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From: Incest Man <incestman@graffiti.net>
Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories,alt.sex.stories.hetero,alt.sex.stories.d
Subject: Double Blind (sci-fi/mystery)(m/2xhermaphrodite)
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2006 15:14:14 -0700
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===================
http://www.incesttabooo.com/MHerm.html
Double Blind (sci-fi/mystery)(m/2xhermaphrodite)
By SandMan
She was waiting for me when I stepped off the lift. As I
walked down the hallway I studied her. Tall, shapely, in a
black dress that left little to the imagination and was no
doubt cut just to show off her curves. The dress was slit
at her legs, revealing a gorgeous shapely leg and the hint
of a garter. The shoes matched the dress, black with very
high heels. A diamond necklace hung around her neck,
plunging down between her ample breasts. They had to be
synthetics; no one could be that perfectly shaped,
especially when not wearing a bra. Matching diamond
earrings dangled from her ears. A large brimmed black hat
hid one eye, but the one studying me as I approached was a
brilliant green. Her long wavy blond hair flowed from
under the hat and danced across her shoulders. There was
the hint of blush, and full rich red lips. She was
elegance and class personified.
"You're late," she said as I unlocked the door and held it
open for her.
"Traffic," I replied. Really my droid had broken down and
I had had to fix breakfast myself. Even though she was
impossibly out of my league, I didn't want to ruin any
potential chances by rubbing her nose in my poverty. She
tossed her head in a dismissive gesture and took a seat. I
moved behind my desk and sat down as well. "What can I do
for you?"
"I'm about to divorce my husband. I want anything you can
find on him," she answered.
Hardly surprising -- spouse hunting was my stock and trade.
"A thousand new dollars a day, plus expenses, and a fifty
grand bonus if I can prove fault," I replied. It was
higher than my usual fee, almost double what I normally
charged, but she looked as if she could afford it. The
necklace alone would be worth a year's salary. Proving
fault wasn't as easy as catching her husband in the sack;
he could do that all he wanted, and it would still be a
no-fault divorce.
Fault in this case would be to catch him in a criminal act,
something that would send him to jail, annulling the
marriage and ensuring she got every last penny of the
estate. It was a rare case when I got to collect a bonus.
"Expensive," she said, as she considered. For a second I
thought I had inflated my fee too high; I could dicker, but
if it came to that I'd probably lose her anyway. "My
contacts in the department said you were the best. I'll
give you a week; after that we'll see where you stand."
It paid to keep up old friendships. I had started out as a
cop on the beat, and made detective in only three years.
After I solved a particularly gruesome serial killing that
had stumped even the feds, the FBI recruited me and I
worked for ten years as the best serial killer stalker in
the trade. The CIA pulled me from the FBI and set me to
work on tracking terrorists, but I only lasted with them
two years. The CIA scared the daylights out of me. They
knew too much about everyone, and they didn't play fair.
When I quit the CIA, I returned home and hung up my shingle
as a Steve Whiley, P.I. I kept up my ties with the cops; I
respected their beat they respected mine.
And when someone casually asked how something could be
found out, they usually sent that someone my way.
"I'll need a name, Personal Identification Number, and
address. I'll start today," I said quickly.
"Jack Dawson," she replied. "I'm Ann Dawson. His PIN is
2832-893-2913. Our address is 315 Wedgewood in the
heights. I'll meet you here; don't try to contact me."
She stood and fished through her purse and removed a white
envelope. She opened it and, after a bit of counting,
removed some cash and threw the envelope on the desk. My
quick eye counted two thousand new dollars had been
removed. When I checked the envelope I was not surprised
to find a thousand new dollars waiting for me. I had short
changed myself; she would have gone to three. But a grand
was more than enough. I watched with an appreciative eye
the way her hips swayed as she left the office.
I swung around and turned on the terminal and did a quick
search. Jack Dawson, president and owner of SynCor the
largest maker of computerized medical devices in the world.
The most famous product was the nanites, microscopic robots
which could be injected into a patient's bloodstream by the
millions. Smaller than a blood cell, they repaired damage
cells, cleared arteries, and could even locate and destroy
viruses and bacteria. The second was the passive imaging
table, a staple of any doctor's office. The patient simply
lies on the table and a wall-sized view screen prints out
vital signs and a complete realtime scan of the body, with
several flexible views, allowing the doctor to slice
through the body layer by layer in any direction. Under
the direction of a skilled controller, the P.I.T. could
simulate a free floating camera inside the patient's body.
