AfterNet 01 - Good Cop Dead Cop

want supplemental reports from you and Munroe,” the lieutenant told her. “And tell Munroe he did a good job.”
    “I’m sure he heard, lieutenant.”
    “He might have said something about you,” Munroe told Yamaguchi after the SWAT lieutenant left. “If you hadn’t moved forward when you did, I wouldn’t have been able to reach your terminal.”
    “No big,” she said. “I know you can’t pass through solid matter. They don’t.”
    Munroe said nothing. He knew the other cops were quite well aware of his limitations intellectually, but she knew Munroe as a person, as her partner. Most of the other cops only regarded him as a piece of high-tech equipment, represented by the terminal on her armband, or at best as their pet ghost.
    “Come on, Alex, let’s get out of here.”
    As they passed through the train station lobby, they passed the SWAT officer who threw the tear gas into the room. “Hey, good night, Gooch,” he called out to her. She raised her hand and gave him a small wave, but didn’t look back.
    “I thought you hated being called that,” said Munroe, as he tried to keep up with her stride and the rise and fall of her terminal’s interface field. “Aren’t you going to tear into him?”
    “I’m too tired to tell him off. Besides, he’s one of the cute ones.” She opened one of the doors to leave the station and kept it open the extra beat required to make sure he made it through. Outside it was after 1 a.m. and Munroe was surprised to see how busy the street was until he remembered it was the weekend before Christmas and downtown Denver did have a nightlife, even when the temperature was in the teens.
    “Oh, yeah, what was his name?” he asked.
    “Bimmelman, Schmimmelman, something like that?”
    “It’s Zimmerman. Officer Arliss Zimmerman, as you well know.”
    “Yow. OK, maybe not cute enough to make up for that name.” Munroe decided not to throw back at his partner her full name, Laurelinda Yamaguchi.
    They reached their parked cruiser and Munroe waited for her to open the door. Again, she waited the extra beat that allowed Munroe to get in before her. He instantly found the large field of the police cruiser’s terminal and felt comforted by the luxury of full Internet access. He immediately began checking his email and Facebook page and blog. Yamaguchi meanwhile pulled out her ear buds and took the portable terminal off her armband and inserted it into the charging dock.
    Munroe found little other than spam emails that offered to reconnect him with his loved ones or dubious methods of engaging in disembodied sex. He did, however, see the latest email from Apple that promoted their new, home AfterNet terminal. Nice, he thought, if only I had a home.
    He deleted everything and looked back at Yamaguchi, who as usual was already listening to the local public radio station. At this hour, it would be the BBC World Service. If he let this go on, she would start talking about how evil U.S. foreign policy was, and he’d remind her there was a Democrat in the White House, and she’d counter how he and his fellow Republicans had controlled Congress for too long. He had to do something quick.
    “So, how’s your mom?”
    “Oh, don’t get me started.” She turned down the radio because she clearly would start. “Do you know she actually called the watch commander the other night because I missed a chat with her last week … ” Munroe knew he had some peace and quiet while she recounted her tales of horror about her wacky Japanese mother who made such a looming presence in her life. Munroe logged in to the AfterNet to see the latest news, then entered the Lost Love forum, his favorite guilty pleasure.
    “Looking for Mr. Wright” was the most recent post and Munroe read about Mrs. Nora Wright. Her husband died five years ago and would he please get in touch with her because her new husband just couldn’t give her the satisfaction that he had and would he be kind enough to share his secrets with husband number two.
    Although the post was only an hour old, there already were 60 replies, mostly from women wondering what secret Mr. Wright possessed and that they’d be happy if he’d share his secret with them or their partners as well. Munroe realized that as a purely intellectual exercise — and that’s all he had left now — he was kind of curious himself. He was just about to start his reply when he realized that she had just said that they’d returned to the