Absorption: Phase 03 (The Eighteenth Shadow) Read online

  “Ready at your convenience, Mrs. Fossbender.”

  Lucinda smiled. Her wife would be so proud of how she handled this.

  “Poor thing’s probably a homeless addict. Another teenage booze victim.”

  She took a deep breath and opened the door.

  When neither the girl nor the peculiar gray dog turned around, she called out warily, “Doll? Can I help you?”

  The gray dog turned its head first, eyes closer, now strange and dark blue. Then the girl turned, casually, easy, not with the startled fear Lucinda expected from a hovstreet urchin. Her expression was so sad.

  “Oh, you poor thing,” said Lucinda reflexively. “Are you lost?”

  The girl’s frown became a smile. Her beauty was making Lucinda extremely uncomfortable! The girl took one more gulp of beer. She put the cap back on the mason jar, dropped her sunglasses to her nose. Her eyes were green, so beautiful! Lucinda remembered every detail. Her eyes were just like stars in the sky.

  September 3, 2082 – One Month Fourteen Days Before Event.

  Sheriff Dale Proudstar did not play favorites. One person went hovergolfing with the mayor, or helped a councilperson’s kid get their motorized kitten out of a tree… they all thought they deserved a free latte and a handjob on the taxpayer’s digi. It was the same with this nurse, famous only for running the behavioral meatgrinder out at Greystone. She knew Dennis Slopes. And? The sheriff growled and kicked his boots up on the corner of his desk. He lit the morning’s first cigar, spitting the end into the laser recycler.

  The office com chimed overhead, “The ignition of recreational tobacco products inside government buildings is prohibited under Lawrence civil code 7782. Please extinguish. You will be notified again in twenty seconds. Warning: if a third notification is required, you will be registered for a 200 digi citation and your employer will be informed. Thank you.”

  The hulking sheriff spoke low and clear, craning his ox-like head as he blew a thick plume of smoke at the air quality sensor, “Computer, open window.”

  He watched the plumes of rich, Cuban tobacco smoke flow into the daylight with pleasure, hazing his view of the Massachusetts Street walking mall.

  After another drag, he tapped his jaw, “Everquist?”

  Enough time passed for him to get a third pull off the cigar before his digital forensics specialist replied, sounding unusually rattled, “Sir! Everquist, yes, good morning.”

  “Daniel, did you know a man used to be able to smoke a cigarette on an airplane 100 years ago?”

  “You’ve mentioned that, sir. I’ve already wiped the enviro-klaxon. But there’s nothing I can do about Mrs. Stiles’ sense of smell.”

  “The department nurse for three precincts and she’s got nothing better to do but cut and paste documentation about lung cancer into my health report?”

  “That’s correct, sir. Don’t forget the antiquated perceptions of chivalry in your psych profile also,” said Danny.

  The sheriff sat up in his chair, “Hellfire and damnation, Everquist! I didn’t make it to age 64 smokin’ cigars cause I ain’t healthy. If Stiles smells tobacco on me and don’t like it, tell her she can blow me.”

  Everquist smiled in his office one floor down, “Yes sir. I’ll be sure and communicate that to Mrs. Stiles next time I see her. Since I’ve got you on-com though, the situation down here is escalating.”

  “That lady is still flapping her gums, huh?”

  “As you would say, flapping them like a wet rubber band stretched across a prop-fan’s intake manifold, sir. I don’t know how much longer Maybelle is going to be able to keep Mrs. Fossbender waiting. She’s just a receptionist. That woman, she’s like three meters tall, screaming at everyone in the lobby. She just spit a loogie on the vestibule! Talboy, Jones and McPherson are trying to calm her too, but no one can get a word in. Mrs. Fossbender says if you don’t personally come down and talk to her she’s going to ping Director Adams at MTF. And someone she knows at CNED HQ in D.C. She’s already been to see Detective Slopes, but Slopes’ office told her it’s a county matter since it may involve cyborgs. She left a message with the Mayor too. Shall I tell her to blow you, sir?”

  Sheriff Proudstar chortled. He liked Danny Everquist. After four years, the gangling, east coast, freckled son of a bitch was finally starting to get what it meant to work in Kansas government.

