AfterNet 01 - Good Cop Dead Cop

visiting those chat rooms or whatever. I also sent emails about these people to AfterNet security to see when they last used a terminal, but I’m guessing it’ll be a while before I get a response.”
    “I’ll light a fire under them,” Feore said.
    “Good, thanks. So here’s the spreadsheet.”
    “Oh my God,” she said, looking at a table with hundreds of thousands of names.
    “I never would have been able to find this much using the terminal at work.”
    “There are 125,000 rows here,” Feore said.
    “No, it’s not that bad. Here’s the list after I crosschecked it. Unless someone has found a way to duplicate a dead person’s field signature …” Feore shook his head “… we can remove most of the names off this list because they’ve been on the AfterNet or Internet at some point after someone wondered where that person was. And we’re left with this list.”
    They looked at a list with 10,700 names. “This isn’t much better,” she said.
    “We further narrow it down to people who last accessed the AfterNet while in the western United States … all the square states … and we’re left with this.” Munroe clicked another worksheet and they saw the list had dropped to 1,700 people.
    “Now we plot these disappearances by date on a line chart.”
    “It’s a flat line,” Feore said.
    Munroe loved showing off. “We change the scale of the chart, compress it a little … et voilá!” Yes, definitely showing off, he chided himself.
    “It’s got little bumps to it,” she said.
    Feore leaned closer to the screen. “Each of these bumps represents no more than a two to seven increase in disappearances.”
    “And then we superimpose the days that the Explorers hosted their events.”
    Yamaguchi looked where she guessed her partner to be. “How do you know those dates?”
    “They were posted on the wall of Tracy Newell’s office. You see, but you do not always observe, Watson. Look at the screen.”
    The dates were mostly within two to three days and no more than a week away from the bumps on the chart, and all the dates were before the bumps.
    Feore was stroking his chin. “Well, I guess that’s a little more than coincidental.”
    “But wait, there’s more, isn’t there, Alex?”
    This is why he liked working with her. “You are correct. If we compare the locations of the raves and the last location these missing people used the AfterNet: we have a 99 percent match for people whose physical location was within a 10-mile radius of the raves. This is going on and has been going on all over the Southwest. And for all I know all over the country.”
    He waited while they digested the information. After a few seconds, Feore said, “Let me call security. We’ll send out traces on all these names.”
    Yamaguchi stood up from the computer and walked away from Feore and motioned Munroe toward her. She used her own terminal and ear buds to talk to him.
    “Alex, you were in that chamber about 20 minutes.”
    “Yeah.”
    “How did you find all this in 20 minutes? How many forums did you visit?”
    “Thousands. And I pulled up transcripts from chat rooms, Twitter postings, Facebook, usenet groups, Google Groups. Admittedly I didn’t search any foreign domains. And half of the forums and chat rooms I checked were hosted directly on the AfterNet, and since that’s where we are, access was instantaneous.”
    “You’re like a machine.”
    “I sing the Body electric / The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them.”
    “Huh?”
    “Walt Whitman. I looked it up while I was in the chamber. In my spare time.”
    They left the offices of the AfterNet and went to the department. They had little chance to discuss their findings because Clemens and the SWAT commander grabbed them to discuss their new assignment. Like most meetings that were only supposed to last an hour, it lasted two and a half. And they weren’t involved in most of the debate. The SWAT commander assumed they would be in his chain of command, but Clemens still wanted all the disembodied and their partners to report to him. And because they had again connected the terminal to speakers, they weren’t free to pass smart remarks back and forth.
    When they were finally released, she went in search of what food was available in the break room’s vending machines. Munroe had gotten her out of the house before breakfast and now it was 5:45 p.m.
    She had already deposited her money to get a microwave beef stew when