A Ballad of Wayward Spectres: Day 2, Page 2
William B Hill
“Nope.”
“Then I guess that the kid ain’t as good as we thought, missing details as simple as that,” Martin chuckled. “What do you want to do?”
“I’m going to work. You’re going home. Sick, remember?” Rich said.
“No, asshole, what are we really going to do? Do you want me to cruise around the city eyeballing every pretty college student that I pass, or do you have something specific in mind? I need a little something to go on other than a face. All I have is that she probably doesn’t have all of her toys anymore.”
“Isn’t that something?”
Martin stabbed his eggs. “Yeah, it’s something, but it might be too broad. You know how many places you can buy a phone in this town? Even the fucking gas stations have the cheap ass mobiles that you can buy if you’re too broke to pay a bill every month.”
Rich closed the folder, and pushed it back to Martin. “You’ll figure something out. Once the scan comes back, I’ll get back in touch with you.”
Rich started for the exit.
“Hey, you’re really going to let me go at this alone?”
“Isn’t that what you want?” Rich asked. He stopped, and turned around.
“Maybe a little; it doesn’t hurt to have some company when you’re camping outside of the Short Stop looking for a girl to walk out with a prepay-mobile and a lotto scratcher,” Martin said. Rich couldn’t detect any sarcasm in his voice. Still, he nodded, smiled, and went for the exit. “I’ll see you in a few hours, Martin.”
Martin returned his attention to his breakfast. He opened the folder as he scooped up a mouthful of eggs, and looked over the notes once again. He searched for changes from the previous version, and wrote the details down on the inside cover; pigment augmentation procedures, business addresses, emergency contact information, and most important, the differences between the new photo and the previous.
The shape of the jaw, the width of the nose, and even the height of her cheeks were off. The real Marina could probably see the top of her cheeks if she smiled wide enough, and the youthful woman in the new photo probably couldn’t see her nose when her eyes were crossed. Eye color wasn’t an issue; anyone could have a supply of contacts for the purpose of misleading a retinal scanner. He wondered if Derrick had bothered to check the hotel for fingerprints, or if they were taking everything at face value. With Central 1 running a tight budget year-round, he wouldn’t be surprised if he’d tried and been turned down because of the bureaucratic dick that was Timothy Dewitt pinching every penny to look good in front of the mayor.
With the bead having been drawn onto Marina after getting the case, they’d probably rushed the investigation at the house. After all, someone as rich as Tomas Dekare was going to draw media attention and a suspect would always look good on the news. All they’d need was a reason to look for his wife. They’d have the scene photographed and scanned for further research if necessary. Martin thought about asking Rich for access to the Green Lab so that he could look the site over himself, but he knew that a little post-mortem breaking and entering would always serve his investigation better than any live computer rendering of the scene would. Not to mention, a visit to the station would break Rich’s cover story.
Martin flipped to the back cover of the folder and wrote the words “visit Dekare home” next to “find the girl” in blocky, uneven letters.
II
The rain stopped when Alyson was a mile away from Pages, a big box retailer several miles from downtown. She’d been walking for two hours, soldiering through varying degrees of nastiness from above, and counting the times she noticed dead Oct cars on the tracks. A muggy haze begged her to strip her jacket off, and just be wet from head to toe for the rest of the day, but she persisted out of some spite against the rain for stopping. She hoped that the end of the storm would bring in a cooler afternoon, but all signs pointed to miserable, hot, and wet. She felt like she was walking through a cloud. The air stank of oil and exhaust.
Alyson stepped into Pages, bombarded by the blast of a fan hanging just in front of the entrance. She stood beneath the high powered blower for a moment to dry off. She scanned the store for her opposition in blue, seeing no one but a politically correct assortment of men and women clad in green polo shirts and black pants, with lanyards bearing keys and name tags.
