The Unsung Frame, page 6
part #2 of The Synth Crisis Series
Some hools came close, looking for an easy score, but Dhata had the revolver holstered on his waist. The night was warm so he left the duster in the car, but kept the revolver just in case. It was an illegal weapon, a loud, projectile-throwing relic from the past. Guns like it had been banned on the streets way before he was born. Weapons that were permitted merely stunned or froze, and those were what were given to the police as standard issue.
Knowing enough policemen and judges for it not to matter made Dhata comfortable with keeping his illegal guns. Now he wore one off the hip, and when the hools saw it, they quickly dispersed. Dhata walked forward to take the lead from Lur. “It’s down here,” he said, as they got to a dark alleyway. He led her to a side door, which opened up inside of a bar. It was closed and dark, but the door was left unlocked, and Dhata motioned for Lur to take a seat.
“What if the owner comes and catches us in here?” she said, hopping up on a barstool.
“Then I’ll talk to him,” Dhata said, slipping behind the bar. He produced two shot glasses, and found a bottle of honey tequila. He poured out shots, and then pushed a glass over to her. She threw it back and exhaled audibly before tapping the edge with her nail. He poured another, and she tapped it again after throwing it back with a, “Woo!”
They drank half the bottle, and then made out, kissing like teenagers with limited time. She sat on the bar with her legs around him, and his entire reality was sweet lips and perfume. This went on for a while before he caught his senses and lifted her down and stepped away. He touched the UCC deposit panel and paid for the tequila, then took Lur’s hand and led her towards the restroom.
“Wait a minute, hold on,” Lur said suddenly. “You are not going to get me in there.”
This made Dhata laugh when he understood. “Oh, no, it’s not what you think, Lurita. I’m taking you to the hideout. This place used to be a barbershop back in the days of alcohol prohibition. The gangsters would get a haircut, then go towards the bathroom and pull up this latch right here.” He reached down and pulled up a hidden door, revealing some stairs leading down. They descended into an uncomfortably narrow passage which led to more stairs leading up into another building.
When Dhata emerged it was to the barrel of a gun, held by a well-dressed gangster in a vest and bowtie. “Dhata Mays,” the man said hesitantly, “you have a lot of balls coming down here.”
“Aaron, this is Lurita. She’s going to be living here. I need you to post guards, and don’t let anybody in,” Dhata said.
“Why would I do that? I don’t owe you jack. Plus you killed the boss in cold blood. If you was anybody else, I would do you right here—”
“Shut up and quit with the melodrama. You’ll do it because I have something for you that will make you want to kiss me. Let me see your hand,” Dhata said, holding out his own.
Aaron, who was once a two-bit lieutenant for the synth boss Peyton Ace, was now trying to do his best to emulate his former boss. His outfit would be nice if it was worn by someone who knew what they were doing, but on him it looked like an ill-fitting costume. Peyton was smart, so Aaron wanted to be smart, and being smart meant that you had to have friends like Dhata.
When they clasped hands, Dhata placed a receiver in his palm. It was one of several that he used to keep up with the tracker on Jackson Cole. “I planted a tracker on a nasty John. You know, the one who likes to come down here and take advantage of your hospitality,” he said.
“You talking ‘bout Jax,” Aaron said with a smile. “You’re right, it make me happy, but you ain’t getting no kiss. You’re still a piece of shit for what you did to Peyton, but this gift that you give me, it can buy your girl this place. There’s food in the fridge … Lita, is it? Yeah, Lita, there’s food and drink in the fridge. The beds upstairs was used by Marys turning tricks, so you may want to sleep on the couch.”
Lur didn’t find Aaron or his antics amusing and she stood staring at him for a very long time. “It’s Lurita,” she said. “Lu – Rita. There, now you say it.”
“Looreetah!” Aaron said, with a mocking bow.
“Thank you,” Lur said. She glanced at Dhata who winked at her to gauge where she was mentally. She gave no response but turned and looked up the stairs. “I am going to look at the bedroom,” she said. “I’ll leave you two to talk.”
