On Monday mornings, I send out a story via email: ultra-brief tales of 1,000 words or more, usually in genres including horror, science fiction, and the supernatural. Those stories collectively are called Once Upon A Time. I’ve also published several ebooks and compendium volumes of those stories so far.

I’d love to have you as a subscriber to the weekly free story. You can subscribe via email here. Unsubscribe any time, from the link in every issue.

Here's story 242, of 266 so far.

Ghost Streets

It was difficult to see her phone’s screen in the midday light, but I leaned in closer after she increased the brightness to maximum. The device displayed a mapping interface, with our location shown by a pulsing blue dot.

“It’s a navigation app. I’ve got it on my phone too,” I said. “It even remembers where I park.”

She looked at me in that way she has, where she’s trying to keep her expression blank but can’t help showing just a little bit of irritation. Lately, it’s been changing slightly, though. There’s some amusement around the edges. At least, I think it’s amusement.

“The app isn’t the important thing. Look at the actual map it’s showing.”

She handed me the device, and I dutifully looked. The area was of course the one immediately around us, entirely familiar to me. I shrugged and met her gaze again.

“So?” I said, and she somehow managed to say look again, stupid without so much as opening her mouth. I looked again, more carefully this time. There was the street we were actually on — that was the Glasgow Road — then there were the streets branching off, where I walk the dog most days. Broomhall. St John. Eyre. And the adjacent cul-de-sac that runs towards the park: Hanover. And then I saw it.

There was a broad line connecting one side of the cul-de-sac with the main road that was a full block to the east, but in reality there’s no street there at all. It’s a parking area and ends with a brick wall, and beyond it there’s just private allotments. On the screen, though, the line was labelled Otago Place.

“That’s not a real street,” I said as I turned, my eyes automatically searching out the brick wall that was just visible from where we were standing. Sure enough, there it was. There was no street there. There was no Otago Place.

She took her phone back and pocketed it, her point obviously already made. “That’s right,” she replied. “It’s a ghost street.”

My instinct was to come up with some quip or other, but she’d already shown me so much that I wouldn’t have believed before I met her. I knew there was a reason she’d brought me here, and that it would probably redefine another chunk of what I’d previously been sure of. So I just raised an eyebrow, and waited for her to continue.

“There are lots of mapping data companies and organisations out there,” she said at last. “Google, of course. Microsoft. Apple. Ordnance Survey. MapQuest. OpenStreetMap. Garmin. TomTom. And those are just some of the bigger ones in the western hemisphere. And a lot of their business comes from selling access to that map data, or providing access to their APIs. Apps like this are just clients that use the central data.”

It made sense, and I was vaguely aware of how it worked. I shrugged. “And?”

“And so piracy is an issue. People using the data without licensing or paying for it. So they have to sort of watermark it. They physically mark the maps with their logos in the corner, of course. But they also watermark them in another way.”

“Ghost streets,” I said. “They add fake streets?”

She nodded. “They all do it. Different streets for different map data companies. If you overlaid all the maps from all the companies, you’d find dozens of ghost streets in every major settlement in the developed world.”

I was taken aback at first, but it was also completely believable. Like an easter egg added to a video game. I looked at the brick wall halfway down the cul-de-sac again, and then she tapped my elbow and nodded towards the same wall. We started walking.

“So Otago Place is a ghost street, which means it’s a watermark from…”

“Google, this time. But Apple Maps would have a different one, and so on. The ghost streets never match up between data providers. They’re like a gigantic fingerprint spread across the world, in plain sight but hardly noticeable unless you look really carefully and you already know the area well.”

It was a vaguely sinister idea, when you thought about it. We reached the wall in less than half a minute. I knocked my fist against it twice, then glanced at her with a grin. My grin faded when I saw the expression on her face.

It was the one she wore when she was about to chip away another piece of my previous view of the world, and show me something wonderful, or terrible, or scarcely believable. Or all three at once.

“They’re just watermarks,” I said, but my tone made it sound like a question. “Fake data, to catch people out and make them pay a license fee.”

She made a movement that was somehow both a nod and a non-committal shrug.

“But?” I asked, and then she stepped forward to lay her own palm flat against the faded red bricks. They were faintly wet from the brief rainfall earlier in the day, but it had been dry for several hours now.

“But we use them,” she said. “To keep things away from prying eyes.”

I blinked, then looked at the wall again, and finally returned my gaze to her. She pressed her lips together in a thin line, and I knew that this time she really was concealing some amusement. After a moment, she continued.

“Maps, even digital ones, have a way of codifying things. Solidifying them, and establishing them in the world. They dispel a lot of the disbelief-inertia we usually have to compensate for. So, yes, the mapping companies create them as fake data; little tricks to help with revenue collection. They have no idea that these ghost streets are ours too.”

Her palm was still against the bricks, and she lifted it back slightly, allowing her fingers to remain pressed to the rough surface. She traced a pattern of some kind, almost as if she were conducting some silent and hidden orchestra, then she placed her palm flat against the wall once more. I didn’t hear or feel or see anything. Until she bent her elbow slightly, and gave the gentlest push.

And Otago Place opened up before us.

JINX

KESTREL face a new and terrifying enemy: an all-seeing mastermind who already knows exactly who they are, and many of their deepest secrets. Nothing stays hidden forever, and the line between privacy and liberty is razor-thin…

Book 3 in the KESTREL action-thriller series.

Find Out More

I'd love to hear any feedback or other thoughts; you can find my contact info here.

I encourage you to share this story with anyone you think would enjoy it. If you’d like to receive a tale like this via email every week, you can sign up to receive them here.

Thanks for reading.