Technology and the Author

The man who came to me and claimed to work for the police was not, as I suspected, associated with any local police precincts. I stared at the computer screen, unsure what thread to follow next. I looked around and shrugged. I'd been clacking away at the police's secure terminal for thirty minutes by then, and I saw no reason to stop now.

I poked around the local police reports. Nothing I found suggested gang activity that was supposed to have killed me, or my father, or whoever. All lies, cooked up by...

Before my eyes, the text cursor erased my search query, letter by letter, of its own accord, to replace it with a message of its own:

The wave of vertigo threatening to overtake me was not enough to keep me from noticing the shadowy silhouette of a man in a fedora approaching from around the corner.

I ran.