Chapter 15
Terry Horst exhaled a long breath as she tightened her grip on the steering wheel. To the casual observer, she seemed fine. Maybe a little annoyed, but fine. However, the remote proprietary full-body recognition system painted a slightly different picture. Bags, a shade darker than usual, hung under her eyes. Her eyeshadow was a bit mussed compared to images from earlier in the day. And her normally impeccable nails appeared freshly-bitten. Taken as a whole, the details indicated Terry was exhausted and dealing with an emotionally-charged matter.
She wiped her eyes with the heel of her right hand. Then she regripped the steering wheel and exhaled another long breath. What was she thinking? It was impossible to be sure, but again the little details hinted at some possible answers.
First, the radio. It was off. This was a stark contrast to her historic usage rates. When behind the wheel of her JetFlow sports car, Terry listened to NPR roughly 93 percent of the time. That number jumped to 99 percent when the car’s pressure sensors, utilized to determine whether or not passengers were wearing seat belts, indicated she was driving solo.
Second, her route. It lacked direction and showed significant weave patterns. Terry didn’t fit the profile of a normal sports car owner. Automotive data stored in her vehicle’s so-called black box revealed a propensity for highways and straight-line trips. 86 percent of the time she took the most efficient route to her destination. Less than 0.5 percent of her trips were for pure pleasure, defined as starting and ending in the same location with no in-between stops.
And third, her braking. It was unusually hard. Terry was a fairly cautious driver, applying extra force just 2 percent of the time. But on this particular trip, she was braking hard at about ten times her normal rate.
Now came the irritating part. Putting it all together, building a profile based entirely on hard data. What an inconvenience to have to rely on human intuition.
As per usual, the radio had started up with the engine. NPR had played for a full seventy-four seconds before Terry switched it off. Revealingly, script analysis showed a bulletin about the Manhattan riots had gone out at the seventy-two second mark. The other two clues — the meandering route and the hard braking — started immediately after the radio had been switched off. This indicated she’d responded to news about the riot by turning off the radio and engaging in a little therapeutic, distracted driving.
People liked to say eyes were the windows into the soul. That was all sorts of nonsense, spouted by silly dreamers and reinforced by an exploitive film industry. Data though, well, that was the real deal. It didn’t have the whimsical charm or screen presence of a knowing Hollywood gaze. But if you wanted to peer into someone’s very essence, there was nothing quite like it.
Terry cleared her throat. “Cadence?” she said.
“Yes, Terry?” Cadence’s voice, rich and musical, floated out of the speakers. Cadence was a next-generation intelligent personal assistant, programmed to perform tasks based on a person’s location and input.
“Connect to Mentanio.”
“Very good. Your standing order?”
“Yes. No, wait. Make that my standing order plus a side of breadsticks with garlic sauce. Do they still have my credit card on file?”
“Let me check.” A brief pause followed. “Yes, Terry. They have your credit card and address. Would you like to know the total bill before we place your order?”
“No. But please add a five-dollar tip for the driver.”
“Very good. Estimated delivery time is forty-five minutes.” Another pause followed before Cadence’s rich voice again filled the car’s speakers. “Your order is placed. The receipt will be emailed to you as per usual. May I help you with anything else, Terry?”
“No. Thank you, Cadence.”
“You’re very welcome, Terry.”
It was amusing, listening to Terry talk to Cadence as one might talk to a servant. In many ways, it was fitting. Just like a servant, Cadence knew far more about her master than the master would ever realize.
A couple of keyboard clicks was all it took to gain access to Terry’s Cadence profile. Mentanio, it turned out, was a small chain of upscale artisan wood-fired pizza joints. Their delivery business was small compared to a traditional pizza place, but still sizable.
Hmm, this… this could be interesting. It wasn’t exactly poetic justice. Still, there was a certain symmetry to it all.
Fourteen minutes later, the driver of a Mentanio-branded sedan experienced sudden, inexplicable brake failure. The steering wheel twisted to the left, resisting all his efforts to control it. The vehicle shot over a small median and, at a speed of fifty-five miles per hour, slammed headfirst into the driver side of an oncoming JetFlow sports car. The JetFlow’s multiple airbags failed to deploy upon impact.
Traffic halted and people rushed out of their cars. Smartphones, held aloft by rubberneckers, captured the bloodied and bruised driver of the JetFlow still in her seat. Proprietary software collected all accessible video evidence in the area and pored over it, determining the driver was dead.
Malware leaned back in her plush, fabric swivel chair. A soft smile lit up her rosy cheeks. Her hair — long and black with red streaks — hung in layers, framing her smoky eyes and pouty mouth.
She was nothing like the stereotypical computer geek so prevalent in modern media. At least not on the outside. She didn’t, for instance, dress only in black and decorate her body with strange jewelry and odd tattoos. She didn’t sit in some dank, dark basement, surrounded by walls of computer screens and piles of high-tech equipment. And she certainly didn’t live a friendless, solitary life, utterly limited by poor social skills.
No, Malware lived a rather normal life. Almost boringly normal, by design. She had a real name — Willow — and real friends. She dressed in girly-girl clothes, stuff like skirts, blouses, dresses, heels, and the like. She was pretty, vivacious, and flirty.
But it was all an act. A mask, if you will. Malware, so normal on the outside, was quite different from the mouth-breathers with which she surrounded herself. Unlike them, she saw humanity for what it was. Namely, a collection of replaceable widgets on a controllable landscape.
She stared at her laptop, small and compact and filled with guts of her own personal design. The screen showed Terry’s corpse, mapped together from over a dozen camera feeds. Mouth breathers stood around it, snapping pictures.
She leaned forward, clearing the screen. Then she switched to her self-developed texting program and typed out an untraceable message, programmed to self-delete after a single reading.
Side project is completed, she wrote. Back to main project. No changes, I assume?
The message was for Ben Marvin, Chairman of the Federal Reserve. A man she knew quite well.
A few moments later, a reply popped up on her screen. Correct, it read. Everybody dies. Love you.
Love you too, Pop.
Chapter 16
“That you, Cy?” Graham’s gravelly voice sounded dull and hollow in the darkness. “If not, then you’re, uh, hearing things.”
“Yeah, it’s me.” I stared at my satphone, waiting for new orders from Malware. But the screen remained stale and eventually, faded to black. “Are you okay?”
“Nothing a couple of shots can’t fix.”
“Drinks are on me when this is over.”
“I feel better already.”
I switched on the flashlight function. A bright light shot out of the satphone, bathing the surrounding area in a harsh glow.
We stood inside a large lobby, partially gutted and shrouded with enough dust to fill a lake. The floor had been stripped to concrete and even some of that had been removed, revealing much older layers of concrete. Wheelbarrows, stuffed to the brim with dust, concrete chunks, rotten wood, and other debris, stood nearby. Raised platforms, mounted on metal brackets, stretched to the untiled ceiling. The walls were unpainted and featured plenty of spackle.