Razor: 2079

[NeoEllis]

A short story I've been working on here and there for a few weeks, if you're willing to take on this rather lengthy work (6771 words at present time), I'd appreciate any constructive criticism you might have to offer. What does work, what doesn't work, what needs development, what doesn't seem to and much to the story, etc. The story is technically incomplete at this moment, but the final thousand words or so should be written and posted within the week.

Thank you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Razor: 2079

Fredric Bacon walked briskly down the low-key and toneless corridor of the police station, his gray trench coat flapping behind him. Staffers darted to and fro around the busy offices; hard copies, discs and coffee in hand as their polished black shoes clicked against the cold linoleum floor. Bacon’s ears perked up as he detected a pair of feet rapidly approaching him from behind, a clipboard soon tapping him on his shoulder.
“Good morning, Detective,” said the man behind Bacon, moving faster to catch up with his long strides. “You’re looking as grim as ever.”
“Is this our man?” the detective asked, taking the clipboard.
Michael Descartes, Age: 28. Bacon skimmed the printout of suspect’s record, no prior convictions for violent crime, no convictions for theft –petty or otherwise, no traffic violations. The detective glanced at the younger man, Albert, struggling to keep the pace.
“What do we have on him?”
“We managed to bring him in on 57 counts of digital piracy, including illegal distribution of entertainment media and government documents, as well as virus writing and server hacking.”
“And why wasn’t that included on the hard copy?”
“Well, um, it was an older copy, and I printed out the wrong one and didn’t have time to-”
“Don’t be so sloppy next time. If you want to be a professional, act like one.”
“Yes sir. I’m sorry, sir.”
“Has he made any statements yet?”
“He said, ‘We are all privileged.’ That’s it.”
“Huh.”
Bacon looked back at the paper. Alias: “the_rax0r”, interesting. Immediate family: none. Extended family: none. The attached photo related a sullen, pale skinned young man; the grease in his black hair absorbed every drop of light that touched it and the bags beneath his eyes told of many sleepless nights. A hacker, huh? The guy certainly looked the part.
Address: 4872 Marathon Boulevard Apt No. 405, IR, Gamma Island.
The Inner Ring, the manufacturing district, the slums. Bacon’s home.
“What did his neighbors tell you about him?” Bacon asked.
“Well, the residents of both next door apartments happened to be out when we made the arrest, but we were able to question about a dozen other people who lived in the area. Should we follow up on the next door neighbors?”
“Probably, but hold off for now. We need to focus on what we have right in front of us. What did the people you questioned have to say?”
“For the most part, they described him as quite and avoidant, but polite when spoken to. Some people didn’t even know who he was, they had never seen him before -thought his room was empty.”
“That’s all you could get?”
“For the most part. I’ll file a full report as soon as we finish the interrogation.”
“Good… good. Does this guy have a girlfriend or a liaison? Visited any prostitutes that we could bring in?”
“No, none of the sort.”
Back to the hard copy. Bacon flipped to the next page, this time the photo would tell a slightly different story. It pictured the back of the hacker’s head and neck, his oily black hair brushed aside. While it was not surprising for a criminal with 57 digital piracy charges under his belt to have undergone modifications, the extent of the hardware was enough to take the detective aback; this hacker must have made quite a living.
High Speed Universal Serial Buss or simply, HS-USB ports were most commonly implanted into AVA-TAR operators to allow them to control the massive humanoid construction and war machines with a precision otherwise unattainable. Occasionally secretaries would undergo the surgery in order to allow them greater searching and organizational abilities, but the practice was in decline. Many seemed to find the mark alienating.
Then of course, there were hackers. About a third of all digital piracy cases they brought in had guys who had modified themselves, in one way or another. The reason was obvious; the closer to the inside of a computer you are, the better the hacker you are; or so it would seem.
