Rhys-Michael Silverlocke
5200 WORDS

Percentages

He stared out through the glass, out and down. A pale figure
silhouetted and illuminated by light coming from behind him.
Forty-six floors to the pavement below. Both the view and the
drop compelled him.
He didn't hear the sound of the other one approaching. Surely
some sound had been made-- the elevator arriving on this level;
perhaps a click of the lock as his penthouse door opened. But he
heard nothing. Still, he knew somehow he was no longer alone.
Without turning he remarked, "I've been expecting you for hours
now. What have you all decided?"
A discomfited shifting of shoes from behind. Then silence.
He added, "It has to be done, you know that. Or things will go
on like this forever." He swept a hand towards the win-dow and
the city below, "This mess we've created for ourselves."
More shuffling. A metallic "snick" and the smell of sweat
approaching.
It hardly took a moment. Surprise reflected from the pale face
in the glass as the life quickly departed from the owner of the
penthouse. As he sank slowly downward, his reflection was
replaced by the pale and frowning image of another man holding a
gleaming knife which dripped blood like little red pearls to the
spattered floor.
"We couldn't let you do it. You know that don't you..." the
other man told the corpse like an apology or a benediction. Then
he began to go through the rooms in a precise search.

A swarthy looking man with dark eyes and hair made his way
across the street, stepped over a sleeping man and slid his card
along the reader-strip. "Jared Hood, fifty-eight, detective
second-class, 115-j32." The door slid open and behind him Hood
could hear a few titters from the people passing outside.
The whispers followed him all his life. "A fifty-eight? They
let that sort in there?" But actually he drew a secret pride
from the fact that surprise prompted such comments more than
anything else; Hood could easily pass for a sixty-five or even a
seventy to most people... until he was actually forced to reveal
his p-card.
He passed the main desk, giving no thought to those sealed
outside as the main doors to Precinct 14-south slid seamlessly
closed with his passage. He nodded at the man behind the
counter, "S'up Carlos?"
"Lots. Something for you tonight. Talk to Li-Chen; he'll clue
you in." Li-Chen, the captain no one dared to call captain.
Hood nodded. He went to his office and slid his card in the
door. "Jared Hood, fifty-eight, 115-j32." His door clicked but
did not open. Damned mechanism never worked right. He pushed it
open grumpily.
Probably why they gave this office to him. The percentages...
No one ever forgets, and the percentage can grind you into dust
if you aren't careful. Hood did his best not to let little
things upset him.
He brought up Rover and logged in. The virtual secretary
informed him he had three messages in e-mail, one on the Web, and
a vid-trans from Albuquerque... that last a call from his ex-
wife. He told the animated dog to store the vid, brought up a
brief summary of his messages and decided it could all of it wait
until later.
He toggled the comm. "Li-Chen," he said simply. A minute
later an oriental face appeared.
"Hood. Good." The inscrutable face did not crack a smile.
The man in charge of this precinct rarely used humour, gave no
regard to titles, and had little use for words most of the time.
"Li-Chen. There is something for me?" Hood replied patiently.
Li-Chen remained impassive but anyone who knew him could sense
his anticipation. Something about the light in his eyes and the
furrow crinkling in the man's forehead inevitably gave away what
his composed demeanour often struggled to hide. "There's been a
death. Here is the address." Laconic, controlled, and to anyone
who knew the man as Hood did, clearly bursting at the seams!
"Anyone we know?"
"Research scientist for Mellicon Laboratories. Address is
coming through..."
Hood watched the split-screen and saw the victim, the location
and some other particulars. He took a good look at the face of
the dead man. "Why me?"
"Why not you?" the other man countered. The screen went dark
as the connection ended.
To no one in particular Hood replied, "Because I'm am way out
of my league investigating the death of a ninety-four, dammit!"

The pasty-faced little manager laughed at Hood when he demanded
admittance to the penthouse. Jared showed the man his shield and
p-card, saw the usual surprise register on the bland face and the
usual questions forming: "Is this man really only a fifty-eight?"
"How did he rise so high on the force?"
