Identity Theft and Other Stories Read online

  I walked around, looking at the artificial body from all angles. The replacement Hansen still had a bald spot, although its diameter had been reduced by half. And, interestingly, Hansen had opted for a sort of permanent designer-stubble look; the biological him was clean-shaven at the moment.

  Suddenly the simulacrum’s eyes opened. “Wow,” said a voice that was the same as the one I’d heard from the man next door. “That’s incredible.”

  “How do you feel, Mr. Hansen?” asked the male technician.

  “Fine,” he said. “Just fine.”

  “Good,” the technician said. “There’ll be some settling-in adjustments, of course. Let’s just check to make sure all your parts are working…”

  “And there it is,” said Cassandra, to me. “Simple as that.” She led me out of the room, back into the corridor.

  “Fascinating,” I said. I pointed at the left-hand door. “When do you take care of the original?”

  “That’s already been done. We do it in the chair.”

  I stared at the closed door, and I like to think I suppressed my shudder enough so that Cassandra was unaware of it. “All right,” I said. “I guess I’ve seen enough.”

  Cassandra looked disappointed. “Are you sure don’t want to look around some more?”

  “Why?” I said. “Is there anything else worth seeing?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Cassandra. “It’s a big place. Everything on this floor, everything downstairs…everything in the basement.”

  I blinked. “You’ve got a basement?” Almost no Martian buildings had basements; the permafrost layer was very hard to dig through.

  “Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes.” She paused, then looked away. “Of course, no one ever goes down there; it’s just storage.”

  “I’ll have a look,” I said.

  And that’s where I found him.

  He was lying behind some large storage crates, face down, a sticky pool of machine oil surrounding his head. Next to him was a fusion-powered jackhammer, the kind many of the fossil hunters had for removing surface rocks. And next to the jackhammer was a piece of good old-fashioned paper. On it, in block letters, was written, “I’m so sorry, Cassie. It’s just not the same.”

  It’s hard to commit suicide, I guess, when you’re a transfer. Slitting your wrists does nothing significant. Poison doesn’t work, and neither does drowning.

  But Joshua-never-anything-else-at-all-anymore Wilkins had apparently found a way. From the looks of it, he’d leaned back against the rough cement wall, and, with his strong artificial arms, had held up the jackhammer, placing its bit against the center of his forehead. And then he’d held down on the jackhammer’s twin triggers, letting the unit run until it had managed to pierce through his titanium skull and scramble the soft material of his artificial brain. When his brain died, his thumbs let up on the triggers, and he dropped the jackhammer, then tumbled over himself. His head had twisted sideways when it hit the concrete floor. Everything below his eyebrows was intact; it was clearly the same face Cassandra Wilkins had shown me.

  I headed up the stairs and found Cassandra, who was chatting in her animated style with another customer.

  “Cassandra,” I said, pulling her aside. “Cassandra, I’m very sorry, but…”

  She looked at me, her green eyes wide. “What?”

  “I’ve found your husband. And he’s dead.”

  She opened her pretty mouth, closed it, then opened it again. She looked like she might fall over, even with gyroscopes stabilizing her. I put an arm around her shoulders, but she didn’t seem comfortable with it, so I let her go. “My…God,” she said at last. “Are you…are you positive?”

  “Sure looks like him,” I said.

  “My God,” she said again. “What…what happened?”

  No nice way to say it. “Looks like he killed himself.”

  A couple of Cassandra’s coworkers had come over, wondering what all the commotion was about. “What’s wrong?” asked one of them—the same Miss Takahashi I’d seen earlier.

  “Oh, Reiko,” said Cassandra. “Joshua is dead!”

  Customers were noticing what was going on, too. A burly flesh-and-blood man, with arms as thick around as most men’s legs, came across the room; he seemed to be the boss here. Reiko Takahashi had already drawn Cassandra into her arms—or vice-versa; I’d been looking away when it had happened—and was stroking Cassandra’s artificial hair. I let the boss do what he could to calm the crowd, while I used my commlink to call Mac and inform him of Joshua Wilkins’s suicide.

