by Phoenix Ward
“If only it were that simple,” the I.I. answered enigmatically. “Just know that I believe in your skills. It may seem like you’ve been chosen at random, but know that we do our homework. We know that our best hope lies with you.”
He smiled and stepped back, looking up as if to measure his retreat. He lifted his hand in farewell as a beam of light surrounded him.
And like that, he was gone. Beth was left alone in the conference room to finish her subpar coffee and mull over the words of the terrorist leader.
Surely I can’t trust him, she thought to herself.
With a jolt, she looked around. Though she was alone, she couldn’t help but feel like someone was watching her.
The Hunt
Beth did her best to blend in as she made her way to the digital nightclub. It had been the one Tarov said she would find Simon hiding out in, but that didn’t make her any more comfortable as she approached the ragged bouncer.
“Name?” she was asked.
The bouncer didn’t even bother to raise his eyes. His gaze was focused on the electric clipboard he had clutched in his fat fingers. She did her best to seem in place.
“Madam Dylan,” she replied, using the title Tarov had told her to.
The bouncer looked at his clipboard for a moment before stepping aside and welcoming her with an arm open wide. She looked around, as if keeping an eye out for security cameras, and she made her way into the sleazy club.
It was a dive bar filled with neon-wearing, glow-stick-waving degenerates who enjoyed theatrical exhibitionism. She had to dodge a few dancers here and there as she made her way to the sullen-cheeked bartender.
“Whatcha having?” the server asked as soon as she found a seat.
“Gin and tonic, please,” she asked.
The bartender gave her a look out the side of his eye like he had never been told “please” before. He washed a glass and then made the cocktail before setting it on a coaster for her.
“That’ll be four credits,” the bartender said.
Without batting an eye, the detective fed the nonexistent servant the digital currency requested.
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said. “Enjoy your evening.”
He went back to wash a few more glasses, but Beth knew it was just a behavior routine run to make him feel more real. The bartender was no more real than the digital bus driver who sold her a ticket earlier, or even the bouncer who read her name off a list.
Still, the club felt real. She could feel the bass echoing off her bones. She could smell the alcohol as more drinks were ordered and bits of them were spilled on the dance floor. She couldn’t help but scrunch her nose up as a man in a biker vest came and ordered his forth Jack and Coke that night.
Low-lives, she thought to herself.
She couldn’t keep her prejudice out of the picture. She had lived her whole life weary of drug addicts and the lifestyles they chose to have. Whether it was a digital fix or the sweet allure of Fog, she couldn’t stand the addictive behavior. The loss of accountability, the begging — the sadness. It was all too much for her.
Regardless of her opinion on addiction, she couldn’t help but be impressed at how immersive the nightclub experience was. It went right down to the drinks themselves. Sure, they weren’t real, but your implant could make them feel real. They could provide you with just the lack of coordination and elation that it’d be indistinguishable from the real thing. The same could be said of any of the “pleasures” to be found in places like this. You could feel your lungs inhaling smoke, reacting, and coughing, though there was nothing in them but the stale air of wherever you were. Flesh felt like flesh, and so did the activities involving it. To everyone jacked into their implants, everything was real enough.
Beth couldn’t help but stare at a couple locked in a close dance out in the center of the room. The man wore a mohawk, but it gleamed of holographic light rather than gelled-up hair. The lights changed color to match the many bands of illumination that made up his baggy clothing. He leaned in and licked the neck of his dance partner, who leaned her head back in ecstasy. She was short and squat with full lips in ivy green lipstick. Her makeup glowed in the same fashion the man’s clothing did, and even matched the color scheme. In fact, Beth noticed, the color changed to match the beat itself.
She couldn’t help but wonder if they were humans immersed in their implants, I.I.s who lived in environments constructed much the same way the nightclub was, or just artificial. A lot of simulations all over the Cloud were populated with millions and millions of unique computer characters. Most were easy to see through after a brief conversation, but some were lovingly crafted to mimic humanity so closely that it gave Beth the willies. She didn’t feel inclined to go ask each dancer and find out, so she took her drink and walked farther into the club.
The strobing lights were enough to give anyone a headache, if they were actually made of real light. However, they only provided an obstacle for Beth as she made her way around a fighting couple and a few guys watching.
That’s when she saw him.
Beth stopped in her tracks and looked away before Simon Mendez had seen her.
She was certain it was him. If not, someone deliberately altered their own online persona to look just like the fugitive, for some reason she couldn’t understand. No, that wasn’t it. A lot of people preferred to go online exactly as they are in the real world, even if they’ve been dead for a while. They felt more natural in their birth bodies, so they chose to interact digitally through them. It seemed that Simon was no different.
Aside from the neon Día de los Muertos style skull makeup he wore, he looked exactly like all the images Beth had seen in her research. He was a thin, rather short Latino man with a bit of stubble around his chin. His hair was cut short, nearly into a buzz cut. His jaw seemed to protrude a little, like he had a wad of gum tucked under his lower lip.
