by Gerald Lynch
He and Ewan would talk some more, and soon. For now — zip up, zip out.
Chapter 15
In the operations room, the waiting Brigid was in a barely controlled dither: “Chief Thu called again and said he’ll be here soon!”
“Good, what’s to worry?”
She controlled her excitability, though she couldn’t look at him: “He says he wants the missing evidence.”
“Chief Thu can have it. What about the machete?”
“Frank wouldn’t say, even on an official communicator, but he did say to tell you this case is fairly closed. He insisted we stay put and not go near Anna Kynder till he gets here. C’mon already, give: what’s in McNicol’s manuscript? Where is it?”
“I left it at my apartment. There’s nothing in it, or not much. Big disappointment.”
She grew excited again. “So that’s where you’ve been. Wait: you went home first when you left the scene at McNicol’s and didn’t bring the evidence back here with you! Evidence from our number-one suspect, dead McNicol, whose bed was decorated with the murder weapon! Holy shit, Kevin!”
“It’s junk mostly, the ranting of a vindictive twit.”
“You left the illegally removed evidence in your apartment! Frank’ll have another conniption!”
He had to smile; he’d better not tell her that he never locked his door.
“Brigid, you are welcome to go to my apartment right now and retrieve it or read to your heart’s content. I’ll handle Frank. Tell me more about how it went at the scene.”
She reached behind nonchalantly to support herself on the edge of the table, but her hand was trembling. “Like I said, it took forever, what with MYCROFT crashing and all. Once we were up and running again, the MYCROFT scanbots took about a nanosecond to report that evidence had been removed.”
“How was Frank — I mean apart from my taking off with the evidence?”
“I’ve not known Chief Thu that long, but he was awfully upset over McNicol’s death, like he took it personally. He stood, like, forever with his face in his hands. If I may say so respectfully, it was highly unprofessional behaviour from our chief.”
Kevin squinted and nodded to himself. “You may. I have known him, like, forever, and that is not like Frank, like.”
She smirked at his mockery. “Then he went ape-shit about your leaving the scene. He said to tell you that he is still lead investigator on this case. He said he’d have to stop off at HQ to smooth things over for you about the missing evidence.”
“That’s something…”
“Are you with me, Kevin? Because he also said if you can’t explain yourself, you could be permanently retired and I could be busted back to bike patrol.”
“Then we’d better get to work before we’re denied MYCROFT access.”
Ertelle did a small double take. “What’s to work? With the murder weapon, McNicol’s as good as left us a signed confession. All that remains is to interrogate his likely accomplice, Anna Kynder, DeLint’s administrative assistant, but we’re not to move on her till Frank gets here.”
“Does Frank have you seriously worried about your career, Brigid?”
“No. Oh, I see: it’s the exclude-no-possibility thing. Okay, boss, partner, whatever, let’s get to work. Where to, as long as it’s not Anna Kynder?”
When he walked over and sat at the MYCROFT terminal, she exaggerated her surprise:
“Oh, please, Kevin, haven’t we seen enough vid? This DeLint, he’s infiltrated my dreams, and they’re all nightmares!” Her voice grew yet more melodramatic. “He was sleeping with me as I was waking up this morning, whispering in my ear about celebrating ourselves! I woke up aroused for Christ’s sake! It’s making me sick, Kevin, really sick! I’d prefer to be staking out Anna Kynder’s office till Frank gets here.”
Kevin paused — young women will say anything nowadays — then spoke to the monitor: “What was he wearing?”
“What? Who? DeLint in my dream? Please, I’m serious, I’m sick of the vids!”
“Me too. What was he wearing?”
“I…I dunno.” Her voice was finally normal.
“Try to imagine what DeLint wore to bed. Silk pyjamas? A flannel nightshirt and cap? What colour? Or commando?” He looked up at her. “And what size bed do you sleep in anyway that would hold DeLint too? I assume Mike was…on board for this? A fat DeLint sandwich?”
