Copy Me: & Other Science Fiction Stories by Kirkland Laston

Author:Kirkland, Laston [Kirkland, Laston]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: S+
Published: 2014-11-10T05:00:00+00:00

Courtesy Call

“Hello?”

“Sir, this is Officer Bluson of the Happy Valley Police Department. We noticed you are carrying a model Saiga semi-automatic assault rifle and walking down a public street towards town.”

“It’s my right. I don’t need a license because it isn’t concealed. I’m carrying this rifle wherever I go!”

“Absolutely, Sir.”

“You can’t stop me! As long as I don’t go near to a school or into a private establishment! I know my— What did you say?”

“I said, Absolutely. We won’t stop you.”

“You won’t?”

“Nope.”

“Uh, Why?”

“The police force recently purchased nine Aeolia hydrogen drones, each with camera systems. And Argus system software. Six of them are slowly circling above of us right now. According to my screen, all of them can currently see you. They recognized the rifle, it triggered a flag, which is why we chose to call you.”

“Why did you call if you weren’t going to take it away?”

“As a personal courtesy, and to warn you. While the weapon is visible, the drones have you in target sights as standard procedure. Should the rifle appear to be “brandished” or should the subroutines determine you are acting in an overly hostile manner, the drones will alert the officers on duty, and we will have to make a ‘fire’ decision. We will probably dispatch a patrol car first—if it looks like we have time.”

“Wait a minute, let me make sure I understand this. As long as I carry this rifle, you are pointing a sniper gun at me?”

“Yes, Sir. In this case, six of them. Also long range rubber rounds. And four taser net rounds report they have a lock. It’s a small town. Not much happening today. You are getting a lot of attention.”

“What? How?”

“The new Argus software can handle several thousand simultaneous targets without effort. It’s directly tied into the Aeolia drones which have quite a collection of weapons and sensors. The drones can float up there for about nine months before needing to be serviced, using solar panels for power and artificial photosynthesis cells to convert water into hydrogen for the gasbag. Every now and then they skim a lake to refuel. Mostly we only ground them to reload the ammunition.”

“You can’t do that!”

“Which part, Sir?” the officer asked pleasantly.

“You can’t just arbitrarily point weapons at people!”

“Technically, the weapons are at rest and not actually pointed at you, just the targeting system. However, if we give the go-ahead, that changes fast.”

“You can’t let a robot shoot people just for pointing a weapon!”

“No Sir. We have officers at computer monitors, watching live streaming video, seamlessly connecting to every other camera in our network. We would be the ones shooting. A lot like my game controller at home. Remarkable how smoothly I can pan and zoom the cameras.”

“That’s—that’s horrible!”

“Well, Sir, look at it this way. If we pull our own service revolvers, Argus instantly targets us as well. Lots of cameras on police in the field now. With Argus, we should have a lot fewer reasons to use a gun at all.

“Ah.”

“Just so you know, we have tied Argus automatically into the detection of your cell phone signal.

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