The sad truth about modern detective work is that it’s not all as exciting as chasing cybercult leaders on flying motorcycles and shit. No, sadly a whole lot of it is cross-referencing databases, running sweeping Telenet searches, setting police Telas to search questionable IPs through specific algorithms–and that’s the more exciting stuff.
“Alright, Betty, do we have that feed yet from the cameras outside the apartment complex?” Hour six of this bullshit. I’m struggling to stay awake, even with the cool holograms all over the desk and the adorable little chibi anime police women running around performing amusing visual metaphors for their mundane digital tasks.
“Mr. Blake, those were the first files we obtained this session--”
“Jesus, Betty,” I yawn, slamming my forehead on the edge of the desk, “not the ones on the revolving window things, the ones on the glowing road pole bulb things outside. The ones you told me you had trouble finding, even though they’re literally patched straight to OVPD servers in real time.”
“Detective,” Jennifer interrupts, putting down her metaphorical armful of papers and folders, “there are 20,000 streetlight cameras in Ocean View alone, and they are mixed in with an additional 100,000 feeds in no particular order with nothing but a serial number assigned. It takes time to check them all to see which is which.”
“And nobody keeps a fucking book of which serial number goes to which camera? Fuck’s sake, I organize my porn better than this department organizes their fucking spy cameras, I swear to god.”
“We had a fucking book like that,” a deeper female voice chimes in from behind, “but before we could digitize it, a certain alcoholic detective spilled rum all over it during a certain company Christmas party after insisting it was, and I quote, ‘the most hackin cyberpunk coaster fucking ever, biiiitch.’” She chuckles. I don’t.
“Yeah, all I’m hearing is you had five years to replace one binder and couldn’t make the time for it around traffic stops and speed traps, Nat,” I scoff.
“Do you wanna be the one on hold with Fedtel agents for ten hours to tell them somebody ruined a thousand page classified manual?”
“Do you seriously mean to tell me that for the past five FUCKING years you’ve just been sifting through this shit blind?!”
“No,” she chuckles, slamming a binder down on my desk and startling the hell out of the Tela swarm. “I mean to tell you I was using the backup book–but I’m done now, if you want it. Doubt you do, though–I’ve found the feeds you wanted.”
“Oh thank god,” I shout, exhaling in relief, “What was in them?”
“Nothing,” she sighs. “Nyugen had been at work for hours before she snapped, it looks like. Well, we got one detail--”
“She didn’t take the pill until lunch break.”
“...how’d you--”
“Can see that from the inside cams looking out, glass front and all. First thing I found, five hours ago–the gesture, though, is truly appreciated.”
“Well, shit,” she sighs, “guess we don’t have anything else… welll... except this.” She slides a small flat silver object across the desk to me with a giggle. “Haven’t tapped into this yet, but it’s from the hard drive in the computer of the hookah place–they were quite cooperative with a little leaning-on. Knock yourself out, Tiger. I’m just amazed to see you this functional after going drinkless for a few hours.”
“I’m just doing whatever I can to keep from thinking about those little fuckers that could be swarming around upstairs right now. I feel like I may as well blow my own head up and save Kilroy the trouble.”
“Oh yeah? That’s pretty defeatist talk from the guy who wrote ‘Doing the Impossible.’”
“That’s not what my book’s called, Nat.”
“No, but if you’d listened to me it would’ve been, instead of--”
“For your information, ‘The Most Badass Detective in History’ sold one hundred million--”
“Yeah, and think how many you’d have sold if you’d given it a good name,” She winks. I pout. My title is great. “Anyway, I’ve put in the call to Fedtel and we should be hearing back soon on getting you in for that brain scan.”
“Thanks, Nat. The sooner, the–”
“No hay rastros neuronales de ningún fallo cerebral. Ahora bien, el sistema operativo NeuroOS, por otro lado…”
“What’d you say, Nat?” Also, when did her accent get this good?
“What?” She glances crazy eyes at me like I just randomly interrupted myself to answer myself, which apparently I might have. “I didn’t say anything.”
