by F X Holden
Warnecke looked at him suspiciously, “There’s no coffee pot in the library.”
“Sure there is,” AJ told him, “Just follow me sir.” He walked off, and looked over his shoulder to see Warnecke trailing along behind, skeptical, and Ramon looking grateful.
In the library he went down past the rack of VR units to where the coffee pot was sitting, dairy powder and sweetener next to it and small ceramic cups stacked up underneath. He took out a cup, “How do you have it?”
“Black, one sweetener,” Warnecke said. “How fresh is that pot?”
After he poured, AJ looked at the time, “Library opens at 10.00, but they make the first pot about 0930. I’d say this is still the first batch,” AJ said. “It’s self-service after that.” He opened the cupboard on the stand under the coffee pot and showed Warnecke the coffee bags and water jugs. “You can just make a pot yourself any time you like, if the pot is empty. It’s kind of a courtesy to make a new pot if you finish one off.”
“Oh, it kind of is?” Warnecke said, sniffing and trying to goad AJ, making fun of how he talked. He took the cup from AJ and sipped it. He winked at him, and AJ thought it was a way of trying to make things better, then he remembered his twitch.
“So, you OK now sir?” AJ asked. He was still really thirsty himself.
“This your good cop routine is it?” Warnecke asked. “You just hang around here, doing favors for the people you’re shadowing, think you can get in their good graces that way.”
“Still just a Service Technician, sir,” AJ told him. “Not a cop.”
“Service my ass,” Warnecke said, turning away from AJ to look for his book back among the lounge chairs.
Next morning Cyan finished her laps as AJ was heading in to The Lake to check the cleaning robot had started on time today. He had reset the timer to winter time the day before, just wanted to be sure. Earth calendars weren’t designed for Tatsensui’s three month trip around Coruscant. Asking Earth tech manufacturers to take Coruscant’s moons into consideration in their design? Yeah, forget that.
“Did you have to come so damn far in AJ? I’m getting older every day,” Cyan said, pulling up beside him.
“Looking younger though,” AJ said back and leaned over to look down into the water.
“You’re supposed to look at me when you say something like that, or it doesn’t come across as authentic,” Cyan said, still panting a bit from her last sprint. AJ kept his gaze on the pool, felt Cyan smiling at him, not annoyed.
“Might come across as harassment, I do that,” AJ said, still not looking at her, but smiling to himself.
“True. Hey, back to business. Ramon told me what you did yesterday with Citizen Warnecke. That was classic de-escalation, you did a great job there.”
“Thanks.”
“I mean it. Ramon put you up for the monthly peer recognition.”
“Cool.”
“We’re not doing entertainment vouchers anymore though.”
“OK.”
“We changed it to restaurant vouchers, still the same amount. Figured people might like that.”
“Sure, always good with a change.”
“The vouchers are for two,” she said. “If you win it, who would you take?”
AJ thought about it, “Probably my Ma. She doesn’t get out much.”
“Still no regular partner then?”
It wasn’t an unusual or creepy question from Cyan even though she was his boss. It was the sort of stuff they talked about in the mornings, that they kept just between them. Of course, Cyan’s stuff was usually much more interesting than AJ’s.
“Nope, not since Henni.”
“Well, no hurry for you I guess. For the rest of us it’s procreate or die, right?” she said with a hint of irony. “You set for today?”
“Leon’s in today. Only got three routine calls, and some ad hocs.”
Cyan lifted each knee up to her chest a couple times and started running on the spot, “You know what? You get through those three routine calls, you take the afternoon off. Go surfing.”
“Morning’s best usually,” AJ told her. “Not so many spouts in the afternoon.”
“Sheesh, I can’t force you to take time off. OK, how about you take a resident down the street then, see do they want to do some shopping?”
“OK, I can do that.”
“Thanks. How about you take Citizen Warnecke? Seems he responds to you.”
