[Note from the author: Science Fiction (or SF, if you want to get Harlan Ellison about it) has never been something I've seriously considered writing. Looking back, I can see the genre peppered throughout my work. I've always been fascinated by the un-manifested and theoretical. I've spent my entire life thinking outside of the box, so it only seems logical that my imaginative wanderings would lead me into the wilderness of Science Fiction. This story, like most stories, was born of a random thought. A what if ...? I've always loved a good detective story. The process of logical deduction and sometimes of plain blind luck. So, I says to myself, "What about a futuristic detective story?" I says, "What if there was a traditionalist detective revolted by the technological advances of his race?" I says, "What if science was the new religion ... and someone was killing its priests?" And so, at the bottom of the rabbit hole, three weeks later, and two weeks behind on my one-short-story-per-week quota ... this bastard orphan of a tale has hatched from the pupa of my subconscious. Enjoy. Following the blog or spreading the word is always a nice 'thank you' ... especially if you enjoy the stories. I'm not above beggary.]
“She’s the
fourth one this month.” The coroner stared at her body like it was a
game trophy, those antlered beasts that still hung in museums along the
Manhattan-Boston megalopolis. “Linked herself to the apartment’s A.I. circuits.
See these?” The coroner pointed to the metal tacks piercing the dead woman’s
temples.
Detective Delano
Krohl nodded. “Pulse sensors?”
The coroner
pumped his eyebrows. It was the first expression Krohl had seen break the
placid disinterest of the man’s face. “A techno-savvy detective; now I’ve seen
everything. Do you happen to know what pulse sensors do?”
“The way I
understand it, there isn’t much they can’t do.”
The coroner
laughed. “Right again. It was a baited question. What you’re looking at is a
technological slip-trap. The kind hunters used before the woods were
flattened.”
“I’m familiar,”
Krohl said, annoyed by the man’s condescension. “A slip trap tightens against
the pull of prey. So how is this like that?”
The coroner
sidestepped the ruptured fluids, dried in a fanning pattern across the
apartment’s chrome tiles. “The A.I. responds to the vocal patterns of its chosen
parent; in this case, our departed Doctor Shannon Charlemagne. These sensors
have been programmed to plumb the subconscious and conscious layers of the
mind.”
“Those aren’t
easy algorithms to pattern.”
“They’re child’s play for a Theoretical
Engineer of her caliber. The hubris of science knows no bounds. Even in death.”
The coroner laughed, looking out the window, where bridged skyscrapers crowded
the ash-metal sky. “We’ve evolved beyond pistols and razors in the bathtub.”
“We don’t know
it is suicide,” Krohl
reminded him. “The facial scanners recorded nothing.”
“It’s most
certainly suicide. The apartment doors were coded and sealed. The facial-scanners
had no need to record; it was only her face in the room. This is no bungalow or a mine-flat,
detective. It’s a paradise high-rise, equipped with the most sophisticated
security netting software next to the President-General himself. Her biological
signature is uploaded into the apartment’s A.I.. Each human heart beats at its
own frequency, like a vocal chord. The security net awakens the minute another
heartbeat enters through that door. Which was locked, I’ll remind you.”
“Could the
system be tricked?”
The coroner
shook his head. “Unlikely. Unless it was a dead man or a machine, this woman
killed herself.”
Delano Krohl
studied her face, full lips pursed, cheekbones pronounced beneath the frozen
clench of her jaw. He couldn’t look long at a thing without eyes, and so he
turned back to the arrogant little man busy typing into his ComScreen. “I
didn’t mean to interrupt you. The slip-trap. You were saying?”
“Well, now this gets interesting. Pulse sensors of this
nature are used to pilot non-corporeal machines: war bots, star probes, and the
like. In this case, the same piloting mechanism has been reversed, so that the
power of the machine enters into the pulse sensor.”
“So the A.I. did
that to her eyes?”
“Only after she
initiated the sequence. You see, using sensors this way is what the Oldens used
to call a suicide bomb. The initial link to the A.I.’s power source was
self-inflicted. Once the alignment was in place…”
“There was no
stopping it,” Delano finished.
“Her voice, her
screams, her convulsions—all of it triggered the AI’s built in responses. It
tried to help her…”
“Can we map her
nervous system?”
The coroner
shrugged. “I can try. But she’s well-cooked.”
*****
Krohl sat by his
window in Headquarters, watching human bugs mill through the steel hide of the
city. The Glak Weed in his pipe was bitter, a cheap Malrovian import from
Andromeda. Ah, but the focus came despite its taste. He leaned back in his
chair, feeling his spinal columns align. A wave of gooseflesh swept up his
back, the synapses swelling in a flash-pop of fire until all he could see were
the bodies, four eyeless dolls laid on a bed of darkness.
He closed his
eyes, puffed deeper on the pipe, and vanished into himself.
He stepped
through an old wooden door into the cabin of his Inner Room, a place that
existed only in his mind. Furnished with rustic pine-work, a bearskin rug, and
a hearth of river-stone, the walls danced with crackling fire. He’d modeled it
after a time the history files referred to as The Great Frontier. There were hunting rifles in the
corner, leather-bound classics stacked in a wall-length shelf, a wood stove,
and the aromas of roots and coffee.