The software was so good that it required little skill to
control.
Jack Dawson had attended MIT for one year, and then had
dropped out when he struck gold with a nifty little device
which made comparing DNA instantaneous. Drop a sample of
each in either side, and within one second a green or red
light would flash. Over the next year he improved the
technology to allow for computer coding of DNA strands, and
the government made him a wealthy man. It's the staple of
any prescient lab: drop a DNA sample from the crime scene
into the analyzer, and within five minutes the DNA is
compared with every living person in the nation. The next
year he built the profiler, a device which would
reconstruct with 90% accuracy the physical profile of a
person just from their DNA. The only thing it couldn't do
was predict fat from environmental factors, and facial hair
and coloring. Another jackpot. He met Ann Varas a few
years after he invented the profiler at a charity auction,
courted her a year, and then finally tied the knot. No
children, probably by choice, since sterility was always
reversible if you had the money for it, and genetic
incompatibilities were equally repairable -- again, if you
had the money.
Pictures flashed of both Jack and Ann. He was a mousy
little man, about five foot five, thin as a rail, with
short brown hair and too small blue eyes that looked
distinctly beady. His nose was thin and hawkish, set above
thin bloodless lips. One would have never known by looking
at him that he was one of the richest men in the world.
I punched an address into my terminal and an attractive
blond appeared on the screen; she smiled when she saw it
was me. "How's it hangin', Steve?" she asked.
"It never hangs when I'm lookin' at you babe," I replied.
She loved the banter; we'd had more than a few good times
together.
"How sweet! What can I do you for?"
She was busy; otherwise, she would not have skipped over my
remark. I was brief. "I need an e-tap on jd@syncor.med --
Jack Dawson."
She gave a low whistle. "That's grade A stuff honcho."
"You can do it?" I asked.
She leaned over conspiratorially so that her face filled my
view screen. "We're the CIA honey. We can do anything.
Usual fee; tap will be up in a few minutes." The screen
went dark.
I had met Candice when I worked for the CIA. She was one
of their net agents, and we worked on quite a few cases
together. She was one of the rare computer nerds who
happened to be both interesting and genuinely attractive.
Candice was married to the net, but she was also lonely.
We had had a few flings just for the fun of it. She was
the first to know I was leaving the CIA, and the only one
to really know why. She was one of my best contacts; she
liked me enough to do a favor now and again and didn't mind
the money on the side, usually five hundred new dollars.
She was also good enough that we both knew she'd never get
caught freelancing.
A window popped open on my terminal. The tap had started
and I was getting all of Jack's unread e-mail. Twenty in
all, nineteen of them business related, or so technical I
couldn't make heads or tails of them. But the tenth of the
bunch set my blood racing.
To: Jack Dawson From: Anonymous
The package has arrived. It will take a few days to
prepare the reply you requested. Look over the plan again
carefully.
There may be a flaw and it could all unravel. I'll explain
further once we can get a secured line. You'll probably
have already seen it by then.
My heart pounded. On the surface the message seemed
perfectly innocent, but the way it avoided naming anything
set off alarm bells. Something was going on here, and
maybe something that would earn me a nice little bonus. I
called up the message headers and then began the laborious
process of tracing the e-mail back to its source. I
couldn't trace it to a single person, but I did trace it to
Zurich, Switzerland, at a SynCor branch office.
A little more digging through the net and I found Jack
Dawson was scheduled to leave today for a vacation in the
Bahamas. I winced when I saw it would be by teleport. No
way was I going to follow him through that. The Star Trek
guys had it right all along, it turned out, though not as
easily as it looked. Take three atoms A, B and C.
Entangle B with C. Then take C as far away as you want.
Now entangle
A with B, destroying A in the process and C immediately
takes on every
last characteristic of A. Immediately, as in faster than
the speed of light. Einstein called it spooky; he was a
smart man.
