Lost Time: Part 1 [Second Skyn]

by Boyes, Damien

  “He must have wanted something out of your head.”

  “I can’t imagine what. I’ve never even seen him before. Didn’t know his name until you told me.”

  “He wouldn’t know you hadn’t been syncing.” He presses his lips together, squints at something only he can see. “Did he say anything else?”

  “He knew me. Knew I’d be there, even through the new identity.”

  He makes a noise in his throat and nods. “And when you refused, he threatened your parents. Why don’t you call them yourself? They can alert their local PD.”

  “I tried. ”

  His shoulders rise and fall, once.

  “Ok, Mr. Gage. I’ll have someone check up on them.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “I appreciate it.”

  “I’m not doing it for you,” he says. “And this isn’t over.” Then he zips his jacket, opens the door and leaves without another word.

  Yellowbird hangs back and we watch each other for a moment. She’s giving me a look. Quizzical.

  Thinking the word purrs a sudden pulse of pleasure through me. My knees quiver and I put my hand against the counter to catch myself.

  What was that?

  Her eyebrow arches.

  “Yellowbird, right?” I ask to break the silence before she can. “You his new partner?”

  “Nah,” she says, hands still deep in her pockets. “Standards wouldn’t have me. I just came to rubberneck.”

  “Worth the trip?”

  The corners of her mouth turn down. “I’ve never seen Galvan like that,” she says. “He’s had a hard time of it these last few months. I think seeing you brought some stuff to the surface.”

  “Glad I could help.”

  She smiles out of one side of her mouth, then says, “We were friends, you and I. Still are, as far as I’m concerned.”

  My chest sags with relief. I hadn’t ruined everything, maybe there’s still hope for me. “That’s the first good thing I’ve heard all day. I was starting to think some pretty bad things. Like I destroyed everything I touched last time around.”

  “Not everything,” she says. “Not quite. Let me know if you need anything. I’ll help if I can.”

  Right now, there’s only one thing I need. “All that stuff Agent Wiser said I did, do you believe it?”

  She chews on her lip. “Some of it. Maybe. You were conflicted, in pain. But ultimately, the Crown didn’t think it had enough to press criminal charges. That I know of, anyway.”

  “What happened to me?” I ask. It’s all I want to know. How could I have turned out so wrong?

  She looks at me, her big bright eyes searching mine, maybe looking for the person she knew. “All I know is, the good guy lost,” she finally says, then considers and adds, “But it was close.”

  StatUS-ID

  [a646:d17e:8670:511f::Finsbury/D//GAGE]

  SysDate

  [06:19:21. Friday, April 12, 2058]

  I wake in the position I laid down in, completely refreshed, hungry to start back at the investigation into Connie’s killer before remembering I’m expected at work instead. I consider calling in sick but know I won’t. Whether I want to be there or not, I made a commitment. I have a job to do.

  Fifty-Seven Division is a fifteen minute walk from my new apartment, which makes me wonder if my IMP knew where I’d be posted before I did. I leave early, wearing one of the new suits I’d ordered yesterday morning, custom to my strapping new body.

  Connie used to warn me before I left the house dressed like an off-duty rodeo clown but the IMP assured me everything I ordered was mix and match so I picked randomly, ended up in the brown suit with a light blue shirt and muted grey tie. I walk along Eastern Avenue in stiff brown shoes, squinting into the blushing sunrise, and get to the station twenty minutes early.

  Fifty-Seven Division HQ is housed in a converted red-brick factory dating back to the early part of the last century. It’s gorgeous. Originally two long narrow buildings with a small gap between the short sides, they’ve been incorporated into a single unit, connected by a glassed-in walkway. The roof slants down from an unbroken strip of windows along its entire length and more giant windows curve up from the ground floor. Four tall chimneys, stretching like guard towers along the south wall, have been converted to support the rooftop hopper pads. The whole thing is covered to the second storey in deep green ivy that seems to glow in the morning light.

