SmackDown: MadMike's Revenge!

Round 5: FantasyLand - @Reffster

FantasyLand

by Reffster

December 19th 2165

They say cops shouldn't keep diaries. Well, 'they' can kiss my ass. Who else I'm I going to tell this shit to? Besides, when it's encoded and encrypted to hell and back, with all that military-grade shit the IT department is always crapping on about, it's not like anybody's going to read the thing. Especially given I keep it in my head. It's about time I got something out of all the tech the force installed in there.

The shrink at work says to me, "You should talk to your spouse or significant other." Yeah, sounds nice in theory, but when your spouse is significantly banging someone other than yourself, it's a little harder in practice.

I could talk things out with my partner, I guess. Only thing is, first I'd have to wait for him to finish banging my wife.

So, single, messed-up and no-one to talk to except my diary. It's like high school all over again.

Here we go. Dear Diary. Today I get a call to attend a homicide. Not that surprising, given I'm a homicide detective. But what a homicide. After fifteen years in the job, I thought I'd seen it all. I thought wrong. Not even those lame-ass virtual-immersion training runs at the academy were anything like this.

The first interesting thing about the case is the body. More specifically, the lack of a body. Or most of the body, anyway. There's a head, a leg and a foot (ie, two feet altogether and one leg (just to be clear (because I hate being vague (which must be the cop in me (and you've no idea how sick that thought makes me feel (and now I've got to waste a minute of my life counting how many closing brackets I need)))))).

My wife tells me it's that kind of pedantic crap that made her leave. Go figure.

Anyway, so the first question about the body is, where's the rest of it? Cue forensics. Turns out the rest of it is everywhere - on the walls, on the ceiling, floating in the air, in our hair, etc. I think you get the picture. This guy was atomised. According to ballistics, only a fusion-pulse weapon could do that kind of damage. So not only is there dead guy up our noses, we also have a perp running around with military-grade firepower.

The second interesting thing is the identity of the victim. This isn't just any brain-hacked, cyber-wastoid junkie. Oh no. This is Eric Vanguard. When the CEO and biggest shareholder of the FantasyLand empire gets whacked in his own office, that's a big deal. The rest of my caseload just got a bad case of irrelevance-itis.

The third interesting thing is that the victim is able to give me a description of the killer. Which is not often the case in murder investigations. Particularly the ones where the victim is in pieces.

Being on the jaw-dropping end of the filthy-rich spectrum, Vanguard had some pretty advanced enhancements installed. Memory expanders, neural boosters, cognitive enhancers, all that crap. And the tech is so good that it keeps running for a while after Vanguard's body bites the dust.

Which is how I come to find myself chatting to a disembodied head. Just a regular day in the life of a big-city detective.

Well, not chatting, exactly. No lungs means no talking. Vanguard's head can't vocalise, but the implants in his head can text his replies to one of the holo-displays in his office. Weirdest conversation I've had for a while. And it's got some competition, I can tell you.

Weird, and as it turns out, not particularly useful. Most of what Vanguard has to say is along the lines of, "Oh crap, I'm gonna die," "Help me, please," and "Ouch." Understandable, but not really helpful. All I get before his lights go out is that the killer wore body-armour and a mask, and came in through the window. Which is impressive, given Vanguard's office is on the 240th floor. But we already figured that part out for ourselves - it's pretty hard to miss the cabling running from a nearby skyscraper to the ledge just outside the office.