He hated the
world, the people, the machines; longed to return to the unconquered forests
and fields forever lost to humanity. It had been fifty years since anyone had
seen a tree, or heard dogs barking in the night. The only thing that grew in
his part of New Boston was the fungus on the air vents from Subterrania’s
mine-lofts.
He took a
rocking chair by the fire, staring into the flames. The reds and oranges
braided themselves in endless patterns. The power of the mind was incredible.
To actually feel the
heat.
“But the mind,”
he widened his eyes, “is what’s missing from this equation.”
He edged closer
to the fire, thinking, the mind, the mind, the mind.
One month ago to
the day, Gremlin Henschel had been found in his hotel bathtub with an electric
conduit clutched in his hands. That was so obviously a suicide that no one had
thought much of it. Physicists of Henschel’s class were invariably mad, and,
under the Responsible Psycho-Hypnosis of the Engineering Class Amendment, were routinely treated for the “God
Complex” that had nearly destroyed the scientific class.
But just two
weeks later Doctor Hento Chuang, head of the Colonytech space expansion
think-tank, had been discovered in his lab. The man had siphoned over a gallon
of sulfuric acid into his own nasal cavity, reducing the upper half of his
torso to jelly. That one got Krohl’s attention. He’d tried to find a
connection, but the only commonality between Henschel and Chuang was the Colony
Program, which said little, considering every scientist and mathematician in
the world was involved in the colonization of space.
Four days after
Chuang, a sleep chamber engineer named Adina Glass had been discovered with her
head in a waste compactor. By then Kohl was positive that someone was killing
scientists. In each case the pattern was uniform: locked doors in high-security
facilities; no sign of forced entry or a struggle of any kind; a personal
history of Compos Mentis
and regular RHA treatments by the Guild of Psycho-Hypnotists; and the mind (he was sure of it); the
mind most of all.
The meditation
shattered with his grunt of frustration.
The spent bowl
of Glak Weed smelled of rotten meat. He coughed and leaned toward the filmy
window, the sky a slate purple now that evening had come. He watched the heat
thermals buffet up from Subterrania, could almost taste the offal and ash.
Krohl pressed a
dial at the edge of his desk, instantly transforming half of its surface into a
vertical ComScreen.
“Hello
Detective,” a female
voice chirped. “How may I assist you?”
“Homicide files
for Henschel 3-2897, Chuang 3-2956, Glass 3-3034, and Charlemagne 3-3123.”
“Detective, I
regret to inform you that, as of August 28th, 2144, there are no
Homicide Files with those case numbers.”
Krohl punched at
the screen, the holographic image shivering as his fist passed through. “The
damn suicides, then, you stubborn microwave!”
“There is no
need for name calling, Detective. I’m pulling the files now.”
Krohl sat back,
his knuckles whitening in a fist. The hate distracted him from the hollow ache
the Glak Weed always brought. “I should burn you,” he told the computer. “Pull
your wires right through your teeth.”
“I have no
teeth, Detective. Here are the files you requested.”
Usually Krohl
would have cursed and spat at the hologram. But he was too shocked to speak.
There in the air-painted images of each victim, a mental connection had been
made.
“Their minds,”
he whispered.
Only now that
statement meant
something.
*****
Krohl moved
through the port door of the coroner’s chambers, a blast of sterilizing wind
nearly blowing his hat to the floor. He flattened it to his skull with a curse
as the steel flanges zip closed behind him.
The coroner
stood by the body of Doctor Charlemagne, her lush auburn hair spilling over the
polished death-crib. “Detective, what an unpleasant surprise. I was just about
to—”
“It wasn’t
suicide,” Krohl blurted.
“Well, the
evidence speaks otherwise.”
“Trump your
evidence.”
“Doing so would destroy the framework that holds
our fields together. What makes you so confident?”
“A quantified
biological reflex that’s been solving crime since Ancient Mesopotamia.”
“Which is…?”
Krohl smiled. “A
hunch.”
The coroner
turned back to the body, maneuvering the steel splints sticking from Doctor
Charlemagne’s empty sockets. “Unfortunately, hunches have all the value of
lint. See here, I’ve attempted to map the nervous system, and as I suspected,
the brain tissue is useless.”
“It’s how he’s
killing them.” Krohl paced, the blood-rumble in his ears deafening the bleats
of machinery. “Their minds. We’ve possessed the ability to map dead tissue for
how long now?”
“Thirty-two
years. I wrote a book on the subject, as you’ll recall.”
“And here we
have four victims that have erased our only recourse of harvesting evidence in
the process of taking their own lives.”
“Such measures
are commonplace,” the coroner said. “With the drugs and hypnotic
trance-inducers circulating on the black market, any number of personal
atrocities can be erased. Human beings still hold privacy in high regard. Their
vices, highest of all.”
Krohl shook his
head. “The trance-inducers are a criminal enterprise. Robberies. Murders.
Dosing victims so they won’t remember their kidnappers. This is something
else.”
