This work of fiction is for entertainment purposes only and no copyright infringement is intended.  It is based loosely on characters and situations from "Mystery, Alaska" and "Virtuosity" and contains adult subject matter.  The author and webmistress are not responsible for any discomfort felt by the reader of this material.

MYSTERY IN MYSTERY 

CHAPTER 1 - SID 6.66 Heats Things Up

Chuya Crasche finished her whiskey sour.  Decision finalized, she set down her glass and applied fingers to the regulator valve that fed liquid nitrogen to the strange machine on her living room floor.

Clyde Reilly’s instructions had taken weeks to decipher.  His terminology was Greek to her.  And his notes were composed of messy illustrations and stream-of-consciousness rambling.  Far from the crisp, precise style of Chuya’s infamous brother.  Picking up the module labeled “SID 6.66”, she hesitated.  This might be a disastrous idea.  Just in case it was, she had a heavy hammer ready to smash the module to smithereens...  

Chuya and August Crasche had  moved to Mystery, Alaska three months ago with crates full of components in a large U-Haul.  Chuya had been christened Lydia Lindenmeyer.  But as the sister of Daryl Lindenmeyer the rogue genius whose cop-training Virtual Reality invention had inspired an unknown psycho’s ghastly murder spree, Lydia had taken an alias and fled that shocked city.  Her brother’s surviving colleagues at LETAC (Law Enforcement Technology Advancement Center) had of course denied responsibility for giving the nameless butcher access to Daryl’s serial-killer program.  They had all ridiculed the rumor that the suspect was actually a synthetic sinner created in their labs.  Embittered by Daryl’s death and heavily edited reports of the debacle that led to it, Lydia had launched a criminal career of her own.

She had hooked up with Grant Perry.  A cop-hater like she was, Grant was also a clever, usually successful bank robber and skillful con man.  He was intrigued by what she knew of her brother’s work.  He had enough cyber-savvy to use whatever she could glean from Daryl’s VR paraphernalia.  So Lydia, inheriting her brother’s estate and pooling that money with Grant’s takes had bought at auction Lindenmeyer’s lab’s equipment.  They also got the late Clyde Reilly’s nano tech synthetic organism junk. Nobody understood or dared to tinker with that equipment. Clyde had been the first victim of the killer who copied Daryl’s VR criminal “SID 6.7.”  That grim legacy was all the press had left to Clyde. Yet his work had been far ahead of anyone else’s innovations in nano technology.

Lydia and Grant deliberately donned exotic aliases.  They’d read that too many fugitives chose names too close to their real IDs.  The pair had became Chuya and August.  Then they had wed.

Among Daryl Lindenmeyer’s effects was a VR module for SID 6.66.  This was a rejected version, discarded en route to SID 6.7.  This SID was seductive, capable of intercourse: in this version SID was acronym for Sexually-Interactive&Deadly.  The excuse for 6.66 was that a sexy psycho could be dangerous to female cops who wouldn’t want to believe him guilty.  Erotic but still remorselessly lethal, this version had been nicknamed “SID sex-point-sexsex.”  He was used primarily for prurient recreation.  His list of on-screen conquests far exceeded his cyber-kills.

SID 6.66 was Lindenmeyer’s “proxy-prick,” his colleagues had snickered.  Daryl had  lacked a love life.

After his most recent robbery August, too, had needed a hideout.  He and Chuya packed up their new toys and moved to Alaska.  There they could realize their dream of opening a VR club and café.  They bought and renovated a building in Mystery.  The establishment was instantly popular.  Amazed by the VR technology and the wicked fun it provided, inhabitants made use of the small stock of Lindenmeyer’s original modules, and the more adventurous paid to fabricate new ones.

Recently a resort developer had built a hotel-skating-skiing complex a few miles from Mystery.  Now the Saturday hockey games attracted bleacher bums clad in designer duds, and local eateries and dance cabarets had become lucrative venues.  The Crasche VR club and café lured adventurous resort guests along with locals.

So in the past month modules had proliferated and new stalls in which to experience their games had been added.  But the SID 6.66 module was reserved for the private VR caprices of only the Crasches.  Even restricted to VR SID might be just too dangerous to share.  For August and Chuya he exercised not just sex fantasies.  They had him chase cops and FBI agents and prosecutors.  When he caught them he could choose from a repertoire of macabre methods by which to dispatch them...

Chuya on this eerily light summer Sunday night, after August had left for the closed club to do accounts, at last had roused the nano-tech synthesizer.  Drawing a deep nervous breath she stuck the 6.66 SID module into the receptacle labeled “INSTALL.”  Clyde Reilly’s Pod Processor responded with strange noises.  Chuya had no clue what to expect.

