Hashtag

by David Wake

  Count backwards: ten, nine… and then he’d woken up with a desperate thirst and a feeling of something pushing on his forehead. There had been a tingling, a crawling sensation as if there were spiders on his face, but it was just the links sliding along the pinholes drilled through his skull to his frontal lobe. Soon his nerves learnt what this strange intrusion was and how it opened up the world.

  “Don’t think with your tongue hanging out,” his Mother had insisted. But it had been hard to form the thoughts at first and then he was thinking to his school friends, wondering what all the fuss had been about. It had been easy, apart from all the choir practice needed to keep his vocal chords working, and he couldn’t remember when he’d had to form the special characters before a person or the hashtag for a subject. Months later he’d fallen over in the playground and been bombarded with abusive thoughts about calling for his Mother. When he’d formed the thought, he turned ‘Mother’ into ‘@elenor3941’ automatically: it was second nature. He hadn’t been aware of the hashes and ampersands for years now.

  “Woah!” he said aloud, leaning forward to put his head between his legs.

  Doctor Ridge paused in his mopping. “Scary eh?” Idiot, he thought.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Careful you don’t buffer too many worries.”

  “No, er… I’ll not think.”

  Oliver leant back, closing his eyes. It felt like he was falling forward.

  “It’s the roof,” said the Doctor.

  “I didn’t think…”

  “No, but I can guess your… hmmm…” Ridge circled his temple with a finger to signify a mental process. God, he’s slow, the man thought.

  “I guess the language has changed somewhat. Before thought, mental processes were called… er…”

  “Hmmm…”

  Ridge went back to his work, realised he’d finished and propped the mop and bucket against the wall.

  “The roof?” Oliver asked.

  “Lead, cables – something to do with too much copper – or just that we’re a long way down.”

  “But your thinking during the autopsy was clear.”

  “The cutting room’s down there, there’s a skylight,” said Ridge. “Not here though. We probably don’t want to encourage people to hang around down here anyway. Too many ghosts.”

  “I wish I could ask her ghost,” said Oliver, signifying the corpse drawer with a hand gesture.

  “Aye. We could hold a séance. They used to do that.”

  “Did it work?”

  “What do you think?” What a moron, you can’t talk to the dead.

  “She was murdered.”

  “You don’t say?” State the obvious, why don’t you?

  The man’s thoughts were very clear because Oliver’s Thinkerfeed was otherwise completely empty, even so Oliver ignored the jibes.

  “Why did you do the autopsy so late?”

  Doctor Ridge waggled his left hand at Oliver to show his blank wrist. “Can’t noodle in here, so I lose track of time.”

  “Difficult to kill yourself by smashing your face in,” Oliver said.

  “Even more difficult to scalp yourself, post–mortem.”

  “Scalp!?”

  “You know, Red Indian style,” said Ridge, and he unnecessarily lifted his slight fringe and mimed cutting his forehead off.

  “Maybe that was someone else?” said Oliver, losing his way in his chain of reasoning. “Except that an iBrow isn’t worth anything, a bit of iridium and gold, I suppose, but it’s too small to be worth… the bother. Simpler…”

  “Drink of water?”

  “Please… simpler to consider the death and the scalping as one event with one culprit.”

  Ridge turned on the tap at the basin in the corner, swilled out a cup and brought it over to Oliver.

  “Thanks.”

  Oliver drank, cooling his raw throat and taking the unpleasantness away. He was glad to be rid of the taste of vomit.

  Murdered or not murdered, he thought. Murdered… ah, buffered, damn.

  “Talking, stops thinking,” said Ridge.

  “Are you psychic or something?”

  The Doctor pointed two fingers at his own eyes as if he was going to gouge them out, but he just wiggled his hand side to side. “I saw your eyes move.”

  “Who was she?”

  “No idea.”

  “The code?”

  “She’s been scalped, her iBrow removed.”

  “Oh, but perhaps she didn’t have one.”

