Snapshot

by Brandon Sanderson

  “Roger.”

  Davis kept pace with Estevez. The perp was a thin man, but taller, more . . . intimidating than his mug shots had made him seem. He’d made a big mistake—not just in murdering a man, but in picking the man to murder. The mayor’s nephew.

  This was already ramping up to be a big case for the prosecutor, who felt he’d have heavy hitters in the city leaning on him. Unfortunately, their case against the accused wasn’t strong. So he’d requested a warrant for a Snapshot.

  The city government of New Clipperton had bought the Snapshot Project. Paid the Restored American Union through the nose for it. But what did they know about how it worked? Barely anything. One of those . . . things was trapped somewhere, kept unconscious, electricity buzzing through it and doing this. Re-creating days, in their entirety, from provided raw matter.

  Well, you had a small window to get a Snapshot of a specific day made. A few weeks, and that was it. You had to start it up in the morning, insert people right away. If you waited it grew more difficult. Like the doorway in just wouldn’t open. And getting data out . . . well, the cops had to carry it out with them. You could usually get secure texts through, but even with those there was interference sometimes.

  Privacy watchdogs had lost their minds when they’d found out about the Snapshot Project. Particularly when they’d discovered that originally, the mayor had been using it for personal enjoyment, details redacted.

  The resulting flurry of laws and restrictions meant that you needed a court order to re-create a day, and it could only be used for official government business. They could technically send in drones to record what was happening, and the precinct had experimented with that. Might eventually move to it full-time, but for now, old-fashioned detective work seemed most effective. This way you could put a cop on the stand to testify about what he’d seen with his own eyes. Juries responded to that sort of thing.

  He was proud of how he stayed on Estevez’s tail with no sign of alerting the man. Like a real cop.

  Chaz met him at an intersection, and the two kept following as Estevez called someone on the phone. They were too far back to hear anything, but the end result was that they saw when the man knelt down at the edge of the sidewalk and fumbled with something, then stood and darted down another alleyway.

  Chaz cursed, speeding up, but Davis caught him by the arm.

  “He’s getting away!” Chaz said, reaching under his arm for his gun again.

  “Let him. This was what we’ve been waiting for.”

  “This?” Chaz asked.

  Davis walked up to the place where Estevez had knelt: a storm drain on the side of the road. He peered down, then reached in with his phone and took a few pictures. He held it up, scrolling between them until he found a good shot.

  A handgun lay in the filth of the drain. “Murder weapon,” Davis said, standing up and showing Chaz. “The IRL detectives have been searching for this in all the wrong places.” He attached it to a message, then opened the secure HQ communication app on his phone.

  He sent the message to Maria, their HQ liaison. Murder weapon found, he wrote. Storm drain in front of a beauty salon on the north side of Twenty-First, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues.

  “I hate just letting him go,” Chaz said, folding his arms.

  “You hate not being able to get into some kind of gunfight,” Davis said back.

  He waited, worried he’d need to send the message again. You never could be certain what would get out. Fortunately, a few minutes later his watch buzzed, and he glanced at the phone. A line was open, for the time being.

  Intel received, Maria sent. Nice work. Between Tenth and Eleventh? That’s far from where you should have been.

  Eyewitness is wrong, Davis sent back. Estevez went east after the murder, not west.

  Chance of Deviation? Maria sent.

  Ask the bean counters, Davis replied. I’m just reporting what I’ve found.

  Roger. Sending a team to that gutter IRL. Stay close in case they need follow-up.

  Davis showed the phone to Chaz.

  “So . . .” Chaz said, looking around. “We have some time. You want to head to Ingred Street?”

  “It’s noon,” Davis said dryly.

  “And?”

  “And it’s a school day.”

  “Oh. Right. What, then?”

  “Well, we had some million-dollar burritos,” Davis said, nodding toward a diner. “Shall we have some million-dollar coffee to wash them down?”

