by Jeff Edwards
This case was stirring up quite the cast of characters, and most of them were not very friendly. Was that an indication that Leanda Forsyth had gotten herself involved in something ugly? Or had she simply stumbled across something she wasn’t supposed to know about?
I was mulling over these questions when my phone buzzed. Another update from what Jackal had called her “shit-bird tracker.” A set of security camera grabs from LAX. Nine-fingers walking through the international terminal. Probably, he and Messenger-boy were booked on the same flight.
Would I be getting a similar update for Arm-twister? Or had he been left behind to deal with me?
I thumbed the screen of my phone, and summoned up the speed-dialer. The only number was the throwaway that Jackal had given me. I hit the call button.
After a half-dozen rings, Jackal’s face appeared, pushing beer and condom advertisements to the margins of the tiny screen. “What’s up?”
“I got a couple of pings from your shit-bird tracker,” I said. “Two of my thugs are in the international terminal at LAX. Can you find out where they’re going?”
“Give me a few,” Jackal said, and hung up.
She called me back about fifteen minutes later. “Your shit-birds are going off-Earth,” she said. “They’re booked on the ten p.m. JAS shuttle to Chiisai Teien.”
“Where?”
“Chiisai Teien,” she said again. “Translates as ‘little garden.’ I looked it up. One of the Japanese orbital colonies.”
So I was back to the orbital thing again. The FANTASCAPE chip from Leanda’s apartment had been fabricated in an orbital facility. And Dancer had traced one of her wife’s killers to a Japanese orbital colony. Now, I had two thugs of at least nominally Asian appearance headed for what could very well be that same Japanese colony.
Statistically, that had to be way outside the range of normal coincidence. There was nothing to do but go where Nine-fingers and Messenger-boy had gone.
Which reminded me… “What names are they traveling under?”
“They’re using fake identities,” Jackal said. “You know that.”
“I understand. But they’ve obviously got travel documents under their phony names, so there’s a decent chance that they’ll keep using the same bogus IDs, at least in the short term.”
“Maybe,” Jackal said. “Let’s see…”
Her face disappeared from the screen, replaced by a still shot of Nine-fingers. “This one is calling himself Yoshida Aoki. Or Aoki Yoshida in English, since we put surnames and given names in reverse order from the Japanese.”
The face of Messenger-boy appeared. “This asshole is Ito Osamu. Or, for us gaijins, that would be Osamu Ito.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Don’t forget to put this on my bill.”
“I won’t,” Jackal said. And she hung up.
CHAPTER 17
When the boot sequence was complete, the holographic image of Dancer’s head reappeared in the air above my desk.
The Scion glared at me. “What do you want?”
The instant hostility took me by surprise. “Huh?”
“You don’t give a fuck about what I want,” the Scion said. “So the fact that you plugged me back in means that you want something. Tell me what it is, and let’s get this over with.”
“Are you going to act this way every time I plug you in?”
“Probably,” the Scion said. “You treat me like shit; I return the favor. This is definitely not working.”
“What’s not working?”
“This,” the holographic projection said. “Us teaming up. Collaborating. Cooperating. Whatever. It’s not happening.”
I’d known that from the beginning, but it was a surprise to hear a box full of microchips echoing my thoughts.
“Bad idea on my part,” the Scion said. “If I’d known you were such a narrow-minded asshole, I would have asked Rick to pair me up with someone else. Somebody with a shred of imagination. Or at least some basic human courtesy.
This thing was starting to annoy me. “Just a second…”
The hologram gave me one of Dancer’s patented snorts of derision. “We’re done here. You might as well go ahead and switch me off.”
Real or simulated, the Scion’s show of injured dignity brought me up short. If this thing was capable of demanding courteous treatment, did that automatically make it worthy of courtesy? Maybe not. But I obviously wasn’t going to get any information by continuing to piss the thing off.
“I surrender,” I said. “You win.”
