SINthetic

by J. T. Nicholas

  There was that hesitation again, and I could almost feel her gathering her courage. “Ms. Morita,” I said again, then paused. “Tia, it really is OK. Unless you tell me you were somehow accidentally the killer yourself, I’m not going to get mad at you. OK?”

  She sighed, a sound that mixed regret and just a trace of amusement. “OK, Detective. There was a shadow that showed up on the x-rays. I wasn’t sure what it was, but it wasn’t anything natural. No strange bone anomaly or genetic defect—not that those are even possible in synthetics. But whatever it was, it definitely looked man made. I took it to Dr. Fitzpatrick, and he informed me that it looked like a microchip of some sort. So, I did some research.” Another long pause. “Detective…I think it was a tracking tag.” Her voice dropped even lower, close to a whisper now. “As in GPS. Dr. Fitzpatrick informed me that it isn’t an uncommon practice, particularly at the corporate level, to have synthetics chipped.” She stopped talking, but I didn’t step into the gap. I knew what was coming. “I found out too late,” she finished in a rush. “The techs had already cremated the body. The chip was destroyed.”

  My brain was already churning. Would the chip have helped? Absolutely. Knowing the exact movements of the victim and the precise timeline of those movements would have been great. But we knew the body was moved after death, so it wouldn’t necessarily give us the place where the murder happened. But it would definitely have helped. Would the information still be available? Tucked away on Party Toys’ servers somewhere? And why hadn’t the inestimable Ms. Anderson informed me of the fact that their synthetics were tagged? An oversight, or a deliberate omission? The problem with this entire investigation was too damn many questions and not enough answers to go around.

  “Detective?” Ms. Morita said in a small voice.

  “It’s OK, Tia,” I said, putting a smile that I didn’t really feel on my face and hoping she could hear it in my voice. “It’s not your fault. And while having that chip might have made things easier, there’s no guarantee we could have gotten anything useful off of it, anyway. Besides, I’ve already made contact with the people at the victim’s…employer…and they seem to be willing to cooperate. Now that I know about the chip, I might still be able to get the data from them.” Not likely, but there was no sense in kicking the assistant medical examiner while she was down.

  “So I didn’t ruin your investigation?” The words were self-mocking, but I heard a hint of honest relief underlying them.

  I smiled a real smile at that. “Not at all. In fact, you’ve been very helpful, and now that I know about the chip, I at least have something else to ask Party Toys for.”

  We made a few more minutes of polite small talk before I heard Fitzpatrick yelling something from the background. “You’ve got to go,” I said, preempting her words. “I can hear the old Irish coot screaming from here.” That earned me a quick, tinkling laugh. “If you think of anything else…”

  “I’ll call you,” she assured me. We said our good-byes, and I hit the End Call button on the screen.

  I finished my dinner in large bites, more interested than ever in the information that PTI was supposed to send. Would Ms. Anderson include the GPS data? My gut said no. Even though she seemed to want to do the right thing, corporations had an innate distrust of the police force. I couldn’t really blame them. The Cyber Crimes Unit didn’t spend a whole lot of time or effort on stolen credit cards or hacked corporate databases. They were more concerned with preventing and catching people who attacked the city infrastructure: camera networks, traffic lights, the power grid, that sort of thing.

  When I was done, I used some of the paper napkins to scrape the grease from my fingers and tossed the trash into a nearby bin. Then I sat back on the couch and opened my e-mail on my screen. The program was smart enough to prioritize incoming messages based on what I’d done with previous e-mails. People I replied to often got pushed to the top, things I deleted got shunted off into a graveyard folder, and so forth. There was also a tab for new contacts. I swiped over to that one, and started scanning the e-mails. Only one jumped out at me. The subject was innocuous enough: Info you requested. The sender, however, was Sylvia Anderson.

  I opened the e-mail. There was no salutation, no words wasted on greetings or explanations. I got a list of three rows and two columns. The leftmost column held the serial numbers of the three victims that had worked for Party Toys. The rightmost column, in turn, held three names, all different, all male: Thomas Caine, Jeremy Fowler, Robert Gutierrez.

  I muttered a curse as I read them—Ms. Anderson had done exactly what she’d said she’d do…and not one millimeter more. I had no way of knowing if the names were even real or how many individuals they represented; they could be three different people, or three aliases of the same guy, or some combination thereof. She hadn’t even bothered including dates. I could make some assumptions based on the dates of disappearance of the synthetics. Gutierrez had an “engagement” with the first disappearance from the PTI subset of missing synthetics, Caine the second, and Fowler with the most recent disappearance. It was more than I had a few minutes ago; not much, but better than nothing.

  “Now what?” I asked the empty room. I could still access the station servers from my screen, even off duty, but triggering the search algorithms from the touch screen would be a nightmare. That would take hours, and I’d be better off going home and using my computer there. I could try calling PTI and asking for more information, but I had the feeling that the only way I’d get a single additional byte of data out of Ms. Anderson would be with a warrant.

