AfterNet 01 - Good Cop Dead Cop

about a crime, not just missing persons.”
    “I don’t know if it is a crime. It’s pretty hard to prove a crime without a body.”
    “That’s not fair, is it?”
    “Need I mention that …”
    “Life ain’t fair, I know. All right, how do we proceed?”
    “I don’t know what we do next, Linda. I think we’re stuck waiting at least until Thursday. Maybe if we’re lucky, the court case will get postponed or we can try to get something done over lunch.”
    — & —
    Brian dozed with his head in Karen’s lap. Funny, he found himself doing whatever she wanted, and he didn’t mind. She’d always complained before that he was too selfish and they always did what he wanted to do. But obviously she was wrong. Or maybe it was him that was changing, taking time to relax instead of working so hard to get his degree. Although it was funny that he was spending so much time lazing on a park bench. When I was alive …
    Wow, what a strange thing to think. Of course I’m alive.
    That weird thought brought him out of his reverie with a start and he was sure that he’d sat up. But here he was with his head still in Karen’s lap, who was still talking. “… or do you like the Mini Cooper?”
    “What?” he asked. “Sorry, I just had the strangest thought. I thought … I thought I had died.”
    “That’s a really weird thing to say, honey. If you’d died, how could you be here with me?”
    “Is this … is this heaven?”
    “No, you dope, it’s Denver. Heaven is a place where nothing really happens.”
    “Talking Heads. You like Talking Heads too?”
    “They’re kind of old, but yeah, I like them. But you know that.”
    Edwards, the older of the two men observing the session via their monitors, made a mental note to talk to Rachel, the woman acting the part of Karen, about the Talking Heads reference. Stick to the script, he thought. Thankfully it worked and the subject didn’t notice but the line was just a bit too clever considering the situation.
    “I guess, sometimes I forget,” Brian said.
    “Don’t worry about it, we all forget sometimes.”
    “How long have we been here?”
    “I don’t know. Fifteen minutes?”
    “Seems like longer.”
    “Maybe, but you still haven’t told me yet what car you prefer.”
    “What?”
    “Look over there you dope. See those three cars parked there?”
    Brian lifted his head from her lap and looked where she pointed. He saw three shiny new cars, the sun glinting off their paint.
    “OK, the Ford Focus, the Honda Civic and the Mini Cooper. Which one do you like the best?”
    “The Cooper, I guess.”
    “On a scale of one to ten?”
    “Um, a seven.”
    “Good, honey,” she kissed him on top of the head, then smoothed his hair with her hand, softly moving his head back to her lap. “Why do you like it so much? Is it fun? Is it exciting? Is it sporty?”
    She kept reeling off a list of adjectives and Brian would make his choice.
    Good, we didn’t lose him, Edwards thought. He turned back to his monitor started checking off boxes on Brian’s evaluation form: Suggestibility, Good; Malleability, High; Retention, Fair.
    He found himself humming a tune. When he completed the form, he got up to stretch his legs and looked through the windows of the small office overlooking the warehouse full of beach ball-sized black spheres wired together. I got another intake evaluation to do after this, he thought. I hope Rachel can wrap things up.

Chapter 7
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) — The Nobel Foundation announced today that it would reconsider the prohibition against awarding the Nobel Prize posthumously.
“There are scientists, authors and politicians who remain active in their fields, even after their death. The foundation believes that to ignore their contributions would be an injustice,” said Hans Erich Kleineman, speaking at an annual gathering of the board of directors.
Currently the foundation’s statutes read: “Work produced by a person since deceased shall not be considered for an award. If, however, a prizewinner dies before he has received the prize, then the prize may be presented.”
Antonia Simone, the woman whose invention and death led to the discovery of the afterlife, praised the decision. “Even though I’m unlikely to ever be nominated, I’m happy on behalf of the early pioneers in afterlife research, who deserve to be considered.
“But it obviously goes far beyond afterlife research. We’re seeing real progress in the fields of robotics,