More Than 512 Words

Hey look, another of my stories has been published! This one is in SNAFU, a military horror anthology:


cohesionpress.com/snafu

My story is "Making Waves," and yes, it's based on the 512 of the same name. Among other things, you may notice that I changed the name of the main character, and I made the magic system a bit more specific to this world.

The SNAFU Kindle eBook is on sale now for just six American dollars. Hardcover, paperback, and other eBook formats to follow soon.

BTW, here are two other stories that grew out of 512s and got published:

"Somebody's Daughter" (based on "Who's Your Daddy?") appeared in Leading Edge Issue 65. Buy it on Kindle for just $3 and find out how Jake & Andy deal with a woman whose mother was a clone, and who thinks Jake is her biological father!

"Don't Fence Me In" (based on this 512) appeared in Song Stories: Blaze of Glory, which is FREE for Amazon Prime members to borrow.

Happy reading!

"Just Follow Your Nose"

JUST FOLLOW YOUR NOSE
By Curtis C. Chen

"Then the girl said the guy coming out of the bathroom was her boyfriend. But the old man didn't believe her. So he went over to talk to the bathroom guy. This corpse is twenty-two hours dead. Are you sure I'm not talking too much?"

"Absolutely not," Andy replied before Jake could. "Could you say that part about the corpse again?"

"Sure." Jennifer waved at the vaguely human-shaped lump of charred flesh and bone on the ground. "This man died no more than twenty-three hours ago."

"How can you know that's a man?" Jake asked.

The teenage girl stared at Jake like he was some kind of alien. Which wasn't far from the truth; Jennifer had been raised by Varna'ut for the last ten years, ever since her birth parents—Earth's ambassadors to the Varna'ut homeworld—died in a shuttlecraft accident. Jennifer was physiologically human, but all her habits and behaviors were distinctly Varna'ut.

"I can smell his burned testicles," she said, pointing. "Enzymes from the seminal vesicles have a very distinctive odor. Even more so when they've been oxidized through combustion."

"I don't want to know how she knows that," Jake muttered to Andy.

"Anyway, the old man stops the guy coming out of the bathroom," Jennifer continued, without missing a beat. "Of course, the guy has no idea what's going on. But he recognizes the girl."

"Sorry to interrupt," Andy said, "but would you mind finishing that story later?"

Jennifer blinked. "This isn't interesting to you? You can just say that. Are you trying to be 'tactful?' They told me you might do that. I can tell a different story. There were at least four different attackers in this room. There was also this really hairy man on the flight. His beard came all the way up his cheeks, and he was wearing sunglasses."

"It's not the story," Jake said. "It's the way you keep changing subjects. Go back to the four attackers."

"I thought humans liked to talk," Jennifer said.

"We like to talk about one thing at a time," Jake said.

"Jake's very focused," Andy said. "Could you try... limiting our conversation? Just for a little while?"

Jennifer shrugged. "I'll try it. I can smell the residue from the attackers. You could, too, with proper training. The first thing Varna'ut children learn in school is how to use their noo'usp."

"You're doing it again," Jake said through gritted teeth.

"No," Jennifer said, "we're still talking about scents."

"Look—"

Andy grabbed the sleeve of his partner's jacket. "Can I have a word with you, Jake? Outside? Please excuse us."

"Don't touch anything," Jake said as Andy dragged him out the door.

"Why would I touch anything?" Jennifer asked.

After Andy had shoved Jake around the corner of the building, he said, "What the hell is your problem? She's helping us. Not to mention this will become an interstellar incident if you punch her in the face."

"I'm not going to punch her in the face," Jake said. "Stomach, maybe."

"Hard to believe you're still single."



Photo Credit: giveawayboy via Compfight cc

"Waking Up Alone"

WAKING UP ALONE
By Curtis C. Chen

The girl's glow-green eyes glittered as she said, "Baltimore with a shot of espresso to go, right?"

Jake was so surprised, it took him nearly a full second to reply, "You remember that?"

The girl shrugged and smiled. The holographic heart tattooed into her left dimple sparkled. "It's just an odd combination. Most half-caf folks don't add espresso."

"It's for the flavor," Jake said. "Espresso tastes different than drip coffee. To me, anyway."

The girl nodded. "Charge card?"

She indicated the paypoint with one slender finger. The animated flower painted on her fingernail danced from left to right.

Jake swiped his card and pressed his thumb on the reader while racking his brains for small talk. He'd spent hours last night researching cosmetics, finding out what brand of contact lenses she wore and what the diffraction pattern in her cheek tattoo was and the name of every cartoon plant on her fingernails. He had thought he was prepared to make interesting conversation.

Jake didn't know shit about coffee.

He suddenly wished he had an excuse to truncate this awkward silence. Maybe he could pretend his phone was buzzing. That it was something important, police-detective-important, and he had to run.

Then he felt like an idiot. You stare down perps in the box every day, Jake told himself. And you can't manage a simple conversation with this girl? Pull your shit together, Lanosky!

He'd say his name, finally introduce himself, and ask her name. He was dying to know her name, the one on the apron tag that was covered up by her long, brown hair. Simple. Easy. Go.

Jake opened his mouth just as the girl slid his drink across the counter.