  “Everquist?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “I’ve scanned that HOLODIVX Fossbender brought in. Looks like twenty minutes of homemade, lesbo action. Chick A’s hot. Chick B ain’t bad, but a little broad in the britches. Then there’s the gray dog that walked in behind the hot one and curled up in a corner while the ladies played chase the tongue bean… I take it that’s a Coyote?

  “Yes sir.”

  “Of course it is,” the sheriff kicked back in his chair again. “Then, I had to watch this part twice, where the purple haired gal, the wife, gets down on all fours and starts barking like a Cocker Spaniel. Then comes the deal with the cupcakes.”

  “Yes sir. It’s quite a show.”

  “So Danny, my boy, send a ping to Talboy, ask him what the hell else her majesty Nurse Fossbender thinks she has. Cause that file don’t hold evidence of any kinda rape I ever seen.”

  “Will do,” replied Everquist, adding, “People pay fondly for that sort of thing onstream.”

  “Not people I wanna know,” growled the sheriff.

  “Yes sir. Well, it does appear to be one of the Darkpool Coyotes, and the Bmod fugitive. Manual facial recognition seems to confirm it, but I keep losing the transfer as soon as a copy hits our mainframe. So I don’t really have confirmation.”

  Sheriff Proudstar threw his hat on the desk, “Our hacker? The Pansy?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “So what sort of manual facial recognition system you running, Everquist?”

  “My eyes, sir. Memory. Looking at a still on the thumb drive and a newspaper holoscan I remember from the time of the incident.”

  “Smart. Could it be a fake?”

  “What would be the motive?” asked Danny. “I mean… it could be that a very hot girl who happens to look like Ms. Dean and a mid-size gray dog that happens to look like a coyote show up at this particular house. But it’s a copy straight off the closed circuit security cameras in the Fossbender home.”

  “Who uses closed circuit security cameras?”

  “Paranoids, sir. The fugitive did try to blow up the nurse’s hovcar, after all.”

  Proudstar pulled on his gray mustache, considering, “Huh… it’s really the same damn nurse.”

  “Definitely Nurse Fossbender in our lobby, probably the fugitive, yes sir. But again, as soon as I upload the video to our cloud for her FR confirmation, it, uhh…”

  “It uhh what?”

  “It vanishes.”

  “Fuck me hovering,” the sheriff rapped his knuckles on his desk. “What is it about this betty? Secret girlfriend maybe?”

  “No. Something larger is happening. I’m pretty sure if I plugged this thumb drive into the cloud, the data would be wiped within seconds.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning Joan is watching us, sheriff,” Danny sighed. “She’s got the power to shut down every law enforcement computer system for thirty kilometers. If she wanted to.”

  “You’ve made that point in the past. And I’ve made the point that if she pings me her Ipv7, I’ll courier her a balloon with a thank you card for not doing it.”

  “I know, sir,” said Danny, becoming excited. “But what I’m getting at is that the hacker seems to specifically target sequences on the event horizon that have to do with the shiner trade. She doesn’t have an interest in general anarchy. I think she’s trying to eradicate any evidence of this woman’s existence since the day of her escape from Greystone, as well as any reports of unregistered dog sightings in the last 24 hours.”

  “Elaborate.”

  Danny Everquist took a deep breath and grabbed his thi
nning red hair with both hands as he spoke, “Okay, okay. I think this girl, Tara Dean, is a shiner. At least she’s heavily affiliated. The Coyotes are like her pets. I think she’s been here this whole time, protected by Joan.”

  “So The Pansy works for a still. And?”

  Danny Everquist swallowed his substantial Adam’s apple, then replied, “And… that’s all I have. Except, that she probably showed up in this nurse’s house, long after the fact, to exact revenge.”

  The sheriff chuckled again, “Revenge she got. Hell ain’t got no fury like…”

  “…a betty scorned, sir,” finished Danny.

  “Everquist, run with me a second. What if this Tara Dean is your lady hacker friend?”

  “Impossible.”

  “Why?”

  “She’s too hot.”

  “What?”

  Danny’s nose twitched as if the point was obvious, “Hackers are a lot of things. Supermodel cute isn’t one of them. It’s why the avatar was invented, after all.”

  “Fair enough,” said the sheriff. “Though I’m assuming you have something more concrete?”

