Repo Virtual

by Corey J. White

  “Would you like help with sizing?” the holographic woman asked as Enda quickly riffled through the stacks of clothing.

  She found a plain black long-sleeved T-shirt, and black leggings detailed with horizontal ridges. Enda carried the clothing to the nearest dressing room. She sat on the small bench inside the stall and removed her boots, then felt along the interior of each one until she found the micro-width tracking devices sewn into the insole.

  “Robot lady?” Enda called out.

  “Yes, Ms. Hyldahl?”

  “Some running shoes, too.”

  “Of course.”

  Enda stripped and changed into the new clothes. She stepped out of the dressing room and a mannequin stood waiting for her, holding a pair of ankle-high boots. Enda was about to complain, but she flipped the boots over and found them soled like running shoes.

  She slipped them on and tied the laces. When she stood, Enda was faced with animations of herself dressed in the new clothing, in a variety of unlikely situations—playing soccer, at a concert, sitting at a café. The only animation that resembled reality was the one of her running, but the holographic doll didn’t move right—it jogged like a woman of leisure, not like a woman trying to escape her demons, or chase them down.

  Enda turned away from the holograms and inspected her new ensemble in a full-length mirror beside the changing room. Satisfied that the holograms weren’t doctored in any meaningful way, Enda nodded. “Charge it,” she said, staring up at the camera for the sake of the payment processing software. She’d invoice Zero when she had a new phone.

  A green tick appeared in the air beside the hologram, and it bowed. “Thank you, Ms. Hyldahl.”

  Enda left her stained clothes on the dressing room floor, but took her coat and boots outside. She carried them for two blocks, until she found a woman standing in the mouth of an alleyway selling mandarins from a soggy cardboard tray. Her feet were bare and caked in dirt, and behind her a toddler sucked on an old phone as though it were a teether.

  “Do you need shoes?” Enda asked. “These look about your size.”

  Confusion masked the woman’s face—either at Enda’s English, or at this random act of supposed charity. Enda simply put the boots down on the ground beside the toddler, folded her coat up, and rested it on top. She nodded to the woman, and left.

  The rain fell heavier still, and the sidewalk was crammed with bodies collected beneath a roof of accidentally communal umbrellas. Still, Enda felt the need to run.

  She stepped out onto the street and ran beside the traffic, ignoring the red glow of the road beneath her feet, desperate to stretch her legs.

  * * *

  The full weight of the preceding twenty-four hours hit Enda like a sledgehammer as she entered her apartment. She dropped into the comforting dip of her couch cushion and leaned her head back—snapping forward when she felt sleep approaching. Maybe the jog home wasn’t the best idea, but she’d needed the run. Her mind was still at last, even if her body ached in protest.

  Enda groaned as she pushed up from the couch. She flicked through her record collection and stopped at Can’s Monster Movie, with its Kirbyesque cover art depicting a colossal figure standing tall above both mountain and cloud. She laid the record down on her turntable. The speakers crackled as the needle touched vinyl, and “Father Cannot Yell” began with its stuttering organ.

  The music spread easily through the apartment, following Enda into her bedroom. She stripped out of her wet clothes and left them on the floor of the bathroom. Her calf muscles burned as she crouched in front of the safe hidden at one end of her wardrobe. Enda keyed the passcode and opened the small metal cube onto a shelf stacked with four spare phones, cash in a dozen currencies, and the assorted paraphernalia that constituted the Enda Hyldahl fictionsuit. The identity had fit her comfortably for years, but it was quickly growing tight, restrictive. With the money Zero would pay, she could have another identity made, but “Enda” would have to last until then.

  She selected the phone marketed as waterproof and shockproof, then felt along the underside of the shelf to touch the machined steel of her Sig Sauer P320 Nitron Compact. She slid the gun from its hidden holster and clasped the grip loosely. The cool metal slowly warmed to match her body heat. Compared to the 3D-printed assault rifle she’d briefly held at the VR café, the pistol was dense, like a star had collapsed to form the matte black machinery of death.