Pages was formed out of the ashes of so many big box retailers, and advertised an “environmentally friendly” approach to mass market retail, using all of the traditional advertising devices to make it seem like they cared. The business emerged parallel to the rise of the earliest modular mobile telecommunications devices, and offered repairs and legitimate tech recycling, so it seemed like they were trying. Alyson had read a number of articles on the net regarding the internal struggles and board room battles over how much money it cost to handle the ecofriendly electronics market, which was an oxymoron if she’d ever heard one. She couldn’t help but admire the mixture of ambition and rebelliousness.
Alyson felt her eyes start to burn in the blast of cool air, so she continued into the store, taking a turn towards the media section. She assumed that loss prevention personnel were probably watching her from the moment she stepped in the door. Alyson knew that she’d stolen a lot of money from people, but she’d never stooped so low as to shoplift.
Alyson took the long way around to the Modern Mobility department, a claustrophobic collection of tables with glass cased devices running simulated versions of each devices operating system on a mounted touch screen behind the display. She wasn’t satisfied that there were only three people waiting in line. If she couldn’t be invisible, she wanted to be as close as possible, and three people couldn’t conceal her presence as much as she’d like. Instead of entering the cluster of displays, she continued around the circuit to the computer department.
A teenage boy griped about video cards and RAM to his mom as she pointed out a laptop with moderate specs, while pining over a COM-STAR 220 desktop monster, which boasted LEDs lined into the case, and high performance specs. He dragged her over, and Alyson ran her fingers over the sad computer left behind by the irritating child who groveled for the chance to own the beasty overrated powerhouse.
Six prototypes were delivered to her house a few weeks before her fifteenth birthday. Her mother’s funeral was three months behind them, and her father had finally caught a break with Metro Tech, a technical writing firm. It was his first assignment, and each of the devices, which included a pair of early modular mobiles, came with an immense amount of documentation. They were living in a one bedroom apartment. He slept on the couch and worked from the kitchen table, allowing her to keep the bedroom and the little privacy it offered.
She remembered sitting on a stool and eating a bowl of chili while watching him unpack the first of the laptops, a COM-STAR MP2, and go through the initial setup while writing several pages of notes. She stood over his shoulder, and listened as he explained his process, the machine itself, and how he’d prepare documents to inform people on how to operate them. She’d complained that any idiot could use a laptop. He agreed, but noted that some people modified their existing computers, and that they needed to know what kind of changes were made to each model, how they were different, and what they could put into the device without destroying the system.
On her birthday, she received her first mobile, an E-Fort S6 ready modular device. She pined for the newer MT1 system that was undergoing surgery on the kitchen table, but was thrilled just to have her own mobile. Her mother never allowed her to have one, and it was the only concession her father been able to afford.
Alyson remembered that he’d cried himself to sleep that night. Even with those months between him and tragedy, he still would break into tears. He had taken down old family pictures, and locked them into a closet at the end of the hall.
Alyson had given up on grief.
Three months after he told her about the insides of the MP2, she snuck the device out of his workspace, and started toying with it in her
bedroom.
She shook the memory away. The E-Fort logo shined on the top of the modest laptop, and Alyson ran her fingers through the cracks between the keys, brushing away a layer dust with maternal grace. The specs were similar to her recently deceased machine. She wasn’t surprised. It hadn’t been long since she acquired her last laptop, and it bored into her soul that she had to do so again so soon.
Alyson glanced to the Modern Mobility section of the store, fifteen yards away and growing busier. She slipped away from the computers, and merged with the stubborn and frustrated mass of customers complaining that the screens on their mobiles were shattering too easily, and that they needed to carry more replacements. One older customer griped that he preferred the insurance plans of old, where a broken device was replaced in a couple of days without the wait for parts, and a temp was given in the interim.
The cousin to her deceased mobile sat on a display at the end of the first table, advertisements screaming from the banners overhead, with trio of blue spheres arranged in a triangular shape around the P&V iconography. Hers was a prototype, taken from the place where she got her best equipment. That resource was dead in her eyes. The access sat in her pocket, a single call away, but they would be
“Then I guess that the kid ain’t as good as we thought, missing details as simple as that,” Martin chuckled. “What do you want to do?”
