Part One — Lights Out Over Freo

1.

“Who monopolised time, life and fortune?” Ned Loh wondered as the police buzzdrone woke him prematurely one Friday morning in November about 4.30. It was just about all he could get into his feeble brain at such an hour. Still ... full-sentence interrogatives this early in the morning ... not a bad achievement. (Even if someone else had already said it.)

Time, Life and Fortune. Hadn’t they been paper magazines in the last century? Where did they all go?

The cheap Ishibu-stim Chronoslave on his wrist adjusted itself more quickly to the situation. “Shave. Shower. Shit”, it said. His face in the bathroom mirror was frightful. Last time he’d seen a face like that, it was a long time ago and it had a mouth full of cum and didn’t know whether to spit or swallow. That bad?

Half way through the Chronoslave’s triptych, the com lit up and he voiced it to take the call in the bathroom. It was bloody Warterski again. Bastard had probably rostered the buzzdrone specially to fly over his place just so the comcall could go through without Warterski having to get Ned out of bed personally.

“What the fuck Vee-Eye?”

“Loh, I need you in here right now to feel a bunch of data just came in on a definite hom-one”.

“Hom-one? No shit? Who got zapped?”

All fucking interrogatives this morning, like?

“Let me surprise you, Loh”, said Warterski with a laugh like a badly-tuned Kombi.

Loh’s battered pre-mill. Honda Prelude, left to him by his old Mum and now on its fourth motor, didn’t sound much different from Warterski’s laugh as it coughed into life on the fifth try. Not much traffic on the Hampton Freeway at that hour of the morning and Loh made it into Freocentral in under the half hour. Warterski met him at the media-ops room door, leaning against the jamb with a Diet Steroid already popped and hissing.

They walked in together and plugged themselves into the bank of Somatel body consoles lined up at the far end. Each looked like a well-appointed coffin, hollowed out, soft, and ready to take its flesh contents. As the media-ops room gave way to straight data, then to graphics, then to full 1024-bit holographic Reals, the answer to his early-morning question came to Ned. The combined might of Carbonsoft and Somatel had monopolised time, life and fortune. The Car-Tel was who.

Ned had turned cop round about the same time Somatel made the hardware break from silicon everyone had been expecting. Carbon, it turned out, could be programmed. And that meant every fleshcase in the world was up for transformation into circuit-free datalife. Carbonsoft wrote the programs for them ... us. By getting holographic data storage into practical form and back-programming into the Somatel consoles, the data potential became infinite. Infinite redundancy too — because any carbon nanochip could carry anything, everything! At least everything it was allowed to carry. And that was precisely Loh and Warterski’s job: checking the flow, watching for carborgan piracy ... policing the Rhizome.

They were the only cops in town, because every crime was carborganic. Theft was hardware and software piracy; murder was hardware and software piracy; rape was hardware and software piracy. Even moving traffic violations were hardware and software piracy. So a hom-one was a freak event. Someone (the Somatel console didn’t know who) had actually turned up, in the flesh, with no data imprint and, in the good old-fashioned way, had blown away someone else (the Somatel did know who) using a very ancient, probably pre-mill. antique, shotgun! Maybe along with some other retro meat-disposal equipment.

So this wasn’t going to be a routine net-raid like yesterday’s — some poor unfortunate with an illegal beta of Erectro-Fat 32, Carbonsoft’s latest and very expensive dildonics package. Bernstein Latin feel here:

When you honeymoon in Niagara

Don’t ya take that old Viagra

Screw the best that you can screw

(Pause)

With Carbonsoft Erectro-Fat 32

No. This was going to mean something altogether different, and Ned didn’t like it. He was even less enthused when Warterski, technically his senior, told him the case was his — alone — and he was totalled when the Somatel told him that the bits of dripping flesh pod on the back wall of an office at Freosouth University (even now downloading in full 1024-bit) were none other than those once belonging to his own Med.D supervisor, Professor Malachai De Fink.

Ned’s first thoughts were less than empathetic. To be exact they were: who the hell was going to get him through the coveted Doctorate of Media now? De Fink wasn’t clever. In fact it was said that when he arrived at Freosouth, not only did he still have books, but some of them hadn’t even been coloured in. He wasn’t clever, but he had connections. And with a topic like Ned’s, “Crime Fiction and Carborganics”, above all you needed connections. De Fink could get the data, the gen, the info. De Fink could even get supplies of old paper novels, many of which were, even now, testing the springs on Loh’s dunny door. De Fink could get the right examiners. He was an operator. Stupid, true, but the operator from Hell.

