by Jem Tugwell
‘Why?’ He lowered himself back down again.
Zoe glanced at her notebook. ‘Her signal tracks lead to her home. She did her usual commute: train then walk then home. Same route every day. Her signal stopped at 17:37 at her home, but she wasn’t there. We have no idea where she is.’
‘Stopped, as in went red?’ Art asked.
‘No, her body would have been at her house. The signal just dropped to 0%,’ I said.
‘That’s not possible.’ Art gave a dismissive flick of his arm. ‘The signal can’t drop. Tech Support would have known.’
‘Zoe talked to Tech Support. They got a No Signal alert, but they couldn’t contact Ms Morgan and said that nobody else was at her house.’
Zoe nodded. ‘Her vital signs were all normal to the end of the signal. Pulse and breathing spiked a bit high, but she showed no alcohol or drugs. No risks taken.’
‘As I said, it’s not possible.’ Art smiled again but with a reptilian coldness in his eyes. ‘The tracking signal doesn’t fail.’
What’s he hiding? ‘You're saying you’ve never had a problem? All tech has glitches now and then.’
The smile stayed fixed, but he bristled against the questioning. I bet he doesn’t get challenged very often. ‘We had a few issues in the early days. But not now.’
‘Really, what about two years ago? You know, version eleven – the hot spot version.’ I rubbed my neck at the memory – it had taken weeks for the burn to heal.
‘We fixed that inside a day.’ His smile was gone, leaving a cold glare from his eyes. ‘Our processes and people have changed since then. Everything’s tightly controlled now.’
‘How?’
‘Our test procedures were found to be deficient, so we changed things. Emma is much more rigorous. Very different, very thorough.’
‘Emma who?’ I said.
‘Emma Bailey. She’s our test manager.’
I typed the name into the notes section on my HUD for us to follow up on later. A quick scribble in my old notebook would have been much less intrusive than my fingers waving in the air tapping invisible keys on my virtual keyboard, but I had tried to move with the times. Just a little anyway, and it meant that the note auto-synchronised to Zoe.
‘But you still have programmers – they must make coding errors.’
‘If they do make mistakes, Emma catches them.’
‘So how can we have a missing person?’
‘Isn’t that your job to find out?’
‘Yes, but the system has to work for us to do that.’
His face started to flush. ‘It does work.’ He paused, trying to control his voice. ‘It’s made life better.’
It sounded like the beginning of one of his corporate speeches, but before he could get going, Zoe said, ‘I love the convenience.’
Art smiled at her. ‘Me too.’
I snorted. ‘It’s not perfect. Your form of convenience is really control, and if I’m controlled, then I’ve lost my personal freedom.’
‘Ah, you’re a libertarian.’ He dragged his eyes from Zoe and back to me. ‘Did the obese celebrate the freedom to eat themselves to death? Did the drinkers appreciate their livers failing? I don’t think so.’ He switched to his sincere CEO face to deliver the familiar message. ‘It was our responsibility to eradicate those problems. People weren’t going to change themselves, but defining and controlling their behaviour against the Model Citizen through iMe has been extremely effective.’
Yeah, yeah, yeah. This was always the argument: the state knows what’s best for you. You had to conform to the Model Citizen or pay the price. I hated the constant comparison to the set of perfect behaviours defined by the Model. How can eating chocolate be defined as a high-risk activity?
‘Enabling a better you,’ I muttered the iMe slogan.
Art nodded sincerely. ‘Exactly. People need help. And look at the health benefits.’
iMe wasn’t helping my mental health. ‘We’re not here for a lecture,’ I scowled at Zoe. She had taken us away from the real topic. I wondered if that was what Art intended.
I paused, trying to regroup. ‘So, you’re saying that it’s impossible not to be tracked. What about a soldier? You wouldn’t want an enemy tracking our soldiers, would you?’
‘That’s not the same as your civilian Sentiment designer.’
‘So, there is a way?’
‘Not for a civilian. Not for your person.’
