Katria decided to drop it. She knew OffDaLeash hated it when she tried to milk her. She was old-fashioned that way. Any scene player knew that a conversation could be more than just fun; it could be profitable. Yeah, I guess Moon Booties™ can freak some players, she replied. Next time you’re at my pad you can try ’em on though. Speaking of, it’s been a while since we hung. What are you playing tonight?
Oh, I have to patch up some hard feelings between a few locals, but then I was thinking of taking a real break, said OffDaLeash.
Who? asked Katria.
Who what?
Who all needs to kiss up? Anyone interesting? Katria asked.
You know I’m not at liberty to say. OffDaLeash’s thought signature was amused, but Katria knew her sister was not kidding.
OffDaLeash practically specialized in mediator games, which was a good choice in a family as competitive and yet interdependent as theirs. Pretty much any family, even the hippie ones, always generated a good supply of emotional flare-ups and long-held grudges.
Issues like that were often not handled well by computer agents; rather, they required a human touch. OffDaLeash had that down since she could be as practical and objective as AI, but she also brought the empathy and social graces needed for a good long-term outcome. And the points! When it came to rev time, her clients showered her with them. Even when they remained pissed off at each other, which was most of the time, they did not take it out on her.
As such, Katria did not blame her longtime friend for refusing to spill on her clients. After all, her reputation was part and parcel of her livelihood. Still, she was no fun when Katria was in the mood for some good smack talk.
You need to play something that we can at least gab about, Katria said, followed with a Whinicon™ featuring a bawling baby in an old-fashioned diaper.
You should talk, Sis! OffDaLeash flashed back. You with your high-security shenanigans. When’s the last time you talked about your grind?
True, Katria admitted. I guess neither of us is much in a conversation. Ya know, since we can’t talk about what we do, maybe we should just make stuff up.
Sure, why don’t you start by telling me if you and Jerkle are fast-tracking, or what? OffDaLeash sent this with a howling, humping puppy emoticon.
His name is Dirk! And as far as our intimacy status, I’ll say — Katria dropped the blink with her friend, midsentence. There was some serious shit going down in her game.
The angel she had been monitoring, the one she simply referred to as “the Tool,” had a live one. Some crazy demon was burning down an apartment mound with some kind of flamethrower! And no sooner had she realized this than the demon blew himself up, taking down the angel with him. It’s a shit storm! she thought. The impact of the blast was nothing special, but the heat signatures that streamed in before the angel shut down were way higher than typical demon weaponry.
Rhemus sent her a blink. Flip! The Tool just got melted! Rhemus was a game ally of Katria’s. They both were into law enforcement games and typically played closely together.
Katria could barely respond. Despite what the data was feeding her, she could not believe it. It was inconceivable. No angel she had ever monitored had gone down. It was time for the two of them to get to work.
Looks like the demon’s completely gone, Katria sent.
No way there’s anything left of him. Not enough brain to get any intel, Rhemus replied.
The girl-the one screaming to warn him-she’s our intel! Katria sent the message along with a two-second clip from a dance song to emphasize her point.
Right, the Tool was going to apprehend her, but he sure as hell isn’t going to now. I’ll scramble a sky eye on the area, Rhemus said.
It was standard protocol when hunting someone outdoors to immediately get a satellite on the area.
Katria cursed herself for not being more vigilant in her monitoring. It had seemed like a routine mission. The target was pretty low level, and there was a positive ID on him when entering his apartment. An angel was overkill for such a job, but since one was available nearby, it was deployed.
Missions like that never really required human help. The onboard AI of an angel was top-tier and therefore far faster and more reliable than a human when it came to rote work like this. Humans were occasionally useful for adding an assist here or there, but for the most part, they just watched the show. Even for more complex missions it was hard to be of much help to a fully decked-out angel. Nevertheless, when Katria was on top of her game, she could get in a contribution or two. And working with premium Authority agents like angels was high- stakes grinding. Any help you gave was big points, which kept her logging in. Besides, it had taken her a long time to get the security clearances required to play these types of games, so she felt invested.
But this had seemed like a cakewalk, so she had felt free to shoot the breeze with OffDaLeash while she casually monitored. Even when that bitch started raising the alarm with her “Todget, run!” routine, Katria didn’t bother to end the blink with her friend. A couple of ghetto demons could not stand a chance against an angel, or so she had thought six seconds ago.
Now the unthinkable had happened, and Katria was elated-one demon out and one little bitch still on the run, but no angel to catch her. That left Katria, Rhemus, and anyone else who was willing and able to log into the game and finish the job-something they never got to do. DNA samples that the Tool found in the apartment shortly before he got fried confirmed the runner’s identity. As was protocol, Katria sent a request to the Authority, asking to upgrade the priority of the demon girl. Within a second the Authority sent back confirmation upgrading her from low priority to medium; the status change was only because, in light of recent events, the girl might know something useful, not because she was estimated to be dangerous.
This rating was good for Katria. It meant that the stakes of the game just went up, and with it, potentially the reward. However, the priority was not so high that another angel would step in and relegate her back to the sidelines. Fortunately for Katria, the Authority was very reticent about spreading their top resources too thin.
Okay, Rhemus, you handle the air surveillance. I’ll see if there are any nearby sniffers I can snag, Katria ordered.
Katria’s familiar, a black Labrador puppy she called Snazz, was scanning for the closest sniffer bots available. Sniffers were Frisbee-sized robots used to ID suspects and, if necessary, detain them. Snazz found two bots within a fifty-mile radius and six more within two hundred miles.
Katria decided to rent all the available bots. It would be expensive at ten thousand points each per hour, but she figured she would need them. This demon had a head start, and it was running in a highly populated field. There were bound to be a ton of suspects to filter through.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained, she told herself.
It would be a few minutes before her sniffers got to the scene, so she decided to take some time to do analysis. She thought about leasing some hard-core AI for the job, but she decided that would be too expensive. Every player had an expense cap (which depended on the game) to keep a single rich player from dominating every time. Having caps in place encouraged more thoughtful use of resources versus brute-force methods for solving problems, which tended to strain infrastructure. Katria had already burned well into her cap by renting eight sniffers.
She messaged her familiar. It’s going to be just you and me, Snazz. The dog cocked his head adoringly and got to work analyzing the data the Tool had uploaded before shutting down.
Rhemus sent another blink. I got an eye on the area. No surprise our girl is no longer in her last estimated location. By the way, there’s some heavy cloud cover. Grokking suspects is going to be a little slow.
Satellites could still be used in heavy cloud cover, but their effective sight radius decreased due to the need of focusing in more for greater penetration.
Get another satellite then, Katria responded.
Soul, that’s gonna tax, Rhemus whined over the blink.
We’ll get paid. We underestimated the first demon. Let’s not make the same mistake on this bitch, Katria shot back.
Okay, I’ll work it out. Rhemus had learned by now to trust Katria’s instincts, which was the main reason