  Up the short sidewalk from the street, big clear doors open onto a wide lobby. Along one wall sits an old wooden bench and a wallscreen regaling visitors with the latest, always impressive, Service history and stats. A glassed-in meeting room sits off to the left. A place for public consultations, press conferences, middle-school civics classes.

  With shift about to change the large room is busy with uniformed officers returning to the station or in civvies passing through to get changed. I’m momentarily refreshed, just by standing here. By the pace of it all. The familiarity. This is the first time I’ve felt remotely normal since the restoration.

  Maybe Yellowbird was right. Maybe a routine will be good for me.

  It turns out, I even know the Desk Sergeant, Herbert Montgomery. Herb’d worked nearly every station in the city over his career, sticking around just long enough to put in his time for promotion, but never long enough to be trusted with any real responsibility. Which seems to be exactly how he likes it.

  Herb notices me through the curved green-tinged wall of shock glass at the end of the room and buzzes me through. He leaves reception to his constable and saunters out into the lobby, brandishing his ubiquitous grin.

  “If it isn’t the Service’s latest convert, in the flesh. Well, mostly flesh anyway, isn't that right there Gage?” He extends his thick hand and I take it.

  “Still minding the door, Herb?”

  “Hells yes, this is the cushiest job in the Service. No one shooting at me. No drunks to clean up after. I get to tell people where to be and what to do. I got my own bathroom—this may not be the most respected shop in town, but I got my own shitter. They’re gonna have to scrape my corpse out of that chair.”

  “Glad to see some things don’t change.”

  “Yeah, change ain’t never a good thing, so far as I’m concerned—present company excepted.” He looks me up and down. “Death’s been good to you.”

  Except for the all-consuming grief, the bitter anger, the existential trauma and the sudden orgasm handshakes, sure.

  “One way of looking at it,” I say with a shrug.

  “Did you hear they were planning you a memorial? A dress blues, local-hero-tragedy type thing?”

  “Who? The guys in Homicide?” Sounds like something Ray would organize.

  “No, straight from Command, issued you a commendation and everything. But when they found out you were going digital, they binned it. Couldn’t take the commendation back but they kicked a bunch of dirt over it. I think they were kind of dicked about the whole thing.”

  “Imagine how I feel.”

  “Yeah—well anyway, you were a great morty cop and I bet most of that came over to bit-head. If you still got half of what you used to, we’ll all be glad you’re here.”

  A polite but nasal gender-neutral voice interjects, sounding to my ears as if the speaker is standing beside us, “Welcome back from leave, Detective Gage.” The Service AMP projecting through targeted audio. It’s like an IMP but ten times smarter and a hundred times more annoying. It’s a constant presence in interviews and meetings. It runs the drones, oversees communications and research, and offers opinions, invited or not. “Please accept the Service’s condolences on the passing of your wife, Constance.”

  “Condolences accepted,” I say.

  “Geez,” Herb mutters, “leave the guy alone, will you.”

  “Sergeant Montgomery, please make Detective Gage acquainted with the facilities,” the AMP says.

  “I was literally about to do that before you interrupted us—”

  “Then yo
u may proceed.”

  “May—?” his chest rises and falls under his uniform. “As I was going to say—” he looks up at the ceiling and raises his voice, “before I was interrupted,” then snaps his voice back to normal and says to me, “—Staff Inspector Chaddah runs her shifts like she’s got an atomic clock for a heart, but we got a few minutes before rundown starts—why don’t I give you the dollar tour.”

  I shrug, which is good enough for him.

  “What’s Chaddah like?” I ask Herb’s back as he walks us down the inner hall toward the secondary security door.

  “To the point,” he says. “Been here three months and brought lots of changes with her. Came from somewhere in the Arab League—” he pulls on the corner of his moustache, “Egypt, I think. Or Iran. Or Jordan. Used to be Intelligence they say, all hush-hush, locked dox.”

  I’d met most of the Central Command over the years, and had at least a passing familiarity with the rest, but I’d never heard of Inspector Chaddah before yesterday. And I was so focused on investigating the accident I hadn’t bothered to do any research on my new commanding officer. I’m usually better prepared. Maybe all of me didn’t make the jump to digital after all.

