“This mate is in over his head,” Charles says.
I shake my head at the boxy Victorian house across the street.
“He never fucking leaves.”
Charles puts the Tesla into drive, gives me a dismissive look. I glare back at him; his comment is just as asinine as mine. But deep down I know that—yet again—I’ve missed something about the case.
Back at the Oakland police station, we make our report to Captain Mays.
“No movement for a week,” Charles says. “We’ve done 24-hour surveillance, including GS-22s and pips, there’s no way he’s left.”
“No entrances for pips?”
“He had the whole place winterized. Filled every cranny. And he never opens a window. Or the front door.”
“But he’s on Bart camera nine days ago and two witness saw him right after the killing.”
“One of which also said he saw a fucking demon on the train,” I put in.
Mays shrugs. “Stress reaction. Go talk to Herbert again at BP and look at his schematics. He’s getting out somehow. Maybe he’s got a trap door you couldn’t find.”
I look at Charles. He nods at Mays, serious.
Back in the car, we head towards West Oakland.
“A fucking trap door, Charles?”
“The chief’s not bloody stupid.”
“Right.”
“Look, it’s not magic. We searched, just couldn’t find it. But if we open his alibi, we go in. Go get some sleep, talk to Herbert, look at those maps again. Then start riding the Richmond line between 24th and Balboa.”
“You?”
“I’m gonna check the drone videos again and see what other type of surveillance I can get on the place. If he’s not leaving above ground . . .”
“Jesus, now we got a fucking mole-man murderer?”
#
Charles drops me off on Filbert St. in West Oakland and I mount the steps to my split-level apartment. I set my service pistol on my nightstand, take off my shoes and walk to the kitchen and drink two shots of rye from a half-empty bottle of Old Overholt. I sit at the table, staring at the glass.
Both my parents were cops. As a teenager, I hated them, not just because they had double the authority and discipline of most parents, but because they honestly believed they were a net force for good in the world. I made life as miserable for them as I could because of this perceived hypocrisy, but in the end, I was never caught for any crimes that would disqualify me from the academy. By the time I was eighteen, I started to see police work as a useful way to live with my urges. But for all my effort—and their pride—I’m still a shitty detective. Charles, and all the other detectives in homicide have some knack I don’t.
Worse, Charles only has two years with the OPD, versus my five, but everyone treats him like the senior detective. He’s only an American citizen through his wife, and acts like he knows everything about Oakland and the U.S. despite growing up in London. And he doesn’t really know anything about murder, not like I do.
After two more drinks, I brush my teeth and crash into bed. As I drift off, I don’t think about Charles, or even my most recent hobo. The mole man and his escape tunnels occupy my head until my exhaustion finally takes me into a vivid dream.
I’m in the suburban bedroom of my childhood home. Dallas Cowboys and Dick Tracy posters on the walls. Football pads and an air rifle in a corner. I’m sitting on my bed, waiting for someone.
A voice growls from the bottom of the stairs:
“Ready for your time, Rollins?”
My stomach clenches, and a crushing fear makes me throw up. It’s thin and liquid, made up of orange juice, beans, and cake.
A beefy demon steps through my door. His face is like obsidian, his cheekbones and nose razor-sharp.
He roughs me down to the floor, laying me in my puke. He pulls out a cordless power drill and starts to poke holes through my eye lids. It only burns at first, and I’m more worried he’ll gouge out my eyes, but he doesn’t. Eventually he switches off the drill, pulls out some sandpaper, and starts rubbing patches of skin off my back.
He stops and stands up. “You’re ready.”
I feel a bubbling darkness coming up the stairs.
“Do we really have to do this?” I beg. “Can’t we do the pain another day?”
The demon shakes his head. “This is what you signed up for. Six more months, Rollins.”
Somehow, I know I’m on a payment plan of torture, that this session is only one of many, and that they’ll only get worse and worse. I’m paying off my crimes, and they are not pro-rated.
The demon disappears. Tendrils of darkness lap around the edge of the doorframe. I cower on the floor. The door splinters apart, the darkness swirls in, and a giant cockroach appears, his mouth full of razor teeth. I stand, leap for the window, but he’s too fast. He stabs his six serrated arms through my body, avoiding all the vital organs, and starts to twist them around. I scream and he roars back at me like a jet engine, creating a whirlwind in the room.
I wake up screaming, heart hammering in my chest. I have one breath of calm air until I feel something in my bedroom. The cockroach demon. He’s crouched in one corner, shaking, preparing to stab me.
I reach for the gun on my nightstand and he roars.
Acid in my whiskey? Still in a dream? I hit the light and his arms flash towards me.
My ears ring from the shot in the enclosed space. My front window is shattered. The demon is gone, and every dog in the neighborhood is barking. Sitting up and rubbing my eyes, I know the mole man has sent this as a warning, and next time, it will be all too real. I dial Charles to tell him to I’m quitting the case, and leaving the force if I have to, but it goes to voicemail. A voice in the back of my mind says: without a badge, murder will out. But the fear of ending up in the demon’s torture den is stronger.
