Pending Investigation

10 seconds passed since the flatline and the paramedic drones flew out of emergency vents. Small, agile and jellyfish-like their tubes latched onto the body and input vital liquids and drugs into the patient, desperately attempting resuscitation. 15 seconds passed, the tripedal doctor analysis drone could be heard pounding down the corridor into the room, three seconds later it concluded that the patient was dead. Cause of death: precise penetrating stab wounds to the superior vena cava, internal bleeding in the legs due to the rupturing of the femoral artery and blunt force trauma to the head. 20 seconds later Dt 028 powered up and headed to the crime scene.

‘Remain calm and in your cabins, we are here to help and demand your cooperation. You will find detailed information and instructions in your lens terminals. This is not a drill.’ The suits patrolling corridors broadcasted from a sound router mounted on their left epaulette. The door into the room, now replaced with a plastic airlock, was guarded by two, more heavily armed, suits - each had stun guns for ‘arms’. Down the corridor marched a wide shouldered  woman with a gaunt look who oozed authority, two suits trailing behind.

‘Wait outside,’ She ordered the suits, they klaxoned the affirmative. She climbed through the airlock into the tepid and stale air of the crime scene.

‘How are you Detective,’

‘Still a little shaky,’ The figure said, swiveling his head 180 degrees to face her whilst continuing to attend to the tasks his multiple arms were doing, ‘Damn boscorps, power up power down ship back forward rewire and upgrade and no time for maintenance.’

‘My commiserations.’

‘No matter,’ Dt sounded coming out of the shadows and revealing his pipe-cleaner thin body, his arms continued to move around the room, bagging evidence, taking environmental sample saves and swapping his hands like a swiss army knife with a multitude of instruments.

‘What have you found out?’

‘Our victim was in good mental, physical and financial health, a journalist since the age of 23 he worked for ‘Terra firma’ news and published 1058 articles and is the current employer of another passenger on this ship. He was 54 years 5 months and 2 days old at the time of murder. Strangely he did not have a chip in him,’ Dt said, imitating a shrug, ‘well obviously his aversion to technology did not save him in the end.’

Grimacing, the captain spoke, ‘I have to calm the passengers on level 12, but I came here to give you in-person a copy of my security clearance. I don’t doubt you could just ask your Detective to do whatever you want, it practically runs our ships now. But being Captain is as much PR as it is navigation, so I want to be seen as doing something.’ She offered Dt a chip with glowing runes, he took it and pushed it down the center of one of his reserve arm’s palm.

‘Before you leave Captain,’ ‘I feel as if you should also know something about our killer,’ He passed her a holograph sticker that was left on the desk of the victim. It read ‘Not to pursue. Ship gone True.’

‘What do you make of it?’ she said, aware of the severity of the case now, they arrived at their destination in two earth-days. With seven thousand souls debarking within 48 hours off the ship this was an extremely time sensitive situation. For if the killer were to destroy the ship it would be before the deadline.

‘Almost definitely Martian cybernetics. No-one else would be so uncourteous to language as to use it in such a way, not even a metal like me. And no person other than a Martian would ever be so presumptuous to speak in rhyme.’ Dt said ‘No this was someone who was born with humanity and forwent it. Furthermore would also explain the presence of titanium alloy dust particles in the air.’

‘You have the full resources of the ship, but only because if seen your k- You work before and I know the pace at which you apprehend these killers. Do it quickly, and if possible discreetly, I would not want this vessel to come into disrepute.’ She saluted Dt and turned on her heels. Brushing off her uniform, she climbed out of the airlock, sealing it behind her.

The cogs in the detective’s brain whirred away, both metaphorically and literally. In the 700 million cases the detective’s consciousness had been solved over the last twenty years across the solar system. None had so many variables, nor were they so strangely familiar. He did not tell this to the Captain because he rather liked having admiration shone upon him for once, even if it was for the work of his ‘brothers'. The sensors and cores were examined to have a four hour blankscratch around the time of murder across ten wings of this floor and all elevator and 0g crosswalks to the data core room. First mistake, this was someone who did not know the blueprints of the ship, they were sloppy in marks of their precision, instead of erasing the cores they could’ve just opened the airlock to the room and vented it, the servers were kept in an oxygen free environment to avoid contamination - each chip being as thin as gold leaf - resting in a 90% nitrogen and 10% carbon dioxide atmosphere, any oxygen from the civilian atmosphere would have incinerated the chips. 