AJ called Warnecke thinking the guy would accuse him of police harassment or something, but he wasn’t at home so he left a message. He didn’t expect him to call back, so he was just planning to spend the afternoon checking if any of the outdoor benches needed repair or repainting; that was a pretty relaxing way to spend the free time Cyan had given him. Leon hated stripping and sanding and painting, but AJ didn’t mind. Once you got started, it was all flow.
His comms buzzed in his ear and he saw it was 96. The fashion for comms devices came and went but the current fashion on Tatsensui was for an in-ear earbud which synched with nerves in the visual cortex to throw images up on the wearer’s right or left visual field. They were used to communicate with each other, for routine tasks like direction finding and for accessing information on the Core. The user interface if the wearer wanted to send a message or switch modes was via AI assisted eye tracking. For privacy reasons the devices could be switched between audio, VR video or text. AJ could drift on the Core without using his comms device and there was no reason the other functions couldn’t also have been included in basic cyber bioware, but citizens were only willing to go so far in the capabilities they allowed their cybers, and invisible, seamless inbuilt communication systems that citizens did not have access to were apparently a step too far. So AJ had a comms unit in his ear for distance communication with the citizens around him, just like everyone else.
“How much is it going to cost me?” Warnecke asked. “This shopping trip?”
“Nothing,” AJ said. “Citizen Tanike gave me the afternoon off so I thought I’d take a walk down to the Seaview market zone. I thought I could show you around.”
“Nothing costs nothing at this place,” Warnecke said. “I’m even paying ten percent more for air here than I did in Gakona.”
“Air is better here. Tell you what, you can buy me a real coffee, how’s that?”
“Sounds fair. Where shall we meet?”
Like all residents, Warnecke could come and go as he pleased. The community was gated to keep strangers out, not to keep residents in. AJ met him out the front.
“Where’s the car?” he asked, looking around him.
AJ pointed at his feet, “All-terrain mobile.”
“We’re walking?”
“It’s a mile and change,” AJ said. “You can skip your swimming class tonight.”
“I’m not signed up to any stupid swimming class,” Warnecke said as they began walking.
“There’s a shock,” AJ smiled.
Neither of them were big on small talk, so AJ just pointed out some of the main markers on the route, so Warnecke wouldn’t get lost in case there was a chance he would ever leave Sol Vista to do his own shopping. Most didn’t. They just keyed in their shopping preferences and the Core kept an eye on what was in their larders. If they were running low, the stuff was all ordered for them and delivered straight to their door from the market. Every now and then they got free samples of something new from the market to see if they wanted to add it to their list but most folks with TGA stuck with what they knew, because anything unfamiliar was unlikely to stick in their short term memory anyway.
“Where are we going?” Warnecke said at one point.
“Market zone,” AJ said. “I’ll show you what’s what down the road here, you can come back any time you like.”
“I know we’re going to the market,” Warnecke said angrily. “I’m not completely demented. I mean which shops?”
“Sorry,” AJ said. “There’s a meds store, across from that is a big Super Sava
with more stuff and it’s cheaper but not as convenient. There’s a surf shop, three or four restaurants, a tech store.” He tried to think. “Fish cafe, bakery coffee shop, that kind of thing.”
“How about a book store kind of thing,” Warnecke asked, making fun of AJ again. “Real books.”
“Nope. Most people around here don’t have that kind of coin. But Sol Vista will get print books in for you, if you want to order them. We got a connection with the national public library, it only takes three days.”
“If you don’t mind waiting three days,” Warnecke grumbled.
“Or, you can get Core-made through your entertainment system.”
“If I wanted to read AI trash I wouldn’t be asking would I?”
Most folks didn’t discriminate. Three days from when you dictated the scenario you wanted to the A.I., until a unique book came back to you, written? That was a pretty good service; most people preferred it.
“You like reading huh?” he asked.
“And I’m guessing you don’t.”
“What was the last book you read?” AJ asked.
