Unkillable

by Dean C. Moore

  “That body was fresher, obviously. This one has a longer expiration date from the initial time of death, whether or not full reanimation has had a chance to take place. But we’re also getting to it a lot closer to his end than his beginning.” Her words triggered her empathy response again, and she returned her eyes to the golem.

  Adrian filled in the rest of the blanks for himself. If Captain Pedophile here had been cut up and his body parts kept apart until the artist was ready to set them out as part of his exhibit, then reanimation certainly couldn’t have had a chance to kick in until the very last moments of his second life.

  Klepsky hiked over to the windows at the sounds of sirens. “They coming for us?” Adrian asked.

  “Give me a second. They’re stopping. They’re getting out of their cars. They’re heading this way. They’re entering our building. Of course, it’s a big building, and this is New York. They could be responding to a crime from ten years ago. Rest assured, the backlog is that great.”

  “What’s say we don’t take the chance?” Adrian suggested.

  “Yeah, light that body up, doc,” Klepsky said focusing his beady eyes on her. They were set inside tiny bat caves tucked well back from the sheer cliff of his forehead. “And I don’t mean burn it to a crisp. I mean burn it so there aren’t even ashes to be swept up.”

  “I’m in crime scene investigation, Klepsky, not crime scene destruction. What makes you think I came with anything like…”

  “Never mind, I got it,” Adrian said pulling a grenade out of his trench coat pocket. He yanked the pin. Dropped the timed explosive. Nobody had moved. Perhaps because no one had accepted the new reality. Eyes rolled with the grenade then back to him. “Might I suggest you regard me with shock and awe from the other side of the door?”

  Adrian had to grease the wheels by grabbing them forcefully at the upper arms. Then they hightailed it from the room.

  About one floor down in the stairwell, they ducked instinctively as the blast went off.

  “What about the neighbors?” Celine asked. “I didn’t come here to kill innocent civilians, Adrian.”

  “I doubt they heard a thing. These walls are built to keep perennially-stressed New Yorkers from killing one another.”

  “That’s no ordinary grenade, right?” Klepsky said with innuendo that indicated Adrian better respect that the question was rhetorical.

  “No. I anticipated a scenario in which we’d have to destroy the evidence and fast before someone got to it. As you should have,” he said, glowering back at Klepsky even more accusatively.

  “How was I to guess someone would get past this dragnet I keep around you at all times?”

  “And the fact that they did?” Adrian said, getting tired of cuing him.

  Klepsky sighed as if he were only trying to forestall the revelation for obvious reasons. “Whoever this killer is, he might be more connected than anyone of us gave him credit for being.”

  “That’s one possibility.” Adrian’s distant eyes suggested he was running through the others.

  “Why don’t you give me the verbal form of a printout from that calculating mind of yours on the way down the stairs?” Klepsky suggested. “Don’t want to be picked up this close to a bomb blast, I don’t care if I am wearing an FBI badge.”

  The three of them headed down the flights of stairs as Adrian bought them both up to speed on his thinking. “What’s the one common denominator with the two scenes so far?” Adrian said. Then he quickly corrected himself when he realized there were a lot of common denominators, just none that mattered as far as he was concerned. “The one all-important common denominator?”

  “The reanimating dead body,” Celine volunteered.

  “Besides that.”

  “Both scenes have been mighty surreal. Even by New York City standards,” Klepsky admitted.

  “You’re getting warmer.”

  “They’re what, Adrian?” Klepsky said gasping, and managing to nuance his question with annoyance all the same. “My body is made for being a linebacker and tackling bodies to the ground. Not for these stair-climber exercise routines.”

  “They were surreal, they were artsy, and most of all they were mind-blowing,” Adrian explained, “up until the end, when they looked like every other crime scene. And by then, they had to be destroyed or risk muting the shock value as it dissipated into anticlimax.”

  “Okay, I’ll bite,” Klepsky said. “But what does it mean?”

  “Don’t really know,” Adrian said.

  Klepsky sighed his disapproval. “Then keep these half-baked ideas to yourself until they’re ready to be pulled out of the oven.”

