Chrysalis by Jennsen G. S

Author:Jennsen, G. S.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Hypernova Publishing
Published: 2021-02-23T00:00:00+00:00

Chara

Ten meters ahead of Nicolette, a man in a gray tailored suit crumpled to the sidewalk like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Her step hitched, but she forced herself to keep walking as bystanders around her rushed to his aid. Anadens did not drop dead in the middle of the street unless they’d been shot in the head or heart, and sometimes not even then. She saw no traces of blood as she passed the body.

So it was an SAI-controlled mannequin. Somewhere on the planet, a figurative plug had been pulled on a living machine.

Her gaze swept across the pedestrian traffic with renewed interest. How many mannequins were walking around disguised as Anadens? It had only been a few weeks since Loshi had shared the existence of the prototypes with her. But he never had been one to waste time, and SAIs’ quantum brains moved fast indeed.

As of yesterday, there were 4,689 registered SAIs on Asterion Prime. In the last week, the police had confiscated the SAIs belonging to twenty-six companies for technical, if not spurious, ‘violations’ of the new regulations—that she knew of. But if Loshi had shared the prototype specs with other like-minded engineers, there could be hundreds of mannequins by now. A thousand or more.

How far was the government going to take this?

…and how far was she?

The entrance to the levtram station loomed forbiddingly on the next block, and she steeled herself for the coming gauntlet. The lobby was busy, as was typical this time of day. People proceeding about their lives, oblivious to the wreckage currently being made of others’ existence.

She stepped into the crowded tram headed to the city center and wormed her way toward the middle, so she was surrounded on all sides by commuters. The best surveillance cams and facial recognition technology still stumbled when confronted with so many moving bodies in proximity. At least, she hoped like Hades they did.

The tram started moving, and she activated the routine KIR had written. Over the next twenty seconds, her hair steadily lightened from rich black to a dull chestnut. As it did, she casually and oh-so-slowly unfastened her coat, slid it off her shoulders and let it drop to her feet.

As the tram came to a stop and the doors opened, she slid on a pair of stylish shade wraps and pulled her hair out of the knot it had been bound up in. Alterations complete, a different woman walked off the tram.

The next half-kilometer passed in a blur of adrenaline and paranoia, but she made it to the apartment building without incident and rode the lift up alone.

Maris Idoni dragged her through the door before wrapping her up in an emotional embrace. “This is all just dreadful. What can President Kyvern be thinking, to cause such pointless upheaval?”

She’d met Maris almost eighty years earlier at a reception she’d hosted at the Asterion Prime Commerce Department shortly after being named its representative. Maris’ parents were wealthy philanthropists, a calling that intersected with Commerce’s purview more frequently than she’d expected.

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