Alli

by Kurt Zimmerman

  There were several loose ends he wanted to follow up on this morning. The warm water of his shower stung the top of Randy’s head. Damn, I must have been out in the sun too long yesterday, he thought. He and Detective Miller had walked quite a distance along the shore under a partly cloudy sky before turning back to where they had left their vehicles. The slightly warm breeze and the salty smell of the ocean had worked their magic on them both. It had been a very relaxing and enjoyable afternoon. He had sensed an attraction from Michelle, but Randy could not get the innocent, yet alluring sound of Alli’s voice out of his mind. He found himself thinking about what she must be like, and wondering when she would call again.

  Randy’s cell phone erupted as he was leaving the apartment.

  “Randy, its Michelle. I am at a crime scene you may want to see. Are you available?”

  “Of course, sure- where are you?”

  After receiving the address information, Randy made his way through the Washington morning rush hour. The address led to a brick and glass nine story apartment building on Pomeroy Road. When Randy pulled up, there were several DC police cruisers, plenty of crime scene tape, and an ambulance idling outside.

  Michelle met him as he approached. “I think we found your Jessica Cooper. Looks like she’s been dead a couple of days.” Randy was allowed into the apartment, accompanied by Detective Miller. She offered him a bottle of Vicks Vapo-rub before they entered.

  “If it’s only two days, it can’t be too bad yet,” he said. “I’ve probably smelled worse.” After entering the apartment, he wished he had accepted her offer. A little Vicks in the nose is better than what awaited him. The body had not had enough time to really start producing that foul, putrid odor, but it had released waste matter right after death. Good thing the air conditioning was left running, Randy thought.

  The apartment looked as if it had been tastefully decorated, but now showed the obvious signs of a struggle and a thorough ransacking. The body was crumpled in a heap at the foot of the stairs. There was a large black stain in the carpet below the victim’s head.

  “Looks like a struggle and a blunt instrument trauma to the head,” said one of the officers in the room. “And I would guess that broken trophy over there is the blunt instrument.”

  “Thank you, professor,” said Detective Miller sarcastically. “We’ll take it from here.” She stepped around the body toward the trophy. Randy noticed several other trophies scattered around the floor, as well as a few still standing behind the broken glass door of a nearby display case. Most of them were for cheerleading and gymnastic competitions. What a waste, Randy thought, what a waste.

  Randy stayed until after the scene was thoroughly photographed and the body removed. Detective Miller and her team carefully collected and sealed any fabrics, hairs, fluid samples, and any other items of interest, into evidence bags. The broken trophy was also collected. The entire process took nearly three hours.

  Not wanting to seem rude or unappreciative, Randy offered to buy lunch for the pretty Detective.

  “I’m surprised you still want to eat after that experience,” observed the detective. “Most people can’t eat until the smell goes away. How do you think I stay so thin?”

  “That sounded like a no to me, but the offer still stands.” Attempting to change the conversation, Randy continued: “Now you have two dead bodies that had the misfortune of speaking to me recently.”

  “Plus your traffic accident,” Michelle offered. “You could have been number three.”

  “That was no accident, kiddo- I was being waved off; warned away from something, and my guess is I was being warned away from the Call Center. There’s something disturbing going on in there, and I’d sure like to find out what it is.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Work. Why am I doing this? Randy asked himself as he pushed hanger after hanger across the rod in his closet. What does a private investigator wear to work nowadays? He settled on a dark-grey suit and black tie. He’ll probably have me wearing some rent-a-cop uniform with a silly baseball cap or something, anyway. At least the hour drive to Middleburg was an easy one. All the rush hour traffic was heading in the opposite direction, into the city.

  When Randy pulled into FrazTek’s parking lot, he was surprised to see it was nearly full. Most of the vehicles were new, high-end models. I guess security work pays pretty well, he thought to himself, at least at FrazTek it does. He found a space and went inside.

  Carl was on his office phone as Randy arrived, so the secretary ushered him into a nearby vacant office. There was a mountain of forms and paperwork to be completed before being assigned any kind of meaningful work, and it took the better part of the morning to finish it. Besides the normal employment forms, there were background check consent forms, fingerprints and applications to several local, state and federal offices that needed to be filled out and submitted. Does anyone actually read this stuff? He wondered to himself. I thought this paperwork nightmare was behind me. He kept reminding himself why he was going through this again.

  Around noon, Carl stuck his head into the office where Randy was working. “Hey slacker, let’s go grab some lunch.”

  The nearby Red Fox Inn and Tavern that Carl chose was more like a private hunting lodge than a restaurant. The Oak tables, handcrafted furnishings, stone fireplaces, hand-hewn ceiling beams and thick fieldstone walls created a relaxing dining environment. Of course, all of the wait staff knew Carl and treated him like a celebrity. The lunch conversation centered on work.

  “I thought we should discuss your new duties,” Carl began. “Your experience and work history would put you right back behind a desk, but I have a feeling you are thinking of something different than being a desk jockey.”

  “You know how much I like being cooped up,” Randy said, sarcastically. “Seriously, I was thinking of something outside that required some investigative skill. I am a trained observer, you know. But I was thinking of something more exciting than a boring stakeout, watching some cheating husband at some flea-bag motel.”