  I got up and peered into the bullpen. My desk was still open, but it would probably take fifteen or twenty minutes to enter the information, even from a keyboard. If Laroche came back to find me occupying his space, he’d be pissed, and rightly so. I could ask one of the other detectives, maybe even the Cyber guys, to run the info for me, and they would, but they would ask questions. Lots of freaking questions, and ones that I couldn’t answer, not without revealing that I was pursuing an investigation that, at least in the department’s eyes, should have been closed when I found out my victim was a synthetic.

  I glanced at the clock on my screen. It was past seven o’clock, and my shift had ended at five. I was closing in on the twelve-hour mark, and I’d still be on call if anything came up while Laroche was otherwise occupied. Screw it. Tomorrow was another day; I would run the names then, from the comfort of my own desk, and see what could be found.

  The journey back to Floattown passed quickly, my mind still churning over the list of names, and the questions the mysterious synthetic had left me. It was still early enough that my neighborhood had not fully converted from kids playing in the streets to thugs loitering on the corners, though I did automatically assume my “don’t fuck with me” walk, as much out of instinct as out of any real need. Most of the neighborhood knew who I was and what I did, and I’d put down the first few challenges hard enough that it had been a long while since a new one had arisen.

  My apartment building looked as unassuming as ever, though my previous evening’s visitor had given me a newfound sense of paranoia. I needed to talk to my neighbors, to remind them to be vigilant about letting strangers into the building. I almost snorted at that thought. That’s just what most of my fellow tenants would want—the pushy cop watching over their shoulders and telling them to be careful.

  I made my way up the stairs, mind on the task of just how I was going to get the other tenants to listen to me. I found myself before my door, my feet taking me there on autopilot. Then my brain was jolted from its reverie by one simple observation.

  The access pad by the door indicated that it was unlocked.

  Chapter 10

  “Son of a bitch,” I muttered, staring at the unlocked door to my apartment—the door that I knew I had locked before leaving to go to work. Hell, the thing was set to lock automatically after five seconds, even if I forgot to
lock it. It should have been locked, and no one should have been able to break that lock, though I knew the albino synthetic had already done so once before. It could be him; it was probably him, and if it was, he probably didn’t mean me any harm. But that was two “probablys” too many. I slid my forty-five from its holster and took up a position on one side of the door. Then I grabbed the doorknob and pushed the door open, ducking my head and gun hand around the corner for a quick sweep of the room.

  A hulking form once again sat, hands folded calmly in his lap, in my favorite chair. I had little doubt that the cameras would show, as they had last night, that he had been here for hours. I stepped into the room without a word, closing the door behind me. I swept the rest of the apartment, moving quickly from room to room, but making sure that we were alone. Only then did I holster my weapon and return to the living room.

  Neither the synthetic, nor I, had said anything while I cleared my place.

  I looked at him, taking in once more the bald pate, alabaster skin, and slightly pinkish eyes. A sardonic smile twisted his lips, but his body language spoke of a sort of ponderous patience, a willingness to sit and wait for the most opportune moment before doing…well, anything. There was something insect-like about that patience. No, not insect-like. Arachnid-like. A spider at the center of its web, just waiting for something to come ringing the dinner bell.

  “Is this going to be a habit?” I grated. “Should I have a key made for you?”

  “I don’t need a key, Detective.”

  I snorted. “You’ve got balls. I’ll give you that.” I went to my kitchen and grabbed a tumbler from the cabinet. I dropped two ice cubes in it and poured three fingers of whiskey over top of them. I didn’t offer the synthetic any, not because he was a synthetic, and not even because he had twice broken into my house. But the asshole was sitting in my favorite chair—that was inexcusable.

  “What have you found?”

  I took a small sip of the whiskey as I moved back into the living room, and, reluctantly, dropped down onto the couch. I propped my feet up on the coffee table, leaned back, and took another sip before answering. “I’m afraid I can’t discuss ongoing investigations with people who make a habit of breaking and entering. The department has strict guidelines about that sort of thing, you understand.” I tossed back the rest of the drink in one long pull and set the sweating glass down on the table. “What’s your name, anyway? All day I’ve had to think of you as ‘the albino synthetic who broke into my apartment.’”

  He tilted his head slightly to one side, and the smile widened. “You don’t like that, do you?”

  “It’s cumbersome. And not very precise.”

  “How many times do you think humans ask synthetics for their names?”

  I sighed. Did we have to go through this again? Humans treated synthetics badly. Got it. I was probably even guilty of it myself, though, I hoped, to a much lesser degree. But I was the one working to stop synthetics from being murdered, mutilated, and deposited in the streets, and, oh by the way, risking my career and livelihood to do so. I really didn’t want to have a long conversation about all the failings that could be laid at humanity’s feet. There weren’t enough hours in the day to even get up to the point where we were producing synthetics, much less to catalog all that had happened since. I didn’t want to get into it; so instead, I asked, again, “Your name?”

  “Silas.” He said it with a slight sibilance, drawing out the S sound at the end. Something in the way he said it, in the narrowing of his eyes, told me that it wasn’t the name he’d been given at the factory. It was his true identity, a name he had given himself, and probably something he had shared only with other synthetics.

