Jesse's Blog

I’d sell my soul to wipe my eyes, but it’s already impounded.

Pass 3,714 of District 19, 2am to 3am. I’ve seen a stray cat, a tired waitress, two delivery trucks, and several sets of blinds getting shifted around. There’s the ever present window movement that’s really just a television cycling colors in room devoid of conscious thought, which around this time of day is the blind leading the blind. My job sucks.

My current score is 19,247. I lost a couple hundred points this morning loitering too long in the previous district. My relief got jammed up, District 19 had a window of opportunity, and Mother Corp risked violating her sacred Service Agreement, and so I watched the score fall without so much as a “for shame” coming over the audio feed. The Score makes a climbing pitch sound when it goes up, and a lowering pitch sound when it falls. Lowering like descending into hell.

I think I’m 24 years old, but it’s really hard to tell any more. We are discouraged from tracking the passage of time. I don’t have a date stamp anywhere, and the filtering system on my eyes blurs date stamps before I can recognize them. I’ve tried to outrace it before, and the result is that descending pitch sound. You quit that pretty quick.

Anyway, at 24, your twitch reflex is pretty strong, and so the movement in my peripheral vision causes me to spin round and focus. There’s something moving, and so I approach, lowering down for a better look. The drizzle has blurred my lenses a bit, so I have to move in. You’d think they’d fix that.

There’s a stack of cardboard boxes precariously perched next to a dumpster in the alley by the apartment building. One of them is still in motion, falling. I switch to thermals, looking for the motive force that caused the slide. The box, the carton from the latest gaming system from Mother Corp, can’t be moving on it’s own, can it? I catch a spot of color, approach even closer, focus. It’s the cat.

Ten minutes left. I find myself wishing, please, let someone stupid cross my path.
“Ha, noob.” That’s ChrisRoxx7580. Behind him, I hear his little tribe all snarking at me. I’ve never understood that. How can these losers overwatch others and still rack any points themselves? I mean, ChrisRoxx7580 is fifth on the leaderboard; he’s nearly out, and yet it never fails that if I lose time, he’s right there jeering at me. I pull the overwatch board for a second. I see the feed from dozens of us, all moving through light and dark neighborhoods, all circling for morons like vultures hoping for a corpse, and in a few cases, the red-blue-red flashes of a score. Next Page buttons would let me see more; these are just the feeds from nearby districts, but who has time?

Another flicker. It’s not the waitress, but it iss a dark doorway on her path. I swing round, gain altitude, and go into silence as I take position.

White male, 17, 5’ 9”, 190 pounds. Face obscured by a hoodie with a screen that’s reflective on my side. He’s avoiding face recognition. He’s meat.

The waitress‘s heels are clocking slow and even on the pavement. She’s getting closer. *He swings out, hands coming out of his pockets. I catch a glimpse of a knife. I fire.

The taser could kill him. I almost hope it does; if he hadn’t hidden his face, I could have checked his stats against his corporate health care records to look for other non lethal options like electromagnetic interruption of alpha wave, but that thing will eat my battery, and I can’t afford a pit stop tonight. He drops, spasming. I turn on my flashers, and the pavement cycles red and blue.

The waitress steps right over him. I hear her snicker a little.

I descend my drone just above him and fire the “cuff”; it’s a tiny little circuit that interrupts his neural function, paralyzing him and placing his location on the local collection system. He’ll be here about three minutes while the wagon comes to collect him.

I reach a probe out and spark him just before the parlay action kicks in, flopping him on his back. I cut through the reflective screen and pull it back, getting a look at his face. Gerald Ozark, 18, two past offenses in grade school. Oh man, strike three; payday.

I hear the rising tone, and check; 19,984. Waiting for the paddywagon, I think through the math. My sentence is 65,000 points. It’s going to take me another 61 arrests like this one. 61 idiots, thinking they can cheat the system, break the law, steal from the corp. 61 more arrests before they finally disconnect me from the enforcement system, disconnecting me from the drone that has become my entire existence.

I scan around, hoping. Just 61 more arrests until I get my body back.