by Kevin Bragg
‘Drop me off around the corner from my place, about mid-block, and I’ll walk the rest of the way there.’
‘You sure about that with your knee and all?’
‘Not in the least,’ I responded with a wry grin. ‘But I still need to maintain the illusion of being home all night and that means avoiding any cameras.’
‘You’re the boss.’
*
The LTI stopped near the alley behind my building. I paid the fee from the dummy account and tacked on a large tip.
‘That’s way too much, Mr Helmqvist,’ he said when he looked at the reader in his part of the cabin.
‘You earned it. Thanks for not abandoning me tonight.’ And remember my generosity if the heat comes down on us.
‘Well, if you insist,’ he said, as he turned in his seat to face me better. ‘And give me a call any time you need a driver.’
‘I definitely will.’
I extracted myself from the LTI with some care. The pain in my knee had settled into a dull throb that made it bearable.
The cab pulled away and took a left at the next intersection. I limped along in the same direction but took a right instead.
At the alley next to my building, I ducked in and looked up at the fire escape ladder with some amount of consternation; leaping up to grab the bottom rung most assuredly meant more pain.
I was right. I managed the jump badly and the landing sent a jolt of pain up my leg like someone had jabbed a handful of needles into my knee. I wanted to howl at the top of my lungs. Instead, I bore it with tears in my eyes and a silent grunt.
I managed to hobble up the ladder and reach the landing outside my bathroom. One more easy system hack and I was, at long last, home sweet home. Once inside, I sat on the bathtub edge, stripped down to my birthday suit and gave my knee a closer inspection.
It was swollen and discoloured, but not too bad. The FE9’s kneepad had absorbed most of the impact. Nothing a regimen of painkillers couldn’t sort out in a few days, or weeks.
I fumbled about in the medicine cabinet until I found a prescription from a martial arts training injury. The label said not to take more than two at a time. I gulped three down with mouthfuls of water straight from the tap. I had a look at myself in the mirror and I wished I hadn’t. Nothing a shower couldn’t remedy tomorrow.
In the living room, I jammed the spy gear and the datapad into a gym bag and hobbled towards the bedroom. Erica was sleeping quietly with her back to the doorway.
In the soft glow of the early morning light, she looked even more beautiful. I dumped my clothes in a hamper, grabbed a pair of boxers off the floor, changed into them and slid in next to Erica.
She stirred but quickly settled back into a deep sleeping pattern. I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling; smiling once again. For better or worse, I had made it through the night. I had broken into one of the most sophisticated tech facilities on Mars and made it out alive.
14
A late night filled with a lot of close calls, and a whole lot of pain, should have trumped anything attempting to pull me from my mini-coma. However, the sensation of gentle bites on my neck and earlobes, the feeling of Erica’s soft curves and a silky smooth leg draped over mine, eased me into the conscious world.
‘Morning.’ Her warm breath sent delightful chills down my spine. ‘You’re here.’
She grinned and cocked an ear. ‘No sirens. No one banging on the door. I guess your night went well?’
‘Well enough, but not without incident.’
‘Oh?’
‘I banged my knee up.’
‘You poor thing.’ Erica pushed me playfully flat onto my back. ‘I’m no doctor, but I heard bed rest and a distraction are excellent cures for this type of injury.’
She slid her hand across my chest and down under the sheets. I tensed up.
‘You heard this, did you?’
‘I did.’
Before I could say anything else, Erica slid on top of me and took complete command of the situation. I moved my hands up the side of her thighs and hips but she did the rest. And she was right – I forgot all about the pain in my knee.
When we finished, Erica rolled off me, breathing heavily. A thin layer of sweat glistened on her body. I rolled over on my right side. My knee took that opportunity to remind me that I played pinball with it last night. I swallowed the pain and ran the fingers of my left hand over her stomach.
‘I’m not sure my knee is fixed, but maybe with a few more treatments like that, I might be one hundred per cent in a few weeks’ time.’
Her laugh sounded like a song. ‘We should do something about that then, but for the moment, I am absolutely starving!’
‘I know a great place for breakfast.’
‘And it isn’t where I work?’
‘Surprise, surprise, it isn’t.’
‘Then let’s go! Dinner felt like a lifetime ago.’
We threw on the same outfits we had on the night before and headed out the door.
*
After a delicious brunch, we parted ways at her doorstep with a kiss and a promise to do it again once I had wrapped up my current case.
Stereophonics’ A New Stereophonic Sound Spectacular played in the background as I negotiated my way through traffic back to the Commercial District. Events from the night before superimposed themselves over the very same streets, buildings and monuments as I cruised by them. How different everything looked in the noonday sun.
*
My FE9 barely fit into the hidden compartment in the Griffon’s trunk. It wasn’t my top choice of hiding spots, but I couldn’t risk leaving it in my apartment or my office. The break-in at MARA Corp might end up knocking on either, or both, doors with a search warrant. I had to gamble on them overlooking my car as a possible place to investigate under reasonable circumstances.
‘Why hello, Pam,’ I grunted as I pushed my way through the front door. Every step to my office was accompanied by the sensation of a nail gun to my knee.
