Two days
By J. L. Young

An incoming text blinked in the corner of my field of vision. The notification listed it as an emergency. A freshly prepared and served bowl of Banmian took precedence. Another notification flashed and was promptly ignored with a spirited slurp of freshly made mian tiao. It was certainty a call was coming shortly. Given the proper codes, the people I work for can override the often used reject icon.

I felt the familiar vibration in my temple, “Wright, where are you? I know you received my texts,” her voice always seemed to have a quality about it. It was like she was perpetually pissed off. Even when she spoke to other people, good people, it was there seething just beneath the surface. I’ve asked what her deal was, I was always met with a polite, but vulgar hand gesture.

“I’m in Chengdu, Lumi.”

“Captain wants you back in New York,” she replied.

“How long ago did you catch a case?”

“Let’s see, the case landed on my desk about five minutes ago. I’d say he wanted you back about five minutes ago. You’re such an adequate DI, why do you ask stupid questions?”

“That’s high praise.”

The call ended abruptly.

I released a sigh and muttered under my breath, “At least I got two days.” I called the hotel.

Not long after the call, I found myself in the lobby of the hotel. My clothes were packed and ready to be distributed to the needy as per my request. I don’t like to travel with luggage. A smiling woman stood in the queue for me. She offered her hand as I took her place. I obliged.

I shook nervously, but I’m quite accomplished at hiding it. Fearful of the slightest miscalculation and I’m just another headline buried deep on some obscure web page. “Detective Inspector dead returning home from abbreviated vacation, criminals rejoice.”

The quiet decrescendo of the plinth found my ears. Before me stood Lumi Hayward. She actually looked pissed to see me. Nothing new. She looked at my clothes, a black traditional Tang suit, and shook her head, “We’re going to 197th and Webb Ave. Come on.”

Our car settled at the street level of an apartment complex. This area was destroyed during the last World War. “Its a thousand stories tall, a wonder of the modern world,” I said while in awe of the lacework facade.

“Yeah, forty years ago,” Lumi said snidely.

A doorman held the door for us. I suspect some android heritage. Inside, it wasn’t much to speak of, save for the fountain that shot a three-meter column up to the penthouse floor. “Its a hologram. Has to be,” Lumi said.

“Test your theory,” I goaded.

“Ha, and lose a hand. No thanks.”

An elevator took us to the 467th floor. The doors parted, a uniform turned around and respectfully greeted us with a nod understanding the importance of silence in our work. Lumi and I nodded.
As the doors opened, my implant engaged. The body found in the foyer had not been dead long.

Lumi removed a device from the small backpack she always carried. She rested the device on the floor and pressed the button on the top. Lasers danced on every surface in the room reading the ever weakening vibrations and recorded them.

“Playback,” she commanded the device.

Blobs of light coalesced into humanoid shapes. It seemed as though this was a normal middle-class household. Lumi, though impatient, endured the tedium this process engendered. A sharp sound of broken glass flowed through the room, clearing a path through the mundane noises. As the sound dissipated, the figures returned. Their images painted a picture of the event.

I did a scan of the bodies as Lumi scanned the rooms, “Six dead. Three adults, three children. Time of death, 6:33 A.M.” I paused, That’s strange. DNA, the uplink is buffering.”

Lumi picked up the device and stored it in her pack. “The time of death and the time stamp on the recording concur,” I reported.

“Check this out,” Lumi said.

I took to her side and saw a window had been broken. “That’s fifty millimeters of Aluminum Oxynitride glass, that shouldn’t be broken like that. Hold on,” I looked closer, “I’m picking up some short, fine fibers. Looks like lint. But whatever it is, it’s reading as natural. My implant studied the signature of the fiber and reported, “Gossypium barbadense, a strain of cotton.”

“Naturals. Hatred fueled this?”

“It’s been twenty years since their last attack. This is small, a single family.”

“This could be the resurgence!”

“Don’t jump to conclusions. What do you know about them?” I asked as the DNA sequencer continued to buffer.

“When the corporations took over the Fed, they purposely forced bills through that led to the prohibition of natural products in order to boost their profits. Natural textiles were a threat to those profits. They paid politicians to vote in favor of them, it’s disgusting.”

I continued where she started, “The Naturals would agree with you. Not long after that, they began their terror raids. Small at first, then….”

Lumi turned sharply toward me, “They progressed to genocide. Everyone wearing synthetic clothing was a potential victim.”

“Yes. And to throw us off, they used tech to generate false DNA traces to hide their members. They could easily employ the DNA signatures of every human on the planet, all twelve billion of us.” I paused again, “That could explain the sequencer buffering.”

“Where can they get that information?”

My head tilted slightly in thought, “Hospitals, polling stations, point of sale devices…,”

She snapped her fingers, “The plinth.”

“Yes. If the lobbyists usual method is employed and the recipient is an agent of the Plinth Transportation Bureau, everyone on Earth is a suspect.”

“I thought they were supposed to be incorruptible.”

“You believe everything the podcasts tell you?”

“Of course not.”

“Call the Medical Examiner for pickup. The building manager will want this apartment sold before the end of the day.”

Lumi grumbled as we left, “Greed.”