Abaddonian Dream

by M. K. Woollard

  “Sorry, sir,” the warden said, “but it’s more than that. There was a surveillor here, but it didn’t record anything.” He pointed to one of the buildings beyond the alleyway and Hammell saw the familiar white and black bulbous shape.

  “What do you mean, it didn’t record anything?”

  The warden opened his mouth but was lost for words. “I mean,” he began tentatively, “that it didn’t record... anything.”

  Hammell avoided wringing his hands or the young man’s neck. “No images?” he said. “What did it record, noise? Was it switched off? What?”

  “No, it was recording fine,” Porter said quickly, almost falling over himself to please and Hammell allowed himself an inner smile. Back in the day he’d been known as the Rottweiler. It was pleasing to find he could still make people jump just by barking a little.

  “There are images of the streets,” Porter continued, “but they didn't record… this.” He gestured towards the barrels.

  "And you checked it wasn’t just a mistake in the timeline,” Hammell said and the warden stuttered.

  “W-well,” Porter began, “I don’t… They didn’t exactly let me check. I was just… there.”

  Of course you were, Hammell thought. That was practically a warden’s job description - just... being there.

  “But I watched the forensics unit check the data,” the warden said hopefully. “The time and date were right, but there was nothing on the recording. So they ignored it.”

  Hammell fought not to show it, but he could feel the old wheels starting to turn; he could practically hear them creaking as they shook off the dust. He didn’t want to get carried away, but he was starting to think that there just might be something in this...

  “Standard practice, they said,” Porter continued. “No evidence means no evidence. That’s why I called an I.A.” He looked pleased with himself for having finally figured it out.

  Hammell looked up at the surveillor, one of around a hundred thousand strewn across the city. Semi-mobile, invasive, ubiquitous, and part of the most successful policing project ever created, it resembled a bubble that had merged with lots of smaller bubbles. He wondered whether it could it have been tampered with without being detected. More likely it was just a mistake - that the warden had got the wrong end of the stick somehow.

  “So?” Porter asked expectantly.

  “So?”

  “So, what do you think?”

  “I don’t anymore,” Hammell said. “It’s no longer required.”

  He could see the disappointment on the warden’s face - and deep down he felt just as disappointed in himself for saying it. But what did the kid expect? That calling in an I.A. would mean his little mystery would be solved on the spot? Didn’t he know that I.A.s had only marginally greater powers than wardens now? If Providence couldn’t solve this with all of its different agents and facets and technologies, what chance did one solitary investigator have?

  “I, um…” Porter said, breaking into his thoughts. He lowered his voice and Hammell knew exactly what was coming. “I… I’ve never seen violence like this.”

  “No,” Hammell said, offering no encouragement.

  “Well,” the warden said tentatively. “A few of us were wondering… could it be them?”

  “Them?” Hammell asked, feigning ignorance.

  “The Red Hands,” the boy said, almost in a whisper.

  “No,” Hammell said, but his mind had jumped to exactly the same conclusion. His implant had even been placing pertinent facts about the last organized criminal gang in the world at his disposal during the drive here. The Red Hands were known to create black spots in Providence to cover their tracks, even multiple black spots for diversionary purposes; albeit usually through unsubtle means such as physically destroying androids and cameras. They had previous - but there had been no Red Hand activity in the city for years. The worst had been in Paris recently, and even there things had gone quiet.

  “How do you know?” the warden asked. “Who else would do something like this?”

  Hammell grunted noncommittally and turned away. He had what he needed from the boy now and wanted rid of him before the idea occurred that he might somehow help with the investigation. He stalked up to the nearest forensics android, one which had JENN-526 emblazoned on its chest, shoulders and forehead - one of Stein’s.

  “You,” Hammell barked, “make sure the androids at the new checkpoints ping everyone who leaves here, not just everyone entering.”

  “They already are, I.A. Hammell,” Jenn replied evenly. Androids couldn’t be intimidated or flustered; another reason Hammell disliked them.

