2: Hats

The Cit-Pro agent stood silhouetted against the spotlights that continued to pour through the jagged openings that had once been the diner's windows. A breeze stirred up dust around the agent, the low hem of his or her rain jacket fluttering. Jack squinted at the figure, again remarking to himself on the odd trilby hat the agent was wearing; an affectation of an era of police stylings long gone.

"Mr Willington. We have been looking for you for a significant amount of time" the agent said calmly as they took a step towards Jack.

Jack attempted a nonchalant shrug "Well I do come here quite often, so maybe you weren't looking hard enough?" the note of rebellion he attempted came out more whiney than he'd have liked. Either way the agent ignored him.

"You are now under the supervision of Citizen Protectorate advanced reconnaissance agent Z8P9x. You have the right to a Civic Centrale allocated approximate-AI legal system. If you request a human lawyer you must route the request through Civic Centrale Liaison Committee. This may add additional processing time to your supervision. I have e-cast these instructions to a secure local access node, along with other pertinent details pertaining to your supervision. You have 30 seconds to access them. Failure to access them will be assumed acceptance of the terms there-in. Do you have any questions?" the agent now stood directly in front of Jack, looming over him. Even if Jack had been standing, he'd have been a head shorter than the agent.

A head, that is, without a face.

Jack hadn't seen a reconnaissance agent in the grey-tinged synthetic flesh before and he would quite happily never see one again. Cit-Pro's ranks were dominated by drones these days, certainly all on the front line with an increasing number swelling the ranks of crime-analysis in Civic Centrale. The front line drones were considered perfect for the grimey streets of the Megatroplis' lower levels. They didn't accept bribes, they couldn't be intimidated, they didn't commit any of the violent excesses that took place in the slum riots of 50 years past.

Each was designed for a specific purpose, adapted over hundreds of iterations to perfectly suit the task at hand. Be it surveillance, breach and clear, fast response; whatever the crime situation there was a drone to tackle it. Except for the small issue of those pesky meat sacks that the drones came up against day in, day out. Humanity. As well as the heavy hitting side of blunt force police work, there was also an ongoing need to investigate and interrogate. And here was where the reconnaissance agents, or RA's, came in. They could move among humanity effortlessly, but would never be recognised as human. In the early iterations there were attempts at facial features, intricately automated, but the results never managed to clamber out of the depths of the uncanny valley. Instead the machine-learning algorythms of Civic Centrale noticed better case clearance performance from the RA's left without faces. They were just the right combination of menacing, yet humanoid to exert maximum co-operation. Teamed with a sophisticated array of sensors to establish the truth in whatever witnesses, or suspects, told them and crime rates plummeted. It wasn't long before crime rates fell to a level low enough to justify turning attention to crimes thought - or, indeed, hoped by certain older gentlemen - to be long forgotten.

"Your 30 second access time has expired. Your failure to access has been registered as a presumed acceptance. You must come with me" the agent extended a long arm, placing a three fingered hand on Jack's left shoulder.

"Wh..what...wait. Nooo" Jack was hauled onto his feet, the elongated thumb of the RA digging painfully into his clavicle. "I'm not. Tapped in. No direct feed" Jack said breathlessly, pointing to his unadorned iris with his free arm.

The RA paused. "Civic Centrale confirms medical exemption from Megatropolis statute on inclusive Transnet access. You are permitted an additional one minute to access the supervision instructions via a softwired access point." It let go of Jack, who slumped back down on the stool. The old man began patting his jacket, quickly locating the lump he was searching for and reaching a shaking hand inside to a breast pocket.

The drone hovering overhead uttered a shrill beep and dropped down, nasty looking chain gun pointed at Jack. Targeting lasers from the plow drone and the remaining hovering contraptions painted Jack's coat in thin lines of blue. "Whoa" he said, freezing. "I was just reaching for my aug-specs, like you said to fella" he risked looking up at the RA, which didn't move, but an unseen command saw the other drones fall back.

"Do it slowly" the RA the instructed him

"Sure thing" Jack complied, hand once again retreating inside his jacket. Slowly it came back out holding a small glasses case. "I'm good to open it?" he asked, setting the case in his lap, biting his lip nervously.

