Fiction Vortex - June 2013

  “How was the dance?” Mom said. The Wall sensed it had lost its audience and froze, waiting for the command to resume. “Did you talk to any cute boys?”

  “Mom!” The girl stretched the word by a syllable; in her head it sounded like “moron.” Amity didn’t believe Mom would recognize a cute boy if one kissed her on the mouth. Mom chuckled and exchanged winks with Dad.

  “Go on up to bed. Amber’s sleeping, so ixnay on the oisenay,” Mom said. “We’re leaving for Grandma’s early tomorrow.”

  Amity offered both parents perfunctory cheek pecks. The softporndrama on the Wall had already reclaimed most of their attention.

  Amity jogged up the stairs to the bathroom. Eleven minutes of scrubbing and brushing later, the teen was in her room. She flopped on her bed and brought up her onboard’s menu. Amity closed her eyes and scrolled through the pictures she’d taken at the dance until she found one of Kyle Latham, widely regarded as the cutest boy at school. They’d danced all night, and she’d let him put his hands on her while they kissed. The picture she had of him smiling, his blue eyes flashing, was a keeper. She attached it to an email and addressed it to the girls from the taxi: “Hndz off, beetches. Heeez all mines. :-)”

  Amity cracked a king-sized yawn. She got her syncband from the nightstand, the faux terrycloth circle glowing softly in the dimming room, and stretched it around her head. The onboard made contact, and a day’s worth of school notes, photos, and voice recordings streamed to the Cloud. While Amity slept, the onboard would download her schedule, summarize her required school readings, and update her newsfeeds with the latest in music, fashion, and celebrity gossip.

  Amity’s personal CloudPal, KittyKat15, shot her a message in Wizard-World font: “Hi, BFF. Wud u lik a Sweet Dream?”

  Amity moused “yes,” and followed KittyKat15 through the menus to a romantic-themed comedy. She entered “Kyle” for the name of the dream’s love interest. KittyKat15 adjusted the image of the romantic lead to suit Amity’s new favorite picture, and the dream began to play.

  Amity didn’t notice the seizure that made her piss herself and grind her teeth together fifteen minutes later. She was with Kyle, and he was being so sweet. The wind played with his hair, and his eyes sparkled as he leaned close to kiss her.

  “I love you,” she said.

  The dream stuttered, and Kyle’s cute face blinked into an eyeless mask. “Ditto, babe,” he said. Kyle bit into Amity’s forehead, his suddenly huge mouth full of tiny, sharp teeth.

  ~~~~~

  Davis Wood took a pull from his beer and settled into the battered recliner. The ancient computer in his lap beeped synchronicity with its distant target — an automated observatory on two acres of the Sonoma desert Wood had inherited from his grandfather.

  Wood strained to see the heavens through the light pollution and smog, but the only things in view from the observation platform he’d hammered together on his condo roof were the moon and a few of the brightest stars: Alpha Centauri, Canopus, and Arcturus. He held up his beer in salute.

  The antique beeped again, and Wood turned his attention to the thin screen. He hadn’t visited his observatory — a rust-pocked Airstream trailer and a slightly-better-than-amateur broad-spectrum array — in more than a year, and he was always relieved when the laptop assured him it was still there. He tapped coordinates into the computer, setting the array’s tracking motors into motion

  For months, Wood had been observing a stellar speck he suspected might be an undocumented asteroid. In another week, maybe two, he’d have enough data recorded to attempt a registry. He planned to name this one after his daughter, Molly, who he saw in person about as often as he saw his observatory. The first asteroid he’d found bore his ex-wife’s name, and he saw her even less.

  Wood fished another beer out of his cooler. The laptop played four bars of an old pop song, and Wood tapped the screen to open a tiny window to the desert sky. The stars shone brightly for a moment and flickered into a blue “lost signal” alert.

  “Lousy piece of —.” Wood sat his beer down with a thump and flinched when an object near his elbow vibrated.

  His badge. Wood woke it with his thumb and hooked the wireless receiver over his left ear. “What’s up?”

  “The chief wants you in. Nightside’s already on site, but it’s going to bleed into your shift.” The voice in Wood’s ear paused. “There’s a dead kid. Her teenaged sister is the primary suspect.”

  “Give me forty minutes.”

  “I’ll pass it on. Good morning, detective.”