"There you go," she said, and started to turn away.

"Wait," Jake said. "Just one more thing."

She turned back, smiling brightly. "Yes, sir?"

And Jake wilted.

"You have a great day," he said.

"Thanks! I'll do my best," the girl said. Her eyes had already moved on to look at something outside the window.

Jake walked out of the cafe. After he turned the corner, he dropped the full coffee cup into a trash bin.

He got into his car, opened the glovebox, and pulled out the hip flask. He tossed back a shot of whiskey. He would have put it in the coffee anyway, he rationalized, and this woke him up just as well.

He wasn't anybody to the girl in the cafe. Just another "sir," another customer she could get a bigger tip from if she flirted a little. He was stupid to think he could have gotten anywhere with her.

And he knew why he'd been so nervous about chatting her up. Because no matter how most-wanted or armed-and-dangerous his suspects were, Jake had nothing personal on the line when dealing with them. He knew exactly what that relationship was: antagonistic. And Jake was good at being the bad cop.

He wasn't so good at being an actual human person.

"Fuck it," he grumbled, and downed another shot. "Time to go catch some bad guys."



Image: Coffee to go by Christian Kitazume, November, 2007

"Parents Just Don't Understand"

PARENTS JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND
By Curtis C. Chen

"I'm telling you, the contents of this diaper were weapons-grade," Sandy said. "I never saw so many different shades of brown. And the smell!"

"Will you stop talking about this?" Blake said, holding up her mega-sized cup of soda. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed more than one of the teenagers in the food court eyeing her and Sandy. Good. "What can I do to make you stop talking about this?"

Sandy waved a hand. "You know how, when you've been away from home, like on vacation, and you come home and step inside the front door and suddenly smell everything you didn't notice before because you'd just gotten used to it?"

"Fatigue, right?" Blake swept her eyes around the mall. The RF overlay in her eyeglasses painted bright circles near the midsection of every single teen around them—sitting, walking, dancing to unheard music from their iPod implants. Needle in a goddamn haystack.

"Yes! Olfactory fatigue." Sandy spoke louder as they walked past a Muzak-blaring potted plant. "It's when you become desensitized to a certain odor, like not noticing your cat's litterbox because you smell it every day. Which is different from anosmia, a permanent condition—"

"You want some cookies?" Blake waved her soda at the Mrs. Field's on the other side of the food court. They had to make sure everybody in the search area heard their conversation. "Let's go get some cookies for you and me, and then I can toss mine. How does that sound?"

"So anyway," Sandy said, "this smell, I kid you not, the smell that comes out of these diapers is like an incredible new sensation every time. And not in a good way. How is it possible for such a tiny creature to produce such huge amounts of foulness? And so many times a day? I swear, it's like every hour, on the hour, poop!"

"I am so glad we are talking about this," Blake said. "I am so glad you brought this shit into my life. Literally." Come on, partner, remember the code word.

"But listen, we figured out how to deal with it," Sandy said. Blake bit her tongue to keep herself from grinning. "Scott had this brilliant idea last night, just brilliant. Total genius. Are you ready?"

Two girls, one with bright pink hair on Blake's left, and one in an oversized camo jacket on her right, turned their heads to listen. Close enough. Blake used the hand that wasn't holding her giant soda to hit SEND on her own cell phone.

A cloud of white incoming signal blossomed around pink-hair's midsection, and she jumped as the phone in the back pocket of her jeans vibrated. Blake came up to the table before the girl could leave, with Sandy one step behind. Both detectives had their badges out.

"LAPD, Miss Wagner," Blake said. "You're a tough girl to find."

The suspect, Clarissa Wagner, looked up, then slumped in her chair. "Shit."

"Enough about that," Sandy said. "Let's talk about the baby you stole."



Image: No diapers by Leo Reynolds, June, 2009

"Act Two Problems"

ACT TWO PROBLEMS
By Curtis C. Chen

"You're talking about the Mafia?" Libby asked.

"I'm saying they were definitely organized, if you know what I mean," Grant said. "Anyway, I thought they'd tell me to delete the records and then go deal with the girl themselves, but they just wanted me to modify the file. Make it look like somebody else was the father. I figured the happy couple had worked things out, and anyway, you don't say no to these people."

"Who paid you, Mr. Grant?" Libby asked. "Who was the father?"

Grant stared at her. "You can protect me, right? You're going to protect me?"

Something cracked in the distance, and there was a sound of glass breaking. A small red spot appeared on Grant's chest. He looked down and made a whimpering, gurgling noise.

There was another cracking sound. The window beside the couch shattered and spilled glass onto the floor. Grant fell backward into his chair, leaking blood from his mouth and two holes in the middle of his chest.

"Down!" Jake shouted. "GET DOWN!"

He grabbed Libby's jacket collar and pulled her onto the floor, putting the couch between them and the window. Jake looked around the room for better cover. Libby already had her phone out and was calling for backup.

"We need to get out of here," Jake said.

"Are you wearing a shield?" Libby asked.

Jake had already considered using the department-issued emergency force field generator clipped to his belt. He opened his mouth to answer. There was a loud thwack, and a bullet hole appeared in the far wall.

"That's a high-powered sniper rifle," he said. "Nothing except distance is going to protect us."

