Maybe it’s the neural implant, Beth thought. That’s what makes record-keeping so damn easy for everyone else. And here I am stuck with this outdated C.C.
She had spent all last night trying to create and index a list of Simon’s social contacts. She didn’t sleep. It took her over eight and a half hours to find a single person who was both alive and out of prison that she could meet with. Even the incarcerated ones had turned down her invitation to get together, claiming they didn’t know Simon any better than a commuter might know his bus driver. This was the only contact she could make, but she kept searching.
Beth was nervous that there would be no other person she could interview and they would just have to rely on the police to catch Simon doing something other than murder. She knew the chances of that were slim, if the suspect had any wit about him.
The hyperloop tube she was in turned gradually towards the downtown part of Seattle, but she couldn’t sense the change. It was a small compartment, not much larger than the back seat of a taxi, and since that’s essentially all it was, that’s all the space it required. There was no driver, of course. Like all other forms of transit that shot people from point A to point B, hyperloop tubes were automated. They dart through the hollow tubes that sprawled through, under, and between most major cities at speeds of over four-hundred miles per hour. Magnets propelled the cart through the hyperloop, managing the forces of acceleration and friction with such precision that one’s arrival could be determined up to one-tenth of a second, without error. It was cheap and made navigating the denser urban areas more feasible, though Beth was too distracted by her research to appreciate the convenience.
It had taken her a moment, but she found the file on her contact. Just after leaving high school, Simon had started dating a young college student named Andrea Colm. They were together for about four months, with him staying over at her place, before they broke up. It wasn’t clear why, but based on the timeline Marcus drew up, it would be around the time Simon started going full-time into Fog manufacturing.
That had been over fourteen years ago, Beth observed sourly. It’s not like they’d still be in touch, but it’s my only lead for now.
Not only had they been separated for so many years, but new relationships had come and gone, likely eroding any meaningful chance that Simon would reach out to Andrea. It wasn’t unheard of for people on the run from the law to get into touch with people they’d not spoken to in decades, but this case was different. Mostly because Andrea was not Andrea anymore.
Her current name was Trishilan, although Beth wasn’t sure ‘her’ was the appropriate term. According to her social media and personal records, this Trishilan was an ‘entity’.
Beth had only ever heard of the term in passing, but never encountered one personally. As far as she understood it, an entity was an intimate mindshare relationship composed of two or more human consciousnesses. These individuals then take on a communal identity of sorts, essentially becoming a new individual. It didn’t make much sense to Beth because all she could gather about entities came from Trishilan’s social media and a few cursory articles for the layman reader.
I wonder if it’s offensive to refer to her life before — as Andrea, Beth thought. Maybe she — or they — won’t answer my questions.
She dismissed the concerns as she felt the telltale lurch of the cart arriving at the right station. It was gentle, but stirred up a few butterflies in her stomach.
She wouldn’t have agreed to meet if she wasn’t willing to share what she knows, Beth thought.
It was a block and an intersection between the hyperloop station and the restaurant Trishilan had told Beth to come to. A light drizzle fell from a cloud-roofed sky, but it didn’t bother the detective at all.
She walked through the front door of the Ten Shilling Restaurant and Bar. It took a moment for the ocular filters connected to her C.C. to adapt to the dim interior. The only light inside the place seemed to come from individual lamps placed as the centerpiece of each table. There were even a few lining the bar, which two men drank at with an empty stool between them.
Beth looked around for any sign of Trishilan. She knew roughly what the entity looked like, though almost all of the photos Trishilan posted online featured heavy costume makeup or large, obscuring hats. Still, Beth could tell that the entity was not in the restaurant yet. Aside from the two at the bar, there were only two couples and a party of four. None of them looked like the images she’d seen.
She noticed a HELP YOURSELF TO A SEAT sign projected by the cash register and obliged. She pulled off her damp jacket before taking a seat at a booth near the front.
She waited there for a few minutes, thumbing through the menu tablet they had at each table. Nothing really stood out to her, but then again, she didn’t come with a full appetite. She was there on business, not to gawk at some prime rib or to have a few cocktails.
“Can I start you off with something?” a man said from her right.
She looked up and saw a young man, no older than seventeen, wearing an all black serving uniform.
“Coffee, please,” she replied. “And a cup of water.”
“You got it,” the waiter said before slipping away.
She appreciated his shortness. She wasn’t in the mood for small talk. Didn’t want anything to distract her from getting the right answers.
A woman entered the restaurant, a chime going off when the door slammed shut behind her. She looked around for a
