Divided- 2120

by Brian Savage

  The man eased himself back into his chair. “You say there was something on the screen of the computer in the aerial, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It was obviously malfunctioning. Right?”

  “Or it was hacked,” Jack said.

  “Well,” the old man said, picking up his pipe and tapping the ash into the ashtray, “would it then not follow that the camera was likewise malfunctioning or hacked? For instance, a program that would replace the face of the man you saw with that of a prominent party Official?”

  Jack stepped to the side and sat down in a bar highchair that matched the one the old man sat in. He leaned forward, elbows down on the counter on either side of the chess board. “I guess,” he said, “but the facial recognition is supposed to be able to see through the deep fakes. It recognizes the digital overwriting of the true image and recognizes the face beneath.”

  “The truth garnered from a lie, is a lie,” the old man said, sitting back and folding his hands into his lap.

  “I don’t understand what you are saying.” Jack looked at him, confused.

  “If the AI in the aerial actually believed that Johanes Frond was sitting in the back, would it transmit the image of someone else or the image of Johanes Frond?” The old man touched his chin to his chest and seemingly studied his crossed fingers.

  “Why would the AI believe it was Johanes Frond when it wasn’t?” Jack was more confused now.

  “How does any automated system know you are you anymore?” The old man smiled, tapping just below his right ear.

  Jack absentmindedly touched the cool metal implant, smooth but for the small bump of an LED light.

  “But…” Jack stopped, trying to collect his thoughts. His eyes, unfocused, rested on the white and black marble before him. “If the AI thought he was Johanes Frond, it would allow him to access everything he was allowed with that type of implant, but that still doesn’t explain why the computer showed us Johanes Frond.”

  “Is it easier to create a new image or use an image that is already saved in the computer?” The old man looked up at Jack.

  “I assume using one that is already in the system.” Jack didn’t know what to think about this path of thought he had just been led down.

  “It would use a lot less storage space to use the same image over and over, versus collecting different ones every time a camera picked you up on a feed, right?” The old man leaned forward and crossed his arms on the high table, “I’m sure, in reality, they have a set number of images they use to add some variety.”

  “They?” Jack asked.

  “The AIs,” the old man replied.

  Jack sat back faster than he meant to. The front legs of the chair came up a few inches before righting themselves and thudding down to the floor. His face registered disgust and confusion. The old man sat still, looking intently at Jack.

  “Tell me, Jack, how does the video feed work on your implant? Do you know?” the old man asked.

  Jack looked into the old man’s wrinkled face. “No, I am not a hundred percent sure. They say that visual stimuli are just the result of interpretation by the brain. The feed just cuts in somewhere between the eyes and where the brain starts turning it into movement and color and all that.”

  “So how do you know that I exist?” The old man had stopped smiling.

  Jack didn’t know how to respond. He sat for a full minute, just looking at the old man. He could read nothing behind the emerald eyes before him. “You are here, right in front of me.” Jack reached out a hesitant hand toward the old man’s knee, just above the edge of the table.

  “BOO!” The old man jumped forward, uncrossing his legs and raising both hands like imaginary claws.

  Jack jumped, nearly sliding out of the slick leather chair.

  The old man burst out laughing, a hearty, full-throated laugh, his lips curling up and deepening the smile wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. Startled, with eyes wide open, Jack sat there for a minute with his hand still outstretched, finger pointed to the old man. Slowly, a smile spread across Jack’s face, before he fully gave himself to the silliness of the situation. The two were lost to the roll of thunder and crackle of fire for a few long minutes as they laughed.

  “See, you are real,” Jack said as he calmed himself.

  “Ah, but you don’t really know how far that implant has wormed its way into your brain, do you?” he said, rocking forward and shaking a finger at Jack.

  “I don’t see how this helps me with the problem of a man who dies but isn’t dead,” Jack retorted.

  “Maybe it doesn’t,” the old man shrugged, “I just wax philosophic when it gets late at night.”

  The old man slid out of his chair, checking an old-fashioned digital watch on his wrist. He turned around, taking a couple steps to the cabinets behind where he once sat. The man opened a cabinet on the right, and Jack heard the clatter of a medicine bottle full of pills.

  “I have a red pill, and a blue pill, Neo…” he said, turning around and smiling.

  “What?” Jack said, sure his old friend had finally lost his mind.

  “Oh, never mind—a joke from a bygone time that pertains a little to the conversation we were just having.” He sighed. He opened the cabinet to the left and pulled a glass down from the top shelf. He filled it from the sink below, then threw back the plain white pill he held in his wrinkled hand.

  Jack hid the concern in his voice but said, “Are you sick?”

  “Cancer, but don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere for a while. I’ve had it more than once.” The man drank what was left of the water in the glass and placed it in the sink. He looked back up at the concerned look Jack was trying to hide on his face and dismissed it with a wave.

  “I have plenty of money in savings, as well as various investments that pay rather handsomely. It won’t run out anytime soon.” He smiled. “Worried about losing one of the only few people in City Prime that still know how to play chess, huh?”

