AfterNet 01 - Good Cop Dead Cop

I can forward it to her. He realized it was 2:30 Thursday morning, however. She wouldn’t even read it until much later that morning.
    OK, maybe I’m not a cyber geek, able to trace this email around the world. But maybe I can find some evidence of what they’re planning. The game’s afoot.

Chapter 14
From The Washington Post
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released today a survey that shows 65 percent of Americans believe in the afterlife, as it has come to be known since 1997.
The forum is a project of the Pew Research Center, a non-partisan organization that regularly conducts opinion surveys. The figures released today show a 3 percent drop in the overall average since the same time in 2003 and are in contrast to similar surveys in Europe, where the numbers that believe in the afterlife are increasing.
Vance Edmonds, principal researcher on the survey, said, the results “follow the same nationwide trends as the years before. If we look at the South, 60 percent believe in the afterlife, which is down 2 percent from the year before. Of those without any college experience, 58 percent believe. Consider yourself ‘a devout Christian’ in the South, 48 percent. In the Pacific Northwest, on the other hand, 75 percent believe in the afterlife.”
Claire Redmond, a spokeswoman for the group MovedOn, responded to the figures. “These numbers might make it seem that a divide is opening between those who believe and those who don’t. But less than 50 percent of Americans believe in evolution, yet they don’t mind receiving a new flu vaccine every year necessitated because flu viruses evolve. And I don’t think people will refuse to take the new vaccines that will come online next year, even if they are based on research from disembodied scientists. And we don’t believe in global warming, yet we finally approved new cap and trade legislation. Americans have always been able to believe and accept contradictory things.”
In Europe, the acceptance of the afterlife and the disembodied is increasing, according to a poll conducted last year by the Pew Global Attitudes Project. Surveys conducted in Britain, France, Germany, Spain and Italy show a 9 percent increase in belief, although the methodology of that survey is different from this recent U.S. survey.
    “I admit, it really does sound like someone is trying to kidnap the disembodied,” Yamaguchi admitted to Munroe, “but this isn’t proof anyone’s going to accept.” She was looking on her phone at the email that he’d forwarded to her.
    “I know. We need something more solid,” he said. They were sitting on the 16th Street Mall, not too far from his favorite Starbucks where she’d gotten a hot chocolate. Few people noticed the woman sitting on the bench talking to herself.
    “I’ll go in early and start searching too, see what I can come up with,” she offered, although she really didn’t want to. She’d had a restless night and woke far too early, in time to get a call from him asking to meet her at 10 a.m.
    “It won’t make a difference. We need something faster.”
    “The department’s …”
    “A lot faster than the department,” he said.
    “Where’re you going to find that?”
    “Feel like calling your boyfriend?”
    She had no idea what he was talking about. “Who?”
    “Bob Feore, the guy at the party.”
    “Him? He’s not a boyfriend. Hell, I think you talked to him longer than I did.”
    “Half the time he was pumping me for information about you,” he said. A little bit of a lie, but not much, he thought to himself.
    “Really? What did he want to know?”
    “No time for that, Linda. He told me about a new search technology they’re working on. Then he clammed up when he realized he shouldn’t have said anything. He said it was like a supercomputer search engine for the disembodied. I think he was trying to impress me so he could ask more about you.”
    “Oh,” she said, looking down at her cup of hot chocolate. “I was kind of mad at him … and you. I thought I was being neglected. And when I went to find him later, he was gone.”
    “No, he was definitely interested in you. The point is, this search technology might help find what I’m looking for.”
    “OK, tonight when I go home, I’ll look up his number …”
    “I already have it. Call him now.” He gave her the number. “Go on, call him.”
    “I hate pushy dead guys.”
    “Just do it.”
    She dialed the number and it