by David Archer
“What about all that stuff?” Martin asked, pointing at a large pile of things that had been shoved into a corner.
Charlotte glanced at the pile. “Those were Carson's things,” she said. “I'm moving out of here to get away from his memory, I certainly don't want to take a bunch of them with me. They'll send in a cleaning crew once I terminate the lease. I'm sure those people will take what they want, and give away the rest.”
Martin nodded. “I can understand,” he said. “Well, I guess we're ready then?”
Charlotte smiled, and nodded her head. “We're ready. Oh, Martin, I love you so much. This is going to be wonderful, the two of us starting our lives together.” She walked to him and put her arms around his neck, pulling his head down for a kiss. “Just in case I haven't told you already, sir, I think you are the best thing that's ever happened to me.”
Martin smiled down at her. “I can say exactly the same about you, babe.”
They walked out of the apartment and Martin told the AI in the truck where to go while Charlotte hailed an Uber. They climbed into the little hover car and told it to follow the truck.
The next hour was spent unloading the truck, but it went a lot faster with the robot to help. Despite the fact that it was designed to resemble a female, it was capable of lifting and carrying very heavy loads. Martin stacked several boxes together, and had the robot carry them inside. It wasn't long before he sent the truck back to Google.
The robot had adapted to Charlotte's presence with no problem, and after being instructed so by Martin, accepted her orders as readily as his own. Charlotte was delighted, and happily supervised the machine as it unpacked all of her things and put them in their proper places.
Finally, it was done, and Charlotte went into the kitchen to begin preparing dinner. Martin had told her that he loved chicken, and she happily set about making the first homemade fried chicken he had eaten in years, with all the trimmings.
Martin sat on the couch in the living room, and quietly scanned through the Justice Net schedule. He knew that Carson would be fighting soon, and felt a thrill when he saw his name on that Thursday's schedule. He looked over his shoulder to be sure that Charlotte wasn't watching, then quickly bet five thousand on Carson's opponent, a five-time winner named Leo Malkovich. Malkovich was big, and should have no trouble snapping Carson Pace into little pieces.
He cleared the screen and tuned the HD to a news program. He sat through several stories about arcology politics, and then the announcer started talking about the previous day's rape at the college. Martin felt a chill again, but only for a moment. The announcer clearly stated that the police felt they were dealing with a copycat trying to emulate the rapes that were solved with the arrest and conviction of Professor Carson Pace. The story was over quickly, but Martin heard the little gasp that came from behind them and turned to see Charlotte standing there.
“There's been another rape?” Charlotte asked.
Martin nodded. “Yeah, I guess the University station is saying they have a copycat. It’s probably the real rapist that poor old Carson went down for, but they won’t admit that, of course. Hopefully, they'll catch him before long, and put a stop to it. I'm sorry you had to hear that, I didn't realize it would be on the news.”
Charlotte looked at him, and he saw a single tear on her cheek. “But even if they catch him, that won’t help Carson, will it?” She wiped the tear away without thinking and then smiled at him. “Well, I guess that means I won't be going near the University anytime soon.” She turned and went back into the kitchen without another word, and Martin let himself breathe again.
* * * * *
Carson had been busy, but he was quickly learning new ways to avoid getting hit or grabbed, and stay on his feet. One of the women in the audience had stepped forward and spoken to Roscoe, explaining that she had been trained in several of the martial arts. Roscoe happily agreed to let her teach Carson some simple defensive moves, and then that led to instructions on how to use his opponent's weight and momentum against him. By the time they broke for dinner, Carson was easily throwing around even some of the biggest men in the crowd, and his teacher had been approached by a dozen who wanted to learn from her.
As they were walking toward the chow hall, the blue-haired girl ran up beside Carson. “I'm Anita,” she said, “Anita Baron. There's something pretty interesting about you. I saw you the day you came in, and I wouldn't have given any odds on you winning a fight, but now I wish I could put a bet on you myself.”
Carson grinned at her. “Thanks,” he said. “Nice to know I've got your vote of confidence.”
Anita smiled. “Listen, I was wondering, would you like to hang out after dinner? I'd love to get to know you a little better.”
Carson, with testosterone pumping through his body from the day's sparring, admitted to himself that he was tempted. “Maybe for a little while,” he said. “I'm afraid I've got another day just like this one coming up tomorrow, so I need to get my rest.”
The girl reached over and took his hand, and for a second Carson thought about yanking it back, but there was something comforting about human contact that wasn't trying to inflict pain on him. He let her hold on to it as they went through the line, and then she sat with him, Roscoe and Johnny as they ate.
Roscoe and Johnny were shooting him knowing glances, but Carson was ignoring them. Anita seemed like a pretty nice girl, and Carson wondered how she had ended up in J-Net. He'd been warned, however, that it was never appropriate to ask anyone what they were there for, so he kept his curiosity to himself.
When they finished eating, Anita followed Carson back to his room and he let her come inside. They sat on the bed and talked, and he didn't even have to ask why she was there.
“I've only had one fight, so far,” she said, and Carson felt a slight chill as he realized that the girl sitting next to him had obviously killed someone. “My sentence is only for three, so I've got a fair chance of getting out of here in a month or two.”