  They were on the ground floor finally and Klepsky was pushing his way through the front door. A couple cops were stationed there to keep anyone leaving the building until the police inside got the answers they wanted, so Klepsky flashed his badge. “Looks like you boys got to the crime scene ahead of us, so this is us politely stepping out of your way.”

  “Yeah, thanks, appreciate it,” one of the two flummoxed cops said before they parted for them. The one doing the speaking was so taken aback he sounded as if he’d never used his mouth before to actually utter words.

  The threesome continued down the sidewalk spewing theories at one another without much regard for who was overhearing them. If they could barely process the reality of what had just happened upstairs, and they were the professionals, there was no reason to believe any sane person in earshot would make a damn thing of what they were saying. Considering they were walking in the heart of the theater district, they might even be presumed to be rehearsing their parts for some surreal play. “Any ideas from the hi-tech division?” Adrian asked.

  Celine shook her head slowly, but mostly to indicate she just wasn’t sure what to think, yet. “It’s hard to imagine him evolving his handiwork this far in the course of a day. Maybe it’s an AI we’re looking for, one with self-evolving algorithms that allows it to think a mile a minute and evolve as it learns from its mistakes.”

  Klepsky, rattled by the pronouncement, exchanged his coffee for a flask of whiskey he pulled out of his trench coat pocket. “What are the odds of that?” he asked, taking a swig off his flask.

  “About as likely as someone designing an unkillable man this early into the 21st century. Maybe more so. In another ten years maybe, but not now.” Celine, done gulping her coffee, took Klepsky’s half-finished cup he was getting ready to toss and set to work on it. They were headed in opposite directions with their minds; Celine wanted more rocket fuel even as Klepsky was applying the brakes.

  “Keep going,” Adrian said.

  “Why?” Klepsky protested. “We’ve got enough confusion to sort through already without her adding to it.”

  “You’re not up to speed on Chaos Theory?” Adrian spoke with a wolfish smile. “Shame on you. You can’t get to a higher integral order of consciousness except across the chaos, by forcing your mind to integrate what it couldn’t process formerly.”

  “What kind of cockamamie theory is that?” Klepsky bellyached.

  “One I picked up from Dion. It’s based on Piaget’s child psychology, which describes the different developmental milestones a kid hits when growing up. Or at least it was his theory before Chaos Theory mathematicians appropriated it for use in their equations to describe how societies molt spider-like from more primitive incarnations of themselves into more advanced forms. Or, if you prefer, how humans go from being humans to trans-humans or post-humans.”

  Celine flashed him a defensive look, as often she did whenever he mentioned one of his other girlfriends in a good light. But she got over herself pretty fast. “Speaking of Piaget, you think our killer could be a child prodigy?” Her train of thought must have been moving pretty fast because it took her mind where she was going before Adrian could get there. “No, I don’t suppose there’s any point trying to connect your joke to…”

  “It’s a possibility,” Adrian said. “Children are more prone
to blur the lines between fantasy and reality, as our killer has been doing.”

  “They’re also more invested in the future and a lot more fearful of it,” Klepsky said, taking another hit off his flask. “At their age, their whole life lies in the future, so they have more skin in the game. All the more true if their focus is this societal change from the human era to the post-human era that’s underway, as you suggest.”

  “Someone convinced the world is coming to an end soon enough because it’s just too easy to get one’s hand on self-empowering tech to make you smart enough to pull off whatever diabolical plan you have in mind…” Celine piled on, running with the idea.

  “…might just be determined to incentivize us to spend more money hiring more futurists, and or upgrading the ones we have now to my standards or higher,” Adrian said.

  As with any brainstorming session, they were getting lost in each other’s heads to the point where it was impossible to separate their thinking from one another.

  “I’ll get going on chasing down people to interview that fit the profile, or should I say profiles, of one child-prodigy and one AI-designer,” Klepsky said.

  “I’m not sure we have the luxury of running down one lead at a time, Klepsky,” Adrian said. “And at the rate of our perp’s learning curve… how many days do we have, Celine?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know, a week, two maybe.”

  “Why don’t you put that impressive army of people you have working for you, Klepsky, all the junior futurists you’re going to need to replace me if I ever retire, to chasing down the leads simultaneously?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Klepsky said, “but…”

  “Yeah, I know, you like to do your own interviewing.” Adrian sighed. “I do too. The things we give up in the name of God and country. Just have the kids film the interviews so we can both look over their shoulder to make sure they’re not missing anything.”

