It was ugly.
A man in a black jumpsuit and gloves had come up behind Aunt Zelda and was ramming her face into the sink. After the third crack, he placed his hands on her ears and with one violent turn – he twisted her head 180 degrees, so it was facing the opposite way.
Neil made a gagging sound. I hit the pause button. From this angle, all I could see was the back of the man’s head. He had dark hair, a muscular build, and his jumpsuit looked like a uniform of some sort. I picked up the TEV by the handle, and walked it to the other side of the sink. While the action on the monitor remained paused, the angle changed as the lens moved, allowing me to view the scene from a different perspective. I set down the TEV and zoomed in, getting a close-up of the bastard’s face.
“Totally fuct!” Neil uttered.
Totally fuct was right.
The murderer looked exactly like me.
His hair was darker than mine and slightly longer than I wore it. But everything else about him was identical.
“You! You killed her!” Neil backpedaled, raising up his hands in case I was going to grab him and twist his head off.
“I didn’t kill her, Neil.” I was shocked, but kept my voice even. “That’s just someone who looks like me. A disguise. Or someone with facial reconstruction. Might even be a clone.”
Neil’s voice was shaky. “He’s your age. He would have had to have been cloned at the same time as your birth.”
“Look, I’ll prove it isn’t me.”
I zoomed out and switched the resolution from the visible spectrum to a preprogrammed wavelength and frequency, bringing up an electromagnetic radiation resolution. The effect was similar to old-fashioned X-rays. The killer and Aunt Zelda became phosphorescent skeletons. I used the joystick to focus in on the man’s wrist, then zoomed in.
His chip filled the screen. A twenty-digit ID number, followed by the birth name.
I paused it, and then got an even bigger shock.
The ID number and the name were mine.
“You killed her,” Neil whispered.
“The… uh… chip has to be a counterfeit.”
“It’s impossible to counterfeit chips. They’re specific to individual DNA.”
I zoomed in even more, to a microscopic level, seeing the nanocircuits trading electrical impulses with nerve endings. The chip had indeed fused with this guy’s biological system. It was real.
That was all the confirmation Neil needed, because he turned tail and ran for the door, yelling, “Fuct! Fuct, fuct!” and waving his hands in the air.
So I did the only thing I could do.
I drew my Glock and shot him in the back.
FIVE
My Glock 1MV fired wax bullets, each housing a barbed needle attached to a microprocessor that was directly linked to my account. The slug hit Neil between the shoulder blades and the wax broke away, leaving the needle embedded fifteen millimeters into his shirt and skin. At the speed of light, the processor accessed my Tesla billing ID number, and a tiny lightning bolt shot out from the ceiling and gave Neil a taste of one million volts. The same wireless electricity system that powered the city also powered my bullets.
For a nonlethal weapon, the Glock Taser was still pretty nasty, and I knew from experience it hurt like hell. Neil plopped onto his face, unable to break his fall with his hands because his entire skeletomuscular system locked up. He flopped around on the floor for a bit, and I hit the remote control on my utility belt, shutting off the juice. Then I removed a supplication collar from its case and locked the thin strip of anodized plastic around his neck.
“Fuct…” Neil moaned into the carpeting.
I holstered my roscoe and took the EPF activator-a silver sphere no bigger than a hypergolf ball-and placed it next to the front door, setting the distance at two meters.
With Neil taken care of, I went back to the kitchen and stared at the TEV monitor, my face staring back at me. Tachyon emission visualization technology was foolproof. It couldn’t be compromised. It couldn’t be faked. The TEV was better than any eyewitness, because it showed the truth without perception or bias getting in the way.
But this wasn’t the truth. At the time of the murder, I was home with Vicki. I had an alibi.
Of course, the famous court case of the State of Illinois v. Joseph Andrew Konrath showed that alibis meant nothing against TEV evidence.
I picked up the unit and hit rewind, keeping the lens on the killer. I watched the murder in reverse, and then saw him sneak away from Aunt Zelda, walking backward. I followed him, through the hallway, to the apartment door.
Outside the door, I watched him use a smart magnet on the lock. Smart magnets were used by locksmiths, when electronic entry failed due to mechanical error. Prior to the invention of timecasting technology, burglars used them to gain entrance to homes. But B and E was a thing of the past, because all a timecaster had to do was follow the thief all the way home, either forward or in reverse. Which was what I planned on doing with my double.
He led me to the elevator. But right before he stepped out, the monitor flickered.
And he disappeared.
I pressed fast-forward and watched it again.
One millisecond he was there. The next he wasn’t.
I tuned in to the exact frame of his vanishing act, trying to spot where Alter-Talon went.
Alter-Talon didn’t go anywhere. He completely dematerialized. Which was, of course, impossible.
The only difference between the before and after frames was the hallway lighting. Before he disappeared, it was slightly bluer. When he appeared, the light became a bit oranger.
“Fuct!” Neil screamed, high-pitched and decidedly unmacho.
I glanced over at Aunt Zelda’s open door, then walked back inside her apartment.
Neil was on his ass, eyes bugging out, both hands gripping the supplication collar. His whole body shook. I grabbed his shirt and dragged him away from the door, back into the hallway.
“I put an electronic perimeter fence by the door. If you get within two meters, it shocks you. But you apparently figured that out.”
Neil was gasping like he’d been underwater. “You… killed her.”
“I didn’t kill her.”
His eyes welled up. “Please let me go.”
“Sorry. I can’t do that just yet. If you go running to the Peace Department, they’ll put me away before I have a chance to figure out what’s going on. So you’ll have to stay put for a while.”
Neil pouted, and a trembling hand reached up for his earlobe.
“It also jams your headphone. And if you try to cut it off, it explodes, blowing a hole in your neck.”
The last part was a lie, but I wasn’t too concerned with Neil getting the collar off. It was reinforced with carbon nanotube fibers. They were the strongest things on the planet, and were used to tether space elevators to earth. Unless Aunt Zelda had a diamond bit drill, the supplication collar would stay on until I took it off.
Then I went back to the TEV. Instead of reverse, I let the past move forward. The murder was just as horrible the second time. Even more so, because I zoomed in on the killer’s face as he snapped her neck, and the SMF was smiling.
It got worse. After her death, the alter-me pulled something out of a sheath on his belt. From my viewing angle, it appeared to be nothing more than an empty handle. But I knew what it was.
A Nife.