“Only three fights? Wow, that's the shortest sentence I've heard of yet.”
She giggled. “Yeah, they go pretty easy on you if it's just something simple. I'm afraid I got caught turning tricks without a license. The first couple of times they only made me pay a fine, but the third time I got sent here. I'm hoping I make it out of here, I've got a little girl back home that needs me.”
Carson looked at her. “You were a prostitute? But, why? You're obviously pretty intelligent—surely you could have gotten a job.”
She shrugged and made a face. “I've had jobs, but they don't pay the kind of money I needed. My daughter, she has some health problems and the treatment is expensive. A lot of men think I'm kind of pretty, so they're willing to pay pretty good money for a chance at me. Don't worry, I was always careful about STDs, I'm clean.”
The sudden irony of the situation struck him—that she would think he might be worried about picking up a disease if they were to have sex. Despite the best efforts of Roscoe and Johnny and others, Carson knew that his odds of surviving his entire sentence were pretty much infinitesimal. He didn't think getting the clap would be much of a problem, under those circumstances.
Anita took his grin for eagerness, and suddenly leaned over and kissed him. Carson stiffened, and almost pulled away, but once again, the pleasure of human contact was more than he could resist. It was only a moment later that they began unzipping each other's jumpsuits, and shortly after that Anita taught him some new wrestling moves of her own.
TWENTY-FOUR
Independent IT consultant Irving Mitchell was alone in his office when the call came, and he answered it without thinking. Normally, Irving wouldn't answer a call if he didn't recognize the caller ID, but he had been expecting another call and assumed that this was the one he was waiting for. Too late, he realized that the caller ID only showed zeros. A silhouette appeared on his screen, but he couldn't make out a face.
“Mr. Mitchell,” he heard, and instantly realized th
at the voice was electronically distorted. “I have some information for you.”
“Information for me? Who is this?” Mitchell asked.
“I am someone who knows who you really are, Mr. Mitchell, and the information I have could help you in your endeavors. Are you prepared to make notes, or record?”
Mitchell squinted at the screen. “Look, Buddy, I don't know who you think I am…”
“Mr. Mitchell, let us not play games. I know that you are the mysterious and elusive Demetrius, the leader of Nostrado. I know of the work you do, and I approve. I'm not going to ask you any questions, or in any other way try to entrap you, I simply want to give you some information that you desperately need.”
Mitchell's eyes were wide, and he was stuttering as he tried to deny the accusation, but the mysterious caller didn't wait to hear what he had to say.
“Make notes, this is important. In the Chicago District, an innocent man was sentenced to the maximum penalty in Justice Net, seventy bouts. The charge against him was three counts of rape, of which he was innocent. The evidence against him was manipulated and falsified, and I have traced it back to a Chicago District Special Unit Inspector named Haywood Pennyfarthing. Inspector Pennyfarthing manipulated DNA scores to make it appear that this man was guilty, and another inspector coached the three victims in their identification. The man's name is Professor Carson Pace, and he is currently scheduled for his first fight the day after tomorrow. I know that Nostrado includes some of the best hackers, both black and white hats, alive today. I'm quite certain that you can find the proof that Professor Pace needs to prove his innocence and save his life.”
The call went dead, and Mitchell sat and stared at the blank holo-tab.
He was in shock. Only three people in the world knew that he was Demetrius, and he was certain that the caller had been none of them. Still, he was suddenly glad that he had his holo-tab set to record all incoming calls. He poked a button on the display, and played the call again.
This time, he took notes.
As soon as he was finished, he began looking into the allegations of the mysterious caller. News stories about Carson Pace were abundant on the web, all of them applauding the efforts of the Chicago District Police Authority in bringing a serial rapist to justice. All three of his known victims had positively identified him as their assailant, and his DNA was a ninety-six percent match to the samples taken from the victims.
There were, however, a few other links that appeared in his search. One of them was a blog post by a man named Stephen Langley, a crime lab technician at CDPA. In this post, Langley claimed that DNA samples taken from a new victim, raped less than a week after Pace was convicted, were a perfect, one hundred percent match to the previous samples, proving that the same rapist had attacked all four women. Since Pace was already in Justice Net at the time this last rape occurred, it was impossible for him to have committed it, and therefore impossible for him to have committed the previous ones.
Mitchell went into hacker mode, swiftly finding his way into the CDPA cloud. From there, it was short work to get into the crime lab’s database and look at the DNA results for himself. Surprisingly, what he found was that there was no match at all to the previous victims, which made him wonder why Langley would've insisted the match was perfect. He broke the files down, and began tracing all access to them.
There it was! Two days earlier, Haywood Pennyfarthing had logged into the system using his ultrahigh security clearance, and had edited the report.
Mitchell leaned back in his chair and put a finger to his bottom lip. Obviously, this Pennyfarthing had wanted to be certain that no one else would come to the same conclusion Langley did. By changing the DNA report on the rape kit sample, he had made it appear that the most recent rape had been performed by someone other than the original rapist. Without the original report, no one could prove conclusively that the same rapist was still at large.
