Fiction Vortex - June 2013

  “Nearly a double dose this time,” the doctor said. “Mark it.” He turned to the window separating Wood from the operating theater. “What am I looking for?”

  Wood cleared his throat and forced himself to look away from the girl he’d last seen smiling from her MyLife page. “Just give me what she got in her last download.”

  The doctor signaled his team, and they began to put sensor patches on the girl’s bald head. Wood glanced at the nurse. “She said anything?”

  “We kept her sedated for the first twenty-four hours.” The nurse studied the room on the other side of the window. “She’s not violent unless someone’s in with her. Just sits and moans in the corner. Once in a while she gets up and tries to walk around the room.” Amity was lost in the sea of scrubs and lab coats; the only part of her Wood could see from the window were her feet. Her toenails were painted purple. “She’s blind, but she doesn’t feel her way around. She’ll take a step and sort of screech. Then she’ll take another step, screech again, and so on.”

  “Sounds like she thinks she’s a bat.”

  The nurse offered a wan smile. “It doesn’t work. She’s run into the wall twice that I’ve seen.”

  Wood blew his nose. “How long is this going to take?”

  “Depends on how much she has in there.”

  The onboard technology was nearly two decades old, and Wood knew every attempt to put the tiny computers into the heads of anyone over twenty-two had resulted in brain damage. It had something to do with the plasticity of the adolescent mind; the kids could adapt to the onboards where adults could not. Few people over thirty had the things. The onboards weren’t cheap, either. The little computers were digging the generation gap deeper and creating new fronts in the class war.

  Wood counted on his fingers. Molly would be eight in September. Two years too young for the first stage of onboard implantation.

  The intercom pinged. “That’s it,” the doctor said. “You got it all.”

  ~~~~~

  Wood watched Amity’s dream, hoping to spot a hidden message or post-hypnotic suggestion. It was drivel. Girl meets boy, boy screws it up but works hard to win her back. Girl learns valuable lessons about being strong on her own but opts to forgive the guy anyway. Wood pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. Experience had taught him a different lesson.

  He turned his attention to the files downloaded to Amity’s onboard. According to the CloudPal, KittyKat15, Amity should have received a download of her next day’s schedule, several articles about fashion and celebrities, the newest album by Subservient Puppies, and an annotated synopsis of the first three chapters of Catcher in the Rye. But neither Rodney nor KittyKat15 could find a trace of those files.

  “Rodney, list the files we do have, by type,” Wood said. Wood’s desktop filled and overfilled with words and numbers. “How many of each sort of file are we dealing with?”

  “There are 13,000 image files, 230 video files, 2,700 sound files, and 30,033 executable files. The image and video files are blank.”

  “Are the executable files apps?”

  “Unknown.

  “What about the sound files?”

  “They are identical. No voices or coded messages I can detect.”

  “Play one.”

  The hiss of background noise came out of the desk speakers. Then a single, high-pitched pulse. Then another, even higher. The pulses came quickly, about once a second, increasing in pitch. Wood winced, but the pulses stopped before he could ask Rodney to pause the recording.

  “The recording continues for another twenty minutes,” Rodney said. “The pulses are now beyond the range of adult human hearing.” The near-smart paused. “Now they are above all human hearing.”

  “Stop the playback before we wake up every dog in the city.” Wood drummed his fingers on the desktop and studied the list of files on the screen. “Rodney, is your virus protection up to date?”

  “As of five minutes ago.”

  “Update it again and then execute one of the smaller files. Override code Wood7T6.”

  “Confirmed. Executing file.”

  The desk screen flickered to blue, then went back to normal, then to blue again. Wood slammed the big red button marked “emergency disconnect” and crossed his fingers. The desktop went dark. He thumbed his badge awake. “Rodney, reboot and report.”

  The small speaker made a long screeching noise. The Watson responded with its usual start-up message, but its simulated voice sounded like it was being dragged through piles of broken glass. “This is Rodney. Why can’t we all just get along?” The badge screen went blue, then black. Wood counted to thirty and tried again. Nothing. Rodney had gone down a half dozen times in the five years since he’d been activated, but he usually rebooted in seconds. The badge had never crashed; it was tied into everything in the precinct. Wood slid his thumb across the screen several times.

  “Shit.”

  He tossed the useless badge on the desk and got up to look for a phone, hoping the mysterious application hadn’t crashed the entire network. He’d already catch hell from tech support for overriding the virus protocol.

  When Wood left the office three hours later a new badge was riding on his belt, but Rodney was still offline.

  It was last call at Third Base by the time Wood walked in. Trolan was several beers ahead, and his broad face was flushed.

  “I hope you aren’t thinking about driving home.” Wood climbed onto an adjacent stool.

  Trolan flapped his hand. “I’ll be fine. Trust me, I have a doctorate.”

  Wood grunted. The bartender had his back to him, and it wasn’t until the server turned that Wood realized the man was a stranger.

  “Where’s Murray?” he said.

  “Dunno.” The bartender dropped a coaster on the bar. “Murray got attacked, someone he knows got attacked, maybe he attacked someone. I deleted the message right after I called in to say I could pick up the shift.”

  Wood ordered a double and a beer to make up for lost time, then looked at Trolan. “Do you know Murray’s last name?”

  “No,” Trolan said, staring into his beer. “Guy gave me the same line; I don’t know what happened.”

  “Without his last name it won’t do much good to ask Rodney to —.” He shook his head. “I keep forgetting.” Wood picked up the drink the bartender set in front of him. “I killed Rodney today.”

  The astronomer raised an eyebrow. “Technically, that’s impossible. Rodney is not alive.”

  “Call it what you want. He’s down for the count.”

  Trolan signaled for a refill. “What about the backup?”

  “The tech guys restored him five times. Each time he locked up and deleted himself.”

  Trolan patted Wood on the arm. “There, there.” He took a drink. “How did it happen?”

  “I ran an executable file we found on a suspect’s onboard.”

  “Virus?”

  “Nothing the tech guys or cybercrime have seen before.”

  “You’re lucky it didn’t get into the entire system.”

  Wood swallowed some scotch. “Yeah, lucky.”

