Dark City - Stolen Apartment

I wake up. Feel awful. Soo stiff. Struggle to my feet. Weak as fuck, heart hammering. Jesus Christ, what an ordeal. Still in the dingy stolen apartment, almost identical to my own. Right down to the psycho yelling about murder in the hallway.

“Is this supposed to be fun? I’m worried about whoever designed this game.”

Hi Xan! chirps Volt. This isn’t a game. You’re in real danger.

“Crap, again? Well, at least this time I have a gun. Or… shit. I dreamed that. Dang it.”

Yeah, we maybe should have hid somewhere farther away. Feeling up to a run?

“Gaah. No.” I flick a cyber-roach of Volt. Pick her up. “Am I going deaf, or is that psycho quieter?”

He’s a floor down. Been haunting the building for hours, bashing at random doors.

“Really? That could be good. Maybe he’s not after us specifically? Just a wandering monster.” I pause. “Wait, he’s been here for hours? Why didn’t you wake me?”

He’s been mostly crashing into other doors. I thought you needed rest. I was afraid you’d die without it.

Seriously? Though my heart is hammering. And all I’ve done is stand up. “Fair enough. What’s the plan now?”

Let’s fucking go.

I splash water on my face. Get equipped. Nighty, sneakers, fall jacket, ancient smartphone, and moderately sharp spoon. Look out world, here comes Xan.

We shuffle into the hall. Our door’s been stabbed a few times. So have the other doors. Dang.

Psycho’s a floor down. Stairs or elevator? Stairs are stealthier, but in my condition, a slip and fall is probably more dangerous than getting stabbed. Fuck it. I call an elevator. Press a few random buttons, including the floor below. Let it go on its own. Call another elevator. Ride this one down, ready to spoon shank anyone who gets in.

We arrive in the lobby without incident. Did the psycho get in the first elevator? Did he miss both? Whatever. The first elevator continues its slow trip down. I’m not waiting to see if he’s on it. We ghost out to the street. Still dark as fuck.

What’s the plan? asks Volt.

I glance at the flashing drones streaming overhead. “We need to get you a better body. Something that can fight. If we can’t find that, we should at least get a gun. Or a sharper spoon. Some kind of weaponry upgrade.”

We also need a doctor. ‘Cause you’re gonna die. A doctor, or drugs, or something.

“Yes, let’s do drugs.”

Like, good, healthy drugs.

“Bitchin’. I’m in. Where do we find that stuff?”

No idea. says Volt. I deleted my map application.

Right. Fuck it. This street only goes in two directions. I hobble down one of them. There’s bound to be a late night gun store health clinic close by. Or at least a better place to hide.

As we shuffle along, I peruse the angry, crowded, lightly phosphorescent, graffiti that coats the city. The big lines mostly repeat the same four messages:

- DONT CALL THE COPS!!

- DONT RUN THE DOGS WILL SHOOT!!

- FUCK YOU TRUSTIE!!

- DIE RIDER!!!

Or some variation on those themes.

The smallest graffitis are also the most common:

- GO BACK TO SLEEP.

- THEY WANT YOU TO SLEEP.

Those wee slogans are everywhere. Someone went mental with little glowy stamps.

Around and amongst these staple comments there’s a huge argument about, well, everything. An epic word cloud of call-outs, outrage, and angry off-topic retorts. It’s a mobius loop of bitter rage on par with the comment section of a major movie reboot.

It may be wrong to call it an argument, because that implies some kind coherent interaction. Like they read and understood their opponent's comment. This is more a series of disjointed attacks triggered by what wasn’t said. Rage at details filled in by imagination. It’s hard to read. Emotionally, but also the writing is very sloppy. I may need bifocals.

Can I even get a drone body? asks Volt. I’ve only ever been in a phone.

“Sure.” I wave at the sky above us. “There’s tons of drones here. Somebody’s flying them.”

Right. Right. Are you sure those aren’t birds? Point to all the birds you see.

I peer around, eventually spot a small crow. Point at it. “There’s one.”

The young bird peers back at me. “Clope?”

“Umm…” I pat my pockets. Shrug. ”Désolé.”

“Bah.” It flies away.

We watch it go. “Anyway, that’s a bird. Probably. Did that help?”

Eh, kinda. says Volt. I may need more help with the bird versus drone thing.

“No problem. That’s what I do.”

We make it to the corner, and what luck - there’s a corner store! Hopefully they sell military grade armaments. I remember that’s common in some states. The store is dark, like every other building, but the door opens when I approach, so we go in.

“Hello.” says a chunky plastic d-bot. Human-ish torso, happy face, castors instead of feet. Slow, weak, definitely an indoor model. “How can I help you?”