  ~~~~~

  The house was late twentieth century and well maintained. The two hydrogen-fuel Volvos in the driveway smacked of an upper middle-class lifestyle. The white picket fence looked like something out of a snuff film, though, shamed by yards of crime-scene tape and tinged spastic red by the lights of the ambulance. Wood crumpled his coffee cup and tossed it onto the passenger-side floor. He flirted with the idea of driving right by the crime scene and finding out where the road went, but he signaled and pulled into the driveway instead.

  Wood showed his badge to the blue at the gate. He didn’t know many of the nightside cops and didn’t expect they would know him by sight.

  “Detective Wood,” he said. “Dayside homicide.”

  The blue took him inside, past the living room where the parents sobbed to a police counselor, to a pink bedroom on the second floor. Inside, blood spatters made Silly String patterns on holoposters of fairy-tale princesses and unicorns. Four large men were crouched around a tiny body on the floor. One man, tieless and rumpled this late in his shift, rose as Wood approached. He pulled off one purple vinyl glove and offered his bare hand. “You look like you spent the night on the roof.”

  “That was the plan.” Wood shook his former partner’s hand. “What’s the feed?”

  Detective Sean Ossinger sucked his teeth. “It’s ugly.” He pulled the badge off his belt and peered at its small screen. “Victim is Amber Cobb, age six. Primary is Amity Cobb, age fifteen, the vic’s older sister. According to the house biolock, Amity Cobb came home at 2247 last night. Parents say she was at a dance.”

  Wood peered at his own badge, where a twin to Ossinger’s notes was now appearing.

  “Sometime between 2323 and 2430, which is the best guess on the little girl’s death, big sister went bat shit.”

  Wood grimaced. “Rodney, strike ‘bat shit’ from the file.”

  Rodney was the name of Wood’s Watson app, a police near-smart that could sift data faster than Sherlock Holmes; it beeped confirmation. On the badge’s screen, the words flashed twice and vanished. Ossinger shrugged and continued. “The teen left her bedroom and, without waking anyone else in the family, bludgeoned her little sister to death with an antique jewelry box and started eating her brain.”

  Wood’s eyebrows rose.

  “Wait, there’s more,” Ossinger said, raising his pointer finger, professor-style. “Sometime before the attack, big sister ripped all the hair off her own head and gouged out her eyes.”

  “How’d she kill her sister if she couldn’t see?”

  “The Force? Lucky guess?” Ossinger squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose between two thick fingers. “She’s lived in the house all her life. Probably wasn’t too hard to feel her way along.”

  Wood felt a tickle in his sinuses and fumbled a handkerchief out of his pocket in time to catch two quick sneezes.

  Ossinger shook his head. “No one’s allergic to the Cloud, Wood.”

  “Then why am I sneezing?” Wood smiled at the familiar exchange and wiped at his nose. L.A. was the first of the big cities to seed its air with Cloud nanobots, each of them doing the jobs once held by servers, routers, and wires. Wood knew he was allergic to the nanoscopic computers; he could almost feel them blinking and beeping in his sinuses. Every doctor he’d gone to had told him it was impossible, but, if that were so, why had he only started sneezing when the Cloud came? He sneezed again. “Where’s the s
uspect?”

  “Ambulance hauled her off about twenty minutes ago. Real mess. Won’t speak. Just growls and makes this, like, screeching noise.” The cop shrugged. “It’s too bad. She’s a pretty girl. Mom and Dad say she has all kinds of friends. Good grades. The perfect kid.”

  “Drugs?”

  “Nothing chemical.”

  “Anybody see anything?”

  “It’s an older house. Modernized, but not fully wired. It doesn’t know who opened what door when.”

  Wood looked down at the little girl’s body. Her light blue pajamas were dark with blood, and skull fragments and bits of brain tissue clotted what little he could see of her curly blond hair.

