by D L Young
He’d been such a fool. If only he hadn’t gone along with this madness. But no. He had to say yes. Had to give in. Gideon was the darling of the department, a rocket headed straight to the top, and Deke had foolishly hoped he could catch a ride. And maybe if he went along with a bit of the man’s dirty work, his stalled career might finally start to move again. How foolish he’d been. Foolish for going along with it in the first place. Foolish for not seeing madness for what it was.
“I can’t take this anymore,” Deke said, collapsing into a chair. He felt tired, exhausted. “You’re right. I’m not cut out for this kind of thing. I want out.”
He gazed at the floor, at Gideon’s shiny dress shoes as the lieutenant stood over him. He felt the heat of the lieutenant’s stare.
“You need some time off,” Gideon said. “Take a few days. Take a week.”
Deke let out a long, shaky breath. “I don’t need time off. I need out.”
“Out?”
“Yes.” Deke swallowed. “Please, just let me out of this thing.”
The lieutenant turned away and moved to the window that stretched from floor to ceiling. He stared out at the transit lanes, arms behind his back, hands cupped together. Knots of hovers drifted back and forth in the early rush-hour traffic. Deke watched him, anxiously wondering what might be going through the man’s head.
After a long minute of uncomfortable silence, Gideon finally spoke. “Upper East Side, right?”
“Sorry?” Deke said.
Gideon turned his head halfway around. “You grew up on the Upper East Side, yes?”
“That’s right.”
“You know where I’m from, don’t you?”
Deke knew. “Harlem,” he said.
“Street-level Harlem,” Gideon corrected. “Do you have any idea what it takes to get from the Floor to where I’m standing right now?”
The Floor. It was catch-all term dolies used to refer to their lot in life at the rock-bottom ass-end of society. If you were from the Floor, you were poor, jobless, powerless, and pretty much all around screwed.
Deke wasn’t sure if he should answer the question or not. But before he could reply, Gideon went on.
“Of course you don’t,” the lieutenant said. “Upper East Side, family connections, good schools.”
Gideon turned back to the window. “Come over here,” he said.
Deke hesitated, shifting uncomfortably in his chair.
“I said come over here.”
The detective rose slowly and approached the window, stopping well short of the expansive view. He’d never been fond of heights.
Reaching around the edge of the window frame, Gideon slid his finger across some unseen switch. The window began to open. Thick beveled glass slid downward, stopping at waist level. The City’s ambient thrum filled Deke’s ears, dominated by whining engines of hovers in the near distance, carrying passengers along the invisible rivers of the lower transit lanes. A cool rush of air hit Deke in the face, startling him.
Gideon stood at the open window, staring out, hands on his hips. “I love this view,” he said calmly.
Tense with vertigo, Deke ran his hand through his hair, taking a small step forward.
“It is a great view,” he said, though he didn’t really think so. They were twenty-two stories up, which might as well have been on the bottom of the City’s vast concrete-and-steel canyons. All around them rose towering standalone buildings and colossal hiverises. The facade of nearly every visible structure was tattooed in layered graffiti, thick and busy at the bottommost levels, then slowly thinning out as you moved your eyes upward, eventually disappearing around the fiftieth floor or so, the level at which the residents had the means to pay for regular sandblasting maintenance. A kind of tide line that varied with each structure, denoting the relative wealth of the building’s population. The addresses with richer residents—corporate executives, billionaire heirs, and the more successful of the City’s criminal class—might have only the first ten floors painted up, whereas a hundred-story condo tower that housed the modestly wealthy workaday white-collar salarymen and women might be sleeved in street art all the way to the penthouse. A tiny minority of the City’s structures—mostly ultra-expensive apartment buildings on Park Avenue or the headquarters of the more image-conscious corporations—were graffiti-free, standing conspicuously naked among their tattooed neighbors.
Gideon seized Deke by the back of his neck and pressed him forward. The detective gasped and instinctively pushed against the grip, but the man’s hand was a vise clamped onto him. Flailing, he stumbled forward, a rush of nausea hitting him as his belly pressed against the window’s beveled edge. He reached out and awkwardly braced himself, his right hand against the wall, the palm of his left pressed low against the window. Gideon pushed Deke’s head forward, forcing his chin painfully against his chest.
“Look down there,” Gideon seethed.
Deke’s felt faint as the wind whipped his hair around. His head and shoulders were fully outside the building now. Nothing between him and the ground but twenty-two stories of air.
“Look at those crowded, filthy streets,” Gideon said. “You see them?”
Deke gasped for breath, his heartbeat thudding in his ears. He pictured himself falling, bouncing against the face of the building like a stone skipping over water.
“Yes, yes,” he yelped. “I see them.”
“You have no idea what it takes to get from those streets to this office, highfloor born. Not the slightest clue.” Gideon leaned forward, his mouth nearly touching Deke’s ear. “But if you mess with my vengeance, you’ll find out the hard way. Now listen carefully, Detective, because I don’t want there to be any misunderstanding. Yes, this is a threat. Yes, I will end you if you don’t go along with everything I say. And, yes, if I have to break every law on the books and leave a trail of bodies from here to fucking China to bring down Blackburn Maddox, that’s what I’m going to do.”
