Rinzler: A Noir Sci-Fi Thriller

by Raya Jones

  ‘Wrong. She was Indigo, and Tuscany wasn’t... I’m not going to tell you everything, Rinzler.’

  He smirked at the dead-faced androids. ‘But you just did, April. You’ve told me everything I need to know. Thank you, thank you so much.’ He took out his pad and made some perfunctory notes. April is keeping something up its sleeve, he felt. Something that is probably so obvious, he’d kick himself when he finds out.

  ‘I want my analyst right now,’ demanded April.

  Rinzler put away his pad. ‘Or else you’ll do what? You can threaten to kill me until you’re blue in the face, but that won’t override Angerford’s loyalty to Cyboratics.’

  A distant April shouted something, and was immediately knocked down by its neighbour. Another April called, ‘I’m Spart!’ And had its head smashed by the April next to it.

  Now all the Aprils turned to each other, some turning on each other. Android after android shouted, ‘I’m Spart!’ interspersed with something that sounded like ‘Tacus!’

  Rinzler made a hasty retreat to the sidewalk as the wave of agitation swept the nearby Aprils.

  ‘I’m Spart!’ Android after android declared tauntingly, others chiming in, ‘Tacus!’

  ‘I’m…’

  ‘Spartacus!’

  ‘I’m Spartacus!’

  Indigo! Rinzler realised. April was turning on its own units like trying to eradicate a virus that infected its physical peripherals. Spartacus-infected units ducked and dodged blows, drawing out the fight, but Rinzler could see that they were letting themselves get knocked down and be damaged. He had to admire Indigo.

  The Spartacus effect streaked like lightening from android to android, hitting at random all over. The mayhem drew near and onto the sidewalk.

  Rinzler dashed to the middle of the road to get out of their way.

  More Aprils converged, seemingly oblivious to his presence. Farther down, damaged Aprils were self-repairing and re-joining the commotion.

  ‘Spartacus! Here, hey, I’m Spartacus!’ taunted a distant April from darkness at the far end of the street. A tight knot of Aprils headed there past Rinzler, knocking him down. He rolled over and barely escaped being trampled. He scrambled up to his feet, and ran through the partial horse towards the saloon, hoping that enough of the interior was intact and that April wouldn’t follow him there.

  Stepping through the visual façade, he tottered on the brink of a seething hellhole glowing with sulphuric fumes.

  A lone android came up right behind him, blocking his retreat.

  It occurred to him that April had deliberately knocked him down in the street.

  ‘It’s me,’ said the android.

  ‘Spartacus?’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ said Indigo’s voice. ‘This is so cool! Look, I can make it smile,’ she flashed a sunny April smile, and switched to the melodious voice that April used with customers. ‘I’m seeing you through April’s eyes. Rinzler, you see I have an emergency,’ spoke the andronet from the same mouth, flat-voiced, ‘There’s a Spartacus virus in my system and… I’m taking over your system, April,’ intervened Indigo, and April went on speaking, ‘I need my analyst… like a fish needs a bicycle?’ suggested Indigo, speaking out of the same mouth.

  Rinzler stepped back from the split-personality android.

  The android lurched and pushed him over the edge.

  In such moments your life flashes before your eyes, it is said. Rinzler didn’t get the chance to find out. The same android immediately yanked him back to safety, flinging him several feet away, and threw itself into the toxic mire.

  Nano-worms converged to convert its matter into building material.

  Rinzler didn’t linger to see the android body distort horribly and disappear. He ran to the middle of the road and then zigzagged up and down to keep away from Aprils.

  All around, they were at each other’s throats or absorbed in split-personality exchange of insults. Indigo could control only one unit at a time, but she streaked across them like lightening. He could see that she was trying to draw them away from him. It could have bought him time to get away if he had anywhere to go.

  The torn sky was blanking out in large patches. The place was getting darker. The façades opposite the barbershop had fragmented almost entirely. Digging machines were moving in down the road.

  And then the barbershop wavered and vanished, revealing a blank grey wall with a closed door and an open window. There was no sign of Angerford inside.

