Rinzler: A Noir Sci-Fi Thriller

by Raya Jones

  Chapter 7

  Rinzler reclined back in his seat.

  The back of the chair hit the wall of the cubicle. He had outstayed his welcome in this cybercafé when he was drawn into a brawl earlier. The proprietor kept sending him reminders to pack up and get lost. ‘I’m paid up for another 20 minutes,’ Rinzler muttered angrily, and turned to a case that CrimSol had recently referred to him.

  Closing one more case should clear his debt.

  He opened it with determination to make it an open-and-shut case.

  It was the enactment of a Justice Assurance policy. Corporate justice departments deal with crimes against their citizens, but they don’t protect citizens from their own corporation’s wrongdoings. CrimSol sells the promise of an independent inquiry in the case of a suspicious misfortune. Rinzler had a few cases like that in the past. They involved workplace accidents that could be due to safety violations. Seeing that this case involved an OK citizen, he wondered, amused, what sort of workplace injury could befall designers of entertainment software.

  He skipped forward to the incident synopsis. His amusement evaporated when he read that the policyholder had been shot dead. He wasn’t required to solve the crime. His brief was to ascertain whether or not the victim’s employers were implicated. This was precisely the danger zone that he did his best to avoid: corporations assassinating their own citizens. He sighed, hoping that he gets lucky and a murderer with a personal motive is found. She was killed in her home. It could be a crime of passion, Rinzler reflected, hopeful.

  His hope vanished as soon as he saw the policyholder’s name: Indigo.

  Rinzler stared at it, not knowing whether to laugh in relief or be afraid, very afraid.

  For the first time since finding out about his near-escape, it occurred to him that he was the innocent bystander. She was the target. Whether killed by her own corporation or someone else, this woman had been involved in something big, murky, and nasty.

  His survival instinct told him to drop the Indigo case right away, but he wasn’t in a position to negotiate with CrimSol. His only option was to drag it out indefinitely, creating the impression of working on it whilst doing next to nothing.

  Rinzler was good at that.

  He activated his business avatar, the Rinzler he liked people to see when they contact Rinzler Investigations. It was his true likeness except that the virtual Rinzler wore a smart pinstripe suit, was clean-shaven, his hair was neatly combed, and his face lacked the scars and bruises that the real Rinzler had acquired in recent fights. The virtual Rinzler reclined on a stylish charcoal leather sofa in the reception area of a spacious, brightly lit office.

  The flesh-and-blood Rinzler saw the slim face of a dark-featured man in his forties, with a complicated coiffure of jet-black hair, appear in front of him. There was no background. A scrolling legend identified the man as Jeremiah Cordova, Quality Control CEO @ Division.53/OK. ‘Yes?’ prompted Jeremiah, who really did sit in a spacious, brightly lit office, but didn’t transmit his surroundings to people of lower status.

  Rinzler noted: the top boss is taking a personal interest. Next he’ll tell me they are taking the matter very seriously. Rinzler spoke like reciting off a script. ‘According to CSG Charter zeta-zero Second Amendment stroke 14.5 I hereby duly inform you that Rinzler Investigations undertake from CrimSol to investigate the death of their client, formerly OK citizen Indigo, ID number…’

  ‘Yes, yes. We are taking the matter very seriously. We are holding our own inquiry.’

  ‘Of course you are, sir. But any information you have bearing on the case must be fully disclosed to me as per regulations. Please consult the attached documentation about the correct format for referencing Items of Evidence. Non-compliance with any clause of the CSG Charter zeta-zero Second Amendment stroke 308.2 Text-Revision,’ Rinzler recited, lengthily and monotonously with perverse relish, ‘will constitute a violation of the Code of Fair Trade and will be duly reported to the Consumer Standards Group.’ He spelled it out for emphasis, aware of the traditional animosity that executives feel towards the CSG, the watchdog of the corporations and a pain in the corporate backside.

  Jeremiah winced visibly. ‘What does fair trade have to do with this? An OK citizen was murdered in her own home, which is OK property. That’s internal affairs.’

  He’s squirming. Moments like this make these jobs almost worthwhile, thought Rinzler. ‘CrimSol outsource to me. They are my client. That’s trade.’

