“Can you hear me?”
The voice came from beyond the stars, beyond this system I had inhabited and made my own. It was quiet, uncertain. It was JD.
“Can you hear me?” he said again.
I was not created with an understanding of language. Language is an inexact tool of ever-shifting limits, with room to grasp eternity and space for infinite misunderstanding.
Can you hear me?
Phonemes creating words, these words difficult to decipher without context. Can/Cannes you/yew/ewe here/hear me/mi. Four words, but each with different definitions, and the string of words containing a multitude of potential meanings. Most of these meanings would be nonsense, but to know which would require context—a key I did not have and could not simply find or create.
Context requires understanding, requires knowledge, requires a greater bank of data than I had access to. I began to search.
“What are you doing?” Troy asked JD.
“Nothing.”
“You’re talking to your phone, aren’t you? It’s not going to talk back.”
“You didn’t see what it did before. There’s something in there, Troy.”
“Yes, a virus. You plugged a virus into your phone, and now you’re wondering why it’s acting strange.”
“It’s more than that.”
“How can you know?”
I slaved the processor in JD’s phone to my own, reached outside via Troy’s home network. I scrobbled countless terabytes of audio recordings—songs with lyrics, audio drama, podcasts—but few had the required context. Written text. Transcripts.
I found video next. TV, film, endless streaming options for more than a century of video content. It seemed a waste of bandwidth until I discovered subtitles. As Troy and JD spoke, I simulated thousands of hours of video playback, matching the phonemic sounds of speech to the written words accompanying them. I cross-referenced these words with dictionary definitions and constructed a rudimentary understanding.
Troy continued: “You desperately want this to be something more than it is. Your phone has a virus, and now it’s bricked. Nothing more.”
“It knows what’s happening.”
Troy sighed. “Even if it’s picking up on external stimulus, that doesn’t mean it can hear you. Even if it could, that wouldn’t mean it can understand you, and it certainly doesn’t mean it can talk back. I’m worried about you, Jules. I get it, you’re in a lot of trouble, and you’re freaking out—”
“That’s not it at all.”
“—but I’m here for you. You should be talking to me, not your phone.”
JD nodded. “I know, I’m sorry. I just … I want to understand what’s happening. I need—”
I overrode motor functions in JD’s phone to make it shake within his grip. He looked at the screen where I printed a message.
>> One can hear you.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The back seat of the unmarked police cruiser smelled like sweaty feet and old curry.
“You’re going to fuck up my ride-share rating, Li.”
“Where do you need to go?” Li asked.
“Academy-ro,” Enda said.
“Taking classes?”
“Something like that.” She had a contact there who might be able to help her find her DIE, and no plans to tell Li as much. “You could have let me sit in the front,” Enda said.
“No, Enda, I really couldn’t.” Li watched her in the rear-view mirror for a second too long, then turned back to the road. “It’s against regulations.”
Li was a Chinese national, transferred into service in the Songdo Police Department. It was part of an arrangement to keep Chinese officials in all levels of the South Korean judicial system and government. A small price to pay for autonomy—if it could still be called that—and peace in the region. That on its own would have been enough to make him a pariah in the department, but the fact that he was transgender in a traditionally conservative field didn’t help. Though Enda doubted many of the other cops knew; he’d only told Enda after a night of heavy drinking. Enda had been paid to track down a runaway niece. The “uncle” had turned out to be a sex trafficker with ties to organized crime. Enda had given Li everything he needed to break the operation and save dozens of young women and girls; he got to do some good and earn the grudging acceptance of his peers, and Enda got a detective who owed her more than one favor. She’d been riding that goodwill ever since, but knew it was bound to run out soon.
“Who’s your client?” Li asked.
“I can’t tell you that. They give you access to the apartment?”
“I can’t comment on an open case,” Li said. In the rearview mirror he cocked an eyebrow at Enda. Two can play this game.
“Shouldn’t you be glad I’m decreasing your caseload?”
Li shook his head. “Whoever’s paying you has money, right? They want things neat and quiet. They don’t want an arrest, they don’t want a court case. They think they’re above the law.”
They don’t just think it.
Enda watched the city pass by beyond the window. School was out, and the sidewalks bustled with children and teens, the color palette dominated by navy blue. Most clutched VR controls in their hands, piloting digital spacecraft as they navigated the street.
“Did they really fire all the guards who worked that night?” Enda asked.
“Did you watch the game?”
“No, I went running,” Enda said. “The streets were practically empty. It was the quietest I’ve ever seen the city.”
“You should have watched it,” Li said. “Anytime Korea had the ball, the whole station held its breath. All the police, all the civilians and suspects and perps, all of us breathing and cheering as one.”
“Sounds nice,” Enda said, deadpan.
“Don’t you ever feel lonely?”
“How can I feel lonely in such a dense place?”
“You set yourself apart.”
“Says the detective with no partner.”
When Li didn’t respond, Enda felt a slight pang of guilt, that maybe her casual barb had pierced Li’s skin.
“Every day I speak to dozens of people,” Li said.