The man’s upper
lip shivered. “You have my curiosity. But with no conclusive evidence it’s…" The
coroner hesitated, snapping his eyes to the body as if just seeing it for the
first time. He turned to his instruments, punching commands.
Krohl crowded
behind him, watching his deft fingers move. “What is it? What are you doing?”
“The nervous
system is useless, but there might be another way,” he said quickly. “Brain
mapping traces actions through the synaptic pathways. When a habit is formed,
it fuses its own eternal path in the mind. By triangulating that pathway with
the Hippocampus and the pre-frontal lobe, we can form a timeline for events.
Pictures, faces, sound.”
“I know all
that,” Krohl grunted. “But the damn thing is fried.”
The coroner
punched a final code, then steepled his fingers as a flash of colored ganglia
mapped themselves across the screen. “There are always other doors.”
*****
Krohl sat at the
desk in his Econoflat, the sewage-filled Hudson frothing beyond his window.
UV-repellent-tinting shielded the bright red sun, but even that was chipping.
Twice he’d fallen asleep at this desk under a diamond of unadulterated light,
only to waken with angry red blisters.
Though small,
the flat was a kingdom by comparison to Subterrania, where the under-class were
known to sleep six to a room. He looked at the clock fused in his window, the
liquid iridium ticking off seconds.
He hated
waiting, wished he had invested in a god-chip so his downloads could be
instant. Alas, he’d indulged his technophobic tendencies, and to this day remained the only
detective in his sector without wires braided through the ganglia of his brain.
“The price of
freedom,” he mumbled, looking at his Sat-watch.
At 15:30 his
Sat-watch buzzed. Krohl enabled the speak-function on his wrist. “Accept
transmission and upload to ComScreen 46578-345, Secured Channel, Detective
Delano Krohl.”
A tiny chirp of
a voice: “Initiating encrypted link. Stand-by.”
A slow feed
uploaded, filling the screen with the same synaptic webwork he had glimpse in
the coroner’s chambers. The view pulled out of the vein-like chaos, resolving
itself into a misshapen brain. A box dropped open on the corner of the screen, the
coroner’s ratlike face grinning with pride. “Detective.”
“What have you
got?”
“Not even a
‘hello’?”
Krohl grunted.
“Hello.”
“Do you always
wear that hat?”
“What have you got,
dammit?”
The coroner
smiled. “I was able to map more than I bargained for. Not much, but it’s
something.” The coroner reached out of view. “There’s a piece of audio. The
modulation signature of the voice is too distorted to match. But I think you’ll
find it interesting.”
Krohl could
hardly breathe. He was bunched up in his chair, tapping his fingers on the
desk. “Any images?”
“Only one.”
“What are you
waiting for?”
“Detective, you
might look into polishing your manners.”
Krohl heard his
knuckles pop and un-clenched his hands. “May I remain in eternal gratitude for
your limitless wisdom, O sapient dissector of the human brain.” He paused.
“Enough polish for you?”
The coroner
pursed his lips. “That will have to do.”
The screen
filled with an image too distorted to make out. The characters looked vaguely
alien, like the Holy Scriptures of the star-worshipping sects prevalent in
Subterrania. “Those look like Astraglyphs.”
“At a first
glance,” the coroner agreed. “But apply the right filters, and…”
There was a
click, then Krohl was on his feet, both palms on the desk. “nalA?”
“nalA,” the
coroner agreed.
Krohl began to
pace, thoughts flashing behind his eyes. It could be a sect, like the other
star-tribes. One that had infiltrated the surface and spread into the upper echelons
of the colonization effort. He had heard of such ritual suicide, performed to
appease the spacegods man could never hope to surpass. But such demonstrations
were performed by the uneducated, in lands without sunlight, where superstition
had replaced logic. Might it be a code or acronym, then? NALA. Nationalists
Against Lunar Advancement or… No, that was foolish. His gut was a dead lump of
tissue. Not a single impulse to guide him. So then, was Nala a woman? A child?
A savior? A weapon?
“Detective?”
Krohl froze.
Until that very second he had forgotten the coroner was waiting. He took his
hat off of the table and sat heavily, his eyes still wandering with ideas.
“Sorry. Play me the sound byte.” And as an afterthought, added: “If it’s not
too much trouble.”
“Just stop,” the
coroner waved his hand. “Some men were built for etiquette. And some for wearing
hats.”
Another box
appeared: this time a wave chart that crackled with distortion. Krohl covered
his ears. “Can you do something about that ringing?”
“I’m afraid not.
The sensory functions were scrambled.”
“Go on then.”
The coroner let
it play on, an atonal whalesong warbling in and out of range. Then a scratchy
voice breathed. Long and slow, as if into a lover’s ear. “Listen very
carefully, doctor.” A
loud crackle exploded, arcing the sound waves. “…Are you listening?”
Krohl sat
forward.
“I need you
to get something for me. I need you to help me get the—”
The transmission
broke apart.
“Dammit!” Krohl
slammed his fist. “It was right there. Can’t you get the rest?”
The coroner
shook his head, for the first time looking piteous. “The receptors beyond this
last transmission are dead. That’s all there is.”
