“Pluto,” he said, and the dog barked happily.
Salvi smiled and nodded, eyeing the dog.
“So, what brings you to these parts, Detective?” he asked, eyes fixed curiously on hers.
Salvi shrugged. “I was just in the area.”
Stan’s eyes studied her, squinting like he did when he was trying to work something out on a case, accentuating the crow’s feet. “You’re a bad liar, Mia. Always have been.”
Salvi smiled again and nodded, her eyes resting on a pot of pink roses against the far wall. She looked back at Stan. “Hernandez told me to come.”
Stan nodded. “And?”
“He said you have information for me.”
“On?”
Salvi studied him. She felt like she was on the opposite end of a suspect interview. Stanlevski had always been good at making suspects talk.
“My new partner,” she eventually said, feeling a sense of guilt like she was betraying Mitch by being there. “Apparently there’s something I should know about him.”
Stan nodded, glanced around casually at the tropical beach before him. He looked back at her. “You sure you want to know?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Do I?”
“How’re you finding him?”
“Fine.”
“He legit?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
“So why are you here, then?”
“Stan, if you’re playing games, I really don’t have time.”
“I know you don’t. Two women dead now in that religious community, huh?”
“Hernandez?”
Stan smiled. “Hernandez likes to stay on top of things. It’s his way of asserting his dominance. He asserts his dominance by knowing everything and having an answer for everything. So, he finds out everything. He’s good police.”
Salvi studied him. Stan looked a lot more relaxed than when they’d worked together. Retirement was agreeing with him. She smiled, happy for him.
“So, what does Hernandez know that he wants me to ask you?” she asked.
Stan studied her a moment, then moved over to take the seat beside her. He exhaled loudly as he sat, then looked at her. “An old friend of mine is stationed in the Chicago hub that Grenville came from. Turns out it wasn’t a willing transfer when they sent him here. This was his last chance to keep his badge.”
“Yeah, I heard the rumors. So?”
“After they found his girlfriend dead, he became the prime suspect, Mia. And he was the only suspect for a long time.”
Salvi paused, staring at Stan. Her breathing became shallow. “What?”
She’d known about Mitch’s girlfriend, had known about the transfer being forced, but she hadn’t known that he’d been the prime suspect in her death.
“But… they had to drop it,” Stan continued, “’cause they didn’t have enough evidence to go on. They watched him like a hawk, though. And eventually they had to get him out of town, because he wouldn’t let his girlfriend’s murder go. Every waking hour he could, when he wasn’t working the case he was assigned to, he was searching for her killer trying to clear his name. He was obsessed, overworked, drinking hard and they said… they said he started shooting up.”
Salvi felt a small relief wash over her. “Yeah,” she said. “He was ReVitalizing to combat the effects of his drinking.”
Stan shot her a weird look, studied her for a moment. “Either way, he was on edge. He got a lead on a guy, some guy the girlfriend had worked with. Turns out she’d had an affair with him behind Mitch’s back. Mitch wound up beating the guy pretty bad, put him in hospital. But the guy was innocent. Mitch was lucky he didn’t press charges. The guy must’ve felt guilty for the affair.” He paused a moment. “According to Hernandez, Mitch is still on edge. He’s still drinking?”
“Yeah, but… it’s only been recently that he started up. The first few months he was fine. But… it was the anniversary of her death yesterday.”
Stan nodded, studying her some more. “You think he’s innocent?”
Salvi looked away, out at the beach. “I don’t know. I don’t know enough about him.”
“Is he good police?”
She looked back at him, thought for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah. I think so.”
“Not as good as me, though, right?”
Salvi burst into a laugh. Stan smiled back, before his face fell serious again.
“What’d I teach you, Mia?” he said softly.
Salvi looked back at him.
“What’s your number one weapon in the field? Screw all the technology. What’s your number one weapon?”
“My gut,” she answered.
