Fish Swim in the Lake

Part 1 | And they were happier than I am

alphaDana knew Sergeant Pijai's desk was expensive. It was translucent red plastic on aluminum webbing with poured metal legs. The lot of it was obviously recycled, but George Carlin's claims to the contrary, every time plastic was re-used, there was a speck less of it. The impurities were filtered away and, she didn't know what was done with the dregs exactly, but she thought there were shot into space. In any case they were gone. Where did it go, she wondered, now that landfills were outlawed? A quick vog would turn up current law; Pijai probably wouldn't even notice she wasn't giving him her full attention. Most people didn't expect full attention anyhow.

She was mentally formulating the search when Sergeant Pijai snapped his fingers in front of her squarish nose. She blinked, stopped, and looked around: worn grubby melamine walls; chipped linoleum; sickly blue flourescent overhead lights behind wire cages. On the desk was a pink coffee cup with a permanent brown layer inside.

"Sit up. I know that expression," Pijai said distastefully. "I have an aunt that's one of you. Stay focused while you're here: if you're capable of that. The word "capable" was loaded with recrimination -- anger -- why? Steve Pijai, age 37, born in Carleton Place, Ontario--

"I said STOP THAT! If you can't control yourself I'll have to cut off this room. I don't know about you, but I hear your kind finds that unpleasant."

alphaDana sat up straight in the brown hemopape chair and stared earnestly across Pijai's bright red desk. "Listen, Steve," she began.

"How do--" he made a crumpled noise of disgust and then said, "that's 'sergeant', tourist."

alphaDana leaned down and shook her head quickly, twice, with her neck twisted to the left. Her shoulder length hair -- grass green today, artificial to replace what she lost in chemotherapy as a child, dyed by biodegradeable nanites at the scalp, brow, lash and pudendum to match -- her hair bounced over her angular face and she left it there. She was medium height, medium build, with her mouth chewed between her teeth. She wore tight worn black jeans, a sleeveless ribbed black cotton turtleneck, and unpolished black leather loafers so new that they'd given her a blister on her right heel and another on the fourth toe of her left foot. She carried a knee lenght light grey trenchcoat with large silver buttons. Her right fist, hidden in its folds, worried her belt buckle back and forth.

She flipped her head back and shivered it like a wet dog. "OK. Sorry. Look, sergeant, I don't know why I'm here. I didn't see anything weird today. It was a total loss. I barely made my fare. If I saw anything I would've uploaded a tag to the syndicate right off like usual. I even do that with the stuff I expect'll get blacked out. I always upload. OK? So why am I here?"

Pijai made the disgusted sound again. "You tourists think you know everything. You think because you didn't think it was important that it ipfac wasn't."

alphaDana leaned forward a little. The buckle cut into her palm. "So I did see something," she said with poor, thin casualness.

"You were proximate to an alleged criminal offence, yes. We want all rights to copy and decompress the relevant timeframe from your memory."

"Sure. I charge by the second."

"If you prefer," Pijai said acidly, "I can just get a warrant for your whole day and you can spend a week without your implant while we're transferring the data by xmodem. I thought you might like to work with us instead."

"By the time you get a warrant I may have already sold rights to what you want."

"Not if I issue a general statement warning all syndicates, satservs and freelance chasers that a substantial portion of that day's rights are contested by the federal Justice department."

"That'd be right unfriendly of you," alphaDana said.

"If you did see the alleged crime," Pijai said patiently, "you can't be allowed to publish your record of it. That would inhibit the suspect from getting a fair trial. It would interfere with police business. I would be personally irritated, and while I am not personally rich and powerful, nor do I have rich and powerful friends, I can have you strip searched once a week for the rest of your life in the Canericas."

"I also know that under the Blackout Act, that I'm allowed to vlog anything I want until a judicial order comes down censoring the parameters of a specific topic. For all you know I'm vlogging this whole session and the second your cogs bother me, I'll disgorge -- strictly to protect myself, of course."

"Maybe a judicial order has come down already."

"Then I wouldn't be able to record your suspect in the first place, because suspects that've been blacked out don't even register right. It's creepy. They're totally low-res even when my vlogger's turned off, to keep people from switching on and off every time they notice someone they're not allowed to vlog."

Pijai eventually said, "this suspect is about to be indicted on a crime that's already in blackout."

"So he's still fair game."

"Technically, but by the time you upload, he won't be. It's no use to you anyhow. You can't sell it. Why don't you just turn it over?"

"I uplink fast," alphaDana said. "If you're so sure it'll be blacked out that fast, why worry? Once it's blacked, like you said, it's useless to me, so I might as well give it."

"Because I don't have all day to wait for you to figure out the right thing to do."

"You know what I think?" alphaDana said. "I think you're not going to get an indictment without more evidence, which you hope I have, but aren't sure about, or you would've already gotten a warrant. I don't think I should just give that away, because whatever it is is worth money in the bank from the satservs. Since you're not planted, I'll tell you my bank balance for free: it's about five hundred nallars under what I need to pay my rent this quarter, and whatever I saw today is worth at least that much. So let's play a game, Steve. I'm going to go, unless you're going to charge me with something, and I'm going to upload whatever it takes to make my rent, before you get some justice asshole to black it out."

She stood up, leaning discreetly against the brown hemopape chair to hide how much she shook. She had been in jail. She didn't like it.

"That five hundred nallars could buy you a lot of trouble," Pijai said uncertainly.

"Maybe, but not having it is buying me trouble already." She carefully put on her coat and started fastening the buttons.

Pijai unfolded a desk drawer and took out a thick rumpled plastic bag. He opened the flap and teased out five folded Trudeaus. He pushed the money over with a long stiff finger as though he hadn't wanted to touch it much.

With a thin, porridgy kind of anger, he said, "the evidence room is on the fourth floor. Room four-oh-eight. OK?"

alphaDana grabbed the money and shoved it deep in her pocket. "OK."

Posted by gtaylor at April 12, 2002 10:13 PM