The RA simply replied,"slowly"

Jack did as he was instructed. Truth be told, the arthritis in his right hand wouldn't have allowed him to do it any quicker. The case opened, but there weren't any aug-specs in it. Just a rectangular metallic block with a shiny red button perched on top.

Jack closed his eyes and grimaced.

Jack pressed the button.

No explosion

No blinding light

No noise

Just four muffled thumps

Well, four muffled thumps then the sound of Dax swearing loudly.

Jack opened his eyes tentatively. The RA and hovering drones had gone. Well, not gone gone, but gone as in they were now lying inertly on the floor of the diner. One of the hovering drones had landed on top of the sprawled Dax. In the entrance the plow drone was still stood, but lent awkwardly to one side, articulated arms dangling.

"Interesting" Jack muttered, looking from the collapsed drones to the small device still gripped tightly in his hands "Can't believe one of his thingiemawatsits actually worked" incredulity spread into a smile on his craggy face.

"What the drak did you just do?" Dax had heaved the drone off him and stood up, wincing as he surveyed the damage.

"Not quite sure" Jack replied, still eyeing the device

"They dead? Or whatever passes for dead for these creeps" he toed the prone form of the RA.

"Dunno. Either way, they'll have company inbound. Civic Centrale bound to notice them dropping offline. Time to get going" this latter part more to himself than Dax. Jack stepped off the stool and headed for the entrance.

"You just gonna leave me here to explain this?" Dax was almost plaintive.

"Just tell them what happened. And when Centrale stumps up the damages to keep you from selling you story to the networks, I reckon they'll also cover your defective pulse oven" Jack turned to give the proprietor a wink "Be seeing you Dax" he turned to shuffle past the plow drone and outside.

The sense of faux bravado from teasing Dax was soon washed away by the gust of icy wind that met Jack outside the diner. He shivered. It had always been easy to play the big-man in front of a nervous audience, but the stakes were so much higher than his days as a low level tough up on level three of the Peacock district thirty-odd years ago. He'd just knocked out a Cit-Pro interception team. They'd be people, and machines if they had any, pulling their hair out in Civic Centrale. Then, well then they'd be after him. Time to put some distance between himself and the scene of the destruction he had no idea how he'd caused.

Around the side of the diner lay two more inactive hover drones, one decked out in a surveillance kit - maybe the one Dax had seen buzzing about earlier. Over by the side of the road was a Cit-Pro autobus, presumably supposed to be his ride uptown. A thin line of smoke wound its way from the vehicle's hood while an error message slowly scrolled across the public information banner on its flank.

Jack quickened his pace, as much as his hip would allow, and limped towards a small row of tenement buildings that sat on the other side of the autoroad pillars to the diner. Dwarfed by the snaking road above them and the massive towers that the road headed towards in the distance, the tenement buildings looked like small grubby pimples. They were significantly older than the roads and towers, older even than the formation of the Megatropolis itself, swallowed up by the development of the city decades previously. There had been plans to knock them down and start again; space was at a premium in the early days of the Megatropolis. However, as the years moved on, birth rates moved down and the flow of refugees from the Wastes dried up, the need for redevelopment waned.

Jack moved into the tenement complex, winding his way through dingy walkways and across derelict spaces that had once housed playgrounds or picnic areas. Now they just housed broken furniture and emancipated looking rats. Built before the rise of the service drone in everyday life, the tenements were unsuitable for most of the technology that people in the towers relied on for their day to day care. Delivery drones struggled with the confined walkways, small elevators, and narrow entrances. Cleaning machines struggled up stairs are around sharp corners. The small average room size of the abodes prevented the installation of the modern day culinary and personal hygiene equipment many had come to depend on in between their decent into the full immersion scenarios and entertainment-casts of the Transnet.

As people moved away from the tenements and into the more modern towers the area became more attractive to what Civic Centrale viewed as unsavory elements. Unsavory both in terms of criminality - other than the complex and expensive humanoid RAs, Cit-Pro drones experienced many of the same access struggles as their service-drone counterparts - but also unsavory in terms of that small minority that resisted the march of deep integration into the Transnet life. Jack was a little from column A and quite a lot from column B in terms of his own unsavoryness; these tenements had been his home for the past 15 years.