Still, the standard HS-USB port –the only type of Bacon had been familiar with up to that point- was a simple one by two centimeter wedge implanted into the cerebellum, just about where the back of the head met the back of the neck. A cord would run from the user’s port to the computer they were interfacing with, and that was generally all most people –even hackers- needed. This man’s set up was different, much different.
Bacon had heard of greater modifications, such as a second port or a wireless transponder, but nothing like this. The back of the hacker’s neck was covered, absolutely covered, in ports of all kinds. For most of them Bacon didn’t have the slightest inkling as to their function. There didn’t seem to be any apparent logic in the distribution of the plugs either, as if they had been added haphazardly one after another. The hacker knew where everything was, evidentially.
“Yeah. Weird, huh?” said Albert.
“Strange indeed… Anything else I should know about him?”
“Yes. The suspect has several self inflicted scars that are of interest.”
“Attempted suicide before he could be arrested? Typical.”
“Actually, no. All the cuts had scarred long before we made the arrest, and they’re all found on non-vital areas of the body. The cheeks, along the back, on the feet, etc.”
“Great.”
Bacon frowned, he wasn’t a psychiatrist, and he didn’t like dealing with weirdoes. He had dealt with suicidal criminals before, and it was no picnic, to say the least. Now he potentially had to work with something even stranger. He didn’t like the direction with case was going in, not at all.
The two reached the end of the hall, finding themselves at a door. Inside was a fairly standard interrogation room, a table with two chairs on either side of it, three dimly lit walls and a mirror stretching between two of the walls that surrounded the proceedings. A camera/ microphone complex was mounted in the ceiling directly overhead. Bacon and his assistant entered, the suspect and another member of the police force were already there.
The captain looked over his shoulder as the door’s joints creaked with use. “Ah, you’re here Detective, I’ve already-”
“I assume you’ve been read your rights.” Bacon glanced back at his briefing. “Michael ‘Rokkor’ Descartes, is it? Are you aware of the charges being brought against you?”
The hacker looked back at the detective, his expression completely blank as his greasy bangs hung before his face. The man’s elbows rested on the table, his hands cradling his chin in spite of the handcuffs. “Call me ‘Razor’, and yes. You’re looking for a hacker that slashed the throats of five people… you seem to think it was me.”
Bacon sat down at the table across from Razor, folding his hands. “Well, that’s what I’m here to find out. What we do know is that you are guilty of over fifty counts of digital fraud. Despite whatever apathy you may have for the murders you’re being charged with now, do you have anything to say pertaining to the other felonies you have been charged with?”
Razor stared back at Bacon, still stoic. “I haven’t thought about it much in a while.”
“Well, if you haven’t thought about it recently, tell me what you thought about a while ago.”
“In this life, people are constantly scrambling over one another to get to the top. In government, in business, even in personal relationships, people take advantage of each other to satisfy themselves. I wouldn’t be surprised if you had stepped on a good number of people to get where you are. Am I so much worse because I use different means?”
Still no expression, no body language.
“Even if there are choices in life that we have to make which may seem inhumane, there are some things that are within the law, and some that are not.”
“Would you be calling me a criminal if I had written the law?”
“Why don’t you tell me about all those ports on your neck. Do you really need them all? Can you even use them all?”
Razor simply stared back in silence.
“Well?” pressed Bacon.
“It’s my collection.”
“Your what?”
“My collection. I collect different types of plugs, all sorts. I’ve got old ones and new ones, cheap ones and expensive ones. I’ve been collecting them for about four years now… These days, all kids care about the are newest, fastest ports. They don’t care about any of the classics anymore… I don’t have time to use most of them very much, though. I can’t really use more than seven at a time, and I usually don’t use more than three…My collection’s not really that big compared to a lot of others’.”
“You have at least thirty.”
“Yeah, I suppose it is pretty impressive, isn’t it?”