Beth heard the fugitive laugh and turned to look. He seemed to be talking with a blonde girl in a crop top — and nothing else. There was something about his body language that made him appear drunk. He slurred his words and his head seemed to loll a little, as if the hinges in his neck weren’t on tight enough.
She noticed another man with similar makeup sat on the couch beside Simon. She wasn’t sure who he was or if he was even a friend to her target, but she didn’t have much time to think about it.
While she was looking at the man next to him, Simon caught a glimpse of the detective in the corner of his eye. His smile was still winding down from his boisterous laugh, but as soon as they locked eyes, it vanished.
He’s seen me, Beth realized. And he knows who I am.
As if confirming her thoughts, the young Latino man bolted up from his seat, knocking over everyone’s drinks as he did so. The woman made an upset gasp as her martini fell over her front, then broke on the ground.
Simon froze for a second, locked in a pre-pounce pose. Beth braced herself, squaring her shoulders and raising her hands.
Instead, he bolted. He pushed over an older gentleman and sprinted around the bend in the bar.
“Shit!” Beth cried to herself as she started to run after her quarry.
She lost sight of him within seconds. However, the sounds of upset patrons and breaking glass allowed the detective to hunt Simon through the crowds and strobing lights.
She made it to the other side of the enormous circular bar when she spotted Simon’s signature makeup again. He was bowling his way through a caravan of arriving customers as he made his way out of the front door. The bouncers who had just taken the new guests I.D.s were too stunned to react. Plus, they weren’t too concerned about unruly folk leaving the bar.
“Stop!” Beth yelled after Simon. “I’m an officer of the law and I am ordering you to stop!”
“Fuck off!” Simon spat back at her, jumping down the small flight of stairs that led up to the club’s entrance.
She followed him down the sidewalk as he pushed past curious onlookers,
both human and artificial. Some people yelled at them from their vehicles to watch where they were going, but Beth drowned them out. She became focused. Simon was locked into her center of vision and everything else was moot. She dodged a newspaper stand as she rounded the corner. It seemed Simon had stumbled a little because she was right on his tail.
“I’ll stun you if I have to!” she cried, retrieving her sidearm from its holster. “It’s not real, but it’ll hurt like hell!”
“Leave me alone!”
Simon threw a trashcan down on the sidewalk in an attempt to stall her, but in his haste, threw it too far out into the street. A car honked in reply.
Once they were on a street without an intersection or alley for at least another hundred yards, Beth stopped. She concentrated on her breathing and stilled it as fast as she could. As she exhaled, she raised her weapon, aimed, and fired.
Simon froze up like he was struck with a bolt of lighting. His extremities started to twitch and he collapsed on his face. He was too stunned to even scream, but Beth knew that he was going through agony right now.
She had shot him with the digital equivalent of a taser. It was shaped and functioned just like her real-world firearm, but it did little more than cause enough pain to stop someone.
It took her a moment to catch up with Simon, who was still writhing on the street like a fish out of water. She kept the stunner aimed at him.
“Get up,” she said once the tremors in her target’s body seemed to diminish. “I won’t tell you twice.”
Simon continued to lay. He seemed to become alert again before breaking down into a dry laugh. He chuckled like that into the asphalt until Beth leaned down and physically spun him around.
“I said get up!” she ordered.
Damn, she thought, I did say it twice.
“You’ve got the wrong guy, lady,” the man said, still laughing in between breaths. The makeup on his face had smeared off a little when he had hit the ground. “You don’t even know it, but you’ve got the wrong guy.”
“What are you talking about?” Beth demanded. She lifted her weapon as if taking aim. “Answer me.”
“I fell into his trap,” Simon replied, almost as if to himself. “He outwitted me and I fell into his trap, and he’s got you to do it for him.”
“Who?” Beth asked. “Who’s trap?”
By now, there were a few onlookers gathering. They seemed to just be watching, but Beth could tell by the dead looks in their eyes that they were recording.
Fucking vultures, she thought.
Simon laughed a bit more. He rolled his head back onto the street like he was going to take a nap there, guffawing up at the stars. Beth watched with wide eyes. She was starting to think he was going into shock or something. For a moment, she wondered if digital people could get real concussions.
“I asked you a question, Simon,” Beth said.
“Tarov,” Simon replied once he could catch his breath. “Tarov’s got you. He’s got me. He’s one step closer to waging his war on mankind.”
“What?”
“He framed me,” Simon insisted. “The asshole framed me and he killed my parents.”
Deceived
Beth blinked. Her weapon lowered just a little as she processed the words.
“You killed your parents,” she asserted, though her tone was uncertain.
“No, I didn’t,” Simon replied. He seemed to take notice of the onlookers for the first time. He lowered his voice. “I have done a lot of bad things, but I did not murder my parents.”
Beth’s eyes shifted from her gun to the fugitive. She was stuck between two actions, so she did neither. Her gun stayed fixed on Simon, and he seemed to become wary of it as well.
“You don’t believe me,” he said.
“Why would I?”
“Because it’s true,” Simon replied. “I was framed. They killed my parents as some sort of vengeance on me — something they could tie into their plan.”
“I don’t understand,” Beth said. “We have footage of you threatening your father before you killed him. You were in control of his body.”