He knew going back to his apartment was dumb. It would be the first place Cit-Pro would turn over looking for him. Hell, they might even be there waiting for him now. The thought gave him a moment's cause to pause in the shabby lobby of his building. But then long forgotten instructions eddied back up from the depths of his mind.

When they come for you:

Press the button

Put on the hat

Find me

The first two parts had come to pass. What was more, the button press had actually achieved something. Jack had half suspected he'd been carrying round some kind of prank device for the past 23 years. But it was the real deal he murmured to himself as he reached forward to call the elevator. And if the button was real, then presumably the hat would be of some value too. What value, he had no idea. Perhaps he was just supposed to look dapper as the Cit-Pro took him down. But Jack suspected there was more to it than that.

The elevator arrived and Jack stepped in to its cramped confines. With a rumble its doors closed and he was whisked upwards to the third floor. Here he walked down a narrow corridor. Paint peeled from the walls and the carpeting was threadbare in places, stained in others. Patches of the ceiling light panels blinked as he limped along, making his movements look all the more jerky.

Around a corner and down a small flight of stairs Jack arrived at the door to his apartment. He hesitated at the threshold, then bent down to waist level with a pained sigh and squinting at where the door panel met the dented architrave.

Still there, unbroken.

The old hair across the door trick, make sure he'd had no guests while he was out. An old habit, and truth be told probably ineffectual against an RA's sensor suite, but Jack had always figured it was a rouse so old that maybe the proxy-AI's at Civic Centrale hadn't heard of it.

Another pained sigh and Jack was back upright. He was going to start having to put the hair at a more accessible height if his aching back was going to have any say in the matter. He shuffled over to the other side of the door where the access panel was located. Leaning forward he put his left eye to the sensor and waited half a beat for a quick pulse of red light as his iris was read. Most people these days had their door locks directly patched to their onboard system, a tiny computer injected into the cervical spine then synced to their iris lens, ear drum speaker and any other of the host of physical adaptations available today. None of which Jack possessed.

The access panel chirped, then flashed an error message. The door stayed resolutely closed. Jack frowned, then looked around. Had he been hacked? Or had he simply wandered to the wrong door again? Senile old bat he chided himself. Get a grip. This was the right apartment, the faded blue door had always jarred with the pastel shades employed elsewhere on this floor. So was his sensor malfunctioning? Or had it been interfered with? He paused for a second or two more. Then remembered. The iris scan he'd gone out for in the first place, that was it. It had been what the docbot called a deep scan. Part health check, part fraud protection. Make sure he was who he said he was when collecting his UBI creds. The docbot had said it might cause a bit of swelling in the eye after. Jack patted around his pockets again, this time hand emerging with a small bottle of eye drops. In they went. Back up to the sensor panel he went. This time the sensor recognised him and the door slid aside.

Jack needed a sit down. Cit-Pro be dammed, his heart couldn't take much more of this. If a shonky door lock is going to give me palpitations, what hope have I got? he wondered. Thoughts of putting the coffee maker on popped into his head - he never did get more than a sip back at the diner - but he resolved to find the hat first. He had never been the tidiest person, there was certainly little reason to how or where he stored things. But nor was he a hoarder - there weren't big piles of detritus that he would need to sort through. 

It took a little while, but Jack had the hat in question in his hands. The instruction was to put it on, but first he carefully turned it about, looking for any clue as to its ultimate purpose. Nothing stuck out. It was kind of old fashioned, certainly of an era prior to even when it first came into his possession over 20 years ago. The brim was wider than on the trilby worn by the RA, and it was a darker shade of brown. But it was just as big a juxtaposition to the ultra-tech Megatropolis. Jack never did understand fashion. He frowned again. Do the RA's understand fashion any better? he mused.

But now was not the time for pondering how much of an approximation of human intelligence the latest class of proxy-AI driven drones were. Now was the time for donning an out-of-time hat and getting the heck away.

Jack placed the hat on his head. It wasn't too bad a fit, maybe a little loose, but it would do. He headed back to the door, slapping the open button and stepping into the corridor. Out of instinct he reached a hand up and pulled one of the few white hairs that resolutely held on to his wrinkled scalp and went to place it across the door seal. Then he stopped. A realisation dawned that he couldn't envisage a single scenario that would ever see him returning here.

The hair fell gently to the floor as Jack limped away.