Gumshow Telepath - Brunch

Here is the long overdue next installment of Gumshoe Telepath.

I walked into the Roundtree my customary ten minutes late. I always liked to keep clients and colleagues alike stewing. It was just a part of the whole PI schtick I like to cultivate. Kirsten looked perturbed and naturally I assumed it was because of my tardiness. That was a mistake. On my getting to our corner booth my gorgeous if gloomy partner in crime-busting glanced up at me and asked if I had seen the news.

The netlink on my side of the table was bung. Once, I would have reflexively groped in my pocket for some hand-held device, but the solar flares that had started in the 2040s had brought the wireless age to a premature end, and our lingering need for web access had resulted in permanent fixtures, like net-enabled cafe tables, in all sorts of places. They were great, till such time as they needed fixing, and I asked Kirsten to read the news to me. That was my next mistake.

It was the news that had her all flustered and, as she read, her words became more agitated and strident. "Listen to this Derrick!" she began.

"Today the Global Institute for Standardized Terminology (GIST) bowed to pressure from the Congress majority to alter the definition of 'discrimination' to apply only to those aspects of an identity that are innate and cannot be altered by personal or collaborative acts-of-will."

Kirsten then looked at me, expectantly, as if I was somehow to blame for this particular snippet of 'boring but important'. Then came yet another mistake.

"So, what's the biggy?"

"What's the biggy? Derrick, GIST set the definitions for all words in Global English, and now the Government has the authority of this new definition to justify so much more of its Discernment Policy!"

"Kirsten, this is 2050, not 1984, and nobody these days thinks that you can actually control thinking by controlling words, and nobody can control words anyway. Nobody tells me how to define my terms but me, so why would it matter to me what a bunch of geeks at GIST say?"

"Derrick, they only need to sway the thinking of a handful of wavering congresspersons, and they do pay attention to GIST. Every politician likes to think they are some kind of expert and so they mimic what the technocrats think. Now GIST tells us that ‘discrimination’ and ‘discernment’ are distinct words because a rational language should work that way, and the Congress will go right along with that."

"And this affects us how?"

"We may be okay, we are well-adjusted and productive members of society, we get regular contracts, we engage in respected forms of recreation, we have vigorous sex lives."

"Mine could be more vigorous than it is..."

Kirsten rolled her eyes at that, glanced away, stirred her coffee, then looked back at me. "All I’m saying is that they are pulling a swifty on us. Many older forms of prejudice are prohibited by law, but now the Government is just playing with words so that they can turn on new kinds of victim, new forms of excluded other."

"Kirsten, can we move on from talk of ‘excluded other’ and move onto the much more pressing matter of murdered crime bosses?"

"I just wish you could take more interest in world events, Derrick."

"Look, I’d be more interested if I thought the Government was the P-Plate dictatorship you think it is, but it cannot even manage the crime corporations, so it looks to me like a pretty pathetic excuse for an oppressor, whatever it may try to be."

"So what you’re saying is that life is fine if you’re in a multinational gang, but if you are a goth, or a feral, or celibate, or religious, or anything deemed maladjusted or non-rational, then you’re fair game?"

I often made the mistake of arguing with Kirsten. A PI and his telepathic sidekick we may be, but we were also politics graduates. Only dif was that I was trying to play the part. She was just trying. Once more I deftly moved to change the topic.

"Speaking of fair game, what about those crime bosses erasing each other?"

"Well, okay then" said Kirsten as she inhaled audibly. "Both Jacinta O’Leery and Marko Masonite were killed on the same night, and witnesses to both events swear that each was killed by the other, despite the fact that both incidents occurred at the same time, and on other sides of the city, and that is simply impossible!"

“I would agree with you, and would also say that the smooth escape of whoever the perps are was also damn unlikely."

"Whomever."

"Now who’s the fucking GIST?"

"Sorry, Derrick, old habit. Look, I need more info to go on if we are to find the missing link in all this. We’ve interviewed witnesses, we’ve inspected the scenes, but what I need is to be there while nobody is around at all, free from any distracting mental activity, so I can do a proper vibesweep."

"Kirsten, you know the O’Leery and Masonite clans only let us in under duress, and are wanting to take care of this in-house. I cannot get the cops to give us any more than they have given, and the clans are unlikely to allow us to wander round their houses at night unaccompanied."

"I'm aware of all that, but I have something that may allow us to bypass it all."

Kirsten had a funny look on her face, a mischievous look, one that I found both infuriating and maddeningly alluring at the same time. I was gonna make a whole lot more mistakes by the end of the day. Call it a prescient ability of my own! I looked at her, waiting for her to continue.

"Notice anything about my coffee?"

"Your coffee is gone Kirsten, the waiting staff must have taken it."

"No, Derrick, it’s still there, only I’m now editing it from your perceptions."

The smile on Kirsten’s face was infectious. I smiled too.

"How much stuff can you do that to?"

"I can definitely edit an entire human form from the perceptions of several witnesses, and I think with a bit of practice I could do the same for two."

"And just how rare is this ability?"

"Dr Pax says there are only sixteen reported cases of it worldwide."

Rajiv Pax was a colleague and mentor to Kirsten, and the foremost world authority on telepathy. If anyone knew how rare this particular talent was, it would be him. Kirsten had more to say about her new party trick.

"If I let on that I could do this I would instantly be recruited for government surveillance work."

"But then you couldn’t slum it with me, babydoll."

"Something like that" grinned Kirsten, abandoning her usual cool demeanour.

"So, mental prodigy you may be, but you’ll still need me for my wicked lock reprogramming skills if we are gonna get you into those places."

And so it went. I was spending my brunch planning to illegally, and very dangerously, break into the houses of the City’s crime duopoly, under the invisibility granted by this wunderkind of a telepath, who I knew was all too human. Anything could happen. Still, it meant more time spent with Kirsten, so I was game. And hey, I figured we may even get some traction on the damned case.

The rest of this now completed story can be accessed via this listing.