The teleport is the quickest way to travel and communicate
anywhere. It's really the only way to get to the outer
colonies. The only problem with it is that you die in the
process. Oh sure, another you walks out of another booth
somewhere, but could you teleport a soul? And not everyone
was convinced the original suffered a painless
disintegration; quite a few imaginative authors described
in vivid detail the agonies of the original self before the
new self emerged.
I booked a supersonic flight to the island and just barely
had time to run by my apartment and pack a few things
before I caught the flight. He wasn't due to leave for a
couple of hours, so I'd arrive in plenty of time to mark
him as he left the teleport terminal. In fact, thanks to
the usual airport delays and rental car hassles, I had just
barely pulled up to the terminal when I spotted him walk
into a waiting limo.
I followed him to a nearby ritzy resort, The Caribbean,
where I stood behind his assistant as she picked up the
key. Penthouse, of course.
I sighed mentally as I stepped forward and requested a room
on the floor just under the penthouse. The price would put
a serious dent in my savings, but it was the only way to
keep up the stakeout. I could do it on the beach, but
sooner or later someone would notice the snooper, and the
snooper was not something I wanted noticed. The penthouse
would also face the beach, so a hotel to the back or side
would have too much interference from the other rooms.
Like I said, it was the only way, and my expenses were part
of my bill. I'd get it back sooner or later.
The room was classy and large, with a great view of the
ocean, almost worth the mortgage they charged to keep it
for a night. I didn't bother unpacking farther than my
snooper. CIA standard issue,
Made of composites so it didn't trigger airport alarms. It
looked like nothing more than a small laptop; it even was a
computer, if someone turned it on. It used another quirk
of quantum physics: take a photon and it hits a wall, and
the light stops dead in its tracks. Only sometimes, maybe
one time for every million, it doesn't. It bores right on
through and comes out the other side. It also happens to
do this at five times the speed of normal light. The
Snooper uses incredibly sophisticated image enhancement
routines and catches this almost non-existent light,
piecing it back together again. The software was so good I
could even select views, zoom, and pan as if I had a remote
control video camera in the room I was looking in on. It
was also illegal as hell to own one.
I set it up quickly, aiming the invisible laser at the
roof. The laser was generated from a device which looked
like a camera, the kind
you'd use for video teleconferencing. It picked up the
vibrations that passed through the walls and windows and
reconstructed them as sound. It worked best on glass, but
the software would give me a clear read on what was being
said upstairs. And so the stakeout began.
He dismissed his secretary almost as soon as she had him
settled in. After making a few calls, very mundane, he sat
down in a chair and sipped a scotch, waiting for something
or someone. There was a knock on the door, and when he
called out "come in," the door opened to reveal two
strikingly attractive ladies, as pretty as the man's own
wife. Jack may have been an unattractive geek, but his
taste in women
was impeccable, and to many women wealth was as handsome as
a man could get.
They were twins, from the look of them. Long slender faces
with oriental features, long straight silken black hair,
large dark eyes with just a hint of an oriental slant.
Their breasts were stacked; probably synthetics again --
too perfect. Narrow waists, pleasingly rounded hips, long,
long legs. Jack smiled when he saw them. "It's been too
long since I've seen you."
They closed the door and walked over to his chair. Each
taking an arm, they lavished him with kisses. I selected a
discrete Arial view and punched the record button. If I
had to testify in court, I would swear I had placed a
camera in the room. Adultery wasn't cause for a fault
finding anymore, but it would tend to sway the end result a
bit more favorably to the one who had not committed the
act, or at least the one who had not gotten caught. If
things progressed as they looked like they might, Ann's
judgment would shift from a 50/50 split to a 60/40 split in
her favor. And, at these numbers, that was no small chunk
of change.
He had undone one of the girls' tops, exposing a breast,
which he fondled and kissed eagerly. The other girl undid
her own top and, seeing un-tasted flesh, he turned his
attentions to the new girl and then back again. Jack
sighed and stood up and the girls began to disrobe him
eagerly. One girl did not remove his shirt so much as
massage it off of him, letting her hand rub across his
chest and back as she skillfully removed the shirt. The
other girl removed his shorts and pants, pausing a moment
to place her mouth over his erect cock and give a small
suck. Naked, he walked over to the bed and sat as he
watched them disrobe.
