Rusted Chrome

by Karlos Allen

Day Three

part 2 of 4

After a few minutes, feeling calmer and more alert, he decided to go online and see what Margie had managed to dig up for him. The office was quiet. He walked over to the water cooler and poured a glass. It wasn’t authentic, but right now even imaginary booze would be too close to home. Sitting down he opened the manila folder on the desk.

The top sheet was marked “Crime-Busters, Inc.” Seeing it jogged his memory. The Crime-Busters had been billed as ‘Living Security Cameras’. People literally rented out their eyes and ears. How does it work? He scanned down the sheet and midway along found a paragraph titled just that.

The Human Body is the most sensitive thing there is. — Bull! — Whenever your Crime Buster sees or hears anything out of the ordinary his adrenalin spikes. Sensors surgically implanted in him immediately respond by tapping the optic and audio nerves, providing a real-time high-definition feed to the central control room. At the same time, the CB moves forward to investigate, taking advantage of any available cover. By doing this he can provide the control room with data that no cameras or remote could ever provide.

Further, with on-the-spot intelligence, no amount of jamming or electronic countermeasures will stop him from getting the information to us. In turn we can have police out to the disturbance knowing exactly what they are facing. Get yours today!

Sounds like a jumped-up security guard. He thought about the people on the sidewalk in the Pearl. There is no way I would ever trust them. Besides what’s the point of the tattoo? He scanned a little further:

With their distinctive cap and markings, their presence serves as a deterrent to would-be thieves who know that where you can see one, there will be others you can’t see. And by hiring disadvantaged ones we prevent crime by providing steady, well-paying jobs to those who otherwise might be forced to support themselves in other ways.

Oh boy! Let’s just hire the crooks to guard the place, that way they won’t be tempted to run off with it!

He scanned further:

Our special training and reinforcement program encourages honesty in our employees. Thus you have total peace of mind knowing you are doing a good thing for yourself and society.

Huh??? “Special training and reinforcement program?” That does not sound good! In fact it doesn’t even sound legal! He put that paper in his ‘Look into this; Urgent’ box and turned to the next page.

He could see what had been taking Margie so long in the search. Even as an electronic facsimile the results took up several pages. He began skimming the overview she’d provided for him. He quickly saw the pattern: there were about five or six useful sites; the rest all just echoed them and each other.

Deleting everything else, he went back to the main sites and began reading. The first one was incredible: it laid out the basic idea of the Bio-Server but then began making a case that it was being created by aliens in collusion with the Government to keep the citizens under control. Really? Then how’d YOU get on the Web, pal?

The second and third were more believable, but were terribly thin on facts; he deleted them too. The last three were entries on a discussion board that had nothing to do with the Bio-Server legend directly; they were anecdotes by people in the mental health industry. They were talking, with names removed of course, about some of the weirder patients they’d had. He went back and read one of them more closely:

One of the guys, I’ll call him ‘Hal’ had been in Ward Two for about ten years. He seemed bright enough but was really unstable. At times he switched personalities, insisting that he was really someone else. We’d learned to go along with this and even got to know the different personalities’ likes and dislikes. He had about five: there was Janice, she was a math savant who insisted on eating only square food; and Simon, who was very likable but had a real penchant for editing and an obsession with grammar. If Hal came toward you with a red pen, you knew Simon was around.

A couple of the others were fragmentary, just bits and pieces of personality and didn’t last long. Then there was Alex. He was an absolute psychopath. He would state goals and then drive toward them. He was not human and would kill you as soon as look at you if you got in his way. When Alex was out, Hal went into solitary. This was not easy, because Hal and all of his personalities were geniuses with electronics and computers.

This is interesting but what’s it got to do with Bio-Servers? He scanned a little further:

Once we said something in Hal’s hearing about the server being down. He went berserk, screaming that he needed to interface. He started begging that we let him interface — with what I don’t know — but all of the personalities started coming to the surface at once, clamoring to be let back into the project. “What project?” we asked. He stopped and then Alex, you could tell from the smile, said, “The Bio-Server Project, you poor little meat boards.” He went into solitary then.

About this time the car informed him that they were back at the station. He keyed the office to transparent so he could see to walk and headed straight for his desk. Everybody saw he was online and stepped around him. Even with the office in transparent mode you don’t navigate well and people tend to give you a wide berth.

Sitting down at the desk, he looked at the next one:

That reminds me of one I dealt with. It’s been about twelve years ago. “Shelley” was the same way, only never dangerous. She was actually a sweet patient, she’d try to be helpful, but she could never remember what she was doing. Then her other persona, “Zach,” would come out and straighten her up. It was as though she had her own big brother living in her head.

Once, though, I came upon her in the lunch area just crying. When I asked what was wrong she answered, “I can’t interface; I can’t get back to the Project.” I asked what project that was and “Zach” came back with: “The Bio-Server Project, they won’t let us in any more, they say we’re unstable. I know we’re odd, but at least we aren’t dangerous, not like...” and he wouldn’t go on.

Well, this is interesting! He turned to the third entry. He started to scan it and then sat up and started from the beginning.

Folks, there never was a Bio-Server Project. The patients you are pretending to refer to never existed. You know this; I won’t remind you about your ethical obligations again. You will delete your entries now! — the Moderator

Wha-?! He yelled for Margie.

“Yes, Mr. O’Leary?”

“Margie, where did you get this thread? It’s deleted data.”

“Oh, that! Well, I did have to poke through a few trash cans for some things, but you know how it is these days. The garbage men are so lax. Nothing ever really gets thrown away; you just have to know where to look.” The innocence on her face was a work of art. “You’re not the only detective here, you know.”