  Two

  Davis couldn’t help wondering how the people in the diner would react to knowing they were dupes. The fat lady behind the counter, going over receipts. The two white guys in flannel and trucker caps, chewing on Reubens and grunting at each other. The mom with a gaggle of kids, hushing them with force-fed fries.

  Davis felt he could take the measure of a man or woman by the way they handled the news that they weren’t real. It was uncomfortable, intimate, and fascinating to watch. Some got angry, some got morose. Others laughed. You saw something about a person in that moment that they wouldn’t ever know—couldn’t ever know—about themselves.

  His watch buzzed as the waitress arrived with a plate of fries for him and topped off his coffee. Davis had momentary sadistic visions of himself guessing the reactions of the people in the room, then pulling out his badge and showing it around to see if he was right. Trouble was, Chaz might do something like that if he got too bored.

  Chaz got back from the restroom as Davis was munching on fries. “Sure,” Chaz said, sitting, “you’ll put mustard on those.”

  “Mustard belongs on fries.”

  “Like it belongs on burritos.”

  “Disgusting.”

  “You just aren’t willing to live, Davis,” Chaz said, stealing a fry. “Try new things, you know?”

  “Once again, this isn’t new,” Davis said, checking the message on his phone. “You literally have been trying to get me to eat like you for three years.”

  “It’s why I’m a good detective,” Chaz said. “Tenacity. What’s hottie pants say?”

  “Hottie pants? Maria?”

  Chaz nodded.

  “She’s like twenty years older than you.”

  “And hot. What does she say?”

  “They found the gun in real life,” Davis said. “It was down there in the storm drain where Estevez threw it. Soaked in ten days’ worth of grime, but they rushed it through ballistics and it came back a match for the bullet. We might have to testify.” They now had enough evidence to convict Estevez, and the testimony of two hardworking cops would only reinforce that.

  Chaz grunted. “Would still feel better if I’d been able to gun that punk down. Pay him back, you know?”

  “You don’t even know what he did,” Davis said dryly.

  “Killed someone. That . . . um . . . girl?” He shrugged. “Anyway, want to play hooky for the rest of the day?”

  Davis looked up, feeling a cold jolt.

  “Our next job,” Chaz continued, stealing another fry, “it’s not till . . . what, almost twenty-one hundred?”

  “Quarter after twenty. Domestic disturbance. They want us to see who hit first. Corroborate one story or the other.”

  “What a waste of our time.”

  Davis shrugged. It wasn’t uncommon to go on small missions like that throughout the day, after the main case had been investigated.

  “I don’t want to wait around eight hours to see who slapped who,” Chaz said. “Let’s save everyone some time and money and bug out of here. The shrink says I should let her know if I feel ‘emotional distress.’ ”

  “Which means what?”

  “Hell if I know. She seems to think that I should find living in Snapshots distressing.”

  “Seriously?” Davis said. “You? Is she paying any attention?”

  “She’s not even hot,” Chaz added.

  Davis sighed, but it did little to cover his sudden anxiety. They couldn’t leave. Could they?
/>   Maybe that would be for the best. . . .

  No. Warsaw. 20:17. He had an appointment.

  “Come on,” Chaz said. “Let’s go. I’ll even let you push the button to turn the Snapshot off.”

  “I always push the button,” Davis said.

  “And today I won’t complain.”

  “No, look, I’ve got something for us to do.” Davis scrambled to pull out his phone again. “I’ve been reading the scanner forums—”

  “Not again.”

  “—and there was a blip about this day, when it happened for real. Though I couldn’t find anything in the precinct records, the forums claim that multiple squad cars were called in to search an apartment building. That will happen in the Snapshot in about an hour. Want to get there first and see what it was?”

  “Forums,” Chaz said dryly. “Conspiracy forums. You said there wasn’t anything in the official records.”

  “Nothing I was allowed to see.”

  “Which probably means they didn’t find anything.”