He got to his feet and helped Libby up into a crouching position. Then Jake drew his weapon and extended his right arm, pointing the Glock ahead of them. He put his left hand on Libby's shoulder and pushed her to the front door. Another bullet smacked into Grant's lifeless body with a wet crunch.

Jake fumbled the car keys out of his pocket and into Libby's palm. "Stay in front of me. Get in the car, get down on the floor."

"I can drive while you shoot," Libby said.

"This guy could be five hundred yards away. I won't even be able to see him." Jake hefted his Glock. "This is just in case he's got friends waiting out front."

Libby nodded. "On three, two, one, go!"

She yanked the front door open and sprinted through it, faster than Jake had expected. They made it across the empty street in a matter of seconds. Libby opened the car door and tumbled inside. Jake followed, slammed the door shut, and powered up the car.

He kept his head below the top of the dashboard as he pulled into the street. Something shattered the back window. He stomped the accelerator and risked looking over the dash to turn the corner at the end of the block. His heart didn't stop pounding until the car was ten blocks away and inside a parking structure.



Image: Evil rimfire by Mitch Barrie, January, 2007

"Everybody Loves Lawyers"

EVERYBODY LOVES LAWYERS
By Curtis C. Chen

Jake disliked the man standing in the lobby immediately. It wasn't the slicked-back hair, the iridescent three-piece suit, or the trendy stubble covering the bottom half of a face too young and round for that look. It was the smell. Jake didn't trust men who wore cologne.

Libby took a single step forward when the elevator doors opened, then froze. Jake nearly ran into her and had to yank his arm back to avoid inappropriate touching. Andy exhaled sharply as his stomach met Jake's elbow.

"Libby?" said the man in the lobby. "Liberty Wasserman?"

Libby recovered from her momentary surprise and walked out of the elevator. Jake and Andy followed and stopped on either side of her, facing the man in the sharkskin suit.

"Roland," Libby said. "I didn't know you were with Levine and Associates."

"You know this guy?" Jake asked Libby.

"You work for Karl Levine?" Andy asked the lawyer. Levine and Associates was the finest criminal defense outfit in the city—more dedicated, more ruthless, and more expensive than any other law firm for a hundred miles.

"Roland Stern," the man said, holding out a business card. Andy took it and held it up to the light. The holographic printing made the text appear to hover above the paper. "I'm doing a pro bono rotation. And yes, I went to law school with Miss Wasserman—it is still 'Miss,' isn't it?"

"It's District Attorney Wasserman," Libby said, with an edge on her voice. She nodded at the folded paper in Stern's left hand. "You've read the people's brief?"

Stern nodded. "Yes, and may I say, it's very generous of you to authorize ROR, considering the unfortunate lapse in judgment my client displayed this morning."

"Save it," Libby said. "We know she's ill, and she's been cooperating. Are you ready to take custody?"

Stern actually winked at Libby. "Are you trying to get rid of me already, counselor?"

Jake saw the muscles in Libby's jaw clenching for a moment before she replied. "Detective Dixon will help you with the paperwork."

Andy looked up from his examination of Stern's business card. "I will?"

"Detective Lanosky and I have an appointment elsewhere," Libby said. "If you'll excuse us."

She pinched Jake in the side and hustled him out the front door of the police station before he could object.



Photo: Los Angeles Personal Injury Lawyers 2 by The Reeves Law Group, June, 2011

"Assassination"

ASSASSINATION
By Curtis C. Chen

"So," Jake said, "who killed Abraham Lincoln?"

"And what's his full name?" Andy asked.

"No ID on the body," said the uniform standing just inside the police tape. His name tag said HOLLISTER. "Found the hack license under the front seat. Looked like the killer was in a hurry to leave."

Andy nodded. "So, robbery?"

Hollister shrugged. "Whoever killed him did clean out the car. Glovebox was empty. Took his wallet, cell phone, GPS—even the meter." He pointed to a blank spot on the dashboard.

"Why would anyone take the taxi meter?" Jake asked.

"Data," Andy said. "The meter tracks how far the cab's traveled. Even without the GPS, we could have guessed at where Abe picked up his last fare."

"He's got to have a chip, right?" Jake said. "Where's the ME?"

"Already been here," said Hollister. "Didn't have the right scanner. Said we'd have to wait for INS to show up."

"That's going to take all day," Jake grumbled.

Andy bent down to look at the wrinkled mass of the dead Varna'ut behind the wheel of the taxicab. The alien would have stood over seven feet tall fully upright, but they compressed their boneless bodies to fit into human vehicles. This one had kept its lower body extended, to reach the control pedals and to put its tentacles at the same height as the steering wheel.

Andy reached into the car and touched one of the tentacles still wrapped around the wheel. He pressed his gloved fingers into the spongy flesh and watched as the purple inkblots in the translucent gray skin broke into smaller bubbles.

"Still warm," Andy said.

He followed the ripples of purple up the tentacle into the Varna'ut's torso, and saw a small slick of something brown and opaque—almost like mud—underneath the spot where the limb attached to the body, where a human's armpit would have been.

"Son of a bitch," Andy muttered. "Hey, Jake!"

The other detective walked around the car, followed by Hollister, and leaned over to look where Andy was pointing. "What am I looking at?"

