Thrill Switch

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3

FILTON FUKAMI STRODE onto a giant stage in the virtual world. A deafening roar went up from the crowd of millions gathered, come to see the creator of the Holos. These people had voted him in as a senator of Nevada—their official place of residence, even if they never went outside.

Fukami’s avatar was the perfect picture of how he looked in real life—the quintessential Japanese businessman. Fit. Suited. Groomed black hair with hints of grey on the sides. The stadium around him was like a colossal Coliseum. Ancient-looking pillars contrasted with cutting-edge, Tru-Res screens. On the top tier of the stadium were glass skyboxes fitted out as full luxury apartments. The elite’s way to view history.

A shimmering screen unfurled behind Fukami, showing lush green fields. He held up his hands for silence. The crowd gave immediate respect, the roar dropping to a hum.

‘The Holos is our world of promise,’ he said. ‘We must fight to keep it free!’

Cheers erupted again. Cyberpunks, military nuts, fantasy freaks and more, all watched in supplication. Every faction clapped with their hands in the air.

‘The Holos has been the only place where we can express ourselves as we truly are,’ Fukami continued. ‘The only place we can fulfill our deepest, darkest desires without harm or fear. It used to be we could say, write or print what we liked in this country. That same freedom of speech should extend to digital visions too. Fantasies of the mind that feel truly real. That stimulate our souls.’

The screen behind Fukami flashed with writhing naked bodies, then a gun battle with zombies, then back to the clean, clear fields of grass.

‘But our paradise is under threat!’ Fukami shouted.

The cheers turned to boos.

Fukami’s background changed to an image of polluted skies. Of trash mounds, heaped and rotting.

‘Before the Holos,’ he said, ‘our scrambling for material wealth was r****g the planet. Pandemics were commonplace.’

Footage of crowded hospitals and piles of dead lit up around the space. All then flashed back to green fields.

‘Now we can have everything we desire. All the prestige and physical possessions we want, without using resources and polluting the land. All of our physical needs and fantasies fulfilled without the risk of getting infected.’

Images of people driving luxury cars roared to life through the air above the crowd. Then models sipping cocktails. The good life as a light show. All went black again. Bright images of the world’s capital cities strobed on the big background screen. Clean streets of New York City. Flawless skies above Beijing. Orderly traffic in New Delhi. People lounging on lawns in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

‘Since the Holos started, our carbon emissions have dropped globally,’ Filton went on. ‘All electricity is produced sustainably from solar. The climate has stabilized. People are enjoying themselves in both the virtual and the real on unprecedented levels.’

He stopped. His avatar grew. It towered above everyone, projected lifelike as a hundred-foot giant in the front of the stage.

‘And it's all because of freedom,’ he boomed.

The applause from the crowd was ear splitting. People screamed themselves hoarse, stomping their feet. Fukami raised his arms for silence.

‘These new laws Senator Rommel has proposed will take that away,’ he said gravely.

Silence. Not a peep.

‘Your freedom will be gone. We will go back to the poverty and pollution of the past. To the disease and famine and suffering. Do we want that? Or do we want a free Holos?’

The reaction was instantaneous.

‘FREEDOM. FREEDOM. FREEDOM.’

Fukami let it go on for a full five minutes. He stood with hands clasped in front of him, nodding sagely. His projection then shrank back down. Fukami glowed with pure light on stage. The crowd hushed again.

‘Let Senator Rommel know how you feel. We will not stand for her tyranny, for draconian laws in the digital world. Blog. Vlog. Flit. Feed. Scream it from the rooftops. She is a public servant just like me. She needs to serve your will. Let that will be known. Squash her policy proposal before it gets put on the open market. Show her it won’t be successful. Tell her you’ll not invest in a dark future. Let her know the Holos will not be shackled. Anonymity. Freedom. Fulfillment.’

The three words lit up behind him in neon. A slogan anyone could remember. The crowd took up the call.

‘ANONYMITY. FREEDOM. FULFILMENT.’

‘Now go!’ Fukami said. ‘Create action. Show you’ll protect your home by any means necessary!’

People streamed out of the public square, jazzed up, ready to do his bidding. It felt like an incitement to riot, even though he hadn’t used the words.

I sat back from the hologram screen, taking out my earphones. The police station buzzed with movement around me. Coffee slurped, donuts chomped—the sound of cases being cracked. I tried to filter it all out and concentrate. That Fukami speech was utter drivel. It was the eighth result of millions that had come up when I’d searched for ‘Money, Power, Holos.’ There was no way it related to the case. Fukami might have once worked with Jazlin Switch on coding and connecting the Holos, but that was ancient history. He’d disavowed anything to do with her when she went full psycho. She’d almost destroyed what he’d worked so hard to create.

An endless scroll of unread articles sat beneath the speech footage. That avenue was starting to feel hopeless.