"Just open the damned door," he told the pale and greasy-haired
little man, "then get the hell out of my way." It felt good to
bully the manager, in part because the man was so smarmy. Also,
from the look of his face, the manager clearly registered at
least a seventy-five or possibly higher. Jared didn't often get
to speak his mind to his "societally acknowledged betters" and
relished each slender opportunity.
The coroner's people had thoroughly trampled and dispersed any
information which the crime scene might have afforded. Typical.
Hood never let that get in his way. He roamed through the lavish
penthouse, room by sumptuous room.
The bedroom was comic, from his standpoint, and hinted at some
sexual perversions left unspoken in the company of polite or even
hard-bitten people. A closet full of clothes. A spare room with
a bed and dust on the dressers. The bathroom needed a paint job.
No personal items anywhere. No photo-cubes, no family albums
lovingly-cherished. Like a hotel room, the penthouse had a feel
of sterility.
Only one terminal in the whole place. Hood engaged the monitor
and checked the system statistics. Encrypted, of course. He
slid his p-card into the reader and punched in his override. The
screen glowed immediately with all the activity of the last
twenty-four hours.
Interesting. Someone in the wee hours of the morning had tried
to wipe all the active memory. It hadn't worked; a cleverly
devised security program prevented the deletion of any file from
the system. A curious thing for the dead man to have done.
Hood listed all the files which weren't programs. Not much
there. He brought up a few and browsed them. Windy scientific
explanations for well-known principles and diagrams of simple
devices used everyday. Nothing worth reading or wiping for that
matter. Just to be thorough he ran off a copy and shunted it to
the police mainframe for Esther to check out.
He listed the programs too at one point, mostly a lot of games
and some info packets on the Web and cyber-cable. No phone
lists, no emergency numbers, no friend's names or appointments
made or kept. Nothing.
Hood went into the deceased's personal database. The victim,
Horace Thornton, had not bothered to fill in most of his owner's
documentation. Just his name and an e-mail address.
Jared connected to the building computer, knowing it would
incense the greasy little man downstairs when he discovered it,
and started thumbing through the leases. Thornton's contained
the same dearth of information. No family, no references, no
previous address. Nothing. Hood was becoming irritated.
How does one rent an apartment, much less a penthouse, without
providing any pertinent information? Hood half-suspected that if
he had used his access to hack his way into the Mellicon computer
to find Thornton's original employment application it would be
the same story once again.
He didn't have that option, though. Overriding the building
computer was a nothing and the manager could squawk all he wanted
and no one would give a shit. But pulling records from a company
as big as Mellicon would require a courtesy call at very least,
and possibly a warrant.
He needed to see where the dead man had worked, maybe talk to
the people there. Hood called the precinct for an authorisation.
"Do it." That had been Li-Chen. Hood had to think about it
twice to be sure he had not imagined it. After waiting on hold
for nearly ten minutes, his superior's image had appeared and was
gone in an instant.
He had time while waiting to think about all this. A dead
ninety-four was news. But no cyber-press waited outside with
cameras. Odd. A man lives in a penthouse with no possessions,
no past, and no family or friends. More than odd. The dead man
had worked for Mellicon... a dangerous connection there? And a
peon, a second-class little fifty-eight is sent to be the sole
investigator?
Beyond odd finally. Ridiculous!
But Jared Hood had a job to do. Possibly impossible, likely
ludicrous and yet... And why did the word "expendable" hover in
the back of his mind?
Hood pulled up the address for Mellicon's local facility and
punched it into his car's auto-pilot. He nursed a single thought
as the car propelled him to his destination: What's really going
on here???
He barely gave a thought to the long white car which followed
him from a discreet distance.

For a company which could be said to control the actual status
of every citisen of the planet, Mellicon's offices didn't make
much of an impression on Hood. There was a moment, when he slid
his card through the door; the realisation that all the p-cards
came from a plant just like this one. But other than that
personal interlude, the facility remained unremarkable.
A receptionist had greeted Hood curtly, then professionally
when his information passed across her screen. He had been
directed to the Coordinator of Projects, a small and wiry man
with bright eyes and thick glasses.