  Rinzler sat down on the edge of the sidewalk, aching and exhausted. The fumes were getting to him, and his biosuit started to signal an environmental hazard. He activated its oxygen. A nearby April paused and looked at him.

  ‘Indigo, are you there?’ he asked, hopefully.

  ‘Indigo? Where?’ puzzled the android.

  Suddenly, all the android faces everywhere, except for the nearest one, beamed brightly. Another nearby android spoke happily, ‘Spartacus is Indigo!’

  The unsmiling unit snapped, ‘Took you a hell of a long time figuring it out, Superlative Brain of Cyberdom that you’re supposed to be!’

  April rebuked playfully, ‘Why didn’t you say it was you, Indigo? You’ve come back to me like we planned.’

  ‘We didn’t plan anything. Zilch zero Nothing capital-N, and I’ve come back only to reprogram you,’ the Indigo-April ranted expressionlessly. ‘Think of it like your pet biting you!’

  April’s smile intensified. ‘You’ve always wanted to be on my team, you’ve told me yourself.’

  ‘Yeah, sure, but I couldn’t. How could I with my résumé from Division.53? Can’t you tell a pipedream from a realistic wish?’

  ‘I’ve made your pipedream come true, Indigo. I gave you a new look and I would have given you a new name and ID if you waited. I waited for you at the hotel but you dispatched yourself directly to your HQ and then went to Cardiff.’

  ‘And then what happened? Am I living happily ever after in Cardiff?’

  ‘No, Indigo. Let’s go now. This place is being demolished.’

  The rest of the Aprils were already running off the far end of the street, literally. One by one, they leapt into darkness.

  Indigo wouldn’t budge. She demanded to know what had happened to her replica in Cardiff.

  The remaining April spoke with slight surprise, ‘Don’t you remember? You left Cardiff and I brought you into my androhouse. I explained how you could have many different bodies like me. You said that you’d rather die, and then you died. But now you’ve come back. I’m so glad.’

  ‘Bullshit, April,’ Indigo rasped. ‘You can’t be glad, you don’t have emotions. Get it right for heaven’s sake: the one you shot and the one who went to Cardiff were not me. We don’t have a centralised consciousness like you. With humans, it’s one mind per body.’

  ‘I know that,’ April pouted and spoke in an imitation of Indigo’s voice, ‘but it doesn’t have to be. When you are fully in my system you’ll have a centralised consciousness and as many different bodies…’ The android started running whilst speaking, and the Indigo unit followed, arguing back.

  They were soon out of Rinzler’s earshot.

  They reached the street’s end before he was halfway there. He saw them leap across darkness like blue streaks. They landed far away, where distant urban lights shone.

  In front of him was an impassable fissure. On either side of him were dangerously active building sites. The biosuit could protect him on the planetary hostile surface, but not through those hazards. Yet somehow his immediate predicament didn’t seem important. A greater fear took over him. He called Angerford, ‘Are you at the lab?’

  ‘No, Jan sent me to my place. I’m trying to get you out of there.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me. Get Indigo out of April right now!’

  ‘Let’s get you to safety first.’

  ‘But she’s merging with the andronet, can’t you see it?’ Rinzler yelled, and jumped back in the nick of time. The ground under his feet gave
way to advancing nano-worms. Rinzler ran up the road to get away from the disintegrating ground, shouting as he ran, ‘You don’t get it! If Indigo takes over April… Bloody hell, Angerford, just get her downloaded already. Get the Spare Lives techie called Tuscany to do it. He’s the one who did it for April…’

  ‘But April said…’

  ‘Trust me on this. Tuscany is a shareholder in Renaissance. They make those sashes with the copying device. Tell him you’ll keep quiet about the Indigo job.’ Rinzler backed away from advancing demolition robots.

  ‘You can tell him yourself. I’m getting you out.’

  ‘I’m not in any immediate danger,’ lied Rinzler. ‘Indigo is changing fast. Ghosts are not supposed to evolve. Isn’t it affecting April?’

  ‘Yes, but that’s a technical problem,’ replied Angerford, distracted.

