Self Made

by M. Darusha Wehm

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Monte’s, while being Dex’s first choice as an interview location, wasn’t going to do. Ivy had been there several times and Dex had even met both Ivy and Bellinger there before. No, he needed a neutral location, so he asked Annabelle. She named a few spots that fulfilled all of his needs — quiet, public but out of the way locations. Dex logged into Marionette City and scouted out Annabelle’s bars, finally deciding on a place called Lucky’s. It was dark, with an old fashioned dark wood and burgundy leather decor. The place was small, but there would be no problem getting a table and the most important feature was that there was a back door. It meant that Annabelle could track Bellinger’s movements if she tried to run.

  He got there early and found a secluded table near the back. He had received a confirmation ping from Bellinger earlier and he sent her a link to the bar. He had reviewed the recording of his earlier meeting with her, but he was still unprepared for her arrival. He had been expecting the subdued redhead that he’d met at Monte’s with Ivy and the others, not the silver coated creature who linked in to Lucky’s.

  The face of the avatar was the same, but that was about all. Where she had been ordinary and quiet before, she was shiny and glowing now. Even her hair glittered in the low lights of the bar. She scanned the room and Dex pinged her so she would more easily find her way to the table. She walked over to him and he thought that maybe strutted was a better term. She reminded him a little of the dancers that Mickey Udo had visited with Reuben. It was disconcerting.

  She approached the table and the avatars shook hands. She sat across from him and Dex watched as a virtual White Russian appeared in front of her. He sipped his dark and stormy, wondering if she was getting her drink with or without the neural stims. “Mr. Dexter,” she said, her voice low and even. “It’s nice to see you again.”

  “And you, Ms. Bellinger,” he answered. He studied her and saw that she kept fussing with her appearance. A hand to the hair, slight corrections to the rate of shine on her slivery skin, expecting fabric where there was none. Dex guessed that the new look was, in fact, quite new. She sipped her drink and then looked around the small bar.

  “I see that your good taste in drinking establishments hasn’t diminished any,” she smiled.

  “It’s not a bad little place,” Dex said, smoothly. “So, what did you want to see me about?” she asked, stirring her drink absently.

  “It’s about the case I’m working on that Ms. Velasquez helped me with,” Dex lied. “I was hoping your could clear up a few things for me.”

  “Oh?” Bellinger said, the pitch of her voice rising slightly. She continued to stir her drink rhythmically.

  “You’re a programmer at the same firm as Ms. Velasquez, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes,” she answered, guardedly.

  “What’s your specialization there?”

  “I design three dimensional interactive virtual user interfaces.”

  “Avatars?”

  “Usually,” she smiled and sipped her drink. When she replaced it on the table, she began stirring it again.

  “Good,” Dex said. “That’s exactly what I need. I was hoping you could take a look at some code for me. It’s part of a case — I can’t talk about that, of course — but I could really use a professional’s eye on it. May I send it to you?”

  Bellinger stirred her drink faster and said, “Sure.” Dex pinged her system and sent her a copy of the code that his attacker had used against him, the code that had killed Reuben. He watched as she stirred her drink, then all of a sudden her avatar went completely still.

  “Ms. Bellinger,” he said, but there was no response. He opened up a voice channel with Annabelle, who was already in mid sentence.

  “... still there, she just isn’t sending any input. If you just wait, she’ll come back. I think.”

  “Okay,” he subvocalized to Annabelle, “I’m going to turn you off again. Use the emergency channel if you need to talk to me.” He cut the connection and waited for Renna Bellinger to unfreeze.

  • • •

  It didn’t take long for her avatar to start responding again, but her demeanor had changed so much it was as if she were a different person. She no longer stirred her drink incessantly, instead she completely ignored it. Rather, Bellinger focussed intensely on Dex, her head cocked slightly to the left. She seemed calmer, almost serene somehow. It threw Dex off.

  “I suppose you’re very proud of yourself,” she said, finally, with only a hint of malice. “Catching the big bad killer.” Her voice was sarcastic and Dex wondered for the first time if she might be under the influence of some drug. “What gave it away?” she asked. “Was it my coding style? Did you find something that tied me to the bot that tried to pass the code to your avatar? How did you figure it out?”

  “You told me,” Dex answered.

  “How?” Bellinger said, her voice getting louder with equal parts curiosity and anger. “We’ve hardly ever even spoken. When did I say anything that could have tipped you off?”

  He answered quietly, “About twenty seconds ago.” She looked at him with that calm silent gaze and Dex waited for her next move.

  “You didn’t know,” she finally said, her voice suddenly quiet. “You were just trying to find out what I knew, what I’d say. You never knew until now.”