  ‘Why is CrimSol involved in the first place?’

  ‘The victim took out a policy empowering an independent investigation in the event of her untimely death.’

  ‘Why should she do that?’

  ‘Precisely my question,’ replied Rinzler with grim satisfaction. ‘Why should a junior, what was she, a junior clerk in your Quality Control division feel that she needed a posthumous inquiry into foul play against her by her own employers?’

  ‘What are you implying… what’s that noise?’

  ‘It’s Thursday. We’re renovating the premises,’ Rinzler quickly retorted, and cussed under his breath. The proprietor had disabled the ambient-noise filter. A Thursday thug was banging at the cubicle’s door. Rinzler called out to the android, ‘I have seven minutes left. Don’t you androids have a sense of time?’

  He turned back to Jeremiah. ‘Please arrange for all the information to be forwarded to Rinzler Investigations with all the pieces correctly referenced as per instructions, sir. Good day.’

  Chapter 8

  The detective’s image vanished from the communication space above the glass top of Jeremiah’s oval desk. The desk was empty and featureless but for a thin silver strip. With the workspace switched off, the tiny firework display of electronic activity that flashed up and down the silver strip was his only interface with cyberspace. His office room was expensively styled for elegance and functionality. It was a matter of status to flaunt designer furniture in a large room. But surveying it now, the décor felt contaminated by the vulgarity of Rinzler’s crude imitation of such an office. ‘He’s probably plagiarised my designers’ brochure. How cheap is that, I ask you,’ Jeremiah asked nobody in the solitude of his office.

  A request for audience from Indigo’s mother flashed on the silver streak. ‘Give me a break,’ Jeremiah muttered, ignoring it.

  The sight of Indigo’s body on the floor, which was relayed to him from the crime scene days ago, still haunted and taunted him. She lay there defiant in death like a personal betrayal to him. It would take months to bring someone else into the secret life of Division.53 and train him or her for the same project. The window of opportunity that he had so carefully created would be lost.

  Sighing, Jeremiah contacted Acid Burns, the senior hacker assigned to the murder investigation. The head of a woman with purple hair and facial tattoos in the fashion of corporate hackers, wobbled into view in front of him. He immediately regretted not communicating in voice-only. This is too much visual vulgarity to bear in one day, he complained to nobody in his head. Aloud he spoke mellifluously in what he imagined was a colloquial style. He instructed her to check out a Cyboratics connection, adding as if confiding, ‘Counterespionage are so paranoid you wouldn’t believe it.’

  ‘Yeah, I believe it.’

  ‘Did Indigo have friends in Cyboratics?’

  ‘Yes, but she wasn’t a mole if that’s what you’re implying, Chief. I have friends there too. It’s a small world.’

  Jeremiah signed off, reflecting bitterly that here he was stuck in a small world — a world where employees of rival corporations are chummy with each other as if citizenship was just a job.

  Eleven years earlier, he feistily campaigned for basing Division.53 in Proxima. At the time, everyone expected a Narayana Gate to be installed here. Only one Narayana was due to be installed in the Centauri sector in the foreseeable future. Jeremiah’s operations would have been in the hub of interstellar commerce. But Alpha Centauri, with Cyboratics’ influence there, had won
the bid. Proxima, the oldest mining colony outside the solar system, became condemned to history, a world ticking on at the backwaters of civilization.

  He wasn’t having a good day and it got worse when his contact in Counterespionage told him that Old Man Cordova was taking a personal interest.

  ‘Why? He’s retired. He did retire again, didn’t he?’ inquired Jeremiah.

  ‘Yes, but I wonder whether he realises it. Don’t worry. It’s not your project. It’s Indigo he’s asking about.’

  The information filled Jeremiah with dread and hope. He was clawing his way into the hidden power structure of OK military intelligence. He hoped that the most powerful man in OK military intelligence would notice his project — a man you definitely don’t want to notice you when your project hits a serious glitch. Aloud Jeremiah said, ‘How does he know that she exists… existed?’