Krohl sat back,
staring out the window; the red sun; the brown river; the scum-filmy sky; the
death upon death somehow sustaining his life. “She was murdered. And somehow
this nalA is at the center.”
*****
Krohl couldn’t
sleep. What little rest he stole was done within the firelit confines of the Inner
Room, poring over evidence in his high-back chair. He’d pulled the business
records of each victim, traced the infrastructures and subsidiaries, delving
through convolution upon convolution of what slowly revealed itself to be a
monopoly in the private sector of space colonization. He’d searched for mention
of nalA, and by the end felt like a man chasing ghosts. Most of the victims’
files had been redacted and altered or altogether removed.
As if someone
was erasing them.
The connection,
when it hit, came with the force of a bullet. Krohl fell from his
desk and stumbled through the darkness to his Sat-watch.
He listened to
the intercom ring, grinding his teeth. “Come on. Come on, damn you.”
A sleepy voice
answered. “Hello?”
“They were his
moles!”
“Detective? Do
you know what time it
is?”
“Trump the time!
Moles! It’s obvious! The colonization. All of them in high positions, security
clearance, mechanical and theoretical genius. They were being harvested!”
“Keep your voice
down!”
Krohl shook his
head. “They were killed because they knew him. Because they were accessories.”
“To what?”
That gave Krohl
pause. He picked himself onto his knees, turning a sweaty face to the moon, its
gray canyons teaming with the same human lice that had chewed the earth to
useless leather.
“Detective?” The
coroner’s voice, softer now. “Are you still there?”
“I’m here,”
Krohl whispered, fluttering his eyes, seeing the pieces float closer together.
“Why were they used? And for whom?” He spoke the questions aloud so they would
not shatter in his skull. “He must of known all of them. Had intimate knowledge
of their positions.”
“It could be
random,” The coroner offered, too quickly, as if attempting to subvert a theory
that’s wildness he could already sense in Krohl’s tone. “Terrorism. The
Stargazer sects. It’s no secret that they loath the stellar expansion. Think of
all the scientists they bombed last year. Perhaps they’ve found a cleaner way.”
“It’s possible,”
Krohl reasoned. “But the Stargazers loath technology.” That Krohl himself
agreed with many of the Stargazer's tenets he left unvoiced. “They’re primitives. The
level of engineering involved here is beyond their capabilities.”
“Not if one was
converted to their cause.”
Krohl felt
himself being swayed and fought for balance. “All their files have been
redacted.”
“The
Stargazers?” The coroner asked.
“No. The
victims. Someone has been censoring their comings and goings. The colonization
effort is too well protected for a Stargazer to infect four minds.”
“You think it’s
someone on the inside?”
Krohl stood up,
looking at the moon. Something trembled beneath his face. To see the marvels of
man’s expansion stitched across that lunar face brought not pride, but disgust.
He felt his stomach cramp, leaned against the window of this Econoflat that passed
for middle-class recognition. The clean, recycled smell of it made him gag.
“Detective? Have
I lost you?”
“No. I was just
thinking. Of course it’s someone on the inside. But it would take a great mind
to conquer four. To convince such accomplished individuals to dismiss their
life’s work for a casket. It’s no secret that the Sci-Class rebuke an
afterlife. There are no Gods or eternities beyond the expansion of the
universe. They are Romans in that way.”
“You’re speaking
in riddles.”
“The Romans
erected aqueducts in their name. Lauded their achievements. Public ostentation
was as common as breathing. The Sci-Class has only their accomplishments to
speak for them. And yet they surrendered themselves. Anonymously. It’s madness.
And madness is not scientific.”
“The
God-complex?” The coroner’s voice had fallen to a harsh whisper. “You don’t
think…”
But Krohl was no
longer listening. “The God-Complex,” he said again, feeling the pieces lock
together behind his eyes.
*****
The inside of
Colonytech Industries was a carnival of polished surfaces, walls and ceilings
fog-activated with digital sensors and speakers in an expensive display of
profligacy. When Delano Krohl stepped into the vaulted lobby, a holographic
thunderstorm was raging sixty feet above him, complete with blue tongues of
lightning.
Sweat slithered
down his neck. The thousand-fold hum of sensors and relays and ticking alloy
brains vibrated through the floors. He felt as a parasite in the body of a vast
machine.
“Can I help
you?”
Krohl snapped
his face down and almost lost his hat. When the secretary giggled it transformed her face
into something seldom glimpsed in the cesspool of his world.
He smiled his
best, most-handsome smile. “I’m looking for the Hall of Records.”
“Do you have an
appointment?”
“I have
something better.” He pressed the button on his wrist, showing her the
holographic warrant in an outdated, flickering blue.
“Is that a
Sat-watch? I haven’t seen one of those in ten years.”
“I believe I’m
the only one top-side that still uses one.”
“Why?” Her eyes
were wide, uncomprehending. “The chip is so much easier.”
“Convenience has
its disadvantages.” Krohl leaned closer without much choice, pulled there by
the radiance of her skin. “Who invented the god-chip?”
“Shade
Industries.” She giggled. “Everyone knows that.”