But Hood had learned little of use from the man, nor form any
of those who had worked in the lab with the dead man. Most of
them simply favoured him with disdainful looks and protested they
were much too busy to talk with him. A few seemed to stare at
him warily, or perhaps it was his own paranoia.
Hood obtained permission to look in the active files for
anything which might provide a clue to Thornton's recent
activities. What he found further disappointed him; Thornton had
been involved in any number of projects, but there was nothing
significant. Nothing for which someone would kill or be killed.
Left alone in the coordinator's office for a while, he thumbed
surreptitiously through a decade of the company's files until he
found Horace Thornton's original application for work. The habit
of not providing information had apparently been a long-standing
practice-- name, date of birth, ident-number, and an internet
address.
How did Thornton ever get hired without any academic records?
Another impossibility, like the penthouse. He pulled up the
phone-records for Thornton's private office in the building.
Stunned didn't quite describe his reaction; it had never been
used. Not once in the seven years the records traced back had
anyone dialed out on that number.
Or had someone tampered with the records to hide certain calls?
But why delete them all and attract attention? Then again, why
had anyone tried to delete Thornton's files at the penthouse when
they were useless? Too many questions. No place to start.
Hood chewed his lip in frustration. How could a person exist
in these days with no friends, no history, no family, and without
providing the sort of intrusive information everyone had to offer
these days just to live and work?
No phone calls? Well... no outgoing ones. Had anyone ever
called in? Yes!!! Three. Three calls in seven years? What did
that mean?
The caller-id records showed that two of those calls were from
the penthouse itself-- possibly Thornton leaving himself a
message at the office about something. The third call had been
from a "L.T. Horton" and the number was local. It had been made
more than four years ago, a voice-only transmission, but it was
the only lead he had. Hood noted the number.

"Hit him again!" one snarled.
"C'mon. Get his shoes!!!" another called, this one female.
Hood curled into a protective ball on the pavement as the blows
continued to rain down on him from all sides. He almost vomited
as a well-placed foot found his abdomen.
"Damn seventy! What the hell are you even doing here???" and
another sharp kick.
Silently Jared agreed. He had been foolish. The pain in his
head was proof enough.
Someone ruffled through his pants, making clumsy grabs to get
into his pockets. A sharp cracking sound and suddenly Hood felt
himself smothering under a heavy weight.
Another crack and a scream this time. Hood knew the last blows
had not landed on his own body. He heard a new voice thundering
with rage.
"C'mon!!! Come on!!! Let's go dammit!" came a deeply resonant
voice with thick street-talk overtones. There was another crack
and this one Hood felt second-handed through the body which had
landed on him. Then there were footsteps running away and angry
shouts.
Hood was more than happy to pass out.
When his eye again brought the world into focus he had been
moved inside. He lay stretched out on a long couch in a dimly
lit room. There was an unfamiliar odor in the air, and something
furry at his side. Before he could flinch it came to him that it
was simply a cat.
"What'chu doin' down here, mister man? You outta' your mind?
You lucky those idiots didn't kill yer ass afore I got there with
Old Bess here..."
The voice came from very darkly-visaged man in his twenties who
faced Hood from the doorway of the kitchen. "Old Bess" probably
referred to the ancient-looking fire extinguisher the man hefted
easily through the air before him.
"I imagine that did the trick nicely..." and immediately
regretted it as his head began to throb. He managed to croak
out, "Thank you."
"No sweat. Wanna beer?"
In a much softer tone, "Not really. Where are we?"
"Inside," the brown-faced man told him with a laugh, "better
than outside, yes?" He opened his beer with a quick twist.
Jared attempted a weak nod.
"Child, what have you done to this man!" came a new and
distinct voice. "You get over here before I take off my shoe!!!"
"Now, Mama..." the man with the beer began.
"Mama nothin'! What you done to this man??? You answer me!"
Hood sat up weakly, "He saved my life," he said. Then he
slumped back against the cushions.
Lots of discussion from that point, but Hood noted little of
it. The room spun pleasantly for him at the moment and he simply
lay there and enjoyed it. It was some time later when he became
aware of someone asking him questions.
"Can you take a little soup, mistuh man?" the older voice, the
mother of his rescuer.
"I... I think so. Hood."