“Never figured you to have a human girlfriend,” Aaron said when she was gone. “Dhata Mays, he like rust on his—”
“Come on, man,” Dhata said, motioning upstairs where he was sure Lur was listening.
“I’m just breaking balls, chill your hume head,” Aaron said, trying to be as smooth as Peyton Ace used to be. It almost made Dhata miss the former boss, but Aaron was agreeable, despite looking pathetic, so he decided to play along with him.
“She gon’ be able to breathe in this pit?” Dhata said. The windows of the building were boarded up and replaced by video screens. The feed on the televisions cycled through cameras installed on the exterior of the bar.
“She’ll breathe fine. Trust me, they have vents up there.”
“Any hools gonna miss this place, stir up trouble for my girl?”
“If they do, they answer to me,” was all that Aaron said. They shook hands, and he exited the building.
Dhata joined Lur upstairs in one of the bedrooms, where he found her sitting on the bed. The room was cozy, albeit claustrophobic, but she was unpacking her luggage and settling in.
“They won’t find you here, and it’s temporary,” he said, but she merely shrugged in response.
“When I came here, away from Don Ruiz, I expected that I would end up in a place just like this. What I got instead was your beautiful home, but then I messed it up by revealing the location to AKR. This place is good, Dhata, I will be fine. Just go back to work and come back. Okay?”
He nodded slowly, his heart full, and she stood up and gave him a hug. “I’ll do my best, my Lurita, especially knowing that you’re down here. I’ll keep in touch, let you know where I’m at, and you keep plugging away at that rack—”
“Dhata, you don’t have to do this,” she said. “I will be okay.” She gasped as he sprang forward and consumed her in a hug, kissing her until understanding played across her eyes. She pulled him down and held him, her legs interlocked behind his. “Finish what you started,” she said.
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The trip back through the tunnel and out of the empty bar was all a blur to Dhata. Why is it so hard to leave her alone? he thought. I never had a problem before.
He walked slowly through the slick, wet street, and it took some time for him to convince himself that she would be okay. Hools regarded him left and right, but none made a move since he had his revolver.
There was a small gathering at the foot of a fountain that had been built to commemorate synths joining society. It was a beautiful sculpture depicting a female robot and a human male, shaking hands above the bubbling water of the fountain. The synths of Ybor took great pride in this symbol, and it remained spotless amidst the graffiti and garbage.
As Dhata grew near it he saw wreaths of flowers, people on their knees praying, and people in robes talking amongst themselves. One of these robed synths caught him looking and walked out to greet him with an extended hand.
“Please come pray with us,” the robed man said. “Today is the anniversary of the Birman incident, when twenty-six of our brothers and sisters were murdered in cold blood.”
“Ah,” Dhata said, recalling the situation. “That was a sad time for humanity. A real low point for us. Praying though, that strikes me as odd. To whom are you praying?”
“Whatever deity or belief that you have, my friend. The point is for us never to forget,” he said.
“This is a beautiful thing, what you all are doing here. Positivity in the face of oppression. That takes some real strength. But I have to ask, and I mean no disrespect, aren’t you a little careless to ask a human to pray over a bunch of dead synths? How do you know that I’m not one of the crazies? You all are unarmed and I have a clear path out of here.”
The man was built to look young, like a twenty-something college student, and his fuzzy brown beard made his smile seem clownish. “We know that you’re a friend,” he said, the smile plastered across his face.
“How do you know that? Is it Arch Brain that tells you?”
“No, but we can sense your cybernetic parts, my friend. You have taken a part of us into your body. No crazy, murdering human would ‘defile’ his body this way. I have met some hypocrites, well-meaning humans that led us to harm, but none of them were part machine like the man in front of me.”
Dhata couldn’t help but smirk; he had finally cracked the code. For years the synths had regarded him warmly and he assumed that his reputation had preceded him. This didn’t explain the same warm treatment when he traveled overseas, but even then he thought that it had something to do with their master mainframe, Arch Brain.
