Headspace

by Damien Boyes

  I lean in to him, get conspiratorial. “You’re lucky it wasn’t a real person,” I say. “I used to be in Homicide. Sometimes we’d take primary respondents down to the station for a thorough interview, really go over their story, check into their background. You’d be surprised how often the person who calls in a crime had something to do with it.” I nudge closer. “Have you ever spent a morning drinking Service coffee while every private thing you’ve ever said or done is exhumed and passed around the office?”

  He kneads his upper lip and shakes his head.

  A little closer. “We find everything.”

  “I didn’t see anything, sir,” Morris says quickly. “I swear I just found the body and called it in.”

  “The body?” I ask, tightening my voice, slipping from congenial to questioning.

  Morris’ face scrunches up, confused. He looks over at the victim, back to me. “Yes, Detective. The body. The Reszo.”

  “The Reszo,” I clarify. “You mean the person over there? The person who just died.”

  “That’s correct, sir,” he says.

  “Good enough then,” I say, straighten up, and keep going like that didn’t just happen. “We’re going to ask a couple questions and let you be on your way.” I shoot Galvan a half-smile

  “Sure, sure,” Morris says. “Whatever you need, Detective.”

  “Do you get a lot of break-ins here?” I ask.

  “Not really. Kids sometimes looking for someplace different to blaze. Those urban explorer wackos who try to climb to the top of the smokestacks. Nothing serious. Nothing like this, anyway.”

  “Are there any breaks in the fencing where someone could get in and out?”

  “Sure, all over the place,” he says, and points in about five directions, one after the other. “But this isn’t exactly a maximum security facility. In six months, it’ll all be rubble anyway.”

  “The new lakeside Reszo community,” Galvan says.

  “Yeah, then I’ll be back in the rotation,” Morris says with a sigh. “Probably stuck behind some desk. At least here I get outside.”

  I nod. He isn’t going to be any help. “Detective Wiser will finish taking your statement. Can we contact you if we have any more questions?”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Morris answers.

  “Thanks for your help,” I say, shake his hand and leave him to Galvan.

  I walk over to the tech, nudge him in the ribs with the pointed toe of my shoe. Probably harder than necessary.

  Maybe Morris’ crack did piss me off.

  Omondi snaps awake, confused and groaning. His smouldering cigarette drops to his lap and a second later he jumps up, swiping at the crotch of his white cleansuit.

  “Rise and shine, soldier,” I bark.

  “What the shit was that?” he says, long fingers probing his side. Back in NorAm, falling asleep on duty would have got you an invitation to a blanket party. He’s lucky all he got was a boot to the ribs.

  “Your cigarette could contaminate the scene,” I answer. “So could your snoring.”

  He drops his hands and squares off, rising to his full height and looking down his wide, blunt nose at me. “The Homicide dicks already trampled all over the place, messed with the body. One of ‘em left his coffee cup resting on the vic’s chest. Besides, it’s hardly a crime scene, just another crispy bit-head.”

  I squeeze my jaw until my teeth hurt, tilt my head up to meet his grey eyes, stare him down. Morris questioning my humanity was one thing, this guy should know better. But I can’t make it about me being a Reszo. “Regardless of your opinion of the victim, Officer, or this dog-call you’ve been assigned, a crime has been committed and it’s our job to do everything humanly possible to determine who is responsible.” I take a step forward. There’s only centimetres between us. His breath reeks of the cigarette. “You have a job. You get lazy, you get sloppy. You get sloppy, you get me killed.”

  He drops his knobbly shoulders, takes a half step back. The fight’s left him but he isn’t ready to show it yet. Probably wasn’t much there to start with.

  “Chill, this isn’t a war zone,” he says, his face pulled nearly to a pout. “Besides, I’ll bet this guy’s back in a new skyn already, cuddled up to some rent-a-bimbo, while I’m out here in the middle of the effing night on my day off cleaning up the mess he left behind. And to top it all off, now I’m taking shit from, who the hell are you anyway—” and then I see him clue in and realize who I am, realize what he said. His face falls.