"Hmm?"
"Hood. Detective Jared Hood."
"A cop callin' hisself 'Hood'? Boy you got hit too hard on the
head. What were you doing in this neighbourhood anyways?" She
didn't wait for an answer. She went to the kitchen muttering,
"Man like to be out of his mind."
He looked around the modest dwelling. A few chairs, a couch, a
bedroom or possibly two off a hallway. His wallet lay intact on
the long low table next to the couch in easy reach. The curtains
were drawn against the light of day, but it crept warmly in
around the edges. He hadn't been out for too long then.
A smell presaged her return. A nice smell. A sit-up-and-take-
notice sort of smell. Hood arranged himself in a somewhat
vertical position and got his first real look at the old woman.
"It's hot, so eat up." Careworn eyes the colour of mahogany
watched him from behind so many wrinkles no one could count them.
But the eyes were alight. The colour had all but been bled from
the tight bun of kinky hair on her head by relentless time, but
she remained sturdy and proud.
"Thank you. It's amazing."
She inclined a slight bow and sat near him.
After he had eaten some he asked, "Why did your son save me?"
"I got me some big shoes, mister Hood," she laughed a golden
laugh, revealing a brief glimpse of the young girl she must have
once been. Seeing his incomprehension, she added, "Jerome knows
I'd whup his ass if he let someone get himself murdered
practically on my doorstep."
Jared nodded. "Even a cop?"
"I like to think we all got some good in us..." in tones rich
with irony.
Jared laughed. It was an easy thing to like this woman, to
talk with her. She represented something sadly lacking these
days.
"I was looking for an address. I needed to find a man named
Horton. L.T. Horton."
The woman half started out of her seat. "Mistuh Horton? Ain't
no Mistuh Horton; not any more anyways. Just me. Mother Louisa.
Ohh, and my boys of course. But they're called Horace and
Jerome. Jerome you met already."
Hood knew he had to be hearing things. She didn't just say
that. Horace Horton... Horace Thornton? No. Not an option.
The blow to his head, surely. The answer... no.
"What was your husband's name?" he asked. Mother Louisa... why
did that sound so damned familiar?
"George. And a piece of work he was too, lord yes!" she had a
frown creeping around the corners of her mouth as she recalled
old memories.
"But he's not around anymore?"
"He passed on a number of years ago, just a few years after the
accident. I called Horace to tell him, but he didn't come to the
funeral. Jerome sticks close by me though. Still, we all knew
he wasn't coming anyways."
"Who?" Hood interrupted.
"Horace. My other boy. He got hisself burned pretty bad in an
accident a bunch of years ago. Wouldn't let anyone see him after
that. Still won't! He was a powerful smart boy who was going to
crack the world open and find all the secrets inside.
"He went to the biggest school me and his daddy could afford,
got hisself some scholarships too, and tagged some big degrees.
Was even gonna' be a scientist. Then one day we get a call from
him in the hospital..."
"You never saw him or spoke to him again?" Hood could see the
pieces falling into place. The picture of the puzzle was not
totally clear yet, but it became more distinct with each passing
moment.
"Well, I spoke to him a couple of times in the hospital... some
private place he fixed up for hisself. And I called him when
George passed on. He always was a serious and headstrong child
and until he gets over it that's just the way it is."
Hood ignored good manners and lifted the bowl to his mouth to
get the very last drops of the soup. "So there is no L.T.
Horton?"
"You don't listen. That's me! Louisa Tillman Horton. Louie,
when I was young and full of vinegar; Lucy, to my no-good
husband, God rest his drunken soul; and now Mother Louisa now I'm
an old cuss.
"So, what did the poe-lice wanna' see me about?"
Mother Louisa. Why did that keep nagging at him? There was
something. Something he had seen.
Hood thought furiously. The connections loomed before him so
crystalline. Clickety-click. Ka-ching. He realised she was
staring at him and had been for a few minutes.
"I think someone played a prank on me, Mother Louisa.
Someone's having some fun sending me on wild goose-chases and
watching to see if I get killed or not." He showed her his p-
card.
Her eyes widened a bit, "Well hell, boy, you sure had me
fooled. I took you for a white man!" she quipped.