Stan nodded. “Your gut. It’s more important, more powerful than any man-made weapon. More important than your gun, your iPort, your fists, anything. Science has proven that now. Our brains are linked with our guts, but our guts don’t get clogged with emotion. It’s our base survival mechanism. You listen to it. You absorb everything. Let it work in conjunction with your senses. Listen to the sounds, take in the smells, record everything with these,” he pointed to his eyes. “And you listen to what your gut tells you. Your brain will process everything and give you the answers you need. But your gut’ll give you the early warning you might need to survive. You hear me?”
Salvi nodded. She missed working with the old bastard. To her, he was like family. The only family she had. She suddenly felt a lump in her throat and the sting of tears in her eyes at the realization.
Stan was all the family she had.
He reached out, placed his hand on hers and gave it a quick squeeze. “You’re good police, Mia.” He let go of her hand and stared out into the ocean. “His girlfriend was raped and murdered. That’s gotta cut anyone up pretty bad,” Stan said. “If he’s clean, then he’s clean. But if he’s not…” Stan looked at her, “you gotta watch your back.”
Salvi nodded, looking down at her hands. “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”
He shrugged. “’Cause you don’t like being told what to do.”
She looked up at him.
“And…” he shrugged again, “you’re good police, Salv. Hernandez is being over-protective, but he don’t know you like I do. I know you can stand on your own two feet.” He gazed out upon the beach before them. “These murders started after Mitch moved out here, but that could just be a bad coincidence.” He turned back, locking eyes with hers. “If he’s clean, he’s clean. And if he’s not… then you take care of it. You do what you have to, Mia. Either way, you catch this killer. You know you can.”
Salvi saw the twinkle in his eye as he looked at her. It was pride. She smiled back at him, and quickly, briefly, squeezed his hand too.
Stan stood and waved her off. “Now get out of here. I got shit to do.”
Salvi laughed and watched him disappear back inside his apartment, while Pluto the virtual dog followed.
Chapter Eleven
Connectivity
Salvi tried to go back to the hub after her visit to Stan, but she just couldn’t face it. She didn’t want to see Mitch or Hernandez. Her apartment wasn’t an option either – being left alone with her thoughts as she stared out her window at the city lights and police drones. No, she needed to take her mind off things for a while and give her subconscious time to sort through things. She needed to submerge herself in the city and become invisible.
She jumped one of the new Cylin trains, an inner city add-on to the existing BART system, and made her way into the city’s heart. As she stood, feeling a smooth vibration travel through her legs with the movement of the Cylin, she studied the people in her carriage, sizing them up like she did. Like they were a suspect. Like she needed to remember their faces, how they were dressed.
They varied in age, sex and race, she noticed, but they all had one thing in common. Every single one of them was connected to technology in some way. As she glanced around she realized she was the only one disconnected. Three of them sat wearing Voakleys
– VR integrated sunglasses. Two wore boxy headphones, one bopping his head to music, the other tuned in to the screens on the front wall of the carriage. She counted nine on various other devices – some tapping their fingers quickly playing a game of some sort, others typing messages or undertaking some other administrative task. And the carriage was silent.
Stone cold silent.
With each stop the Cylin made, some people exited and new ones entered. All were connected. Even those that appeared to be traveling together barely said more than a few words to each other unless it had to do with whatever technology they were interacting with at the time. Watching a young couple sitting side by side, she saw the teenage boy hold up his smart device to his girlfriend. On the screen was a love heart. The girlfriend held her device up to his and he knocked them together and the heart transferred to the girl’s screen. The girl smiled at the screen, then tapped her device against her boyfriend’s and sent the heart back to him. They cast each other a brief smile, then once again became absorbed in their individual devices.
Once upon a time, Salvi realized, those lovebirds would’ve kissed and hugged each other. Now they tapped screens.
