Hamilcar Pande lived in a modest ovoid building, far removed from the fashionable towers where the Kathmandu jet set played. He could have afforded more, of course: as a stalwart of Central Admin he had the points to requisition almost any living quarter. He was borderline ascetic, however, and all the indulgences of drugs and sex and Virtuality had limited appeal for him. There were people who staggered from orgy to mind-altering orgy, while their PMDs burned hot cleaning their blood, and it seemed to Hamilcar that they soon descended into one gigantic mindless beast, no longer harboring even the individuality they desperately craved.
He maintained real, if limited, relationships. He saw his parents once a month, at their home (they were still married) for dinner, which his mother still tried to hand cook, although that was nigh impossible now that all the ingredients came in cube form and were inevitably made of some variety of seaweed. Still, there were traditions to maintain, momos to pinch shut and steam, tea that had to be served a certain way.
His siblings lived all over town, and cousins and half cousins, and he conscientiously messaged them and attended reunions. They even had a family militant order of knights in Final Fantasy 9000, and played missions once or twice a month. He had no wife, but there was an attractive colonel who lived above him whom he had feelings for. Kanelia Shakia worked at Defense, which fielded a reserve force of human officers and soldiers in case the drone system ever went down. They mostly war-gamed simulations and did live drills with archaic equipment. Karma kept human contingencies for everything, anticipating her own failure: necessary redundancies or busywork, no one was ever quite sure. Still, public service awarded points, and that was good enough for most people.
Once a week, Tuesdays in fact, Hamilcar had dinner with Colonel Shakia and then spent the night in her bed, where they had wild and inventive sex until exhaustion. He wanted more, but she had him on a strict schedule and seemed unwilling to deviate. He often wondered whether she had other lovers on rotation, but there was nothing furtive about the colonel, and he had never seen anyone else even visiting her, let alone spending the night. It was perfectly acceptable to have multiple partners, but Hamilcar was old-fashioned, and somehow over the past two years of seeing her, he had become half-enamored with her rigid routines.
This morning he woke up to find her gone, but she had made hot tea for him and left a sweet note. He was perfectly welcome to take his time, but alone in her apartment, he always felt like an interloper. The urge to root through her drawers or the back of her closet was almost irresistible, but Hamilcar was a man of honor. Besides, any illicit information would cheapen the hard-won confidences the colonel dropped to him from time to time, slivers of her life that he cherished and kept like polished stones in the back of his mind.
Her tea was excellent, made with perfect amounts of sugar and milk, stewed together in a pot rather than from the kitchen unit, so he drank it by the window, naked, and reflected on the city. He thought that perhaps he was a boring man, with a boring job, that somehow life kept him at arm’s length at all times, as if he were merely gliding along the surface of the thing without ever experiencing the real blood and guts of it. Was this what the colonel saw in him, a prop, a mannequin man?
Was there anything such as achievement left anymore, anywhere in the world? There were still places hideously poor, places destroyed by nanotech, this was a planet of heaven and hell juxtaposed, post-human and stone age jumbled up, and he supposed he should be grateful to be living in the former. He was grateful. He believed in Karma with a confidence that far outstripped his belief in gods or nirvana. After all, he could see up close her workings. There was nothing secret about her algorithms; normal human minds couldn’t follow them, but they could see the symbols and numbers whenever they wanted, study the bits that interested them. Which god had ever lifted her shirt and let the faithful look inside her skin?
When his tea was finished he washed the cup and pot and set them to dry. Then he dressed, made the bed, and changed her sheets and pillowcases, spending a last few minutes erasing any further signs of his ingress. He did this every time, although she never asked for it, never even seemed to notice it. This routine of physical work helped to center him, and seemed the least he could do, for messing up her orderliness. He took the stairs down to his own place, a bit heavyhearted as he was every Wednesday morning. Later, showered and shaved, he settled into his couch for some work.