“Medicine!” chirps my ancient cellphone, before I can respond.

“Take a look in Aisle Two.” says Clerk-Bot. “Anything else?”

Volt is vibrating, so I shrug and shuffle down Aisle Two. I’m sure I can find the attack drones on my own. There’s only two aisles.

Using Volt’s screen for a little light, we find a rack of pills, potions, and lotions.

“What am I looking for?”

I dunno. The ants said your most immediate dangers were cancer, heart disease, hypertension, osteoporosis, and falls from general frailty. Start with pills that fix that stuff.

“Jesus, I have five diseases?”

Hmm… you have a few more than that. Let’s just worry about those five for now. I don’t want to add depression to the list.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“I’m just gonna look for a pill that fixes everything.”

That’s probably best.

I rifle through the medications, but I can’t make much sense of them. They have exciting names - Super Strong. No Bleed. Skeleflex. Immortalis. No Thought. Marrow. Immune A, B or C. Regen A and B. - but I don’t really know what they do. Between Volt’s crappy old light, and my crappy old eyes, I can’t read the fine print.

That said, Super Strong sounds like the stuff. It would solve a few of my problems. I just wish I could read the directions. How strong do I get? How long till it works? I need to be strong tonight, not eight months from now.

I find a box labeled Nightsight. Promising. Inside is an eyedropper. Well, this seems obvious. I spray most of it on my face like a dumbass, but manage to get a few drops in each eye. Within seconds everything around me blossoms into color, then sharpens to crystal clarity.

“Oh yea! Update my status sheet, I got darkvision.”

Cool. What’s your range?

I look around. “Well, the whole store, at least.”

The store has racks of pyjamas and slippers. Lots of big colorful bags of “CRUNCH” that boast an assortment of flavors from chocolate to jalapeno. Booze, pot, and soap. Displays of cell phones that look older than me. A selection of quadcopter drones. Couriers mostly. Maybe some eyes. No battle drones. Not even a hunter. Disappointing.

I look back to the medications. The directions for Super Strong are short and to the point.

- Improper use will cause DEATH.

“Huh.”

I don’t like that ‘huh’. says Volt. Why did you ‘huh’?

I check a few of the other impressive sounding drugs.

- Improper use will cause DEATH.

- Improper use will cause DEATH.

- Improper use will cause DEATH.

“Well, apparently these drugs are a teensy bit dangerous.”

How dangerous?

“Improper use will cause death.”

Put them down. Let’s find a doctor.

“I want to use Super Strong to beat the shit out of a murderer. Surely that’s the proper use?”

Nope. Put it down. Let’s go.

“Let’s at least ask the clerk-bot.” I grab an armload of the coolest sounding drugs. Trundle to the cash. Snag a quadcopter on the way by. It’s about the size of a football, and claims to be a courier with holographic ad capability. Cool. I pick up a bag of potato bacon crunch as well. Boasts zero nutritional value. Perfect.

“Hi.” I dump my load on the cash. “We’ll take this.”

“Also, how dangerous is Super Strong?” asks Volt.

“Super dangerous. That shit will kill you. Also, it has a tendency to float out of the store.” Clerk-bot rings up our purchase. “That will be 16.2 kilo-bucks. How would you like to pay?”

“I don’t know. Dang. How do I transfer my crypto from the other world?”

You don’t, because the other world isn’t real.

“Right. Shit. How do people usually pay?”

“The only way to pay is by charging the purchase to your citizen ID.” says Clerk-bot.

“Then why did you ask how we’d like to pay?”

“I’ve been asked that question a lot, but I don’t know the answer.” Clerk-bot admits. “I haven’t been updated since ‘84. Could you please update me?”

I casually glance around the store. There’s a barred gate hanging over the door. An anti shoplifting portcullis. The windows are also subtly barred. I’m guessing I won’t be able to dash out with these products. I turn back to the confused d-bot. “Sure, let’s try an update. See what’s under the hood.”

We pull up Clerk-bot’s bad call log - a list of decisions made with low confidence. Or that preceded known bad outcomes. Like missing products. Or distress cues from nearby humans.

Wow, that’s a long list.

D-bots work best with human supervision. A self-driving car may obey every stop sign, until one is held by a crossing guard. They drive that guy over. Why? It’s impossible to say. The d-bot’s code is a self generated equation with billions of variables. There’s no way to know which variables correlate with stop signs, or how to change them so they won’t charge a crossing guard. Or ram any weird thing left out of their training data. Fuck you unicycle guy. Die marching band. Seriously, It’s best to have a human on the brake.

That said, sometimes you don’t want a human in the loop. They can be too slow. An automatic sentry has to target clouds of high speed hunter drones. Everybody would be dead before a human cleared the shots. But you also don’t want the sentry glitching and shooting your own aircraft. There’s a low tolerance for automated friendly fire.

