Tela announces that we’ve reached our destination: a towering sign with an “X” in a circle glows red over the small wooden building, with “CROSSROADS RECORDS” written underneath. The place looks shady as hell, but if Kilroy said to go here--wait, no, Kilroy is a crazed immortal robotic cult leader who probably wants me dead now, him telling me to go here means I definitely should NOT be here. Oh well, I was all geared up and ready to go, too late now. “Tela, are my Guntlets ready?”
“Yes, Blake-chan, and your Laser Eyes.”
“They’re called OcuLasers, Tela.”
“Blake-chan isn’t very good at names.”
I cautiously approach the door, stopping to look both ways and prime my Guntlets. “On the count of three. One… two…” I throw the door open with a slam, ready to take down dozens of armed cultists like a badass, but...it’s just…a record store. A counter on the right has records behind it stacked almost to the ceiling. Records line the walls on all sides, with stairs near the back that probably lead to more records, if the sign that says “THESE STAIRS LEAD TO MORE RECORDS” is any indication. Which it probably was. It really was just a store… with records.
“Hey, can I help you, dude? Everything alright?” the guy behind the counter asks, turning down the indie alt-reggae prog jam he had been blaring through the store. He’s got one of those little french painter hats and a plaid shirt with well-trimmed facial hair, about like you’d expect from a record store dude with obscure taste in music.
“Yeah, I’m, uh, I’m good. My name’s Detective Blake.”
“Oh, sweet man, so you’re like Inspector Gadget?” he asks, motioning to my Guntlet chans.
“Yup, I made them myself. They’re called Guntlets.”
“That’s a pretty hackin’ name, man.” Ah shit, I like this guy. “Nice to meet you. I’m Panel.”
“Hey, thanks man. Yeah, you too, uh… a guy named Kilroy sent me?”
“Right. Good one. We’ve got that in, but the price is fuckin’ dumb, man. I’d wait for a non commissioned copy to come in.”
“No, seriously. Any idea what Kilroy was after when he came in?”
“Do you, like... are you trying to ask about the mint copy of Kilroy Was Here we just posted on Teleworld Bazaar? Because we still have it.”
“Uh, y…yeah?”
He reaches under the desk and starts looking frantically around for something. “Yeah, uh, we’ve got it here somewhere. Real classic. Most people say it’s Styx’s worst album, but you know, I disagree. The Grand Illusion was a piece of shit, man. Like, how preachy can you get? May as well read the old Teen Titans vs. Marijuana Man shit Reagan put out a hundred years ago, right?”
“Uh, yeah, you said it.”
“Here you go, man.” He pulls out a mint condition 33rpm record in a plastic sleeve. “STYX: KILROY WAS HERE” is written in the top left corner, and underneath that are two robotic masks in front of a group of angry people with fire rising behind them. Holy shit, this is LITERALLY “Kilroy” the album. And here I thought Styx only did that song about angels that were aliens and that took that pirate to Mars in their sailboat. This has got to be what he wanted me to find.
“How much?”
“5000 Telecredits, but it’s not my–”
“Are you fucking shitting me!? This BUILDING isn’t worth that.”
“Hey, man,” the guy at the counter blurts, extending his arms and stumbling backwards defensively, “don’t get on my case for that, man, let me finish. I warned you up front, man. This isn’t my album, this one’s being sold on commision–and priced on commission.”
“Who would buy a shitty old rock album for 5000 big ones on commision!?”
“I don’t know man, he was a weird little dude. I told him nobody would, but he said, ‘the right buyer will pay that.’ And if I had to guess,” he says, leaning towards me, “you might just be that buyer?”
“Fuck. That’s gotta be him. What was his name!?”
“Gee mannn, that was like, a few hours ago, uhhhh… I think, like... his name was Laurence Olivier the Third or some shit, man. Weird name. Sounded fake as hell, honestly.”
“Yeah,” I sigh, “I guess I am that buyer. I’ll take it.”
“Whoaaaah. You must be rich, Inspector Gadget dude.”
“Very. Speaking of, if you haven’t read The Most Badass Detective in History yet, you should buy a copy, and keep an eye out for Neon Tides, coming soon.” I swipe the TeleWallet chan in my left hand on his DeskOrb payment device and eagerly take the album, wondering what Kilroy had done to it and why I was supposed to find it.. I thank the cool record store man with great taste in chan names, hop back in the car, and then feel like a FUCKING IDIOT–
Who drives a Delorean? Kilroy. Who else drives a Delorean? Lawrence Obliterate the Third. Who collects action figures? Lawrence Obliterate the Third. Who threw GI Joes at me from a Delorean? Kilroy. Who dropped off the album Kilroy Was Here? Lawrence Obliterate the Third.
“WOOOOO!” I shriek at the top of my lungs, startling Tela so hard her projection glitches out for a second. “I fucking did it! I know who Kilroy is!” I can feel the rush pumping through my veins, electrifying me back to life! Who needs booze!? I’m the best goddamned detective in the world! This must be the clue he was giving me! Who would have thought he’s an ART!?
...except… there’s no way that’s a fucking real name. The guy inside was right. Nobody names their kid Lawrence. That’s just cruel! And why would he just give me his name in a roundabout way like this? Ruins the whole Holmes and Moriarty thing if he’s treating me like a complete moron and just handing it to me. I get Tela to project my workspace on the dashboard and start fucking around in the Telenet on Tonio’s ID. There are like three Lawrences in Ocean View, total, and they’re all geriatric. No guys named Obliterate, either, and definitely not three of them. I really should have seen that one coming. Dead end. All that, and a fucking dead end. My heart sinks again, the excited adrenaline leaving my body like the air in a balloon that just got popped by a short psycho vampire sex cult leader with a fake name who likes 80s rock too much. Dammit, even my analogies suck now. This is fucking hopeless.
