The Epoch Index

by Christian Cantrell

  The first thing he does is check his handset. It is currently detecting and synthesizing sixteen different high-speed data signals, and both the handset and his glasses are constantly jumping bands and regenerating keys to keep their connection secure. The handset is recording the audio and video streams from Ranveer's glasses as well as his geographic location, orientation, altitude, speed, all of his vitals, the current weather, the radar signature of the rooms he's in, and, of course, a timestamp. You never know when you're going to need an objective recreation of something that just went down.

  Next is his watch. The custom Chinese-made chronometer is, to the best of Ranveer's knowledge, one of the most sophisticated timepieces ever assembled. The crystal is six-millimeter thick synthetic diamond, and the case is made from a tempered high-carbon steel that the Americans use not for building tanks, but for punching holes in them. The cesium module breaks a single second down into over nine billion individual parts (not nearly as accurate as ytterbium, mercury, or strontium atomic clocks, but easier to miniaturize), and only has to be reset when the International Bureau of Weights and Measures decides to add a second to Universal Coordinated Time in order to compensate for the slowing of the Earth's rotation due to tidal breaking. The instrument's diagnostic systems are reporting no errors, and the time more or less agrees with what he sees in the corner of his glasses.

  He notes that all three devices — the watch, the glasses, and the handset — are actually better charged now than when he woke up this morning. Each uses various methods to keep their batteries topped off: photovoltaic and thermoelectric outer shells for converting light and heat into energy; tiny generators housing thousands of magnetic nanocoils which harness the kinetic energy of movement; and antennas which capture nonessential ambient radio waves and reroute them into capacitors where they are converted into electricity and stored. Should any one of his devices require more power, its companions will comply by passing a charge through any magnetic field which happens to bind them — namely the one generated by Ranveer's body.

  He lays a thoroughly scarred titanium alloy case on the bed and positions his thumbs on its latches. After a quick biometric sniff, the latches release and the lid gets gingerly lifted. Inside are the components of what Ranveer maintains is the most magnificent and elegant weapon ever conceived.

  The gas gun is admittedly complex, but in this case, complexity yields configurability, and configurability enables flexibility. Compare it to a conventional pistol. A 9mm or a 10mm round will always be a 9mm or a 10mm round. Its bore, grain, propellent, jacket, and primer are all determined at the time of its manufacturing, and that's all it will ever be. Put a 10mm cartridge into a 10mm pistol, and you are going to do 10mm worth of damage. No more, no less. How does that saying go? If your only tool is a .50 caliber Desert Eagle, everything looks like it needs a very big hole? Which, of course, everything does not. Sometimes it is desirable to kill a man with a projectile that doesn't even pierce the skin. Something heavy and slow enough can bounce right off the temple and leave a man every bit as dead as if you'd taken his head clean off, but with much less mess and media attention. Other times, in close quarter situations, a big-bore frangible round might very well be in order: tightly packed metal powder bound with wax and designed specifically for breaching things like doors and chest cavities without the risk of penetrating a common wall, or worse, ricocheting back at you. Another classic gas gun configuration is what is known in the business as the micro-meteor: an incredibly tiny, very high velocity, and very hot projectile that pierces the heart or brain so quickly that it's usually mistaken for a headache or indigestion until the triggerman is enjoying an espresso and a scone at least three blocks away. When coroners measure cauterized entrance and exit wounds of less than a millimeter in diameter, nobody even bothers looking for the slug.

  This is the kind of flexibility a professional gets with a gas gun. The gas gun separates propulsion, ignition, and payload. The model Ranveer favors accepts six different muzzles of six different bores, each with a sudden expanse in volume in the final third to accommodate a series of ports and channels which do an admirable job of suppressing noisy gas expansion and muzzle flash. The propellent is a cartridge of hydrogen gas which is used to fill a chamber to the desired pressure which is then ignited by a spark produced by a small rechargeable battery. Ammunition can be anything from a rubber pellet to a chunk of depleted uranium to buckshot to a needle laced with something suitably nasty. It all depends on the job.

