MINDFRACK

  The call was semi-secure, meaning that they would avoid names and details where possible, reducing the chances of pick-up on key words by anyone that might be nosing into his affairs.

  “Not by you.”

  “No. A paradox,” said Crusoe, sounding genuinely intrigued.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Postman called me mid-fight – caught the intruder. Sounded confused.”

  “In what way?”

  “Thought the man he had was working for me.”

  “Did he show you – have you ID’d him?”

  “Yes, he’s pure gold – I’m sending a snap plus his name, encrypted … now.” Pure Gold referred to twenty-four carats or the twenty-four stars of the NYPD flag. He was a police employee.

  When the details appeared in Emmett’s iSense head-up he let out a low groan.

  “You know him?” asked Crusoe.

  “Yes,” said Emmett while fixating on the image of Mark Logan. His appearance at Adams’ home didn’t make sense – like his unofficial interview of Dexy Please. “Did he say why he was there – and how he knew about the postman and the package?”

  “Postman was confused when he called me. Asked if I’d sent him. Then the intruder got the better of him.”

  Emmett held his hand up, he needed space to think. Crusoe obliged.

  The plan had been simple.

  Adams was to hold onto Carrie until Crusoe took the playmate off his hands. Then Crusoe would dispatch Adams. While Carrie was secured at the agreed location, Emmett would tell Grist that he would need to wait twenty-four hours before he could bring the playmate to him. During that period Emmett would call in his own AI experts; they could just about pull out anything from a 6thgen brain, although it might mean destroying it in the process. Whether they were successful or not in retrieving information regarding Grist’s son, they would ensure that any hidden memories were “degraded” for good.

  Then he would give whatever was left of Carrie back to Grist. He would be none the wiser, thinking that the fall had damaged the 6thgen’s memory beyond recovery.

  He would then quietly pursue his own line of investigation based on whatever his team had levered from the playmate’s brain, and find Grist’s son.

  The plan was weak and full of holes, but he had worked with less during his career and had come up trumps on many such occasions.

  He had not, however, anticipated Logan’s participation.

  Emmett set his jaw and nodded towards his selfie. “Show me the mess.”

  Crusoe fed his employer the view from his smartlenses while retaining the selfie-cam aspect of himself. There was a slight delay due to the additional visual encryption. He swept his eyes over Adams’ body and the pool of blood that had settled around him, followed by the view up and down the hallway. It was chaos, made from a bachelor’s already untidy living space. He walked into the kitchen.

  Emmett’s confusion escalated as he scrutinized the scene. He’d done a cursory background check on the detective straight after his conversation with Dexy Please. It revealed nothing of concern. Logan was a self-employed 6thgen consultant on a fixed-term contract with the Police Forensics department. Nothing in his background leapt out to say he was a killer. Other than his work and his obsession with malfunctioning 6thgens, Logan indulged in wild parties and women while regularly seeking oblivion through alcohol and nanos. There was nothing flagged up with respect to any political involvements, and no criminal activities other than some trivial juvenile misdemeanours. He noted with interest that Logan’s family died in a tragic road accident prior to his wayward behaviour. And then some time spent with a child psychologist. He ditched the file, considering it useless.

  Could it be that Logan was now working for another interested party, like Intrum, and had cleverly covered his tracks? Or could Grist be using him behind his back? Instinctively, Emmett discounted the latter. The former would make him, like Crusoe, a covert agent for hire. Perhaps his background warranted a closer look, after all.

  Whatever.

  He needed to realign his strategy and quick.

  If Logan was detected as Adams’ killer then Grist would hear about it through his own contacts within the Police Department. And what if the police recovered the playmate during their investigations? Back to square one. He knew he couldn’t let that happen. He cleared his iSense view and tapped his right temple absently as his eyes roamed across an endless terrain of prairie grass and sparse woodland.

