“What about the march on the Mall?” I asked.
“Oh, I’ll definitely be going to that,” Tony said, and grinned. “I think we’ll all be going. Are you planning on it?”
“I’m pretty sure I’ll be working it,” I said.
“Right,” Tony said. “I guess this is a busy week for you.”
“Just a little.”
“Got thrown into the deep end, it looks like,” Tony said, looking back to his code. “You picked a hell of a week to start your gig.”
I smiled at that and looked up again at the pulsing neural network, thinking. “Hey, Tony,” I said.
“Yes?”
“You said a hacker gave people heart attacks.”
“Well, arrhythmia, actually, but close enough for government work,” Tony said. “Why?”
“Is it possible for a hacker to implant suicidal thoughts?” I asked.
Tony frowned at this for a minute, considering. “Are we talking general feelings of depression, leading to suicidal thoughts, or specific thoughts, like ‘Today I should eat a bullet’?”
“Either,” I said. “Both.”
“You could probably cause depression through a neural network, yeah,” Tony said. “That’s a matter of manipulating brain chemistry, which is something networks do already”—he pointed up at his network simulator—“although usually accidentally. The patch I’m doing now is designed to stop just that sort of chemistry manipulation.”
“What about specific thoughts?”
“Probably not,” Tony said. “If we’re talking about thoughts that feel like they’re originating from a person’s own brain. Generating images and noises that come from the outside is trivial—we’re both doing it right now. This room is a mutually agreed-upon illusion. But directly manipulating consciousness so that you make someone think they’re thinking a thought you give them—and then making them act on it—is difficult.”
“Difficult or impossible?” I asked.
“I never say ‘impossible,’” Tony said. “But when I say ‘difficult’ here I mean that as far as I’ve heard no one’s ever done it. And I don’t know how to do it, even if I wanted to, which I wouldn’t.”
“Because it’s unethical,” I prompted.
“Hell yes,” Tony said. “And also because I know if I’ve figured it out, someone else has too, because there’s always someone else smarter out there, who may not have ethics. And that would really mess with shit. It’s hard enough to believe in free will as it is.”
“So,” I said. “Really difficult but not actually impossible.”
“Really really really difficult,” Tony allowed. “But theoretically possible because, hey, it’s a quantum physics universe. Why do you ask, Chris? I sense this is not an entirely idle question.”
“What’s your work schedule look like?” I asked.
Tony nodded upward. “It looks like my patch is doing what it’s supposed to. Once I clean it up a bit, which should take less than an hour, I’ll send it off and then I’m free.”
“Have you ever done work for the federal government?”
“I live in Washington, D.C., Chris,” Tony said. “Of course I’ve done work for the government. I have a vendor ID and everything.”
“Do you have a security clearance?”
“I’ve done confidential work before, yes,” Tony said. “Whether on the level you seem to be thinking about is something I guess we’d have to find out.”
“I may have a job for you, then,” I said.
“Involving neural networks?”
“Yes,” I said. “Hardware and software.”
“When would you want me to start?”
“Probably tomorrow,” I said. “Probably, like, nine A.M.”
Tony smiled. “Well, then,” he said. “I should probably finish up what I’m doing so I can at least attempt to get some sleep.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“No,” Tony said. “Thank you. It’s not every day that a new housemate comes bearing work. That makes you officially my favorite housemate.”
“I won’t tell,” I said.
“No, go ahead and tell,” Tony said. “Maybe it will inspire a competition. That’ll work out for me. I could use the work.”
Chapter Fourteen
“DON’T TELL TRINH I said this to you,” Captain Davidson said, pointing to the five Hadens he had in his holding cell, “but I would be delighted if the FBI took these idiots off our hands.”
The five Hadens, or more accurately their threeps, glared at me, Vann, and Davidson from the other side of the holding cell. We could tell they were glaring because their threep models came with customized heads that displayed faces and expressions. The faces these threeps carried were not their owners’ actual faces, unless their owners were the spitting images of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Thomas Paine, and Alexander Hamilton. The threeps were also wearing colonial-era uniforms, which may or may not have been historically accurate. It was like an elementary school diorama of the Continental Congress come to life.
The threeps were just threeps, of course. The Hadens driving them were somewhere else in the country. But when you’re a Haden and you’re arrested in your threep, if you disconnect, that’s considered resisting arrest and fleeing the scene. This fact was courtesy of a young, rich Haden who in the early years of threeps carelessly knocked down an old lady, disconnected from her threep in a panic, and then spent three years and a couple hundred thousand dollars of Mommy’s money trying to get out of what would have been a standard-issue moving violation. She eventually also ended up adding perjury and bribery to her docket. She should have just done the community service.
Thus our colonials, cooling their heels and glaring through their pixels.
“What you in for, George?” I asked Washington. Davidson had called us in to deal with several different Hadens in his holding cells. This was the first bunch.
“For exercising our constitutional Second Amendment rights,” Washington said. His real name was Wade Swope, from Milltown, Montana. His information was popped up in my view. “Here in the dictatorship of the District of Columbia, a man is apparently stripped of his right to bear arms.”