  The ward reads Herb’s bio/kin as he approaches and has the interior door open before we get there. He pauses in the doorway and waits for me to pass, ushers me through with his thick hand on the small of my back.

  The office is cathedral-like, wide-open from what looks like the original wooden floorboards to the catwalk between the parallel rows of windows way up above. Massive beams stretch from one end of the building to the other. It smells like my Grandfather's workshop—all old wood and machine oil, minus the Cherry Amphora pipe smoke.

  Most of the space is dedicated to semi-private desk pods, two rows with four desks per pod and six pods per row. About half are occupied. The rest look like they were just screwed together.

  Meeting rooms line the wall to my left. A cluster of interview cells and the walkway between buildings occupies the other end of the room. He stops and leans in the doorway of a long room that stretches the length of the wall to my right.

  “This is the briefing room,” he says. It's like a mini cafeteria with a row of vending machines along the back, six tall, round, chair-less tables arranged through the middle and a livewall at the far end. Windows line both sides—one side looking out onto a thin swatch of grass and the parking lot beyond, the other inwards to the office. Herb continues, “It’s also the break room if you need a printwich or cup of coffee that tastes like someone else already drank it and then pissed it back into the machine.”

  “One of those desks mine?” I ask, cocking my head out at the pods. A station this big, it looks like only thirty people work here. The Service is mostly paperless, but still. The unoccupied desks have no personal effects. No coffee mugs or family photos. Nothing.

  He chuckles. “Nope, strictly free-range. One of the Inspector’s first initiatives.” The emphasis is clear but he leaves it at that. “You’ll get used to it. Most people have regular spots, and they'll kick up a fuss up if you land on it, but there's room enough to find somewhere to squat when you need to.”

  Which suits me fine. I travel light and don’t want to be tied down to a desk anyway.

  Besides, I couldn’t bear staring at picture of Connie’s smiling face all day long. I've already told the IMP to hide images of her from my feed. I can't live constantly on guard against catching a glimpse of her on my tab or the wallscreen and having the unexpected reminder tear at the pain in my gut.

  I follow as he weaves through the pods of identical display tables and short privacy walls. People are packing up to clock out, finishing reports. Here and there people are chatting as the memories of favourite desks are wiped and transferred from one shift to the next.

  “Evidence and the armoury are in the basement,” Herb says when we get to the end of the room, and points over to the south service entrance, where a staircase leads down. “Lockers and showers are down there too. Cyber, the tech lab and holding are back in the other building, through the tunnel. And up there,” he says pointing back the way we came, “is the Inspector’s office.”

  Chaddah’s office extends from wall-to-wall above the lobby, overlooking the desk pods. An adjoining briefing room has a wallscreen, long desk and high-backed swivel chairs. A wide iron switchback staircase leads up from the ground floor. She’s got the opaques up on her office wall now, so I can’t tell if she’s in there.

  “Don’t forget, the Warden’s always watching,” he says and ribs me with an elbow. “I won’t bother taking you to the other side. You’re a smart enough guy, you’ll figure it out.” He looks up at the ceiling, “If that’s okay with you.”

  I take his word for it. I've only had the dollar tour, but I’m already starting to feel like myself. Being back at work, with the growing anticipation of a day running down bad guys and helping bring the small consolation of closure to people’s lives—even the petty grievances and eternal office politics—it’s like I’ve been holding my breath and only just exhaled.

  “Come see me after the briefing,” Herb says. “I’ll have your bio/kin into security and your weapon and badge coded—you prefer lenzs or spekz? Or I bet you’ll want a cuff like the Inspector. I had to go all the way through every link in the chain to get that one approved, you wouldn’t even believe it. But it shouldn’t be so hard now we’ve got the procedure worked out…” He trails off as if he just heard what he was saying, looks at me to see if I’ve noticed.

  “The Inspector’s restored?” I ask, not sure why I’m surprised.

  He exhales through his teeth. “You know I don't go in for gossip, none of my goddamn business who people are or what they do, but you're gonna find out anyway, so—yeah, she's digital. Highest ranking Reszo in the Service.”

