A Cog’s Investigation (Part 1)

“Perhaps” Clive said “The people have become too subservient. Why, they are practically removing their own threat for us!”

“Yes,” I replied, “But without them, who will work?”

Clive scoffed “Oh please. You really think this is coordinated? For all their intelligence, they might have just played hopscotch off the roof together.”

“Five hundred.” I declared.

“What?” Clive asked as he made one of his trademark sneers.

“Five hundred suicides.” I replied. “This city. This month. Last month? Eight. This month was over fifty times the amount of last month.”

“Well what kind of damn protest kills the protesters?!” Clive yelled.

“Like I know.” I replied “If I did, you think i’d be here, talking to you? I’ve got my own quotas to fulfill.”

“Whatever” Clive shrugged “I got security footage to review.”

“Yeah… I guess I should go back to the site. Damnit, why a school…”

“...Yeah.”

Both Clive and I knew about the most recent suicide. I had to go there earlier in the morning to get data. Clive had heard about it over the grapevine before I had even gotten back. I went outside and walked down a couple blocks over to the school.

It had all been cleaned up since, of course. The victims, or perpetrators, I guess, had climbed up to the fifth floor and then jumped out. They had broken through the lock and killed the security guard. It had seemed odd at the time that suicidal people would bother killing a security officer. Either way, they got to fifth floor, broke a window open and jumped out, one after the other. They were seven in total, six adults and one baby. I was able to confirm the baby was the child of one of the adults. None of the six adults had any connections. Each one was from a different part of town, with different occupations. Well, there was one connection, all of them were male. In general, there was a nine to one suicide rate of men to women, so this wasn’t that surprising. Ever since the 062 declaration on gender, women had a mandatory service in childbirth. For currently unknown reasons, women that have gone through the service are far more passive than they were before.

A few people were milling about the scene. I wondered if they had come to see if anyone else was going to kill themselves. There was one man though, who was hysterical.

“Uh sir?” I called out.

The man was clawing at the door to the school, which had been closed since the incident.

I tapped the man’s shoulder, and he racketed around to look at me.

“Open this door!” The man screamed.

I took a step back “The school is closed; don’t you know what happened here?”

“Of course I know what happened here! I missed them! I missed the chance!”

“Missed the chance?” I mumbled to myself.

Then I realized. This man was supposed to kill himself with the others. Thinking this was my big break, I grabbed his arms and slammed them in handcuffs.

“What the hell are you doing! Get out of my way!”

The man tackled me to the cement. I was dazed, but managed to shove him off of me, but he quickly got back on his feet. Seeing this, I pulled out my gun and shot his leg. He howled and fell back away from me. As he writhed around in pain I flipped my gun around the end and slammed in his forehead, knocking him out.

“Should have started with that…” I mumbled to myself.

The people around had all ran off by this point, which at least meant there was no one to fight. I called up someone to come pick me and the other man up.

As soon as he came to, I had him already placed in an interrogation chamber.

“Nice to see you again,” I chimed, fake smile and all “I don’t think we were properly introduced. What’s your name?”

“Why am I here!?” The man yelled back.

“You shot yourself in the leg. You need medical help.”

“Cut the BS and let me out of here!”

“Ok, we really weren’t properly introduced.” I said as I got my gun out “Your choice, arm or leg?”

“You can’t do that to me!”

“Fine, I’ll choose for you” I said.

I promptly raised my gun and shot him square in the shoulder. He screamed and writhed around again

“Damn you!”

I sighed. “I guess shooting someone isn’t the best way to get someone to talk. Anyway, tell me why you want to kill yourself.”

“I don’t.” He growled.

“So, what's with the school then? I heard you wanted to get in on that party.”

“It wasn’t a suicide meeting, I don’t know why they jumped!””

“Fine. What kind of meeting was it?”

“A… resistance meeting. We were all going to run off, get out of here.”

“Why? What’s the reason you wanted to get out of here so much?”