“Ah, yes, but
not everyone knows the President General and his Senate War-Council funded over
half of the production costs.”
“No,” she
admitted, “I didn’t know that.”
“Doesn’t it make
you uneasy to know the government owns over half of that alloy parasite humming
in your skull? What if there was a war? An uprising? What if the populace
became a threat to the wise shepherds watching over them? The central ganglia
to which the chip attaches is the very fulcrum of higher brain function. A
small electrical discharge and…”
The girl jerked
back on her airseat, clasping a hand over her mouth. “That’s madness. If you
weren’t a detective, I’d have you removed. You sound like a Stargazer.”
Krohl’s smile
disappeared. He hooded his eyes and removed his elbows from her desk. “The Hall
of Records, please.”
*****
The man that met
Krohl on the four-hundred-and-eightieth floor looked like a toad in a flak-skin
suit. The braces on his thin limbs told a story of bone-erosion, one of the
many unintentional diseases of man’s climb to technological glory. The braces
wheezed and creaked as the man shuffled into the hallway.
“Detective
Delano Krohl.” Krohl offered his hand. “Manhattan-Boston Homicide.”
The man didn’t
shake it. His large glassy eyes narrowed. “Homicide, you say?”
“Murder, if you
like that better.”
“What business
do you have at Colonytech?”
“That business
is mine. I have a warrant. Consider yourself a chaperon. You don’t even
have to talk.”
The man’s frown
dimpled the pouch beneath his chin. “I think the Chairman should like to hear
of this.”
“The Chairman?”
The man touched
his ear, speaking softly. “There is a detective here speaking of murder. He has
a warrant to search the Hall of Records. Yes sir. Yes sir, I understand. One
moment.” The man swiveled his fish eyes onto Krohl. “The Chairman would like to
speak with you.”
Krohl smiled.
“Lead the way.”
*****
The Chairman’s
office was a plasma corona of blue panels. The light touched everything, making
teeth and eyes and skin glow with a faint sheen. The wall of glass behind his
desk was a perfect replica of New York City circa 2015. Sleek yellow taxis
wound through crowded traffic, Central Park a tree-choked Eden shimmering in
sunlight. Krohl stopped short to catch his breath. “My God. It’s beautiful.”
The fat man
hunched his shoulders, looking back at Krohl the way one might study a
poisonous spider. “Chairman, sir. This is detective—”
“Delano Krohl,”
Krohl interrupted. “So this is what it looked like before the war. New York
City. I’ve seen it in pictures and documentaries. But this… this...”
The wing-backed
airseat turned from the window. The chairman’s face was sleek and devilish in a
way that was both pleasing and grotesque. Krohl felt a predatory alarm tighten
around his bones.
“There is no
limit to what science can accomplish,” The Chairman agreed. His teeth were
polished squares of chalk, capable of biting a human wrist in half. “Or, if you
prefer, we can visit Los Angeles.” He pressed a button and the mythic city came
alive across the window, the Hollywood sign a distant mural across the hills.
“Singapore, Brussels, Beijing, Dubai, St. Petersburg…” As he spoke, the panels
rematerialized, flipping through channels that glowed in the pupils of Krohl’s
eyes.
“I could watch
it for hours,” Krohl whispered.
“Alas,” the
Chairman pressed a button and the wall went the same shocking blue as the
office floors, “We have only minutes. Your warrant, may I see it?”
Krohl lifted his
wrist and showed him.
The Chairman
squinted at it, his smile amused. “Thank you. That’s a lovely Sat-watch. I take
it you’re not a man that finds the company of chips a heart-warming endeavor. A
touch of technophobia?”
Krohl knew he
must step carefully. “I’m prone to infection. A slow healer. Invasive surgeries
are not a luxury I can risk.”
“I see.”
Something deadened in the Chairman’s face. He stood up, easily one-foot taller
than Krohl. “You may leave us, Hector.”
The fat man
slunk away, his braces creaking as he went. The Chairman watched him go, not
blinking until the woosh of
the door slid closed. “Now what’s this about murder?”
“Your engineers.
Chuang, Henschel, Charlemagne and Glass.”
“Mine? You say
that as if they were possessions. I’m aware of no murders.”
“They were
classed as suicides.”
“Ah,” The
Chairman walked around his desk, his footsteps heavy, the tailored suit tight
against his musculature. “I do recall a memo. But the details escape me. I’m a
busy man with many oversights, Detective. You understand.”
“No,” Krohl
said. “I don’t understand.”
“Perhaps I could
help.”
“Now were
cooking with gas.”
The chairman
studied him closely. “A Sat-watch, the use of archaic idioms, and an inflamed
suspicion of the Scientific Class. You do understand how that looks, detective.”
“I’m not
interested in how I look. Your efforts to expand our disease into the solar
system is of no consequence to me.”
“You don’t plan
on leaving? After Europa is complete, the Surface Class will have no need of
Earth. By 2160 its resources will be depleted. Subterrania is readying for war.
This planet’s days are numbered. It will end in a great fire, the oxygen sucked
from the skies. Is that the fate you’d choose?”
“A man’s fate is
his own.”
