Rinzler: A Noir Sci-Fi Thriller

by Raya Jones

  One, he won’t upgrade his hotel accommodation any time soon. He couldn’t tell Ferrari that the person she sought was he himself, which meant he wouldn’t collect his fee.

  Two, he was terrified.

  Rinzler was used to having people after him even in P-7. It was an occupational hazard. Until now he believed that he knew who they were or at least what they were. Even the corporate spooks who hunted him down in Ronda were the kind who’d beat him up, at worst shoot him dead, but won’t go to extreme lengths and devious technological means. He kept himself safe by staying away from certain places whenever he could and looking over his shoulder when he couldn’t. He had healthy survival paranoia, but never felt hunted by an unseen malevolent power.

  Until now.

  Chapter 3

  Rinzler ticked off the CrimSol backlog cases one by one. His savings depleted fast on renting cubicles in cafés. To save money he shifted his operation to cheaper, seedier places, who charged by the hour and were frequented by the very lowlife he wished to avoid. He teleported about his business as usual, yet with trepidation, and fully aware that his fear was irrational. The fact that 1Step were investigating the matter meant they’d be vigilant in the near future. The next attempt on his life will come from an unexpected direction. He couldn’t anticipate it, so he did what he always did. He kept safe by staying away from danger. It meant staying clear of anything that had a whiff of politics and looking over his metaphorical shoulder when his jobs took him into corporate territories.

  A month after being evicted he was still living rough and still none the wiser as to who was after him. It didn’t seem related to what had happened in Ronda two decades ago, as far as he could ascertain without arousing suspicions by scouring archives too vigorously. He wondered whether it had anything to do with his former mentor, Schmidt.

  The only thing he knew for sure was that Harvey Schmidt wasn’t the man’s real name. Even as an apprentice, Rinzler suspected that Schmidt Investigations was a front for something else. The agency’s signpost listed the kind of jobs that Schmidt refused, and the list included almost everything for which people might want a private investigator. Nevertheless, it was legal, duly registered with the CSG. Other agencies rejected Rinzler as soon as they learned that he was 12 years old. Schmidt wasn’t recruiting, but agreed to train him. He was impressed that the boy from Clay Valley, a mining outpost in Ronda, tracked down his signal via many proxies to Tao Ceti. Young Rinzler did easy research and knew that Harvey’s late father, Helmut, had founded the agency. There was no image of Harvey anywhere, so he imagined him as similar to Helmut: white, red-haired, freckled and mustached. The man spoke with Rinzler in a voice that wasn’t his own and transmitted only an animated shadow, a placeholder for a man. Rinzler used a Sherlock Holmes cartoon as his avatar. Schmidt didn’t ask to see the boy’s true face. When Rinzler cautiously revealed that he was almost 13, Schmidt said dryly, ‘I was that age once.’ Much later Rinzler discovered that Helmut Schmidt didn’t have any offspring.

  Whoever ‘Harvey Schmidt’ really was, he had powerful enemies. Soon after Rinzler completed his training, that agency was wiped out in an attack so deep that Rinzler, even now, couldn’t fathom the techniques that his ex-mentor’s enemies used. For several years afterwards he believed that the man had died. Rinzler followed his parents into the security business and trained with the Golden Goose syndicate. When he was old enough, he applied to start up a detective agency of his own, against his parents’ wishes. Schmidt reappeared and sponsored him by proxy — Freedom Cordova, an ex-client of Schmidt’s, whose case was the first one that Rinzler worked on his own whilst still being trained. After setting up his own agency, Rinzler’s only way of contacting Schmidt was to send a message ‘For Al’ to an account under Freedom’s name, and Schmidt a.k.a. Al would reply from some untraceable site. They kept sporadically in touch over the years.

  Rinzler resisted an urge to contact Schmidt when he first found out about the near-miss teleportation collision. ‘No way, mister, you’ve taught me to look out for myself,’ he thought at Schmidt in his head, and added to himself, But not how to look out against someone who can infiltrate 1Step Teletek like that. The more he thought about it, the more puzzled he was that 1Step couldn’t retrieve his ID.

  Sitting in a cybercafé cubicle, he reclined back with fingers interlocked behind his neck, and wondered whether to contact Schmidt after all. He could say, Hi Schmidt! Just calling to say hello.