"You see that brown spot there, right under the base of the tentacle?"

"Please tell me that's not anything that starts with 'p'."

"Regurgitation," Andy said. "It's how the Varna'ut greet each other. Honest Abe knew his murderer."

"That's a bit of a reach, isn't it?" Jake squinted down at his partner. "I mean, I say hello to the greeter at Wal-mart, doesn't mean I know the guy."

"This is gastric secretion," Andy said. "Stomach acid. You can smell it, can't you?"

"I'm trying not to."

"Only friends and family get actual regurgitation. Strangers are greeted with saliva—just spit, not vomit."

Jake frowned. "Is there some reason you know so much about this?"

"My kid sister's dating a Varna'ut."

"You're joking."

Andy stood up. "You know, it could be worse. She needs to get the rebellious streak out of her system, and at least an alien can't knock her up."

"Okay," Hollister said, "now I'm going to be sick."



Photo: detail from Taxi queue at King St Station by Oran Viriyincy (via GIMP's "Newsprint" filter), April, 2010

"The Ties That Bind"

THE TIES THAT BIND
By Curtis C. Chen

The door to Interview Two closed with a soft click behind Jake. He stood there for a moment. The woman had stopped crying, but her eyes were still red, and she clutched a kleenex in one hand. Her bony fingers looked like claws.

She and Andy both shifted in their seats. Jake leaned back against the wall and folded his arms across his chest.

"We got a name?" Jake asked Andy.

"Leah Comler," Andy said, holding up his phone. The woman's DMV record glowed on the tiny screen. "ID checks out. No priors."

"Why do you need to find your father, Miss Comler?" Jake asked. "Other than the obvious emotional closure, I mean."

"Jake," Andy said. "She's sick. Hospital sick," he added quickly.

Nobody said anything for a moment. Jake glared at Andy. Andy glared back. Jake walked around the table and sat down next to Andy.

"Sorry," Jake said. "I didn't know."

"No, I should apologize," Leah said. "What I did was wrong. I'm sorry. It's just—" She sniffled. "I've been trying to find my father for months. I was sure you were the one."

Jake nodded at her hands. "What is it?"

"Idiopathic aplastic anemia," Leah recited.

Jake slumped back in his seat. "You're looking for a bone marrow transplant." He didn't say what he was thinking: You're dying.

Leah nodded.

"I'm already in the system," Jake said. "I give blood four times a year. If I was a match, you'd already have found me."

Her lower lip quivered. "I was hoping that my biological father would have had other children. That's my best chance for a donor match."

"I'm not your father," Jake said.

She started crying.

The door to the interview room slammed open, and District Attorney Libby Wasserman stepped inside. "Detectives!" she said. "A word, please? Outside?"

***

"For crying out loud, Jake!" Libby said after she had ushered Jake and Andy into the monitoring lounge. "She's not some wirehead junkie. Could you try to treat her like a human being?"

"Give me a break," Jake said. "A stranger walks into my precinct, points a gun at me, and says she's my kid? How am I supposed to feel?"

Andy stepped forward. "There's an easy way to settle this. Were you listening in earlier?"

"No," Jake and Libby said in unison.

"Well, Leah's mother died in January," Andy said, "And in her will, she left Leah a safe deposit box at Craneson Credit."

That got both Jake's and Libby's attention. Craneson Credit International had a reputation as bankers to the rich and famous, ensuring security and privacy with state-of-the-art technology from strong encryption to biometric sensors. Craneson's customers included CEOs, celebrities, and more than one organized crime family—which the NYPD only knew because of their grudging cooperation with ongoing federal investigations.

"What's in the box?" Libby asked.

"No idea," Andy said. "According to the will, it's coded so that only Leah and her father can open it. Fingerprint and DNA scan required."



Photo: Manhattan Crime Stoppers flyer, photographed by Adam Greenfield, August, 2007

"Who's Your Daddy?"

WHO'S YOUR DADDY?
By Curtis C. Chen

"Detective Jacob Lanosky?" asked a female voice.

Jake looked up from the desk he shared with Andy. As the young woman standing next to them lowered her arms, Jake got a glimpse of the card she was holding: a photograph of a man, maybe twenty years younger than Jake, smiling, wearing a blue police uniform.

He looked back up at the woman, studying her face but not recognizing it. Why does this girl have a copy of my academy graduation photo? "That's me."

"I need your help," she said.

Jake stood up. "This is homicide, miss. We don't handle general complaints—"

"Please, Detective," the woman said, "I'm your daughter."

Jake felt a defensive smile creeping onto his face. "You must be mistaken, miss."

The woman opened her purse and pulled out a piece of paper printed with gibberish. "My mother went to a fertility clinic. Artificial insemination. That's the donor profile. I matched this to the municipal genome database."

Jake sighed and turned to Andy. "Do you know what the hell she's talking about?"

Andy bounced up and out of his seat. "We're city employees, Jake. Remember those drug tests? Blood and tissue samples? All that's public information. The department's required by law to make it available."

"That's great," Jake said. "Just one problem. I've never been a sperm donor."

"But your genetic profile is an exact match," the woman said.

