"Police Duality"

POLICE DUALITY
By Curtis C. Chen

"There's good news and bad news," Lahane says to the assembled federal agents. "The good news is, we've recovered the murder weapon from Todd Mason's apartment." She touches the display board to her right, and an enlarged photograph of a black semi-automatic pistol appears.

"Sig Sauer P326," Oliver says quietly, probably to himself, though I'm standing close enough to hear. "Nine millimeter, modified barrel."

"The bad news," Lahane continues, "is that we still have no idea who's running this show. Mason and Garcia were just cutouts. They were both hired over the Internet, through anonymized e-mail and forum accounts, but we've been able to backtrace the IP addresses to rough physical locations."

She touches both boards at once, and they flash to two different street maps of Buffalo. "The account used to hire Garcia was accessed here, using wireless from a public library. We're pulling security footage now, but coverage in that part of town is spotty. Thank you, privacy laws." She points to the other board. "This location, on the other hand, also a wireless access point, leased to the Pissing Pony Saloon, a dive bar frequented by one Todd Mason—and this man."

She touches the screen again, and a mugshot appears. I know who it is before Lahane says the name out loud.

***

"Donnie Reynolds?"

The man at the bar swivels around on his stool, and the smile on his face fades as soon as he sees the FBI badge and ID card that Lahane is holding up. Westmark has come up on the other side of Reynolds' stool, casually leaning against the bar, and Oliver and I stand behind Lahane, arms crossed.

"Can I finish my drink before we go?" Reynolds asks, holding up a lowball glass of amber liquid and partly melted ice cubes. His eyes are bloodshot and gleaming with just a hint of wetness.

"Sure," Lahane says. "You're not driving."

Reynolds nods and raises the glass toward his lips. Before it makes contact, he jerks his arm to the side and throws the drink in Lahane's face. She staggers backward, cursing loudly, and Oliver and I catch her.

Reynolds leaps off his stool and makes a break for the door. He runs straight into Westmark, who pulled away from the bar as soon as he moved on her partner. Westmark grabs Reynolds' shoulders, spins him like a rag doll, and shoves him up against the bar.

"Ow! What the fuck!" he screams.

"FBI," Westmark says, slapping her badge down on the bar. Reynolds groans.

"So," I say to Oliver, "would you say that glass was half full... or half empty?"

He shakes his head at me. My best material is wasted.

Lahane finishes wiping the whiskey from her face and pulls a pair of handcuffs out from under her jacket. The bartender and other patrons have all moved away, minding their own business.

"Let's hope that's the worst decision you make today, Reynolds," Lahane says as she cuffs him. "Otherwise it's going to be a real bad day for you."



Image: great scot! by IntangibleArts, May, 2008

"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

"Runaways"

RUNAWAYS
By Curtis C. Chen

Kaylee knows she can't throw the guy without killing him, or at least doing serious spinal damage; every surface in the subway station is some kind of hard flat or edge. So she settles for slashing his right leg, just above the kneecap, with one of the blades hidden in her leather gauntlets, and then running like hell. All I can do is observe from twenty-two thousand miles away.

Here's the thing about having your consciousness transferred into a solar-powered satellite in geosynchronous orbit: sure, you never have to sleep, you can see the entire continent at once, but that's pretty much all you can do. Watch. Even with a two-way broadband link directly into Kaylee's cerebral cortex, transmission delay plus reaction time means anything I tell her will be at least five hundred milliseconds out of date. And that half-second could get her killed.

So most of the time, I just keep my mouth shut and let her do her thing.

I watch, through Kaylee's eyes and the spotty subway securicam coverage, as she maneuvers through crowds of commuters. She knows I'll have better coverage once she's at street level, and she's probably figured the same thing I have from her first attacker's dress and approach: professional killer. Somebody's called down a hit on my little sister.

We knew it would happen someday. You can't run free in any city for long before the local mafia or union or PTA or whatever they call themselves wants a piece of your action. I hope she's ready for this.

"Another heavy on your six," I verbalize into Kaylee's speech centers. She won't hear the words so much as she'll think them, but she'll know the thought didn't come from herself. "Hoodie, ballcap, hand-cannon in his pants."

"Thanks, bigbro," she thinks back at me.

Her head snaps around, but she doesn't stop moving up the last stairway to ground level. The hitter behind her is younger than the first one, and better camouflaged; I only made him because of the weapon bulging in his waistline. He's smart, this one; not drawing on Kaylee until he absolutely has to, probably thinking he'll get close enough to put her in a headlock, use his size as advantage and use the piece for persuasion.

Kaylee skids to a halt at the top of the stairs, turns around, and screams at the top of her lungs, "Stop following me, you pervert!"

