
In the near future, serial killers can merge their demented minds with the newest augmented reality tools -- this doesn't end well.
A gear whirred as the seat belt secured him. The 1-passenger accelerated down a street canopied by deciduous maples. Dead leaves spiraled behind it.
Augie slipped on his glasses and brought up the packet. The serial number of an RFID chip appeared as well as its coordinates on a GPS thumbnail. The host was still on Lincoln, but his coordinates were moving. By the time Augie reached it, the boy had turned onto 5th.
"Redirect destination to indeterminate. Follow coordinates, please."
After a few more moments, a new interface popped up showing a heat signature. The iridescent shape of a sitting human floated down the street. Augie's car followed it into a residential neighborhood, taking a series of short turns past kids playing baseball.
The heat signature stopped and began to walk. "Park please."
His car pulled to the side of the road.
Augie brought up a new screen featuring a high school-aged male. His stats popped up: Bradley Manning, age 17, height 5'11". Augie already knew all this, so he swiped it away and replaced that quadrant with a smell map.
The boy had returned from basketball practice. Wisps of green gas billowed around Bradley's skin—his body odor as depicted by spectrograph. A perspiration map showed a dripping shell, which Augie overlaid with a real time image that filled the shell. Now Augie could see where the boy was sweating.
But only for a moment. Bradley disappeared into his home.
He made a gesture with his hand that looked like sign language but was actually code entry for a plug-in. Once he was logged into his account, a schematic popped up, showing the infrastructure of the house as transparent panels. A heat signature in the shape of a person appeared again.
Alongside it came moving close-ups of Bradley's body as he made a sandwich. Transparent gossamer represented clothing; his skin, muscles, and limbs popped out in saturated 3D.
Augie took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He moaned softly.
Now, where is the family?
He brought up a bookmarked file that contained three additional RFID coordinates. He threw them onto a map of the city and assessed it. The mom had just gotten off work and was at the hair salon on Kavanaugh. His notes from last night's audio tap suggested she would be going to the grocery store after that. Dad was still at the office, which was on the other side of town. He rarely came home before 7 PM. The little brother was at marching band practice, which went until about 6:45 PM, and then he'd carpool home with a friend.
The time was 5:37 PM. The only potentially problematic variable was the mom. But he could see her coordinates and even if she came straight home after the hair salon, that would take twenty minutes. He had time.
"Seat belt off, please."
Augie removed a small black box from the duffel bag at his feet. It was about the size of the box one might present during a marriage proposal. Inside of it lay three flies. He removed one and returned the box to the duffel bag.
Augie touched the air with his left fingertip until small circles vibrated outward like an earthquake symbol. Then he held his fingertip about a centimeter away from the fly, which lay on his right palm. The fly emanated a virtual blue pulse; its tiny wings began beating 200 times a second, lifting it a few inches off his palm and producing a subtle buzzing noise.
Augie pinged its destination on the schematic and opened the car door window. The fly took off. Augie bit his lip; he hoped it got there before Bradley took a shower. He wanted the scent.
Augie monitored the fly as it approached and circled the house, looking for an opening. Then, the gravatar representing it appeared inside the living room. When the fly reached the kitchen, it circled Bradley's heat signature, releasing a gas that appeared on the schematic as millions of tiny dots. A few hundred disappeared, inhaled into Bradley's body.
A chart of the boy's vital signs popped up, with a few numbers fluctuating momentarily as he became unconscious. Augie was mainly making sure there was no spike that might indicate Bradley hitting his head on something as he fell. Everything appeared okay.
Augie pulled out a container of balm from his duffel bag. This was a biometric ointment that would prevent any surveillance cameras from recognizing his face; anyone reviewing curb cam footage would see a man with a blur for a head.
As he entered the home, he saw through to the kitchen, where Bradley's legs lay motionless next to a half-eaten sandwich. Augie walked right in and peered down at the body, so unusually still and sacred. It was like he'd walked into a museum or a church.
Slowly, respectfully, he dropped to his knees and kneeled beside the treasure.
Bradley's upper torso lay face down, but his legs were turned sideways, slightly splayed. Augie parted a few locks of hair so that he could see the boy's face. He was turning into a man right before his eyes.
His trembling hand drifted over to Bradley's waist and pulled back the elastic of his athletic shorts. The sight took his breath away.
"Ohh..."
A tear came to his eye.
It was right where it should be, just as he had plotted for, mapped out and dreamt of: the birthmark on the upper corner of the boy's right buttock. Another of nature's masterworks, a small nebulaic shadow, printed on the body of a demon. He'd watched it for weeks, tracked it, and knew its exact dimensions and still its mystic beauty took him by surprise.