  Ranveer takes the hydrogen cartridge assembly into the master bathroom and begins attaching it to the sink. United Emirates Airlines will allow a disassembled gas gun in the belly of a plane, but only if the hydrogen cartridge is empty. That means one of the first things Ranveer is tasked with upon reaching a new destination is procuring some hydrogen, and the easiest place to find hydrogen is in water. Once the feeder tube is secured, he opens the faucet and, satisfied there are no leaks, plugs the rig into the wall. Over the next two hours, the device will use electrolysis to dissociate the hydrogen and oxygen atoms and fill Ranveer's cartridge with enough gas to get him into and out of just about any conceivable situation.

  The next item unpacked and strategically positioned for quick access is what appears to be a simple blade, but is in fact anything but. The knowledge to forge Damascus steel is thought to have been lost in the 18th century, but the truth is that you simply need to know where to look. With the right contacts in India or Sri Lanka, it is possible to purchase a beautifully textured and pattered weapon of between 5 and 180 centimeters in length that converges into an edge of mere nanometers and is strong enough to peel the edge off most other blades like chicken fat. True that in an age of cheap synthetic diamonds and prolific laser technology, it is not the most menacing and effective implement, but Ranveer has a soft spot for tradition.

  His leather-bound pocket apothecary goes into the room safe for now as it wouldn't do him any good in close quarters hand-to-hand combat. The capsules, syringes, and lozenges within can produce effects either quick and painless or slow and excruciating. Some leave no trace while others leave a chemical calling card behind designed specifically to speak posthumous volumes. There's even a putty-like substance which some of Ranveer's colleagues are particularly fond of; when mixed with human saliva, it rapidly expands and congeals, simultaneously silencing a victim and obstructing both the nasal and oral airways and usually inducing a state wherein victims become surprisingly receptive to any final admonishments requested by a client — a custom Ranveer suspects was made popular by gangster movies, and serves no real purpose in his practical mind.

  But even with all these choices, he is still stumped. Nothing immediately jumps out at him. Nothing in his experience suggests an approach to a target who, according to his information, is only nine months old. He decides to let his subconscious work on the problem during his next few hours of relaxation, and begins to undress.

  PART FOUR: Legwork

  The first body Quinn was responsible for was in Moscow. The next one was in Caracas, and now she is sitting in a small dingy cubicle in the local L.A. field office investigating the most recent murder. The victim was the 17-year-old spoiled son of a former Bollywood movie producer. Other than his stepmother, he didn't seem to have any enemies. There were no attempts to extort his father, and so far, it seems his family's involvement in politics was limited to elbow rubbing, and a few fund-raisers and photo ops. This one is as seemingly disparate and arbitrary as the rest. The only connection to the other murders is the number 114 carved deep into the kid's cheek with a blade as precise and honed as a scalpel.

  Quinn knows her best shot at a lead is hotels and airlines. There's no way local resources are being tapped for all these jobs, and given the rate at which bodies are accumulating, and the fact that they are turning up all over the world, her man is clearly traveling by jet. And given what Quinn knows about the economics of contract killing, he is probably also traveling in style.

&nb
sp; Finding a list of airlines is easy. She simply needs to cross reference cities and dates with flight schedules — or rather, she needs to compose the right search expressions to do it for her. There are several possibilities, but one that stands out: United Emirates Airlines services more cities on her list than any other airline. Refining the query further reveals that UEA services every city where a victim was tagged with the number 114. Quinn is starting to suspect that there actually are multiple killers — each with his own unique tag. And number 114 — by far the most prolific — appears to be very picky about his airline.

  This is the one Quinn wants.