  “There are lesions in the frontal lobe and cerebralisation strands left over. It was a five series, the shape’s unmistakable.”

  “But no–one’s missing,” Oliver insisted. That was a stupid thing to say: whether or not the iBrow was removed didn’t make any difference to the missing person status.

  “Yes, it was a stupid thing to say,” Doctor Ridge snapped. “What was your time parameter?”

  “Last week.”

  “Earlier than that, she’s been dead for three to four weeks, a month.”

  “No!”

  That meant he’d wasted all that time: he noodled a new list with an adjusted time parameter to include those missing weeks.

  Nothing.

  “Damn!”

  “Buffered?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ever deleted?”

  “No,” said Oliver, genuinely puzzled. What was the man talking about, he thought – he was getting a headache.

  “Bring up your recent thoughts.”

  Oliver did: what was the man talking about? The extended Noodle search. Murdered or not murdered, murdered… ah, buffered, damn. How many places were officially communications black spots? Test. Another speaker. Who is Unknown 271? Morgues are dreadful places, really awful.

  “Now, poke it.”

  “Sorry?”

  “With your mind.”

  “Oh, right… er… ah…”

  The floating thoughts stabilised, and he had a hint of ‘rethink’ as usual.

  “There’s just rethink,” but then Oliver realised that there was also ‘edit’ and ‘delete’. He jogged at ‘delete’ and ‘what was the man talking about’ – suddenly he couldn’t remember what had been there.

  “People just think and don’t realise that there’s delete,” said Doctor Ridge, “though to be fair, there aren’t many places where it’s possible.”

  “You can, er… set a delay,” said Oliver, vaguely aware that he’d heard of the possibility.

  “You need your remote,” said Ridge, now wiggling an imaginary gadget near his forehead. “And your pin code and password.”

  Every good pa–pah… “Yes,” Oliver said aloud, “How come you don’t get a headache?”

  “I’ve a lot of time down here, so I played with all the settings, not just the spam filters. Did you know you can switch from network to recognition modes entirely?”

  “Can you?”

  “I can.”

  Deleting is weird enough, I’ll never get the hang of that – ouch!

  Ridge smirked, then said, “He made a mess of her forehead.”

  Oliver felt bile rising again.

  “You’d need an electric saw or something for that.”

  The iBrow filaments would have intertwined with the neurons of the frontal lobe, brain matter twisting and contorting like spaghetti around growing ivy. Oliver realised his metaphors were all over the place, but his head felt very strange, almost loose as if he was cut adrift. How could you follow a chain of thought when you couldn’t store the first links? And the lack of other people’s thoughts in his head made him both euphoric and desperately lonely.

  “Jellicoe will want an update,” Ridge said.

  At Jellicoe, Oliver started thinking, but then he realised. He fancied a drink anyway.

  “Thanks,” said Oliver.

  “You’re welcome.” Idiot.

  “I don’t like your tone.”

  “I’ve been polite,” said Ridge; here we go.r />
  “Your thoughts are insulting,” Oliver said. “You say one thing, you think another, it’s hypocritical.”

  “Do you judge a man by his thoughts or his words?”

  “His thoughts… words… I don’t know.”

  “You judge a man by his actions.” Something to think about, sonny.

  Oliver was glad to get out. The corridor seemed wider and then suddenly the cacophony of thoughts returned like a comforting blanket. Once he felt a faint network signal, he ran the last few paces until he was completely reconnected with everyone he knew.

  At Ollie, you’ve to see Jellicoe, Freya thought.

  New menu at the Palatine.

  Hash Charlie, Hash Foxtrot, Snatch Squad Charlie is having a beer and skittles evening, all welcome.

  Five members of Snatch Squad Charlie liked this.

  Special thoughts for special people.

  Chen, Sasha and Vincent have birthdays this month.

  Don’t forget your Sergeant’s Exam this Thursday.

  Surprise Me for that special present.

  It settled down and only those threads that interested him became apparent.