  So the Inspector's bit-head too. That must be some pressure. There are still people who can’t—or won’t—accept that a person with plastic and light for a brain is still a person. Especially in a position of power. Especially in the Service. And a woman on top of all that.

  “So…lenzs?” he asks, almost sheepishly.

  “I’ll keep my tab,” I say. The Service puts strict filters on the devices they issue, restricting the things we’re allowed to see without approval. I can’t worry about HR blocking out some shady feed I might need to do my job. “Snag a vizr if I need one.”

  “Suit yourself, let me have your tab while you’re in the briefing and I’ll get the AMP to register it.” I fish the slender tab out of my pocket and hand it to him. “Follow me, I'll show you your locker before the briefing starts.”

  He heads down the wide stairway and I bounce down after him with a spring in my ankles I haven't felt in twenty years.

  ***

  SysDate

  [06:55:36. Friday, April 12, 2058]

  I get to the briefing room early, stand with my spine humming against the lunch gun, and watch the constables and techs arrive in groups of two and three, clutching sleeves of coffee or poking at tabs. The other detectives saunter in at the last possible moment.

  It's a small crew but I spot a few familiar faces. Some notice me and smile or nod, but no one comes over, and more than a few make an effort not to notice me at all. I can't blame them. Three days ago—or six months, depending on which side of my eyes you're on—I wouldn’t have been overjoyed with a Reszo showing up in my station either. Just because they work at Fifty-Seven and have to enforce the Psychorithm Crime laws, doesn’t mean they have to like Reszos while they do it.

  Most of the time, you can’t tell a normal person from a digital one by looking, but once you know, you can't forget. The restored have always seemed different. It’s like living with the knowledge that perfectly camouflaged but benign aliens walk among us—unsettling, but for no real reason. Reszos are human, but in a different sense. Caught in an uncanny valley that exists only in our heads.

  Maybe it has to do with an unspoken fear, deep down i
nside, that’s worried we're somehow being left behind.

  But now I'm on the other side, the one getting the looks, the one who seems like an impostor in his own life, I'm surprised that I don’t feel like a different person. I still think the way I remember thinking. The me inside my head is the same me I’ve always known.

  But then again, how would I tell the difference? How can I be sure that the me I am now is the me I was six months ago? I only know what I know. Second Skyn seemed to think I was, but I guess I’ll find out.

  Whatever I now am on the inside, my new body is amazing. In the distracted seconds when I forget what's happened, when I forget who I am and how I got here, I feel like I could run and run and run and never need to stop.

  The problem is, I don’t have anywhere to run. Plenty to run from, sure. But nowhere to go.

  Staff Inspector Chaddah enters at precisely oh seven hundred and breaks my self-absorption. The room hushes. She’s shorter than I expected, wearing a dark purple suit over a stiff-collared brown dress shirt, short lapels buttoned to the throat. Underneath a loose-fitting headscarf her bangs are piano black, iron-straight and cropped in a line just above her heavy eyebrows. Her long, prominent nose looks like it’s been broken and not reset properly, a cosmetic affectation that likely cost extra. If she’s wearing make-up I can’t tell.

  She stands at ease at the head of the room, hands behind her back, clears her throat and begins, “Good morning everyone, let’s make this one quick.

  “First off, we've filled our final Detective team. I introduced you to Galvan Wiser last week, and today we have Finsbury Gage who will join Detective Wiser as Team 4.” She glances at a slight yet somehow doughy guy in a cardigan and high-collared shirt standing at a table all by himself. First-gen spekz with thick black rims dominate a rounded head that’s capped by a bristly runway of dark hair. He looks young but probably isn’t.

  Wisers’ eyes shift back and forth between the Inspector and the flickering spekz covering his eyes. “Finsbury is back from leave and we're lucky to have him. Some of you know him, the rest of you will get to know him, but I am sure you will all do your best to make him welcome.” She gazes across the room at me, a look that drags the eyes of everyone else in the room with it. “Glad to have you on the team, Finsbury.”