The sun was out, breaking a long rainy streak that had turned the snow on the ground into slush. Still, Beth liked the little squish each moist ball of precipitation made when she stomped on it.
Once the coffee shop was in view, Beth could see Dave standing outside, looking as disheveled as ever. He looked over and saw her approaching, and a sort of calmness came to his face. The wrinkles that sought to overtake his features softened as they locked eyes and he smiled. She pulled her purse a little closer to her, but returned the smile.
Dave was a Fog burnout who liked to hang out in front of the cafe and try to beg customers out of their change. Beth was convinced that his implant was rigged to only take donations and show him conspiracy videos online. Like many beggars, he had adapted to the modern economy and set himself up with a digital transfer account, so no one could refuse him money on the basis of having no cash.
“Beth!” Dave exclaimed once the detective was in earshot. “I gotta talk to you, man!”
The detective took in a deep sigh, then approached the junkie.
“Hey, Dave,” she greeted him.
“Hey yourself,” he replied, looking over his shoulder with fearful eyes. “Did you hear what they’re doing to us now, man?”
“Who?” she asked.
“The government, of course!” Dave said as though Beth had asked what color the sky was. “They’re starting to get us through the radio frequencies in our head. You haven’t heard?”
“I haven’t,” Beth replied.
“All the signals we get,” Dave started to explain. “The government is using it to see how much porn we’re watching! They want to see what we beat off to, you see, and they want to use it against us.”
“You don’t say?” Beth asked uninterestedly.
“That’s right!” Dave said, scratching his scalp like his life depended on it. “I think they’re using all that to blackmail us. Maybe some sinister plan in the future? What do you think?”
“I think I’m going to get a coffee, Dave,” Beth replied. Then she transferred him a dollar. “There you go.”
“Aww, thanks Beth,” the junkie said. “But just remember, be careful where you watch your porn!”
“Alright, buddy,” she said before opening the door to the coffee shop and removing herself from Dave’s drug-fueled paranoia.
She felt for the junkie. In a sad way, he reminded her of her own brother, Nathan. He was about four years older than Beth and became addicted to Fog just after their father’s organic death. Being the older sibling, he had taken his death harder and was even less resistant to accept their dad’s I.I. as a member of the family. There had been some fights, and the two of them vowed to never speak to each other again. Nathan had considered his father dead when his heart stopped beating one spring morning. After a particularly heated argument, Nathan fled the country and set out to see the world.
Unfortunately, Beth thought, Nathan discovered Fog more than any culture he came across. He became infatuated with the drug and spent his free time traveling between countries in Oceania and Southeast Asia, occasionally calling Beth to cuss her out and blame her for the family’s unhappiness. She did her best to ignore him and shrug all the cruelness off as a terrible side-effect of Fog.
A devilish narcotic, Fog was. It was one of the first drugs to include a chemical compound specifically designed to interact with a person’s neural implant. Combined with the power of the implant, the user experienced an intense sense of euphoria with even more vivid hallucinations than any previous drug could achieve. And the tricky thing about it — since it was partially computer code in the form of chemical reactions — was that it was hard to detect. Aside from the degradation and eventual death of brain cells, there was no physiological tell of Fog. Nothing traceable in the blood or urine, nothing tappable from the spinal cord. Just junkie behavior and speculation.
Beth sighed as the door closed behind her. Once Dave was out of sight, she was able to shake off the gross feeling thinking about Fog gave her and take in the delightful aroma of the cafe.
“Good morning!” the young man at the counter greeted her.
She smiled and returned the greeting. She had been going to the little coffee shop for years now, but it still kind of threw her off to be greeted by a flesh-and-blood human. Most places she went were manned by simple robots, or were all self-serve. That’s why she came here. Besides the unique flavor of each handmade cup of brew, the retro approach to customer service made her a little nostalgic. There were very few businesses in the world that did that anymore.
“What can we get started for you?” the barista asked. One of the brewing devices gurgled from behind him.
“Whole milk latte, please,” Beth said.
The young man nodded and wrote the order down. She paid for her drink, and he told her it would take a couple minutes.
She stepped away from the counter and let the barista get to work. It wasn’t terribly convenient to wait a whole two minutes for her coffee, but she swore that the taste was remarkably stronger than the common instant mix.
She was looking over a piece of art depicting sunflowers made from old-timey newspapers when a call notification popped up in the corner of her vision. It was Marcus.
“Yes?” she answered the call.
“I’m at the scene of another murder,” her partner said. “I think you should get down here.”
Through the call, Beth could see the barista setting her coffee down on the counter. To him, she said, “Could we make that to-go, actually?”
Murder
There was a cop positioned outside the Tattered Wineskin Brewery,