“Some little worker ant like you wouldn’t understand.”

“Make me understand.”

I thought maybe I should try to sympathize the man I’d already put two pullets in, so I kept talking.

“I want to know the same thing you do. I want to know why they died.”

Either due to wound-based hallucinations or simple insanity, it worked.

“Yeah… But I don’t know anything. I already said, I missed the meeting.”

“Why did you miss it?”

“I feel like such an idiot… I slept in. My alarm never went off.”

“Wow, talk about Deus ex Machina…”

I got up and straightened my suit.

“Well, you’ve been helpful. Sadly, you assaulted an officer, you’ll be going to prison and possibly exterminated. No worries, I’ll keep you here and alive until the case is finished.”

The man lunged forward from his chair, as well as a person could with two serious wounds, anyway. Luckily, he quickly tumbled back into his chair.

“Damn you!” He yelled.

“I’ll keep that in mind.” I replied, “Just sit tight.”

I walked out of the room leaving my loud witness behind. Yet, as soon as I was in the hallway, another loud voice erupted.

“Boss want to meet you” Clive blurted out “ASAP!”

I sighed, and then headed upstairs to meet my boss, Mr. Ross, in his office.

I had met my boss three times previously, and had enjoyed none of those visits. He clearly had no interest in a low-level employee such as myself, and made no effort to hide it. He would always be chewing nicotine gum, he was probably a smoker before the ban, and he would just spit the gum out on a small plate on his desk. Unfortunately, he rarely changed the plates out, so he usually had a mountain of grey chewed up gum sticking out of his desk.

As I entered, my eyes met the infamous mountain of gum, same as ever.

“Ah, Harris, get your butt over here.” The boss said.

“Yes, sir.” I replied.

I quickly moved over to the only other chair in the room. The boss sat at his desk, leaning back and chewing his gum loudly.

“Harris” The boss said, “You’ve been wasting time.”

“Huh?”

“You’re taking too long, you’ve spent all your time interviewing one witness, and you haven’t got anywhere, I can tell.”

“Well-”

“No excuses, Harris! You need to get this case done quick, you hear me? I want to know why these idiots are killing themselves, and how to stop them.”

“Yes sir.”

“Now, I got execs from the capital breathing down my neck about this. You need to stop wasting time and get this done NOW. You know what’ll happen if you don’t.”

“Sir-”

“I never make it a secret, Harris, I don’t like you. You’re lazy. But you got the most book-smarts here, so I’m relying on you for this. Fail, and I’ll kick you outta here harder-”

“Yes sir,”

“Don’t you dare interrupt me boy! Now as I was saying, you need to get your butt outta here and get whoever or whatever is responsible for this mess, understand?”

“Yes sir.”

As I walked out of that office, I felt… about as cynical as you might expect.

“Blowhard.” I mumbled to myself.

“Guess the ol’ conference didn’t go so well, eh ’Arris?” Clive sneered, seemingly waiting by the hall to ask that very question.

“No. Now I have places to be-”

“Eh, he got you real good then?” He asked, “Stamped on your tail?”

“You are quite annoying, Clive”

“Says Mr. Smug-Quips. Anyway, where are you heading to next?”

“Those getaway club members must have lived somewhere. Maybe someone paid them a visit recently.”

-The First house-

The first man lived in a single room, as was the norm. The room had not yet rolled over to its now resident, so I assumed it was left untouched since last night. The door unlocked regularly after inputting my administration ID.

The room was pitch black. The hall I was in had dim lighting, so I could only see a little into the room. I fumbled around, hoping the automatic lights would turn on eventually, but had no luck. I called up the manager of the apartments and, through some extended persuasion, he came over to where I was at and gave me a flashlight.

“What you expect to find in there?” The manager asked as he handed over the flashlight.

“Not sure, really.” I replied, “And if did know, I wouldn’t tell you.”