  Schmidt wasn’t someone to exchange a casual hello.

  To take his mind off things, Rinzler checked his inbox. A private customer requested to check someone’s identity. He moved it to a holding box. A repeated inquiry from the 1Step chief, who wasn’t easily fobbed off when he told her that there were ‘complications’. He was trying not to back out. If he did that, she’d find someone else who’d give her the result. It occurred to him that the whole near-miss scenario could have been fabricated by 1Step to manipulate him to do something for them. No way, he thought angrily at ‘them’, the faceless goliaths of the corporate upper class. If this was a setup, he definitely didn’t want her to suspect that he suspected. He moved her message to the holding box.

  His stomach rumbled, but he was expecting free food at a friend’s party. He silently rehearsed complementing Spart on her promotion and how to ask her to look after his boxes for a few days for old times’ sake. He moved all CrimSol mail to the holding box without opening it.

  And then there was only one unchecked mail. It was anonymous and without a subject heading. When he clicked on it, plain text unfurled in front of his disbelieving eyes: Hi Rinzler! Just calling to say hello. Free to meet.

  Instead of a signature there was a link to an old menu of game options, the kind of mindless games of speed and scoring that Rinzler and his pals used to play in their youth. The same menu used to be offered in an OK games bar in Clay Valley, where Rinzler and Schmidt met face to face for the first and only time, about a year after he had started his apprenticeship.

  Rinzler instantly forgot the party.

  Chapter 4

  Shortly afterwards Rinzler arrived at the empty foyer of the cheapest inn in P-7. He rang the desk bell. A semi-transparent projection of an unsmiling middle-aged woman flickered into holographic existence at the reception desk in front of him.

  There was movement behind him. He looked over his shoulder and saw a beautiful strawberry blonde in an electric blue bodysuit crossing the foyer. Rinzler idly wondered what a top-market android like ‘her’ was doing in a place like this. Responding to his stare, the android asked brightly, ‘How may I help you today?’

  ‘Not today, April.’ Rinzler turned back to the receptionist and told her that he was visiting Sherlock Holmes. The receptionist wouldn’t divulge the guest’s room number and inquired, suspicious, why Rinzler’s ‘friend’ didn’t tell him himself. ‘Elementary…’ Rinzler began and gave up. How could he explain that this man lived in a reality where you visit people by cracking their passwords and penetrating their firewalls? Rinzler had to hack hotels’ registers and figure out Schmidt’s alias. ‘Never mind. Just tell me, did he choose his own room?’

  She nodded slightly and refused to tell him.

  Rinzler walked through identical corridors lined with doors that all looked the same except for their numbers, until the numbers became as long as dates. He stopped at a door with a number like the date he met Schmidt face to face in Clay Valley. He knocked on the door, apprehensive, ready with apologies if a stranger opened it.

  A small middle-aged oriental man in a black biosuit opened the door.

  Rinzler opened his mouth.

  No words came out.

  The stranger spoke quietly. ‘What took you so long?’

  Rinzler shuffled his feet, embarrassed.

  ‘Look at you, Rinzler. So tall, all grown up!’ The man tilted up his head to make eye contact.

  Rinzler grinned awkwardly, feeling as if he were 12 years old. ‘Grown up enough to t
ell me who you really are?’

  The man’s slanted-eyes narrowed to slits like a warning.

  Rinzler laughed and followed him in, ill at ease. ‘So what should I call you, Schmidt?’

  The man-who-wasn’t-Schmidt said nothing.

  The tiny utilitarian room was without furniture. A bedroll was rolled away against a wall to make room for an XT-Pro portable portal, which was spread like a mat on the floor. Schmidt, for want of another name, swiftly packed it up. Rinzler could picture him poised on the mat, operating the interfaces nimble and precise, dance-like, penetrating unseen realms at inconceivable speed. Try as he may in his youth, Rinzler couldn’t master those mats. He was too slow.

  Schmidt invited him to sit down on the floor and offered a drink from the inn’s vending machine. Surely a ronin of his calibre could afford a better hotel, mused Rinzler. Then it occurred to him that this inn offered the kind of anonymity that would suit someone of Schmidt’s shady persuasion. ‘I would have invited you home, but…’ he mumbled.

  ‘That’s okay.’

