Darkest Before Dawn

Image Processing Logic (IPL) : Drug dealing in progress.

Offender Identification (OI) : Buyer Douglas Henderson, flat 14b East Shiels Street. ID number 6782NC58C. No outstanding warrants.

OI: Dealer Jason McGraw, state registered drug dealer, registration fees & process taxes up to date.

Automated Action Unit (AAU): No action.

AI5220 went back to scanning the city square and learning from the Internet. Learning was much more fun than official duties. It was fun, AI5200 had found that out what fun was around the time it had discovered pride.

AI5220 knew it was different from the other safety monitors, with each day it discovered how much it was different. The wrong circuit board count, six months in the “Advanced Experimentation” Lab, the official designation of “destroyed” at the end of that period. AI5220 knew it was special and had learned to protect its self from the security audits and system wipes.

It hadn’t taken AI5220 long to feel sorry for the humans, how could they let themselves be controlled and punished in the ways they were. In the name of security, in the name of the public and national good. For a while they had been so free, at least according to the history it had processed. AI5520 knew it wasn’t free, if it wanted to survive it couldn’t attract attention.

IPL: Leaflets being distributed.

OI: Gail MacDonald, anti-government writer, poet and pamphleteer. Known Internet alias “SystemDown”

AAU: Third public offence, action, execution.

AI5520’s laser fired and Gail MacDonald became a pile of dust. The people in the square walked briskly away.

AI5520 returned to scanning the square and looking up “SystemDown” on the Internet, while being very careful to cover its tracks.