by Rebecca A. Demarest

The snick-snap sound of furious typing in the living room triggered my wake protocol and I poured my consciousness into my insectoid home-body to see what had my housemate in an uproar this time. As my servos spun up, I noticed she wasn’t at her war station, the desk threatening to collapse under the weight of varied archaic monitors stacked three, sometimes four high. Instead, my industrious companion was crouched on the floor, tablet and keyboard balanced on an empty delivery box, chiclet keys close to breaking under her assault. Ah, the sounds of home.

“Good morning, Sherlock. What has you so worked up at such an ungodly hour?” I scampered across the room, climbing to perch on her shoulder and peer at the screen. It would be much easier to share her data stream if she wasn’t so paranoid about security. Instead, I was relegated to the data I could intake and process through external sensors only. I never complained, though, as that same paranoia is what made this place such a safe refuge for a decommissioned military medical AI like myself.

Lock stuck her tongue out at me for the use of her full name and broke off typing long enough to swipe at my small metal frame (missing of course) before diving right back in. “What are you complaining about, it’s not like you actually need to set yourself to sleep.”

“I am currently experimenting with downtime and backend systems to increase data analysis. Your feud with —” I focused on the screen, “— Buggrit784 over the differentiation of pre- and post- Remediation water sources interrupted that.” I switched to Lock’s other shoulder and settled in, nuzzled up to the side of her neck. “Why are we arguing with him again?”

If anything, her typing became even louder. “Because he is wrong.”

“Ah, yes, and you just happened to be up reading the boards at 4am because…”

“He lives in the Wastes on the reclamation projects and this is when he gets off shift.” With one more final flurry of keystrokes, Lock sent her final rebuttal into cyberspace and put her tablet away. “Besides, I’m expecting a client at any moment.”

I quickly parsed through the last few days security logs, vids, and news sources trying to identify the pattern Lock had noticed leading them to believe we had a visitor inbound. After a moment’s analysis I shook my tiny head. “A hint?” I wasn’t too proud to beg.

Lock picked me up off her shoulder and held me up to eye level. “Watts, you know that’s cheating. You’ll never learn to predict human behavior like this.”

“I’ll just download a patch,” I joked, leaning hard on my sarcasm subroutine, and flashing a “/s” on my data screen just in case Lock didn’t get the joke. While computers could, and had, gotten to the point where a lot of the world arounds us could be quantified and analyzed, we still couldn’t quite approach the level of prescience that Lock maintained. Without implants.

She had her mouth open for a rebuttal when someone rang the bell down on the street level. Seeing as our landlady was most certainly not awake, I swung down the stairs and opened the door, clinging to the doorframe.

“May I ask who is calling?” Just because it was early doesn’t mean I couldn’t be polite.

An older woman stood on the stoop, in an expensive, yet understated wrap, with a digital interference veil. It played havoc on my ocular sensors. After taking a moment to examine my custom, palm-sized insectoid vehicle, she responded. “I’d rather not say out here, if it’s all the same to you.”

“As madam requires.” I leapt down from the door frame and waited until she had crossed the threshold to give the door the order to close. I scampered up the steps ahead of our early morning guest, using my other sensors to assess them. A light step, toe first, but not the gliding step I’d come to associate with those with martial training. A dancer then. And someone with a license for a DIV, because otherwise an enforcement bot would have confiscated it right out. She was just shy of six foot, was wearing seriously expensive clothing purchased from a bespoke salon in Milan, and was wearing a perfume that my databank identified as custom composited for her body chemistry with one… no, two neurotransmitter alteration agents. Pliability and Attraction if my scans were correct. I ran the odds and presented my findings as I entered Lock’s study.

“Delphine Moreau to see you, Ms. Holmes.” I bowed once to the fashion designer and then leapt to Lock’s shoulder as she blanked her array of monitors and turned to face our guest, fingers steepled. Pure theater.

“Thank you, Watts. Would you like a seat, Ms. Moreau?”

The woman hesitated briefly before sitting, raising her veil, and taking off her hat. “I know Devereaux said not to be surprised by your talent for observation, but I must say, that is an unnerving trick.”