  “Yeah, I guess…” Klepsky’s words sounded like an anchor dragging at the ocean bottom, suggesting the degree to which he was resisting the idea.

  “And while you’re at it, see if you can rule out some other theories one time,” Adrian said.

  “Like?”

  “The Humpty-Dumpty analogy I keep coming back to, for one. The fact that these golems aren’t just dead bodies that have been infused by an animating spirit, but that they’re all broken into countless pieces first. Maybe the perp took a nasty fall when he was younger, cracked his head wide open, and he’s been trying to put his mind and or his body back together ever since.”

  Klepsky nodded. “If it’s the defining trauma of his life, would definitely affect how he sees the world.” He was taking notes to keep track of all the crazy ideas. “You know this is bad investigative procedure?” he scoffed. “You chase down one lead at a time for a reason. That way your mind is exhausting all angles on it before you let go prematurely and move on. Just like a writer is supposed to finish a book before starting another one.”

  “I agree, it’s risky,” Adrian confessed. “That’s why you’re going to have some of the junior futurists continue to chew on these various theories long after the rest of us have moved on.”

  “Yeah, I suppose I can go for that,” Klepsky said, the resignation in his voice oozing out the cracks between his words.

  “What are you going to do?” Klepsky asked, pocketing his notebook.

  “I’m going to see Dion. I keep getting derailed but if I don’t see her, I’m likely not to get in touch with the clues I’m missing buried deep down in my unconscious because a piece of me doesn’t want to find them. Would mean facing a part of myself I don’t want to face. That, or I’m so afraid that I’ll let one of these guys slip past me, that I’m secretly sabotaging myself by cutting off my access to my intuition. Better that, and feeling the mistake was mine, than accepting that there’s just no hope of anyone forestalling an apocalyptic future.”

  Klepsky snorted. “If this is you cutting off access to your intuition, I’d hate to see you firing on all burners.”

  Celine was making a pouty face. That usually translated into begrudging acceptance that Dion was good for Adrian, even if she wasn’t good for Celine.

  EIGHT

  “What have you got for me, Gorman?” Klepsky said, throwing his jacket on the coatrack by his desk in the FBI field office and looking up slightly at him. Gorman was tall, lithe-figured, and strangely handsome for a geek. The thick black glasses somehow brought out the handsomeness, maybe by toning down his beak of a nose, or highlighting just how lit that face was because of the mind behind it beaming so brightly.

  “I wouldn’t be tossing those threads just yet,” Gorman said, picking through the files in his arm. “Which most likely candidate would you like to look into first?”

  “You’ve whittled the contenders down already?”

  “Not like the list for child prodigy sociopaths was that long to begin with. The list for AIs that could have pulled off these murders is even shorter, being as none are alleged to exist. As to the number of people walking around New York with brain damage from early childhood trauma, well, I think that’s most everybody. Still, I managed to winnow the list down in time to win the FBI Oscar awards for Best Needle Finder in a Haystack this year.”

  Klepsky groaned. “I gather you were listening in to our little conversation on the sidewalk.”

  “We’re always listening, sir. We’re the government.” He gave him one of those tightly-drawn rubber-band smiles. “Sorry, couldn’t resist.”

  “Just hand me the damn files, Gorman.” Klepsky extended his hand. Gorman bent over and put his face up to Klepsky’s palm. “Well, the good news is your life line says you’re going to live damn near forever. The bad news is… see this line breaking off here… you’re going to spend most of it as a senile old fool.”

  “What are you playing at, Gorman?”

  “Sorry, sir, taking a class as a palm reader. Every FBI investigator should take one. Same for yoga, tai chi, chakra energy balancing, TM… turns out half the stuff we dismiss as sheer poppycock is the most mind-expanding…”

  “The files, Gorman.”

  “Sorry, sir, they’re on your cell phone. Sent them to you hours ago.”

  “Then what the hell is that in your hand?”

