The Harmony Paradox (Virtual Immortality Book 2)

by Matthew S. Cox

  Miyazaki Prefecture, ruled by Kurotai Electronics and by extension, his father, leaned more toward feudalism than not. Masaru regarded it all as an elaborate and pointless costume drama. Society could get along just fine without everyone acting ridiculous.

  Of course, the average citizen seemed to adore it. Especially given Kurotai’s more relaxed approach than, say, Okinawa, where a truly awful performance review at work could result in an order of seppuku. Ritual suicide did remain in Kurotai, but it had only been invoked twice. Once for an engineer whose willful negligence caused an accident that killed thirteen people, and once for an auditor who’d embezzled ninety million credits.

  Noriko led the way west, no doubt following a compass in her armored helmet. The yellow transparent visor over her face glinted from a projected HUD, which still worked despite the crack. She panned her rifle from side to side, pointing it wherever she looked.

  For as far as he could see in any direction, continuous ruin stretched. His mind teased him with doomsday fantasies, as though the entire world smoldered. The crunch and scuff of their footsteps echoed when they entered a concrete canyon where a section of taller buildings remained standing. Business offices or apartments, he couldn’t tell.

  “Why haven’t they rebuilt this place?” asked Noriko, breaking their two-hour silence.

  Masaru shrugged, not that she could see him behind her. “Superstition. My”―he almost said father―”theory is that people spend too much time worrying about what may or may not exist, and not enough time worrying about the world in which they live.”

  “Yeah.” She smiled over her shoulder at him. “I know what you mean. At least old man Kurotai’s a little more relaxed than some. Isn’t it silly to watch him dress up like a samurai and stand in front of a field of hover tanks?”

  His father thought the old ways represented pride in Japan, but he did not believe it a paradigm without flaw. Many aspects of ancient Japan struck him as barbaric, and not worthy of recreation. At the image of him prancing about on a horse in front of a battalion of hover tanks with plasma cannons, he couldn’t help but chuckle. “I can see that being humorous.”

  She walked backward for a few steps, giving him a curious stare. “What do you think about all of it?”

  “I think it wasteful. Pageantry over practicality. We should look forward, not backward.”

  “You said you spent time in the west?” She spun fast at a creak of metal, but nothing emerged from where she aimed.

  “Two years, while attending school. There are many unpleasant things about their city, but it makes more sense than this.”

  Her laugh bounced among the walls, repeating from windows and cracks like an army of tiny gremlins. “Never expected you’d prefer the west. I thought you samurai types ate all this costume stuff right up.”

  “I’m not really a samurai.” He shifted the ration box to one hand to stretch and rest his fingers.

  “But you’re carrying a katana… if you’re not a samurai, that’ll get you killed in some places.”

  Masaru smiled. “Then I shall not go to those places.”

  “Who are you, Moto Masaru?” She grinned over her shoulder at him. “A man from Japan, in a western suit and a katana at his side.”

  He hesitated, momentarily taken by watching her walk. In his life thus far, he’d spent much time admiring the feminine form from behind, from the side, from above, any way possible. I am not gazing upon her body; I am gazing upon her. Would she tolerate knowing who he was, or would her entire demeanor change? She might close herself off and project the subservience he so loathed, or react with contempt.

  “I’m a negotiator for Kurotai Corporation.”

  Noriko stepped over a warped streetlamp post and turned to face him. “You said that already. I meant what makes you tick inside, not what you do for a job.”

  He opened his mouth, but before his brain could come up with a decent answer, three men emerged from a narrow channel between a pair of six-story rubble piles. Their clothes looked as though they’d spent the past few months sleeping in them, but otherwise had the style of modern middle class from a more western-leaning area. The figure in the center had a JSDF helmet on, and carried a rifle identical to the one in Noriko’s hands. Bloodstains and rips decorated his Manglers Gee-ball t-shirt. The other two carried combat rifles as well, though far less boxy than the JSDF weapon with all its onboard electronics.

  All three had a cocky swagger suggesting their intentions fell somewhere between harassing outsiders or murder-looting.