The crowds on both sides of the stairs, both going up and down, freeze in place. The hitter stops, too, and makes a show of looking around just like everyone else, working his disguise. That gives Kaylee more than enough time to draw her taser, line up a clear shot, and fire the darts right into the side of his neck.

The hitter gurgles and crumples in the middle of the parting crowd. Kayle drops the taser, still discharging electricity into the man, and disappears into broad daylight.

"That's my girl," I think to myself, wishing I could still smile.



Image: Where are Jérémie and Martina? by Éole Wind, January, 2008

"Just Another Fish Story"

JUST ANOTHER FISH STORY
By Curtis C. Chen

I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.

You may say that is to be expected when temporal anomalies are involved; but we—that is to say, humanity as a species—have adapted remarkably well to dealing with the multiple realities which exist side-by-side, in parallel most of the time, intersecting only briefly, with unpredictable results each time.

The first account I had of the incident was from my dog, Bartholomew, an Irish setter who had wandered into this timeline some years ago.

"It's raining fish out there," Bartholomew said as he entered the house through the kitchen. I waited until he had shaken himself dry in the alcove to respond.

"Do you mean that literally, or is this another of your canine metaphors?" I asked from my seat at the table, where I was enjoying a mid-afternoon repast of toad in the hole.

"Literally, of course," Bartholomew said, lying down in his doggie bed.

I would have questioned him further, but he had already fallen asleep, no doubt exhausted from a long day of chasing automobiles and navigating wormholes.

The next to report on the unusual weather was our housekeeper, Nancy, who returned from her weekly trip to market at the stroke of eight.

"Fuck a duck!" her strong alto reverberated from the foyer. "It is raining motherfucking cats and dogs out there!"

"Do you not mean fish?" I inquired, leaning out of my chair so I could see from the parlor into the hallway.

"Not unless you know some fish with hair and legs and teeth and shit," Nancy said. "Now please excuse me, I'd better put away these goddamn birds before they thaw."

I rose and stepped over to the front window. There was, indeed, a torrential downpour outside, but the fading light made it difficult to discern what the various wiggly objects falling from the sky might be. Moreover, as is the way with many incursions from other realities, the objects tended to disappear—I believe "phase out" is the technical term—when they contacted other solid matter in this reality.

There was a knock at the front door.

I opened the door. The being which stood before me was quite unprecedented. The overall shape of it was humanoid—bipedal, at any rate—but it wore no clothes, and instead of a single contiguous external integument, its outer skin appeared to be a wet mass of overlapping fish, varying in size and species, with the occasional crustacean or mollusk mixed in.

"Good evening," the creature said in a perfectly clear baritone. "Apologies for the intrusion, but I presume you are Doctor Robert Coombs, the renowned water-surgeon?"

I raised the two fluid appendages which had replaced my arms during my only excursion to another plane, and formed the extremities into a fringe of the thin, dextrous tendrils I employed in my work. "The same. How may I help you?"

"Not just myself, Doctor," the fish-being said. "Our entire homeworld is in dire straits."



Image: Sock puppet with raw Sardine by Willem Velthoven, February, 2007

"Inheritance"

INHERITANCE
By Curtis C. Chen

Fast Eddie went out and got the hands as soon as he knew he was dying.

"Do my ears deceive me?" Sweet Sal said when Eddie told him what he wanted. "Or do you merely become aged?" He pronounced the last word as two syllables, like Shakespeare or something.

"Just gimme the damn hands, Sal," Eddie said.

Sal shrugged, went into the back of his ostensibly legitimate pawn shop, and returned a moment later with a plain white box labeled MEDICAL USE ONLY. Eddie hadn't expected it to be so light when he picked it up. It couldn't have weighed much more than one of the zip guns he always kept tucked into his left ankle holster.

"This is everything?" Eddie asked.

Sal nodded. "Straight from the factory, unlocked, unformatted except for the firmware." He narrowed his eyes at Eddie. "Do you plan to configure this device yourself? Are you now a coder?"

"You let me worry about that. How much?"

Sal waved a hand. "I will not take your money, Eddie."

Eddie felt his eyes watering. "Thanks, Sal."

Programming the hands took a little longer. Eddie didn't have a lot of friends who knew about the soft stuff, and all the referrals he got at first were small-time scam artists running online versions of old confidence games. Finally, the Generous Greek hooked Eddie up with One-Name Westly, who looked like a linebacker but spoke in a high-pitched staccato.

"Totally doable," Westly said after Eddie explained what he wanted. "Most of that's available off the shelf, I just need to integrate all the pieces, and then it's up to you to train it."

"Good," Eddie said. "How much?"

Westly looked embarrassed. "Off the shelf doesn't exactly mean legal. I'll have to crack the FDA licenses—"

"How much?"

Westly quoted an exorbitant fee, and was surprised when Eddie only haggled him down by twenty percent. They worked out payment terms, and two weeks later, Eddie started training the hands.