As I watched them something hit me as unusual, but it
wasn't until they removed their panties that I noticed what
had bothered me. They were hermaphrodites! They stood
before him with raging hardons and, as part of the show,
they were pulling back their pussy lips to give a good view
of their anatomy. They both had pubic hair and they both
had pussies, but where the clitoris should have been they
both had large five-inch cocks, and below the cocks were
fully formed vaginas, which they were both probing with
their fingers at the moment.
I sat back in my chair and whistled. Hermaphrodites were
incredibly rare, maybe one in every fifty thousand births.
Most doctors changed the sex to either male or female at
birth so the child would not grow up in the underground
"third sex". Even the poorest patients were allowed the
operation. Sometimes the doctor and parents allowed a
child to remain unchanged, until the child himself would
one day decide to become a boy or a girl; until that day,
the child had both sexual organs. Some, like these, had
only a penis; others had testicles as well. Either these
girls were born hermaphrodites and chose to stay that way,
or they had one hell of a surgeon. One thing was very
certain though: Jack Dawson had very, very exotic tastes.
The "girls" moved from masturbating themselves to fucking
each other. One girl slid her cock into the other and they
made love standing up, very carefully positioned to give
the maximum amount of exposure to their audience on the
bed. Their breasts brushed against each other as they
moved, their beautiful faces locked in a long lingering
passionate kiss. The penis of the girl being fucked rubbed
against the belly of the girl doing the fucking. Jack
watched the show as fascinated as I was at the sight.
Go tell your extreme religious fanatic about this, the kind
that doesn't like doctors because they thwart the will of
God. Ask him if the girls were homosexual. He'll probably
run screaming for the door. Find the most gay-bashing man
you can dig up, and put him in a room with one or both of
these women, and he'd probably fuck them without a second
thought and then run screaming to the nearest loony bin.
Hermaphrodites can do that to people. You find yourself
asking a lot of questions you don't know the answer to.
Both girls visibly reached orgasm in the loudest and most
active way possible; it was part of the show, of course.
The girl whose penis was visible actually ejaculated, so
she did have testes, probably internal. If they weren't
careful, these girls could get pregnant all by themselves.
They looked over at Jack and smiled mischievously. He
smiled back. I think I would have as well. The answer to
every possible dream, the dream of having two women, the
dream of bedding twins, and that little dream that few of
us really admit to having, the dream of exploring
bisexuality.
Jack didn't need to explore. Judging from what followed,
he was going
back over well-traveled ground. The girls walked over to
him, and he swallowed one girl's prick, still covered with
cum, while he fondled the other girl's cock with his hands,
letting it fall on occasion to finger fuck her.
He brought both of them to climax, and not missing a beat
he swallowed his partners' seed. It slowly dawned on me
that while the girls may have male anatomy, they retained
the woman's ability to achieve multiple orgasms. I very,
very much envied them at this point.
One of the women rolled over onto the bed and, after
placing a pillow under her ass, spread herself invitingly.
Jack smiled and poised himself above her. Jack was not a
large man in any respect. His fully erect penis measured
perhaps three and a half inches, and I say that with the
margin for error on the high side. He slid in and then
waited. The other girl scooted up behind him on her knees,
her penis covered in a mass of cum and saliva. She
positioned herself at his ass and pushed in. Jack didn't
grunt in pain; he was used to this. Then they began to
move in a dance that was so exotic I just about came in my
shorts.
Jack's belly brushed the prick of the girl beneath him. It
quivered and throbbed noticeably as he brushed it. His
chest brushed across her ample breasts, her nipples
standing firm and erect. The girl behind him had her
thrusts timed perfectly. As Jack withdrew she thrust in,
when jack thrust in she pulled out. Her breasts, as
perfectly shaped and as full as her sisters', bounced with
the movement, and she massaged them eagerly with her hands.
Sometimes she would lean over, allowing them to brush
against Jack's back as he moved.
The girl on the bottom climaxed and, judging from Jack's
face, he was joining her. The girl behind him looked to
prolonging the inevitable.
No doubt if she came now it would interfere with the
timing, and there
was nothing I saw that indicated these girls were not the
pinnacle of professional. She waited until Steve's pace
slowed and he fell onto the girl under him, who wrapped him
in a lovers embrace, holding him inside her. The girl
behind him dropped her hands to his hips and was not gentle
as she followed through with her own orgasm.
