Before handing over her case files, Joanna spent ages extracting all references to AB Foster from them. Gradually she turned Derek’s crusade into a more conventional plagiarism case. A search for someone he thought was misappropriating his work, the detective novels he wrote years ago. (She had a sharp pang, remembering those... wishing she could download ‘Deadly Vendetta’ just as easily as a Box Clever eeBook, wishing it was also up there in the charts.) Her reports now detailed how a standard online trace had led them to the wrong place: an old and dangerous warehouse, filled with leaking gas pipes and stored chemicals... all it needed was a spark.
She made it all look like an accident. Like it happened for nothing.
That’s how it has to be, Joanna assures herself. Only she knows otherwise. And her partner, of course.
“Greg, still with me?” she says aloud. Her auto interprets this as a voice call. It brings up Greg’s profile inside her Vades™ and then his voice in her ears:
“Hello. You have reached the voicemail of Greg Randall. I’m not available right now as I’m breaking the law with my girlfriend, but if you’d like to join us in our life of crime, please leave a message after the beep.”
“We’re not breaking the law, you – ”
Greg: “Beeeeeeeeeeeep.”
“ – silly fucker. We’re just going to ask a few questions.”
Greg: “Which Global Investigations would take your licence for if they found out. But hey, it’s Friday, so it’s either this or going bowling again tonight, and I’m sure you’ve got those lanes rigged, the number of strikes you get.”
Joanna smiles and shakes her head in mock-despair.
Greg: “Woah, don’t do that, you’re making me feel sick!”
“You’re picking everything up okay, then?” she asks, and he confirms he’s receiving full data feeds from her Vades™. Right now Greg’s back in her flat’s spare room, watching everything she sees on the smartscreens, hearing everything she hears, and recording it all. Her very own operations backup. She’s given him full access to her auto, even the inputs from the microbiosensors inside her clothing that monitor her health. Sharing absolutely everything. Should feel weird. Doesn’t.
Greg: “So. Ms O’Donnell. You are looking very, very sexy tonight. That tight black trouser suit. I really wanted to just run my hand along it before you left. Maybe up your back. Would you have liked that?”
She swallows. “Cut it out, Greg, I’m working – ”
Greg: “Wow, your heart rate just spiked to 162 BPM! Nice to see I can still have that effect.”
“For God’s sake, stop playing games with my heart!” One second later, they both burst out laughing at how cheesy that sounds.
Greg: “Let’s hope they’re not at it when you arrive. Looks like these two can’t keep their hands off each other at the best of times!”
That’s certainly how it seems, judging by the public profiles of Amy Pearce and Juan-Miguel Fernández Mendoza. Ever since 14th February, their timelines have been full of flirtatious messages, and then outright romantic or sexual comments. A full-on international romance, with Amy regularly flying to Spain. But at the moment Juan-Miguel is living with her in London on a three-month visitor’s visa. All of this and more was freely visible online.
“Hardly had to do any digging at all with these two,” Joanna remarks. “They just want to share their whole lives with the world. They’re like the anti-us!”
Greg: “I know, and over two countries too. Imagine going out with a foreigner! Such a pain, having to teach them how to use a knife and fork...how to cross the road... how to wipe before flushing...”
“Shut it!” giggles Joanna despite herself. “Look, I’m here now. Try to be professional, mister marketing manager. ”
Greg: “Okay, I’ll do my... hey what’s all that...”
“Oh God.”
Greg: “Shit.”
They see them through Joanna’s Vades™ at the same time. The tags. Hovering in mid-air, or so it seems, outside Amy Pearce’s ground floor flat. Invisible to the unaided eye, but for anyone with an online view, the property is plastered with words.
CONT LOVER
Get the cont out now
England for the English!
The tags are in a variety of fonts, colours and styles, like incredibly neat aerosol sprays. Over a dozen, all saying the same thing. All auto-spellchecked.
Get this FUCKING
FOREIGN CONT out of our
street!