  Detective Dougal McCrae of New Klondike’s finest arrived about twenty minutes later, accompanied by two uniforms. “How’s it look, Alex?” Mac asked.

  “Not as messy as some of the biological suicides I’ve seen,” I said. “But it’s still not a pretty sight.”

  “Show me.”

  I led Mac downstairs. He read the note without picking it up.

  The burly man soon came down, too, followed by Cassandra Wilkins, who was holding her artificial hand to her artificial mouth.

  “Hello, again, Mrs. Wilkins,” said Mac, moving to interpose his body between her and the prone form on the floor. “I’m terribly sorry, but I’ll need you to make an official identification.”

  I lifted my eyebrows at the irony of requiring the next of kin to actually look at the body to be sure of who it was, but that’s what we’d gone back to with transfers. Privacy laws prevented any sort of ID chip or tracking device being put into artificial bodies. In fact, that was one of the many incentives to transfer; you no longer left fingerprints or a trail of identifying DNA everywhere you went.

  Cassandra nodded bravely; she was willing to accede to Mac’s request. He stepped aside, a living curtain, revealing the artificial body with the gaping head wound. She looked down at it. I’d expected her to quickly avert her eyes, but she didn’t; she just kept staring.

  Finally, Mac said, very gently, “Is that your husband, Mrs. Wilkins?”

  She nodded slowly. Her voice was soft. “Yes. Oh, my poor, poor Joshua…”

  Mac stepped over to talk to the two uniforms, and I joined them. “What do you do with a dead transfer?” I asked. “Seems pointless to call in the medical examiner.”

  By way of answer, Mac motioned to the burly man. The man touched his own chest and raised his eyebrows in the classic “Who, me?” expression. Mac nodded again. The man looked left and right, like he was crossing some imaginary road, and then came over. “Yeah?”

  “You seem to be the senior employee here,” said Mac. “Am I right?”

  The man nodded. “Horatio Fernandez. Joshua was the boss, but, yeah, I guess I’m in charge until head office sends somebody new out from Earth.”

  “Well,” said Mac, “you’re probably better equipped than we are to figure out the exact cause of death.”

  Fernandez gestured theatrically at the synthetic corpse, as if it were—well, not bleedingly obvious, but certainly apparent.

  Mac nodded. “It’s just a bit too pat,” he said, his voice lowered conspiratorially. “Implement at hand, suicide note.” He lifted his shaggy orange eyebrows. “I just want to be sure.”

  Cassandra had drifted over without Mac noticing, although of course I had. She was listening in.

  “Yeah,” said Fernandez. “Sure. We can disassemble him, check for anything else that might be amiss.”

  “No,” said Cassandra. “You can’t.”

  “I’m afraid it’s necessary,” said Mac, looking at her. His Scottish brogue always put an edge on his words, but I knew he was trying to sound gentle.

  “No,” said Cassandra, her voice quavering. “I forbid it.”

  Mac’s voice got a little firmer. “You can’t. I’m legally required to order an autopsy in every suspicious case.”

  Cassandra wheeled on Fernandez. “Horatio, I order you not to do this.”

  Fernandez blinked a few times. “Order?”

  Cassandra opened her mouth to say somethin
g more, then apparently thought better of it. Horatio moved closer to her, and put a hulking arm around her small shoulders. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll be gentle.” And then his face brightened a bit. “In fact, we’ll see what parts we can salvage—give them to somebody else; somebody who couldn’t afford such good stuff if it was new.” He smiled beatifically. “It’s what Joshua would have wanted.”

  The next day, I was sitting in my office, looking out the small window. The dust storm had ended. Out on the surface, rocks were strewn everywhere, like toys on a kid’s bedroom floor. My wrist commlink buzzed, and I looked at it in anticipation, hoping for a new case; I could use the solars. But the ID line said NKPD. I told the device to accept the call, and a little picture of Mac’s red-headed face appeared on my wrist. “Hey, Lomax,” he said. “Come on by the station, would you?”

  “What’s up?”

  The micro-Mac frowned. “Nothing I want to say over open airwaves.”