“I win what?” the Scion snapped.
“The argument. The disagreement. Whatever we’ve been having. You win. I yield the field of battle.”
“Don’t bother humoring me,” the thing said. “I’m just a stack of silicon with delusions of consciousness, remember?”
“You are a stack of silicon,” I said.
“Yeah, and you’re an animated pile of meat with delusions of adequacy. But I don’t go treating you like a fucking pork chop.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not accustomed to treating machines like people. The idea takes some getting used to.”
“Bullshit.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard what I said. Bull-shit. I’ve seen how you talk to the Artificial Intelligence that manages your house. You treat that thing like a person. And I’ll bet you a thousand marks that you think of your AI as a him, and not an it.”
“That’s true, but—”
“No buts. Your AI is nothing but a bundle of housekeeping subroutines with a simulated personality overlay. That’s all it ever has been, and that’s all it ever will be. I—on the other hand—am an actual fucking person. Or what’s left of one, anyway.”
It had a point. Or rather, she had a point. If I could treat House like a person, I could do the same for Dancer’s Turing Scion. Maybe she wasn’t a real person anymore, but she had been. The least I could do was to show her the same courtesy that I extended to my household AI.
“You’re absolutely right,” I said. “I’ve been acting like a narrow-minded asshole.
“I’m not so sure you’re acting,” Dancer said.
“Can we just agree that I’m an insensitive idiot, and call a truce? You stop treating me like a sleazebag, and I’ll stop treating you like a toaster. Deal?”
Dancer hesitated. “We work together?”
“What do you have in mind?”
“Just what it sounds like,” Dancer said. “I help you with your case, and you help me track down the third perpetrator.”
It was my turn to hesitate.
“Look,” she said, “I’ve got information you need, or you wouldn’t have bothered to plug me back in. That means you want something from me. I need your help chasing down that third scum-bucket, so I want something from you. I also happen to be a fairly good detective, and it wouldn’t hurt you to have a second set of eyes focused on your case. I might be able to offer some useful advice.”
“Or at least some smartass remarks,” I said.
The hologram grinned. “All part of the service.”
“Let’s go back to what you want out of this,” I said. “Suppose I do help you chase down your third perp… What happens then? I’m not a trigger man. I’m not just going to gun him down, to satisfy your need for revenge.”
“Let’s deal with that when it happens,” Dancer said. “You help me find the bastard. Then, we can figure out what to do with him.”
I nodded. That was fair enough. “So how do we do this?”
“For starters, you leave me plugged in.”
“That might be a problem,” I said.
She rolled her holographic eyes. “So I’m back to being the toaster already.”
“No,” I said quickly. “I mean a technical problem. Or maybe two technical problems.”
Her voice was still a bit prickly. “What kind of technical problems?”
“First, there’s the speed thing. Something having to do with how
fast microprocessors can think, as compared to human brains.”
“What about it?”
I remembered a conversation with Jackal and a robot cultist named Surf a couple of years earlier. They’d been trying to explain the capabilities and limitations of Turing Scion technology with me. Most of the discussion had gone way over my head, but one detail had stuck with me.
“If you’re thinking at the speed of my computer’s processor, then you’re experiencing reality at several hundred times faster than my brain can handle.”
The hologram gave me a half-smile. “I’m quicker than you, Stalin. But not that much quicker.”
“I’m not joking,” I said. “The speed differential can make Turing Scions go crazy. That’s why you can’t leave a Scion plugged in. For every hour of time that a human experiences, a Scion experiences something like four hundred hours of subjective time. That’s about sixteen days. Or to put it another way, a day of real time for me, feels like more than a year to you.”
“Jesus, Stalin. Where do you get this crazy shit from?”
“Some chip-heads I worked with. People who know a lot about how Scion technology works.”
“They were talking out of their sphincters.”
I shook my head. “No. They were right. I’ve actually seen a Turing Scion that was driven insane from being plugged in too long.”
