feature, but it sucks. It makes the voice sound like a saxophone played by a drunk who accents all the wrong notes. A couple of months ago Miles sent me a package containing circuit boards he claimed would give my computer not only a better voice, but also the Holy Grail: voice-recognition capability. Naturally, those circuit boards are still sealed inside their antistatic bags in the box they came in. For my purposelistening to lengthy e-mail messagesthe droning digital voice EROS already has is good enough.
Scanning Miless messages, I set the frequency to a medium baritoneMiless registerand lie down on the twin bed to listen.
Hello, snitch. Heres an update from Serial Killer Central. Ive finally met the elusive Dr. Arthur Lenz, and I am impressed (though not as impressed as he is with himself).
If you dont already know (and how could you?) there is a massive bureaucratic battle afoot between the FBI and the various police departments involved in what they are vulgarly calling the EROS murders. (Is vulgarly a word? I defer to the grammarians on that.) The instinct of the police (I use police collectively for Houston, San Francisco, New Orleans, Minneapolis, et al.) is to shut down EROS for the foreseeable future. This is obviously short-term thinking. They apparently believe that shutting us down will keep Strobekker (whoever he really is) off the playing field. The FBI (read Lenz) quite rightly understands that shutting down EROS will only send our predator to greener pasturesor at least different ones. I give Lenz credit for understanding that the digital fields of the Lord are quite expansive, and that our beast at play is well versed in traveling them.
Segue: while writing this I have recalled a bit of high school Emerson.
If the red slayer thinks he slays
Or if the slain thinks he is slain
They know not well the subtle paths
I keep, and pass, and turn again
From Brahma I believe. Come to think of it, from now on, when I refer to the killer, I shall call him Brahma. Strobekker makes me picture a pasty-faced Minnesotan of Swedish descent, killing with the same knife he uses during the graveyard shift at the meat-packing plant.
I think Lenz plans to lure Brahma to his destruction by somehow manipulating our network. The police argue the obvious: that every minute EROS is up and running is another minute women are at risk. But Lenz has used your session printouts to good advantage. He points out that Brahma not only has a recognizable prose style on-line, but also that his messages, which are error-free for eighty-five percent of the exchanges with his victims, become full of errors as the dates of the murders approach. Lenz didnt know why that might be, so I decided to throw him a bone. I think Brahma is using an advanced voice-recognition unit, which allows him to simply speak his words rather than type them. Maybe he works for a computer company and has access to prototype equipment. A unit like that might not be easily portable, and he probably couldnt use it remotely because of cellular dropouts. So when he takes his show on the road, hes got to type like everybody else.
Anyway, Lenz realized that the FBI can use this error-rate flag as an early-warning system to know when Brahma is on the move and women are in imminent danger. He also points out that except for Karin Wheat, only women on the blind-draft billing system have been killed so far. This group represents a significant but minority number of total female subscribers, approximately twenty-three percent. Five hundred seventy-eight women.
Lenz also argues that allowing Brahma to continue on EROS will give the FBI time to track him through the phone lines, which Agent Baxter assures both Jan and myself will be but a matter ofa day or two. The local police departments seem to have a lot of faith in this argument and will probably relent. Bureaucratic panic always gives weight to the quick-fix solution. But I dont share Baxters faith in the phone-trace
Scanning Miless messages, I set the frequency to a medium baritoneMiless registerand lie down on the twin bed to listen.
Hello, snitch. Heres an update from Serial Killer Central. Ive finally met the elusive Dr. Arthur Lenz, and I am impressed (though not as impressed as he is with himself).
If you dont already know (and how could you?) there is a massive bureaucratic battle afoot between the FBI and the various police departments involved in what they are vulgarly calling the EROS murders. (Is vulgarly a word? I defer to the grammarians on that.) The instinct of the police (I use police collectively for Houston, San Francisco, New Orleans, Minneapolis, et al.) is to shut down EROS for the foreseeable future. This is obviously short-term thinking. They apparently believe that shutting us down will keep Strobekker (whoever he really is) off the playing field. The FBI (read Lenz) quite rightly understands that shutting down EROS will only send our predator to greener pasturesor at least different ones. I give Lenz credit for understanding that the digital fields of the Lord are quite expansive, and that our beast at play is well versed in traveling them.
Segue: while writing this I have recalled a bit of high school Emerson.
If the red slayer thinks he slays
Or if the slain thinks he is slain
They know not well the subtle paths
I keep, and pass, and turn again
From Brahma I believe. Come to think of it, from now on, when I refer to the killer, I shall call him Brahma. Strobekker makes me picture a pasty-faced Minnesotan of Swedish descent, killing with the same knife he uses during the graveyard shift at the meat-packing plant.
I think Lenz plans to lure Brahma to his destruction by somehow manipulating our network. The police argue the obvious: that every minute EROS is up and running is another minute women are at risk. But Lenz has used your session printouts to good advantage. He points out that Brahma not only has a recognizable prose style on-line, but also that his messages, which are error-free for eighty-five percent of the exchanges with his victims, become full of errors as the dates of the murders approach. Lenz didnt know why that might be, so I decided to throw him a bone. I think Brahma is using an advanced voice-recognition unit, which allows him to simply speak his words rather than type them. Maybe he works for a computer company and has access to prototype equipment. A unit like that might not be easily portable, and he probably couldnt use it remotely because of cellular dropouts. So when he takes his show on the road, hes got to type like everybody else.
Anyway, Lenz realized that the FBI can use this error-rate flag as an early-warning system to know when Brahma is on the move and women are in imminent danger. He also points out that except for Karin Wheat, only women on the blind-draft billing system have been killed so far. This group represents a significant but minority number of total female subscribers, approximately twenty-three percent. Five hundred seventy-eight women.
Lenz also argues that allowing Brahma to continue on EROS will give the FBI time to track him through the phone lines, which Agent Baxter assures both Jan and myself will be but a matter ofa day or two. The local police departments seem to have a lot of faith in this argument and will probably relent. Bureaucratic panic always gives weight to the quick-fix solution. But I dont share Baxters faith in the phone-trace
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