Organo-Topia, a cyberdick novella

Scene 2

Detective Maris Peterson stepped from a magnacar and took in the scene. The vehicle slammed its door shut and whined away to retrieve its next customer.

A hastily-erected enclosure obscured the impact point on the sidewalk. Immediately, he tilted his head back to gauge the distance from the top, some primal instinct driving the glance.

Eight, nine stories, easy. Maris ducked under police tape and stepped into the enclosure. He glanced over the Coroner's shoulder at the pile of flesh on the sidewalk. "What do you think, Urzula? Pushed, fell, or jumped?"

"Not my bailiwick, Detective," the Coroner said, looking up from her work, a bug-eyed holocam on her shoulder recording her every move. "Cause of death is why I'm here." Urzula Ezergailis didn't mince words—she ground them through her teeth.

"Oh, come on, Urzula, speculate a little. Let your imagination wander free of that bear-trap mind of yours." Maris goaded her, the two of them having worked their respective sides in scores of cases.

"Blunt force trauma, delivered at the speed of a sidewalk from nine stories up. You do the physics, Peterson."

Maris had been on his way home when he'd received the neuracom, the death suspicious enough to entertain its having been a murder. It was the suspicion that brought him in, nothing else. "Identity," he murmured on his trake.

The victim's demographics cascaded across his corn: Thirty-four year old Ofem, specialized design for the pleasure trades, but with a twist. She was a walking sperm bank, vesicles in mouth and vagina designed to hold semen in stasis until she could deliver herself to the laboratory, where it would be extracted and stored in zero-kelvin cryo. Within the demographics was her socio-economic status: Wealthy, married, living in a penthouse.

His gaze went again to the roof-line, nine stories up. Palatial, he knew, without even looking in the door. Suspicious, he knew, without even interviewing the spouse. "Angle, Urzula?"

"Head first."

Indicating a jump, but not conclusive. "I'll be up there if you need me, Coroner."

"I won't, Detective."

"Warm and personable as a glacier, Urzula, that's what I love about you."

"Jerk off, Maris."

He did, entering the building. Marble wainscoting with chrome trim graced the halls. The stairwell railing was wrought from Mirnavian beetlewood, the steps from Worlian travertine. He took the first flight just to get a feel of the building. New money mixed with old in this high-rise, the flats owned rather than leased, the tenants prohibited from having renters by covenant, he was sure. "Tenants," he murmured on his trake, and their demographics filed past on his corn.

"Ninth floor or roof, Sir?" the officer in the elevator asked, the investigative team having already commandeered it.

"Ninth," he said, seeing buttons for nine floors and the basement. Below the buttons was a sensor; the roof, Maris guessed. The elevator was as plush as the ride to the ninth floor was silent. He was there almost before he got on. Degravitized, he decided, eight stories without the sensation of motion.

There was only one door in the penthouse foyer, and it was open, a uniform beside it. At the officer's feet were four pairs of shoes. Wailing came from within, striking him like a caterwaul as he stepped off the lift. He checked the victim's demos again. Oh, a female spouse, something he'd missed the first time he'd glanced.

"How long she been like that?" he asked the uniform at the door.

"Since I got here at eighteen-hundred," the patrol officer said.