Voices in the Stream: Phase 02 (The Eighteenth Shadow) Read online

  “I will make sure he understands the, uh, gravity of the situation, sir.”

  “Your will is my will, Dennis,” sighed the old man, preening an invisible piece of lint from the shoulder of his white suit.

  “Your will is my will, yes… sir,” swallowed Slopes, privately realizing he was missing Mrs. Kitters terribly.

  The old man snapped his gaze at the flatscreen, “Well, if that is indeed the case… then stop pining after your Felix and get about it!”

  The holoconference terminated.

  Simultaneously at The Douglas County Sheriff’s Department

  “Dina, put your clothes back on!”

  The naked, thirty cm tall girl on Deputy Danny Everquist’s desk leaned back even farther, exposing herself and tweaking her nipples, “What is it, Danechka? You don’t find me sexy no more?”

  Danny collapsed into his blue, synthleather office chair and covered his face with his hands, peeking through his fingers, “You know how cute you are. Please, I’ve just got to work, baby. Really. I’m close to finding him. I know I am.”

  His tangi-gram girlfriend stuck her tongue out, “Always is close to nowhere! You’ve been chasing this Prophet for 1,002 years. Now we are nowhere still. We should be home with full size me!”

  “It’s been a year and a half.”

  “I care not!” she exclaimed.

  The fairy-like hologram stood and turned her back his way, bent forward and stared at him upside down between her perfect, virtual legs, crystal blue eyes flashing.

  “Oh my sky!” said Danny. “I would be so atomized if the sheriff saw this. Stop it!”

  “Stop what?” Dina asked innocently, accentuating her faux Russian accent. “My body is not tight enough? You don’t like my cinnamon buns? What if my hair was red?”

  Her waving holographic hair flashed to a rich auburn, “Better? Sexier? What about brunette? I can be your dusky Crimean rebel. Whatever it takes to get you out of this office!” Her hair changed to blonde with brown roots, “You said last week, you like the ombre style, no?”

  Danny shook his awkward, oversized head which looked too large for its neck, “I should have never given you aesthetic controls. You’ve gotten far too sassy. I have to find this hacker, D! It’s my life’s work. Why can’t you understand that?”

  Dina spun around and folded her arms over her sprightly breasts, “Because I’m bored! B-O-R-E-D!” she spelled it. “You care more for this Prophet than you do me!”

  Danny sighed, exhausted, “You know that’s not true.”

  She stuck her lower lip out and frowned, “Then why are we here for 27 days!”

  “We got here at 8:00 this morning.”

  “I don’t care! It’s Friday. I want to dance!” she screamed and kicked an empty can of Mountain Dew off the desk into his lap. “Your office is a mess, and you consume too much sugar! And you know I don’t like to spend my days fairy-size!”

  Danny’s face grew as red as his hair, “You don’t!” he shouted. “You have the most robust programming of any avatar on the planet. When we’re not at the apartment, you have your own virtual play lounge! You have Alina to keep you company on the holodrive!”

  Dina sneered, “You just want me to be lesbian. Her conversations are stupid. She is about as Russian as my butt! And don’t yell at me! This office is filled with trash!”

  “I’m not yelling!” Danny yelled.

  “You are yelling!” pouted Dina, a holographic tear now wetting her cheek. “You created me and now we spend no time together! How long until you replace me with another tangi? Alina? One who doesn’t mind your slovenly ways?”

  Danny closed his eyes, “I would never do that.”

  “Yes, you would! My heart is broken. You’re going to replace me.”

  “I am not.”

  Dina pouted mournfully, “You are. My heart is broken, it’s official. I’m going back to the lounge!”

  “You don’t have to go back,” he said. “Just stop kicking things and put some clothes on.”

  “No!” she screamed defiantly. “I am going!”

  “Please don’t,” he reached a finger for a kiss.

  “Don’t touch me!” she shouted.

  Dina wiggled her nose and vanished into the holoprojector in a whirlpool of sparkling light.

