We're Friends, Now

Raoul Beardsley, a weary Crime-Central coordinator, approaches the most unsettling case of his career: the murder of Amos T. Carmack, the man whose patents made ECAIAC the world's infallible crime machine. In a near-future society addicted to automated justice and public spectacle, Beardsley is forced to confront not only a mountain of persona-tapes, suspects, and statistical evidence, but also his own private dread of the system he serves. The news media hypes the case while Beardsley seethes at the machine's cold authority and the way it has reduced detective work to sterile calculation. At ECAIAC's vast chamber, the machine seems almost alive, and its operator, Jeff Arnold, is increasingly tense as unexplained "excess data" and failed synaptic clearances hint at deeper instability. As reject tapes emerge and the suspects narrow, Beardsley reveals that powerful figures are entangled in the murder: Minister of Justice George Mandleco, Professor Karl Losch, Brook Pederson, and even Arnold himself. When the machine suddenly breaks down in a blaze of smoke and chaos, Beardsley's suspicion hardens into resolve. He takes command, determined to solve a case that may expose the limits of machine logic and the dangerous human motives hidden beneath it. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.