  Dex shrugged. “I hate to ruin the illusion, but most of good detective work is just watching and waiting. And being at the right place at the right time to find the answer. So, now that I do know, do you want to talk about it? Tell me why you did it?”

  Bellinger leaned back in her chair, a cigarette materializing between her fingers. Dex wondered if there were some kind of neural stims involved here as well. “She never even told you that I’m her wife, did she?” she asked, her voice hard with bitterness now. Dex shook his head, hoping that he was successfully concealing his surprise.

  “We met through work, at one of those awful mandatory parties for all employees. They sat us together by classification and I ended up next to Ivy. We hit it off right away. Maybe it was because we were doing the same kind of work, or maybe it was that we both liked to talk about ideas — what things meant, how the world was changing, how we were a part of it all.

  “We started to spend a lot of time together in Marionette City. We’d been together a couple of years when we decided to get married. I know it’s an antiquated notion, but we felt like we needed something, some event to mark the occasion. It was one of the things we liked to talk about, how virtuality had created a renewed need for ritual and structure.” She took a drag off of her cigarette and looked off somewhere over Dex’s left shoulder. Her voice took on a wistful quality, replacing the bitter tone she’d had.

  “It was such a beautiful day. We flew over the great canyon on Tropical Island, hand in hand, watching the sun go down. We were both so happy; I thought I was the luckiest person in any world, physical or virtual.”

  Bellinger refocussed on Dex and pinged his system. He accepted the download and opened an image of Ivy’s and Bellinger’s avatars, each dressed in beautiful gowns, grinning under a canopy of flowers and bells. “You both looked lovely,” he said.

  As if she hadn’t even heard him, Bellinger continued. “It was wonderful at first. We were even happier after the wedding than before. But then Ivy started getting distant. We started to meet less often and she wasn’t as interested in me, in my ideas, in my form.” She ran her hands over her shimmering body. “I tried everything — leaving her alone, paying more attention to her; I even changed my avatar for her in case that was it.” She began to cry, virtual tears flowing down her cheeks, and her voice fought against a sob.

  “It was a long time coming,” she said, “and at first I didn’t notice. But she was changing and she was changing into someone who didn’t want me. I had been moonlighting as a contractor with Stella Bish and I heard about a new hot shot UI developer who’d started — some guy named Reube
n Cobalt. I was impressed, so I checked him out. I never would have guessed...

  “At first I thought she was in love with him. She never mentioned him, of course, but I knew the boards she read, the company she kept. Just because her name wasn’t there, that didn’t mean anything. She would have to know him and he was everything she would want. I was convinced that he was stealing her away from me.” Her voice broke and she swallowed hard. “I didn’t realize how right I truly was.

  “I followed him around the ’nets and of course, I broke into the logs. I saw where he went, who he talked to, the things he likes to look at. I should have seen it long before I did. It didn’t take long to have the proof and I couldn’t pretend any more that I didn’t know. He was her multi. He was what she wanted to become. And he didn’t even know me.

  “I don’t know how she thought she could keep it from me,” Bellinger frowned at the thought and the sob she’d been trying to stifle nearly broke through. “I’d know her code anywhere. Did she really think I wouldn’t notice that it was her? I loved everything about her, of course I’d see her in his code.”

  She looked directly at Dex, her eyes full of tears, her chin quivering. “People change, I understand that. Of course, we all do. But we were supposed to change together.” Her voice broke again, but she kept it together. “Instead, she was going to leave me and become someone else, someone entirely different. And I’d never see her again. How could I let that happen? I couldn’t just let him take the woman I love away from me.” The sob finally broke free and Bellinger hung her head, letting the tears flow freely.

  Dex sat there a moment, watching Renna cry. Then, he carefully turned off the video stream to Annabelle and turned off his own recording. He stood and walked around the table to where the woman sat weeping. He sat down next to her and put his arms around her. “I understand,” he whispered and held her, slowly rocking her, until the tears stopped.

  “What is going to happen to me?” she asked once she had stopped crying.

  “I don’t really know,” Dex said, softly. “What you did isn’t technically illegal, so you don’t have to worry on that front. But,” he paused and lifted her chin so that she looked him in the eye. “I am going to have to tell Ivy.” He expected her to start weeping again, but instead she got a stoic look on her face.

  “It was only ever a matter of time,” she said, resignation in her voice. “Even if she never knew what I did, she’d still leave me. I see that now. Maybe it’s better this way — at least she’ll see how much I love her.”

  Dex sighed, wondering not for the first time why so many people think that the best way to demonstrate love is by hurting themselves or others. He asked her if she needed him to call anyone for her, but she said that she would be fine. Then he left her and wrote a brief report to Ivy. He sent the report, along with a copy of the recording he’d made of most of his conversation with Renna. It was up to her how she dealt with the situation. His part was done.