September 1st 2029

September 1st 2029

“Jez, you’re needed, “
I raised my head, eyes aching, the four hour info delve giving me nothing but a promise of a mother of all migraines.
I flicked off the compiler and expanded the visual cue that flicked on and off in the top right.
“Who’s that?” I rubbed my eyes under my glasses. Time for some Novocol, I thought distantly, tapping the keyboard and sending the code I had filtered to be rendered on the server, making a promise to find who’d hacked it if it killed me.
I didn’t recognise the face at first, but the hopelessly outdated brown Trilby tucked messily over the back of his head was a blatant clue. It was Filbert, the ‘Liason’ between Homicide and IT. I wasn’t keen on him, didn’t like his disposition. He probably didn’t like mine: I was two years out of state university, he was 5 years from being discharged and sent to live in the lower quarters of Baltimore. That earned a kind of jealousy that could eat a man alive.
We didn’t talk often, and especially not in person.
“Needed, where?” I replied.
“Homicide. Fancy coming out of your cupboard for a few hours? Got a corpse for you. “
IT’s didn’t do point, never dealt with the dead, only in code and numbers.
“What’s homicide got to do with IT? Especially on-site, “ I muttered, flicking off his visual with a flourish. It was bad manners to do so, but he’d picked a bad time to piss me off.
If I’d offended him, he didn’t let it show. I sat back, listening to his brittle, harsh voice, the kind only an understanding wife or mother could listen to with any semblance of love. “We’ve got a dead woman. Multiples. Blunt instrument by the looks of it.” A pause.
Get on with it, I gestured irritably, mentally slapping his bald sweaty forehead. “And?”
“One of yous did it. “ A pause. “Security auto. “ Another pause while it sunk in. “AI? Get it?”
Shit. Shit.
No doubt my non-reply amused him. He was that kind of point scorer.
“That I doubt, “ I replied, looking around for my hat and jacket and checking the schedule. It was booked for rain today.
“Come take a look. There’s been a specific request for an AI specialist. Protocol, you understand, you guys are about as useful at a crime scene as a stripper on ketamine. “
“Okay, send a car.” Neutral. Keep your voice neutral. Where the fuck was my hat?
“Get one yourself. “
Fine. Homicide being their usual friendly selves. “Whatever. Where am I going, or do I have to find that out myself?”
“Didn’t I mention? The Chinese Embassy. I’m sure the cab will know where that is. “
The Chinese Embassy. Oh shit.
And where the FUCK was my hat?

It had been a while since I’d been in a cab. The last time was during my final semester during a drinking binge where we’d had a competition which I seem to remember involved a lot of vomiting and yelling. Either the cabbie shared some kind of collective memory with the previously aggrieved colleage or took offence at my hefty waterproof jacket (only certain members of the civil service were given notice of the weather changes) but either way he took an age to get there and ignored all my urgings to get us there faster. Even waving of my police badge (IT department true, but I covered that bit with my thumb) didn’t encourage an increase in speed, so I gave up and instead called home and ordered my oven to cancel the pasta bake and order a freeze-dried pizza in instead. I was about to hang up when the oven passed the answer phone onto me who told me Giulietta had been on the line again, spouting on about what a shit I was was and how I’d be first against the wall ya de ya de ya. It played a sample of the message. It wasn’t nice.
“Great, “ I muttered to the answer phone. “If she call’s again, tell her when I find her she’s going back to the manufacturers. “
“Hey, it’s your car man, “ the answer phone told me, “tell her yourself. “
I lay back in the creaky leather seat, ignoring my primitive thoughts on re-programming corrupt AI’s with sharp pointy objects and focused on what was coming up. My stomach told me I was nervous, but this was for a number of reasons. First thing was that I hadn’t seen a dead body before. That part I wasn’t looking forward to. The other factor was that it was a murder in the Chinese Embassy by a security robot, our security robot.
That meant many things, but the foremost thing in my head was they had done it again.

The cab breached the avenue, rising slowly through the drizzle until the sunlight broke through and washed the cab in violent yellow haze. Seconds later the visors came down, slowly adjusting until the sunglass view came into sight. Troubles momentarily forgotten I stared down at Washington, slowly slipping down into the mist, watching the evening light’s twinkle into life.
“All the way up?” the cabbie asked gruffly, chugging through the vertical gears with grim determination. This cab didn’t like heights.