The rest of the Freosouth Media faculty were all serious theorists and knew all about such things as the Body-without-Carborgans, Interferance (with an “a”), Scopo-epistemotics, and the post-Virtual Audience. So De Fink had been a godsend. A veritable theory-free zone whose idea of a Med.D thesis was that it was like a stamp collection. Collect enough stamps, assemble them according to some principle, any principle, make it look nice and — most important of all — send it to examiners who owe you (because you did much the same last year for one of their utterly hopeless protégés). De Fink had intimated he’d already teed up his Irish and Russian cronies for the job on Ned’s thesis. O’Crochet in Dublin and Nyetsova in New Leningrad. Both women, both well-qualified, and both with a suitably mysterious debt to De Fink. There was a third, but Ned wasn’t in on that particular part of deal. Craven-Moorhead in Seattle perhaps?

Now he was gone, and Ned was going to be thrown to the theorists in all likelihood and, without a doubt, exposed as somebody with a genuine interest in reading cop stories and not much else. In short, he was taking it personally.

Not that he actually liked De Fink. On the contrary, he thought him a self-important and talentless little swine who didn’t suffer intelligence gladly. You don’t have to like your meal-ticket, after all. And on that subject, it occurred to Ned that De Fink, although he was owed a lot of favours (perhaps because he was owed a lot of favours) was bound to have a lot of enemies. And a lot of enemies meant ... a lot of footwork. And it was going to have to be footwork, too, because the Somatel was going to get him pretty much nowhere with this. At least, not in the short term. No dataprint. No secret-circuiting inside a carbotrojan up into some crim’s Organic Processing Unit. No sitting around the media-ops room with Diet Insomnocola, plugging into the carborganic Rhizome for Ned. No not for ages. Warterski was going to have weeks alone to play with the whole media-ops array, including the big Somatel 4000 that was Ned’s favourite toy. And Ned was going to be out squelching it with the fleshcases’ damned exteriors.

Nothing for it then but to haul ass and Prelude down to the Freosouth campus and have a look at De Fink’s final impersonation of a bad Jackson Pollock.

2.

Things weren’t so cool in the otherwise terminally cool Media faculty. Bodies, it seems, did have organs after all. But they weren’t expected to be on view, let alone on view in such colourful and distributed forms. Nothing like a good carve up to keep the theorists on their toes.

“He was around here ages before most of us” — this from Fergus O’Mara who, just this morning, had become the new acting chair of Media Studies. O’Mara sat back in his tatty leather recliner, half way between his usual cool and something vaguely approaching human feeling. Loh couldn’t tell what feeling though.

“Came in from some Pommy place in the years before anyone realised most of that prestige was fake. Had an unfinished Masters degree in Marwood biography, not much else. In fact, I think the Handbook still shows B.Cert next to his name, so I guess he must have been alive in the technical sense. But it was around the boom time back then, just after the Second Resources War and the universities couldn’t get even half-qualified staff. Couple of others got interviewed. One from Florida was OK. But he got off the plane and took one look at Perth after the North Koreans had micro-nuked it and went home. So De Fink basically just walked into the chair. As they say, for some obscure reason, he did a Bradbury.

“Problem for him came during the Media expansion into carbon a few years later. The faculties flourished and the world was full of incredibly bright, young and well-qualified staff. So here he was, pretty much useless, out of date and too old to learn. But his contract made it all but impossible to ditch him. About then we started to get rumours, nothing really solid. Suddenly he was publishing again, couple in good zines even. And he was getting students into Med.Ds with an incredible throughput rate.

“Strange thing was, the publications seemed different from his usual style. And lots of the students — present company excepted, I’m sure — really didn’t look like they had a hope of passing. Still De Fink kept publishing at a modest rate in respectable Rhizome zines, even one or two in more traditional ROM collections. And the students kept coming to him and going out the door with qualifications.

“So we all had our suspicions about his connections. Maybe there was some scam going on somewhere, maybe not. No one could ever prove anything. The Sub-Deputy-Pro-Vice-Chancellor did look into it all about a year or so back but drew a blank. There wasn’t even an official report.

“But there had to be something. I mean you just had to talk to the guy to tell he was a few gig short of the terabyte. Don’t know what he had in mind most days, but it didn’t have a lot of company. Everyone here took an instant dislike to him — probably because it saved time. Even said he had to study for a prostate test.

“So if he was crooked, he was also a loner as far we were concerned. No one got close enough to find out much about him. He held the chair in name only and hardly ever took on any admin. So we never saw him much in meetings. When he did turn up, maybe twice a year, he was the usual prehensile arsehole. Useless as a one-legged man at an arse-kicking party — and proud of it. Only connection with the institution we knew was that he drew his salary each month. Hell of a lot of it too by academic standards. Must be worth a bit in accumulated savings and super by now. Guess the wife he bought in Korea after the war gets it all”.

With that O’Mara checked his Chronoslave, said something about a class, popped a couple of neuro-activators from the dispenser on his desk and logged into his Somatel. Ned hadn’t said a word.

3.

The university’s CEO, Sub-Deputy-Pro-Vice-Chancellor Hagan, was less forthcoming. Ned strolled over to his spacious jarrah-panelled office in the Chancellery, past the banks of Somatels in the Library, now all pretty much empty as term was coming to an end for the summer. The odd nerd lingered on here and there playing one of the latest game crazes. Probably RhizomeRunner or IceCrash by the looks of their eyes: soft, glinting, concentrating. All the infinite holographic points between one and zero mainlining up through their OPUs (formerly known as “brains”) and just barely visible (to the trained software cop) in their eyes.

