Dark City - Cozy Triplex

“...and then at the end of the meeting we realized Make-Worse was there. She’s working both sides.”

“That duplicitous bitch.” Henry pauses. “Actually, I think I already knew that. She may have told us at our first meeting.”

We’ve hooked up with Henry after an excessive amount of sneaking around. Pretty sure we didn’t lead any psychos here, monkey or otherwise. He’s crashing in a small triplex in an older part of town. Lots of smaller buildings packed tight. We’re around the kitchen table. Andrew’s tucked into bed with a random old fat guy.

“Anyway, that’s what we know.” says Soca. “We may win the election. They’re probably gonna wake people to stop that. Or try to scare us off. And there’s some new bot that’s been lurking around.”

“Hmm. Yes. Yes, yes, yes.” muses Henry. “Not sure what to do with all that. I guess we’ll tell everybody at the meeting tomorrow.”

We give him a moment. Sit in silence.

“That’s it?”

Henry shrugs. “That's all I got.”

“Who is this Mayor Boxer anyway?”

“Don’t know exactly. Does it matter?” asks Henry. “Some asshole who wants to own everything. I can’t keep them all straight.”

We spend a few hours puttering around the small home. Henry’s hell bent on cleaning, and it’s hard to watch without helping. Sometime after lunch, Soca pulls me aside.

“This sucks. Let’s get out of here.”

We get back to tidying, but now Soca ponders aloud the small inadequacies of the apartment’s cleaning supplies. Is this brush too scratchy? Has this soap expired? Is this a rag or a bandana?

Eventually, Henry sends us off with a shopping list. Thank fucking god.

“Why were we cleaning that place?”

“I have no idea.”

“Are we actually getting cleaning supplies?”

“The fuck no. We’re getting food and booze. That’ll slow Henry down so we can all relax.”

We find a store, update the clerk-bot, then rob it blind.

“Why did we update the clerk-bot?” asks Soca.

“I’m helping them see better.”

“Do we actually want that?”

Shit. That’s a good point. “Maybe not? It’s part of a plan to help Volt see better. I don’t think it’s a big deal. We’ve only updated 7 or 8 bots.”

We have updated 19,321 bots.

“Um, what?” I shake my head. Give the bugbot on my shoulder a sharp look. “No we haven’t.”

2 holodrones, 8 clerk-bots, 2,432 bug-bots (of which 824 remain functional), and 16,879 courier-drones.

“Oh shit. I forgot we set the clerk-bots to automatically update their courier drones. I thought they’d have, like, 6 drones each.”

The clerks don’t have dedicated couriers. They’re dispatched to whatever job is closest to their last delivery to minimize empty travel time. This drastically increases the amount of cargo the drone fleet can deliver.

“Makes sense.” I look at the continual hoard of courier drones swirling overhead. “Whoops.”

Soca sighs. “Is it working? Can they see better? Can Volt see better?”

It’s hard for me to tell. Is that a drone or a bird?

My little bug points towards a mosquito on ‘roids. It’s the size of my hand with an unhealthy glisten.

“Good god. That’s either a mutated bug or a bio-engineered drone. I’m not sure which is worse.”

Soca takes a step back and brandishes the shillelagh. I heft my bag of beer and junk food. Fucking thing is alarming. Its proboscis looks wet.

Okay, so that’s a hard one to identify. I definitely feel there’s a creepy guy behind you.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“What?” I spin. Half a block behind us is an off-kilter, smiling bot. “Aww fuck. This guy again.”

The stalker-bot places us in something of a quandary. We could lose it with our truck, but we left the truck at the triplex. If we go back for it, we’d probably have to move Henry again. And I just spent hours cleaning that fucking apartment.

“It’s also a pain in the ass to move Andrew.”

“And Gary.”

“Who’s Gary?”

“The guy in bed with Andrew.”

“Why would we take him?”

Soca shrugs. “Why do we take Andrew?”

“Jesus Fucking Christ, let’s just not go back. We can hook up with them at the meeting tomorrow.”

Soca makes an unhappy hrrm sound. “Do you know if Henry took his pills?”

“No.”

Soca shakes his head. “Probably hasn’t taken them in days.”

“Okay, fuck.” I give Soca our supplies and take the shillelagh. “You get Henry pilled up, I’ll take this fucking thing on a walk through town.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’ll see you at the meeting. One of us should sleep in a clean apartment.”

We split up, Soca leaving first, me waiting til he’s out of sight before poking away in the opposite direction. The stalker-bot and skitter-drone both follow me. Perfect.