He hadn't intended to take any more jobs, but it was the only way to properly train the rig. According to Westly, biofeedback was most reliable under real-world conditions—no amount of practice could substitute for actual stress responses.

Eddie almost got nabbed on the last job, cracking the vault on a deep-sea drilling platform to get at the specialized geothermal sensing equipment inside. Security capped two of the crew's lookouts, and Eddie and the helo pilot barely got away with the merchandise and their lives.

Fast Eddie died three days after turning over that loot and collecting his payment. Federal authorities found the cash still under his bed, and seized it along with all other assets they could trace back to Edward Tanabont, Senior.

By that time, the cybernetic servo rig that Eddie had trained was already on its way across the country. Its titanium-alloy mesh and imbedded nanoprocessors had learned everything they could from Eddie's brain waves, muscle movements, and specific nerve impulses, and they were ready to teach his son everything Fast Eddie had known about safecracking.



Image: Bank Vault 1 by mbrand, February, 2009

"Want You Gone"

WANT YOU GONE
By Curtis C. Chen

On Tuesday, Cletus and LeeAnn Savier went missing.

"What do you mean, missing?" said Pauline Deschanel, Chief of Security aboard the Princess of Mars cruise ship Dejah Thoris. "We're half a million kilometers from the nearest planet or spacecraft. Where the hell could they go?"

"I'm just telling you what the cabin stewards told me." Jefferson Logan, the ship's cruise director, shrugged his broad shoulders. In addition to overseeing the cruise activity schedule, he also kept track of the associated statistics: how many passengers attended each show, how many booked which tours or excursions, who ate at which restaurant for which meal. The data helped him plan for future demand, and also alerted him to any unusual activity patterns. Like two passengers suddenly going unaccounted for.

"They booked a Royal Banquet at Mortimer's tonight, but didn't show up," Jeff continued. "Two stewards checked the room after calling. No sign of them."

Deschanel raised an eyebrow. Mortimer's was the ship's most high-class restaurant, with a standing dress code and entrée prices that ran into the thousands. Nobody stood up a reservation at Mortimer's. "Newlyweds?"

"There's no notation in their booking." Jeff brought up the passenger records on his tabletop display.

Deschanel saw the ID photos and said, "Wait a minute. That's Cletus Savier?"

"You recognize him?"

"His name's not Cletus. And I think I know where to find him."

***

Deschanel stepped out of the airlock and engaged her magnetic boots on the exterior hull. She took a moment to look around the blackness, just to make sure there wasn't something funny going on inside the effective range of the ship's navigational sensors, then walked forward.

She found the missing couple standing just behind the avionics section, looking through a telescope on a tripod attached to the hull and aimed at Dejah Thoris' destination: Mars. They were wearing the two spacesuits which she'd found still checked into the amidships excursion lounge but physically missing from inventory. Deschanel switched her suit radio to the common EVA frequency.

"I hope that tripod has magnetic feet, Cletus," she said, "otherwise you're getting billed for the hull repairs."

The spacesuited figure on the left turned, and a familiar brown face smiled at her through the helmet. "Good to see you, too, Chief."

Deschanel nodded at the other person. "You going to introduce me to the wife?"

The second figure rotated around, and Deschanel saw a pink face with twinkling blue eyes. The woman smiled and shook Deschanel's gloved hand. "Hi! I'm LeeAnn. Cletus said we might run into one of his friends on board, but I didn't think he meant the crew."

"Oh, we go way back." Deschanel squinted at "Cletus." "I remember the first time I caught him breaking half a dozen ship's regulations and interstellar laws."

"Oh, we can afford to pay the fines," LeeAnn said. "It's less hassle than chartering a private spacecraft, anyway."

Something occurred to Deschanel. "Is 'LeeAnn' even your real name?"

The other woman winked. "It is this week."

Deschanel grumbled. "Congratulations. You two are perfect for each other."



Image: Planet Mars by Paul T., April, 2010

"Unanswered Questions"

UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
By Curtis C. Chen

Remember, operators: "non-lethal" does not mean "safe," and as a certain maverick exobiologist recently learned, even rubber bullets can get you into trouble with local law enforcement.

I'm Cathieri Pomayn, and this is BOUNTY CALL.

We get a lot of questions from viewers about weaponing regulations, and our answer always has to be the same: do your homework! With over two hundred human colony systems, there is no way we could keep up with the research, even if liability issues allowed us to address specific inquiries in the first place.

Please, before you even think about entering another jurisdiction, look up their prevailing regulations. We can't tell you where to do your research—again, liability issues, sorry boys!—but your local weaponer should have some good pointers. If anyone's going to know what's legal and what's not, it'll be the guy selling you the bullets.

Now, what we can talk about on this show is current events. For example, here's what happened to notorious treasure hunter Driftis Degge just last week on the Grunsharii homeworld.

