Unidentified Funny Objects 2 (19 page)

The five looked at one another, then over the side of the roof of Totality Software. Dena leaned over to see for herself. By squeezing her eyes, she activated the telescopic feature of her police-issue contact lenses, and zoomed in on the scene below. At the ground level, ninety stories down, occasionally obscured by passing air traffic in between, the coroner’s staff was putting a white-covered body on a stretcher into the meat wagon. The blue lights on top began flashing, and the vehicle took off, angling upward toward the northwest for the morgue.

“Who is that?” she asked.

“Was,” said the man with the tattoo, with annoying precision. He, like all his fellow Totality employees, wore a headpiece with a single gray lens that covered his right eye like a pirate’s patch. “Art Smedley. Our CTO. Chief Technical Officer. He fell off the roof.”

“Suicide?” Dena asked.

A woman with brilliant neon green hair and golden skin nodded her head sadly.

“I never thought he’d do it.”

“Self-destruction?” K’t’ank asked, though audible only to her. “Curious! With so many means of achievable death available to one in the normal course of human life, why choose terror and collision?”

“Hush!” Dena said. She gave the others an apologetic smile. “Had he been threatening self-harm?”

Suicide was a major crime in the city, and unsuccessful attempts were usually penalized with terms in locked mental therapy facilities as well as eye-watering fines. The successful ones couldn’t be prosecuted, though they knew their families would have to pay the city for cleanup and nuisance costs. Dena hoped that would deter some of them from going through with it.

“I never heard him say he wanted to kill himself,” the man protested. The ID he presented gave his name as Frank Perugio.

The green-haired woman’s eyes flashed. Her card named her as Roshin Caitako.

“He did, though. To me. He didn’t feel he could confide in
you
. Any of you.”

“That’s not fair, Rosh!” protested the other woman present, Magi Tene, a blonde of middle years clanking with computerized bangles and other gizmos. The two remaining males, who looked like father and son, added their protests.

“We need you to find out why he did it,” the father said. He was Jerry Lopez. His son was Dario. Dena nodded.

“I’ll need access to his personal computer—providing he didn’t take it with him—and to go through his office. You folks realize that as of the time you called us, your computer systems went on lockdown. Nothing can be deleted until we’ve had a chance to look at it.”

“We know!” the elder Lopez exclaimed, his brows drawn down. “Government invasion of privacy!”

“It’s normal, Jerry! Come on, Detective, I’ll sign you on,” Perugio said. They headed toward the access tower. He gave her a sideways glance. “Uh, could we talk with Dr. K’t’ank now?”

“Sure,” said Dena, with a groan. She switched on the bracelet. K’t’ank, never one to disappoint an audience, introduced himself.

“Most curious the way your cities are constructed,” he said. “My planet-sharers are much more careful in the construction of their habitats. Are our lives more precious to us than yours?”

“Not at all!” Perugio protested. “We prize life and safety. Look at our rooftop! This is our living space. We spend hours out here every day. It’s set up to protect us.” Dena swept an eye around so K’t’ank could take in all the features, a mix of cultures and eras. A croquet lawn sat beside a net-encased basketball court. The ornamental fountain she noticed on arrival was less than an inch deep, with sophisticated drainage preserving the water and preventing anyone from drowning. At the rear, behind the access tower, was a miniature arena, complete with electronic scoreboard and T-shirt cannons. It was fenced high so no ball, or ball player, could fall over the parapet just a few yards away.

“But consider the statistics,” K’t’ank said, and Dena knew he had them at his fingertips, so to speak. He spent most of his life on the Internet. “Harm comes to humans in many ways every day… .” The Totality employees listened raptly, leaving Dena to concentrate on observing the crime scene. She took recordings of her own of the rooftop, the access tower, and the corridor leading back to Smedley’s office.

That sanctuary reminded her less of a Fortune 5000 company official, and more of a toy store. Smedley had at least one of every major nerd collector toy dating back over a century—static, animatronic, holographic, you name it—arranged on paper-thin shelves that lined every wall. Enviously, she touched the holocrystal display from
Star Trek 21
, the first movie in the second reboot, a limited edition collector’s item. She noticed he owned copy #7 of 500.

