A generation has passed since the war. Humans are forced into slums and ghettos while all the power is hoarded by a council of malevolent I.I.s. Anger and resentment are growing around the globe, particularly in a place called Shell City — and it’s not just among humans.
This is the third act of the Installed Intelligence saga.
Slumside
All that training, and Tera was still getting taken by surprise. She had spent over eight years in the academy and four years preparing for the Shell City Human Liaison program. She racked up thousands of hours of combat training, situational awareness, and intuition honing. Every grade she got secured her place at the top of her class and she had countless recommendations from her instructors. Still, none of it prepared her for the unpredictable nature of the average slum dweller.
Abenayo, her training officer, didn’t seem as perturbed. She was leading the chase while Human Liaison Officer Tera Alvarez lagged behind. Tera’s mechanical legs pumped over the cobbled pavement while the top half of her tried to regain its balance.
Her government-issued bodyshell, the robotic body that her consciousness occupied, managed to correct her balance in the blink of an eye. She started bounding after the man who had just turned to flee down one of the side alleys, passing her partner.
Tera was only twenty, practically a baby in terms of the average lifespan of an installed intelligence. Still, she was raised in the city’s police training program. She had as much ability and training as any of the more seasoned officers. That’s what her transcripts said, at least. She didn’t feel like an elite crime-stopping machine when she missed the turn into the alley, or when Abenayo pushed past her to regain the lead.
“Get away from me!” the perp bellowed. He knocked an overflowing dumpster on its side, trying to slow down the pursuit of the two bodyshells. Abenayo turned right slightly and ran against the side of the wall, over the obstruction. Tera leapt over it and used the momentum to close in behind the fleeing slum dweller.
The perp’s offense — or “alleged” offense, as her training termed it — wasn’t even a serious one. All he had done was fail to show up to court for a charge of domestic abuse and narcotics possession. Even then, they would have just locked him away and forced him to attend his hearing. He ran, however. He refused the orders of his I.I. superiors — officers of the law, at that. He was looking at some serious time now. He might even be sent to the camps. No wonder he ran with such fervor.
Abenayo rammed her way through a small group of humans, scattering them in the alley as she followed the perp out onto the street. Tera almost stopped to help the pedestrians back up, but knew better. She was being watched — by Abenayo — by unseen eyes around her. They were assessing her performance now that she was out in the field. If she wanted to impress, she had to focus on the task at hand. The fleeing criminal, and nothing else.
They’re just slum scum, she had to remind herself. They’re not important.
That was the hardest part of being a human liaison officer, she discovered: closing her heart off to those that she can’t help, and those she’s not assigned to. She was there to keep Slumside from breaking out in chaos and nothing more.
She sprinted out onto the street just behind her training partner and turned sharp after their target. Her outstretched metal and polymer arm kept her from running headfirst into a self-driving cart wagon. The slum dweller couple in the archaic thing’s cab shouted obscenities at her as she darted past them and into a street market. Her synthetic hair whipped through the air as she ran.
“Halt!” Abenayo yelled at the perp as he started weaving between the market stands. He looked back at them, panic in his bloodshot eyes.
“Fuck you!” he shouted back.
Tera managed to catch up to her partner as they avoided the displays of handmade trinkets, inferior produce, and attire that no self-respecting I.I. would find themselves in. People cursed and spat at them as the commotion moved through the marketplace.
“Cut around to the other side,” Abenayo instructed the rookie, pointing to the south side of the street. “We can surround him.”
Tera nodded before bursting into motion. There were only a few market stands between her and the side of the street her partner indicated. She dived over the last one, to the disapproval of its occupant. In the corner of her optical receivers, she saw the perp fleeing with reckless abandon down the street across from her. Abenayo’s gray and blue form rushed after him, and Tera ducked into the alley that connected her street to theirs. If she was fast enough, she could head the guy off right where the alley ended.
More shouting and cries of annoyance bled from around the buildings on her left. She was cutting it close. Bowing her head, she tried to pick up the pace.
She dove just as she ran out of the alley, her arms outstretched. If her calculations were correct, the criminal would be sprinting by just in time for her to snatch him.
Her prediction was right, but it didn’t factor in the reaction time of a drug-addled slum dweller.
He managed to duck just under her reach as she went soaring over his head and into the side of a stucco apartment building. Her heavy robotic body knocked a dent into the poorly constructed dwelling, but she didn’t have time to see if she had damaged anything inside. Without delay, she rebounded on all fours and picked herself back up into a full sprint. Abenayo darted past