  “I.A. Hammell,” the warden asked politely and Hammell inwardly rolled his eyes.

  Here it comes… “And we should get a list of everyone coming in and out of the Reserves since… since the checkpoints went up,” he continued.

  “We already have the list,” the android replied, “covering the past six days. If you check the evidence folder on polnet, you will find it.”

  “Excuse me, I.A. Hammell…” the warden tried again.

  The ambulance took off suddenly and Hammell watched the surviving victim disappear into the heavy sky. The chunky vehicle only just made it up out of the alley without hitting the narrow walls before vanishing over the buildings, heading off towards the city and its distant megastructures. Hammell would have to catch the guy at the hospital or the station, if he survived that long. He wondered what a person submerged in acid would come out looking like... He glanced over at the bloody, gloopy skull which a forensics android was now picking up and moving into an evidence bag. Somewhere between a man and that.

  “I.A. Hammell,” Porter said. “I was just thinking that maybe I could-”

  “The beacon will be giving off a signal,” Hammell said to Jenn. “Make sure an alert has been sent out.”

  “It’s all been taken care of, I.A. Hammell,” the android replied.

  “Then what the fuck am I doing here?” Hammell growled and he gave the warden his most intimidating stare before stomping off back to his car, wiping the sweat from his brow as he went. He didn’t turn back to see if Porter was watching. The kid had got the message, disappointing though that message was.

  Chapter 3

  Hammell stopped off on the way for his fourth cup of coffee - possibly a mistake, but he was feeling generous and wanted to bring something to make Toskan feel human again. Holding two cups and a bag of pastries made it difficult to open the cupboard door, but he eventually managed, bursting in more dramatically than he’d intended.

  “Sorry,” he said before stopping and gaping at the scene before him.

  Dave Toskan was sitting behind his desk while in the centre of the room an improbably proportioned naked woman was dancing for him. “Oh, shit,” his partner said as he scrambled and fell out of his chair.

  The commotion caused a passing android to nose in. “Is everything-” it began, before Hammell kicked the door shut in its face.

  “It’s not what it looks like,” Toskan said quickly as he picked himself up and attempted to regain his dignity. “Stop dancing,” he told the model, which complied, with a pout.

  “Toskan, come on, man,” Hammell said wearily as he put the coffee cups down on his desk. “I eat in here.”

  “It’s work,” Toskan said, and technically he was right; the model was from the insurance fraud cold case catalogue. Toskan closed the catalogue and the model disappeared sulkily. “Shouldn’t you be out investigating a murder or something? I thought you’d be gone for the morning.”

  “Evidently,” Hammell said as he waited until he was sure his partner was decent before passing over a coffee and an almond croissant. “You’d better hope that android didn’t cop an eyeful.”

  “It was work,” Toskan protested.

  Hammell avoided making a crack about how hard he appeared to have been working and instead sank down into his chair to call up the alert on polnet. Without anything much from Providen
ce, the case file was pretty sparse, filled only with reams and reams of raw, unprocessed data. Hammell didn’t much fancy looking through tens of thousands of photographs - that was a job for the megaAI, which would assemble a full 3D reconstruction of the scene.

  “Providence is slow today, eh?” Toskan said as he tucked into his croissant and Hammell thought that he was way too chirpy for someone who’d been as drunk as they’d been the night before.

  Why isn’t he suffering like I’m suffering? Hammell asked himself, resenting it.

  A DNA profile popped up in the folder and Hammell opened it to find that the identity of the surviving victim had been established. Providence quickly began to compile data about Mr Arthur Beecroft. The file began to fill. Hammell called up the man’s polnet profile, but there was little to see. Arthur had never been arrested and there was nothing to suggest any criminal connections. He was a perfectly legal citizen and there was no hint of any involvement with the Red Hands.

  “You’re keen,” Toskan said as he watched Hammell work. “Think you have a chance of beating the network?”

  Hammell shot him a look.

  “Me neither,” Toskan said.