It made her think of Bountiful, how they disregarded technology. Did they have a point? Was their community more physically connected as a result? Were the people in the city, with their access to technology, physically disconnected? Or was it merely a trade-off at the end of the day? Whether religion or technology, whichever way you looked at it, whichever enslaved you, was it really a case of freedom vs control? Were we all slaves to something?
Staring at the young couple, she couldn’t help but think of Sharon and Tobias. How he’d told Salvi they’d tried other things to avoid temptation. She wondered whether Sharon and Tobias had managed to get their hands on some ‘sinful’ technology, whether they had once sent each other love hearts like the couple before her. Before it spilled over into real life. She recalled Ellie’s claim of seeing them heading toward the Bountiful SlingShot station and wondered whether they had mostly just sat in the café and held hands as Tobias had claimed, or whether their visits to the city with Kevin had enabled them to indulge their love in other ways. Whether the technology and freedoms of the city had seduced them and tainted their innocent minds.
The Cylin reached the city center and Salvi exited. She made her way through the tubular stark white corridors and up the smooth escalators to ground level, watching all the people coming and going like ants in an underground colony. It reminded her of the Solme Complex but on a much larger scale.
As she stepped outside someone tugged on her coat. She pulled it away from their grasp and looked to where a young man sat on the ground. He was skinny and pale and desperate, holding a dirty cap out toward her. She saw a broken device on the floor before him. This wasn’t a druggie needing money for a fix. This was a techie, an addict who couldn’t survive without their tech and needed cash or supplies to hook them up again. Salvi turned away and kept walking.
Fresh rain had left the streets glistening and reflecting the bouncing, pulsing and flashing lights of the thriving metropolis around her. As she walked along she absorbed the overbearing impact of the lights, the sounds, the crowds, the smells. The distraction she’d sought, fulfilled. The anonymity she pursued, embraced.
The communities on the outside saw the cities and the technology they were drowning in as decaying cesspits. Many claimed technology would be our downfall, would result in the ruination of mankind, especially after the Crash. When it happened and people had died, some of the population had drawn their line in the sand, and that was when these communities on the outskirts grew in popularity as people vowed to live tech-free.
Their arguments had merit, but thinking about it now, in Salvi’s eyes, they had simply traded one obsession for another. They left tech behind, but they’d traded it for gods or guns. Sometimes both.
Yet, despite the Crash, many remained in the cities. Many decided they could live without the neural tech, but they couldn’t live without all the other mod cons of everyday life. The thought of adapting to the way their ancestors lived, or ‘regressing’ as some called it, was far too scary a thought. The truth was, many just saw it as a lot of unnecessary work for little reward. Why clean your house when a robo-cleaner can do it for you? Besides, now the neural tech had been retracted from the market, people felt safe again. The chances anyone could hack their brain had been erased.
Unless, of course, people like Attis Solme were successful in bringing it back again. From what Salvi could tell, the neural tech Attis used at the Solme Complex was only a small element of what had been on the market prior to The Crash, but still… Salvi loved technology, yet even she drew the line at neural tech. She would never leave a door open for someone to fuck with and control her mind.
She’d been down that road before, and would not let it happen again.
To help take her mind off things, she thought about seeing something at the AR movie house, but standing in the queue for a ticket, she changed her mind. And so on she walked, until just outside the heart of the city, she came upon the area known as the Mission, now called “Transmission” by the locals. It was the tech center of the city and it was packed with shoppers, street sellers, and of course, the tech-heads with their caps out. She looked up into the sky and saw a drone hovering overhead. There were always at least four drones dedicated to watching the Mission. She passed the windows of a variety of “specialists”, from VR, AR, other high-tech gadgets, and robot specialists offering everything from robo-help to robo-security to robo-whores.
She hadn’t walked around this part of town for a while and noticed several new stores alight with their bright LEDs and holo-sales personnel, encouraging her to step inside. She glanced further down the street and saw something that made her pause.
It was a bright green BioLume cross.
