Girl in a Fishbowl (Crowbar Book 1)

by Thomas A. Gilly

  Jerome watched the video of the argument between David Hicks and his son Conrad several times. David Hicks certainly appeared to be the typical crazed privacy-obsessed recluse—dirty bathrobe, scraggly beard— Jerome got the impression that David Hicks’ normal mode of communication was “rant”.

  Step one in the search was facial recognition. From the images provided by Conrad Hicks he generated a 3D model of David’s face and put it through the publicly available searches—through social media and internet cams.

  Step two was gait analysis. He extracted the physical dimensions of David Hicks’ body and from his movements generated a dynamic model of how he would walk under most normal circumstances. This would allow for hits from more cameras from a variety of distances and angles, without relying on facial recognition. He set up a search radius of a half kilometer around the apartment, then starting from the time of Conrad Hicks’ recording, he analyzed all of the public recordings of that search area, looking for David Hicks’ movements. There was one thing about the apartment that Jerome guessed was not a coincidence—that section of road was not in the range of any public cams.

  Jerome started up the program and went on to another project, knowing that the crunching of so much video data would take much of the day.

  Six hours later he checked on the results. He was disappointed. The gait analysis hadn’t gotten any hits higher than 87 percent certainty of being Hicks, and there was absolutely nothing for facial. He brought up a map and had it display all gait analysis hits that were a greater than 80 percent match. It was possible to defeat gait analysis, but it took more than just being in the Ministry of Silly Walks. If you were familiar with how the software represented the human body and what markers it was looking for, it was possible to modify your walk in a way to make it less effective.

  He had the computer filter the closest results with any people whose faces were obscured. He got three hits; one guy with a big fedora, another with a hoody, and one with a surgical mask. He put each of their tracks on the map in their own colors. The fedora guy and hoody guy both had normal tracks, he could trace them easily through the city. Surgical mask guy looked like he had just appeared out of nowhere and then disappeared. He brought up the segment of video.

  There was surgical mask guy, walking quickly around a street corner in the edge of the screen for about a second and a half. He was wearing sunglasses and had black curly hair.

  That hair had to be a wig.

  Jerome could make only one conclusion—David Hicks had been monitoring the street cams and was actively avoiding them. Except from what Natalya had said David Hicks refused to go on the internet now that biometric verification was required, and there was no way he could have that kind of access to where the street cams were pointing without being on the internet.

  Jerome would have to check with his contacts at the various internet service providers to verify that David Hicks was not online. Until then, he could check out other video sources—the city was filled with people constantly recording their daily activities from their smart glasses and contacts. There was no way David Hicks could avoid all of them. He noted the time stamp of when surgical mask guy went around the corner and checked to see if anyone was uploading video to the public feeds on that street. Anyone who was recording from wearables generally streamed the data live to their internet service provider—if you ever wanted your video data to be validated as authentic it had to be streamed as well though VuDyne in real-time with their encrypted certification tokens—any video that had been recorded without such authentication would have no way to prove that it hadn’t been modified with CGI.

  The most valuable service provided by VuDyne was copyright protection. Any live video stream you sent to VuDyne had instant legal protection—so if you were going down the street one day and you saw a dog walk in front of you with a monkey wearing a cowboy hat riding on its back, you could make the video public, slap on some advertising, and you would earn whatever revenue it generated. If anyone else sampled your video and tried to attach advertising, VuDyne would catch them and stop them.

  In order to accomplish all of this VuDyne had the computing power of ten Googles and an army of the best programmers in the world.

  Using peeper records, Jerome found five people who were on the road David Hicks turned into when he went off camera. None of them had been streaming their data to the public, but if they had been recording it might be at VuDyne. He would have to contact them and request their recordings. He would offer to give the owners a modest payment—it wasn’t all that unusual for people to sell their video feeds to strangers.

  Yes, these missions from Natalya were certainly fascinating and challenging. Jerome was looking forward to learning more about this David Hicks, he had a feeling this mission was going to lead to something interesting.

  Chapter 21

  Natalya was having a bubble bath. The bathtub, set in the floor of a vast Roman styled tile mosaic of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, could have easily accommodated six people and was shaped like a giant scallop shell. Natalya was reclining in one of the curved ridges, the water up to her neck.

  Terri walked in wearing just her bath robe. She pulled up her hair, tied it in a knot, and slipped off the robe. Stepping into the bath, she took her position at the other corner of the scallop.

  Natalya had a washcloth over her eyes with her head lying on the tile. “I’m watching the news about the shooting. I still can’t get over it. It’s over the top crazy. A multi-billionaire murdered on Slat 3!” She pulled the cloth away from her face and flung it aside. “They’re interviewing the cop who killed the guy right now. Here.”

  She flicked her finger toward the far wall, telling her smart-contacts to put the news program on a common feed for both of them.

  Terri saw two women on the projection sitting across from each other. A blond woman Terri vaguely recognized as a talk show host was talking to a tall Hispanic woman wearing a professional pantsuit. A caption identified her as Detective Angel Martinez.

