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Friday, July 29, 2016

Maintenon Mystery # Eight. An Excerpt.





Louis Shalako


L’Auberge Richard was in the village just up the road. St. Etienne was a crossroads, in an area of prosperous farms, occasional manor houses and quiet rural prosperity. The village might have had a population of three or four hundred.

In something a little unusual to the men from the big city, the parking lot was vast in initial impression, about half full of automobiles of recent make and some of them were very high-end. Parisian restaurants so seldom had a yard, complete with a shade tree steps away from the kitchen door. Going by the curtains and planter boxes hanging on the window-ledges, the proprietor lived on the second floor.

The trio stepped into the cool, dim light of the interior, made more intimate as the curtains had been drawn against the glare from the noon-day sun.

The buzz of conversation didn’t let up. Utensils clattered against crockery, there was a buzz from the kitchen, at the back and with access doors on each end of the wall. Waiters were attending to tables and then going to a small kiosk and handing their slips to some anonymous order-writer sitting behind it with sweat beading up on his forehead. In short, a busy and popular establishment.

The place was packed. Some tables had empty places, but all the tables would appear to be occupied.

“Damn. I was afraid of this—” Larue had sort of forgotten how popular the auberge was in high summer, and the fact was that it was the only place in town suitable for such august visitors.

There was a huddle by the door, a queue to get a table, and coincidentally, as a small party arose from their table, bus-boys pounced, harried but efficient. Even that would take a little time, with two of them working. There were several parties ahead of them.

He gave Maintenon a nervous look. Larue had of course read about a few of Maintenon’s cases, as many folks in the surrounding areas took the city paper, at least on a Sunday. He was one of them.

There was so little going on locally. Some items were just plain unobtainable here, and so they read the advertisements just as avidly as any sensational or scandalous bit on the front page.

There was also the radio—not having a local station of their own, people sat in the parlour most evenings and listened to football or music or whatever radio plays they favoured. That all came from the big city too.

Tailler shrugged. Maintenon was a tough old bird. If nothing else, he would be polite, although he was probably suffering as much as anyone. It was well after one o’clock.

His own stomach was gnawing on his backbone.

“I wouldn’t worry too much about it.”

Laurent Espitailler, (Wiki).
A man in a suit came out of the back room, and Larue waved his hand.

“Richard. Richard.”

Richard’s face lit up. Grabbing a handful of menus, he hustled on over, a smile lighting up his slightly pudgy features and extending his free hand for a big handshake.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen, please. My apologies—you should have telephoned, but it’s not a problem. You can sit at my table.”

Opening up the small half-gate in turned and varnished maple, he gave a firm nod to the maitre’d and led them to an alcove at the back, on the far right, with a bar and a serving hatch right there where the boss could keep an eye on things…Richard was very much a hands-on manager.

***

Larue attempted to make introductions, but Monsieur Richard had recognized Maintenon right away. His enthusiasm, downright embarrassing.

“And this is Detective Emile Tailler.”

The pair shook hands and then Richard gave a quick, stiff little bow and a curt wave to a waiting server.

They settled in, the nearest customers a scant ten feet away, as yet seemingly incurious but that could change.

Tailler cleared his throat.

“I suggest we keep business talk to a minimum. Right, sir? We don’t know anything anyways, not until we get the reports.”

Larue glanced at Maintenon, who was opening up the menu for a look as the waiter hovered at his elbow.

Maintenon put it down.

“Oh, I don’t know.” A faint grin passed over his face. “What else do we have to talk about?”

Larue’s head bobbed.

“What about the, er, gentleman? I understand that you know him from before?”

Maintenon sighed.

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

It was a long story, or so the tone would seem to imply.

“Now, what are we going to eat?’

The waiter spoke.

“If I might suggest, gentlemen…”

Arnaud 25, based on unverified copyright claims. (Wiki).
***

“Marko Dubzek. Hmn.” Where to begin? “Marko Dubzek operates, or operated, a known child-brothel in Paris.”

“Ah.”

Tailler sat up a bit straighter. So far, no one was paying them any attention, and Maintenon’s voice was low, but still clear and audible over the crowd.

