The Receiver

2 3 - T H R E A T S

It grows so late in the night that it eventually turns into early morning and I still can't bring myself to fall asleep. I'm too transfixed by the footage on the screen to look away.

They've been replaying old shots on a loop for a while now, with a few more minutes of new footage added every hour on the hour from drones with night vision capabilities, illuminating the darker areas of Lower, down side alleys, into abandoned warehouses, and over crumbling bridges until the differences in quality of life in the two cities become incontrovertibly clear.

Kids throw random objects into the air, usually a shoe, to try and hit the drones passing by. This all must look like a game to them, especially to the ones who are too young to understand, too young for any of the stories they've heard of a time before to be anything more than a fairytale. Some of the bots have grouped together into blocked formations to combat violent bottomfeeders and the camera catches it all, although I often notice how they conveniently duck away whenever the images get too grizzly, like when the sweepers try to keep the peace and fail or when two older boys beat a younger one to a pulp on the corner of 62nd and Lexington near an old ice cream shop.

This makes me wonder who's behind the controls, whether the drones operate on autopilot like the helipods or if some uppercruster's manually turning the eye of the camera away. It doesn't do the citizens of either city any good to continue hiding the truth. It's like the whole glass slaughterhouse thing, back before industries dealing in animal agriculture were shut down because they were poisoning the planet.

In the back of my mind, I know I'm secretly searching out Iris's face, but I know it's pointless. She's a Daughter through and through and La Señora has trained her well. None of them will be on the streets this late. Instead, they'll be huddled together in someone's apartment or at the church, finalizing plans and getting ready for whatever Lady Death has up her sleeve.

I look away from the laserscreen, my eyes dropping to where my index finger hovers above the glowing screen of a tablet. A string of beautiful ones and zeros shimmers back at me and, below it, the word SEND. Tapping this button will change the way we transport goods to Lower. We can move tons of supplies, easily a hundred times the amount we can fit into a single helipod. And now that the sim is down, bottomfeeders will be expecting provisions. I know I would if it were me and Iris still stuck there.

So why am I hesitating?

It's Frank, his warning tone echoing in my head: Miss, I urge you to consider all the possibilities this code may bring, assuming others find out the elevator is now functioning properly again. It's old tech, which means there's no way to code the doors so that only you have access.

I know, I'd told him. I have thought about it.

I take a breath, hit SEND, and fall asleep watching the fires burn.

#

In the morning, I wake to breaking news.

A newscaster narrates over yesterday's old drone footage.

"Last night, Skylark Robotics tested out their newest line of combat droids designed to serve and protect New York City. Finn Skylark, the leading roboticist of Skylark Enterprises and great-grandson of famed monorail engineer Herman Skylark, tells us the trial run was only a simulation, that the images we saw last night were simply the virtual reality of a theoretical situation he says is unlikely to happen anytime soon."

The screen switches to a clip of Finn Skylark, his name and occupation displayed in bold type beneath him.

"With the crime rate near zero and air traffic accidents at a record low," he says, "the United Technocracy has moved past the point of requiring an army, much less a state-regulated police force."