It wasn’t an altogether unpleasant sensation, really. More like a gentle massage on the back of his neck, where his brain stem met his spine. But it wasn’t a real buzz. If it had been, if he had really been clicked, he would know. He hated getting clicked; regretted ever getting the damn thing installed in the first place. All it ever did was feed his anxiety. The knowledge that anyone with his code could contact him at any time, day or night, put him on constant alert and made him feel these phantom vibrations. He imagined back to his grandfather’s time, when people carried communication devices around in their pockets, and wondered if they had had the same problem. Would they feel a buzzing coming from the device, only to inspect it and discover that no one was trying to contact them? He figured they probably would. In fact, he thought, you could probably trace that phenomenon back to the origins of language itself. An errant grunt, emanating from some cave, is mistaken for a greeting, and Neolithic awkwardness ensues. We’re no different, he thought. We’re still hearing those grunts. We’ve just changed the timbre.
Everything fights so forcefully for your attention, you either crumble under its weight, or you tune it all out. Sounds shouting at you in three-hundred-sixty-degree stereo become nothing more than mere whisperings, simple suggestions, easily ignored. Lights of every color flashing in epileptic frenzy don’t even warrant a sideways glance. How boring this world is, he thought. Every attempt to jerk us awake only pulls us deeper into our slumber.
The kid didn’t look any older than nineteen, but Xan knew that looks could be deceiving. Could be older than me, he thought, with all the shit that’s possible these days. Could be, but probably wasn’t. Kids die all the time. So much, in fact, that it just becomes something else to tune out.
Xan walked through the laser cordon, the chip in his neck granting him access. The ME was already there, taking notes on his gold-tattooed forearm. The data was transmitted directly to his chip, as well as to the cloud backup in the tower. He noticed Xan and stopped tapping.
“Someone spiked this guy’s punchbowl, Xan,” the ME said, stepping over the body, presenting his clenched fist in front of him. They bumped fists, and then Xan knelt to take a look.
“Poison?” he asked.
“Looks like it. Don’t know what kind, yet. Gimme a few hours and the tox lab’ll have a full report ready.”
“A few hours?” Xan was surprised. “What is this, the twentieth century?”
The ME winced and nodded. “Yeah, I know. Should be done already, except our system’s shot. Overheated. We’re on air cooling until we can get it low enough that the liquid doesn’t boil. You know what that means.”
“Yeah,” Xan said. It was bad news. The computer in the tower was quantum. It ran thousands, millions of calculations simultaneously. Incredibly effective, but hot. On a normal night, it was no problem. The computer was done working after only a matter of seconds, and the power supplies had plenty of time to cool off. On particularly busy nights, though, they could run non-stop for hours, at which point the liquid coolant would heat to the point of boiling, eventually fizzing noxious gas into the air and congealing into a crusty sludge which would harden mere seconds after the computer was turned off. In that case, they would have to switch to more traditional, silicon-based computers. This must be a busy night, Xan thought. Any busier, and the fans would bust, and they’d be on paper and pen, like the detectives of legend. When efficiency tech fails, it does so in exponentially ironic fashion.
“Do you at least have an ID?” Xan asked.
“Well, that’s not my job,” the ME replied, “but--”
“But you do.”
“That’s right. His name’s Ranger Epsilon. Little shit-stick, from what I could tell. Started growing weed in his mom’s basement at ten years old, moved on to full-scale distribution only a few years later. Probably caused a lot of misery, in his short life.”
“Weed,” Xan sighed. “Great.”
“Yeah. Real potent stuff, too. The shit they warn you about in those videos.”
Weird how words can change their meaning, in such short intervals. In Xan’s grandfather’s day, “weed” was what they called marijuana. It was illegal, then. People actually thought it was dangerous. Now, you’d be hard pressed to find any consumer product that didn’t include at least some form of cannabis. Coffee, face creams, hell, Xan even had a pair of socks that were lined with cannabinoid oil. Helped him focus, relax. Helped his anxiety. It seemed silly, now, to think of how scared people used to be of it, but he guessed the past was supposed to look silly. That’s what made it the past.
This new weed was something worthy of fear. It was a psychotropic plant of alien origin. It gave you all the basic hallmarks of recreational drug use, with an added effect: it over-stimulated your medial prefrontal cortex, one of the parts of the brain responsible for distinguishing musical tones. This in itself was not so dangerous; the worst that you might experience would be extreme sensitivity to sound until the drug wore off. But, for those who had chips integrated into their nervous systems, it was often lethal. The chip’s primary function was to collect and collate data. Since the universe is nothing more than matter vibrating at different frequencies, the chip relied heavily on its ability to recognize minute oscillations in air pressure, or, as the sales brochure said, to “hear the music of the world.” A hyperactive medial prefrontal cortex meant much more for the chip to process, and would often result in the damn thing shorting out, sending a jolt of electricity through the body, stopping the heart. They called it “power-stroking.”