“Here’s the thing. We could never get anything to stick. And we tried—charges were brought against him a few years ago. For one thing, he could afford a good lawyer, a very good one. An expensive one. And yet we were pretty sure that he owned the building. He must have had some idea of what was going on, and probably bankrolled it. People talk after all. The brothel was very expensive, very exclusive. The department had it under surveillance. We had people working inside. It was a long-term operation…”

“And, Inspector?” This was Tailler.

This was before his time, and it was news to him that Maintenon had ever pulled that kind of duty.

Gilles nodded.

“We managed to shut it down. But. We found a series of shell companies, all leading back to a big property management company whose head offices are located in Zurich. Switzerland. And under their laws, we didn’t get any further. They’re very circumspect. They wouldn’t tell us a damned thing. They kept referring us to their legal counsel, who kept referring to privacy laws. We eventually let it drop. Dubzek spent a night in jail, nothing more. Our sources said he owned the place. If anyone made trouble, he would send someone after them. This was a certain Dubois character. He was the enforcer, and he had a little crew all of his own. We had victims, and no one willing to testify. In the criminal underworld, they all know each other—at least anyone of consequence, anyone who has, ah, been around for any length of time. Anyone that messed with Dubzek’s operation found out the hard way that he wasn’t messing around.”

“Really! A child brothel operator…”

Tailler nodded.

“Right, Larue. But don’t forget, there’s big money involved…right, Inspector?”

“Yes. Ultimately, they’re all paying off somebody, and one would suppose overhead is high in any such business. The thing is, we shut them down, and the ones we missed, sometimes very small fry indeed, run off and set up somewhere else the very next day. It’s fairly organized, at least it seems so, in that they’re very hard to keep down. Even the victims, children in some cases, return to the same work, even after we had intervened. Or attempted to.”

“And Dubzek was on vacation…in a nudist camp.” Larue swallowed.

Tailler eyed Maintenon. The gentlemen just across from them was finally having a look. 
Their voices might have unconsciously risen.

Then, his concerns were alleviated when the other guy’s mouth opened.

“…we’re looking at a bumper crop on the wheat this year. The thing is last year, the harvest was in by September. The thing with winter wheat is to get it in the ground early…” His companion, an attractive-enough woman in her low forties, nodded knowledgeably.

Tailler turned away.

“We’ll have the film soon enough, sir.”

Larue slowly subsided in his seat, finally able to relax a bit. These guys were human, after all.

“Yes, Tailler. Yes. Ah. Beer.”

Their server was back with a tray of glasses and one ice-cold pitcher.

***

Caradea, (Wiki).
Gilles made a couple of calls from the phone in the vestibule.

The first was back to the unit.

It was Levain who picked up.

“Hey, Gilles. How’s it going?”

“Not that well, Andre. I reckon we’ll be back tonight, and then come back here tomorrow. How are things there?”

“Busy as usual. We have a few more cases. Nothing special. So.”

“Ah, yes. So. I want you to pull every item, on our deceased. Have that ready for me when I get back.”

“Marko Dubzek.”

“Yes.”

“Anything else.”

“No. I’ll talk to you tomorrow morning, if you’re around.”

“All right, Gilles.”

Maintenon hung up and dialed again, reading the phone number of Number Eighteen out of his notebook and cursing when the thing just rang and rang and rang.

A proper cop would pick it up, play dumb and see who it was—


END

Saturday, July 23, 2016

What Will Virtual Reality Look Like in the Future?



"In the slums of the future, virtual reality junkies satisfy their violent impulses in online entertainment. An expert player discovers that the line between games and reality is starting to fade away. 3DAR’s latest short film explores the frightening potential of our next technological revolution. Behind the scenes coming soon! Stay connected, but not too much ;)"



Commentary by Louis Shalako




What does the future of virtual reality look like?

It’s a complex question and one well worth asking.

But when the cat is scratching at the door to come in and it looks like a Pokemon, that would be one logical outcome for those with the desire and the cost of admission to a whole new world, one that is an artificial overlay on all that is real.

In Vernor Vinge’s award-winning Rainbow’s End, people wear ‘augmented reality’ glasses and other hardware, which allows them to superimpose whatever gloss they want upon their present surroundings. In a case like that, one person might live in a perpetual Disneyland, while another might prefer a world where every person or object is modeled on the Flinstones. If you like Clint Eastwood and scenes of people on horseback riding across the Painted Desert, you will be able to superimpose that sort of thing onto your present circumstances. A really good system would give everyone a western drawl. 

