Future Crimes Part 60

"He's behind the Malibu Sheer killings, dim bulb said Tinker.

"Geeze, I figured that out even before I met you for lunch, boss. The cops were too dumb to spot this, but I figured out that two of the victims, in different and not obvious ways, stood in the way of a new takeover Trafalgar's planning. So he cooked up this Slicer business and--" "You dropped in on him and told him what you knew," said Jake.

"Rather than telling me or the police."

"Bingo," said Tinker.

"You couldn't pay me anything, neither could the cops. With the money I'm getting from Erie, I'll be setting up my own detective agency in Greater LA. Tinker & a.s.sociates. This is my last case as a stooge.

From now on I'm the boss and not a flunky."

"But you're not supposed to have any ambitions like that. You're a robot, and they--" "You really don't attend to me," said the dog.

"I've been telling you that I'm not your ordinary dogbot anymore."

Jack still kept himself from looking at what was left of his former wife.

"What's to stop Trafalgar from arranging an accident for you?"

"He would've tried that had I not informed the gink that there are several copies of the dossier I whipped up about his activities in the case," explained the robot dog.

"So cleverly hidden electronically that he and all his goons'll never find them. But if I don't perform certain tasks each and every day, those several copies will find their way to the minions of the law."

Jack started to stand up.

"You killed Polly, didn't you?"

"Wasn't that difficult," said Tinker.

"And the method that Trafalgar and his toadies worked out for the other killings is a cinch to imitate. Cops, trust me, won't be able to tell the difference."

Jack lunged for the dog.

"You're not going to--" "Sit." A thin beam of yellowish light shot out of Tinker's right eye. It hit him in the left knee.

He cried out in pain, tottered back, sat.

"Lowest setting," explained the dog.

"You can still talk, but you can't walk at all."

"How are you going to convince the police that I--" "Oh, you're going to be long gone when they get here, a suicide," Tinker said.

"What's going to clinch it, in addition to the clues I'll plant is the voxmail confession you're going to send to the SoCal State Police right before you do away with yourself."

"You're not going to be able to force me to make a confession. Tinker,"

Jack a.s.sured the robot dog.

"And there goes your half wit plan."

Tinker sighed.

"It looks like you're going to keep underestimating me right up to the bitter end," he said in a flawless imitation of Jack's voice.

by Gary A. Braunheck

Gary A. Braunbeck writes poetically dark suspense and horror fiction, rich in detail and scope Recent stories have appeared in Robert Block's Psychos, Once Upon a Crime, and The Conspiracy Files. His occasional foray into the mystery genre is no less accomplished, having appeared in anthologies such as Danger in D.C. and Cat Crimes Takes a Vacation.

His recent short story collection, Things Left Behind, received excellent critical notice. He lives in Columbus, Ohio.

"Secret of my universe: imagining G.o.d without human immortality."

--Camus, Notebook IV, January 1942September I found the guy outside one of the downtown VR cult temples just like the thin-voiced tipster said I would.

He was around thirty-two, thirty-three years old, dressed in clothes at least two sizes too small for the cold December dusk. There were blisters on his forehead, face, and neck. One look in his eyes told me that his mind--or what might be left of it--was still lost somewhere in cybers.p.a.ce, floating without direction down corridors formed wherever electricity runs with intelligence; billowing, coursing, glittering, humming, a Borgesian library filled with volumes he'd never understand, lost in a 3D city; intimate, immense, firm, liquid, recognizable and unrecognizable at once.

The Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man, in the flesh.

I gently placed one of my hands on his shoulder.

My other hand firmly clasped the b.u.t.t of my tranquilizer pistol, just in case.

"You okay?"

He turned slowly toward me, his eyes gla.s.sy, uncomprehending.

"Who've you, mister?"

"A friend. I'm here to help you."

"D-d-did ... did he ever find that girl?"

"Who?"

"John Wayne?"

He seemed so much like a child, lost, lonely, frightened.

A lot of VR cultists end up like this. Sometimes I wondered if the ma.s.s-suicides of religious cults in the past were really such a tragedy, after all. At least then the cultists--sad, odd, damaged people who turned to manufactured religions and plasticine G.o.ds-were released, were freed forever from the Machiavellian will- and mind-benders who turned them into semi-ignorant, unquestioning, shuffling . Worse, though, were the families who hired me and my partner to get their kids back and deprogram them. They always thought that familial love and compa.s.sion would break through the brainwas.h.i.+ng--and don't try to PC my a.s.s, because brainwas.h.i.+ng is the only thing to call it--but then they find out all too soon that you don't need surgical equipment to perform some lobotomies. Seven times out of ten the kids wound up in private inst.i.tutions; at least one of the other three are dumped at state-run facilities where they're snowed on lithium for six months, spoon-fed first-year graduate school psychobabble, then put out on the streets to join the other modern ghosts, adorned in rags, living in shadows, extending their hands for some 240 Gary A. Braunbeck change if you can spare it, and wondering in some part of their mind why the G.o.d they had wors.h.i.+ped from the altar of their computer monitor has abandoned them.

"That's my car over there. C'mon, I'll take you someplace safe and warm. You can eat."

", .. 'kay .. ." His voice and gestures seemed even more childlike as he started toward my hover car "How - . how come your car don't got no wheels?" He seemed genuinely mystified, as if he'd never seen a hover-car before. We were nineteen years into the twenty-first century and hover-cars had been in use for the last five. Okay, so they weren't exactly commonplace yet, but there were more than enough in the air at any given time that, unless you'd been on Mars since 2014, you'd have seen at least a couple.

"It flies."

His eyes grew wide, awed.

"Really?"

I smiled at him.

"Sure thing. Why don't you get in ... uh ... what's your name? Mine's Carl."

"Mine's Jimmy Waggoner."

"Get in. Jimmy Waggoner."

He did. I locked his door from outside (the pa.s.senger side door cannot be opened from within), then took my place behind the controls, and soon we were airborne, gliding smoothly and quickly over the cityscape.

Jimmy looked out the window and down on the world he was no longer a part of.

"This is soooooooooo neat!"

"Glad you like it."