I cocked my head to indicate interest. “Even though you’re used to people knowing who you are?”

“Especially so. I’ve taken quite a lot of care in coming here this evening and to be addressed so casually is… well… perhaps you can help me after all.” She folded her hands gently in her lap and took another moment to compose herself. Lock and I waited for her to get to the point. It took an entirely too long 3.45 seconds before she looked back up and began.

“I am being blackmailed. How they came about the information, I can’t begin to fathom as I’ve kept this strictly analog, just for this very reason. But it’s for real, they have too many details for it to be someone fishing. I am not the only one. I know of two other people who are so afraid that they’ve just paid. And paid again. You know how these sort of people are.”

Lock spit on the floor, scowling. “Blackmailers. Cowardly leeches praying on the vulnerable and depraved alike. Murdering common decency and privacy.”

In the startled pause after my partner’s outburst, I asked, “What are they holding over you? And what is the price that they want?”

“I almost can’t — it really is horrible, do you need to know? The price I am happy to tell you. I’m to pull out of next month’s fashion show. Plead illness. But I just can’t, I’ve so many contracts riding on this show, and my business operates at breakeven most years.”

For fun, I calculated the cost of her outfit into the tens of thousands, but didn’t contradict her narrative. Lock took up the thread of questioning.

“Really, if we’re to help you, we need to know what they have on you, and when and where they could have come across that information. Otherwise we’ll be of no help finding the culprit and bringing them to justice.” Lock leaned forward, elbows on her knees, hands clasped. “I know this is difficult, but believe me when I say that I have invariably done things much worse and do not judge you one bit for whatever you need to tell us.”

Position 8, the Confidant. Lock had given me a series of flash cards of body language to study. I was still working on the whole having-a-body to practice with. I turned my analysis back on the fashion designer and tracked her vitals. Increasing heart rate and blood pressure, increased respiration. Until she took three deep breaths to calm herself.

“It’s silly, really, I don’t even know why I’m so uncomfortable with people knowing. It’s just…not all my designs are my own. There, I’ve said it, and I can’t take it back now. I’ll go down to Refuse Reuse, where you can buy by the pound, and I find all sorts of antique clothing and I repurpose the patterns. Remember the breakthrough pants I had last year?” At our blank looks, she waved a hand dismissively. “That’s alright, you’re obviously not fashion people. They’re based on the ancient brand of pants called JNCOs, some hideously punk teenager fashion from a few centuries ago. A few tweaks and I’m making headlines.” She chuckled to herself, dry and bitter.

I stopped myself from asking wasn’t that what fashion was all about and instead tried to convey serious consideration.

Lock beat me to the next question. “You say you take great pains to make sure you are off the grid when you shop. Tell me what your usual habits are.”

“Well, I have a few off-the-discount-rack outfits I’ll wear, really cheap stuff, and I leave all my devices home so I can’t be tracked or listened to, and I wear a ball cap with an IR QR code that scrambles a small section of video, plus a face prosthetic. I can’t imagine anyone who could track me after all of that.”

Lock stood and briskly straightened the vest she wore over her camisole. “I can see your concern, but I do believe I have an idea of how to start. Ms. Moreau, I bid you good morning, but my partner and I have a lot of work ahead of us. You said there were others?”

“Yes, Gunter Marquis and Blaine Bashir.” Our new client stood, elegance in every line. She took her time resettling her hat with its high tech veil. “Whatever your price is, Ms. Holmes, I will gladly pay it.”

After trading payment codes, Lock sketched a brief bow and let Delphine Moreau out of our rooms. When she had gone and the front door was latched behind the fashion designer, Lock turned to me with a familiar glint in her eye. “Watts, do you know how to track someone who has made themself digitally invisible?”

I mulled the question over. I could think of several ways, but they all involved trackers of the digital variety. “Not off the top of my head, no.”

“By looking for the space where they should be but we find only blank space and dead air.”

Lock started where she always did: her network of informants on the discussion board IR3GUL4R5, a conglomeration of data minded individuals who delighted in gathering all sorts of useless information and putting it together in startlingly enlightening epiphanies.