"Computer error, then," Jake said. "Look, I'll put you in touch with the records division—"

The woman shook her head. "No! It's you. It has to be you!"

"Calm down, miss," Andy said, raising his arms and holding his palms out. The gesture appeared friendly but actually helped corral suspects.

The woman dropped her paper, turned, and yanked Andy's revolver out of his shoulder holster. She raised the gun to Jake's chest.

"Gun!" Andy shouted. "GUN!"

All around Jake, police officers ducked behind furniture and drew their weapons. Jake and Andy both stayed perfectly still. The woman's hands shook like a leaf in a thunderstorm.

"You're a policeman, right?" she said. "I must be breaking, like, five different laws right now. You have to arrest me. You have to talk to me."

"I swear," Jake said quietly, "on the grave of my mother and my honor as an officer of the law, I will hear you out."

She stared into his eyes for a moment, then nodded and lowered the revolver. She seemed to feel its full weight for the first time, and she fell to her knees. The barrel of the gun thunked against the tile floor. Then she burst into tears.

Andy swooped in to retrieve his weapon. Jake waved off the other detectives, who had risen from their cover and were advancing on the woman.

"She's down!" Jake called out. "All clear! We got this!" He looked down at Andy. "Cuff her, Dix."

Andy looked up, surprised. "But you said—"

"I said I'd talk to her," Jake snapped, "not serve her tea and cookies. Get her into an interview room. I'm going to find a goddamn lawyer."



Photo: warthogs at Zoo Atlanta, May, 2008

"There Will Be Banter"

THERE WILL BE BANTER
By Curtis C. Chen

"What kind of a name is 'Migdan?'"

Jake snatched the evidence bag away from his partner and sealed it. "What are you, a genealogist now?"

Andy shrugged. "Could be a clue. Some of the big fake paper operations use software to generate random strings that look like names. Lets 'em churn out more IDs in a shorter amount of time."

"And just think," Jake said, kneeling next to the body, "I'm the one who had to go to cultural sensitivity training. That's what you call irony."

"I'm just trying to help." Andy crouched down on the other side of the corpse, then looked around the alley. "Hey, Cee, can we flip him yet?"

The dark-haired, brown-skinned woman wearing nitrile gloves and holding a clipboard scowled at the detective. "Yes, and when the hell are you going to learn to pronounce my name, Dix?"

"As soon as you get a divorce, sweetheart." He blew her a kiss. She shook her head and turned away.

Jake put his own gloved hands on the dead man's hips. "You done chatting, loverboy?"

Andy nodded and grabbed the victim's shoulder. "On three."

They counted down together, then rolled the body onto its back. The man's hazel eyes were open and glassy, and a stripe of dried blood ran from the left side of his mouth down to his chin.

"Another dumper?" Andy asked.

"I'm guessing that's the good news," Jake said. "Miss Chattopadhyay? May I borrow your penlight?"

The medical examiner tucked her clipboard under one arm, fished a penlight out of her jacket pocket, and handed it to Jake. "My pleasure, detective. And may I say it's nice to see that chivalry is not dead."

"He's playing to your rank, Cee," Andy said, "not your gender."

"Do you hear something, Detective Lanosky?" Chattopadhyay said to Jake. "Kind of an annoying buzzing sound?"

"Can't get rid of it," Jake said, smiling.

"Hilarious," Andy said. "You two ought to take that show on the road."

Jake clicked on the penlight and shone the beam into the corpse's open eyes. The borders of the irises reflected the light, making two golden circles.

"Shit," Jake said.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Andy said.

Chattopadhyay knelt down and pulled a portable tracer off her belt. She calibrated the controls, then pressed the scanning pad against the victim's left thumb. After a few seconds, the tracer pinged, and its screen lit up.

"AB negative," she read. "I won't know for sure until we do the autopsy, but—"

"He's a goddamn blood bank," Andy said. "Great! Now we're going to have feds crawling all over us."

Chattopadhyay stood up. "Sorry, Jake, I have to call this in."

"Yeah." Jake handed back the penlight. "Thanks."

He and Andy stayed there after Chattopadhyay left, staring at the dead man.

"What's your type?" Andy finally asked.

Jake said, "Leggy blond with loose morals."

"Serious here, Jake."

"B positive," Jake said. "Third most common. You?"

"O neg. Universal donor. Hospitals love me."

Jake nodded. It started raining.



Photo: unused concept poster from Homicide: Life on the Farm (The Game, 2001)

"Wait For It"

WAIT FOR IT
By Curtis C. Chen

"That sounds like a pessimistic technology," Jake said. He folded his arms, ignoring his partner's sideways glance. Andy smiled politely at the crime scene investigator standing in front of them.

The dark-skinned CSI shook his head. "You detectives always have the wrong attitude about these things. It's not about what we can't retrieve. It's about getting as much as we can from the environment."

"Okay, but footprints?" Andy said. "Come on. Anybody could be wearing those shoes."

"It's not just the imprint," said the CSI. "We also measure stride length, indentation depth, particulate residue, energy signatures—thirty-two different data points in all."

"We're so happy for you," Jake said. "But without physical evidence for comparison, you can't actually match anything. We still gotta nab the guy."

Andy nodded. "Speaking of which, do we still like the son for this? Melvin Kaminsky, Junior?"