[NeoEllis]

Razor sat idly in his dark cell, hands folded. Slowly and gently releasing his right hand from his left, Razor stroked the back of his neck, feeling the cool grooves and nooks of his pride. He wished that the guards would allow him to jack in some of his ports, at least one of them. Even if the connection wasn’t active, it would be enough for him -he didn’t like the sensation of the emptiness behind his head. The gentle tug of the cords that normal ran from behind him were as much a part of his daily life as wearing the clothes on his back. He felt naked, that was for sure.
Now he was being treated as a criminal. Not exactly an unfamiliar feeling. He recognized the fact that he deserved such treatment, yet it still struck him as odd. While he was used to the notion that he had done something wrong, to be see and listed as a felon was quite alien, to be seen as a murderer, no less.
Still, they did have a good amount of evidence, despite being circumstantial, against him. Five people had been murdered, all of them hackers just as himself. All of the victims had been involved in some sort of online scheme, one which was apparently pretty big and went pretty deep. All the victims had been struck down by a blade; his name was Razor.
It did not matter that he did not know any of the dead, it did not matter that Razor had not been in on whatever scam they were running, it did not matter that they would never find any evidence of Razor ever being at the respective scenes of the crime, much less killing anyone –on the journey through the mouth of a slick prosecutor to the ear of the ignorant, the truth could change into an ugly shape.
Five premeditated homicides, that spelled out to five death sentences without appeal. It was then that Razor realized that his best guarantee for a longer life was another murder on the case he was charged with. He lay his head back, staring into the inky ceiling. That wasn’t right. It wasn’t right to hope for the death of another to save yourself, but what did it matter, really? Razor’s mere thoughts wouldn’t be enough to kill a person. Hell, if his passing thoughts were enough to change the solid reality of his situation, he’d just wish his way back to his apartment.
“‘I think therefore I am,’” he mumbled to himself, sarcastically.
And who would be his sacrificial lamb, who would be the faceless and mysterious savoir to unknowingly exchange their life for Razor’s? Could they possibly be thinking of Razor’s well being as he thought of theirs? At least he was being considerate. Or maybe it was the other way around, perhaps these corpses had known a good deal more about Razor than he knew about any of them. And what of that detective? He seemed like a perfectly honest and unhappy man, as most people of this day and age were. Did that man really have anything to gain from sending Razor one way or the other? He could only wonder.
It was all the same to Razor, at least for now. So long as he was trapped in that cell with no contact to the outside world, there was nothing he could do. He didn’t really feel one way or the other, anyway.
The footsteps of a passing guard jarred Razor from his thoughts. Perhaps he could make some progress this time. There where no others being held in his small wing of six cells, perhaps most criminals, or the police, or both took this time of the year off. Perhaps the cops simply didn’t want the likes of Razor interacting with the others they brought in. It didn’t matter.
“Hey,” said Razor to the guard.
The man started a bit, swinging around to squint at the prisoner through the dark. “What? Speak up.”
Razor realized that he was still mumbling, he wasn’t very used to voiced conversations. “Can I get some help here?” he asked, pointing at the back of his neck.
The guard looked a bit perplexed, turning on the cell’s light to get a better view of Razor and his request. Razor squinted in the sudden blast of the glare.
“Would it be possible for me to get plugged in here?”
“Sorry,” said the guard, finally understanding. “That’s against the rules here. You’re not in a hotel, you know.”
No shit, thought Razor. “Can’t it count as my phone call?”
“Nope. Although you can use your phone call now if you want.”
“No, never mind in that case.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. Do you like baseball?”
“Well... yeah,” said the guard, again a bit confused.
“Ever been to Rene Stadium?”
“Once, with my Dad,” said the guard. “I haven’t been there in years, though.”
“If you do me this favor, I can get you whatever kind of seating for whichever game you want.”
“Really?” asked the guard in surprise.
“Really.”
“How?”
“Do you need to ask? Use your imagination.”
The guard licked his lips, he was tempted, for sure. “Sorry pal, but I heard about this one guy a few months ago that got bribed by a detainee and lost his pension. My Dad’s sick and I’ve got a wife and kid to think of. I can’t afford to fuck up, not even for Rene Stadium.” With that, the guard left him.
Razor snapped off the light as soon as the guard left the cellblock. Close, he though, close...

