With her head moving unconsciously to the music, Enda opened the virtual re-creation of the burglary. Her rig hummed as the twin GPUs powered up, and a small circle spun on-screen. Enda blew on her coffee and sipped it. Finally the rig pinged.
The ghost of a hallway was drawn over her apartment. With her sight blurred by overlapping visions, Enda put her coffee down and fumbled across her desk until she found her eyemask and virt controls. She put the mask on and the real world disappeared. Dull, overcast daylight had been replaced by night, her decor removed as if by invisible stagehands, without even the need for a curtain to hide their work.
She hit play on the re-creation, and every flat surface surged with masses of flesh—thrusting, sucking, gagging, fucking flesh. She paused the playback and the walls of pornography stopped with it.
“Fuck me.”
She zoomed out at speed, vertigo like free fall in reverse. She was outside, looking down at the complex—every surface was painted the flesh-colored tones of sex. The compound looked like a living thing, a massive structure of undulating skin.
The compound’s security system had been compromised, and whilst the Digital Intrusions Expert hadn’t been able to disable the cameras, they had tampered in another way. In dimly lit corners of the enclave, the pornography was also steeped in darkness. This wasn’t a simple overlay, it was precisely what the cameras “thought” they had seen. It was bizarre, but it was inspired. Perhaps the DIE had intended a simple trolling, but it also meant that Enda couldn’t trust the virtual playback, and it could never stand as evidence if the thieves wound up in court.
Enda sipped more of her coffee, and looked over the fleshy compound one more time. She pulled the eyemask from her face, and closed the virt re-creation, feeling the first pang of a VR headache. She was going to have to see the building in person.
The rain fell heavy, and water flowed over the windscreen with the movement of the auto-car—pushed to the sides when the vehicle accelerated, and drifting down when it stopped. The city was distorted through that shifting lens. Enda focused out the side window, and urged her brain to silence as the auto-car took her across the city. She had her own car, but the morning’s events left her feeling too irritated to drive.
“The Korea Meteorological Administration forecasts rain for the next five days,” the car said in an upbeat voice. “Flood warnings may soon be in effect. Would you like to know more?”
“No.”
Crowds filled the sidewalk like a funeral procession, black umbrellas bobbing over the throng. Enda felt disconnected from it all, shielded behind thick glass and rubber-sealed doors. Auto-cars were ostensibly a means of mass transportation, but they were priced beyond most city-dwellers. They offered protection, and distance. A way to move through the bleeding heart of Songdo-dong without getting dirty.
“VOIDWAR servers—”
“No.”
“Police are ur—”
“No,” Enda said, louder. “Disable conversation for this account.”
The car went quiet. Enda knew it was taking her command literally, but the silence seemed petulant. Could you hurt a car’s feelings?
The sidewalks passed by like a film set. Songdo looked oddly bare through her eyes—everywhere were the flat planes of cement and glass, the censorious gray panels of her ad-free AR subscription. She’d found Songdo too much when she first arrived, like New York’s Times Square, but for block after endless block. It had looked too loud—there was no other way to describe it—as though every surface were screaming at her to buy something, even surfaces that didn’t exist in the real.
Still, at times the layer of artificial cleanliness was jarring—unreal, unnatural. She had tried to alter the settings of her Clarity to let through street art and noncorporate shop fronts, but it was an all-or-nothing proposition. For the sake of her inner peace, Enda had chosen nothing.
The car braked sharply outside Lee’s enclave, and Enda’s head was jolted off the window. She took a moment to select the expense account on her phone, paid the fare, and opened the car door. The city rushed to meet her—the steady drone of traffic, the hiss of rain, the chatter of conversation, and the disparate sounds of music coming from two busy noodle shops on the opposite side of the street.
Enda slammed the car door and turned the high collar of her coat up against the rain. She quickly adjusted the bag that was slung over one shoulder and across her chest, the dotted neoprene pressing into her skin like tiny fingers. It was weighed down with her eye-drone and her small but effective less-lethal arsenal: a telescoping baton and collapsible riot shield rated to withstand up to three hundred pounds of protester bodyweight.
Enda approached the rampartment’s entrance, and a woman dressed in a black windbreaker emerged from a small booth beside the gate. She wore bulky facial recognition glasses—less about functionality than signaling: If you speak to me, you will be tagged.
“Please, state your business, ma’am,” the woman said.
“I’ve been hired to look into the burglary,” Enda said. She took her wallet from her bag and showed the guard her private investigator license.
The woman took it, and held it up to inspect Enda’s face and photo. The license was authentic—the forms of identification she’d used to get it were fakes. Expensive fakes too—though the real cost was always the database manipulation rather than the forged paperwork.
After a few seconds the guard handed the license back to Enda and said: “You’re clear.” Must have gotten permission via the glasses. She took a step closer and lowered her voice. “Please do not speak with any of the residents. It is best if they do not concern themselves with an isolated incident.”
Enda nodded. “I understand.”
“Good.” The woman returned to her booth and