Vann turned to Davidson. “Shocked, shocked I am to find men with guns somehow landing in jail.”
“Yes, well,” Davidson said. “Our founding father here is correct that he has the right to bear arms, which in this case were long rifles for each of them. The part he’s skipping over is where his little group of colonial fighters went into a coffee shop—private property—and started to make a scene, and when they were told to take a hike, commenced to wave their rifles around. We have it on the store video, not to mention the phone of every single person in the store.”
“We’re here to be the security detail for the march,” said Thomas Jefferson, aka Gary Height, of Arlington, Virginia. “We’re a militia, consistent with the Constitution. We’re here to defend our people.”
“You might be a militia,” I said. “But I don’t think waving your firearms around in a coffee shop accurately describes ‘well-regulated.’”
“Who cares what you think?” said Patrick Henry, aka Albert Box of Ukiah, California. “You’re standing with them. Those who oppress us.” He pointed to me. “You are a traitor and a sellout.”
It occurred to me that Henry/Box actually had no idea who I was, although I don’t know if that would have changed his opinion any. I glanced over at Vann and Davidson. “Oppressing us, as in we Hadens, or oppressing you, dudes waving around firearms in a coffee shop?” I asked. “I want to be clear on the depth of my traitorness.”
“You know what confuses me, Shane,” Davidson said, before any of them could answer.
“Tell me,” I said.
Davidson motioned at the colonial Hadens. “On one hand these guys seem like your basic crazy conservative types, with the Second Amendment and their Yankee Doodle hats. But on the other hand they’re saying they’re security
for a march protesting reductions in government benefits. Which seems pretty liberal to me.”
“It’s a puzzler,” I agreed.
“I don’t know,” Davidson said. “Maybe it’s not about politics. Maybe these guys are just assholes.”
“Seems the simplest explanation,” I said.
“We have a right to assemble—” Washington/Swope began, clearly winding himself up.
“Oh, Jesus, don’t,” Vann said. “It’s too early in the fucking A.M. for your brand of pathetic patriotic bullshit.”
Washington/Swope clammed up, surprised.
“Better,” Vann said, and leaned in toward the lot. “Now. Your threeps are here, but each of your physical bodies are in a different state. That makes you the FBI’s problem. Which means you are my problem. And I say five jackasses dressed up like the back of a two-dollar bill, claiming to be a militia and waving around rifles in a goddamn Georgetown coffee shop violates Title Eighteen of the U.S. Criminal Code, chapters twenty-six, forty-three, and one hundred two.”
I quickly pulled up the relevant chapters of Title Eighteen and noted that chapter 43 was for “False Personation.” I didn’t suspect that anyone would confuse Swope with the real George Washington. I also knew to stay quiet.
“So, here’s the deal,” Vann continued. “You have two options. The first is I decide not to make a federal case of it, and you idiots walk your threeps over to the precinct storage room, where you power them down and then we yank out the batteries. You’ll have three days to arrange to have your threeps and your precious rifles shipped back to you, or we’ll assume you’re donating them to the Metro police.
“The second option is I do make a federal case out of it. In which case we confiscate your threeps and rifles, and a law enforcement official comes to all of your houses to wheel you off to the nearest Haden-capable federal detention center, which is probably not actually anywhere close to you. Then you get the joy of spending all the money every single member of your entire family will ever earn on lawyers, because in addition to those three chapters of Title Eighteen I covered with you, I’m going to throw every other single thing I can think of into the indictment.”
“That’s bullshit,” said Thomas Paine, aka Norm Montgomery of York, Pennsylvania.
“Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t,” Vann said. “But whatever it is, I will absolutely fucking bury you in it. And I will enjoy it, because you chose to waste my time making me deal with you. So, decision time. Door number one or door number two. Choose wisely. And if you don’t choose in ten seconds, we’re going with door number two. Choose.”
Seven seconds later our founding fathers chose door number one and Davidson was yelling for an escort to walk them down, one at a time, to evidence and storage.
Then we moved on to the next Haden in the pen, this one in for punching some woman who had called her a “clank.”
* * *
“Welcome to the next four days,” Vann said to me as we exited the second district headquarters. “We’ve got a bunch of incarcerated threeps in the first, third, and sixth district to get at, too. Then when we’re done with those we can come back here to the second and start all over. And then over and over again until the march is done and all the Hadens go home. You should probably tell your caregiver to put you on a caffeine drip.”
“What about Johnny Sani and Loudoun Pharma?” I asked.
“Terrorism’s got Loudoun Pharma,” Vann said. “We’re only on the edges of that one. Sani’s in our morgue and not going anywhere. Both of them can probably wait until Monday. Unless you think you’ve got something.”
“I think I have something,” I said. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?” Vann said. “We don’t have time for ‘maybe’ at the moment. We’ve got a whole line of threeps that we have to decide what to do with.”
“I want someone to look at Sani’s neural network.”
“We’ve already got our forensics people looking at it.”