  At least he feels bad about it. I ease off too. “No, this isn’t a war zone. And this call may even not be that important, but it’s your job.”

  “Yessir,” he says, his tone conciliatory. “And sorry about that bit-head crack.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I didn’t put my best foot forward either,” I smile and extend my hand. “Let’s start over. I’m Finsbury Gage, your new bit-head Detective.”

  “Sam Omondi,” he says, shaking my hand.

  “Good enough. So what do we know? Do you have an ID?”

  He turns to the lab behind him, swipes through a few screens of data. “All I know at this point is the vic was restored, male, probably hardlocked due to critical Cortex damage, then doused with a methanol accelerant and left to burn. Fire was too intense for a definitive g-scan. Cortex is fused, won’t even return a basic ping. I’ll have to get it back to the bench, dig out the serial and get Second Skyn to relay me a StatUS-ID.”

  “So the assault happened here?”

  “It happened all over the damn place,” he says, glancing around, “but it ended here. The bot went down out there with an EMP burst first, then, after factoring out Homicide’s size twelves, we got three distinct sets of footprints coming in. Looks like they were running, two unacs and the victim. Vic trapped himself here at a dead end. Only two sets of footprints leaving, and it doesn’t look like they were in a hurry. They caved the vic’s head in—you’re looking for something cylindrical, maybe a bat or length of pipe. The fire’s screwed with the sniffer. I’ll have to examine the skyn myself at the lab to tell you anymore.”

  I cock my head back at the constable. “What’s her name?”

  “Gonzales…” he squinches one eye, “Lucinda.”

  “Constable Gonzales,” I call out. She jerks her head up from whatever’s on her tab and comes over.

  “Detective?” she asks.

  “I need you to walk the perimeter, look for entry points, breaks in the fence. See if you can find any traces of someone coming or going. And keep an eye out for the murder weapon, we’re looking for something cylindrical, about ten centimetres in diameter.”

  “But it’s still dark, sir.”

  “Your tab don’t shine?”

  She sighs a ’yes sir’, focuses her tab down to a point, pulls her hat down and tromps off.

  I turn back to Omondi, gesture at the body. “Can I take a look?”

  “Be my guest. Sniffer isn’t going to find anything else anyway. Hydrocarbons are messing with the readings.” He pokes at the lab screen and the sniffer packs up and ambles over to its base.

  I duck under the tape and carefully pick my way over to the body. It smells like the day after chemical fire at a slaughterhouse.

  A partially scorched can of campfire fluid lies nearby. A shoe sits empty a short distance from the body, the other one is melted to the victim’s foot. The dirt all around the scene is churned up. There was definitely a struggle. A brief one though, probably shoved the vic back and forth a few times then finished him off. Maybe a mugging gone bad.

  I walk around to the vic’s head, crouch for a better look. The skyn’s facedown, arms at his sides. Didn’t even put his hands out to catch his fall. Could have been unconscious before he hit the ground. The back of his head is concave, the scalp split. Melted plastic has seeped from around the blackened edges of skull. The clothes are nearly gone, burned away or fused to the body, what’s left looks like designer quality though. Strands of metal fila
ment run through his scorched trousers.

  I check along each side of the body, using the pointed end of my tab to gently lift what little clothing remains. No sign of a tab or device of any kind. Near the skyn’s waist, under a patch of fabric that was likely part of the vic’s jacket, I notice a bunch of distorted cylinders partially buried in the dirt, each about three centimetres long.

  “Galvan,” I call. He dismisses Morris and trots over, slows down once he’s on this side of the tape so as to disturb as little as possible.

  “What would you say these are?” I ask, pointing to the cylindrical lumps.

  He lowers to his haunches to get a closer look.

  “Shyfts,” he says.

  “Think it’s a coincidence?”

  “Could be, could be,” he swivels on the balls of his feet, waves Omondi over. “Bring an evidence bag.”

  I stand and get out of Omondi’s way, let him gather up the cylinders.

  “There are shyfts here,” I say, “but I don’t see a cuff. Could it have melted?”

