Here are the previous episodes of
The Mysterious Case of Betty Blue.
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
The Mysterious Case of Betty Blue. Pt. 11.
“There are no
guarantees in this life.”
Scott sat in
what felt like a dentist chair.
Not used to
being touched or handled in any way, his recent relationship with Betty
notwithstanding, it was oddly arousing in the physical sense. The young woman
went on.
“It’s a good
thing you have somebody to help you.” She had shaved his skull, and pulled a
tightly-constricting latex mask over his head.
Now she was
applying putty and makeup around the edges, after lifting the cheeks and putting
small pads of putty in strategic locations.
“His face
seems a bit lopsided.” Betty was right there with him.
Hopefully no
one would notice the slight bulge in his pants.
“No one’s face
is truly symmetrical.” The technician hummed softly as she worked.
He and Betty
had been expected, somehow. Upon their arrival at the Red Dog Saloon, she, in
her temporary disguise as a metrosexual, led him to the bar. He heard her
exchange brief words with someone.
A few minutes
later, the result of some signal which he didn’t quite catch, she took him by
the arm and led him to what must have been the hallway where the restrooms were
located. The smell was a dead giveaway.
“So?”
“If you get
caught, it’s a hundred-thousand dollar fine for obstructing the course of
justice.”
A hundred
grand! For wearing a mask. The world had certainly become a crazy place. Scott
wondered if it was worth it sometimes.
A recent news
story, the typical horror story put out by the mainstream media, had documented
a case where someone had gotten an illicit nose-job. The lady didn’t have the
money for the medical fees and the permit required from Motherland Security.
She had faked the documents, vanity being what it was, and the
self-objectification of women being what it was…she was caught, inevitably it
would seem.
Now she was
doing fifteen years in a work camp. She would get out of jail by the time she
was thirty-five. This was one of the northeastern states, as he recalled. Down
south she’d be doing three life sentences.
Scott hoped it
was worth it to her. License fees for cosmetic surgery were a major source of
revenues for the state. One of many new sin, or as Scott called them, vanity
taxes…harsh penalties were an incentive to save one’s pennies—and pay your
fees.
“Huh.”
Her deft
fingers smoothed the putty around the edges of the mask. Fine sable hairs
tickled his face, as she applied some kind of powder to blur the lines where
skin met rubber.
Scott had
never really thought about it, but he pondered the question. What about women
and their makeup?
What about the
female penchant for new hair styles? What about people who changed their
clothes, every day, what about people who got a hair cut, or wore sunglasses?
But apparently
the programming was sophisticated enough to recognize these changes, for
according to the published theories—Scott called them ‘justifications,’ the
facial recognition algorithms were only a part of the picture.
Biometrics
included height, weight, eye colour, body type, silhouettes, and a person’s
characteristic walk. Sociometrics included daily habits, the PPP, known
associates, family circle, place of residence, work, license plates, make,
model and colour of vehicle…social and employment status. They knew who you
were when you walked past a scanner and the machine read the chip.
It was all
about digital characterization from records and daily documentations in the
course of one’s daily peregrinations.
Nowadays crime
could be predicted, even intentions could be predicted—hopefully Betty and he
stood some kind of a chance. Even this present situation could be predicted to
some extent, although he had the feeling he was a few steps behind Betty every
inch of the way.
Much food for
thought there. If only he knew where to begin.
“So, what
about the I.D.?”
“Everything’s
going to be fine, Scott.”
Betty was
reassuring, although she was in her own chair and her own technician applied
himself to the job at hand. His voice was soft and yet deep when he spoke, but
that one kept the talk to a minimum.
His girl
wasn’t much more talkative.
“What do you
think of the Mets this year?’
“Not much.”
Scott rarely listened to baseball.
“You’re not a
fan?”
“Not for many
years.”
Not since he’d
lost his vision and therefore most of the pleasure in watching a game. While
aware that people had listened to baseball, football and other sports on the
radio, going back a century or more, those people were of course not aware that
they had missed anything.
In a
subconscious habit, Scott turned his head towards Betty.
“So. Who are
you going as?”
There was a
chuckle.
“Your mother.”
 |
| Lora Shalkar. (Wiki.) |
He laughed, a
sour laugh but a laugh none the less.
