The Harmony Paradox (Virtual Immortality Book 2)

by Matthew S. Cox

  One by one, spiders returned with data tiles in their fangs. He back-traced four different users, all of whom came from a database query as being employees of The Bandau Group, the law firm Grant had made partner with. Looks like someone’s misusing company resources. Joey chuckled as he collated all the records into an organized log of who accessed Katherine’s municipal file when, and changed what. He crosslinked to nine different false MDF officer profiles, cops who never existed, added that to the report, and generated a new data tile. After sliding that into his chest, which transferred the file back down the military uplink to his hardware on Earth, he held up Katherine’s tile and clucked his ghostly tongue at it.

  Line by line, he flicked his clawed finger to the left, flagging each of the spurious entries as hidden. Only Division 9 (or C-Branch) would see them. He would’ve deleted them, but since Grant had been stupid enough to spread his net-love to the police network and not just Katherine, it constituted an attack against the Mars Defense Force, which gave jurisdiction to Division 9. Depending on how mightily he wanted to savage Grant, he might need the altered records later for the inquest.

  Joey hummed to himself while reading. They’d added false reports of Katherine taking bribes, bribing judges, the underage boy sex thing, trafficking in illegal recreational chems, a few charges of theft via misrouting delivery bots, prostitution… He laughed. Clearly, they’re not trying to get her arrested… though he has that whole ‘moral character’ thing. The system showed six pending investigation tags on her record, five of which came from her law firm attempting to verify her claim of being a victim of altered records.

  He got a silly grin. At least, he experienced the feeling of one―his shadow person avatar had no facial features. A few mental impulses remapped the investigating agent on each charge to Don Simon. For once in Joey’s weird life, he was doing something perfectly legal and above board. If he took the investigation himself, a reasonable person would question the conflict of interest of him clearing his sister, regardless of the bogosity of the charges.

  For good measure, he copied his evidence tile and shot it down the pipe to Simon’s ID. He had all he needed in there to respond to the investigations confirming tampering. And with the investigation closed by Division 9 instead of the Mars Defense Force, that should slam the door in Grant’s face.

  Going beyond the simple legal record in Katherine’s file, he swam into the nest of data about her everything. Finances, job history, medical history, Citycam records of her moving around, PubTran travel logs… heck if he dove deep enough, he could even calculate out how many times a day she used a bathroom. He didn’t dwell on any of the actual data, but looked for yellow or red triangles at the edges of each record. Sure enough, Grant’s pet hackers messed with her account, causing her bank to show rent paid, but rather than sending the credits to the building management, the money went into a black hole.

  They also set worms loose that siphoned credits from her law firm and redirected them to the PID of a nonexistent man, who then sent them to Katherine’s account. Okay, this is a little over the line, but fuck this guy. Joey made a few tweaks, changing the worm to send things to Grant instead of Katherine. He shifted all the deposits it made to Grant’s account, altering the records to appear as though they’d gone straight there. With the firepower of his official login, no one would be able to tell the software hadn’t always been feeding Grant’s account, nor would they be able to prove any of it had ever been in Katherine’s. After that, he moved the ‘black hole’ credits to her property management company’s system to legitimately pay her rent, and created a proper log trail for it.

  He scrubbed out thousands of connection records creating the appearance of Katherine spending hours connected to MarsNet interactive porn. Again, the overabundance of making it look like she fancied sims with underage boys screamed amateur. Joey’s skin crawled. In VR, such things weren’t illegal since a sub-sentient program simulating a child had no legal rights. However, it struck him as only slightly less skeevy than the bottom-feeders who purchased WellTech child dolls and had them modified to be anatomically correct. While the law wouldn’t do much about them, society often stepped in to ‘make adjustments.’

  This asshole is trying to kill her reputation. An upwelling of anger almost made him respond in kind, but… not with Division 9 hardware.