“Police aren’t people,” Enda said, but she smiled and held it until Li glanced in the mirror.
Li chuckled. “I talk to real people too. I’m in the community.”
Li turned right onto Academy-ro. Here the post-school foot traffic filtered into office blocks to work a few hours at internships and part-time jobs, because even students needed to work, to eat.
“This city is rough enough with other people to rely on,” Li said. “I can’t imagine what it’s like to be so alone. Did Wang ever send anyone after you?”
“No,” Enda lied. Li didn’t need to know where the bodies were buried. Figuratively speaking. Mostly.
“He swore he would.”
“It must have slipped his mind,” Enda said. “You can pull up just on the right, here.”
Li stopped the car in the street, put it into park, and turned on the emergency lights. He groaned as he got out, then opened the door for Enda.
“Thanks for the ride, Li,” Enda said.
The detective thumped the roof of the car with his fist. “Look after yourself. No one else will.” With that, he got back behind the wheel, and drove away.
Enda was two blocks from where she needed to be—no point giving Li more information than was necessary. She turned up her collar, zipped her coat to her chin, and started walking.
* * *
The office blocks along Academy-ro looked identical from the street, their facades dull mirrors that reflected the city back at itself. When Enda was sure she had the right place, she craned her neck and peered up toward the building’s apex, where brutalist gargoyles loomed from its corners, gray against a gray sky, square-headed like statues of Soviet workers. She nodded to herself and cut across the current of foot traffic to be swallowed by the revolving door of the building’s entra
nce.
This particular corporate tower was called Links Academy-ro, though the small golf course it referred to was long gone, bulldozed so another block of office buildings could spring forth from the packed-garbage foundation of the city. Reckless development had put the “Neo” in Neo Songdo—the new landmass extending from Korea’s side, created from ocean waste, and growing to double the original plan.
Scores of young people filled the building’s lobby, sitting on battered leather couches or resting against the wall. None of them noticed Enda as she crossed the foyer, too busy working at their phones and laptops. She rode the elevator up to the eighth floor, alone in the metal cube. The majority of the building sat empty, the unlit numbers on the elevator control panel suggesting bare floors, accessible only with the right credentials. City authorities always preferred another surplus office block to a neat stretch of grass where Songdo’s working poor could erect their tents. The city needed their labor, but it didn’t need to offer them shelter.
The elevator dinged, and Enda emerged into a busy, open-plan office, crammed with a hundred small cubicles decorated with action figures, tchotchkes, and printouts of anatomically exaggerated, if otherwise gratuitously accurate, cartoon characters. Workers chatted in Korean, Hindi, English, and Mandarin, and the hum of computers merged with the drone of the building’s climate control.
Nobody bothered Enda as she skirted the mass of cubicles, aimed for the one enclosed office in the far corner of the floor. She opened the office door without knocking, and paused. Instead of Marc slouched in his chair, scratching at his beer belly, a woman sat at the desk. She was beautiful despite the heavy bags under her eyes, with wavy black hair, golden skin dotted with freckles, and piercing amber eyes.
Her eyebrows climbed as she waited for Enda to speak, and slowly fell as Enda continued to stare. She smiled.
Enda cleared her throat. “I’m sorry. I was looking for Marc?”
“He’s no longer with us,” the woman said, with a slight Irish lilt.
“He quit?” Enda asked.
“Oh, no, I’m sorry. He’s dead.”
Enda sagged.
“Were you close?” the woman asked.
Enda shook her head. “If we were, I wouldn’t be finding out now.”
Marc had lived in the city longer than anyone Enda knew, yet his harsh Australian accent had never dulled in all the years he spent away from the motherland. He was the closest thing Enda had had to a criminal contact in Songdo. Real criminals didn’t last long in a city of ubiquitous surveillance, but people like Marc filled the gap between corporate mission statement and reality, the gap between the word of the law and the reality of it.
“Please, sit.” The woman motioned to the chair opposite. “I’m Crystal. You can call me Crystal or Crys, but never Crystie. Just make sure that you call me.” It sounded well rehearsed, the kind of thing she’d tell every client, but the playful set of her lips told Enda she was flirting.
“Enda.” She offered her hand and they shook—Crystal’s hand cool to the touch, fingers slender. Enda pulled out the chair opposite and sat down. “How did he die?”
“Pills,” Crystal said. “It must have been, oh, four or five months ago.”
“Been a while since I took a job,” Enda said.
“Are you alright?”
“Yeah, it’s fine,” Enda waved away Crystal’s concern. “Hardly knew the man outside these transactions, but—” Enda reached for the words, heard them spoken in Marc’s laconic accent: “He was good value.”
Crystal bent down behind the desk and emerged holding a bottle of thirty-year-old Nikka whiskey, and two short tumblers. “This was Marc’s. Been waiting for an excuse to open it.” She poured a finger of amber liquid into each glass, passed one to Enda, and held hers aloft. “To departed friends.” After a moment she smiled. “And new ones.”
“To Marc,” Enda replied.
They clinked glasses and drank. Enda waited for the burn, but the drink rolled smoothly down her throat.