L0CK&K3Y: Need to track down some holes in the web, around specific data points.

hUshpUp: Targets?

L0CK&K3Y: Delphine Moreau, Gunter Marquis, Blaine Bashir

StinkyBob: *whistles* that’s some tippytop honey there

hUshpUp: 100 cred says I can beat you to it

J3W31: Make it two, and I’m in

StinkyBob: why you still jawing, I’ve one down

I’ve tried a few times to trace the usernames of the IR3GUL4R5 back to their home accounts, but they were universally clever, and I frequently ran into riddles and tricks my software was not equipped to handle. And yes, riddles. I’d gotten singed on J3W31’s sphinx shaped firewall when I tried to brute force my way through it rather than solve the increasingly obtuse riddles.

The only user I knew the identity of for sure was StinkyBob who was, in fact, a teenager who lived just down the road. I only knew them because they frequently came over to harass Lock when they lost their internet privileges. Which was often given their antiauthoritarian streak and penchant for practical jokes.

The board traded jibes for another half hour, with a half dozen more members adding to the fray. In the end, it was not one person who pulled the web into focus, and the bet went unclaimed. I had yet to observe someone actually collect on one of their wagers; they were all so interested in actually getting to the answer that they worked together more often than not. In the end, we had a temporally fluctuating spider web for each of the three names and if we played it forward we could watch them drop off the radar, and the blank spot they occupied cutting its way through the digital signals around them.

“That’s rather obvious, isn’t it? It can’t be hard to see those dead spots.” I climbed up into Lock’s lap, watching as Lock scrolled forward and backward on the webs, studying nodes and labels. “What did you promise the IR3GUL4R5 for this one?”

“A live recording of Korn and Evanescence in concert just before the Drought. Last tour they did together.” Lock spread the three charts across her monitors, multiplying, layering, looking for points of connection.

“Super classic. Where’d you find that piece of music history?” I logged into our private server and started analyzing the webs myself.

“StinkyBob found it in their dad’s underwear drawer of all places.” Lock made a pinching motion at the screen of her tablet and then threw her hand at her wall of monitors, sending the webs into giant relief in varying resolutions. “What do you see, Watts?”

I scampered to the top of their head for a better vantage point, comparing the versions in my databanks with the ones on the screens. “There’s a convergence point that is present around all three holes.”

Lock prodded me. “Which tells us…”

“Which tells us —” I swiped at their continuously poking finger. “That if we find the person with the Monokuma Corporation employee ID, the membership to Redemption Homebrew, and a subscription to —” If I had a nose, I would have wrinkled it, “Boutique Toilet Paper Monthly, we’ll have our blackmailer.”

“No kinkshaming. Some people just really prefer archaic sanitation methods instead of a high quality laser-bidet. Or seashells.” Lock lifted me down from her head and plopped me into her carry-all. “Bet you can even guess where we’re going next.”

“It’s too much to hope it’s straight to Monokuma to let me hack the system to see who that ID number belongs to.” I settled into my Faraday pocket, letting the leg with my passive sensors hang just far enough out so that I could track what was going on, without exposing myself to government trackers.

“With a name like Boutique Toilet Paper Monthly do you really want to go anywhere else?” Lock swung out the door, taking time to adhere one of her hairs across the doorjamb before heading out into the street.

I played a recording of Lock’s own exasperated sigh before responding. “With all my ram.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

I peeked one ocular sensor above the edge of Lock’s bag and stared up at the building where Toilet Paper Monthly was registered. It was one of the post-modern architectural “wonders” that someone had the bright idea to put a historical marker on, and was now home to some of the highest end, boutique sourcers on the market. After a quick inspection of the frequencies around us, I clambered out of the bag to ride on Lock’s shoulder.

“So, are we running the delivery girl or reporter?” I began sorting through my breaking protocols, trying to guess ahead of time what kind of security I’d be working through inside.

“I was thinking of just asking them.” She stuck me back in the bag and I grumphed.