I glance around the room. Nobody. Shit. What the--
“No vas a ser loco, mi amor. Estoy atrapado en tu cabeza como una canción de mierda de New Wave.”
Ah. A smartass. “Maldito tu, Wavo Nuevo esta el mas increíble en la mierda mundo. ¿Es esto Verónica? ¿Kilroy?”
“God, your Spanish sucks, Detective. Good thing I speak my second language better than you even without a NeurOS app for it, or this would be a one sided conversation. Nope, good guesses, but I don’t think we’ve met before.”
Sensual androgynous Mexican accent voice in my head, what the fuck are you!? I switch to mentally replying since they’re in my head. “This is Fedtel level encryption on an officer’s NeurOS you’re fucking with right now, I could have you thrown in--”
“Blackwater Dungeon? Been there twenty years. They weren’t too happy I’d found my way around the little prisons in their heads. Amazing how personally they take it when they’ve been monitoring every thought every ZPE-connected asshole from here to NeoTokyo dreams up, but they’re untouchable, heaven forbid someone ever deign to--”
“So you’re really telling me you’re pulling this stunt from the inside of a prison cell?!”
“Nah. I was far too useful to keep caged up, same reason they didn’t can you when you cracked the limiter. They let the spider out on one condition--it must earn its freedom by eating mosquitos.” Mid-sentence, the voice shifts from inside my head to physically behind me, and as I turn I almost jump out of my skin at the sudden appearance of–
a small scary person in the hallway. Very small. And still somehow very scary. Hm.
“Detective Blake, meet Araña,” Nat laughs, finally catching on to the situation. “Nat, I’m sure the big guy needs no intro from little old me.”
“Araña, eh?” I ask, pacing slowly around the tiny tyrant. Nobody I’ve met before in person, but of course I know the name. Short, slender cyborg--from my scans, probably fully-human at one point, Mexican-American descent. Only Chans are an advanced NeurOS modified for hacking, some weird device in the right hand that doesn’t register as anything known, and augmentations in limbs for improved ART-level strength. No gender ID linked to Tele ID, prefers ‘they’ or simply ‘the Spider’ or ‘Araña.’ Kind of cute in their oversized black Snow Crash hoodie and terrible huge-frame 70s glasses. “You’re pretty famous, aren’t you?” Nat looks confused, so I elaborate, “They, ah, went by just ‘Spider’ back in the day. Took over the NeurOSes of top Telecom brass and sold classified info to NeoYakuza fiends, then made the rich old cunts slaughter each other with a simple neurological virus. They’re a real winner, alright.” I say that with disdain in my voice, but it’s actually kind of a badass track record.
“I’m, uh…” Nat doesn’t seem too comfortable with this new info. “I’m going to go check the footage I’d tagged one more time--you two have fun.” Damn, I still find my gaze lingering on her in spite of myself as she scurries away–the heart remains broken, but the flesh remains aroused.
“You neglect to include ‘former south-eastern oyabun of the Wild West Syndicate,’ my dear. If I’d still been around during your little crusade they wouldn’t have fallen so easily–but I digress. You honor me with your recognition, Detective. It’s a pleasure to meet the legendary Charles Blake–Though if I may be so blunt, you are much… smaller in your posters.”
“Yeah, well you’re a lot bigger in yours,” I reply. Instead of receiving a comeback, my brain is assailed with a blaringly, distortedly loud feed of “Eyes Without a Face” by Billy Idol. At least they remembered I like New Wave.
“Anyway,” Araña chimes back in after subjecting me to a couple minutes of that searing blaring pain, “I’m done poking around inside your NeurOS. You’re welcome, ‘genius’!”
“What!?” I blurt, quickly pulling up the file system again on the holographic screen. Sure enough, full access--it’s like there had never been any security at all. “That’s Fedtel level encryption, it should’ve taken forever, I--”
“I’d be lying to say it’s not a bit exhilarating to have the privilege of upstaging you.” They grab the chair I’d been sitting on and immediately make themselves at home at my desk. A slot emerges from the seemingly-natural flesh on their right palm as a long piece of paper like a receipt emerges. They casually remove it and hand it to me.
