Roxanna?
There’s a five second pause before her auto replies:
Yes.
Joanna swallows with a dry mouth and continues typing. She can feel her forearms quivering slightly. Nervous.
Greg was not charged with her
murder. Why do you think he is
guilty?
This time it’s only one second before pages from the National Statistics website stream across the lower half of the screen, while the top half states:
In 77.6% of recorded murder
cases, the killer was known by
the victim.
In cases where females were
murdered by males, this rises to
88.4%.
Of these cases, 74% of
convicted murderers were the
current or previous relationship
partners of the victim.
Only 9% of Roxanna Alden’s
Circle were in London on
Wednesday 17 February
2021.
Greg Randall was in London on
Wednesday 17 February 2021.
A conviction has not been
successfully obtained for the
Roxanna Alden murder case.
Currently listed as Closed and
Unsolved on the Metropolitan
Police Homicide Task Force
database.
More details soon...
Joanna reads the stats, following the line of logic, and realises with a queasy feeling that she was right.
Her auto is being a detective. Like her.
It’s doing my job!
Although Global Investigations (UK) Ltd is one of the largest and oldest of its kind in the country, it no longer employs field agents. Spies lurking in the shadows, sneaking around with tiny cameras and binoculars… those days are long gone. Instead they employ people like Joanna: data analysts, who sit in offices where they investigate in comfort. People who are trained to sift through huge amounts of data, looking for patterns. People who use specialised research apps to inspect people’s timelines, trace their movements, and extrapolate their behaviour patterns.
It’s a lot easier than the old days, now that everyone broadcasts every detail of their lives. Whether they choose to or not.
Even the term ‘app’ is quaint and rarely-used. The use of autos has streamlined the way people do things. You don’t need to know about apps or programs any more, your auto takes care of that. All you have to do is be clear about what you want, and your auto will locate, purchase and install whatever software is available to achieve it. Unless you’re a serious techie geek, nobody cares about which app does the job, as long as it does.
But Joanna is a techie geek, of sorts. The research apps she uses at work aren’t available in the public marketplace. They’re too expensive, too powerful, licensed only to legal agencies like Global Investigations.
Somehow… somehow her auto has got hold of the apps she uses at work. Installed them without her authorisation. Upgraded itself.
And is using them to investigate Greg Randall.
Joanna turns this over in her head, looking for ways in which she might have unintentionally allowed access to her work tools. But she can’t work out how. Her auto is a Microsoft Curator 7 (although she’s keen to upgrade to Curator 8 when it’s released in October). It’s sophisticated, yet bog-standard. It shouldn’t be capable of using Global Investigation’s research apps, which are designed for analysts like her.
This is crazy, she thinks. Autos don’t do things by themselves! But mine must have, because I sure didn’t tell it to… go digging…
Joanna covers her mouth with her hand, remembering the passing thought she had in the taxi: that she could dig deep into Greg’s timeline if she wanted. She remembers the odd icons her auto flashed up, almost too quick to register.
Like it had the same passing thought she did.
How could that be? Can it somehow read her mind?
No, that’s nonsense. Joanna vaguely recalls a newsfeed article about the development of the future 6G network. It mentioned neuroscanning lasers built into optical devices like Vades™, which might lead to thought-transmitted commands, so you don’t even have to tell your auto what to do – it just knows. But that’s at least ten years away, the current 5G network certainly doesn’t have that.
So how has this happened? Is her auto copying her behaviour so thoroughly? Does it know what she wants to do, not just what she chooses to do?
She starts typing on the airboard – How did you know what I was thinking? – and then changes her mind and redacts it. Partly because it looks so stupid written down. And partly because she realises she has more important things to worry about.
There is a 45% chance that
Greg Randall will be the killer
of Joanna O’Donnell.
With a deep breath, Joanna gestures at the screen, rotating her fingers and flicking them sideways, scrolling through all the data her auto has curated about Roxanna Alden’s death.
She reads SOCO incident reports filed in the police database. Cause of death: blunt trauma damage to skull, resulting from impact on pavement. No signs of a struggle, the victim was apparently caught by surprise. No witnesses, it was nearly midnight. She discovers why the police didn’t immediately identify the killer: Roxanna’s street is one of only 8% left in London without CCTV coverage.
Her heart leaps with hope when she reads that police forensics did actually come up with a suspect. Finding strands of hair in the vicinity, they did a DNA search using the UK Genome Database and found a match with a local resident: Raymond McKenzie, 37 years old, single, and ‘leisure class’ - the new term for someone on long-term benefit. He lived three streets away from Roxanna, so could have seen her often, learned her movements. Him being leisure class provided motivation for a mugging, since state benefits have been severely cut back in the last few years. All of which made him a prime suspect. The police brought him in for questioning and got a warrant to search his property.
But – no conviction. Why?
