They arrived at the street before Cassandra could ask more questions. Not that she truly needed to, the woman sure of her observations more than anything. Plans for how to handle the thief were properly sent out into the database and saved for later. The woman would work with her boss about them later in the day if there was time for it, Cassandra wanting some extra eyes on it. Human eyes, that is, the woman not truly trusting the entity beside her to have objective observations.
“You have arrived five minutes later than anticipated,” the automation already on the street announced loudly. Not enough for the would-be civilian observers near them to hear, but it was still much louder than the thing had any right to speak. “Explain your lateness in fifty words or less.”
“You realise that you’re taking our speed from my personal average, right?” Jules questioned before Cassandra even had a chance to open her mouth. The woman looked at the automation, ready to question why she wasn't doing the talking like normal, before just shutting up her mouth in mild curiosity. There was some part of her that wanted to see where it went if she didn't interfere.
“Yes,” the other automation confirmed without a hint of shame. “Taking it from the general average of the entire force would be unreasonable and take up too many resources. Taking it from your personal speed already logged would make it more accurate to your normal speeds while also taking up a fraction of the processing time.”
“You really need to stop talking about efficiency and all that other stuff, dude,” Jules said with a shake of its head, somehow starting on becoming a surfer without Cassandra ever having seen it with a board in hand. Perhaps that was what it had done while she waited in her car? The mental image caused a small smile to form on her lips, the construct surfing the waves of what was previously known as Hawai. That did leave her wondering if it was still lived on, as the woman had a small desire to travel there when she had the chance. “You aren't being that smart with the efficiency and all.”
“I am being efficient. Less data equals less regression needing to be made,” the automation corrected.”
“Less data equals that you are being a vain prick,” Jules counted, clearly having spent many years thinking of that comeback. “How much over the average time was that ride from before when compared to the time I spend normally on the same route?”
“Three minutes more than normal,” the automation answered with no hesitancy, likely already having loaded up the statistics beforehand. The construct was more than prepared for the discussion, after all. “Three minutes and 4 seconds, if the exact time is needed.”
“Ignoring your apparent need for data needing to be efficiently processed, please do check out the average time spent on a similar stretch of road in the middle of a populated city,” Jules gave out orders like it was nothing. The other construct just stood by with a blank face, making it all the weirder to see from the side. “Tell me how much above average time I spent from that.”
“You spent… two minutes under the average when compared to all other cops in the region,” the automation said, pausing midway through its speech as if it didn't believe in its own words. It even looked a small bit confused.
“See? Ignore the big picture and you start out on the blaming game,” Jules said, giving the other confused construct a small hug. “With all that blaming being thrown around, it might not even be me who’s the biggest time waster here. Have a think about that when you can.”
The two walked a few more steps forward, Casandra not looking happy and the automation beside her being as stoic as ever. They even looked at each other, nodding with a professional tone, before walking almost fifty meters more forward.
Then they cracked, finding the reality of the situation more surreal than anything. It might have been due to the woman being extremely stressed the entire day since death had been around the corner in more ways than one, but she just couldn't help but share the automations way of humour. It was the funniest spectacle she had seen in such a long time. Even knowing that none of it was meant to be funny in any real way, she just couldn't help but almost fall to her knees.
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Jules was in a similar state, all laughs and giggles and troubles with the knees. The two would have fallen in a heap if not for grabbing each other's shoulders to hold themselves upright. How exactly two unbalanced people equalled out to complete balance occurred was a complete mystery to both, but it wasn't like either of them actually questioned it.
“You know, the fact that it’s actively trying to create an algorithm for what I would say in any situation just makes it all the worse?” Jules said, wiping away a non-existent tear away from its eyes. Or maybe it just didn't notice it's lacking the ability to currently cry. It could have been either, Cassandra certainly having a few of those droplets she needed to have removed with her own fingers. It had been the first time tears had been there in a long time. She couldn't have been happier that it wasn't for any other reason that they appeared. “Can’t figure out that it just needs to think a bit more about things.”