“Harry Potter, just finished them all.”
“Oh. No, I mean the last modern book.”
Warnecke shrugged. “I like reading the classics,” he said. “Call me old fashioned.”
“Yeah but that’s so passive,” AJ said. “You got no influence over the story, the characters. You’re just taking in what was in someone else’s head.”
“Yeah, well I’m not the creative type. I studied quantum programming,” Warnecke said. “Got my PhD in advanced quantum coding.”
“There’s a coincidence,” AJ said. “So did I.”
“Don’t tell me … you dropped out, because you realized you could make more money working as a handyman at a retirement village than you ever would as a Q-programmer,” Warnecke said.
“No, I went all the way. I was awarded my Ph.D. last year. Did the thesis part-time, while I was working here. I like working at Sol Vista.”
“My ass.”
“No, I do. It’s the nice friendly residents that keep me there,” AJ smiled.
“A comedian too,” Warnecke said.
“You really want to know?” AJ asked him.
“No, but what else we got to talk about?” he said. He walked with a sliding gait like his feet had rollers underneath them.
“I work here because it’s a steady job that pays a pretty decent wage, gives me time for surfing and my boss is awesome.”
“You’ve got a menial job no one else wanted, that uses a fraction of your intellect,” Warnecke told him. “And you’re designed to be happy with it.”
He’d heard it before, that kind of comment didn’t get to him. “I could leave tomorrow if I wanted.”
“And seek out another crappy job you’re programmed to like?”
“Or just surf all day if I want to,” AJ said. “I can pretty much live off my bandwidth credits.”
“But not completely right? They still own you,” Warnecke pointed out. “No welfare for cybers. The only reason you’re allowed to indulge your desire to take some crappy manual job is that the Core can still tap your unused bandwidth. And you do know you only like surfing, because the Core allocated you a hobby to make you more interesting to citizens, right?”
There were just some people who loved pointing out to Cybers where their place in the world was. Psych theory said they did it out of insecurity about their own place in the world and should be pitied for it. AJ figured Warnecke was just another one of them. But then he proved him wrong.
“Yeah, no. I’m not buying the whole Service Technician thing. The moment I got here I started looking for who it was he put here to spy on me, and it took me five minutes to realize it was you.”
“I’ve been at Sol Vista five years,” AJ pointed out.
“You say.”
Don’t engage in delusion, AJ reminded himself. As they arrived at the main road he pointed first in one direction and then the other. “Medmart, Supa Saver, tech store that way, restaurants, surf shop and fish cafe that way. Where you want to start?”
“Let’s skip straight to where I buy you a coffee and then we can go back,” Warnecke said. “I got something to discuss with you.” He pulled a rolled up page out of his pocket and held it there so he didn’t forget it.
It was digital paper. Plastic, electrostatic ink. The sort people used to keep stuff off-Core where no one could hack it. “Fatty’s it is,” AJ said.
A couple of people said hi as AJ walked in, but it was a different crowd this time of the day and week. Fatty was Fatty though. He was this old skinny ex-surfer, looked like he had some wasting disease, was all skin and ribs under his singlet and needed a belt to hold up his board shorts. He couldn’t make coffee to save his life, but he refused to use a machine for that and always employed a real live barista. They came and went, but most of his staff stayed a while because Fatty paid a pretty good hourly for a good barista. He knew it was his original coffee and juices that kept people coming in, because it wasn’t his good looks.
“Hey Kylie,” AJ said as he walked in, to the girl who was barista since the summer. She was a pretty girl with big hips who liked dancing and couldn’t surf for shit, so she wasn’t impressed by any of the bragging that went on around her - guys who didn’t know her trying to score points. She was from way up north, and the first thing she had taught AJ was how to order coffee like an Inland Territorian and AJ caught her eye as he walked past, “Two long blacks, thanks.”
“No worries A-man,” Kylie called back.