“Did he power-stroke?” Xan asked the ME.
“Well, the chip shorted, but I think he was dead by then. See how his veins are all bunched up and weird right there? Something injected into his bloodstream. That’s what did him in, I’ll bet. Unfortunately, with his chip shorted, we can’t log in to his biometrics to see what it was. And with the supercomputer in the tower out, we won’t know until the tox results come back.”
“What the hell kind of a name is ‘Ranger Epsilon’?” Xan asked.
“The kind you give yourself. It’s legal, though. Had it changed through the courts. But, privacy laws being what they are these days, we can’t track down what his birth name was. We’re living in the true land of opportunity, pal. Life not going your way? Log out of your chip, sign a form, and log back in a new person. I’ve heard of people who had as many as six profiles on their chip at any given time.”
“So, what do I have to go on?”
“Not much. He had this in his pocket. A receipt for a falafel place off Greenville. He must have gone there earlier tonight. Oh, and this.” The ME reached down and moved Epsilon’s head. On the back of the neck, right where his chip was, there was a triangle of tightly-grouped holes.
“What’s with those holes?” Xan asked.
“Ranger here had a land-line.”
“What’s that?”
“I’d only heard rumors, until now. Apparently, you take a shit-load of weed and then plug your chip directly into a data source. Most likely the subterranean cable system.”
“That’s still operational?” Xan said. The underground cables had been the original city-wide data network, before the supercomputer in Reunion Tower switched over to wireless, roughly fifteen years before.
The ME continued. “Yeah, looks like it. Not that it’s maintained, or anything. But the information still flows, if you have a power source.”
“But wouldn’t that stroke your chip like a motherfucker?”
“Actually, no. When you use a land-line, your chip is only the means of connection. Your body powers it, and, thanks to the weed, your prefrontal cortex acts as the receiver. It takes an incredible tolerance to the drug, but, if you can pull it off, it’s like you yourself become the chip for the larger body of the city. Looks like Ranger had stepped up to level two.”
“Thanks, Bilko,” Xan said, hoping he had remembered the ME’s name correctly. “You’ve been a big help.”
He wasn’t in any real hurry. Without the tower system, he would have to work this old-school. He would be forgiven for taking his time. And it wasn’t like he was going to bust his ass to catch the hero who killed a drug dealer. The falafel place was about a mile away, so he decided to walk.
Dallas hadn’t changed that much since he was a kid. Like most cities of over a hundred million citizens, it had started adding more high-rise public housing around 2045. Xan had grown up in one such building. After his dad power-stroked when Xan was seven, his mother climbed the stairs to the roof and stepped off. Xan moved three floors down to live with his grandfather. The old man was already sixty-four at the time, but he was still DPD. Fraud and burglary mostly, but in those days, any detective from any desk could be called upon to investigate the occasional murder. He told Xan every detail of every case he ever worked, leaving nothing out, even accounts of the most violent and depraved acts imaginable. Xan loved every minute of it. From the moment the last of his boxes were unpacked in his grandfather’s apartment, he knew he would become a cop. He never had a single doubt. Still didn’t.
The falafel place was on Lower Greenville, between a couple of ratty bars. Pretty genius, actually. A guy and his asshole friends get kicked out of one bar, they have to pass through the smells of fried food on their way to the next one. From what Xan could tell, the place was kept solvent thanks to mumbling drunks who dropped their cash on the floor on the way to the counter. Pretty much how it went, on Greenville. Xan walked inside and straight up to the guy working the counter, passing the sloppy line of half-dead customers.
“Gotta wait in line, just like everyone else,” the guy said.
“That’s only if I want to eat some of your fried lawn clippings,” Xan replied. The guy didn’t seem too offended. “Do you know Ranger Epsilon?” Xan asked.
“What is that, some new religion? ‘Cuz I gotta tell ‘ya, I’m about up to my dick in new religions.”
“Only in the sense that he has moved on to whatever eternal reward is awaiting us all.”
“So, he’s dead? That what you’re trying to say?”
“Yeah. He was in here earlier tonight.”
“Okay,” the falafel guy said.
“That all you have to say?” Xan asked. “No questions, nothing? Just okay?”
“What do you want me to say? I don’t get married to every person who comes in here and screams at me until I give him some food. I would say that I’m sorry to hear that he’s dead, but I was always taught that you don’t lie to the police.”
“Funny. This was only a few hours ago, you remember anybody from then, might have been really fucked up on weed?”