  “I didn’t find one,” Omondi answers. “Or even the remains of one.”

  “Did you see his shoes?” Galvan asks.

  “Yeah,” I answer, watching as Omondi has the sniffer approach and gently lift the body. “What about them?”

  “They’re Massarroti’s. Custom siverseal. They run thirty, thirty-five thousand dollars a pair.”

  “Thirty-five grand for a pair of shoes?”

  “They have to grow the silverseal to match the owner’s DNA.”

  “Yeah, but thirty-five grand?”

  “They’re nearly indestructible. They adapt to the shape of your foot and provide custom support. They maintain an ideal humidity, they prevent fungal infections. You could live in a swamp for a month, never change them once, take them off and your feet would be shower fresh.”

  “For thirty-five grand I can take a shower,” I say. “How do you know so much about shoes, anyway?”

  “How do you not?” he responds. I can’t tell if he’s joking.

  I’m about to ask him if he keeps his testicles in a silverseal purse when he’s not using them, but a glimmer of red in the shadow under the victim catches my attention before I can exert my inner twelve year-old.

  The sniffer has the body on its side, and Omondi is reaching under to retrieve a shyft that looks to have escaped the heat.

  “Blammo,” Omondi says and holds the cylinder up. Xiao’s mark flickers on the cap.

  “Package that up for me separately,” Galvan says to Omondi, and as he steps over to examine the shyft more closely my tab buzzes.

  I answer and the Service AMP relays a message. It’s another lost time complaint, name of Rene DeBlanc. Likely our victim. Woke in Second Skyn from a rithm sync the day before and is reporting the loss of twenty hours. He’s already called three times, demanding someone come take his statement.

  I tap Galvan on the shoulder, hand him my tab. He scans it and gives it back to me.

  “I think we’re done here anyway,” he says. “Shall we go interview Mr. DeBlanc?”

  “After you,” I say, and lift the tape for him.

  Before he leaves, he says to Omondi, “Sam, make sure you examine those caps ASAP. Detective Gage and I are going to call on our victim and I want to check them out as soon as I get back.”

  “I knew it,” Omondi calls back. “Reskynned already. I got a hundred bucks at ten-to-one I’m right about the rent-a-bimbo, and just to make it sporting, that she’s a blonde.”

  “You’re on,” I say, sliding under the tape. “Galvan?”

  “No way,” Galvan says. “I only take bets I know I’ll win.”

  StatUS-ID

  [fdaa:9afe:17e6:a2ef::Gage/-//GIBSON]

  SysDate

  [23:56:15. Thursday, January 16, 2059]

  The IMP gives me an address for Shelt’s club. It’s on the ragged fringes of Reszlieville, somewhere between what used to be Leslieville and the Upper Beach, and I tell the waiting Sküte. We leave the cordoned-off park, heading toward the shimmering nova on the horizon.

  Dora keeps her face turned away from me, hood up.

  “You knew Dub,” I say to the back of her head. “Why would he kill himself?”

  “He wouldn’t,” she says to the window.

  “Then why would he try to force a shyft into my head?”

  “He wouldn’t do that either.”

  “Evidence to the contrary—”

  She whirls at me, her eyes livid, but when she speaks, her voice is controlled. “He was kind. He’d never hurt anyone.”

  “He tore people’s limbs off as a hobby. Violence like that changes people.”

  Dora sighs, slumps on the bench, chin against her chest. “I’m telling you, Fin, that wasn’t him. Elder, Tala, Miranda and now Dub. Someone’s doing this to us. Getting inside our heads and making people do things. I’m going to be next, I just know it.”

  “But why? To what end?”

  “I wish I knew,” she says, her voice quiet.

  “It has to be related to the counselling. Did someone say something, let something slip they shouldn’t have?”

  Dora shrugs. “If they did, I couldn’t tell you what.”

  “What about Elder?” With everyone else dead or stocked, he’s the only remaining member from counselling unaccounted for.

  “He vanished, like I said. Just after you hardlocked. Probably saw what was coming and ran away like we should.”

  “How long after did he disappear?”

  “A few days. Two, maybe three.”

