SINthetic
The
New Lyons Sequence #1
by
J.T. Nicholas
Genre: Science Fiction – Cyberpunk Noir
Pub
Date: 1/23/2018
The Artificial Evolution
They look like us. Act like us. But
they are not human. Created to perform the menial tasks real humans
detest, Synths were designed with only a basic intelligence and
minimal emotional response. It stands to reason that they have no
rights. Like any technology, they are designed for human convenience.
Disposable.
In the city of New Lyons, Detective
Jason Campbell is investigating a vicious crime: a female body found
mutilated and left in the streets. Once the victim is identified as a
Synth, the crime is designated no more than the destruction of
property, and Campbell is pulled from the case.
But when a mysterious stranger
approaches Campbell and asks him to continue his investigation in
secret, Campbell is dragged into a dark world of unimaginable
corruption. One that leaves him questioning the true nature of
humanity.
And what he discovers is only the
beginning . . .
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Chapter
1
The neon signs glowed sullenly, sending
sickly tendrils of light slithering down the rain-soaked streets like so many
diseased serpents. Once bright and inviting, the reds and blues and greens had
dimmed and paled, sloughed off the flush of health, and left behind a spreading
stain of false illumination that heralded nothing but sickness and decay. The
signs themselves, flickering and buzzing, wheezing like something that wanted
to die, something that should have
died long ago, offered up a thousand different sins, unflinching in the frank
descriptions of the acts taking place within the walls that they adorned.
I stared at those signs, indistinct and
hazy beneath the mantle of falling rain. The mist softened their lurid offers,
restoring, however imperfectly, an innocence the city lost long ago. As the
gentle caress of a silken veil added mystery to the sweeping curves of the
female form, hinting at secrets far more tantalizing than the revealed flesh
beneath, the cloak of rainfall shrouded the city’s darker side, softening its
edges and lending it an air that approached civility.
Approached civility, but did not—could
not—achieve it.
With a sigh, I turned my eyes away from
the cityscape, and dropped them to the pavement beneath my feet. To the body
that rested there, or what was left of it.
After nearly ten years on the job, I
still had to fight down the bile threatening to crawl its way up my esophagus
and force its insistent path between my teeth. The body—so much easier to think
of it as “the body” and not “the woman”—lay flat on its back, arms stretched
out above its head and crossed at the wrists, legs spread akimbo. No clothing.
Nor could I see any discarded garments in the immediate area. The pose,
purposeful and meticulous in its own horrifying way, was a parody of passion.
It was a pose that was likely even now being played out in many, perhaps most,
of the establishments adorned with the gasping neon signs.
With one very notable difference.
Vestiges of beauty clung to the woman,
holding desperately to a youthful vivacity that was losing an inexorable battle
to the unnatural slackness of death. Makeup adorned that face, hiding the
pallor beneath blush and eyeliner, lipstick and shadow, only now beginning to
fade and run beneath the unrelenting assault of a thousand raindrops. Her
features were symmetrical, regular, past the awkwardness of youth, but not yet
touched by the wrinkles or worry lines that would fell all of us in time.
I forced myself to look past her face,
past the strong lines of her outstretched arms, sweeping past her bared breasts
and to the…emptiness…that extended beneath her sternum.
From her lowest ribs to the tops of her
thighs, the woman had been…
I realized I didn’t have a word for
what had been done to her. The words that stormed through my mind—savaged,
brutalized, tortured—leaving a teeth-gnashing anger in their wake and making my
stomach twist itself into a Stygian knot, were almost certainly true, but they
did not describe what lay before me.
Hollowed.
The word floated up from somewhere in
my subconscious, bringing with it memories of carving into pumpkins and
scooping out the seeds and ropey innards with big plastic spoons made slick and
awkward from the pulpy mess.
I clamped my teeth so hard that a lance
of pain shot along my sinus cavities, but it kept me—if only just—from
vomiting.
Hollowed.
The skin and muscle had been removed
from the woman’s stomach and groin. The organs that should have been
present—stomach, intestines, kidneys, everything south of the lungs—were gone.
The tissue beneath them, the muscles along the spine, back, and buttocks
remained, exposed to the air and rain. I could just make out pinkish gray
tissue poking from beneath the ribs, so I guessed the lungs, and probably the
heart, were intact and in place.
There was no blood.
The steady rain had formed a small pool
in the resulting cavity, taking on a cast more black than red in the dimness of
the night. No more blood on the body. No more blood at the scene.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God.”
The heartfelt exhalation came from
behind me, and I glanced over my shoulder, tearing my eyes from the horror
before me. The uniforms had finished cordoning off the area, spreading the
yellow tape in a rough perimeter maybe twenty yards in diameter. Even on a
night like this, in a neighborhood like this, a crowd had gathered, a few dozen
people pressed up against the tape as if it were the glass wall at an aquarium,
desperate to peer into the darkness and see the wonders and horrors within. All
of them pointed screens in my direction or stared with the strange motionless
intensity of someone wearing a recording lens. I prayed that the darkness,
rain, and distance would cloud their electronic eyes, and grant the woman what
little privacy and modesty were left to her.
Halfway between me and the tape stood a
small, trim man in his late forties. A fuzz of iron-gray hair sprouted from his
head like a fungus, and a pencil-thin beard traced the line of his jaw. He wore
blue coveralls, stenciled with the words “Medical Examiner” in gold thread. Dr.