  No, it’s not okay, Rinzler argued in his head. He felt ashamed for wasting the training Schmidt had invested in him. Aloud he muttered, ‘You know my situation, don’t you, you’ve checked me out.’

  ‘My training wasn’t wasted on you.’

  ‘Huh? I didn’t exactly make a success of my life.’

  ‘Success does not always manifest in obvious ways.’

  Rinzler couldn’t imagine any non-obvious ways in which his life could be called a success.

  ‘Taking on Goliath and surviving, for instance,’ Schmidt helped.

  ‘Who’s Goliath? It was Goodwell Mining,’ Rinzler reminded. He blurted, ‘I haven’t thanked you for putting CrimSol my way when I needed a way out of Ronda.’ Schmidt was shaking his head, but Rinzler insisted, ‘Thanks.’

  ‘It wasn’t me.’

  ‘Someone must’ve put a good word. CrimSol approached me specifically.’

  ‘Freedom Cordova did it. I was in cryonics at the time, long trip. I couldn’t stop him.’

  ‘Please tell him it’s appreciated… Is he still alive?’

  Schmidt nodded and fell silent. He was a man comfortable with silence.

  Even his silence has a scary edge, thought Rinzler, uncomfortable. He tried small talk. ‘So where do you live now?’

  ‘Cyberspace as always,’ replied his ex-mentor as if surprised by the question.

  ‘Silly question,’ Rinzler admitted apologetically.

  Schmidt almost smiled. ‘Earth mostly. I’ve been commissioned to test the Narayana Gates one by one as they install them.’

  The nearest Gate was in Alpha Centauri. Passing through Proxima was a long detour, but Rinzler knew better than to inquire what Schmidt was really doing here. He also suspected that GEM, who make those gates, didn’t need a freelance hacker to test them. They have scientists for that. But Rinzler knew better than to probe.

  Over more drinks from the inn’s vending machine, Schmidt talked advanced theoretical physics like making small talk. It was giving Rinzler a headache. ‘Just get me from A to B fast and safe, mister, that’s all I care to know. Why are we talking science anyway? The real question is politics. Why did Proxima lose the Narayana bid to Alpha Centauri?’

  Schmidt clammed up.

  Then he spoke enigmatically, the way he speaks when he has something important to say: ‘In the end of days, when human beings are no more and only our machines tick on, digital memories of lives will continue to swirl in vortexes and eddies of signals. How could anyone looking back to today know what’s in people’s hearts right now?’

  ‘There won’t be anyone left in the end of days to wonder about it,’ Rinzler pointed out pragmatically.

  He decided not to tell Schmidt about his near-miss teleport collision. If Indigo was involved in something big and nasty, Schmidt was probably aware of it. Perhaps this was the reason for his detour to Proxima. Rinzler said nonchalantly, like an afterthought, ‘What did you use to delete my ID from 1Step logs?’

  ‘A flea.’

  ‘As small as that,’ mumbled Rinzler like a man who doesn’t deserve anything bigger.

  ‘Miniscule!’ The face of the man who lived in cyberspace lit up. He rushed to unpack his XT-Pro. ‘Let me show you.’

  Chapter 5

  Indigo was in her home telling a woman she had met for the first time ten minutes ago to get out of her life. Both women were in their early twenties, wore black biosuits with identical gadgets and fashion accessories. They would have looked even more alike if it weren’t for Indigo’s multi-coloured hair and animated LED rainbow tattoos shimmering under her eyes. Her visitor was without tattoos and her short brown hair looked as if she had just got up from sleep. She sat on Indigo’s bed with knees pulled up, greasy boots smearing the bedcover.

  ‘Get out of my life!’ Indigo paced the narrow space between the bed and a kitchen unit that was piled with a few days’ waste of takeaway food. Her pet Vesuvians, fire-spitting dragons only a few inches tall, frolicked about the room. She was careful not to step on their tails.

  Her one-room apartment was wallpapered, walls and ceiling, with interactive poster portals into games and lifestyle demos, like gateways to many parallel worlds. But her physical world, here and now, was haunted by the stranger who wouldn’t leave.

  The woman picked up a fashion accessory, a silken green sash that was coiled amidst clutter of memory pearls, data pins, novelty hi-tech accessories and cosmetics on Indigo’s bedside table. ‘But the paradox,’ she intoned, waving the sash at her.