He hadn’t seen
his family in ages. It’s not that they had abandoned him. Far from it. It was
just that he had felt like a burden, it was just that in the early stages of
losing his vision that they were in denial.
There was some
kind of blame-game going on there, an unspoken one, one where they kept asking
stupid questions.
Isn’t there
something somebody somewhere can do?
And the
trouble was that there wasn’t…not that they were in any position to go looking
for treatment. They couldn’t deal with it any better than he had.
The lady was
speaking.
“Okay, I want
you to lean back and open your eyes very wide…”
Scott complied,
blinking uncontrollably as she dropped liquid into his eyes.
He gasped.
“What’s that?”
“Okay. We’re
just going to put some drops in there…”
“Ah…ah.” In
for a penny, in for a pound. “What…?”
“This is the
hard part, but I’ll be very gentle. I’m going to put the contacts in now.”
Betty
explained.
“We’re giving
you some new retinas—to go with your new I.D.”
Yet another
person, probably the male voice in the room, grabbed him firmly by the head and
held him still as the lady worked.
New retinas…of
course. A blind man didn’t have to see through them. She’d been doing some
thinking. He wondered how long that had been going on. Did she really love him
or did she just need a blind man?
Was Scott just
an accessory—unfortunate word, but she was obviously holding a few things back
from Scott.
“Argh.” The
first one, the left one, was in.
 |
| You have to be careful not to arouse their suspicion. |
It felt like
someone had shoved a damned dinner plate into his eye socket.
“Betty.”
“Yes, dear?”
“You and I are
going to have to have a little talk.”
The makeup
artists laughed, and then Scott’s head was clamped in place by strong hands,
tucked into the guy’s armpit by the smell of it. His one ear felt moist.
“Ah—ah!”
“It’s okay,
we’re done now.”
They were done
all right, there was no way he was going to go through that again anytime soon.
He couldn’t
believe people did that to themselves out of choice.
The lady gave
him some instructions on the care and keeping of lenses, but Scott was hardly
listening, completely focused on the nagging sensation in his eyes. It seemed
kind of ironic, putting lenses on a blind man…he couldn’t think of a line.
Maybe it was
better left unsaid.
His heart
sank. He’d had a few ups and downs over
the last few days.
This was what
he had been aching for—adventure, he told himself grimly.
His life
really had changed. It couldn’t be a whole lot worse than how his life had been
so far.
It might even
be worthwhile.
Scott was all
too aware of what had been taken away from him. If truth be told he now hated
sports, and even more he hated people who gushed and raved about their local
sports teams as if this was any real substitute for having an actual life.
The door latch
clicked, the noise from outside got louder and someone stuck their head in.
“How long?”
“Two minutes.”
“The sooner
you guys are on your way, the better off everyone will be.”
“We
understand.” Betty spoke for them.
The door
closed.
So Betty had a
plan, then—and not necessarily the one they had discussed back home, before
setting out. Scott hadn’t been asking enough questions, the price of
desperation.
More than
anything, he was curious as to how all of this had been set up. He was curious
as to how Betty was communicating with other robots, and especially how all of
this was undetectable to the authorities.
How much was
all of this costing? How did she know where to go? How long had she been
planning this?
What did she
need him for?
That was one
loaded question.
The simple answer might be correct. Sooner or later the cops would have gone back to his place. There was no avoiding that, but.
But.
And where was Betty
getting the money? In other words, who; or how
was all this being paid for?
Expert
criminal advice never came cheap.
He knew that
much from T.V.
***
The silence
was funereal as Dr. Piqua snapped shut the heavy oaken slab. One or two even twitched
as he flipped the thumb-piece on the deadbolt.
A minimum of
staff had been invited, nice word, to the emergency meeting.
Doctor Piqua
moved to the head of the room, where his chair sat vacant. Features obscured
with the strong light of the floor-to-ceiling windows behind him, he regarded
the group, examining each face, one by one. He stood with hands on the back of
the chair.
Clearing his
throat, he began to speak.
“I think it is
time to invoke Plan Nine.”
They all knew
what that was. Plan Nine was a backdoor into every unit built.
His plan was
limited to passive surveillance.
“Basically,
nothing changes. Our units go on as before. We just take a stream of data from
each one, and run it through the machine.” When he said machine, he meant more
than one.