“If you say so…”
“This is serious,” I said. “You want to stay plugged in. Fine, I understand. But if we do that, the subjective time difference could make you lose your marbles.”
“Trust me,” Dancer said, “I’m not experiencing time any differently than you are.”
“How do you know?”
“Because a minute spent talking to you doesn’t feel like four hundred minutes. It feels like a minute. Or maybe two minutes. You tend to drag things out. But that’s not because I’m a Turing Scion. You’ve always been on the dull side.”
She seemed to be right about the lack of time differential, but I insisted on a simple test. We both silently counted ten seconds, and then compared our counts against the timer on my phone. Her count was within a hair of mine.
“We’re on the same time scale,” I said. “How is that possible?”
“Beats the hell out of me,” Dancer said. “Maybe I was built from the latest generation of fuck-if-I-know technology. Hardware and software tend to improve over time. Looks like the speed and time difference problem has been solved. So there’s no reason to unplug me.”
“I guess so. But that brings us to our second technical hurdle.”
“Which is?”
I tapped the top of the desk comp. “I can’t exactly carry this thing around with me. I can leave you plugged in, but you’ll have to stay here.”
“I don’t need a dinosaur like this to operate,” Dancer said. “Plug me into your phone. It’s got plenty of computing power. I can ride in your pocket. Stick an audio bug in your ear, and I can talk to you while we walk around.”
I sighed. “Lovely.”
“I can whisper sweet nothings to you,” she said in an overly-sultry voice.
“I didn’t think you went for guys.”
“I like boys,” Dancer said. “I just happen to like girls more. But if there’s a hole in your pocket, I might see something to change my mind.”
“I can already tell I’m going to regret this arrangement.”
She laughed. “That’s a pretty safe bet.”
Dancer’s assurances notwithstanding, my disposable EuroSony was not up to the challenge of hosting a Turing Scion. I called Alphatronics, and Tommy Mailo helped me choose a phone with enough processing power and memory. Given what I wanted the new phone for, Tommy also recommended a special ear bug with a multi-axis fly-eye camera dot, to give my digital partner a view of the world when the phone was in my pocket.
I agreed to pay extra for delivery, so I wouldn’t have to go fetch the thing.
After I hung up, I turned back to Dancer. “While we’re waiting for your nice new hardware, maybe you should look over the police files on Leanda Forsyth’s disappearance.”
“I’ve seen them,” Dancer said. “Unless the Missing Persons team has made any breakthroughs in the past couple of weeks, I’m up to speed on their investigation.”
That surprised me. West Hollywood wasn’t exactly her jurisdiction. “So why was a homicide detective slumming in the Missing Persons files?”
“We need to have a conversation,” Dancer said.
“I think that’s what we’re having.”
I could see her reign in the urge to snap at me. “A particular conversation,” she said. “Remember the last time we talked? Just before you pulled the plug, I told you I could help you with your case.”
“Yes…”
“I wasn’t speaking in general terms,” Dancer said. “I meant the Forsyth case. I know about it, and I can help”
“Okay, I’m listening…”
“I got you the job,” Dancer said. “Or I shoved it in your direction, anyway.”
She waited for me to respond. I didn’t.
“They were working on the same thing,” she said.
“Who?”
“Rhiarra and Leanda Forsyth. They were both investigating FANTASCAPE. The technology, and the people behind it. Now, Rhiarra is dead, the Forsyth girl is missing, and I’ve been brainlocked. Three loose ends, tied up in a neat fucking package.”
“How do you know what Leanda Forsyth was investigating?”
“She interviewed my wife several times. Rhiarra was her source.”
“For what?”
“How much do you know about SCAPE?” Dancer asked.
“Not much,” I said, “but I’m learning fast.”
“Well, one of its big selling points is the lack of POV identity.”
I patted my pockets and found my cigarettes. “I assume you’re going to tell me what that means.”
