This is the eight and final scene of Algorithmic Timestamp: Mara and Lex find themselves in Jaxon Klade’s apartment surrounded by tactical automatons. Mara thinks Temperdu finally got them, but the truth is somewhat more nuanced.
Return to the first scene of the story: Temperdu in District Zero
Read the previous scene of the story: The Fringe
It was a bad idea to run and an even worse idea to fight. Mara could have dealt with one tactical automaton, perhaps even two. Not with the eight that broke through the windows and cracked through the front door of Jaxon’s apartment. She wanted to message Elliot to say how much she loved him, but she couldn’t because he was in Reset & Restore. Offline, maybe forever. Everything was a mess; how quickly a life could turn.
Next to her, in an unusual swirl of movement, Lex reached for her hip, grabbed her pistol, and pointed it at her forehead. “One more step and she dies,” he said. To Mara’s surprise, the automatons stopped instantly. “That’s right. Your detective here nearly got me, but she wasn’t quite fast enough,” he said. He looked at her and prodded the cold pistol against her forehead, his arm outstretched.
“Drop the weapon,” the automatons said.
This wasn’t how Lex would usually act. He was a veteran criminal and would never hold a weapon this close to the person it was pointed at. Especially not someone who he knew could disarm him. Mara realized that Lex was doing this intentionally. She raised her hands, then swiftly pushed the pistol to her right while she moved her body to the left. Lex fired and the bullet ricocheted off an automaton. Mara wrenched the pistol out of his hands and swept his legs from underneath him. “You’re under arrest,” she said as she held both his hands behind his back.
The automatons swept in and took Lex off her hands, shoving and pushing him along the way. Mara had to bite her lip not to say anything. One automaton stayed with her. “How did you find us?” she asked it, still wary that the large robot might act against her, influenced by Temperdu.
But not to act suspicious, she holstered her pistol and found a memory chip lodged inside the holster that she quickly pocketed. Lex must have slipped it in as he had reached for her weapon. It was a copy of Jaxon’s wetware, she already knew. The poor boy had been unconscious the whole time. He’d wake up to an empty apartment with every window broken and a bullet lodged in the kitchen counter.
“We were given coordinates the moment the fugitive interfaced with Jaxon Klade,” the automaton said. Mara nodded and walked out, leaving the automaton in the apartment. She didn’t want to ask who the automaton had received the coordinates from, because she already knew. Temperdu. And yet she felt relieved too. The automatons hadn’t arrested her. For all its powers and reach, Temperdu didn’t seem to act against law-abiding citizens who didn’t have its plugin installed.
The automaton behind District Zero may have tried to kill her, but that had been a dumb unit with a programmed order to instakill anyone who tried to attack the dispenser. It had acted without intelligence. She was sure that other dispensers would be similarly protected. Speaking of, as she took the elevator down and interfaced with Jaxon’s memory chip, a list of coordinates called DISPENSERS floated to the top of the data pool. She plotted the coordinates on a map and was given fifteen locations around the city, including the one behind District Zero.
There was nothing Mara could do about Temperdu itself. The algorithm had grown like a virus within the city’s infrastructure. To destroy Temperdu would be to destroy the city. It had become endemic. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t anything she could do.
She rushed outside to the police carrier that the automatons were pushing Lex in and asked for Lex’s car keys. “In my right pocket,” he said. An automaton fished it out and gave them to her. Mara and Lex looked at each other. She wasn’t particularly worried about him. He’d spent years in jail before. Perhaps he’d even escape again. Become another person once more. He’d figure it out. She was reluctant to admit it, but she’d grown somewhat fond of him.
As she drove Lex’s car through the city, she was already making arrangements. She knew she’d have to hit the remaining fourteen dispensers at once, as Temperdu would tighten its defenses if she attacked its dispensers one by one. She contacted thirteen other people, mostly police, hard men and women who weren’t afraid of danger. She told them of Temperdu and the threat its plugins represented to its victims. Each was given a dispenser and the one date on which they’d all attack. They were instructed not to tell anyone of their plans, least not an algorithm or automaton.
It turned out to be a relatively straightforward job. When the date came around, Mara and her thirteen accomplices first neutralized the dumb automatons guarding the premises, then destroyed the dispensers. They poured all the plugins, thousands of them, into a machine that crushed them to dust. They didn’t inform any authorities, as the authorities would be infected with Temperdu, but they informed their families and friends and hoped that, over time, awareness about Temperdu would spread.
Mara gave up her job at the police and stayed at Reset & Restore with Elliot. He struggled hard with the fact that he’d never be able to return to the city, and she wanted to support him as best she could. He went through long days of anger, sadness, and dejection, but after a few months he no longer felt that his life had ended. They’d move to an offline community, somewhere in the forests, where life was quiet but good, where they could start again and, over time, forget about the algorithmic timestamp that had changed the course of their lives.
Return to the first scene of the story: Temperdu in District Zero