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iTrust
Mar 25, 2010

It's not good for your health.

:frogc00l:
I've been hovering on getting involved with a TD for a while but I feel like this theme is as good as any to give it a go.

So I'm in for a flash.

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iTrust
Mar 25, 2010

It's not good for your health.

:frogc00l:
True Futures
Word Count: 1770
Flash Prompt: Machine Worship



A light rain skittered upon the concrete and coalesced with the blood of the body lying there, running off into a nearby drain all too quickly. The body was young enough to have age mentioned with sadness in the obituary but old enough to have lived a decent enough life. In the background, the red and blue of police lights blinkered against the grey of the alley in which the body lay. Aside from the way the body had evidently fallen from a great height, there wasn’t anything particularly remarkable about the scene as far as Trent could tell.

She stood up and pulled out a cigarette, lighting and inhaling deeply. Turning towards the cordon at the end of the alleyway Trent motioned towards a paramedic team to head in. She turned as she exhaled smoke, so as to keep it away from her approaching colleague.

“Another suicide then detective?” her colleague asked. He was young and relatively new, Trent had forgotten his name.

“Ninth in as many days,” she replied. “Jumped. At least she had the foresight to land somewhere that won’t disrupt the traffic. Not much for us here, the guys are already on clean up. Going to check the building.”

Trent moved forward before her colleague had a chance to say anything else, nodding to a nearby officer she recognised. She passed through the cordon and into the street. Traffic had built up as drivers slowed down to gawk at the scene and the red and white of the lights on the vehicles twinkled in the falling rain. The building the dead girl had jumped from loomed, a large sign high above her glowed bright yellow against the drizzle but Trent couldn’t make out what it said from on the ground.

A revolving door brought Trent into the foyer of the building. A crowd of people had gathered, some of whom looked in shock and some who were clearly just interested in the suicide victim as a way to escape work for a while. Trent made her way to a large desk, behind which sat a heavy set man with a moustache and tired eyes.

“Detective Trent, here about the girl outside.”

“Horrible business that,” the man behind the desk replied, “horrible business. How may I help you, Detective?”

“What occurs in this building?” Trent asked, leaning against the desk.

“We have several offices for a variety of media based operations.”

“Right, and the victim - I assume her name and the reason for being in this building is known to you?”

“Ms. Wells, yes, she worked in the newspaper offices. She was a relatively new reporter for The Times, or so I’m lead to believe.”

“Anyone who knew her personally available?”

“Not that I’m aware of down here, no, however, if you were to head up to the 17th floor you’ll find the offices she worked within.”

Trent nodded at the man and turned away, heading through the crowd of people towards the elevator. The metal box ascended with incredible speed and Trent stepped out onto the 17th floor moments later. A small foyer spread out before her, a small crowd of people looked up with hesitant faces as she stepped from the elevator. Trent returned the gaze to a few people, causing them to look away from her before a wiry woman with dirty blonde hair stepped forward and adjusted the thinly framed spectacles that framed her face.

“Who are you and what do you want up here?” the woman asked, a note of hostility in her voice, “We have just witnessed a tragedy, you know?”

“Detective Trent, here about the woman who jumped. You are?”

“Oh a detective, wonderful. Well, Ms. Wells likes horoscopes and took hers a bit literally. We’re the ones who are suffering for it, no work getting done and a terrific mess. I’m going to need therapy after this, which is expensive!”

Trent stared at the woman as a slight twinge of disbelief crept across her face. The woman returned the stare, shrugged and turned away.

“It’s just the way of it,” the woman said, “young people and what they believe. Ridiculous. Never heard of this behaviour in my generation I assure you.”

---

The television above the bar projected out a news broadcast about the latest developments in the Mediterranean. She paid little mind to it as she focused on her phone, the light on the small screen illuminated her face. She had spent the last hour or so flicking through various horoscope websites and generators, most of which were exactly as she expected. It made her feel a little better about her life to know that wealth is in her future and Jupiter is sending her social vibes. A voice took her out of her reverie.

“You waiting for it to cool down?”

Trent looked up and found the smiling face of a young woman, her head slightly tilted towards the untouched beer on the bar.

