Case - 2 : Damn you!

I watched with a bemused look on my face as the man in the media claimed to be my father.

'Ha!? Father? You don't even look like me! I wonder whose father you are.'

The media continued to play.

"I am your father."

"And I am your mother." The woman beside the man with the handlebar mustache spoke up.

"We named you Dave."

"Dave Neotestudo, to be more precise."

My heart shook at the revelation but I still didn't want to believe it, this was too much to believe all at once.

I always thought my parents died. Or why wouldn't they have contacted me after I became popular while working in the police HQ?

When I was a twelve-year-old child, I woke up abandoned in a dark alleyway where it wouldn't be a far stretch to imagine an area out of the GAI's level of influence.

I'd woken up simply with the memory of my name. Dave.

Nothing else.

Clearly, I was mindwiped.

It was only after stumbling through street life for a while that Silias found and adopted me into the casino, where I worked to gather evidence on his clients.

"What the hell!?"

I exclaimed out loud, punching through the holographic screen of my supposed parents who'd abandoned me and never searched for me after I'd been tossed out like a dirty rag in a bin.

"We regret to inform you that we'll never be able to give you the life you deserve."

"Then you shouldn't have come back into my life anyway!" I screamed at the media floating in my vision.

"Although we would've liked to be able to do so, we're running short on time so I hope you will understand our need to cut this recording of ours short."

"The heck do you mean running out of time? It's not like the entire police force is after you and treating you like hardened criminals!!"

"You should wake up in a remote area in the city with little to no memories about yourself. And that is intentional. We don't want to burden you with our troubles."

"How is that any justification to leave a twelve-year-old alone after mindwiping him!?"

"Believe me if we could, we'd only wipe away the relevant parts of your memory but that is not currently possible. And your brain holds secrets everyone in the world would kill to get. It carries too much risk for you not to be mind-wiped."

"..."

I didn't have a response to that revelation.

'Maybe, just maybe, they had some reason to do this to me.'

"We cannot inform you more about what has happened through this media since we can't take the risk of the information falling into the wrong hands."

"But if you want to find out more." The woman spoke as she shared a glance with the man.

"Search for Project Avatar." The man completed her sentence.

"And always remember, we love you no matter what." the lady concluded, her eyes softening and filling with water as her voice turned slightly more nasal.

The media finally switched off with that and ended on a particularly family-friendly note that left a sore spot in my heart.

'What's up with these freaks! They come out of nowhere and claim to be my parents! Then they tell me they were forced to mindwipe me because they knew my secrets! What's all this nonsense!'

*BANG*

I slammed my hand into the couch to produce a muffled slam that rolled across my office to ease my anger to no avail.

"I've got cases to solve. This, this is just a distraction."

Opening my AR interface I logged on using my Sergeant credentials as I began scouring Prometheus's social media data that was made available to me.

I tried to fall into the rhythm of opening and scrolling to chat logs only to close them again when I found nothing of use in them.

*BANG*

I punched the sofa again only to find that I'd hurt my wrist in doing so the first time.

"Damn it! Why can't I concentrate."

"Who asked these fools to show up unannounced like this!?"

"What's even the point in doing this? Wasn't it great not to know them! Everything was just fine! I won my court case in the morning and was going to solve my second case today!"

"Tsk. What a waste of time."

"Althea, could you please look for anything with the case name, 'Project Avatar'?"

"Please wait a moment."

Waiting for a second that seemed to stretch infinitely long, I finally had the results in front of me.

"Project Avatar, the movie."

"Project Avatar, a concept in Hinduism and Buddhism."

"Project Avatar..."

I *sighed* at the results since there were no direct correlations with what seemed to be talked about in the media I had just watched.

'Maybe they were just a bunch of crazies, ranting away since they knew nothing of the world.'

'Who were they in the first place?'

I re-watched the media conveniently titled 'TheTruth' and picked up snippets of images of the man and woman while they were speaking into the camera.

This time I noticed little details in the background of what appeared to be their house.

The room they were in was ornate, filled with trinkets of various cultures spread out on shelves with a crate of books that would've given the room a musty feel.

'Who even has books anymore? Are they living in the twenty-first century?'

In a few of the frames, I spotted a little, twelve-year-old, kid running along beyond the room across the door and peeking into the room every few minutes.

The young child's face I easily recognized, since it wasn't anyone else but me. My younger self. Or at least I think it was since the camera had not properly picked up depth information to recreate my face from so far away, leaving it a blurry mess.

But he seemed happy.

Quite unlike the childhood, I remember having.

Mine was filled with gel pods, hookers, and money.

And it rarely had moments that let me express my joy.

If the child was me, I could be at peace knowing I was joyful, once.

Rewatching the media once again I could easily make out that the couple wasn't bullshitting when they said that I was their child.

The watering of the woman's eyes was real and wasn't enacted or even edited.

It was a normal couple doing their best to leave behind a message so that their child would remember them.

"Althea, what was the reason you chose to deliver this message to me now?" I asked since I couldn't understand.

"Because the people in the media currently need help. They are being pursued by a high standing military general who is after them for-"

"What!!? Are you telling the truth!?" I stood up immediately and asked in a panic.