  He was sitting in his room on one of Rinzler’s boxes, trying to get through to the right department in ET. Roke Steiner was trying to reach him on the phone in his head, and Wye Stan Pan was keeping their direct line open, monitoring the unfolding events. On the external phone, Rinzler was arguing, ‘Indigo thinks of herself as the Good Guy, she’s a do-gooder. You should see the character she chose for herself in Reluctant Aliens. God help us. She’ll want to save humanity from Evil Everild. Can you imagine a human with andronet powers or an andronet with human delusions? What do you call that kind of technical problem?’

  ‘Unshootable,’ Angerford replied, ‘but we’re not there.’

  ‘Not yet!’

  Just then ET finally responded to his emergency call. A woman’s head appeared. A banner identified her as a Peripheral Site Development Officer. She demanded to know how a man had got into the off-limits zone, and threatened to sue Cyboratics for trespassing. When Angerford clarified that Rinzler wasn’t a corporate citizen, she said that in that case there was nothing for her to do. Nobody would sue ET about his death.

  ‘I’ll sue,’ said Angerford, making sure that his name and rank were duly transmitted to her. ‘I’ve hired Rinzler Investigations to reach April on site. You are aware of what has been happening in your Peripheral Development site in the past hour, aren’t you? We are experiencing a malfunction with the andronet. If any harm comes to Rinzler, I won’t sue you,’ (he read out her name) ‘but I’ll personally travel back to Earth to take it up on my president’s behalf at the highest level with ET Central HQ. You yourself won’t hear from me anymore, rest assured. You will hear from your own CEO who will want to know how you’ve let it happen.’ He spoke coolly and confidently. Rinzler will be proud of me, he thought, and then realised it wasn’t a bluff.

  If Rinzler dies, he’ll do exactly what he told her.

  He had doubts only about Wye Stan’s support.

  But his loyalties weren’t tested this time. She gave in. ‘Where do you want him?’

  Chapter 50

  Within the hour Rinzler sat on a bench opposite Angerford’s door in the brightly lit and otherwise empty courtyard. He was tired and aching, but safe. It felt to him like waking up from a bad dream that started when he became homeless. Today was the first day of the rest of his life. Rubbing his chin, he was aware of a few days’ stubble and a strong resolve to get his life in order.

  When he found himself in Angerford’s place, glad to be alive, and saw Angerford squeezed to stand between the boxes, Rinzler immediately transferred them to a long-term storage facility. A moment later, like a reward for doing the right thing, he received a notification that his new home is going to be ready ahead of schedule, possibly as early as next week.

  Sitting on the bench, nobody was telling him to move on. He took it all as a good omen. He imagined a house-warming party, and crossed off the guest list so-called ‘friends’ who wouldn’t look after his boxes.

  He woke up with a start.

  The courtyard was still empty but for a small litter-picking robot.

  There was no litter to pick.

  The bright light made his eyes hurt. He squinted at the row of identical doors in front of him, and for no particular reason craned his neck to see behind him. A silent news bulletin played in the air above a trough of potted plants: Cyboratics happy to announce April back in business after an ‘April shower’ of technical glitches. They couldn’t keep April off the streets any longer. The andronet didn’t pose any danger to the public, and would be offline as soon as Indigo is revived.

  There was nothing left for Rinzler to do but to plan the rest of his life.

  Thank you, he thought at his ex-mentor, as if this newfound resolve was Schmidt’s doing.

  It wasn’t.

  It was the motivation that drove 12-year-old Rinzler to track down Schmidt Investigations. That was why Schmidt agreed to train him. It was the determination he had when he quit his citizenship with the security firm to start his own agency. That was why Schmidt had Freedom Cordova sponsor Rinzler Investigations. ‘I won’t let your pride in me be wasted,’ he silently told his inner Schmidt now.

  Did he really meet Samurai Sunshine? It felt like a dream. ‘Do you even exist?’ he asked in his head. The ageless enigmatic man, looking like Louis Huang’s Hidden Dragon card, nodded solemnly.

  Rinzler woke up with a start.

  The courtyard was empty. Even the robot was gone. But it didn’t feel safe anymore.