  “That’s a hell of a coincidence.”

  She shrugs again. “That detective came around, asking questions about you. Elder was gone the next day.”

  “That doesn’t seem strange to you?”

  “Yes,” she says, frustrated. “It seems strange. It seems strange that Tala would kill twelve people. It seems strange that Miranda would murder her husband.” Her tone is rising. “It seems strange that Dub would step in front of a train. It seems strange that I’m trapped in this body—” she cuts herself off, maybe startled by the volume of her own voice, and when she resumes it’s barely above a whisper. “It all seems strange.”

  “What about Shelt?” I ask, keeping my tone as gentle as possible. “Have you talked to him recently?”

  She shakes her head. “He locked himself up in that club of his a few months ago and hasn’t come out since. Won’t come out for anyone.”

  “He’s scared too?”

  “I’m not imagining this.”

  “We’ll see what he thinks when we see him.”

  “Did he contact you?”

  “No, that’s why we’re going to him.”

  “Why even bother? He isn’t going to see us.”

  “If he’s scared, there must be a reason. I want to know what it is.”

  Dora turns to me, grabs my leg and I flash instantly back to the accident, to Connie’s hand on my thigh. It’s all I can do to keep from yanking away from her.

  “Let’s just run,” she says, a chill in her voice. “I have a little money. We can go to the Republic or find a warm island somewhere. I don’t care where we go as long as we’re together. We could be happy…” she trails off when she sees I’m not buying it.

  “If you know me like you say you do, you know I can’t walk away from this. But you should go. Get yourself safe.”

  “I do know you,” she says, and whether it’s her fear talking or her feelings for me, her voice is strengthened by conviction. “I’m not going anywhere without you.”

  ***

  SysDate

  [00:17:23. Friday, January 17, 2059]

  For a place he called In The Flesh, Shelt sure made it hard to find. We cut up from the lake and into a neighbourhood that had been East Indian for nearly seventy years, even managed to remain that way through the Bot Crash, but like everything else was unable to withstand Reszlieville’s encroaching juggernaut of development. Gentrification coming at the spee
d of light.

  Entire blocks are boarded up or in mid-demolition. A forest of cranes and structural printers decorate the skyline. Bots working on sites all around us, building through the night.

  The sidewalks are empty. It’s too late and too cold and too desolate for anyone to be out walking. At one time, the curb lanes would’ve been crowded with idling cabs, drivers running in for a take-out container of tandoori and rice, but not anymore. This is a place in-between. Like a soul in the afterlife, dormant as it waits to be reborn as someone new.

  The Sküte drops us next to a dark stretch of three-story, squared-off brick buildings on Gerrard St. There are seven storefronts on the block and, of those, only three are occupied. The Walk-In Anglican Church and e-Cycler Depot are both closed for the evening. Only the sketched-in Halal restaurant is lit.

  We walk up and down the street for ten minutes, watching our position change on the tab, but still don’t find an entrance to the club. We even check the alley running around back, but it’s only a line of metal security doors and garbage bins. The cold has penetrated through my layers of clothing. I can’t stay out here much longer.

  “Where is this place?” I mutter.

  “You’re meant to cast in, not walk in,” Dora answers as if I should have already known that. “Shelt doesn’t actually expect anyone to show up.”

  It’s called In the Flesh, how was I supposed to know the only way in was through my head?

  “You couldn’t have said that ten minutes ago?” I say.

  She shrugs. “I thought you had this handled.”

  “If you have any advice—”

  “Apart from getting the hell out of this city?”

  “Apart from that, yes.”

  She makes a noise in her throat, a frustrated exhalation. Reminds me of something I’d do when Connie and I used to argue. I wonder if she picked it up from me?

  “More and more people are opting to live as rithms,” she says, “and living a purely digital life in a virtual world is fine, but there’s a…lack. People crave the flesh. Skyns aren’t cheap and money is hard to come by when you’re digital, so Shelt and Dub went in on a rent-a-skyn business. Brief encounters in the physic—anonymous sex, mostly, but also eating. Or just sitting and breathing.”