It’s so bad, I consider telling Galvan to let the pilot drive, but at least this way I can grab the wheel if I need to. Instead, I sit on my hands and opt for distracting small talk.
“The Inspector said you came from Cyber?” I ask.
“That’s right,” Galvan answers, not taking his eyes from the road. “I was there six years, straight from the academy.”
“And this is your first field placement?”
“A week now. But the Inspector had me on desk duty until this morning.”
I swallow a joob chirp. No point being an asshole.
“Here’s to your first day on the street,” I say. “We’ll have to get a drink after shift.”
“I don’t drink,” he says. Which is fine with me, saves me from having to pretend I still enjoy beer.
“Why'd you transfer out of Cyber? Seems like a perfect match.”
“Inspector Chaddah recruited me. I'm well-known in the Personality Rights circles—I was the youngest volunteer during the COPA drive, did you know that? No, of course you wouldn’t, you just said. Dumb—”
“Relax Galvan.”
“Relax, right.” He takes a breath and continues, “Anyway, I did well on the Service Cyber advancement exams, know my way around a Cortex. The Inspector came to me, said she was building the Psychorithm Crime Squad and wanted me as an investigator.”
“How could you say no?”
We stop at a red light. An adbot emblazoned with a local brewery’s logo is offering samples while pedestrians cross the street. Galvan shifts in his seat and grins at me.
“Exactly. It's the perfect job. And now I get to learn from an officer of your calibre. I can't imagine it getting better.”
“In my experience,” I say, “when you can't imagine things getting any better, you should start imagining how they can get worse.”
He gives me a funny look but the light turns and he fixes his eyes forward and crawls through the intersection, swivelling his head back and forth as he does, as though vigorously disagreeing with the opposing traffic. Passing cyclists give us looks over their shoulders.
“You’ve had quite a bit of that,” he says a moment later. “Experience, I mean. Exemplary service in Africa with a Medal of Valour and other NAU Forces commendations. Private Security Contractor. Head of Security for SinoPharm. Fast-tracked to Detective Constable with stints in Major Crime and Homicide. You even have an excellent rep score—89th percentile. It's all very impressive. I can see why the Inspector requested you.”
“She requested me?”
“Initiated the transfer request herself.”
“When'd you find time to read all this?”
“During the run-down, after the Inspector introduced you.”
“You don't waste time, do you?”
“Informational asymmetry is often the key to success in any conflict—or anywhere in life, really, which—that is to say—” He bounces his eyes off me and back to the bumper of the car ahead, takes a breath. “I was rude, earlier. Please accept my condolences on the passing of your wife. I didn't consider at the time that you'd be fresh to the flesh, the recovery date in your file is six months old, and I assumed you'd spend time in the Hereafter while your skyn was being prepared—most people seem to want to get right back to their lives however they can—” He swallows. “I should have said that before I asked you about your Cortex, back at the station.”
“It's nothing,” I tell him. “No harm done.”
“Even still, I—”
“It’s not a problem,” I say, slowly. This conversation needs to end. I'm tired of having it. Why do people think their condolences do anything but tear at an exposed wound?
“Tell me something,” I say as we swing north, the glittering expanse of Reszlieville fast approaching ahead of us. “With all this rithm crime going on all around us, why does the Inspector have Daar and Brewer focused on one guy? What’s so special about Xiao?”
“Xiao,” Galvan says, nearly sighing the name. “Orders came from Division Command. Direct from the Chief.”
Interesting. The Chief usually sticks to politics. If he’s made Xiao a priority, it’s likely someone’s pressuring him into it. The question is who?
“Why does the Chief care?”
“I don’t know for certain, rumour has it Mayor Anders was involved. Xiao has become something of a celebrity, especially now he’s become the biggest scafe and shyft supplier this side of Second Skyn. Arresting Xiao would make a potent statement about the Mayor’s leadership, what with the election around the corner and anti-Reszo sentiment a political win.”
