It Looks Like You're Writing a Letter
Chapter 2

Stilson had worked for OraCorp's Security Services for almost fifteen years. Before joining, he had trained in the fields of law, information technology and psychology.

He was based at OraCorp's satellite office in Kansas City - a glass and steel wave of a building that stood out for all the wrong reasons in the dusty landscape. No logos or signs adorned it and all the windows were heavily smoked. There was nothing welcoming about it, either inside or out - the car park was a sea of dark blue vehicles, all impeccably clean and the very latest model. Everything about the office, Stilson and OraCorp spoke of quiet, efficient minimalism.

Security Services used to be called the Police, back in the days before OraCorp purchased it, something that still prompted nostalgia in some. Stilson didn't come from one of those old Police families and so had no emotional connection with the history of the service.

Working for Security represented a good paycheck, some decent career prospects and some respect from the people he came across. The name was changed long before he started working for the department, after an expensive PR and marketing project decided 'Police' had too many negative connotations for the general public to stomach.

OraCorp was the biggest company on the planet and had been for quite a few decades. This wasn't going to change any time soon. As far as Stilson was concerned, whatever was against OraCorp's interests was against the interests of the common good.

Ora, the social network that started OraCorp's rise to power, still served billions of people every day, forever connecting them, sharing their information, and above all keeping them safe. This is where Stilson slotted in. Part IT specialist, part Special Forces, his training meant he was just as happy tracking a criminal through the Grid as he was chasing them down a dirty alleyway.

He knew when this assignment hit his arm piece that it would likely involve both. He was used to chasing down kids - wannabe evil geniuses equipped with a modified arm piece and cheap scrambler, always thinking they could bypass the all-seeing eye of Ora. Security wasn't the long arm of the law, it was the drone a hundred miles up, scanning you when you thought you were invisible.

The tech supplied to Security wasn't too dissimilar to that available to the average person on the street. Stilson's arm piece had a few extra features and he had access privileges to a few additional databases, but the public product Ora offered was so mature that there really wasn't much it couldn't do.

The difference was in how you used it.

Stilson knew sections of Ora functionality that some of its own software engineers hadn't even heard of, and more importantly he knew how best to leverage them to bring someone to justice.

Justice. The word made his skin crawl. What did it even mean anyway? Rights and wrongs were so clear these days that the idea that there would be any moral or ethical element to punishment was almost naive. You either did the crime or you didn't. It was always easy to prove.

His assignments were usually simple trace and capture missions - the guilty party knew they were guilty, he knew it too, and they both knew he was going to find them, eventually.

Crime hadn't really changed along with Ora's new world order. People still killed, stole, looted, dissented and protested. That was human nature and no amount of tech or useful social tools would change it. As far as Ora was concerned it was all personal. If an avatar winked out of existence due to a jealous husband beating his wife to death, that represented not just the loss of a user and advertising unit, but a reduction in their friends contact list tally. It was all just so depressingly anti-social.

Stilson pulled back his left sleeve and swiped his hand to open a dossier. He silently scrolled through the data on his Ora-branded arm piece as Doherty sauntered up.

"Stilson. How the devil are you?"

Stilson didn't look up. "Busy, Doherty."

"Great to see you too. Show your partner some love!" Doherty faked going in for a hug, making Stilson recoil like an opposing magnet. Doherty laughed and threw himself down in a chair on the other side of Stilson's desk. He was unkempt and eating a sandwich that dripped mayonnaise on the desk. He made an apologetic face and wiped it off with the sleeve of his slim cut brown suit. "I heard there's a new case. What we got?"

Stilson looked at the other officer. He often wondered how he ended up partners with this man. For five years they'd been joined at the hip, but he had no idea how this partnership was deemed to be effective. All recruitment and human resource allocation was, of course, dealt with by an Ora algorithm, so it couldn't be wrong, per se - but it was unusual. Their combined arrest record was above average, so he just went with it.