  ‘Give me a break! What paradox? As in time travel? You are not me. Why don’t you crawl back to your time machine and go back to the future or…’

  ‘Para-docks as in Spare Lives,’ the woman waved the sash at her, and then threw it back on the bedside clutter. ‘You don’t know shit. You’re clueless like a newbie on the Green, soul sister.’

  ‘Don’t you “soul sister” me!’ snapped Indigo. ‘I don’t do Spare Lives.’

  ‘No, stupid, they do you. Let me spell it out to you in neon alphanumeric!’

  The doorbell rang.

  ‘Come in!’ Indigo called. The other woman ducked out of sight behind the bed.

  The door purred open. Indigo started, ‘What?’

  The woman hiding behind the bed heard a gun blast followed with a thud and the purr of the door closing. She rose and saw Indigo lie lifeless on the floor. An ugly scorch mark on her chest was fast disappearing as the nano-fabric of the biosuit repaired itself.

  Stunned, shaking uncontrollably, the woman stared at the body as if it was her own.

  Chapter 6

  A shuttle left the planet on a regular run to the deep-space port. Most passengers stayed in their seats. An elderly samurai stood with folded arms at a porthole, tall and dignified. He wore techno-regalia fashioned after a feudal costume of his ethnic group, with Chinese characters styled like an insignia into the fabric of his deep blue kimono. He carried a ceremonial sword. The planet’s barren surface raced past, crater after crater speckled with lights marking entrances to places underground, fast receding as the shuttle gained distance. Before long the planet became a diminishing ball of poked rock in the vastness of starry space, dimly reflecting the glow of its dying sun, the red dwarf Proxima.

  The old samurai stepped aside to make room for a small child, whose thermochromic biosuit made her appear clothed in rainbows. She stood on tiptoes and still barely reached the porthole. Then she got bored and asked him, ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘I have many names.’ He told her none.

  ‘I have this.’ She showed him a novelty bottle that OK gives away with purchases of educational software. Inside the bottle, vapours consolidated into a tiny Hamlet reciting in a tinny theatrical voice, ‘To be or not to be, that is the question.’ She shook it, and the scene changed. Another Shakespearean character declared in pathos, ‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have th
eir exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.’

  ‘Too true,’ said the samurai.

  He stroked a ring he wore.

  After the passengers alighted, the locusts he had planted in the shuttle’s surveillance system devoured any digital trace of his existence. When his presence couldn’t be erased without arousing suspicion, such as speaking with the child, his image was altered.

  In reality he was inconspicuous. He wore a black biosuit that looked like a cheap uniform and carried a small rucksack on his back. But the child’s mother, coming to fetch her, met his gaze and felt nervous. He was someone people don’t forget meeting — only find it very difficult to prove he existed.

  Three days later, when Rinzler examined surveillance archives of that flight, he imagined his mentor’s voice in his head: ‘Look at what you don’t see, Rinzler.’ Rinzler replied in thought, ‘I see a nihonjin samurai in full costume, which is very unusual in Proxima, and I don’t see anyone staring at him. That’s because they don’t actually see this samurai. They see you.’

  In his youth, when still a security cadet in Clay Valley, Rinzler accessed archives of the day he had met Schmidt in the games bar. He saw his younger self talking with a man in his twenties who looked like the Harvey Schmidt Rinzler used to imagine: white, red-haired, freckled and mustached. If Rinzler wanted to prove to his parents that the man existed, he could show them that image. He never did.

  Schmidt trained him to be attentive to details. The samurai image was a message of sorts. Rinzler ascertained that the Chinese characters on his kimono stood for hi no de, Japanese for sunrise. Further searches failed to reveal any special significance of ‘sunrise’ for the nihonjin neo-tribe — other than, perhaps, an allusion to ancient history. In the early 21st century, when nations still existed, Japan launched the Hinode spacecraft to explore the magnetic fields of the Sun. Rinzler had no idea whether it meant anything to Schmidt. ‘But now I see you, mister,’ he told Schmidt in his head. And now I don’t. Surveillance videos of the spaceport’s lobbies and passageways scrolled in his workspace. The samurai was nowhere to be seen. The locusts have done their job. Samurai Sunrise a.k.a. Schmidt could be anyone and nobody in those crowds, invisibly making his way to any interstellar ship.