When James finally got outside Sam was gone. She had left the car. It sat there, empty. He got on the road. Occasionally another vehicle passed him by on the gilded white streets, always with quiet engines their clean pristine fumes escaping unnoticed. He got inside, sitting down in the bck leather of the driver's bucket seats.
They were not very practical for work. Yet, come to think of it, in reality, he did very little of that anyway. He thought of going to the office, he decided against it. After all, it was unnecessary, anything he wanted could be accessed from the driver's console anyway. This was, thoroughly, the most unusual case he had ever had, and he didn't feel like bringing it in to share about. Putting his hand on the console, he scrolled through the digi-frames and the high-speed analysis of the scene.
Nothing seemed to stick out to him, except the statue, it seemed oddly out of pce, imperfect, too many cracks, at complete odds with the rest of the scene aesthetically. It would be unusual for the break in, or whatever case this turned out to be, to break on a design faux pas, but there was nothing else for him to go on. He listened to himself, he sounded like a movie character, something from a bygone era. This sort of thing, it was unheard of, found only in contraband smuggled in from outside. An analysis of the thing indicated a likely source, the console printed to screen.
The cy material used in its manufacture was exceptionally simir to that found beyond the outskirts of the inner city, around the region of the old autonomous factories, those industrial behemoths blighting the barren nds just outside of Central. He set the course, dragging his fingers along the screen. His route was approved. He wondered again what gave him such unique free reign today. Nevertheless, he plucked his finger and swiped across. The tiny action set him in motion. The barely audible engine thrust the vehicle forward with a quiet vigour.
He rarely left the city. Usually his life was a loop and now, for some reason, he departed from the safety of the rails. As he got further and further the lush irrigation and polished steel of Central gradually began to fade, and eventually it was seamlessly repced with brown, orange, and grey dusty ndscapes before him. The only thing to remain retively pristine was the highway, and less and less so, the car.
At these speeds, he wondered if a pebble or a crack would send his vehicle careening. The ndscape had whipped by and Central had long receded from the rear-view. Everything seemed to be quiet, a different quiet from the predictable silence of the city, less cultivated and more natural, filled with tension. When he woke up, it was from the sound, the low and audible cnking of heavy metal and machinery. It was completely different from the electro-mechanical buzzes and hisses that he was used to. Looking out the window, they loomed before him, the old autonomous factories. They great bronze and dull iron structures, interced with red brick towers. the closer he got, the more they loomed.
The navigation was nearly over, and he switched to manual drive for the st few directions provided by the console. The alleyway was quite wide, but the metal structures were so tall it was still retively dark. Even with the sun so high, he would not have been able to see save for his own vehicle lights and the red emergency lights interspersed at specific intervals of the old factory buildings. He left the vehicle; he was unsure what he was looking for. The brown metal door opened automatically as he came closer, the light above shifting from red to green, the hydraulics dragging the iron stes across. It’s jagged doors resembled teeth.
The sound of the machinery was louder inside. He put an earpiece in one ear. The drone from the car flew out from the trunk, coming inside to begin to mapping the interior. He took a lift to the iron catwalk above him, a long thin corridor suspended high above the rest of the factory. Stepping off the lift, he walked along. Below, these machines were more or less obsolete, but if they were shut down, he supposed, he wondered if their inertia could ever be overcome to get them started again. Supposedly, they had id the foundation for Central, processing the raw brute materials necessary to get them part the inertia of their own.
Now they operated, as they always had, just making materials; processing, and manufacturing their output never to be used. It would be stored in bunkers, and shelved underground, or reprocessed by the machines once themselves simply to keep them operating. Apparently, there were once thousands of humans that roamed these massive buildings, until it was decided they all be autonomous, independent. So of course, they automated the operation of all these machines; and mostly the automation was all maintained by robots, and the robots maintained by other robots. A steward was sometimes kept, as a st resort, in case the entire support chain broke down, to get the whole process started again. He would search for him, if he was even still alive.
The steward's office was empty, it hadn't been used in a while. The drone returned, soil residue matching the type of cy was all over the pce. And a partially degraded set of footprints led to an adjacent building. He used the enclosed metal crosswalk. Halfway across the drone jumped to alert mode. But it was too te. The drone lost power and crashed to the crosswalk with a cnk. John checked his phone; it was dead too.
A dishevelled man, dirty in overalls with a beard, stepped out of the dark side of the catwalk holding an antique firearm. James found it hard to concentrate, he found the man disgusting, he was not used to someone so unkempt. Still, he seemed familiar, somehow, but he couldn't pce him, as though he had seen him or someone like him before. His hand ached. With his other hand he reached for his weapon, managing to draw it and aim, but it wouldn't fire without the net connection.
A slight expression of disbelief, but the other man didn't say anything. He merely backed away, receding into the darkness behind him. James gave chase, lunging and weaving through the deprecated intersections of pipes and across the metal floors. He flicked on his emergency light, a bright shine id bare the utter stolidity of the environment, every mark and disfigurement hidden by the darkness or the overbearing menacing red of the emergency light. The drone still was not operative, and he still had no connection back to the net. Come to think of it, he had never not had a connection before, it had always been there. Suddenly, he sounds of footsteps and movement.
It was a hiding game now and all his usual advantages were gone. Almost always, there was no hiding, no mystery to discover, the chase was all rote. A shot rang out, and for a second James thought he'd been hit, but instead a nearby steam pipe exploded, the hot misty fog spilling out into the area. His heart jumped, it was real danger this time. His training kicked in—find the perpetrator and flush him out.
He must listen carefully, there must be a reason his opponent isn't running anymore. Maybe there is nowhere else to run to. The cnking was rhythmic, and perhaps the man used it to disguise his footsteps. James reasoned he should listen for the extra sound in the rhythm, and be prepared for when it gets the loudest. Upon a huge chugging whir, the overalls man jumped down onto him, but John was ready, he managed to reversed the attack, and threw the man, with all his momentum onto his side. He thought he had overdone it.
John thought that the man was surely dead, and yet upon closer inspection he still breathed. Half of his body had sparks coming out. The shredded fabric of his outfit revealed steel, not shiny, rather grey and dull, beneath. The gun had scattered to the side, yet the man made no move to it, he simply gazed quizzically.
When James got up close an instinct kicked in. He saw the man’s face close for the first time. This man could've been his brother. It was difficult to see through the beard, through the hair, the mangy clothes, and the aged look, yet it was almost like a mirror. John never had a beard before. He had never had a single grey hair. He touched his own face, forgetting his training.
A raging torrent of questions flooded his mind, and he backed away in a panic, the man almost reached out to him, but he did not seem to notice it. There was too much uncertainty now, and soon enough he was the one sitting against the wall while the other man got back up. A drone burst in, a backup from the car, and with it the connection to the city returned, and so did the power to his weapon. Instinctively with a quick motion he drew and fired.
After a moment he realized in shock what he had done, but there was not a bloody bullet riddled carcass before him. A pale woman in bck stood next to him, holding and embracing him, grabbed and crushed his wrist. It was freezing. He dropped his gun. and then with impossible speed she moved and smashed the drone.
Staring at him for a moment, she must've seen it. The look in his eyes. He did not have the fight in him right now to pursue. The bearded man bent down and grabbed his hand. To his surprise it was not cold, it was most definitely a real hand. But then he let go, and he and the woman disappeared back into the steam, their dwindling footsteps masked by the constant rhythmic sounds of the machines.