  It took him another two hours and eighteen minutes to finish cleaning up everything else Grant had done to her record. He logged out at 4:37 p.m., sitting up as the plugs retracted from his head.

  “Damn, I love time compression.”

  “Dillon,” said Simon, leaning against the cube wall behind him. “What’s this data you sent me?”

  Joey swiveled his chair to face Simon, hands up in a gesture of ‘trust me.’ “My sister’s ex is shitting on her life. Swear it’s all on the level. That’s why I sent it to you. Wouldn’t be proper for me to look into that. I wanted to make sure it got done by the book.”

  Simon squinted at him. “After the nuclear-powered dildo joke, you’re asking me to investigate your sister?”

  Joey closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, and raised a hand in a ‘stop’ gesture. “Please don’t put those two images in my head at the same time again. But yeah.” He shook off the horrifying thought of his sister and a ‘toy’ in the same mindspace, and smiled. “Everyone knows I tease you, and I know you’re so ‘by-the-book’ it makes C-Branch synthetics look like party animals. When you look over that data and clear her, no one will question it.”

  Simons’ eyebrows shot up. “Are you asking me to―?”

  “I’m asking you to investigate it. The situation is a legit intrusion. Her ex-husband got some of his law firm’s network people to mess with her. No favors; just play it straight.” Joey stood. “Seriously. They hacked the MDF system and created false identity records for officers. That gives us jurisdiction.”

  “All right. I don’t know what your game is, but…” He stopped leaning on the cube and tapped his foot. “I’ll take a look at it.”

  Joey shut down his workstation and patted Simons on the shoulder as he went out.

  Humming to himself, Joey headed down the hallway of his apartment building while slurping up ramen noodles from a bowl too large for him to wear as a helmet. Grandpa Sang’s noodles might come from a tiny little shop, but they almost scratched the itch. Being across the street, and cheap, he’d been overindulging. I gotta hit the Fu Sheng House again.

  He found it strange to return home to a place not loaded with gangers, drifters, prostitutes, or random homeless cyborgs. He’d gotten an apartment in a building where the hallway’s rich blue carpet didn’t have holes exposing plasticrete and the elevators worked. He’d almost lost his habit of watching the floor on his way in to avoid tripping over a random stranger passed out drunk or flying high. By 5:12 p.m., Joey stepped into his seventy-fourth floor home, and took a deep breath of air that didn’t smell like dead rat.

  He did miss Howard, and wondered if the huge cockroach still lived.

  No one could call the place extravagant: modest living room, small kitchen, decent-sized bathroom, decent-sized bedroom, and one tiny-ass room he didn’t know what to do with catty-corner from his bedroom at the end of the hall. The agent tried to call it a second bedroom, but some prison cells had more space. He regarded it as a huge closet.

  The kitchen counter, coffee table, and kitchen table disappeared under a mountain of empty ramen containers and synthbeer cans. Every day, he looked at the trash and figured he’d clean it tomorrow. Maybe he missed living in a grey zone squat, or maybe he really was that lazy.

  “Fuck it. I’m gonna need the table.”

  He leaned his ass against the kitchen counter, knocking three month-old ramen containers to the floor and sending plastic chopsticks scattering. After devoting six minutes to finishing off his dinner, he went to the bedroom long enough to hang his hat and duster coat, and returned. Throwing trash at a one-foot-square hole in the
wall proved surprisingly challenging, especially when only half looking.

  Eventually, he cleared the crap into the disassembler, which rebuilt it at a molecular level into even-sized beige blocks of hard matter. Somewhere in the walls, the trash cubes fell down chutes to a collection bin, and probably got carted off to be made into OmniSoy, plastic utensils, or dildos for all he knew.

  “Okay.” He stared at his clean kitchen table and clapped. “Now, Grant, thine ass is mine.”

  He stopped by the bedroom again to change into shorts and a t-shirt, omitting shoes, and grabbed the Nishihama Necromancer deck out of ‘mega closet.’ Seeing the black slab made him think of Hugo, or Kelly, or whatever he’d become. How a net god like Proscion could walk away from ‘the life’ never to set foot in the GlobeNet again, all to live as a little girl forever confounded him.

