The machine detective, p.27
The Machine Detective, page 27
part #4 of The Synth Crisis Series
He looked at Ariana, who he realized was watching him, as if she was anticipating a reaction to this place. “What is this room, Ari? And why did you come here?”
“When I tailed our mark, he didn’t go to the girlfriend like we assumed he would,” she explained. “He came up here, and when I tried to follow, they turned on me and I had to fight. You know how in DC we found that room with racks where we had to guess which one was Sigma to get past its defenses?”
“I do,” Dhata said, his eyes returning to the strange burned-out rack on the table. “Are you saying this is the same Sigma mainframe? The one we thought we destroyed from before. How in the hell? We demolished that building. Who could have survived all that to bring it out here?”
“I think we just killed him,” Ariana said, and when he followed her voice, he found her kneeling next to the assassin’s body. She removed his mask, revealing a scarred face, his flesh so badly burned you could see teeth where there once was lips. “That isn’t all, Dee,” she said, standing up to face him. “I had time to look around before he jumped me, and there is something else that you won’t like about this place.”
Dhata gave the room another scan, trying to guess what it was she had found there. He regarded the androids. “Are they rebuilding synths into variants here, as well?” he guessed. “Lay it on me, Ari. What’s going on here?”
“Dhata Mays, meet Dhata Mays,” she said cheerfully, though there was no humor in the situation, or the stress lines creasing her brow.
At her feet, seated together like posed dolls inside a collector’s display, was himself, Lur, and Ariana, perfect replicas but for a few minor details. It sent a chill down his spine, and he exchanged a quick glance with his partner to verify that he wasn’t seeing an illusion. The look on her face confirmed that this was indeed reality.
“This was the goal,” he said softly, looking from their faces to the room itself, trying to get an idea as to what it all was.
“This was the goal,” Ariana repeated. She walked up to grip the back of his arm as she leaned wearily into him. “All that misdirection, and all of those false reports, just to bring us here for what? Some sort of mind transfer?”
“To make us into variants,” Dhata concluded. “Considering what little Nyoko divulged, Sigma sees us as a threat, and concocted this scheme to remove us permanently. I’m thinking now that Robert always knew what was happening, and only gave us those agents when he learned that Sigma was here. Between his talk about my safety and everything linking Manton Paradise to Ida, I let myself believe that it was all about me. Sigma wanted Dhata Mays, and for what? Revenge? Now I know that line of thinking was dumb. This is an A.I., it doesn’t have feelings. It uses logic, and logic makes what we did to it a real threat.
“I’m as much to blame for everything, if I’m being honest,” he had to admit. “Because of this thing with Paradise and all my unresolved shit, I let myself be blindsided and played. Now they’ve copied me down to the minute detail. It is like looking in a mirror, and I can see why you call me an old man. Damn, where did the time go? I look a mess,” he admitted.
“And what were you to do, old variant Dhata?” He walked over to the variant with his likeness, knelt before it, and ran his fingers over its face. “Feels like my own. Needs a shave. Maybe we should keep them, not as variants, but as stand-ins. Wouldn’t you want a duplicate of yourself?”
Ariana seemed to think it over. “It would come in handy, though no cases would ever get solved. What would you use yours for?”
“I’m wanted by the police in Tampa and St. Petersburg. Variant Dhata can turn himself in, and the four of us can go on that vacation we’ve always talked about. I’m not exactly joking. Robert Ito owes us, and I can’t think of a better way to make this right. UCCs are nice, but without our freedom, what could we do with the money? We have two rooms bloody from murder here, guests we’ve interacted with, not to mention cameras. Not the surveillance that Lur took out, but people’s ICLs.”
“Yeah. Get enough witnesses together with a cypher and everything we did here would come to life in full color,” Ariana agreed. “You came up alone?”
“I came for my partner,” Dhata corrected her. “For the record, I expected a war, and a chase leading me to do some of those reckless stunts you always scold me for. Needless to say, I should have known you had it covered, detective.”
“Yeah,” she said, looking up at the ceiling’s fluorescent splendor, “But it’s nice to know someone has your back. It’s a feeling I’ve come to miss at the job.”
“When you called me brother back at the house, it really struck a chord with me,” Dhata admitted mechanically, as if he was reading the lines from an augmented note. “I thought about all our adventures: Jackson Cole, Aaron in Ybor, the nightclub massacre with the girls. Man, there’s just too many to recall. Hell, Sigma. You were there with me through all of it, and for what? Your loyalty to Jason? You, Lur, and Hiro are all I have, Ari, so of course I came for you. Does that make sense?”
Ariana was quiet for a time before walking over to where he stood. He could feel her presence, and when he turned to face her, she stepped in and embraced him tightly. “Thank you, Kuya,” she whispered, and the old former detective turned skiptracer turned vigilante, put his arms around her shoulders, and exhaled.
Epilogue
Bioluminescence
The last time Dhata was in the ViVi with Lur, he recalled her mentioning that she had defenses all around her home, and that without the proper clearance, intruders would get a nasty surprise once they stepped into the invisible containment dome. Dhata used the same portal booth they had traveled in before and remembered to keep his eyes shut during the transfer.