  Jack smirked, “Yeah, it was getting boring playing myself; besides, there might be a few people who play chess, but there are even less that sell actual books anymore.”

  The old man pursed his lips and nodded in agreement.

  Jack looked on at the old man, realizing he had never even bothered to learn his name, and in the same thought realizing that he was one of the closest friends he had. He thought about the pill. He thought about the cancer.

  Completely free markets had eliminated most diseases once considered incurable. No regulations on tests or on experimental treatments had created huge leaps forward in the understanding of viruses, bacteria, and funguses, effectively leading to the creation of a cure for each one. Healthcare became so good that life spans had increased exponentially. The one thing that kept coming back, no matter the treatment, was cancer. It didn’t just come back but was being found in an ever-increasing percentage of the population. It was almost guaranteed to each citizen at least once. You could almost live forever in a world that contained a cure for anything. The only thing that killed you was when you ran out of money to pay for those treatments. The moment you stopped being able to afford the pills, every disease you could imagine would eat you from the inside out.

  He wondered how long savings and “various investments” would last the old man. He guessed that, worst-case scenario, the old man could sell the shop. It would make a pretty penny. He looked around fondly. If that happened, he would have to host the late night chess games.

  “That reminds me, I have your order ready.” The old man shuffled through a door on the right of the cabinets. He pushed through a fading curtain and disappeared from sight for a few minutes. “Doesn’t take me very long to wrap the small ones you like. I threw in some full-size ones, too, so you can feel what it’s like to smoke a cigar like a man.”

  Jack smiled. He couldn’t see the old man behind the curtain, but he could feel him laughing to himself at his joke. He had always given Jack a hard time about smoking small,
short cigars with flavored tobacco. He called them pansy cigars. “I don’t have the time a tottering old man like you does. I can’t sit around all day smoking and reading books.”

  “That’s a good one, ‘tottering’—you don’t hear words like that anymore.” The old man reappeared. “You better be careful, you wimp, or I'll start charging you full price for these.” The old man smiled. Jack pulled two small coins out of his pocket. He had just picked them up that morning. The shiny yellow metal reflected the dancing light of the fire.

  “An ounce, right?” Jack asked, placing them both down on the counter. The old man had no implant, and no other way of accepting modern currency. His shop survived on the trade of value in barter, and the old-fashioned trade of fine metals. Jack used gold he picked up from the gift shops in the Second Ring. There, you could get anything made from any material you liked, limited only by your ability to pay.

  “Yep,” the old man said, sliding a brick of cigars wrapped in paper across the counter, and picking up the coins. “But this is two ounces.”

  “I was hoping you had something else for me, as well, something to read, perhaps?” Jack smiled in anticipation.

  The old man smiled the largest smile he had since Jack had come in tonight. Besides the love of cigars and chess, the two loved to read. Jack had found books by accident. He had been recommended the little shop by a CIO he had interviewed as part of a background investigation. The CIO had offered Jack a cigar at the start, and Jack hadn’t gotten more than three questions and six or seven puffs before he asked the CIO where he got his cigars. The day he walked in to the old man’s shop, address displayed before his eyes, like the time he so often called up, had been the very first day he had seen a book in person. The old man, recognizing the wonder in Jack’s younger face, had given him a copy of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Jack had read it in one night.

  From then on, Jack had started his own small library’s worth of books in his loft apartment. It was small compared to the shop, but they were his. He felt that, of everything in City Prime, they were some of the most tangible.

  The old man pulled a package from beneath the counter, wrapped in paper much like the cigars. This one rectangular, with what Jack easily identified as having the shape of a book, but what the vast majority of people alive would have never guessed.

  “Don’t open this one up until you’re home.” The old man patted the top of the package.

  “Alright,” Jack said, placing the cigars on top and sliding both off the counter. He picked up his duffle from beneath the chair and placed both packages inside. Cinching it shut, he shouldered it and turned toward the door.

  “Thank you, old man. I’ll be back in the next couple of days. Hopefully, the case will be over, and I’ll be able to kick your ass like normal.” Jack waved a hand.

  “Good luck with that!” the old man retorted.

  Jack opened the front door of frosted glass and chipped white paint. He paused on the covered porch and pulled a hood from the collar of his hex jacket. Closing his jacket against the rain, which now was a steady downpour, he descended the cement steps off the porch and made his way toward home, even further from the Third Ring.

  Brant was restless. He sat on the small leather sofa in his one-bedroom apartment. His sofa faced the floor-to-ceiling glass that made up one wall of his living room. Aerials whizzed by faster than the eye could follow. Now evening time, the headlights of the quickly moving vehicles were starting to make him dizzy, as he tried to make sense of the forensic report hovering over his coffee table.

  “Privacy!” he said angrily, as if yelling at every aerial flying by that he needed space. The floor-to-ceiling glass clouded milky-white. He grabbed an empty beer bottle from the cluttered table and walked into his kitchen. His thoughts raced as he mechanically retrieved another beer from the built-in fridge.

