Connected / Chapter 3: Signal and Noise

by Jonathan Wood

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The following is the third chapter of an ongoing flash serial, “Connected.”  Search for the tag “Connected” to find other chapters.  Subscribe to the Daily Cabal RSS feed for a new chapter every 2 weeks.

Police work is minutia, is cataloging detail upon detail, is studying lacunae—building images from what’s absent.  It is dull and tedious.

But there is another police work—as old as Cain policing Abel.

Morello’s  feed is being monitored by internal affairs.   They connected as soon as Morello requested his meatsack be the one to chase the lead.  Because someone took Morello’s son.  Someone disconnected Caul from his tribe and put him in a terror coma.  And even reconnected, Caul remains a phantom limb, a pain that cannot be eased.

The shop is an old religious place. Hard copy bibles, crosses, rosary beads.  Software overlays the walls with glory—gold and colored light.  NYPD AI hacks through, reveals the squalor beneath.  The store owner’s ‘sack is middle-aged, skin worn thin by an ache that bleeds out around his eyes.

“Can I help you?”  A bright voice mismatched to the body, the expression.  Morello guesses the store’s visual overlay doesn’t just cover the walls.

He throws an elbow into the ‘sacks throat.  Pin him against a wall.  Cuffs him.

“Careful.”  His partner, Chambers also riding shotgun in his head.  Chamber’s voice emanates from where his conscience should be.  IA remains quiet.

“Hack him,” Morello tells Chambers.  “Find his tribe, his feeds.”

Chambers works.  Morello searches.  Just one thing to connect this guy to the disconnections, to the ‘sacks severed from the network, from the minds of friends and family.  But nothing.

“I got zip,”  Chambers says.  “Can’t find him.  Like he’s not even connected.”

“Everyone’s connected.”  Morello can’t keep the frustration out.

Everyone’s connected except the bodies.  Except the dead men.  Except his son.  And there’s no reason for the crime.  Indiscriminate terrorism.  Unless… Morello stares at the paraphernalia of belief in the store, and sees the disconnections not as a threat or a demand, but as a mandate.  Men and women committed to disconnection.  Men and women who wouldn’t be connected.

He looks at the store owner sweating it out.  He sees Caul’s sack lying in the hospital bed.  He feels IA riding shotgun in his head.

“Careful…”  Chambers can feel the rage boiling out of Morello’s feed.  No-one is disconnected.  But there are two types of police work, and one must be done alone.

Morello drops the connection.  Drops all connections.  Everything noise to the signal of his rage.  Alone he sets to work.

End of the Line

by Ken Brady

We stood in line because that’s what we do. There was a good-sized queue already formed in front of the dark entrance, so there must have been something worth waiting for.

The people who lined up behind us were clearly thinking the same thing, occasionally craning necks to see what was happening up ahead. Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd.

After a few hours, with only inching movement forward, we started to wonder. What the hell were we doing? Was there really anything up ahead?

“I could go look,” I said. “See what it’s all about.”

“You could do that,” said the jovial looking bald grandpa with an impressive paunch and thick glasses standing behind me.

I nodded my thanks and moved to leave the line.

“But he won’t give you your place back,” said the pimply hat-on-all-stupid-sideways teenaged kid in front of me.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing personal,” old dude said, and smiled. It was not a nice smile.

“You don’t even know what you’re waiting for.”

“Neither do you,” the kid said. “Maybe you should go find out, huh?”

I didn’t leave the line.

I almost left a dozen times, but each time the line would move a few feet, the kid would shuffle forward, and I’d decide to stay. Maybe we were close. To something. It’s not like we had anything else to do. I’ve stood in lines for cheap clothes, bought fantastic gadgets I hadn’t known I wanted. Got great deals on stuff I didn’t need that looked cool when I got it home, making me wonder how I’d ever lived without it. The kid had won tickets to concerts from bands he’d never heard of. Once the old dude got half-price coupons for a year’s worth of gasoline. Then he only had to stand in line at DMV and hope they would reissue him a license.

Lost in thought, suddenly we were through the entrance, all three of us, and it was dark. Cue spotlights on three doors, cleverly labeled: beginning, middle, and end.

There were no lines at any of the doors. We hesitated. We looked at each other. It felt like a trap.

“It’s a trap,” said the kid.

“Probably more lines behind the doors,” I said. “More of the same.”

“Fuck it,” said the old dude. “What do we have to lose by shaking things up a bit?”

I hadn’t a clue. Not even a hint. We shrugged in unison, swapped places, and opened the doors. No idea what we’d find.

We couldn’t wait to find out.