  I nodded. Now that the Wilkins case was over, I didn’t have anything better to do anyway. I’d only managed about seven billable hours, damnitall, and even that had taken some padding.

  I walked into the center along Ninth Avenue, entered the lobby of the police station, traded quips with the ineluctable Huxley, and was admitted to the back.

  “Hey, Mac,” I said. “What’s up?”

  “’Morning, Alex,” Mac said, rolling the R in “Morning.” “Come in; sit down.” He spoke to his desk terminal, and turned its monitor around so I could see it. “Have a look at this.”

  I glanced at the screen. “The report on Joshua Wilkins?” I said.

  Mac nodded. “Look at the section on the artificial brain.”

  I skimmed the text, until I found that part. “Yeah?” I said, still not getting it.

  “Do you know what ‘baseline synaptic web’ means?” Mac asked.

  “No, I don’t. And you didn’t either, smart-ass, until someone told you.”

  Mac smiled a bit, conceding that. “Well, there were lots of bits of the artificial brain left behind. And that big guy at NewYou—Fernandez, remember?—he really got into this forensic stuff, and decided to run it through some kind of instrument they’ve got there. And you know what he found?”

  “What?”

  “The brain stuff—the raw material inside the artificial skull—was pristine. It had never been imprinted.”

  “You mean no scanned mind had ever been transferred into that brain?”

  Mac folded his arms across his chest and leaned back in his chair. “Bingo.”

  I frowned. “But that’s not possible. I mean, if there was no mind in that head, who wrote the suicide note?”

  Mac lifted those shaggy eyebrows of his. “Who indeed?” he said. “And what happened to Joshua Wilkins’s scanned consciousness?”

  “Does anyone at NewYou but Fernandez know about this?” I asked.

  Mac shook his head. “No, and he’s agreed to keep his mouth shut while we continue to investigate. But I thought I’d clue you in, since apparently the case you were on isn’t really closed—and, after all, if you don’t make money now and again, you can’t afford to bribe me for favors.”

  I nodded. “That’s what I like about you, Mac. Always looking out for my best interests.”

  Perhaps I should have gone straight to see Cassandra Wilkins, and made sure that we both agreed that I was back on the clock, but I had some questions I wanted answered first. And I knew just who to turn to. Raoul Santos was the city’s top computer expert. I’d met him during a previous case, and we’d recently struck up a small-f friendship—we both shared the same taste in bootleg Earth booze, and he wasn’t above joining me at some of New Klondike’s sleazier saloons to get it. I used my commlink to call him, and we arranged to meet at the Bent Chisel.

  The Bent Chisel was a little hellhole off of Fourth Avenue, in the sixth concentric ring of buildings. I made sure I had my revolver, and that it was loaded, before I entered. The bartender was a surly man named Buttrick, a biological who had more than his fair share of flesh, and blood as cold as ice. He wore a sleeveless black shirt, and had a three-day growth of salt-and-pepper beard. “Lomax,” he said, acknowledging my entrance. “No broken furniture this time, right?”

  I held up three fingers. “Scouts honor.”

  Buttrick held up one finger.

  “Hey,” I said. “Is that any way to treat one of your best customers?”

  “My best customers,” said Buttrick, polishing a glass with a ratty towel, “pay their tabs.”

  “Yeah,” I said, stealing a page from Sgt. Huxley’s Guide to Witty Repartee. “Well.” I headed on in, making my way to the back of the bar, where my favorite booth was located. The waitresses here were topless, and soon enough one came over to see me. I couldn’t remember her name offhand, although we’d slept together a couple of times. I ordered a scotch on the rocks; they normally did that with carbon-dioxide ice here, which was much cheaper than water ice on Mars. A few minutes later, Raoul Santos arrived. “Hey,” he said, taking a seat opposite me. “How’s tricks?”

  “Fine,” I said. “She sends her love.”

  Raoul made a puzzled face, then smiled. “Ah, right. Cute. Listen, don’t quit your day job.”

  “Hey,” I said, placing a hand over my heart, “you wound me. Down deep, I’m a stand-up comic.”