“I want someone looking at it who knows their way around one,” I said. “Someone who works on them every day.”
“You have someone in mind?” Vann asked.
“My new housemate,” I said.
Vann reached into her jacket pocket for her e-cigarette. “You’re getting an early start on your cronyism,” she said.
“It’s not that,” I said, annoyed. “Johnny Sani had an IQ of eighty. He had no business having an Integrator’s neural network in his head. Someone installed it in him and someone used him, and then when they were done with him, they made him slit his own throat somehow. I think there’s something going on in the software of that network.”
“Something that forced him to slit his own throat?” Vann said.
“Maybe,” I said.
“There’s that ‘maybe’ again,” Vann said. She sucked on her cigarette.
“Tony does neural network software all the time,” I said. “And he contracts with the companies who make them to test their security and troubleshoot issues. He would know what to look for. Or at the very least, he would be able to see if something was wildly off.”
“And ‘Tony’ in this case is your new housemate.”
“Yes,” I said. “He’s done confidential work for the government before. Has a vendor ID and everything.”
“Is he expensive?” Vann asked.
“Does it matter?” I asked.
“Of course it matters,” Vann said, and it was her turn to look annoyed with me. “One of us is going to have to make the case for any expenditures we make outside ourselves. And if they don’t like it, they’re going to yell at me to yell at you.”
“I think it’s going to be worth it,” I said.
Vann took another suck on her cigarette. Then: “Fine, let’s get him in. I’ll tell them it’s related to the Loudoun Pharma thing if they bitch about it.”
“And they’ll buy that,” I said.
“Maybe,” Vann said.
“Because I really do think there’s something going on there,” I said. I recounted to Vann my brainstorming session of the night before.
“Do you do that a lot?” Vann asked, after I finished. “That tossing things into space and drawing lines between them thing.”
“When I can’t sleep? Yes.”
“You need to find some other evening activities,” Vann said.
“I’m not even going to touch that one,” I said.
Vann smiled wryly at that, took one more suck on her cigarette, and then started to put it away. “Well, I don’t want to take a run at Lucas Hubbard if we don’t have anything to take a run at him with. If we come after him I want him off guard. We can ask after Cassandra Bell, but I guarantee you the terrorism people already have a microscope shoved up her colon after the Loudoun Pharma thing, so she may not want to speak to us, and terrorism might not want us stepping on their dicks even if she does. What was the name of that woman Integrator that Schwartz was using?”
“Brenda Rees.”
“I’ll knock on her door today,” Vann said. “See if anything shakes loose there.”
“Am I not going with you?” I asked.
“No,” Vann said. “Since you seem to think all this is on some sort of timetable, you need to go out to California to follow up on that money order and then head over to that City of Hope place to see if anything comes of that. That should keep you busy.”
“What about Tony?” I asked.
“Give me his information and I’ll get him set up and over to the morgue today,” Vann said. “If he’s a flake, I’m going to take it out on you.”
“He’s not a flake, I promise.”
“He better not be. I’d hate to have to kill him and frame you for it.”
“That reminds me,” I said.
“Me threatening to kill someone reminds you of something?” Vann asked, surprised. “We haven’t known each other that long, Shane.”
“I had a run-in with Detective Trinh last night,” I said.
“Really.
”
“Yeah. Among other things, she implied that you drove your former partner to attempt suicide.”
“Huh,” Vann said. “What else did she tell you?”
“That you have high work standards for other people but not yourself, that you’re sloppy, a little bit dangerous when it comes to procedure, and that you have various addictions that are either the result of, or the contributing factor to you, washing out of the Integrator corps.”
“Did she tell you I set puppies on fire, too?” Vann asked.
“She did not,” I said. “It may have been implied.”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t think you set puppies on fire,” I said.
Vann smiled at that. “I mean the things Trinh actually said.”
“This is my third day with you,” I said. “You ride me hard—which I don’t mind, by the way—but then you do stuff like you did in there, where you let a bunch of assholes with firearms slip away rather than charge them with assault. If they did lawyer up, the fact you threatened them with ‘false personage’ wouldn’t have helped your case any.”
“You caught that,” Vann said.
“I did,” I said. “So maybe that qualifies as sloppy. I do notice that you smoke a lot, and when we talk after six P.M. you always seem to be in a bar, looking for someone to screw. As far as I can see it doesn’t affect your work, and your free time is your own. So I don’t actually care, aside from thinking that basting your lungs with insect poison is a bad idea in general.”
“Do you think it has to do with my time as an Integrator?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” I said. “I don’t get the feeling you’re in a rush to tell me about those days, which tells me something really fucked up probably happened way back when. But either you’ll tell me when you want to, or you won’t. The same with whatever the hell is going on between you and Trinh, because clearly she’s got a bug up her ass about you.”
“That’s an interesting way to put it,” Vann said.
“Here’s the only thing Trinh said that I worry about,” I said. “She thinks you’re going to fall apart on me, and that when you fall apart, you’re going to end up taking me with you.”