by Jolie Mason
Controversial... Blah, blah, blah. Dangerous technology. Blah, Blah, Blah. Everyone knew the purpose for the takeover. It wasn't hard to guess that the government wanted to control it.
The Trust had wanted the cloning tech under wraps. That much was true, but, as far as Thursday could tell, the door had already been opened. She never understood how they believed they would ever shut it again. She'd always thought they were doing no better than delaying the inevitable by pulling the curtain over it.
As she rode home in her transport, she hoped her connection would turn into a motive or, ideally, a suspect by tomorrow. However, when was she ever that lucky?
Hayden let the car roll to a gliding stop, then climbed out and took the well lit walk to her apartment building. Her small walk up faced the park, and it was furnished in a very modern, stoic style.
There was absolutely no remarkable feature about the place, all swathed in black and white, until you stepped into the foyer and saw the aquarium. Self-maintaining thanks to bot tech, it stretched from wall to wall, and contained two of the ugliest fish in the history of fish-kind. She called them Paisley and Delilah with a distinct sense of irony given their gray, dull appearance. They'd come with the sublet before she'd gotten the lease entirely on her own.
She pushed her shoes off her feet by the fish tank.
Hayden loved her apartment, but she hated the silence. It made her feel so conflicted about coming home at night.
"Hey, girls," she said to the fish. The lights came on as she entered each room and turned off behind her as she left. She went to her desk drawer and put the stunner inside carefully, then turned the lock to put it away until she needed her weapon.
After showering and dressing for bed, she poured herself a stiff drink and logged into her work account. She'd never sleep soundly, so she might as well get familiar with the autopsy reports and Kinder Tech, since that was her first solid lead in a week.
She also had testimony to give on a domestic turned murder in a few days, assuming the lawyers didn't delay it... again. It wasn't as if Hayden had nothing to fill her life. Her work took up every available space.
Giving a contented sigh, she curled up to read about a horrific murder and get a lesson in why marriage never ended well.
*
Central Archives was the repository of all records, government data, regulatory filings and business transactions. In fact, the sandstone building in front of her had survived just about anything you could think of, and still stood proudly in the bleary winter sun.
Thursday had told Ace to meet her here. He arrived on time with coffee in hand, and his usual grumpy expression plastered on his face.
"Dannen in dispatch says all was quiet last night. Britannia Borough had a triple homicide. That’s it."
"That's about usual for the BB," Hayden said, blowing into her coffee. "At least, he hasn't struck again overnight. You can feel the clock ticking on this one, can't you?"
"Loud as a drum," he answered.
They walked together through the big, glass doors to the reception area where an antiquated bot whirred over the library tile with a sweeper.
The bot behind the desk was almost as old. He was what the general public called a tinny. He stood slim and streamlined, completely metal, though humanoid in shape, and only a smooth featureless face with shining white, lenses for eyes.
Tinnies were totally uncontroversial in today's climate of wanting to slow tech down. They did only what they were told and no more.
"Detectives Thursday and Ace from homicide. We have a court order for the archive director."
The tinny moved stiffly, scanned the badge Thursday had just presented and said, "Detectives, a supervisor will be with you shortly to show you to your station."
"Thank you," Thursday answered, but the bot had already continued with the business of tidying up the front reception area. She watched it dust until a large woman with dark skin and curly hair on the extreme side of curly marched brusquely through the corridor toward reception.
"Detectives, where can I direct you?"
Thursday presented her the tran file for all records to do with Kinder Tech industries right up to their being swallowed by National. The woman smiled benignly down at the file, reading it thoroughly.
"Oh my dear, you do like heavy reading, don't you? That's a lot of files."
Thursday almost groaned. There went her weekend plans to drink to oblivion and wake up hating herself. She always swore she'd do it, and yet somehow she never did. She'd end up working instead. Hayden couldn't even be the stereotypically dysfunctional, workaholic homicide detective without her job getting in the way. No wonder she had no social life.
"Well, we can narrow it down some, I suppose. We definitely need a customer list and an employee list. I'd like the basic research and business history of Kinder. Ace, any thoughts?"
"Sure, transaction and maintenance service history for the month of...," he looked down at his notes. "2070, March."
"Our vics shared birth months, didn't they? You are very much the brains of this operation, Ace."
Her partner grinned behind his trimmed and graying mustache. "Why, yes, I am."
The archivist smiled professionally at their banter and still managed to let off an air of mild disapproval, She led them through the long corridor and to a lift. "Your archive is on the next floor."
Hayden and Ace exchanged a look of blank dread as he asked her, "How are your lifts? They work pretty well?"
The woman gave them a strange look over her shoulder, stepped into the lift and, clearly, expected them to have no qualms about stepping into a box of death.
Suitably shamed, they both stepped on, but neither was comfortable until the lift slid into place and let them out, surrounded by book shelving, console stations arranged concentrically, and several bots whirred around performing all kinds of mysterious clerical tasks about which the detectives could only wonder.
