Lacrima: Chapter Twelve

Seeing the Unseen

Catherine’s fingers tapped the back of Konrad’s chair in a sequence inscrutable to him. He thought it was the rhythm to a song, but then it broke off into a chain of taps, interrupting each other at an esoteric pace. Konrad whittle away many hours deciphering hidden messages, yet Catherine’s eluded him.

Luckily, the information right before him bore more obvious signs. The eight camera feeds were aligned as an array in the application window. While all the feeds streamed live in Konrad’s computer, he could drag his mouse or skip increments with a click of his arrow keys across a timeline. He did this, sometimes clicking an arrow to Catherine’s beat, and watched.

“There’s Job.” The man in question walked between the stacks, not picking up a single book. Instead, he scrutinized the spines. Catherine leaned in.

“He probably just noticed it,” she said.

“What’s it?” Konrad tapped the spacebar, freezing Job as he crouched to a lower shelf.

“When I was in the library,” Catherine started, the garish light of the monitor reflecting off her eyeballs. “I took a quick stroll to see the kind of books on display.”

“Yeah, because it’s a library,” Konrad stated. Though when he said it, he knew it sounded ignorant. An ignorance Catherine quickly clicked her tongue to.

“Different libraries have different books,” she said. “The Library of Congress has distinct priorities compared to your local bookmobile. Esau’s library is no different…” She looked up to the roof. “If I remember correctly, there was a whole wing on philosophy, divided by era and school of thought. French existentialism there. Classical liberalism here. German expressionism in between. Beyond that, I saw another wing dedicated to mental health and psychology. I wonder if that caught Job’s eye.”

“Sounds pretty normal.”

“There was one other section as well,” Catherine said, neglecting Konrad’s comment. Her mind operated as a train. Others had to mind their footing around the tracks, lest they get run over. “Mythology/religion. In that entire wing, every book could neatly fit into one of those categories.”

“Okay, I’m a bit lost,” Konrad admitted. “Sit me down and explain what I’m supposed to get out of this.”

“You’re already sitting down,” she teased. “In any case, my point is this. Esau collected books in a narrow band of interests. If he was this dedicated to having a whole room to house them, those particular topics had to be meaningful to him. Psychology, philosophy, and religion. A social science coupled with two bedfellows from the humanities. Even within their sections, I noticed plenty of overlap. Lots of Jung. Hegel. Spinoza. And enough commentaries to kill a horse. What you should get out of this is that Esau had a fixation on the human condition. From that mind, we get this mansion. Remember, it is his design. To understand the mansion, we must understand its master.”

“I kinda get what you mean,” Konrad said, absorbing. His attention shifted back to Job on the camera. He used his mouse to scrub through the timeline. Konrad watched as Job grabbed a few books, set them down, and read them. He had to scrape away two hours before Job’s image zipped back between stacks, crouching and standing, before leaving entirely.

“Take a picture.”

Konrad jolted from his chair, pivoted towards the voice, and knocked his hip against the table. Catherine became rigid, but relaxed quickly after.

Job stood behind them, scrutinizing the footage. “It’ll last longer.”

Where Konrad expected him to smile at his joke, he only found Job staring at him. The weary college student crossed over to join them at the workstation.

“I thought you said you only wanted the cameras to spy on Service, not be voyeurs,” he said.

“Hey, that’s a little uncharitable,” Konrad pointed out. “You just happened to be on the camera. We wanted to-”

“Konrad,” Catherine snipped. Her hand rested on the mouse and she leaned closer to the monitor. Something caught her eye. “Let me show Job what we were searching for.” She stepped aside and presented the footage. Catherine even patted the chair for Job to sit on. He elected not to take the seat, instead drawing closer to the screen.

“That’s the table alright,” he said, still skeptically.

“What do you not see?”

Job pulled up his glasses and rubbed the excess skin around his eyes. He blinked before setting his sight back on the monitor. “Books.” He stepped back. “I had the books in a pile. They’re not there.”

“At 10:21, you left the library.” Catherine hovered her fingernail to the point in the timeline. “I showed you the table at 10:22. Let me play what happened during that minute.” She efficiently tapped the back arrow until they reached Job pulling himself up from the table.