  “I have a Head Investigator opening at our branch in Peachtree City, Georgia, but it would require that you move there.”

  “Actually, I think I’d like to stay in the District area, if you have something around here.”

  “I suppose there’s always some politician’s wife hiring us to watch some other politician’s wife, but I thought with your experience and credentials, a management position might suit you better. And the pay would be better, too.”

  “I appreciate that,” Randy said, “but I would rather stay in the area. I have some ties locally that might prove useful.”

  “You’re not still chasing after your mystery girl, are you, bud? You know, Michelle Miller might suit you better, and I have a feeling she has a little something going for you. She speaks fondly of you, you know.”

  “Trying to fix me up with your ex, huh? You must still be paying her alimony or something. Why Michelle?”

  “No reason, bud. Just saying. But your fixation with this Alli girl is starting to border on obsessive. If she wants to see you, she’ll call. I’m trying to look out for what’s best for you, that’s all. I’ll assign you a case, and we’ll see how you do, how’s that sound? Your paperwork should be through the proper channels in a week or two. In the meantime, there’s plenty of work around the office. I had your ID/swipe card made, with a duplicate of my clearance. You have full access.”

  The next couple of weeks passed by quickly, and Randy’s once constant thoughts about Alli were coming less frequently, as work at FrazTek and the daily routine took her place in his mind.

  At least that was the case until he came across a FrazTek payroll envelope in the outgoing mail, addressed to the Call Center.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Senator McGinty was moving uncharacteristically fast down the Capitol hallway toward Senator Williams’ office, when his aide finally caught up with him.

  “Senator, your floor vote on the bill is les
s than twenty minutes away. Do you have time for this?”

  McGinty brushed away his questioner and continued down the hallway without a word. He knew damn well what time it was. What really gnawed at Senator McGinty, besides the waistband of his trousers, was the fact that he was being forced to make this appearance in the first place. Williams was one of only a handful of Senators who actually read what they voted on. But like the others, Williams would vote whichever way got him the most in return, and McGinty was in a position to get him virtually anything he wanted.

  At Williams’ office, he strode past the secretary without comment. He was not accustomed to waiting for anyone, least of all a junior senator from North Dakota. As he squeezed through the inner office doorway, Senator Williams stood to greet the powerful McGinty.

  “Williams,” he began, “what’s it going to take to get this done?”

  “I’m sorry to have inconvenienced you, Senator McGinty, but the moral and ethical issues that are at the heart of my opposition will not allow...”

  “Dispense with the damned stump speech, you idiot, I am not one of your constituents. This bill is imperative to this country’s future, and I need your support. I am prepared to make it worth your while. Are you with us or are you against us? If against, need I remind you of the conditions surrounding the exit of this office’s previous occupant?”

  The young Senator looked around his office for a moment and swallowed hard. He knew what Senator McGinty was capable of. He also knew his constituents stood to gain greatly from the favor of the elder statesman.

  “I... I’m with you, sir. And I’m sorry for you having to come all this way to gain my...”

  McGinty was already squeezing back through the door and out of the office.

  The Junior Senator didn’t bother sitting back down. He collected his papers and headed toward the chamber floor. For the most part, Williams supported the bill that Senator McGinty was pushing. But those two words, two words, sent a shudder through the junior Senator’s body. The bill in question was a run-of-the-mill appropriations measure, but hidden within its 1,423 page bulk was a measure spelling out the boundaries for human organ tissue experimentation. The two words that were hidden in the bill, that Williams thought might have explosive consequences were: commercial use.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Call Center payroll letter changes everything, Randy thought. He came to the conclusion that Carl was not telling him everything he knew about the Call Center. He decided to leave Michelle out of his plan, since what he was planning was arguably illegal. Randy’s observations at the Call Center had already given him the shift change schedule, and he was planning to pay them a visit that evening. Randy was depending on his swipe card’s full access clearance to get him upstairs. If it didn’t, he would have some explaining to do.

  The shifts at the call center were staggered, with a third of the staff changing every three hours. Randy decided that a midnight entry might stand the best chance of success. Randy wore the traditional black suit he had observed others wearing and his swipe card easily passed him and his weapon through security.

  ****

  The alarm on Carl’s smart phone woke him out of a restless sleep. He reached over to the nightstand and glanced at the screen.

  “So tonight’s the night, eh, old friend?” He said to himself. Carl climbed out of bed, slipped into some clothes and headed for Washington.

  ****

  Randy exited the third floor elevators and looked immediately for a restroom. He knew the restroom would be a good place to wait until the shift change foot traffic abated. Then he would look for a way to the upper floors.

  Thirty minutes later, he left the restroom and exited away from the lower floor elevators. His steps were purposeful, and he used his CIA training to confidently move down what seemed to be an endless, well-lit hallway. He came to an unmarked door with a card swipe, so he tried his card. The door unlatched immediately. Inside, he found himself in a stairwell, so he proceeded upward.