(Roll clip, Murray. How long is this segment? No, I'm fine, just let me review the coverage here. Do we have the police report yet? Okay.)

And there you have it, folks: celebrity does not guarantee you immunity from prosecution, and nobody—repeat, nobody—is immune to projectile damage.

Interesting fact about the non-lethal rounds used in this particular incident: they were manufactured on—

(Okay, Murray, hold. I just need a second. I know, I reviewed the copy before air, but it just doesn't—I don't like the way it sounds now. Mark this for an edit. Yeah, I'm ready, go.)

The non-lethal rounds used in this incident were KMR-8's, manufactured on Senqara Prime and commonly known as "crazy eights." If you've ever taken a job in the Senqara system, you've probably pulled more than a few of these out of your vehicles or body armor. If you haven't tangled with Senqarans, consider yourself lucky.

Why did Degge have a sidearm loaded with KMR-8's in the first place? Well, it seems that—

(Cut. Sorry, Murray, this is just—I know I'm on camera, but I can't pretend I didn't even know the man, and this copy—look, just let me talk, okay? Record a waiver for the lawyers, but I need to say this. Thank you, Murray.)

We don't know all the facts yet. The Grunsharii have not yet released an official statement on the incident, and Driftis Degge is being held without bail in their capital city. But I have had the honor of serving with Captain Degge, and I can tell you this: he always knows what weapons he's carrying on his person, and he always knows what ammunition he's loaded into them.

Someone else might have made this mistake, forgotten to change out his mission load for travel-safe rounds, not checked his sidearm before leaving his ship. Someone else, maybe.

Not Driftis.

(You cut that any way you want, Murray. I need to go.)



Image: Jim Raynor Pistol - Glamor 01 by William Doran, October, 2010

"A Minor Inconvenience"

A MINOR INCONVENIENCE
By Curtis C. Chen

Brradox hated actually entering any spaceport, but he needed to store his cargo while the station shop repaired his ship's aging power plant. He studiously avoided making eye contact with any hawkers on the promenade, but looked up reflexively when he heard someone call his name with the proper pronunciation. That meant someone from the homeworld—

Brradox cursed when he saw who it was, then walked in the other direction. He wasn't fast enough.

A slender claw clacked down on his carapace. "Brradox! I thought that was you! What are you doing in this wretched hive?"

Brradox turned around. "Hello, Pirluut. Good to see you, I have to go, safe travels."

Pirluut smacked her antennae against Brradox's thorax. He hated it when she did that. "Now is that any way to talk to your favorite aunt?"

"You're my only aunt."

"It's been months! Come on, I'll buy you a grub shake—"

"Sorry," Brradox said, "don't have time. Live cargo. Need to arrange holding—"

"Animals?" Pirluut parted her mandibles in surprise.

"Humans. Noisy little larvas—"

"You're transporting human children?" Pirluut grabbed Brradox's abdomen with her two middle limbs. "In your ship?"

Brradox's leg-hairs bristled. "What's wrong with my ship?"

"Well, it's not exactly childproof."

"They're caged up. I really need to go—"

She closed both claws around his forelimbs. "I'm coming with you. No arguments," she added when he raised a pincer to protest. "You want me to call your mother? Tell her what kind of trouble you've been getting into out here?"

Brradox grumbled. "This way."

***

"You're lucky these humans aren't dead already," Pirluut said as she adjusted the climate controls on the transparent cube. The humans inside, an immature male and female, were just regaining consciousness. "Too much carbon dioxide. They don't respirate like we do; they're very sensitive to atmosphere changes. Also, what have you been feeding them?"

This was exactly what Brradox hadn't wanted to happen. He rifled through one of his supply crates and produced a bag of feed. "I know that's right; it's pre-formulated. Just add water. They don't like it much, but they like it better than starving."

Pirluut read over the feed ingredients and handed it back. "Well, they seem healthy. Where are they going, anyway?" Pirluut asked, looking over the children. The male had regained consciousness and was yelling and banging his fists against the cube wall.

"Some kind of ranch out in the Crescent."

Pirluut wiggled her antennae. "Really."

"I'm just making a delivery," Brradox said. "They're not inviting me to dinner."

"Still, it's definitely a step up," Pirluut said. "So are you going to make a habit of this now, Brradox? Live transport? It's a big responsibility."

"I can handle it. Thanks for your help," he said, grinding his jaws.

"Don't mention it. You're family." Pirluut looked over the rest of his cargo and waved at a stack of old-fashioned, hard-bound books. "So what are these? Antiques?"

"Part of the same shipment." Brradox picked up one of the books and blew some dust off its cover. "It's a cookbook."



Image: Reddish-brown Stag Beetle by Patrick Coin (via GIMPressionist filter), July, 2011