  The host was talking. “…and do you always carry a firearm when off duty?’

  “I do. It was a habit I was brought up with. Both of my parents were police officers, as was my Pappy . . . my grandfather. There were always guns in the house and it was just normal to have them.”

  “I hear there’s a story behind the gun you used to take down the shooter. Would you mind sharing it with us?”

  “It used to be my Pappy’s gun. It’s a 1911, one of the best, an Ed Brown Kobra. Pappy was an undercover agent on the Mexico border, working for the DEA. He had infiltrated Carlos “El Gordo” Tito’s organization and managed to move his way up to the point where he was taking orders directly from El Gordo himself. El Gordo presented him with the Kobra a week before the DEA ambushed him, using Pappy’s intel. El Gordo died in the fire-fight. Pappy got shot in the gut but made a full recovery. So Pappy gave the Kobra to my dad when he went into the military, and my dad gave it to me after I got out of boot camp.”

  “That was when you were in Special Forces?”

  “Technically it was before my qualification course, but I did get in.”

  “Did you see any combat?”

  “Yes, I was stationed in Nigeria, in Maiduguri,”

  “Oh! I see! So you are no stranger to urban combat. And, just to make things clear to the viewers, you hadn’t transitioned yet while in Special Forces.”

  “That’s correct, I was still technically male.”

  “I have to say, you look absolutely beautiful. And from what I understand you didn’t even have to change your first name.”

  “That’s correct, I was born with—” Natalya paused the program.

  “She is one kick-ass chick,” Natalya said. “You have to learn to shoot like her. I’m going to get her to teach you how to shoot.”

  She still wants me to get a gun, Terri thought. Natalya hadn’t brought it up for a couple days so she thought she might have forgotten about it. Terri said, “I t
hink she might have more important things to do than teach me to shoot.”

  “Nothing is more important than the safety of tax paying civilians, like myself.” Natalya saluted at the video image. She then reached over to retrieve the wash cloth and leaned back, putting it over her eyes. “I have been doing some reading. I have been doing lots and lots of reading. Conrad sent me a copy of his father’s manifesto. At first it made me worried. Insane fevered ramblings. Do you know if David Hicks did mushrooms? I see the influence of mushrooms. But then I found flashes of brilliance. Some of it is semi-lucid and rational, albeit in a stream-of-consciousness sort of way. Here, let me find something for you.”

  Conrad had told Terri about the manifesto years ago, but he had never let her read it. She guessed he was afraid of scaring her off with it. She was a little jealous that Conrad had given it up so easily to Natalya.

  But then, Natalya always got her way.

  Natalya began reading. “The emperor worm, triumphant worm, crowned in earth and filth, king of the earth, shaper of destinies. I was waiting to follow the worms, rainbow colored slime gliding through the kingdom of earth as the foundation of all that breathes in the air exhaled from the mouths of the emperor worms. They rule and they know they rule because in their tiny brains the only two words known to the worms are ‘We rule! We rule!’ But the cleansing rains fall and floods the earth and clogs the mouths of the worms who rise up into their own air that they had bestowed upon us and crawl and crawl on the asphalt baked by the cleansing sun. And I want to follow them, I yearn to follow the worms, the beautiful worms but the cleansing sun bakes and dries them to dark red and magenta. They are dark red and magenta jerky treats for the four-year-old boy blasted out of his home by the aerial terrorists, covered with soot he fills his belly with emperor worms.’”

  Natalya took the washcloth away from her eyes and looked at Terri. “Do you see why I was worried? Can I be a sponsor of that? But I continued reading, and he comes out with something like this.” She closed her eyes and leaned back again. “‘The conservatives and the fascists cried out for freedom! Freedom to use their whip of morals bestowed by their God. They believed that the invisible hand of capitalism was really the invisible hand of God punishing the wicked and rewarding the righteous. The poor were poor because they deserved it, the rich were rich because they deserved it, because their God made it so. Only freedom could unleash the subtle hand of their mighty God. Freedom above truth, freedom above compassion, this was the belief of the conservatives and the fascists.

  “‘And the liberals and the communists had killed God, and in killing God they have killed morals, and in killing morals they realized they had relinquished the whip with which to control the ignorant masses. That whip was now in the hands of the conservatives and the fascists. What to do? What to do? And the liberals and the communists, being academics too clever by half, decided that instead of recreating morals they would instead simply use the pointed business end of morals called GUILT to jab at the ignorant masses. If there are no morals then how to spawn guilt? The too-smart-by-half academics found the way to have guilt without morals—they spawned it on the bloody corpses of the VICTIM. Over here, look at this victim! Over there, look at that victim! Only by parading victim after victim to the ignorant masses could the liberals and the communists foster guilt without morals. Visceral horror at the sight of pain and suffering. Thus the liberals and communists ruled by calling upon compassion, placing compassion above truth and freedom. All compassion, only compassion, words need not mean what they mean in the face of all this suffering. Rules must be made tighter and tighter as long as a single child feels pain.