Under all the clutter were equally expensive office furnishings. She sat down in the enormous black nylon sling behind the translucent desk. The chair automatically adjusted to her size and weight. It was, without a doubt, the most comfortable chair she had ever felt.

“It would be great to have a chair like this,” she said, shifting to enjoy the way it cradled and supported her. “I wonder how much something like this costs.”

“My late host had such,” K’t’ank said. “Eight thousand credits.”

“Wow!” Dena said, appalled. She bounced in it one last time. “Well, I’d better appreciate it for the moment.”

According to the security cameras and the communication records, Smedley had taken a personal call on his headset just before walking up to the roof and jumping off. No doubt about it. She replayed the video from several angles again and again. Smedley had been talking animatedly, paused at the edge of the parapet, then leaped off into nothingness. The cry he let out as he fell was audible on several recorders in the building. She cut off the replay before she got to Smedley’s landing on the pavement. What she could see from the roof had been as detailed as she wanted to get. The coroner would let her know if there had been an organic reason for Smedley to want to terminate himself, like the onset of cancer or dementia.

“I’m just bothered by the cheerful bound into eternity,” Dena said, frowning at the screen.

“Humans are strange,” K’t’ank said.

“Thank you, Captain Obvious. But what do you think about his behavior?”

“He deliberately takes the step,” K’t’ank agreed. “As if he was joyous to do so.”

“Could he have been part of a cult?” Dena asked. “I agree with Perugio. I just don’t figure Smedley for a suicide. He seemed so happy.”

A scan of his personal files bore out her initial impression. Sifting through the remains of a life was tedious work. The personal stuff she could do, using an algorithm to pick up trends in the backlog of the victim’s emails, notes, and diaries, not to mention online postings. When the program finished sorting, it would point out probability trees and anomalies. Smedley’s professional life, however, required a specialist. She could not download all his files to the police computer yet; undoubtedly she required a password or an override by the company sysop. She could, however, access read-only files.

“He does not appear to be part of a collective personality,” K’t’ank said. “Greatly an individual dedicated to individuals.”

“That’s what I think, too,” Dena said, pausing the video of Smedley just before he plunged over the side of the Totality building. “But he wasn’t pushed. What happened there?”

The person on the other end of the call Smedley had been on when he died was a stockholder in Totality, Iris Bendix. Dena put in the code on her police handset, and connected. For the next ten minutes she listened to the woman at the other end downloading her shock and grief. In between wails, Dena made the right noises, and managed to work in a few words. When Iris stopped for breath, Dena interrupted in her calmest voice.

“Tell me about Totality,” she said. “I see that you’ve owned a piece of it for years.”

The distraction worked. “I’ve been on board from the beginning,” Iris said, sounding as if she was pulling herself together. Dena ran the brief ID video on Bendix’s file. A slim woman with smile lines but no other wrinkles. Long white hair. Former model, presently CEO of her own company.

“What do they do?”

“They make a total immersive environment,” Iris said. “It’s like having your own holodeck. Companies have been moving toward this for years, but never quite getting there. Totality did it.”

Dena had a few headsets, helmets, vests, and bodysuits in her closet that had promised that holodeck experience. They didn’t deliver, and had become obsolete almost as soon as she bought them.

“It’s in the eyepatch?” she asked. “The gray eyepatch?”

“Yes. It projects a whole user experience into the eyes. One or both, depending on how you program it. It’s fabulous. You’ve never tried it?”

“No, I…” Dena didn’t want to admit that she and her husband couldn’t afford the system on their combined salaries. Not yet, anyway. Maybe after the next raise. “Ms. Bendix, could it—I’m sorry to have to put it like this, but this is what happened—could it make someone walk off a cliff?”

She was afraid Iris would fold up again, but she remained calm.

“God, no! Totality has more safeguards than the Academy Awards voting system.”

“I’ll look into it. Thanks for your help.”

“Anything I can do to find out what happened,” Iris said. “Art was a great guy!”

THE PROGRAMMERS WERE EAGER to let Dena experience the Totality system. Six of them fussed over her in the white-walled, gadget-filled showroom, getting her preferences on fantasies or favorite programs down on a roll-up screen monitor, accessing her social media to download her friends list, and fitting the surprisingly light headset to her face.

