Chapter Seventeen.

Dallis Sean was a skinny man with a mop of brown curls and beady hazel eyes that darted around. His narrow face was marred with pockmarks and the thin white lines of augmentations. He was an ugly man in a world of artificial beauty.

“Put this on your temple.” Geraldo handed the young man a small square of what looked like paper.

“A dermal interface?” Dallis asked as he took the patch. His thin lips pressed together. “I have a brain dock. I could just interface if you want.”

“Won’t be necessary. This assures me that you don’t have a sub drive. It’s too easy to evade a CIT scan with the right software. This will bypass any contingency plans you have.” Geraldo pointed to his own temple.

Dallis peeled the white backing from the patch before he pressed it against the side of his head, and tried to smooth the patch over. The patch had a pattern like a circuit board. It reminded Geraldo of the old temporary tattoos he had used as a kid in the days past.

“Try not to touch it,” Geraldo warned. He reached into the small black case placed between them on the small table and pulled out a small drone that bussed and lifted from the palm of his hand before he unpacked a terminal and flipped the screen up. The screen came to life, bathing Geraldo in a pale blue light.

The room was square, all four sides backed in with tented windows. Two chairs and a table were the only furnishing. The bustle of the station could be observed from within the box.

“It itches,” Dallis complained.

“That’s normal,” Geraldo said absently as he initiated the program on the terminal, his fingers gliding over the keys of the keyboard as he logged the interview. “It’s the nanofilaments working their way into your skin and skull. You may have a slight headache, but it shouldn’t last long. The dermal patch will become inert and dissolve after a few hours.”

Dallis watched nervously as people walked past the windows of the interrogation room. The drone following his eyes, displaying his right eye on Geraldo’s monitor.

A clicking sound caused Geraldo to look up. Dallis touched the tip of his left thumb to each finger on his left hand, starting with his index finger and moving to the next finger in line, until he reached the end; then he would repeat the pattern back to the other side. The LED fiberoptic implants on each finger clicked against the one on his thumb.

“I tinted the windows,” Geraldo assured him. “No one knows what we are doing in here.”

“Am I a suspect?” Dallis rasped quietly over the sound of his clicking fingers.

“This is just procedure. Covering all our bases is all,” Geraldo assured him. There was something odd about the man’s movements, something off-putting, something Geraldo couldn’t quite place.

The obsessive clicking ended when Dallis abruptly leaned forward and pressed his hands against the wood veneer of the table.

“Because I already gave a statement.”

“It’s just procedure,” Geraldo assured him once more. “We need to rule out any employee involved in the incident, is all. Are you aware of how a CIT scan works?” He added after the program had finished booting up.

“It measures brain wave output as well as pupil dilation; based on the P300 brain wave it can determine if a subject is familiar with crime scene settings. Coupled with the rental monitoring, CTI can deduce if a subject is lying.”

Geraldo raised a bushy eyebrow. “You know your stuff.”

“CIT’s are fed into the data analytics of Taurus. Gives the system a better understanding of who has the potential to lie based on psych profiles.”

“Better than a polygraph.”

“Polygraphs are pseudoscience nonsense. They haven’t been admissible in court since the twentieth century.” Dallis began the clicking ritual again.

“This isn’t a judicial investigation; it’s an internal one. The bar of evidence is much lower.”

Dallis’s eyebrows perked up. “I thought you were a homicide detective?”

“We are off to a great start.” Geraldo gave him an easy smile. “What is your name?”

“Dallis Sean.”

Geraldo watched the graph of brain waves dip. He typed into the display, marking the response as true. “Yes or no questions now, okay?”

Dallis nodded.

“Did I call you this morning to arrange this meeting?”

“You sent me a message.”

“Yes or no, Dallis. Did I call you this morning to arrange this meeting?” Geraldo watched the graph on the display fluctuate. The rapid spikes in his brain waves indicated that he was formulating a response. Geraldo captured the data before moving on.

“No”

“Have you ever watched pornography on company time?”

“No,” Dallis answered quickly.

