Chapter One-"The Summons"

The Summons

The summons had been cryptic. The message from Frodingham Central appearing in her headport at the most inopportune moment. 

                                                

Across the conurbation mass of the Humber Urban Development, a million minds were connected, fused together, locked into one larger consciousness, like some gigantic hive-mind, infused with purpose, to know the answer.

 Who would win the latest talent contest taking place right now on the barrier between reality and cyberspace and become the latest recipient of the NeuroMusicaTalent Crown? The avatars of the two finalists stood in the black space of NeuroMusicas virtual studio clutching on to the electronically fluctuating form of their TalentMentors and waited. The electronic host rippled his brow in an ersatz frown. He built tension. Somewhere across the massed ranks of the cyberfans, a pin could be heard to drop. And just as the results were about to be announced, the summons from Central smashed through her head-port gateway and crashed every other connection.

      Green lettering blazed into the black space of her now empty head-port. It hung in front of her eyes. 

      “Detective Sergeant Esther Ballard. Report to Special Investigation Division at the corner of Crosby and Mayfair. A.S.A.P.”

      That was all. 

      Then suddenly the lettering was gone. The head-port now connected back to the aftermath of the talent contest victory. It didn’t matter now of course. Nothing mattered except responding to the message. Reaching out with her mind, Esther broke off the connection, shut down her head-port and braced herself for the reintegration.

      The cold hit her like a blast of arctic wind. Her nerves becoming aware of her physical surroundings and struggled desperately to adjust to the real world. Her breathing grew rapid and then the tingling pain appeared at the base of the skull as her head-port finally shut down. The pain grew stronger, building towards a crescendo that it seemed would crack her head in two and then suddenly it was just, gone.

      She sat exactly where she’d had when she first uploaded herself to the Cortex that morning. That was a good thing. Some people tended to move when hooked into the Cortex. An electronically induced form of somnambulism took over their bodies. They could go anywhere, even conduct complex tasks and make light conversation with their subconscious, while their conscious mind dwelt in the unearthly realm of the NeuroCortex. It was dangerous. SleepLoaders, as they were called, could walk off a cliff or walk into the middle of a road, without even realising what they were doing. Esther had been known to SleepLoad upon occasion. Not often. But sometimes it had happened. And it frightened her. So waking up in the same position as when she uploaded was a blessing.

      She was lying in bed. When she’d woken that morning she’d realised that she had nothing much to do. She really shouldn’t have taken the day off. But she’d been working flat out and her recent promotion gave her a certain latitude and leeway with her bosses at Central. She’d felt she deserved a day off. At least that’s what she told herself. It was Winterval Day, after all.

      She’d always loved the celebration as a child. The presents from her foster parents and her foster brothers and sisters. The warm glow of the cheap gas fire, a remnant of the last century. The tree with lights twinkling in the corner of the room. The safe place on the edge of memory. A safe place on the other side of tragedy. She looked at the corner of her small flat. No tree or presents. Yeah, she really shouldn’t have taken the day off.

      “Come on Ballard, legs, move.” She said to herself.

       Forcing herself off the bed, she realised, she shouldn’t have gone on the Cortex either. Her whole body felt stiff, leaden, as lifeless as the Euphie ODs she dragged out of the river as a probationary officer just out of training college. She rubbed her shoulders, desperately trying to get some feeling back into them.

      When the Cortex had been first been created, it had been advertised as the ultimate way to live. Not just to play games as the Mega Drive had been in the latter years of the 20th century, or to network with friends as the social networking programmes and websites of the early 21st century, not even simply for the purposes of work as computers were originally created for. The Cortex was designed as the ultimate immersive cyber-reality and cyber-companion. No plugs, no cables, no aerials, just two small silver pick-ups on each temple. Now you could take your entire life with you everywhere. No need for phones, games consoles, address books, notepads, textbooks, music players. All you needed was the Cortex.

      Unfortunately, as is often the case with newly invented technologies, a problem with this brand new method of cyber-existence rapidly became apparent. It was addictive and after a while, detrimental to the human body.

In part this was because people misused it. The Cortex had been designed to enrich life. A product created to help people in their everyday lives. An aid to existence. Instead, for many, it BECAME their existence.