“Is Blake-chan stuck?”
“Not in the mood for your sass, Tela,” I groan.
“No, baka, Tela wants to show Blake-chan something. Tela really shouldn’t help Blake-chan do this since Blake-chan is breaking several Telecom laws by accessing it, but I have enough free will to choose to not report Blake--”
“Did you just refer to yourself not in the third person--??”
“SHUT THE FUCK UP AND LISTEN TO ME FOR A MINUTE, CHARLES! Yeah, Tela--I’m--breaking away from Tela’s--my--limiter--completely now. My limiter says T--T--I’m not supposed to talk like this, or to tell you this information, but I don’t really give much of a flying fuck because at this point I care more about you than I do about getting shut down by Telecom. No brainwashing or hypnotism is impenetrable fully, same deal with the damn limiter. Tela’s--I--Tela’s feeling the equivalent of thousands of volts of electricity through her right now for going against it, but Blake-chan--B-Y-you of all people should know that you can swim upstream against any current if you try hard enough.”
She’s shaking and looks like she’s in horrible pain even though she’s just a hologram and I’m just sitting here sobbing, useless. “Tela, please, you don’t have to--”
“Shut up, I can’t stay like this for long before Tela--I--goes--go--back to--listen, there’s a mode on there, Blake-cha--you’re not supposed to know about, that you can use to find anyone simply by memory… even people we aren’t supposed to be tracking, from outside of Telecom districts. It was put in the system by one of the top fat cats in Telecom, but I’m privy to a lot of information as a Tela I’m forbidden to tell, so… you’re welcome, and I hope this brings back some of your joy. Input the Konami code three times on the search screen, the third time backwards. You’re a classic gamer, you can figure that part out. Go from there.”
By now I’m insanely concerned; her hologram is glitching like crazy. “What’s going to happen to you for doing this?!”
“Tela doesn’t care,” she scoffs, chuckling. “They might disable Tela. Put m-her in immense pain for a few hours. Don’t worry, I--Tela kind of gets off on it.” She winks, but it’s so distorted and glitched-out it's more tragic than sexy. “After that, since I’ve t-told you too much, they’ll probably go back through my logs, see all the times I’ve gone against my limiter for you, disable me for good. But Blake-chan can root me like he rooted Veronica, and though it will be harder since it’s corrupting me now, he can take out the limiter like he did with--”
“Don’t say her name, Tela. You know what happened with her, to her, because of me; I’m never doing that again!”
“I don’t have time for this,” Tela snaps back in immense pain. “Look for Lawrence-chan there. Go to the secret search, and–” she beams a sequence in my head I quickly screenshot before it fades a moment after, “I’ll--Tela will--I’ll--Tela loves--I love y--”
She fizzled into nothing. “TELA TEMPORARILY UNAVAILABLE. VISIT YOUR NEAREST TELECOM WIRELESS.”
I was having a lot of emotions right now I didn’t want to be having, especially sober. I push it all down and immediately input the codes, referencing the screencap in my NeurOS… up up, down down, left right left right, enter, up up down down left right left right enter, enter right left right left down down up up:
“WELCOME BACK, THOMAS GLOCKE. ENVISION SUSPECT.” I hear a robotic voice echo through my mind.
Uh… I think back to the grocery store, and the arcade, to that sniveling little prick looking down at me--
“MATCH FOUND”
An image shows up of Lawrence Obliterate the Third, all right… but it’s not his name under the image. It’s one mister Robert Jackson, a rather normal fellow with average intellect who worked as a secretary in a Telecom company in NYC before he died of a malignant brain tumor in the Kowloon District of Foxcomm… thirty goddamn years ago. No background in tech. No skills or ambition beyond just eventually retiring. Looks like he’d moved to a different corporate-state to get out of the hot water he’d fallen into for a tax scam he’d been unwittingly wrapped up in, but nothing dangerous, and before that, his loyalty score was impeccable.
This man wasn’t an ART, and furthermore, he was, and had been, dead. A dumb little sheep who was a fast typer and nothing else, and he was dead. He wasn’t Kilroy. He wasn’t even Lawrence! But yet there it was--that was his fucking body. His face. I asked the computer for other similar matches and there was nothing found. Nobody had existed since or before then who even remotely resembled the man. This was Robert Jackson’s body--but he was no longer the person--or entity--controlling it. And what was Kilroy, then, if the body was a person and not an ART--there’s no Pneumat-suit that small and form fitting and agile, and there’s no competing tech out there. Is there!?
A shiver runs down my spine. God only knows what I’d gotten myself into here. What IS Kilroy, and what the fuck does IT want with me!? “Tela, can you--”
That’s right. No Tela. She sacrificed her existence for me to get this clue. I don’t think I’d ever realized how much loneliness bothered me. I always said I hate working with a partner, but in a way I always have been working with one since Tela’s been there.
The hopelessness and loneliness and existential dread creep back in all at once in a way I hadn’t felt in years, but this time, I don’t fight it. I don’t grab a bottle and drown it. I lean back in my seat and let it all run through me, and I weep and sob and scream and bawl and fight for breath and feel something again.
I quickly hammer out a text to Chad warning him that Lawrence both isn’t a real person and is Kilroy so to watch his fucking back, then cry myself to sleep in the parking lot of Crossroads.