I left my last few buttons undone and made my way to the study. His sofa, chairs, and wall screen seemed overrun with wild vines. But a closer look saw the vines were carefully pruned to avoid interfering with the walkway, furniture, and electronics. Sata was already on the sofa, a green drink in his hand. On the table in front of him was another full glass, and a bottle of aspirin. I thanked him and swallowed two pills with the liquid, which had a wheatgrass base that tasted like a freshly mown lawn. Knowing Sata, the drink probably had a wealth of micronutrients in it. But that didn’t make it any easier to stomach.
“Thanks. Can I use your projector?”
“By all means.”
I synced up the TEV to his screen. “I have to warn you. The man in the transmission looks like me. He even has a chip that says it’s me. But he’s someone else. I was with my wife when this took place.”
I let the scene from Aunt Zelda’s play, beginning where Alter-Talon materialized out of the elevator.
Sata watched without a sound. The expression on his face was somewhere between confusion and repulsion. I let it play until the killer disappeared again, in the hallway. Then I paused the image, waiting for his response.
“It’s been a very long time since I’ve seen a murder,” Sata said. “And I’ve never seen a friend committing one.”
“That wasn’t me, Michio. The hair is different. And did you notice that the man in the transmission is left-handed?”
“Yes. He also has a mole on his cheek. You don’t have a mole. But all of that could be easily explained. And it’s inconsequential, compared to seeing you break that poor woman’s neck.”
“If I wanted to hide it being me, I wouldn’t have changed my hair and pretended to be lefty. I would have worn a mask or veil. This guy didn’t care that his face was seen. Because it isn’t his face. It’s my face.”
“And you got this on-site?”
“Only two hours ago.”
Sata stood up, rubbing his jaw. “It’s impossible. TEV can’t be faked.”
“Something’s going on. You saw how he appeared and disappeared near the elevator. Wouldn’t that be enough to cast reasonable doubt?”
“No. Remember the State of Illinois v. Jack Kilborn?”
I nodded. Rape, but it had happened in a high-rise building that burned down. So it was impossible to get the TEV in the exact location of the event. Timecasting worked only when you occupied the same physical space where past events occurred. I was dangled from a crane for ten hours, trying to get a good image of the guy’s face. I wound up getting one, but it lasted only for a few rough frames. The judge allowed it. So there was a precedent for dodgy TEV footage.
“Sensei, if I can’t get a close friend to believe me, how will I get a jury to?”
Sata appraised me. His face was kind.
“Do you have any enemies, Talon?”
“Of course. I helped put away over a thousand guys.”
“We’ll need to see if any of them have been released. Or have escaped. You might also want to put together a list of anyone currently on the street who’d like to frame you.”
“So you’ll help me?”
“I should say no. The transmission is pretty cut-and-dried that you’re the killer, and if I assist you, I’m an accessory after the fact. But something about the recording bothers me.”
“The disappearing and reappearing?”
“That. And the color. Did it look orange to you?”
“It was orange. I had to adjust the hue to get it to appear normal.”
“There’s something definitely strange here. This is the original, unaltered recording?”
“You can check the time stamp.”
“Getting someone to look like you would be difficult. Getting them to have a duplicate ID chip would be impossible. But there’s no way they could alter a timecast.”
“Some sort of digital image?”
“Was the dead woman a digital image?”
I shook my head. “She was real.”
“I’ve seen enough of these to know that killer was real as well. You know digital imagining. The movies spend hundreds of millions of credits on special effects, and you can still tell it’s fake. That wasn’t fake. Can you play it again?”
“I have a lead to follow up on. I’ll transfer a copy to you now.” I pressed a button and saved the transmission to Sata’s projector. “You wouldn’t happen to have an Internet connection, would you?”
“Why on earth would I? Do I look like a whack job?”
No matter. They had one at the office.
“Thanks for helping me on this, Sata. And for trusting me.”