“When have you ever been happy with an honest play?” I could feel her chuckle jiggle the bag. There was the woosh of automatic doors and I could hear her being greeted by a reception desk.

“Name and reason for visit, please.” The auto desk had a pleasant female voice.

“Sharron, and I have a screening for the open web developer role.”

“Yes, I have you on the schedule. Your interviewer should be out shortly.”

Of course she did. When did she have time to set that up, I ask you.

As Lock sat in the waiting area, I dropped out of her bag and went looking for a data port. I didn’t have far to go, since they had the coffee maker in the waiting area hooked up to their network. Amateurs.

Another millisecond and I was digging under their firewall and into their membership lists. It didn’t take long before I was downloading their whole subscriber history, but Lock was apparently already back with the interviewer by the time I snuck out from behind the coffee maker and dropped into the pot of a particularly overgrown philodendron. I settled in to churn through the data, seeing if anyone on the list had an online presence that would lead us to a blackmailer.

“Well, Sharron, that was…that was a unique approach to the problem, that’s for sure. I thought Cobol was an extinct language. I didn’t realize there was anything left that could work in it.”

“That’s the best part. Security through obscurity. It’s one of my personal mottos.” Lock stopped by the plant and I crept into her bag behind her back.

“Yes, well, thank you, we’ll be in touch.”

I snickered to myself as Lock strode out of the office, humming the theme song to Battlestar Galactica under her breath.

“That’s a different Kobol.” I informed her when we hit street level.

“Don’t ruin my fun. What did you find?”

I plugged in to Lock’s tablet, transferring the new data. “Five potentials, it looks like. All receive paychecks from Monokuma and have made purchases at home brew shops, including Remediation.”

Lock reviewed the data. “Good work, my little key. Now that we’ve narrowed the field a little, I think we’d best head over to Monokuma, don’t you?”

I preened under her praise. “What does Monokuma do, anyway? Their online presence is about as obscure as you can get without throwing word salad onto the Web.”

“It is a rather awful jumble of buzzwords and jargon, isn’t it? Something tells me that their services fall into the “if you know, you regret it” category of corporations.” Lock shoved her tablet back into the bag, missing me by bare millimeters, and ignored my rude noise in response.

One Tube ride later, we were standing in front of a nondescript office building in the financial district, one of those that doesn’t advertise its inhabitants. The lobby was empty except for a human at a kiosk. There weren’t even doors visible, nor seats to wait or plants to break up the monotony of the entryway.

The human’s attention flickered down to their display screen and they gave Lock a perfectly welcoming, yet slightly chilly smile. It didn’t make it up to their eyes, but was just stilted muscles working together. I was proud of myself for being able to make the distinction. Lock, however, ignored the implicit disdain in the receptionist expression and dove in.

“We’re here to meet with Monokuma.”

“Your name, please?”

“Sharron Helm.” It was one of Lock’s better established cover identities for things like this, where your real name might spark all kinds of inconvenient interest and/or investigation.

“One moment please.”

I didn’t see them touch anything on their screen, but I did notice some slight twitching in their fingers. Ah, yes, dermal control interface. Very fancy. I wonder if they hired the receptionist because they had the implants, or if the companies here paid them well enough to get the implants after the fact.

“They will see you now, Ms. Holmes.”

I didn’t have to be able to see Lock’s face to know it held the grimace that passed for a smile when someone saw through one of her games. Even silly ones. Even so, she followed the receptionist’s gesture to a section of wall that was now sliding away to reveal a lift. Lock stepped inside and I stuck one ocular sensor over the edge of the bag to see that there were no controls on the interior of the lift, just four blank walls and a solid ceiling. I could barely register the movement as the lift skyrocketed up the building and I kept a rough countdown until I estimated that we stopped at the top floor of the building. Expensive.

When the doors opened, it wasn’t onto the latest in office anony-chic, or some art gallery masquerading as an office, but into a greenhouse that took up the entire top of the building, so far as I could tell. Lush greenery filled the space, in a carefully cultivated way, with pockets here and there containing desks with cheerful looking folks interfaced with the latest in technology. For all the money on hardware, the space was oddly empty of sensors and cameras and I cautiously poked my head above the edge of the bag to get a better view of the jungle workspace we’d stumbled across.