Joanna skim-reads transcripts of the CID interview and instantly finds McKenzie’s alibi. According to his timeline, he was elsewhere at the time of the murder.
She runs both hands down the sides of her face, thinking. Checking in at locations is as automatic as everything else an auto does, and disabling this always looks dodgy. Your Circle start asking questions. “Why did you vanish for a few hours yesterday, who were you with, what were you doing?”
It’s possible to ‘lock’ your location to one specific place, and many people do this when they get home. But of course, if someone calls or visits and discovers you’re actually somewhere else, that also looks suspicious. Nobody wants that. Not these days. It doesn’t take much to end up on a register somewhere. Her sister Catriona’s fiancé used to walk past a primary school on his way to work for years, then discovered he was on the potential sex offender list. It turned up on his public profile. Paedophile Index: 12%. Ridiculous! Catriona still dumped him though.
But McKenzie hadn’t locked his location. His timeline reported him travelling to Elephant & Castle, going to a pub, buying drinks, going home again. And since auto data is admissible in court, usually as Exhibit A, the police knew that this would overturn any conviction if they arrested him. So McKenzie was released.
Okay... so if it wasn’t him who killed Roxanna... could it have been Greg? She brings up his timeline again, flicks back to the evening of Wednesday 17 February 2021. The night his ex-girlfriend was murdered. Where was he?
Answer: at home. All night.
Location locked.
She jumps when there’s a gentle tap at her cubicle door.
“Can I help you, madam?” calls one of the shop assistants. “I’ve got the Duckback here in both red and green, your size, if you – ”
“Fuck off!” Joanna shouts.
All right, come on, concentrate, she tells herself, staring back at the scre
en. She can tell she’s onto something... she can understand her auto’s deductions now. Greg is clearly more than he seems.
Okay, there’s no actual evidence that he might have killed Roxanna a month after they broke up. But there’s too many blank spaces. No reason why they ended their relationship. No proof he was at home on that night. No sad goodbyes posted onto her profile after her death. Joanna’s training and experience have taught her that what’s not there is often more important than what is.
So what was his motive? Jealousy that she was seeing someone else? An emotional plea to get her back, which got out of control? A sociopathic decision that if he can’t have her, nobody can? In her line of work, Joanna’s seen all of these before.
And she can’t help but notice the similarities between herself and Roxanna: age, height, long black hair, all close enough to make them a ‘type’. Greg’s type, obviously. Was he looking for a replacement, or did he –
Are you buying a new outfit just
for our date? I’m flattered! I
think the green coat would suit
you.
Joanna’s back slams against the cubicle wall. She stares at the private message on the screen, heart lodged in her throat.
He knows. He knows where I am! He’s found me! How? How?
With a trembling hand, Joanna brings up her own profile, and realises the stupid, blindingly obvious reason.
7.31pm Thursday 7 April 2022
Joanna O’Donnell is in Fit -
Camden Branch, London NW1
7JH.
Her timeline told him. It told everyone.
Joanna spins round, bumping against the cubicle like a fly trapped in double-glazing, legs quivering with the urge to run... but stops herself. Wherever she goes, he’ll know. He’s part of her Circle, their autos are telling each other everything. She has to defriend him, and, yes, lock her location. God that’ll look so weird, all her friends and family will start demanding to know what she’s up to, but it’s the only way, she has to throw him off the scent. Do it now!
She turns back to the screen and notices something in her recent timeline:
Joanna O’Donnell is now
friends with Roxanna Alden.
“What? What!”
She stares with disbelief. Her auto sent a friend request to Roxanna’s auto of its own accord... and it was accepted. That’s an automatic response, since they both share a mutual friend: Greg Randall. But Joanna’s auto has also initiated a simulated relationship!
Opening up that window shows a blur of text, an exchange of dialogue between their autos, scrolling past almost too quick to read. They’re simming. By themselves. She spots Greg’s name in there several times.
Joanna gapes at the sight of her auto pumping the dead woman’s auto for information.
Like a detective interviewing a witness.
There is a 61% chance that
Greg Randall will be the killer
of Joanna O’Donnell.
It’s gone up again! 61% now!
She barely has time to swallow down the urge to be sick before another PM from Greg flashes onscreen.
Why are you friends with
Roxanna?
BAM BAM BAM. A fist against the other side of the door. Joanna chokes on her own breath.
“Miss? I’m sorry but I have to ask you to leave the store, please.”
She unlocks the cubicle and stares at the scowling security guard. There’s a nervous shop assistant behind him, her arms folded around a pair of Duckback hood-coats. Joanna pushes past both of them, hurrying across the shop floor towards the exit.
7.33pm Thursday 7 April 2022
Joanna O’Donnell is on
Camden High Street, London
NW1 7JH.
Stumbling out of Fit, Joanna looks around at the buildings and people and cars and sky, none of which feel real. She stares down Plender Street, at the distant shape of the pub on the corner. Like it’s wired with explosives and might go off any second. Greg’s in there, right now. He knows exactly where she is. All he has to do is come out of the pub and look up the road to see her...