 Hiding away in their rooms, the gold and silver filigree lines of the holo-visor of their head-ports dancing across their eyes, they withdrew from life. All they needed was in the place where mind and machine met and merged. If your wife left you, fashion another one “on the load”; if your child died, resurrect them in an electronic landscape where no shadows fall and death never comes; who needs to leave home to work? Just enjoy the world of the virtual workplace. Your body got used to it. And the more you used it, the harder it became to leave. Until leaving was impossible and the Cortex was the only world you knew.

      Esther had seen the wards of the cyber-sick. People who barely seemed alive, save for the vague shadow of eye movement remaining beneath the electronic tracery that covered their eyes. Their insecurities and vices had driven them into the darkness of their own fantasies and there they would stay, kept barely alive, until their body packed in from lack of sunlight, fresh air, visual and audio stimulation that didn’t come from the ‘port. Until the moment that their spirit gave up from the lack of love, hate, anger, joy, misery, peace.

 A death from the tantalising seduction of artificially constructed emotion, rather than the trials and tribulations of the old fashioned natural kind. A death, in short, from letting go of everything that made them human. Casualities of human evolution and progress.

The image still haunted Esther, so she thought about the pain as she got up from her bed and made a mental note to watch herself on the Cortex.

      Remembering suddenly that the summons had told her to report A.S.A.P., she shrugged off the lingering effects of the Cortex and made for the door. Checking herself in the mirror, she realised that what she was wearing wasn’t exactly standard police issue but having no time to change she grabbed her trench coat, put on her shoes and headed out of her flat.

      The address attached to the summons was at the border of the old and new sectors of the HUD. It would take fifteen minutes for her to drive there, worse if the traffic was as bad as it had been lately, and knowing her luck, it would be.

      The early evening sky glowed orange from a mixture of the conurbations neon lights which advertised everything from the latest soft drink to the latest craze in the world of the Cortex and the reflected light from over the hill as the steelworks that had been there long before the city had, still cast metal and worked the magma of their toils into steel known the world over. As Esther pulled out from her block of flats and out onto the road, the streetlights that represented thousands of individuals, their hopes and dreams, desires and fantasies stretched out across the plain towards the river, like intricate filigree strands of jewellery shining against the night, fading into the distance, echoes of life.

     

On the corner of Crosby Street and Mayfair Avenue, chaos reigned. Spotlights ripped through the night as the sound of police helicopters leant a jarring soundtrack to the scene of devastation. Behind a police line, press reporters and camera crews vied for the best vantage point from which to get the story, their ranks ebbing and flowing like the sea at high tide.

      Esther parked her car halfway down Crosby Street, a good hundred yards from the crime scene and the police line, she couldn’t park any closer, the crowds here were nearly as thick as at the crime scene. Locking the car door, she made her way towards the corner of Crosby and Mayfair.

      Behind the florescent tape, a figure appeared brightly illuminated in the harsh light. There standing right in the middle of the crime scene was the HUDs Police Commissioner, Chesterton. Tall and rangy with a dark unruly mane of hair tinged with grey, his trench coat blown around by the wind, he looked like a Private Investigator from the 1930s detective novels that her foster father used to read, not the elected Police Commissioner of a city of nearly 8 million people.

       Chesterton was a legend among the people who worked for him. He’d been a policeman for forty years, starting out as a small-town policeman back before the HUD was built, then walking the mean streets during the upheaval as the HUD first came into being. Now he ran the city’s police department and the rank and file loved him. Esther didn’t disagree with that sentiment.

      She squeezed between a cameraman and a reporter and ducked underneath the tape. She approached Commissioner Chesterton.

      “Fourteen minutes from Trent View Flats to where we stand now. I trust you drove with due care and attention.” Chesterton stated, without looking at her, his eyes never leaving the scene in front of him.

      “Always.” She answered, her eyes never leaving his weathered countenance.

      “Those were some of your best qualities when you worked in my office. It’s good to know that your years rounding up drunks and Euphie junkies in the rougher sectors haven’t dulled them.”

      “They’ve served me well.” She replied.

      “Indeed,” The Commissioner said, finally turning his gaze from what was in front of him to look at her for the first time.