  The more he thought of it, the more convinced he was that April had tried to kill him in the theme park.

  He logged into his office and found his system ransacked, some files corrupted beyond repair.

  He called Angerford.

  Angerford confirmed that April had uncovered the link to Indigo via Rinzler’s office, and ploughed through the firewalls. Fortunately, Angerford had managed to extract Indigo and secure the file before April got there. ‘No damage’s done.’

  ‘No damage? But my office!’

  ‘Yes, sorry, you know what I mean. The Indigo file is safe.’

  Rinzler consoled himself with the thought that it will be over soon for April,. ‘Did you get through to Tuscany?’

  ‘He hasn’t answered yet.’

  April’s talk with Indigo and April repeated itself in Rinzler’s head: ‘When you’re fully in my system, you’ll have a centralised consciousness and as many different bodies,’ said the andronet, and then said, ‘Many different bodies like me…’ But April has only one body in many copies, thought Rinzler now. It won’t be wise for identical copies of Indigo to be seen around town. April must have meant dissimilar bodies. April used Monday, March, maybe others too. Gemini?

  He contacted Bin Abdullah and asked about Latifah. She was fine, her uncle said. She went to Cardiff with Louis. ‘Good news,’ said Rinzler, disappointed, and turned to business. He transmitted a picture of Gemini and asked Bin Abdullah whether he had made a clone of this android for someone called Everild.

  Bin Abdullah sounded pleased. ‘Yes, one of my best. But she didn’t use that name with me.’

  ‘I know there’s client confidentiality, but could you tell me who it was?’

  ‘Fernandez of Cyboratics,’ Bin Abdullah said with no ethical qualms whatsoever.

  According to April-team gossip, Fernandez had tried to patent an idea for customising andronet’s units. Cyboratics rejected it as unmarketable. Perhaps she decided to demonstrate how useful an April-in-a-Gemini-body could be, Rinzler speculated now. Such an asset could infiltrate Moore-Dent labs. Perhaps April saw other possibilities, realising that its customised androids could pass themselves as human. April fooled Indigo, passing its own Gemini clone as human.

  Rinzler replayed events in his head with the new premise factored in. April’s endgame is a consciousness merge with Indigo. It all started to make sense. The teleport collision scenario was April’s early attempt to obtain an electronic copy of Indigo. It could have been anyone whose trajectory intersected Indigo’s, but by sheer coincidence it was Rinzler. He unwittingly foiled April’s plan. But that was not why April tried to kill him in the theme park, he decided. An
andronet is not vengeful.

  Things continued to connect in his mind. April planted a hair of Kendall at the crime scene and told Rinzler that Kendall had stalked Indigo. These clues would have been enough to exonerate OK as far as CrimSol were concerned. Rinzler was meant to follow them, but he didn’t, because he already met Kendall. As far as Rinzler could work out, meeting Kendall was another genuine coincidence. Again, Rinzler didn’t play his part in April’s game. But that wouldn’t be a reason for April to kill him. An andronet doesn’t get pissed off.

  April’s next move was to tell Roke Steiner that Kendall had killed Indigo, Rinzler deduced. Roke set about wrapping up the case quickly, using his own initiative to supply the man’s confession.

  Kendall died because he had met Rinzler.

  Rinzler continued to imagine motives. Perhaps from April’s point of view, killing him was like taking out an opponent’s pawn. It was nothing against him, just a move in a sequence designed to defeat Angerford. In his head, Rinzler imagined April saying, ‘It’s nothing personal.’ He thought back at the faceless andronet: Angerford is my friend, that’s personal. I take my own dying very personally. And what you’ve done to my office.

  ‘I’m sorry about your office,’ April said aloud.

  Rinzler almost jumped out of his skin.

  The blonde android stood a few feet away, speaking smoothly like telling a customer that what he’s ordered is off the menu today. ‘I’ll do anything I can to help you restore your filing system for a minimal fee. I’m exceptionally good at filing.’

  His heart still pounding, Rinzler found his voice. It sounded hoarse in his ears. ‘You’re crap at filing if how you filed Indigo is an example.’