The waves spiked, indicating it was a lie. Geraldo typed quickly, feeding the data into the algorithm.

“I think we are ready to start.”

“I thought we had already started.”

Geraldo shook his head and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “No, those were just primer questions. Do you mind if I smoke?”

“No.” The waves spiked again.

Geraldo smiled as he lit his cigarette and studied his subject. Dallis was young, a gifted kid who’s augmentation added to his skill. The tips of his fingers contained LED sensor lights, the sort of thing that allowed him to rapidly interface with data without the need to entire the Either.

His agumentation told the story of a dedicated employee who valued his own skill and looked for ways to better himself, but his wrinkled clothes, unkempt hair, and pox-marked face told a different story.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“You ever dive into the Either?”

“Yes.”

“What do you do in there?”

“I don’t know how to answer that with a yes or no,” Dallis admitted.

“You can answer these questions any way you want. I’m just trying to figure you out.”

“Figure me out?”

“Yeah.” Geraldo tapped his cigarette. “What you are into, what makes you tick. Shit like that.”

“I dunno.” Dallis put his hands between his knees and shrugged. “Mostly normal stuff.”

“You spend a lot of time in the Either?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Geraldo took one more drag before he stamped the cigarette out. “Are you a cowboy or something?”

“No. Cowboys are typically kids running a deck their parents got them for holiday.” Dallis brainwaves dipped and spiked, and his pupil contracted before it expanded. A clear sign of resentment.

Geraldo quickly made a note. “Of course. I wasn’t insinuating you were some deck punk dipping his toes into the Either. So, what do you do in there?” Geraldo asked as he inhaled the blue smoke of the cigarette and then blew it out. A haze of smoke hung between the two of them in the darkroom.

“I like to figure things out.”

“Yeah?” Geraldo leaned back in his chair. “What sort of things?”

“I like to find functions and see how they were assembled.”

“Your idea of a good time is disassembling old code?”

“No, its not just old code,” Dallis said enthusiastically, as he leaned forward. “It’s much more than that. Its history.”

Geraldo chuckled a little. “If I had to describe the Eithernet I would have to say it was a place for pornography or a battleground for corporate Netbreaker; not a museum?”

“But it is,” he said enthusiastically. His brown eyes wide and alert. “It was built in the thirties, long before you or me. The world was rapidly moving to war, and all sides needed a secure network, but also a network that couldn’t be turned off,” Dallis rambled off enthusiastically. “Did you know that the UN cut North Korea off from the internet during the unification wars? The world powers realized they needed a network that no one person could control. A truly decentralized metaverse.”

And to have it decentralized it needed to be open-source. Hundreds of thousands of coders began to fill the Either with their creations, some of which are so old that no one knows what they were used for. Relics of the past. Like number stations!”

“So, you find the old functions and take them apart?”

“Yeah.” Dallis settled back into his chair and began to click his fingers once more.

“So, if you are not a Cowboy then what would you call yourself?”

“A Netbreaker.” Dallas’s brainwaves indicated that that was true, or he at least believed it was true.

There was a moment of silence that hung between them.

“What’s the deal with your face?” Geraldo suddenly asked. Dallis was becoming too comfortable, too in control for the CIT to work properly.

The curveball question caused Dallis to reach up and touch his face, and his brainwaves indicated he was aware of how he looked.

“What do you mean?”

“Why haven’t you gotten it fixed? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not much of a looker myself. But it’s a point of pride for me. I lived in a time where beauty wasn’t a few-hour trip to a clinic, not that this mug is all-natural. Getting your face slammed into the pavement a few dozen times leaves you with a face only a mother could love. So, why not get your face fixed?”

Dallis’s hand dropped from his face, his lips pressed together in a thin line of red on a pale face, “Never felt the need to.”

“It can’t be helping you with the ladies.”

“Is this why you brought me up here?” Dallis stuttered and spat. “To push me around about my looks?” He crossed his arms, physically walling himself off.

