Episode 1 - The Beam

longer an only child, suddenly having to fight for maternal attention.
    He closed his eyes and tried calming himself. Behind drawn lids, Isaac saw Micah’s calm and trustworthy face telling the world a version of the story that made so much more sense than Isaac’s.
    Isaac snapped his eyes open.
    “Canvas.”
    A chirp answered him.
    “Get me Dominic Long.”
    A soothing female voice came from all around Isaac and answered, “Captain Dominic Long is in a meeting.”
    “At the DZ station?”
    “It’s a virtual meeting,” said the voice.
    “With who?”
    “I’m sorry, Mr. Ryan,” said the voice Isaac had programmed into his apartment’s canvas — a voice Natasha didn’t know was mimicked from a synthporn star Isaac had been fascinated with once upon a time. “I don’t have that information.”
    Isaac went to the nearest horizontal surface and tapped a series of commands.
    “Now: with who?” he repeated.
    “It’s his weekly cooperative meeting with the other district captains,” said the woman’s sexy voice.
    “Interrupt him.”
    The woman started to protest, but Isaac kept tapping the countertop and she stopped mid-sentence. Being a founding member of the Directorate had its privileges. There was a chirp of acknowledgement and the room fell silent.
    A moment later, a trilling of notes announced an incoming holo call. But holo was for douchebags and lower-downs who couldn’t afford nerve immersion, so Isaac declined and answered with video. The counter beneath his fingers opened a window to show a three-dimensional rendering of a man in blue who looked much younger and much more attractive than Dominic — who in reality was old and tired, and less interested in the cosmetic augments and addons enjoyed by most other citizens of his pay-grade. The rendering had the same almost-real-but-not-real look of all avatars. Computer graphics had improved immeasurably since the first days of simulated reality, but for some reason avatars never stopped being creepy. It was like talking to a doll.
    “Who the hell do you think you are?” blurted the man in blue on Isaac’s countertop.
    “Jesus, Dominic. Get that rig off and look at me proper. You know how I hate those things.”
    Dominic’s Beam-generated avatar ignored him and kept ranting. The avatar’s angry expression was overdone, making its eyebrows rise into furious points. Its skin bloomed red like a sunburn. “I don’t care what your title says! You can’t just break into a meeting like that. You pompous little…”
    “Watch it,” said Isaac. “Just in case you’ve forgotten how rude it is to condescend to your elders — no matter how young and impetuous they may look — you might want to keep in mind who controls rank advancement within public service. PD and FD aren’t exactly Enterprise jobs, Captain.”
    The avatar’s eyebrows didn’t fall, but it stopped huffing and puffing. On Isaac’s countertop, he could only see Dominic’s electronic visage from the chest up, but it seemed to have its hands on its virtual hips.
    “Now slip off your rig and look at me. Your avatar is creeping me out.”
    “I have to get back to the meeting. This isn’t just about me. There are six other captains in there. This is their time.”
    “They’ll get by without you. I’ve sent your regrets to the nexus. Now get out of that rig.”
    The man on Isaac’s counter sighed. Then the screen went blank, and Isaac could imagine the police captain pulling off the clumsy A/V rig that provided what most people thought was fairly good artificial reality — at least as far as two of the five senses were concerned. He pulled a stool from behind him and sat, then dragged the black window to a wall behind the counter so that when Dominic returned, he wouldn’t be staring up Isaac’s nose.
    A moment later, Dominic’s barely-shaven face was staring at Isaac, his hair tousled from the rig he’d been wearing when Isaac had burst in.
    “What?” said Dominic. He looked angry, and days without sleep.
    “I need to find Nicolai. He’s gone off-grid.”
    “So? People go off-grid.”
    “Not Nicolai. Not without telling me.”
    “Maybe he’s getting laid,” said Dominic.
    “He’s always reachable. Sometimes he’ll answer with audio only, and every once in a while he’ll click me over to an autoreply to buy a few minutes, but this is different. If he were in Manhattan, he’d be within the core network. He’d have to have left to get off-grid — and