“It’s only my leg and eyes that are enhanced by cyber,” he said.
“Which is enough. Now, will you come pray?”
“I’m not big on prayer, but I honor your fallen,” Dhata said. “Thanks for the enlightenment, but I have to move on.”
“Okay, brother, but please take this with you,” he said, pressing a card into Dhata’s hand.
The flat surface of the card displayed a video that would activate whenever you held it up to your ICLs. What was playing was a recreation of the Birman incident. Richard Birman walking into a square, pulling open his jacket, and setting off an explosion. The irony of that event being the exact mirror to Jordan’s suicide was not lost on Dhata. Nothing happened by chance in the world, and he wondered if the card was some sort of key.
Birman had been part of a larger group of synth haters known as The Uplifting. He had pulled the short straw in one of their meetings and was made to be the vessel to wipe out the synths.
Dhata compared the similarities in the tragic attacks. A man who seemed to have everything in life, blowing himself up to hurt a great number of innocents. He wondered if Jordan was a member of a hate group—possibly his old squad, and they’d sent him to the shuttle port to martyr himself.
Damn, he thought. If this is the case then there will be a bunch of hate-filled, ex-military synths looking to blow up more shuttle ports. He wondered on the motive since it could come from anywhere. Was it a synths getting back at humans thing, a military rebellion thing, or was it a war between the manufacturers? Surely a cypher, hired by a rival of Akiyama Koch, could have infiltrated the network, uploaded a program into their batch of military synths, and waited until now to trigger their psychosis.
Dhata was no stranger to cyphers and the damage they could deal to society. It had only been a year since he and Lur had stopped Gemini. The cypher had managed to put a city on lockdown using only a rack and a handful of clueless Marys. Dhata was also friends with Hiroshi, a powerful synth cypher, who told him jokingly that if he wanted to bring down Japan, all he had to do was upload a program.
Cyphers were dangerous in general, but a synth cypher was practically a god. If this situation with the soldiers went that deep, then he was in way over his head and drowning. Still, it was not as if he could walk away; they had threatened Lur and now knew where he lived. It was time to take the offensive and get them off her tail. He hated the fact that she had to go into hiding, and he hated the thought of not being able to return to the zeppelin.
It was precisely times like these where he missed Jason. Having a friend inside of the police force had made things so much easier for him, plus he missed their banter. Jason was a true friend in every way, but now he was gone and the world was a tangled ball of confusion.
As he got to the Buick, he considered his next move. Should he come clean to the FBI, or approach Akiyama Koch himself? Maybe drawing their attention would take the heat off of Lur, but the synth manufacturer made billions. If they thought it necessary to erase him from the Earth, they could have it done without any concern.
The FBI on the other hand was a deep unknown. Johns—the local police—were more corrupt now than ever. Who was to say that the FBI wasn’t the same? If he went in and told them everything that he and Lur had done, they could lock him up forever, then find her hiding spot and deport her immediately with a no re-entry clause.
No, he’d have to figure it out himself and forget about help. What he was facing now was an attempt to topple a hundred-foot giant, with nothing but a pistol and old-fashioned detective work.
The last clue from Lur was about the Everglades, how one of the synth soldiers had murdered a human man down there. “Go ahead and take over the driving, CINI,” he said. “Take me to the Everglades but make sure to take your time.” The synthetic voice of the car confirmed receipt of his instructions, and he was on his way south, to the Florida Everglades.
He felt tired all of a sudden, worn through to the point where he felt the foreign invasion of his cybernetic parts. It was all in his head, an annoying symptom of the mental trauma that came with injuries of the past. He reached inside of the center console and touched a button. A hidden compartment flipped open to reveal a long, dark cigar.
Dhata cut the butt of the cigar and applied some flame, taking in the smoke and letting it out. CINI, the Buick, opened a panel in the ceiling, and a slight draft could be felt from where it worked to push the smoke out. “Alright, alright, you whiny girl, I’ll make it fast,” Dhata said. He loved tobacco; it settled his nerves, and it was one of many unhealthy rituals picked up from his father.
