WRAITH CASE STUDY: AUGUSTA PINE
INTRODUCTION
Humanity has always needed ghosts.
Ghosts have been many things—a reflection of the living, a condemnation of our sins, a hope that our loved ones are still with us. We need ghosts for comfort, for stories, for thrills.
But what most people don’t realize is that we need them for national security.
Ghosts—or wraiths, as we call them—are invaluable to our efforts at the Identity Security Division. In our society of constant surveillance, we require assets and informants to be able to move among the populace without leaving a trace. That is why we recruit from felons who are presumed dead.
In this review, we will examine the actions of Asset 1191809—hereafter referred to as “Augusta Pine.” She is the only minor to ever be brought in as a wraith, and I have been in charge of monitoring her progress.
This case study contains details on the Portland Hostage Crisis,1as well as several other confidential mission debriefings.2I have been asked to write thisto determine the risks and rewards of recruiting an underage wraith—and whether ISD would be likely to do so again in the future.
Because ghosts can come back to haunt us.
1
The problem with being dead is that no one forwards your mail.
I only check my email in coffee shops. This shop isn’t busy, but the barista looks relieved when I order decaf coffee instead of their advertised ombre milkshakes. According to the holographic menu, the milkshakes change color corresponding to the drinker’s personality. Two young girls occupy a nearby table, holding milkshakes in transparent to-go cups. One girl checks a chart, trying to decipher what her drink says about her life. The other sips from her straw and grimaces in distaste.
“What is that flavor?” she asks, scrunching her nose. She must be about eleven.
“It’s supposed to be a mystery.” The other girl traces a finger down her chart. “How does it change color, you think?”
“Heat-activated dyes,” I reply before I can help myself. The two girls look at me, then at their milkshakes. Sure enough, the warmth of their fingers has made the dyes shift in hue. Depending on how hot or cold a person runs, their milkshake can remain a muted violet or bloom intohot pink. The drinks remind me of those old vintage mood rings from the twentieth century.
That’s the thing about people—we cannot move through the world and leave it unchanged. No matter how much we want to.
I’m not a caffeine enthusiast, but coffee shops are great for hiding one’s IP address. If anyone tries to trace my activities, they will be led here. And A Whole Latte Fun’s security cameras are broken, the two employees look tired, and the only online security is a lock to keep customers from streaming adult websites.
I have no interest in porn. Rather, I’m hacking the email of an eighty-five-year-old woman.
Okay, that sounds worse than it is. You can’t call it “hacking” when the password is my grandmother’s birthday and her childhood nickname.
“Come on, Nonna,” I murmur. “At least make this difficult.”
The inbox appears in the air before me, projected onto the opaque glass of my visor. Only I can see it. There was once a time when people tried to obscure screens with cupped fingers. Thankfully, we’ve moved beyond that. A smart-ring on my right middle finger allows me to control my visor’s augmented reality.
My gaze sweeps across the coffee shop to make sure no one is watching me. At six in the evening, the place isn’t busy. To my left are two college boys wearing university sweatshirts. They’ve finished their coffees and a forgotten vanilla-glazed doughnut and glass of water sit on theirtable. A mom with two kids hanging from her legs orders a triple espresso, holding out her hand so the barista can scan her tattoo for payment. No one is watching me, and I turn my attention to the inbox.
With a flick of my fingers, I scroll through Nonna’s emails. There are the usual reminders for doctor’s appointments, the correspondence with her book club, and a glut of spam that has slithered past her filters.
I delete the spam for her. There are at least two scams in there—a sketchy address posing as a bank and another promising a brand-new business opportunity that just needs a credit card and—
All it takes is a swipe of my fingers to copy down those email addresses and save them to a folder in my visor. I’ll pass them off to Prefect later.
Once I’ve read through Nonna’s emails—don’t judge me, the most private thing was her complaining about how her robot vacuum keeps getting stuck under her dining room chairs—I scroll down to a familiar folder. It was set up three years ago. The contents are forwarded from a different email. A dead person’s.
Mine.
When someone dies, digital ghosts linger. Social media accounts have to be shut down, newsletters unsubscribed from, DMs and inboxes cleared out. To spare my parents additional grief, my grandmother offered to have my emails forwarded to her. And like a masochist, I check them every time I hack into Nonna’s inbox.
Mostly because my sisters still email me.
At first, I wondered why they did it. Emailing a dead person seems rather morbid. From what I can figure out, it started as a therapy exercise. But over the years, it transformed into something like a diary entry. It was my sisters’ way of talking to themselves while pretending to talk to me.
