Walking behind Lazarus, the CEO, and Evelyn the receptionist, I observed the people all around the office who were busy and fully immersed in doing something inside their Neural Interfaces.
Perhaps noticing my confused look, Lazarus answered my silent question, "We're currently nearing our product's launch date."
"Oh?" I was surprised since not a lot of companies invested in a launch date anymore after the algorithm had begun recommending to people all the various things that it thought they needed.
The business game now was more about how much following a product could generate so that the algorithm picked it up and recommended it to everyone. This initially made launch days into launch weeks and then into launch months and slowly into a constant grind against the algorithm to be the lucky few to be noticed and recommended.
"Yes, we have a launch day. It was mostly Prometheus's idea, he did the research and figured out that we could push our efforts on just the launch day and save money for other things that needed to be developed in our product. Helped us a great deal too, I don't think we'd have reached this point without him. Right?" Lazarus asked Evelyn but she still seemed miffed so she just nodded lightly while we kept walking and reached the office meeting room that was currently unoccupied.
"What is this product you're working on?"
"It's a revolutionary new product that is going to forever change the world with regards to the people that were mindwiped."
"Ha! You're talking as if you'll help them get tier memories back or something."
"Bingo! You nailed it." Lazarus smiled or tried to while not thinking about the death of his friend.
A sort of hope had emerged within me that wanted to celebrate this success but seeing the man's composure for the sake of his employee Evelyn I too remained calm, such command over emotions was commendable.
"That's nice really, I wonder if the law will allow such a thing though. It probably falls into the legal gray zone because you would be denying the existence of the already existing 'new' person after the mindwipe happened." I spoke thinking about some of the rational problems they would face next.
"Our law team is constantly working to lobby a group of senators we estimate it should be done by the end of the week."
"Oh!? You got the lawmakers to do something for you! Now that's an achievement to be proud of!"
"Haha~ I can't be proud of such a thing when another person who was able to do the same without using the amount of money we did is sitting right in front of me."
"Don't mind such silly things, be happy for yourself, for what you've achieved."
"Thank you. It, means a lot to me."
"No worries. Didn't the other people listen to the news we were discussing outside?" I asked as I watched people working through the one-way glasses of the meeting room.
"No, all of them are using focus mode to cut off all distractions unless it's an emergency. We can't afford to lose even a single minute right now with the number of bug reports and fixes we have to deploy now."
"How come you guys haven't hired more people if the product is going to be so famous?"
"Ah, we would've liked to but we can't because the secrecy laws restrict us from signing an NDA on a group of people larger than the one working here."
"I see. I will be recording the following conversation and I have a few questions, Mr. Lazarus."
"Yes, feel free to go ahead."
"When was the last time you saw Prometheus."
"Today morning at around eight am, that's when I usually unlock the office. I could check our key-in and key-out times and get back to you with a perfect time regarding that. He usually works in the office during the night since he finds it peaceful and quiet. No one else to disturb him while he is focused on fixing things that need fixing and building things that need to be built."
"So you met him while he was leaving?"
"No, he left a little after I came in, he was just cleaning up then."
"Did he seem disturbed to you? Anything out of the ordinary? You know like stress?"
"No. Out of all of us, Prometheus was the best at handling stress. He always said, 'Nothing can compare to the warm childhood of a drunken dad and a druggy mom.' He was always surprisingly calm and analytical in any situation, I guess that was also why he was our best engineer."
"Once during one of our tests a patient was losing consciousness due to some faulty wiring, it was Prometheus who saved the day by fixing everything so that the patient felt as good as before." Evelyn continued, her sobs had stopped and all that remained was a solemn look on her face that was reminiscent of a grieving widow.
"Oh? Is that so? How did you know him?" I asked, curious what the scatterbrained receptionist had to do with what was one of the foremost engineers.
Seeing her discomfort with answering the question, I gently reminded her, "You may abstain if you feel uncomfortable, I can give you time to work with the news and be back later if you want."
Evelyn shook her head and wiped away the tears that had threatened to spill, "No need. We'll finish it now. I and Prometheus have been dating for the last eleven years, we were high school sweethearts who always dreamed of doing something great to change the world together. I, until recently, used to work as an engineer on the project but now well let's just say the financials in the company have been tight and so I've been demoted for strategic reasons."
"Oh? You gave up your pay for your goal?"
"Oh, it wasn't anything that serious, Prometheus earned enough for the two of us and it was our dream to make an impact on the world so, you know, that is how it is. Sometimes things just don't go your way."
"Hmm...can I see the CCTV footage of the landing deck in front of the office?"
"Yes, I can send the entire thing to you with the authentication key of course."
"Thank you that will be helpful. It might give us a peak into Prometheus's mind during the incident."