“I’d be surprised if we checked into the Mayor’s campaign contributors and didn’t see Second Skyn somewhere near the top of the list,” I say.
“Neither is mutually exclusive.” Galvan risks a quizzical glance at me but doesn’t take his eyes off the road for long. “Whatever the official basis, the fact remains that Xiao is a dangerous man.”
“Sure, but what makes him more dangerous than anyone else?”
Galvan answers immediately. “Up until recently, five major criminal organizations—the Five Marks—controlled the shyft and scafe market. But Xiao came in out of nowhere and carved away a huge portion for himself in a very short time.”
“How’s a start-up compete with the big guys?”
“Even criminals need a stable market. The Marks were inter-competing but slow-to-anger. They used to keep a balance, ingested talented fledgling Rithmists and eliminated those who brought too much attention. It’s illegal, sure, and violent, but orderly.
“With illicit shyfts and scafes, quality is everything. Xiao appeared with product no one had ever seen before, with shyfts generations away from anything the other Marks were capable of, and broke up their cozy monopoly.”
“So the cartels are angry.”
“They’re furious. Xiao refuses to be ingested. He fights off counter offers. Plus, his presence has destabilized the unspoken treaty between the Five. They're starting to snipe at each other. And at this level, human life is a renewable resource. Violence escalates quickly. It’s spreading, and people are getting caught in the cross-fire.”
“No wonder Xiao’s a priority.”
“Yes, but that’s not the real reason he’s so dangerous.”
“Sound like reason enough.”
“It is—but he’s more dangerous still.”
“Why?”
Galvan sets his jaw. “Because of what he represents.”
“Which is?”
Galvan doesn’t answer for a moment. A squad of drones has swooped past and caught his attention. I wonder if he's ever been out from behind a screen.
A half block later, he utters a single word. “Temptation.”
He’s quiet for another moment then sits himself higher in his seat and resumes speaking in a strong voice that doesn’t once stumble. “The Continuance of Personality Act and the Human Standards laws were revolutionary in their import—they expanded the definition of what it means to be human.
“But they exist for a reason. They keep us grounded. I fear humanity is racing toward a precipice, with Xiao pushing at our backs. If we’re not careful, he’ll have us reach the edge long before we’ve learned to fly.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
His jaw tightens and his voice deepens another octave. He’s morphed from the nervous kid on the first day of school to a seasoned politician on the stump. “Xiao has made it possible to see and do and be what we’ve up until now only mythologized. The shyfts he creates, the skyns he develops—we’re evolving too fast. We’re not ready for what they’ll do to us.”
He can see I’m not following. “Take his Revv shyft for instance. Until Xiao came along, the most advanced shyft the other Marks offered could merely nudge the capabilities of the Psychorithm. They elevated confidence or enhanced reflexes or made a simulated cocaine high last longer. But Revv goes far beyond that. It dis-inhibits the Cortex governors, lets the user crank their n
euroHertz way past Human Standard. Lets them think to the limits of their hardware.”
“People take lots of drugs to be smarter,” I counter. “The Union Forces has one that’s unofficially mandatory.”
“I’m not talking about a slight increase in attention or memory. Drugs only affect the signalling and cellular response of your brain, they don’t change its underlying function. No, these shyfts are different. Cortexes are different. They’re plastic, infinitely malleable. No one’s been able to develop a shyft to massively increase intelligence that doesn’t result in detrimental side effects—severe social detachment, paranoia, psychosis. And there isn’t a mad scramble to enhance moral intelligence or social intelligence. It’s all about being smarter. As if adding two plus two is the only worthwhile trait of human existence. We already have computers why do we need—,” he cuts himself off, sucks in a breath, and returns to his fidgety self. “Sorry, I tend to get a bit ranty about this. Anyway, Revv keeps you as smart as you already are, just much, much faster at it. There’s no drug in the world that’ll let a human brain slow down the subjective passage of time to experience hours in the space of a few minutes.”
