Magistrate Jindal, and a few others within the cattle’s government with the perverse desire to do their jobs properly, was suspicious and resentful of the way crewmembers always seemed to, well, float above the fray, delicately tugging a string here, applying pressure there, a nice little reward for agreeable behavior where no one could see it.
After hearing of the previous night’s attack and the odd pattern of interference, Jindal approved the warrant for Laraby’s personal files. Several hours later, Korolev was finally let off the hook as they crossed the door into the stationhouse.
“Thank you for babysitting me, constable, but I think you should go home and get some sleep.”
“Delighted to, chief.” He snapped a salute and span right back around and out the door again.
“Package for you, chief,” the duty officer, Hernandez, said. “I put it in your office.”
Benson nodded, walked into his office and shut the door. He wasn’t trying to be rude, but in truth, he really didn’t have much to say. Hernandez and he had never quite hit it off. The man was a hothead, a little too quick to pull his stun-stick, and a little too slow to think about repercussions. Despite his seniority, Benson had passed him over for promotion twice, the last time giving Theresa the spot. Hernandez had made several not-so-private accusations about favoritism in the ranks, which hadn’t really helped his career prospects either.
A tablet sat on his desk with a little red ribbon tied around it. That made him chuckle. So Avelina had come through with Edmond’s work files. Benson had another pad tucked under his arm, filled with everything the man was doing and thinking during the other half of his waking hours.
He set the two pads next to each other and opened their files. Sixteen terabytes of data, arranged in dozens of cascading folders and directories exploded from the work tablet, while two more terabytes filled the other.
“Holy shit…” Benson mumbled. “You were a busy little bee, Edmond.”
The pile of data was… daunting. Going through it blind would take months, maybe a year. Needless to say, it was time he didn’t have.
What am I even doing? he thought bitterly. The truth of his existence was starting to come into stark relief. He was no police detective. He was a figurehead, a public relations move by the crew to appease the cattle.
Feng had tried to remind him, and so had the captain in her gentle way. The next reminder had arrived with a little more bite. Benson flexed the muscles in his forearm, feeling the sting of his stitches. They want me to roll over. They expect me to roll over.
Benson nearly spat at the thought. He’d certainly not been shy about enjoying the rewards bestowed on him through playing Zero, but he’d earned them by working his ass off and becoming great at his job.
His first day training with the Mustangs seemed like an insurmountable mountain to climb, too. But coach always told him to ignore the mountain. Take everything one small step at a time. Enough small steps would climb any mountain, cross any desert.
Solve any crime?
OK, small steps. Little bites. Or bytes, in this case. What’s the first step? Show it wasn’t suicide.
Benson opened his plant and linked it to both files, then opened the search menu. “Search all files and documents for terms suicide, kill, ah… and depressed.”
New bubbles appeared on the tablets. Several seconds passed as even the immensely powerful computers took their time to search such large data caches. The hits rolled in, but not where Benson expected. Laraby’s work files returned forty-nine uses of the word suicide, over a hundred for kill, and three for depressed. Meanwhile, his personal files held none, nadda.
“Display results for ‘suicide’ in reverse chronological order.”
-Sample #8472 suicided three days after gestation. Severe deformation of the vascular system observed.
-Sample #8435 suicided five days after gestation cycle started. Root growth failed after 14 millimeters.
-Sample #8426 suicided seventeen days after the start of the gestational cycle. Leaves failed to unfurl properly.
“OK, I can see where this is headed. Display results for ‘kill’ in reverse chronological order.”
-Sample #8469 killed thirty days after gestation. Failed to meet revised absorption goals.
-Sample #8461 killed sixty-three days after gestation. Failed to branch properly.
-Sample #8448 killed fifteen days after gestation cycle began. Chlorophyll reverted to Earth norm.
The list went on, with each incidence of the searched words relating directly to a failed experiment or new plant strain. Even where depressed was used, it was talking about “depressed levels of photon transference.” Benson was no psychologist, but he was pretty sure it had more to do with photosynthesis than suicide.
It was the complete dearth of hits in Laraby’s personal files that really struck Benson as strange, however. The table contained not only Laraby’s private journal entries, of which he had been a prodigious writer, but transcripts of all of his plant conversations, and web correspondence since he’d turned eighteen. It was as close to a complete record of all his thoughts and actions as anyone but a psychic medium was going to get.
Benson hadn’t expected anything as grandiose as a video recording of Edmond reading his suicide note, but the odds that someone wouldn’t say kill over the course of years had to be staggering. Who didn’t say “Let’s go kill a couple beers,” or “Ben’s really killing it on the drums,” or “Work almost killed me today” at some point in their life?
Laraby was either some sort of superstitious, word-avoiding eccentric, or someone had gone through and cleaned up the files using the same mental checklist Benson was going through now. His suspicion growing, Benson opened Edmond’s last journal entry from less than a day before he went missing and checked the revision history.
-Last Edited on 15/04/233PE 17:49. Edited by Laraby, Edmond, ID #C47-74205
Less than four hours before he’d disappeared. Benson tried to call up the prior version, but, to no great surprise, it wasn’t available. He checked the next three older entries with similar results. How hard would it be to alter a time/date stamp and User ID? Probably not very, if you had the right permissions and knew your way around the Ark’s coding architecture. Covering up all of your digital tracks would be harder, but not impossible. Benson ran a few more searches that came to mind, but with identical disappointment.
The only alternative was to read through each entry and transcript individually looking for whatever crumbs hadn’t been vacuumed up. It was an unappealing prospect, and he didn’t have enough time left anyway. It was exactly what Benson had feared. The delay gave whoever wanted the investigation stopped the time they needed to clean up their tracks. He wasn’t meant to find anything here.
Benson threw the tablet at his desk in a fit of frustration. It caught a corner, sending spider-web cracks racing through the glass in an instant. He picked it up gingerly, gently tapping the screen, but the fractured, flickering image told him the tablet was beyond salvage.
Benson sighed. In his anger, he’d just committed a crime. To be specific, a violation of Conservation Code Forty-Seven: The Negligent Destruction of an Asset Prior to the End of its Projected Design Lifetime. For an asset like a tablet, the fine was nearly a week’s pay at his compensation, and an equal length of time spent wasting his nights doing community service.
Benson tucked the shattered pad under his arm and left the stationhouse. He had bigger crimes to solve than the mystery of who broke the tablet, and he wasn’t out of leads just yet.