  ~~~~~

  LeClair was already working at his desk when Wood came to work the next morning. “The network seem slow to you?” the younger man said.

  “I just got in.” Wood handed the fresh coffee to his partner. “Don’t thank me. I spit in it.”

  LeClair opened the top of his cup without looking. “I heard about your Watson.”

  “I’m crying on the inside. It got me thinking, though. It’s not a drug, right? So what if the Cobb girl caught something from her onboard?”

  “Like a virus? Can that happen?”

  “No idea.”

  LeClair scratched his chest through his open collar. “You calling the onboard manufacturer or am I?”

  Wood crumpled his cup and bounced it off the side of a recycling bin. “You are. I bought the coffee.”

  Wood signed o
ut a temporary Watson to help him with a report on a nice, simple wife-on-cheating-husband homicide. He filed the report around noon and leaned back in his chair. “Another hardened criminal off the streets. Miller time.”

  LeClair walked into Wood’s office. “How about another coffee, instead.” He offered Wood first pick from a bag of doughnuts and outlined his interviews with the onboard manufacturers.

  “So ...” Wood rubbed at his face. “It’s not their hardware’s fault and, anyway, they aren’t responsible for the psychotic actions of their customers. However, they can make no claims, or guarantees about the safety hazards posed by illegal apps, viruses, malevolent near-smarts, or corrupt downloads.”

  “You got it. And one guy did say a corrupt download or virus might, in theory, be able to affect a user’s brain. That’s the whole idea behind the e-drugs. They’re just designed to do it.”

  LeClair was about the right age. “You got one?”

  “An onboard? No. My family didn’t have the money.”

  “That may be a lucky break for you. We need to check the other suspects. You want to make the calls, or should I?”

  “You make the calls.” LeClair grinned. “I bought the coffee.”