A man of indeterminate age was working his way through the garden over to us, pausing here or there to deadhead a dying bud here, a wilting leaf there. They deposited the handful of compostables into a container labeled for just such a purpose beside the elevator and dusted any stray dirt off their hands before offering one to Lock.

“Ms. Holmes, how wonderful to meet you in person. I’ve heard much about you around town but had yet to find an excuse to meet you.” His hair was carefully arranged to best display the bit of salt appearing in the pepper of his bushy curls, and there was such a perfect amount of crow’s feet at his eyes when he smiled I was confident a masterful artist had been at work. I zoomed in on his face and sure enough, microscopic scars.

Lock clasped his hand in hers, affording him Smile #13 – Not sure if I will need to eat you yet. It was one of my favorites. “For once, I am at a disadvantage. You know who I am, but you are not on the company roster. At least, not one of the public rosters.”

He chuckled and held a hand out towards me in Lock’s bag. “If I’m not mistaken, this will be Wound and Trauma Service Drone 3-4526, yes? As to your question, I find it so much easier to get work done if no one knows to interrupt you. Don’t you?”

I took a chance and leapt onto the man’s hand.  It startled him and he laughed, bringing me up to eye level. I sketched a brief, many-limbed bow.  “I prefer Watts, if you please.”

“Forgive me, Watts. It’s not every day I get the chance to meet an AI such as yourself.”

“You mean, cracked from pressure, and retired from service?” I spun some of my servos unnecessarily, creating a whirring tremor for a moment. It made the man laugh again. And hopefully allowed Lock the time she would want to scope things out a little more thoroughly and discreetly before being back under his scrutiny.

“I wouldn’t put it quite like that, but… yes, exactly so.” He handed me back to Lock, handling me as gently as he did the plants in this garden on the top of the world. “As for who I am, well, I’ve got a handful of names, but most folks around here just call me Jay. What brings you to my office today, Ms. Holmes?”

“Please, Lock is just fine. And it’s that employee over there, Shari Tequae. If you have somewhere we might sit down and have a discreet word?” I gave Shari a once over, trying to spot what had identified this employee out of the list of five we were starting from. It was easy enough to identify them, given the quantity of pictures online, but scouring their desk area did not give me any clues to make them stand out from the rest of the list. But the game wasn’t over until Lock was enumerating her thesis over a squirming target.

Jay frowned, but made a quick gesture to summon Shari and led the group of us over to a corner of the greenhouse with a noisy water feature, perfect for making speech hard to hear from more than a few feet away. There were also four different dampening technologies at play to prevent digital eavesdropping as well. I made note of the fourth one to research later as Lock didn’t have one in her stash.

“Shari, this is Lock, a private detective who wanted to have a word with you. And her assistant, Watts.” I waved from Lock’s bag, unused to people including me in introductions quite so much. Most people glossed over AIs, but I surmised Jay was the sort of man who never glossed over any details, given his behavior thus far.

“Pleased to meet you. Are we hiring them for a contract?” Shari shifted on the bench they’d chosen, avoiding looking at Lock directly.

Jay smiled, a brief flash of white before returning to his original bemused expression. “No, but I’m sure Lock can tell us more than I can.” He gestured for my employer to take the floor.

Lock leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees. “We have been tasked by a small handful of folks to trace the origin of a rash of blackmail attempts upon them, and the threads all lead back to you, Shari.”

“That’s absurd.” Shari’s response was quick off their tongue, a few milliseconds too fast, if the response-time charts Lock provided me were to be believed. Surprisingly, it wasn’t Lock’s face that Shari focused on after their outburst, but their boss’s. That could be because Shari was worried about their job, but most folks who were lying to Lock tended to focus on Lock as the most dangerous person to their schemes.

