Wanted

Incoming call: Thomas Tait.

Catelyn groaned with exasperation as she lugged three bags of groceries up the stairs towards her small apartment. Blinking firmly, she accepted the call from her ex.

“Is Ethan okay?”

There was an audible sigh through her iSIGHT earbuds. “Hello to you too, Catelyn. Yes, Ethan’s fine.”

Catelyn glanced in the top corner of her vision to check the time. “Well it’s nearly five—”

“That’s what I’m calling about,” said Thomas. “The time got away from me. We’re halfway through a film—”

“Thomas,” said Catelyn, firmly. “That’s not how shared custody works. We have times. Schedules.”

“So… you want me to turn off the film halfway through?”

Catelyn sucked a hiss of air through her teeth, willing herself to bite back all of the remarks floating to the surface that her immature ex-husband deserved. “No, you can finish the film,” she said at last. Be the bigger person, Catelyn. “Just bring him back soon, okay.”

“I tried to call the other night, you know.”

Oh, so now he was up for a chat. Catelyn dumped the grocery bags on the floor of her apartment and slammed the door. “Checking up on me, were you?”

“You need to be careful, going on dates with people you don’t know.”

“The iDATE app is perfectly safe,” said Catelyn. “It records all our interactions, so it’s not like he could take advantage of me without the police knowing.”

“Nice date?”

It had been terrible. The third date with a boring, filthy-rich techno-nerd. At least, that’s how she’d described him over the phone to her sister. On the first date, Catelyn had been wowed by the fancy restaurant he took her to. The second had fallen flat, but she’d decided to go back for a third—just in case she’d been remembering the incessant drone of his voice incorrectly. She hadn’t. “It was perfect,” lied Catelyn. “Now, don’t you have a film to finish?”

Catelyn shoved the packets and tins into her small pantry with more force than was necessary. She shouldn’t let him get to her, but her ex-husband always managed to put her in a foul mode. When divorces were mutual, they could work out okay. Catelyn’s sister, Miranda, was still somehow friends with her ex. But when one childish-excuse-for-a-human thought he was still in love, then divorces could be messy beasts.

She was just shoving the last tin onto the shelf when a single word dominated her field of vision.

WANTED.

Catelyn knocked the can of baked beans onto the floor, the side of the tin crumpling inwards.

WANTED.

She shook her head, blinking quickly, but the crimson word superimposed over the tidy stack of tinned goods refused to disappear.

CATELYN WOODS: YOU ARE UNDER ARREST.

Slamming the cupboard door shut, the letters continued to scroll across the brown veneer while her heart hammered loudly in her chest. She raised a hand to her face, prodding the skin beneath her left eye. Her iSIGHT implant was clearly malfunctioning—what on Earth would she be under arrest for? That, or the technology that was supposed to protect society had decided to turn against her.

As though in answer to her silent questions, brightly pulsating green arrows were abruptly seared into her vision, overlaid on the tiled kitchen floor.

CHARGE: THEFT. PROCEED TO NEAREST POLICE STATION.

Catelyn took three quick steps across the room to scoop her handbag off the kitchen bench. This was a huge lapse in judgment. The flashing arrows on the floor transitioned to orange, and then a dangerous shade of red. “Far out.” She stepped carefully back onto the glowing pathway and it returned to its previous emerald hue.

“Call: Latrobe Police Station.” Catelyn’s voice wavered as she spoke her command.

Call blocked.

“Call: Miranda Woods.”

Call blocked.

A small timer appeared in the upper right-hand corner of Catelyn’s vision. She had twenty minutes to present herself to the police station—or what? She knew exactly what the stakes were if she failed to show. They were the same consequences she would receive if she stepped too far off the glowing path.

Visions of the nightly news where bodies of fleeing criminals lay hunched on the ground, bloody trails flowing from their eye sockets, filled Catelyn’s thoughts. Eyeballs turned to jelly by the iSIGHT implant because they’d failed to turn themselves in.

She pushed the thought away.

“Far out,” she said again.

Clutching her purse in shaking hands, Catelyn followed the flashing arrows out of her apartment and down the stairs. She could fix this. There had simply been a mistake. She stepped onto the footpath. Her hands were trembling so much, she didn’t trust herself to drive.

ETA 14 MINS. CATELYN WOODS: YOU ARE UNDER ARREST.

“Yeah, yeah, I got the message.”

Walking down the road, she carefully placed one foot in front of the other, making sure she didn’t veer off the course generated by the iSIGHT software.

People stared at her as she moved along the road. Some shook their heads; others glared with open hostility. From experience, Catelyn knew exactly what they were seeing. Three words displayed on the iSIGHT implants of the people jeering at her: Catelyn Woods: Criminal.

She looked straight ahead, bolstered by the knowledge that they couldn’t touch her unless they, too, wished to be labelled as lawbreakers. At least, not unless she stepped off the path. If she was stupid enough to attempt to flee, well… imploded eyeballs didn’t kill you straight away.

“Hey, Catelyn, step over here for a moment,” one man taunted.