  Wood arranged for next-day downloads of all the perps’ onboards. The warrants came easy. The media still hadn’t connected the dots, and the police commissioner was eager to close the case before it did. Wood also put in a call to his precinct captain to give him an update. Wood’s badge beeped as he ended the call. Two messages had arrived, nearly a photo finish.

  Message one was a small relief: Murray was alive, but his wife had been attacked on the street. The attacker had escaped; the woman described him as a bald man with scabs on his head. He’d come at her with a brick, screaming inarticulately. Responding officers reported the attacker was likely high on PCP derivative. The second message was a disappointment: The Tech Department had given up on Rodney and erased his back-ups.

  “Looks like it’s you and me, kid.” Wood re-activated the temporary Watson. “Log yourself permanently assigned to Detective Davis Wood. Your name is Amadou.” He spelled it.

  “Amadou. Confirmed,” the Watson said. “Will there be anything else?”

  “Clock me out. I’m going home.”

  “Confirmed. Detective Wood, please be aware there has been a power outage in the parking garage. Emergency lighting is operational, but illumination has been reduced by seventy-five percent.”

  The elevator wasn’t working either, so Wood took the stairs down to the parking level. The bad lighting improved the looks of the parking garage but filled it with shadows.

  “Lovely.” Wood checked the strap on his holster and set off in the direction of his car. His footsteps echoed from wall to wall, the only sound louder than the hum of the emergency lights.

  Wood slid his thumb across his badge. “Rod —” He scowled. “Amadou, start my car, please.”

  “Confirmed.”

  About fifty feet ahead Wood’s aging ChAMP responded with a surprised honk and a quick double flash of headlights. The lights stayed on for a few seconds then faded to embers. Wood swore and hurried to open the driver’s side door. He punched the start-up code into the keypad, and the dashboard lit up with an alert: “Charge insufficient for operation.” The words flashed four times before fading to black.

  “Shit on toast.” Wood couldn’t remember the last time he’d had the car serviced, and the ChAMP wasn’t talking. Rodney would know, but Rodney was gone. “Damn it.” The condo would be a hike, but Third Base was only a dozen blocks away. He could walk to the bar and catch a cab home from there. The ChAMP would be safe in the parking garage. Julia could get it picked up in the morning.

  Wood hand-locked all the doors and headed down the ramp to the sidewalk. He liked the feel of the pavement under his feet. L.A. was his city, and he heard her best when the dark sky closed over the top of the buildings, and the normal people went home to their families. Wood grabbed his handkerchief and sneezed into it violently. “God-damned nanobots.”

  The streets were mostly empty. With the near-smarts running things and modern entertainment being what it was, a lot of people never left home anymore. What was the point? Nearly anything they could want was at their fingertips. The only people who came out at night were kids and —

  A panicked scream echoed ahead and to the right. Wood broke into a sprint, pounding around the corner. As he ran, he pulled his gun, something he’d done only a handful of times outside the shooting range. Ahead, next to a parked car, a youth was being attacked by a ragged bald man. Wood yelled, his voice automatically amplified by the crowd-control system built into his coat. “Police! Freeze! Police!”

  The bald man turned, and the detective’s muscles threatened to turn to agar. There was nothing human in the attacker’s face and nothing comforting about the length of rebar clutched in his hands.

  “Drop your weapon,” Wood said. “Get on the ground. I am a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department. I am armed, and I will shoot if necessary.”

  The attacker studied his length of rebar for a moment and fixed his wild eyes on Wood. He screamed, loud and high enough to send a chill down Wood’s spine and make his throat ache in sympathy. Screeching again, the bald man lifted the bludgeon over his head and charged.

  Wood fired three times. The rusty rebar slipped from the man’s hand and clattered on the ground. Wood kept the muzzle of his gun trained on the attacker as the bald man dropped to his knees and fell backward on the pavement.

  Wood had shot well, three slugs right into the middle of the bald man’s chest. In seconds, the man was staring into darkness deeper than any Wood had seen through a telescope.

  Wood led the kid he’d saved to a nearby bench. “It’s alright. You’re safe.”