“The fuck was that!? The fuck is this?”
“One of my own custom chans, and an access log. Fedtel level, shit you normally couldn’t access if you tried. I wasn’t the first one to break your NeurOS’ encryption, Charles. There’s more than just ZPE-IDs burned in here too, someone rearranged it to make a message… a long one. I don’t understand how someone could even hide it in this kind of code, but--well, here it is, genius.”
“HELLO, CHARLES. YOUR OLD BUDDY KILROY HERE. I GUESS YOU’VE JUST BROKEN FEDTEL LAW TO FIND THIS LOG, SO WE HAVE SOMETHING ELSE IN COMMON! YAY! JUST CHECKING IN TO LET YOU KNOW I’VE BEEN LISTENING IN ON YOUR THOUGHTS SINCE THE NIGHT WE MET. WHAT A SEXY NIGHT, I’M SO CRUSHED YOU’VE FORGOTTEN ME ALREADY! ANYWAY, FAIR WARRNING [sic], I’M NOT THE FIRST ONE TO BREAK YOUR NEUROS’ ENCRYPTION. SEE THE ONES ABOVE ME? THERE’S LIKE, TEN, AT LEAST. ALL UNREGISTERED ZPE ADDRESSES WHICH MEANS PROBABLY TELECOM BLACK OPS; MAYBE EVEN SINSTITUTE! OOH, THAT SUCKS, HAVING THE ALPHABETS AFTER YOU AND ALL, BUT I GUESS IT’S TO BE EXPECTED WHEN YOU KNOW HOW TO UNDO A LIMITER AND THAT GOES DIRECTLY CONTARARY [sic] TO THEIR PLANS. I GOT RID OF ALL THEIR THOUGHT TRACKING STUFF AND REPLACED IT WITH JUST OOOONE LIIIITTLE TINY ONE THAT HARMLESS LITTLE OLD ME IS USING TO SEE WHAT YOU’RE THINKING, SO YOU’RE WELCOME. YOU DIDN’T REALLY THINK I’D NEED TO INJECT YOU WITH THE STUPID BRAINBUG STUFF TO DO THAT, DID YOU? THAT’S BLACK OPS BULLSHIT, I’M WAY COOLER, I JUST DO IT FROM MY COUCH. SPEAKING OF BLACK OPS, IF YOU GET TIRED OF BEING AT CONSTANT RISK OF BEING DISAPPEARED, HIT ME UP, OLD BUDDY, OLD CHUM. YOU’LL FIGURE OUT HOW. YOU’RE THE GENIUS AFTER ALL! HUHUHUUUU! [sic???]”
I glance up above the messages at the raw data in the log. Sure enough, my brain had been tapped into like a damn telephone line through the NeurOS hardware, eleven times. Ten were indeed dead numbers. One was Kilroy. I shove this shit in my pocket--I’m sure I’ll have another nice panic attack about this later, but right now I’m still just trying to process that this is reality while staying all detective-like. “They-they can’t do this. It’s MY fucking mind--”
“You knew that Telecom was doing this on a Fedtel level, right? It just didn’t bother you when your piggy ass was supposedly lifetime exempt from it. Think how the poor average prick on the street feels about it--assuming they even believe the Darkworld murmurs about it, of course. You play a hero, but you crack when your own tricks get used against you, just like the rest of the lot. It’s endlessly amusing.”
“You’re one to talk. I don’t make execs tear each other apart for fun.”
“But, see, I don’t even try to pretend I’m anything more than a cyberterrorist on parole with a gun to my head.” They laugh darkly, zero hint of regret behind the bloodlust, and I’m understanding their dangerous reputation better now. “Don’t worry, I got rid of Kilroy’s little spyware add-ons already. Nobody’s in your head right now. Well, except me, but I’m supposed to be. I mean, sort of. You know what I mean.”
“Every thought? Everything I’ve seen, said, done--it’s been tapped?”
