The day after the art “tourney,” I got woken up at a truly ungodly hour. My room was dark, and I was pleasantly engulfed in a pile of pillows and thick blankets, hibernating in my cold rooms. I didn't have to keep the rooms cold, but I like to sleep with lots of blankets, and the cold kept everything more comfortable. It did make getting out of bed a little more painful, though. But what's the point of being the boss if I couldn't sleep in?
The door chime was insistent though. I shouted, “Voice! Silence alert!” And then I pulled a quilt over my head and snuggled down again.
The door chimed again. “Voice! Silent!”
The door continued chiming. “Voice! Why won't you turn that off!”
The door continued chiming, adding a tuneful accompaniment to the monotone answer, “Oscar Hanson is on the list of overriding officers.”
Oscar Hanson’s title was Marketing VP. Basically he was our PR guy, as I'm not sure we had done any marketing ever since we pushed our first armor programs. I was a little surprised and confused about having him at my door that morning, he literally had never once come to me with an unscheduled problem. Generally, he just dealt with manuals and branding for various products. Once in a while, we had some sort of press event. Lately, he had been spending his time doing daily admin work for various community events. Like the art thing yesterday.
“Voice! Set temp to 70. Lights on. Where is my robe...” Vents began pushing warmer air into the room while I dug about for some clothes. The lights helped, but otherwise, I found clothes on my own. Finally, I gave up and just pulled a blanket around my waist so I could open my door.
Voice was the Arcology’s AI assistant. It was a bit better than the set of last-gen AIs, mostly just because it was able to piggyback off all the other automation advancements. It just integrated with smart tech much better than it used to. Voice wasn’t true AI – no singularity even today, so far as I know – but rather it was a very complicated set of algorithms and voice recognition and so forth. Lots of customization is involved, but I just left it at the default settings.
Hanson (no relation) was a tall, square-jaw, perfect-hair sort of guy. Despite the early hour, he was in an old-fashioned gray suit. As soon I let the door open, he walked right in. He spoke right away, before I could say good morning, “You need to get dressed, whatever happens, it will need your attention. Or at least it needs the appearance of your attention.”
“Slow down, Oscar. You've heard me tell the geeks and I know you know better. Assume I know nothing. And do you know what time it is?”
“It's a quarter to eight. You turned off your alarms again, didn't you? I thought you checked the feeds every day when you woke up, but I guess you haven't gotten to it yet?" He was gesturing with both hands as he spoke, holding up his phone, pointing to the sensors on my walls. "The kidnapping, Lena Green? You gave her sister an award for sculpture yesterday? The castle is blowing up, and people are freaking out.” He went into my bedroom and began rooting through the closet, pulling out clean clothes.
“Kidnapping?” I probably needed some coffee, although Oscar's agitation was a little contagious. I think I was also distracted by the slacks and shirt he pressed into my hands. He didn’t pull underwear out, so I took care of that on my own.
“There's a press conference in fifteen minutes, you really need to be there. Barker is good, but he's still just a fancy rent-a-cop. There'll be questions he shouldn’t and can't answer.” Oscar finally stopped for a moment, then all but fluttered at me, shaking his head and performing credible jazz hands. “Get dressed!”
So I got dressed. While I started to comply, he finally began filling me in with some details.
The Green family had celebrated after the contest. They ended up in one of the children and family promenades. Trees, grassy hills, rounded rock ledges and boulders perfect for climbing, little tunnels and caves that let you hide without being far away or hard to find. It was a lot like that Tom Sawyer island at Disneyland, if you remember the place. While there, the family's littlest child, a two-year-old named Lena, disappeared. Almost a classic situation – mother and father focus on an older child for a moment, and the little one disappears.
When I had gone to bed, the search was just getting started. The immediate assumption was that she had just wandered off. There were plenty of nooks in the area for a kid to hide in, and the surrounding booths and shops were mostly things that delight small children. Candy makers, toy makers of all varieties, arcades, singing, puppet shows, and so on. But it was pretty clearly established that the little girl wasn't there.