  Some of it, he knew, came from jealousy. In his prime, Proscion had been the sort of hacker everyone spoke of in mythic overtones and whispers. Even with all the Division 9 hardware behind him, Joey didn’t feel as good as Proscion had been rumored to be. Hell, the man hacked The Silver, not that anyone could prove it… and his soul had somehow wound up inside a synthetic child body… that happened to live with Nina’s parents.

  Who keeps playing a game after you beat it? Joey chuckled.

  He couldn’t think of any other explanation that made sense. Proscion had ‘beat’ the GlobeNet. He had nothing else to do on it that wouldn’t feel like ‘been there done that.’ More and more, Proscion―now Kelly―behaved as though the man had never existed. Perhaps in some way he had ceased to exist and the little girl had become real.

  I’m not high enough to figure that out.

  Joey ran his fingers back and forth over the four-foot long deck. It had a profile similar to a concert electric piano, only lacking keys. Some musicians still used physical instruments, eschewing holographic interfaces as they didn’t ‘feel’ right.

  “Your former owner has moved out to crazy town.” He pet the deck like a cat. “It’s just you and me now. The master’s sword in the hands of the apprentice trying to fill boots too big for him.”

  Joey carried the Necromancer deck to the kitchen and set it on the table before making a cup of orange herbal tea in the ’sem. He took a seat and meditated, clearing his mind of the laziness Division 9 hardware afforded him. Using this machine, he wouldn’t be an automatic ghost. He’d have to work for everything, use his skills, and experience the danger of being detectable. If anything, his new job added a sharper edge to the thrill of ‘black work.’ Getting caught now could severely bite him in the ass. Division 9 didn’t fuck around. If they stopped trusting him, they’d probably ‘send him to Miami.’

  He grinned; the thrill of it sent a shiver down his arms.

  After getting as comfortable as the chair would allow, he grabbed the wire and pulled the plastic guard away from the bladed asterisk-shaped prong. Staring at it triggered a momentary twitch at the memory of Cleopatra’s shocker. He still had to pay her back somehow for all that. Of course, given that Cleopatra turned out to be an eleven-year-old girl named Hayley living on her own after her cop father had been murdered… he couldn’t get past the guilt of what he’d daydreamed about doing to her. Instead of the vicious retribution he had in mind for the ‘woman’ who had tormented him for months, he’d have to come up with something more appropriate for a kid… something that would possibly embarrass her, but nothing bad enough to send her into therapy or piss Kenny off.

  He didn’t have time for a small girl right now.

  The plug slid in behind his ear with a click.

  Joey had a Grant to fuck with.

  ina’s parents had fallen in love with Elizaveta at first sight. Neither dolls nor synthetics existed in significant numbers within ACC territory, so it had proved easier to tell her Emily and Kelly were other orphans her parents had agreed to adopt. Kelly, formerly Proscion/Hugo, appeared to have little trace of the person he’d once been and acted so eerily like an ordinary eight-year-old girl that Nina couldn’t help but share in Joey’s unease. Emily, the doll who had been at Hugo’s side for years, could pass for a live ten-year-old―if not an overly mature one. Unless something highly unusual happened and Elizaveta noticed Emily’s lack of genitals, there would be no need to explain what a doll was. Though, with Nina for a mother, the question would come up at some point anyway, but that could wait a few years.

  She couldn’t begin to fathom what had happened out in Louisiana. How Shabundo Ghede had taken Hugo’s spirit, soul, ghost, or whatever, and stuffed it into a synthetic body defied everything she thought she’d known about the world. Of course, she had seen Vincent’s ghost on the deck of the bayou house. A real ghost, not some electronic fuckery from an insane AI. She had a feeling Emily had that in common with Kelly, though had been a woman prior to whatever fate resulted in her ghost being merged with a doll. Perhaps that explained the oddness Nina sensed in her presence. Without a living body around it, could her ‘exposed’ brain detect what amounted to a specter possessing a machine?

