This is the fourth scene of Algorithmic Timestamp: Elliot has met up Rhea Harlow in Reset & Restore, a recovery center for tech addicts. Temperdu had scheduled Rhea to die on that day, but she laughs it off. Later that day, however, as she returns to the city, she dies in a robobike accident.
Return to the first scene of the story: Temperdu in District Zero
Read the previous scene of the story: Due Date
Mara hadn’t seen Elliot this upset since she’d divorced his father. He had come in Saturday evening, rushed to his room, and locked the door. Her ear against the door, she could hear him trying and failing to suppress his sobs. He must’ve been rejected by the girl he’d met in District Zero, she’d initially thought. So it goes. A good experience, if anything. You can’t expect to find your partner in a place like that.
But the truth was something much more sinister. Elliot spent two hours in his room before he came out to get some food. “Everything okay?” was all she’d had to ask. Queue ten tearful minutes where he explained everything that had happened to Rhea Harlow. Her Temperdu timestamp and her subsequent death.
And so early the next day she stood in front of the Arcade behind which lied District Zero. Elliot had asked her not to investigate, but how could she not? She was a detective constable and some malicious plugin was wreaking havoc on the lives of the young and malleable. She’d bring this whole place down if she had to. Seventeen years, it had given her boy. He believed it too, which made it even worse. Her heartbeat rose at the thought, in anger and fear like a double helix.
It didn’t matter that it was Sunday. The Arcade was open. These places operate constantly, and she assumed District Zero would as well. But when she asked the few employees she found wandering between the bleeping gaming machines, they were evasive. One said he’d never heard of District Zero, another said she was in the wrong place, and a third pointed her to a machine called Void Skirmish and then promptly disappeared.
She didn’t want to show her badge to any of them, because it was by now clear that the Arcade ran on automated management. Its min wage employees probably didn’t know much more than she did. A badge would only freak them out. Instead, she combed through the entire Arcade without finding any possible entry to a large space beyond its walls.
She walked back out into the glaring sunlight and walked around the premises. The building was much too large for just the Arcade. District Zero was definitely behind it. She climbed a large bin pinned into the street and vaulted the wall that surrounded the Arcade. The drop was about two yards and she cracked her knee against the pavement as she landed. She bit her knuckles in agony before looking up.
She was in a narrow alleyway littered with glass, wrappers, and a camera bolted into the wall at the far end. She turned on her incog shield to shade her presence, and right on time too. An automaton two heads larger than her turned the corner and paced her way with a strength that could crumble bones and barrels. Thankfully, because of its reliance on cameras, Mara’s shield made it blind to her presence. Careful not to step on anything that would make a sound, she moved a few yards away and pressed herself against the wall.
The automaton strode by and cracked its fist into the bricks. Mara moved her hand against her mouth to muffle her gasp. She had stood there only a few seconds ago; the punch would have killed her. Autokill settings were strictly forbidden not just in the city, but everywhere in the country. Whoever had configured the automaton had overridden every security setting of every component it was made of. She hadn’t thought that was even possible. The automaton, aware that it hadn’t hit anything except the wall, trashed its arms around, then strode back. This time, Mara closed her eyes as it passed.
She increased the strength of her incog shield to protect her against more advanced scanners and anomalies in the shield’s connectivity. It would reduce the radius of the shield, but not so much that cameras inside the building’s walls would be able to see her. Her knee still hurting, she followed the automaton around the building until she saw a ribbed door and a dispenser opposite.
There it was.
The automaton turned a corner. Not knowing when it would return, she rushed to the dispenser and interfaced with it. A single screen with nothing more than Temperdu and $5,000 underneath. She filed a note to ask Elliot how Jaxon could afford stuff like this.
There wasn’t anything else to interface with, and she certainly wasn’t going to spend five gee to investigate, so she disconnected and tried to find some kind of manual entry point into the dispenser. She sensed hidden screws at its bottom and tried to coil them out with a magnetic plugin embedded in her finger. She got one out and was halfway through the other when the dispenser discharged a lethal amount of electricity.
Years ago, when tazers were popular among hackers and thieves, Mara had upgraded her entire skin with intradermal insulation. It saved her life today. The sudden shock burned the top layer of her hand, slammed her backwards against the wall, and broke through her incog shield. The dispenser broke open and spilled dozens of unconfigured plugins on the ground. Despite the grotesque pain in her hand, arm, and chest, she grabbed a few plugins and ran. The automaton was already chasing her.
“I can see you,” it said.
With her good hand, Mara reached into her jacket and threw a hologram decoy a few yards ahead of her. She sprinted past it and, as the decoy threw up a hologram of herself, activated her shield again. The automaton leaned its shoulder forward, intending to ram her with crushing force but instead finding nothing but air as it fell through the hologram. This afforded Mara enough time to climb a vent pipe and jump across over the wall onto the street.
She clutched her hand and rolled around in pain. Passersby walked past ignoring her, some stepping over her, engrossed in their interfaces. She had long lamented society’s growing removal from the real world, but this time she was grateful to be left alone. She crawled to the wall and leaned against it to collect herself.
That was when her son called.
“Yes?” she just about managed.
“Temperdu just sent a notification,” Elliot said. His voice radiated panic. “My timestamp has changed. It’s today now. It says today. I don’t understand. Mom, I’m scared.”
Return to the first scene of the story: Temperdu in District Zero
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I'm definitely hooked.