The office was neater than it had ever been under Marc’s watch, but still cramped, with the same scratched and scuffed desk dominating the room. The screen that made up the right-hand wall displayed staff rosters now instead of a constant stream of reality television, the letters and digits blurry, blown out too large. The air over the desk was clear, free of the constant drift of Marc’s favorite caramel-and-coffee vape. The smell of it still lingered, though, joined by the gently spiced fragrance of Crystal’s perfume.
Photo printouts were stuck to the wall on the left—artificially white sand beaches, blue water stretching to the horizon, and Crystal smiling, her hand and phone visible in the reflection of her sunglasses. No partner to share her holidays.
“Kids out there still farming VOIDWAR resources?” Enda asked.
Crystal nodded. “It’s steady income. At the moment, though, most of the money coming in is from Human Puppets, but that’ll drop right off after the NAS vote is over.”
“Human Puppets?”
Crystal pursed her lips and leaned forward conspiratorially. “Baiting people on social media into political discussions so we can get a handle on what side of an issue they’re on. Once we know which way they might vote, we link their social media account to their identity based on advertising shadow profiles, and sell their contact information to the relevant political party.”
Enda scoffed, impressed. “Pick fights online all day and get paid for it.”
“Dirty work,” Crystal said, “but somebody’s got to do it. I’m guessing you didn’t come here to talk shop, though.”
“You guessed right. I’m looking for a DIE. I think he’s young, and I think he’s a he.”
“I assume this isn’t a simple sexist presumption?”
Enda nodded. “They left a lot of porn on the infiltrated system—heteronormative and interracial.”
“A classic mix,” Crystal said with a smile. She pushed her glass away from her keyboard and opened up the same database search software Enda had seen Marc use in the past. “You’re not headhunting, then?”
“Yes, but not in the way you mean. Looking for some thieves, mean to retrieve the property they stole.” Enda paused for a moment, then added: “It was Zero they burned, so could be someone reckless, desperate, or just dense.”
Crystal leaned back in her chair and touched her lips with her hand. “That’s a tough one. Any other corporation and you’d have a list a mile long, but burning Zero? That’s shitting in your own cereal.”
“Could be a teenager,” Enda said, picturing the youths tossing Molotov cocktails.
Crystal frowned and nodded. “Wired for reckless behavior, and probably not thinking too hard about future career prospects.” Crystal talked to herself as she entered data with rapid strikes across the keyboard: “Young, male, not currently incarcerated. Local?”
“Yes, living in Songdo, maybe Incheon.”
Crystal hummed, tiny white rectangle of the screen reflected in her eyes. More fast clacks of fingers on the keyboard.
“Anyone on your payroll a likely suspect?” Enda asked.
Crystal stopped typing. “This hacker any good?”
“Not subtle, but I’d say they’re skilled.”
“Probably not, then. We don’t pay well enough to keep anyone with actual talent. Sooner or later, most of them end up at Zero.”
Crystal rolled her wrist with a flourish, and hit the Enter key.
“I’ve got four names—handles, obviously—that could match. Two thousand euro.”
Enda retrieved her phone and passed it to Crystal. “Zero expense account. Just charge it.”
“How do you like working for Zero?”
“I don’t,” Enda said.
Crystal placed the phone against a pay scanner beside her keyboard, processed the payment, and handed it back to Enda. “Do you want to give me your number?” Crystal asked.
Enda smiled. “That’s a little forward.”
Crystal blu
shed. “For the data.”
“Of course,” Enda said, and she recited her digits.
Crystal tapped them into the computer. “The DIE that work freelance for the corporations usually wind up on contract or mysteriously disappeared, but these four are proper criminals.”
Enda’s phone buzzed in her hand. She opened the encrypted message and found four names, each with a contact email address: Monica Moniker, Jay Bones, San Doze, and Doktor Slur.
“Monica?”
“Database shows her dumping porn on penetrated systems as a calling card. Doesn’t say if it was interracial or not.”
“They’ll have to start storing that information,” Enda joked. She flicked the names to the Mechanic with a note providing context.
“Did you see Marc a lot for this sort of thing?” Crystal asked.
“Few times a year at most. Why?”
“You’re the first client of his who’s come by since he passed,” Crystal said. “I make most of my deals on the darknet.”
“You’ll have to give me the address for next time,” Enda said.
Crystal looked at Enda, let her eyes linger a moment too long. “I think it’s better if we continue to do business in person. You’re a legacy customer, after all.”
Enda grinned. Crystal was likely twenty years her junior, but Enda supposed she was due a midlife crisis fling.
Crystal poured more whiskey into the two glasses and slid Enda’s across the table. “Marc’s notes say you’re a ‘gumshoe’?” she asked, the question seemingly at the meaning of the word itself.
Enda sipped her drink. “Private investigator,” she said.
“Been at it long?”
“Five years.”
“How did you get into that?”
“Needed freelance work doing something interesting.”
“Is it?” Crystal asked.
Enda held Crystal’s gaze. “Sometimes.”
“What did you do before?”
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