We can smell your cont from
out here
Joanna breathes deep to calm the nervous twist in her belly. Ever since the EU split, the press have made ‘continental’ a dirty word, a reason for everything that’s ever gone wrong in the UK. And so many people – especially those who have never travelled to other countries – believe it with religious ferocity.
She can suddenly hear her Mum’s voice: “It’ll be the Irish next.” She’s forever sending newsfeed items to Joanna, every time racial violence in London makes the news. Her mother seems to think Joanna lives in a warzone, no matter how many times she tries to explain that not everyone thinks that way, most Londoners are more civilised than that, it’s not the dark ages Mum, believe me, that doesn’t happen here as much as the press say it does...
Amy Pearce = cont shagger
Parents - conts live here -
keep your children away
please.
Joanna says “Undisplay tags.” They vanish. The small flat in front of her, with its plain brown door, looks exactly like all the others along this street.
Greg: “Oh man. That’s... I had no idea.”
She can tell that Greg’s regretting all his foreigner jokes. He sounds just as sickened by this as she feels.
“It’ll be the Irish next.”
Greg: “Jo? You all right?”
“Who does that?” she mutters, still seeing the tags in her mind’s eye. “Ignorant bloody no-marks... how can they...?”
Greg: “Come on. Let’s get on with it. We’re here for a reason.”
Joanna straightens her back and manages a smile. “Keep up the ‘we’, Mr Randall.”
Greg: “I’ll ‘we’ all over you if you’ll let me.”
“Ew.”
By the time she rings the doorbell, Joanna has put her professional face on. Greg’s voice has helped, as always. She could get used to this, having him along for the ride, sharing her eyes and ears. It feels like he’s close, even though he’s miles away. She likes it. Didn’t think she would.
Amy Pearce opens the door, looking exactly like her profile picture. Perhaps smiling less genuinely, Joanna thinks. They’re roughly the same age but Amy’s taller and thinner, with long blonde hair. They say hi, Joanna introduces herself and offers her laminated Global Investigations ID card. Amy already has her autophone in one hand and aims it towards the card, nodding at the result on its display. Joanna is invited in.
“We’re just making dinner,” Amy says. Warm spicy scents fill the flat. Joanna thinks she can make out coriander, turmeric and pepper, plus a few others she can’t quite identify, but it all smells great. It flits through her mind that it’s a shame her Vades™ can’t detect them and share them with Greg, like they can just about everything else. As she enters the small living room, she feels the heat from an open doorway leading to a kitchen. Someone’s cooking up a storm in there.
“Juan!” calls Amy. Then she calls it again. Then a third time, much shriller. Joanna hears Greg hissing through his teeth, as if tasting something sharp.
Juan-Miguel comes out of the kitchen wearing a dark chef’s apron over a white t-shirt, and Joanna gives him her most pleasant smile, expecting the same in return. Every single image of him online is dominated by a huge grin. But it’s not there this time. Tall, broad, black hair, stubble, deep brown eyes – it’s clearly the same man. But his face is set in stone.
Greg: “Uh oh... looks like there might have been a lover’s tiff tonight.”
And then Joanna turns with surprise as she hears Amy’s voice again, but more stilted, saying “Mi vida, esta es mujer de la que te estaba hablando. Ella ha venido a hablarnos de lo que pasó con nuestros autos, cuando nos encontramos.”
Greg: “Is she auto-translating to her own boyfriend?!”
Yes. She is. Amy’s talking into her phone, through which her auto is reproducing what she said in Spanish.
Joanna’s even more surprised when Juan-Miguel reaches into his back pocket, pulls out his own autophone and says something in rapid, harsh Spanish. She can’t understand a word, but he sounds seriously irritated.
His autophone gently says “Is this really a good idea, sweetheart? As long as we are together, does it really matter how we met? And I’m a little busy tonight.”