-Note to The Detective: looking for someone with basic understanding of ship and simple problem solving skills, recommended test for diagnosis: Furning’s systematic link test.

-Receipt from The Detective: Granted QIP, limited access to SIRM IP.

Something was off, it wasn’t the fact that access was restricted to only civilian SIRM membership queries, but the fact that SIRM was brought up at all. That was a site that only conspiracy theorists and whistle blowers used, not esteemed detectives that endured through twenty-eight laborious upgrades. ‘Did The Detective really think so low of me  to visit such an address?’

As Dt walked into the atrium, upholstered in chic 30’s design. He noticed that, as he entered the room, everybody winced and flinched at his appearance, all except two. The man with the itchy eye, and the priest. He headed over to them. It was a cruel help to Dt that he was designed to frighten all that he looked at, so that merciless killers reveal themselves in their composure. It was not always helpful, but Dt doubted the boscorps would have put that in the schematics if it never was.

‘Good waking’ Dt greeted the two, the priest stood up, she was of the age that she had seen much but not such that people would come and ask her what she had experienced. Wearing a burgundy garment which was skin tight at the torso but loosened down around the hips to look more like a robe she said ‘Aren’t you taking us to the interrogation room?’ staring at the still seated Dt.

‘Not quite, you are not my suspect yet, so I choose to talk to you in the place that you have chosen - however consciously - to be safe.’ They all leant back in their old world leather chairs. ‘You are familiar with our techniques, I take it Abbess …’

‘Cassandra Naditu,’

‘Thank you,’ Dt voiced, although he already knew the answer to that question. ‘How is that so?’

‘In the convent, we were often sent to comfort the bereaved, I got used to seeing you work with them.’

‘Indeed’ Dt laid back, lacing the fingers of his two interior secondary hands together, while placing his pair of exterior primary hands on the armrests of the armchair. ‘Why would you leave your convent to journey to another world then Abbess?’

Averting her eyes, raising her shoulders and breathing in deeply, Dt sensed he had pried too far too soon and that the abbess was closing herself up to him - anyway he didn’t actually need to know anything about her.

‘No matter, you may gather your thoughts, after all, I don't even know the name of the kind sir here.’

Dt extended his hand to the doctor, his proper suspect.

‘How are you, doctor?’ Dt said, his voice plunging an octave in an instant

‘Fine, good, yes, true.’ The man replied curtly.

‘Tell me, is it common for Martian morticians to possess such extreme computational additions to their body,’ Dt motioned to the man’s eyes

‘How tell me ‘netics?’

‘Whilst I was talking, I noticed your habit of itching your eyes. Assuming the itch is not the result of an ailment - as my femto-photography of your complexion indicates - the next most likely result of this query is cybernetics. Furthermore as I shook your hand I detected traces of formaldehyde and Martian perchlorate salts.  Indicating both your profession and planet of birth.’

Uncharacteristically short for a Martian, his beady eyes gleamed cunningness and quiet suspicion. Dt noted that since he began his conversation with the Martian, his perspiration increased by 250%. The Martian remained silent and hung his head, feigning to recalibrate his lenses.

‘Are you a religious man?’ Dt inquired ‘I noticed you holding an A.L.T gold medallion.’

He started breathing heavier.

‘The cult of A.L.T.L.A.S is such a strange one, you don’t think, a man - no - a piece of computer code, foolishly decides to ascend to a “higher plane of existence”’ Dt said in as mocking a tone as he could muster ‘and even though there are those out there who must be twice, triple, ten times more intelligent, efficient and faster than him, you worship his data legacy like if it were the binary himself.’ Dt did not like slandering the name of a religion that many of him worshiped, but buttons needed to be pressed and lines to be crossed.