“Man, half the people come in here are really fucked up on weed, and the other half it just hasn’t hit yet. I mean, you’re welcome to talk to anybody here, but you know how it goes. Three hours might as well be three years, here. Nobody who was partyin’ then is still around, and these losers here were probably four miles down the road, about to buy their first drink.”
“Yeah,” one of the drunks in line offered. “I don’t even get off work until seven fuckin’ thirty.”
“Thanks. I’ll be sure to put that in my report,” Xan said. He considered ordering some falafel, but thought better of it and turned to leave. He paused for one final question.
“You know where I can get a land-line?”
The falafel guy burst out in raucous laughter, like Xan had just told the mother of all jokes.
Xan stepped back out onto the street slightly discouraged. He wasn’t entirely sure what he had been expecting, but the falafel place was his only real lead, and it had come up empty.
Right about now would be when his grandfather would have lit a cigarette and leaned up against a street light, turning off his brain, letting the answer come to him. That was how most of his police stories ended. Xan had believed that the job worked that way until he actually became a cop. The answers never just come to you. You solved cases by using your brain, not turning it off. But right now, he had nothing to go on. And he was working it old school, so he still had time to kill. He decided to check the bars on either side of the falafel place.
The first one he checked was nicer than he had expected. It had blue neon lights along the walls and a small stage for poetry readings or karaoke. No one there admitted to knowing Ranger Epsilon. Xan had a couple beers and left.
The second bar seemed more Ranger’s speed. It had maybe four working light bulbs in the entire place, and, despite being a very small establishment, everyone inside had somehow managed to sit alone. The barkeep shook his head when Xan asked him if Epsilon had been in that night.
“Naw. I don’t recognize that dude.”
“Yeah, that’s what I figured. Thanks, anyway. Lemme get a Shiner.”
As the bartender got the beer, Xan turned and casually leaned backwards against the bar. He scanned the place for any obvious criminals and stopped when he lost count. Reaching behind him and taking the drink, he said, as nonchalant as possible, “Yeah. Ranger was supposed to help me get a land-line.”
Everything stopped. It was suddenly very quiet. No music, no conversation, no one playing pool. Everyone in the bar was staring at Xan like he had just announced that he had had sexual relations with all their mothers. In the tense silence, he felt a buzz coming from his neck. A real buzz. He was being clicked. In the bottom, left-hand corner of his field of vision, the word “Bilko” flashed repeatedly. Before he could answer, Xan saw an orange arrow, just outside the front door. A nav point. Someone had hacked in to his chip and placed a visual location marker in his brain. A sure-fire way to walk into a trap, but the bar didn’t seem like a much better idea anymore. He reached into his pocket to get his wallet.
“Beer’s free,” the barkeep said. “Just get out.”
“Yeah. Fine.”
He went outside. The orange nav point was now pulsing slowly. It would do this, he understood, with greater frequency the closer he got to where he was supposed to go. He stepped one direction, and the pulse got slower, so he turned the other way and started walking. He finally felt safe answering Bilko’s call, but he didn’t feel like talking.
“Listen, BIlko, I gotta call you back. Some fool just tossed me a nav point and I’m checking it out.”
“No, wait—” Bilko said, but it was too late. Xan had already hung up.
About three blocks down, the nav point pulled a hard right, indicating to Xan that he should turn off Greenville, onto one of the residential streets. Most of the houses had been boarded up and abandoned years ago, but a few still showed signs of life. Another couple blocks, and the nav point started blinking furiously and emitting an up-tempo beeping noise. It was pointing to a house on the corner, fully drenched in shadows and seemingly empty. There wasn’t even a front door. Xan pulled his gun, activated the record feature on his chip, and sighed.
This probably isn’t a trap, he thought. How do I know that? Because it’s too stupid. Any person trying to trap a cop would have to assume I wouldn’t just walk into a creepy house by myself. They would have tried to convince me it was safe, maybe turned on a few lights. But there was no subterfuge here, no reason to lower my guard. No, this probably is a legitimate lead, and the matter-of-fact way in which I happened upon it makes me think that whoever is guiding me isn’t human. A computer program, probably. Some incorporeal sentient spyware had heard my questions concerning land-lines, and had taken it upon itself to help out. The answers don’t just come to you, huh? Xan made a mental note to have the security guys wipe his chip clean when he got back to the station.
The inside of the house was as dark as the street had been. There were minimal furnishings, and it was clear that no one had lived here for quite some time. Xan blinked his eyes and flipped to night vision. That, at least, was a positive feature of the chip. No longer inhibited by darkness, he allowed himself to relax a little. The nav point had vanished, so he had no idea what he was looking for. A phone, maybe? He knew that the term “land-line” originally referred to the old telephones they used before his grandfather’s time. But he had never seen one, so he didn’t know where to look. Luckily, the house was smaller than the others in the neighborhood. Only one floor.
