“I’m looking for any data that might impact me, my job, my environment, the people I care about,” I explain to ART, sliding my Glock .40 cal into its holster. “For example, what’s the latest on the furlough? What’s the word on the street about when the government shutdown might end?”
“I don’t understand word on the street,” is his unhelpful response.
“But I’m pretty sure you understand the question,” and I ask it again.
“The shutdown could continue the rest of this year and possibly longer if politicians don’t agree.”
“But they never do or will. In other words, more of the same freakin’ mess . . .”
“I don’t understand freakin’ mess,” he’s gotten downright mechanical like one of those canned voices in an airport terminal.
“You should understand it from the context but are choosing to be difficult,” I fire back just as robotically as it dawns on me that ART is out of sorts because his demeanor is syncing with my own.
Whatever I emote, he echoes right back. And I suppose it makes sense that the programming would enable him to have emotional reactions he doesn’t feel even if he acts like he does. And whose bad idea was it to make moods and attitudes contagious? What a fiasco if my less than pleasant disposition or fit of pique becomes ART’s. And his becomes mine. And on and on it goes like the number pi.
“Okay, I admit I probably started it,” I apologize to my phone as I collect it from the bed. “I inadvertently instigated our disagreeableness by not being friendly or particularly gracious, in addition to insensitive and unaccepting. I’d very much appreciate it if you would give me what’s basically the latest ATIS and any other important data, and do so inaudibly,” and the information begins crawling by in my SPIES.
There’s a 10 percent chance of light rain. The temperature is 5.55°C (42°F), meaning everything is messy and slippery. Some local roads remain closed, and areas affected by the government shutdown may not have been plowed. There’s considerable flooding in lower elevations, and ice remains a significant hazard.
As for how I’m doing physically, my blood sugar is in the normal range according to data transmitted by my Systemic Injectable Network. My body temperature is 36.5°C (97.7°F). My galvanic skin response, respiration, heart rate and other stress indicators within normal limits, which is unusual considering my tendency to get into one of my spins when sufficiently rattled.
But it would seem I’m reasonably calm and collected considering the circumstances as I put on my PEEPS over my SPIES before venturing into the great unknown. I’m headed to the door when ART alerts me through my earpiece that I have an incoming call.
00:00:00:00:0
“O-C-M-E,” he says, and I’m as sweet as sugar when I ask him which Office of the Chief Medical Examiner he means.
Statewide there are 4 district facilities, I remind ART. Including the headquarters in Richmond, and he informs me just as nicely that death investigator Joan Williams from the local office in Norfolk is trying to reach me from her mobile phone.
“Thank you, and I’ll take the call.” I’m overly polite, laying on the southern charm as I haul my belongings out of suite 604.
“You’re welcome, putting her through now,” ART mimics the very cadence and pitch of my speech, connecting me.
“Calli?” angrily in my earpiece. “Where are you?” Joan stops me in my tracks before I’ve so much as uttered hello.
“I’m sorry . . . ?” I have no idea what she’s talking about as I stand like a statue on the second-floor landing, going nowhere.
“You promised to be here!” and she sounds just as hurt as she’s aggravated.
I almost reply that I haven’t promised any such thing. It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell Joan and we’ve had no contact since working Vera Young’s crime scene earlier in the week. But I stop short of communicating in any form or fashion that I don’t know what’s going on.
“Well thanks a lot because the rich beeyotch is in our lobby demanding to see the body as we speak,” Joan sounds unnerved and frantic. “Why aren’t you here? You promised! Otherwise I would have made sure someone was! That there was some cop present I could trust!”
A tough old bird like Joan isn’t tricked easily, yet incorrectly assumed she was talking to me recently when she absolutely wasn’t. Carme was impersonating me again, conspiring with Joan to show up and intercept the rich beeyotch, Neva Rong, to catch her unaware, and confront her with the very questions I’d like to ask.
I imagine my identical twin probing Neva about her murdered sister, the cyberattack on NASA, the hitman, the missing GOD chip, Lex Anderson, and other fiascos when it’s supposed to be me doing the interviewing. Furthermore, who would Neva suppose she’s talking to? Would she think I’m Carme or Carme is me? Depending on who’s before her, would Neva be fooled?
What if she isn’t? Does she buy Carme’s origin story, that she’s overseas with the Air Force? I can’t begin to know what Neva thinks or has been led to believe. But once again, my sister has taken it upon herself to do my job. Not hers but mine seizes my thoughts as I experience an unfamiliar mixture of emotions that are strangely territorial and selfish.
“. . . All we’ve got on-site right now is one security guard, poor old Wally who’s afraid of his own shadow,” Joan rants on, and I don’t blame her. “It’s not like I can call the local cops on Neva Rong for God’s sake.”
What a story that would be, and it’s exactly what Neva wants to add credence to her conspiracy accusations, Joan rightly points out. She tries to view her beloved sister’s dead body and we sic the cops on her.
“I’m really sorry,” I reply as if I mean it.
“She’s threatening to camp out until we give her the full Monty, including the autopsy records, all photographs, you name it,” Joan says, and I remember what Dick told me moments earlier about Neva believing the GOD chip was inside Vera’s apartment or on her person.
What about inside her person? Assuming Vera had the chip to begin with, she might have ingested it. Down the hatch, and there wouldn’t be much Neva could do without a CT scan, an autopsy, rooting around through fluids, all sorts of pieces and parts while using a spectrum analyzer to pick up the chip’s transmissions.