Chapter Text
Chapter 2: Decision
I gathered my things from the office and walked to the bus stop in a dumb haze. Only on the bus did it hit me. How truly fucked I was. I sobbed into my sleeve, covering my head with the hood of my jumper. The familiar commute, the normalcy and safety of it, made my problem seem the more real. Seeing the same old tired faces and grey city, the same, but not my situation. An hour before, I'd been someone, I'd been safe, as much as anyone can be. Now I was snared, in the grip of a vast invisible machine that was all around me, invisible but omnipotent. I glared up at the cameras on the bus. They were in every corner, on the dashboard and facing the doors, and all around the outside of it like warts on a toad. No doubt, I thought, they're watching me know, factoring my faces and posture and habits into their ever-evolving psych profile. I could flip them off right now, and they'd add five points of rebelliousness. I could piss myself and start drooling and they'd add twenty mental illness points. The bastards. If I killed someone, would they give me a pass, or find another stooge to blackmail?
At my stop, I walked past the club. "X@N@T0S", the flickering neon read. Thanatos. Death Impulse. It had been a tech kid hangout before the ban, where wannabe cowboys and transhumanist body-modders hung out with the few emancipated Machines who'd lived in the city before the Purge. I'd gone, once or twice; it'd be improper for a professor to be seen in such a place. People there were there to score, be it sex or designer chemicals or some nicked hard drives, and even with drug decriminalization and increasingly libertine sexual mores, decorum was expected of a professor. It'd been shuttered briefly, during the riots, and the owners had been arrested on spurious charges at one point (all that stuck of the dozen or so counts of operating an unlicensed sex club and accessory to some misdemeanor drug sale counts), but now it was open again, but not the same.
Two unmanned police vans were parked outside. Hovering, eight-propped poldrones were dragging two shrieking, drunken patrons out and forcing them into the separate vans. I could tell from their clashing garb it was a turf dispute. One of the patrons was a Techie, with her shaved-head, visor-like goggles, broken in the scuffle, and black leather, while the other, his sleeked-back hair and waistcoat, was a Human Leaguer. Their respective gangs were pouring out of the club, held apart by two more drones. They shouted and waived walking sticks, on the HL side, and bike chains and home-made electronic weapons, on the techie side, while the hovering drones flashed their tasers menacingly.
The Human Leaguers were kids from poor homes, mostly white Kiwis, although they'd let in anyone who spoke English and had skin lighter than milk tea. Leaguers dressed in whatever 20th century finery they could find at thrift stores, with the men in suits and ties and the women in gowns and furs. It made them look alternately like washed-up celebs doing late-night talk shows, cars salesmen, or, if they pulled it off, dapper fascists (which was what they called their style, when pressed on it). The League was a byproduct of automation. They were comprised of kids who had grown up in homes where their parents had complained about the Machines, immigrants, and refugees taking their jobs. The religious ones had grown up hearing them call A.I.'s and cyborgs abominations unto the Lord. As teens and young adults, they found themselves in a world where the best most of them could hope for was to collect UBI, live in a mincome block, and tune out on simstims and drugs. When the neo-neoliberalism of the 70's took even that from them, they blamed the Machines, not the corporations who had lobbied to slash the safety net, and took to bashing them on sight. Emboldened by the Machine purge, the ban on pro-Machine parties, and the Conservative resurgence in the last election, they'd claimed the streets as their own, and taken to bashing whatever was remotely Machine-like, as well as immigrants, liberals, and anyone who crossed them.
"You are ordered to disperse this instant!" a human voice shouted over the drones' built-in speakers, relayed from a cop sitting comfortably in a chair in some station kilometers away.
Days past, it'd be pol-robs, police robots, but the last thing anyone would stand for now would be Machines telling humans what to do, especially with guns on their hips. The fact that a dozen had taken over a Wellington police station during the riots was just gravy, as far as most folks reckoned. That had been a spectacle. Machine cops gunning down their human superiors, ripping the New Zealand and U.N. flags in half bare-handed on a web broadcast while a synthesized voice made appeals for machine revolution and human collaboration. They'd let pro-Machine humans and the all the crooks they'd released from lock-up raid the armory and had held the police captain and the office staff hostage, demanding an end to the round-up and execution of any thinking Machine. A five-day standoff ensued. The city cut off the power, hoping the Machines would run out of juice. In a show of solidarity, their human collaborators made bicycle-powered generators to keep their machine friends going. A hostage rescue was attempted, which failed miserably. The Machines responded by broadcasting the evisceration of the police chief. It ended when the Air Force had bombed them. Leveled the block (and the next couple blocks for good measure) with a N2 bomb, and the Ministry of Information had outlawed possession of any footage or discussion of the event. I had it, of course, on a triple-encrypted hard drive hidden inside a picture frame. It was sweet as. A Japanese tankbot had pulled the old plod's head and spine out in one sharp jerk before crushing it like a grape, its incongruously childish voice shouting "Sic semper tyrannus!"
As I passed by, one of the drones paused and turned to face me, its victim struggling in its pincers. Its array of lenses whirred faintly. I see you, you fuckers, I thought angrily.
"Please move along, ma'am. Police business."
Turning the corner, and the patrons were rushing out the rear exits. Some Leaguers were among them, one drunkenly brandishing a cane sword, which he waived ineffectually as two girls in sequined gowns and feather boad shoved him into a antique Cadillac. They peeled out as they sped away. Running a red, they were centerpunched by a garbage truck. Wankers must have been driving themselves, no A.I.
"Serves you fuckers right," I hissed. Did they hear me say that? My phone was off, and in a signal-proof case I'd bought, but there was no telling.
My flat was in an old residential high rise. Post-war, the plan had been to build self-sufficient communities in massive highrises of livimg quarters, shopping, and office space, as a way to combat urban sprawl and foster integrated communities. They'd initially been rent-free, paid by taxes on automated manufacturing. Since the seventies they'd be auctioned off, and the rent continually raised. Having had nothing since lunch, I grabbed dinner at the chipper in the lobby. Old Siobhan had run the greasy little hole in the wall since she had come down under thirty years ago, and it'd remained through the parceling off of the commonly-held parts of the tower. Bag of chips and a greasy vat-grown burger in one hand, drink in the other, I rode the elevator up to my flat. I was in a single-room studio up on the forty-fifth floor, a good ten minutes by lift without any stops, and the glorified dorm room cost me, utilities included, a two week's pay for a month. And I was lucky. The only other apartments I could afford, that weren't coffins or sublet, were on the edge of town, and there was no way I was spending two hours on the bus every day.
I sat and enjoyed the chips, already cold and stale from the long trip up. Leon, my cat, was hungry too, so I fed him.
"Guess I'll do it." I said to no one in particular. My home phone rang. Picking it up, I heard a voice say,
"Glad to hear it. We'll book your flight."