He left. Through the camera, a distant shut of the door had been captured with the footage. Then a trembling buzz arose in the library. Under the white light of the fixtures, a blue shape arose from the floor. Ethereal, as if made from some hybrid of liquid cobalt and mercury, it regarded the stack. The figure, which had the same general shape as Service, but uncontained by a screen, gently plucked the stack of books off the table with little effort. It glided to the center of the room where other phantasms each took a book from the pile. They spread out well beyond the purview of the camera. The initial servant folded down before slinking away into the floor. Finally, the chorus silenced and the room returned to relative normality - ready for another guest to walk in.

Catherine crossed her arms. Her smile this time looked easy and assured. Konrad gasped, while Job’s mouth dilated to a punctuated dot.

“That’s what makes the mansion,” Catherine proclaimed. “We have found who sets up the room when we return each time. Service is more than a helpful question-answerer. They are a group with physical properties, maintaining this place.” Her hand stroked her chin. “But how do they work?”

“Ghosts,” Konrad laughed. His fist pumped the air. “Ghosts! I knew it!”

“They definitely look ghostly,” Catherine agreed. “But so do static and old photographs. Let’s not project our assumptions on this.”

“I’m not sure.” Konrad rubbed his arms in delight. His hand passed over his silver necklace with the Mothman hanging from it. His teeth clamped as a gridlock grin. “This looked exactly like a haunting.”

Catherine shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

Job paled, rubbed his glasses against his shirt, returned them to his face, and locked onto the monitor. He pulled another step back. “Catherine, there’s no explanation for this.”

“Right now yes,” Catherine continued to agree.

“No, this…” He paused and collected his thoughts. “These things. They are all around us. I distinctly remember you saying that Service is always listening as well. This mansion…” Job looked away and at the room around him. Each line, each space between planks and tiles, each sill. Service didn’t just live in the reflections, but in the walls themselves. He walked up to one such seam. Job splayed his fingers over the wood. Leaning over, he pressed his ear to it. When he closed his eyes, he searched for sound.

There.

Covered by a pall of insulation, Job could make up a sparse, infinitesimally small crackle within. He pulled, becoming paler all the while.

“This mansion…” he echoed.

“This mansion, indeed,” Catherine said, rising to her full height. “Esau’s design is nothing short of amazing.”

“Amazing,” Job said. “Terrifying.” The dream of the angels, the volcanic floor of glass, and his burdensome guilt flashed in his neurons. Summoned, coaxed back into the waking world. A spasm shivered through him before dying. For a moment, his thoughts became reverberating winds within him. Wayward gusts buffeted his personal cyclone.

Terrifying. Guilt. Angels. Trespassing.

This mansion. Ghosts. Murder.

Argus. Catherine. Konrad. Lucille. Bae.

Hopeless. Lost. Hollow.

They swept him up, making him light-headed before abruptly throwing him back down to earth. The floor felt shaky and unmoored to the foundations. When he returned, he saw Konrad with a concerned look on him, but didn’t cross over. His eyes darted.

“How bad was your sleep?”

“Fine enough,” Job assured. He blinked rapidly. Tinnitus hung in his inner ears.

“You look like…” Konrad stopped him. He aborted his hand reaching out. “You looked like you were about to faint.”

“I’m fine. Fine enough. Fine enough.” Still, Job took the liberty of seating himself on the plush bed. Much like the one in his room, it gently lowered him into the bulk of the mattress.

Catherine had long settled into her new confidence, unconcerned with the other two. She browsed the other feeds. “Look.”

Konrad tentatively glanced at Job before following Catherine’s lead. His twitchy fingers curled when he noticed the new camera feed. This time she showed the one they placed in the eastern hallway. It displayed Bae Yuri. She meandered down the hallway, seeming preoccupied with the window. Bae paced the length of the hall. Her head moved on a swivel, back and forth. This went on for an hour.

Job, at this point, stepped up behind them.

“What is she doing?” he asked. “She’s just pacing.”

“That answers your question,” Catherine put dismissively.