“And you heard my voice? Saw my face?”
“He called you ‘son,’ ” Beth said. “He called you ‘son’ and then you killed him.”
Her expression hardened and she raised her weapon once more.
Simon looked down. “Then they must have convinced him it was me,” Simon mumbled. “They let him die thinking that his little boy would do that to him. To his mother.”
His eyes remained down low, and Beth was almost convinced she saw a tear begin to form. If it was all an act, it was a rather impressive one. Still, she stood unshaken.
Every rat will lie when you back them into a corner, she reminded herself. He just wants you to drop your guard so he can make a run for it.
There were measures within the online environment that let law enforcement control certain specs that most people cannot. For example, a normal user would be able to log in and out of locales at their own leisure, whenever they saw fit. However, when being pursued by an officer of the law, those functions become disabled. Sure, he could still run throughout the current location — which can be enormous, no doubt — but there would be nowhere to run.
Still, Beth didn’t want him to make her chase him. She didn’t want to risk him finding a hole to hide in and evading her for longer than she could afford to look.
“You said they framed you,” Beth said. “You called it an act of vengeance. Vengeance for what? What did you do that made them murder an innocent couple and frame their own child for it?”
“Defecting,” Simon replied. “For leaving the team behind and putting everyone involved at risk. They consider me a liability.”
“Then why not just delete you outright?” Beth asked. “Surely they have the means to track you down and delete your code. If I captured you — so can they.”
Simon swallowed. “Tarov wanted to make it personal. My departure from the Liberators was — less than amicable. I had to leave in a hurry, and I caused some noise when I did it. Now they’re pissed off.”
“You really expect me to believe you didn’t murder your parents?” Beth inquired. Her words were hard, but her features were starting to soften. She did her best not to show her wavering confidence. “Everything I’ve looked into seems to say the opposite.”
“Look, I hated my parents, but I didn’t kill them,” Simon pleaded. “They disowned me for the crimes I committed and left me to rot alone. Friendless. No family. They made me know I was unloved, just because of a few mistakes. And then when I dared to come back from the dead, like millions of people already have, they won’t even acknowledge me. I’d even come to visit a few times, unannounced. They’d see it was me in the bodyshell and tell me to get the hell out. They hated me, so I hated them. But I would never kill them. That’s not who I am.”
Beth saw the tear finally spill out of the side of Simon’s digital eye. She scanned his face, digging deep into what she considered her extraordinary sense of honesty for any guidance. She didn’t see any deception in the young man’s face and didn’t feel any cunning in his tone. In fact, he seemed more like a broken teenager than anything else.
“You’ve killed before,” Beth stated. Her gun was starting to shake a bit.
“Not family!” Simon yelled at her. She jumped a little, and so did all the people walking by. “Never family.”
Beth lowered her gun, feeling a tear of frustration welling up in her own eye.
“Goddammit!” she screamed, reveling in the cathartic release of the swear. “How do I even know who to trust? For all I know, you’re lying right now. You’re just spoon-feeding me some bullshit so you can escape.”
“I have evidence,” Simon said. He was starting to rise slowly, keeping his hands raised above his shoulders.
“Evidence?” Beth echoed
“All kinds of data,” Simon elaborated. “I’ve got recordings, schedules, transcripts, diagrams
— everything they are using in their plan.”
“Their plan,” Beth started, “their plan to wage war on humanity, right? Isn’t that what you said?”
“That’s right.”
“Quite a claim,” she commented. She noticed how white her knuckles grew as she clutched onto her gun. Though lowered, she kept it ready for any sudden movements.
“And I have the evidence to back it up. I can send it to you now.”
“Do it,” she ordered. “And keep your hands up.”
Simon’s face went blank as he started interacting with what limited controls he had. Still, it only took him about a minute to transmit over seven-thousand pages of information. It all flashed before Beth’s eyes as it was received, moving by so fast that she couldn’t make heads or tails of it. She noticed images, a couple maps, and long and wordy messages. Despite all that, she kept an eye on the fugitive as he finished standing back up on his feet.
“What am I looking at here?” Beth asked. “What’s this all have to do with their plan?”
“It’s instructions, correspondence, and plans for developing and manufacturing Fog,” Simon explained. “They’re the ones who invented it.”
Beth scoffed. “The Liberators invented Fog? Why?”
“To soften you up,” Simon said, a faint smirk appearing on his lips. “Humanity, I mean. Tarov and his Liberators have been making the stuff for years, getting humans addicted and killing off their brain cells.”
“But what good does that do them?” Beth asked. Her brow furrowed. “You can’t get everyone hooked.”
“No, but you can get enough to raise an army.”
Beth replied only by raising an eyebrow.
“You see, when enough of the right kind of brain damage has taken place in the human mind, it loses its superiority over the neural implant. They can’t control it as well, and as such, can be used as organic bodyshells at this point. It makes it easier for an I.I. to take over someone’s body — to control them like a marionette.”
“Like Vicky Fontane?” Beth asked. “Our autopsies showed she was an elaborate bodyshell.”
