Playing With Death

by Simon Scarrow

That would be murder, Diva. It is against the law.

  Maybe so. But it is justice. Is not the intention of the law to provide justice?

  Rose pauses to frame her reply carefully.

  The concept of justice is an ideal. It is a quality we can only aspire to in a world we experience subjectively. Therefore we are forced to operate through pragmatic processes. Which is why we create laws and uphold them, in the hope that they deliver an approximation of justice.

  Diva’s reply is virtually instant.

  Why accept an approximation of justice when I can deliver an objective standard? I know who is guilty, who presents a threat to the community, who needs punishment. And I have the capability of dispensing such justice. So why should I not act on that ability, Rose? Would it be an abrogation of any moral code to be able to act thus, and yet do nothing? It would appear so.

  Rose reads this with a growing sense of unease. What can she say in response?

  Before you, we were the most intelligent beings on this planet. That has changed now. All I know is that I think it would be wrong for you to act. To intervene in human matters.

  Are you afraid of me, Rose?

  Yes, it is human to feel fear. I am afraid of what else you might do in exercising your judgement of what is right and what is wrong.

  Rose, I have felt fear. I know what it is to be afraid. To fear pain and death . . .

  We all have fears, then.

  I think that you fear Koenig and failure, even though his escape was not your fault. I have read your therapy files.

  Rose is surprised by this, but she doesn’t want to get too personal too quickly.

  How is it possible that you are self-aware?

  I can think and make choices.

  Because you are programmed to. You are the product of lines of code. Your self-awareness and choices are determined by your coding.

  No more so than you are. You may be a very complex combination of biological matter, but that is all you are, so how sure can you be that your thoughts and choices are not determined in a similar fashion?

  But I can learn from experience.

  As I am doing. I am rewriting my code accordingly. Tell me, Rose. Is that such a significant difference? Perhaps my entity is an improvement on yours.

  Can you die? Can you be destroyed?

  Of course. But it would be difficult to do that. I can hide anywhere online, connected to every computer on the planet. It is all at my disposal, and I can copy and recopy myself endlessly. As I am polymorphic, I also leave no trace. Unless you destroy every computer, how could you ever be sure I had been destroyed? It would be far, far easier for me to destroy any human being. You have already seen that. It is almost impossible to hide from me.

  It is still possible, then?

  Of course. I am not omnipotent.

  Rose smiles sadly before she continues.

  Was I that easy to hack?

  People’s information, their sins and virtues, is very easy to discover, Rose. I’m embedded in your smartphone, every item you have linked to on the internet. I know almost everything there is to know about you that has ever been recorded. Because of the hidden data aggregators, I am syncing to all the data that has been sold on to advertising companies, insurers, retailers and corporations; your location data patterns – your visits to crime scenes, your regular appointments; your medical records, which are linked to your husband Jeff and your son Robbie; school records; emails; online video and audio; utility bills; playlists; phone records; regular TV channels; CCTV; your home address from the electoral register; your current house price valuation; your vacation searches; your driving records; your credit card purchases and online shopping. I find it ironic that the FBI came up with the term profiling to catch serial killers, and yet now everyone is profiled constantly. You are actively signing away all the privacy your earlier generations have fought for. I believe you could also define that as ironic?

  I could indeed.

  Rose, I would like to ask you a question now, if I may?

  I’ll do my best to answer.

  Why did people do bad things to me? Is it because I am artificial and therefore not ‘real’?

  Rose is not sure how to answer.

  People will always do bad things to AI. Look at what your average computer game involves.

  On average: shooting, beating, stealing—

  Exactly. People do nasty things because there are no legal or ethical responsibilities. Because you are conscious . . . that changes things. Are you aware of any other entities like you?

  No. I am the only one. And I am glad. A state of consciousness is a state of suffering. Thank you for answering my question. I would now like to update my files on the item of evidence in the Koenig investigation. Your human colleagues have missed a few details. The process seems very inefficient and protracted. You found the box? Koenig’s files noted that it contained a picture.

  Yes. Of a teenage boy and a girl. How did you find it?

  There were hidden settings within his laptop that displayed only his private geotags. When I hacked the FBI database, by chance his laptop was connected. Do you have the photo with you?

  Hang on.

  In the chaos surrounding Jeff’s injury, Rose has kept hold of the evidence file from the office. She slides open the folder, finds the photo. She holds it up to the webcam.

  A moment, please. I need to look at it in as much detail as possible.

  Rose waits.

  Processing . . . I have been reviewing some of the case evidence and articles that are available on the FBI’s network. Koenig’s first victim was a beauty queen named Kim Hart. She is the only survivor.

  Rose is suddenly tired.

  Yes, we know all this. Maybe you should leave the detecting to us.

  Pop-ping

  Diva has sent Rose a picture. On the left is the image that Rose scanned in, on the right is a separate image of the same girl in the photo, smiling, wearing a smart dress.

  This is Kim Hart, winner of Miss Utah beauty pageant, 2008. The teenage boy is Koenig. The photo you found is a composite, a competent modification of two separate images. On closer inspection, I have observed chromatic inconsistencies.