“Can I at least hang around?” He asked, “I got to make sure the room gets tidy by tomorrow.”

“What you think I’m gonna mess it up? I’m a detective, not some police brute”.

“Well can I?”

“Fine, just don’t blame me if you suddenly feel the urge to off yourself.”

“Huh!?”

At that, I turned around a shone the flashlight inside the room. The ceiling light has been totally destroyed.

“Ah, so that’s why it wouldn’t turn on.”

Looking down at the floor, the bed was bare, its mattress leaning on the opposite wall. The mattress had been torn into on the side, and there was stuffing all over the floor. The fridge and oven had had their power cables cut off as well. In terms of personal belongings, the only thing aside from clothes were a couple of books. They must have been pretty old; their outer covers were pretty well in tatters. Of course, seeing a print book anyway was a rarity, both with storage space concerns and the heaving banning policy for questionable content.

“What was wrong with this guy?” The manager asked.

“Don’t know, he was in some runaway club,” I explained “but the whole club jumped out of a window last night.”

“Was he real depressed or something?”

“All things considered, probably not. Anyway, I need to look things over here. You can go now. I promise I won’t be here too long.”

“Yeah… I guess you can’t do any worse damage than that guy already did.”

After that the manager left. I first looked inside the mattress, but found nothing but stuffing inside.

“He must have already dug out whatever was in here.” I thought.

Next was the electronic devices. They had all either been cut off from power or broken entirely. I found it unlikely it was to reuse the wires for something else, there was no sign of any needed tool in the room, or at the school. Looking inside the fridge, it was totally empty.

“This guy's got nothin” I thought “Nothing but broken furniture and those books.”

I sighed at the thought of having to read all the books for hidden messages, but I went ahead and started looking through them anyway. Most of them were atlases, with a few being old survivalist guides.

“Well, it’s clear what this guy wanted.” I thought “Wonder why he killed himself. It seems like he’s got everything planned out here. Hold on a minute…”

Looking back up at the lights, I realized each light had been broken off, when they could have been easily removed. I remembered hearing about a rumor that the government hid cameras and mics in all sorts of everyday objects, from tables to lamps.

“This guy was paranoid” I realized “Yeah, he’s broken apart everything to look for surveillance equipment. If there was any footage… nah, they wouldn’t give me that… But this guy was really stressed, he could have lived in total darkness for a long time. But, there’s no glass on the floor, so did he clean it all up?”

I grabbed the books and took them with me for evidence. When I got back to HQ, I tried to put together a series of events.

“So,” I thought “We start out with the Runaway Club, which I’ll note as RC. They’ve been meeting for some time now, long enough to have found old maps. No clue about what made them so eager to go though. I don’t think digging into that kind of propaganda will do much good for my record… Anyway, at least some of them are living in fear of their plans being discovered, so they thrash their apartment. They plan to have some meeting, and I guess they meet at the school, which really doesn’t seem like an ideal location. Our witness doesn’t have his alarm go off, so sleeps in and misses the meeting. Sometime during the meeting, they decide to kill themselves. The motivation isn’t really clear at all. There was no sign of struggle, so it must have pretty well unanimous, though I guess the baby didn’t approve. Then the witness finally shows up, hours late and hopping mad. There are five more houses to visit, but I’ll assume all of them but one are fairly similar. That of course, would be the house of the parent and child. Of all the people that would be least prone to suicide, it would be them. Of course, this event isn’t in a vacuum, or else no one would care. Suicides have increased dramatically. They may have been exposed to something that changed their worldview.”

“Really mulling it over, eh?” Clint said peering into my cubicle.

“Yes.” I replied, “Now please leave.”

“Yeesh, what’d I ever do to you?” Clint asked.

“What do you even do here? Aside from annoy me.”

“I assist in government retrieval of objects related to criminal cases, and occasionally review important footage.”

“I wasn’t really expecting a real answer…”

“Well you got one. Add it to the list of things for you to ponder endlessly about.”

