Julius Rosenthal will make candy no more and other short stories by Nicholas Russell (young adult books to read .txt) 📗

“Constable Jonathan Trefero.” The voice was clear and even sounded human, but the words didn’t match the lips movement. The lips were only the beginning of the constructs problems. While the lips were animated the rest of the face was as lifeless as a corpse. “You have been recorded crossing fifth street illegally. The evidence has been presented to a presiding judge and you have been found guilty. This evidence as well as the transcripts of the preceding will be available for viewing for the next thirty days at central processing. Your fine of seventy –two dollars will be deducted from your monthly pay.”

The elevator doors chimed just as Jack slipped the computer into his pocket. It was a bad habit of Jacks that continually left Jack fumbling for his phone when he needed to make a call. The precinct floor was a grid of ten evenly spaced identical desks. As late as it was most detectives had gone home for the evening leaving eight of the desks free. The few constables that were still on duty had their noses buried in computer terminals. Jack slipped off his over coat and laid it across the back of the nearest chair. The items on each desk were exactly the same, a wide-screen monitor, with a digital multi board mounted in the center of the desk. Just to the left of the monitor was a blank digital picture frame. Opposite the frame was a small lamp with a green tented heavy plastic shade. It was supposed to look like a banker’s light, Jack always wondered if that wasn’t just something an ad man had come up with. Taking a seat Jack laid his hand on the multi-board. His official ID picture appeared next to his hand as the surface came to life. Jack spread his fingers wide and began tapping. The order was a personal pass code and had replaced numeric codes a few years earlier. Jack had never been musically inclined and was bad about not remembering the order. On his third attempt he remembered the correct order, Pinky, thumb, middle finger, followed finally by his pointer finger. With the code entered the Terminal unlocked.

The digital picture frame came on first. The frames had been installed after an efficiency expert said the interchangeable desks needed to be personalized. Jack stared at the picture as it flickered to life. It was an old picture but Jack could never bring himself to change it. It was taken the day he graduated from college. Hanging on his right arm was his Grandmother, she raised Jack after his father took his life. Wrapped around his left arm was Peggy Rutledge, she was a sophomore when Jack graduated and from a wealthy family. She stood two inches taller than Jack and had her strawberry red hair pulled back into a tight bun that evening. When Jack took a job with the Constables office, Peggy grew cold. She had hoped he would take a job with her fathers company, when he said no things started to change. The final straw in the relationship had been when Peggy’s younger sister Carol took a job with the constable’s office as well, Peggy blamed Jack. She said she could never forgive him for what he had done. Jack had dated a few women in his life but he hadn’t cared for any of them like he did Peggy.

As the main terminal flickered on, Jack looked away from the picture. The multi-board changed its layout to a standard keyboard with a few exceptions. A series of specialty short cut keys had been programmed along the top row. Jack hit the button for mail and scanned through his new messages. The most recent message was still the notification of his fine for jay walking. None of the older messages looked important enough that he couldn’t put them aside till the morning.

Jack was ready to click over to another sub-system when the screen flashed a new message alert. Two clicks and the body of the email appeared. It was a short message from the crime scene techs. While Jack was waiting on trains the crime lab had solved the case. The pistol used imprinted a DNA mark on the shell casings it was a common feature of newer weapons. It never ceased to amaze Jack how often a criminal would use a weapon that they knew would leave evidence of their guilt. Attached to the email was a compressed file with all the data collected at the scene. Jack copied it into the system memory and switched his terminal over to the reporting menus. This was the part of his job that always reminded Jack how redundant his existence had become. Once the evidence was uncompressed and inserted into the proper locations of the digital form, Jack created a time line of the events. It took him a half hour to read through the files and another ten minutes to compile the timeline.

Closing his eyes, Jack rubbed them gently. The day was getting to him and he was starting to ask questions of himself that he didn’t like to ask. He saved out his report and clicked back over to the mail system again. Nothing new had come in and the rest of the messages seemed even less important now. A couple of quick commands and the terminal shut itself down. The picture frame and the light were programmed to power down thirty seconds after the main terminal. The picture frame dimmed first. The light made an audible click when it turned off, another feature from the efficiency experts. The light itself was entirely computer controlled and the sound was a pre-recorded digital file. The lamp was programmed to play the file when it shut down. The click was supposed to make people feel better.

“Where have you been all night?” The voice caught