Clarence Fitzpatrick had been medical examiner in New Lyons for longer than I’d
been a cop. We had worked some gruesome homicides, scenes far messier, at least
in terms of scattered gore, than what lay before us. But nothing quite so damn
eerie.
“Yeah,” I muttered. “What can you tell
me?”
He made his way to the body and knelt
by it, blue-gloved hands extended over it as if trying to divine information
from the ether. “Liver temp is out of the question,” he said. There was no
humor in his voice, no attempt to make light of the nature of the remains; he
was simply stating the facts of the case before him, retreating behind cold
professionalism. It was something you learned quick on the job. Those who could
not put a wall between the atrocities and their own souls never lasted long.
He touched the flesh of the woman’s
arm, pressing against it, feeling the elasticity. “No rigor mortis, which means
that death was either very recent or she’s been gone awhile.”
He panned a flashlight across the body,
the pale flesh luminescing under the harsh white light. “No discoloration of
the remaining tissue. The damage sustained to the torso is sufficient to cause
death, but there is no way to tell in situ if that occurred before or after she
expired. Though if it had been done here, we would certainly be seeing a lot
more blood, even with the rain.” He spoke in short, clipped bursts, keeping the
medical jargon to a minimum, for my benefit no doubt.
His hands moved to the woman’s head,
peeling back the eyelids. “Cloudy. Most likely, she was killed more than
twelve, but less than forty-eight hours ago. Apart from the obvious
evisceration, there is no readily identifiable cause of death.” He cupped the
woman’s face in his hands, twisting it gently to the side, continuing his field
examination. He brushed back the dark locks of her hair, revealing the back of
her neck. A deep sigh, a sound of relief, not regret, escaped him. “Thank God,”
he said.
I stared down at the woman, not really
seeing what the doctor saw, but I knew what would be there. Only one thing
could have drawn that reaction from Fitzpatrick. A raised pattern of flesh,
roughly the size of an old postage stamp, darker than the surrounding skin and
looking for all the world like an antiquated bar code. The tissue would be
reminiscent of ritualistic scarring, but, unlike the woman herself, would not
have known the touch of violence. It could be called a birthmark, but “birth”
was not a word applied to the lab-grown people that were, collectively, known
as synthetics. They bore other names, of course, dozens of them, all
derogatory, all aimed at dehumanizing them further, at driving home the point
that, though they might look and act and feel like us, they were not humans.
Dr. Fitzpatrick was not immune to that
dehumanization. “Thank God,” he said again. “She’s a mule.”
A young woman is found dead in the middle of the street and
Detective Jason Campbell is called to investigate the crime but when it is
determined that the young woman is not human but a sinthetic he is taken off
the case. But that doesn’t stop Campbell as he doesn’t see things quiet in the
same way as most humans. Campbell is later approached by this guy who has
information for Campbell about this young woman and others like her that could
help Campbell find out what is going on and send him into a world that he didn’t
know existed; a world of secrets that the government and others wants to keep from
the public no matter what the cost.
As everyone knows it is not against the law the kill or harm
a sinthetic as they are not human. No they are no more than a piece of trash.
SINthetics were created to do the jobs that are thought to be beneath a human.
SINthetics have no rights or privacy and only do what they are told to do. They
are incapable of hurting a human no matter what that human maybe doing to them.
SINthetics are no more than a slave and are bought and sold as if they are toys
which to some they are just that when they are bought to be used as sex slaves
or as a babysitter for your children.
I really enjoyed reading SINthetic and getting a look into
what our future could be like with cars that could drive themselves without
human intervention or cabs with no stirring wheels. Now that would be a great
future, something to look forward too. Another thing about SINthetic was that
there being a group of people who think they are superior to others with all
that hate in their hearts. Not taking the time to get to know someone to see if
they had feelings or how they felt about different things. No they just hated
because they were different no other reason than that. Oh wait that is not our
future that is our present; a present that could become worse if it is allowed
to escalate.
SINthetic is a very fast read that was very hard to put down
and was setting the background for books to come and I fell for it hook line
and sinker. I can’t wait to read the next book SINdicate to see where Campbell
and the sinthetics take us next.
I loved the mystery and the science fiction with all the futuristic
elements. I would recommend SINthetic to
anyone who loves a good mystery with a science fiction background.
J.T. Nicholas was born in
Lexington, Virginia, though within six months he moved (or was moved,
rather) to Stuttgart, Germany. Thus began the long journey of the
military brat, hopping from state to state and country to country
until, at present, he has accumulated nearly thirty relocations. This
experience taught him that, regardless of where one found oneself,
people were largely the same. When not writing, Nick spends his time
practicing a variety of martial arts, playing games (video, tabletop,
and otherwise), and reading everything he can get his hands on. Nick
currently resides in Louisville, Kentucky, with his wife, a pair of
indifferent cats, a neurotic Papillion, and an Australian Shepherd
who (rightly) believes he is in charge of the day-to-day affairs.
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3 comments:
This will be my first Cyberpunk Noir.
Totally my sort of thing as a fan of William Gibson, Bruce Sterling and Philip K Dick.
Love The Cover.
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