"Happens all the time," he laughed, for the first time allowing
himself to enjoy the clean irony of it all.
"I'm only a twenty-six my own self, and George, god rest him,
was a twenty-three. Doesn't mean I don't have my pride..."
Hood nodded. He understood, or rather he had been similarly
misunderstood all his life. This woman had walked an extra mile
in similar shoes. "Mother, you've saved my life. Thank your boy
for me, and thank you for the soup. You ought to open a
restaurant."
"Well if that isn't the nicest thing anyone's ever said!" She
looked him up and down critically to decide if he was pulling her
leg. Then she made up her mind and reached out and hugged him.
Hood, surprised, did not stop to think. He gave the old woman a
squeeze and told her he had to leave.
"Get on to a doctor now," she urged him, "Cause my soup only
does so much..." again that light-hearted golden laugh. "You
going to make it to your car or should I get Jerome to look after
you 'til your safe."
Hood told her, "They took me unprepared. I didn't realise what
I was getting into; this was once a nice neighbourhood."
"Once," she echoed with a click of her tongue emphasising both
her displeasure, and acceptance of the decay around her.
He reached into his inner-pocket and produced his needler, "But
I know better now. I'll be fine. Hope my car is still in one
piece."
"Didn't hear the thingy blasting so I guess it's fine."
"Thingy? The alarm? Yeah I don't hear it either." No one's
fool this old woman. Deduction and reasoning. But of course she
could not guess at the vital role she had played in Hood's
investigation.
He had a pang as he left. Horace. Should he try and tell her?
Was he even correct in his surmise? But no, it was too much of a
coincidence. How had it been done? The actual mechanics puzzled
him still. But clearly she should be told something.
Would he want to know? Would she? He wrestled with it as he
made his way to the front door. Finally he decided to let it go
for now. Perhaps there would be time when he was positive to
come back and explain it all to her. For now, let her hold onto
her memories.
"You come back, see me sometime when you're not in such an all-
fired hurry, Mistuh Hood..." she drawled with a friendly smile.
"I'll try and do that, Mother. I really will," he told her.
Then he let the door close behind him.

He had been heading for his office when the image came to him
out of nowhere and he interrupted the car to program a new
destination. He pulled up to the curb and set the theft-devices.
Behind his car, several others drew up and parked.
The manager of Thornton's building was even less happy to see
him than before. Disdaining to step outside his own apartment,
he simply handed the passkey out to Hood and then closed the door
in the other man's face. Hood was beyond caring at this point.
He had to get upstairs.
Finding things as he left them, he went to the monitor and
immediately pulled up the listing of programs he had seen earlier
that morning. There it was: Mother Lousia's Maze! Hood had
taken it for a game labyrinth, but it had to be more, now that he
knew the significance of the title.
He brought up the file and clicked on "run".
The computer initialised the program and brought up not a game,
but a very complex word-processor with text already on the screen
awaiting his gaze. Hood read the first screen four or five times
before he could go on. Beyond shock, it was the sheer scope of
what had been accomplished which took him aback.
He read on, read nearly one hundred pages in a single gulp. It
had been done, all of it. The file included lengthy technical
descriptions of the "process" Thornton had invented. Later pages
detailed how the p-card system had been suborned as well.
Everything Hood had begun to suspect lay revealed as truth in
the words of the dead man.
Surely this was the reason he had been killed. If the truth
ever got out the world would be rocked to its foundations! There
would be riots and panic!
A sound disturbed his reading. He barely heard it, lost in the
revelations spreading before him on the flickering screens. Hood
became suddenly afraid in the quiet penthouse as the setting sun
left the suite filled with gloom. The hairs on the back of his
neck rose.
Jared Hood realised he was no longer alone. He spun in the
chair expecting to see the manager with his hand out for the key.
Several lean and angular men stood behind him. Five pale men
with disturbed looks on their faces and pain in their eyes. Hood
almost reached for his needler, but saw that one of the five
already had a weapon trained on him. He sat back in the chair,
facing them.
"You are the others. The ones Thornton used his process on."
It was a statement. None of them replied.