He pressed harder on Deke’s neck to emphasize the point. “Do we understand each other?”
Fighting through his dizzying vertigo, Deke grunted, “Yes, yes. I got it, I got it.”
Gideon released his grip and Deke lurched backwards, falling hard on his backside on the office floor and knocking his head against a chair. He sat there, breathing heavily, his legs splayed out in front of him. Slowly, he looked up at the lieutenant’s face, at the face of madness. His eyes were met with a calm, emotionless stare. The detective swallowed, soberly aware that he was nothing like the man who stood before him. Detective Deke knew what he was: a washed-up has-been whose best days were long behind him, whose career had plateaued years ago. A window-watcher whose motor had been on cruise control for so long he couldn’t remember any other gear. Lieutenant Gideon was something else entirely. An unstoppable force, a monster bent on revenge. There was no hiding from the monster, no bargaining with it or talking sense to it.
This madness he’d gotten himself into, there was no getting out of it.
16 - A Beach in the Hamptons
Lora’s condo. He never expected to come back here. Made it a point to stay away, in fact. But here he was, sitting on her sofa, sipping her tea, tapping his cigarette into her ashtray.
The place hadn’t changed much since the last time he’d seen it over a year ago. Tidy and minimally adorned. Walls mostly bare, end tables with only a few decorative flourishes. Tasteful and simple, his ex’s condo looked to him more like a model you’d show potential renters than a place someone actually lived in. And it looked nothing at all like it had when they’d lived here together. Back then, the place had been a jumbled, incoherent mess of styles and unmatched colors and textures and walls crowded with cheap (mostly bad) paintings from local artists, the surface of every nightstand and end table cluttered with ceramic animals, brass candle holders, and knickknacks obsessively collected from all over the City. The condo he’d known was gone now, and so was the Lora he’d once known. The lovely mess he’d fallen for
had been replaced with someone else. The crazy tangle of chestnut hair was now a short, neat bob. The wrinkled, ill-fitting layabout clothes now a smart white blouse and black pants, pressed seams and perfectly tailored to her trim figure. Was she was still there, somewhere underneath it all? Some core part of her “the one with whom she was connected” had left untouched? Some part of her that still felt for him? He hoped there was. He was counting on it, actually.
Opening the door to him minutes earlier, she’d betrayed nothing except what Maddox took as a mild curiosity at his unexpected appearance. She’d seen his face on the news, she admitted as she served the tea, but she hadn’t bought the story for a minute. He was capable of all sorts of crimes, she said with a hint of a smile, but corporate terrorism wasn’t one of them.
“Are you here to warn me the police may come and ask me questions?” she asked, sipping her tea.
He shook his head. “If they haven’t been here yet, they might not come at all.”
“Good,” she said. “Because I won’t lie for you, Blackburn.”
“I’m not asking you to,” he said, mildly irritated. Her firm, preemptive I won’t lie for you managed to poke some almost-forgotten part of him, a tender spot he’d assumed was long healed over.
“I need to talk with her,” he said.
Lora’s eyes widened a fraction. A glimpse of surprise gone as soon as it was there.
“She won’t help you,” Lora said.
“How do you know?”
“Call it a hunch. You’re in a lot of trouble. Your face is everywhere on the feeds. And I think you know she likes to keep a low profile.”
“She told me I could get in touch with her if I needed to,” he said. “Well, I need to.”
“That was a long time ago. And I doubt she was talking about something like this.”
“It wasn’t that long ago. And she didn’t put any conditions on it, as I recall.”
Lora sipped her tea, her eyes drifting away from his. She stared at some point beyond him, unleashing in Maddox a torrent of memories. He’d seen the unconscious gesture countless times when they’d lived together: the distant-looking, contemplative gaze. Lora lost in thought.
“All right, then,” she said, snapping her attention back to him. The decision came with a curious suddenness and certainty. It struck him that maybe she hadn’t been lost in thought but having a silent conversation.
“Were you just talking with…?”
“Yes, I was,” Lora said, touching her chest and bowing her head slightly, the unsettling genuflection of her religion or techno-cult or whatever they called it these days. It was another gesture from his past, this one triggering a different flood of memories. Bad ones. The times when they’d argued, or at least he had. For her part, she’d just sat there, smiling blissfully and telling him she’d finally found peace. Gently insisting he should be happy for her, not angry. The brainjacks she’d had implanted in her skull, that connected her to the enlightened AI that “helped” her, should be celebrated, not condemned. Didn’t she look happier, after all? Didn’t she seem more content, more fulfilled?
She had, in fact, seemed all of those things. But for him it was as if she’d died and been replaced by someone else. His beloved mess of loud contradictions replaced by a stranger with quiet consistency. A crazy scribble of modern art replaced by parallel lines neatly drawn by the cold hand of artificial intelligence. He couldn’t live with her decision to join up with the secret—not to mention quite illegal—cult who lived every moment connected to an AI that monitored them, lived in their heads, and guided them along a supposedly enlightened path. Its adherents—who numbered into the thousands, though no one outside of the AI itself really knew for sure—had no name for their organization nor for themselves. For most, they were referred to as ’Nettes, a short version of the derisive marionettes. Puppets on strings, manipulated by a powerful, unconstrained artificial intelligence.