  “I do. The real reason is that if Tara Dean was the hacker, she wouldn’t be able to walk the streets. She couldn’t roll up to Nurse Fossbender’s house without a quantum relay to what is undoubtedly a fairly bad-ass supercomputer. Coyote tech is too old, so she’d need a high-end Fido or private drone escorting her. To remotely hack firewalls at this level, a black driver needs a relay from which to execute the high density code in real time as defense algorithms attempt to compensate. I mean, the associated supercomputer would have to be on par with the war simulator at Fort Riley.”

  The sheriff took another drag off his cigar, then left it smoldering in the ashtray on his desk, “How could there be an unregistered supercomputer pulling that much light off the grid without us knowing about it?”

  “Cause it’s not on the grid, sir.”

  “Well you can’t power a superframe with home-solar or wind, can you? The batteries would never get charged.”

  “No.”

  “Then what? Fusion?”

  “That’s the only explanation I can come up with.”

  The sheriff opened his third desk drawer down and pulled out his manual vapor pipe and a small jar of marijuana bearing the swirling, blue and green CannibaGene© logo.

  He filled the vapor pipe with jane as he continued, “Hiding a fusion reactor is tough. Takes land, insulation. A farm. Everquist?”

  “Here sir.”

  “I want you to increase high elevation drone sweeps in a five kilometer radius around the original crash site coordinates on CHR 1500. Include high gain bands on temporal.”

  Danny remained silent.

  “You there, son?” asked the sheriff after a moment.

  “Yes sir, command executed. It’s just…”

  Sheriff Proudstar cut him off, “I know!” he boomed. “Your Pansy named Joan knows everything we do before we do it. How do we fix this? You’re the computer genius!”

  “I’m sorry sir, I just don’t…” Danny stammered.

  “Oh, for Dog’s sake… don’t hyperventilate,” the sheriff huffed. “It’s alright. I’m just old and grumpy. The moment I think this bullshit is finally behind me, it rears its head again and clamps down on my nuts. My nuts are wrinkly and generally irritable, Everquist.”

  “That’s good to know, sir,” said Danny demurely.

  “Just keep working on it, smart-ass. At the least, we know more than we did two years ago.”

  “That we do sir,” said Danny with bemusement. Then he paused, “Damn. Sir?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What if the CNED mercs start trailing our drones?”

  “What if they do?”

  Danny raised his eyebrows, “Well, they’ve lost thirteen volunteers in the last two years alone.”

  “And? They’re fucking idiots. You know 87% of CNED mercs have been pushed through a slaughterhouse. If I had to base my life choices on Ken Sapet’s advice, I’d probably be dead too.”

  “Understood. It’s just I’m realizing all thirteen of those CNED’s disappeared…”

  Proudstar waited, “Well? Speak up! Disappeared what?”

  Danny shook his head dismissively, “It’s nothing… let me keep working on this.” The combud beeped. “Hang on.” Danny was gone for a moment then flipped back, “Sir, this is not good.”

  “What?”

  “Talboy just broke into my other ear, said Mrs. Fossbender just hocked another loogie on Maybelle’s vestibule.”

  “Shit.” The sheriff sighed and lit up his vapor pipe with an old fashioned butane lighter, taking a long hit. “I guess it’s a little early in the day to start vaping jane, huh Everquist?”

  “At your discretion, sir,” Danny smiled. “The chem-content monitor in your office has been blocked for the next 24 hours until the system reboots. The LED will flash but no alarm will sound.”

  The sheriff nodded approvingly, the mild buzz flowing over him, “Fair enough. Give me a minute. And tell Talboy to man up and calm that woman down. If she spits at Maybelle again, I’m gonna have her arrested.”

  “On what charge, sir?”

  “Unjustified bitchiness!” said the sheriff loudly. “Proudstar out.”

  He leaned back in his chair and eyed the scuffs on his black leather boots, pulling another hit off the vapor pipe. The flatscreen monitor on his desk clicked and beeped, displaying a dizzying array of colorful, ever-changing holotiles; weather data, arrest reports, stock market tickers, upcoming holoflix releases, patrol GPS coordinates, city FR cam-data, news headlines, inter-department e-mails and a paused soft porn video in the upper right corner.