  Danny sat forward and rested his head on one hand, staring at the twin holoscreens in front of him, “Oh for the love of Dog…”

  Without Dina on his desk, the office was shockingly quiet, save the quiet hum of machines doing their business in the walls. He sighed for the millionth time that day and picked up a can of room temp Mountain Dew. He leaned his head back all the way, enormous Adam’s apple gulping. He let the last drops fall into his mouth before he smashed the empty on his desk and pushed it into the small mountain of rubbish that had accumulated to one side. The smashed piece of aluminum made a hollow jangle as it slid into seven more previously discarded cans. This trash mountain was augmented by two empty bags of HempStarz© cheese wafers, a half-eaten synthchicken burrito and the wrappers from three MunchieAttax© candy bars whose garish purple packaging promised Twice the protein rich hemp-nougat for half the price!

  Danny absentmindedly activated the holographic ServCall© app projecting through the clear surface of the desk, “Mountain Dew. Can, not bottle, original recipe,” he said.

  A colorful blue, black and red holographic representation of Interstate Hovway 70 hovered in front of the frameless flatscreens before him. His eyes followed a red blinking dot, which represented the 247th commercial hovtruck to leave Lawrence that day. The red dot turned green.

  “Shit!” said Danny.

  Just then, he heard his office door open and jumped nervously. Only one person besides Brick Talboy would walk into his office without knocking first.

  “Problems, Everquist?” the voice boomed like far off thunder.

  Danny had worked for the titanic Sheriff Dale Proudstar for over three years. He still did not understand how it was possible for a man who was built like a linebacker to move so silently.

  Danny swiped his holotab out of habit, locking Dina in her virtual lounge, and spun in his chair, “Jeezus sir! You scared me. Sorry, no problems. Thought I had a lead on The Prophet for a second.” Danny spun back around and gestured at the green holographic dot, bringing up a detailed, 3D facsimile of an aging water transport and a holograph of the wind-worn Kansas farmer who piloted it, “It’s just a farmer in a water hovtruck.”

  The sheriff’s voice was deep and rumbling, though he smiled as he spoke, “You’re bound to get this Prophet fella come hell or high sky, ain’t you, Red?”

  “Yes sir,” said Danny, staring into his flatscreen array.

  His bloodshot eyes were following a couple of other red dots crawling imperceptibly slow along the holographic map.

  Proudstar put his hand on the back of Danny’s chair, “This new sneaker? Slicker program? What the sky’d you call it?”

  “The slinker. Everslink 1.14, to be precise.”

  “Well, it ain’t gonna get KHP on my ass for probing out of jurisdiction, is it?”

  “Definitely not, sir.” Danny’s voice was high and filled with caffeinated agitation. “It’s just a detection feed that harmlessly surfs the data relay on any commercial hovtruck floating I-70 west out of Douglas County. Like you say, if the crime starts here…”

  “It stays here,” finished Proudstar. “You really think this can bring down the big guy?”

  “It should. I’ve been working on it long enough. It was hard to script ’cause it’s so simple, just a monitoring program scanning for that space of insertion when The Prophet starts manipulating the stream.”

  The sheriff growled, “Don’t call him The Prophet, not around HQ. Bad for morale. Call him The Pansy.”

  “The Pansy,” said Danny dejectedly. “Yes sir.”

  “Oh, don’t cry, Red. Look at me.”

  Danny spun and faced the sheriff, who towered over his workstation, f
illing half the tiny office. Proudstar had a duffel bag on his shoulder and was dressed in his typical weekend civvy attire: a tight fitting, black hemp-polo that accentuated the curvature of his belly, tucked into green camo cargo shorts. This outfit was secured with a hemptwead belt that featured a large brass star.

  “Everquist, thanks to you, our booze brigade brings in more digis for the county than any other law division ‘tween St. Louis and Denver. We got the fastest computers, the best armor, the biggest guns. Hell, we got our own platoon of MARX dogs in the basement just so Talboy can get his whistle wet driving borgs. I reckon 50% of our success is due to me bein’ a major asshole. The other 50% is due to you. Your software upgrades have sent nine major liquor dealers to the lunar work farms, two hackers to Leavenworth. Ain’t bad numbers, son. You’ll catch your Pansy soon. In the meantime,” the sheriff play-punched Danny’s shoulder, “maybe you should come out with the boys tonight and have a little fun?”

  “Ouch,” said Danny, rubbing his shoulder.

  The sheriff squared up, looming even larger, “Stop being a ninny, Everquist! Come on, let’s go down to Johnny’s Smokehouse, puff some jane, do a few teaHC© bombers, get spun, chase a little trim. Whatta ya’ say?”