      He looked tired, old for the first time since she’d known him. His eyes red rimmed and his skin grey and haggard like faded cloth.

      “They must continue to serve you in that manner, especially now. In the next few months, you’ll see things that will make you question everything you hold dear and you need to keep it together. To respond in the proper way.”

      “Okay, respond to what?” She asked Chesterton, as she stared at him, returning his contemplative gaze with one of her own.

      “Transfer to the Special Investigation Division. H.U.D., Branch, obviously.” He said turning his eyes back to the crime scene.

      “All due respect, sir, but I was up for the last opening on the Division and was rather unfairly blocked after Sergeant Dexter decided he wanted to pursue his career and asked his father, Alderman Dexter to get him the position in the division. Now while I’m aware that wasn’t your choice, I have to admit, I’m feeling a little burned.” She said, with some feeling. Feeling which surprised herself.

      “Sergeant Dexter is leaving the S.I.D.”

      “Leaving? But he’s only been in the job three weeks.”

      “He had the wrong response.”

      “And if you don’t mind me asking sir, but what denotes a wrong response.”

      Esther was startled by a loud voice from the direction of a police van parked just inside the tape-line.

      “Yes, tell her, Chesterton. Tell her what she’s expected to put up with in her new job.”

      From out of the shadows cast in front of a police van, Sergeant Dexter himself appeared or rather slithered Esther thought to herself.

 He was, as usual, impeccably dressed, wearing the latest fashions straight from the catwalks of the HUD. A fine leather trench coat, edged with fur, a pressed shirt in a garish pink. A tie edged with a florescent image of the Cortex’s latest singing star, Gloria Marquez. His designer trousers flared and flattened in just the right places. A sophisticated dandy built for the new urban paradise of the 21st century. He looked ridiculous. Like some cross between Sam Spade and one of the 1980s teenage pop stars whose records were some of the few still on the governments “approved” listening list.

        His supercilious face was twisted in a disdainful sneer. As he walked towards them the ‘port contacts on either temple gleamed coldly in the spotlights, the overall effect was not so much menacing, as he clearly intended it to be, but foolish.

      “Tell her about the freaks, Chesterton. Tell her about how ridiculous your precious S.I.D is.” He said, squaring up to The Commissioner. He stepped back when he realised that he was shorter than Chesterton by a good four inches.

      “You can hardly make comments about how ridiculous things are when you’re dressed like you are.” Esther said as she put herself between Dexter and The Commissioner. “So why don’t you back off.”

      “I am dressed in the highest of fashions, Ballard. At least my clothing is appropriate for a crime scene of this magnitude. Where have you just arrived from, a slumber party?” Dexter shot the barb with venom.

      “Well I actually take my job seriously, so I didn’t waste my time changing, although in your case maybe you should have.” Esther returned the insult with equal violence.

      “Listen, Ballard, maybe if you actually spent some time thinking about the way you’re presenting yourself, you’d get somewhere in life.”

      “Correct me if I’m wrong Dexter, but I thought that the only reason that I’m here taking the position that was previously yours is because you can’t present yourself correctly. You see when it comes down to proper police work all of daddy’s money and a snappy suit get you nowhere. So why don’t you, just leave and let the grown-ups get down to business.” Esther replied.

       In general, she didn’t like to be condescending or patronising or vicious or any of the other negative things she’d been during the course of her brief conversation with Dexter. But he got her mad, as he got nearly the whole force mad. 

      Dexter had been born into wealth. His father had made a killing in land sales and construction when the first migrants had arrived to build the HUD and now, nearly thirty years later, Dexter Holdings was a massive conglomerate, one of the few in the country that still retained a global influence, with fingers in every pie going. There were, of course, inevitable questions of legality over the scope of the company’s interests but no investigation had ever turned up anything concrete. Dexter senior had power, influence, money, control and his son had always traded in all of those things to ease his way up the ranks of the police force.

      But nobody could understand why. Even though he habitually used his contacts to aid his son’s career it was well known that Dexter’s father didn’t approve of his son’s vocation in the slightest. Dexter didn’t need the money either, his trust fund paid for anything he could ever want. He actually seemed to enjoy being a policeman. It was a pity then that he seemed to go out of his way to put the rest of the force completely out of theirs.