After they had rolled apart, with Jack between the two
breathtakingly beautiful women, he sighed, "Much, much too
long..." as their hands gently caressed his body. I
stopped recording and considered what I had found. I could
earn a fortune by publishing the vid on the net. I could
probably earn three times that by using it as blackmail.
But neither was my style. My ethics are the only thing
that lets me wake up in the morning and get a good night's
sleep each night.
An unusual flash of light where there should be no unusual
flash of light led me to swing the view around to the
window. The image started to fall apart as I tried to push
the view beyond what the device could detect. I saw just
the hint of something, then I slapped myself on the
forehead for a fool and went to my own window and looked
out. A helicopter hovered about a quarter mile out. I
fished out a pair of binoculars and zoomed in. A man with
a camera was clearly visible. The shades of Jack's room
had been open. I wasn't the only one who had filmed the
encounter.
That complicated matters, though I couldn't yet say how.
Best see how the dice fell. Jack had sent both of the
girls off with a kiss and a smile and then settled down to
matters of business. He did not look like a happy man,
going through those reports and statistics. I suppose if I
took a vacation and ended up going over reports and
statistics I wouldn't be happy either.
The next morning the news was all over the tabloids. "Jack
Dawson caught sleeping with two hermaphrodites!" the
headlines screamed. The article gave a pretty good account
of what happened, compete with a net address where the
reader could purchase the entire film. Jack was not a
happy man that morning when he found out.
"Do whatever you have to, squash that story and do it now!
Buy every damn rag if you have to, but I want a full
retraction in tomorrow's paper, and I want that net site
shut down immediately or there will be hell to pay!" Jack
hit the disconnect button with a fury and stormed around
the room, stomping so hard I could hear his steps through
the ceiling without the aid of the snooper.
Jack punched up another number and I cursed at being unable
to find a view that would reveal what he pressed. I could
see only him, not the person he talked to or what he typed
on the terminal. "Zaire, I want to push forward with the
plan. Two days, tops, I think. Get everything ready," he
said, as he ran his hands through his hair.
"I think we've worked out the problem, Jack," a woman's
voice sounded over the link. "Two days will be rough; can
you give us five? Even that will be pushing it."
"No, I can't give you five! I said two and I meant it!
I'm through with all this crap and it's going to end in two
days!" Again he jabbed the disconnect button.
The rest of the morning was spent in preparations to return
home. After issuing a terse statement to the waiting
press, that the tabloid reports where nothing more than
creative computer animation, he stepped into his limo and
rushed to the teleport terminal. I had his itinerary well
in hand though, thanks to the snooper, and had booked a
more conventional supersonic for my passage.
Ann was waiting for me back at my office. She sat down in
a cold fury as soon as she entered. "I guess I don't need
you anymore. The perverted little fool!" she said
disgustedly. "I'm here to settle the bill."
I shrugged and pushed over a disk containing the film. The
one you could get off the net, though mine was far, far
better. It never hurt to be cautious where the snooper was
concerned. "There's another grand for today, plus travel
and hotel; that tops off another two grand. You might want
to think about keeping me on. I caught enough hints to
think I can show cause."
"You're joking!" she said, not quite but almost laughing
in my face. The thought of her husband engaged in a
criminal act seemed quite beyond his capacity in her
opinion.
"I'm not," I replied.
She considered me carefully. "No more daily expenses. If
you can show cause, you'll get the bonus."
"If I have to work on spec, the bonus will grow to half a
million new dollars," I shot back. I could play hardball,
too.
"Prove cause and it's yours," she agreed. She stood and
again pulled an envelope out of her purse. She removed
some cash and dropped the envelope on my desk. It
contained four thousand new dollars. My creditors would be
very happy.
I leaned back in my chair and considered. Something was
going to happen in two days, something that Jack Dawson
seemed to think would make his life easier. Someone in
Zurich was probably helping him in his plan. It might or
might not be illegal. If it was illegal and I caught him,
I got my bonus. If not, I lost a few days of my life.
Catching him in the act would prove no easy task, for his
offices in SynCor were such that it was impossible for me
to get close enough to use the snooper. His home, with
that large privacy fence, was even worse. And when the
second day rolled around, I had no more leads on what was
about to happen than anyone else. So I was just as shocked
as everyone else when Jack Dawson was found dead in his
study by a maid.
