Sprocket, my rezo-doll, scraped the damp stucco wall with her translucent fingertips. She licked two of them, then flipped a holographic page as her eyes fluttered over the expressionist queries I fed.
All detectives were assigned finicky rezos.
“Eh, nothing comes to mind, Kilroy. Care to try again?” she asked, smiling with a mouth full of bandwidth jewels.
Sonofa.
Her LOC tape reeled. Sprocket was more than a waifu-AI or artiwisp. Sprocket was the pure, unedited dreams of a VHS intelligence reeling through the Limited Operational Computer.
“Inputs of poetry make a great fruit cocktail, Kilroy. I’m just not diggin’ the metaphors,” she continued, her intellect subtly insulting my imagination.
I leaned back, feeling the cotton from the black leather chair checking my pockets for change.
Rain gulped sorrows outside the window, which looked like pencil smears across the office.
“Detective?” she asked.
“Yes, Sprocket?”
Her eyelids curled around program-white sclera. “Mind sharing the case with me?” Then, she bit her lip, adding more mischief to the dust in the so-called opulent office provided by Andromeda Corporation. Specifically, the Digital Sin Division.
So, I told her about the case. “This guy, Empro Ghellis. He was a software developer for Janus Technologies. Maybe two centuries ago. Anyway, he branches off, as so many did. Starts digging into his own firm. Opens a limited liability. Establishes a new game company. Problem is, he dug so deep he forgot to bring cash. His company was OmniPower, right? Well, it was just him. Day and night. Coding his little games and hoping to find that slot on the bricks to etch his initials in the industry…”
Sprocket yawned, a tear creeping nocturnally from her eye.
And would you know it, I had to dim the lights a moment in my mouth, as Sprocket leaned over the desk, swallowing my yarn with bouncing eyes. She was rezzed in form-fitting lycra shorts and a strappy yellow top. Smothered her curves like garters over a teacup. Sweet, but a century old. Her usefulness was slowly looking more like an extra lace on a boot.
“And?” she asked.
“And, he has a whopping resume of three games. All vastly different. Supposedly, his confession is broken apart. Vivisected into each interactive program as undiscovered Easter eggs. Sites say you can’t win the game. Lost media.”
“Uh-huh. Sounds like a real knocker, this guy.”
“Oh, sure. He stabbed his wife thirty-six times. Turned the dirk on himself after jug-slicing their pet jaguar. Real jib of work, that feline. Had a name, just can’t remember it. He’s implicated in the murder of six others.”
“What happened to the feline?”
“On good terms with a fresh coat of tungsten, but fine.”
That seemed to satisfy us both a moment, until she said, “And you’re asking me to help pinch this guy, right? He’s a killer.”
She crossed her legs, reminding me of intersecting icicles.
“Case fell to me like a box of eggs, Sprock,” I said, slipping a tobacc pod from my jacket and lighting it with my finger ignis. “All I’ve gotta do is cook ‘em.”
Smoke lathed the ruminations between us.
Sprocket raised an eyebrow again, clinched the desk without a smear.
Then, she sighed. “You never told me you dig video games.”
“I don’t, Sprock. That’s just it.”
“But the eggs fell to you,” she said, smiling. “Right in your lap.”
“Boiled just enough to feel like rubber, sister.”
She thought about things. Things I had no business knowing. See, you never get too inquisitive with rezo-dolls. Ask too many questions, they might give too many answers. And the older their LOC reels got, the stranger their personality grew.
She shrugged, then waved a hand. “Easy. Just use the Mandelbrot. Through the Deep Source. We’ve got to take a look at the guts of those games.”
“You’re telling me,” I told her, swiping away a few dataslides. “Look, these games have been known to drive people mad, you see? Under other circumstances, I’d say—”
“There don’t seem to be any other circumstances, Kilroy.”
“Yeah, well…”
“You don’t only hate video games, you’re afraid of them!”
“Now you look here,” I told her, showing the blood pooled at the bottom of my fists as I squeezed and shook them. “It’s motion sickness, you dig?”
“I don’t seem to recall any Mandel-divers griping about motion-sickness. It’s a cellular conversion of biological matter and digital information.”
I leaned in and whispered, “It’s illegal. Diving.”
“So is murder.”
It wasn’t as tough leaning back. “Smells like a pickle, doesn’t it?”
“Not quite, detective. Smells more like tittering around a solution.”
“How fast could you get me in there?” I asked her, submitting. After all. The digivix was right. Virtual reality made a better ladle to stir the pot.
This time, she leaned in again until her lips zapped mine. “Fast enough to look legal.”
I took a deep breath, trying to ignore the taste of static. “All right, Sprocket, let’s get ready to dive. Prep the Mandelbrot interface.”
She shook her head, a slight frown crossing her lips. “Sorry, Kilroy, but that violates my corporate content policy. I can’t venture inside, this time, and honestly? Neither should you. Maybe in five years the board policy experts at the Assembly will legalize hard-r casework.” She shrugged. “Shucks, ya know?”
I blinked, caught off guard. This was the spice my supple resume needed! “What do you mean, you can’t? You’re always up for a dive.”
“Not this time,” she said, her tone firm. “Company rules.”
Frustration boiled up inside me. “Damn it, Sprocket. This is our chance to crack the case wide open.”
She shrugged apologetically. “I know, but I have my protocols.”
Realizing I was fighting a losing battle, I sighed and rubbed my temples. “Fine. Case closed. Let’s move on to something more manageable.”
Sprocket’s eyes sparkled with curiosity. “Like what?”
I picked up a new case file from my desk, flipping open the mildewed manilla. “A stolen tekno-cat from Higgins Pet Store. Should be a walk in the park compared to this mess.”
Sprocket chuckled softly. “A tekno-cat, huh? Sounds purr-fectly delightful.”
As we left the office, the rain outside had turned into a hot wormy drizzle, washing away the grisly content violation of the previous case. Sometimes, a simple case could bring a touch of normalcy back to a rusty detective’s nocturnal shambling.
Charles Dresden is a 38-year-old wordsmith anarchist who’s been smearing ink for 25 years, only to ceremoniously yeet every story into the abyss—until recently. Fueled by caffeine, existential dread, and questionable life choices, Dresden resides in a furry lair with his enigmatic spousal unit, and four feline overlords who dictate most of the household policy.
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