“Margie, I never knew you had it in you. Remind me to give you a raise. Here all this time I thought you were an honest girl who never snooped.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking lately, there’s honest and then there’s honest. Sometimes you can’t be one if you want to be the other.” She turned and flounced back into her office.

He pushed his fedora up on his forehead and scratched where the band had been. Maybe I should talk to Tech Support about this. I’ve never heard of an AI using moral reasoning to get around a hard-coded data search block. On the other hand, this could be useful.

He shook his head and decided to go offline. He was reaching for his cup to get some more coffee when the communicator on his desk buzzed.

Picking it up he hit the receive button. “O’Leary here.”

“Chuck? This is Christie. Could I talk to you? I think I have some information.”

“Sure. Ernie’s?”

“Yes, about five?”

“I’ll be there.” He hung up and leaned back in the chair. What could Christie have for him? She’d given him an initial lead, but it’d been only peripheral to the case. Now, well he’d just have to see. He got that coffee and sat back down. He looked at the clock. Bill was supposed to have his MRI this morning. He noticed that it was well past time for that. Picking up the communicator again he dialed his room. Miko answered.

“Chuck?”

“Hi, Miko, I was just checking in on Bill. How did the MRI go?”

“It wasn’t very helpful. There is plenty of activity going on, but its fragmented. They said it looked as though most of the brain was... preoccupied. Inputs from his eyes and ears were getting shunted away and not really processed. The doctors are puzzled and want to run more tests. I’m not sure I want to let them. I’ve been watching the drugs they’re giving him. They’re starting to prescribe tranquilizers.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“He’s not agitated, that what’s wrong! The tranquilizers are there for the benefit of the staff, not for him. I’ve seen this before, sometimes, when the staff doesn’t know what to do with a person; they dope him up and then just provide basic care. It cuts down on the amount of work they have to do and the family doesn’t usually protest. People are supposed to be groggy and dopey in the hospital. If they were alert and active they wouldn’t be sick. It’s all a matter of perception. I’m thinking of moving him back home. I can provide day-to-day care.”

“How’s he doing right now?”

She suddenly looked really tired. “He hasn’t changed, Chuck. It’s been three days now and there hasn’t been any difference. He still thinks it’s the twelfth and that he got up to go to work this morning.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

“Not really, though he’d be happy to see you.”

“Tell you what; I’ll come by later this afternoon. I have a little time before I have to meet a source on this case. You can take off and I’ll keep him occupied for an hour or so.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem. I owe you guys at least that much for all the dinners I’ve been mooching the last couple of years.”

It was shortly after lunch that he finally got over to the hospital. Miko’s relief was palpable.

“I’ll only be gone for about half an hour, Chuck. I have some errands to run and then I’ll be back.”

“No problem, take your time.”

He walked in and sat down. “Hey, Bill, how’s it going?”

Okawa looked around at him. “Hi Chuck, I’m fine...” he trailed off and stared at O’Leary’s head.

“What’s wrong, Bill?”

“You’ve got a cap on. Could I borrow it? I have some work to do and these terminals aren’t working.”

O’Leary looked at him and almost repeated what he’d said last time, but decided he didn’t want to get into that. Instead he asked, “What work do you have to do, Bill?”

“It’s hard to explain.”

“Could you show me, on a terminal?”

Okawa shook his head, “I’ve tried and tried on a terminal. It just doesn’t work.”

“Try again, on a terminal; I’d like to see what does happen.”

Okawa pulled up a terminal and logged on to the Web. It had been a long time since O’Leary had looked at the Web through this kind of interface. It looked small and flat. Okawa began typing in addresses and soon data was jumping past him on the screen.

“Wait, Bill. None of this makes any sense. Are you programming something? I don’t recognize this at all; it’s not police work.”

“It’s important, Chuck. But I can’t do it this way. I’ve got to interface! Can’t you lend me your cap for a minute?”

“You know that won’t work, Bill. My cap had to be adjusted to fit me, remember? All you’d get is a really bad headache.”

“Then, could you please get my cap for me?”

“Bill, the doctors don’t want you interfacing mentally. Something really bad happened; you had a serious seizure when you were online last time. They don’t want that to happen again.”

“When was that? All I remember was getting up for work this morning and then I was in here in my skivvies—”

“With the nurse checking your vitals,” O’Leary chorused. “That was three days ago, Bill. You haven’t remembered a thing since then. Miko’s going nuts.”

Okawa looked down at the floor. “Sorry. Chuck, I need my cap. The work is important. You’ve got to get it for me.” He paused, “You said you would, I remember that.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, I do. I don’t know when it was, but you said you would.”

O’Leary looked him in the eye. “Bill, I shouldn’t. You’re not well, and I don’t want to make you worse; Miko would kill me. But if nothing happens and you don’t get better soon, I will see what I can do, OK?”

“OK, but what am I doing here?” He was gone again.

The rest of the time was spent having the same conversation over and over. When Miko called up to say she was back, O’Leary almost fainted from relief. He met her in the hall.

“How did it go?”

“He was lucid for a few minutes. Have you ever asked him why he needs to get back on the Web?”

“No, I just assumed it was an obsession. You think it’s something else?”

“I don’t know. I asked him what was so important and tried to get him to show me on a terminal.”

“What did you get?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, it could have been gibberish, or it could have been back-end code. Sometimes there’s not much difference. I did notice that he was able to hold onto the conversation longer. He didn’t go away till we got off that topic. Then it was back to the same old routine. Maybe you should ask if we can try that.”

She looked thoughtful. “I’ll ask and see if they can give me a reasonable answer. I’ll tell you this though. We are not going to do anything that will make it worse. I could never live with that.”

“I understand.” He looked at the clock. “I have to go.”

“Thank you, Chuck. I will think about what you’ve said.”