Free Serial Killer vs. E-Merica by Robert T. Jeschonek

Serial Killer vs. E-Merica
    By
    Robert T. Jeschonek
    The great state of Missouri lay across the Speaker's bench at the front of the House of E-representatives, wrapped in the American flag. His eyes and mouth gaped, and his arms and legs hung over the sides, dripping blood on the carpet below.
    "Oh, God," said Connecticut, her shaky hand hovering over Missouri's motionless chest. "He's not breathing."
    Manitoba stood on the next tier down and wouldn't come any closer. "Is there a--what's it called? Heartbeat?"
    Connecticut lowered her hand, then jerked it away. "That's in the throat, right?" Nervously, she scrubbed her palms on her smart red pantsuit. "Or is it the arm?"
    That was when Nevada had finally had enough.
    Without a word, he pushed his tall, lanky body through the crowd on the floor of the House and charged up the steps to the Speaker's bench. Without hesitation, he pressed two fingers against the side of Missouri's throat.
    "No pulse." Nevada said it loud enough for the whole crowd to hear. "The Speaker of the House is dead."
    A great gasp went up from the crowd--the computer-generated, artificial intelligence-driven avatars of ninety-eight of the one-hundred states of the United States of America. Though they didn't have flesh-and-blood bodies and shouldn't have feared being murdered in the physical sense, the evidence of dead Missouri had left them all shell-shocked.
    "But how?" Connecticut slipped off her gold-rimmed glasses, let them hang by the diamond-studded chain around her neck...then slid them back on a second later. "And why?"
    Nevada pushed up the sleeves of his tuxedo. He took Missouri's head in his hands and turned it gently to one side, exposing a gruesome wound. "Blow to the back of the head." Accepting the wound for what it appeared to be instead of what it was--an electronic simulation of a wound--he looked around for a simulated weapon that could have caused it. "What did it and why, I don't know."
    "What are those?" Connecticut pointed at bloody marks on Missouri's left arm.
    Nevada put Missouri's head down on the bench and took a look at the arm. Wiping some of the blood away, he realized the marks followed a familiar design.
    Someone had cut a number into Missouri's arm. "One hundred," said Nevada. "It's the number one hundred."
    The crowd murmured and moved restlessly. Nevada could tell the e-reps were confused because they usually acted more decisively.
    They were A.I. avatars of the United States in the year 2300, guided by the aggregate preferences of the human electorate in the world outside. Perfectly attuned to the people they represented, perfectly immune to corruption, they never hesitated or doubted themselves.
    That was why their confusion was unusual...and it didn't last long. As Nevada examined the body on the Speaker's bench, three of the e-reps broke from the pack and stormed toward him with jaws and shoulders set.
    Sinaloa, in the middle, flipped his red-lined bullfighter's cape over his shoulder. "This is impossible." An American state since Mexico had disbanded twenty-five years ago, Sinaloa cultivated an air of insolence and false bravado. "What we see here is the product of a server malfunction."
    "Exactly." South Africa tossed his glossy blond hair beside Sinaloa. "This is a bug. The Developers will fix it."
    Nevada rubbed the stubbly cleft of his chin and met South Africa's blue-eyed stare. "Like Idaho?"
    South Africa straightened his khaki safari shirt and looked away. So did stocky Kamchatka, the recent Russian convert, who had followed him up the steps.
    Sinaloa glared. "I hear that Idaho might have been someone else's fault. Not the Developers."
    A cold, threatening smile spread across Nevada's face. He knew exactly whom Sinaloa was talking about.
    He was talking about Nevada.
    "Then maybe you'd best be careful." Nevada adjusted his gold pinky rings and cracked his knuckles. "Just in case he can hear what you're saying."
    "If, by some wild chance, the same person is