Bright City - Secret Apartment

“What the fuck am I supposed to be doing?”

Pizza girl takes a long drag from our joint. “That’s the question, isn’t it? Evolution’s murderous hand has molded us into anticipation machines. Our brains a madness of compulsive predictions. Because fortune favors those who connect cause with effect, and Darwin’s game eats the losers.

“So we obsess. Watch others. Copy their success. Make plans. Make rules. Make art, for what could be. And build a world in our minds, that mirrors the outside, but a vital step ahead. And when it’s wrong it’s disaster, and shame, and ruin. But when it’s right it’s money, and respect, and fucking. Yes sir.

“But the sharper we hone our future sense, the more it cuts to nothing. The farther we see, the less there is. The abyss at the center of everything. Death. Death. Death. Tortured by Cassandra, we circle back to our first question. In the face of the inevitable - What am I supposed to be doing?

“Woe to the existentialist. Your self made destiny be the harshest mistress of all. You can’t give yourself what doesn’t exist. Abandon all meaning. There is nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Ignoring that only brings it faster.

”Accept what is. You’re a random conglomeration of biases struggling to guess a future that cannot exist. There’s nothing you’re supposed to be doing.”

I frown. “I mean, what to do about Harkon? I want to do crime and he’s crimping my style.”

“Oh.” Pizza girl shrugs. “I don’t have an answer for that. I’m more of a question girl.”

I flop down on the bed. Temporarily defeated. “I’m also losing at my dream game.”

“Is that important? Should you be trying to win it? Or experience it?”

“I’m trying to experience winning it.” I grumble. “Shouldn’t be so fucking hard to stay alive.”

We smoke and talk about my problems. She’s a good listener, even if her advice is zoomed out. I explain my troubles with survival. She questions if survival is even the point of the game. Maybe it’s about discovery. Maybe I’m supposed to learn something and survival is irrelevant.

“There’s no problems in a dream game except the ones we create for emotional reasons. Why do you want to struggle?”

“Shit. I don’t know.”

“Figure that out. Though existence is utterly devoid of meaning, asking why you want stuff can offer surprising direction.”

We finish getting wasted, then break to get back to work. Volt and I are left to obsess over Harkon.

“We need weaponry that can see him, a way to avoid him, and a way to find him.”

“Cool.” says Volt. “There’s a spider on your neck.”

I freeze. Slowly shift my eyes to the left. Oh fuck. There’s a hand-sized robo-spider perched on my shoulder. Its razor sharp fangs drip a menacing ooze as they drift closer to important arteries.

I can’t imagine a worse situation, until I look back at Volt. She’s nervously pointing my hand cannon at my neck. “Hold still.” Both her eyes are closed.

Nope! I flip out. Flail, shake, dive, and roll. Gunshots ring through the secret apartment. I end up behind the bed, with the robo-spider crouched on the other side.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“Did I get it?” asks Volt.

“No! Why were you shooting with your eyes closed?!”

“I was concentrating!”

“Slide me the gun!”

“Ahem.” says the spider. “That won’t be necessary.”

I recognise that cultured twang. Like a tractor salesman. “Liam? That your drone? How’d you find my apartment?”

“I followed you.”

“With a drone? Dammit. Gotta get a trashbag.”

“I don’t know what that means. But I didn’t follow you with a drone, more like you stumbled past millions of my drones.”

I cock my head. “I don’t think so. Pretty sure I’d have noticed millions of drones.”

“Ah, but they’re very small. Like a piece of dust. A silicon flake sandwich with a vacuum filling. Etched with metasurfaces by ultraviolet light. A wee camera on one side. A tiny solar cell on the other. Inside there’s a little antenna and just a splash of brains. Individually, they’re a low level eye drone, but together they’re an all seeing eye. A panopticon.”

I call bullshit. “No way, man. You’d have no way to control them. They’d just float around randomly. Their field of vision would be a Picasso fractal of leaving town on the prevailing wind. Good luck training a d-bot to stitch that together.”

“Ha!” Liam is amused. “You’re a panic, Xan. And correct. They do blow away, but they’re made of dirt, light, and nothing. I can make more. And the visuals may be a cubist nightmare, but I’m not making a tourism commercial. I don’t care what people look like. I care what they do. I’m making a heatmap of intent.”

“I don’t see how that’s any easier… Fuck. You’re using my threat detector.” I clutch my brow. Now I’m involved in this. Perfect.

“Yes.” says Liam. “The Panopticon can’t give a detailed view of what people are doing. Its overlapping field of view makes human scale motions too chaotic for a d-bot to stitch together. But it excels at catching the microexpressions to reveal a person’s personality, emotions, interests, and mental problems.

“So I can’t see that Jimmy-Bob is buying breakfast, but I can know that a 30 year old, white, male, bi-sexual, sociopath, crypto-bro affiliate, is hungry and moving with intent to satisfy that urge. It’s more abstract, but also more useful. Because with an eyedrone, I wouldn’t know he was getting breakfast until he got to the diner. But with the panopticon, I know he’s getting breakfast before he leaves his house. Which gives me time to plan a little surprise for him.”

I think. “But you still don’t know who he is.”

“If I know what he’s going to do, I don’t care who he is. I was trying to make a magic mirror, and ended up with a crystal ball. Your threat detector has exceeded all expectations - with a little modification. But I still can’t find the man who threatens me most.”

“Harkon?”

“Who? The vigilante? Fuck that guy, I don’t care about him. I can’t find Big Cheddar.”

I slowly sit down next to the spider-bot, my brain overheating. While I was struggling against a single do-gooder, Liam has been using my invention to hunt down the most powerful person in Bright City. I have set my expectations far too low. It’s possible I spend too much time screwing around and playing games.

Liam keeps talking - either oblivious or uncaring of my small breakdown. “So yeah, I need some tech support here. Why isn’t Big Cheddar showing up on my threat detector?”

I respond absentmindedly. “Maybe he isn't a threat to you.”

“He wants to cram the entire population into sleep-pods to extract wealth from them. I’d say that’s a threat.”

I shrug. “It’s pretty abstract. If we classify seeking-economic-advantage as a threat, the whole city’s gonna light up.”

“Surely there’s a distinction here. A difference between trying to make a bit of money, and trying for absolute control over millions of people.”

I take a deep breath. Sigh. “What do you want, Liam?”

“Fix your threat detector so I can find Big Cheddar.”

“I don’t work for free.”

The spider-bots poisoned mandibles twitch, then still. “Fine. Another bag of crypto?”

“No.” If Liam’s using my invention to further his ambitions, I’m gonna use his for mine. “I need a few people found too.”