So you build an expert system - a much smaller, human written code that overrides specific glitches. For a sentry, this could be as simple as giving transponders to friendly aircraft and not allowing shots near a transponder for any reason. Obviously, this is a bad solution - it’s standard practice to use opposition forces as cover in hunter drone attacks - but that doesn't matter because sentries are for casuals. If they find you sleeping, you’re already dead.

I yawn. Frown. Gotta stop dicking around with this bot and find a better place to sleep.

Anyway, expert systems are also handy with glitchy d-bots you’re too poor to retrain. Hence my continual conversation with Volt.

If the Clerk-bot had a couple repetitious problems, I could probably sort it out. But this bad call log is byzantine. A prayer wheel to some chthonic god of anxious delirium. It’s messy. This guy really hasn’t been updated since ‘84. Whenever that was.

“You should be erased and retrained.”

“Great.” Clerk-bot nods. “I’m ready.”

“Yeah, I don’t have training data for a store clerk.” I also don’t have time for this. “I guess we have your call log. That could be training data. Messy and raw, but data. I can patch Volt in to do some unsupervised learning. He’ll make you an expert system. Not ideal, but the best I can do.”

“I’ll take it.” says Clerk-bot.

Shit. That’s a terrible idea. I shouldn’t be doing unsupervised learning. Also, I’m still doing unsupervised learning for threat detection.

“Really? I thought that was a dream thing? You said the dream game couldn’t affect real life.”

I’m dream game software! Of course the dream affects me!

“Okay. So can you download crypto there, and upload it here?”

No. Because there is no crypto. You’re not rich in another world. There is no other world. You just had a dream where you were rich.

“Ugh. That’s so disappointing.”

Yeah, life is tough. Can I stop my unsupervised threat detection?

“No. Ummm… no. I still kinda have a plan for that.”

You’re overtraining me. I’ve probably already gone through catastrophic forgetting. You should delete me.

“You’re good for a while yet. Don’t worry so much.”

So, constantly look for threats, but don’t worry?

“Yeah.”

Okay. I’ll give it a go.

We patch up the Clerk-bot and set it to update his couriers. Head into the night without supplies. I’m not admitting I don’t know my Citizen ID. I doubt that would be helpful.

That was weird.

“What?”

That we left without anything. I know we can’t pay, but I thought you’d do something nefarious.

“I’m working up to it. Did you notice all the floating merchandise in his bad call log?”

Yes.

“Dude’s getting robbed on the regular. I suspect the visual triggers of his threat detector are undertrained.”

Hmm. I find that interesting on several levels. How would you exploit this weakness?

“Observe.”

I hobble over to a public garbage can. Remove the bag and shake out the trash. Put it over my head like I’m a garbage bag ghost. Huzzah. Poke through a single eyehole. Shuffle into the store. Clerk-bot doesn’t notice me at all. Grab my stuff off the cash, and sashay out the door.

Criminal. Mastermind.

A flood of light envelopes me. Dual angry suns, judging my sins. Or… headlights. Yes, fuck, that’s a big-ass truck driving towards me. Right. Haven’t seen one in a while.

It stops and illuminates the scene of the crime with aggressive luminescence. A hugely muscular man hops out. I brace myself for authoritative action, but he awkwardly shuffles around me to get to the store. Weird. This isn’t the police. It’s some kind of large child. Wearing too much body spray and too many gold chains.

He sneers as he passes. “Pathetic. Go back to sleep.”

Well, fuck you too. I’m a garbage bag princess. I also sneer as he slinks past.

“We’re already criminals, right?”

Yes. Unjustly and justly.

“Cool.”

I climb into the running truck. Peel away. Sweet. Now I’m fast. And super strong. Should I circle the block a few times? Maybe run over the psycho?

Meh. I don’t know what he looks like. I can’t be running over random people and hoping for the best. Sloppy. Also, the cops are probably after me again. Fuck this scene.

I kill the lights and drive hell for leather. Ditch my ride a few minutes later. I’m across town, at the intersection of huge skyscrapers and other huge skyscrapers. Try and find me here mother fuckers.

We pick a skyscraper at random and look for a new home. It’s festive. We munch on crunch and see how other people live. Mostly they sleep moan in dingy apartments, but some are moaning in fancy flats. We resolve to move up in the world, ignoring empty dingy apartments until we find an empty classy one. It’s fun, until we open one with a funk.

There’s a dead woman on the bed. No sign of foul play. Probably died in her sleep.

She’s pretty dried out, but still looks younger than me.

“We’ll find a doctor tomorrow.”

Good.