"Patricide for profit? Hell yes."

The CSI cleared his throat. "If you're looking for Junior, we can give you a preliminary match. But there's something odd about this impression."

"Could you be more specific?"

The CSI motioned them toward the open doorway and knelt down by a numbered plastic sign. Next to the sign was a single, glowing, green shoeprint. "Our instruments are detecting traces of radiation—"

"Please don't tell me that's why it's glowing," Jake said, taking a step back.

"No, of course not," the CSI said. "This isn't a cartoon. We sprayed this area with fluorescein to make any blood residue easier to see."

"So there's blood on his shoe?" Andy asked.

"Not exactly." The CSI held a translator frame over the shoeprint and adjusted the controls. The image in the display pane changed from a visible-light image to a shimmering network of multicolored curves against a black background. "This is a view of the local EM field. See how these lines of force all bend away from the shoeprint?"

"I'll take your word for it," Jake said.

"So Junior stepped in some kind of industrial waste?" Andy asked.

The CSI stood up. "We don't know what it is. But I'm guessing he stole it from the warehouse, and this company secret is why Mel Kaminsky Senior was killed."

"So we'll ask Junior when we get him in the box," Jake said.

"Maybe I didn't make myself clear," the CSI said. "According to the laws of physics, this effect is impossible. You can't bend radio waves like that without some kind of power source."

"Junior's not going to talk," Andy said.

Jake grumbled. "If it's that big, his business partners will kill him first."

Andy turned to the CSI. "But I'm guessing you have an idea?"

"Yes. The effect decays at a non-linear rate." The CSI pulled a small digital camera out of his pocket. "If you can get a reading within one hour after Junior's been there—less time would be better—we'll have more data to work with. Maybe even identify the material, or at least its chemical components."

"Got it," Jake said, taking the camera. "We're looking for the fresh prints of Mel's heir."



Photo: Famous shoe outlines engraved in marble at Martin Luther King, Jr., National Historic Site, Atlanta, Georgia, May, 2008

"A Technicality"

A TECHNICALITY
By Curtis C. Chen

The door to the forensics lab slid open as soon as Jake stepped out of the elevator, halfway down the corridor.

"I'll never get used to that," he said. "How does the door know where I'm going?"

Andy replied, "Motion sensors, facial recognition—"

"Rhetorical question," Jake said. "It's creepy."

"Luddite."

"Turk."

Andy led the way into the cramped space, where a young woman sat typing at a desktop workstation. Her eyeglasses reflected a baffling maelstrom of data from the three displays in front of her.

"Miss Elizabeth Hangram," Andy said, gesturing toward the woman, "my partner, Detective Jacob Lanosky."

"I'll be right with you," Hangram said.

Jake noticed that she was reconfiguring the controls as she went, manipulating clusters of buttons around with a quick swipe, tap, or pinch on the touch-sensitive desktop. She never took her eyes off the displays.

"Hangram's found some physical evidence," Andy said.

That got Jake's attention. "Seriously?"

"Abso-smurf-ly." Hangram bounced a palm on her desk, and the dizzying reflections in her glasses changed to a still image: a gray scarf, magnified to show a tiny red dot near one end of the fabric.

Jake leaned forward to see around the edge of her display alcove. "I think I love you, Hangram. Is that what I think it is?"

"Human blood," Andy said before she could answer.

"How'd you get the lab results back so quickly?" Jake asked.

Hangram frowned at Andy. "You didn't tell him?"

The smile which had been threatening to invade Jake's face retreated down his throat. "Tell me what?"

Andy held up both hands. That was always a bad sign. "Look, I knew if I told you, you'd never want to—"

Jake glared at Hangram. "Where did you find that scarf?"

Hangram looked up at Andy. She wasn't stupid. Andy said, "We subpoenaed the records from the coat check—"

Jake stood up. "For crying out loud, Dix!"

"Will you just listen?" Andy said, stepping between Jake and the door. "The security company was running a special setup for the ambassador's reception. Three points of verification, unbreakable encryption. Hangram's already talked to their tech guys. They're willing to testify."

"The reason I don't work computer crimes," Jake said, "is because I don't enjoy sitting through endless trials where expensive witnesses talk in technical jargon that no jury in the country will ever understand."

"This is different," Hangram said. "We can prove—"

Jake spun to face her. "Do the words 'fruit of the poison tree' mean anything to you?" He jabbed a finger at her screen. "You reconstituted an object based on a replicator scan. That's not evidence. No judge will ever allow it."

"But it's mathematically demonstrable—"

"Lady, I don't care if you can clone a fucking dinosaur! This isn't a magic show, and I don't feel like waiting ten years to be a test case for the Supremes.

"Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some actual police work to do."

Jake wished he could slam the door on his way out. The gentle pneumatic hiss seemed to taunt him.



Photo: Deep Space Nine Promenade food replicator, Star Trek: The Experience, Las Vegas, August, 2008.

"The Color of Questions"

THE COLOR OF QUESTIONS
By Curtis C. Chen

As Detectives Jacob Lanosky and Andrew Dixon watched, Lieutenant Eugene Adler led Jeremy Solis into the observation area next to Interview Room One and right up to the glass partition. Seated inside Interview One--"the box"--were the suspect and Detective Mason Nava.