"Looks like another hacker. Data grab. Walk in, under some decent scrambler or other."

"Uh huh? Send it over." Doherty pushed up his suit sleeve to get access to his arm piece. It was the same model Stilson wore, but the screen was cracked. It was the third one he'd had this year. Stilson waved over his pristine, brushed aluminium and leather unit with the back of his hand and Doherty grunted his thanks.

"Wow... not a bad haul," said Doherty, nodding his head, "and stealing from Momma too. Naughty boy. I don't see the perp's name in here?"

"It's a dark one."

Doherty exhaled loudly. "Man, we've not had a dark one for huh... how long? Three years? It'll almost be like real police work Stilson!"

"We're not police, Doherty. That's why we're called Security." Stilson sat up in his chair and smoothed his thin black tie, followed by his thick black hair. "Whether we know who we're after or not, it makes no difference."

"Yeah I know, but just chasing avatars on a screen is no fun. With this one, we can go and shake down some street punks, interrogate some low-lifes, old school style." He grinned.

Stilson sighed. He was trying to make an effort not to frown as much. He'd just hit forty and while still a handsome man in a plain, classic way, he was still vain enough to want to minimise wrinkles. The number of people who told him to "cheer up" every day was a sign he needed to at least appear more happy-go-lucky than he actually was.

Doherty on the other hand had a ruddy, boyish face with permanent two-day stubble. He wasn't concerned with wrinkles, or having his clothes pressed, or being too fastidious with personal hygiene, but he was loyal like a bouncing, slobbering dog. Stilson found him exasperating but couldn't quite manage to actually dislike him.

"Read the assignment. Finish your sandwich. I'm going to the server lab."

Doherty nodded, his face full of ham and cheese.

The server lab was a short auto-walkway trip from Stilson's cubicle in the main office building. There were some computing tasks too heavy for even the most powerful OraCorp-supplied arm piece. The amount of data collected every second was by now too huge to compute so everyone had stopped trying. Most computing power now was used for spotting patterns and behaviours, connecting these dots and making useful knowledge out of raw data.

Thankfully, advances in natural speech recognition over the last decade had negated the need for humans to man the server lab. This was a good thing in Stilson's view given that the sort of people who worked behind the smoked-glass panels were best suited to the company of banks of hard drives, load balancers and firewalls.

Stilson activated the heavy steel door using his arm piece. It slid silently open and he walked inside. He was presented with a holographic display that filled the far wall of the large room. A series of leather chairs faced the wall. He chose one at random and sat down. The wall swam before him, nauseatingly.

"Wichita data theft, 5th November," he said. The holographic wall jumped into life, the Ora logo quickly replaced with a matrix of possible functions, an empty assignment number field flashing in the top left corner.

"Please confirm assignment number, Officer Stilson." Stilson glanced at his arm piece.

"7655376-87." There was the briefest of pauses.

"Thank you. Assignment number confirmed. How can the server lab assist you today?"

"Show me all the known hackers and non-company techs in that zone on the day of the crime." It was at least three years into his career before he stopped saying "please" to the server lab computer. The ridicule of his fellow officers had helped with that. Sᴇaʀ*ᴄh the (ꜰind)ɴʘvel.nᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

"Listing now." A patchwork of faces appeared over the screen, each overlaid with a name, Grid ident, date of birth and connection tally. Lines of varying thickness joined the faces like a giant spider's web, indicating the strength of their social connection to each other. Stilson scanned the list. As his eyes reached the end of a row or column, the screen automatically adjusted to show new data.

"Are there any in this list with previous involvement with, or employment at, an OraCorp facility?"

"No, Officer." An inside job just started looking a little less likely.

"Did any of these people Grid-out around the time of the crime?" After another brief pause, the list reduced to show just one face. A studded sneer, a hawk-like nose, dark-ringed eyes, a greasy mohawk.

"Tanner Griffen. Of course it is."