  Opening Arthur’s bank records, he was shocked to find that the man’s coefficient was below zero - and had been for some time.

  “Shit,” Toskan said. “How did he live?”

  Hammell could only shake his head. His implant began bringing up facts about the megaAI-controlled rating that determined a person’s value to society, and he mused for a moment on whether the coefficient system really was better than the free market system it had replaced, even with the latter’s uncertainty and periodic booms and busts. The economists said yes, but then they would say that - they’d invented it. It certainly hasn’t done much for people like Arthur Beecroft.

  The only other data of note to appear so far was from Arthur’s beacon. It had stopped working, of course - whoever had taken it out had been smart enough to know to break it. But though the beacon itself had been taken, its data had been automatically uploaded onto a private network. Arthur, Hammell discovered, was a night owl. He tended to sleep all day and become active from the evening. He usually kept within a one mile radius of his registered address, except for when he took long trips on foot into the Reserves. Intrigued, Hammell called up the logs from the new checkpoints, but over the six days the checkpoints had data for, Arthur had not passed through. He’s going in, but he’s sneaking in. Why?

  Hammell sat back in his chair, thinking. There was something in this, he knew it instinctively. He glanced at the alert, half expecting it to turn green as he stared at it. But the two hour prime period had passed already with no conviction. Could Porter have been right? he wondered. Could Providence really have failed?

  He spun his chair around to face his partner. “Someone needs to go to his house.”

  "And someone will,” Toskan said confidently.

  “Someone,” Hammell said, “not something.”

  “Are you being serious?” Toskan asked as he brushed away powdered sugar and pastry crumbs from his mouth. “Are you investigating this? You don’t want to give it a few more hours?”

  "Where’s Abash?” Hammell asked, apparently innocently.

  “No,” Toskan said flatly. “I’m not going. Why don’t you go?”

  “I’m going to interview the victim,” Hammell said. “Where’s Abash?”

  "We’re exactly the same rank,” Toskan said. “You can’t order me.”

  “I didn’t try to order you. I just asked where Abash is.”

  “Abash was fired,” Toskan said, “as you know very well. You went to his leaving drinks.”

  “Then Chalanga.”

  “Fired. There’s no-one else, Hammell. On this shift, it’s just us. As you well know.”

  “Oh,” Hammell said. “Well, then...”

  “No,” Toskan said, with what he clearly hoped was finality. “I’m not wasting my time. I’m going to sit here and...”

  “Flick elastic bands?” Hammell ventured, watching his partner with a critical eye. He wondered whether Toskan was just trying to avoid the inevitable disappointment that came from going up against Providence, or whether there might be more to it. They both knew what could happen to people who investigated the Red Hands… “I didn’t want to bring up what I saw in here,” Hammell continued. “I really don’t want to ever mention that again.”

  “Who are you trying to kid?” Toskan said. “You’d never report me.”

  “Not to Yun,” Hammell said. “But the wardens…”

  “You wouldn’t,” Toskan said.

  He tapped his temple and the iEye within which recorded everything. “I doubt I saw enough to get you fired, but the way you fell out of that chair… It didn’t look good.”

  “You’re an arsehole.”

  “Hey,” Hammell said, “I just bought you an almond croissant.”

  “Send me the address,” Toskan grunted as he snatched his coat from the hook. “But if that thing turns green before I get there, you’re buying me lunch. At La Fête.”

  “Set menu.”

  “A la carte!” Toskan shouted as he slammed the door behind him.

  Chapter 4

  The interview room was a hexagonal structure cut from black sheet metal. It was lit from high above by a cluster of white lights which mingled together into a single bright circle, giving the unnerving impression of being stuck down a well. Arthur Beecroft sat in a cheap metal chair across from a sleek black android with the designation MOR-990; a new model known as a blackshine. As he watched from the observation room behind the blackwall, Hammell considered the fact that trust in androids was steadily increasing as each successive line came out. Gone was the friendliness of the earlier generations. Soft foam exteriors and insane smiles had given way to clinically functional plastic and metal. Mor had the standard bug-eye camera on one side of its forehead and smaller double-windowed lidar emitter and receiver on the other, enabling it to ascertain distances much more accurately than through binocular vision. It had a set of legs for getting up and down stairs, but could also deploy wheels to cover greater distances more efficiently. Many of the newer androids used their wheels most of the time, gliding around in a way which Hammell found unsettling.

