The machine detective, p.5
The Machine Detective, page 5
part #4 of The Synth Crisis Series
In the living area, there were many pictures of Manton Paradise, always in his robes, grinning out at the unsuspecting viewer. Ida had favored a particular pose, always tilting her head with a slight smile that became comical after Dhata saw that she was literally posed the same way in every photo. There was a painting on the wall as well, a large, original oil on canvas. The genuine article surprised Dhata when he let his fingers touch the surface of it, expecting it to be a hologram.
“A real painting, here?” Dhata muttered as he reached up and removed the frame from the wall. “I bet this cost a fortune.” He looked at the artist’s signature to see if it was something that predated the war, but it was newer, an original piece from a local artist, or possibly Ida herself. Here was a house in the age of synths, disconnected from the city’s grid, with no augments. For it being so simple and humble a hole, he could appreciate the subtle touches—like the painting—that put it above some of the fancier, smart homes.
When he was satisfied that the place was clear of any hools waiting in the shadows to spring their trap, Dhata went into detective mode, looking for higher-level traps, the kind set by cyphers or agents of Manton Paradise himself. Tony’s eagerness to help was typical of a stim junkie looking for UCCs, but the ease of getting up to this floor had not been lost on the seasoned skiptracer.
First, he looked for a camera system, or any sort of surveillance that would lead him to believe that he had walked into a trap. He scanned the place for bugs, using his enhanced ICLs that still contained the working programs from his days as a Tampa Bay police officer. The place was clean. It was just a poor woman’s apartment, once cozy, now a stim junkie’s nest, abandoned by the original owner for a reason that Dhata aimed to find out.
Ida riding with a synth at the time of her passing was the very first clue inside Dhata’s head. For her to interact with a synth, she would have had to leave the commune for a place where synths populated, which could be Ybor or any of the smaller pockets scattered around St. Petersburg or Tampa Bay. His first thought was Ybor, since she had crashed near there, and he made a mental note to go there next.
There was a television on, a flat bit of glass mounted to one wall, playing a loop of one of Paradise’s sermons. Dhata didn’t know why he hadn’t noticed it until several minutes had passed with him searching the house, but there it was, the robed man pacing the stage as he spoke about the beauty of humans giving birth. The volume was low and eerie, since an ambient track blended into his voice, which Dhata had to admit was oddly soothing.
Don’t need the brainwash while I’m in here, he thought, turning off the television and turning his attention to the couch. The pillows had been tossed, but there was a pile of clothes stacked up on it, which made him wonder if thieves were really the reason for the state of the place. Using his gloved hands to file through the clothing then couch, he let his eyes roam the wall and window that sat above it.
“I should have worn a mask,” he said to himself when he saw the illuminated dust particles surfing on a shard of light.
His gloved hands touched something soft and wet wedged into the corner of the couch and he pulled back quickly to examine his hand. It was sweet-smelling and creamy, which turned his stomach, but he slipped his hand back inside, and got a good grip on the object and pulled it out.
“Old pastry, half-eaten, but there’s still a good amount in the package,” he said, recording his findings through his ICL and implant. “It looks to be a cinnamon bun from a vending machine. We passed several functioning ones on our way here, in the building’s lobby. Whoever left this must have been in a hurry, which explains the state of this place. Ida was trying to leave town, right when her so-called husband was released. How’s that for coincidences?”
Dhata found a sink and washed his gloves, then used the end of his duster to dry them off. He stopped at a desk, littered with all manner of papers, from old pamphlets advertising a service, to scratch notes, scribbles, and doodles that were actually quite good. Shuffling the papers around to see if anything was useful, he found a newer rack, buried beneath an empty binder.
Dhata let out a laugh. Machines are bad, and synths are the devil, but a rack is allowed? I don’t know if this is ignorance or just good old hypocrisy, but I’m leaning on the latter. Paradise is a psycho, but he’s no fool.