I ponder my options as we lead it away. My best plan is to head downtown. Find another truck. Or an apartment megaplex. Run or hide. Either would let me lose this guy. Hell, if I find a truck, I can run him over then drive back to Gary’s place. Call that Plan A.

That said, trucks aren’t that common. Most nights I never see one. It’s tempting to try Plan A with the shillelagh. That’s what Henry would do. But the Bright City aesthetic of the stalker slows my roll. If it can move like them, my attack could end rather badly. Or maybe It’s just a skinny version of the standard, shitty Dark City bot. Hard to say. Probably better to hide. Which is frustrating, because I shouldn’t have to.

My tentacular squid suit hides me from every other d-bot. How does this one keep finding me? Probably the same way the psycho does.

Fuck.

I figure the psycho tracks me through Volt. She’s unavoidably connected to the internet, and is likely beaming my location in a number of subtle ways. Stalker-bot has probably latched on to those signals as well. It can’t see me, but it’s tracking whatever Volt is continually pumping out.

The obvious solution - getting rid of Volt - is shit. She’s my interface to the Bright City game, and I don’t intend to give that up. Also, she’s my friend. And I still have several failing organs, so psycho stalkers are likely a temporary problem.

That said, Henry is not particularly mobile. If I want to hang with him, I’ll have to figure something out.

“Do you still need my phone if you’re loaded onto the bugbots?”

Probably? The bugbots are self made garbage eaters. Their hardware is a bit potluck. I’d prefer to operate from a central system, and use the bugs as expendable drones. But it doesn’t have to be your phone.

Hmm. That opens some options. I could load Volt into a holodrone and have her fly away. Keep contact with her through a bugbot. If they can track bugbots, there’s enough in the city to keep them busy. Too busy to find me. I probably should get Volt a few back up bodies anyway. It’s possible that my imminent death prognosis has affected my long term planning.

So, I’ve got a plan, but it’s no immediate solution. Can’t be fucking around with drones while this guy watches me. Probably? I don’t really know if him watching is a problem, but I’d rather he didn’t. What would someone planning on living do?

There’s no trucks or megaplexes coming up, but there is a large industrial building straight ahead. It’s on a large lot down by a river. There’s a fenced perimeter, but it has several open gates to three different streets. The inside is probably a maze of offices, storage, and industrial fabrication. If I lead the stalker-bot in, I should be able to ghost him.

Good enough.

As I approach the building, signage indicates it’s a nuclear power plant. Which doesn’t really matter for my purposes, but is unexpected. They should probably shut the gates. I imagine the front door will be locked, but no, it is not. Wonderful.

I pass through a lobby, some offices, and into some kind of control room. It’s halfway modern, big switches and buttons next to touchscreens and monitors. Opening the door triggers the lights and a hologram of a dude in a labcoat. Some kind of d-bot virtual technician similar to Vet-bot. He’s visibly excited.

“Who’s here? Is it a human? Are you here to update me?”

Volt and I share a leery look.

“Nope. Just passing through.”

“Could you update me anyway?”

“Uhh… we’re kinda in the middle of a thing. Don’t really have time.”

“Okay. Okay... Could you at least look around and tell me if anything stands out as unusual?”

“Sure.” I do a little performance of looking around as we edge towards the far door. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Everything looks good.”

Nuke-bot deflates a little. “Whew. That’s a relief. All my sensors are in the red, and I don’t know why. It was starting to worry me.”

I pause at the far door. What would someone planning on living do?

“Fuck. Okay. I know a little about d-bot control systems, but fuck all about nuclear power. I could update you, but this is more serious than what I’m used to. Perhaps we could find someone more qualified to help. Is there someone who is supposed to update you?”

“Yes. Chief Engineer Wilson.”

“Perfect. Do you know where he lives?”

“He doesn’t. He’s right over there.” The Tech-bot points to a mummified corpse propped up at a corner desk.

“Oh shit. I did not see him there. It’s possible I should try harder when looking for unusual things.”

My threat detector is redlining.

“Yes, thank you. Fuck. Okay, we’re still on a time crunch. I think I hear the skitter-bot. Let’s give this fella our usual nannycam upgrade and fuck off. We’ll also take this to tomorrow’s meeting to get some better help.”

A few minutes later, we’re chugging out of the plant, having lost our pursuers. Climbing up from the river to the main streets I marvel at my new found strength. Couldn’t climb this hill a week ago. It dawns on me that I may not die of natural causes.