The Sixth World brought with it things our ancestors could only imagine – dragons, augmented reality, cyberware, magic – but even with all of the progress and advancement, some of the same old problems that have been plaguing humanity keep cropping up where they’re not wanted; those little fears and worries that gnaw at us in the quiet hours.
Tonight’s client is a mid-level corporate exec at Horizon who can’t go to his superiors with this particular problem. Just beneath the pristine “everything is fine here” veneer, he thinks something is rotten within his own house. If the higher-ups found out, or even thought he had doubts that could upset the peace and tranquility of the corp image, he’d be sent to a “realignment training seminar,” which he dearly wants to avoid. The problem, you ask?
He thinks his wife has been replaced by a double.
He swears up and down that he doesn’t have Capgras Syndrome, and is willing to provide a recent psych eval to prove it, but honestly it’s none of my business what his issue is – he has money and he’s willing to pay for subtlety.
He wants covert surveillance on his wife, audio recordings of her talks with strangers, even her Matrix browsing history. He’s sure there’ll be evidence somewhere that she isn’t the woman he married sixteen years ago. Maybe this job will be of interest to those who like a little recon, or for those who just like family drama.
Either way, it should make for an interesting story around the water hole.
Header image taken by Raul Hudson, a modern photographer with an eye to the neon-lit evening streets. Photograph of Manhattan at night.