  “No. That would have been logged. There was nothing there.”

  “Which means you didn’t have clearance. They didn’t want low-level detectives knowing about it, whatever it was.”

  “And doesn’t that make you curious?” Davis asked. “We could do a little real detective work. Snoop. Who knows, maybe someone will try to shoot you.”

  “You think so?” Chaz asked, perking up.

  “It could happen. You’re very shootable.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. Real detective work, eh?” He rubbed his chin. “You know what we’re going to find, right? Some politician with a whore. That’s why they’d hide it. Assuming it’s even real, and the forum nutjobs aren’t making things up.”

  “Yeah, well, I suppose we could just play hooky,” Davis said. “Go back to the boring real world. Sit around. Watch a movie. Instead of living in one . . .”

  “All right, I’m sold,” Chaz said, standing. “But I’ve got to go hit the head first.”

  “Again?”

  “That burrito, man.” He shook his head. “That burrito . . .” He wandered off in the direction of the bathroom.

  Davis relaxed his fist and let himself breathe out, trembling. They’d stay in the Snapshot for now. Davis paid the bill with actual cash, but the diner only gave change as credit. That wouldn’t ever reach him though. This Snapshot city existed on its own, without external infrastructure. If people left the area the Snapshot covered, they vanished immediately. If someone was scheduled to enter the city, the Snapshot created their body and vehicle, then set them on the road driving in at the proper time.

  He’d never been able to figure out the details. How did credit transactions work for those inside here? How did the Snapshot manage to re-create all outgoing and incoming transmissions? The power lines. The internet. Sunlight. What were the levels of reality for it all? He ate food in here. How much would he have to eat before the system recognized him as part of it, rather than being real? If he had too many burritos, would that badge someday shine for him, as it did for the dupes?

  He tore himself away from that line of thinking. Keep focused on my task. He turned around in his seat, looking toward the woman with the children as she packed them up and herded them out the door. The oldest was six, self-proclaimed to his sister in an argument.

  That was two years younger than Hal, but Hal had always been small for his age. Like his dad.

  The mother and her children left, and Davis found himself staring at a different woman, sitting close to the back of the diner near the window. Slender, with black hair cut short. Angular features. Pretty. Very pretty.

  “Well,” Chaz said, stomping up, “there’s another part of me added to the system: my dump. It’ll get recycled when the day breaks down, right?”

  “I suppose,” Davis said absently, still watching the woman.

  “Good to know that part of me will get used the next time they rebuild this. My dump will be recycled into lawyers. Cool, eh?”

  “How is that any different from real life?”

  “Well, it . . .” He trailed off, scratching his head. “Oh. Yeah, I suppose you’re right. Huh. Well anyway, you going to go talk to her?”

  “Who?”

  “The hottie back there.”

  “What? No. I mean, you shouldn’t say things like that.”

  “Come on,” Chaz said, nudging him. “You’re staring at her hard enough to throw sparks. Just go say hello.”

  “I don’t want to harass her.”

  “Talking isn’t harassing.”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s one of the primary methods of harassment,” Davis said.

  “Yeah, maybe, sure. But she’s looking back at you. She’s interested, Davis. I can tell.”

  Davis toyed with the idea, a small panic rising in him like an exploding bomb. “No,” he said, standing. “Why bother? It’s not real anyway.”

  “All the more reason to give it a go. For practice.”

  Davis shook his head and led the way out of the diner. Unfortunately, as they passed the woman’s table, Chaz stepped over to her. “Hey,” he said. “My friend is kind of shy, but he was wondering if maybe he could have your number.”

  Davis felt his heart all but stop.

  The woman blushed, then looked away.

  “Sorry to bother you,” Davis said, hauling his partner out the door by the arm. Then, once outside, he continued, “You idiot! I said not to do that.”

  “Technically,” Chaz said, “you told me you weren’t going to do it. You didn’t say that I couldn’t.”

