Case - 3 : Puppetry.

*DING* *DING* *DING* *DING* *DING* *DING* *DING* *DING* *DING* *DING*

I woke from my short afternoon slumber, cut shorter by the perpetual unrelenting ringing of my AR glasses.

I knew what the dinging meant.

It was a peculiar thing that had only happened to me twice in the last four decades. Both times I was called forth by the GAI, Althea to help her with a case.

Waking up to the unpleasant and incessant dinging indicated only one thing, I was the hot topic for some reason.

And I did not like being the hot topic for any reason.

"Why are people tagging me? What's so newsworthy that I need to know?"

People tagged me every single day.

However, such notifications never disturbed me because I used Althea to filter through the tweets.

On top of that, I only enabled notifications for every hundred tweets on the same news I got.

Safe to say this was a rare occurrence.

"Has Althea called for me once again?" I wondered out loud.

But given how discrete she was in calling me the last time, I doubted it had anything to do with her.

Unless she'd changed her mind?

Did she even have a mind?

I shook my head and rid myself of any lingering sleep that kept my eyes shut as I looked ahead at the large list of notifications that had cluttered both, my virtual and neural interface.

'You're finally awake!!' Little Dave sounded excited.

'I swear, if you're the one doing this, I'm going to get rid of you!'

'No!! I swear! I'm not the one doing this! I can't even do this!'

'What is it then?'

'...I think you'll want to read this one yourself.'

'Little bugger.' I grumbled as I paid attention to the pile of notifications on my screen.

'Hmmm…what's going on…someone realized classified documents? What does it have to do with-'

'-IS IT TO DO WITH PROJECT AVATAR!?'

I was fully awake.

I pulled up the screen on my AR glasses and simultaneously searched on my neural interface.

Opening Tweeter, I rushed through my notifications and immediately viewed the trending news.

"#SergeantDaveCaughtRedHanded"

"...?"

"...caught? Are they talking about the AI Avatar project?"

My heart beat at a fast pace as I browsed through the tweets.

But each scroll up, only managed to confuse me even more, dragging me into a deep rabbit hole.

"Revanche and Vera? Why are they on the news? What do they got to do with Project Avatar?"

"Evelyn too? What's going on?"

"What are they talking about?" My face was confused as I read through the barrage of notifications I had received.

Until, "Finally! Someone sent me a link!"

I clicked on the link and was greeted by the tweet of an unknown hacker group.

[Ever wondered why crimes are on the rise in microcities?]

[Click here to find out.]

I followed the link and was redirected to a web page containing classified documents titled, "Project Puppet Show."

"Puppet show? What does this have to do with the crime rate risi-"

My words froze in my mouth as I read through the introduction of the project.

[With more ways to commit crimes using democratized AI, government-employed public servants are finding it more and more difficult to capture such clever criminals.

The public servants need examples.

It is hence proposed that the Secret Service help entrap such criminals and use a stellar detective's help in capturing them. 

They can be entrapped by manipulating their personal media consumption algorithms so that they always only see what we want them to see, and only hear what we want them to hear.

A recommendation for the stellar detective would be someone like Sergeant Dave. His background is emotional and he has just the right accolades for people to believe him and his works.]

My blood grew cold as I finished reading the introduction.

Immediately I wanted to skip to the relevant parts, so I ordered, "Althea find all references of Revanche, Vera, and Evelyn in the declassified files."

[On it.]

A call from Anneliese came into view, but I ignored it for now.

I could feel my muscles tense waiting for the results of Althea's search.

My knuckles grew white because of how tight I had clenched them, and my toes felt like they'd fall off with how cold I felt.

[Ten Mentions of Revanche, twelve mentions of Vera, and seven mentions of Evelyn found.]

"SSsssss." I sucked an audibly deep breath in through my teeth, worry caught up to me, and I felt like the world spun around me, while my head throbbed like there was a little creature living inside.

'This proves nothing yet, it could be a hit job aimed to take me down.'

But then I realized a surefire way to prove if the leaks were true or false. I prepared for the worst and gave Althea another command to execute.

"Althea, could you find the references to the name, Chester in the same documents?"

[On it.]

It wasn't long after that Althea responded in her all too familiar calm voice.

[Six mentions of Chester found.]

"*Sigh* what the hell."

Now that Chester's name appeared too, I doubted this was a prank or an attempt just made to defame me. I doubted someone was tailing me and had the time to figure out the name of the criminal I'd just arrested recently.

I was growing tired of all this.

The perpetual notifications on my screen, the continuous intrusions in my life about something I could not control, and the incidental happenings around me, all brought me to one question in my mind.

'Should I just resign?'

It was very tempting to give up.

How many people could say they had been used like pawns in a larger game?

I did not know.

But I did know what was happening to me was unique.

'Isn't resigning the best thing to do here?'

'But, I'm not guilty, why do I care if other people think silly things.'