  Finding the hotel isn't quite as straightforward, but the airline lead gives her an idea. Rather than looking at individual hotels, she makes lists of holding companies — ownership and management organizations whose loyalty programs span multiple brands. A query that cross references luxury hotel properties with the cities on her list reveals that number 114 is almost certainly a high-ranking and devoted customer of Crystal Collective Worldwide.

  She spends the rest of the day making calls to other field offices and sending junior agents out to collect passenger and guest lists. After a salad and a cheap glass of wine at a garish local restaurant chain that keeps her just under her daily food allowance, she spends the evening in her room at the Best Western Suites next to the airport writing search algorithms. As encouraged as she felt earlier in the day, she now feels let down; she has not been able to extract a single additional lead from the data. No single name emerges from guest records obtained in cities with 114 bodies. She doesn't even uncover patterns or sets of names which might suggest aliases. Unless her man somehow obtains an entirely new identity for every city he visits, his stays are simply not recorded — perhaps a perk enjoyed by customers with sufficiently elite statuses.

  The next morning, it occurs to her almost immediately that you don't become a successful and highly paid professional contract killer by leaving a trail discoverable by anyone savvy enough to compose a few search queries against various knowledge engines. If he were that dumb, any number of law enforcement computing clouds would have probably already fingered him without any human intervention whatsoever. Her man is off the proverbial grid. He is a living, breathing, walking piece of steganography: a code hidden in plain sight. After a free continental breakfast and several cups of weak urn-brewed coffee, she finds her rental car in the parking garage and instructs it to take her to whichever CCW property is closest to the airport. Queries, search expressions, and cross referencing will not solve this case alone — at least not with the data points she currently has. And she knows she can't rely on junior agents who are still far more enamored with their badges and guns than they are with actually solving cases to bring her what she needs. For now, it's time to put the handset and glasses away. It's time to apply some legwork to this case.

  Quinn doesn't bother with guest lists this time; it's the surveillance footage she's after. She knows her man is almost certainly captured on dozens of different video feeds every day. And she knows that he knows this, as well. Rather than avoiding surveillance, his game is probably to stay lost in the noise. Instead of a disguise, he relies on anonymity. But Quinn knows that there isn't as much randomness in the universe as most of us perceive. Randomness is usually more the result of our inability to see a pattern than the actual absence of one. And finding patterns is what Quinn does.

  The staff isn't exactly uncooperative, but it's clear that nobody wants to be the one to actually hand anything over. She picks up the rules of the game pretty quickly, though; instead of flashing hardware or dropping threats of court orders, she explains to the manager on duty that she completely respects CCW's commitment to maintaining the privacy of their guests, and neither she nor the federal government would ever dream of asking them to betray that trust. She would, of course, do everything in her power to keep the fact that a serial murderer was using CCW properties as a base of operations out of the media. She slides something small across the counter and smiles. Should anyone come across anything that they believe might be of use in quickly and, above all else, quietly solving this case, it would be tremendously helpful if they could forward it to the ID on her card — even if it were more convenient and expedient to do so from an anonymous, untraceable account. The manager solemnly vows to give the matter his full attention, and before Quinn gets to the next hotel, her handset is letting her know that someone has just sent her 72 hours of compressed video.

  The technique works equally well at the second and third hotels which gives Quinn enough data to keep her busy for the rest of the day. The rental car takes her back to the field office and she gets herself set up in an empty cubicle with a greasy fast food lunch and a very large and dark coffee.

  The first thing she does is so mind-numbing that she would recruit junior agents to do it for her if she thought there was even the slightest chance in hell of them not fucking it up. She arranges all the video feeds from the first hotel in a grid on the plasma glass in the cubical and watches them all simultaneously at 10x speed. Every time she sees someone check in or out, she records the feed's timestamp. She decides to narrow her search down to only two days rather than all three which allows her to get two hotels done before it's dark outside and she is entirely incapable of focusing anymore. She picks up a burrito and a tall bottle of sangria on the way back to the hotel, takes a couple of antacid tablets, and falls asleep fully clothed with the TV still on. The next morning, after three miniature pots of in-room coffee and as much 24-hour news programming as she can stand, she puts on her glasses, links them to her handset, and works through the feed from the third hotel.