  At least Emily didn’t overact the child angle, ever Hugo’s protector. Or Kelly, as it seemed ‘Hugo’ no longer existed in any sense of being. His, rather her, mind had evidently collapsed. None of Nina’s training and experience catching liars flagged. Kelly didn’t strike her as a man pretending to be a child; she really believed herself to be as she appeared.

  As always, Nina’s father had been distant, looking at her as one might look at the reanimated corpse of someone he’d once loved. His overt hostility had faded however, though he still refused to make eye contact with her.

  Great. Maybe by the time he’s ninety, he’ll actually speak to me.

  Elizaveta was everything they had always wanted from Nina, a super-girly granddaughter. Once she managed to convince the child not to feel guilty for owning more than one outfit, the girl had gone straight for the dresses. Nina had warned Mother not to spoil her, given her background. Overindulgence would trigger a storm of guilty tears. Getting the child to tolerate a ‘normal’ amount of possessions had been a task. Leaving her with the parents at all presented a gamble. Their home in the north could in no way be portrayed as modest. Elizaveta had come from the ‘commoner’ caste, and they often held a high degree of contempt for the wealthy. Fortunately, at six, perhaps such feelings of resentment hadn’t had time to develop yet. She’d either pick up a happy child, or a little ball of anger who didn’t realize the woman she’d chosen to adopt came from wealth.

  Ugh.

  Nina drove in hot, aiming for a narrow gap between levels of the parking deck adjacent to the Police Administrative Center. Her reckless landing made her remember Vincent… and darkened her mood further. She left her unmarked black hovercar behind and stormed across the garage to the elevators. She caught herself soon after the doors closed; anyone seeing her would probably roll their eyes and make some comment about ‘her reputation’ once she’d gotten out of earshot.

  I’m not that woman. Nina stared at her reflection on the chrome doors. Am I?

  The giant chip she’d had on her shoulder had a name, Bertrand, and she’d dealt with it. She closed her eyes and pictured Elizaveta smiling, hands clasped to her chest as she accepted the beautiful white dress was hers to keep. The expression of utter joy exuded from her memory and infused her.

  By the time the elevator stopped, she smiled.

  The lobby of the PAC contained a near-deafening din of activity. Members of every Division, as well as a handful of civilians walked, jogged, and in one case sprinted, across the room. Far left near the Division 0 wing, she caught a glimpse of Kirsten dropping off a small brown-haired boy, probably at the psionic school. He hugged her and ran inside.

  Nina headed to the opposite end of the room where a plain white door emblazoned with a giant numeral ‘9’ afforded access to the Division 9 wing. She nodded at the two junior field operatives who’d drawn guard detail and made her way inside and down a series of blue-tinted corri
dors to the area holding her office. She stopped in only long enough to hang her brown trench coat on a peg. Six steps later, she hooked a left and continued past seven doors to the office of Harold Hardin at the end.

  A small waiting area in front held a few chairs and a table full of datapads. The wall separating it from the office proper consisted mostly of soundproof, bullet-resistant resin. He smiled before she got close enough to trigger the door’s auto-open feature.

  Her boss, a former field operator, gave her a nod of greeting as she walked in. The chestnut brown in his hair fought a stubborn battle against relentless grey that had crept over most of his head. As usual, his frumpy polo shirt and khaki pants made him look more like a high-school history teacher than a spymaster.

  If they didn’t force him to fly a desk, he’d still be out there.

  “Morning.” He leaned back in his chair. “I hope you had a pleasant weekend. How’s the new arrival doing?”

  Nina took a seat in a chair facing his desk. “She’s gone from fearless to terrified to hesitant normal. Still hides in her room a lot, and there’s nightmares… but I think she’ll get over them eventually.”