  Noriko’s arms and rifle blurred, shifting from relaxed to putting three rounds into the chest of the man in the JSDF helmet in an instant.

  Speedware dragged everything into slow motion. Masaru heaved the box of rations upward and ducked around it as azure muzzle flare bloomed from the rifles pointing toward him. He leaned to the right and down, allowing bullets to spin by without touching him. Three red-tipped projectiles moved past him from behind, heading for the thug on the left.

  Masaru sprinted forward, closing the twenty-ish meters in the time it took Noriko’s bullets to strike the man on the right. He darted in an outward curve that kept him inches from a continuous stream of spiraling slugs coming from the man he intended to kill. When he reached his target, he drew the Nano katana in an upward slash that severed the man’s left forearm before the blade continued into his torso and emerged from the top of his head. An expression of fear only began to form on the punk’s face as Masaru completed his swing and brought the katana across in a beheading stroke.

  Two halves of head tumbled apart. The body collapsed over backward, split from stomach to neck. He pivoted to engage the third man, but held back at the sight of gore streaming out from the man’s back. Noriko’s shots made small holes in the front, but left fist-sized hollows in their wake. With no visible threats remaining, he disengaged his neural boosters.

  Time returned to normal.

  The box of rations hit the ground with a thump.

  “Damn,” muttered Noriko. She slumped to one knee.

  “You’re hit?” Masaru rushed to her side and stooped over her.

  She put a hand over her chest, gasping. “Yeah. It didn’t penetrate, just knocked the wind out of me.”

  Masaru pulled her gloved hand away from her breast, exposing a pair of dark scuffmarks on the beige armor.

  Noriko coughed. “I’m okay.”

  “You also had the feeling they didn’t wish to talk?” He smiled.

  “The helmet.” She pointed her rifle at the man in the Manglers shirt. “I remember that guy from the crash site. That helmet belonged to someone I knew.”

  Masaru stood, walked to the man, and picked up the helmet. He brought it over and offered it to her. “Then you should not leave it in this place as I have left my friend.”

  She looked down, but accepted the helmet. “I’m sorry about your friend.”

  “I intend to return for him. It is my hope that they see little value in his body.”

  Noriko clipped the helmet onto the left side of her belt. “They dragged my team away, but I think they wanted gear. These people aren’t like… cannibals or anything.”

  He put a hand on her shoulder. “Let us continue. Are you okay to walk?”

  “Yeah.” She ceased slouching and glanced at the four pieces of head on the road. “Is that usually how you negotiate?”

  Masaru leaned back, laughing. “Only when necessary.”

  ne by one, the net creepers came back. Nina had hoped for something useful, but only two of the 473 individuals she’d targeted resulted in hits. Both had lost their lives within the past month, one a week ago, the other sixteen days. The more recent victim died after attempting to obtain control of a Division 1 officer’s sidearm during a routine traffic stop. In the older case, a twenty-nine-year-old woman, an executive assistant, had become enraged at the executive she worked with and beat her to death with a ‘corporate excellence award’ made out of a huge block of fake cr
ystal. According to the Division 2 report, she resumed her duties until the Harmony wore off. Once the high faded, the woman evidently became overwhelmed with guilt and defenestrated herself from the eighty-eighth floor of the Courtesy West tower. Witness statements explained the two women had been friends since high school.

  Nina tapped a finger on the desk, thinking. The guy who’d been shot dead at a traffic stop worked for Grey Star, driving a delivery truck into bad parts of town where the bots refused to fly. Courtesy West provided hospitality services that mostly took the form of corporate cafeterias and janitorial services.

  Hmm. Neither one of them had any possible intelligence value to the ACC. Nina closed her eyes and sighed out her nose. Did the drug just do that, or were they targeted for disposal?

  Two out of 473 searches, and neither one on Tao, the supposedly more dangerous form.

  Her sniffers picked up traces of intermittent data connections headed to Mexico. While various treaties attempted to ensure the GlobeNet remained ‘free and open,’ both the UCF and the ACC took great pains to ensure they could tell what everyone did at any one time. The ACC had a far greater segment of the population too poor to bother with cyberspace, and in a society built on the premise of doing everything as cheaply as possible, corners got cut.

