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NEURAL LOG 14 : 124 : 56
"Hello Pi," Kittyhawk spoke, "You have an incoming call from the Insurance Director."
I picked up my backwards-compatible phone and accepted the call. The Director herself appeared on the holo-screen.
Why wasn't our conversation taking place inside my Neural Interface lenses, you might inquire? The answer is simple - firstly I prefer my office to be in the styles of human-detective dwellings from past century (which the Director is probably silently judging as "Hipsteresque").
Secondly the backwards-compatible telephone is harder to hack into, being a hideously outdated machine from last century that I've personally updated with a few shmancy options such as accepting or disconnecting holo-calls.
Sometimes there's no simpler pleasure in life than to hold the phone's grimy handle against my ear while staring at the holo-screen. Even if the Neural-lenses make such motions totally unnecessary, the phone makes me feel at least 15% more human.
I haven't seen the Director's real office, but I bet it is made of bare concrete and endless rows of filthy gray graphite pillows. Re-imagining and re-designing the interior daily inside their minds is what most people do these days. Want to make everything into green meadows and Alpine peaks? It's easy with the "Re-design your Space" Neural App!
Want to replace all the smog and gloom of Eureka with the wonderful illusion of digital Sunsine?
There's an app for that too.
Unfortunately I currently lack such "creativity juices", being a DEX. My job is to handle the dirt and to dig deep into the evidence beneath, not to ignore reality but to tolerate and investigate all the things.
The Insurance Director's overly digitized avatar had a grumpy look today.
She spoke of a "temporal infraction" incident in Cube 15, as reported by Hunter Drone 17-94-15.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Temporal Infractions are generally messy business, which I always get boggled in. First insurance claim I've handled dealt with a whole science team dispersing themselves forward in time. Seriously, who invents a temporal jump-watch that only moves you forward in time? Sure it's useful for sending pancakes to your future self for tomorrow's breakfast, but when it also accidentally sends you a million years into the future that's kind of a problem. I suspected such was no accident either- it seems a lot of people have been jumping forward in time because the present is rather full of drama and air pollution neither of which is good for non-augmented and extremely fragile human organs. Personally I think it is rather unwise to expect the air to be in a non-solid state in the future, seeing how thick the smog is these days.
Also, I think it's rather foolish to jump into the future with an assumption that the ANNET's planetary anchor is forever online, until the end of time. I mean, what if someday ANNET is upgraded or the anchor breaks down? You'll just end up somewhere in space, earth and the entire universe having moved out of position.
Temporal Loops are serious business, fitting for an expert of my caliber.
For example, "Case 311" dealt with an un-connectable 1% group terrorist that made a bomb using common household chemicals, a pine cone and a temporal-watch. A whole section of a G-cube 34 got looped, forever stuck in some kind of intensely inescapable non-existence.
I looked inside at the clipping 15 second segment of time that jumped back and forth shuffling in moon-walk fashion and sealed off the entire section with nanite-packing tape and a notice that said "DANGER! DO NOT ENTER UNTIL FOLDING OF THE UNIVERSE, TEMPORAL LOOP IN PROGRESS!"
So, Cube 15.
I downloaded the report into my mind and reviewed the video of the "coffee" flood.
A most obtuse terror plot unfolded before my eyes. The Unscannable pretended to bumble around, as if he had nothing to do with the entire thing as Cube 15 went to hell in a matter of minutes.
Pipes do not explode on their own. Mobile satellite super-weapon apps do not activate themselves.
The ion beam interrupted the video by shutting down the all the electronics.
They found him, alive in the ruins, his DNA crawling with tachyons.
All you ever do is run away. Well, you can't run away from a Dex. We are designed to never stop.
The face-file of my nemesis loaded on screen. 76'99% probability that you're the one. Not good enough for the Science goons to put you out of your misery, but good enough for the Insurance Agency.
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The dreaded Unscannable reveals himself to me after all.
Leader of the Unconnectable terrorist group. I will hunt you down and I will fold you up much like my old-timely blinds.
Your ANNET-hacking, satellite hijacking and clock re-winding days are over, my pasty, meaty friend.
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