‘But it can be done? For someone who’s not a civilian. How does it work?’
He paused, considering. ‘Confidentially, for people of strategic importance, their tracks can be concealed from the public.’
‘How?’
‘That’s classified.’
‘But there is a method for soldiers?’ His obstructiveness was pissing me off, and I wanted a reaction. ‘And for celebs who pay enough?’
Art stared at me, his frown pushing the ends of his eyebrows down, trying to intimidate. ‘Don’t push your luck, Inspector. You already know that I'm not without influence with your superiors.’
I could do without another bollocking from Bhatt. ‘I’m only repeating a rumour. I was only asking if it were possible that my missing person’s tracks could be hidden.’
He stood and waved a dismissive arm at the door. ‘I’ve wasted enough time on this. I have another meeting.’
I wasn’t getting anywhere with the confrontational approach, so I tried a gentler line. ‘We need help here – since iMe, we’ve never had a person we couldn’t track.’
Art’s eyebrows straightened, and his face softened a fraction. ‘You can send a formal request for an encrypted signal check. Just to remove any doubt. I’ll approve it.’
‘What’s an encrypted signal check?’
‘Just send it to Tech Support. You won’t be authorised to see any detail. You’ll get a simple yes or no. But it won’t help you.’
***
Back in the car, Zoe and I faced each other over the tabletop screen. ‘Let’s send that encrypted signal request now,’ I said.
‘Do you know what it is?’ She threw her HUD screen at the screen so that I could see what she was doing.
‘No idea. But there’s obviously some way a person can hide their tracks. Or at least some way that the system can hide them from us.’
‘So how do I send it?’
‘Just try sending a standard message and put “encrypted signal” all over it. Say it’s authorised by Art.’
She moved things around on the screen, dragging and dropping Karina Morgan’s details, the location and times into a message. She pressed ‘Send’ and the message window collapsed into an icon of an old postal envelope. Zoe’s Buddy ran onto the screen, grabbed the envelope, folded it into a paper aeroplane, launched it across the screen and unfurled the ‘Message Sent’ banner.
‘We’ll head back to the office while we wait for a response.’ Travelling while facing the rear of the car calmed me, but I needed to turn to face the front for voice commands to work reliably. ‘Car… Destination… Office.’
‘Destination… Office,’ the car repeated and slotted us into the traffic.
I turned back to Zoe, who was flicking through reports on the screen.
‘You seemed to like him, Zoe.’ I was still irritated by her vocalising her love of the system in the meeting.
‘Not really, but I do like iMe.’
‘Clearly, and he liked you.’
‘No, he didn’t.’
‘Yes, he did. What was that he said as we were leaving?’ I attempted an Art Walker impression. ‘I’ll certainly be happy to answer any of your questions, DC Jordan.’
‘He was a bit of a creep.’ She glared at me. ‘You trying to get at me, Boss? If you’ve a problem, then come out with it.’
She was right, Art’s refusal to help had wound me up, and I was projecting my anger onto her. ‘Sorry, no. Just the bit about liking the system took us off the point of the meeting. It broke the flow.’
‘Fair enough. But
iMe is good.’
‘How can it not get to you? Can’t eat this, can’t do that.’
‘It makes life simple. You can’t get tempted.’
‘Simple and dull.’ I let out a long sigh. I could feel the weight of the case on me and spent some minutes watching the roads and wallowing in the familiar and strangely addictive sensation.
A binging sound broke me free. ‘Well?’
Zoe looked up from the screen. ‘There are no encrypted signal tracks.’
‘He did say it wouldn’t show anything. Do you trust Art?’
Zoe considered it. ‘He’s a bit slippery.’
‘I thought he was avoiding the questions.’
‘So, what now? How do we find her?’
I was so used to relying on the system that my mind was empty of ideas.
I didn’t need iMe to ‘enable a better me’. I needed the old me.