  “Oh this? My last five years’ tax receipts. I’m being audited. Can’t believe the bastards are auditing me. I told him I was FBI. You’d think he’d back down, right? No, of course not. Turns out one government bureaucrat is no more impressed by another bureaucrat than the general populace.”

  Klepsky made a pained face. He knew he was making a pained face because it was causing him pain. No doubt it broadcast no shortage of perplexity too. “How is it you came to work for me, Gorman? All I ever want to do is strangle you.”

  “You want to strangle everybody, sir. I profiled you. You’re wound tight, short-tempered, explosive, have poor impulse control, a background as a street fighter, which allowed you to channel that rageaholic personality of yours until it was join law and order or become a criminal. You came over to our side…”

  “Can you tell I’m getting ready to hit you?”

  “Ah, sorry sir. I’m a babbler. With an off-sense of humor. Or so I’m told. As to why you hired me, sir, I’m the brightest man in the bureau, next to Adrian, of course.”

  “So, what you’re saying is you’re an even more likely candidate for our killer than any of the people in the files you sent to my phone?”

  “Ah-hem, well, in narrative terms, sir, I believe I’d be called a red herring.”

  Klepsky grabbed his trench coat. “You actually have anything pertinent to tell me about these cases you didn’t already stuff into your e-files, you can tell me on the way to the lobby.”

  “No, sir, I’ve seen the way you take stairs. Gives my stair-master a complex. But I assure you my briefs are quite thorough.” He ran up to Klepsky as he was reaching for the door, handed him a bag of walnuts. “For cracking, sir,
to keep you from cracking heads. If you go to jail I won’t be able to fantasize about you shoving me into a closet and giving it to me up the ass anymore, which is the modus operandi behind my being so insufferable, in case you were wondering.”

  “Like you could help yourself.”

  “I’ll get you to turn that schoolyard bully on me sooner or later.”

  Klepsky took the bag of walnuts. “You’re a strange one, Gorman. Sadly, not strange enough to be my killer. Something tells me this is going to be a long day.”

  Klepsky opened the door. “Can I ask you, sir,” Gorman rushed the words to make sure he got the last question in, “how is it Adrian doesn’t rile you? And everyone else does?”

  “That’s simple enough. He’s the only one that makes my life any easier.”

  Klepsky took the stairwell to the lobby like someone running in a dream. Running to escape something. Running to a goal he’d never reach. Leaving only the torment in between his starting and ending destinations.

  ***

  Once inside his unmarked sedan, Klepsky stuck in the earpiece and listened to the audio file on one David Clancy, child prodigy extraordinaire. Gorman would have known how to queue up the files for him, by whichever one was closest to the FBI field office. If it was an equal chance of any of them doing the crime, and he got lucky on the first try, he’d end up saving the city a lot of gas money. His life was a list of endless shortcuts of the piddling variety; this was just one of them. It was that or let go of another futurist-in-training. Not hardly.

  There was a rotary button on the cord connecting the in-ear mike to the cell phone that allowed him to pause the recording if traffic was getting a little too dicey to play divided-attention games. But David Clancy sounded interesting, so Klepsky relied on his innate sense of the town to steer him down streets less traveled so he could listen to Gorman’s voice. Gorman sounded different on tape, calmer, more confident, all business, and he hated to say it, sexy. It was as if he were cueing Klepsky on his Clark Kent/Superman alter egos, one for the office to throw off the wandering eyes and pricked up ears, one that was just his to share with Klepsky in private. Maybe the man really was trying to seduce him, and his earlier remarks weren’t just more strange Gorman humor. Truth be told, Klepsky could use a lithe figured, super-middle-weight boxer type to dominate mercilessly when thrown into the ring with someone with his junior-heavy-weight boxer’s build. Someone he could pummel mercilessly and who would get up the next morning all bruised and swollen and thank him for it, and for the opportunity to work from home for a few days. And with his wife out of the picture, already moved out, and the divorce pending, Klepsky could use all the frustration-amelioration he could get. His shrink had advised he find a healthier outlet for his rage before he ended up in jail. Maybe Gorman was just the outlet. Klepsky didn’t see himself as gay, but if that was Gorman’s price for being the yin to his yang, so be it. Since when were barely closeted super-predators all that concerned about the nature of their prey? Or how they dominated them exactly?