He heard a sound from the other room. A clicking and creaking, then a ray of light hit the wall. The front door was opening.
Augie had knelt on the right side of the body, so he was out of the direct line of sight, but he froze, shocked, infuriated. Who could this be?
"Hellooo...I've been texting you, my car's acting weird, can you look at it?"
Augie recognized the voice. It was Bradley's girlfriend, Amanda. The sudden pause likely meant she saw his legs.
"That's not funny, Brad. Stop being a jerk..."
She let out an exasperated sigh and marched into the kitchen.
"Brad...?"
She knelt down on the floor and jostled him.
"Brad...? Oh my God, Brad! Are you okay?"
Her eye caught Augie standing in the corner. She gasped.
"It's okay," he said. "I'm here to help."
"Who are you?" She asked, fearfully.
"A friend of the family. He's passed out from dehydration, he'll be okay. I'm sorry to have frightened you, dear."
He held out his hand and stepped forward.
"My name is Augie."
Hesitantly, Amanda took a step toward him and held out her hand. Augie grabbed her wrist and yanked her viciously into him, stabbing her in the neck with a carrot peeler, the only pointy object that had been immediately visible to him. To compensate for the bluntness of the peeler, he stabbed with all his strength and several times, snarling angrily at her.
She groaned and gurgled as blood spewed out of the shreds in her neck. He had listened to her inane, needy babble talk for weeks and now he was able to put an end to it.
She fell to the floor, quivering, eyes wide, mouth open and deranged. Her death came slow and agonizing, twitches right to the end.
Augie brought up his interface. The mom's coordinates were close. She had definitely skipped the grocery store.
Augie carried Bradley to his car and dumped him in the backseat. He took out the second fly, activated it and released it. This was a 'collector'; it would hunt down and remove any biological material or DNA left behind.
"Take us home. U-turn now."
The car accelerated and turned around to head in the opposite direction of Bradley's mom's car, which was only a quarter of a mile away.
It was a tight squeeze in the backseat with the boy's limbs going this way and that. Augie breathed a sigh of relief. That had been a lot closer than he expected. The girlfriend had complicated the operation, but if he'd had to pick any additional victims, she was first in line anyway. A possessive and insecure teenage girlfriend would likely dominate the early police investigation.
Augie loved cutting through flesh, especially when the yield would be so fruitful. He had spent months looking for the specimen Bradley possessed. Many young boys had come close and more than a few died unnecessarily.
It always amazed him how hundreds of hours of manuscript analysis and dream recovery could culminate in the acquisition of a single slice of flesh.
He carefully severed the last shred of tissue connecting it. Another precious artifact, another piece of the puzzle.
A square chunk of flesh. The underside was bloody but the surface remained clean and intact. Under the illumination of his surgical light, he now perceived unforeseen details that added entirely new layers of meaning.
Augie was trembling. He placed the flesh onto a specially sterilized metal tray and removed his gloves.
From his desk, he retrieved the newest prototype of the device, the surface of which looked like an oversized computer chip with a hinged glass hatch hanging from the side. Under the surface was the hardware, bioengineering CPU specially designed to simulate the fibers and tissues that support the epidermal layer of skin.
Augie placed the chunk of flesh on the surface of the device and smiled. He could almost hear the cells and proteins sizzling as they settled in. He closed the glass hatch. The rescued birthmark was in its new home, which would preserve the skin and keep it alive.
A stirring came from the operating table. A soft rustling, then a groan.
Augie's smiled disappeared. Bradley was waking up.
The boy lay naked under the bright light. He groaned again and twitched. Augie stared at him with resentment and disgust.
"What's—going on?" Bradley said, groggily. The boy turned his head to look at Augie. "Where—am I?"
"You're in the final place you'll ever be alive," Augie said.
He surged back over to the operating table, picked up his scalpel and slit Bradley's throat, shrieking as he did so.
He watched the boy bleed out until the life was flushed from his eyes. Augie picked up the birthmark plug-in and carried it into his studio darkroom.
He hung the plug-in on the wall in a designated spot amidst hundreds of others. Together, illuminated by red light, they created a new image, a wall-sized mural of an even larger birthmark.
Augie gasped. He'd inserted the final piece of the puzzle and could finally see the forest for the trees: the dark shape was morphing, unfurling, expanding. It began to whisper to him and reach out.
"Talk to me, Lord," he said, falling to his knees.