"You killed Thornton... Horton. And now you've come for me, is
that it?" He waited. No one moved more than peripherally.
"Well, come on... don't keep me in suspense. You've got me right
where you want me, so talk to me!" he demanded.
One stepped forward a pace from his fellows. Sandy blond hair
in his eyes, barely thirty, but with a keen edge in his voice, "I
will speak."
"You killed Horton," Hood began.
"Not I, but it was a group decision." The others looked
nervously at the floor.
"And your little group has come to another decision now, has
it?" Hood let the sarcasm drip out freely. "You're going to kill
a cop???"
"We don't like it. We're here in person because no one of us
trusts the others won't blackmail him with this later. This is
too big. It is nearly beyond us. But we are the five who
decide, decide for the benefit of all the rest and the entire
world."
"You couldn't stop an investigation into the first murder; what
makes you think you can jsut get rid of me?"
"Horace's murder will never be solved. Your death will appear
to be an unrelated gang-incedent, like the one we set up for you
earlier today."
Hood hadn't anticipated that. These people were more thorough
than he gave them credit for. "You think of everything," he said
blandly.
"We're not happy about it; there's simply no other way. How
much did you read? How much of the accursed book?"
Hood lied, "Nearly all of it."
"Do you know what would happen if the world found out? The
system we have now is a horrible travesty, a sickness which is
destroying us. But we cannot throw it over in a single moment--
not without bringing down society as well. We must work
gradually and undermine the current system until it can fall
apart gently... when there is something new and better to takes
its place."
"What if I don't tell anyone?" Hood challenged, not intending
for one moment to remain silent while he drew breath.
"You are burning to tell someone. You want to shout it from
the treetops. You're even going to go back and ruin that sweet
old lady's life with the news that her son wasn't hurt in any
accident but the first of a new breed and now he's dead.
"You would do that and more in the name of whatever personal
path you follow. But it is not time for such revelations and we
cannot permit you to do it."
"If not now, when?" Hood asked, not realising the quote.
"You sound like Horace. He too thinks things have gone far
enough and that it is time for a change. Hence that damned
book..." he trailed off with genuine sadness in his voice. He
looked around the room as if trying to catch a whiff or glimmer
of the former occupant. He told Hood softly, "No one wanted to
do it..."
Hood didn't allow himself to be put off by contrition. Not in
the face of what they so obviously intended for him. "There are
how many of you living outside the system??? How many others
passing as ninety-fours or higher? There's at least one in my
precinct because I haven't been alone on this case since it
started. And a couple in the lab looked just like you guys."
"There are forty of us, now that Horace is gone..."
"Now that you've murdered your maker, you mean..." Hood
replied, emphasising their crime-- the crime they obviously
planned repeating with himself as victim.
"This isn't easy for us. We aren't bastards. No one wants it
to be this way. But society isn't ready. What would happen if
the world found out about us???"
"You would be torn apart by the nearest mob," Hood told them
blandly, threatening them with anything he could find.
"What would happen to the process? What would our government
do with it? Would it ever get into the hands of those who need
it most?"
That stopped him. Hood shifted angrily in the chair and tried
to find a flaw in their reasoning. Oh, of COURSE they wanted to
save their own skins. No man was capable of being entirely
altruistic.
But their existence also offered the world hope of something
better. Could he allow that to be extinguished? He turned his
chair away from them. Hood looked again at the dynamic plan of
Horace Thornton, a vital and necessary plan.
He thought of a sweet old lady living in a ramshackle with her
only son. He thought about a world where people like that,
people of great value were left to rot unnoticed and be preyed
upon by the lower classes running uncontrolled in the streets.
He thought about a world of locked doors, where even the church
and the police stations had closed their doors to the public, and
how people fought over numbers on plastic cards.
He thought about these five, these harbingers of his doom and
society's renewal. As he thought, he heard at least one of the
five drawing nearer to him. Without turning to look at them he
stood and walked to the window and looked out, out and down.
The sunset was finally over. The lights from below dazzled.
He pressed his nose against the glass, feeling the delightful
coolness. A sound from behind he ignored. Another coolness,
spreading from below and behind.
It was all over in a minute.