  A jackdaw caught his eye, chased by another, something desirable in its beak. Harassed, the handsome bird dropped its carrion. Another swooped in below and caught it mid-flight and disappeared into a tree. Emmett twisted around in his seat, following nature’s micro-drama before it was lost from view.

  He snapped his fingers as the answer came to him.

  “We may be able to make this work for us. The intruder can buy us some extra time.”

  Logan’s interference would be a valid reason for any delay in getting the playmate to Grist. He could use that to give his own techies more time to extract the information he needed. But he would need to monitor and control events tightly. “There’s no sign of police activity yet?”

  “None. Postman’s toy was silenced. Doubt anyone heard anything – and in this neighbourhood most people won’t want to be involved.”

  “Okay, this is how it will go: I’ll check in on our boy genius – get him to track the intruder and the package. We’ll take it back when the moment’s right. Meanwhile, you oversee the clean-up there. I want all bios of the intruder removed.” He didn’t need to tell Crusoe to account for his own DNA as he always wore a clean-suit on hits.

  “Can do that – but it’ll take a few hours. Need to get a specialist in as it’s a mess in here.”

  “Good. After that, be ready to move once I tell you to.”

  22

  Logan drove straight to the location Wanda had given him.

  He’d expected something seedy. Instead he was taking in a respectable linked frontage to the salons she’d described. The Moana Lisa was the left-hand-most shop. It appeared niche-upmarket.

  He pushed through the door.

  The salon was bigger than it looked from the outside, open-plan with six large cubicles and a cacophony of buzzing coming from at least half of them. The décor’s theme was glass and steel with black and silver leather furniture. There was lots of unusual lighting, including a couple of impressive faux chandeliers. Mounted on the wall nearest was a framed licence followed by a line of certificates and accolades like Top iTatt Venue of the Year and Best iTatt Artist. Another wall was covered in animated iTatt sample designs.

  From around the side of the nearest cubicle appeared a lean, well-muscled woman, looking kick-ass tough. She wore a black vest over denim jeans. Her arms were covered in animated iTatts, some of them the most amazing Logan had ever seen.

  She looked him over, drawn to his own iTatt on his right temple and then down to the one on the back of his right hand, and tutted. “Basic jobs, probably done by one of those tatt-chains.”

  “Yeah – it was Shucks.” Anyone could set up and use a 5thgen iTatt harness, but quality, tailored iTatts were specialist creations as they combined visual artistry, animation and iSense apps.

  “Do you want it replaced? Or are you after more tatts?”

  “Uh, no, neither. I’ve come to see Wanda. Is she here?”

  Her friendly attitude collapsed. She moved up closer and looked him straight in the eyes. “And who might you be?” she said, jutting her chin.

  “She’s expecting me. I have something for her. A 6thgen, to be repaired?”

  “Is that Carrie?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, wait here.” She took a step back and apologized to the hidden occupant of the cubicle before walking off to the back of the shop and disappearing through a door.

  She reappeared with Wanda in tow. They could have been taken for sisters, Wanda the softer version of GI Jane at front of
shop. Logan had no idea if Wanda had iTatts as she wore a sweatshirt, leopard-print leggings and pumps. She was now a frizzy redhead.

  “Hi, Wanda?”

  “Mark. Where is she, Carrie?” She maintained the same intense, edgy manner, underlined with a good measure of suspicion like her GI sister. Maybe she thought there was another agenda to his visit given his association with the NYPD. Perhaps they had something to hide. He decided to play it as straight as possible, until he could earn their trust.

  “She’s in the car – I’ll go get her.”

  “You want help?” said GI.

  “No, I can manage.”

  GI checked back on them before she disappeared into her cubicle.

  “She always like that?”

  “Only on good days.”

  “Hold the door open, that’d be great.”

  Logan lugged the box containing Carrie through the shop and into Wanda’s workshop at the back. When he placed the box down he had a chance to look around. It had a similar look and feel to Diaz’s lab though there were pieces of equipment that were unfamiliar. Cybernetic parts were scattered about, and parked on a rack, in a recess at one end of the room, were a couple of stripped-down robot bodies.