The Chairman
sighed. “What concern are these engineers to you?”
“They’ve been
killed. And someone in your infrastructure is responsible.”
“What proof do
you have?”
“Enough to issue
a warrant. I’m afraid that’s all I’ll be disclosing.”
“I can have you removed.”
“Certainly. But
it would not bode well for your public image. The first place I’d stop would be
the news ring. Evidence of murder. A chairman obstructing justice.” Krohl
weighed them in his hands. “The intimations are riveting. I don’t need to tell
you how ambitious news-scribes can be. By morning, you’ll be claimed an
accessory. The channels will be full of interviewers. Your lobbies will be
overrun. I understand your bidding for the Europa contract. With Mars and the
moon already in your clutches, the competition for Jupiter’s moon has
quadrupled. How long will Colonytech last in the running with a public scandal
clamped to its ankle?”
The Chairman’s
grunt was full of impressed shock. “Name your terms, detective.”
“I want to know
who would have access to the victims. A close relationship. I could spend days
requisitioning interns to help me sift through the Halls of Records, but most
of those files have been redacted.”
“All redaction is done with good reason. They’re irreversible, I’m afraid.”
“To force a full
disclosure would require the sanction of the War-Senate. Lucky for me, I have
friends in high places. Make no mistake, Chairman. I’ll drag your name into the
street. Down there. Where the people are starving and angry and hopeless. I can
give them a target for their vengeance.”
The Chairman
walked back to his chair and cleared the windows. The smog-choked reality of
Boston-Manhattan came into focus, its buildings caked with rust. “What we do is
classified. This puts me in a delicate position.”
“Our
conversation is off the record. I have no chip. My brain-map can be redacted
once the man is caught. I’ll sign the waver.”
The chairman bit
his lip and sighed. “I had no knowledge of the suicides until Doctor
Charlemagne. Her and I were … well, let’s just say we tested the bounds of a
professional relationship. When we searched her files, we found large portions
missing. Also, supplies from her lab.”
“What kind of
supplies?”
“I won’t bore
you with technicalities. Let’s just say they were sensitive and very
expensive.”
“And the other
engineers?”
“Only after the
discovery was I made aware of the previous incidents. Four suicides in one
month haven’t happened since the outbreak of the God-Complex. A full scan was
performed immediately.”
“And?” Krohl was
thrumming with anticipation.
“The same thing.
Missing data and supplies. Entire research folders removed and re-encrypted.
High-level erasure. At first, we suspected the Stargazers might have finally
found their mole.”
“I came to the
same conclusion.”
“But that’s just
it,” The chairman shook his head. “The statistics are improbable. One doctor,
and I would consider it. But to recruit four is impossible.”
“Who then? Who
has access to all of them? Close-quarter contact. Is there a team overseer? An engineer
in charge of your deputy scientists? An analyst? Who?”
The chairman
suddenly straightened, disbelief and comprehension battling for control of his
face. “Doctor Satorius.”
“Satorius? I
know that name…” Then he had it. “His daughter was murdered last spring. Is it
the same man?”
The chairman
nodded. “A pulse bomb in his loft. Part of the Stargazer’s brain-drain
initiative. Only he wasn’t home when the bomb went off. I remember the day he
came back from the rubble. He slept in his lab for a month. None of us had the
heart to terminate him. Then one day he was himself again, though much more focused.
He worked like I’d never seen. Like somewhere in the ashes, he’d rediscovered
his purpose.”
“Perhaps he
discovered a new one.”
They looked at
each other for a long moment, before Krohl moved for the door. “Take me to his
office.”
*****
The Chairman
spoke quickly as they moved through the hall. “The Sci-Class must be monitored
and cleared for mental stability. An annual clearance is the law, but with the
bidding race to colonize Jupiter’s Moon, we’ve upped the regulation to
quarterly treatments.”
“RMA?”
“Yes,” the
chairman reached the air-shoot, punching a code and stepping inside the
containment sphere. “Retrogressive Mental Amputation had to be quadrupled.”
Krohl thought
about it, nodding. “Europa is the farthest we’ve gone. The most problematic.”
“Precisely. The
equations one must contemplate are beyond the level of what caused the outbreak
of the God-Complex in the first place. We took care not to find ourselves in
the midst of another disaster.”
“Don’t you have
a team of Psycho-Hypnotists?”
“We do. But this
was, is, an exclusive
project. Certain parts of the brain are affected by the theoretical
complications posed by the Europa colonization. We thought it simpler to keep
one doctor in charge of the whole endeavor.”
“And who’s idea
was that?” Krohl waited, watching the floors fly past in luminous bars of
light. “Satorius?”
The outrage in
the Chairman’s eyes was answer enough.
*****
The lab was
empty, the lights still humming in their alcoved tubes. In the corner a
ComScreen blurred with dancing snowflakes. The Chairman stared at it.
“Someone’s been here.”
Krohl approached
the digital blizzard. “How long before a ComScreen goes idle like this?”
“Thirty minutes
to activate, and thirty more before it turns itself—” But just then, the screen
went black.
“An hour, then,”
Krohl grunted.
“How could he?”