[NeoEllis]

The apartment door slammed shut with a resentful crash as Bacon ungracefully closed it behind him. It was becoming dark out already, and the drooping plants scattered around his room seemed to be as tired as he was. Bacon had been on the case all day, questioning and requisitioning witnesses, getting warrants for this and that, combing the same crime scenes for evidence over and over again, and talking with technology experts who treated him like an idiot, it was the same as always.
The detective threw off his old, gray trench coat, collapsing into the bare wooden chair by his paper and empty coffee mug strewn desk. The phone rang.
“Hello?” answered Bacon. It was Albert.
“Hey, did you hear about the Chief of Police?” asked Albert.
“No… what?”
“He got arrested for a DWI while on duty. Hit a guy too.”
“You don’t say?” said Bacon with a half laughing snort.
“Yeah. Ironic, huh? Anyway, the boys and I were wondering if you wanted to check out that bar in the Lunan Block. It’s not far from your place, right?”
“Nah.”
“Why not? I heard they’ve got everything there. Cheap too.”
“Cheap drinks come with cheap people. It’s a seedy place, a lot of thugs waste their time there. I don’t like paling around with people I might be arresting the next day.” Or so he would say. Drug dealers, gunrunners, prostitutes; he knew several personally. Nevertheless, attempting to control that level of society wasn’t part of his job, at least, not realistically. The higher ups saw their tall clean buildings and their bright white suburbs and declared society free of “animalistic crime”. The goal of an efficient police force, they rationed, was to weed out any and all elements that might obstruct or otherwise harm commerce.
“So, do you want go somewhere else, then?” asked Albert again.
“No, you guys go ahead. I’m not really in the mood to go drinking tonight.”
“Alright. See you tomorrow, early.”
Too early, thought Bacon, setting the phone back in its place while pulling open the half sized refrigerator’s door open with his right foot. Fishing out a beer, the middle aged man made his way to the room’s one window, pulling apart the Venetian blinds to watch the muted oranges of the setting sun sink behind the gray blanket of clouds. Bacon looked out over the dirty apartments and filthy streets, over the drab factories and billowing smokestacks. Wondering what it all meant, or perhaps, hoping that it meant anything at all.
Is this what humanity had come to after so many years? Sixty-four years after World War Three, humanity’s first, and hopefully last nuclear war, four cities –each an independent nation-state- and roughly twenty-five million people were known to remain on the face of the Earth. This city, his city, Gamma Island was the largest and wealthiest of all. Like all places of the past, present and future, where there were tremendous riches to be found, there was also tremendous poverty. Not well hidden, but well ignored.
Gamma Island, like all the cities that had risen from the ashes after the fires of war had gone out, was split into three separate sections. The center of the city was a circle 8 kilometers wide disc, it was covered mostly in skyscrapers, penthouses and what was left of the government –mostly financial firms, though. Beyond that was a three kilometer wide moat of water for raising the food supply and to act as a reservoir. Around that moat wrapped a four kilometer wide ring of land, officially designated for manufacturing. Beyond that lay another three kilometer wide moat which was encircled by yet another four kilometer wide ring of land, the residential area, suburbs.
Most of the outer ring was open, allowing for parks, small retail stores, churches and even family sized houses to take root. Few buildings, relatively spacious apartment complexes, rose to over ten stories there. The inner ring, however, was unofficially designated for poverty. The streets were dirty and the buildings in disrepair, those who found themselves working in the factories knew only low wages and no hope for advancement. Even the bridges that brought the workers from the outer ring the heart of the city where the corporate jobs were to be found ran in tunnels beneath the inner manufacturing ring. If the suits didn’t have to travel through the poverty, they didn’t have to recognize it. It was simply easier to crawl beneath the squalor.
Bacon’s view slid from the tightly clustered buildings and skies the color of the sidewalk; he had had enough of the city for today. He cast his gaze across his desk, his eyes finally falling on a photo of his ex-wife and daughter. They were laughing arm in arm before the billowing green leaves of spring as the wind blew through their honey colored hair. Bacon remembered that back then, they visited the park every weekend The picture must have been five years old, at least. They looked so happy.
Bacon sighed. Had he not given everything he had for his daughter? She had so much potential, she was so intelligent, a genius even. Yet she had blown it all for that punk. That god damn punk. Now… now Bacon didn’t even want to imagine the sort of tricks she might be turning. Yet she was out there, somewhere in the inner ring. He hadn’t seen her for over three years now, yet he still feared the day he would find her. As for his wife…
The phone rang, again.
“Hello?” said Bacon
It was Albert. “Detective,” he said. “There’s been another murder.”