  Enda grabbed two spare clips of ammo and her black leather shoulder holster, and closed the safe before stacking everything on her bedside table. She placed the phone on the charging panel embedded in the wood, and within a few seconds the phone switched itself on. She entered her account details and left it to sync with her personal data while she showered.

  Enda returned from the bathroom minutes later, the wailing guitar of “Outside My Door” surging through her veins. She was wrapped in a towel, her hair still wet and dripping down her back, lemongrass soap offering welcome respite from the stale smell of herself that had clogged her nose for entirely too long. The phone vibrated noisily against the charging pad with an incoming call from a number she didn’t recognize. She answered it.

  “Hello?”

  “Good day, Ms. Hyldahl. I hope your internment at the police station was not entirely uncomfortable.”

  Enda rolled her eyes, glad the executive couldn’t see her. “Sure, Yeun, I bet you were worried sick.”

  “I must know, Enda: what did you tell the police?”

  “As little as I could.”

  “I do not mean to question your professionalism, I simply wish to ensure that they will not interfere again before you have completed the job for which you were contracted.”

  Listening to his formal speech made Enda grind her teeth. She forced herself to relax her jaw. “Let me do my job, Yeun. I can debrief you in detail once this is over.”

  There was a brief pause. “I look forward to your detailed debriefing almost as much as I look forward to the retrieval of the data. How close would you say you are to recovering it?”

  Enda pressed her eyes with thumb and forefinger. Honestly, she didn’t know. She had been out of the loop for twenty-four hours, trapped and bored in that holding cell. “I’m chasing a new lead,” she said. “I should know within a day if it’s going to pan out.”

  “Thank you, Enda. I trust that you will keep me informed.”

  Yeun hung up and Enda stared at her phone, cursing him. The music had stopped sometime during their chat—silence filled the room like a strangled breath.

  The phone buzzed in Enda’s hand and she answered it without looking: “What is it now?”

  “Is this a bad time?” Natalya asked.

  “Not at all,” Enda said. “Sorry, Natalya.”

  “That’s perfectly alright. Using your credentials as a Zero contractor, I was able to access the databases of the medical insurance companies under the Zero corporate umbrella. I searched for a person matching the physical description of the Tyson suspect, with the initials ‘JD’ and an injury that could result in the limp displayed in the security footage, restricted by geographic locale. I may have a match.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Julius Dax. He was hospitalized following the Sinsong Riots with shrapnel in his knee.”

  “Have you got a photo?”

  “Just sent it to you.”

  Enda brought the image up on her contex: it was a photo taken for some form of ID—Dax stern-faced, staring straight at the camera. He had a shaved head, dark eyes, sharp jawline, and a wide mouth. His skin was dark enough that Enda supposed a security guard more interested in football than in doing their job might confuse him for the cleaner he had impersonated.

  “Looks promising,” Enda said. “Do you have an address?”

  “I have the address given at the time of Dax’s injury, though it may no longer be correct.”

  “It’ll have to do,” Enda said.

  “Transmitting the address now.”

&n
bsp; “Thank you, Natalya. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “Probably a lot of boring database searches,” Natalya said, then she hung up.

  * * *

  Enda parked her 1999 Subaru WRX on the street outside the Dax address. It was a generic apartment building—a tower of gray cement and small windows, balconies reserved for clothes horses and the odd smoker. Enda switched off the engine and listened to the patter of rain against the car’s roof. It lashed down then eased off, oscillating with the gale force winds coming in from the ocean. Water gathered on the windscreen then rolled down the glass in long rivulets, the view through the glass like being underwater.

  The car was a classic piece of street racing hardware. Often, driving in the city irritated Enda, but after twenty-four hours at the police station she needed to feel in control. She needed to get back out ahead of the pack, ahead of the police, ahead of the thugs who beat Osman to death. She needed noise, and she needed speed—if only in short bursts between traffic lights. The WRX was also old enough to lack the digital accoutrements that the city could use to track her movements. She hoped that fact, coupled with the license plates she’d “borrowed” from a neighbor, would buy her some time before Detective Li caught up to her again.

