Charles Stross - Rule 34

You have face-mail. “Liz?” It’s Dorothy. You startle and guiltily look over your shoulder, but the door’s shut. “Long time no see. Uh… I’m in town again? And I was wondering if, if you’d like to meet up? I’m free tonight, if that’s convenient, or we could talk?”

Well , that’s a turn-up. But it also up-ends all your carefully controlled tranquillity. You and Dorothy have history. (Or herstory.) Your heart beats faster for a moment, the phone clammy in your palm. “I—” You stop. Talking to voice mail: ungood. You text her back, quickly, suggesting meeting up in a friendly wine bar in the new town. Then you take a deep breath and swipe your phone back to its on-duty persona. You take another deep breath as you try to gather your scattered thoughts. You’re not sure how you feel about this; it’s been months, hasn’t it? But suddenly you feel almost hopeful. Which is bad , because you’re meant to be on duty. So you turn back to the waves and streams of ICIS chatter, and see—

KARL@Dresden, DE, 15:56 -1:00H: Hi guys we have a weird one here today! One of our local low-lifes tried to off himself in a really original way—we think. $PERP owns a fancy sun-tanning bed. (Don’t ask.) Apparently there is a common software hack to override the 10-minute maximum exposure and tanning intensity limits, and he drank half a bottle of schnapps spiked with oxazepam before getting in. Not sure why… Anyway, third-degree radiation burns to 95% of body! Man, those UVA LEDs are scary! There is rumour about tanning and street drugs producing endorphin high—are any similar reports?

You’re not sure just what it is that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, but you sit there and stare at the transcript for a long moment, then air-type:

QUERY: What is $PERP’s background?

It’s a minute or so before Karl spots your addition and replies, during which time you’re perusing a report on trends in toxicant inhalation among youth in the seedier Parisian banlieues, then:

$PERP is a scam artist—bulk-mailing fraud and tax evasion. Why?

Your fingers shaking, you reply:

Maybe nothing, but we have a weird one here, too. Our $PERP had a record: pharmaceutical spam, illegal sale of medicinal products, counterfeit goods. We are investigating as murder due to circumstances of death.

More waiting:

What circumstances?

At this point you pause to authenticate Karl’s identity credentials. Karl Heyne is indeed an officer of some kind in the Kriminalpolizei in Dresden, according to your departmental authentication server. He is, in the loosest possible sense, one of your colleagues. But on the other hand—you check the department newsfeed for confirmation—Dickie has indeed escalated the case of the late Mr. Blair to Murder in the First Degree as of lunch-time, and the ironclad rule of criminal intelligence is: assimilate everything, disclose nothing . You think for another minute, then:

I am not principal investigator. Suggest you contact DCI MacLeish (profile attached) for further information. Tell him I noted circumstantial similarity.

(Bye.)

At which point you could wash your hands of the whole affair and consider your duty done—but that’s not enough, is it? You stare at Karl’s note for a full minute, letting it all percolate together, trying to quantify your sense of déjà vu.

Item: $PERP is a spammer.

Item: $PERP is found dead, in a weird and improbable accident, at home.

Item: rogue domestic appliances are implicated.

Item: so are inappropriate intoxicating substances.

Naah, that never happens, not in real life, outside of the movies. Does it?

“Dickie will think I’m off my trolley,” you mutter to yourself. Then you pick up your phone, shake it, and speed-dial.

“Chief Inspector? If I can have a moment… ? Really? That’s too bad… Listen, I don’t want to add to your work-load, but I have a possible lead from—it’s a long shot—Germany. Yes, it’s intelligence-led. They’ve got a circumstantially similar case on their hands in the past twenty-four hours. No… Not exactly the same, but I spotted at least four points of similarity. So far, no, no, they’re still treating it as accidental-but-weird. No, I know. I told him I’m not the lead, gave him your details. Yes, I—I’m sorry, but in my judgement there’s something very fishy about it, and I think you need to talk to the man. No I—no. Look, you know what I do, don’t you? I’m here to watch for—well shit .”

You put the phone down carefully, in case it explodes. Or maybe in case you explode. Anger management is one of those compulsory people-skills hingmies they put you through on a regular basis; clearly Dickie’s overdue for his next refresher.

You can fully appreciate how busy he is, and how he’s got the brass breathing down his neck—Scotland as a nation gets about a hundred murders a year, but Edinburgh accounts for less than a tenth of that—and you know this is but a circumstantial what-the-fuck? indicator, most likely a coincidence. But there’s no call to bite your head off. If Dickie disnae want to carry it, he can always fob you off on one of his minions. There is absolutely no fucking call to swear at a fellow officer like that, much less a sometime classmate, and it is indicative of a distinct lack of respect and professionalism, and you have half a mind to—

No , scratch that. Leave the formal complaint for some other time, when he isn’t being shat on from above and trying to juggle a murder investigation and his regular case-load. Now is not the time to go nuclear, whether or not Dickie deserves it. You’ve had years of practice at swallowing this shit. Often as not, they don’t even realize they’re dishing it out: coming from a macho subculture, gobbling pints and proton-pump inhibitors to keep their stomachs from exploding with all the bile and suppressed rage that goes with the job—no. Just no . Bottle it up for later.

And speaking of bottling it, you put in three and a half hours of overtime yesterday, it’s forty minutes to end of shift right now, and if you don’t claw back some personal space, HR will notice and send you on a mandatory work/rest chakra-rebalancing course again (because the new-age hippie counselling shit is cheaper than paying for stress-related sick-leave).

Anyway, haven’t you got a date?

It’s time to go home and shower, then off to the wine bar to see what Dorothy wants—whether it’s you, or just a familiar face in a strange town. And to maybe bring down the wall and get comfortably numb for a few hours before you climb back into the broken hamster wheel of your career and scamper round again and again…

Maybe you didn’t know it at the time, but you and Dorothy have been friends for, oh, ever so long. Since maybe back before you were in primary two and Miss Simpson started in on the utterly bowdlerized sexed coursework, which was all they were allowed to hand out back then. Back in the early nineties, in the dog days of Section 28—the part of the Local Government Act that banned local councils and education authorities from admitting that homosexuality even existed, much less allowing teachers to tell isolated kids that being destined for the Adam and Steve alternative didn’t mean they were pariahs or perverts—back then, even aged eight, you’d figured out for yourself that this stuff was all wrong. You’ll never get me to do that with a boy. Well, maybe —but why bother? It’s an awful lot of hard work—and no little mess—for something that doesn’t look much like anything you’d call fun.