12
Thief
When I returned, Karina looked much brighter. She had washed her face and brushed the shine back into her hair. She almost hopped with the excitement of a child promised a trip to the beach.
‘I have to worry about logistics,’ I said. ‘I have to get you out of here and to the park without being tracked and without you being seen.’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘I need you to drink this.’
She hesitated, looking with suspicion at the glass tumbler full of cloudy liquid.
‘Be a good girl, Karina. Don’t make me change my mind. It will make you sleep, and it will make all of the other things I have to do so much easier.’
She drank it all, grimacing at the taste, then placed the glass back on the little tray and wiped her mouth. She looked at me with expectation. ‘I can’t wait to get home and sleep in my own bed again.’
‘Best you lie down.’
***
I started getting everything ready; going through my plan in my head, but who next kept coming into my mind, jamming my thoughts. Perhaps the reason Karina couldn’t satisfy me was that she was kind of a victim, like me. We were both controlled.
I busied myself with the task at hand. I had to get Karina out and to the Great Park without problems. I had a long list of things I needed, so I headed to the garage.
I need someone else. But who? I needed to go pro-active, to retaliate.
I let my mind run free, giving an idea the space to grow. Of course, that smarmy bastard.
Dr Owen would be proud of me. He had always gone on about life’s journey and personal growth. Now, like a good little patient, I was learning from my mistake with Karina. My next one was smug, powerful, and connected. He was part of the cause.
I dumped the things I’d collected in my bag. Don’t get ahead of yourself. I still had Karina to evict. I had no choice, she would be in the way, and I wanted to give him my full attention. It would be more difficult to get him than Karina. He was more public and visible, but my mind was logical, and I liked to work things out. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. I definitely had the will.
***
The strip lighting’s cold white light reflected off the brushed metal surfaces. I’d chosen my protective coveralls because they had a flap covering the zip and the seams were fully taped: ‘an impenetrable barrier against all manner of liquids’ was the manufacturer’s claim. I needed that to be true, but I could feel a lot of sweat building inside the suit, sticking my T-shirt to my back.
When I planned this it had seemed simple, but doing it was much, much harder. It was making me sick and dizzy. My mouth filled with excess saliva and I fought the gag reflex. I lost and bent over, dry-heaving three, four, five times. Each one was accompanied by a strange half-retch, half-burp noise. I closed my eyes and tried to slow my breathing and the feeling passed. Being sick would give me something else to clean up.
The metal surgical tray held the empty packaging from five central line catheters I had already put in place. I picked the last unused one up, popped it open, and placed the packaging tube back on the tray, making sure that it was perfectly parallel and aligned with the others. Last one.
I checked the tap was closed and touched Karina’s carotid artery.
13
DI Clive Lussac
I had wrestled with the problem all night and felt a little light-headed from the lack of real sleep. If it was a technical fault that iMe couldn’t find, why hadn’t Karina come home? She couldn’t have got out of the UK to iMe-free Europe without a lot of checks and security. Plenty of posturing civil liberty campaigners had sworn to leave the UK if iMe came in, but they never did. Was it possible that Karina’s signal was being hidden? So, who had the knowledge to do it and what had they done with Karina?
I shrugged on my ancient Spirit of the Honey Badger T-shirt that was becoming more hole than shirt. Stepping into a pair of faded red joggers, I hopped a couple of steps as I pulled them up and headed to the kitchen. Finally, I had a case to challenge me, and it felt good to have to think. I was looking forward to work for a change, and there was no better way to start an exciting day than with a fat-boy full-English breakfast: sausage, bacon, eggs, the works.
Not that I would get it.
People chose all sorts of voices for their machines: actors, singers, cartoon characters. Mine were Doctor Who Daleks: ‘the emotionless master race bent on domination, utterly without pity, compassion or remorse’. They personified my on-going battle against the world. When government policy was implemented through unthinking rules and technology, when my fridge was the guardian of the food in my house, then my machines were Daleks.
The merciless fridge crushed today’s fragile hope.
