AR Fiction: Forensics Simulations and Crime Scene Analysis
Thursday, December 17, 2009 at 12:42PM In a recent post, I mentioned that I was a contributing author to Working Through Synthetic Worlds. Unfortunately, I have not received my own copy of the book from the publisher (sent to an old address) and Amazon.com is now temporarily sold out (which is great, except I’m not getting any royalties).
Anyway, the format of the book is unique. As the description says:
The editors use a distinctive format for the book, consisting of a set of chapters composed of three parts: a story or vignette that describes work conducted within a synthetic world based loosely on the question, ‘what will work be like in the year 2025?’, founded on the expert authors’ expectations of plausible future technologies; a scholarly review of the technologies described by the stories and the current theories related to those technologies; and, a prescription for future research required to bridge the current state-of-the-art with the notional worlds described in the stories.
What I wanted to do here was share part of my chapter with you, at least the fiction part. This is the unedited version (the final is much cleaner), so please ignore any glaring writing errors. I hope you enjoy the short story…I might continue it at a later date depending on reader response (I had a limited amount of space to work with in the chapter).
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The call had arrived at a little past two-thirty in the morning and Kendra had drawn the short straw to venture out in the freezing rain that had been cascading from an inky black sky for the last several hours. She waited at the stoplight, listening to the soft hum of her electric car and the turn signal’s metronome clicking away little segments of time. She was tempted to let her mind wander while staring at the glistening raindrops snaking their way down her windows and brightly lit by the stoplight. Kendra had always felt something mysterious about inclement weather in the middle of the night, especially when there were only few people on the roads heading to some unknown destination. The only thing that could make the atmosphere a little more surreal would be snow materializing out of eternity and blanketing the city in silence, with only the reflections of street lights free to echo through the night.
The light finally changed to green and Kendra turned her mind back to the task at hand and drove the rest of the way to the crime scene, preparing herself for her work.
Kendra arrived at the scene and shouldered her way through the overly eager press reporters that had already gathered like hungry vultures desperate for a meal. She ignored their barrage of questions and ducked under the police cordon, showing her badge to the officers attempting to control the growing crowd. This was the fourth murder in as many days and the public was beginning to demand answers. She made her way across the driveway and up the brick stairs leading to the front door of the house, dodging the growing pools of rainwater that would soak her feet if she wasn’t careful.
She entered the house and