  The kid was almost certainly a prostitute. He tried to look anywhere but at Wood or the slain attacker, and he shivered against fear and cold. Wood pulled off his coat and draped it around the teen’s narrow shoulders. “You’re going to be okay.” Wood knew the transmitter in his pistol’s grip had sent an emergency signal to police headquarters as soon as he’d drawn the thing. There’d be a cruiser on scene in minutes.

  “He was, like, watching me from across the street,” the kid said. His right forearm bent in the middle, the break suffered in self defense. “He just ran at me. I didn’t say nothing to him. He was making this sound, like a dog’s squeak toy. You know?” The kid shivered. “All the time he was hitting me. He kept making the noise.”

  Wood walked back to the corpse. A few locks of hair were still attached to the man’s raw scalp. His pupils were dilating rapidly. The detective sat down on the curb near the body, trading his view of the corpse sprawled at his feet for the feeble gleam of the stars above. After a few minutes he woke up Amadou and put in a call to LeClair. “I think we’ve got another one. Get a download as soon as you come in.”

  The meat wagon picked up the body twenty minutes later, and Wood caught a ride with a blue the rest of the way home.

  The alarm cut through his sleeping-pill haze at nine the next morning. Wood’s body felt heavy, and he sat on his bed and held his gun for a long time before replacing the three spent cartridges. He stopped for coffee on the way into work.

  “Trade you,” LeClair said, waving a printout.

  Wood handed over the coffee, his eyes fixed on the report in his partner’s hand. He scanned the sheaf of paper summing up the contents of each perp’s onboard. “The same kind of files as the Cobb girl had. The same shit that took out Rodney.”

  “They’ve all got it. It’s got to be a virus.”

  Wood put a call in to his captain. Four hours later he was in the captain’s office.

  “Congratulations,” the captain said. “A security patch just went live. GooglePlex is writing a worm to destroy any copies of the virus still in the Cloud.”

  “That won’t get them all,” Wood said. “Some funny guy probably has a portable drive full of the
m.”

  The older man shrugged. “It’s out of our jurisdiction. GooglePlex is international. We sent it all up the line to Homeland Security and Global Cybercrimes. It’s a terrorism case now.” He clapped Wood on the shoulder. “Take a couple of days off. Go see that kid of yours. Mary?”

  “Molly.” Wood leaned forward. “It’s not over. The guy I shot had eyes. Something’s changed.”

  The captain’s eyes grew flinty. “It’s over. A nice little case to give the media. Protect and serve. We’ve done our jobs.”

  File it under Somebody Else’s Problem, Wood thought as he walked back to his office.

  LeClair met him at his office door. “Don’t bother going in there,” he said. “The network just went down.”

  “What happened?”

  “Probably some kind of security measure. It knows there’s a virus going around and doesn’t want to get sick.”

  “What the hell are we supposed to do in the meantime?”

  “It’s Friday. We saved the day. Go home early.”

  Wood thought about the police captain, upstairs washing his hands of the whole thing. “Hell with it. I will.”

  On his way out the door Wood called Trolan to tell him he was going to stop by the observatory and bum a few upgrades for his array. The professor laughed and said there was shareware, free to download, that would do a better job than Wood’s outdated commercial package. “Bring your laptop by, and I’ll see what I can do.”

  Then Wood called his ex wife and reminded her that the custody agreement allowed him to take Molly for long weekends. “We’re going out to Sonoma,” he said. “I’ll pick her up in the morning. The kitten, too, if she wants.”

  It was full dark when Wood pulled his rental car into a parking spot near the university’s observatory. The ChAMP was in the shop, its recharge resulting in nothing more than the car’s alarm going off, the piercing tones making Wood wince and force a shut down.

  Trolan was in his office, halfway through a fifth of whiskey. Wood sat in Trolan’s guest chair. “Didn’t I buy you that bottle three years ago?”

  Trolan slid it across the desk to Wood. Wood took a slug and wiped the bottle’s neck on his sleeve. “What are we celebrating?”