Tag - A Technothriller (52 page)
Read Tag - A Technothriller Online
Authors: Simon Royle
Tags: #Science Fiction, #conspiracy, #Technothriller, #thriller, #Near future thriller
The awful irony? The reason my father was killed was not because he was Bo Vinh’s advisor, but because he was investigating who assassinated Bo Vinh. And here I am. Parallels in life are easy to draw, and once drawn are hard to shake off. They cast a shadow across your thoughts.
I shifted Philip gently over to my right arm, and kept rocking slowly. I smiled, thinking of Abdul’s gift. A good chair to sit and think in is an essential tool. He knew a thing or two that man.
Gabriel would be blamed. The extent of the blame hard to say, but at the least, Annika was killed on his watch. I still felt angry about that. I was calm enough to observe that I was still angry about that and irrationally so. There would be an explanation, and if you had faith in Gabriel as I did, then it would be a good one. Still I’m human, and like all humans, anger is a chemical in my body initiated by a primal switch in my brain.
I looked over to the bluff on my right. Trying to judge the time by the cast of the shadows on the jungle and red rock. It was probably noon. An earthy smell reached my nose. I smiled and rising from my meditations went inside the house. I laid Philip down on the soft mat we had put over the hardwood floors and removed his nappy. Picking him up I took him over to the sanitizer and popped him in. Thirty secs later it switched off and that was a signal for Philip to start crying. Milk. We had installed a small fridge in the upstairs room to keep his mother’s milk in. I placed it on the heat pad, set to simulate the warmth of Mariko’s fresh milk. As soon as he smelled the milk he stopped crying.
After I got Philip dressed, I picked him up, taking the milk with me. I needed to get back on the web. I needed to find Gabriel and some answers. The air felt hot and heavy. I leaned out and took a quick look up at the sky. Dark grey, the sun hidden, the white sand of the beach subdued. It was going to rain and soon. Far out to sea, across the now white-topped waves, lighting flicked above the horizon. I went into my study.
I pulled the Siteazy across and laid Philip on it, looking at him, trying to keep my thoughts and feelings cloaked. A child should not know grief. I folded my arms on the edge of the Siteazy, gave him the milk, and reached over to my Devstick to bring it closer.
“Dev, show Philip our solar system. Project it about thirty cents above his head. Make the planets bright colors, please, Dev.” Philip loved this image swirling slowly around his head. When he first saw it, he had cooed, also for the first time. “Play ‘Cada Beijo’ for him, softly, please, Dev, a bit lower, good.” Philip’s eyes tracked the movement of the planets as he suckled the milk. Life goes on. We eat, we sleep, we talk, we touch, we reproduce, we die. ‘We are born astride a grave’. Ibsen. A gloomy thought. Philip was staring at me, colored balls ignored.
“It’s OK, my boy. Daddy’s just feeling a little sad. A good friend passed from my life today. I don’t know where she is now, and I’m just a little sad about that.” I sent him some very light theta waves, low bandwidth, a slow calming pulse, and stroked his cheek. His eyes closed. Beethoven concerto number five in E flat minor, as the Devscreen showed, played softly.
I sat back in my chair and looked at the Dev cockpit arrayed before me, like a conductor in front of his orchestra, about to pick up the baton, but did I want to play? I glanced down at Philip, sleeping, peacefully, his biometrics on the devscreen next to Beethoven’s meta data. I dared not look at my biometrics, there are some things better left alone.
“Dev - monitor Philip. If he starts to wake give me an alert.”
“Yes, Mark.”
“Give me a single view of my current online status. Tag all mentions of Gabriel’s, Annika’s, and my name.” I had pre-configured this view of my connected status: all mentions of my name, number of mentions by locality, frequency, topics, shown on a global basis - high frequency mentions and large numbers of people, in deeper colors.
“Break out the stats for number of mentions by name. No, move it to the far left. Good, yes.” The stats showed Annika was way ahead of either Gabriel or me. In a league of her own. I ran a distant third to Gabriel. “Give me a breakdown of topics on Gabriel, put it under the stats.” The graphics swirling and moving with different colors bore an uncanny resemble to Philip’s virtual solar system mobile.
Gabriel’s mentions spiked. My Devstick buzzed.
“Mark, it is Dietrich Flederson. Do you wish to connect?”
I let out a long breath and didn’t look at the topics under Gabriel’s name. I didn’t want to see what might be there.
“Connect - voice only.”
“Yes, Mark. Connecting now.”
“Mark, I have some bad news.” Dietrich was never one for small talk.
“Yes?”
“I wanted to come and see you personally. Unfortunately the feeds already have the news, hence my call.”
“I understand, Dietrich. What is the news?”
“Gabriel and Martine were with Annika.”
I had a brother, my true blood brother, for a year, exactly. A year ago today, about this time, I had met Gabriel for the first time. I had been angry with him, this morning on the beach. He was already dead when I was angry with him.
“Mark?”
“Yes, Dietrich. I’m still here. Do you have any idea who did this?”
“Not yet, no, but we will find them. I promise you that.”
“You mean like Bo Vinh or my father?” I sighed into the silence. “I’m sorry, that was unfair of me.”
“I understand. Forget it. I will try my best to catch who did this, but we have no leads at all. Nothing. If there is any news I will contact you.”
“Thank you for calling me.”
“Take care, Mark.”
“Dev?”
“Yes, Mark?”
“Turn off everything except Philip’s mobile and the music.”
The image in front of me disappeared. I looked down at Philip sleeping. ‘Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata’ playing softly as the solar system swirled above his head.
We’re it now, just you and me. The last of the Zumar blood.
A bright flash lit the room. I counted. One. Two. Three. Thunder cracked, and settled into a rumble. About five kiloms away. I picked Philip up and went back out to the deck. Lightning and thunder rolled as one. The storm was on top of the house. Either side of the deck palms flapped and clacked together as the front moved in. Big round, dark spots appeared on the steps to the beach. The rain came thick and fast. Flattening the sand with its force and hiding the sea from view.
I sat down in the blue chair. I wanted Mariko to come back. I didn’t want Philip to get this feeling from me. He held me in check, a restraint on my emotions. White-hot anger fueled by grief.
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