Amy stands and looks at him for a moment, her face unreadable. “Piss off back to your kitchen then, if you don’t care. I’m sorting this out whether you give a shit or not.”
Softly, from her autophone: “Disculpa si te incomodo mi amor, déjame resolver este asunto, no tardo mucho. Te lo prometo.”
Juan-Miguel gives Joanna a look that tells her precisely what he thinks. No translation required. Without another word, he stomps back into the kitchen and hurls the door shut with a bang that rattles the windows.
Greg: “Hang on – that’s not right! My translation’s coming up different. They’re not saying what the other one thinks they’re saying! Look at this!”
He sends the actual translations to her Vades™. Joanna scans them quickly. He’s right, they’re miles off. The translations are a lot softer, in fact outright lovey-dovey, compared to the harsh words they’re actually saying to each other. Fascinating!
Amy gestures for her to take a seat. As Joanna sits down on a leather sofa, she glances at the kitchen door, behind which pots and pans are being slammed against every hard surface possible.
“Sorry,” says Amy as she takes the chair opposite. “He’s...” She holds her hands open as if an explanation has slipped through her fingers.
Joanna raises an eyebrow. “Spanish?”
Amy laughs a little. “Very.”
“Listen,” Joanna goes on, “I saw the tags outside... from your neighbours, I suppose? That can’t be easy to live with. The two of you must be under a lot of stress.”
“Yeah.”
That’s all Amy says at first, but Joanna knows the look of someone who wants to talk, and keeps silent for a while until she adds “It hasn’t been as easy as I thought it would be, to be honest. Juan’s, like, pretty hot-headed at the best of times, you know? I mean, that was part of the attraction, at first. But he doesn’t deal with people’s stupidity very well.” She waves in the direction of the front door.
“I can’t blame him,” says Joanna softly. “Nobody should have to put up with that. Prejudiced bastards.”
“I know, for God’s sake!” Amy visibly lowers her barriers a little. “You’d think he came from some long-lost tribe or something. He’s just Spanish, what’s the big deal! How can people be so narrow-minded?”
“So you never had this trouble with previous boyfriends?”
“Oh no, he’s the first one who’s for…” Colour creeps up Amy’s neck. “Non-English.”
“Have you thought about living in Spain instead?”
Amy sighs, brushes back her hair. “That’s what he wants. Keeps talking about taking me to Santurzi... that’s his town, in Basque Country. But I dunno. I’ve lived in London my whole life, my friends are all here, my family, my job, so living in another country... and I won’t even be able to speak the language out there.” She gestures with the autophone, which is still in her hand. “I’d have to use this all the time, twenty-four seven, to do anything with anyone! God, it’s a pain in the bum as it is, just talking to Juan.”
Greg: “It’d be a lot worse if you knew what he was really saying!”
Joanna coughs twice into her hand, hoping Greg will translate that as ‘shut up’.
“Anyway,” Amy says with forced brightness, “you want to know about the way we met?”
Joanna quickly explains that Global Investigations is gathering information on unusual auto behaviour, in order to help them develop better detection methods in criminal cases. It’s close enough to the truth that she knows she sounds convincing. She invites Amy to explain in her own words how she managed to connect with a man she’d never heard of, who lived hundreds of miles away.
Amy tells her what happened on Valentine’s Day. How she saw the name Juan-Miguel Fernández Mendoza for the first time – when her own auto’s profile suddenly claimed she was in a relationship with him. She corrected it, of course, but before long it once again stated Couple/Monogamous. And his said Pareja/Monógamo, claiming to be with her.
“Just to confirm,” says Joanna, “you had absolutely no contact prior to this? There wasn’t anyone in your Circle who bumped into him or holiday or something? No-one who was some distant acquaintance of his family or friends?”
“Nope. We wondered this too, but we’ve checked, there’s nothing. And our see-eye wasn’t that high either.” Amy leans forward and drops her voice. “To be honest, he isn’t even the type of guy I’d go for, normally. I’ve always had a thing for blonde men.”