  “That was humiliating. I—”

  Davis froze as the door to the diner opened and the woman stepped out. She blushed again, then handed Davis a little slip of paper before ducking back into the restaurant.

  Davis stared at it, reading the phone number scrawled across the front. Chaz grinned a big, goofy smile.

  Sometimes, Chaz, he thought, tucking the paper away, I love you.

  “So, where are we going?” Chaz asked.

  “Fourth,” Davis said, leading the way down the street.

  “Bit of a hike.”

  “Autocab?”

  “Nah,” Chaz said, hands in pockets. “Just saying.”

  They strolled for a time, Davis feeling the paper in his pocket. He was shocked, even embarrassed, by how pleased he was. How warm it made him feel. Even if he was never going to call her, even if she wasn’t real. Damn. He hadn’t felt like this in years, since before meeting Molly.

  “You ever wonder,” Chaz said as they walked, “if we should be using this more?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Chaz nodded at the cars passing on the wide avenue. At least half were autocabs, smooth and careful, each one coordinated with the others. A variety of older cars joined them, and most were just as smooth—but you could tell the manual drivers from the way they jerked about, making a mess of things. Like fish that had suddenly split away from the rest of the school.

  “We should use this more,” Chaz repeated. “We’re in a day that already happened. So shouldn’t we be able to . . . I don’t know . . . buy lottery tickets or something?”

  “And win money that will vanish when the day ends?”

  “We could swallow it,” Chaz said. “Like you said.”

  “There’s a big difference between one coin and millions in lottery earnings. Not that they pay out instantly anyway, for the types of winning numbers we could look up ahead of time. Besides, it would likely be classified as counterfeiting if you somehow did get money out.”

  “Yeah.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “It would still be fun to win. Anyway, I just feel we should be able to do more. Get right what someone else got wrong.”

  “Which is what we do.”

  “I’m not talking about legal stuff, Davis.” He sighed. “I can’t explain it.”

  The two crossed the road, and cars started again behind them. A few old combustion engines roared past,
making Davis turn. That was a sound from his past. Like the smell of gasoline.

  “I understand,” he said.

  “You do?”

  “Yeah.”

  That seemed to comfort the taller man. “So, any idea what we’re looking for when we arrive at this place of yours?”

  “I don’t know,” Davis said. “It’s just one of those blips that the forum people notice. Sudden, urgent call for a car, several responses . . . then silence. No report. No nothing.”

  “And you think someone’s scared we’ll find out.”

  They’d talked about this sort of thing before. In here, the two of them were absolute authorities. Flashing their badges could get them past any obstruction, overrule any order. They were two men in a crowd of shadows.

  In here, they were the only ones with rights. In here, they were gods. The longer he’d been working in Snapshots, the more Davis had realized that there were certain people on the outside who found his power in here terrifying. They hated thinking that there were simulacra of them that a couple of low-level detectives could order around. How to contain them, protect people’s privacy, was a constant argument.

  “I’m surprised,” Chaz said as they finally reached Fourth Avenue, “that they didn’t remember to send us to some saferoom.”

  Davis nodded. They wouldn’t have gone—they never did. But the precinct continued to order it, claiming that if Davis or Chaz were to meet their own dupe selves in the city, they’d be mentally scarred. Which was stupid.

  “If we don’t find anything at this address of yours,” Chaz said, “I’m going to take the day off.”

  “Fair enough. But I think there will be something. It’s suspicious.”

  “I’m telling you. Politician with a whore.”

  “They wouldn’t call in squad cars for that.” He chewed on his lip. “Have you noticed how lately they seem to have us do only the least work possible on a case? Find a murder weapon, witness a criminal activity. No interviews, little real police work.”

  “Guess they decided they don’t want us getting too comfortable with that sort of thing,” Chaz said. “Hell, they don’t want IRL detectives in here. That’s why they send guys like us in the first place.”