Nostrado had long believed that innocent people were being sentenced to Justice Net, framed by the trolls for crimes they didn’t commit, and then hustled through the court system by corrupt magistrates. Justice Net made hundreds of billions of dollars each year on the legalized gambling that allowed citizens to bet on the fights, and the hackers of Nostrado had followed the money to learn that it was being shared with politicians of member nations and even the magistrates and judges who passed sentence. The more people who went into the system, the more money they each made. In the past two decades, acquittals had been extremely rare.
Despite the fact that Nostrado had repeatedly leaked proof of these facts to the public, the vast majority of citizens still believed in the system. What Nostrado needed was a case that was incontrovertible, absolute proof that a citizen who had committed no crime was deliberately jeopardized by police, and then given no opportunity to prove his innocence.
It looked like the anonymous caller had dropped such a case into Mitchell's lap.
Nostrado had originally come into existence as a result of certain interpretations of the prophecies of Nostradamus, many of which could be seen as having predicted the Great Disaster and the rise of the Global Union, which its followers had once considered to be the “third antichrist” described in many of the later quatrains. Renegade hackers, in an attempt to prove their theories, had begun combing through the files of the GU and its member nations, but over the years had shifted their focus.
Since the beginning of GU Year 26, Nostrado had been trying to educate the citizens of the GU about the corruption it found, which extended from the highest levels down to the lowest. Despite GU claims of equality for all, Nostrado found plenty of evidence to suggest that the leadership of the GU considered themselves to be an elite class, worthy of greater power and rewards than anyone else. They had become a secret society, and no one was able to enter their ranks without sponsorship by current members thereof. Nostrado had found that elections were all manipulated in order to ensure that only an approved candidate could possibly win.
Shortly after taking office, each newly elected official would be quietly inducted into the society. In the rare case where such a person's morals might prevent him or her from accepting the benefits of membership, there would follow almost immediately a “tragic accident,” and another, more cooperative new member would be appointed to complete that term.
Mitchell sat forward again, and began sending messages to his most trusted members. Somehow, they needed to find proof that Professor Carson Pace had been a victim of the system. It would be necessary to learn not only how he had fallen prey to this great evil, but also why. If they could accomplish it, this might be the case that would finally swing public opinion against the GU and its evil elite.
* * * * *
“Good morning,” Anita said, as Carson stepped out of his building. Roscoe, Johnny and Anita were all waiting there for him, and the four of them walked toward breakfast together. Roscoe and Johnny managed, with some difficulty, not to leer at them, but Carson could feel their eyes brushing across him from time to time.
They chatted about simple things during breakfast, and Anita shared her story with the other two men. They expressed sympathy, and both of them gave her their hopes for her continued survival. It wasn’t until they had finished eating that Roscoe turned to more serious matters.
“I didn't want to bring this up before,” he said, “but you gonna be stuck with Johnny today. I can't be working with you, 'cause I got a fight tonight.”
Carson looked up at him, surprised. “Tonight? And you couldn't have mentioned this sooner?”
Roscoe shrugged. “Didn't want you worrying about me, you got to concentrate on yourself. Soon as we leave here, I got to go into isolation. Everything go okay, I’ll be back tomorrow morning.” He reached over and put a hand on Carson's shoulder. “Don't you be thinking about me. I done made it through fifty, I make it through this one, too. You just work with Johnny today, he gonna show you some new tricks.”
Carson looked at his friend for a m
oment, then turned to Johnny. “When do you fight next?”
Johnny grinned. “Me? My next fight is Thursday, the same day is yours. I'm the big feature that night.”
Carson frowned, and turned back to Roscoe. “Do you know who you're fighting?”
“Sampson Niles,” Roscoe said. “He already made it through thirty bouts, but his lucky streak about to end. He be a big sumbitch, but he ain't all that. I can take him.”
They turned in their trays, and Roscoe shook hands with all three of them as he took his leave. “See you all in the morning,” he said, and turned to walk toward the guard shack. He and Johnny had explained to Carson that, on the day of your fight, you reported to the guard shack just after breakfast. There, you were encouraged to relax and prepare yourself mentally for the fight, and were locked into a room that was somewhat luxurious. You could watch a Cloudcast, take a nap or whatever else you wanted to do. There was even an actual bathroom, in case you wanted to take a bath.
“Come on, buddy, let's go,” Johnny said. Carson followed him to the area where the crowd was bigger than usual, waiting to watch him practice.
“Okay,” Johnny said when they got there. “I've got something new to show you this morning. This is my own patented little trick, the way I won my last three fights, and the best way to show it to you is by surprise. What I'm going to do is, I'm going to take little Anita, here, off to the side and tell her what to do. You're going to spar with her this morning, and you're going to be in for a surprise.”
Carson's eyes were wide as he watched Johnny and Anita walk away, but he had come to trust the man. If he said Carson and Anita needed to spar, then as long as she was willing, it was okay with him. He watched them as they whispered to each other, and could tell that Anita was surprised at what she was hearing. Apparently it was a pleasant surprise, because she broke out in a big smile. She glanced back at Carson, winked, and then they came back to where he waited.