Looking about to make sure that he was still alone, Dhata gripped the handles on the rack and looked down at its dusty, smooth, black, glassy surface. His vision blurred instantly, and his ICLs connected. Now he was seeing the manufacturer’s logo—a stylized eye opening in the center of his field of vision, to become the dot on the “I” of the initials ISF (Imperisoft Systems Foundation).
It hovered for a second, then vanished, leaving Dhata in a virtual apartment similar to the physical one he was in. The difference, however, was this one was neat and untouched by vandals, and there was a stack of folders on the desk in front of him and filing cabinets lined up against the wall. He considered logging out and stealing the rack. Lur could crack the files in a manner of minutes, then go beyond the augmented visuals to the code, to see the things that were hidden beneath the surface. Staying jacked-in made him vulnerable, and time would fly by when fully immersed, making him even more susceptible to the hools that had seen him come in with Tony.
Dhata reached for a folder and a photograph fell out. It was a wedding photo of Ida and another woman, standing at the altar with Paradise. Deciding against further probing in the virtual world, Dhata shut his eyes and willed himself out of the system. Picking up the rack, he detached the cords, collapsed the handles to make it smaller, and slid it into a side pocket of his duster.
A tone in his ear startled him momentarily, until it came again, louder this time, alerting him to a call. It was Ariana, as expected, her stoic face appearing in the corner of his ICL. Dhata touched the tragus of his ear, to trigger his implant to connect the call, then eased himself back into the corner of the apartment, where a disheveled platform bed sat below a large, faulty air-conditioning unit.
“Ari, good timing,” Dhata said when he connected the call.
“No, not at all, Dhata. Let me guess, you’re at the Paradise buildings? You need to get out of there quick. I would say you have ten minutes tops to be scarce from the premises. Someone reported a burglary in progress at Ida Nelson’s home, and the local Johns are en route.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” he said. “Thanks for the tip. I’ll call you later.”
“Get out of there, Dhata. You know they won’t be trying to arrest you if you’re caught,” Ariana said.
Dhata was already out the door and descending the stairwell, passing by the occasional loser, stimmed up and unaware of his hulking form jumping whole steps to gain the ground fast. His cybernetic leg was showing its worth, absorbing the shock of his falls, and adding height to the leaps he attempted.
In less than five minutes, he was on the ground floor, running across the swampy lawn, hitting every puddle to escape the property. By the time he reached the parking lot, Dale had the door open with the engine started, and Dhata dove into the front seat, righted himself, and took hold of the wheel.
The G11 nearly clipped a light pole as he swung the steering wheel violently, knocking over a medical pod as the tires locked, drifting him past a stoplight and frightened crowd to jump up on the highway, going over 100mph. He could see the flashing lights in the rearview mirror, and on the dashboard’s HUD, a map outlined several squad cars in pursuit, with the computer giving several options for escaping them.
“Dale, how did you know just now that I needed you to be ready to leave with such expediency?” he said.
“Sir, your heart rate had increased, and at the rate you were moving towards me, I made a calculated guess. Was I wrong?” Dale said.
“No, this was good. I just had to be sure, since it was so unexpected,” Dhata said.
Flying past traffic doing the speed limit, they fled, Dhata relying on the G11’s proximity sensors to push the limits. He cut across lanes and slipped the gaps between vehicles, inches away from causing a crash.
The police were relentless, however, their assigned squad cars struggling to keep up with the modified sports car. Dhata took an exit at the last minute, going up on two wheels as he nearly clipped the guardrails, avoiding a vehicle that had made a sudden move. When they were past it—an old Toyota—they completed the roundabout at another drift, slipping out onto Park Blvd, causing a motorcycle to crash.
“Police drones incoming from the north,” Dale announced, causing Dhata to glance upwards expectantly. Drones were a new resource for police, giving surveillance from a bird’s-eye view, when in the past it would be helicopters, hover-cars, and zeppelins. The drone’s small size made them formidable, and normally there would be five or six to cover a broad net.