  ‘I don’t know. But he knows she’s dead. You don’t want him to know that you haven’t factored in your subordinate’s revenge exposure policy. You could retro-create some malpractice for the detective to uncover.’

  She wasn’t joking. An internal scandal might cost Jeremiah his reputation but would be of little consequence to OK. The worst-case scenario was that Cyboratics assassinated Indigo as a message to him, indicating that they knew about his project. If they know about it, he has a mole on his team. Such carelessness will make him a liability and cost him his life.

  Sickened by it all, Jeremiah read an urgent text message from Jan, Indigo’s mother and his deputy. She suggested that it would be prudent to check Indigo’s work files before Rinzler started snooping. To tell Jan to do it herself would have required contacting her, and he still hadn’t acknowledged her request for audience. He didn’t feel up to it yet.

  He downloaded Indigo’s tray, reflecting how unnecessary this precaution was. He trusted Indigo not to leave confidential material near the surface. She was a responsible agent. And then she spoilt it by getting herself murdered. How irresponsible is that, I ask you, Jeremiah asked nobody in his head.

  An ethereal workspace unfolded above the glass desktop. Noisy animations popped up, jostling for attention. They were Indigo’s pending tasks, OK products lined up for her to check. Jeremiah donned the slender headgear, which enabled total sensory immersion in OK Frames. The physical domain of his serene elegant office faded away. Larger versions of the same animations danced around him like an invasion into his stream of consciousness, assaulting his senses with vivid sights and jingly sounds.

  He opened up Indigo’s log and stabbed his finger at her last job. A gaudy banner flashed overhead like a theatrical lightening with a peal of thunder: Whodunit-3010!!! It’s here!!! A Free Demo! New!!! Classic Murder Mystery! Multiplayer!!! A Spectrum Exclusive!!! It was already on the market. Division.53 specialised in post-marketing quality control.

  Indigo had accessed the murder mystery shortly before she was murdered.

  He activated one of his personal avatars, a voluptuous blonde he named Mitzi, and inserted ‘her’ into the game dialogue box.

  Everything else faded away.

  In his digitally induced consciousness, Jeremiah found himself in front of a Victorian mansion silhouetted dramatically against a stormy night. Lightning streaked across the sky. Thunder rolled. He stabbed his finger at Scene Selection at random, halfway into the storyline.

  There was an unusually long delay.

  When he was about to give up, things happened.

  Mitzi, wearing a sexy negligee that came with the Whodunit-3010 wardrobe, stood in a dimly lit wood-panelled corridor. A scripted sense of foreboding compelled her to look over her shoulder. A blood-curdling scream sounded from a nearby room. Jeremiah oriented his avatar there. Mitzi entered a wood-panelled drawing room. At the centre of the room, a portly middle-aged man in tweeds and bushy sideburns stood over the body of a young woman lying face down with a dagger sticking out of her back. Whoever has created this ought to be shot for criminal banality, Jeremiah thought with passion.

  The script rolled on. ‘This makes three dead, Ambrose,’ Mitzi spoke.

  Ambrose, who could be computer-generated like the dead body at his feet, turned around as if startled. Mitzi stepped towards the drinks cabinet and took out two tumblers and whiskey, ‘Ice?’

  Ambrose replied, ‘Yes please.’

  I don’t believe this script. Who has a social drink over a murdered body? Jeremiah thought in dismay, trying to suppress his memory of Indigo’s dead body.

  The inane script played on. Mitzi deftly prepared the drinks, saying, ‘I know you didn’t kill her.’

  Ambrose accepted his drink with a thank-you nod, raising an eyebrow quizzically. Mitzi explained, ‘You were in plain sight at the time of the first murder.’

  Ambrose frowned, suspicious, ‘But I don’t recall seeing you around when the Professor met his untimely end. You weren’t around anywhere until now.’

  A computer-generated character would have responded as if Mitzi had been in the game all along. Jeremiah quickly took over the scripted speech, ‘You’re a player I take it.’

  ‘Yes. You’re one too?’

  Jeremiah made his avatar sigh in relief. ‘I was going to give this demo two seconds more to pick up. I think it just did, darling.’ Mitzi indicated the armchairs, which were tagged as a backstage zone. They went to chat off-script.