"This is the Corporate Archive. Everything you want will be here," their archivist said.
Thursday turned to look at the woman, and said,"How rude I am? I just realized we never got your name."
The woman gave her that strange look again, and in complete surprise answered, "I just assumed... I have no name, Detectives. I am ARC3089, a clerical droid model. We are all automated here."
She smiled again, "Well, except for Dave and Terry. Use any of the consoles to have the information you want copied and delivered to you electronically. It would appear your court order gives access until the conclusion of your investigation, so we can always add to the information at a later time."
"Thank you... Ma'am," Ace said it with a questioning tone and a shrug to Thursday who almost grinned. It was a strange world they lived in.
When the droid left, Ace gave a loud stage whisper to his partner, "Did you know she wasn't a person?"
"Not even a little bit. Jeez, tech is crazy anymore. She's just so human."
Ace nodded in exasperation. "Couldn't really tell her from the real thing in a line up anymore. Do you know what that could do to our jobs?"
"Our jobs are already impossible, yet we persevere. You order the records for the two vics. I'll focus on the company's operations and get a list of customers and employees."
They spent some time hunched over computers and guessing what might be relevant and what was just fishing. When they were through, it was obvious that she had no intention of ever joining the real world again as a citizen because she would die alone in her apartment reading this case file.
"This is a month's worth of reading."
"Hayden, you know we need Risen's super powers," Ace chided. Risen made Hayden more than a little uncomfortable. Primarily, because he was strange, but also because she wasn't used to the attention of men, and Risen was always trying to give her attention.
"Why don't you work with him then?" she asked in surly tones that could give her partners attitude a real run for his money.
"Because he won't
do side work for me, but he'll do it for you."
She sighed, taking the tran from his hands with a tug. "Fine, but I want compensation. A steak, a real one. Not some synthetic slab of fake meat. A steak, mind you."
They divvied up the workload, and Hayden trudged back down to the morgue where Risen was finishing up with some other poor, unrelated Vic.
The morgue didn't really bother Hayden. Everyone ended up here eventually, so that took some of the scary out of it for her. Then, there was the scary which Risen put right back in with his baby face, cautious, almost anxious, attitude and his expectant gaze. She didn't do well with expectations, and she did worse with relationships. Risen wasn't in the running. The only things she could commit to were ugly fish.
It was an absolute mystery to her why Risen was having this problem anyway. It wasn't like she was some vid queen covered in diamonds. She wore mannish pant suits like any other detective, and she had the same bite to her that the other detectives did, one born of years of chasing down other people's lies.
Her kind could be assholes, and they knew it. Most of them didn't try to have families. Seemed like the ones who did always regretted it.
She waited for Risen to clean up and put the body away. As he walked into his personal office, he smiled broadly. "Detective Thursday," he said jovially. "What brings you here this afternoon?"
"Ace and I took our trip to the archive, and there's too much. We need to narrow down our search."
He chuckled. "You need Bessy. You hate Bessy."
"I don't hate Bessy. She's not a person, Risen," she said. "You can't hate someone that's not a person."
He chuckled again. Hayden frowned harder. "Give me the file," he laughed.
Thursday wanted to growl at him, but he wasn't alone in humanizing AI. Lots of people did it. She'd seen people do it with pets, and that's okay. Silly, but okay because pets mostly aren't dangerous. But, forgetting that Arties and tinnies aren't people could land all of them in a mess which put her firmly against humanizing tech.
He led her to the small room off his main lab. The circular mainframe was waist high and the console interface was dormant until they walked in, then it lit up like a plaza Christmas tree.
"Good afternoon, Detective Thursday."
"Bessy, we have a file that needs to be split and searched. We need cross referencing patterns and any extrapolations or simulations you can make."
"Very well," she said placidly.
Hayden stood beside Risen awkwardly waiting a moment after he plugged the small squared off tran file into the machine. "How long you think this could take?"
"Hard to say. It's unpredictable. Depends on how much she has to sift through. Could take hours."
"I have something," the AI said.
"Or, it could be now," he quipped. "What is it, Bess?"
"Detective, I am afraid you have a rather high probability of other related murders in multiple boroughs. Your immediate victims were indeed kinders. They came from a batch of ten developed at the inception of the company's public operations. All but one of that batch are deceased."
"How did they die?"
"It varies," the AI answered. "However, they have died in clusters of three since the beginning. I also extrapolate that your string of serial murders may not have started with your first victim, but rather is a cluster of four."
"The first victim was Borough Rep Collins Fisher. He died in a train bombing two months ago."
"But, that's not what's going on here? I have a serial killer displaying his victims, not blowing them up."
"That is a puzzling difficulty. One that I believe it is reconciled by several failed attempts to kidnap the representative in the weeks prior to his death."
"So, our killer ran out of time on the clock, and decided to take the easy way out for his hard target and set up a terrorist attack."