  “Well,” said Raoul, “I always say people should be true to their innermost selves, but…”

  “Yeah?” I said. “What’s your innermost self?”

  “Me?” Raoul raised his eyebrows. “I’m pure genius, right to the very core.”

  I snorted, and the waitress reappeared. She gave me my glass. It was just a little less full than it should have been: either Buttrick was trying to curb his losses on me, or the waitress was miffed that I hadn’t acknowledged our former intimacy. Raoul placed his order, talking directly into the woman’s breasts. Boobs did well in Mars gravity; hers were still perky even though she had to be almost forty.

  “So,” said Raoul, looking over steepled fingers at me. “What’s up?” His face consisted of a wide forehead, long nose, and receding chin; it made him look like he was leaning forward even when he wasn’t.

  I took a swig of my drink. “Tell me about this transferring game.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Raoul. “Fascinating stuff. Thinking of doing it?”

  “Maybe someday,” I said.

  “You know, it’s supposed to pay for itself within three mears,” he said, “’cause you no longer have to pay life-support tax after you’ve transferred.”

  I was in arrears on that, and didn’t like to think about what would happen if I fell much further behind. “That’d be a plus,” I said. “What about you? You going to do it?”

  “Sure. I want to live forever; who doesn’t? ’Course, my dad won’t like it.”

  “Your dad? What’s he got against it?”

  Raoul snorted. “He’s a minister.”

  “In whose government?” I asked.

  “No, no. A minister. Clergy.”

  “I didn’t know there were any of those left, even on Earth,” I said.

  “He is on Earth, but, yeah, you’re right. Poor old guy still believes in souls.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Really?”

  “Yup. And because he believes in souls, he has a hard time with this idea of transferring consciousness. He would say the new version isn’t the same person.”

  I thought about what the supposed suicide note said. “Well, is it?”

  Raoul rolled his eyes. “You, too? Of course it is! The mind is just software—and since the dawn of computing, software has been moved from one computing platform to another by copying it over, then erasing the original.”

  I frowned, but decided to let that go for the moment. “So, if you do transfer, what would you have fixed in your new body?”

  Raoul spread his arms. “Hey, man, you don’t tamper with perfection.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “
Sure. Still, how much could you change things? I mean, say you’re a midget; could you choose to have a normal-sized body?”

  “Sure, of course.”

  I frowned. “But wouldn’t the copied mind have trouble with your new size?”

  “Nah,” said Raoul. The waitress returned. She bent over far enough while placing Raoul’s drink on the table that her breast touched his bare forearm; she gave me a look that said, “See what you’re missing, tiger?” When she was gone, Raoul continued. “See, when we first started copying consciousness, we let the old software from the old mind actually try to directly control the new body. It took months to learn how to walk again, and so on.”

  “Yeah, I read something about that, years ago,” I said.

  Raoul nodded. “Right. But now we don’t let the copied mind do anything but give orders. The thoughts are intercepted by the new body’s main computer. That unit runs the body. All the transferred mind has to do is think that it wants to pick up this glass, say.” He acted out his example, and took a sip, then winced in response to the booze’s kick. “The computer takes care of working out which pulleys to contract, how far to reach, and so on.”

  “So you could indeed order up a body radically different from your original?” I said.

  “Absolutely,” said Raoul. He looked at me through hooded eyes. “Which, in your case, is probably the route to go.”

  “Damn,” I said.

  “Hey, don’t take it seriously,” he said, taking another sip, and allowing himself another pleased wince. “Just a joke.”

  “I know,” I said. “It’s just that I was hoping it wasn’t that way. See, this case I’m on: the guy I’m supposed to find owns the NewYou franchise here.”

  “Yeah?” said Raoul.

  “Yeah, and I think he deliberately transferred his scanned mind into some body other than the one that he’d ordered up for himself.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “He faked the death of the body that looked like him—and, I think he’d planned to do that all along, because he never bothered to order up any improvements to his face. I think he wanted to get away, but make it look like he was dead, so no one would be looking for him anymore.”