[NeoEllis]

Bacon arrived at the station the next day exhausted, he had been up all night at the scene of the crime. It was the same as all of the other cases, a lone hacker found after a few days with his throat slit. Either way, it ruled out his only suspect.
“Where is he now?” asked the detective as he took a mug of coffee from Albert’s hand.
“In the interrogation room, he’s ready.”
Bacon entered the same dark interrogation room, taking a seat at the table. Razor sat across from his, picking at his stained sweatshirt, as if oblivious to the officer’s entry. Bacon frowned.
“There’s been another murder,” said Bacon.
“Ah,” said Razor, still picking at his sweatshirt.
“Which means that most likely you are not the culprit from the past crimes on this case.”
“Yeah,” he said, making no eye contact.
“That means, I’ve lost my only real lead.”
“I’m sorry.”
Bacon leaned toward Razor, growing aggravated. “Look kid, there’s been a bit of a shake up in my department as of late, meaning that everyone’s under more pressure to perform. There are a lot of people in my department who suggest that you did in fact commit those murders, and that you’re simply part of a larger network.”
“Ah.”
“And yet, I haven’t seen any evidence of that. I could try to fudge this case going on what we have with you alone, I could pull a few strings at the DA’s office and that would be the end of it. However, there’s been word going around that a massive crack down on police corruption is about begin anytime, and I don’t want to find myself in the middle of that.”
“Don’t want lose your pension…”
“More to the point, it’s not going to look good for me if I call this case closed and these murders keep happening. Even if you are cleared for the murder rap, you’ve still got 57 felonies under your belt.”
“I’ll probably get off with fifteen years of accounting. Death actually might be preferable to that, but-”
“I know this cases is buried somewhere on the net, it’s obvious just from the victims and from our leads, but I just don’t know how to follow it. I wasn’t trained to fight spam. We have technical experts, but non of them are as experienced as you, and all of them are over worked. Furthermore, non of them are as close to this case as you are.”
“So then,” said Razor, finally lifting his head to meet the detective’s eyes, “you need my help.”
“We’re willing to plea-bargain. I can cut up to five years off your sentence if you get us something solid.”
“What guarantee do I have?”
“We’ll both sign for it officially.”
“And you actually trust me? Why is that?”
“More than anything else, I don’t have much of a choice at this point, but as long as you trust me, I suppose I should trust you.”
“Or trust your signature, rather.”
“Right,” nodded Bacon as he got up to leave.
“You’re wrong though, Bacon,” said Razor as the detective opened the door, “You always have a choice, always.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re always choosing the way we live our lives, it’s death that we have no voice in.”

[NeoEllis]

Bacon shuffled through crowded downtown sidewalks of the Inner Disc, he had just left his police station and was on break. Turnings his eyes toward the sky, Bacon found his view cluttered by the forest of skyscrapers reaching into the beyond. He wondered what it was all really for, in the end. The buildings, the people, the badge, the gun, the Moderators and the Administration, the notions of right and wrong –what purpose did they serve beyond justifying themselves? Bacon might catch a criminal that day or the next, but wouldn’t there always be crime the day after that? He could fill his stomach on the lunch break, but wouldn’t he be hungry by nightfall?
The crash of concrete exploding in the face of metal stirred Bacon from his thoughts, the detective brought his gaze around to see a construction AVA-TAR along with a dozen labors working on a closed off street. Painted in a bright, but age and weather worn, yellow, standing a roughly four meters tall, the humanoid robotic vehicle –with two arms, two legs, a torso and a pull down cockpit bubble for a “head” -gripped an oversized jackhammer with its three fingered hands and smashed the road and sidewalk bellow it to pieces.
Ironic, thought Bacon. Without AVA-TARs, the city could never have been built at the scale and with the speed that it had been, yet here was one of those very machines ripping a piece of that very city apart. Why put so much energy into something just to tear it down again? It seemed to dawn on Bacon at that moment that that was the very nature of an industrialized society, his society. With nothing greater to strive for, the society had settled into a state of endless maintenance, endless death and rebirth. For the first time in a long time, Bacon realized that he was the society, that he was the AVA-TAR, and it chilled him to the bone.
He gazed around him, at the heard of people that surrounded him. What was he to them and they to he? Bacon’s duty was to protect these people, but from what? From themselves? From the likes of Razor? From violent criminals? No, in their minds violent crime existed only as a vague and distant threat, a specter of the television screens. In spite of someone being gunned down every week in the Malthus blocks, not a single police station was to be found in the Inner Ring. What were his fellow officers if not hot shots all too eager to climb the corporate ladder? What was he if not an old thug trained for a different age, growing more useless everyday? Who was his own daughter, estranged and not seen for years? A stranger? A criminal? His daughter nonetheless?