‘Good afternoon,’ she replied after slight delay. ‘Based on your gait, it appears you have suffered damage to the synovial joint of your right leg.’
‘How nice of you to notice.’ I hobbled to her desk and took my usual spot on the right corner. ‘Any phone calls?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Any visitors, like the police? Or the army? Or better yet, a robot army?’
She responded with her unusual brand of contemptuous silence.
‘My mission last night was a success.’
‘You obtained the datapad?’
I produced it from my jacket pocket. ‘Hey! I told you to scrub the events of last night from your memory banks.’
‘I took it as a suggestion and decided not to comply.’
‘A suggestion? Christ! If the police confiscate you, they’ll know I did it!’ Professional privilege did not extend to androids any more than it did to a toaster.
She shrugged. I swear to God she actually shrugged. ‘What’s done is done. It will be in your best interest not to alert the police, or anyone else, to your illicit activities.’
Anger would have been an acceptable response. Instead, I bust my gut laughing. What’s done is done. The absurdity of an android employing such a well-heeled idiom was too much.
‘I’ll do my best.’ With my index finger and thumb, I swiped tears from my eyes. ‘Speaking of, I will need your help running interference while I access this device. My guess: this thing has a sniffer that’ll send a traceable signal to Kitterman as soon as it’s powered-up.’
‘Very well, sir. I will begin running countermeasures when you are ready.’
She looked back at her monitor, fingers hovering over the keyboard ready to get started. I limped back to my office and eased myself into my chair.
‘Begin running interference and bouncing our ISP,’ I called through the intercom; no shouting today.
‘I have already started. You may proceed when you are ready.’
‘What woul
d I do without you?’
‘Should I answer that, or is it rhetorical?’
‘Rhetorical.’
*
In case the datapad had some sort of RFI locator built into it, I placed the device in a Faraday Cage of my own design, connecting it to a WildCat port on the inside of the box. The cage, I plugged into my computer. When I did, it hummed to life. At the same time, the datapad lit up with soft glowing lines of blue LED that raced around its edges. A few seconds later, ‘MARA Corporation’ appeared on my screen in the same block lettering I had seen on the building last night.
‘Detect anything?’
‘Yes, sir. The device attempted to send out a locating signal the moment you powered it up. However, I muted the signal before it left the office.’
‘Good girl.’
‘You have used this phrase before and I do not understand why. I am not a girl, sir. I am modelled after a human female.’
‘Thanks, Pam. I hadn’t noticed. Now be quiet. I need to concentrate.’
The determined banging of keys echoed through the intercom.
‘The device is protected by an asymmetrical algorithm,’ I called out. ‘This might take a while.’
‘Is there anything that I can do to help?’
‘Nothing more than you already are doing.’
It took me about an hour to crack the public key in the encryption. That left the private one (or as people like to refer to it – the secret key – to give it an air of mystery). Still, I counted this as a minor victory.
‘Mr Helmqvist?’
‘Yes, Pam,’ I said as I typed away furiously.
‘I thought that you should know that the device attempted to flag itself across multiple platforms. They have been successfully suppressed.’
‘That would be because I unlocked one of the keys. Expect it again when I get the second.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Anticipation coursed through every fibre of my being. I was moments away from learning the truth about Mara Kitterman.
Much to my surprise, it only took 45 minutes to get past the second password and unlock the files.
‘I’m in!’
‘Congratulations,’ Pam said over the intercom with what I think was an attempt at enthusiasm.
‘Thanks. I couldn’t have done it without you. Were there any more attempts to locate the device?’
‘There were but I routed them to a server on Ganymede and then bounced the signal to every major Earth city.’
‘Well done! I’m going to access the files now. Standby.’
I pulled up the file system on my machine and found a main directory plus an executable file. Nested within the main file resided a whole horde of subdirectories filled with terabytes of information. The sheer volume was staggering, and not one obvious clue to direct me down the correct path.
A cursory search yielded nothing. A file labelled ‘UN Bombing’ would have been very handy. I didn’t even find anything of interest around the time of the attack in Manhattan. That left the executable file as my last hope.
I double-clicked on it and the word Transilience appeared on the monitor, followed by a 3D model of a featureless man who looked like department store window dressing. After a few revolutions on an invisible axis, it shifted to the left side of the screen. On the right, data cascaded down the screen.
As best I could tell, it was technical information related to the figure next to it. By all appearances, I hadn’t stolen a smoking gun from under Kitterman’s nose. Instead, I had taken her latest project like some piece of shit industrial spy. Like a common thief.
All my hard work and the risk getting into her office and I grab the wrong storage device. I broke the law on so many levels; not to mention the abuse of my poor knee. I picked Executive when I probably should’ve picked R&D. I bet the house on red and it came up black. Karma and Irony both gave me the one finger salute.
To make matters worse, the damn thing sat there, mocking me with its pulsing blue glow. It took the will of a titan not to smash the thing to tiny pieces. My God how I wanted to and probably should have.
But I didn’t.
It wasn’t mine and I felt more than a little shame because I had taken someone’s intellectual property; even if I suspected them of mass murder.