This was going
to take up a lot of machine-time.
All faces were
turned to him.
“Are we sure?”
Company president Renaldo Gage took a deep breath. “Once we are blown, we will
stay blown.”
Gage was a sleek, corpulent man with the thickest thatch of mouse-grey hair that had ever been seen on a man in his low sixties. It was an uncomfortable compromise between vanity and reality. At least in the eye of the beholder.
“Yes, that’s
very true. But we cannot rely on the police to find Betty Blue, not any time soon, and we must have
her back. It would be preferable if we were the first to examine her.”
Plan Nine was
only for the direst of emergencies. With foresight, and a knowledge of the
heavy liabilities involved, it was a worst-case scenario.
Steve Hobbs,
senior software writer, cleared his throat.
“Yes?” Piqua
gave him his opening.
“We are
already aware that some units have been hacked. If we can isolate those units,
I wouldn’t have a problem with it. Unfortunately, there are no guarantees.”
All in the
room were aware of the problem. Once a unit was hacked, its security was
forever suspect.
“It’s a risk
we are going to have to take.”
Hobbs nodded.
“I would
prefer almost anything but that…”
Hobbs turned
to program security chief Letitia Bennett. She was opening up her file, as if
seeking reassurance, although she could talk on this subject without notes. Her
small eyes surrounded by wrinkled flesh looked bitter at the best of times. She
was as tough as they came.
“With all eyes
looking for Betty Blue and this Scott Nettles character, we have a better than
even chance of finding her before they do.”
‘They,’ of
course, referred to the authorities.
“If one of our
friendly neighbourhood hackers detects our presence, there may very well be
hell to pay.” Hobbs, a slender bald man in his early thirties, nodded. “Or a
hell of a lot of money.”
He blinked at
them through wishy-washy, pale blue eyes that always seemed a bit too moist.
Piqua had
other ideas.
“I was
thinking we might use Plan Nine a little more creatively than originally
anticipated.” He nodded at Hobbs. “Once we activate the plan, we not only have
more eyes looking for our runaways, but we might be able to locate some of the
missing units…and bring the perpetrators to justice.”
This was a
loaded question as they all knew.
Bennett shook
her head.
“What?” Piqua
knew what she was going to say, but it must be said and she might as well be
the one.
“Assuming we
do that…we’re going to have to account for the information. How did we get on
to them? What was the source? And, furthermore, the courts are a matter of
public record. Once the genie is out of the bottle, we can never put it back
in.”
Piqua nodded.
The others nodded. Bennett looked around the table and nodded.
“There are
ways and then there are ways.”
Several looked
down at the table but the doctor heard no objections.
“So we are
agreed on that much.” Doctor Piqua looked at his chair but didn’t sit down.
He wasn’t
anticipating a long session, or even a particularly stormy one. They all knew
the stakes and the risks.
Norbert
Krumholtz, the company’s resident legal specialist, shook his head. His jowls
were blue with a five o’clock shadow and his brown suit shone.
“I’m not too
worried about the courts. We recover our property, lay a charge and the only
thing that is made public is the fact that a charge has been laid. We can word
it in such a way as to give virtually no information, to the press, the public,
law enforcement, or our competitors.”
Legal
precedents for this sort of thing went way back according to him.
“So, you are
saying…?” Hobbs raised an eyebrow.
“We use our
own security teams to recover our hacked machines…units, and make citizen’s
arrests. Once we have these turkeys behind bars, the vast majority of them will
lawyer up and make no statements they don’t have to…”
“What if they
can’t afford one?” Bennett’s question was a good one.
Krumholtz
grinned, giving Piqua a look, and receiving a nod in return.
“Don’t worry
about that—one of our pet foundations will provide them one.”
Piqua stepped
in.
“Assuming they
don’t waive the right to an attorney, that will have to suffice.”
So far, the
real issue had not been raised, and he was content enough with that.
With bonuses
running into the hundreds of millions each year per person, there was no real
incentive to ask too many questions.
His guts
always tightened up when he contemplated the unthinkable. The unspeakable, and he prayed no one else brought it up.
To show that sort of concern
to the troops was a bad idea.
Confidence was
everything, or so he had always believed.
END
Horse-Catcher was my third or fourth science fiction novel. It's available on iTunes.
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