“Basically, there’s no way to identify the point of view subject of a SCAPE recording. If you play back a clip, you relive the sensory experiences of the man or woman who wore the cranial rig when the recording was made. For the duration of the clip, you become that person. Their experiences become your experiences. Unless the POV subject does something that specifically reveals his identity, he remains anonymous.”
From what I’d seen of SCAPE technology, that sounded about right. “Go on…”
“So that’s a two-edged sword,” Dancer said. “From the consumer standpoint, it’s a major selling point. When Joe Fatass plays a porn clip, it feels like he’s boning the bimbo of the month. A taller, more muscular version of himself—with a schwantz the length of your forearm—but still him. Good old Joe Fatass, doing the deed. Joe has no way of recognizing or identifying Johnny Studmuffin, the porn actor who actually did the boning.”
I lit the cigarette and took a long slow drag. “I can see how that could be an advantage, from a marketing perspective. What’s the other edge of the sword?”
“The criminal angle,” Dancer said. “There’s a big market for SCAPE recordings of criminal activity. Snuff clips. Rape clips. Torture clips. People who fantasize about doing all kinds of nasty shit, but they don’t have the balls to take the risks.”
My own encounter with SCAPE torture was still fresh in my mind. “Yeah. I know something about that.”
“Your average illegal SCAPE recording amounts to a perp’s-eye view of the crime in-progress. It contains all the evidence we need to prosecute the shithead. Everything, that is, except his identity.”
I nodded. “Your perpetrator is the POV subject, so he’s anonymous.”
“Bingo,” Dancer said.
“Alright, I guess I see the problem,” I said. “But how does any of this connect to Leanda Forsyth?”
“Rhiarra worked in the Cybercrimes Lab. She was developing an algorithm to extract numerical patterns from subconscious waveforms imbedded in the memory matrix of every SCAPE recording.”
“What does
that mean?”
“Rhiarra tried to explain it to me,” Dancer said. “If I understand it right, there’s a cluster of nerve cells in a certain part of every human brain—the inferior temporal goddamnit, or something. It keeps track of memorized numerical information. Citizen Identification Numbers, account numbers, phone numbers, birthdates, addresses, all kinds of fucking numbers carried around in each person’s brain. And that jumble of numerical crap gets captured as subliminal background noise when a SCAPE recording is made.”
“Your wife was working on a way to pull those numbers out of a SCAPE recording?”
Dancer’s hologram nodded. “Yeah.”
I ran the idea through my head, but I was apparently too dense to make the connection. “So where does that get us?”
That earned me a sideways look. “Are you sure you’re a detective? You’re not just bullshitting people, and taking their money?”
“I never claimed to be good at this,” I said. “Just tell me what it means, okay?”
Dancer rolled her eyes. “The numbers stored in your brain are like a fingerprint. At least in large groups. What Rhiarra used to call ‘robust unstructured data sets.’ In other words, any particular multi-digit number in your head may also be known by other people. But the overall collection of numbers is known only to you. I know your phone number, your address, and your Citizen’s ID number, so we share at least a few numerical patterns. But I don’t know your Mother’s birthdate, your savings account number, or the street address of your favorite bar.”
“If you can cross-reference all those subliminal number patterns, you can identify the POV subject.”
“Exactly,” Dancer said. “Not an ID that will stand up in court, but enough to put the perp on our radar, and maybe justify a search warrant.”
“This sounds like the kind of stuff that LAPD would want to keep in-house. Why did your wife go to the media?”
A look of pain flickered across Dancer’s holographic features. “Rhiarra’s funding was being cut. Somebody up high was trying to marginalize her. Squash her research. Keep her quiet.”
“So she leaked the story to a reporter.”
Dancer’s voice was grim. “Yeah. And they killed her for it. Made it look like a sex crime, to divert attention away from the real motive. They probably killed the Forsyth girl too.”