The gray patch was translucent, but it bothered Dena to have something so close to her eye.

“Stop fluttering your eyelids!” Caitako said. “You’ll forget all about it in a moment.”

“I can’t,” Dena protested, batting away the technicians’ hands until someone sat on her lap to stop her.

Then they turned it on.

“Oh, my everliving God!”

An endless plain of grass and wildflowers surrounded her. Birds flew, chirping musically. Huge, white, fluffy clouds rolled overhead. A gorgeous dark-skinned man, muscled like an ancient god, rode up beside her on a white horse. He plucked a bunch of grapes, glistening with dew, from a vine that suddenly sprang up from the ground and took one perfect, round purple globe from the bunch. He leaned over toward Dena with a knowing, wicked smile. She opened her mouth, waiting for the grape’s cool, wet shape to touch her tongue.

“It is baffling!” K’t’ank’s voice interrupted her. She felt his tail whipping against her internal organs. “It is not natural! Stop the illusions at once!”

Dena blinked. Through the hazy image of the divine man and his horse, she saw the Totality employees and the lab.

“That is absolutely amazing,” she said. “I felt as if I was there. Wherever there was.”

“It’s the greatest system we have ever made,” Perugio said proudly. “We’ve sold over eight hundred million units.”

“I do not like it,” K’t’ank said.

Dena removed the light band from her head.

“I can see how it would overwhelm reality,” she said. “Is it possible there was a system malfunction that caused Mr. Smedley to see something that wasn’t there?”

“Never. You get used to it in a short time,” Dario Lopez said, polishing the eyepiece and putting the headset back into a pure white carton. “You’re always aware of what’s real and what isn’t. It’s why we made the background lens gray. It sticks out.”

“Well, check the system and get back to me,” Dena said. “I am finding no reason why Mr. Smedley would have jumped off a building, not when he had a set of mint 1977 Star Wars figurines to come home to.”

“Will do, Detective,” Perugio promised. He leaned toward her. “Um, Dr. K’t’ank, can I, uh… do you have email in there?”

“Most certainly!” K’t’ank said. “I would be pleased to add you to my correspondents. I am very active in staying current with connections.”

“It keeps him quiet at night,” Dena pointed out dryly.

SHE TOOK SMEDLEY’S FILES home on a small drive, and went over them while her husband watched a couple of hours of television on their wall-sized screen. K’t’ank shared Neal’s passion for reality videos. Dena had learned to glance up every few seconds while she was doing something else so he could follow the program, without really seeing what was on the screen herself. The medical examiner’s file had arrived during dinner. She studied it.

“Smedley’s health was fine. He broke his wrist during high school, but since then, nothing. No cancer. No fatal disease. Nothing but a little myopia.”

“Everybody has myopia,” Neal Malone said, without looking away from the tri-vid screen.

“Yeah, I know. It couldn’t have been an organic failure. But what? It has to be right in front of me. Something that drove him to not only kill himself, but do it happily.”

“Look up, Malone, look up!” K’t’ank said. “That terror is like one who lives on my world!”

A nightmare beast lunged directly toward them, opening a vast blue, fuchsia, and slate gray mouth lined with row after row of sharp teeth. She jumped backward, her heart pounding. It turned on its tail and swam away.

“Why do you flinch?” K’t’ank asked. “You know what you saw isn’t real.”

“I hate you,” Dena said. Her pulse slowed to its normal rhythm.

“That is not an answer!”

“Yes, it is,” she said, and went back to her reading. She stopped. “Could it really be that easy?”

“What is easy?” K’t’ank asked.

“Seeing something that isn’t there?”

She attacked the company files, much less easy to sift through. The screen opened hundreds of cascading files that all looked alike except for a few lines of text and a 3D rendering spinning in a box, of anything from a console to a single circuit. Smedley’s job as CTO was to collect documentation and coordinate applications to the Terran Patent Office, among other things. At any time, he had somewhere between sixty and two hundred applications under consideration, with more in various levels of appeal or approval. Not only that, there was correspondence from all around the solar system and beyond regarding rival applications. Some of them were for technology almost identical to Totality’s. A few were almost word for word identical to ones submitted by Smedley from a company on Enceladus. They had been forwarded to him by Ms. Bendix. Dena called her again.