Is she… Job squinted.

Bae, in the footage, paused at key points. First, at the window with a hand on the glass. Next, she leaned casually next to Argus’ office door. Then, she stared at the ceiling - perhaps at the thin light fixtures. Finally, Bae cycled through these distinct poses one after another. After an hour of this, she heaved a massive breath before, at last, making her way out of the camera’s scope of view.

That’s not anxious pacing. That’s… Job collected his words. … off-putting.

Catherine’s arm snapped into action with a sharp click of the spacebar. “There. Right after Bae leaves the hallway!”

The freeze-frame showed one of the tiles parted in the floor. Raw black filled in the empty space. Catherine set the playback speed to half. Unleashed, the video crawled forward in time. With it, a sinewy hand made of pale light pulled up the rest of a skeletal glitchy body. Even at half speed, the figure flickered in blue pulses. It came up to the floor and produced a cloth to which it wiped the window down. An outline ringed the person with an eerie cyan glow. Job tried to parse out the face. They could see Bae’s face in the previous hour of the footage. But he couldn’t tell if either this phantasm simply didn’t face towards the camera or its face was just that inscrutable. The conclusion an observer could make would be: “It’s human-shaped.” This servant looked like reality scrubbed it of the details. A dead spot that a human could fit into, but would never dare. If he squinted through his glasses, Job could fool himself into maybe seeing the cut of a jawline or the bridge of a nose. In the end, it gave him a throbbing headache, so he looked away.

The specter made a few passes with the implement before efficiently heading down into the crawlspace. Noiselessly, the tile slid back into its proper arrangement.

“They keep the house clean,” Konrad stated.

“But never seen,” Catherine added. “Service, may I ask: why have we never seen you?”

Service peaked their face between the blinds covering the window. Job tried to look at Service’s avatar to see if he could get an eye for their particular details. As Service loaded a response, Job picked out more than just a vague face-shape. He swore he made out vertiginous cheekbones, a smattering of hair on the scalp, a high forehead, the impressions of eyelids, and maybe a button nose. Did his eyes really adjust Service’s darkness or was he infected with pareidolia? Job staked himself on the former. He couldn’t doubt himself. Not if he wanted to survive. His mind was all he possessed in Lacrima.

“You are not the first group to Lacrima and the mansion,” Service intoned. Job focused on the mouth. The low-rendered protrusions which constituted the lips moved out-of-sync with the actual words. Still, they moved with a hypnotic cadence. It wasn’t a random simulation of mouth movements, but a code he knew he couldn’t parse. He tried to read the not-lips.

“The first group found the visible presence of us disconcerting. This is an expected response from the guests. In keeping with our mission to make the mansion as comfortable as possible, we humbled ourselves until our upkeep became invisible to most guests. We are sorry if us being the background worries you. Please understand that we are only trying to make your stay as rejuvenating as possible.”

Service flicked off. Job shook his head, unable to read the lips.

Catherine leaned back in her chair. “That confirms that Service has been listening to more than just questions.” She caught Konrad’s confused look and answered him before he opened his mouth. “I mean - Service has to have a way of knowing if a guest is in the area or not. Service cannot see, as it answered so. But we know it can hear. How else can it answer our questions? I bet it picks on sound cues: footsteps, talking, objects moving, to determine whether a guest is physically somewhere.”

“Could you evade Service’s ‘ears’?” Job wondered, but kept his attention on Catherine. “Could it perhaps hear breath and heartrate as well?”

“With how sophisticated the whole technology is,” Catherine said. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“It’s either everything is surprising or nothing can be,” Konrad noted, gesturing to the room. “Lacrima works in extremes.”

“It does.” Catherine nodded.

Job scrutinized Catherine with a new sight. Sight acclimated to finding shapes in shadows. Though she wore a human face, Catherine held a kinship with Service in how difficult it could be to read her. Even now with the smile and the casual conversation, she remained implacable. Sometimes only her cheeks and lips moved to form words. Job could only imagine it came from extreme discipline. Her unexpressiveness had to be a cultivated habit. One that would benefit a killer.

“Service could be lying,” he said. “What’s stopping a machine from lying?”