The Chairman shook his head, backing away. The possible murder of his de facto
lover, the threatened Europa contract, the scandal such news would bring, seemed to detonate
in icy blasts behind his eyes.
“Focus,” Krohl
growled.
The Chairman
stiffened, pulling the lapels of his suit. Krohl was proud to see it. “I’m
sorry. What can I do?”
“Get your best
analyst to canvass this ComScreen for redactions. I understand deleted drivers
leave ghost for several days. I’ll need that ghost reincorporated. Are there
cameras in this office?”
“Satorius had
them disabled last month.” The chairman hesitated, shaking his head again. “Before the first suicide.”
“What about the
hallway?”
“Those should
still be running.” The chairman touched his ear. “Darvin, I want the hallway
cameras outside of Lab 49 reviewed immediately. I need to know if Satorius came
or went from this office in the last two hours. Yes. What? How long ago?” His
face grew grave. “I want the floor locked down and the emergency isolation team
mobilized and waiting in Sub-Basement 4 for my arrival.”
“What’s
happening?” Krohl demanded.
The Chairman
raised a finger. “Darvin, get Chopsky and his team in Lab 49 immediately. I
want a full threat analysis on this ComScreen. Tell him to look for redactions.
Stolen Data. Any traces or mention of Doctor Charlemagne. Good. Hurry, Darvin.
This is Level Black priority.” He touched his ear again and made for the door.
Krohl reached
for him, and missed. “What’s going on?”
“Satorius is
still in the building.”
Krohl raced into
the glass hallway after him…
And Froze.
He blinked for
several seconds. Then a cold knowledge lit his face. The doctor’s placard was
clearly visible above the laboratory doorway. Alan Satorius, MD, PhD.
He stared at the
reflection in the glass, feeling the ghost of Doctor Charlemagne align with his
body. Less than a week ago she had stood here. She had looked up exactly where
he was looking now, and her brain had kept the image for them to find.
Not Alan, but
nalA.
*****
The security
team’s neolex armor blended perfectly with the cement walls. To Krohl it looked
as if the basement was rippling with heat. Then a shape resolved from the
mirage, stepping forward to meet the Chairman.
“My men are
ready, sir.”
“Good.” The
Chairman looked at Krohl. “Are you sure about this?”
Krohl hesitated,
removed his hat, wondering not for the first time if he secretly wished to
destroy himself. “Yes, I’m sure. I have control of my trigger finger. The same
can’t be verified for your band of ghosts.”
The shimmering
apparition grunted, not displeased. “The cameras have been disabled. You’re
going in there alone, with no armor and a compression pistol. Misfire that, and
three floors will come toppling from above you.” The security chief turned to
the Chairman. “Send us, sir. He’s too pale. His hands are shaking. A Level Black
priority requires force and efficiency.”
The Chairman
looked ready to agree when Krohl pushed open the basement door and rushed
inside.
*****
The room was
filled with ozone. Krohl squinted into the acrid smoke, trying not to cough.
He’d left his hat on the floor outside the basement, felt naked without it.
Here in the darkness, stepping over what felt like puddles of muck, it took
everything to master his fear. The smell of science and ambition and madness
choked the air. It was the same smell that oppressed the city streets, the
alleys, the airvents steaming with the flatus of Subterrania. It was the smell
of men crushing men; of achievements built atop the bones of competition.
Electricity
snapped in the distance. Faint lights pulsed through the smoke. Krohl gripped
his compression pistol, squinting to discern the room’s obstacles. He made his
way around a massive panel of reactors, the steel hot to the touch. A guardrail
slammed into his hips. He looked down the stairwell, its walls pulsing with
light.
“Hello up
there.” The voice cracked with emotion. “You’re too late, whoever you are.”
Krohl froze on
the stairs. He bent through the opening, saw the lower floor lit by a dome of
bright blue light. Machinery was arranged in a makeshift circle. And there in
the middle of it all was an emaciated man with a shock of graying black hair.
His eyes were a maze of burst capillaries. There was foam at the corners of his
mouth. It looked as if he hadn’t slept in years.
“Do you hear
me?” Satorius screamed.
He lofted a control switch the way one might loft an execution axe. “You’re
too late! It’s done! Now leave me to it! There’s not much time!”
Krohl closed his
eyes, shook his head, and decided. “Time for what?”
Judging by the
doctor’s instant jerk, Krohl realized the man hadn’t been certain that someone
was there. This was a creature driven by suspicions. How he had managed any
semblance of normalcy at his post as a Psycho-Hypnotist was nothing short of
miraculous.
“Who’s there? Stay
back!” Satorius lifted
the control switch again. “I’m warning you!”
“My name is
Delano Krohl.”
“Are you a
Stargazer?”
“I’m a
detective.”
“You can’t stop me.” It wasn’t a threat, but a plea. “I’m almost out of time.”
“Time for what?”
“Helen.” The
word made his face crumble. “I can’t. Please just go away. I don’t want to hurt
you.”
“So don’t.”
Krohl descended the stairs, holding his compression pistol by the barrel. He
knelt slowly and slid it toward the doctor’s feet. “I’m not here to hurt you. I
want to know what you’re doing. Why you’re doing it. And why you hurt those
scientists.”