"I'm sorry Officer?" The computer asked, not recognising a command.

"That will be all, thank you."

"Have a productive day Officer." The screen span back to the Ora logo and awaited its next visitor.

Back on the auto-walkway, Stilson reflected on how many times Tanner Griffen had slipped through Security's fingers. It wouldn't have been so bad if he'd committed a crime then gone to ground, but the cocky little punk made a point of proudly boasting about his superiority every single time. And people listened to him. At last count Griffen had three million connections. The average person was lucky to get a couple of hundred thousand in their lifetime. This meant his voice was loud and every time he mocked Security he mocked Stilson.

They'd never actually met face to face, which wasn't surprising. People like Griffen had automatic alerts set to keep them as far away from Security forces as possible at all times. You couldn't sneak up on anyone, or take them by surprise anymore. This was both a good and a bad thing, depending on who was doing the sneaking up.

Nonetheless, Griffen was a prize. Stilson's thoughts turned instantly to his own reputation, promotion, bonuses, social standing. He pictured the Grid proclamations he would make when he finally nailed Tanner Griffen, self-styled super criminal and snot-nosed irritant, once and for all.

He strode purposefully back to the cubicle he shared with Doherty.

"You ever heard of one Tanner Griffen?" he asked.

"Hacker. Also dabbles in data theft, kidnap, blackmail, ransom, identity theft, grand theft auto, racketeering and illegal gambling." Doherty had finished his sandwich and was idly leafing through sports scores on his arm piece. He didn't look up.

"I'll bet my badge he's our missing perp in the Wichita data grab," said Stilson.

"We don't wear badges, Stilson - you're thinking of the police."

Stilson ignored the remark.

"Anyway, are you sure?" continued Doherty, "this looks like a pretty standard smash and grab as far as I can see. The Sec guys on site are blaming faulty sensors or sun spots or something for letting one perp get away scot free with a bunch of other people's info."

"That was no faulty sensor. To hide from the Grid for the amount of time he needed to get in, get the memory cards and get out needed something pretty advanced, and pretty expensive."

Doherty grimaced. "Probably too expensive for a low-level hacker?"

"Griffen is anything but low-level. He acts like a punk, but this guy knows what he's doing, and he's been known to hang with some pretty serious players."

"Remember when he hacked the television networks and broadcast 10 minutes of his own ass, at primetime?" asked Doherty, grinning like a schoolboy.

"Sure I do. That was a major embarrassment to Security. We copped a lot of heat in the media for not putting him away for that."

Doherty nodded, switching his expression to one of grim determination. "So what's the plan?"

"Griffen winked out shortly after reaching the roof. According to the report, on-site Sec say he was whisked away in a white unmarked auto-drone. The timing was perfect."

"Sounds a bit too slick?"

"That's what I thought, it seems too organised to be the work of an opportunistic hacker trying his luck. Some of these guys are so high on various household chemicals they're not even afraid of death, let alone getting shocked and locked."

"Griffen a tweaker?" asked Doherty.

"Not according to his data. Drug related keywords don't appear in his social updates, and he doesn't connect with any known dealers regularly enough to be scoring."

"Is that good or bad?"

Stilson shook his head. "Bad. Tweakers make mistakes and get desperate. Griffen is unlikely to do either. But - he is missing."

"Missing? How does that work? Where's his avatar?"

"Nowhere."

Doherty screwed up his face. There was only one reason an avatar would be removed from the Grid view. "He's dead?"

"Can't guarantee that either."

"If his avatar has gone, he's dead. He must be."

"Did you have a little snooze during basic training, Doherty? Usually there's a 48 hour window for an avatar to remain geographically static before death is declared, provided all life signs have ceased to transmit from the user's arm piece. In Griffen's case, his life signs and avatar disappeared at exactly the same time."

Doherty leant back in his chair and knitted his fingers behind his head.

"Tanner Griffen, where are you?"

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