Lenny Nero had gone from cop to street hustler dealing in SQUID clips back to cop again, and sometimes he was still dizzy from it all. In the end, it was his career peddling SQUID tapes that had saved his career as a cop; that, and Mace, who had taught him that what you can have is sometimes far more desirable than what you can't; Mace, who had pulled him back from the edge of the precipice.
They had called him the Magic Man on the streets back then, the number one dealer of SQUID decks and tapes. Short for Superconducting Quantum Interference Device, the SQUID receptor rig consists of a two-part system: a lightweight, flexible mesh of electrodes and a recorder. The technology had originally been developed for the feds to replace body wires, but had found a far more permanent home on the black market. The SQUID acts as a magnetic field measurement tool on a micro level. By placing the electrodes over your head and activating the recorder, your first-person audio-visual-sensory experience is recorded wirelessly, direct from the cerebral cortex onto a TDK 60-minute MiniDisc. The rig can also be hacked using a signal splitter and simstim attachment - allowing someone else to experience your experience in real-time. Murderers had recorded the experience from their point of view and that of their victims. Lenny had seen just such a recording of the murder of the person who had given him the disc containing the murder of Jeriko One, a hooker named Iris. Optional accessories for the rig include a fanny pack for closely storing the recorder and various wigs for concealing your otherwise obvious surveillance of others.
There was still no way to directly upload these recordings to the net, leaving room for inefficient, in-person, illegal "playback" dealings of MiniDiscs similar to buying and selling drugs. From sex to committing crimes, clients of the self-proclaimed "switchboard of souls" dealers are able to jack-in to a variety of illicit activities without leaving their home.
The bulky, retrofitted Sony MiniDisc player acts as a Playback Deck for the recordings, taken straight from the cerebral cortex. Linked up to a simulated-stimulation (simstim) attachment via short-range wireless technology, users affix the translucent appendage over their head and hit play to receive a sensory overload of someone else's experiences. The simstim attachment delivers a high adrenaline adventure to your audio-visual-sensory receptors, so strong that keeping your eyes open causes you to see double. You see, smell, feel everything the wearer did.
While the Playback Deck is rather basic in its play, stop, fast-forward and rewind functionality, hackers had been able to insert amplifiers inline in order to boost the sensory signal. This hack is not recommended for tinkerers at home, as amplifying SQUID recordings causes frontal lobe failure, leaving you in an acid-trip-of-a-coma for the rest of your life. One of Lenny's friends and one of his enemies were currently in this state, for life.
After the events of New Year's Eve, 1999, LAPD had brought Lenny back into the fold as the house expert on Playback, using him as a patrol officer only when they were short on manpower. His usual beat now was busting up illegal hypnosis labs. Since that bloody night, a new black market for hijacked memories had emerged, and experiences stolen via hypnosis were currently the most sought after of all. Everything thing from rape, torture, and murder was extracted and sold as entertainment. There were illegal hypnosis dens all over the city now, all over the world. They were especially prevalent in prisons. All those virgin criminal minds.
Steckler says hello. Someone wanted what Lenny had carried in his head all these years, the memory of the recording he had seen of the execution of rapper and political activist Jeriko One by two cops. Knowing public release of the disc would incite citywide riots, Lenny and Mace had given the recording to Police Commissioner Palmer Strickland. Burton Steckler had been one of the two cops who had executed Jeriko One, and he had been shot dead trying to escape arrest that New Year's Eve. His name was now synonymous with dirty cops who wanted to stay that way without interference. Lenny was still despised by many for handing over the disc, which he had nearly traded to gain freedom for his faithless ex-girlfriend.
Someone was waiting in his small office when he finally reached it. Zane, another IT guy who also worked Vice. "Hey, Lenny! Hear the news? A squidhead assassin was caught in Germany about to whack the Chancellor so he could sell the Playback. How much do you think he could have gotten for the tape?"
Lenny considered it. "Millions."
"His unlucky day, right?"
"They shoot him?"
"Yeah. Deader than shit."
"That tape will be worth a lot. Would-be assassin snuff clip. I got some stuff to do, Zane." Lenny closed the door. He had left the AC on, and he unbuttoned the top button of his shirt and sat for a minute letting his sweat dry before slipping the trodes almost lovingly over his skull. He loved Mace, and their life together, but there were moments when he longed for the good old days when he was their priest, when only he could get them what they wanted. Watching them get their first taste. He leaned back in the chair, propped his feet up on the desk and pushed play.