In astonishment she gaped as something resembling a giant alien poppy pod budded in the chamber.  Swiftly it fabricated from a red-hot bubble of molten silicates into a glassy humanoid skeleton. The nanobots swarmed over and inside it in their millions, forming muscles as the awful thing writhed and quivered with their activity, fleshing it out, covering it with skin of some advanced kind of fiberglass.  It appeared to Chuya that a layer of gas-filled thin, underlying sacs cooled the skin – so that was what the expensive tanks of liquid nitrogen were for.  SID grew pseudo eyes, nose, lips.  Complete in four dimensions he emerged from the growing pod with tentative movements.  His programming quickly taught him how to balance, stretch and contract his artificial but powerful muscles and tendons. 

So the wild rumors of nanite-manufactured monsters were true!  When Daryl in a hurried, distressed phone call had described an android run amok she’d believed he must be drunk or stoned or putting her on.  She had never got the chance to call her brother back. 

As she stared astounded, the creature tested his mechanisms and operating system.  His first guttural utterances were as odd and unspecific as any baby mammal’s.  But soon the module’s data files provided him language.  And appropriate gestures to go with it.

“Hey, Lady,” he greeted her, voice a bit flat but human.  “Have we been introduced?”

Breathless and frightened, she shook her head, swallowed and replied, “No...Sid.”    

“You are not Sheila, or Mavis or Pam or Carla.  This is not V R,” he observed.  “You are human?”

“I’m a woman, yes.  My name is Chuya.”

“Woman.”  He seemed to savor the syllables.

“Yes.  Don’t hurt me, I’m your friend.”  Right out of Frankenstein, she thought.

“Why would I hurt you?”  He smiled sweetly.  “You’re beautiful, Honey Babe.”

Elvis sang from the CD player.  The android brightened.  “Elvis!  ‘...Don’t wanna be your tiger, ‘cause tigers play too rough; don’t wanna be your lion ‘cause lions ain’t the kind you cuddle up.’”  He got the voice down in seconds, and rotated his hips, making his unit swing and bounce.

“Let me get you something to wear.”  He had all his external parts in place.  And every feature was...particularly well designed.  Chuya hoped her nosy next-door neighbor Sarah Heinz wasn’t peering through a window.  Not that he was freakish looking now he was...finished.  In fact he was quite presentable.

Presentable as what?  she asked herself.  Presentable to whom?  There was something familiar about his face.  She couldn’t identify whom but this SID resembled some human she’d met somewhere...

“I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You” played now.  Tenderly SID sang along, and before she could move to the bedroom to get him clothes he pounced, arms encircling her waist, and swept her into a dance.  With every step his skill improved.  He took her hand and twirled her.  The heat from his touch startled and alarmed her.

“Good Lord, you’re on fire!  Are you – overheating?” 

“‘I’m a hunkahunka burnin’ love,’” he quipped with an Elvis hip swivel.  “I run hot.”  Lifting her easily he swung her between his legs and back up again.

Tumescence occurred suddenly and riveted her attention. Holding her close he nudged her with it subtly but insistently.  The curious Chuya (a human, after all) decided to experiment.  He was a machine, a sex toy, not a man she’d be cheating on her husband with.  Kicking off her panties she had him kneel and straddled him.  He quickly passed the hugging and stroking tests.  Obviously he’d already had those courses.  Kissing him she noted the odd flavor and lack of scent.  She shivered but ventured on.  His “skin’ was a bit abrasive when rubbed.  And his “hair” reminded her of nylon wig fibers.  The disquieting novelty of him and the whole prospect of un-human humping excited her while her fear increased apace.  He never kills Sheila, Mavis, Pam or Carla.  Chuya encouraged herself with that observation.

He entered her with surprising gentleness and skill.  Were his VR lovers such good teachers?   It certainly hadn’t been Daryl who’d trained SID sex-point-sexsex!  He hadn’t much liked women.

As he thrust in and glided out, tempo accelerating gradually, his turquoise eyes gazing into hers – collecting what data? – she panted and moaned with far-from-virtual pleasure.

“Kudos,” she murmured, “to Sheila and Carla...and the rest.  And you,  what a student!  Five stars, Big Boy.  Yes, oh, that’s soooo fine...mmm’mm...”    

This was the wildest, rarest sex of her life!  No other woman had ever done this, it was the world’s most exotic erotic experience.  She could write a best seller!  The thought made her giggle. 

But while SID could pleasure virtual vixens in a number of ways, his nano-tech embodiment could never climax this intercourse with pleasure.  As in humans a sort of hydraulics was involved in erections – molten silicates – and that fluid had to be ejaculated somewhere.  In a human it would do terrible damage.  This fatal feature of SID’s anatomy Chuya discovered the hard way.

Too late she wondered if – and what – he might cum.  Not only did the searing-hot fluid burn, it rapidly solidified into blade-like projections that cut and gouged her.  Agony was a reaction SID’s virtual lovers had never evinced .  Sid, incapable of guilt or concern for human suffering, was still puzzled and perturbed by the woman’s screams.  Reverting to program he responded as he’d been designed to with any creature he found vexing:  he killed..  His fingers sought and located the vagus nerve.  Applying pressure he finished her off fast.  Something akin to regret at the loss of an absorbing plaything tinged SID’s clinical observation of life departing, leaving her limp and utterly unresponsive. 