I was operating under the idea that they had died, why else wouldn't they try to come meet me? 

I was super popular after all. Everyone recognized me! Alright except for Raivesh, almost everyone.

"Where are they!? And why are you telling me this only now!?"

"I apologize for the delay but nothing can be done about it. Under the single case law, an acting officer cannot pick up a new case until their current case is either solved or marked incomplete!"

"To hell with your laws! This is an emergency! Pass me the case this instant!"

"Do you want to pass the case on to a Cadet in your department if it is an emergency-"

"FUCK YOU!" 

I sat back down on my desk and began to immediately scroll through the chat logs that Prometheus had left behind, fully motivated to solve a case that was blocking me from solving the one I actually needed to pay attention to.

Most of the communications Prometheus had were through emails that went as follows,

[Greetings]. My name is [Name], and I am writing to inquire about the possibility of receiving samples of your Memory recovery tool.

I am particularly interested in exploring the features and functionalities of your product to integrate it with our pipelines of features [name of features].

Additionally, any relevant details regarding pricing, shipping, and availability would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you very much for your attention to this request. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

[Name of Employee.]

[Name of Company.]

'This is not going to cut it.'

'I need to cut my work short.'

"Althea, could you go through the chat logs and figure out if Prometheus was suicidal?"

Accepting my request a progress bar appeared on my screen as Althea began to chug through the petabytes of texts and other communication emails to figure out if Prometheus was mentally ill.

*DING* *DING*

[Although a bit of a recluse and an introvert, Prometheus was not suicidal.]

"Thank you."

[I aim to please.]

"Alright, he was not suicidal, then was his death a murder?"

"Althea, are there any communications that threaten Promemtheus's life? Directly or indirectly?"

[No there are no such communications.]

"None at all?" I asked confused, since I myself received quite a handful each day.

[No, none of the emails or texts hint at anything violent.]

"So either he was a saint or he deleted all his texts that related to something violent."

"Althea, could you tell me if there are any people in his first and immediate friends circle that Prometheus stopped talking to?"

[Please wait a moment.]

In less than a few seconds this time, Althea dumped on me a list of names and addresses that corresponded with people whom Prometheus had stopped speaking to.

[Jack, last seen five years ago.]

[Ethan, last seen seven years ago.]

[Benny, last seen…]

"Althea, remove all he people that stopped coming online of their own violation."

Suddenly the list of names that was hundreds of names long was reduced to only two.

[Evelyn, last message two weeks ago.]

[Lazarus, last message two weeks ago.]

"Huh?"

"Evelyn and Lazarus? Aren't they his closest friends? Why has he stopped talking to them?"

I quickly opened the chat logs that related to Evelyn and saw something that I hadn't known about until now.

Prometheus: "We made a mistake."

Evelyn: "What happened?"

Lazarus: "What happened? Is there something wrong with the systems?"

Prometheus: "No. It's about the usage of our tech."

Evelyn: "What usage? Did any of the patients suffer any complications?"

Lazarus: "What are you talking about my man?"

That was it.

Those were the last words Prometheus left with everyone before he killed himself after two weeks.

"So he was worried about someone misusing the tech?"

"But what's there to misuse?"

"Was he worried about people recovering lost passwords?"

"That's not much of a threat to kill yourself over is it?"

*DING* *DING*

[Anneliese is on her way to your office boss.]

*phew*

"Calm down."

"Calm down."

"It's ok, pretend everything is alright."

*Knock* *Knock*

"Come in.", I said standing up and righting my shirt.

Anneliese opened the door and peeked in as she asked.

"Are you free?"

"Yes, what's the issue?" I asked back.

"Oh nothing, the judgement became public! I wanted to show it to you since you missed it!"

"Fantastic." I nodded and accepted the media Anneliese shared with me.

"I'll watch it. You may leave."

"No! I want to see your reaction!"

"Huh? Why?"

"You'll find out! Anyway! Watch it quick! I don't got all day! I'm a busy intern, learning about corpse biology."

"..."

I pressed play on the media and watched it just because it was the fastest way to get Anneliese out of the office without rousing suspicion.

'Wait a second. Anneliese was selectively mindwiped about her experience in the innermost core of the Headquarters! In Althea's room!'

'Misuse of technology!'

'Was Prometheus worried about someone reverse engineering their tech to be able to selectively mind-wipe people without their knowledge and consent?'

[To Mr. Sterling the accused, I hand over a sentence of one life sentence in prison without the possibility of parole for the premeditated killing and manslaughter of Mr. Waltinger.]

"That's a standard sentence? What was so worthy of watching my reactio-"

[And to Sergeant Dave for acting while off duty I award him a fine of seven hundred thousand Units.]

"Wha-!!!!"

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!" Anneliese's laughter interrupted my cursing as I pushed her out, pretending to be embarrassed while she continued to laugh in the corridor all the way to her cubicle.

I immediately spoke to Althea.

"Althea, I've solved the case."

[A slight reminder, a case isn't solved until you provide evidence or have a confession.]

"DAMN YOU!!"