He made it in, but without Lur’s permission, he was ejected off her property immediately. This was done via a violent shove from an invisible force so strong that it lifted him off his feet and into the air, landing him in the wet sand near the water. Before him was her father’s mansion, and all the pain it presented. He was dazed and uncomfortable, but nowhere near as much as he’d felt when he had come here the first time.
It was Jose Diaz’s mansion in every way, and he let his eyes follow the water up to a stone path where the sand ran into the manicured lawn. There were a number of people working on the yard, but there were no armed guards patrolling as they had done in the real world, when Lur still lived with her father. To make it this far, only to fail at surprising her the way he’d planned, made the situation suddenly feel hopeless.
After Seattle, Lur had been instructed to take it easy for a few days, and chose to spend it in the ViVi, where she didn’t have to see the bandages wrapped about her arms and abdomen. Hiroshi, who had decided to extend his stay in the United States, had convinced Dhata to jack in and find his cypher girlfriend. Dhata, who had been averse to the grid his entire life, felt like a fish out of water, which was now evidenced by the pain he felt from the fall and his waterlogged clothes.
The dark waves upon which he now focused reflected the sunlight, appearing as fairy lights twinkling upon its surface, magicking him from the present to that deep black attic of his detective’s mind. Those lights reminded him of lives, a metaphor presented by something he’d either seen or read on a billboard, their random blinking echoing an abundance of randomness and change.
Dhata recalled how sure The Unsung had been that Sigma had been eliminated after the events last year in DC. Yet, Sigma had returned and threatened them, upending all their lives until they were able to find and destroy it. Again they had assumed it was within an entity, and that eliminating this entity would remove Sigma’s hold on the variants.
With no mainframe to house the central A.I., it would finally see oblivion, and the world would be free from its mimicry. But again, how did they know this assertion was correct when last time the logic was just as sound? All these twinkling lights that he beheld were like human lives being taken and replaced with variants. He thought of the speed and accuracy in which a variant had replaced them, and how close they had come to losing their lives.
“We can’t win,” he admitted softly. Sigma could exist in one of the old satellites orbiting Earth, with connection to multiple racks, each hosting a portion of its program, lying dormant. If that was the case, then removing the rack in Seattle hadn’t been the end of anything. They would need to find every variant and every link it had with a manufacturer, then find a way to destroy them, all of them, scorched Earth style. There was simply no way around it.
This scenario of a hive made the last few weeks seem worthless in the greater fight for humanity against the variants. It would take humans working with synths, both The Unsung and the government allied, helping to prevent Sigma from making its replication efforts truly global. Essentially the impossible, he had to admit, feeling suddenly exhausted with this reality.
We can hunt the variants down one by one, but we need help from the top if we’re to shut this down, he thought. Why am I so lucky to be chosen for this mess? He recalled how only a few years back, the only thing he worried about was UCCs and keeping his nose clean to maintain a skiptracer’s license.
He heard footsteps off in the distance and looked up to find Lur running towards him with her arms outstretched. Before he could stand, she bowled him over, dousing the rest of his body in the shallow water, where she pinned him down, laughing. “You came into the ViVi all by yourself,” she exclaimed, straddling his hips and interlocking her fingers with his. Even if he wanted to get up, something told him that she in her excitement would not allow him.
“How’s my, princesa?” He forced a smile, his dark musings still present but fading.
“Better now that you are here,” she said. “I was making a few changes to the house. You want to see?”
“Can we start with the bedroom?” he tried, and she answered with a hard kiss on his lips.
“Forget the bedroom. This is my beach,” she grinned wolfishly. “We can go exploring later, but for now, you are all mine, and I am not going to let go, so get used to it.”
Glossary
Skiptracer – A bounty hunter and private investigator that works exclusively for the police.
Cypher – What used to be known as a “hacker.”
John – Police officer (A play on the French pronunciation of Gendarme).
Mary – A prostitute.
Hool – A criminal or thug (The word hooligan shortened into street slang).
Grid – Computer matrix (This is a very generic term used interchangeably with “cyberspace”).
Synth – Synthetic person or Android – a sentient machine built to look and act the way a human being does.
Snoop – Detective.
Global Network – The Internet, according to the world of Dhata Mays
Virtual Village (ViVi) – A small world inside the global network, accessed through virtual reality.
SAR – Spatial Augmented Reality.
ICL – Internal Contact Lens – Built into the eyes of most human beings, the ICL is used to access personal computers and sync with external SAR units.
Augment – Objects that seem real but are projected in three dimensions by an SAR.
Rack – A powerful piece of computer hardware that grants access to the Grid.
Fomeal – Government-issued meat substitute.
Hume – A derogatory term for humans.
Zeppelin – A hovering fortress used in war for bombing.
About The Author
GREG DRAGON brings a fresh perspective to fiction by telling human stories of life, love, and relationships in a science fiction setting. This unconventional author spins his celestial scenes from an imagination nurtured from being an avid reader himself. His exposure to multiple cultures, multiple religions, martial arts, and travel lends a unique dynamic to his stories.
See Greg’s author page at gregdragon.com or keep up with his latest books and appearances through email.
Greg Dragon, The Machine Detective