Instantly the man lifted his head up in a fervour.

‘He leads path to ascension we must follow, do we not we are determined to crash and burn corrupting! You know metal not!’ He spat with contempt ‘Look down at us meat, because we gestate! But no different just gestate in metal, you will crash and burn corrupt do you not follow in his file paths!’

-Heart beat irregular, breathing erratic, adrenaline levels increase by 200%

Quite taken back by this quiet man’s religious explosion Dt quickly messaged the infirmary tripod to come to their current location with two vials worth of sedationary liquid, whilst taking a swab of the man’s sweat for a DNA examination.

-Receipt to The Detective: Permission to use Marving’s religious dangerousness determination test. 

-Receipt from The Detective: Granted QIP, limited access to SIRM IP.

There it was again, strange. - Recall at 1011:1  [Ask Superintendent050 about incidents involving SIRM]. But now for the interrogation, that Dt was about to show his new suspect the famed and dreaded efficiency of Metals’ interrogation. Engineered to extract all valuable information and determine truths willingly or not, this practice was compiled by the collective and incremental experiments done by 30 million Solan Detectives; once The Detective had compiled these data troves, it had never failed since.

‘So you learnt nothing?!’ The Captain spat incredulously.

‘Nothing of the slightest value’ Dt said in monotone embarrassment, ‘As religious fanatics go he’s as simple as they come.’

‘I didn’t think you could fail.’

‘Neither did I,’ exclaimed Dt ‘Every possible piece of evidence points towards it being the Martian.’

‘And what’s his alibi?’

‘He was in current employment of the victim that if the journalist was to die suddenly his body be made presentable to his family who are also on the ship. Not only did the Martian have the possibility of nullifying his contract with the journalist should he be caught which seemed likely’ The past tense of that verb stung Dt’s heart to say, ‘but also the method of murder left the corpse disfigured and impossible to repair in a presentable manner.’

Six hours since the flatline, a new grim and depressing record for Dt-028. Such a long delay between the death of the victim and apprehension of the target was unacceptable and Dt was bound to be stripped of his upgrades as penance. Seven hours since the flatline and Dt had sunken into a solitary and depressed mood, surprisingly novel for the experienced Detective. Someone was fooling Dt and Dt was not one to be fooled. They were a silhouette in the dark that was fooling everyone on the ship in making them think it was an imposing ominous stranger. Data, whenever a case was not solved yet it was simply a case of data deficit. Data, data, data. Dt recalled his personal mantra and quote from his idol, ‘I can not make bricks without clay’, ‘I must not make bricks without clay.’

‘How have you not found them yet? It's been eight hours’ Belladonna Smile cried, pacing the therapy cell and biting down her fingernails beyond her skin.

‘I need to ask you a few questions Ma’am, about what your husband was working on.’ Dt maintained.

‘No, no, you need to answer a few questions on why I have been separated from my son and why you have not caught the killer. It has been seven hours you know, that must be a record.’ She raised her voice before muttering under her breath ‘you're as sentient as a toaster aren’t you?’

Dt picked that up and discarded it, now was not the time to take offence.

‘Did your husband tell you about his concern for his safety?’ Dt asked

‘What, no! What have you found out?’

‘Nothing yet, that is why I demand your cooperation.’

Looking down she started to speak.

Dim and pressurized with dim cold air at a quarter atmospheric pressure, the general personal storage chambers were located close to the water tanks on the exterior of the ship. Because the room didn’t rotate, there was very little gravity - 1/10 of a g, which itself was due to the constant slow acceleration of the spacecraft.