Jeremy folded up his cane, put his hand on the glass, and asked, "What is this material?"

"Glass," Adler said. "One-way mirror. They can't see you."

"Which one is the detective?"

"The one closer to us."

"Are you sure?"

Jake gave Andy a look that said, I don't know how much longer I can put up with this crap.

Adler looked again. "Yeah. Detective Nava is on this side of the table."

Jeremy removed his dark glasses, and Andy saw the blind man's eyes. They looked like polished gray marble, missing irises but veined throughout with silver streaks, like lightning frozen inside a storm cloud.

"Your detective is the wrong color," Jeremy said.

"Okay, that's it," Jake said, and started for the door.

"Lanosky!" Adler said.

"It's not enough you gotta bring in some bullshit psychic, now he's a freaking racist, too?" Jake made a point of turning his back to Jeremy as he spoke.

"My apologies, Detective," Jeremy said. "Perhaps Lieutenant Adler didn't explain the nature of my sight."

"You let me know when the show's over, LT," Jake said. "I'll be getting some coffee. Black coffee."

Jake spun on his heel. Jeremy raised his arm, stopping the detective with a flat palm.

"You got five seconds before I arrest you for assaulting a peace officer," Jake growled.

"You and your partner are the same color," Jeremy said.

"What the hell is he talking about now?" Jake asked Adler.

"I see people's histories," Jeremy continued. "I don't have a good way to describe it. I just call it 'color.' You and Detective Dixon and Lieutenant Adler are the same color because you're police." He pointed to the glass. "The man in there is not."

Andy did a double take. "You're talking about Detective Nava?"

"Yes," Jeremy said. "His color--what I see of his history--is different. He is not like you."

"So what is he, then?" Jake asked.

"I don't know," Jeremy said. "I haven't seen his color before. On anyone."

Jake folded his arms and took a step back. Adler said, "Happy now, Jake?"

"No," Jake said. "But I'll take the bloodhound."

"What's going on here?" Andy asked.

"Sorry to keep you out of the loop, Andy," Adler said. "We couldn't risk you saying anything to Mason."

"I'm a little confused, myself," Jeremy said.

"We also had to convince Jake that Mr. Solis here was the real deal," Adler said.

"Wait a minute," Andy said. "You already knew there was something wrong with Mason?"

"Yeah," Jake said. "We dusted his keyboard for prints yesterday. Whoever that is in there, it's not Mason Nava."

"Nice performance," Andy said.

"Thanks."

Andy looked into the box. "It's another goddamn clone, isn't it?"

Jake shrugged. "We'll find out soon enough."

Audio: "The Color of Questions"

Music: instrumental stems from "Re: Your Brains" by Jonathan Coulton, licensed under Creative Commons.

Over There

No witty banter this week; I'm in Switzerland for jra's wedding, where the keyboard layouts are unfamiliar and flaky Internet access costs CHF 2.40 an hour. More later!

"Sam Spayed"

SAM SPAYED
By Curtis C. Chen

The building manager unlocked the apartment and said, "You know they got a talking cat, right?"

Jake took his hand off the doorknob and stepped back.

Andy said, "Don't tell me you're afwaid of puddy tats, Jake."

The older detective scowled. "I hate talking animals."

Andy shook his head and stepped forward.

The first pet "translators" were just prerecorded audio chips triggered by sound. Then a couple of Stanford graduate students had refined the technology, using voice stress analysis and text-to-speech software. Now anyone could walk into any pet store in the country and get a patented "translation collar" to give his or her pet its own unique voice.

Andy pushed the door open and called, "NYPD!" Nobody responded.

Enough daylight was coming in through the kitchen window for him to see potted plants everywhere, half-folded newspapers on the dining table, and one mostly empty teacup on the carpet by the futon. There was a distinctly non-plant-like silhouette in the kitchen window. Andy walked over and saw a sleek orange cat, half-crouched on the windowsill and staring back at him with big yellow eyes.

"Hey there," Andy said. "I don't suppose you know where your owner is?"

The cat blinked its eyes slowly and started swishing its tail. It let out a short meow, and a second later, the hexagonal tag on its collar blinked green and said, "I can has cheeseburger?"

Andy groaned. Apparently their missing person had sprung for one of the novelty language upgrades.

He saw two empty bowls on the kitchen floor, picked up one of them, and filled it from the tap. The pressurized water hit the side of the bowl and spattered all over Andy's chest before he could shut it off.

The cat yowled, "You're doing it wrong!"

Andy put the bowl down. He saw Jake standing in the living room, grinning.

"What?" Andy said.

"I'm searching the bedroom," Jake said. "You have fun with your furry friend there."

"Fuck you," Andy replied.

The cat descended onto the counter and sniffed at the water bowl. "Do not want!"

"Yeah, yeah," Andy muttered.

"It has a flavor!" the cat said.

Andy looked at the bowl on the counter. He turned on the faucet and watched the water spray into the sink. The stream seemed more diffuse than it should have been.

Andy searched his pockets and found his Mickey detectors. The precinct had issued everyone drug testing kits after a sudden wave of knockout rapes in downtown. He opened the plastic canister, pulled out a strip, and held it under the tap water. The stiff paper turned red instantly.