  He had a start when a voice from behind said, “Hello, I’m Alex. You might be?” When he turned around he was faced with the head and torso of a dapper, steel-haired, androgynous-looking 6thgen. Wanda told it to sleep. It shut its eyes and hung its head.

  Wanda noticed his surprise. “Now are you convinced that Fifi is my alter ego?” she said, leaning back against a worktop.

  “Maybe. Maybe someone else uses this room and you clean it or something.”

  “Oh come on!”

  “Hey, I was kidding. I believe you.”

  She huffed at him, a glimmer of humour surfacing.

  “Are you guys related?” he said, nodding back towards the shop area.

  “No. Kath’s very protective of me. You’d want her around in a fight – she’s a kick-boxing champion. She’d take you down, no problem,” Wanda said, looking him up and down. “And yes, people do say we look alike, except she has muscles.” She became serious again. “Now, can we take a look at Carrie?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Logan lifted out the head and then the torso. Wanda tutted at the Heath Robinson repair to the head, before poking around in the box. She selected other components, examining them critically.

  She took the head over to a work-surface and clamped it into a cradle.

  “So you’re doing your masters up at Columbia, you fill in with repair work and Fifi?”

  “That about sums me up,” she replied, without taking her attention from the worktop.

  “The Fifi thing – does Kath know?”

  “Yes, of course,” she said, picking up a probe.

  “What’s the SuperSense 300gs about? I know it’s a sex-suit.”

  “You ask a lot of questions,” she said pointedly, “but I guess that’s your job.”

  “I’m not a cop. I’m a civi, I do contract work, consult as a cyber-analyst for NYPD Forensics – behavioural specialist.”

  “Well, you are the clever robot-shrink, aren’t you …”

  She was starting to irritate him. “Hey, can we get along for the sake of Carrie?”

  Without altering her stance at the worktop, she cocked her head sideways. “Sorry – habit. Goes back. I had three older brothers to contend with. Your job’s pretty cool, I imagine.” She returned her attention to Carrie.

  “I wouldn’t go that far either. It’s a job.”

  “I guess what I do here is a job, but it’s the other side of the coin – hardware versus mindware.”

  “Yeah.”

  Without looking up, she said, “The 300gs thing? You still want to know?”

  “I guess so.”

  “See behind you – hanging on the rack with the 6thgens over there – between them and the wall? That’s the 300gs. It’s the latest VR sex-metasuit. Supersense is the brand name. Full enclosure with a hundred sensory pixels per square inch, and compatible with the iSense suite. And the 300gs? That’s the interesting bit. It’s the part of the suit that has 300 pixels per square inch, and gs is for genitalia sensorama – I guess you can work the rest out.” She paused, while pulling off the duct tape from the back of Carrie’s head, exposing the damage there. “So a client must have something compatible – a male version for the man. We can basically make out in any VR simulation that turns them on. It’s here for an upgrade to its interface.”

  ”Hmph, interesting …” He decided to change the subject. “Can you see anything?”

  “Not yet, I’m doing a general inspection of her external cranium to gauge the amount of kinetic damage. Looks bad.”

  “How bad?”

  “Can’t tell, till I get inside.”

  “Can you do it now?”

  “Yep. You can stay if you want, but not if you ask too many questions. I need to focus on what I’m doing. Some invasive stuff, and it takes a lot of concentration …”

  ***

  An hour later Logan was still waiting for the results but thought Wanda was making positive headway, judging by her body language and comments.

  She was now totally engrossed looking into a viewer that was taking its feed from a probe inserted deep through an access point in Carrie’s equivalent of a cranium.

  She looked up and rubbed her eyes.

  “What’s your prognosis?” Logan asked.