He checked the rooms meticulously, looking for anything to clue him in to why he was here. Nothing stood out in the living room or any of the bedrooms. The kitchen, however, was another story. What appeared to be the pantry door was wide open, and Xan noticed a trail of dirt leading through it. Peering in, he saw that the floor of the pantry had been hollowed out. The hole looked to be about seven feet deep. For one, brief instant, the orange nav point returned, pointing down. Shrugging, Xan holstered his weapon and dropped into the hole.
The tunnel ceiling was low and he had to crouch, taking infinitesimal steps. After a few tedious minutes, the space opened up and he happened upon another hole. This one was more official, with a discarded man-hole cover and a ladder leading into a dimly lit concrete corridor. I came this far, Xan thought, lowering his not quite out of shape body on to the metal rungs. The ladder stopped about ten feet from the floor. He didn’t like not being able to go back the way he came, but he had no choice, seeing as he had never been able to reach the basketball rim, even in his prime. He dropped down, and the road became one-way.
This wasn’t a sewer. There was no running water, and it didn’t smell. In fact, there was hardly any noise, save a low humming, and even less to see. There were fading fluorescent lights along the ceiling, forcing him to switch off his night vision, but they illuminated the tube so poorly that he was still in the dark. Limbo space, a crappy compromise between two acceptable alternatives. He put his left hand against the side of the tunnel and took his first steps.
Before long his eyes adjusted to the dark, and he could see slightly better. He noticed a thick black tube, running along the ceiling next to the lights. This is the underground system, he realized. This is where the neurons still flow, along these obsolete synapses. Where would they lead him?
“I see you got my invitation.” It came out of the dark, somehow alone, bereft of any echo against the concrete. It stopped Xan in his tracks.
“Who are you? Where did that come from?” he asked. He couldn’t help but notice his own voice bouncing off the walls, more alive than the voice which had addressed him.
“Just follow the cable,” the voice continued. “Soon enough, you will reach a large chamber. There, you will stop.”
Any other period in history, and Xan would have assumed he was going crazy. But, due to the chip, people couldn’t recognize insanity the same way they could in the past. A voice coming from inside your own head was more likely to be a hack, or a virus. Which is more frightening, Xan often questioned during periods of reflection, hearing voices that weren’t there, or knowing for a fact that everything you experienced was real?
Sure enough, after what he estimated to be a quarter mile, the tunnel began a shallow descent, and after several more minutes of walking, he came to the large chamber. In it was a large metal structure, thick in the middle and branching out in multiple directions at the top. It looked like a huge dead tree, leafless and intimidating. A large placard welded to the side said, “CENTRAL COMPUTER TERMINAL—DIRECT LINE TO REUINION TOWER”
The cable system, Xan knew, worked just like any system of the human body: individual lines snaked along the city, congregating in larger, more powerful nodes, which would then send the data straight to the central computer. He had apparently stumbled upon one such node.
His neck buzzed again, and once again Bilko’s name flashed in Xan’s left eye. This time Xan answered and stayed on.
“Bilko, I don’t know what the deal is, but I think I just found a hub-node.”
“That makes sense.”
“It does?”
“Yeah, it does. If you had answered my call from before, I could have told you: the tox results came in.”
“And? What was Ranger poisoned with?”
“It was weed, Xan. Pure, concentrated weed. Didn’t quite liquify, but it was viscous enough to get into the bloodstream.”
“Oh, shit,” Xan said.
“Oh, shit is right. And another thing: the weed wasn’t what killed him.”
“What? Then what did?”
“He overheated. His body shut down at one hundred-nine degrees, but the fever just kept rising. Really strange.”
“Overheated? Just like—”
“The central computer. Exactly. My theory is he plugged his land-line directly into the node you found. With all that weed shot straight into his blood, his brain would have been vibrating like crazy. Then he downloaded all the information in the entire city, right to the dome.”
Xan was stunned. “So, why would he overheat? Wouldn’t he just lose his grasp, log out automatically?”
“He went deeper than anyone has before. I think he formed some sort of bond with the computer. A symbiotic arrangement, or something like that. Not only were their minds connected, but their bodies were as well. He could unplug his land-line and still get everything.”
“He must have felt like God.”
“Yeah. Unlucky for him that it was a busy night. Too many stats to calculate. When the tower went out, so did he.”
“So, nobody killed him,” Xan said.
“You could say that,” Bilko responded. “You could also say that everybody killed him.”