  Hash Charlie, what time is the beer and skittles?

  Except for some intrusions.

  He remembered that Unknown 271 was unknown, a more solid memory than the fleeting words and thoughts of Doctor Ridge, and then recalled the obvious missing persons list: no missing persons in the last six months.

  At Ollie, did you understand that you have to see Jellicoe, Freya thought.

  Square one, he thought. At Freya, yes, sorry, thought problem.

  No luck, Mithering thought.

  I’m afraid not.

  Oh, you saw Doctor Ridge, Freya thought, or Doctor Hassan?

  That’s it, Ridge, Oliver thought back, on my way now.

  Jellicoe was in the same booth in the Lamp. It was as if he hadn’t moved. If this is going to be the regular haunt for my meetings with my line–manager, then it’s going to be expensive, Oliver thought.

  Special thoughts, only £9.50 a month.

  Hash Charlie, Hash Foxtrot, beer and skittles, 7:30.

  “My round,” Jellicoe said. There were two pints on the table. “An Inspector’s salary is more than a Detective Constable’s after all.”

  This is totally against regulations–

  Jellicoe held his finger up: “Ah!”

  Oliver hadn’t finished the thought: Another psychic.

  Once he was settled, Oliver picked up his glass and acknowledged Jellicoe’s generosity with a ‘cheers’. He took a sip, it was horrible.

  “When’s your Sergeant’s Exam?”

  Oliver didn’t need to noodle that one. “Thursday.”

  Hash Charlie, Hash Foxtrot, 7:30 on what day?

  Jellicoe grunted, “Anyone take an interest in the case?”

  You, Oliver thought.

  “Apart from me.”

  So you can hear thoughts when you want to.

  “When I want to, yes,” said Jellicoe. “Go on.”

  “Er… Freya–”

  “Chief Superintendent Turner?”

  “Yes, and my girlfriend… well, not recently… and Chen, Mox, someone called Mithering.”

  “You’ll get more of that when the papers come out.”

  “Papers?”

  “It’s an expression. All the vultures will descend to pick at the bones as it were. Drink up.”

  Oliver was not happy. He wanted to be somewhere else and the beer and skittles conversation jumped to the fore.

  7:30pm this evening, stupid! Hash Charlie, Hash Foxtrot.

  “Freya doesn’t come down here,” Jellicoe said.

  Oliver couldn’t imagine the Super down in this dive. “No.”

  “Too good for the likes of us.”

  “She’s uniform, so… it’s not… she can’t, you know, er… drink.”

  “Don’t mind if I do – same again.”

  Jellicoe had downed his. Oliver did the same and felt himself go off–line.

  At Babs_lamp, can I… oh, damn.

  Oliver dragged himself over to the bar and waited to be served. Eventually he was. Pubs were the one place that had stayed stuck in the last century, if not earlier; full of those stupefied into thoughtlessness.

  Oliver spilt most of one pint when he turned round and so placed that one in front of himself. Jellicoe swapped them over, his little finger raised in a strangely polite manner for someone so crumpled in appearance.

  “Why did he scalp her then?” Jellicoe asked.

  “Oh, well, maybe he took the iBrow as a trophy,” Oliver said, and then, warming to the idea, “they do that – serial killers. I’ve seen it in profiling: trophy collection. The killer wants something to remind him about it, so he can, er… relive the experience.”

  “Why not just remember the thoughts?”

  “In public?”

  “Reliving the experience without a thought would be tricky.”

  Oliver nodded as he realised that was true. “Not many serial killers now.”

  “No,” said Jellicoe. “Can’t really stalk prostitutes broadcasting your intentions to all and sundry, can you?”

  Oliver nodded in agreement. “One victim doesn’t make a serial killer.”

  “How do you know there’s only one victim?”

  “Only one body.”

  “We didn’t know about that one, except by accident. There could be many, many more.”

  “No–one’s missing.”

  “This one isn’t missing.”

  Oliver felt flummoxed: he noodled why people might not be registered as missing.