  The next step is to write a script that parses timestamps out of the guest records, then compares them to the timestamps she recorded from the video feeds. Eventually she should find a mismatch. If her hypothesis is correct, someone should appear on video who doesn't appear on paper.

  She finds a few anomalies which she needs to verify manually, but after all the data sets from all three hotels have been analyzed, Quinn doesn't find anything sufficiently inconsistent. In the shower, she considers the possibilities: either she needs to analyze data from longer periods of time, or she has the wrong hotel chain. Or, she realizes as she wraps her curly blond hair in a ragged, over-bleached towel, her man checked in without ever approaching the counter. Maybe high-end hotels were like car rental locations: spend enough money, and you get to smugly walk past all the schmucks in line.

  She orders up a grilled cheese and french fries, then opens the elevator surveillance videos from the most expensive of the three hotels. Each elevator has three different cameras, so she picks the feeds with the most direct view of the occupants' faces, then overlays a facial recognition filter. She adjusts parameters until her food arrives, backing down the threshold to prevent false positives caused by reflections in polished metal panels and by dolls in the arms of little girls, and then she makes sure it continues to track correctly at very high speeds. When she has the right settings, she configures all the feeds from all the hotels to play in off-screen buffers simultaneously at 100x their original speed, and to dump everything it finds to a log file. She wants to know many faces are being tracked, how long each face is tracked, and, of course, the exact time.

  When the data is ready, she knows her man is in there, and she knows she has everything she needs to find him. It's just a matter of figuring out how to make the data talk. Quinn takes a diet soda from the minibar, checks the price on the card, then puts it back. She'll go out for coffee later.

  The first thing she does is divide the data up into individual elevator trips which is relatively easy since all she has to do is find the points where no faces are being tracked. Since she suspects her man stays in the topmost room of the hotel, she initially assumes that whichever elevator trip is longest most likely contains the footage she's after. However, because of intermittent stops, she realizes it isn't going to be that easy. She needs to subtract the t
ime it takes for the elevator to pause, and for occupants to come and go.

  It takes her two hours and costs the taxpayers not only that diet soda from the minibar, but a tin of mixed nuts, as well, however she is eventually able to isolate blocks of time when some faces change while other faces remain constant. By subtracting those periods from the total time of each elevator trip, she has calculated what she calls absolute travel time. She compares all the data and finds that there are 18 pieces of footage which, in terms of absolute travel time, run a full seven seconds longer than any of the others. That's way outside her expected margin of error. The data has finally spoken. Or, rather, she has finally learned how to listen.

  Each clip shows a different configuration of occupants: a fidgety manager-on-duty; a bellhop wheeling several metal cases accompanied by a fidgety manager-on-duty; a chef fussing over several covered dishes on a cart accompanied by a fidgety manager-on-duty; and several varieties of women, primping on the way up and irritatedly adjusting undergarments on the way down. Only one occupant — tall, slender, and dark — seems entirely unconcerned with the goings-on around him.

  Quinn has found her man.

  She takes her time isolating several still images from various frames and enhancing them. She is proud of her work, and she wants him to look his best.

  She stops for coffee and a warm chocolate croissant on the way to the airport, then spends some time sharing her new pictures with the folks at the UEA counter. But she also shows them several other images, as well. Random faces she keeps on hand. Some are from advertisements, some are wanted terrorists, and one is her ex-husband. She cycles through them on her handset and asks one particular pretty young girl if any of them are familiar. The girl seems to know to be careful. But what she doesn't know is that the handset is recording her responses: sampling her voice, constantly comparing images of her eyes, monitoring her body temperature and heart rate. When the girl denies ever seeing Quinn's man, the handset vibrates and the girl looks up.