A myriad of tests. An ID check, a blood test, a breath test, an enamel test, and then a final check by her herself. Anderson wondered why... That final check alone would have been enough to prove his identity, as the slogan said ‘She knows you better than you do’. He often wondered what the marketing team at Matasia Incorporated had meant by that. Perhaps they’d all spent a nice evening of wine and fancy cheeses in an attempt to get to know her a little more – but had instead discovered that they were all borderline sociopaths.
After an hour and a half in total, he was finally there, at the last checkpoint in a sprawling corridor. He knew he was nearly there because the door at the end of this corridor was far better protected, to the extent that ‘door’ might be a bit of an understatement. It was a huge circular hatch, bordered with locks and bolts – the kind of thing you’d expect to see at the end of a heist movie. In front of the door, there was a woman sitting at a glass desk, typing away at her keyboard, and focusing hard on the display projected onto her glasses. Anderson wasn’t sure if she’d noticed him, and let out a sharp cough. She typed faster for a moment, before turning to Anderson, peering at him over the glasses.
“Mr. Anderson?” she said, a strictly rhetorical question, as she gave no time for him to respond, “You’re running a little late.”
“It’s all the damned checks,” replied Anderson, doing his best to mask the anger in his voice.
“Not an excuse,” chimed the woman, waving an accusing finger in the air, “I have to go through the checks every day, and I’m always on time – a little early, even.”
“Christ,” went Anderson, “You must get no sleep at all.”
The woman didn’t respond to that, not directly anyway, instead, she just gestured towards a dinner plate-sized hole, directly in the centre of the impressive bulkhead.
“Please proceed to mobile verification,” she said, sing-song.
Anderson approached the door, these things always made him a little nervous – like the whole thing could come crashing down on his arm, or some nesting monster might bite his hand clean off. Regardless, he put his hand into the hole, and a range of scanners and sensors looked for a small chip in the flesh between index finger and thumb. This was Andersons mobile phone.
The machine beeped, and he closed his eyes for just a second, as the confirmation code was beamed directly from his network provider, to his brain.
“4566-3469-8046-9,” he said, to the door.
One by one, and with a satisfying little click, the bolts of the door began to drop, go left, go right, go diagonally, or rise, depending on which bit of the door you were looking at. The process itself took about a minute and a half, during which time Anderson had turned to the secretary with a sort of ‘get a load of this’ expression, which she had entirely ignored. She had, however, slipped on a jumper in the time he’d been looking away.
The door opened inwards, and the first thing Anderson noticed was the freezing cold draft that hit him full force in the face. He wasn’t expecting that, and if he had, he probably would have bought a hat and coat. It made sense, of course, servers, processors, and other technological things Anderson had never been bothered to learn about, all needed to be kept cold. The retro computers his dad collected needed pipes of water to keep cool, and some of them even had archaic fans spinning around inside. This was the same idea, albeit on a massive scale.
Anderson faced yet another corridor and cursed under his visible breath. Much to his delight, this one didn’t seem too long. It didn’t have an elevator like most of the others, and thankfully, there were no stairs in sight. At some point he’d heard the door clunk shut behind him, and, although it may have been his body adjusting the new climate, he felt like he was getting warmer.
Finally, he reached the main chamber, the hidden nucleus of Matasia Compound 6.6ab, and it was as grand as he’d heard. The room itself was the size of your average block of flats, the walls, floor, and ceiling clad in a labyrinth of stacked servers – it was like there was a model city on each interior face. There was, much to Anderson’s delight, a little gangway going from where he was, over the floor servers, and to the centre of the room. He made his way over it, tucking his hands into his armpits for warmth. When he got there, he was rather taken-aback by what he found. He’d expected some kind of space-age device, maybe with a ball of eerie blue energy glowing above it, but instead, he found something that looked like the microphones old stand-up comedians used to use.
The more he thought about it, the more it made sense. This was simply her mouth, and mouths, as a general rule, not including great whites and mantis, are pretty simple looking. The majority of her, her body and mind, was attached to the walls and ceiling.
“Hello, Montgomery Anderson,” the mic lit up with blue light as it spoke.
Anderson gave a thin smile, and a little nod.
“I suppose you know why I-”
“Of course I do,” she interrupted, “You are Mr. Montgomery Anderson, currently the 17th oldest Montgomery Anderson alive on the planet, and the 849th oldest Montgomery Anderson in general. You are here on the orders of a formal inquiry looking into my involvement in the death of politician/media mogul, Lancelot ‘Lance’ Libirion.”
“In the murder of Lance Libirion,” Anderson corrected, taking a little pleasure in the act.
For a moment she didn’t reply, and the little stand-up microphone seemed be staring him down.
“Lance Libirion was not murdered,” she explained, “Lance Libirion was killed by a bullet.”
Anderson’s eyebrow raised itself, quite involuntary on his part.
“Where did the bullet come from?”
The same pause.
“A rifle,” she replied.
“And the rifle was held by...”
Another pause and Anderson swore he could hear some kind of whirring as the machine seemed to think.
“Carolyn Coen,” she replied.
“And Carolyn was the one to pull the trigger?”
“Yes,” she said, no pause this time.
“So, it was Carolyn Coen who murdered Lance Libirion?” asked Anderson, hoping to god that this would be the last question he’d have to ask this infinite line of code.
The pause returned, and this time, Anderson could definitely hear it. It was like a buffering or loading of sorts – it reminded him again of his dad’s collection, something called a walking man.
“Lance Libirion was not murdered,” she said, finally.
“But he was, wasn’t he? Carolyn Coen shot him right in the head.”
“She did,” replied her.
“So, Carolyn murdered Lance,” he stated, arms on hips.
The whirring came back.
“Lance was not murdered,”
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