“Mmm, yeah, me too,” grins Joanna. “Every time.”
Greg: “Oi!”
Amy continues, explaining that it didn’t stop there. No matter how many times she instructed her auto to revert back, it ignored her. In the space of one evening, her relationship status went from single to couple to engaged to married to...
“What?” asks Joanna.
Amy has paused, looking into space. She draws in on herself slightly, like a cold draught has blown through the room.
“...It said pregnant. After married. It went to pregnant.”
“Your relationship status claimed you were pregnant?” Joanna fails to stop an instinctive glance at Amy’s flat stomach. “Okay. Maybe your auto was randomly picking statuses off a list somewhere.”
“No. It wasn’t random. It was like... God, you’re going to think I’m mad, but it looked like my auto and Juan’s auto were... having a baby together.”
Greg: “Jo, if she offers you a cup of tea, don’t drink it.”
Amy shakes her head, brushing her hair back again. “I don’t know, it was all really weird, I didn’t understand half the crap it was coming out with, it was gobbledegook to me. I’m not a geek or anything.”
Joanna taps her teeth with a fingernail. “And what happened next?”
“Then it all stopped,” Amy shrugs. “It was like our autos just went back to normal. Maybe they rebooted or reset or something?”
“But now you had made contact with Juan-Miguel?”
“Yeah, I messaged him... he’d had the same thing happen to him. And we just, you know, got talking.”
Greg: “Hmm. If it’s true, then this is pretty consistent with what we know, right? Sounds like her auto was put on a BBX sever in February, which is why it went bonkers. It went looking for partners for her, like they do, and got it totally wrong.”
Joanna nods gently, to let him know she agrees. She already ran a trace of Amy Pearce’s auto, confirming it’s currently being run on a normal server. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t being run on a BBX server in February, like her own had been in April.
Pregnant. Joanna can’t get the word out of her head. Something about that is making her uneasy and she’s not sure why. The idea of autos having a baby! That’s some serious malfunction going on there. And maybe Amy’s right, it rebooted to clear the glitch. Autos do have self-diagnostic procedures, so they tend to maintain themselves and fix errors without the user noticing.
“It was all pretty crazy,” Amy says. “I was so freaked out I was going to uninstall everything and get rid of it.”
&nb
sp; Joanna nods. “Yours is a Macroverse auto, right? Which model?”
“The first one.”
“How do you mean?”
“It’s a prototype. Of the Auto-Mate™.”
Greg: “Wow, I remember those! That’s seriously retro!”
Yes, it is. Joanna remembers the Auto-Mate™ too, which hit the market while she was still at Trinity College and quickly became an obsession amongst the students. It was one of the first super-apps, which incorporated all online data into one place from existing email accounts, social media platforms, other apps and anywhere else. There were already several similar things on the market, but it was thanks to the Auto-Mate™ that the term ‘auto’ became industry standard for any digital assistant. Before long, all three of the O’Donnell sisters had them on their smartphones, autoing as much of their lives as they could.
“A prototype? How did you manage to get one of those?”
“My Mum. She worked there. She invented it in the first place, so she was always getting me to test the early versions. I’ve had the same auto since 2012.”
Greg: “Um... your heart rate just spiked again. That wasn’t me, was it?”
Joanna swallows. “You, er, you don’t still have it?”
“Sure. Hang on.” Amy gets up and walks out of the living room, going next door to what Joanna assumes is the bedroom. There’s the sound of pans clanking on a hissing gas stove behind the kitchen door, but otherwise Joanna’s alone for a moment.
“Greg,” she whispers, “run a check on Amy’s mother!”
Greg: “Right. Stand by! Okay, here you go. I don’t know why I’m whispering...”
Inside her Vades™, Joanna sees the profile of a woman in her sixties with long grey hair and glasses, and narrow features similar to Amy’s. There’s a faded X overlaid on her image. This is an unliving auto.
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