[NeoEllis]

Razor hacked feverishly away at the keyboard before him, he was relived to be back in front of a screen, a few of his plugs filled again. Bacon stood over him, one hand in his pocket, another on the back of Razor’s chair, his eyes in the process of glazing over as text and images followed incomprehensibly over the screen. The police computer lab was empty with the exception of Bacon, Razor and a technician.
“How’s the connection?” asked the tech.
“Terrible,” replied Razor, “but it will do.”
“This is the best speed we can get on the kind of budget we have. It’s not as if we brought you here to play so if you don’t like it, you can-”
“I’ll call you if we need anything else,” Bacon asserted. “This could take a while, and I’m the only one that needs to observe, so why don’t you go work on something else?”
“If you insist, sir,” said the technician, leaving the room.
Bacon still stared at the mesmerizing efficiency of the computer screen dancing before him, he wondered what it might be like to be that good at something.
“What’s it like?” he asked. “A direct Man-Machine interphase, that is.”
“M-Ming? It’s not something I could put into words, you’d have to try it yourself. The closest I could say is that it’s like reading something, listening to music and suddenly remembering something else all at the same time, only the system breaks it up so that you can understand it all clearly and you can pick out exactly what you need. Perfect focus. Now stop hovering over me, you’re breaking my concentration.”
“Sorry,” Bacon said, moving to a chair a couple of meters away. “Razor.”
“What?”
“Do you really have a passion for what you do? Hacking and such, that is.”
“I did at first,” said Razor after a brief silence, “but then I got bored of it. Now it’s just something I do to pass the time and to keep some cash in my pocket. To tell you the truth, I put so much of my life into computers, I wasn’t really sure what to do beyond that.”
“I can relate,” said Bacon, gruffly.
“What about you? Do you enjoy what you do?”
“Not really. I can’t see myself making a difference anymore.”
“Then what is it you protect with that badge and gun?”
“Most people would like to say freedom.”
“Freedom? People hate freedom, you should know that. Politicians and TV pundits talk up a storm about it, songs are sung in its honor, and most people walk the streets believing that they’re free as a bird, but no one really even knows what it is, no one bothers to ask. What they have is blissful ignorance, not freedom.”
“And I suppose you know just what true freedom is then?”
“Freedom and loneliness,” spoke Razor, “are not so different. Freedom is to walk with nothing encumber you, to be in solitude. You may only truly make your own choices when the choice is yours and yours alone to make. You can only make these choices in confidence when you look at the world as it is, when you face the harsh realties of the world objectively. The fact is, that’s not the way most people wish to live their lives. Most people are more than willing to dilute themselves for a bit of comfort. That’s why we have nationalism, that’s why we have religion and all the rest.”
“What would you do,” asked Bacon after a pause, “to change the world then?”
“Nothing,” answered Razor. “I just don’t care anymore. Why don’t you go out and change the world? You’ve got the power.”
“No I don’t, not really. These days, it’s all for show.”
Silence.
“Hey Bacon.”
“What?”
“Did you know that the police used to be a public institution, so was the postal service and even the military.”
“Yeah, yeah I’ve heard that before.”

[NeoEllis]