  Ossinger looked sick. “She was still stuffing pieces of it into her mouth when we got here.”

  ~~~~~

  Murray nodded when Wood walked into the bar. “The usual?”

  “Yeah.”

  Wood blew his nose. He couldn’t remember Murray’s last name but knew how the balding man had lost his left foot and that he’d been the nightside bartender at Third Base long before Wood started frequenting the place.

  Wood’s usual was three fingers of scotch, no ice. He expected to order more than a couple. Amity Cobb was under heavy sedation, so he’d spent the day and a good part of the evening questioning her friends and going over her Cloud presence with Rodney. Wood had set Rodney to comb through several weeks of pictures, school notes, and MyLife updates looking for a reason the girl might have turned murderous. The near-smart had come up dry. Amity Cobb, at least the one Wood knew from her files and friends, was a typical kid — although not quite as perfect as her parents believed. One classmate had called her a slut on a public board, and Rodney collated several pictures, video files, and messages that added up to at least one drinking party and three sexual encounters in the past month. Amity also tended to cheat on her English homework.

  Wood sipped some scotch. As he set the glass down, he felt someone sit down beside him. Recognition made him grin, and he extended his hand to accept a low five. “I was hoping I’d run into you.”

  The newcomer’s hand smacked deftly into Wood’s. “You break your little telescope again?”

  “Maybe. Mostly I was just looking for comic relief.”

  Miles Trolan was one of Wood’s oldest friends. They’d both gone to college to study astronomy. Wood turned cop, and Trolan went on to get his doctorate and tenure at a university observatory about seventy-five miles outside the city. Trolan sipped the dark beer Murray set in front of him. “You look like hell.”

  “Long day,” Wood said. “Dead kid. Pretty messed up situation.”

  “There are easier ways of making a living.”

  “Don’t rub it in.” Wood finished his scotch and ordered another. “Distract me. Dating any star-eyed coeds?”

  Trolan scooped a handful of peanuts out of the bowl in front of him and juggled a few into his mouth. “Nobody new. A couple from my greatest-hits collection.” He chewed thoughtfully. “There’s not much going on. Got some static on the radio arrays. The old SETI guys had a quick circle jerk, but there was nothing cohesive in there the near-smarts could dig out. It’s trash.”

  Wood tasted his new drink and put it back on the bar. “The dead kid’s about Molly’s age. Couple of years younger.”

  Trolan nodded toward Wood’s drink. “Finish that.” He caught the bartender’s eye. “Get us a couple more.”

  ~~~~~

  The six o’clock alarm was less than welcome. Wood showered — full hot, then full cold, then full hot — until he felt human. He’d left Third Base after last call and headed up to his roof to look for the asteroid. The laptop worked just fine, but the observatory refused to sync up. Wood hoped it was a software glitch and that nothing had gone wrong at the site.

  Shivering, Wood wrapped a towel around his waist and signaled Julia, his condo near-smart, to start breakfast. She told him there was a message from Molly.

  “Is she okay?” he said.

  “Fine,” Julia said. “Her mother got her a kitten, and she wants to know if Mr. Sprinkles would be an appropriate name for it. Shall I play the message?”

  Wood thought about the little girl with the smashed-in head. “Save it for later.”

  Fifteen minutes later he was dressed but tieless, drinking mediocre coffee and checking the messages on his badge. What he saw there made him run for the door, his eggs cooling on the counter.

  Wood’s new partner, Brian LeClair, met him at his office door.

  “I heard,” Wood said. “Two more last night. Same M.O.”

  “Different sexes but they’re about the same age.” LeClair checked his notes. His tie was perfect. “Families are in the same income range. Vics are an older brother in one case, two slumber-party guests in the other.”

  “Damn it.”

  “Suspects gouged out their own eyes and made a good attempt at tearing out their hair. Victims were bludgeoned to death as they slept, brains partially consumed.”

  Wood dropped into his chair. He wanted a drink. “Could this be a new e-drug? Something they uploaded into their onboards?”

  “I already ran the idea through my Watson. It didn’t come up with anything.”

  “Send your parameters to Rodney,” Wood said. “He’s been around a lot longer and might have a few more tricks.”

  LeClair sat down in Wood’s guest chair. “Any other ideas?”

  Wood whistled tunelessly. “Maybe it’s some kind of teen-murder pact thing.” He ran his hand through his hair. He wished again Ossinger had turned down the promotion. “You stay on the suspects. Interview their friends. See if the subs know each other. I’ll check with the morgue.”