Another walked beside her, glaring; his face uncomfortably close to her own.

Catelyn averted her eyes, gazing instead at the giant billboards lining the street. “iSIGHT: Keeping you safe,” promised one. “Everyone. Everywhere. All the time,” announced another. The signs that had always felt comforting, today, seemed threatening.

It felt like it took a lot longer than fourteen minutes to reach her destination, but the timer in Catelyn’s vision assured her that wasn’t the case. The police station was crouched between two enormous skyscrapers; a relic from the not-too-distant past, when such establishments were necessary to retain order. These days, they were more symbolic than anything.

The woman behind the desk looked up from her iNEWS in a bored way. “Under arrest?” she asked. “Take a seat. Your transport will arrive shortly.”

As she returned to her reading, the headline leered out at Catelyn. iSIGHT SUCCESS: CRIME RATES REDUCED TO RECORD LOWS.

Catelyn cleared her throat, moving closer to the counter. “Actually, I’d like to appeal.”

The woman looked as though Catelyn had just said she was a time traveller from the future. “Lady, nobody appeals. We have iSIGHT footage as evidence of your crime.”

Catelyn imagined she could hear the transit van pulling up, ready to take her directly to prison. No judge. No jury. Do not collect $200. Her hands shook with more intensity, like little aftershocks. She clutched them firmly around her purse, determined to remain calm.

“Look—” she glanced desperately at the woman’s nametag—“Trudy. You probably hear this all the time, but whatever you think I did—it wasn’t me.”

Trudy laughed in a humourless way, putting her iNEWS down on the counter. “You got a twin sister or something?”

“No.”

“Lady, iSIGHT uses the latest—”

“I know,” Catelyn interrupted, losing her patience. “But what if the witness didn’t get a clear view? The facial recognition software does its best to find a match, but it’s not infallible.”

“You’ve been watching some whacko conspiracy channels, haven’t you?”

Catelyn took a deep breath. “I’d like to know the match percentage,” she said, at last. “If it’s less than sixty per cent, I know my rights.”

Trudy rolled her eyes. “Come on, then.”

She led Catelyn down a hallway to a small room that was once used for interrogations, before the mandatory iSIGHT implants rendered such methods redundant. A computer squatted on a low desk and a projector screen dominated the back wall. Catelyn sat at the table, clutching her purse as if holding onto the last threads of her sanity.

Catelyn’s faceprint appeared on the screen as Trudy typed her name into the computer. “Only one witness to the crime,” she muttered, opening the solitary video clip. “92 per cent match with Ms Catelyn Woods. That’s you, yeah?”

Catelyn peered into the screen, where a slightly blurry image sat next to her own government-issued faceprint. Biomarkers were etched all over the evidence photo, with a luminous ‘92 per cent match’ glowing beside it.

The oxygen felt like it had been sucked out of the room and Catelyn drew shallow breaths into her lungs.

Trudy pressed a button and the image on the screen jumped backwards a few frames, showing the woman with dark hair at a self-serve checkout. Between scanning her groceries, she picked up a charity tin from the counter and emptied it into her handbag.

“It looks exactly like me,” breathed Catelyn.

“Where were you at 4.03pm this afternoon?” asked Trudy.

“The grocery store.” Her voice came out in a strangled whisper. “But I can prove it’s not me,” said Catelyn, shoving her purse towards Trudy. “Look, there’s nothing in there.”

Trudy shook her head. “Aww hun, you could have stashed the money anywhere by now. 92 per cent match. There’s no arguing with that.”

Pins and needles cascaded down Catelyn’s arms. “You have to believe me. It’s not me. That woman—she might look like me, but it’s someone else.”

Trudy gazed at Catelyn, tapping one finger on the desk. Was there a hint of thinly veiled curiosity on her face? This must be the first time Trudy had seen anyone appeal in a very long time—perhaps ever.

Catelyn put her face in her hands, but she couldn’t stop the tears spilling out from between her fingers. “Either the technology is mistaken, or someone’s setting me up.”

“And how would they do that?”

She rubbed her nose on her sleeve. “I don’t know. Edit the video feed? Hire a look-alike? It’s 92 per cent, not 100 per cent after all.”

Trudy looked at Catelyn doubtfully, tapping her finger on the desk. “Nobody can edit the iSIGHT feeds.” She opened a drawer beneath the desk and passed Catelyn a box of tissues. “But I suppose it could be possible to hire a look-alike and stage the offence if someone hated you that much. You got any awful ex-boyfriends?”

Catelyn blew her nose. “I have an ex-husband, but surely he wouldn’t—”

Trudy looked thoughtful. “You never know. Did you break his heart?”

Catelyn shrugged.

“Was there a child involved?” Trudy pressed.

“Yeah, yeah. There’s a child.”

“Bloody bastard men,” said Trudy. “You know, there was another witness. Maybe they’ll show a different story.”

“There was?” Hope surged through Catelyn. “Why didn’t you say so?”