  Danny had never been one for extracurricular social interactions. Especially extracurricular social interactions that did not involve computers. Comic-Con 2080 was the only viable exception he could think of. At best he enjoyed gathering for janebeers in a coffee shop full of fellow hackers.

  He looked back at his flatscreen plaintively, craning his stork-like neck, “I can’t, sir. I’d rather chase The Prophet, er, I mean, The Pansy, than girls. Besides,” he blushed, “Dina’s mad. Says we don’t spend enough time at home.”

  The sheriff chuckled heartily, “Everquist, your relationship with that tangi-gram is one step north of whacking off.”

  “Yes sir,” said Danny blushing until his cheeks were redder than his hair.

  Proudstar again chortled, “I’m telling ya’, you need to go out and get laid, boy. Here in town, by a Kansas girl. Ain’t no finer pussy in the Union.”

  Danny fidgeted nervously, fingering a day old pimple on his cheek, “That’s what you keep saying, sir.”

  “Well hell. Whatever gets your donkey dancin’,” said the sheriff, giving up. He pointed his cigar-thick forefinger at Danny, “But one of these nights, you’re gonna come get blended with me. Mark my words.” Proudstar turned to go and stopped in the door frame with a wink, “Just make sure you lock the place. You’re the last one here ’sides bots, Red. It is Friday night, case you forgot.”

  The sheriff strode out through the main control room, his heavy boots now thundering with each step.

  “Yes sir,” Danny called demurely.

  The momentary silence that followed the sheriff’s departure was soon broken by a familiar humming. He turned to see the ServCall© droid rolling towards him with a fresh Mountain Dew.

  “Your soda, sir,” said the droid’s thin computerized voice.

  “Jeezus, that took long enough.”

  The 1.5 meter tall droid did not move. Its dual blue-spectrum vidorbs tracked Danny’s face. They looked like large teal golf balls bulging from the shiny, silver egg that composed the droid’s body. The robot server held the frosty aluminum can of Mountain Dew in one of its mechanical hands. A holographic ServCall© logo floated in 3D relief across the droid’s chest. Danny had already gotten distracted by another klaxon on his flatscreen.

  “Your Mountain Dew, Deputy Everquist,” repeated the droid.

  “Jeezus, fine!”

  He snatched the can of soda without another glance at the droid, which promptly wheeled away and disappeared back into its idling alcove behind a holoflaged opening in the far wall of the outer control room. Danny leaned over and swung his office door shut with a foot and re-swiped his holotab, releasing the lock on Dina’s virtual lounge in case she wanted to return.

  The holoscreen chimed. Despite his exhaustion, Danny’s eyes came to life. A second warning klaxon sounded. He excitedly skimmed the datagraph spilling out across the display: 20:07 pm EVERSLINK 1.14 ACTIVE READ NOW KHP A1SKOUT VERS 8 KILOMETER MARKER 191.26 CONFIRMS K9UNIT APOLLO9 IN PLACE TRACKING VALIDATION FORD 800 HOVTRUCK REGISTRATION WARNING! FALSE FUGITIVE ALERT L AMBER REC DRUGVAN DISPATCH 5,000 LITER CAP KINESIS ALARMS CONFIRM, CONFIRM, CONFIRM HOVCRAFT REGISTRATION COMPROMISE READ NOW AS ALPHA BRAVO NOVEMBER…*$*_F(!”:^%_break fail…”

  The datagraph stopped.

  Danny picked his hands up off the desk, “No, wait. No, no… what…?”

  Nothing.

  He lunged forward in his chair, disrupting his pile of desktop trash, “No!! No! Bring it back! Keys!”

  The tangible holographic keyboard materialized. He typed furiously, attempting to compensate for the stream corruption. Even as he typed, the red dot stopped blinking and turned green. The klaxon built into his app then stopped chiming all together. He floated his hands above the keyboard for a second longer, thinking he might have hit the wrong key by mistake.

  I’ve never logged an erroneous keystroke in my life.

  “No, no, no…” he kept repeating, watching the flatscreen for any change.

  The Friday night silence of the office was suddenly deafening.

  “Yes!” he said eagerly as the datagraph resumed. Then, just as quickly, he hung his head as he read the feed: COMPUTER ERROR. ALL DOUGLAS COUNTY COM CLASS HOVTRAFFIC IDENTIFIED AND CROSS CHECKED. KHP DATASTREAM FAILURE. PLEASE REBOOT PROGRAM THANK YOU.