#
Just after 9:00am, following a thorough chewing out by Capitan Mays, I walk two blocks from the station to the Broadway Starbucks. I brood over my coffee, wishing I could have gotten a word in edgewise to announce my resignation, when Charles slides into the opposite chair. His eyes are tired, his suit wrinkled, and he has a two-day shadow on his bald head.
“Sleep like shit, too?” I ask.
“Quite. Did you ever read about the Moors murders?”
I rub my eyes. I hate it when Charles gets all intellectually morose about serial killers. But it’s better than getting shit about my “accidental discharge.”
“That the one where they killed the kids and tape recorded torturing them?”
“They did it to me last night.”
Pin pricks break out on my neck.
“Charles—”
“You dreamed something equally horrible.”
“What the fuck is going on?”
Charles lets out a sigh. “It’s Jones, the mole man. Well, he’s the proxy anyway.”
I stare at him blankly. He sips his tea.
“The chief dropped the case last night.”
I shrug, relieved, but embarrassed, knowing Charles’ reaction.
“Mays didn’t say shit.”
He nods. The purple under his eyes shimmers like makeup in the fluorescents.
“At about the same time you had your ‘accidental discharge’ he called. I could tell it had happened to him too—the dreams. He said the DA had dropped it for lack of evidence, wanted us to focus on other targets. Figures that the feds might take it over—”
“Look, Charles, I know you’re probably still gung-ho, but—”
“More than you can imagine. But it wasn’t just a dream. I know what he’s got.”
I clench my fist under the table, burning shame and confusion gnawing at my gut. This isn’t the first time Charles has made me feel like a fucking child.
“OK,” I say steadily. “What’s he got, Sir Charles?”
Charles sighs again. “In the car. Though it probably won’t make any difference. I imagine he can hear us there too.”
#
Charles drives on Broadway north, towards Jones’ house in Uptown.
“It’s a general AI, Rollins,” Charles says. “Maybe the first. He killed the woman to get a brain emulation.”
“Charles, what in the fuck are you on about? You’ve—”
He slams the breaks, backhands me hard across the face. I lunge at his throat. Tires squeal behind us. We’re stopped in the middle of a two-lane intersection, car horns blaring, and Charles’s glock is now in my face. My hands feel terribly sweaty and slick on his throat. I’m reminded that Charles has killed people, with the Royal Marines in Iraq, in addition to two perps on duty in Oakland.
“You’d better sit back, mate,” he says, and I do. Charles waves a thumbs up to the honking cars behind us and slowly eases his back into traffic.
“I know what it bloody sounds like, but there’s not much else capable.”
“Go on,” I say, trying to sound tough, suddenly feeling very lost.
“Google or the NSA or somesuch has built what is called a seed AI. An artificial intelligence that is designed to get smarter and smarter. They’ve got it in a box full of sensors and traps, so it can’t cause mischief. But it’s already outsmarted them, and snuck out. It’s found a client, some berk, Philip fucking Jones, to help make itself into a superintelligence, not just a genius program fucking around on the internet. When it’s done that—probably in a few days—it’ll be in complete control to do whatever it wants with us and the Earth. Which likely will be to toss us in the bin.”
“How does that explain the dreams?”
“It’s done a full-brain emulation. So it can project into the dream-creating part of the cerebrum, even during wakefulness. It can probably read our thoughts too, maybe those of the entire world.”
“I guess we’d better call the president.”
“No, we’re not. We’re going straight over there.”
I feel a terrible burning contraction in my stomach. I roll down the window and vomit. Charles doesn’t slow down.
He hands me a napkin from a left-over pile in his console.
“We can’t do that,” I say, wiping my mouth.
“I know it’s gotten in there,” he says, tapping his head. “But the world is at stake here, Rollins. If we report it, they’ll push back even harder. It’s in their dreams too.”
“The fucking president? The chances of you being not crazy right now aren’t good.”
He looks at me, purses his lips. “I know it sounds like science fiction, but I did study this sort of thing at Kings.”
I look at the wheel; Charles still has his pistol in hand, resting in his lap.
“If you’re wrong, this is a 492 at least, and probably a 242, because he’s not just going to let us in his house.”
“Maybe even the old 444, if he puts up too much of a fight. We’ll be lucky to get less than five if that happens, maybe even life.”
“Charles, you can’t just break in his fucking house and shoot him because you’ve got a hunch!”
He doesn’t look at me, just watches the road. We take a left off Broadway onto Telegraph. Eight blocks away. My stomach convulses again and I know I have to do something.
When we cross 24th Charles slows for a mom and kids in the crosswalk and I try to snatch his gun. He deftly pulls it out of reach, slides it into his other hand, and pistol-whips me in the face.
The mother grabs her children and runs.
He pulls into 26th, a little side-street. Hands me more napkins for my now dripping forehead.
“Sorry, mate.”
“Fuck you, Charles!”
“Look, the whole human race will be dead tomorrow if we don’t do this. We’re probably fucked anyway, but we should at least try. You gonna go down like a conchie?”
“It doesn’t make any fucking sense! The whole U.S. Army would be here if they knew it was out.”