Razor leaned back in his chair, what time was it? He glanced over his shoulder to find Bacon fast asleep at another computer. Regarding the windows, he found that the sun had sunk behind the horizon, he found himself alone, again. Razor glanced at the small clock at the corner of his screen, it was just past ten o’clock, he had been working for over six hours. Razor was hungry, but not it was not a hunger for food, he knew that. Stretching backing in his chair, allowing his joints to pop and groan, Razor shut his eyes and stared into the darkness of himself.
Snapping back to the key board, Razor returned to his work. It was relatively slow going, even with the police clearance and his own speed. Something was slowing him down.
The city was under the control of six different corporations known as “Moderators”, subcontracted by the Administration, the public government, to run the daily operation of the city. Their zones of control were cut into six even slices like a pie, so that each Moderator controlled one section of the Inner Disc, one section of the Inner Ring and one section of the Outer Ring. The crimes had been scattered throughout the city, all in different Moderator Zones. Apart form one murder in the Inner Disc and another in the Outer Ring, all of the cases were found in the Inner Ring. Gates and dead ends were everywhere.
As Razor worked, a sense of hopelessness, like a dark cloud cast shadow, slowly swept toward and overtook him. The more he learned, the more he realized that he knew almost nothing about what he was pursuing, every pebble of an answer seemed to trigger an avalanche of questions.
Six people, all hackers like himself, had been murdered, that he knew. Yet none of them had any apparent connection to one another. Razor had check their virtual whereabouts and had cross referenced all their screen names, none of them had been members of any of the same message boards and none of them had contacted one another through any hacking circles or game networks. No instant messaging services had recorded any transmissions between the victims either. Not even phone calls. It was very possible that they had covered their tracks, but there was nothing in their habits to imply that they would seek each other out randomly. Razor could only conclude that they had been recruited independently by a third party, but by whom? Furthermore, what had they been looking for?
Razor tipped his head back with a sigh of frustration, noticing that Bacons computer was still running. It didn’t take long for Razor to slip into the detective’s machine. He skimmed the history log of Bacon’s internet activity, partly out of curiosity, partly out of boredom. Jesus, thought Razor as he found that Bacon had been to over twenty prostitution related sites in the hour before he had drifted off, that’s one hell of a hobby for a cop.

[NeoEllis]

Morning light streamed through the Venetian blinds of the vacuous police office. Bacons closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, it had been a long time since he last fell asleep at work.
“Is it true that you’re using that hacker on the murder investigation?” Albert asked.
“It is. What about it?”
“What about it? You know that it would never be allowed if the whole office wasn’t in such a shake up over the Chief’s little ride.”
“Look, we need him. He’s the only one with the kind of skills we need that we have access to at the moment.”
“And you don’t think there’s anything wrong with giving a criminal with a horrendous record in cyber crime access to a police network? And what about those scars all over him, don’t they bother you? He lived alone and mutilated himself, that guy needs a psychologist, not a keyboard.”
“Other than the way he looks, he seems normal enough to me.”
“Sometimes it’s the ones who seem the most normal who are the most disturbed. I get the feeling that you’re just doing this because you don’t get to bust knee caps or use your gun anymore.”
“Get me a coffee.”
***
“They’re all connected to the military and to foreign military business. From the looks of everything I’ve been able to find, this goes strait to the Administration and involves at least four of the six Moderators,” said Razor as he handed to Bacon a thick printout report of what he had found.
Bacon struggled for words. Razor had been working on the case for only five days, and he had already managed to dig up this much dirt thought Bacon in amazement as he took fifty plus page stack of papers. He hand almost not heard Razor’s statement as he gawked at the sheets of pulp.
“Wait, what?”
“Foreign military interests, a company called ‘HDS’, probably a dummy. They’re involved with the Moderators and the Administration to work on a top secret weapons project of some sort. From what I’ve gathered, they’re working on developing a new type of military AVA-TAR for use in urban combat, one which breaks international law. I would surmise that they contacted and used talented hackers for logistic work and such before killing them once they were no longer needed so that the powers that be could continue to work in anonymity.”
Bacon could only stare. “…you’re sure?”
“Yes.”
Bacon turned on his heel, flipping through the report. “I’ll get back to you on this…”

[NeoEllis]