He stood, went to the CD player and re-played the Elvis song he liked best.

“‘Wise men say  Only fools rush in...’” he sang sounding sad.  Now he must search the cottage.

Soon he caught his reflection in a floor-length mirror on the closet door in the master bedroom.  From photographs on various walls SID perceived a significant difference between his own appearance and that of the men in those pictures: he lacked coverings.

In August’s half of the closet he found clothes like some in the photos.  Choosing a fine pinstripe suit he added a tee and fleece-lined  mule-style bedroom slippers that fit comfortably.  A “pair of socks” and “undershorts” were recommended by the “MALE APPAREL” file but he wasn’t clear on what those items looked like or where to find them.

One collection of hung pictures showed Chuya with a man in front of a fancy doorway framed in bright colored lights, then apparently inside that edifice.  Wondering what “106 Fern Street” meant, SID consulted his data banks to determine that it was an “address,” used by forgetful humans to re-locate geographical coordinates.  One used a car’s “Satellite Navigation System” or a printed “map” in proceeding to an address.  SID sensed that the man beside Chuya lived in this house with her and would instigate a “Police Investigation” when he found Chuya “dead.”  She fit all criteria of “dead.”  The man, named August Crasche according to a  Certificate of Marriage mounted over the bed,  fit the criteria of “witness” subcategory “to be disposed of.”  Dwelling here, August probably knew about SID’s Nanite Fabrication Pod.  It was hard to miss in the middle of the room where Chuya’s body lay.  August would direct suspicion to the product of that pod.

On his way outside to explore, SID waded through the wide pool of Chuya’s blood. 

“‘Blood,’” SID repeated, scanning the file on “ASPECTS OF DEATH.”  He bent and stared at something protruding from the blood’s source; withdrawing it, he wiped it on her skirt and took it with him. 

He also retrieved his module from the Processor.  And snatching up the whiskey glass he crunched it to shards between his silicate teeth and swallowed with a satisfied gulp.

A massive machine on the driveway was identified by a complex data file as  “motor vehicle,” “automobile,” “car,” “ride,” “wheels.”  The complicated code in the file dealt with “driving” the car.  SID 6.66 over-steered at first but negotiated the vehicle onto the street.

Though Sarah Heinz did not see SID she did hear the car’s ignition.  Hours earlier the other car, August’s, had left.  For newcomers the gloomy “midnight sun” – at this point in June, 10 PM sun – always evoked insomnia.  As Sheriff John Biebe’s new night-desk-rider and Deputy trainee, Sarah welcomed the wan illumination.  Not that Mystery was in the throes of a crime wave.  But the new resort brought guests who got lost, drunk, disorderly, occasionally ripped off and punchy in bars.

Chuya had left music playing.  When Sarah went outdoors she noticed something else: shoe prints in red on the thin layer of frost on Chuya’s walk.  The treadless tracks stopped where Chuya’s car had been parked.  August always parked his car on the other side of the driveway.  Studying the scarlet stains Sarah became alarmed.  Sure looked like blood.  She flipped open her cell phone and alerted Sheriff Biebe 

When Sheriff Biebe stepped into the cottage he drew a whistling breath.  “Jeez!  Massive blood loss.  What the hell went on here?  And what’s that – thing?”  The bizarre contraption was recorded by Deputy Michan’s camera before the two men made their way past it to Chuya Crasche’s remains.

Carefully checking for pulse John found none.  Inspecting the corpse’s exterior features he focused initial speculation on a miscarriage resulting in fatal hemorrhage.  No uterine matter or fetus was visible in the blood pool, though.

From the doorway Sarah said, “You know, lots of early miscarriages happen in the bathroom, and the fetus gets flushed down the commode before the woman realizes what’s gone wrong.” 

“Too much information,” Bobby Michan muttered, wincing.

“We’re cops.  No such thing as too much information,” John responded, and shook his head.  “Why didn’t she call 9-1-1?”

~*~

On the drive to 106 Fern Street SID underwent the equivalent of decades of human education.

Googling by his personal WiFi records on Daryl Lindenmeyer, he discovered the true identity of Chuya Crasche.  Daryl had “willed” his “estate” to his sister Lydia. 

Fern Street soon escaped the town’s confines and wandered into the woods.  Isolation and a big parking lot enhanced the Virtual Night Out Club’s privacy and its allure.

SID surprised Grant/August at the bar where he sat with a calculator and register readouts. Gasping, August jumped up, ducked behind the long bar and reached for the revolver he hid there.

“You – you’re SID!  How the fuck –”

“No, no, no, I’m just the man Daryl Lindenmeyer modeled SID’s physicality on.”  SID smiled disarmingly.  “Daryl didn’t bother to get my permission, the bastard.  Considering what SID’s been used for, I’m mildly offended by that.”