“Then they don’t know, or this thing is taking every step to make sure they don’t.”
“Why us?”
He sighs. “I may as well tell you. I’ve killed people, Rollins. Lots of them.”
He responds to my look of feigned understanding.
“Yes, in Iraq. And on duty. But I killed people in London before. For fun. Which was why I joined the Marines, and became a detective.”
“Stop telling me this—”
“I enjoyed it, being a predator. But I wanted to kill and be praised for it, or at least not go to jail.”
“What the fuck does this have to do with anything?”
“That’s why it can’t bloody control me, you idiot.”
“What?”
“It doesn’t yet understand sociopaths. They don’t fit into its dataset of “this is human.” People want life, love, sex, money, status. I just want to kill for fun, which is not normal human behavior.”
For a moment, I want to tell Charles we share a dark brotherhood, but the fear is too much. I flip the door latch, swing out onto the sidewalk and run. A shot cracks behind me, my left ass cheek goes numb, and my knees give out as I stumble into the alley wall.
Footsteps on concrete. Smell of piss on the sidewalk. Charles’s aftershave wafts over me.
He pats me on the cheek.
“Sorry, mate. If you wake up tomorrow and I’m in jail, consider yourself lucky. Send me a pound cake, all right?”
He pulls the gun from my armpit holster and walks away.
I touch my leg and come back with blood. I’ve been shot in the ass, but I can’t tell how bad it is. Somehow, the alley whirling, I use the wall to get on my feet again. I wish I’d told Charles the truth. And that I’ll do anything to help him stop this thing.
I careen across 27th St.—both lanes honking and slamming breaks—and run through someone’s yard. I jump a hedge and cross a small street, then I’m over the fence of the mole man.
I land in a pile of dusty ivy. I feel the blood pulsing out of my ass and know I’m running out of time. I claw to my knees, stand up. It’s a big backyard, full of overgrown shrubs, the fenceline a solid wall of ivy. I don’t hear any voices. I limp around a fig tree in the middle of the yard.
Everything tilts and shifts and the yard’s full of monsters, howling demon cockroaches, giant land squid, living plants with gnashing maws like great whites. I cower on the ground. The monsters crowd around me, and I close my eyes to block them out.
They disappear. I focus on my fear. The source of it is the basement of the house. I see the padlocked ramshackle door. It hides something terrible, a torture den, satanic rituals come true, some screaming inescapable hell. My whole body tells me to flee, but I force myself to move forward.
There’s nobody in the windows above the basement door. I circle right to see the front of the house. I peek around the corner. Philip Jones is dragging something into the front door. A body. Charles.
I flash of anger burns into a last shot of adrenaline. I kick in the basement door with my good leg and I collapse on my shot ass cheek. Fighting the pain, I crawl forward down a set of concrete stairs into darkness. I grope along the paneling, cobwebs in my face.
I reach the landing, and my eyes adjust. It’s a regular basement, with stacked washers and dryers against one wall.
The AI stands in the middle of the room. It looks human, wearing an expensive grey suit. At first, I don’t recognize his face. Then I see it’s Charles. It morphs into Philip Jones, then into the murder victim, LaDacia Davis. Then into myself.
A hole materializes in the floor, and the AI drops into it.
#
I wake up in a hospital, with Captain Mays by my bedside. He looks exhausted. His bushy eyebrows droop. He’s got some kind of nervous tick in his shoulder when he talks.
“We’re gonna get you evacuated. They can’t stop it . . . Gonna move towards Sac.”
“Charles?”
Mays shakes his head. “Jones killed him and escaped somehow. Then this shit started . . .”
“What?”
“The whole city, the world, it’s disappearing, melted down by some kind of grey goo.”
“It was the AI, it got loose . . .”
Mays shoulder ticks and he turns around. There’s shouting outside, a soldier sticks his head in.
“We are fucking evacuated. Move it!”
Behind him I see other soldiers carrying a stretcher. Then I pass out.
I wake up, eight hours, maybe a day later. My mouth has almost closed from thirst, the wound in my ass sends pounding waves of pain through my body. I roll over, see I’m laying on kind of black material, like plastic but harder. No sign of Captain Mays. Or the hospital.
Driven by thirst, I get to my knees. All around me are miles and miles of solar panels. Up in the sky, I see a rocket in flight, of a shape I don’t recognize. About a hundred yards away, I see another person. He yells, waves. I wave back, then have to sit down.
Twenty feet away, I see a body, an old woman, slowly disappearing into the black support material of the solar panels.
“It’s finito,” I can hear Charles say. “Just deserts, eh?”
I feel somewhat at peace, knowing how the world ended.
At least Charles didn’t shoot me for nothing. I chuckle at the irony of two sociopaths almost saving the world. I wait, listen for his voice, hoping for some pithy quote from Shakespeare or Philip Larkin, but it doesn’t come. I close my eyes, satisfied. At least now my last dreams will be my own.
Leonard Crosby teaches dystopian literature, and other English courses, at Santa Clara University. He’s been obsessed with science fiction, dystopias, and horror for as long as he can remember.