Sci-Fi Shorts

Fantasyland

A/N  Written for a smackdown contest, this was my first (and so far, only) attempt at incorporating romance and/or crime into a sci-fi story—scary.  Just over 4000 words.

December 19th 2165

They say cops shouldn't keep diaries. Well, 'they' can just pucker up and kiss my ass. Who else I'm I going to tell all this shit to? Besides, when it's encoded and encrypted to hell and back with all that military-grade shit the IT department is always crapping on about, it's not like anybody's going to read the thing. Especially given I keep it in my head. It's about time I got something out of all the tech the force installed in there.

The shrink at work says to me, "You should talk to your spouse or significant other." Yeah, sounds nice in theory, but when your spouse is banging someone significantly other than yourself, it's a little harder in practice.

I could talk things out with my partner, I guess. Only thing is, first I'd have to wait for him to finish banging my wife.

So, single, messed-up and no-one to talk to except my diary. It's practically high school all over again.

Here we go. Dear Diary. Today I get the call to attend a homicide. Not that surprising, I'll grant you, given I'm a homicide detective. But what a homicide. After fifteen years in the job, I thought I'd seen it all. Brother, did I think wrong. Not even those lame-ass virtual-immersion training runs at the academy were anything like this.

The first interesting thing about the case is the body. To be more specific, the lack of a body. Or most of the body, anyway. There's a head, a leg and a foot (ie, two feet altogether and one leg (just to be clear (because I hate being vague (which must be the cop in me (and you've no idea how sick that thought makes me feel (and now I've got to waste a minute of my life counting how many closing brackets I need)))))).

You know, my wife tells me that's the kind of pedantic crap that made her leave. Go figure.

Anyway, so the first question about the body is the obvious one—where's the rest of it? Cue forensics. And, I'm sorry to say, it turns out the rest of it is everywhere: on the walls, on the ceiling, floating in the air, in our hair, etc. I think you get the picture. This guy was just atomised. According to ballistics, only a fusion-pulse weapon could do that kind of damage. So, not only do we have dead guy up our noses and who the hell knows where else, we also got a perp running around with military-grade firepower. And that's one of my absolute least favourite kinds of perp.

The second interesting thing is the identity of the victim. You see, this stiff isn't just any brain-hacked, cyber-wastoid junkie. Oh no. This is Eric Vanguard. Yeah, you heard me. Eric Freakin' Vanguard. When the CEO and biggest shareholder of the FantasyLand empire gets whacked in his own office, that's a big deal. The rest of my caseload just got a bad case of irrelevance-itis.

The third interesting thing is that the victim gives me a description of the killer. Which is not something you get a lot in murder investigations, believe me. Particularly the ones where the victim is in pieces.

See, being on the jaw-dropping end of the filthy-rich spectrum, Vanguard had some pretty advanced enhancements installed in that head of his. Memory expanders, neural boosters, cognitive enhancers, all that crap. Hell, the bastard probably had climate control and a maid service in there.  Anyway, the tech is so good it keeps running for a while, even after Vanguard's body bites the dust. Or, I guess, becomes the dust.

Which is how I come to find myself chatting to a disembodied head. Just a regular day in the life of a big-city detective.

Well, not chatting, exactly. No lungs kinda equals no talking. So, Vanguard's head can't vocalise, but the implants in his head can text his replies to one of the holo-displays in his office. Weirdest conversation I've had for a while. And it's got some competition, I can tell you.