Ertelle grinned but said nothing. The grin faded to smug. Then all traces of self-satisfaction disappeared, leaving her smile weak and sympathetic.
Kevin watched her reflection on the dark monitor: Christ, she might be pretty again.
“But why think of DeLint that way?”
And quick? Quick.
“Because you weren’t thinking about DeLint, you’re thinking only of yourself, Sergeant Ertelle. Imagine DeLint. After a million years of a billion intelligent computers probing and scanning the arseholes of a million monkeys, no machine will ever begin to imagine. Know everything you can about everything connected to a case; remain open till it’s closed. We didn’t know enough about McNicol before barging in on him. We failed to imagine McNicol imagining the worst, and look what happened. Until this case officially closes, we need to find out all we can about Eugene DeLint.”
He activated the screen with a virtual tap and MYCROFT came alive with a quiet static bark like a throat clearing, as it had been doing. Kevin made his usual irritated face about this. Ertelle shrugged and continued:
“Father Beldon, when it comes to computers versus humans, you’re preaching to the converted.”
“Frank said you’re a wiz on MYCROFT.”
“Know thine enemy.”
“Will you take over here?”
“A flannel nightshirt, but no cap, commando underneath.”
He didn’t react. “Good, keep going.”
“Every night Mother brought her Eugene a thick mug of hot chocolate with a plump and powdery marshmallow bobbing on top. Tucked him in, perhaps a bit too attentively. She never failed to ask if he’d remembered to remove his underwear. She was something else, was Mother DeLint, in every sense Eugene’s creator. More than DeLint himself, Mother is to be thanked for Omphalos. Then she died. Abandoned Eugene continued to carry on conversations with her, probably used spiritualists or some other voodoo. Anna Kynder tried to fill the black hole Mother had left, but Auntie Anna’s salty nuts could never compensate for the absence of Mother’s sweet hot chocolate. Maybe surrogate Mom grew to hate her big insatiable baby. Maybe Anna Kynder used McNicol against DeLint. We should be down there talking with her, Kevin.”
“There may be hope for you yet, Sergeant Ertelle.”
She moved behind him. He could feel her with his neck. What if it turned out he liked her a lot? There’d be nothing romantic in it, he imagined, but there would be something of real feeling again. He didn’t like that.
He said, “Anna Kynder is the next most likely living suspect, and maybe still the most likely. Because, as I said, murder weapons can be faked and planted, and McNicol acted like no killer I’ve ever seen. For now, though, while we wait for our chief, the DeLint vids.”
He focused on the frame he’d frozen. “Would you show me again how to work the latest version of REIMAGINE?”
For close to two days Brigid Ertelle had been pacing alongside the windows at the far end of the room while at the business end Kevin chain-smoked his small cigars and reviewed the dump of vids. DeLint may have shunned Macro media, but he’d had OmVid record his every appearance since Omphalos was only Canada’s Food Bank.
Since Sunday night, MYCROFT had begun waking up with this mechanical bark. Kevin mumbled his complaints. Ertelle had summoned Omphalos IT, whose restricted diagnostics turned up nothing amiss. Now the screen changed without command and a message appeared:
WARNING: USER MAY BE ON FIRE!
Kevin cringed as at a bad smell: “What the…”
Ertelle lightly placed a hand on his shoulder and said with no little awe, “Kevin, MYCROFT is making a joke about your smoking. I’ll bet that static noise is a mock throat clearing!” She went open-mouth amazed: “It’s something about you, Kevin, not just the cigars!”
Kevin, with just a twitch in his deadpan look betraying his mild fright, managed to appear nonchalant. He wanted no special relationship with MYCROFT. He would not be joking partners with a machine.
MYCROFT had other ideas:
COULD REQUISITION SCANBOTS AND RUN MRI OF DETECTIVE LUDDITE’S LUNGS.