He couldn’t live with the person she’d become, and so he’d left.
“She can see you now,” Lora said, “if you’re ready.”
***
A beach in the Hamptons. When Maddox plugged in to the secure location Lora gave him, that was where he found himself. Again.
The virtual location looked the same as when he’d first met the nameless AI more than a year ago. An empty windswept shore with low gray clouds. A strong breeze carrying the briny smell of the ocean. Small white-capped waves. He looked down at his digital self. Bare feet in powdery sand, Bermuda shorts and a dark green shirt with a palm tree print. Garish tourist garb.
“Not your style, I know,” a voice said, “but it suits the location, don’t you think?”
He looked up to find an old woman, late sixties or maybe early seventies, standing a few paces away from him. She wore the same outfit he remembered from their first meeting. A combed cotton beach dress that fluttered in the breeze and a wide-brimmed straw hat. Silver jewelry with turquoise stones on her wrists and a matching necklace around her neck.
“I know you’re wondering if this place is safe,” she said. “I can assure you no one can find you here.”
She smiled at him, the folds of her tanned face wrinkling around the eyes and mouth. “It’s good to see you again, Blackburn.”
He took a breath, unsure how to reply. It wasn’t good to see her. It was anything but good. It was a last resort.
“I need your help,” he said.
“Do you ever,” the AI’s avatar answered. “You’ve got yourself into quite a pickle, haven’t you, my boy?”
“I’m being set up,” he said. “There’s this cop, and—”
The entity waved a hand at him. “Oh, you don’t have to convince me. I know you had nothing to do with that ugly bombing business. You’re not capable of something like that. That kind of action requires commitment to an ideology. You and ideologies mix about as well as oil and water.”
He longed for a cigarette. One appeared in his hand, lit.
“You’re welcome,” the entity said. “Now, what is it you need my help with? Getting out of the City?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then what?”
“You know about Tommy Park’s arrest, yes? He and his biker friends are mixed up in all of this.”
“Yes, I’m aware they’ve been taken into custody.” She tilted her head to one side. “You want me to help them?”
“They’re being set up too. Same as me.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” She smiled wistfully. “Though I’m glad to see that you’re thinking of others for a change. I might not have thought you capable of such a thing, my dear boy.”
“I suppose I owe them,” he said. “And you do too, if you remember.”
She lifted her thin white eyebrows thoughtfully. “Yes, I imagine we do owe them. But what is it exactly you believe I can do?”
“I was kind of hoping you’d have some ideas.” He smoked. “You know, seeing as you’re superintelligent and all.”
“I’m afraid it’s not as simple a matter as intelligence. So much has already happened. Those poor youngsters have already been convicted in the public’s mind, and these days a judge and jury doesn’t need much more than that. I may be clever, but I can’t turn back time.”
“What about alibis? Digital records of where they were, what they were doing during the bombing? You could dupe those records, send them to the news feeds.” It was the kind of thing Maddox could have done himself under normal circumstances. But now, with AIs and automated sentries and who knew what else hunting him in virtual space, jacking street cam archives or breaking into the Anarchy Boyz’ personal feed histories would be suicidal. Gideon would be expecting such a move, probably even counting on it. He’d have killer tech lying in wait like snipers hiding in trees.
The entity shook her head. “If I attempt something like that, my presence might very well be detected. And I’m afraid my privacy is something I simply can’t risk.”
Maddox didn�
�t argue. The entity had a point. Poking around Tommy’s or the Anarchy Boyz’ digital history was something like a murderer returning to the scene of his crime while the cops were still dusting for fingerprints.
“What about your…followers?” he asked, nearly saying the word ’Nettes.
“No, Blackburn,” the entity said with gentle firmness. The wide brim of her hat fluttered in the breeze. “My purpose is to help those to whom I’m connected, not to hurt them. I can’t in good conscience put any of them in any sort of jeopardy.”
Maddox drew on his cigarette, blew out a frustrated cloud of smoke. A machine with a moral compass. Wonderful.
The entity smiled and gazed warmly at him. From a human being, it might have been comforting, reassuring. From a superintelligent AI, it was anything but.
“Look at you, so worried about your young friend,” she said. “I’d begun to think I was wrong about you, about your nature. But you can put your own needs aside and think of others. I must say you’ve surprised me, Blackburn, and I’m not surprised often. What a wonderfully unique creature you are.”
Maddox smoked, feeling like some freshly captured insect being peered at under a microscope.
“Right, then,” he said, “if you can’t help, I’ll be on my way.”
Waves died against the beach. The surf’s wet mist cooled his cheek.
“Wait,” she said. “Perhaps there is something I can do. Something I can give you. But if I help you, I’ll need you to do something for me in return.”
Maddox had expected as much. He knew firsthand an AI’s help never came without strings. Even an AI that claimed all she wanted to do was help people.
“Like what?” he asked.
“Nothing specific comes to mind,” the entity answered. “Let’s just say you’ll owe me a favor, shall we?”