After they had taken Ann in for questioning, I sat in
precinct headquarters, sipping on really lousy coffee with
Bill Stein, an old buddy I used to walk the beat with. The
years had not been kind to Bill; he had grown very rotund,
to such an extent he only worked desk duty now. Fat was
easy to remove, liposuction and pills were nearly 100%
effective, but Bill liked who he was, though I suspected he
liked that the fat kept him off the streets. It was scary
out there, even for a cop.
"What's the dope on the Dawson slaying?" I asked.
"You nosing in on our territory, Steve?" Bill asked
seriously.
I shrugged. "The girl's my client. Referred to me by one
of my pals here at the precinct. I have a prior claim. Or
let's just say a vested interest. If I decide to do a bit
of nosing around, I'll make sure my old buddies get the
credit."
Bill nodded. "It's a righteous bust. DNA sniffer shows
only three people in that room, the maid, the wife, and the
husband. The maid has an alibi, the wife doesn't. Murder
weapon was found in the room by the door, too far away to
be a suicide; the trajectory doesn't look right either. No
prints on the gun, but the wife has a nice selection of
stylish gloves."
"Gun?" I asked.
"Rail," Bill replied.
"Damn!" I swore. Rail guns were every bit as effective,
compact and portable as their gunpowder counterparts, but
were more accurate at long range and they left no gunpowder
residue. If Ann really were innocent she could have proved
it, had gunpowder been involved. Up to 48 hours after a
shot, the residue could be detected even in the suspect's
blood.
"Thanks, Bill. I appreciate the info," I said as I got up.
Normally the cops would still be questioning a suspect,
trying to wear him or her down, but she was rich, and rich
bought privileges, not the least of which was an overpaid
lawyer who told my brothers in arms to go fuck themselves.
But they held her in a private cell pending formal charges;
they could at least do that. The case was circumstantial,
but it was the strongest circumstantial case you could
have.
Her lawyer was in the meeting room when I entered. He
studied me warily. I sat down at the table across from her
and asked, "Did you do it?"
Her lawyer started to object, but she shook her head
fiercely and hissed, "No." I believed her. It was more
than just wanting to believe her as well. I felt it in my
gut. She disliked Steve, she wanted to divorce him, she
wanted him out of her life; but she wasn't the type to go
around killing people. The cops said the motive was money.
When you start dividing up billions of new dollars, there's
not much difference between five billion and ten billion.
Either figure was more than a person could spend in three
lifetimes. The motive didn't jibe. The secondary motive
was jealous rage at finding her husband in a compromising
position with the two "girls". That was more credible in
court. But Ann had wanted to divorce her husband; Jack's
exploits only served to further her cause. Again, the
motive didn't jibe with what I knew.
"I'm still available if you need my services," I said.
"Same rate as before, fifty grand bonus if I get you out of
here." I could have asked for more; I should have. But
the trouble with ethics is that they don't really leave you
much room to take advantage of situations like this.
"Get me out of here and I'll pay whatever you want," she
said, on the verge of tears. And seeing the once proud,
strong, elegant woman I had first met reduced to this
cowering, very afraid little girl, I would have taken the
case pro bono.
I set out of the precinct with a grim determination and a
familiar thrill of excitement rushing through my veins.
The closed box mystery is a long favored prop of mystery
writers that so rarely appears in real life. My client was
the only one in the box. That and the maid.
I spent the rest of the day interviewing her and digging
into her past. There was nothing that pointed to her as
anything other than a simple servant who had worked for the
Dawson family going on ten years
now.
What started tripping alarm bells were the security logs,
showing that shortly after the murder a white Porsche had
been taken from the garage and logged out. I went through
the logs again; everyone in the house was accounted for.
Everyone that was logged into the house was there when the
Porsche left. I sat back in my chair and let out a low
whistle. Someone else had been in the house that night,
someone
who had gotten around security. The log showed the magcard
had been Jack's own personal card. There was no picture.
Apparently Jack didn't feel it was necessary for security
to take snapshots of his comings and goings.