“I’m going to work. You’re going home. Sick, remember?” Rich said.
“No, asshole, what are we really going to do? Do you want me to cruise around the city eyeballing every pretty college student that I pass, or do you have something specific in mind? I need a little something to go on other than a face. All I have is that she probably doesn’t have all of her toys anymore.”
“Isn’t that something?”
Martin stabbed his eggs. “Yeah, it’s something, but it might be too broad. You know how many places you can buy a phone in this town? Even the fucking gas stations have the cheap ass mobiles that you can buy if you’re too broke to pay a bill every month.”
Rich closed the folder, and pushed it back to Martin. “You’ll figure something out. Once the scan comes back, I’ll get back in touch with you.”
Rich started for the exit.
“Hey, you’re really going to let me go at this alone?”
“Isn’t that what you want?” Rich asked. He stopped, and turned around.
“Maybe a little; it doesn’t hurt to have some company when you’re camping outside of the Short Stop looking for a girl to walk out with a prepay-mobile and a lotto scratcher,” Martin said. Rich couldn’t detect any sarcasm in his voice. Still, he nodded, smiled, and went for the exit. “I’ll see you in a few hours, Martin.”
Martin returned his attention to his breakfast. He opened the folder as he scooped up a mouthful of eggs, and looked over the notes once again. He searched for changes from the previous version, and wrote the details down on the inside cover; pigment augmentation procedures, business addresses, emergency contact information, and most important, the differences between the new photo and the previous.
The shape of the jaw, the width of the nose, and even the height of her cheeks were off. The real Marina could probably see the top of her cheeks if she smiled wide enough, and the youthful woman in the new photo probably couldn’t see her nose when her eyes were crossed. Eye color wasn’t an issue; anyone could have a supply of contacts for the purpose of misleading a retinal scanner. He wondered if Derrick had bothered to check the hotel for fingerprints, or if they were taking everything at face value. With Central 1 running a tight budget year-round, he wouldn’t be surprised if he’d tried and been turned down because of the bureaucratic dick that was Timothy Dewitt pinching every penny to look good in front of the mayor.
With the bead having been drawn onto Marina after getting the case, they’d probably rushed the investigation at the house. After all, someone as rich as Tomas Dekare was going to draw media attention and a suspect would always look good on the news. All they’d need was a reason to look for his wife. They’d have the scene photographed and scanned for further research if necessary. Martin thought about asking Rich for access to the Green Lab so that he could look the site over himself, but he knew that a little post-mortem breaking and entering would always serve his investigation better than any live computer rendering of the scene would. Not to mention, a visit to the station would break Rich’s cover story.
Martin flipped to the back cover of the folder and wrote the words “visit Dekare home” next to “find the girl” in blocky, uneven letters.
II
The rain stopped when Alyson was a mile away from Pages, a big box retailer several miles from downtown. She’d been walking for two hours, soldiering through varying degrees of nastiness from above, and counting the times she noticed dead Oct cars on the tracks. A muggy haze begged her to strip her jacket off, and just be wet from head to toe for the rest of the day, but she persisted out of some spite against the rain for stopping. She hoped that the end of the storm would bring in a cooler afternoon, but all signs pointed to miserable, hot, and wet. She felt like she was walking through a cloud. The air stank of oil and exhaust.
Alyson stepped into Pages, bombarded by the blast of a fan hanging just in front of the entrance. She stood beneath the high powered blower for a moment to dry off. She scanned the store for her opposition in blue, seeing no one but a politically correct assortment of men and women clad in green polo shirts and black pants, with lanyards bearing keys and name tags.