I rearranged my things, shifting my keypad to be parallel with the edges of the bench. Dead center. My earphones went in their case, lid securely closed. The case went in its dedicated slot. Order. Now that I could concentrate again, I swung around to another screen, which showed security footage of empty hallways in the Bolodair Apartments. A cleaner appeared on the day of the body discovery. He meandered from room to room in the hall, doing his thing inside each one, then exiting again, until he came to room 842.

He opened the door, paused for a few moments in shock, then ran back down the hall. The cleaner had reported the murder right away and made a statement with the scan team. Nothing unusual. No one unusual. Nothing he didn’t see every day… except for the dead body.

‘Go back 24 hours and play again on four-times speed,’ I said to the screen wearily.

The footage kept rolling. I grunted in frustration. Five years ago I would have just clicked a mouse or banged the side of the monitor if that didn’t work. These new hologram screens were a nightmare.

‘Go back 24 hours and play again four-times speed,’ I said slowly and loudly, as if talking to an i***t.

Still nothing. I wanted to hurl something at the screen, but it would just pass right through.

‘Need a caffeine injection?’ a voice said behind me.

I turned to see Cline, our digital analyst. More hair than man, he had an unkempt afro, bushy beard, and eyebrows you could hang a hat on. He held out an extra-large cappuccino. I took it gratefully.

‘Cline, if you waxed your fun nuggets, you’d be marriage material,’ I said, taking a glorious sip. ‘Can you fix this stupid thing? I want to rewatch the footage again, but faster.’

Cline nodded knowingly. My I.T. support savior. He never got frustrated with me, just fixed things and moved on.

‘Q, back 24 hours. Quad speed, please.’ The footage immediately jumped back and ran. ‘You have to say ‘Q’ first, remember?’ He smiled.

Q. Siri. Alexa. It was hard enough remembering people’s names, let alone computer systems.

‘Do I have to say please too?’ I asked grumpily.

‘Well, manners never hurt.’ He shrugged. ‘You find anything?’

‘Not yet,’ I admitted. ‘Waiting for a doc’s report on the potassium in the blood. I’ve read that it could mean kidney failure, but we both know that’s not what killed him.’ I indicated the hallway on the screen. ‘You sure this footage hasn’t been tampered with?’

He nodded.

‘I ran it through the AI. No scrubbing found at all. It passed all the deep-fake detection programs news media need to run before being allowed to publish anything too. You could stamp it with a blockchain watermark and call it legitimate in any jurisdiction on earth. More to the point, there were no suspects pinpointed. Not in a whole month of footage.’

‘I don’t get it though,’ I said. ‘Most security systems like this run on motion detection. There shouldn’t be footage of empty hallways. It’s too random. There has to be some kind of manipulation here.’

‘Maybe they’ve got rats?’ Cline shrugged his shoulders. ‘You know what those places are like. Did you get anything on the keyword search from the writing on the wall?’

‘Money, power, Holos. Are you kidding?’ I said. ‘I may as well have typed in ‘free music, p**n, cat photos’. It’s even worse with Senator Rommel’s Holosian bill hitting the policy market yesterday. Every man and his vlog are covering it.’

‘I hear its only paying $2 already,’ Cline said. ‘I got it at $3.50. If it gets down to a dollar five for a whole day and becomes law, I’ll make a handy profit.’

‘You bet on it?’ I asked, surprised.

‘Didn’t you?’ he asked. ‘I thought you’d be all over more law and order in the Holos.’

‘I don’t bet on policy,’ I said. ‘We should vote on them, like the old days.’

‘You’re kidding, aren’t you?’ Cline asked, getting worked up. ‘It’s bad enough we still vote on what goes into the National Welfare Index. Old-school democracy is dead. Futarchy is the future.’

‘Whoever named that system needs an old-school bullet in the head,’ I said, looking back at the screen. ‘Now, how am I going to sort through this junkyard of articles?’

‘Have you tried narrowing the search by adding anything like ‘Indian Man?’ or something?’ he asked.

‘I should have done that already,’ I said, chastising myself.

The pressure of interviewing Jazlin Switch had me rattled. I was about to put fingers to keys, when a new result appeared at the top of the scroll. Its bold headline thundered out from the screen like a throat punch.

My breath faltered. Cline saw it too.

‘s**t,’ he said.

I almost did one in my pants. This wasn’t good.

CHRISTOS RAMA SLAIN IN SPECTER STYLE KILLING.

An image of the crime scene from the apartments sat beneath, True-News watermarked to prove authenticity.

‘Mother…’

‘…Fucker!’ the shout came from Gibson’s office.

His door swung open a mere second later, smacking into the wall behind. Everyone in the place turned his way.

‘You two,’ he said, leveling a finger toward Cline and me. ‘Briefing room. Now.’