“No, kid. Just trying to get to know you is all. See, if I was to hazard a guess, I would say you haven’t gotten it fixed because you don’t spend a lot of time around people. You’re closed off down in the server rooms and when you go home you just jack in, create an avatar that no clinic could ever create. A perfect representation of your true self.”

“That’s the tag line of JaxLink.” Dallis mumbled.

“What can I say?” Geraldo shrugged. “I’m not the most original guy you’re ever going to meet. But, am I wrong?”

“No.”

“And in all that time you spend jacked in, have you ever turned a gig for chips?”

“I don’t do it for money,” Dallis mumbled.

“It’s not against the law if you do,” Geraldo assured him, “I have made a few chips on the side running private security. Even busted a few knee caps, not that I am proud of it.” He added.

“Really?”

“Scouts honor.” Geraldo held three fingers, with his thumb and pinky touching. “This job pays shit, sometimes it’s not enough to get by unless you want to live in a pod. But I am sure they pay you a little more than a grunt like me.”

Geraldo noted how Dallis kept looking down, or off to the side. He never held his gaze, and if Dallis looked at him, it was only for a fleeting moment.

“Are you gen perfect?” Geraldo asked.

“Yes. No.” Dallis corrected himself quickly. Both answers were a lie.

“Care to elaborate?” Geraldo leaned forward and clasped his hands together. Trying to pass himself off as easygoing.

“I am gen perfect, but I’m not neurotypical.”

“I see.” Geraldo leaned back. Gen perfect meant they made you as perfectly as they could. Neurotypical was not something they could promise, it was always a risk. And when a child was detected as being neurodivergent it was often terminated by Biloxys while still a fetus, but some fell through the cracks. No system was perfect.

Geraldo shifted uneasily in his seat. Suddenly understanding the strange way Dallis was acting, and feeling remorseful for how he had treated him. Deviants were easy to pick out in a crowd, but neurodivergent not so much.

“Okay, I think I understand,” Geraldo said easily, “but, I need to know if you have ever worked as a netbreaker?”

Dallis looked down at his hands, flipping them over and examining his palms. “Yes.”

“Did you break into the Taurus mainframe?”

“No.” Dallis’s brain waves dipped. He was telling truth.

“Did you allow someone to break into the system?”

“No.” Dallis insisted. Again, he was telling the truth.

“Is it possible that someone could have accessed Taurus while you were away?” Geraldo pushed.

“We have to log in and out every time we leave the room.”

“Okay.” Geralod brought up the report he had been given. “Lets go over that log. You checked in at ten pm?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, stop me if something sounds out of place.” Geraldo began to rambled off the work log. When he had finished he looked up at Dallis. “Dose all that sound correct?”

“No.” Dallis’s forehead knitted together, bringing his thin eyebrows together.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“I had left at two am to get a chocolate bar from the vending machine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I go every day at two am. I have the credit history to prove it.” Dallis fished out his terminal from his jacket and tapped away before he turned it around and showed him. Geraldo took the device and tapped on the charge labeled, “Easy Go Snacks.” Every morning at two AM Dallis had charged the same amount, day in and day out.

“Have you given your credit slip to anyone?”

“It’s embedded in my palm.” Dallis held up his hand.

Geraldo could see a corporate logo on his palm. Geraldo narrowed his eyes at the analyst as he loaded up the security footage and typed in the timestamp of one fifty-five AM. The video showed Dallis moving data around the halo vid screens, like some sort of orchestra composer. The man never left the room, which corresponded with the log. Geraldo frowned as he reset the clip and watched it again.

The sound of clapping and shouts lifted his attention for the video. He grunted as he pushed himself to his feet and stomped over to the door and flung it open.

“What the hell is going on?” He asked a page who was standing next to the door.

The man turned, a smile stretching from ear to ear. “Gabriela Fohren won the lottery.”

“Which lottery?”

“Bioloxys.”

Geraldo’s blood ran cold. “That’s not possible,” He whispered to himself. He suddenly found himself with a new suspect. Gabriela was excluded from the lottery.