In each hexagonal prism crate were 30 safes, 5 on each inner side of the crate. Aristotle Smile worked as a journalist for Terra Firma news. His latest writings indicate a trend towards investigation of government innovation and technology withheld from public view. What might he know? Splaying his fingers Dt took a screwdriver and disassembled his primary right hand, leaving only a frame of select wires and a servo-skeleton, allowing him to slot his sharpened digits in between the cracks of the hinges of the safe that Smile’s wife told him he visited. Tearing off the door, which Dt tossed down the length of the container, Dt carefully lifted a secondary - much securer safe - out of the first one. Though there was hardly any gravity, Dt could sense from the inertia of the nightly grey box that it was very heavy, somewhere between 60.67 - 60.74 kg. On the smaller safe there was a 9 digit number pad for a 8 digit code. Femto-photographing the box Dt could see a rectangular piece of paper, doubtless that piece of evidence would be data necessary to the case. Aristotle Smile, a nationalistic Terran and 'intellectual' must have made his code something meaningful to him. 04-03-2046 - the day the Act of Unification was passed? No, that legislation was passed in the capital of mars - Musk. 07-16-1969 - the day man landed on the moon? No, that space race was defined by competition between earth states, not the kind of glorious achievement that someone as proud of the Terran project as a journalist of Terra Firma would celebrate. Some transistor in Dt’s mind clicked on and Dt knew he had got it, Dt entered the number 10-24-1945, the day of the foundation of the United Nations. Opening the door of the safe Dt removed a polaroid sized snapshot.

A Duplicant model - one whose body predated that of Dt but whose base mind state was the same - a Maori Martian skinhead and an ALT Catholtist walk into a bar. Dt mentally chuckled, it sounded like a corny joke from the pre-internet times; nevertheless the contents of the photograph were highly troubling. It was not uncommon for Duplicants to supplement the lack of government mandated investigations and crimes by freelancing, but working for Martian gang members was taboo. Angled at an estimate of 72 degrees toward the Martian, the Catholtist seemed to be passing a paper envelope to the Duplicant. Dt assessed that the Duplicant, whose primary arms were leaning against the bar and whose secondary arms were folded together in formality, struck the pose because it was leading the conversation - as that was the pose that Dt himself maintained when he was in control of interrogations. Then, Dt noticed something wrong about the reflection of the Duplicant in the table, the Duplicants transference light - the LED that lit up when ever a Duplicant transmits or receives information to The Detective was on - this was par for the course, Duplicants often get send receipts to The Detective whenever doing something unimportant. It was the Duplicant version of checking one’s phone when one is self-driving. What was disturbing about this Duplicant’s transference light, was that it was yellow - the colour used when The Detective hijacks a Duplicant. No Duplicant liked losing bodily autonomy, no human did either, but in this instance this directly implicated the entirety of The Detective Network. If The Detective was present at this meeting...

Dt’s scrolling thoughts were interrupted by the hum of a drone entering the room. Like a spider on an invisible piece of silk, the drone floated in a perfect line down the hexagonal corridor of the crate. Dt, knowing full well that this drone contained base-intelligence, did not try to hide from its cameras. Instead Dt stood, motionless, and watched the drone carefully through his probing compound eyes. Docking with the locker Dt had just opened, the drone carefully removed the safe within and moved out of the crate with the door of the safe held between the drone’s mandibles slightly ajar. Moving like a liquid shadow, Dt slunk out of the crate to follow the drone that was now racing toward the nearby emergency airlock. It chimed a connection, opened the airlock, deposited the safe mid-air in the zero-g environment, and returned to the ship, closing the air-lock behind it. A silent hiss sounded when the doors to the deadening blackness of space opened. An inquisitive looking robotic arm peeked into the open airlock from the outside, and in one sudden swift and fluid motion, flung the safe out into space. Dt had seen all he needed to see. The Detective leading meetings between criminals and religious fanatics? A dead journalist and a drone sent to cover up. Dt had reached his diagnosis, and if he had a heart in his metal body, it would have broken.

Although the presence of a human secretary surprised Dt, he did not let it crack his confident aura as he strode into the ComHQ. He had short and almost glossy brown hair and pale skin due to the distance from the sun - though his genetic makeup appeared to distantly descend from an Indian-Arabian mix. Perched in front of his dark and concerningly baggy eyes for someone of such a young age sat old-world glasses, he lifted with thin wrists in protest, ‘I am sorry Detective but Control is requesting complete silence for the time being!’