Security reports were normal, point scammers, glitch riders, grifters were all within known parameters, the violent watch list was under drone surveillance, there was an uptick of noncitizens, but that was expected during this tourist season, and anyway, well-heeled travelers never caused trouble. The days of European backpackers looking for prayer wheel philosophy and life affirmation plus some cheap hash were long, long gone. Karma taxed visitors in hard currency, and they paid well to come see the Jewel of the Himalayas.
Something was bothering him, some tick under his skin, and it was well past lunch when he remembered the two rustics. No Echo, no PMD. He had requisitioned direct surveillance. Where was the report? He queried Karma and found a glitch. Not a glitch. More like an absence. There were a few images. Blurry. And then nothing. Large patches of time, nothing, as if the drones suddenly couldn’t see in every frequency of light and sonar and magnetic fields. Drone failure was technically possible. Unlikely, but possible. So why did he feel a gut certainty that the rustics were responsible?
He blew up the pictures. Rustic One was big, hazy, of indiscernible ethnicity. He was the one wearing a goat. Rustic Two was unmistakably Gurkha. There was a look to his face, the deadpan expression, something pent up. What was it? Who was this man? He was not that old, why did he not have a PMD or Echo?
“Facial history search,” he called to Karma. “Central Admin requisition account, please.”
It was still official business. Hamilcar was scrupulous with requisitions. If it ever even felt personal, he would spend his own points, and let Karma decide on reimbursement.
“No citizenry of Kathmandu or any known incorporation,” Karma reported. So he doesn’t belong to a foreign power, either.
“Search pre-citizenry please. He’s definitely Gurkha, so regional search. Requisition external records if required.”
“External” were pre-Karma databases, which had to be paid for with hard currency from entities that were not on the Karmic points system. Hamilcar was actually affecting Kathmandu’s external balance of payments from his couch, albeit in a miniscule way. Karma was following directions for now, like a normal input-output AI. If his query ever got more serious, she would take over, engaging higher mind tiers, and her analysis would reach levels far beyond human logic or serendipity.
This search took longer, long enough for him to have an illicit hand-rolled cigarette, the effects of which his body purged almost before the flame was out.
“Bhan Gurung. Eighty percent match.”
“Good enough. Who or what is Bhan Gurung?”
“Male, early sixties. No permanent address, affiliation, or data trace. Recidivist, most likely.”
“No scores? Not even guest scores?” Karma kept unofficial point scores for visitors, in case they ever wanted to requisition something against any good deeds. It was also a fad for travelers, to come to Kathmandu and accrue some of those famous karma points. She even issued certificates upon leaving, if someone had done something particularly useful.
“None. Not even any gaming records.”
“So a luddite of some sort.” A flash of insight. “Where was he, Karma Day One?”
A longish pause. He felt a flutter in Karma, as if a second gear of her mind was now engaging. “Prison. Death sentence. He was to be executed on Karma Day One.”
“And you stopped it?”
“Day One was general amnesty, erasure of debt, cancellation of all contracts, deposit of all currencies, and nationalization of all private property,” Karma said. “Yes, his execution was stopped with two hours to spare.”
“What was his crime?”
“Records sealed and unavailable.”
“He’s inside our walls. Requisition in the name of national security!”
“Not sealed in an ethical sense. Hard sealed with crypto, and even then the files appear empty. Flushed. Records are physically unavailable.”
“Even for you? I mean the top tiers of you?”
“There is no cure for full and final erasure.”
“Is that even possible?”
“It is irregular. Many things were irregular before KD1.”
“Can we pull him in?” Hamilcar asked.
“He has done nothing wrong so far. Pulling him in is not a requisitionable option at this point.”
“Please run your advanced predictive algorithm for future threat levels.”
“This is a problem,” Karma said.
“What? Why?”
“The predictive algorithm is not working for them. The nameless male . . . Rustic One. He is blocking the algorithm.”
“What? How? Is he a hacker? He’s wearing a goatskin, for fuck’s sake.”
“Not hacking. By existing. He is blocking the algorithm just by being there,” Karma said. There was a weight to her voice, as if an unknown number of mind tiers had crashed the conversation. “Sheriff. You are authorized to investigate in person.”
Somehow the sobriquet did not sound so mocking this time.