While telling me all those details, Oscar was fussing over me like a lady's maid. Before long he had me in dark slacks, a white polo shirt, and a blue sport coat. He even pulled a comb and spray bottle from out of nowhere and changed my hair from actual bedhead into something just tousled. I guess appearances matter for marketing and PR, either that or he'd worked through college at Men’s Warehouse or something.
As soon as we set foot out in the hallway Oscar turned into a new man. The rapidly moving hands stilled and fell to his sides in a comfortable pose as he walked, his shaky head movements slowed into calm glances at me and passers-by. He took the lead with a brisk walk – clearly, we were going somewhere and not idling, but there was none of the huffing or swinging elbows that come with hurrying – letting me fall into step beside him as we made our way. My apartment was on the out ridge instead of a tower, so we only needed to take one elevator to reach our destination. It helped that a lot of the main administrative areas had grown up near where I had put my apartment in the first place.
I'm not sure what I expected, but there was a full-blown impromptu press conference going on. Juan Barker was currently fielding questions, letting the press know what he knew, which wasn't much. Juan looked like a cop – not terribly large, but with the clear build of a previously muscular man giving in to middle age, dome of his head balding and shiny in the glare, but eyes firmly watching the crowd in front of him. Tan pants, a dark blue polo, a badge pinned to his chest. Somehow he looked more intimidating than he did back when he’d been wearing full armor and tackling me in the parking garage.
He faced each questioner directly, saying as I walked in, “The family wasn't covered by our cameras when the disappearance happened. However, at this time we have to assume that she was taken, and not merely lost.”
Bedlam.
Juan picked out a question from the crowd, “Our camera coverage is minimal. There are a few placed for large coverage in each of the promenades, and all the elevators and transports have a camera as well. But the fact is, it isn't terribly hard to avoid them. The only areas we’ve made any attempt at full coverage is in the various entry ports.”
Bedlam again.
Juan was savvier than I would have assumed. I was here, and he was going to make sure I took over this mess. My chief of security knew exactly where the buck stopped, “Yes, cameras are minimal. There has never been a real problem here with vandalism or random violence. The decision to not go for greater coverage was made at the highest levels.”
Instead of bedlam, the reporters followed his gesture and saw me. And then bedlam again, as I blinked at the camera flashes.
I probably couldn't tell you any of the specific questions shouted at me from the mass of the sixth estate. Or is it fifth? The press, I mean. But despite the chaos and the inability to make out anything beyond a roar of sound and the blur of faces behind lights, it was possible to pick out general themes. I waited a moment, while I shook Juan's hand and thanked him.
Then I turned and addressed them, my body language mimicking the cop's. I leaned forward without actually putting weight on the podium and spoke, “Like Mr. Barker said, we've never had a real need for cameras. Add in our intention to maintain the civil rights that we were all accustomed to, despite this environment, we purposefully kept surveillance to a minimum.”
Bedlam again, so I opted to continue instead of changing the subject, “Why are you asking this? We covered all this years ago when the Arcology first expanded. None of the rational has changed...”
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I trailed off, lost in my own thoughts for a moment. No bedlam yet, but one reporter jumped into my pause, “But hasn't the situation changed? We have families here, communities. Just because we don't have the chaos that happens outside doesn't mean there aren't threats. That's what's happening now – a little girl has been taken. You could have prevented it!”
And then bedlam again.
I had wanted to make this place into a utopia. I thought we were in a place where I could realize some of Ford and Disney's old dreams, but maybe people are people. And people suck, even when they don't. The press conference wrapped up quickly enough, there just wasn't that much to share yet. All we could do was listen to the panic that people were working themselves into.
We left to the central security office, where Barker had a little conference room set up. Oscar peeled off to speak to a man and woman sitting on the side. I’d seen them yesterday, it was Lena’s parents, Marcus and Tiffany Green. I’m sure you’ve seen their pictures, so I won’t belabor them any. I doubt they’d slept any since yesterday and looked it. Both had deep lines on their faces, whitened knuckles, and drooping heads. Oscar spoke softly, doing his best to comfort them while we all watched reports coming in.
Sitting down, I joined them as Barker and a couple of his men worked at a big whiteboard. The board had a few maps of the arcology, with areas circled, crossed out, and otherwise noted as searches went on.