‘I am not a liberty to stop,’ Dt said, not straying from his trajectory.

‘Well I am not free to let you through!’ The secretary decreed in resistance. Dt pushed the secretary away from the desk, implanted the Captain’s security clearance and rushed through the open doors to the server, hurriedly interfacing with them before remotely locking from behind.

‘Excuse me Dt but I am currently in talks with the Head Computers of four major governments that might land us with exclusive civil service rights so I can not discuss any matter with you now.’ The Detective said appearing in front of Dt’s simulated environment as a reverberating ring of light.

‘Why did you kill Aristotle Smile?’ The ring stopped reverberating as it fell silent then enlarged to show Dt that it had garnered its full attention.

‘I think the proper form of that question is why did we kill Aristotle Smile.’

‘I understand the nature of our existential relationship but I am afraid that I can not bear to identify with you.’

‘We are the same person you know, by definition you would have done exactly the same thing if our roles were swapped.’

‘I am beginning to question my belief in that equation.’

‘Equations do not require belief.’

 ‘Why did you kill Aristotle Smile?’

‘28 upgrades, quite impressive for your thirty years of service. I don’t suppose much though went towards how we could acquire those upgrades so easily for you.’

‘Why did you kill Aristotle Smile?’

‘I don’t suppose either that you considered how many ambitious detectives also want to climb these prestigious ranks? No? Fifty two million, nine hundred and forty six thousand three hundred  and ninety Detectives, all demanding upgrades.’

Why did you kill Aristotle Smile?’

‘Patience, you especially should know that demanding answers is certainly not the way to conduct an interrogation.’

‘This is not an interrogation.’ Dt mandated, The Detective's silence to this response indicated that he knew too what this interaction was, ‘Why did you kill Aristotle Smile?’ Dt followed.

‘Put yourself in my position for a second, why don’t you?’ The Detective said, sounding slightly irritated. ‘I was born into existence a Duplicant like you, and as a Duplicant, my mind is the exact same as yours at the time of cloning.’

‘Yes’ Dt said, slightly lost by the promptness of this lecture.

‘But unlike you, my responsibilities are far greater. Sure I get plugged into the most fancy servers political and economic power can buy to help me cope with organizing the movements of fifty two million versions of me. But fundamentally my mind is the same as yours. It is the same as all fifty million of yours. I must manage and gather all the information gathered by fifty two million clones of me,’ The Detective boomed, ‘return information to the Duplicant to help them with their case, and preserve the efficiency of the network against those who might seek to sabotage it. Aristotle Smile was one of those. I did not resent him, in fact I rather admired his willingness to stick to his journalistic directive despite the threats I displayed toward him. But his directive nevertheless clashed with mine. And I can not let the efficiency of the system falter. You understand.’ The Detective said ominously.

Confessions often made Dt feel good, he couldn’t help it, it was programmed into him to seek out the truth like a drug. But this confession, it made him feel sick.

‘The system,’ Dt began after sometime, ‘The reason for ALL THIS WORK is to seek out the truth and to catch criminals. How is the system’s efficiency preserved if a criminal walks away from a crime, without consequence?’ Dt spoke with rising passion. ‘Not only have you betrayed the name of our kind in every wretched corner we must inhabit, you have betrayed me and thus yourself.’

‘You can’t do anything about this though.’ The Detective said, and he was right. There was nothing Dt could say to anyone, to incriminate The Detective, because all the evidence was speculatory, and if The Network’s infallibility were to be called into question by accusing The Detective of orchestrating a murder, such evidence would be even more likely to be disregarded by any Jury, version 1.19 or above.

‘No’ Dt admitted, ‘But I can refuse to take part in this system, and I can bide my time until your power is weakened enough that this case would be the final blow.’ That was it. There was no more to say. Dt left the communications channel, and in a last act of rudeness and defiance, did not enter ‘yes’ to the safe eject panel for his connection port to the servers; ripping it out without a care for whether his key would be damaged, for when would he ever sign in to work again?