  The city morgue was four floors straight down and cold. Wood knew the facility was spray sterilized once each shift, but he always thought the white walls looked like they’d feel greasy if he brushed against them. He kept his hands in his pockets and used his shoulder to push open the swinging double doors.

  Paul Keefe, the city’s dayside chief medical examiner, claimed he kept his head shaved for “hygienic purposes” but never said why he also shaved his eyebrows and seldom removed his dark glasses. The medical examiner’s handshake was chilly and damp, and Wood had to force himself not to wipe his palms on his pants. Keefe laced his fingers in front of his stomach. Wood thought Keefe’s hands looked like pale spiders and tried not to breathe through his nose.

  “I scanned the reports on the way down, Doc. I’m looking for something off the map.”

  “Off the map.” Keefe’s mouth quirked. It might have been a smile. “Eleven victims, each death resulting from blunt-force trauma to the head —.”

  “There are only three vics. Two from last night, one from the night before.”

  “I know who is in my morgue, detective.” The pale scientist pulled his badge from his belt and slid his long finger across the screen. “Eleven. Similar causes of death. All showing partial consumption of their brain matter.” He gave his little smile again. “Would you like to count them?”

  “Eleven over how long?”

  “The past fifteen days.”

  ~~~~~

  “It must be a mistake.”

  Wood thought LeClair still looked too pretty to be a cop, but at least his tie was crooked now. “Rodney checked the files. The reports are all there. They just weren’t linked.”

  “Eleven nearly identical violent deaths in fifteen days, and no one saw a connection?”

  “It’s a big city.” Wood took a sip of his coffee and grimaced. “Besides, we’re all app happy now. It’s possible no one actually saw the files.”

  “Why didn’t the Watsons find it?

  “The others were sort of scattered around. Four were reported by private security out in the Hills.”

  Wood pulled the stats up on his desktop. The ten suspects were all in their teens, with upper middle- to upper-class lifestyles. They all had loving families, good grades, and lots of friends. And somewhere in the d
ark, all of them had opted out of the human race.

  LeClair rubbed his chin, and Wood heard the rookie’s fingers rasp on the respectable five o’clock shadow there. “The media’s going to be all over this.”

  “Maybe. The Watsons didn’t pick it up. Maybe the newsbots won’t, either. What did you learn about the suspects?”

  LeClair leaned back in his chair. “Not much. Friends and family didn’t see it coming. The usual. They synced their onboards within an hour or two of the incidents.”

  Wood rubbed his eyes. He doubted any of the suspects would have written up a conveniently detailed murder plan, but if it were a pact of some kind, they might be acting on a schedule. “Anybody check to see what they downloaded?”

  “Not that I’ve seen.”

  Wood woke up his badge. “Rodney, get me a warrant for a download of the Cobb girl’s onboard.” He glanced at the time; there was no way they were going to get the doctor out this late. He was probably at home with a trophy wife and a Mercedes. “First thing tomorrow.”

  Wood drove home and dragged himself up to his roof. The laptop linked up with his observatory this time, but the array only offered a test pattern: a repeating scale of high-pitched tones. A hasty phone call and half a week’s pay bought Wood enough time on the university’s array to get the asteroid data he needed. Trolan gave him a big break on the price, but the exchange left Wood feeling even wearier. He remembered the first time he’d taken his ex wife out to the desert to see the stars. They’d lain naked on the cooling metal of the trailer roof and talked about a future that never happened. Wood opened another beer. The array was a link to happier times, and the stars it usually showed didn’t care how far he’d fallen.

  ~~~~~

  From the hospital lobby, a nurse directed Wood down a hallway and through an unmarked door to a surgery-viewing gallery. Wood hung his coat up and peered through the smudged observation window.

  Amity Cobb was strapped to the table, screaming wordlessly. Oozing scratches marred her pale scalp, showing where her fingernails had scraped and cut the skin as she ripped out her hair by the handfuls. Her eye sockets were packed with synthgel. Veins had ruptured in the girl’s face, sending a spider web of hematomas across her cheeks. Amity tested her restraints wildly, straining her thin arms and legs against the Kevlar straps. A burly orderly held the girl’s arm still so a nurse could administer a sedative. Minutes ticked by before Amity went limp.