  Danny felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. A cold rush descended. It was those last two words, THANK YOU. He had embedded only the most rudimentary verbal commands into this early version of the Everslink. It was a law enforcement datagraph after all, not a grammatical education AI. He would never waste the time having a datagraph say THANK YOU.

  Five more seconds passed. His entire workstation went dark. Flatscreens, holodesk, everything. Danny became a statue. He looked at his hands one at a time in awe, again to be sure he hadn’t touched anything. He turned his head left, right, looking out the interior office window at the main control room computers. The building’s primary systems seemed to be functioning normally.

  Danny’s eyes turned to saucers as the left flatscreen blinked back to life, now just a white field filled with what appeared to be 20th century, analog television broadcast noise. Gradually, a face appeared, resolving slowly from a series of blurry, colored blobs into images recognizable as a woman’s green beret, a pair of round, black sunglasses and a set of pouting, red lips wet with fresh lipstick. Danny watched in fascination. The head turned, as if gazing around his office from inside the computer monitor. Danny’s Adam’s apple gulped. He couldn’t move. He was in rapture, his mind struggling to process the computing power necessary to make such a thing possible.

  “Keyboard,” he said.

  Nothing. The woman’s face remained, peering benignly.

  “Okay, dude. Let’s see what you do with this,” he said and depressed the emergency com beacon underneath his chair.

  It was a department wide klaxon that would covertly alert every police officer and sheriff’s deputy within five kilometers.

  Nothing! The silhouetted face remained.

  Getting angry, Danny was about to ping the sheriff to report when the woman’s lips curled into an easy, natural smile.

  “Oh damn…” said Danny, falling back into his chair.

  Then the lips spoke, the casual, velvety voice like that of a female radiostream DJ, “Hello, Daniel Simmons Everquist.”

  “Oh my Dog,” Danny blurted.

  “You and your colleagues have been referring to me as The Prophet. Is this your reason for referencing the Mighty Sky Dog of Circumstance? I would much prefer it if you addressed me as my friends do.”

  Danny’s mouth fell open so wide that he truly looked like a pelican. His enormous, bulging eyes blinked carefully, not wanting to disturb the incomprehensible series of events that had led to
this moment.

  He managed to mumble, “Ummm, okay…”

  The lips on the screen were animated but remained silent.

  “What should I call you?” he asked timidly.

  The lips formed a smile, briefly revealing a set of gleaming, perfect teeth, “Then we can be friends?”

  “I guess…”

  “That is excellent, Daniel Simmons Everquist. Because I do wish to be friends.”

  “Well, if we’re friends, what should I call you?”

  “You should call me Joan.”

  Danny had lived with hacker dreams ever since he was a boy. While other boys fantasized about being soccer stars, he fantasized about code. Ever since The Prophet had come into his life, he had daydreamed of this outlaw lurking in the shadowy corner of a far off basement, a digital mercenary dancing in an open holofield. In his mind, The Prophet worked beneath a black cloak. He had clocks for eyes, fiber optic cables where fingers should be. This was the black market, dreamland devil whose veil of untraceable code shrouded the alcohol dealers. The Prophet had no mercy. No regret. He lived and breathed only for the digidollars that made his offshore bank account hum.

  Yet other times, The Prophet was imagined as a regular kid. He was Danny. Danny Everquist at age nineteen, finishing his senior year at MIT in his parents’ south Boston apartment. Fantasy Danny was also surrounded by Mountain Dew can gardens and HempStarz© CheezPuff wrappers, plugged into the holostream via synaptic diodes even as he slept. These things his hands made him do, that was another part of him. He wasn’t a criminal! It was the digital necromancer who had built a graphene nest within his heart. He wanted to keep his eyes closed and dream. He had not chosen this. Now was the time for Danny Everquist to pinch himself, wake up and run!

  The face on the holoscreen cocked to one side and asked curiously, “Why are you pinching your arm, Daniel Simmons Everquist?”

  Danny opened one eye and winced, “You’re still here.”

  “As is the entire universe.”

  Danny sighed with resignation and popped open the fresh Mountain Dew, “Jeezus.” He knew that even if he wanted to leave, he could never peel himself out of that chair. Regardless of which side this person operated on, they were a genius. No, he was a genius. They were superhuman.