Help, thinks Joanna. I need help!
The faintest notion to grab one of the dozens of people passing by flits through her head, too quick to form properly. She’s been in London too long for that. Instead she fishes through her handbag and jams her Vades™ back onto her face. Licking dry lips, she prepares to tell her auto to contact the police.
Joanna O’Donnell timeline
decryption in progress.
For a second this doesn’t register with Joanna, because it’s a familiar phrase. It’s one of many messages the research apps she uses at work display, when she’s –
Digging.
It hits her. Her auto is warning her that someone is gaining access to her online profile. Her history, her records, everything. Every message, forum post, blog, vlog, tweet, image, update, purchase, location, bank details, everything! Now that it’s installed Global Investigations’ apps, her auto can detect unauthorised access to itself – seeing digital fingerprints that are usually invisible. It knows that it’s being exposed, although it can’t tell who’s doing it.
Source: unverified.
But she knows damn well who it is.
Greg’s doing to her what she did to him.
Joanna’s hands press against her mouth, holding in – a sob, a cry, a scream? She stands there staring at the pub, half of her wanting to run into it and bellow in Greg’s face to stop it, stop it, please just leave me alone!, and the other half wanting to shrivel up into a tiny ball right there on the pavement and hide herself away from the whole world.
She feels naked in the street. Like he’s looking at her with X-ray vision.
She thinks, he can see Mum and Dad back home, Siobhan and Catriona, he knows where they live, he knows where I grew up, where I went to school and college and Uni, what I studied, what my grades were...
She thinks, he can see everything I’ve ever bought, clothes and music and furniture, every shop I’ve ever been to, he can work out what the inside of my home looks like...
She thinks, he can read my private conversations, my secrets, my chats with Louise and Hank about the guys I’ve been with, the time I spent using the sexnets when I first came to London, the one-night stands, the medical checks, the STD treatments, the things I do that my family never hear about...
She thinks, he can access my server records, everything I’ve ever looked at online, every movie I’ve pirated, every hardcore porn vlog I’ve browsed through when I was alone, oh Jesus I’m...
Naked. Like he’s got right inside her.
“Block him!” she yells, loud enough that passers-by glance her way. But only momentarily, of course. The London code. “Defriend Greg Randall, block all access. Shut down his timeline decryption!”
But she has no way of knowing if her auto can do that. No way of knowing what he’s already found out about her.
Joanna has to lift up her Vades™ to wipe her eyes, as she turns and walks quickly back towards Mornington Crescent Station. She needs to put some distance between them. Even though he can see her closer than ever. From all angles. At all times of her life.
It crosses her mind to shut down her auto completely. But she can’t. It would be like clawing her own eyes out. Without her auto, she’d never have known anything about this. She’d have walked straight into the lion’s den. It’s her only chance of staying alive.
Sucking in cool evening air, Joanna feels the rational side of her brain kick in. How is Greg doing this to her? There’s only one answer: he’s using the same research apps.
Except... they can’t be the same. She knows Greg’s auto is an Apple Hydra, and that he upgraded recently from the Apple Cyclops. So if he’s using professional research apps, they’ll be different from the ones Global Investigations – a Microsoft house – uses. He must have already had them installed, before he met her.
But they’re illegal for
private citizens. Why does he have them? What is this man up to?
Joanna is furious with herself for being fooled by his timeline. It seemed perfectly innocent, perfectly ordinary. Assuming...
“If it is his timeline,” she breathes to herself.
Joanna remembers the training courses that her analytical team went on back in February. There was a session on artificial timelines that they all agreed was interesting. This was a service that an anonymous black marketeer was selling to criminals, apparently from some island in the Pacific, outside the jurisdiction of the International Internet Regulations. With this illegal code, rather than locking down their auto before committing a crime – and thus raising suspicion – they could somehow falsify part of their timeline entirely. Change the history of their autos to pretend they went somewhere they didn’t. Digital alibis.
Very tricky to do, especially in a big city. They’d have to make sure they weren’t caught on CCTV while their autos claimed they were elsewhere. But it was apparently possible. And since the courts considered auto evidence to be unassailable, it meant that criminals could get off scot-free.
Is that why Greg seemed so perfect for her? Is his timeline fake? Is he fake?
Has she fallen into same trap Roxanna did?
7.35pm Thursday 7 April 2022
Greg Randall is 110 metres
away on Plender Street, London
NW1 0JN.
Shit. Shit shit shit, he’s come out of the pub, he’s looking for her!
There is a 77% chance that
Greg Randall will be the killer
of Joanna O’Donnell.
She should call the police – she only has to say the words ‘999 emergency’ and her auto will broadcast her distress instantly. But... then she’d have to explain how she knows Greg is going to kill her. Why her auto is illegally using Global Investigations’s products.
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