I try to imagine what it would be like to have my thoughts racing even faster through my brain, but can’t wrap my head around it. They move fast enough as it is.
“And that was just the beginning,” he continues. “It seems like each week sees some new shyft or enhanced skyn that pushes us even further away from what we are.”
He eases his eyes from the road and says, “If Xiao and people like him continue accelerating our development we are doomed as a species. We’ll tear ourselves to bits.”
Maybe there’s more to all this than enforcing copyright after all.
“So why not arrest him and shut his shit down?”
“No one knows where he is. Or who he is. Or what he looks like. We’ve got no record of his birth or emigration. No bio/kin. No linktivity until about five months or ago when his first thoughtmods appeared. We don’t even know if Xiao’s his real name.”
“No one knows what he looks like? How’s that possible? How do you know he’s even a real person?”
“We don’t, but I’m hooked into the Undernet chatter and, from what I’ve been able to tell, the link believes he exists.”
“And no one’s ever wrong on the link,” I deadpan.
“The shyfts are coming from somewhere. Shyfts that are orders of magnitude more advanced than his competitors. Someone’s behind them. I believe that someone is Xiao, and I believe he’s in this city.”
“Based on?”
“Patterns. His shyfts originate here and disperse around the world. Linktivity chatter. I’m ninety, ninety-two percent sure he’s here.”
“Have you told Daar and Brewer?”
“I tried,” he says, a hint of anger in his voice. “I sent them a report, summarized and catalogued. But they—dismissed me. Said they’d turn on the lights and clear away the shit when they wanted to hear a desk fungi’s opinion.”
“And Chaddah?”
“I—I didn’t want to go over their heads.”
Good instinct. If he's having problems with them, running to the teacher would only make things worse.
“So what’d Daar and Brewer do that was so bad they ended up in Reszo Squad?”
He shrugs. “There was nothing in their files.”
They must have messed-up something fierce. Or pissed someone off. Good cops don’t get sent to Reszo Squad. Just the bit-heads and the screw-ups and the people no one else wants.
“Hang in there,” I say. It’s a platitude but I have nothing else to offer. “They’ll come around.”
“That remains to be seen,” he says, tightens his grip on the sticks, locks his eyes on the street ahead and eases us into the otherworldly architecture of Reszlieville.
StatUS-ID
[fdaa:9afe:17e6:a2ef::Gage/-//GIBSON]
SysDate
[06:01:23. Thursday, January 16, 2059]
After Special Agent Wiser and Officer Yellowbird leave, I need some time to calm down, so I try to turn off my brain by cleaning. It takes nearly two hours to straighten the tiny apartment, and in the whole time, I find only one familiar thing—the snake plant Mom had bought before I shipped off to boot camp. It lasted longer than I did.
Everything else is straight out of a stranger’s life. Not that the stranger had much of one. The few clothes I found are too small and the only food is a year’s supply of tomato soup in single-serving cans.
The tomato soup I can see, up to a point. It was a comfort during those long months of deployment, but how did I turn into someone who eats the same food for every meal? And why didn’t I bring anything from Connie’s and my life together? No mementos. Not my medal. Not a single picture. Even Grandpa’s Triumph is gone. What had I been thinking?
With the apartment back in order, the housebot dusting and my head a little clearer, I sit down in front of the wallscreen to find out exactly what I’d done to my life the last time around.
It doesn’t take long to find out that Wiser wasn’t exaggerating. I made a mess of it. Fucked it up hard enough Mayor Anders’s using me as a talking point for her tough-on-Reszo re-election campaign. Good cop turns shyft addict.
If that’s true, how much of the rest of it is too?
There are two major bursts of linktivity around my name—one about Wiser and I busting something called the arKade, a underground Reszo expo that tortured the idea of Human Standards, and the other revolving around the circumstances of my death, blown to bits when the top three floors of an apartment building exploded in what was reported as a Mark turf war.