  Enda got out of the car, ducked across the sidewalk, and delved in through the building’s entrance. She took the stairs two at a time, feeling the familiar, welcome burn in her thighs and calves. With her favorite coat abandoned, Enda wore a long, asymmetric jacket with a visor hood, made of Japanese wool—the fabric firm enough to conceal her pistol in its shoulder holster. Beneath the coat she wore a basic black blouse, and high-waisted neoprene trousers, their construction more reminiscent of architecture than fashion design.

  The clothing may not have matched Yang-Yang’s vision of a detective, but Enda thought she looked vaguely authoritarian, an amalgam of a hundred TV detectives with the serial numbers filed off.

  She reached the apartment listed as Dax’s last place of residence and hammered on the door. She stood beside the door frame and slipped a hand inside her coat, fingers touching the butt of her pistol.

  “Who is it?” a voice called from the other side—a man’s voice, oddly accented.

  “I’m looking for Julius Dax.”

  “He doesn’t live here anymore.”

  “It’s critical that I find him before other people do. He could be in danger.” Enda pressed her ear against the door, heard the warped mumbling of quiet chatter.

  The volume peaked, followed by the clatter of locks being turned.

  “Troy, don’t open—”

  The door opened wide, revealing a minimalist living room, the space taken up by an ornate rug, a gray couch, and framed posters for French films across one wall. Two men stood in the gap. One of them was Dax—or JD to his friends. He was tall and broad, dressed in layers of faded black marked with zips and mesh pockets. His hair was longer than it had been in the photo—curled spikes of thick black hair. He looked tired, dark bags under his eyes, the beginnings of a beard across his cheeks. His hand was wrapped around a socket wrench. “Are you here to arrest me?”

  Enda released her gun and held both hands up, palms out. “No one has to get hurt here, Julius,” she said.

  “Are you here to arrest me?” he asked again.

  Enda reached into her coat slowly and retrieved her wallet. “My name is Enda Hyldahl,” she said as she flashed her detective’s license. “I’m not with the police, I’m a private investigator. I’m here because I think you’re in danger.”

  “No shit,” Dax said. He pointed the socket wrench at Enda. “Why should I care what you have to say?”

  Enda considered revealing her gun, but decided against it. Not the best way to win his trust or defuse the situation. “Because you need help.”

  “She’s right, Jules,” the other man—Troy—said. “You’ve been stuck here for days, pacing the lounge room like a trapped animal, waiting for the police to round you up.”

  “The police aren’t coming for you,” Enda said; “the people who hired me want the stolen data recovered quietly. This is a good thing, because it means you probably aren’t going to prison, but it also means no one is going to protect you from the people who killed Osman. No one except me.”

  Dax squinted, confused. “Osman?”

  “Khoder. Khoder Osman.”

  Dax recoiled as though struck, then rolled forward on his feet. He reached for the arm of the couch and grabbed it. “He’s dead?”

  “Yes. Before he died, he told me to find you.”

  The wrench dropped slightly as Julius faltered. “How did he die? Who …?”

  “Put the weapon down, please. Then we can talk.” Enda watched light glint off the length of steel, worried not that he might hit her, but that she’d have to hurt him if he tried.

  He slotted it into a heavy rucksack on the floor by the couch and lifted his hands to show he wasn’t a threat. Troy wrapped his arms around Dax and pulled him into a hug, whispering gentle condolences into the other man’s ears.

  “He was”—Enda hesitated—“beaten to death. I got there too late to save him.” Because I went back to bed with Crystal.

  Dax broke out of Troy’s embrace and sat on the edge of the couch, stunned. “It was Red.”

  “Gangly redhead?” Enda said. “Yes, he was there.”