Trudy reached into the drawer again and pulled out a long, silver cord. Plugging it into her laptop, she passed Catelyn the other end.

“Oh,” said Catelyn, realisation dawning on her. “Of course.”

“Just connect it to your implant.”

Catelyn pull the lower lid of her left eye down, inserting the cord fibres into the iSIGHT port that was implanted as a child. There was a slight tingle as the strands melded with the hardware and Trudy scrolled through the video feed.

“4.03pm…” she muttered, as disjointed frames of Catelyn’s existence were displayed on the laptop screen. Working. Eating lunch. “Aha, here we go.”

Catelyn saw her hands scanning groceries at the self-serve checkouts. “You’ll see,” she said confidently. “I didn’t do anything.”

There was a slight blur, and the screen panned across to the left. Then, just as the witness video showed, Catelyn tipped the charity jar into her purse.

“No.” Catelyn’s voice came out in a strangled gasp. “That didn’t happen. Something is wrong with the technology, it’s turned against me—”

“You’re under arrest for theft.” Trudy was all business now as she tugged on the cord and it prickled slightly as it popped out of Catelyn’s iSIGHT port.

“You don’t understand,” said Catelyn.

“No, girl. It’s you who doesn’t understand. Wasting my time. Filling me with stories of… Anyway, minimum sentence for stealing: Three years. Maybe more since it was from a charity.”

Catelyn returned to the waiting room in a daze while Trudy muttered angrily to herself. She briefly considered running, but there was no point; anyone who saw her would know instantly that she was wanted by the police.

Then she had an idea. Somebody who might just be able to help her. She knew it was a long shot, but she only knew one person with links to iSIGHT industries.

“Call: Jonathan Taylor.”

Call blocked.

“Call: iSIGHT Industries.”

Call blocked.

“You can’t make calls no more,” said Trudy. “You’re off the network. It’ll be reinstated once you get out of lockup.”

There was an old-fashioned pay-phone in the corner of the room. It took Catelyn a moment to work out how to use it, but then the sound of the ringtone filled her earbuds.

He answered after the fourth ring. “This is Jonathan.”

“Jonathan, it’s Catelyn—”

His laugh was loud and so abrupt that Catelyn was caught off-guard. He seemed far more animated than he had on any of their dates. “Ah, Catelyn. Catelyn who went on three dates with me and then decided to ghost me? Catelyn who wouldn’t return my calls? That Catelyn?”

“Yes, Jonathan, but listen—”

“And what would Catelyn be wanting from me now? She must want something, or she wouldn’t have called.”

“Look, Jonathan, I don’t have much time. You told me that you work with iSIGHT Industries. I need your help—something’s wrong with the app. It’s showing me doing something that I never did.”

“Is that so? Well, well. You need my help?”

Catelyn huffed impatiently. “Yes. The police are coming to get me for a crime I didn’t commit, and you’re the only person I can think of who could do something.”

“How did you enjoy our date the other night, Catelyn?”

“What? Did you hear me? I don’t have time—”

“Our date. Or should I say dates. I spent a lot of money on giving you a good time.”

A wail of sirens sounded in the distance. An ambulance, or Catelyn’s one-way ticket to lockup.

“Can we talk about this later? First off, the malfunctioning app…”

“The iSIGHT app is infallible. It would never malfunction.”

“But it has malfunctioned,” Catelyn insisted. “I never—” An uncomfortable feeling bloomed in her belly.

“Stealing from a charity,” said Jonathan slowly. “Tut-tut.”

Cold fingers clawed Catelyn’s spine.

“You’re just like the rest of them,” said Jonathan. “You’d labelled me as boring in that first date. Unimpressive. But you liked the money, didn’t you Catelyn? You liked the glamour.”

“That’s not—”

“The truth? You seem to be struggling with fact and fiction this evening.”

“Okay, Jonathan—you’re right. That first date wasn’t amazing, but I thought you were a really nice guy—”

“Liar. You know exactly why you went on those next two dates. Maybe your conscience finally kicked in then and stopped you from stringing me along for a fourth. Honesty is important, isn’t it, Catelyn?”

She felt like a small child being reprimanded by a teacher. Through the window, she saw a van pull up outside the station. “Please, Jonathan—I never meant to hurt you.”

“Of course you didn’t,” said Jonathan. “Pretty women never mean to break a man’s heart.”

“I didn’t break your heart, Jonathan. We went on three dates.” The policemen were exiting the van now. Three of them. Three policemen coming to get her.

“So,” said Jonathan lightly, as though asking about the weather, “how many years did you get?”

Catelyn stared at the door as the policemen entered the station.

“Well? Three years? Four?”

“I can’t believe you did this,” she said quietly. “I have a life. A kid.”

“Did what?” asked Jonathan. “You know the iSIGHT software is tamperproof. Well, unless you’re a boring, filthy-rich techno-nerd, right?”

The words she’d said to her sister echoed around her head, mingling with Jonathan’s laugh. She hung up the phone and leant heavily against the wall.

“Catelyn Woods,” said a firm voice. “You’re under arrest.”