You could take a really interesting vacation and never even have to leave home.

In a world of increasingly grim inequalities, virtual reality might mean that whatever shoes you’re wearing look like Guccis rather than a ratty old pair of runners, long since due for replacement. When you take off the goggs or shut down the implant, reality comes back. 

But then, reality has always been perception--and now we will be able to control those perceptions a little better than we could before.

In a proper game-space, where all the machines, ‘wearables’ or implants even, would all be talking to each other, how we present ourselves to others would be a matter of choice, (just as it is to some degree now). The other person, similarly-equipped, may see that we are wearing Gucci footwear when really, we’re not.

People of all ages are sort of living in the Pokemon Go world now. They’re not even wearing special goggles. They seem intent enough on the relatively small screens on their smart-phones, to the extent that they’re stepping out in front of buses and falling off cliffs already.

They’re walking around with their faces down and their attention elsewhere. Virtual reality might be somewhat less dangerous because it will be totally immersive. In this virtual future, a person might choose to have city buses appear as charging rhinos. In a virtual world, one would hope that peripheral vision would be roughly as good as our own natural vision. The odds are that we won’t be stepping out in front too many charging rhinos, chugging diesel fumes and squealing the brakes, going down Main Street U.S.A. anytime soon. Let’s hope not, anyways.

Virtual reality is not just for fun and games. Scientists will use virtual reality in a number of ways.

Sensorama, 1950s. Photo Minecraftsyco, (Wiki.)
A robot equipped with enough sensors will be able to show all angles as it enters a nuclear reactor facility under meltdown and show outside observers exactly what’s going on in there.

Observers will be able to slip on a headset and look up, down, all around at no risk to themselves.

With improved medical imaging systems, a surgeon might be able to ‘make himself really small’ with virtual reality. They will be able to stand beside a tumour deep inside the brain and direct laser beams, micro-scalpels, or a small cluster of nano-bots to more accurately excise a tumor for example.

Soldiers will train on virtual reality renditions of sensitive targets without having to build an expensive, and rather insecure mock-up, which will become increasingly difficult to hide or camouflage from space-based observation as time goes on.

I have minimal experience with virtual reality. A few years ago, a buddy had a set of FatShark goggles and a camera aboard a model airplane. The aircraft was equipped with a video transmitter, and he had an antenna and recording unit on the ground, with the goggles plugged into the system.

He could fly the plane from the point of view of the aircraft itself—the only real complication being that when he swiveled or panned the camera, tilted it up or down or whatever, it was easy to lose that centred, forward view. The field of view was also quite small. There was a learning curve and it involved not just adrenalin, but some disorientation as well. The field of view is limited, but makers are continually improving the product. When you move your head inside of a proper game-space, the view changes, just like in real life.

I was wearing the goggles when he finally brought it in for a landing. With the ground, real enough, coming up at me, I literally braced my feet for impact and tottered back and forth, heart pounding, as the machine hit the grass.

It’s also pretty amazing when the plane is rolled, looped or spun. Reality, or a real model airplane flying in a real atmosphere, isn’t even really necessary to the equation. There is nothing real about World of Warcraft. People become totally immersed in a violent and convincing rendition of a battlefield. There is the sound and the fury, the flinch as a spear or sword comes at the player. The only thing lacking is blood, but there might even be some real fear in there, once a player has really let go of their external circumstances.

In terms of history, and many other applications, VR might be a useful teaching tool or a 
learning experience.

Weaponized.
It’s real enough, or it certainly could be and the peaceful uses of virtual or augmented reality are presently being explored. It may be possible to plug directly into the brain, in which case the deaf might hear and the blind might see, a case of a parallel technologies, based on many of the same principles as VR. The real difficulty there is the brain/electronic interface, another problem that science and manufacturers are working on.

In the future, virtual reality, like all tools designed and built by humans, will be weaponized.

It will be used to save lives, to improve lives, and ultimately, no doubt used to take life as well.

As for the author, I have to get back to the game. Them other dogs are beating me at poker (again) and I need to sting somebody for cab fare at the very least.


END