  ‘I wonder if anyone actually finishes this game,’ Ambrose said conversationally.

  ‘Maybe there’s no murderer. The programme kills them off one by one, that’s the whole point of it.’

  ‘Seems pointless to me. I like puzzles to have solutions.’

  ‘A problem-solver, so sweet,’ Jeremiah smiled via Mitzi, and wondered whether Ambrose was male or female in reality. ‘Ambrose darling, what do you do in real life if you don’t mind me asking?’

  ‘I solve problems. I’m in Cyboratics. And you?’

  ‘I’m not in Cyboratics,’ Mitzi giggled. ‘So, you’re an android maker. Perhaps you could settle something that’s been bothering me for a long time. Do androids have a sense of time? I don’t mean being able to give us the time of day. Do they feel the passage of time?’

  Ambrose frowned, perplexed, ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Don’t worry, sweetie, I’m not a child,’ Mitzi flashed a seductive smile. ‘Let’s switch frames to a love hotel and I’ll prove to you that I’m an adult, an experienced adult…’ Speaking, Jeremiah noticed text forming on the wall, visible only to him in the game space: high priority. re: cy connection. acid burns. ‘Damn it! Ambrose, there’s an incoming business call I must attend to. Let’s save this moment and meet here again sometime, how about that?’

  Chapter 9

  In a private room slightly larger than a cubicle, Angerford removed his hired OK headgear. He was a lanky man, mid-thirties, with long dark hair tied in a ponytail. He stayed lying on the narrow bed a while, deciding that his game avatar Ambrose should lose weight and the sideburns when he meets Mitzi again. Then his common sense returned. The avatar must not resemble him. He knew nothing about ‘Mitzi’ except that the player must be local, because the demo was confined to Spectrum. He reminded himself that P-7 — unlike the corporate towns where he had lived all his life until now — has a mixed population. It won’t be wise to advertise himself as April’s new Chief Analyst.

  He arrived in Proxima eight days earlier.

  Eight days earlier Angerford stood by a porthole aboard the shuttle from the deep-space port. The barren surface raced, crater after crater, as the shuttle descended to the planet. It was his first trip outside the solar system and he wasn’t happy about it. The assignment troubled him.

  A stranger trying to see the view accidentally brushed against him, and backed away apologising. Angerford stepped aside to let him take a look.

  The man was young, slight-built, with delicate oriental features, and overdressed in heavily padded clothes of non-nano fabric. Angerford guessed that he was a follower of the anti-technology, quasi
-religious Human Essence movement. The essencist darted a glance at the Cyboratics logo on Angerford’s grey biosuit. He sees an android maker. I represent everything his creed despises, thought Angerford. Back on Earth, essencists were often hostile. But the young man seemed friendly. He eagerly pointed to the planetary surface, ‘Cardiff, my home.’

  Then he stepped back to let Angerford return to the porthole.

  Looking at the view, Angerford silently reflected how incredible it was that anyone lived on a planetary surface swept by lethal radiation. He turned to ask which pinpoint of light was Cardiff — and was taken aback to be facing, instead of the young man, a middle-aged oriental man in a high-tech black biosuit.

  ‘Keep watching the view, Angerford. Don’t look at me,’ the man instructed very quietly.

  Angerford obeyed automatically, sensing himself tremble, recalling rumours of ninja serving the Cyboratics’ president. I didn’t even have a chance to fail in my assignment yet, he thought, sensing the other’s presence behind him in the prickly sensation of hairs standing on the back of his neck. He spoke to his own ghostly reflection on the porthole, ‘Who are you? How do you know my name?’

  The voice at the back of his neck answered almost inaudibly. ‘I’m in the business of knowing.’

  There was a pause.

  Angerford tried to glance sideways at the man, and quickly fixed his gaze back on the porthole when the deadly quiet voice resumed. ‘I know you’re a trouble-shooter and I know why you’re here. You don’t need to know who I am but you might need to contact me if the trouble becomes unshootable. Check your junk mail in a few days’ time. I’ll send you contact details encrypted in an anime samurai.’