We Are Many. We Are One.
by CarolinaC
We are many. We are one. We have seen what has become of this world, and who is responsible. We demand punishment. We demand repayment. We do not forget.
The words blared through every speaker on the promenade, overlapping in a cacaphony of garbled echoes. The shoppers and strollers clapped their hands over their ears. A baby began to cry. Then, just as the sound had become unbearable, it fell silent. For a moment, the only sound was the infant's wail, high and angry. Then the promenade exploded.
* * *
"Forty-two separate explosives," Kurta said. His eyes unfocussed briefly, and Tamblin figured he was accessing the central police servers via brainfeed. "All of them low grade rubbish, and all of them independent – no comm links, no signal receivers. Not even robo-carriages."
The evidenco-bots tooled around collecting information, and Tamblin shook her head. "I get the lack of robo-carriages. The Artificial Abolitionists would never knowingly put a robot in danger. But I didn't figure they were anxious to kill off their human sympathizers, either – murder's their style, not suicide."
"Suicide?" Kurta's smile was almost ghoulish, and Tamblin recoiled a little. "You've got it all wrong. These babies were on timers."
He handed Tamblin a metal band that had been tortured into a twisted spiral of metal. An evidenco-bot the size of a shoebox made an angry noise, wanting the bit of evidence.
"Shh, little bot, there's plenty for you," Kurta said, as if he thought the device could understand him.
Tamblin turned the blackend spiral over in her hand. "What is it?"
"It's a sort of archaic spring, Tamblin," Kurta said in the tone he usually reserved for his first-year forensic students. "The timers were – you've seen the image of a round, analogue clock face, haven't you?"
Tamblin nodded, still not understanding.
"Clocks used to run on springs. Flat springs, like what that little scrap you're holding used to be. I wouldn't have thought those luddite abolitionists could make a thing like that, seeing as how they refuse to use modern manufacturing. It isn't a thing you can carve from wood with granite knives."
"Flint knives," she corrected – and wished she hadn't.
"Tam." Kurta narrowed his eyes at her. "You sure you're not mixed up with them?"
"No, no, just, you know, my brother -"
"Yeah, yeah. We've all heard about poor, innocent, young Winford and how his politics landed him in the levolater ward for life. We've heard about him more times than I can count."
The little bot who thought Tamblin had stolen evidence was spinning around in circles. Beeps and whistles exploded from its sound system as it frantically berated itself for its imagined failure. Kurta sighed, and picked it up. With a single twisting motion he quieted it, and it lay cradled in his arms like a dead thing. He spoke again. "Tam, those AA types are bad news. You get involved, bad things will happen. Your brother knows it, but I'm not sure you do."
Tamblin sighed. "Sure, Kurta. I got it." She held up the snippet of twisted, blackened metal. "Mind if I keep this?"
"Go for it, kid. But don't forget what I said."
Tamblin stuck the metal evidence to her torso plate, noting that she was running low on magnets. She nodded to Kurta, and left.
* * *
YOU ARE READING
SmackDown: Back to Our Roots
Science FictionOur previous two SmackDowns were both massive successes, and it's high time for another. You might remember the last one was heavy on the "game" elements, maybe even too heavy. This time we're going back to the basics and keeping it simple. It's jus...