  But for a few seconds’ reprieve, none of that mattered. The sheriff’s eyes drifted to the Purple Heart he was awarded after the Iranian War. Then they drifted on, to an antique wall photograph of his great, great, great grandfather, Earl Proudstar, standing on an airfield in front of the B-36 Peacemaker bomber he had piloted during America’s first war with Korea. The print was cracked and faded. The sheriff preferred to think he was more like Earl Proudstar than his own dad, the miserable drunk. Or his father’s father, and so on.

  Still, Dale Proudstar was a man of war. Come hell or high sky, he would never be a Dogdamn politician cowering for favors before the citizen elite. He took one more sturdy pull off the pipe, exhaled the white vapor and put the piece back in its drawer. He returned his Stetson to his head and straightened it.

  Then he picked up the still smoldering cigar, hit it one last time and stood with a deep groan, his baritone mutter barely audible as he exited his office, “Fucking bureaucrats.”

  Ninety Three Seconds Later.

  Nurse Marlene Fossbender let out a banshee-like wail upon seeing the sheriff come through the door to the left of the receptionist’s vestibule.

  She pushed Deputy Brick Talboy out of the way like he was made of straw, “Sheriff Proudstar! I’m so glad to see you finally have time to speak with me! I’ve only been waiting 25 minutes!”

  She checked a make believe watch on her portly wrist. Her face was beat red. Two other deputies stood to either side of Brick Talboy looking sheepish.

  The sheriff took in the woman’s dimensions, forcing the most reasonable smile he could. Even though she was nearly two meters tall, he still towered over the nurse by a good eighteen centimeters. Yet she was more beefy than he in nearly every other dimension; a huge woman with rotund cheeks and black, deep set eyes that flitted about above a bourgeois pig nose.

  The nurse’s voice was brash, “So! I’ve turned the evidence over to your deputies,” she said, throwing Brick Talboy a look that froze the urine in his bladder. “They say you’ve reviewed it. I haven’t seen any patrol hovcars being dispatched!? Why, sheriff? You see what’s on that thumb drive!!!” she spat. “That cunt RAPED my wife. Forced her to perform heathen acts, in my living room! On my couch! With my child in the next room sleeping!” Nurse Fossbender began tickin
g off points, “She’s a fugitive, she trespassed, brought drugs onto my property, came into my house and laid hands on my woman against her will…” The nurse began poking Sheriff Proudstar in the chest, “Do you know who I am, sheriff? I deal with addict sluts like this every day! I’m telling you, there’s never been one more dangerous. She’s spreading sedition! Why is she not in jail? I sit on the CNED board!” She poked his chest extra hard this time, “I should have you arrested for dereliction of duty!”

  “Actually, ma’am…” the sheriff tried to cut in, wiping a drop of the woman’s spittle from his mustache.

  “You’re all just standing around!” she continued. “Why isn’t she in jail? You got her FR scan. You all got shit for brains?”

  The sheriff scowled but contained his voice, “Mrs. Fossbender, I appreciate your…”

  “You appreciate nothing! If you appreciated the situation, this scarlet whore would’ve been drilled two years ago when she torched my hovcar and destroyed half the hospital with her pack of Fidos! Everyone knows you’re a sympathizer, sheriff! Stinking of tobacco, walking around like you own the city. They should send you and your useless deputies to the labor camps!”

  Proudstar bowed up, speaking through gritted teeth, “As a matter of fact, I do own the city. And the county. So if you threaten my officers again, you’re going to be the one in mag-cuffs, got it?”

  Danny Everquist watched in awe with a bird’s eye view from the lobby surveillance cameras. Brick Talboy’s jaw hung wide. Deputies Jones and McPherson hid behind Talboy. Jones fidgeted nervously with her pony tail and stared at the floor. McPherson looked as though he’d just been locked in a closet with a wolverine.

  Marlene Fossbender did not back down.

  She began screaming even louder, spittle flying, “You’re going to let this fugitive drug addict come into my house, trespass, rape my wife, then threaten me?! Director Adams at MTF will hear your name before noon! Mark my words!”

  The sheriff took a deep breath and squared himself, eyes never leaving the woman, “Ma’am, I assure you we are doing everything we can. We are aware that this individual is wanted, and based on the surveillance you brought in, we are aware she may have trespassed on your property. However…”