“All this for a supposed burglary?” Dhata said, wondering if Tony was really who he had claimed to be. There was a chance that with all his posturing, threats, and bribes, the so-called stim junkie was the one holding the cards and had played him like a jazz quartet.
The speedometer was now topping 120mph as the vehicle roared through a residential neighborhood. The place was a wreck, with holes in the road and buildings so badly damaged that it was a wonder people still lived inside them.
Dhata manipulated his ICLs with a sequence of blinking and pointed thoughts, seeing if the G11 could pick up the drones that would now be above them. When there was no luck, he drove into an old building, a hotel whose front doors had been blown out, leaving a cavernous entrance. Whipping his vehicle around sharply to a screeching halt facing the way they had come in, he exited and went to the back, where he retrieved his ANGR Shadow rifle from below one of the seats.
With the dust from the Sayen G11’s reinforced tires still thick in the air, he walked out towards the entrance, letting the rifle charge its bolt to full power. In a time where ballistic weapons were illegal, electroshock tubes were the norm, but Dhata found them slow and ineffective in a shootout. This was why he and Lur carried their old-fashioned handguns, for which he recently had to invest in a press for bullets.
The ANGR Shadow wasn’t ballistic; it used an electroshock charge to permanently damage the circuitry of synthetic targets. Purchased by Hiroshi from an underground black market in Japan, the “synth killer,” as it was known, was a top-secret weapon employed by Japanese Special Forces. It was a wicked-looking weapon, as long as a man was tall, though it could be broken down for close-quarters fighting, and it came with a digital scope, which made aiming easy as long as you pointed it towards your target.
Kneeling on the rubble of the stairs, Dhata scanned the skies through the scope and saw four hovering drones, working to canvas the old, ruined neighborhood to find him. One by one, he dropped them with precision shots, sending them toppling to the ground, where they shattered upon impact with the rooftops and refuse.
“How’re we looking Dale?” Dhata said, his implant still synced to the G11’s A.I.
“No drones detected, Dhata,” he reported.
Dhata grinned and stood up, compressing the barrel of the ANGR Shadow, and breaking it down until it was no longer identifiable as a rifle. Returning to his car, he slid it back beneath the seat, then climbed in and put his feet up, effectively surrendering the controls over to Dale.
He called up Ariana using the G11’s interface and then sat back, trying to come down from the rush of having a police chase. “Hey, you, big guy,” Ariana said, cheerfully. “I take it you made it out of there okay?”
“I’m still alive and free, if that’s what you mean.” Dhata laughed. “I’m touched that you were worried about me, but thanks for the tip on those Johns. That could have been really bad.”
He averted his gaze, distracted by the wreckage outside the window of what once would have been a tiered platform of buildings. Much of it remained intact, though it was little more than a desolate reminder of the world before the war twisted it. He could make out people, caked in the dust of the rubble, picking through it for items that were still usable to sell.
Above it all, the tall buildings were little more than skeletal frames with power lines like spider webs running between them, signs that scavengers and vagrants now occupied them, salvaging power from anywhere they could and sharing it. This was NU-USA in the aftermath of the War for Peace, only just revived by the same synths they routinely abused.
The audacity of sharing the world with artificial sentients was appalling to the human citizens who wanted things back the way it was before the war. Reminding them that there would be no life without synths would trigger responses ranging from religious rhetoric to flawed entitlement based on conspiracy theories.
“Earth to Dhata, you still with me, skiptracer?” Ariana said, snapping him out of his thoughts to focus on her image on the windshield.
“Sorry, I zoned out,” he said. “I’m at my middle age, and we tend to do that when we’re tired.”
“I was saying that we should meet up to discuss what you found,” she said.
“Righteous. Want to meet me in Ybor? I know a cafe where we won’t be disturbed,” he said. “It’s under Aaron, so no chance of Johns. They know who you are, so don’t sweat it. Just take a civilian ride and don’t forget to hide your badge.”