“What the hell is a ‘long black?” Warnecke asked, as they sat themselves at one of the open windows.
“What you were drinking at the library,” AJ said. “Is that OK?”
For a second, Warnecke looked vulnerable. It was like a shadow of pain crossed his face, and he twitched twice, quickly, his left eye blinking rapidly. He looked at AJ and looked away.
“Boy, you say that like it should mean something to me,” Warnecke said, looking away. “And I know it probably should. But it don’t. I don’t remember running into you at the library.”
“That’s OK Citizen Warnecke. That’s your TGA at work. But anytime you glitch like that, you should know Sol Vista is fully wired. You can always get the facility Core feed to play back the vision if you want to check whether a memory is real or if you just forgot what happened, where you put something, that kind of thing.”
He looked at AJ, a small scared man now, “I don’t get it. I always thought, you lose your memory, you should lose it all, either all your short term, or all your long-term memory. But it’s like I remember some things happened today, then I completely forget others. I remember some stuff from my childhood like it was yesterday, but then there’s whole years missing.”
Kylie dropped their coffees on the table and AJ pushed the sweetener over to Warnecke.
“I’m not the expert. You talk to Doc Niedzwiecki about it?” AJ asked.
“No, I got a different Neuro. Barruzzi. I should ask for Niedzwiecki?” he asked.
“All three of them are good,” AJ said. “See how you go with Doctor Barruzzi. She’s a good listener, you tell her what you’re worried about, she’ll know what to do.”
“You have to say that,” Warnecke said. “I get it.”
AJ couldn’t deny it. He had his opinions about the three neurologists at the clinic as personalities, but he had no idea what they were like as doctors. Theoretically as AIs they should be identically competent, because they all had access to the same Core knowledge base; it was just a matter of different personalities. So, best he just kept his trap shut on that topic. He pointed at the page still rolled up in Warnecke’s hand. “You had something you wanted to talk about?”
Warnecke opened it like he was looking at it for the first time, but then something clicked and he smoothed it out to look it over, then fixed AJ with his tough guy stare again.
“Look, can we cut, the BS? I know you’r
e an undercover agent or private security and I know what you’re after.” AJ opened his mouth to change the subject but Warnecke wasn’t going to let it go that easy. “Don’t deny it,” he said. “The more you do, the more I know I’m right. Look, I wanted to tell you, he can’t keep hiding it. It’s coming out. So get out your recorder or get us a car to the police station or however this works.”
AJ knew he shouldn’t respond. TGA made some people paranoid, and he’d run up against people with TGA who were convinced he was an assassin trying to kill them, or a long lost sister, or a dead relative who must be a ghost, you name it. And the thing to do was to just respectfully ignore it and move the conversation on. Staff weren’t supposed to play games or indulge the fantasy or even ask questions, because it didn’t help anything and just increased the resident’s confusion. But he couldn’t stop himself.
“He who? What is coming out?” AJ said.
“You want me to say it out loud? Is that it?” Warnecke said. “OK, I get it. Here you are then.” He stood up and put out his arms and looked around the cafe at the people there; a couple of customers, Fatty and Kylie. “Can I have your attention please?” Warnecke said in a loud voice. “My name is Dave Warnecke, and I want to confess to a crime.”
AJ should never have asked. If he could do it again, he’d just have kept going, changed the subject and tried to distract Warnecke long enough so he’d lose track and then get him back to Sol Vista.
Now it was too late.
Luckily this was Fatty’s. The staff and patrons here were used to seeing all sorts of stimulant and TGA induced behavior. So when Warnecke stood up and made his declaration, the only reaction, apart from a couple of wary looks, was from Kylie who called out, “Hey AJ, find out what meds he’s on. I want some.”
“Let’s go,” AJ said, dropping a couple of credits for their coffees. He wanted to grab Warnecke by the elbow and drag him outside but they weren’t allowed to handle the residents, so instead he just headed out the door and hoped Warnecke would follow.