Read Online Transhuman by T. K. F. Weisskopf Mark L. Van Name - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: T. K. F. Weisskopf Mark L. Van Name
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present incarnation as she would be if she were on Mars.
"Who's Mitch Cohan?"
I go back to my fugitive file and read the information there. One advantage of an awareness that exists entirely within a digital network is that I can read, process, think much faster than any merely flesh-and-blood mind. Through the intermediary of the network, the collected brilliance and stupidity of humanity is available on a whim. The distilled essence of the criminal's life is laid bare in fractions of a second. "He's a class-one runner, wanted on a federal warrant. Murder, embezzlement, and stock fraud." Gennifer pursed her lips, a small but incredibly seductive gesture, made more so by being unconscious.
"That seems like an unusual combination. What's his history?" The file tells a story and I summarize. "He was a player in junk bonds, rode high on the corporate merger wave at the turn of the decade. He cut things a little close to the edge, lost a lot of money for a lot of people, not least of all himself. He made his own fortune back by pumping money from worthless stock sales into his own accounts. His chief accounting officer started an audit. Auditor's body turned up in a shallow grave a week later. Mitch Cohan vanished with the money. He's living in Cuba now."
"What's he doing in Chicago?"
"Unknown. The identification isn't clear." Even as I said it, facts from his file pushed their way to the front of my awareness. "Interesting. His mother lives in Lincoln Square, let me check the background." I start with CPD police files, but Elizabeth Smith Cohan, 67 years old, doesn't appear in them. The FBI has a thin record, containing only two brief interviews. The first occurred when her son was first charged, the second after he disappeared. In both she said she knew nothing of what he had done or where he had gone, and her FBI interviewers believed her. Bank records show a paid-off mortgage on a modest older house, a small pension, payments to local grocers and businesses, the usual bills, and little else. Government archives show no passport, a military service record some 40 years old with an honorable discharge. Telephone and network records show no contact with her fugitive son. There's nothing unusual here, nothing to raise suspicion, and yet the coincidence of a man with Mitch Cohan's face getting on the L three blocks from her home address is too much to ignore. Of course he would have to know the risks. Why would he go there?
The last purchase on her bank account is from a pharmacy, labeled simply "prescription." I go to the pharmacy's files and find out it was for something called ticlopidine. The pharmacy doesn't list her physician's name, though it should. I call up a list of doctors in the area, then visit their patient files, one by one by one until I find what I'm looking for. Mrs. Cohan was admitted to hospital with a suspected stroke. She was there three days, experiencing some fluent aphasia which subsided after treatment with . . . I skip the details of her hospital stay. Released home in stable condition, diagnosis: minor stroke to the posterior superior temporal gyrus on the left side. I reference ticlopidine, find out it's a stroke medication, a blood thinner. Even so, blood remains thicker than water. Mitch Cohan had gone home to visit his ailing mother.
"It seems he was visiting," I tell Gennifer. "I've got high-priority tags on the L station cameras. We'll pick him up when he gets off the train.
"Well done." Gennifer smiles, which makes me happy. My stereoscopic cameras swivel and focus the way human eyes do, set on a mount that moves like a human head. I feel most like myself when I'm looking at the world through them, but choose to use the security camera up in the corner of the lab to watch her instead. It lets me see all of her as she sits at her lab bench.
"I'm waiting for him to show up at a station, and then I'll bring the police in."
"How long has he been running?"
"Eleven years."
"He's good at
"Who's Mitch Cohan?"
I go back to my fugitive file and read the information there. One advantage of an awareness that exists entirely within a digital network is that I can read, process, think much faster than any merely flesh-and-blood mind. Through the intermediary of the network, the collected brilliance and stupidity of humanity is available on a whim. The distilled essence of the criminal's life is laid bare in fractions of a second. "He's a class-one runner, wanted on a federal warrant. Murder, embezzlement, and stock fraud." Gennifer pursed her lips, a small but incredibly seductive gesture, made more so by being unconscious.
"That seems like an unusual combination. What's his history?" The file tells a story and I summarize. "He was a player in junk bonds, rode high on the corporate merger wave at the turn of the decade. He cut things a little close to the edge, lost a lot of money for a lot of people, not least of all himself. He made his own fortune back by pumping money from worthless stock sales into his own accounts. His chief accounting officer started an audit. Auditor's body turned up in a shallow grave a week later. Mitch Cohan vanished with the money. He's living in Cuba now."
"What's he doing in Chicago?"
"Unknown. The identification isn't clear." Even as I said it, facts from his file pushed their way to the front of my awareness. "Interesting. His mother lives in Lincoln Square, let me check the background." I start with CPD police files, but Elizabeth Smith Cohan, 67 years old, doesn't appear in them. The FBI has a thin record, containing only two brief interviews. The first occurred when her son was first charged, the second after he disappeared. In both she said she knew nothing of what he had done or where he had gone, and her FBI interviewers believed her. Bank records show a paid-off mortgage on a modest older house, a small pension, payments to local grocers and businesses, the usual bills, and little else. Government archives show no passport, a military service record some 40 years old with an honorable discharge. Telephone and network records show no contact with her fugitive son. There's nothing unusual here, nothing to raise suspicion, and yet the coincidence of a man with Mitch Cohan's face getting on the L three blocks from her home address is too much to ignore. Of course he would have to know the risks. Why would he go there?
The last purchase on her bank account is from a pharmacy, labeled simply "prescription." I go to the pharmacy's files and find out it was for something called ticlopidine. The pharmacy doesn't list her physician's name, though it should. I call up a list of doctors in the area, then visit their patient files, one by one by one until I find what I'm looking for. Mrs. Cohan was admitted to hospital with a suspected stroke. She was there three days, experiencing some fluent aphasia which subsided after treatment with . . . I skip the details of her hospital stay. Released home in stable condition, diagnosis: minor stroke to the posterior superior temporal gyrus on the left side. I reference ticlopidine, find out it's a stroke medication, a blood thinner. Even so, blood remains thicker than water. Mitch Cohan had gone home to visit his ailing mother.
"It seems he was visiting," I tell Gennifer. "I've got high-priority tags on the L station cameras. We'll pick him up when he gets off the train.
"Well done." Gennifer smiles, which makes me happy. My stereoscopic cameras swivel and focus the way human eyes do, set on a mount that moves like a human head. I feel most like myself when I'm looking at the world through them, but choose to use the security camera up in the corner of the lab to watch her instead. It lets me see all of her as she sits at her lab bench.
"I'm waiting for him to show up at a station, and then I'll bring the police in."
"How long has he been running?"
"Eleven years."
"He's good at
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