Chapter 6
Lunch at Zebots
Zebots was a synth diner, which was a matter of irony since synths eating was a mere formality so they could blend in with their sustenance-craving human neighbors. With a shortage in foodstuffs worldwide, synths consuming anything was generally frowned upon. Zebots, which was owned by the enterprising gangster, Ze, got around the stigma by catering to the human population living in Ybor City. Since it was but one of four places available for actual food, it became popular from the outset, and stayed busy.
Fomeal, the cheap, malleable, nutrition-rich paste that made up the majority of the food that humans consumed, could be crafted to look like burgers and fries, so this was what they served. In the past, when Dhata and Lur were hiding out in Ybor City, this would be their spot, knowing that if trouble came knocking, they would be alerted. Dhata was a friend of Ze’s, who like most of the synth gangsters, had a complicated past with the ex-detective.
When he crossed the threshold of the diner, it was midday and Dhata was tired, hungry, and slightly agitated. Speaking to Ariana was going to have to wait until he had something in his stomach and a moment to breathe. Which was precisely why he had hurried there, to seek nourishment before talking business.
Zebots was a converted office space, which was evident from the furniture where former desks now served as dining tables. Old chairs and couches had been hauled in from other abandoned buildings to act as seats about these tables, and the walls were covered in posters, ragged relics from yesteryear. An attempt at some flooring had been made in the VIP area, which was a roped-off section in the back, with a large boardroom table and proper chairs.
Lighting came by way of stolen lamps and neon street signs, rigged up amidst a maze of dripping pipes for the plumbing. The floor could use a broom and mop, but the debris only added to the charm. The kitchen, which was to the immediate left of the entry, was an old food truck, cut in half to salvage the stove, behind which worked a triad of short-order cooks, sculpting the fomeal into whatever was ordered from the extensive menu.
Dhata walked confidently to the back, scanning the faces of the patrons to make sure that no one was present who could make trouble. There were mostly young, liberal sympathizers, some nodding their heads at him out of respect for seeing someone so old inside Zebots. It took everything in him not to roll his eyes at them. He had been on the front lines, when association with synths could prove fatal, especially for a member of the Tampa Police Department.
He sat down heavily on a couch, spreading his arms to rest them on the mildewed, faux-leather back. It felt just like old times, sitting there, starving, as he watched the traffic walking back and forth in front of the doors. Back in the day, his pistol would have been on the table, primed and ready to go at any time. Now, it wasn’t so dangerous to be a human daring to coexist with the machines of “synth city.” Any enemy coming for him wouldn’t dare bring it here, where he was revered and protected by the members of Aaron Tang’s gang.
A career of sticking his neck out for synth rights, dodging bullets, and rubbing elbows with the underworld had earned him a permanent place in synth society. This was no easy accomplishment for any human, let alone an outlawed former detective. Dhata, it had turned out, was truly one of a kind, for having friends on both sides of the law, and a membership to the clandestine synth watchdog group known as The Unsung.
Membership had made it so that any synth synced to the Arch Brain’s database not only knew who he was but would come to his defense if he was threatened within their eyesight. Knowing this allowed him to let his hair down in a place that was once considered ground zero for the synth and anti-synth human civil war. To call it surreal to the former detective was an understatement, but he could appreciate that his efforts had helped to bring peace.
“What can I get you, Chief?” said a heavyset synth woman with large green eyes. “Want your usual?”
“No, not today, Lyn. I’ll have the All-American,” Dhata said. “And heat up two croissants for my lady friend. She will want hers with coffee as well. Black.”
“Someone’s hungry,” Lyn teased, then clicked her tongue as she put his order into the tablet that she balanced on one forearm.
As she tended to the other tables, Dhata went back to watching the door. For fifteen minutes, he watched random yuppies come in and go, before Lyn returned with a large plate brimming with eggs, potatoes, and ham.
It barely touched the table before Dhata was wolfing it down shamelessly. He hadn’t been this hungry in a while, and so the way he appeared was the last thing on his mind. He could hear Lur in his head, telling him to slow down. If she’d been there, he wouldn’t hear the end of it, especially if she was hungry. Then the tigress would come out.