Pages was formed out of the ashes of so many big box retailers, and advertised an “environmentally friendly” approach to mass market retail, using all of the traditional advertising devices to make it seem like they cared. The business emerged parallel to the rise of the earliest modular mobile telecommunications devices, and offered repairs and legitimate tech recycling, so it seemed like they were trying. Alyson had read a number of articles on the net regarding the internal struggles and board room battles over how much money it cost to handle the ecofriendly electronics market, which was an oxymoron if she’d ever heard one. She couldn’t help but admire the mixture of ambition and rebelliousness.
Alyson felt her eyes start to burn in the blast of cool air, so she continued into the store, taking a turn towards the media section. She assumed that loss prevention personnel were probably watching her from the moment she stepped in the door. Alyson knew that she’d stolen a lot of money from people, but she’d never stooped so low as to shoplift.
Alyson took the long way around to the Modern Mobility department, a claustrophobic collection of tables with glass cased devices running simulated versions of each devices operating system on a mounted touch screen behind the display. She wasn’t satisfied that there were only three people waiting in line. If she couldn’t be invisible, she wanted to be as close as possible, and three people couldn’t conceal her presence as much as she’d like. Instead of entering the cluster of displays, she continued around the circuit to the computer department.
A teenage boy griped about video cards and RAM to his mom as she pointed out a laptop with moderate specs, while pining over a COM-STAR 220 desktop monster, which boasted LEDs lined into the case, and high performance specs. He dragged her over, and Alyson ran her fingers over the sad computer left behind by the irritating child who groveled for the chance to own the beasty overrated powerhouse.
Six prototypes were delivered to her house a few weeks before her fifteenth birthday. Her mother’s funeral was three months behind them, and her father had finally caught a break with Metro Tech, a technical writing firm. It was his first assignment, and each of the devices, which included a pair of early modular mobiles, came with an immense amount of documentation. They were living in a one bedroom apartment. He slept on the couch and worked from the kitchen table, allowing her to keep the bedroom and the little privacy it offered.
She remembered sitting on a stool and eating a bowl of chili while watching him unpack the first of the laptops, a COM-STAR MP2, and go through the initial setup while writing several pages of notes. She stood over his shoulder, and listened as he explained his process, the machine itself, and how he’d prepare documents to inform people on how to operate them. She’d complained that any idiot could use a laptop. He agreed, but noted that some people modified their existing computers, and that they needed to know what kind of changes were made to each model, how they were different, and what they could put into the device without destroying the system.
On her birthday, she received her first mobile, an E-Fort S6 ready modular device. She pined for the newer MT1 system that was undergoing surgery on the kitchen table, but was thrilled just to have her own mobile. Her mother never allowed her to have one, and it was the only concession her father been able to afford.
Alyson remembered that he’d cried himself to sleep that night. Even with those months between him and tragedy, he still would break into tears. He had taken down old family pictures, and locked them into a closet at the end of the hall.
Alyson had given up on grief.
Three months after he told her about the insides of the MP2, she snuck the device out of his workspace, and started toying with it in her
bedroom.
She shook the memory away. The E-Fort logo shined on the top of the modest laptop, and Alyson ran her fingers through the cracks between the keys, brushing away a layer dust with maternal grace. The specs were similar to her recently deceased machine. She wasn’t surprised. It hadn’t been long since she acquired her last laptop, and it bored into her soul that she had to do so again so soon.
Alyson glanced to the Modern Mobility section of the store, fifteen yards away and growing busier. She slipped away from the computers, and merged with the stubborn and frustrated mass of customers complaining that the screens on their mobiles were shattering too easily, and that they needed to carry more replacements. One older customer griped that he preferred the insurance plans of old, where a broken device was replaced in a couple of days without the wait for parts, and a temp was given in the interim.
The cousin to her deceased mobile sat on a display at the end of the first table, advertisements screaming from the banners overhead, with trio of blue spheres arranged in a triangular shape around the P&V iconography. Hers was a prototype, taken from the place where she got her best equipment. That resource was dead in her eyes. The access sat in her pocket, a single call away, but they would be