  “We should examine the scene of the crime,” Jellicoe said.

  Oliver remembered that to be an ‘officially missing person’ the last thought had to be more than 48 hours old, or a non–thinking individual who was reported as missing.

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  “Sorry,” said Oliver. “I was just… we’ve got a body with no possible missing person to match. Well, that’s, er… impossible.”

  “At least she wasn’t killed in a locked room.”

  “What?”

  “Drink up.”

  Jellicoe led the way outside, stopping to whisper to one of the detectives smoking at the doorway. Oliver didn’t know who they were. He recognised them as he walked past when their iBrows came into range, of course, but he was none the wiser. When the conversation was over, Jellicoe and Oliver walked towards the police station. A car rolled up and stopped: the driver was Chen. It was strange that Jellicoe was too drunk to think at Chen and yet here was a car on cue.

  Jellicoe got in the back and Oliver in the front.

  You’re not thinking, Chen thought.

  Oliver made a drinking motion with his hand and rolled his eyes in the direction of the back seat.

  “Chedding car park, James,” said Jellicoe.

  “It’s Chen, Sir.”

  “Thank you, James.”

  They drove in silence, which gave Oliver a chance to check up on some thoughts: Jasmine had asked him to unfollow her, he was a git and other variations from her friends, Mithering wondered why he’d gone quiet, a DC had killed a woman in the car park apparently (where do these ideas come from – ouch!), Chen had warned Mox of their impending arrival, Mox was complaining about the interface to the fingerprint machine at the scene of the crime and Oliver was to drop by Freya’s office when he had the chance.

  Mox had the security shutters up, so Chen was able to drive straight into Chedding’s car park. They descended and drove between the empty bays towards a bright light. Chen brought the car to a slow crawl, indicated and then parked neatly between the white lines.

  They got out, Jellicoe signalled Chen to stay in the car. Chen nodded and glazed over, a sure sign that he was surfing the Thinkersphere.

  The scene was the same as before, except for the lamps set up on stands around the vehicle to illuminate it and the quaint finger print dust over the do
or handles.

  Jellicoe leant against a pillar, his arm out to hold the concrete to support himself.

  “Fancy a snifter,” Jellicoe said. He held out a hip flask.

  Not on duty, Oliver thought. Ow!

  He was still technically drunk. Two pints and he realised he’d need the loo soon.

  Jellicoe wiggled the hip flask, sloshing the contents suggestively.

  Oliver shook his head: he checked, poking his thoughts, and he’d not buffered that one. Of course, you wouldn’t want all your drunken thoughts to fly off once you sobered up. The trick only worked in black spots, he realised.

  “Suit yourself.” The man lurched himself away from the pillar and secreted the hip flask back in his pocket. “Well?”

  Oliver looked at the crime scene. He was too used to examining the thoughts of suspects and victims to have ever really worried about physical evidence.

  “It’s a car,” he said.

  “Come on.”

  It was a four–door Tiger Fire, neatly parked, although he wasn’t sure how anyone had managed to drive it past the barriers and into the abandoned car park. He opened the driver’s door and got in. Comfortable, although he shivered when he imagined the presence of the late passenger lying behind him.

  Looking round he examined the rear view mirror, the back seat empty and blood stained. There was the steering wheel and the autopilot. He checked the vehicle was in ‘safe’ and thought for a pairing.

  Nothing: flat as a pancake.

  It ought to have tried to boot up. Modern batteries last… he noodled, the Tiger Fire used Benning Supers, so two years would be perfectly reasonable according to the advertising. Maybe not to drive it far, but the CPU ought to have thought back at least.

  Looking again, more carefully, he saw it: the colour e–ink display still showed the aircon settings. It was ‘on’ and ‘cool’ with the fan to ‘mild’. It had obviously run until the battery gave out. Whatever else, the car must have sent a reminder that the aircon was on when the door was closed. The driver must have synced with the on–board computer to have thought these aircon settings in the first place.