Chrono Inquisitor (Gods Be Damned) (3 page)

Just like with the IRS of old, everyone feared an audit. There were so many laws on the books only a platinum level upgraded lawyer could navigate the complex workings of the ChronoGen/U.R.N.A. legal system. The beauty was, everyone broke the law in some fashion or another.

The patrons who had been close enough to hear my reason for requesting a booth quickly got up and left.

Showing I did have some civility I tipped my hat to them and wished them an eventful day.

Satisfied, I proceeded to my newly designated seat.

Inquisitors Jurisdiction

Section 84

“Any Inquisitor who abuses his position by asking for, receiving, or agrees to receive, any bribe, emolument, gratuity, reward, or anything deemed of value, except as authorized by law while undercover and during an investigation, is guilty of a misdemeanor and will be punished to the full extent of the law for abusing their position.”

I placed my hat on the hook of the bench and slid in to the side of the booth which allowed me an unobstructed visual on the entrance. I was fairly certain neither Mr. Jacobin, nor Rashad was going to come through the door, but still, it was a good idea to keep an eye on anyone who did.

Finally sitting down, I reached into the vault, compartment 23, and extracted an 8cm x 8cm square piece of metal three centimeters thick. I placed it on the table and pushed a biometric button in the lower right corner. It expanded in size till its height matched its other dimensions.

The surface of the tabletop flickered from a menu screen to black as the cube and table synced. When the red light on the cube turned green, indicating a secured connection, the familiar logo of a transparent blue die bouncing around appeared on the table. When it stopped it landed with the 3 side showing, but instead of white dots they were I’s, which then expanded to say,

‘Intelligent

Informational

Interfacing.’

The words merged together then faded, leaving I
3
, the name of the manufacturer. One of the many subsidiaries of ChronoGen Inc.

Realizing I hadn’t ordered yet I minimized the cube’s display window and brought back up the diner menu. Perusing the offerings my suspicions were confirmed. There weren’t any real animal products listed. I was really craving some bacon. It’d been at least a month since I’d had that salty, greasy, taste of carnivorous pleasure making love to my taste buds. On the bright side of things, true to Kali’s word, the place had real coffee. Though I doubted it was as good as my private stock. But, then again, that was to be expected.

There wasn’t anything appealing on the menu. I ordered my coffee along with a carbotein scramble and fruitrient spread, hoping the place would prepare it better than the last one I’d had. But my hopes weren’t high.

I looked up as a group entered the diner.

Local authorities.

‹
“I thought I told you to take care of the situation,”› I said to Kali, internally.

‹
You did, and I followed your instructions
.
›

‹
“Then why am I staring at a handful of cops?”›

‹
I do not know
.
›

Great. One more thing to delay me getting some coffee.

I put my hands behind my head and waited for the five officers to approach me.

After a minute of watching them talk to Margerie, she seated them at the empty booth where I’d scared off the previous occupants.

Since it seemed they weren’t there for me I went back to my business. I pushed the glowing die icon on the table face and my I
3
resumed control of the display. A message, ‘Notifications Pending’ dominated the screen. I’d forgotten to take Kali out of ‘Do not disturb’ mode.

“Kali, resume active architecture.”

‹
Resuming. You have several messages pending. Two messages are audible. Three are textual. None are dually sensible
.
›

I couldn’t help but laugh at that last remark. “Ain’t that the devil’s truth? Play the audio messages internally.”

Kali started playing the oldest message first. I didn’t want anyone eavesdropping so I had the audio played internally instead of through the speakers at the table. This was the norm for myself, as well as most other people. Though unlike most others, I had the habit of speaking to my CerA aloud more often than not.

‹“Morning sunshine,”› the voice said. It was Frank, my boss. ‹“Have you seen the headlines this morning? No, I guess not. You’re probably still asleep, it being your day off and all. Either that, or you’ve forgotten to enable your messaging system. Anywho, give me a tickle when you’re up and active.”›

“Delete. Next message.”

It was Frank again. ‹“Going to sleep the day away? How are you my number one when it seems all you do is sleep?
Anywho, got a new assignment for ya, sandman. Give me a tickle me when you decide to join the living.”›

“Delete.”

A new assignment. Thank the gods.

I tapped the ‘Notifications’ tab and it brought up the messages of text. The first message was from my bank informing me of some new financial – whatever. I barely glanced at it and passed it on for Kali to deal with. The next message was actually a spam-ad promoting tech upgrades. I deleted it since I was always up-to-date. Being an Inquisitor I got tech before most people even knew about it. And I
usually got it for free.

The last message read:

“Kali, who sent this?”

‹
Origin unknown. It was sent through a ventriloquist system. I can attempt to track its path of origin and see if there are any clues as to the identity of the sender. If you desire
.
›

I thought about it for a second, then said, “It’s probably a carrot, and the last thing I need is you chasing ghosts, sucking up your resources.” I was going to tell Kali to delete the message, but it did hit a little too close to home for comfort.

Officially, I was a Chrono Inquisitor, an undercover Chrono/myte investigator. I dealt with all sorts of cases. Anything involving abusing and manipulating mytes, an Inquisitor investigated.

My job ran the gamut
, but most of the time it was cases of insurance fraud. People trying to scam the system so they wouldn’t have to pay higher insurance premiums. Or, it was people illegally downloading myte upgrades they hadn’t paid for, generally nothing too serious.