The next day, a half dozen middle-aged men sat gathered around an office table, eyeing the report for themselves.
“It’s bullshit…” companied one of Bacon’s fellow officers.
“Do you really expect us to believe this pile of anarchist propaganda that strung out shut in you dragged in dropped, detective?” asked one of Bacon’s superiors.
“Gentlemen, I understand that this is all very hard to swallow, but look at that facts. It’s all very clearly lain out-”
“Do you really expect us to believe a hand full of sources you found on the internet? We all know you’ve had a tough time lately, but this is one hell of a way to get attention.”
“Don’t even try to use his family life as an excuse!” charged another ranking officer. “We all know that that was over at least a year ago. Don’t take this personally but, you’re getting old, Bacon, and you’re getting worn out. Starting a ruckus like this, trying to pull this department into a damn crusade against our own Moderator, it just won’t float. This has been a tough case, we can all see that, but we gave it to you because we thought you would handle it best. Now, if you want to hand it over to one of us and take some time off, then I’m sure we can-”
Bacon left, the door slamming in his wake.
Albert approached him, handing him a paper.
“Do you believe it, Albert?”
“Well, not really.”
“What’s this?” Bacon skimmed the sheet. A memo. Bacon’s eyes widened, orders from the new Chief of Police, according to the instructions, Razor was the culprit, the case was officially closed. He couldn’t believe it, Razor was right.

“So, that’s it then,” said Razor upon hearing the news.
“Look, I’m sorry. I believe what you’ve come up with.”
“Oh. Why is that?”
“Because your facts are credible, because the logic makes sense. All the evidence points in the direction of what you’ve come up with. At first I couldn’t believe it myself, but I realized that just because it’s difficult to accept doesn’t mean it’s not the truth.”
“They’re going to put me to death for this, you know. I can’t imagine what they’re going to do to the detective who allowed the murderer of six people to strut around a police office for a week, using every resource available to him to attack the Moderators.”
Bacon stared in silence, unsure of what to do.
“Are you going to fight it? Take it to the top and demand justice from the corrupt rulers so that the people might see how they have been wronged?” inquired Razor with a ting of irony in his voice.
“Probably not,” answered Bacon in honesty.
“Do you really care one way or the other?”
“The truth is Razor… the truth is I really can’t say.”

***
A few weeks later, Bacon waded through the darkness of the dimly lit prison block, the curses and boos of inmates swarming around him. Razor had been sentenced to death by lethal injection with no parole or appeal.
It had been a swift trial. The defense argued that Razor was simply a victim of society, that his alienation had pushed him to modifying himself to such a degree and that his implants had effected his ability to asses reality, that he wasn’t truly in control of his actions. The prosecutor, of course, made that case that Razor was clearly a madman who had slipped away from society and had lost all conscious sense of morality. Murdering six people was an act of shear misanthropy, clearly a man who was so devoted to machines that he had lost all notions of humanity had no right to live when he had taken that very privilege from others. No mentions had been made of Razor’s findings, as far as the official record was concerned, that investigation had never occurred.
“There’s not much more I can do for you,” said Bacons, stopping in front of Razor’s cell.
He sat still, as if taking no notice of Bacon’s arrival. “Can you get me to the roof?”
“The what?”
“The roof. Soon, maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day or next week or a month from now, but soon they’re going to take my life. I’ve done a good deal of reflecting in the time that I have since they announced my sentence, and do you what I’ve missed the most? The sky. I all my life, in all the time I’ve devoted to computers and to my plugs, I never really did take the time to appreciate the vastness and openness of that void that stretches from horizon to horizon. I want to be sure I take it in before it’s too late.”

Copyright 2005, Justin Klitgaard-Ellis

[Craze]

Well-narrated and the implanted dialogues on society are well thought out and thought-provoking.

But, the story just seems a tad unoriginal. Really, it just seems to be Se7en meets Hackers (with a touch of Silence of the Lambs) set in a film-noir (heh, Venesian blinds)/sci-fi setting. Some of it borders around a been-there-done-that type of characters and happenings, but there are a few things that make it unique such as the world it is set in.

It might just be me, but I thought the whole explanation of Moderators and Administration just came out of nowhere, seemed too out-of-place in the position you had it.

Other than that, it is very good as it stands, despite my gripes over the plot. And thank you for reminding me of one thing: copyrighting my story.

Best line:
“Sometimes it’s the ones who seem the most normal who are the most disturbed. I get the feeling that you’re just doing this because you don’t get to bust knee caps or use your gun anymore.”
“Get me a coffee.”

[NeoEllis]

Thanks for the feed back, Crazy, I appreciate it (although to my credit, I'm unfamiliar with Se7en and have only seen about half of Hackers ).