“That’s not how programs work, especially LLMs,” Catherine replied. “Computers are literalistic systems. They have no motive to lie. But, you bring up a good point. Someone behind the program might be lying and using Service to spread misinformation.”

“Esau, you mean?”

“Could be Esau. Could be someone else. Though we are operating with…” She turned to Konrad with expectation. “What Konrad?”

“What?”

“When you cut all only to the simplest explanation…?”

“Shoot,” he whispered. “Some kind of razor?”

“Occam’s razor. Half credit,” Catherine teased. She turned back to Job. “But yes, if there is misinformation in the system, I would assume it would be Esau or…” A thought came to her. “Service did say they changed because of the feedback from the first group of guests. Could a guest have fed in bad information: witting or not?” She tapped the armrest, situating back into her finger syncopation. “How much power could a guest have over Service?”

Brandishing the potential of your weapon? Job thought.

“I wonder about that myself,” he said.

“It is of particular interest to me,” Catherine said. “Think of the capabilities of Service. Even a neutered version could launch a thousand apps, inventions, and whatever you could jam it into. It turns out Esau had more to give than just a measly chatbot.”

“And anyone who could get their hands on it would make themself rich,” Job baited. “Or sell it to the highest bidder.”

“Indeed. You could be the kingmaker of Silicon Valley or anywhere for that matter.”

“Indeed,” Job reflected, drawing out the word. He slid deeper onto the bed, relaxing as he looked at Catherine. For her part, she crossed her legs and interlocked her fingers.

Konrad looked at one and then the other. He found himself missing something, but didn’t know what. Instead, he busied himself with his computer. Leaning inward, Konrad noticed something. He then tapped on the keyboard a few binds. With a wizardly flourish, the fourth camera came into fullscreen view. Here: the bedroom hallway. Only delayed by half a second, he saw Bae again. She lingered outside her door, appearing to stand above the knob. Bae stood there, without moving. Konrad flicked over to another camera before leaving Catherine and Job to themselves. He exited his room.

Right where the camera reported, Bae hovered. She spun her heel, threw her hands back, and bowed her head towards Konrad. He realized just how choreographed her movements really were.

“Konrad! How’s the ghost-hunting?!”

“We found something!” he yelped, trying to suppress the uncanniness of the chat. “I’ll show you later.”

“Cool. Cool.” She shrugged. “Do you want to go on a walk?”

“Sure, but first…” No, Konrad couldn’t let it slide. He needed to know. “Bae, you know I have cameras up?” He pointed to the camera numbered four he mounted on the ceiling.

“I knew tha-” The realization mortified her. A shotgun blast of blood flushed from her face. “So, you saw me standing there?” Bae laughed, throwing her head back. “I just space out a lot. Too many thoughts going in and out of my head. This whole place has been so overwhelming. I’ll tell you: for a vacation this has been exhausting!” Her overcompensating laughter made her sway. She leaned and patted Konrad on his bony chest.

“Yeah,” he said. “Is that what you were doing downstairs?”

Now, even the laughter died, becoming a gasping huff. Bae Yuri stared off, pale as a ghost.

“I promise I wasn’t looking-looking at you,” Konrad said. He dove too deep. “I happened to notice it. We actually saw-”

“What did you see?”

Konrad cleared his throat. “I saw you pacing and what looked like posing in different places. Is that just how you think?”

A semblance of color returned to Bae. The lucidity returned, but she still looked rigid. “Sure. Yes, that’s how I think.” It came out strangled. Not really an admission of anything. She finally shook her head and a grin came back to her.

“Let’s go on that walk,” Konrad said.

“Yes. Yes.” Bae led the way. “Tell me about the ghosts. Or rather what might be ghosts.”

Before Konrad replied, he noticed that Bae’s eyes fixated on the camera’s location. She spoke and listened alright, but her attention rested there. He already didn’t like what the cameras have turned him into. But he just got a massive breakthrough with Catherine’s help.

I’ll just be more careful to not look where I’m not supposed to, he thought. I’ve been told that lesson before. A few times actually.

“I’ll point out the tiles on the floor first…”