Occasionally though
, I dealt with nefarious hackers who were pushing the boundaries of what mytes were capable of, but those cases were rare. The Four Horsemen generally dealt with those. Someday I hoped to join their ranks. But that meant one of them had to retire first, and it didn’t look like that was going to happen anytime soon.

No one retired anymore. Not permanently, anyway. Sabbaticals. That’s what they’d come to be called. Work thirty to forty years, save enough money, take sabbatical for five to ten - depending on how much you’d saved and what you did during your time off. Then it was back to
work to start the cycle anew.

Being an Inquisitor I worked for ChronoGen Inc. - a company with their hands in everything and an influence in policy worldwide. The company was behind practically all technology some way or another.

Back when I was a kid people used to talk about first and third world countries. Those times were gone. Everyone had access to industrial technology. But what mattered now was nanotech.

Just as much as some things change, others don’t. Now it was Alpha and Gamma classifications. If a country had a contract with ChronoGen they were Alpha status, which meant they had access to all the
wondrous technology the company had to offer. Most countries had an arrangement with ChronoGen, but there were still a few holdouts. The Vatican, for example. The Catholic Church deemed ChronoGen tech an abomination. Humans trying to replace the Almighty.

Depending on where we were stationed, the job had different titles. In the new British Empire we were known as Watchmen of the Deathwatch. In other parts of Europe we were Chrono Keepers. In the Empire of Japan we were
Shinigami
. A few years back, the Japanese association with Inquisitors and psychopomps spread and resulted in nicknames with a similar association throughout the globe.

The rising one in the Unified Republics of North America was Reaper.

I’d hated the name when it first came about, but it grew on me until I’d
eventually come to embrace it wholeheartedly. So much so that I’d even earned the
agnomen
, Grim, amongst my peers.

‘What does an Inquisitor fear? Death, the Devil, or God?’ That’s what the message had said.

Physical death was basically out of the question. CIs didn’t have to pay for body regenerations – aka baptisms, which meant we could get rejuvenated indefinitely, and therefore had the best chance of living forever.

Unless of course death meant another reaper. But the only thing reapers had to fear from each other was bounty stealing, and it wasn’t something to be afraid of. I definitely didn’t fear any other CIs.

Unless death meant Death. Now that was something to fear. One of the Four Horsemen. The Inquisitors of Inquisitors - Internal affairs.

Fearing the devil and god was just stupid, and was for superstitious Human Purist fools.

If I had to choose one, it would be Death. But why would I need to fear the Horsemen? I hadn’t done anything wrong. Okay, showing my badge and revealing myself, and then claiming to conduct an audit was stupid, but that would probably end in a stern talking to from Frank once he found out. At most
, it would probably mean I wouldn’t be getting any more assignments in Pueblo, which was no real loss. There were plenty of places for Corruptors to be.

“Kali, is there a timestamp for this message, and did it come before or after I identified myself?”

‹There is, and it was received before you awoke this morning.›

That was a relief.

I read the message again. I didn’t know what
it
was, therefore, I didn’t think anything of
it
. I wasn’t sure who was supposed to be lying, or even who this fink was.

“Kali, do a search for ‘Run a Chaos Monkey.’”

‹
I retrieve no results in regards to that exact phrase. However, ‘Chaos Monkey’ may refer to the original name of an old computer program which was specifically designed to cause disruptions in a user’s own system. Its purpose was to make the user better prepared to deal with natural random failures. And if that is the case, ‘Run’ may refer to running such a program. I do not however know how this information helps. I am already equipped with and running the evolution of such a program
.
›

“Are you telling me you have a program inside you,
that is essentially a self-inflicted computer cancer?”

‹
That is not what I said, but your analogy is applicable
.
›

“Who’s fucking crazy assed idea was that, and how the hell does it potentially fuck me up the ass?”

I wasn’t happy with the discovery.

‹
Generally, it does not. I am usually able to correct any problems the program causes within microseconds of the occurrence. But, in complete transparency to your inquiry, there have been a few occasions where it’s taken me a few full seconds to correct the problem. Luckily, none of these times have happened when I was directly assisting you. And even if one were to occur at such a time, I remind you, the longest ones only lasted for a few seconds
.
›

“How long, exactly, was the longest occurrence?”

‹
The longest occurrence was 4.849324 seconds, and it occurred eight years, seven months, twenty-four days, thirteen hours, forty-four minutes, and seventeen seconds ago. Since then, no occurrence has lasted more than 1.53721 seconds. If it helps assuage your concerns, you blink faster than ninety-seven percent of them
.
›

“Yeah, sure, that helps a lot.
Basically… we still don’t know what this message might mean.”

‹
I will continue to investigate
.
›

“No. Like I said, I don’t want you wasting resources on this. Why don’t you just keep an eye open for anything which might pertain to the message, and we’ll leave it at that.”

Then something caught my eye.

“Hold on,
that last phrase is in place of where someone would normally put their name in a correspondence.”

‹
You are correct, but that is not a normal name
.
›

“True.” I sat and contemplated the possible meaning
for a minute, but my mind was misfiring. I was still too tired. “You know what, just keep your figurative eyes open,” I told Kali.

‹
As you wish, sir
.
›

I opened up the news feed window and was attacked with an eyesore of text in various fonts, colors, and sizes. Each one trying to outcompete the others for my attention.