“Sorry, just researching something,” Trent said, “horoscopes.”

“Oh yeah?” the bartender replied, ”which ones are you looking at?”

“All sorts, I’m curious.”

“Future is worth being curious about, I say. You should check out the one I like, it’s a personalised one that generates based on the data you put in about yourself! Look up True Futures, should be the top result you get!”

“I’ll do that,” Trent nodded at the bartender, “thanks.”

The bartender skipped away as another patron called out and Trent returned to her phone. She found True Futures just as the young woman had said, top result. The screen changed to a webpage no different to any Trent was used to. A few fields marked Input social media identification and a pop up requesting to access her location. Trent filled in the information, clicked okay on the location request and the webpage loaded in full. On her screen now were input fields for a variety of things and a notice at the top of the page that read more information results in a more accurate prediction. Several of the fields were already completed thanks to the information she had input on her social media identification so Trent pressed ahead with what had already been done and clicked generate.

You’ll come to understand that which perplexes you.

“Well that’s extremely convenient,” Trent said to herself.

---

The evidence lock-up in the police station could barely be described as a lock-up. A single chain fence separated it from the outside world and through the oak wood doors that made up the entrance the only security was a thin old man behind a desk. Trent showed her badge to the attendant and received a grunt in reply. She came into a small room with shelves that stretched from the floor to ceiling, some buckling under the weight of various boxes upon them. Working against the lack of filing system, Trent came upon the box belonging to the suicide victim after a half hour of searching.

The clothes Ms. Wells had been wearing at the time of her death were sealed in transparent plastic bags, underneath them were the things she had been carrying. Trent pulled the phone from the box. The screen had a large crack through it. Holding her breath, Trent tried to turn it on. She exhaled as the screen lit up with a familiar glow and after a minute she was presented with a lock screen.

“Of course it is,” Trent sighed.

She fished out a small metal object from her pockets and a cable, then attached the locked phone to it with the cable. Trent pressed a button on the object and the screen on the phone lit up once more. She placed everything back into her pocket and left the storage room. The attendant at the desk looked up at her as she emerged.

“Checking out a phone,” Trent said, “I’ll return it in an hour or so.”

“Yeah, fine,” the attendant replied, “Just return it, saves me having to file anything.”

Trent gave the attendant a nod and left through the doors, stepping into the pale sunshine of the empty car park, the rain from the day before a distant memory. She heard the attendant call out that she had better return the phone as the doors closed behind her. She lit a cigarette and walked towards her parked car.

---

An hour or two had passed since Trent had picked up the phone before it had been unlocked. She disconnected the device and noted the code before having a look through the phone that had belonged to Ms. Wells. The phone was completely normal as far as Trent could tell, there was no sign of any weird applications. She opened up Social media ident. and scrolled through the page that had belonged to the suicide victim - her name was Trish, she had graduated from college reasonably well, was ‘single but looking,’ a member of a few groups dedicated to bringing back pet ownership and against sea drains and a post that she recently started a job as a reporter.

Trent closed the application and opened up the photo album on the phone. Flicking through some recent photos she found nothing inconsistent with the social media profile; a picture of an e-reader and a coffee, a tree that Trent spent a moment to admire, the sunset from a window - nothing jumped out from the photographs to Trent. She lit another cigarette and rolled down the window of her car and continued to search through the phone. She opened the web browser and was met with the splash page of True Futures.

“Should have just done that first,” she muttered to herself.

On the True Futures page, Trent noted that every information field had been filled in already, so she scrolled down and clicked generate.

You must go. You must go. It cannot happen with you here. That which you want can only happen if you go. Your secrets will be revealed if you don’t. You must go.

Trent stared at the message on the screen for a long time. The cigarette she held burnt down to the filter and it was only the hot ash falling on her hand that brought her attention away from reading the screen. She brought out her own phone from her pocket and brought up the True Futures page, generating a horoscope for herself.

To continue discovery, you must look to what came previously.

“Machine generated horoscopes that tell you what you already know,” Trent sighed and looked at the other phone, “or that you need to die.”

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