It Looks Like You're Writing a Letter
Chapter 2

Stilson had worked for OraCorp's SecurityServices for almost fifteen years. Before joining, he had trained in the fieldsof law, information technology and psychology.

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

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

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

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

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

He knew when this assignment hit his armpiece 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'tthe long arm of the law, it was the drone a hundred miles up, scanning you whenyou thought you were invisible.

The tech supplied to Security wasn't toodissimilar to that available to the average person on the street. Stilson's armpiece had a few extra features and he had access privileges to a few additionaldatabases, but the public product Ora offered was so mature that there reallywasn't much it couldn't do.

The difference was in how you used it.

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

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

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

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

Stilson pulled back his left sleeve andswiped his hand to open a dossier. He silently scrolled through the data on hisOra-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 yourpartner some love!" Doherty faked going in for a hug, making Stilsonrecoil like an opposing magnet. Doherty laughed and threw himself down in achair on the other side of Stilson's desk. He was unkempt and eating a sandwichthat dripped mayonnaise on the desk. He made an apologetic face and wiped itoff with the sleeve of his slim cut brown suit. "I heard there's a newcase. What we got?"

Stilson looked at the other officer. Heoften wondered how he ended up partners with this man. For five years they'dbeen joined at the hip, but he had no idea how this partnership was deemed tobe 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 wasunusual. Their combined arrest record was above average, so he just went withit.

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

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

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

"It's a dark one."

Doherty exhaled loudly. "Man, we'venot had a dark one for huh... how long? Three years? It'll almost be like realpolice work Stilson!"

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

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

Stilson sighed. He was trying to make aneffort not to frown as much. He'd just hit forty and while still a handsome manin 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 signhe 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 himexasperating but couldn't quite manage to actually dislike him.

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

Doherty nodded, his face full of ham andcheese.

The server lab was a short auto-walkwaytrip from Stilson's cubicle in the main office building. There were somecomputing tasks too heavy for even the most powerful OraCorp-supplied armpiece. The amount of data collected every second was by now too huge to computeso everyone had stopped trying. Most computing power now was used for spottingpatterns and behaviours, connecting these dots and making useful knowledge outof raw data.

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

Stilson activated the heavy steel doorusing his arm piece. It slid silently open and he walked inside. He waspresented with a holographic display that filled the far wall of the largeroom. A series of leather chairs faced the wall. He chose one at random and satdown. The wall swam before him, nauseatingly.

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

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

"7655376-87." There was thebriefest of pauses.

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

"Show me all the known hackers andnon-company techs in that zone on the day of the crime." It was at leastthree years into his career before he stopped saying "please" to theserver lab computer. The ridicule of his fellow officers had helped with that.

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

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

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

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

"Tanner Griffen. Of course it is."

"I'm sorry Officer?" The computerasked, 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 reflectedon how many times Tanner Griffen had slipped through Security's fingers. Itwouldn't have been so bad if he'd committed a crime then gone to ground, butthe cocky little punk made a point of proudly boasting about his superiorityevery single time. And people listened to him. At last count Griffen had threemillion connections. The average person was lucky to get a couple of hundredthousand in their lifetime. This meant his voice was loud and every time hemocked Security he mocked Stilson.

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

Nonetheless, Griffen was a prize. Stilson'sthoughts turned instantly to his own reputation, promotion, bonuses, socialstanding. He pictured the Grid proclamations he would make when he finallynailed Tanner Griffen, self-styled super criminal and snot-nosed irritant, onceand for all.

He strode purposefully back to the cubiclehe 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 andillegal gambling." Doherty had finished his sandwich and was idly leafingthrough sports scores on his arm piece. He didn't look up.

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

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

Stilson ignored the remark.

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

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

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

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

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

"Sure I do. That was a majorembarrassment to Security. We copped a lot of heat in the media for not puttinghim away for that."

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

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

"Sounds a bit too slick?"

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

"Griffen a tweaker?" askedDoherty.

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

"Is that good or bad?"

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

"Missing? How does that work? Where'shis avatar?"

"Nowhere."

Doherty screwed up his face. There was onlyone 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. Hemust be."

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

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

"Tanner Griffen, where are you?"