Hooper liked a good old fashioned procedural investigation drama. There were thousands from the classic era in the media archives of most entertainment providers. A large number were available as old two dimensional shows in a series or long episode format; written stories from thousands of authors, many with the original translations and notes to understand comprehension; and a few centuries of remakes and interpretations alongside audio dramas. It was relaxing to watch them and to marvel at how people perceived investigations.
The really good ones all knew a secret that the more pulpy stories seem to ignore. That might be for the purpose of drama, or to heighten the intuitive abilities of the main protagonist. But they did ignore it. They would hinge their stories on a big reveal, or a hidden twist. The investigator would determine the truth from some clue, a mistake on behalf of the criminal. It was dramatic, but it was rarely how it worked in the real world. Rarely did one string some abstract clues together with a subtle reading of character.
Investigations were a marathon and not a sprint. They were not based on a single telling mistake. To solve a crime involved piecing together the narrative by examining and re-examining evidence. It was steady, repetitive and thoroughly undramatic. It was worse if the crime was carefully pre-meditated and then evidence covered up or destroyed. Since the perpetrator of this was likely to be a judicial officer, they would know what evidence to suppress.
Technology had made much of the repetitive work a much easier task. Automated systems and artificial intellects could examine the evidence at much greater speed than an organic mind. Some of the intellects were of a sufficient grade that they could be creative and use intuitive steps to reevaluate the evidence to determine the truth. Those were rarely used speculatively. A higher level artificial intelligence was expensive to maintain and therefore was utilised for a vast array of work. One had to have a good reason to occupy its time.
Hooper had also wanted to use as few internal judicial systems as possible in the investigation. Hooper knew that whomever the mole in judiciary was they had access to a great number of the internal systems. There was at least one person involved, and they had the resources to utilise others. Hooper could not be sure which systems might be compromised. Therefore the access used would be retrieval only. Hooper was able to use a secure outside link to get into the systems and would use other resources to help with the analysis.
Hooper was helped by the access to artificial intelligences and a very talented slicer who had set him up with a detailed construct programme. So now Hooper sat in a comfortable chair that floated over a vast sea of screens. Each one of them was a feed with a datum stream. Hooper could call on a vast number of data points to help determine who was the mole.
There would be no singular mistake. There would be no telling clue. But there had to be an intersection of information that gave probabilities of who the organic was. All that Hooper had to do was use the information they had learned so far and compare it to the vast array of knowledge recorded by the judiciary. It might take some creative thinking to help with the boring cross analysis. But that was the only job that would need Hooper’s focus.