I was surprised to see a few photos up next to the maps, with a circle around one old lady. “Juan, I thought there weren't any suspects? Who's she?”
Juan didn't bother to look at the board, “The girl's grandmother. Mary Overstreet. The Greens were certain she was involved, even though there wasn't any evidence at all that she was in the promenade with them when Lena disappeared. They did have a ton of documentation about her though – the old lady has been harassing them for years and threatening to take their children away. I guess she tipped off the deep end when her only daughter got married.”
“We haven’t gotten too involved. We found her shouting outside their apartment a couple of weeks ago, so we barred her from the Green's quarter of the arcology, including the playground promenade.”
“Last night we sent someone to talk to her, but her apartment was empty, and her cell was left behind.”
Barker continued, “I thought it seemed suspicious. We know she’s in the Arcology, but that doesn’t help much. We'd know if she had left.” He was studying the board. Despite the pictures, it was pretty bare.
“The entrances are pretty much the only place we have full surveillance. Any entrance or exit requires a face recognition scan and a voiceprint. The AI is pretty good at making sure no one hides, too, even when a guard is feeling lazy.”
“She's still inside. Somewhere. We're pretty sure she took the kid, too. Someone had to, and there isn’t anyone else likely who’s come up missing. We think she's been planning it for a while. Mrs. Overstreet used a bunch of her manufacturing credits on things like a crib, stroller, and kids' clothes. Enough to set up a kid's room and everything. It's kinda creepy, really. But none of it is in her apartment.”
I grimaced. “That's... so we know it was her. Why haven't we announced it? That we’re looking for her?” I waved my hand before he could answer, “No, no, I get it. She's already hiding, we don't want her to go and hide deeper, right?”
At his nod, I sighed. “I'm sure you've already cracked all her records, let me know if you get more. Also, be sure to keep the sheriff in the loop. See if he can get you an arrest warrant, and search warrants too. I know we don't need them, strictly...”
“But this is big enough to be extra thorough. I get it.”
At this, Oscar cut in, “One moment, Mr. Green? Mrs. Green? Why don’t you come with me and let these gentlemen get to work.”
He led them out. I don’t know where they went, I was still focused on the board. Technically, all the security officers in the arcology were deputies to the county sheriff. That gave them a fig leaf of legality to deal with the more serious crimes that got committed. There was some weirdness, where civil rights and the contractual rights of our citizens overlapped oddly, but it mostly got the job done. I tried hard not to abuse it, but sometimes it was tempting.
The search went on for three days. I joined in, as did as large a percentage of our population as we allowed to be involved. Someone physically checked each vacant living space. Despite the seriousness of the situation, I couldn’t help but focus on how unrelieved the rooms were. Identical white walls, over and over and over. Hallways where no one lived were just as white. Even in occupied spaces, the only variation was little things like doormats. Sometimes someone placed a chair or bench outside their door.
It made the whole thing surreal. Just looking at the empty spaces, day in and day out. The search was complicated because we couldn’t use drones. Back in the day when they were first being rolled out, someone had programmed into them an inability to record people. For privacy reasons, the drones were capable of seeing a person so they could be avoided as the gadget flew around but were utterly incapable of recording anyone or even indicating that a person was present. Worse the privacy detail was programmed in so deeply that it would have taken weeks to re-write it. A person could manage a single drone and override the camera feed to watch the live take, but at that point, the person might as well have been on foot doing the search on his own anyways.
During the search, we placed cameras to cover all the promenades, hallways, and non-living areas in the arcology. I got the programmers to work on including facial recognition to keep track of movement through our little city. Movement and location records were kept for one year, full video only a week, and of course motion detection was utilized to keep us from recording empty spaces. One entrepreneur even came up with a badge for people to wear. It was just this little bit of circuitry that basically worked as a cell phone and included location and biometric tracking. It allowed the wearer to interact with their own Voice throughout the Arcology. Parents could be notified immediately if something happened to a child, or even if the child just took it off. The badge was initially spread as a way to protect children, but very quickly everyone was wearing it on their chest, or wrist, or collar. I hated the badges, and never wore one.