"It would appear something to that effect occurred, Detective. If I have extrapolated correctly, the next victim is Dr. Allen Macy, a former researcher with Kinder Tech. He was a walking advertisement for the services they could provide."
" A kinder doctor working on kinders. Bessy, where is the doctor now?"
"He has taken a leave of absence and is currently on sabbatical, no location is listed."
"Like maybe he knows he's next. Where was he working prior to his sabbatical?"
"He currently oversees the National Trust Research Lab Station here in Waldorf, greater metro area at 2553 E. Caltrops Lane."
"Bessy, I apologize. I was wrong. You are the best detective ever. Risen, I'm heading to the lab. Get Ace on the comm. Tell him to warrant up and search the good doctor's residence. If he's the next victim, then he's how we catch our killer."
Thursday didn't wait for answers or replies. She ran out of the lab at top speed toward her transport. Midday traffic would be in full force. She wouldn't get to the lab for a bit, and she had to puzzle this out.
She scanned the tran file with her holo and stared at the holo representation before her in the transport as it drove her out east of the precinct to the upper district where the big money lived and worked.
With Bessy's help, the pattern in the killings was easy to see. The first cluster were all traffic accidents of some kind or other. The victims were so ordinary it would never raise an eyebrow, and their only connection was in the very secret story surrounding their births. All of that begged the question, why kill them at all?
In fact, the only thing any of them had in common was being Kinder. And, how many families hid that fact to avoid the prejudice that came with it? Mistrust of tech was a common theme these days, and many didn’t consider the Kinder to be Human at all.
The second cluster occurred all in the same hospital. Three patients all came in for routine or non-life threatening procedures and died on the table. It ended in malpractice sanctions and the shutting down of the Market Borough Hospital where it all took place.
Then, there was this cluster. Even within the pattern, there was a pattern. She just needed more puzzle pieces to see it.
What was crystal clear was that the big picture pointed entirely to this lab and the National Trust. Of that, there was no doubt. The entire mystery unraveled somewhere in the building she was headed toward at that very moment.
Hayden took a look out the transport window at the pedestrians slipping slowly by as her boxy little transport navigated the city streets. No one out there had any reason to suspect that the terrorist attack two months ago was anything but a legitimate attack on the nation. The idea that all that destruction had been for one man sickened her. The train cars had derailed, and thousands of people were injured, maimed, killed. All for what? What was the end game?
That was what she had to figure out. No one killed like this for nothing. They had a plan, a big one. Something that was worth the trouble that came with taking thousands of lives.
Hayden shivered as she looked out at the men, women and children of the Boroughs. All of them were just pawns in some kind of murder game. She included herself in that number, and it made her mad as hell.
It was possible to have that kind of power, but who the hell had that kind of right? How was it okay in anyone's mind to play with all these lives like they were picking up jacks on a playground?
They would get to the bottom of it and soon. There was no way she was letting this go, not until she knew what was happening at the National Trust. Without the other kill clusters, she would think this was only a serial. Now that she'd identified more Kinder victims, this could only be a cover up of something big, maybe political.
It was the systematic removal of witnesses, and she'd bet the witnesses didn't even know what they were. They condemned someone just by breathing.
She'd get her killer, but there were more up the food chain. Of that, she was certain. She'd have to work to get them, but, if they could get this killer alive, they stood a chance. Better than a chance, if she could get him to roll over on his bosses. All she had to do was catch this one
.
CHAPTER TWO
*
The National Trust wasn't just one building or two. It was a network of government run assets like trains, museums, and research labs dotted all over the sprawling metro area that took up thousands of square miles.
Some things it merely regulated, and others it owned outright. The Kinder Tech company had been determined too dangerous to let run unchecked and nationalized. It was meant to be mothballed, not hidden and worked on in secret.
The building was so nondescript as to be unnoticeable in the dozens of other buildings surrounding the complex, but living in the United Metropolitan Authority was to be enveloped and overwhelmed by vast, sweeping cityscapes constantly. Sometimes, you stopped noticing architecture and beauty. You stopped seeing the parks, the statues, the gardens, and saw only the crush of humanity.
She located the reception entrance, stopped her vehicle at the curb, and walked into the building while taking careful note of her surroundings.
The technology inside the place was not nondescript. It was state of the art. She turned to slowly gauge the set up, and made no secret of what she was doing; cameras, droid guards, and two humans on the door.
All the while, she knew someone was watching her investigate. Good. It would give them something to think about.
"May I help you?" The impeccably dressed young woman behind the desk asked her helpfully.
Hayden pulled out her badge to show it to the girl.
"Detective Hayden Thursday. I'm wanting to speak with a researcher here, Dr. Allen Macy. I understand he's on sabbatical, but there is some concern that he could be in danger. We'd like help locating him, and to see what he's been working on recently."
She tapped on a screen a few times, then said, "Detective, the records I'm finding indicate that Dr. Macy has left our employ. And, I'm afraid his research is highly classified. I can't even tell you what it is because the system doesn't say what it is. I can give you his home address."
