Fish Swim in the Lake

Part 2.3 | Don't letcher babies grow up to be mentechs

"How would you normally recover the space?" Colin asked.

"Normally I dump it while I sleep and then burn it while I'm out. A whole day's dump takes up a lot of space. I can only hold maybe a week at acceptable res and even that's not too useful for me because it loses a lot of fine detail. I can keep three days at full res. Stuff this small is expensive, you know?"

"So you could hold it until Thursday. You've got the space."

"Assuming you get the transmat on Thursday."

"I don't need whatever else you record. Can't you just freeze this afternoon and do your normal stuff with whatever you vlog later?"

"I guess. I don't like burning out of continuity though. It can get hard to match up the ends later. It's not like I've got a Vancouverwood grade editing facility." I don't, she thought then, but I know someone who does.

"You have a better idea? It's not like I want to spend the whole day jacking off a tourist either, you know."

"Well... if you wouldn't get it until Thursday anyhow, maybe I could dump it normally and just dupe you a copy. Then you upload the burn through the transmat instead of uploading my plant. Nobody'll know the difference. Hey, this could work," she said with mounting enthusiasm. "All you'd have to do is jack in the copy to look like it was a straight upload. If somebody really checked into it they might be able to find out, but who'd bother?"

"Maybe. I'd need it in MT6 format."

alphaDana winced. "Seriously?"

The mentech made a vague, hopeless gesture. "Yeah, I joined the police to work with braindead obsolete technology, supervisors that don't understand the limits of the braindead technology and won't pay for new stuff because the vendors convinced them MT6 is new, and to spend more time jacking off tourists than programming."

alphaDana shook her green head in genuine sympathy. "Look, I know some people, some hardware guys, they're not too expensive, maybe--"

"Forget it," Colin said. "The vendor we've got is the Captain's brother."

"OK. Sorry. So if I burn this in MT6 I can go now?"

"Yeah. I can scan you out. Just get me the copy by Thursday morning." He jacked up the access point and dragged an external retina scanner over his eye. He handed it to alphaDana. "Left eye, please. Your left."

She scanned and handed it back. "So... you work a lot with Sergeant Pijai?"

"No," Colin said. "I don't work 'with' anybody. I get assignments. I file reports. I hear about it again maybe a month later if I walk past them having lunch and they're talking about it. Or if they're mad, I hear right away. I think they think I'm a glorified security guard."

"Sorry?"

"All I do is scan records, vog the net, that kind of thing. I never even had a beat. I wasn't even a bike cop." He rubbed his chin and said quietly, "I never even arrested anybody."

alphaDana shook his hand sympathetically, and then hurried out as fast as she could walk.

Posted by gtaylor at April 17, 2002 07:50 AM