Slowly the scene unfolded. Someone had been in the room
with Jack that night, shot him with a rail gun, somehow
managed to not leave a single trace of his DNA behind, and
escaped in the white Porsche. But the killer would have to
wear a space suit to avoid leaving behind a few strands of
DNA, and a man in a space suit is not inconspicuous. I
pulled up the police lab report with a kernel of an idea
forming. It had been tried at least once: a man using a
clone to fake his own death. What had tripped him up were
the replication errors in the DNA. A clone is not a
perfect copy; there are subtle replication errors that can
be detected. From what I had learned so far, this didn't
sound all that farfetched.
I scrolled through the lab report until I found what I was
looking for, or rather didn't find what I was looking for.
There were no replication errors. Another dead end. Next,
I called up the will; when you want for suspects, the will
can be a veritable grocery store of suspects. It struck me
as unusual as I read it. It pretty much gave half of the
entire estate to Ann, which she was entitled to anyway
unless dead or in prison. Jack's half was to be inherited
by a registered clone that would be awakened after his
death. If Ann were dead or in prison, the clone would
inherit the whole ball of wax. Few men were vain enough to
live out their deaths as clones, but Jack seemed the type.
I pulled up the previous will, which had been changed only
two weeks ago. It was far more standard; everything went
to Ann and a few charities were mentioned favorably.
Nothing unusual, nothing out of the ordinary. But two
weeks ago Jack suddenly becomes interested in clones,
changes his will, and is violently murdered soon after. I
called up the new will again and investigated the
registered clone. The clone was stored in Zurich.
Suddenly everything started to click together, though it
still didn't show anything useful. Everything seemed to
revolve around Zurich, and that is where I found myself the
next morning.
I walked into the SynCor branch office and presented myself
to the secretary. "I'm not sure who I should talk to," I
began. I was wearing a transkit, basically a glorified
microphone I spoke into. Echo cancellation muted my voice,
and the computer provided a smooth translation to the
listener. "I'm here to see the person in charge of the
Jack Dawson clone."
"Please have a seat. I'll find someone to help you," she
said. The speaker in my ear gave her a dull mechanical
sound that in no way went with her otherwise attractive
features.
I waited patiently until a striking red-haired woman in a
white lab coat walked over to me. I rose and made a small
greeting. "You can take the transkit off; I speak English
fluently."
I smiled as I took off the kit. "How did you know I speak
English?" I asked.
"You have the look about you, and I have a keen ear." She
shrugged. "What can I do for you?"
"I'm investigating the Dawson murder. I'd like to see the
clone and maybe learn a bit more about the process," I
replied.
"Are you a policeman?" she asked.
"Investigator for Ann Dawson," I answered. "Same rights."
"Not in Switzerland," she said dryly.
"I've got a few pals on the force. I'm sure I could get
one up here, if you insist, and I'm sure he'd let me tag
along," I countered.
"No," she said, considering her words. "That won't be
necessary. Follow me."
As I followed her through the maze of corridors, she
explained the process of cloning. "It's fairly simple,
really. We take an egg and destroy the genetic material
inside; we then insert a compete strand of the donor DNA.
The egg believes it's been fertilized and starts growing.
Of course we modify the DNA slightly to speed up the aging
clock, so to speak. One in three clones can't or don't
survive the first three days. After a week, if all goes
well, we have a fully grown clone that's put into
cryostorage until it's needed."
"But without the memories and experiences of the donor," I
said.
"Correct. We're working on a way to transplant brain
engrams, but the process is still very primitive and we
haven't made that breakthrough yet. One day, perhaps."
She took me to a vault that looked more like a morgue than
anything else and pulled out a drawer that contained a body
which, to my eye, was Jack Dawson.
"Jack Dawson's registered clone. We're waiting for the
final approval to come down through the executors before
reviving him. After that, we'll begin an accelerated
teaching program, and within a year he'll be a fully
functional member of society again. Is this what you came
to see?"
Another dead end. "Yes. I guess it was. I thank you for
your time."
As I sat in the hotel room that night I tried to piece
everything together. But it all fell apart. Something was
going on; every instinct I ever had screamed at me that
something wasn't right. But I couldn't put my finger on
it. I checked my e-mail and I read a note from Bill, my
buddy on the force, that said they had located the Porsche
in front of the teleport terminal. Whoever had left was
now long gone.