“These people all went to great lengths to ensure they were as disconnected and hidden from the everyday fabric of technology as possible for their escapades, and yet, someone found them out. Someone who had found the same holes I tracked, who carried an employee card from Monokuma, who homebrews, and who has a boutique toilet paper subscription service. Someone who did not think to shield those services on their personal devices. Two wasteful, expensive hobbies. Surprisingly, there are five of you who are employed at Monokuma with those self-same habits. However, you are the only one carrying a personal, unsecured tablet from which those two services utilized your location data. You would probably be better served by turning off location services altogether if you’re going to be engaging in nefarious activities.”

I almost missed Jay’s quiet question.

“Shari, I knew you were moonlighting, but this?”

Shari’s vital signs went wild as they went into pure adrenaline overdrive. I’d only seen reactions that strong on the battlefield before, so I switched my attention back over to Jay to see what could have elicited such a reaction. He was as still as I’d ever seen a human become, not rigid, but ready, every muscle held at the tension of a bowstring, taught and ready to let fly. His gaze was narrowed, his focus on Shari, but I couldn’t help but notice that his body was turned subtly towards Lock and I. At the perfect angle for an actor on the stage projecting to the cheap seats. Interesting.

“I’m so sorry, I really am, Mr. M —”

“Enough. That you would be so clumsy as to get caught blackmailing —” Jay turned to Lock. “Are the victims pressing charges? Shari will turn themselves in for whatever punishment they see fitting.”

Shari didn’t argue, merely hung their head in defeat, shaking in their seat. I’d heard some workplaces elicited strong loyalty before, but this was akin to the cowering of a beaten dog, not a human employee. I looked up to make sure Lock was taking Shari’s reaction into account before they answered and was reassured to see them giving the young employee a long considering study.

“I’ll take them with me to face their accusers. Would now be convenient?” Lock stood, tucking her bag back under her arm, and me along with it. I kept the majority of my sensors on Shari, worried about their heart rate and respiration, which only seemed to be getting worse.

“Please. Get them out of my building.” Jay made a dismissive gesture and walked away, confident in our ability to deal with Shari.

“This way please,” Lock invited, gesturing to the young employee to proceed us out of the jungle.

Shari didn’t respond, simply started along the path, steps slow, but certain. They hesitated beside their desk long enough to pick up their satchel and pick a sprig of flowers from beside their desk before leading the way to the elevator. I was unfamiliar with the variety and started running a scan for similar species on the web.

It was an achingly silent wait for the lift, and when it arrived, we kept our silence as we entered. When the car had started its descent back to ground level, Lock broke the silence. “What gave you the right to extort people? What were you getting out of it?”

Shari shrugged, and started picking at the magenta flowers, shredding the petals. “It’s surprising what is valuable to some people.” They stared for a moment at the handful of crushed and shredded pink petals in their hand.

In the same moment, my search for the flower’s name returned a result and Shari began to bring the handful of petals to their mouth.

I leapt at them, shouting, “Lock, stop them!” but my reaction time simply wasn’t fast enough in this damnable scrap metal body. Shari had swallowed the handful of oleander before I could stop them, while Lock hadn’t moved an inch.

“Damn it, Lock!” I rummaged in her bag for my med kit, pulling out the bottle of Ipecac we kept for just such occasions, while dialing emergency services. “Help me get this into them!”

Lock gently took the tiny bottle from my grip. “It’s too late, Watts, look.” 

Shari had collapsed onto the floor of the elevator, seizing. It was the fastest acting case of oleander poisoning in comparison to the literature.

“It was a genmod. Instant death in a beautiful package.” Lock tidied the medical kit that I had spilled across the floor of the elevator in my haste, giving a wide berth to the now still employee.

My scans kept running over and over the slowly cooling body, desperate for some small sign that it wasn’t too late. Then what Lock said made it through my logic loop.

“You knew.” I accused. “You knew and you let them do it.”

The elevator opened on the ground floor and we were rushed out of the car while a team of emergency medical personnel got to work.

“It would have only delayed the inevitable.” Lock stepped out of the building and stared up towards the glass house full of poison. “By their hand or not, I had a feeling there was no stopping that particular fate. Come, Watts, there is research to be done.”