  Perhaps the ACC didn’t understand that any time data left the UCF, it got logged. She’d always assumed they did something similar, though development of software and hardware cost time and money. Maybe they skipped it. She brought up a list of the case detectives for each investigation involving Tao or Harmony and sorted by the number of cases each one worked. A Detective Darren Weber appeared to have the most experience with this issue.

  Wonder if he can offer anything useful.

  She stood and headed out at a brisk walk, snagging her coat from the peg by the door on her way out. Her office lights dimmed on their own once they detected the room empty. A few thoughts spared to procedure caused her headware to append notes to the case file, logging her suspicions that the ACC had somehow obtained nanobots designed for brain surgery, and repurposed them to turn drug users into unwitting audio/video recorders… and somehow triggered fatal anti-authority rage in a small number of individuals.

  Nina stepped into the elevator, turned with a swirl of her coat, and poked the button for the roof. She shook her head and let off a dark chuckle. A chem named Harmony causes discord.

  Thirty-two minutes and a chicken burrito later, Nina landed at the Regional Tech Center and made her way into the Investigative wing. Hayley Roth’s horrible sobs echoed in her memory, called back by the drab hospital-green corridor. The last time she’d been here, they’d discovered her father, whom she’d assumed a neglectful parent, had been dead for almost a year. She hadn’t checked up on the kid since right after making sure the favor she’d called in had gone through. One of Joey’s friends had agreed to take her in, and with a little nudge from Nina, the court fast-tracked the adoption. It didn’t surprise her; the hard part of the city’s orphan problem came in finding parents. A case that could be opened, processed, and closed in five minutes padded some social worker’s stats. Some counselor likely saw her as an easy way to hit quota.

  She stopped at the main desk at the front of the Investigative division, and nodded at a young woman in a white uniform shirt. She couldn’t have been twenty yet, and her rich brown skin made Nina feel conspicuously pale.

  “Can I help you?” The Division 2 junior tech leaned up, staring at Nina’s chest, evidently hunting for a nameplate that didn’t exist.

  “Lieutenant Nina Duchenne, Division 9.” She held up her physical ID. “I’d like to speak with Detective Weber… Darren.”

  Rather than the usual ‘oh shit’ reaction to Division 9, the woman’s eyes brimmed with eagerness. “Oh, wow. What’s got Nine sniffing on Darren?”

  Nina smiled. “It’s not an internal affairs issue at all. Our cases have a lot of crossover and I’m looking for a new set of eyes.”

  “Oh, sure.” She pointed to the left. “That way, seventh door on the right.”

  “Thanks.”

  Nina headed down the corridor to the indicated door, and knocked.

  “It’s open,” said a man from inside.

  She waved at the sensor, and a slab of hospital-green slid right, into the wall. A thirty-something man with dark skin and a short, neat afro looked up from his desk and gestured at a single facing chair. He did the white shirt, red tie, and black pants thing, but it looked okay on him. A small Class 3 pistol on an under-the-arm rig sat in a wad on the corner of his desk. As soon as he got a good look at her, his eyebrows climbed with an ‘oh hellooo there sweetie’ expression.

  Nina entered and sat. “Detective Weber, I understand you’ve worked more cases involving the chems Harmony and Tao than anyone else.”

  “I suppose.” He shrugged. “Normally a chem like that we wouldn’t pay much attention to. Like Flowerbasket, mostly harmless.”

  “Mostly… except for the part where people wind up dead.” She gave him an unimpressed half-frown.

  “Yeah, well, that’s why we started looking into it. What’s your interest?” His prurient affect faded to a more businesslike demeanor. “You with the NewsNet? LRI?”

  She held up her ID. “I pulled a case involving this crap too, wanted to pick your brain.”

  “Shit. What happened to get Nine interested in street drugs, and why are they getting a doll involved? Shouldn’t you be off somewhere killing executives we can’t charge?”