"Erm…" Evelyn interrupted using a filler word allowing us to focus on her as she spoke, "I think the CCTV is broken. It had been a while since we last checked them and I remember Prometheus wanted us to save every bit of money for the final launch day promotion so we chose not to fix the broken CCTV."
"Oh... that's unfortunate. Please check if-"
"-I just checked. Unfortunately, that is the case...I don't know if I should feel relieved or saddened." Lazarus said.
"What do you mean?"
"If his last moments were caught on tape, I'd have felt broken and empty by now. Watching it play over and over and over again. I'm a little glad that at least I don't have to, you know, watch him die again. This way it sort of just happened you know. Like when you suddenly find all your tasks completed and no new ones popping up."
"..."
'I wish I knew which bastard mindwiped Gracewell. I'd love to have been awake and watched it happen just so I could track him down and kill him later.'
Everyone stayed silent for a few seconds lost in our imagination when I began speaking again.
"How do you plan on telling the news to everyone else?"
"I...I haven't really thought of that, yet. All this is too much to process on its own, I don't know, maybe I'll keep working, and eventually, when someone finally asks me what happened to Prometheus I'll tell them? No, that sounds quite terrible. Maybe I'll gather people and inform them together? Yes, that feels better, I probably need some support too."
"Do either of you have any idea why Prometheus would take his life like this? Perhaps a spat between coworkers or something?"
"No, Prometheus wasn't the type of guy to interact with people in the first place. He avoided most office parties and used to excuse himself saying that I and Evelyn were all the family he ever needed. That we were the light of his dark world."
"I see."
'So this was a suicide then?'
'No. I still feel something is off. What about the second body? If it wasn't the body that fell onto the car then why is the roof dented and the seat bent towards the yoke of the PTV instead of backward.'
'Something is wrong and I can feel it.'
'Especially the camera.'
"Erm…this is just for the sake of rounding up the questions that's all so please don't think much of it." I said and they nodded. "I see so please respond truthfully, have either of you had a relationship with each other, or have cheated Prometheus in any way."
I saw both their jaws clench shut as their hands squeezed tight and their eyes brimmed with anger.
Just as both of them were about to answer the question with an angered voice, I interrupted their build-up, "That will be all, thank you very much for taking your time to help me out." I graciously nodded and left the office room, leaving the two people confused as to what had just happened as I walked away.
While on my way to the exit, I spotted the fire exit at one end of the office buried behind an endless amount of cleaning power tools.
'Huh. If I was a safety checker, I might've just marked them down for a violation of blocking the fire exit.'
Just as I was about to exit through the glass doors I had come in from, a loud shout called me to stop, "Sergeant Dave! Please wait!"
I stopped and turned around only to find Lazarus panting with his hands on his knees for a few seconds after which he jogged towards me at a comfortable pace.
"I forgot to give this to you, but here you go." Lazarus said and handed me a card, an invitation card to be exact.
'MMR reveals, the world's first Mind wipe reversal tool, Mnemosyne's Memory Oracle.'
"Memory Oracle huh. Nice name." I muttered out loud.
"It is, isn't it? Prometheus came up with this too, he did it while watching a show about all the future predictions from all around the world."
"I see. You want me to attend?"
"Yes, the MMR group would be most delighted if you accepted our humble request."
"Fine, then I'll be there in three days. Don't worry. I'll even make sure to bring along someone famous so that you can get a boost to your promotions!"
"HAHA! There can't be a bigger celebrity than you in Inception City, I'd like to see someone claim otherwise."
Patting the kid's shoulder, I left the office as the familiar noise of traffic greeted me once I stepped out again.
Using my AR glasses to call forth my Hoverboard, I began examining the scene once again and walked ahead to look at the accident site diagonally below.
I traced the path my PV and the one ahead of me took during the crash and found something interesting.
'Huh, why do both the PTVs follow more or less the same path out of the traffic? Shouldn't the one without the body on it be much lighter and in that case fall much farther?'
'Hmm…maybe because I steered the PTV to a forceful stop it affected the trajectories?'
'But I remember clearly steering only to reduce the time in which the PTV crashed into the landing deck, I hadn't changed the direction during our crash.'
'This second body…it's puzzling.'
'What would a person gain from hiding a body?'
'What is the relationship between the two bodies if they exist in the first place?"
'And who stands to gain the most from the death of Prometheus.'
'Was it the two seemingly innocent people Prometheus considered his family, or was it someone entirely new?'
'Confusing but I can feel I'm getting closer, asking questions I shouldn't be asking.'
My HoverBoard arrived in front of the landing deck and I stepped on it to go back to the Police HQ, I needed more information about my suspects and the victim.