Kevin pinched his lips, shook his head, and stared at the monitor. “It’s not me, Sergeant Ertelle, it’s you. This machine is mocking your mockery of me.” Inadvertently demonstrating his familiarity with voice code, he established and twice confirmed secure connection, then commanded MYCROFT to cease and desist with noise and irrelevant messages. He shut it down. They waited impatiently through the reboot.
No such messages appeared again but the virtual smoker’s hack at wake-up had persisted.
Ertelle immediately described the problem to HQ, who called in the Mounties’ AI team, who were responsible for HQ MYCROFT.
Having been ordered to do nothing further, Kevin and Brigid waited irritably as neither Frank nor the Mounties arrived with any dispatch.
Twenty minutes later the RCMP team of four swept in on a wave of excitability. After much oddly solicitous “conversation” with MYCROFT, and as much poorly concealed frustration, they declared they could not investigate adequately unless Chief Thu or Detective Inspector Beldon removed the security lockout.
“Not now,” said Kevin, heading to his cot. “Clean it up as best you can, we have pressing work to do.”
“Then please…” When he saw that he’d be speaking to Kevin’s back, the sweating leader continued his plea with Ertelle: “Please do nothing to stunt MYCROFT’s…evolution, its growth, if you will. Try not to vocalize your criticisms; in fact, try, if you will please, to encourage the learner.”
“The what? What the hell are you talking about?” Ertelle asked icily. “Any tablet can talk convincingly.”
“Of course, of course,” said the tallest of the four, who was always nudged to answer by the pretty little blonde. “Apologies. Learner, as in master algorithm. But it’s not exactly talking, is it? And we’re not talking here about mere vocalization, Detective. Your —”
“Sergeant.”
“Well, Sergeant Ertelle, MYCROFT has been vocalizing expertly since VIRABELS-point-one, and you’d be hard-pressed in the latest version of even that program (point-seven, which is what you’re using here) to prove you’re not talking to another human. That clarified, this latest MYCROFT development is of a whole different order of machine-and-man communication —” He’d been poked. “I mean of course person. We secured permission to roll out HAWK-point-two on this system precisely because MYCROFT is super-secure; too secure as it turns out. We were immediately approved because someone high up wants only the best for the DeLint case. So this is something of a trial run of HAWK-two —”
“Look, all that means squat to me. Get it to stop the start-up bark, that’s all we want from you guys, and girl, I’m sorry, Ms.”
The group shuffled some, and ended up standing in a more bunched formation.
“We can’t.”
“That’s an order!” shouted Kevin from his cot.
Nudged again, the speaker adjusted his glasses with an upside-down thumb and found a placating tone:
“I mean, we are unable to interfere without jeopardizing years of work on HAWK-two. This communication is potentially much more than mere…well, I know that someone who is not a computer engineer specializing in vocalization, well… Just bear with it, please, officers, and do please report any new developments. We have been dreaming of just such a sign as this but never really dared expect such a major advance on the asymptotic growth curve so soon — a non-verbal communication! Because that’s what this truly appears! And coupled with a rhetoric of irony? We had of course fully expected evolution, I mean given the sophistication of HAWK-two’s mock-synaptic algorithms. But this, please, if you would only permit us —”
“Okay already, we get it. Now, get out.”
That had come from Kevin stretched on his cot.
The AI headed for the door, the men with flaming faces, the blonde pursing snootily at oblivious Kevin.
Kevin raised his arms straight up and shouted at the ceiling: “Stop!”
The lead man halted, causing a brief cascade of rear-ending. Ertelle snickered into her fist.
“Why HAWK?” Kevin asked in a reasonable tone.
The female answered: “HAWK-point-one was named in honour of the great Stephen Hawking for his pioneering work in computer vocalizing.”
Kevin covered his face with his hands and rocked his head back and forth. “Sweet Jesus. MYCROFT may be making a more complex joke with his bark than you think, as in hock, as in a throat-clearing spit, which is what I’d assumed. If it starts adding the two I’m taking a sledgehammer to it.”
MYCROFT defied him: “Hock-two!”