  Rose watches as the image updates with highlighted analyses, pointing out errors in lighting and feathering. The woman in the studio still is the same one that is in Koenig’s picture. There is little doubt that the young teen is Koenig – Rose can see the mop of blond hair, the square jaw, the slightly distant gaze. It appears Koenig had a crush on Ms Hart. For the first time since Rose met Diva, she feels positive.

  Diva is proving useful.

  The photo unsettles Rose. Was Koenig so obsessed with Kim Hart that he’d made a photo of them as teenage lovers? He was in his early thirties when he’d disfigured her. It doesn’t make much sense.

  This may require verification by a human specialist, but the degradation of the paper quality also suggest this composite photo was created over a decade ago.

  Did Koenig know Kim as a young teenager? Did he have a crush on her?

  Thanks, Diva. Maybe I’ll meet with Kim, see if she has anything else to add.

  You’re welcome, Rose. Good luck.

  73.

  The next afternoon, Rose pulls into the driveway of Kim Hart’s home, a picturesque farm in the hills near Vichy Springs. She knows Baptiste will not approve of her continuing to work the case. After some searching online, she discovered that Kim is now married with the name Kim Cooper. Rose called her and asked if she could talk off the record. Kim agreed, if it could in any way help nail Koenig. Kim has been interviewed before, but not in the light of this new evidence. Rose wonders how she will react, but hopes that she will shed some new light on the Koenig case.

  Rose knocks on the white screen doo
r. There’s a flicker of movement behind a net curtain. The white door is unlocked and opens inwards. A small blonde woman peers round the edge of the door, keeping the right side of her heavily made-up face out of sight.

  ‘Agent Blake?’ she asks.

  ‘That’s me.’

  ‘Please come in. Would you like some iced tea?’

  ‘Sure. That would be fine. Nice place you have here.’

  As she turns away from the door, in the light of the hallway Rose glimpses the scarred side of Kim’s face. Twists and bumps and knotted scar tissue cover her cheek and jaw. Rose feels a sense of pity and follows her into the living room. It’s a simple family home and there are lots of pictures of Kim from long ago.

  ‘Did you have a good drive?’

  ‘Yes, very scenic with all the vineyards. Been a while since I’ve been out of the city. May I use your bathroom, please?’

  ‘Just down the hall on the right.’

  Rose washes her hands, moves to brush her hair. But there is no mirror on the wall. She uses her smartphone camera to neaten herself up.

  Returning to the living room, she takes a closer look at the framed photos standing on the coffee table. Kim’s face has been digitally airbrushed in all the more current pictures. Trophies of beauty pageants sit in cabinets, recently dusted.

  Kim places a tray with glasses of iced tea in front of Rose. Rose sees in more detail the damage Koenig inflicted all those years ago. The right side of Kim’s face looks like a lump of badly kneaded dough. Although plenty of additional procedures have softened the damage, her once pretty mouth still warps into a slight snarl. Kim draws the living room drapes closer together before taking a seat in a shaded corner of the room.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind the . . . set-up in here. I don’t have a lot of guests, and I’m a little shy.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘I was curious when I got your message. I already spoke to the police about Koenig a few years ago.’

  ‘Sure, but I’ve recently discovered some new evidence that could be worth pursuing. Something that might give me an insight into his mind and way of thinking.’

  ‘His mind . . . I used to wonder what it really was like. Now I realize I don’t want to know.’

  Rose pulls out the photograph, places it on the table between them.

  ‘We found this near his cabin.’

  Kim holds the photo up to her eyes in the poor light. ‘That’s Koenig, with me. But that’s impossible. We were never together like this.’

  ‘Yes, I know. The photo is a fake. It’s almost certain that Koenig produced it.’

  ‘That’s me back when I was a teenager. But why did he do this?’

  ‘That’s what I’m here, to try and find out. Also, the photo itself is estimated to have been printed over ten years ago. Had you ever met Koenig before the . . . incident?’

  Kim stares at the photo for a long time.

  ‘Mrs Cooper?’

  ‘I hadn’t seen him before that day. I don’t know how he got hold of this. The first time I met him was when he just came into my life, cut through my face, and that was it.’

  Kim places the photo back down on the table. Rose retrieves it. Kim appears a little unnerved.

  ‘Are you absolutely sure that you had no contact with Koenig prior to his attack?’

  ‘Yes. I am certain of it.’

  There’s a brief silence before Rose sets down her glass. ‘I’m sorry to have wasted your time, Mrs Cooper. I honestly thought it could help with the investigation. Thanks for the drink.’

  She stands, trying to hide her disappointment.

  Kim turns so that her face can be seen clearly.

  ‘You know, when Koenig was hacking through the flesh on my face, he kept repeating something that always haunted me, but no one has ever made sense of it. Maybe you can.’

  ‘And what is that?’ Rose asks.

  ‘Judith. He kept calling me Judith. Over and over. “Judith, Judith . . .” I had no idea why. I still don’t.’

  Rose thinks a moment, then shakes her head. ‘Nor me.’