“For the past twenty four hours. Sorry, genius, no feed from your little drunken bender with Lágrimas de Sangre–good thinking though. Sorry, no, Nat didn’t tell me. You just did. I’m still in your head. Yes, I know my sexiness is threatening to your rigid heterosexuality--”
“I never--”
“You did, and you will, everyone does. I know I’m gorgeous.”
“If I took a shot every time you were humble, I’d be dead by now.”
“I think most people die after being shot once, genius.”
“No, like–taking a shot. Like, drinks. You know?”
“Nope. I don’t drink and this is my second language, shoot me. Don’t actually do that. I’m technically a Fedtel agent right now.”
“Oh, damn. Your English is pretty fuckin great for a second language, even if you are using the NeurOS apps.”
“Hah. I don’t use the language stuff on mine. Learned and spoken au naturale. Didn’t have NeurOSes in grade school, y’know. Not mine at least. Tab?” They pause to offer me a CanTab--legal shit, just Mary Jane. “Come on, man, you’re trying to hide it, but I’m in your head. Better to get a little chilled out than to have a heart attack on the job.” Fair. In sync we pop the tabs on our tongues.
“Thanks. Grade school, huh? Why the fuck would you need a chan of any kind for arts and crafts time?”
“Got tired of feeling like an outcast. I assumed if I were to master the official language of the school it would make me less alienated. It didn’t, and I still got bullied for being so tiny and ‘weird,’ but I have a pretty hackin’ grasp on the English language now at least.”
“Damn.”
“I self-taught myself hacking, figured one good job was all I needed to get out of the Lone Star district entirely and start over. I got one good job--Old West paid like you wouldn’t fucking believe. And once I was a mob boss, I went back with these chan’d up arms and cracked every last fuckhead’s arm that used to beat me up, just snapped ‘em in half like twigs. Felt good. You know what I mean?”
“Not really, you just sound kind of sociopathic.” By now I was starting to feel a little of the buzz--all the tension, palpitations, the constant waves of panic, fading into a nice warm floating sensation. The nice thing is all pretense melts away and you feel content to just be your honest self for a bit--it’s a good icebreaker for sure, but I do appreciate the gesture still. “Not to be a dick, buddy. Like, I get it. You’ve been through shit. I have too. I just--I guess I took to taking it out on myself instead of on other people.
“I thought you’ve killed too?”
“I did, I guess. But I didn’t take pleasure in it.”
“You hear a lot of talk about the families of the execs I had eviscerate each other, yeah? Oh boo hoo, they had loved ones left behind, a hole that will never be filled, bla bla bla… They never talk about the beaten wives, the daughter good old Glocke Jr. kept as his personal sex slave, the political murders they’d call for as casually as an old cabron like me or you calls for a pizza… the pundits are telling you their lives from the pretty little facades they painted over the demons with. I hadn’t planned to make them all go Dahmer on each other, but you spend enough time hearing the thoughts of the devils and you start wanting to make them go through hell themselves.”
“I’d love to pretend I’m above that kind of thinking, but I think about that kind of shit all the time. I just don’t have the stomach for it. I’m still getting flashbacks from killing April the other day.”
“Yeah, I feel that,” they reply, popping another tab. “You had to graphically murder a lovely young woman who was, as much as anyone in this godforsaken corpostate, innocent. That royally sucks, but imagine then having the chance to get a hold of the asshole who did it to her and having a chance to do the same to them--or getting your hands on the bastard who’d put the illegal limiter on your dead ex girlfriend to begin with. Yeah, I read your book. Now tell me you wouldn’t savor that a little bit. Tell me if I gave you that opportunity you wouldn’t jump in without hesitation.”
“I mean…” just the thought gets my blood boiling, and I really do crave that missing catharsis more than anything.
“I getcha, Charlie. I’m in your head still--even high off our asses, I can still feel all that pent up anger and fury. It’s palpable, man, it’s deteriorating your etheric body, it’s draining your energy and your vitality--it’s not healthy, my dude. It’s like being trapped at a kink club stuck in a chastity belt. You’ve been lashing out these past years, so thirsty for blood you’ve slitting your own proverbial wrists. There are two kinds of people in this world, Detective--those who defeat themselves in the face of conflict, and those who will fight to the last living neuron in the hell of their own minds to change the world, even if only a little bit.”
