“Personally, I have no idea,” Karl started. “But Maynard seems to have a lead. Care to hear it?”
“Of course,” his old friend responded. His eyes gleamed with a faint glaze of childish curiosity.
Karl could hear Maynard buzzing with anxiety as he was getting close to the I.I.’s role in the story. Maynard had been nagging him without halt about a hypothesis he had—one Karl chalked up as a “conspiracy” theory.
“As you know, every installed intelligence is activated when the subject’s original brain ceases to function,” Karl began.
“Of course I know about all that. What is this, elementary school?” Thompson interjected.
“I know, but I have to cover all my bases when explaining this. Nothing must be misunderstood, you see.”
“Agreed.”
“Well, Maynard’s story starts with his death,” Karl began. He could hear the voice in his head making commentary on his storytelling, but he ignored it like a zoo gorilla might ignore a pair of flies. “According to him, he was murdered.”
Thompson seemed to stand in silence, either waiting for more information, or already contemplating what he was given.
“And?” he said after a moment, perhaps with less compassion than Maynard expected in regards to his death.
“I think he’s starting to think his death and the attack might be related.” Karl seemed to wince as he spoke, like he was firing a moody employee and he wanted no part of the procedure. He hated playing middleman, in any circumstance.
“How so?” Thompson wanted to know.
“I’m not sure. He just mutters about it and I catch what I can—Maynard?” the psychologist said.
He could feel the I.I. groan within his own mind.
“The traitor, I suspect, is the same man who killed me,” Maynard insisted.
Man? Karl offered. He got no response.
“He thinks the traitor that perpetrated the attack might be related to the person who killed him,” Karl said. His tone betrayed his skepticism.
The amount of information Thompson had access to was mind boggling to the psychologist and his I.I. It gave him a sort of uneasy feeling up and down his spine when Karl realized how little was left private in the modern world.
On one of Thompson’s many screens, live feeds from people’s cerebral computers were coming in with random frequency. At one point, the image of a man shaving his face appeared on the monitor. It took Karl a moment to realize that he was looking through the man’s eyepiece and into the stranger’s reflection. It made the psychologist feel dirty, like some sort of perverted voyeur. He hoped no women in bathtubs appeared onscreen, simply for the safety of his self-respect.
Perhaps what disturbed him the most about the set-up was how little Thompson seemed embarrassed by it. To Karl, it felt like his friend should behave like a teenager caught watching pornography. Instead, he was akin to an enthusiast showing off a collection of art.
“Where do you want to get started?” his old friend wanted to know. “I was thinking about looking for digital trace records of each ID swipe on every doorway in the lab. I don’t expect that to show us much, but if we can connect those with incoming police reports—which we have access to, as well—to match IDs with the deceased.”
Karl nodded in thoughtful agreement. “Process of elimination,” he said.
“Tell him to look into reports of my death, as well,” Maynard urged.
Karl passed the request onto Thompson, who accepted without a second thought.
His old friend took a seat before the massive device and pulled a keyboard out from a drawer. It had been a few years since Karl had last seen one of those, but even then it had been while passing by an antique store.
To his amazement, Thompson was able to glide his fingers over the keys as if punching out a ballad on a grand piano. Karl didn’t know more than a handful of people who still had the ability to type, and they weren’t all too proficient at it. Thompson, however, barely broke stride as the buttons clacked. He didn’t even have to look at his fingers.
He should show this off on one of those talent programs, Karl thought.
Maynard scoffed and said it was nothing special.
“You realize that in order to build the cerebral computer we HAD to use keyboards, right?” Maynard explained.
That sounds terrible, Karl commented.
“Kids,” Maynard spat.
After a few minutes of silence, Thompson seemed to become aware of his friend’s presence once again.
“Sorry,” he said. “This might take a while to gather all the little shards of data. You could probably use a rest, huh?”
Karl seemed to snap to full attention at the word “rest.” It was like he was in a hypnotist’s trance, and the magic word to break the spell had been uttered. His skin seemed to hang off him like old rags. He was indeed tired.
He nodded.
“There’s a cot just on the other side of that wall there,” Thompson said, pointing. “Should be a pile of fresh sheets on the chair.I’ll just be in here.”
The psychologist thanked his companion, and then turned into the room indicated. He glanced at the sheets, then simply fell face-first onto the mattress and into deep slumber.
Karl woke up to the sound of a mug being set on the nightstand beside his face. His eyes opened before his mind awoke, still lost in the blank darkness of dreamless sleep.
The first thing that came into focus was the wafting steam trails floating slowly up toward the ceiling. Then he noticed Thompson standing beside the cot, drinking from his own cup.
“Find anything?” Karl asked. His parched throat clung onto the words as he spoke them, forcing all of the moisture from the sound.
“Yes,” Thompson replied.
“About time,” the I.I. commented. His tone was entirely alert.
Thompson pointed to the mug on the table. “I wasn’t sure if you took cream or anything.”
“Black is fine,” the psychologist