  I was once again struck by the notion that an entire subculture almost certainly existed among the synthetics, with their own norms and mores, and maybe even their own social hierarchy. The idea wasn’t new—such subgroups had existed among human societies for ages, based on race, beliefs, and so forth. But the thought of a subculture among synthetics implied a degree of organization that made me slightly uneasy. That unease was balanced against an undeniable tingle of something that teetered perilously close to pride that the synthetic—that Silas—had just, however reluctantly, given me a glimpse into that clandestine world.

  Which didn’t change the fact that I was more than a little pissed at him for breaking into my house. So instead of dwelling too deeply on the thought of what the synthetics might be doing right under the noses of the rest of humanity, I said, “Well, Silas…what the hell do you want?”

  “Justice.”

  His one-word response didn’t surprise me, but it did make me grind my teeth in silent frustration. I wished he would stop talking in grandiose ideals, and get to the fucking point. Justice was a wonderful concept, but it was elusive and notoriously difficult to pin down. “We all want justice. We all fucking deserve justice. We seldom get it.” I raised a placating hand before he could jump on that. “Though I will admit some get a hell of a lot more than others.” I paused, but he said nothing. “So, what do you want from me?”

  “I want you to investigate the deaths of those girls, and follow that investigation wherever it may go.” He paused, but, given that I had just spent the entire day doing exactly that, I wasn’t inclined to jump into the conversational gap, so it was my turn to sit in implacable silence. After a long moment, he spoke again, and it was as if the words were being dragged from him. “And I want you to stay alive long enough to see it to that end.”

  That got my attention. Sure, I chased murderers for a living, but outside of a very narrowly defined set of circumstances, most of them weren’t truly dangerous. Within those circumstances, they would fight, kill, maim, do whatever they had to, but when faced with a man with a badge and a gun, they almost always folded. In the close to ten years I’d been a part of the New Lyons Police Department, I’d only fired my weapon once, at a perp who had been too high to recognize that he didn’t have the training, much less the coordination or natural ability, to bring a knife to a gunfight and survive. I had been in a few other dangerous situations, though none to the degree where deadly force had been required. For the most part, the job had become routine, bordering on the edge of boring. The bulk of it centered around gathering evidence from crime scenes, talking to people while following up on leads, and waiting for lab results. But something in Silas’s tone told me that he had specific dangers in mind, not just the generalities of being on the job, dangers that I definitely needed to know about.

  And yet, he seemed reluctant to speak about it. If he kept this up, I was going to need to schedule a visit to the dentist. I forced myself to stop grinding my teeth, and took a slow, steadying breath. “Look, I just spent all day running down leads in this case. While, I might add, trying to keep the whole damn thing from the brass, since they’d happily shut me down, and shut me down hard, if they knew I was pursuing this. I’m tired. I’m frustrated. And I want nothing more than to grab another whiskey, then hit the shower, and the sack. But can I do that? No. Because, once again, I come home to find a stranger sitting in my apartment. In my favorite chair. So how about we drop the mystery routine, and you tell me whatever it is you have to tell me, then you go ahead and get the hell out of my house.” I managed to get through it all without yelling, though my voice had crept up in volume.

  His expression didn’t so much as flicker, despite my rant. He still wore that same, slightly sardonic smile. “Very well, Detective. I wanted to see if you’ve made any progress, and also to warn you.”

  “I’m following some leads. I’m already in deep enough. I can’t discuss the case with you. Department policy forbids it.” I smiled as I said it, the polite, professional smile that was drilled into me at the academy. It was the nicest way I knew to say, “Fuck you.”

  He laughed. A rocking bass of a laugh that started near his belly and burst forth from his mouth. It startled me so much t
hat my hand dropped instinctively to my sidearm. It took a full ten seconds—with the big synthetic laughing all the while—to get my heart rate back under control and register that there was no threat. “What’s so goddamned funny?” I demanded, trying to steady my shaking hands as I reached for my glass. It was empty, so I slammed it back to the coffee table.

  He raised one hand, as if to say, “Wait a moment,” as he continued to laugh. When he had finally finished, red faced and nearly panting, he gasped, “Detective, you amaze me. Even when trying to display your anger, you treat me as more human than ninety-nine percent of your kind.”

  I didn’t really know what to say. He must have seen my confusion, because he continued. “Telling me about your case no more violates any privacy or security guidelines in your department than telling your microwave would. Or perhaps, telling your dog would be a better analogy.” I heard the faint trace of bitterness beneath the humor in Silas’s voice, a bitterness that, I suspected, had been bottled up for many years, left to ferment, and distilled into a powerful and heady brew. “Synthetics are not covered under any privacy laws; we have no privacy of our own, of course, but neither are we considered a security risk.” The sardonic half smile returned. “After all, who would share secrets with us?”

  Something in his tone, in the smile, made me suspect that the answer to that question was damn near everyone. Synthetics were in our schools, babysat our children, cooked and cleaned in our homes. They even shared our beds. For most people they were a fairly constant presence, always around, but never really noticed. How much did they overhear while moving invisibly through the world that humans thought of as their own? How many secrets fell unwittingly into their grasp? If that collective knowledge could be pooled…