DARK CITY a gripping detective mystery by CHRISTOPHER M. COLAVITO Page B

witnesses. There's going to come a time when your puppy dog enthusiasm wears off, when the job grinds away the shine of your smile, and when that happens, you're going to be as tired and bitter as I am. The last thing you're going to want to do is sit in a courtroom and listen to people trying to tell you the sky isn't blue.”
    Lane looked at his partner, trying to assess how genuine these feelings were. He knew that Knox was not a fan of the non-investigative duties the job entailed, but he had never heard it phrased so bluntly. He was disappointed to hear that Knox appeared to have stopped reaching for personal growth, resigned to being the old coot sitting in a rocking chair, yelling at clouds, telling stories about how much better everything used to be.
    “You say that, but we both know that you like to put on an act. You're afraid of letting anyone think that you still care, to make sure they leave you alone. I get it. I know what you're up to, but I'm going to let it be.”
    “You'd better, if you want to see what tomorrow looks like.”
    As the door opened, and the stale, recycled air hit his nose, Detective Knox wondered what it must be like to spend an entire life in such rooms, surrounded by machines designed to mimic and impersonate life. To spend day after day engaged with a facsimile, communicating entirely through the pounding of keys and flickering written words, could not be a life with much value in it. Being human, he thought, required embracing what life had to offer. Even for a solitary man like Knox, humanity could not be found in an endless string of ones and zeros.
    The technicians never broke their focus as the detectives entered. Their eyes were fixed in a trance upon their screens, their fingers falling like a steady rain upon the keys. Knox listened to the tapping, a rhythmic white noise that only further convinced him no consciousness could survive in such a place. Impatient, he spun a monitor around, breaking the connection between eye and screen. The technician's fingers stopped, but his eyes did not move, as though he were processing what had just happened. Seconds later, he looked up, and the blank expression on his face was as lifeless as his reflection on the screen.
    “Nice to see you back in the land of the living. I hear you have some information for me?”
    The technician didn't know what to make of Detective Knox, nor what to make of face to face communication. An expression of discomfort was evident on his face, a fact that Knox took great pride in admiring.
    “I assume you're Detective Knox?”
    “My reputation does seem to precede me.”
    “Yes, we managed to decrypt the flash drive you gave us. There was a . . .”
    “Let me stop you there. I don't need to know the details of what hoops you had to jump through to get the files open. I won't understand any of it, and you probably don't want to talk to me any longer than you have to, so how about you just tell me where the files are, and I'll leave you to ogle your little screen again.”
    The technician reached into a pile of neatly organized trinkets, arranged in a pattern that Knox knew meant something, but was not important enough to waste his time thinking about. Though he was a fan of puzzles, cracking the enigmas of which most people consisted was something best left for his retirement. He did not care to know much about people until he had no choice but to depend on them and had nothing better to waste his time on.
    He selected one of many identical pieces of plastic, fondling it quickly before stretching his hand out as one would throw meat to a hungry animal. Fear may have been the culprit, or he could have been awkward because of the atrophied sense of coordination caused by a life sitting in front of a computer. Knox took the drive from his hand, being careful not to touch him. Not knowing how deep the neuroses ran, Knox didn't want to set off more alarms than he needed to.
    “That flash drive has the decrypted