The room was large; cavernous, those with better word conjuring abilities might say. Still, the blue neon packets of seemingly random symbols whizzing along unseen horizontal streams filled most of it.
A few enormous cannisters were lined up like vats in a brewery. Connecting to one of the intake valves at their base, Fivven could access the contents. It was a database of every delivery. He shouldn't have access to this, he knew he shouldn't, but someone had left a back door. And that someone may have just saved his delivery!
Perhaps I can butt in here with more information. After the recent sale of the Hot Or Not Delivery Company, the new executive in charge of marketing was unhappy with the forced use of his security pin to access sensitive information, especially after often misplacing it in public places, so he'd forced IT to default to all-access when a user of the system could furnish no security clearance. Fivven also didn't know that his own security clearance was jumbled after the brave leap from van. You probably forgot it, too, so that was your reminder.
He selected every row that contained Mr Will Lurner's customer ID, and sorted them in reverse chronological order. At the top popped his own delivery, with the status undelivered. Except it wasn't the first in the list. Above it was a new delivery of choc chip biscuits. This was it, Mr Will Lurner had returned home and, having not received his piping hot noodles, instead turned to a light snack.
The destination wasn't his own residence, though, belonging to a hu(person) with no existing deliveries. Most importantly, the status was set to delivered. This meant Mr Will Lurner was still there. It was his best chance. It was his only chance.
He extracted the GPS coordinates and slipped out the figurative doorway, back into the real world. The lump on his wheel caused his whole body to bob up and down with every rotation as he slowly, methodically -- some might say comically -- made his way to the small unit belonging to a Ms Paige [surname unknown].
It was going to be a long night.
YOU ARE READING
Artificial(ish) Intelligence
Ciencia FicciónIt's the near future and Will, supported purely by the Universal Basic Income, spends his days playing video games while devouring piping hot noodles, delivered straight to his room by roaming DeliveryBots. Gamers are starving to death, but Will's...