  For all the robot’s innate creepiness, the man looked even more disturbing. Completely hairless with melted, raw, pink skin, his entire body dripped with a protective gel which had soaked through his hospital gown, leaving thick, bloody droplets on the table and floor. Hammell couldn't help but think he looked like a hairless cat - a Sphynx breed, his implant informed him - that someone had fattened up and slathered in KY Jelly, for whatever reason.

  Hammell felt for the guy. He’d only been out of surgery an hour, but he was already being grilled by a thing which totally lacked empathy or compassion. Mor made no distinction between criminal and victim. Information was its only goal. The only positive was that Arthur wasn’t aware he was being mistreated. There had been no sign yet that any trace of intelligence remained behind his red, glassy eyes.

  The shiny black robot asked its question again: “Who attacked you?”

  Again, Arthur responded with vacant staring and drool.

  Interviewing androids typically asked few questions, but they were dogged. Mor could patiently wait for hours or even days without ever changing its tone of voice or needing to move. Food and water would be supplied to the interviewee via a shutter in the door, which was designed in such a way that the tray would appear automatically. The interviewee wouldn’t even see the hand of the deliverer - they were cut off, isolated, not allowed to so much as sense the presence of another human being. A sleeping shelf and toilet could be extended out of the wall, but the android would not leave its chair until it had what it wanted. It would stare as a person attempted to sleep, even as they went to the bathroom. It was all designed to put people on edge - and it usually worked.

  Not in this case though. Arthur Beecroft had lost too m
uch. His memory chips, his black box, even his implant, all gone. His brain was now frantically trying to rewire around the enormous gaps; it didn’t leave much room for consciousness. He probably didn’t even know what day it was, or what year. He might not even know what a year was. Whoever Arthur Beecroft had been this morning was gone. This flaccid, bleeding, zombie-like creature was all that was left. Maybe in time he could learn to become someone else and live in society again, but more likely he would die in a gutter. These aren’t the kind of thoughts to stave off the blues.

  The android asked its question again and Hammell began to suspect that it was keeping to a set time interval. His implant checked back and confirmed it: Four minutes and eleven seconds. That was the length of time Mor had determined was the optimum to elicit a response from this particular person, using some kind of magic formula beyond Hammell’s comprehension. Not magic enough for it to actually work though. When he found he was counting down in the back of his mind to the next question, Hammell decided he’d had enough. His hand darted out to the microphone button. “Ask him something else,” he said, his message audible only to the android. “Anything else.”

  “If you would like to ask a specific question, please state it,” came Mor’s reply over the speakers.

  “Fine,” Hammell said. “Ask him… Ask him why he goes to the Reserves at night.”

  The android complied and the slick, ruined face moved a fraction. Hammell sat up. Is that a reaction? He couldn’t be sure. The man’s face was a mask - a melted mask. He stared hard into Arthur’s rheumy eyes through the blackwall. The sensors were indicating something - increased heart rate, pupils dilated, maybe even a nervous twitch. His skin pores hadn’t opened, but that could easily be because of the acid, or the jelly. Does he understand more than he’s letting on? Is he choosing not to answer? Hammell wondered how those burned out eyes could possibly be functioning. The doctors said they were though - at least partially. They should have been covered while they healed, but no matter how many times the nurses had tried to explain that to Arthur, he’d kept tearing off the patches. They could have sedated him, but his coefficient wouldn’t cover medical care beyond the global minimum, so instead he was bandaged up, covered in anti-infection gel and kicked out of hospital. Worse than that, he was sent here.