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The packet from Multiplicity arrived a month after the attack. It was delivered encased in so many layers of XNG Shipping tape and Fragile: Electronic Device stickers that Pritchard thought he would never get it open. But the cardboard parted neatly when he ran the knife along a single origami seam, folding back down into a flat sheet around the slim dark box. He lifted its lid and there, arranged in a row against the foam, were the names of the dead.
Multi's usual slick design aesthetic had been muted here. The four flat rectangles were smooth and plain. Each metal card was folded into a matte black envelope of paper with a name printed in white, standing up from the black foam. Pritchard removed the first one and unwrapped the paper. The same name was laser-etched into the back of the device. He laid it on his desk. Karen Jeong.
He got out an adapter and connected the key to one of his own jacks, then connected to Multi over the VR interface. The key followed him in. In the virtual reality the little silver rectangle became a window. When he looked at it from the right angle, he could see a tight-wound spiral of cryptographic code hidden in its depths. He had most of the graphics turned off on Multi's corporate interface, so that it appeared only as a simple drawing of a tree, each bright blue leaf another of their manifold information services. Set in the trunk was a door, and on top of the door perched Multiplicity's cartoon bird avatar. It cheeped at him. He fed it the key.
The door opened into a swirl of light that bloomed up around him. The words "Welcome back, Karen!" appeared in midair. Then the light faded into a view from a park bench of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. The sun shone just past noon out of a clear blue sky, but a pearly fog lurked around the edges, waiting to cover the bay. A shining splinter twisted up from the distant skyline. Multiplicity's headquarters. The welcome message faded in next to the far-off spire. The default VR environment. Not surprising. Karen hadn't been augmented. She had never used this simulation.
Four names was more than he had been expecting. Only those who had no living close kin and no designated Data Beneficiary had had their digital shadows revert to Sarif Industries after they had died. That clause in the employment contract wasn't often used. But Multiplicity didn't make mistakes about this sort of thing. They had contacted the company after the death certificates had been filed to let Legal know that four of the victims of the attack had named no one to curate their data after they had ceased to generate it.
A rush of wings. Multi's bird avatar flew in from behind him and landed on the grass in front of the bench. It cocked its head, cheeping at him. He blinked, and it became a globe of white light. A gesture split it into a dense network of smaller lights. Karen's avatars, all descended from her master Multiplicity query agent. She had tuned and customized them with care, and in return they had answered her questions, sorted her mail, watched her feeds, filtered and organized and presented her with information. Now their services were no longer required. He dismissed them, the intricate structure dissolving in his hands. Then he donned Karen's identity and began.
Private accounts like mail, notes, and storage were wiped. Her history he deleted as well, but that was a futile effort; it persisted as a thousand echoes in a thousand corporate databases. She had had an Exler desktop that synced to her Multi identity, plus a Pocket Secretary. Both were still patiently waiting for her to sign back in. He wiped them remotely. Her friends were unfriended all at once. Her feed subscriptions were unlinked, her accounts on various datawells were deactivated. Her own feed he left as it was; videos, photos, music, art, text, and any other content Karen had pushed out into the net would last as long as Multi cared to archive it, and the information giant was not prone to throwing things away. He traversed the list, folding up the constellation of data that had once surrounded a living human, until at last he posted a single notice at the head of her feed: Deceased. No Further Updates.
Pritchard signed out. He rewrapped the black paper around Karen Jeong's key and replaced it in its shallow foam grave. When he knew the job was complete he would take the silver cards to the labs to be melted for scrap. He removed the second key. He could have scripted it, automated the procedure. But he hadn't.
It took Pritchard a couple of hours to work his way down the row, performing his digital last rites. When he arrived at the fourth key, he paused, surprised. Multi did make mistakes after all. The white letters on the last black tab spelled out "Adam Jensen."