There was absolutely no greater chill than the one that came from a cigar and brown liquor. This he experienced as they cruised through the night, and all of his stress and worry was blown out in smoke. “Don’t worry, Lurita, I’ll figure it out,” he muttered as he slumped into the seat. He was fast asleep before he knew it, still holding the burning cigar.
‡Chapter 8‡
Sleuthing in the Swamp
When Dhata woke up it looked as if CINI had veered off and parked in the middle of the swamp. The Buick’s windows had gone transparent and the dashboard showed that it was charging the battery.
“CINI, wake up,” he announced, and the cobalt light of the Buick’s dash came on. “Where are we?” he said, and in response a map was displayed with an icon over the Florida Everglades.
He closed his eyes and connected to his personal computer, pulling up the information on the location of the victim’s family. He synced it to the Buick’s CPU, then set it to drive him to an area outside of their neighborhood. CINI responded instantly, and he was back on the road rolling south.
“You know, I really should upgrade you to say more than a few words of denial or confirmation, CINI,” he said, “but then I’d probably fall for you, since you’re such a great listener and all.”
They drove up to a house that was a gem stuck in the center of a swampy soup. It was a modern smart home, elevated off the ground by several feet of thick, reinforced steel. The grass was trimmed around the house but it was bordered on all sides by an electric fence. Power lines from the roof stretched off into the trees, and in the yard was a hovercraft.
Above the fence was a neon sign with the words “KEEP OUT, PRIVATE PROPERTY”, and on the ground in front of it were spent shells for emphasis. Dhata wondered why a synth would come out to such a remote area of old-styled human prejudice. The rationale was beyond his understanding since even he felt threatened and he was human.
It was dawn and the fog was lifting, but it still gave the place a look that hinted at danger. Dhata had a flashback to the last time he had dropped in unannounced to ask someone questions. It had led to a shootout that he barely survived, and several human lives lost to his seasoned trigger finger. Since then he had vowed that things would never go that way again, but here he was, dropping in cold, again, to ask questions.
He reached for his revolver and checked the cylinder, holding it against his chest as he went through the motions. Why are you here, dumbass? he thought, going over it in his head to see if there was an answer. He wondered if it was his subconscious, begging for another shoot out. No, he thought, I’m not like that. I can’t be, it’s my training, what dad taught me: catch ‘em off guard and force the truth out of them.
The radar on the dashboard showed several figures coming up from the rear. A few more stood waiting inside the house, paused by what he assumed were the windows. The longer I sit out here, the more suspicious they’ll get, he thought, so he holstered the big gun and put a smile on his face. He stepped out of the Buick and walked up to the gate, touching his side to make sure that he had his revolver in place.
As he got near the gate, he heard a gruff voice coming from the speaker box next to it. “That’s far enough. Who are you?” it said, and Dhata strained his neck, looking at the house to see if anyone had come outside.
“I’m Dhata Mays, a skiptracer. I have some questions concerning Tyler Fort.”
“We don’t have anything to say about that thing. He’s frying in robot hell somewhere. What’s this about, fella? You’re trespassing on private property. Tell me why you’re invading my land, or you’ll regret coming out here to fuck with us.”
“That synth was one of a bunch of killers hurting innocent people,” Dhata said. There was a pause and then several expletives came over the speaker, followed by the front door of the house opening and someone peering out.
“It’s Saturday. Do you people ever take breaks?” the man at the door shouted. “Plus, the robot is dead, what in the hell more do you need to know about him?”
“We’ve had some more synth killings in the city, possibly connected to Fort, sir,” Dhata said. “I will be quick, sir. I don’t want to ruin your morning, or overstay my welcome on your property.”
“Alright, I’m coming out, but don’t make any sudden moves. If you came out here to rob us, you picked the wrong time and place, Bubba.”