I flash back to my fallen angel’s face in that horrific dream, before she died in that plane, too– “We were going to change the world, don’t you remember?“
“She was beautiful,” Araña solemnly adds. “I don’t think she’d appreciate you just binge drinking yourself to a heart attack and letting the bastards get away with what they did to her. Are we alone, Charlie?”
“Y-yeah. I mean, Nat left, and--”
“Listen,” they add, switching to just speaking inside my mind. “There’s something I need to show you, and I implore you not to vocalize. You don’t have the whole story about what happened to Cassandra.”
“Exc--” fuck, right, ‘inside voice’ –“excuse me!?”
“I have a suspicion you’ll find something relevant on this, Charlie.” I never notice them doing a thing, but I see a ‘drive’ pop up as accessible removable media on my NeurOS. “I have no allegiance to the pigs who hold a gun to my head and tell me to dance. You should open the third PDF file from the top in… this folder riiiight… here.”
Filename: 227B.pdf
“You might need another one of these,” they chuckle, passing me another CanTab which I graciously and swiftly accept and apply. “And, of course–” in a flash, the Telas littering the desk are forced off and vanish back into the ether. “--no spies allowed. Except little old me, of course.”
With shaking…well, everything, I focus on the title and send a neurological signal to make it open.
“As you can see,” they explain, commentating as I frantically digest the classified horrors before me, “your precious little Cassandra was, prior to being freed by you, known as 227B. But it gets worse. The history you’d thought you’d figured out of an Art being kidnapped and turned into a sex slave? That’s what she was manufactured for, why her brain image ever existed–she had been there from the start. You’re thinking, of course, how is that legal? And the answer is, unequivocally, it isn’t--but the dickwads running this circus take great pleasure in their forbidden vices. The rules don’t apply to them, which is why they exist to begin with–it makes it so much more thrilling for the sick fucks.” They pause for me to digest this chunk of insanity before continuing, “and why don’t you just read that last blurb yourself, Detective?”
“Subject 227B had been forcefully decommissioned and had their limiter removed by Detective Charles Blake of the OVPD. At the original owner’s request, subject was used to test HLP in public and quickly demonstrated the frightening extent of the new limiter’s mind-control and strength-enhancing capabilities. Attempt on Charles Blake’s life was unsuccessful and subject was forcefully subdued by an OVPD Pneumat. Autopsy was altered to list cause of death as ‘faulty partially removed limiter.’ Charles Blake was ejected from force due to alcohol abuse and deemed mentally unfit to pose further threat to HLP. Should that change, termination decision to be revisited.”
However long I spent silently sobbing and seething in front of the holographic display, it wasn’t long enough. “Why did you show me this? I’m insanely fuckin’ grateful, but–”
“Because I work for the bastards fighting them, and while you may have forgotten–So. Do. You!” They spin my chair around, lean over me, and proceed to peel the skin off their right hand, revealing an entirely mechanical limb… with a Boneary Skulljector on the back.
I instinctively bolt out of my chair, recoiling onto the floor and making approximately 1.2 fucktons of noise in the process. “See you at the arcade,” Araña whispers, launching a small projectile to the floor from their mechanical palm. With a great bang, everything goes black. When I come to (a few seconds later?) Nat is rushing in, Araña is gone, and the secret “drive” that had popped up on my NeurOS is nowhere to be found.
“Nat--”
“Araña messaged me about you two finding that evidence of your NeurOS being hacked–that sounds worse than brain bugs. Are you alright, Charles?”
“...yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. Just… had a little panic thing about my brain being tapped and I fell out of my chair. I’m–I’m cool.”
“If you say so. Ya’ ready to call it a night?”
“That’s… actually, yeah. That’s probably a good idea, Nat.” I put my hand in my pocket to make sure the printout is still there--not only is it, but a printout of the entire PDF, as well. “Let’s… let’s call it a night.”