Once my rage subsided, I simply unplugged the datapad.
‘Alright, Pam, we should be out of danger,’ I said out loud while I continued to watch the machine. ‘Do one last sweep to make sure we’re clear.’
‘No evidence of polling. I believe that we are safe,’ she replied after a few seconds.
I slumped back in my chair. Disappointment, mental exhaustion and hunger hit me from all sides. I needed to get out of the office. So I scooped up the device, my suit jacket and hat and went into the conference room where I kept disposable lab gloves, various wipes and sprays. I gave the device a thorough cleaning and ran it under a UV light. Once I was convinced it didn’t have any of my prints or DNA on it, I slid the datapad into a plastic bag and sealed it tight.
Even though I had resolved not to destroy the storage unit, I didn’t have a clear plan as to how to get rid of it. My best bet would be to get it into the hands of the police. How to achieve that anonymously, however, posed some serious problems. Forensic scientists could find so much these days. They made it nearly impossible to get away with anything.
I walked out into Pam’s area of the office, holding the bag in my glove-covered hands like it might explode any second.
‘What will you do with the device?’ Her gaze shifted from me to the bag.
‘I thought that maybe you could drop it off, anonymously, on the steps of Metro HQ sometime later tonight.’
Her eyes widened at the thought. ‘Me?!’
‘Yes, you. You’re perfect. You have no fingerprints to leave a traceable path back to this office and I doubt that anyone would recognise you on the street. You never leave here.’
‘That’s just it, I never leave here.’ She moved her gaze from me to around the office. ‘This is where I belong. Besides, they would know. The police and, in all probability, MARA Corporation can track all androids from a central location. It is part of the protocol required by New London law. My ID signature might trigger some sort of notification to alert the police of my presence as soon as I neared the station. Far too risky for me to leave here.’
‘Damn! Of course. How could I forget that?’
‘I’m not sure, Mr Helmqvist, but it is the law.’
‘Again, rhetorical.’
‘Oh.’
‘Take an envelope big enough for this package and print “Deliver to MARA Corporation. Do not open” on it.’
When she finished, I jammed the package and another pair of lab gloves in a satchel.
‘Okay, Pam,’ I said. ‘I’ll ditch this some place as far away from here as New London permits. You’re off the hook.’
Again, I would swear that she relaxed her entire composure in a gesture of relief.
‘Thanks again for the help today. I couldn’t have done this without you.’
‘You’re welcome, Mr Helmqvist. Are you done for the day?’
‘I think so. I need a break and some food. I thought I’d catch a film at the Art House. They’re showing Hitchcock’s last picture in a one-night engagement. Maybe I’ll find some inspiration there.’
*
I checked my smartwatch. The film started at 8pm and the Art House was only a few blocks from my office. That gave me plenty of time to get up to some mischief and be back before the intro credits began to roll.
I set off with a vague idea of where I should ditch Kitterman’s storage device. Either the IM or Res 3. Both places the cops would expect to find it. I meandered through the industrial sector but nothing jumped out at me. Eventually, I found an alley I knew from growing up in Res 3 on an avenue with missing street cameras. I hopped out of the Griffon, checked for an all clear, and threw the package down the alley. It glided through the air li
ke a Frisbee and skipped off the ground with a dull thud. I retreated back to my car and said goodbye to the old neighbourhood without a glance in the rearview mirror.
I lived close to the Art House Theatre and decided to hobble there. It was a pleasant night for a leisurely walk, but then again, it’s always pleasant when you live under a dome. I arrived at the cinema with enough time to spare to enjoy a whisky neat from the lobby bar.
The movie was good, not quite your usual Hitchcock, and hit pretty close to home. The actor-turned-private-investigator boyfriend felt strangely autobiographical. I could’ve been Lumley; some poor schmuck drawn into a vocation entirely unsuited to him. I could also see a little bit of Charlotte Rennick in the phony psychic. A comedy hidden behind a thinly veiled mystery sounded about right. Anyway, when I walked out of the theatre and headed towards the nearest Underground station, I felt a little less dour.
*
I strolled into the 3rd Street Lounge and stopped in my tracks. Instead of the usual sad sacks leaning on the bar, a crowd of twenty-somethings filled the joint. And the music didn’t sound like something played from speakers. My gaze shifted left. Five actual human beings played their way through Woody Shaw’s ‘Traffic Jam’. About a dozen lookers and gees swung to the music, doing their damnedest to rub the polish off the parquet.
A quintet in the 3rd Street.
A sure sign of the end of times. And, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood.
A group of hipsters sat in my usual spot so I eased up to the bar. Curt slid a highball in front of me. The tonic fizzled away merrily.
‘What gives, Curt? I take one night off and I come back to find you’ve added some class to this dive.’
‘I know, right?’ He looked around like he had no idea how it had happened. ‘What do you think?’
‘Aside from my spot being taken, it’s good.’ The band had moved on to an upbeat version of ‘Perfidia’ in a style best called Brubeck. ‘And for a bunch of kids, the five on the stage can play. How in the hell did you find them?’