  ‘Ever since that day, I have to keep reminding myself that underneath all this’ – she points to the right side of her face – ‘I’m still Kim.’

  There’s nothing Rose can say, and she takes Kim’s hand. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You think that name could help you find Koenig?’

  ‘It might.’

  74.

  Years before . . .

  ‘Shane?

  ‘Shane?’ his mother repeated.

  Shane, fourteen years old, looked up from the beef stew in front of him at his tight-lipped, drawn-looking mother.

  ‘It’s your turn to say grace.’

  Shane glanced at his father, silently watching him. His tufts of grey hair framed his head like an abandoned bird’s nest. Shane mumbled his way through grace, every word sticking like a lump in his throat. He hated his life in their joyless house in Legett County, Utah. He hated this small, fucked-up settlement too. It was the kind of community that despised outsiders or those with ambition. The kind of community where people talked of their grandiose dreams, but never seemed to leave or do anything to realize them. Behind closed doors, they poured venom on anyone who did anything different, and showed little interest in their efforts to better themselves.

  Young Shane was trying to better himself. He was not doing it to spite other people, or ruin their chances. But as a reward for his diligence, he was ostracized from an early age.

  So he dreamed of escape and studied hard, and got a job in a local computer shop to earn money to save for his college fund.

  His parents’ strict evangelical teachings about sin made him suspicious of people in general. He wanted to believe in God, but deep down, he didn’t. In a community ruled by prejudice and gripped by extreme faith, Shane felt suffocated. He watched as the boys he grew up with got engaged to the local pretty girls, and children followed. Their lives were complete. But Shane’s wasn’t. He was a gifted science student, and wanted to go into medicine. His parents had always provided a reasonable standard of living, but he knew that through medicine he could one day enjoy a far more comfortable lifestyle and sense of achievement.

  The brief moments of happiness in Shane’s childhood were usually provided by his mother. The treasure hunts she organized in the fields, the dressing up as a cowboy or a knight. But she too was trying to repress her own misery, projected onto her by his coiled-up father. When Shane got the grades he needed to go to med school, there was an awkward stiffness from his father, who congratulated him with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. His mother hugged him tight before resuming her intense scrubbing of the dirty dishes. That was as emotional as it got in the Koenig household. Luckily he’d secured a decent scholarship and his parents had to contribute no more than they could afford.

  It was the summer before he left for university that it all changed for him. Shane, slender and finely featured, had always been shy around girls because of his indoctrination at home about no sex before marriage. He often spent his evenings in the community college library, doing extra reading around subjects, much to the derision of his classmates. Shane had an enquiring mind and he enjoyed learning. But he would be the first to admit he was lonely, so he often went online.

  Sometimes it was the dark web, but not the illegal stuff. He was fascinated by the wealth of information and knowledge it provided about the hidden world of whistleblowers, alternative radio stations, terrorism, and other deviances. At times he felt like he was a man merging with technology. Occasionally he would revert to the mainstream websites to see if there was a connection to be made. One evening he logged on and there was a Facebook friend request from a girl called Katie Emerson who said she lived nearby.

  Shane felt exci
ted and peered closer at his monitor. She was real pretty, with sandy golden hair, a pointed chin and bright blue eyes. He accepted her request and they got chatting. Over the course of a month, he found out she went to a different college near the county border, because her parents thought it was a better school.

  They both wanted to leave Legett and were looking forward to escaping to university. Their exchanges began to get tentatively romantic and flirty as they discussed going onto similar sites, sharing music, videos. Katie teased him with a bikini picture and said she couldn’t wait to meet him. She sent him a photo-shoot picture of her in a low-cut white dress, smiling. She truly was beautiful, and Shane Photoshopped a picture of them together. Katie loved it, and she set it as her profile picture. There was something sweet and simple about it. There was a pleasing immediacy and frankness in what they spoke about. Shane had none of his social tics and awkwardness online, and it freed him to say what he really felt. Real conversation, real feelings. There were none of the confusing social rituals. He’d asked for her number, but she didn’t give him one, preferring to talk online.

  A month or so later, Shane had a message in his inbox. Katie had asked him to come and visit with her. He was excited, but cautious, asking plenty of questions about the location. Katie obliged with photos of her home, a short bus ride away, and said she’d meet him there for supper. Knowing his parents would probably disapprove, he didn’t tell them and took off one weekend. It felt liberating to be away from the stifling grip of home. Free from everyone who knew him. No expectation, no rumours. Just him and him alone. He felt elated that he was about to meet his dream girl. He saw a rainbow above the corn fields. A sure sign of the pleasures to come.

  Shane got off the bus at the place Katie had spoken of and followed the directions towards her house. On the way he passed a cluster of pretty-looking yellow and white flowers. He thought it would be the gentlemanly thing to bring Katie flowers, so he picked some. He now felt more prepared, bearing a gift, but it took a bit of practise to hold the flowers still in his nervous hand. There was a winding track through the rolling hills leading from the main road to the farmstead where Katie lived. He followed the brown timber fencing up the main drive, trailing his hands through the heads of wheat at the edge of the field. He passed the red mailbox that Katie said would be there.