  “As I thought, it’s had a severe kinetic shock and there’s a lot of physical damage. It’s a wonder the whole structure didn’t rupture from the protective sheath. They are designed to be pretty tough, though.”

  “As I said, she landed on a car, I think that must have absorbed a lot of the impact.”

  “The quick answer you’re waiting for is: yes, I can repair the structure and maintain Carrie’s personality. After that, I will need to reload her memory engrams as the kinetics will likely have disrupted a lot of them. Can’t guarantee she’ll have a hundred percent recall. Likely she’ll have the same gaps in short-term, as that’s a lot more fragile.”

  “Not really interested in short-term now – more interested in her old memories, especially sub-neural.”

  “If we want to get deeper, we’ll need the maintenance key. And I know you don’t have it.”

  “How do you know that? About the key?”

  “I’ve been looking after her for years. Dexy told me she doesn’t have it.” She regarded him oddly, as though weighing his worth.

  “What?” he said defensively. “Did I say something wrong?”

  She continued to study him, before appearing to arrive at a contentious decision. “All right, we’ve got to know each other well enough. Everything you’ve told me agrees with what I know. I think it’s about time we came clean with each other. You need answers – don’t you.”

  “Not sure what you mean.”

  “Yes you do. There are things happening around you, and to you, that you don’t understand. Am I right?”

  “I guess so. But –”

  “And you want answers. Look, just admit it, okay, this’ll go a lot easier.”

  “All right – yes, I do.”

  “Good. Now first I need to ask you a question.”

  Logan bristled. “You said answers – not questions.”

  She held fast, while her face told him, You want to know or what?

  He sighed. “Okay, go ahead.”

  “Why? Why are you doing this?”

  “Well, I –”

  She slapped him across a cheek.

  Logan locked up, caught between fight and flight; this was the second time in a day that he’d been hit unexpectedly, though looking down at Wanda he immediately shut down the primitive reflex to react defensively. “What the f –”

  “It’s all right. Just tell me. Why?”

  “Because Carrie needed –”

  Again she caught him across the cheek. It stung like
hell. He took a step back, confused by her aggression. If the first blow served to grab his attention, the second blow silenced the background chatter in his mind. It was as if a kill switch had been hit on a frenetic production line. He stared at her pointedly, anger brimming. “Lady, you don’t want to –”

  She brought her hand up third time, but this time he was ready, and he caught it hard around the wrist. Wincing at the pain, she sucked air through her lips and said, “Think, dammit. Don’t give me your stock answer.”

  “What? How …? I can’t …” He felt something give within him, like a stubborn bunched muscle relaxing.

  “Yes – think about it very carefully. The actual reason. Think about the events that brought you here …”

  He let go of her wrist but left his hand up, the message clear, he didn’t need any more shock therapy.

  “It’s bigger than Carrie, isn’t it?” she said, directing him.

  Logan’s frown deepened; the question was somehow loaded, and he didn’t understand why. Wanda scrutinized him closely.

  Why did he feel so confused? Yes, he knew he was doing this for Carrie, yet suddenly it seemed he was doing something out of character. He had his “thing” for screwed-up robots, as Dorsey had put it, but this? Damn it, he’d put his life on the line for a machine and he’d killed a man in the process. Any future as a cyber-analyst was probably screwed. Hell, he might even be facing time in jail. And here he’d been, talking to Wanda like he’d just collected a speeding ticket. The full gravitas of what he had done settled upon him like a leaden shroud. He started to sweat and staggered back onto a seat.

  Wanda continued to watch him, her expression knowing.

  “What the hell …?”

  “It’s okay. I know what you’re going through. I’ve seen it before. Just relax.” She poured him some water from a tap at the end of the worktop and passed the glass to him. ”The feelings will pass. I’m guessing you’re experiencing confusion and other stuff, depending on what you’ve done to get here. Conflicts.”

  “How do you –?

  “Know?”

  “Yes.”

  “First it was Dexy, yes?”

  He nodded.