"Son of a bitch," Andy said.

He turned off the water and unscrewed the aerator at the end of the spout. When he pulled it away, a small, shiny disk fell out of the faucet. The surface of the disk felt slimy and left a residue on his thumb.

Andy smiled and petted the cat with his other hand. "Good kitty."

"Also," the cat said, "your mechanic is a pony."

Audio: "Sam Spayed"

If there is a moral to this story, I suppose it would be: Humans are easily fooled.

We are hard-wired to fill in the blanks. Flash a sequence of still images at twenty-four frames a second, and we think we see motion. Show us strange phenomena that can't be easily explained, and we turn to conspiracy theories, religions, or both.

It's good and bad that we're predisposed to understand things in terms of story. Good, because narrative is a solid framework for all kinds of information dispersal; bad, because sometimes what you want to hear isn't what you need to hear, or even what's available. Reality can be a real buzzkill.

Music: Bass and Electric Guitar stems from "Code Monkey" by Jonathan Coulton, licensed under Creative Commons.

IM IN UR STORY, etc.

Yes, I'm afraid it has come to this: punny titles and gratuitous references to overexposed Internet memes. But hey, at least I'm not taping bacon to my cat.

Here's another link, just in case you're wondering where I got that punchline. And yes, I have made some Lolz featuring our own cats.

Simpsons fans may recall a similar translator idea in "Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?" But the idea of a "universal translator" dates back to at least 1967, when Star Trek used it, and probably appeared before then in other fiction.

Would the ability to communicate with other beings help or hurt first contact and the establishment of peaceful inter-species relations? I have to agree with Douglas Adams here—it would most likely be irrelevant. Many people who speak the same language are still right bastards to each other.

Being able to talk to someone doesn't mean you're automatically going to like them. Or believe them, for that matter. As cops and doctors know, everybody lies. Even machines.

"Getaway"

GETAWAY
By Curtis C. Chen

Jake sat across the table from the man he'd been investigating for six months. Harlan Anderson's face stared back, but the eyes were wrong. Jake could always tell by looking at the eyes. Of course, the DA wasn't going to take Jake's word for it. So they waited.

The door to the interview room opened, and Andy walked in. He dropped a file folder on the table. Jake opened the folder and flipped through the lab printouts.

"Scarring at the base of the skull consistent with interface penetration," Jake read. "Tox screen detected phenol compounds indicating breakdown of Ferris drug within the last six hours. EEG shows increased activity in PPRF region. Hey Andy, do you know what the PPRF region controls?"

Andy crumpled up a twenty-dollar bill and threw it at Jake.

"That's right," Jake said, pocketing the cash. "Eye movement. How 'bout that? You learn something new every day."

Harlan's arms yanked on the handcuffs attached to the table. "Can you please take these off now?"

Andy said, "Lieutenant wants us to take her with us. And a tech with a portable interface."

"You're kidding," Jake said.

Andy shrugged. "The brass want a photo-op when we bring him in."

The technician, Karl, met them in the motor pool. Jake drove, Andy rode shotgun, and Karl kept looking over at Harlan's body.

"I'm not him," Harlan's voice said.

"I know," Karl said. "It's just weird, seeing his body."

"Speaking of which, how do you guys deal with this stuff dangling between your legs all the time?"

"You'll get used to it," Andy said.

"Oh, I hope not."

The woman's name was Jennifer Nathans, and she lived at 5028 Montana Street, Apartment 7, on the ground floor. Jake could tell as soon as he pulled into her parking space that they were too late.

The front door stood slightly ajar. Andy and Karl stayed in the car while Jake followed Harlan's body through the ransacked apartment and into the kitchen. Shards of glass covered the floor.

"How much cash was in there?" Jake asked.

"Almost five thousand." Harlan's face looked close to tears.

"Anything else missing?"

Harlan's head shook from side to side. "Shouldn't be hard to find him, right? You've put out an APB for my car. And I don't have a passport."

"He's probably ditched your car by now," Jake said, holstering his weapon. "Maybe shaved off your hair and got a wig."

"My hair?" Harlan's voice sounded horrified.

"It's not his body," Jake said. "He doesn't care what happens to it. But cheer up. If he's smart, he's already swapped it for another one. Someone we're not looking for."

Harlan's face didn't look cheered. "This is the worst day of my life."

"No," Jake said, "that's tomorrow, when you find out the Ferris transfer is permanent after twenty-four hours."

"Please tell me you're joking!"

Jake waited until he couldn't suppress his grin any more. "Yeah, I am."

Harlan's palm smacked him across the face.

"See?" Jake said. "You're feeling better already."

Audio: "Getaway"

http://512words.blogspot.com

Music: Bass Stem from "Creepy Doll" by Jonathan Coulton, licensed under Creative Commons.

If you know the song "Creepy Doll," you'll understand why I chose it to accompany this particular story.

You, too, can use JoCo's music in your own project. You can even download it via BitTorrent! He releases all his stuff under a Creative Commons license, which allows anyone to copy, distribute, transmit, or adapt the work--as long as you provide proper attribution, and you don't use it for commercial purposes. This podcast may not be quite what he had in mind, but perhaps he will be amused regardless.