for mid-range weapons. Its weight was comfortable, it's mass seemed perfectly balanced. If the blade flexed at all, it wasn't evident. Perfect!
He held up the blade again and examined it, attempting to discover how it folded or disassembled to fit within the hilt. He found nothing. It was a solid, inflexible segment of elegantly forged metal.
He watched closely as he pressed the stud aain. In a fraction of a second, the crossbar and blade retracted. It appeared that the blade simply slid back into the handle. Of course, this wasn't possible as the handle was perhaps one-fifth the size of the blade.
He pocketed the sword and gingerly lowered himself back into the seat. He was careful, but it still hurt. When he finished with the wincing, he picked up his tablet, which still displayed the empty internal scan of the sword. Someone had found a way around the rules of evidence established in 2032. Since then, physical evidence was not entered in court. Forensic scans were easier to present, more detailed, and harder to fake than the actual physical objects. Generally, evidence that was not deemed illegal was never confiscated, just scanned and returned. One of his responsibilities in this investigation would have been to give these objects to the victims' next of kin.
Of course, now the sword would have to go to the lock-up for illegal or dangerous evidence... eventually. He hoped he'd have time to drop this thing by his father's place before then. He wanted to know if Dad had heard of anything like this before... and he wanted to see his face when he extended the sword for the first time.
He picked up the driver's evidence bag and fished out the tablet. He used his own tablet to administer the warrant key, then copied out the data. A quick examination of the data showed that the decryption had worked. There was a sparse calendar, a few entries in the address book, two novels, and five videos. The novels were romances; filled with protagonists with long, thin fingers and creamy skin, no doubt. The movies were recent romantic comedies, with the only oldie, Blade Runner- The Director's Cut departing from that genre. On a whim, he pulled up the tablet's theater and checked the logs. The other movies had been recently leased and most had been watched, but Blade Runner had been watched about once a month since the tablet had been initially configured three years ago. He checked the file histories, which showed that the film had been in the initial transfer of data from Mr. Sieberg's previous tablet.
So it was an old and enduring favorite. The movie obsession felt like a clue. In fact, Ping would have been a lot more suspicious if he hadn't seen Blade Runner in the last year himself. Solid film, but only the director's cut was really worth watching more than twenty or thirty times. He had first been exposed to it in an ethics class in graduate school while training for his first career as a family counselor.
The movie takes place in a dark "future" (circa 2019... before Ping was born) where genetically engineered artificial people called Replicants are created to serve as soldiers and slaves. The story revolved around Deckard, a reluctant policeman who hunts rogue Replicants. In the movie, a ruthless band of three-year-old Replicants fought to find their creator in order to force him to give them more life than the four years written into their DNA. During the course of the investigation, Deckard falls in love with another Replicant who has been implanted with false memories and thinks she's human. The end of the director's cut was surprising in its implications.
In the class, the movie had been the basis for conversations on the nature of reality, about what happens when the assumptions on which we base our lives are ripped away. For Ping, the movie had been about alienation... about lost children. He couldn't help but feel for the Replicants. He smiled, remembering how at the time he'd wanted to help the poor doomed Replicants.
He held up the blade again and examined it, attempting to discover how it folded or disassembled to fit within the hilt. He found nothing. It was a solid, inflexible segment of elegantly forged metal.
He watched closely as he pressed the stud aain. In a fraction of a second, the crossbar and blade retracted. It appeared that the blade simply slid back into the handle. Of course, this wasn't possible as the handle was perhaps one-fifth the size of the blade.
He pocketed the sword and gingerly lowered himself back into the seat. He was careful, but it still hurt. When he finished with the wincing, he picked up his tablet, which still displayed the empty internal scan of the sword. Someone had found a way around the rules of evidence established in 2032. Since then, physical evidence was not entered in court. Forensic scans were easier to present, more detailed, and harder to fake than the actual physical objects. Generally, evidence that was not deemed illegal was never confiscated, just scanned and returned. One of his responsibilities in this investigation would have been to give these objects to the victims' next of kin.
Of course, now the sword would have to go to the lock-up for illegal or dangerous evidence... eventually. He hoped he'd have time to drop this thing by his father's place before then. He wanted to know if Dad had heard of anything like this before... and he wanted to see his face when he extended the sword for the first time.
He picked up the driver's evidence bag and fished out the tablet. He used his own tablet to administer the warrant key, then copied out the data. A quick examination of the data showed that the decryption had worked. There was a sparse calendar, a few entries in the address book, two novels, and five videos. The novels were romances; filled with protagonists with long, thin fingers and creamy skin, no doubt. The movies were recent romantic comedies, with the only oldie, Blade Runner- The Director's Cut departing from that genre. On a whim, he pulled up the tablet's theater and checked the logs. The other movies had been recently leased and most had been watched, but Blade Runner had been watched about once a month since the tablet had been initially configured three years ago. He checked the file histories, which showed that the film had been in the initial transfer of data from Mr. Sieberg's previous tablet.
So it was an old and enduring favorite. The movie obsession felt like a clue. In fact, Ping would have been a lot more suspicious if he hadn't seen Blade Runner in the last year himself. Solid film, but only the director's cut was really worth watching more than twenty or thirty times. He had first been exposed to it in an ethics class in graduate school while training for his first career as a family counselor.
The movie takes place in a dark "future" (circa 2019... before Ping was born) where genetically engineered artificial people called Replicants are created to serve as soldiers and slaves. The story revolved around Deckard, a reluctant policeman who hunts rogue Replicants. In the movie, a ruthless band of three-year-old Replicants fought to find their creator in order to force him to give them more life than the four years written into their DNA. During the course of the investigation, Deckard falls in love with another Replicant who has been implanted with false memories and thinks she's human. The end of the director's cut was surprising in its implications.
In the class, the movie had been the basis for conversations on the nature of reality, about what happens when the assumptions on which we base our lives are ripped away. For Ping, the movie had been about alienation... about lost children. He couldn't help but feel for the Replicants. He smiled, remembering how at the time he'd wanted to help the poor doomed Replicants.
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