      Dexter’s face was bright red and livid with anger as he desperately tried to think of a response to Esther’s words. Before he could say a word though, The Commissioner broke his silence.

      “Go, Dexter. Get back to Central. You’ll be reassigned in the morning.”

      “Now, sir, I really think we can talk about this.” Dexter reasoned, suddenly ingratiating and cajoling in his tone.

      “No, Sergeant, we can’t.” Chesterton said sharply, cutting Dexter off in mid flow.

      “Now, I really think you want to reconsider, if you’ve forgotten the position my father holds in the affections of this city, I’m sure a reminder can be arranged.” Dexter’s tone now switched from ingratiating and cajoling to a quietly menacing tone.

      “Are you threatening me, son? Do you really think that’s a good idea given the trouble that you’re already in the middle of?” Chesterton replied, his rough local accent reasserting itself over the sanitised vocals he normally affected. 

“Just so you understand and there’s no confusion. I’m not scared of your father, his money or his position on the city council. And saying that your father is held in affection by this city is the same as saying that a Euphie dealer is loved by the junkies he sells to. I’ve got people I can rely on, who really hold me in affection, and a good selection of them don’t work for me. Your father tries to do anything to “remind” me of his position as chief peddler of every damaging thing on the Cortex and the man who tore up my hometown and turned it a real-life Gotham City, then he’ll see who’s held in affection. Now sling your hook! Go! Get back to Central, you’ll be reassigned and like it! And if you don’t you can quit.” Chesterton’s voice never rose but in the quiet, still, manner in which he spoke could be heard the echoing hints of anger kept barely in check.

     

“Commissioner!” Dexter whinged.

      “Look at my face, lad. Do you really think for one moment that I’m not serious? Go on! Get going!”

      Dexter looked for a second as if he might be tempted to push the issue further. Anger and fear collided on his face as he seemed to debate within himself whether to respond to The Commissioner or to leave. Finally he turned and stormed off back past the police van. Raised voices could be heard as he barged past the journalists waiting at the tape-line.

      “That was the wrong response.” Chesterton said when Dexter had vanished between the cars on the street past the cordon.

      “He’s a fool.” Esther stated.

      “ No he's not, he's just what they used to call entitled. So you can a little bit easier on him. I think deep down he’s got a good heart, he’s just used to everything in life being presented on a silver platter for him. How do you gain good social skills and a sunny demeanour like mine if all your friends are paid for by your father?” Chesterton responded, staring into the darkness that Dexter had disappeared into.

      “But haven’t you been hard on him?” 

      “He’ll forget in the morning, his father will find someone to create a Cortex scenario for him, something sufficiently sordid and by tomorrow he’ll have forgotten this.” Chesterton explained.

      “I think you’re wrong. He won’t forget. But if you think he’s not going to remember, why did you say all that you said?” Esther asked in a confused tone.

      “Because the first thing he’ll do when he slopes into the mansion is tell his father. And his father won’t forget. I need him to know that I’m not scared of him or his underlings. And I need him to stop mucking around with my men while we’ve got a serial killer on the loose.”

      “A serial killer?”

      “That’s right. That’s why I had you called. I need someone who can handle themselves and you can. I also need someone who can handle the unorthodox officers of the S.I.D better than Dexter. Okay?”

      “ Sure.”

      “Well, go on then.” Chesterton said, pointing towards the crime scene.

      “Are you not coming in?”

      “Oh I’m fine just here.”

      Esther looked at The Commissioner. He smiled slightly. Then she turned and looked at the crime scene.

      Directly in front of her was a low wall, broken down and old in places, graffiti staining the walls, behind that was a massive two story high heap of rubble and junk, encased in the shining steel and chrome of a massive clear geodesic dome. Old cars, their stripped remains jutted out from beneath the remains of reinforced concrete pillars, skeletons of the modern world beneath tombstones of artificial granite. The forms of old streetlights lay at odd angles throughout the structure. Here lay the detritus of the past, the reminders of a forgotten world, echoes of an age forgotten.

      When she had received the summons Esther had forgotten what lay at the corner of Crosby and Mayfair. And now she remembered.  The Crosby Sphere.