Hagan, anywhere else in the world, would be the university president. But as history had taken its course, all the officials above him had become progressively, or regressively, titular. Now even the Deputy-Pro-Vice-Chancellor was only wheeled out for special ceremonies. For all Ned knew, the Vice-Chancellor could be the Pope and the Chancellor God. In this scheme of things, Hagan was just the village priest, but he was as far as you could go in any actual com-net.

“Mr Loh to see you SDPVC”, said the young, old-fashioned, well-pressed secretary to the neat gold com-stud implanted in the left corner of her mouth, half com-device, half fashion accessory. She looked like the robot chick from Ned’s favourite history ROM, Mars Attacks. She frowned a lot, probably because Loh’s cop signature on the com had taken override and ruined her carefully worked-out Chronoslave entry for this particular Friday, Nine Nov: 9/11.

“Thank you Morticia, show him in”.

All very old world stuff this.

“Terrible, terrible thing”, hiccupped Hagan. “Never anything like this here. Hardly any bodies on campus these days anyway. Complete mystery”.

Couple of slow rounds of this glottal equivalent of solo clock golf and Hagan was exhausted. He flopped back in his padded chair and took a large mouthful of what looked like water but was probably a sed of some kind.

Ned reminded him of the semi-official inquiry into De Fink and Hagan grew even less communicative. “I can download the files if I need”, Ned further reminded him.

“Course, yes, er”. Second draught of the sed. “Quite some time ago. Not sure quite what, er”.

Ned this time: “Was he fucking around, sir?”

“Well, we couldn’t prove anything as such. Some evidence that a number of Med.D examiners had been used rather frequently’s all”.

“Did you check them out?”

“All seemed above board. Excellent credentials. Publications. Good universities. Type of thing”.

“Dublin? New Leningrad? ... Seattle?” Ned prompted.

“‘Spose you’ll check anyway. Um, yeh, those and a couple from, as I remember, Haifa and Suva”.

Good memory, thought Ned. Good network for De Fink too. Ireland, the New Soviet Union, the other WA, Palestine, Pacific Republic. None really close to home though. “Anything else you found?”

“Not a lot. Some previous political involvements. Long time before he came to Freosouth, though. Mostly student activism. Sort of stuff”.

“You get details?”

“New old left, or old new left. Before my time. Boy-meets-tractor biz-marxism. Race, class, gender issues. Something in there called PC or the PC, or the CP or something. Could hardly make sense of it myself. Ask a historian, if you can find one these days”.

Switching to underline, Ned dropped that down to his internal NotePad file. “So how come nothing went any further? Doesn’t information want to be compulsory, after all?”

Hagan turned slightly away. Ned captured his look for a later re-run.

“Lawyers”, he said, finally. “De Fink had a great legal team, assembled suddenly, from pretty much nowhere. Best in the country. Buzzed in from three states and two territories. Subpoenaed every byte. Guess he had the cash reserves. Before we could move, they had us in court on breach of contract.

“No one had actually looked at De Fink’s original contract. It was so old. Written at a time when we were desperate for staff. Especially with old world cred. Cringe was big then. We got a lot of dross from Paris, Oxford, Harvard. Most of it dead now, of course”.

Now, of course, including De Fink — Hagan didn’t add, perhaps for convenience, perhaps from indifference.

“Lots of stuff in those contracts that no one could get today. Some clause about academic freedom said De Fink’s research and scholarship was to be autonomous and couldn’t be challenged by university officials. Those days, it was signed by the Chancellor — and even I don’t know who he is today”.

Probably she, thought Ned.

“Bench took a look at the signature”, Hagan continued, “and awarded him compensation for damages. We paid costs. So the whole thing was dropped. Figured if we moved again, same thing would happen. De Fink got enough compensation to run us back into court whenever he liked. We couldn’t touch him. He could move too quick and too heavy”.

“Well, it’s unlikely he’s going to move now, not from what I’ve seen of him. Unless it’s slowly down the paintwork. So I’d say there’d be no harm in anything else you might want to say”.

“That’s pretty much all I know. Hardly even met the man”. Hagan back in his shell again. Back there with that funny sideways glance. What was that? Check the replay later. Run the 4000 over it. Meanwhile, let’s go for the bloody unconscious. Just in case. So, Ned turning to leave, swings back and tries the parting query trick: “Women?”

Just catching Hagan again in that glance, just a flicker. A flicker and a little sweat on the opposite side of the neck. “Uh, they tell me he was married”.

Something else bubbling away here. Let it hang.

Loh nodded to the pretty starch effigy at the desk who didn’t look up as she re-edited her big desk Chronoslave. Be worth a look, that. Natch, he meant the diary.