I called Teleport, Inc., and worked my way up the ladder
trying to gain access to the security files for the
terminal, but it was no go all the way. Even the cops
couldn't touch Teleport; they were a multinational and
their terminals were nearly as immune as embassy grounds.
Frustrated, I punched up Candice, and after a few minutes
of good natured bantering I posed the question. "You up
for a game of whodunnit tonight, blossom?"
She grew serious. "Whose system?"
"Teleport. LA Terminal. Security reports for two days
ago," I replied.
"A snap. You owe me dinner, though, and a good fuck
after!" she ribbed.
"You can have those anytime you want," I said, deadly
serious.
She sighed. "Then I'll have to add a few more items to the
list later!" she winked. "Hold on, lover; here we go."
My screen split in two, showing Candice on the left and
security readouts on the right. I started recording the
right side of the screen. A couple of hundred faces
flipped past me at the rate of about one a second. Then
suddenly I said, "Stop! Go back one." The faces stopped
and the image flipped back to the previous one. Not the
one I wanted. "Again," I said. Again, nothing familiar.
"Again," I said. And suddenly Jack Dawson was staring
right at me. The time and date stamp of the photo clearly
indicated a time after he was supposed to have been dead.
"Can you follow this one through? I want to see where he
went." Candice nodded and more information appeared on the
screen. Polynesia, a private island owned by SynCor. I
leaned over and kissed the camera and made a big show of it
with a loud smack. "For this, Candice, I will have to
marry you."
"Ugh!" she said, ruffling her nose. "That's not a reward;
that's a punishment! But I'll think of something
interesting, I promise."
She cut the connection and I let the pieces of the puzzle
fall together. Jack makes a big show of being caught in a
scandalous affair, probably even going so far as to tip off
the tabloids, giving his wife even more of a motive for
murder than the billions of dollars already at stake.
Somehow he manages to get an exact copy of himself, not a
clone with replication errors, but a copy so perfect that
every DNA test says the copy is him. He kills the copy and
runs off to hide on a private island for a year or so. His
wife gets sent off to prison and his clone inherits the
whole ball of wax. The clone
goes through the motions of learning to be a person for the
curious, but the attention span of the press is hours, not
months. After a year, maybe a little longer just to be
safe, the clone meets a quiet, untimely end, and Jack steps
out of hiding, free and clear.
But how did he get the exact copy? Replication errors were
inevitable. It could be proved scientifically that a
perfect clone could not be produced. Then, because Jack
had centered my attention on Teleport so much, the last
piece of the puzzle clicked into place. Teleport works by
entwining A with B, destroying A but transferring the
properties of A to C. In theory, there could be a D and E.
The D would disintegrate itself like B but the E would be
another perfect copy.
A shiver ran down my spine as I imagined the two of them in
the study together. Maybe they even had sex; he was just
narcissistic enough to do it. Then they flipped a coin to
decide who would die. In the end, it was just another
teleport, but one that finally did live up to all of those
writer's imaginations.
I turned the results of my investigations over to Bill and
my client. The cops had a little trouble getting
Teleport's security logs, but eventually they saw what I
did. The cops didn't storm the island. A lone deputy
arrived by launch and personally handed the summons to
appear in court to a very, very surprised Jack Dawson.
Ann's lawyers dug out all the labs that were used to make
the exact copy, and she was acquitted by the grand jury
without ever standing trial.
In the end, I got fifty-six thousand new dollars. My bonus
for getting her out of jail, my fee for the days worked,
plus expenses. Since no one could decide if a murder had
been committed or not, since the victim was now very much
alive, I didn't get my half- million. The most we could
get him on was adultery and fraud. Fraud was a civil
crime, not a criminal one. The prisons were too crowded
for that kind of criminal. But, in the final divorce, Ann
got a 70/30 split, which was far better than the 50/50 she
had started out with.
Ann's a good girl; she offered me the half mil, but I
turned it down flat. Ethics can be a damned nuisance
sometimes. But, for the moment, at least, my creditors
were happy and I have some cash in my pocket and a
supersonic booked for Virginia, where Candice and I have a
dinner date planned. I'm sure she's thought up some pretty
good things to add to that list by now as well.
-Sandman
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