With that, Clint left the cubicle. Then I, and I assume the whole world, sighed in relief.

“So,” I thought “The second caretaker for the baby might have known something. I should go ask about the two. I suppose he’ll be pretty shook up, desperately trying not to get punished for his partner’s misdeeds.”

The two victims lived in a middle-class apartment building. Again, either the ones the searched the bodies either didn’t find a key or didn’t deem it needed to give to me. However, providence struck: the door was unlocked.

“I really hope this place hasn’t been robbed” I thought as I opened the door.

The way these doors worked, you’d have to manually set the door to not automatically lock.

“I assume they didn’t see a point in locking, with leaving town and all.”

The door opened, and the room was fully lit up. The first thing that struck me was that the carpet, a deep purple, had been cut up into squares and stacked in corner of the room. Thus, the floor was mostly gray concrete. However, looking around, nothing else seemed torn apart. There was a moderately large bed, fully intact and seemingly cleaned recently. Of course, the lights were intact too.

“Maybe this one was less paranoid?” I thought “This seems like a nice room. However, there’s no crib…”

“What the hell are you doing in here!” A voice yelled out from behind me.

I paused, gripping my gun, still standing with the other person behind me.

“A detective.” I said.

“What!? Oh…” The voice replied.

I turned around. The person behind me was a rather short woman, with an embarrassed look on her face.

“I guess I should’ve expected a detective to come by.” She said apologetically.

“Indeed.” I replied, “You didn’t come here to tamper with the crime scene, did you?”

“Huh!? Uh, no! I came because I had loaned him my TV…”

My eyes glazed over.

“Huh. Well then, Can I ask you some questions about the man that lived here?”

“Um, sure, I guess”

“Ok. Now, this guy killed himself and the child under his care. You are aware of this?”

“Yes”

“How were you made aware?”

“Well, the news spread everywhere didn’t it? I saw a bulletin listing who died.”

“Fair enough, did you know he had plans to off himself?”

“No, of course not.” Her faced turned to a scowl “He’s screwed me over. I’m done for now.”

“Did you know of his intentions to leave the city, to run off?”

“What? He never said that to me.”

“Ok.” I pulled out my phone, and showed a picture of the witness that I arrested at the school “Ever seen this guy?”

“Huh. He does look kind of familiar. Was he one of Rob’s friends?”

“You could say that. Well, I guess that’s all I need. Oh- How long has the carpet been like this, and did you set this door to be unlocked?”

“The carpet- What the hell!? Oh, come on- Am I going to have to pay for that too? Oh, uh, he leaves the door unlocked all the time. Said his door was on the fritz.”

“He really just lived here with no lock?”

“Oh, you don’t know how many lectures I gave about that…”

Ok, thank you for your time. You’ll need to leave this area alone until my investigation is finished, ok?”

“What? Can’t I just run in and get my TV?”

“No.”

“Aww…” With that, she walked off.

I sighed.

“Time to get back to searching.” I thought.

I continued my search of the room. As the woman had mentioned, there was a TV there. Unlike the other guy, there were no book in this room. Other than that, there was nothing out of the ordinary in the room.

“I wonder…” I thought “The TV… She really wanted to get a hold of it…”

I walked over to the TV. Now looking at the back of the TV, it wasn't hooked up to anything.

“Well, I guess he wasn’t in the mood to watch TV, or… The TV is meant for something else.”

Looking in the shelves in the apartment, I found a screw driver.

“Well, I’m not sure if I can put this back together, but here goes…”

I took the screwdriver and unscrewed 8 or so screws from the back. I peeled the plastic back casing, revealing a large heat shield. A little bit later, I was able to take off the heat shield as well. That’s where I found it, a small pamphlet.

“That actually worked!?” I exclaimed.

Seconds after I said that, a loud “THUD” noise erupted behind me, and before I knew it, I was unconscious.