The AI team trembled closer, the blonde’s hand reaching to the leader’s shoulder. It was pure nerd joy.
Still on his back, Kevin raised his brow. “It is learning. That’s a vast improvement on the start-up cough. MYCROFT could give a whole new meaning to hacker.”
The AI team looked confused.
MYCROFT, drily: “Hardy-har-har-har.”
The leader looked like he might cry. “Something’s gone horribly wrong already with tonal articulation.”
Kevin swung his feet to the floor and said, “I hope so. But I suspect that was an ironic laugh. For God’s sake, for my sake, whatever you do, don’t ever add the letter E to the program name!”
Into the furrowed pause MYCROFT did its thing: “Hock-two-ee!”
The four trembled as one, a virtual AI team orgasm. And they spoke as one what had obviously been talked about many times: “Thinking, thinking and vocalizing, as a human would! Joking! Joking! Joking!”
Kevin said calmly, “Okay, eggheads, whatever you did to undo my command about no vocalizing, go back and undo yours.”
They wouldn’t move until Brigid Ertelle actually circled behind and ushered them back to the table, though of course only one was needed to perform the operation.
“Resistance is futile,” the leader nodded down to the other three as they shuffled along.
He had the blonde take the seat and stood behind her, giving the other two men elbow room only.
Again leaving the room, the leader found a placating tone: “Would you please keep a…a log of events. And please reconsider permitting vocal —”
“We’ll be in touch,” Kevin called. “Don’t call us, et cetera, et cetera.” Up and returning across the floor, he spoke ahead of himself: “When a million mocking monkeys, with billions of talking tablets, come streaming from the singularity of my butthole. Seriously, why should hearing bullshit from a computer be such a big deal anyway? A babbling baby is way more impressive.”
Ertelle stared daggers after the AI team. “I’m reporting that door-slam. The disrespect to you!”
Chapter 16
Throughout his painstaking viewings of the past two days, Kevin had frequently summoned Ertelle to execute some function on MYCROFT. Now she said, “You’ve unintentionally shown that you know MYCROFT’s reliable voice and gesture command, Detective Beldon, which is much more efficient than this holographic keyboard. I mean, since you refuse to learn EsperHand, which is by far the most efficient.”
“Command, please, Sergeant Brigid Ertelle, by whatever means you prefer. At my age I’m not about to talk to MYCROFT like it’s a deaf mute and I’m some raving lunatic. And this latest development with the joking discou
rages me further. It was all my tactile old self could stomach to manage the transition to a virtual keyboard.”
On such calls she stood off his left shoulder and talked more loudly than necessary as she reached across and activated the hovering holographic keys.
Now, he stood away from the computer. “Isolate and define the female on the far right.”
“The female on the far right,” she gently chided, taking the seat. Her right-hand fingers began knitting the air as MYCROFT responded like a thought. “A lovely occasion. This is one of the few I’ve scanned again myself, just for the pleasure of it. There’s nothing relevant in it, I can…assure you. Wait, I moved this old vid coin to the viewed pile.” She hurried on, “Where were you on this occasion, Kevin?”
“Making the streets of Ottawa safe for women and children, Detective Ertelle. And you did move it to the viewed pile. Luckily I remembered its signature code.”
“Uh, sorry, but why lucky? I made the connection only before I left last night when I saw her in this vid: Kelly Beldon is your daughter, right? She’s been a hero of mine for years. Remarkable coincidence, that a daughter and father should both be…”
“I’m flattered, Brigid, and honoured.” Smiling as companionably as he could manage, he looked at her, but turned back to the monitor when he saw she was blushing.
“But neither Freud nor Jung nor MYCROFT nor Sherlock Holmes himself believes in coincidence, and neither should you, Sergeant.”
“I asked Frank for this assignment, Kevin. Thank you, I’m here to learn.”
Frank again. In forgetting herself she testifies to their conspiracy. “Did you now? Then I’m doubly honoured. But didn’t Frank assign you of his own accord?”