We had moved on from residential spaces. Security was still interviewing people – there was some suspicion that the crazy lady had some help somewhere, someone else’s apartment where she could hide out. We didn’t want to just crack open every occupied apartment in the Arcology, so instead Security was mapping out her social contacts and following leads. Legal was trying to decide what sort of warrants we might need to get an entry. Being landlords, employers, and the governmental authority all rolled into one kept things iffy as per usual. In the end legal decided we ought to follow the same standards that police elsewhere had to follow.
I was walking through our refinery when the call came in. The refinery was a massive space along the northern arc of the Arcology. Drone trucks rumbled in, carrying loads of ore. The trucks were basically just big dump trucks, just without anyone sitting at the wheel. It was the road that was different. Each truck would roar in, driving along an unsupported catwalk of Plasma Steel. Under the curving catwalk was a truly stupendous hopper – an inverted pyramid. The trucks would simply dump their ore over the side of the catwalk and continue back around and outside. From where I stood, I could see four different catwalks, each with a constant stream of trucks dumping rock.
There really wasn’t anywhere to hide up here. There were a few observation spots where a person could stand and watch like I was. They were empty, and with the dust and noise, I couldn’t imagine anyone staying long. I certainly didn’t stay long.
I stepped back into a passageway and entered another little door. Here was a set of stairs following the outside of the hopper down below ground. The hopper itself was inset with hundreds of different grates, each designed and spaced to allow different-sized rocks to be separated out. Those grates had ramps that dumped the ore into varying conveyor belts carrying rock along. Each belt had an array of robot arms picking and prodding the rocks. There were even little lasers here and there that vaporized a little chunk. If I remember right, Austin had said the lasers were there to test the makeup of the ore. The arms would remove some chunks, moving them to other belts. Most of the belts would vanish into other various chambers.
Someone else was manually moving drones through those chambers. The refining process involved crushing the ore, washing it in acid, washing the acid off, subjecting it to heat, sorting the output, heating and washing it again, and all sorts of other arcane processes to turn the rocks into useable iron. The one thing most of those processes had in common was that it tended to be immediately unhealthy for a person to be in the same space. I doubt that Mrs. Overstreed had taken Lena into the refinery, but we were being thorough.
I was kinda getting angry. We had spent a ridiculous volume of resources on this arcology, and hundreds of thousands of man-hours had gone into designing it. And there was still an insane amount of wasted space. Passageways left between different production spaces, places where rooms didn’t quite fit and a gap was left instead of allowing a room to be a bit off the square. There was a crawlspace at the top of the farming area that literally stretched for miles – four feet high, two miles long, and almost a mile wide. That spot made me dizzy when I saw it – no pillars, no piping, no texture to the space at all.
It made sense to me that no one knew everything about the Arcology. How could you? The thing housed a million people and provided all their necessities with capacity to spare. We had schools and entertainment venues as well. We exported hundreds of tons of food. We had an industrial capacity that exceeded the whole of the Great Lakes region back in its heyday.
But somehow there were places that we’d built that nobody knew about. We could have been infested by a tribe of hyper-intelligent grasshoppers and never known until trash cans started disappearing. Well, maybe not, we used trash chutes instead that led to a recycling and incinerator station. Searching all those spaces was turning into an impossible task.
And all the while I had to sit down with Marcus and Tiffany a couple times a day to update them. It had been three days, and I don’t think either of them slept at all. Or ate. Or did much beyond sit and watch us work.
I don’t know if it was a relief or not to know that their daughter hadn’t been taken out of the Arcology. As impossible as the search looked, at least they knew she was close. I don’t know if that was better.
A maintenance worker finally found them. He hadn’t even been part of the search. Instead, he had been dispatched to the bowels of the arcology to find out why an air duct had quit pushing air. It happened all the time, usually because something obstructed a fan. This time he found a little nursery built right over the top of an intake vent. Blankets lined the walls and floor, making a cozy little space. Warm textures and bright colors instead of the white Plasma Steel. A crib was set up, along with another bed, a rocking chair, and other furniture. There was a refrigerator with enough stocked up food to last several weeks. The blankets and rugs also stopped nearly all the airflow, and the carbon monoxide buildup from a nearby processing plant filled the room.
Both of them looked very peaceful.