For the fifth time, its stilted, electronic voice said, ‘I cannot release the items you have requested, Clive.’
‘I need a good breakfast today.’ I was begging now, and I had no business begging my fridge for a sausage. It wasn’t good for my self-worth.
‘You have four days left on your Excess Consumption Order. You are on a restricted diet.’
I could see the food through the fridge’s transparent front, all the separate loaded compartments. Everything I wanted was in there. The articulated arm moved inside the fridge and selected a food container.
‘Don’t give me that bird food again,’ I pleaded. I’d seen a news article a few days ago about a man who had been arrested for attacking his fridge with an old axe. I knew how he felt, but my axe had been handed-in during a Dangerous Tools Amnesty.
‘Low-sugar granola is not bird food, Clive. I have added some dried strawberries as your iMe shows a slightly low potassium level.’
‘Fantastic,’ I said, but the irony was wasted on the fridge.
‘Enjoy your meal,’ it said.
I hoped it didn’t understand sarcasm either.
***
We needed to get a better understanding of how the system worked, so Zoe and I were back at the iMe offices. I hoped we would have more luck than with Art. As we entered the office, the two people we were there to see were already waiting.
I wore different shoes to avoid the ‘mouse squeaks’ in the iMe office corridors. My only suit was on duty again, but instead of yesterday’s white shirt, I had gone pink with a loud tie. My nose crinkled at the smell. I’d tried to mask its musty odour with a good spray of deodorant, and maybe I’d overdone it. Zoe’s stylish white top made the contrast between us too much to bear. I must get my suit cleaned.
The two people stood up, and the names Manu Ameobi and Emma Bailey came up on my HUD. Manu Ameobi was a striking figure. Not unusually tall, maybe six-foot one, but he had the wide, muscled shoulders and slim waist of a swimmer. His skin was dark as ebony, and this set off his shining, broad smile. He held himself with a warm self-confidence that wasn’t close to arrogance.
Emma Bailey was nearly invisible beside him. She stood maybe five foot six and had a birdlike quality to her movements: small and fast. She was stick-thin, and her muscles and veins stood proud of her tight, ghostly-pale skin. Emma loo
ked like she needed some vitamin D.
‘You’re the technical architect and test manager for iMe, is that correct?’ I said as we took our places at the meeting table.
They nodded.
‘What does that mean?’
Manu leant forward, and Emma leant back. The volunteer and his evasive shadow.
‘I’m the technical architect,’ Manu said. ‘That means that I have the overall responsibility for how the system works and how the different parts fit together. Technology needs a designer, in the same way that a building needs a structural design.’
Manu stopped and waited for Emma.
‘I’m the test manager,’ she said. I had to strain to hear her. ‘What Manu designs, the programmers have to write. I make sure that their code works as intended.’ She paused to check that we were keeping up. ‘To do that, I design and run tests that prove iMe functions properly.’
I pointed at Manu. ‘So, you design iMe.’ My finger swung towards Emma. ‘And you check that it works.’
Manu and Emma exchanged a quick glance, eyebrows raised. ‘Grossly oversimplified, but yes,’ Manu said.
They may have been acting as if I was a slow child, but I was pleased I could follow a technical conversation at all. ‘How do you test it?’
‘I think of all the ways that iMe is used. Then I create scenarios to simulate that usage. Then I prove that iMe works in each scenario,’ Emma said.
She spoke slowly and carefully, like she was trying to force understanding into me, but I was frowning in confusion. I understood the meaning of each word, but not the whole sentence.
She gave a tiny shake of her head in annoyance. ‘A simple example would be a front door lock,’ Emma said. ‘We have all of the legal locks in our testing area. I program the door lock, so iMe thinks it’s my house, and test that the lock opens when I touch the door. Follow so far?’
I nodded.
‘Then, as a second test, I program the lock, so it isn’t my door, then test that the lock doesn’t open.’
‘OK, and you do that for every possible usage? Kids, adults, everyone in the country?’