  The report, which he had sent to his home email without bothering to consult it, read simply and matter-of-factly that no person had, in fact, been in the aerial when it exploded. It stated that high-grade kinetic explosives had, in fact, been the payload, which had vaporized the guard within the direct vicinity of the blast. The aerial had been found to be a Fleet rental vehicle, rented directly from the manufacturer. No modifications had been made, besides a remote-control system, which was how it was steered into the gate. The onboard computer system had been completely destroyed in the blast. No other evidence had been found or noted.

  He fell back onto his couch. The sweatpants and tank top he wore were still stained with the sweat of his after-work cardio. He took a swig of the cold beer, running his other hand through his greasy hair. There was video of someone in the aerial when it exploded. That video was saved on their workstations. He kicked himself for not sending the rest of the case files home. Jack wouldn’t have made that mistake, he thought to himself.

  He was agitated. He had always been a high achiever but was increasingly frustrated in his current position by the ease at which his partner did things and knew things. He wondered what Jack was doing tonight. What was he looking into, what random rabbit hole did he go down to solve the cases the way he did? Brant knew he was being too hard on himself, and that comparing himself to an agent who had been on the force over twice as long as he had wasn’t a fair comparison. He set the beer down and moved to the side of his coffee table.

  “Video feed,” he said, planking on his hands and feet. He placed his feet together and began knocking out pushups as a news caster appeared on the glass wall of his apartment. He didn’t count these. He liked to see how many different stories the talking heads could get through before muscle failure forced him to stop. The talking heads were bickering back and forth about the guy Jack had terminated that day. Brant had seen the report on a screen in the greasy spoon he chose for lunch. The report brought into question whether the man had indeed been the one who had embezzled all that money. He wondered how Jack must be feeling. He had seen the hesitancy in the termination. He had tried to empathize but couldn’t understand it.

  It wasn’t lost on him that his partner was different than your average agent. He saw it in his face, in the hesitancy with which he pulled the trigger. He didn’t mention it, or offer to take his place, knowing that it would only net him chastisement about being too eager to kill, or anger at what Jack would probably take as an insult. His mouth opened as his breathing started to increase. He kept pushing.

  “In other news, a new socialist attack on the Third Ring, and what you can do to be safe in the security lines,” an overly somber woman with a British accent said. Brant began to struggle, one pushup coming every five or so seconds. Stock video of the lines entering and exiting the rings appeared. A reporter near one of the gates talked about keeping a head on a swivel, reporting suspicious behavior, and never accepting packages from strangers. He inwardly laughed. None of those things would have stopped the angry, possessed aerial today.

  He finally stopped, sitting back on his knees and catching his breath. He weakly reached for the beer and pulled it to himself without lifting it from the table. He paused at the edge of the table before shakily lifting the bottle to his lips. The light in his implant blinked rapidly.

  He mindlessly watched the talking heads. Not truly thinking, he let his mind wander, and watched as impartially as he could. He had decided that the case could wait until he could talk over the new evidence with his partner. The pictures changed, but the talking heads squawked on. He sat on the floor, breathing deeply, one hand on his knee and the other gripping the slick glass, which became increasingly room temperature by the moment.

  He pushed himself up just enough to slide back onto the couch. He started to feel a bit dizzy, not uncommon after workouts, probably more common when he combined exercise and alcohol. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back, listening to the drone of TV voices that went on. He felt a twinge of a headache, and decided it was time for a shower and bed. He opened his eyes, judged the amount of beer he had in the bot
tle, then drained it, placing the empty container down on the coaster now perched on the edge.

  He stood and had a moment of vertigo. He stopped moving, waiting for it to pass. As he stood there, staring at an unmoving point, a movie poster print hanging on one wall of his apartment, words started scrolling across his field of vision, like the time did upon his request.

  He grimaced, reading, not sure if he was imagining them or if he was much more inebriated than he actually felt. The words, “He thrust his fist against the post and just realized he was the host,” were hollow and lifeless. The black letters were slightly blurred and moving with his dizziness. He shook his head hard, blinking his eyes to find them gone as quickly as they had appeared.

  No phantom words scrolling; no anything. He must have accidentally used the time command, and just imagined words. He turned off the thought-command function for what he thought was the hundredth time. It wouldn’t have been the first time he had found the feature had somehow come back on. Thoughts were so fleeting and random at times, who knew if he had accidentally turned the system on himself. He shook his head again and rubbed his eyes with a damp thumb and forefinger. Yep, there’s that headache, he thought, feeling it creep up his neck and into the back of his skull. Time for a shower, some Ambien, and sweet, sweet sleep.

  He made his way toward the hall between his bedroom and bathroom, removing his sweaty tank top along the way. He dropped it on the floor in front of his bathroom door, where all of his dirty clothes ended up before the washer, and muttered to himself in a sing-song voice, “He thrust his fist against the post and just realized he was the host.”

  Chapter 6

  Brant walked into the office the next day to find the windows already turned private. He was whistling a tune, and in a good mood, but the sight of Jack on the wrong side of his desk, leaned over, and talking in a voice that could kill, immediately curbed his enthusiasm. He sipped his dirty chai latte and patiently listened to the end of the life of whoever was on the other end of the phone.