He didn’t wait for the answer, muttering about licences as the taxi dragged itself uprwards. I didn’t listen, still lost on the sight of Washington waking itself up to the night. Somewhere, over by fourth and eight, was Beth, serving drunks with drinks, wondering where I was. I would call her, but I’d been doing all the chasing recently and I was tiring of that particular game. I’d rather hear my answer phone talk about my psychotic car – running around Washington in a virus induced frenzy – than hear Beth go on about how dull yet dangerous her job was.
The cab pulled up. We waited patiently whilst the visors lifted and the scanner ran around the cab. It struck me as amusing that the authorities still believed that any modern attack would come from someone arriving in a taxi, when phreakers can easily bring a bank down with 2 minutes of diligent hacking from the other side of the world.
No sooner had I stepped out when I saw Filbert. Or, rather I saw his silouhette – the sun was bright as hell up here. It took a few seconds for my shades to kick in and I could now see him in all his fat ugly Americanised splendour.
“Still aiming for the twentieth century cop thing, “ I noted.
He grunted, then: “What took you? We’ve got everyone from the cultural attaché to the military up there.“
“Slow evening, I take it?” I said, shrugging off the jacket. The heat up here was pushing 30 degrees and was quickly drying me out, a plume of steam rising from both of us. We walked up the entrance without saying anything else: we’d only be making digs at each other and in that heat I just couldn’t make the effort. My flippancy was just a cover – I was about to see my first corpse, but that wasn’t the reason for my nerves.

For the first few seconds I honestly believed that her body didn’t look as bad as I had imagined, that it was just a body and the person inside, the soul, had long departed for pastures new. When that ran out I had to turn away.
Filbert was speaking to the coroner behind me, whispering quietly. I could smell her body going bad. The look of terror etched on her face, both hands like claws, rigid, tendons taut all the way to the end told me this wasn’t going to be an open casket funeral.
That, and the gaping wounds in her abdomen and between her legs.
Head whirling, I spun around to find Fibert and the coroner, a serious looking young man, staring at me.
“You OK?” Filbert asked. His attitude seemed to have changed now that he had seen the body. Not only that, but the room was filled with several high ranking members of the military, all of whom spoke and dealt with me something like respect. I would find out why later on.
I felt sick and knew if I opened my mouth, more than words would come out. In the corner, several sharp dressed Chinese delegates muttered to each other, casting their gaze to the dead girl, and then onto us. There was insinuation in their cold, angry looks. Not surprising really. Relations between our two countries had been going seriously wrong for quite a while for one reason or another. Something occurred to me that suggested that they were kicking a fuss up about this for some specific reason; there’s been dead bodies found in the Chinese embassy before, but they had been dealt with quietly and efficiently. The Chinese way.
The young lady was Chinese, a secretary to one of the important delegates. Five and a half hours ago she was attacked and repeatedly struck in her groin area by a blunt instrument many, many times. She died during the attack.
“I’m ok, “ I lied. Damned if he was going to see me puke, feigned concern or not. “What happened to her?”
“That’s where you come in, “ said a deep, powerful voice to my right.
“What do you mean?” I turned to the voice. He was a general, shirt heavy with medals and badges, middle-aged, but with that preserved look to him which made me imagine that in ten years time he’d look exactly the same, only with more medals. There was a look on his face that told me people didn’t usually speak to him without bellowing the word ‘Sir!’ after it.
As he was about to say something along this line, a uniformed soldier burst into the room. “General, Sir, we’ve located it!” he yelled.
“Located what?” I asked Filbert as the General proceeded to loom out of the room, acolytes in tow. The fat bastard just grinned, and I was beginning to feel pissed off at being the last to know everything.
“The Security Robot, “ he said.
He caught the look on my face. “Yup. The robot that was trying to rape her. “

You can say a lot about robots, but the resounding fact is that they don’t rape people. For one, the AI won’t allow them to bestow physical harm to anything. It’s hard wired. The Security druids are good for one thing, sureveillance and detection: beyond that they are just expensive machines that make reassuring clunking noises wherever they walk. The second factor is that sex simply isn’t a concept they understand. I suppose it’s like a dog suddenly finding a need to use a dishwasher.
This one did, however. In a big way. It grabbed that poor girl and despite the fact it had no genitalia with no hope of any sexual gratification, it had tried to have sex with her.

Until, that is, the grilled speaker where it’s humanoid-form mouth was began to scream in mandarin.

It was the first of many shocks that day. Little did I know it then but the first retaliatory shot in a secret, hidden unknown conflict had been fired. It wasn’t the droid who had raped that poor girl.: once captured and disassembled back at the lab, instead of the core security AI, I found the uploaded consciouseness of a convicted Chinese street Peddler, who had been taken from his secure on-line storage and violently inserted into this mechanical foreign body. His mind was terribly, horrifyingly bent.

He had been ‘uploaded’ (the best definition of a term not yet invented by the populist press) by a group of anonymous American vigilante hackers called Phreak2. This was a direct response to several similar attacks made on American soil by Chinese-backed hackers. The fact that this was a Chinese girl in the Chinese embassy was a distinctive and gruesome flag waved to our enemy.
Later, I would find myself being recruited by the CIA, and then the FBI.
Even later, I would find out why Phreak2 was so anonymous.