I start at the beginning, wade into my previous life—the one I didn’t live through but still have to suffer the consequences of. It feels schizophrenic, examining the events of my life as though they happened to someone else, which they did, except the someone else they happened to was a me I never became. Even parsing the grammar hurts my head.
It starts out innocuously enough: restoration, Service re-cert, posted to Fifty-Seven Division. Reszo Squad.
Com logs are slight, mostly contact with the then-Detective Wiser. The IMP finds a picture of him from less than a year ago and he’s like a different person. Baby-faced. Brush cut hair and big eyes avoiding the camera behind thick-rimmed spekz. Not the posturing hardass that pummelled a hole in my kitchen counter.
All other on-duty activity is hidden behind Service firewalls. Nothing else to tell me how I managed to screw my life up so profoundly.
In all that time the only other person I had any significant communication with was someone named Doralai Wii, who I figure I must have met during my Service-mandated Restoration Counselling. A quick rep check shows no trace of her since just after I hardlocked. Either she’s been hiding this whole time, or tied her rep to another set of bio/kin, or died. And I can’t find a record of her death.
The worst part is, my rep’s plummeted to a point four-three. An entire lifetime of trust blown. Even if I clear my name it’ll take years and a small fortune to earn it back to a respectable level. No wonder I abandoned it in favour of Gibson’s.
I sign out of the Finsbury Deacon Gage link account and relog with the Gage Gibson credentials. I’d best get used to them.
Gibson’s rep’s a point seven-seven—high as a well-regarded middle-school science teacher—which is higher than I’ve ever had it when I was using it to troll porn.
Wiser was right about this too: Gibson’s rep’s been manipulated, that much is obvious. Paid entry to hi-rep communities. False transactions and upvotes. The odd thing is it all happened while I was awaiting my second restoration. Someone was grooming the account. Getting it ready for me to inhabit.
The question is who? Whoever kited my rep must also have arranged for my restoration and picked this absurd skyn, and since I was waiting in storage I know it wasn’t me. Besides, I’d never have chosen the meathead chic look, all good-looking and chiselled, like I just ste
pped out of a comic book.
At least there’s money attached to the account. Not much, but enough to keep me in soup for a little while. Until I can figure out what’s going on, maybe even get my job back.
There’s only one contact on the account: xYvYx, the Darien Cole Agent Wiser accused me of murdering. I find logs for both voice and text. The voice conversations show only as time and date stamps, but the text chats were saved in the archive. Encrypted, luckily. The Service won’t know what the conversations were about, which I quickly discover is a good thing because I had a hell of a motive to kill him.
He was my shyft dealer. And he was blackmailing me.
The last me.
It’s infuriating, knowing I’d done all these things, but not being able to remember any of them. Facing the consequences of choices I never made.
How did he deal with Connie’s death? I can feel the grief, it’s huge, but distant, sub-dermal, with everything that’s happened and everything I’ve learned in the past day layered over like a scab. But if I close my eyes, the pain comes flooding back. I’m there in the car with her, reliving it all over again. There’s also the glimpse of the man who was driving. The man who killed her.
Digging deeper into the Gibson dox, I see I’d flown to the Lake Quannapowitt Hopper Station outside of Boston under his account and Rohk’d to an address I don’t recognize. Why would I have hidden my actions under Gibson’s name? Was I hunting for the man who killed us, or working for Xiao like Agent Wiser accused? And why not do it as Finsbury Gage?
A StatUS check on the address shows a single mother of two, so probably not the driver’s house. But if I was on the hunt, I probably wouldn’t have rolled up to his front door anyway, so who knows where I was headed. Dead end.
I get the IMP to dox Doralai Wii and Ari Dubecki, my two concrete leads, and find anyone else we had in common. I carve off a hefty portion of my remaining cash to StatUs for the highest detail reports, hoping I can find some correlation that’ll give me hint as to what’s going on.
Lost Time: Part 1 [Second Skyn] Page 11