  “Doll…” She self-consciously shifted her weight.

  “Oh, no offense.” He smiled. “It’s right there on your ID if anyone cared to notice. The C3 at the end of your badge number means Class 3.”

  Fortunately, synthetic skin only blushed when she wanted it to. “Oh. Right.” She let the assassination jab go. “We’re not trying to take the investigation off your hands, but there’s a complication that got our attention. What can you tell me about this shit?”

  He gestured at his holo-panel. Unlike the Division 9 ones, his didn’t have the dual emitter with the opaque backing. In her vision, the reverse screen righted itself, courtesy of her image processor, and she glanced over the file of a man who appeared to be a small-time chem dealer.

  “It’s all in the reports. Users experience a sense of overwhelming calm. An ‘everything’s gonna be okay’ feeling that sometimes becomes a heightened sense of self or makes them feel immortal. Most of the time it’s a mild euphoric high, not even as strong as Flowerbasket. Just puts the user in a good mood.”

  “But there’s quite a few cases of spontaneous violence…” She glanced at her notes in a virtual holo-panel. “All within the past three months.”

  “Yeah, that jibes with what I’ve been seeing too. Weird thing is, you’d think it would be the people on Tao since the shit’s impure. I can’t honestly even figure out why Tao exists.”

  “Harmony is just Placinil re-sold without a prescription… plus a little tweak.” Nina turned her hand palm up, fingers splayed. “Isn’t Tao a cheaper but cruder alternative?”

  Detective Weber shook his head. “Initially. Laughlin-Reed Innovation manufactures Placinil, which I’m sure you know is the source of Harmony. Without insurance, a single dose costs about two-hundred credits. A chem head can score a dose of Tao for about twenty. Now here’s the interesting part… Someone realized that if they added a drop or two of synthetic cannabis, Placinil went from being a strong anti-anxiety medication to providing an extremely long duration ‘high.’ What it lacked in kick, it made up for in persistence. People began scamming prescriptions for Placinil, doctoring it up and re-selling it as Harmony.”

  “So what’s the appeal of Harmony over Tao aside from being pure?”

  “Harmony’s all over the place because it’s only a little more expensive per dose than Tao, and people trust it more since it wasn’t made in someone’s bathtub. Most I’ve seen someone selling it for is forty creds. This stuff isn’t really taki
ng off with the hardcore dosers. H gets in with the middle ground people, the ones working themselves to death. People who want an escape but who aren’t looking to throw their entire life in a shitbasket. Forty credits for six or so hours of not worrying about a damn thing seems like a no-brainer.”

  “I’m surprised the insurance companies aren’t hiring mercenaries.” Nina chuckled. “Placinil’s 200 a dose, but Harmony forty, and with more kick?”

  Detective Weber shrugged. “I don’t think they care. The money is still moving around. In order for someone to sell Harmony, they already had to buy Placinil. LRI got their money.”

  “Does anything you’ve found line up with the recent uptick in violence? Either something went wrong, or someone’s got a sick sense of humor. They call it ‘Tao’ or ‘Harmony,’ but it’s doing the exact opposite.”

  “Perhaps, or maybe they refer to duality – Yin and Yang, light and dark?”

  Nina gazed into a strip of white on her leg where the gloss black armor caught the overhead lights. The form of the aluminum housing, slats, and LED light tube appeared in perfect miniature detail, warped with the curve of her thigh like a surrealist artwork. “That would make more sense if the users turning violent happened with Tao… but so far they all seem to be Harmony, which should be safer.”

  “True. To answer your other question, Laughlin-Reed did report an entire lot of Placinil stolen… not surprising given the street popularity of Harmony. We haven’t yet determined who took it, but I’m inclined to suspect one of the local gangs. I’ve been sniffing around a few sources, but we haven’t collected enough evidence to push the inquest in front of a judge… of course, you don’t have that problem.” He smiled.

  “I’ve got policy to follow just like you.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, but it’s a lot easier for you to convince your superior that a corpse is guilty than me to fight my way past half a dozen lawyers with a case intact enough to convince a judge.”