“Me? No, I never play the game.”
“So what’s all this for?” I asked.
“During the last two iterations of the game, we noticed that something was off, that things were…changing. Mother was designed to monitor those changes.”
“Things were changing…how?” I asked.
“There were more…incidents of alteration, coincidences that fell outside the usual parameters, changes in the intensity in the game—or, more specifically, in the way the game was affecting the world.”
“Incidents of alteration?”
“It’s technical,” he said.
“How does Mother work, exactly?” Chloe asked.
“She was designed to monitor and track systems.”
“What kind of systems?” I asked, experiencing a sense of déjà vu as I spoke. Hadn’t I asked Crow the same thing?
“All of them,” he said. “Or at least all of the systems designed to keep a major North American city operational: sanitation, transportation, food and beverage, and many more.”
“And if something breaks down in one of these systems, you fix it?” I asked.
“Mother wasn’t designed to help us interfere or manipulate; we’re strictly observation only.”
I was extremely uneasy about the thought of privatized citywide surveillance, but at least Fatman didn’t appear to be manipulating people’s lives the way Crow was doing up in his Tower.
“And you work here, all alone?” Chloe asked.
“We’ve created something similar in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Cleveland, Prague, London, New York, and a bunch of other cities.”
“We?”
“Those of us concerned about changes in the game.”
“So you’re not playing Rabbits? Not at all?” I asked.
Neil turned very serious suddenly. “No, and neither are you—unless you’re stupid, suicidal, or both.”
“Because players are disappearing,” I said.
“No,” he replied. “Because so many players are disappearing…and worse.”
I wasn’t sure Fatman knew about Baron, but he clearly understood that people connected to Rabbits were dying.
“Do you have any idea why this is happening?” Chloe asked.
Neil shook his head. “That’s what we’ve been trying to find out.”
“What happened to Alan Scarpio?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Mother couldn’t find anything, and that’s very concerning.”
“What do you mean?”
“Even though he is notoriously reclusive, Scarpio remains a fairly recognizable public figure. The day he disappeared, he completely disappeared. There was nothing on any of the dozens of cameras and microphones that had picked up Scarpio’s activity regularly in the past. He just…vanished.”
“Vanished…like the Magician,” I said.
Fatman nodded.
“What are those?” Chloe asked, pointing to a few glowing yellow stars that had popped up on various locations on the map of the city while we were talking.
“AILs,” he said. “Alteration incident locations. Those stars mark the locations where players reported potential incidents of alteration.”
“What are you talking about?” Chloe asked.
“Incidents of alteration are when things appear different than expected.”
“You mean like the Mandela effect and the Berenstein Bears? False memories?” Chloe asked.
“Exactly,” Neil said. “Except what if they’re not false?”
“Other dimensions? Multiple worlds?” Chloe asked, but I could tell he wasn’t talking about that. He was talking about something else entirely.
“You’re talking about the Moriarty Factor,” I said.
Fatman smiled.
“But isn’t the Moriarty Factor just whatever trillion-dollar multinational conglomerate is behind the game guiding the experience and leading the players to clues?” Chloe asked.
“That’s one theory,” Neil said. “Somebody behind the game spending a whole bunch of money to make things happen.”
“What do you think’s happening?” I asked.
“I’m not sure, but I do know one thing.”
“What’s that?” Chloe asked.
“Moriarty was a bad guy.”
Neil let the last bit of that sentence hang in the air as he stared at me, and I thought back to the man named Crow and what he’d said to me after he staged that elaborate scene on the bus.