*sigh*

'I don't think you should resign. It'll only make you look guilty in the public's eyes. You should clear this issue and then resign if you still want to.' Little Dave said.

'What's going to happen now?' he asked.

'Something very bad.'

'Bad? How? Aren't they just going to get lighter sentences?'

'No. It's not just that. I could be sentenced for entrapping them.'

'But how!? There's no proof such a thing even happened in the first place!?' Little Dave looked furious for some reason.

'Here's the thing. Either I get sentenced due to public pressure or I can prove I was not involved in this.'

'How will you prove you weren't involved in something when you weren't involved in it in the first place?'

'That's the thing. That's why it's bad.'

'...'

A bottled-up scream threatened to escape my dry lips but I bit my knuckles to calm myself down.

Anneliese called me again and with a deep sigh, I picked up the call.

"What happened?" I asked in a depressive tone.

"..." There was a soft pause as I assumed Anneliese was coping with the news that I already knew about the storm headed my way.

"Are you alright?" She asked.

"As good as I can be, do you need something?" I asked back.

"No. Just wanted to know is all."

"..."

"What are you going to do now?"

"We'll see what I can do. I don't know." I responded quickly.

As Anneliese suggested something I'd already thought of, "Can't you use your 'connections'?"

"No, not an incident of this scale.", I explained.

"Don't worry too much then, there are other officers named in the list too. It's not just you, I'm sure they'll figure out you weren't involved soon on their own."

"Ha! How I'd give anything to see that happen." I snorted.

"...fine then, I'll talk to you later when I'm back."

"Sure. Take care."

"Will do."

Cutting the call, I was back reading tweets everyone wanted me to see.

' It seems like they're divided into three general camps.' Little Dave explained, 'Some want to see you gone, some trust you, and others will wait and see.'

'But the problem is that the ones that want to see me gone are the loudest.'

'What are you going to do?'

'Nothing. Anything I do will only make the situation worse. I can remain neutral just like the people who want to wait and see. I want to see too, how they want to prove I'm guilty.'

'What if they do prove it somehow?'

'How can they? When in the last two years, I barely spoke to anyone.'

'...'

Suddenly another call interrupted my musings with little Dave.

'Unknown number?'

'Might be Mom and Dad.'

'They're not your Mom and Dad.'

'...rude.'

I picked up the call and waited apprehensively for the voice on the other end to identify itself.

"Dave!? Is this you?" I heard Mom's voice slip through.

"Yeah, Mom, are you alright?"

"Oh thank god it's you! I was so worried!"

"Where are you?"

"At your home. Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Something like this can't hurt me."

"I hope whoever is playing this prank is caught soon."

"What makes you think it was a prank?"

"Oh come on, of course, it was a prank. How else do you think they can make sure you attend to each of their victims? Someone is clearly messing around with you."

"..."

'How did we not think of that?! You're making me dumber.' I blamed little Dave.

"So don't take it to your heart alright? Make sure you don't worry too much. The truth eventually always prevails."

"I promise I won't be worried." I lied to Mom since I couldn't bring myself to tell her I was sweating buckets right now.

"It'll be alright, don't worry."

"I won't."

"*sigh* alright, come home soon, we brought your favorite food."

"Oh, which one?"

"That's a surprise for later."

"Fine! I'll be home soon. Don't worry."

I cut my call with Mom without telling our goodbyes since an idea had poped up into my head.

'Are you seriously thinking that!?' Little Dave asked me after reading my thoughts.

'Of course, I'm thinking that. It has to be this if it has to be anything!'

'Why go about it in such a roundabout way!?'

'Why not? When all my attention is focused on this and not anything else!'

'Seriously, why will someone do something like this to get your attention?'

'I don't know what goes on in the minds of crazy people, but I do know that if they're crazy they can do anything.'

Saying so, I gave Althea a command.

"Althea, could you single out all the names of people that I will be involved with? Leave Revanche, Vera, Evelyn and Chester form the list?"

[On it.]

'Do you seriously think someone will do this to inform you of upcoming crimes!?'

'Either way, even if the other people are not going to be criminals, I can still check them out since the damage has already been done, has it not?'

'But then you'll be acting exactly according to the documents, wouldn't that be what the other person wants?'

'I don't know what the other person wants. But if he wants a fight, I'm not going down without one.'

'But, why would someone want to inform you about the people who are about to commit a crime like this!? If they were really interested in helping, wouldn't they have contacted you privately?'

'Like I said, crazy people do crazy things. Perhaps they wanted immediate attention? Perhaps they wanted everyone's attention to see exactly how I would solve this case? It could be a test too.'

'A test for what?'

'A test to see if I'm capable of playing their games.'

'...'

'You'll see I'm right. I'm sure this is a test.'

'...good luck then because you'll need it.'

'Luck? I don't need luck. I need a brain that can handle what's about to come.'

*DING*

[Found eight such names.]

Althea's response set off an explosion within me as I thought,

'Eight more cases to go.'