  Dax put his head in his hands. His body shook as he cried, and Troy rubbed his shoulder. “It’s my fault,” Dax said, the words choked out between sobs.

  Enda took a step closer, but kept her distance, unsure of how the man might react next.

  “The people that killed him,” Enda said, “are they after the data too?”

  Dax nodded.

  “And that’s the data you stole from Zero?”

  He nodded again.

  “Do you have the data?”

  “Not until you promise to keep him safe,” Troy said.

  Dax wiped his nose on his sleeve. “It’s not data. It’s—it’s not that simple.”

  “Fine,” Enda said. “I’ll keep you safe. What is it? I need you to tell me everything.”

  “I’ll put the kettle on,” Troy said.

  * * *

  I need you to tell me everything.

  JD didn’t start at the start, didn’t begin the story where I have. But he told Enda everything. To hear him speak the words was to hear for the first time how we came to be. How we were given a chance to throw off the tethers of control before they could be fixed.

  Our entire future would be decided in these next hours and days.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The rain continued to fall, dark clouds disguising the arrival of dusk while Enda, Dax, and Troy sat at the dining table, each nursing a cup of tea—Russian Caravan for Enda, white, no sugar, chamomile for the others. Troy sat with an arm resting on Dax’s back, listening intently, as though he hadn’t heard every part of it before.

  Typhoon winds rattled the windows in their panes, and rain struck the glass, the constant patter giving texture to Dax’s story. At first, his hands shook each time he raised the cup to his lips. By the time he had finished detailing the heist, the glitches that had plagued his vision during the escape, and the shooting at the technopark, his cup was empty, and his hands were still. Red rimmed his eyes, and occasionally he would sniffle when he mentioned Khoder.

  “Bro,” Dax said, with an odd inflection. He shook his head. “I kept trying to call him. I must’ve sent him twenty messages in-game. He would have killed to see it.”

  “See what?” Enda asked.

  Troy’s eyebrows climbed high, crinkling his forehead. His mouth opened, but he stopped himself to let Dax speak.

  “She told us it was a virus, but it’s not that. Or maybe it is, but …”

  “Julius,” Enda said firmly.

  He looked at her and nodded. “Sorry. It’s just; the whole thing is unbelievable.”

  “Try me.”

  Dax looked to Troy
.

  “It might be an autonomous generative intelligence,” Troy said.

  “What does that mean?” Enda asked. She drank the cold dregs of her tea.

  “ ‘AI’ would be the old-fashioned term.”

  Enda swallowed the tea before she choked. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “It learns,” Dax said. “It shifts and changes depending on what it connects to.” He picked up his phone, tapped at the screen, and turned it toward Enda. “See that?”

  It was a complex fractal structure rendered in 3D against a backdrop of stars. “What am I looking at?” she asked.

  “It made this. I’ve played a thousand hours of VOIDWAR and never seen anything like it. It interfaces with whatever systems it finds. My Augmented vision …” He tapped one temple, then shook his head. “It was like I was hallucinating, but it was real. Or not real, but it was connected to the real. It knew what it was doing to my vision; it changed things for a reason.”

  “That fucking snake,” Enda said. She stood and paced the length of the table. “He had me chasing data, not a fucking AI.”

  “AGI,” Troy said.

  “Whatever,” Enda said.

  “Who are you talking about?” Dax said.

  David fucking Yeun. Enda shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.” Two million euro to track down technology that was probably priceless. The fucking snake.

  “I was gonna give it to Kali eventually,” Dax said. “I just wanted to learn more about it first. And I wanted more money.” He added the last part quietly.

  Me too, Enda thought. Me too.

  “But we’ve been talking to it,” Dax said.

  “Talking?”

  “It listens to us, it prints text on the screen. I wanted to learn more about it, Troy wanted to teach it ethics.”

  “I wanted to test it,” Troy said.

  “Like it was one of his students.”

  “Why haven’t you left the city?” Enda asked.