  As he neared the eighth floor, he decided to have a look around. Strange, he thought. You need a card swipe to get into the stairwell, and to get out. He swiped his card and exited onto the eighth floor.

  Randy was not prepared for what he saw. The entire floor was devoid of any kind of office or partition whatsoever. There was a narrow area around the perimeter of the floor, a space of about five feet. Each outside window had its own compartment in this space. Inside each compartment was a vignette of a typical office, including a desk, chair, tables, even small pictures and documents on each desk. It was set up to look like a typical office from the outside. The lights in these rooms were turned off, for the most part. Randy speculated that the compartments were constructed to simulate what a typical office would look like if viewed from the outside, and the lights would automatically turn off and on to simulate normal activity.

  The majority of the eighth floor, the entire city block, was a single room, filled with computer equipment. Each computer station consisted of a six-foot tall smooth black cube, with a small desk and monitor cut into one side, and an attached chair. The only light in the massive room was coming from the dozens of multi-colored LEDs on a panel directly to the left of each computer monitor. The combination of thousands of these dimly glowing lights cast a haunting glow on the open-girder ceiling. Randy estimated there must have been a thousand of these computer units on this level alone! The floor consisted of open black rubberized grating, with multi-colored wires and tubing visible underneath. Near the top left-hand corner of each cube was etched a name and a ten digit number. “Dora, Dorothy, Drew, Dusty,” Randy’s voice echoed as he read them out loud. “Must be the girls’ names who run these units.”

  The approaching sound of padded footsteps made Randy twirl around toward the sound.

  “You could say that,” Randy heard a familiar voice say. Carl Frazier rounded the corner and came into view.

  “What’s this all about, Carl?” Randy asked. “Is your new career just following me around? What exactly are these things?”

  “I could ask you what you are doing here,” Carl began, “but I already know the answer. I would guess you are still in search of your mystery phone girl.”

  “I think it’s obvious that you know more about that than you have led me to believe,” Randy responded. “So help a brother out here. Tell me what I’m looking at.” Randy leaned one hand out against one of the cubes.

  “Careful what you’re touching there, bud,” Carl warned, jumping toward his friend’s leaning arm. “Take a look over here.” Carl sat at one of the terminals and punched in a few instructions. One of the large panels on the outside of the cube slid upward to reveal the inner workings of the cube. There was a warm, white light that filled the inside.

  “This is Dolly.”

  Randy’s mind refused to believe what he was seeing. There are really no words to describe the conflict, turmoil, betrayal and confusion that Randy was feeling at that very moment.

  Inside the cube, Randy was looking at what appeared to be a peacefully sleeping girl, probably in her early twenties. She seemed to be perfectly healthy, except the fact that only her head and shoulders were visible above a mass of tubes, wires and sensors that made up her upper torso area. Her eyes were concealed with some kind of a visor or electronic virtual reality screen.

  “She’s asleep, so I wouldn’t make any loud noises,” Carl cautioned. “I’m afraid you have been talking to one of these computer units, Randy. Your dream girl doesn’t exist.”

  “Holy shit, Carl...” Randy slumped up against Dolly and slid down to sit on the floor. What the hell kind of place is this? He was thinking. I must be in the God-damned Twilight Zone.

  Carl continued- “All of the girls in these units are dead, Randy. They came to Ameriplaxi as bodies donated to science. They were, however, carefully transitioned from life to death when they died. Great measures were taken to lower their core temperatures and to preserve the functionality of t
heir brains. Ameriplaxi developed a process to preserve and control the upper and lower cortex functions, and these units nourish and monitor these human remains in the name of science.”

  “The name of science?” Randy shot back. “That’s crazy! Your Ameri-porky-whatever company has figured out how to use workers without paying them, man! It sounds and looks like some pseudo-science slavery bullshit to me.”

  “Dammit, Randy, don’t you see? They’re dead! These girls are dead! These remains are used to make the computer seem like its alive! Even the vocal chords and mouths are used for a natural voice! The machines provide oxygenated fluids and compressed air to make this thing function! These are all test subjects, and all in the name of science! It’s the first truly functional computer/human interface, and only a handful of privileged people know about them. I let you in so you would know the truth. I knew you would end up here, but I wanted to let you get here on your own... on your own terms. I wanted you to know the truth about your mystery girl.”

  Randy sat on the floor, slowly shaking his head in his hands. “This is going to take me some time to digest, bud.” Randy finally looked up at Carl. “But I do appreciate you letting me find out. I really do. Thanks.” Randy held up his right hand, and Carl helped him to his feet.

  “I still have to find Alli,” confessed Randy. “I have to. We’ve come this far. Any idea where to look?”

  The pair walked toward the only elevator. “Well, if I know Freddie Hightower, she’s on the tenth floor. The units are in alphabetical order, from the top, down.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  With Senator McGinty’s new appropriations bill finally passed by both Houses of Congress, it went to the President’s desk for a signature. Unfortunately for McGinty, the Junior Senator from North Dakota was not the only person who read everything before they signed it. But this time, he didn’t have to. The president had been made aware of the potential for abuse this bill might create via the growing protests across the street from the White House. Somebody in the general public had read the bill, and had realized the implications.