  “‘But the oligarchs and the plutocrats were displeased by this squabbling. They needed to find a better way to control the masses, and they found it! Truth! Truth above all! The liberals and the communists and the conservatives and the fascists could not bear the light of truth. And with truth above all the oligarchs and the plutocrats could rid themselves of the screeching cry for compassion and clarion cry for freedom and instead rule by the force of their wills directly.’”

  Natalya lifted her head and said, “I think I’m going to have to hire a professional editor to make this manifesto presentable. I mean, some of that crazy stuff is actually kind of great because it will get all these believers reading it and trying to interpret it to find the hidden wisdom. They’ll see this incomprehensible stuff and assume it’s deep. But it really needs to be cleaned up.”

  “Conrad is not going to like you changing his dad’s manifesto. Right there alarm bells are going to go off in his head. He has a good bullshit detector.”

  Natalya smiled. “His bullshit detector is not going to go off because I’m going to actually believe what I tell him. I’m going to actually be a convert to 3CV. I’m going to request an edit because I actually want people to read the manifesto and follow 3CV and restore ethics to our post-ethical society. Because, who needs to be saved by ethics more than I do?”

  Chapter 22

  Finding the location of David Hicks had now become Jerome’s highest priority. When first given this mission he had thought it would be a slam dunk, but the more he tried to determine David Hicks’ path, the more frustrated he became. It was now obvious that Hicks was aware of the positions of all public video cameras, even though Jerome could not determine how he was getting onto the internet. Hicks also had with him several changes of clothes and various ways of obscuring his face, which he had apparently changed in video dark spots. In some of the possible images he was carrying a back pack that looked like it could be the one he left the apartment with, but in other images the backpack was gone.

  He was relieved when he got a message from VuDyne saying that one of the people he had requested video from had responded positively. It cost Jerome two-hundred and thirty-three dollars. He sent the money and downloaded the video. He then dug up the previous footage of the man with the surgical mask and synched the time with the new footage, showing them side-by-side. There was surgical mask man turning the corner, going out of view on the first video. The person who had sent the second video had been riding in a car.

  Damn, he’s looking the wrong way.

  But then his head started turning toward the side of the street where David Hicks had entered.

  Yes, yes, yes.

  As the head turned Jerome caught a glimpse of surgical mask man who immediately turned into an alley and was gone from sight.

  “Huh,” Jerome said.

  “Huh,” echoed Digby, immediately waking on the desk and raising his head up.

  Jerome pulled up a map of the road and looked at the alley. It was a dead end.

  Why did he go into that alley? Was that his destination?

  He looked up the time-stamp of the next possible video hit. Fourteen minutes later about two blocks away.

  “Huh.”

  “What’s all this huhing about?” Digby asked.

  “No,” Jerome said.

  “Huh,” Digby said.

  “No, he couldn’t.”

  Digby sat up on his haunches. “Now you’re just trying to annoy me.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “I’m going to burn your face off if you don’t tell me what’s so unbelievable.”

  Jerome looked at Digby. “Not only is David Hicks on the internet without a service provider, and not only is he monitoring all the public cams, he is also monitoring who is streaming video onto the internet from their wearable cameras.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Jerome showed Digby the two videos of surgical mask man.

  “That doesn’t necessarily mean he knew that guy was streaming,” Digby said. “He might be just ducking away from anyone who looks at him.”

  “No, no, that would be impractical. He’s trying to get from point A to B. He can’t avoid everyone; he would never get anywhere. He must only be avoiding people he knows are streaming live.”

  Jerome heard the distinct tone from his
desktop computer that signaled a text from Natalya. Digby was also familiar with that tone.

  “Hubba hubba,” the dragon said.

  Jerome usually felt a flutter of excitement when he heard that tone, but now he felt dread at the thought of disappointing her. He was sure she wanted an update. What could he tell her at this point? He didn’t know where David Hicks had gone.

  He opened the text.

  “You dead or something? Where’s Conrad’s father? Here’s that manifesto he wrote, maybe it will help. I need to know where he is now.”

  Manifesto? The Invisible Man wrote a manifesto?

  He opened the manifesto and read the title. Defeating the Black Iron Prison. That sounded familiar. That definitely sounded familiar. He read the first paragraph.

  And thus it always has been. With the invention of iron there were better plows and hoes and horseshoes and farming production rose and if you thought you could now live a better life forget it because the iron lords made armor and swords and demanded more from your labor. As technology improves your life, the iron lords wrest control of it from you and use it to beat you down into submission. The printing press—oh the printing press! There was so much hope with the printing press! Literacy became a right rather than a privilege and empires fell and the social order upended and now you could print subversive doctrines and finally, finally you were granted a technology that actually could free you. Yes, it took the iron lords centuries to claw their way back over piles of books and pamphlets written in the blood of the idealists. But they finally mastered the bureaucracies that weaved paper prisons over the black iron ones. Oh radio, oh television, oh internet! Every new technology is hailed as the savior of the masses and every single one is subverted by the iron lords to strengthen their Black Iron Prison, to fill us with fear and hatred of the Other, to kill and to die and to kill and to die.