She moved toward it, crossing the street amid passing autocabs and tuk-tuks. She came to a stop in front of the building. From afar she’d questioned what she’d seen as the building had flashing lights and holograms projecting out front. But she hadn’t been wrong. It was an actual church. A high-tech church.
She pulled the broad, heavy doors open and stepped inside. The layout of a traditional church was before her; rows of pews and an elevated altar at the front, but the aesthetics were very different. She felt as though she’d just stepped inside a nightclub or performance arena. Dim light filled the high-ceilinged building. Where stained glass windows should’ve sat along the side walls, now were video screens of interactive saints. Rows of green BioLume globes sat along the front where candles would’ve once been placed. And the music playing was not a traditional hymn, but some kind of modern interpretation undertaken by an electronica band.
A hologram came to life beside her, offering her holy water. She ignored it and stepped further inside. She noticed a few people scattered among the pews, heads down and praying.
Light blue neon footsteps lit up in the floor before her, and she watched as they slowly made their way toward the altar. She suspected she was supposed to follow them, but she slipped into one of the back pews instead and took a seat.
A spotlight suddenly came on, flooding the altar, and a figure emerged from the side. It took Salvi a few moments to realize that it wasn’t a man but a robot. As soon as it hit the spotlight she saw the shine of its plastic veneer, shaded in a similar tone to human skin. The robot raised its arms to the sky, lifting with it the heavy robes it wore.
“Praise the Lord Jesus!” it called out.
One of the people in the pews ahead called back. “Praise the Lord!” Another startled as though he’d been asleep.
Salvi listened as the robo-preacher spoke of how Jesus loved them, of how he was there for each of them, of how Jesus would always be with them. A screen came to life behind the preacher as it talked. Salvi watched as advertisements began to roll for religious group meetings and the latest apps to connect with Jesus. She saw an interactiv
e Bible app and a confessional app. Instantaneous absolution! Then she saw an ad for an app called Sacrifice™. It challenged users to make sacrifices then record and measure how they did, rewarding them with free Christian literature and music for those who sacrificed the most.
Then came the advertisements for “connected” games. She saw VR glasses that allowed you to walk with Jesus and partake in the Last Supper. Another was called Good Life™ where players would follow and assist Saints as they performed good deeds. Then she saw one advertised called Sin Hunters™, where players were encouraged to seek out sinners and punish them – giving them thirty-nine lashes or nailing them to a cross.
Salvi’s mouth fell open at the last one. The graphics were … very graphic. Before she could gather her thoughts, a miniature drone flew down and hovered in front of her, shaped like a bird with flapping wings. A compartment opened, and an arm extended holding a box.
“Give back to the Lord,” it half chirped, half spoke. “All donations accepted.”
Salvi swatted it away and stood, took one last look at the robo-preacher and interactive saints, then left.
As she stepped outside, she saw three techies now sitting on the doorstep. They raised their hands to a chorus of “Please!” “Help out those less fortunate!” “Just a little!”
Salvi moved past their reaching hands and stepped onto the sidewalk. As she strode away she heard another voice say: “Hey, why don’t you come inside? They’ll give you free tech. Apps, games, whatever you like. All you need to do is just listen for a bit.”
The voice sounded familiar and she glanced over her shoulder to see a young man ushering the three techies swiftly inside the church. It was Kevin Craydon, Tobias Brook’s roommate.
Before Salvi’s brain could compute that, her iPort registered an incoming call. She looked at her wrist and saw it was Mitch. She switched it to message. She looked back at the church and contemplated going back in, when the sound of raucous laughter rang out behind her. She looked around to see a group of teens walking along playing a game of virtual tennis, the bright yellow ball shooting back and forth between two players, swatting it with their haptic-gloved hands. Her eyes swiftly drifted past them, as she noticed a sign for the SlingShot station. She moved toward it and studied the screen outside showing which stops the station serviced. Bountiful was on the list, as was Garner Town and several others north to Seattle and south to LA.
The Subjugate Page 20