“Hurt?” Satorius
looked physically pained. “I did no such thing.”
“The suicides.
You did that. Hypnotic suggestion. I know you did. You’re the only one who had
contact with every victim. Their files are missing. Their equipment. Isn’t that
what this is?” He
pointed at the circular construction. “The fruits of your labor?”
“I didn’t kill
them.” He was near tears, the foam trickling from the corners of his mouth.
“They tried to help me. I didn’t mean for them to die. It was a side-effect.”
“Of what?”
“Of Helen. I had
to, don’t you see? She was everything to me. I’d do anything to save her. I’d—”
“FREEZE!” The
voice roared behind Krohl, and then everything happened too fast for his brain
to interpret. A rush of hot air blew past his shoulder. From the corner of his
eye he saw Satorius lift his hand and duck, the appendage dissolving to the
wrist, leaving only a blackened stump. There were footsteps behind him, then
light from the center of the room, a thunderclap of sound and force burning him
away, burning the rifle fire and the soldiers and the room itself, a
thousand-fold sun collapsing in a volcano-burst of heat.
Then Blackness.
*****
Krohl awoke in
his airbed late in the afternoon. It took several minutes of shaking his head
to clear the dream. He could still feel the heat across his cheeks. Never had
he experienced something so real. He stood slowly, as if acclimating to a
violent altitude, the smell of ozone lingering in his nostrils. He loped to the
tiny washroom; splashed recycled water on his face; stared at his reflection.
And screamed.
His face was
covered in scars, a curtain of blistered trenches stretching pink from his
breastbone to his scalp. He fell back into the wall, closing his eyes … and
when he finally found the courage to face his own reflection, it was gone.
“You’re losing
your mind. You know that, don’t you?”
He laughed to
himself, fetched a lip of Glak Weed from the pouch on his desk, and sat on the settee
before his ViewScreen. The toxins in his mouth leveled him off. After long the
dream began to lose its hold, breaking like ice-melt and sinking into
obscurity. It wasn’t so bad to be a vivid dreamer. There were worse things in
life.
“Download the digi-reel
for August 31st, please,” he said.
The hum of
outdated relays buzzed through the walls, then a stuttering voice said, “It
will take me forty-seven seconds to pull last year’s digi-reel, Detective
Krohl. Please stand by.”
He sat up
straight. “Not last year’s. This year’s!”
“I’m sorry,
detective, but the date is July 12th 2143.”
“The dream,” he
said, rubbing his chin. Something in his mind clung desperately to the idea
that this was a mistake, that it was 2144, but he only wiped his face and said,
“Alright, then. Today’s Digi-reel will do.”
“Are you
feeling well, Detective? I’m sensing elevated blood pressure and increased
respiratory function.”
“It’s the Glak
Weed. Get on with it, you lug of bolts! The digi-reel. Now.”
“As you wish.”
The ViewScreen
hummed to life, bathing the room with light and color. Outside, the sun was
setting, casting a nuclear glow across the wastes. Krohl watched the evening
news, the stories of madness, the winners (and sore losers) of the child
lottery, a new discovery of grass pushing up through the ruins of the
Adirondack Mountains, and finally, the failed assassination of a prominent
Psycho-Hypnotist.
Something
twisted in his stomach. “Raise the volume.”
The A.I.
complied just in time to show the blast-wreckage of an apartment and a team of
coroner bots sweeping the welter of limbs.
The female
news-scribe’s aluminum hair fell in a flawless waterfall over her shoulder.
“The attack was thwarted by an unknown bystander, who detonated the assailants’
explosive before the would-be assassins could strike. There has been no
positive I.D. at this time. The city’s security channels recovered this
footage.”
Krohl felt that
same nagging in his skull, and yet there was no explanation. He pulled another
peel of Glak Weed and chewed, rolling his neck, letting the juice flood his
mouth. He tried to recall the dream, but the details made no sense now that he
was awake and breathing. In June of ‘43. In his Econoflat next to the turgid
Hudson River.
He sat forward
as the footage loaded. In it a group of men in ill-fitting business suits
exited air-taxi. The next feed showed them walking up a sidewalk with a large
suitcase held between them. The next shot was from above, the vantage showing
an alley wall where a hooded figure waited with a compression pistol pressed
against his thigh. He knelt as the men approached, turned on his knee, and
fired.
A pulse of light
momentarily distorted the feed, and when it resolved, the façade of the
apartment was missing, the sidewalk a chewed crater stained with carnage. The
figure, hobbling now, raced across the street, when the image froze.
“If anyone
recognizes this man, please contact local authorities.”
The camera
zoomed in, framing the hunched figure. Only his chin was visible, lathered with
what looked like foam at the corners of his mouth. Krohl studied the image for
a long time, thinking of absolutely nothing.
Least of all,
that the man was missing one hand.
(Thank you for reading! Comments are appreciated! Find Novelist Carson Standifer on Facebook!)
(Thank you for reading! Comments are appreciated! Find Novelist Carson Standifer on Facebook!)
Comments
Post a Comment