Neon Dreams: A Cyberpunk Detective Thriller by Anna Mocikat

Author:Anna Mocikat [Mocikat, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-10-23T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Fifteen minutes later, they were sitting in the autonomous car as it drove through Oldtown’s empty roads toward their destination. Contrary to all other districts, Oldtown had no morning rush hour, but in the late afternoon, the streets were packed with cars, bicycles, and pedestrians, and it got even worse in the evening hours, at least in some parts of the district.

Kate was munching on a bagel with dairy-free cream cheese and fakocado—at least, Siro assumed that was what the unhealthy-looking greenish sludge sticking onto the cream cheese was. It made his stomach cramp.

In his homeland, people still consumed fresh fruits and vegetables, although the younger generations increasingly rejected them, claiming the highly processed fake food was much healthier and better for the global carbon footprint. Siro would never get used to that, but Kate seemed to be enjoying her second breakfast, and that was all that mattered.

“So, what the hell are robot rights activists?” he asked, sipping his coffee.

It was too hot and didn’t taste as good as he remembered, but it wouldn’t melt his stomach.

“I honestly have no idea,” Kate said. “Let’s see.”

She reached into her pocket and produced a small device that she clipped around her ear lobe. It projected a miniature holo screen in front of her left eye. Using her neural implant, she could connect it to the OCPD servers and pull any information available to the investigators directly in front of her eye.

“Okay,” she said, taking a bite from her bagel while her eye moved quickly over the data only visible to her. “There’s an organization calling themselves the RLF—the Robot Liberation Front. Its members follow the rather radical worldview that robots are sentient beings and should receive the same rights as humans.”

“Wow,” Siro said, taking another sip and grimacing.

“I know, right?” Kate chuckled. “Crazy.”

“I mean, what’s crazy is that a group like that can exist in Olympias,” Siro said dryly.

Usually, Olympias didn’t tolerate any opinions that differed from the common narrative. People expressing the wrong thoughts would often disappear, sent to reeducation facilities or forced labor camps.

This wasn’t a big deal, though, as most people never even doubted anything they were told. Indoctrinated since childhood, they would believe whatever they were told on TV. Only rarely did people express thoughts differing from the norm.

Unsurprisingly, many of those were residents of Oldtown.

There was an entire police division—easily five times the size of the regular investigators dealing with homicide, theft, vice, and other ordinary crimes—that did nothing else but comb through seemingly endless amounts of surveillance data to uncover dissidents and remove them from the general population before their dangerous ideas could spread and cause potential damage to Olympias’ perfection.

Most of that work was done by AI, but there were also human investigators, including some who worked undercover. Siro didn’t like those guys very much. Which maybe had something to do with the fact that he was harboring some opinions that would be considered problematic if anyone knew about them. But he was intelligent enough never to let any of his thoughts slip to anyone.

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