“We must all have some flaws,” Cassandra said, getting back into her usual mask. She was way too distracted, a shake of her head ridding her of all that might have caused some form of distractions. No personal ideas, no personal actions, and no personal fantasies. All fantasise during work-hours were only allowed to be related to the death, incarceration, and brutal beating of criminals. Anything else was out of line and able to cause pots to be stirred. “With some… they might be greater than others. While we can point fingers, something must be done to fix the rough edges.”
The automation standing still in the distance clearly needed something done, be that a long conversation with it or some kind of class on how to operate effectively instead of efficiently. The thing had started becoming more than a little annoying, thinking itself higher and mightier through cutting the corners with everything. Though… there might have been one thing that the construct had not done the same with.
“I already did give the bastard a lot of help. Told it where the flaws were, pointed it out real good, and even gave a few lessons on what to do instead. You might not have heard that part of the conversation, seeing as it was mainly through info-packets, but you should have heard the main points well enough,” Jules said, saying a few things that might have been very interesting for the woman to hear. Not that Cassandra truly did, her ears just about shut completely from the outside world. Her eyes were the focus, the woman looking around the street with a very strong gaze.
The street was cleaner than ever before. The woman had driven down the very road she stood on weeks ago, glancing at it at the time. Back then, it hadn't been too bad, only having the occasional piece of trash lying around. Mix that in with a large amount of dirt having reached the sides of the road, however, and one would have a place that couldn't be stood on without a small grimace. While it might not have been the worst place in cleanliness, it didn't truly match the shops that sat on the street.
That had changed now. The mess of ice and glass that had been seen previously had all but disappeared, likely transported far away by the multitude of little workers. Not that those robots were there anymore even, those having disappeared as well. Though… that might have been due to there being so little left to do. The street was clean. It was cleaner than anything seen before.
It practically shone with how clean it was, no speck of dirt seen anywhere. The sides had been sprayed or something like it, all the dirt having been removed meticulously. It was as close to an epic fantasy that the city could have possibly done. Only the shops brought it down, though not by much.
With no ability to see any hint of destroyed glass on the floor, it was hard to believe that anything had been broken into. The dark covering of any previous window or glass pane was more than effective in making it impossible to glance at anything the thieves had left behind. Though… the sheer amount of things that should have been covered up to give the effect was more than Cassandra could count. The pane placements ranged so wildly in height and size that the woman had trouble believing that a single automation had completed it alone.
“How long did the automation work on covering everything up?” Cassandra asked, still not having realised what the automation had said before. And so it would likely remain, with how the construct beside her sighed.
“About forty minutes,” Jules answered, looking around with a whistling sound in the thing's mouth. “While I might not like everything it’s done, you can’t say it was bad at this task. I guess having an extremely repetitive task leaves room for improvement over time.”
“Just how much did it improve?” Cassandra questioned with narrowed eyes. Forty minutes with the number of panes in plain view… she wasn't sure about the exact number, but it had to be extremely quick.
“Quite a bit. Hold on one second,” Jules said, likely pulling up some piece of data from the archives. “Ah, here it is. With a minute-by-minute comparison of speed, the automation improved in speed by five per cent each minute. I guess that added up after a while.”
It indeed was. Cassandra could only hope that Jules was looking at an average improvement scale rather than anything else. The sheer speed at the end must have been more than most could react much less use efficiently. It truly was a scary thought to have been close to. The woman wondered about pulling up the footage from the event but thought better of it. She didn't need her day ruined that much.
“Is there anything else we need to do?” Cassandra asked the automation, not having paid too much attention to what was going on. “We have the clean-up done, but I don’t think we’re meant to leave the place.”
“Indeed we aren't,” Jules said with a smile. “We have the privilege of sitting on our asses, making sure nobody makes a run to get inside, and wait until the camera crews come running along.”
… Somehow, that didn't sound too bad. Cassandra had been wanting to do nothing but sit around. It was a good thing she had packed a few packets of food when filling up the car.