The time was 10:54:31 am. C4 was not facing the walkway.
Photons traveled earthward, absorbed and reflected in various frequencies by metallic surfaces. Water clusters observable in the human visible spectrum were swept along air currents in clusters high above. Bodies defying gravity by manipulation of quantum forces traversed three dimensions along rigid geometric patterns. Nonartificial organisms swarmed over surfaces of hardlight, metal, plastic and concrete in seemingly random patterns that could nevertheless be modeled, and predicted. Vibrations of heat and light formed messages to be interpreted and processed. A matrix of kinetic and potential energy , open to processing and interpretations.
C4 stood along the edge of the walkway surrounding Creaton Tower, overlooking the Mediatrane Chasm. C4 stood below an ornamental lamppost, its light causing minute rises in temperature along C4's head and shoulders, with C4's hands clasped behind C4's back, staring outwards at the view. Behind C4 streamed a chaotic mass of bodies, moving left, right, forwards, back, lacing through one another like colliding molecules. C4 did not need to look at them directly. C4 possessed advanced radar technology that rendered three dimensional models of their spacial relations. Powerful audio equipment detected their conversations, heart rates, palpitations, adding an additional layer of data to the model. Cybernetic receptors processed all electronically stored information originating in the walkers' bodies and appliances: pictures, music, conversations, movies, sensory records, biological manipulators, received and exported signals. With this information, C4 knew the names, ages, locations of origin, species, basic habits and interests—and in some cases plans and goals and destinations—of every person who walked behind, making the application of visual information, the mere modality of color, completely superfluous to their observation, and thus much better applied to the walkway’s view.
The rays shot down deep into the canyon, and the metallic orange tower opposite C4 looked built from sun-kissed sparkling glass. C4 liked the way the buildings sparkled, admired the way the Laws of Physics played out to create something of aesthetic beauty, liked the way flying machines, rendered minuscule by the distance, flew across the vista, creating the sense of a continuity in their travels along their flyways, the way the external elevators and leechcars moved along the surface of buildings and rose and fell in deliberate patterns, the supple graceful curves of the towers that seemed almost grown instead of designed. C4 like these things because C4 was programmed to like these things. C4 had been programmed with a sense of aesthetics.
C4 also appreciated the cloud’s shadows, moving along while stretching down the lengths of the buildings. The moving shadows registered as fascinating, though there was no specific algorithm which lead to the computation that this was so. The precise explanation as to why it was such was elusive, as if the appreciation had merely been included in C4's hardware. Perhaps it had something to do with what could cause such a huge shadow, as it was really only water in the air: the idea that the insubstantial could have an effect on something real. But then, of course, they didn’t really have an effect, did they? Just shadows: phantasmal absences of light.
In another compartment, C4 was analyzing the encounter with the man with the oddly colored hair in the cheap suit who C4 had caught staring at C4 25 minutes ago. C4 was analyzing the man’s actions and calculating whether this was relevant information to report to Central Command.
C4 was a Clockman. The Clockmen were the highest level of Autonomous Automaton1. Clockmen, despite being a unique class of robots, all fulfilled a common function in the city. Clockmen were Peacekeepers. While such functions were not limited solely to Clockmen, marketing and word of mouth detailing the Clockmen’s exceptional attributes and abilities had made them synonymous with that profession.
All Clockmen dressed in well-tailored suits and hats.
Besides their faces, which each robot was allowed to customize to suite their designated personality, the Clockmen all had identical construction. They were all specifically calibrated to be taller than those addressed without being explicitly imposing for the maximum percentage of city inhabitants, which resulted in them all being a height of 76 and 7/8th inches.
The deviations in appearance had been based on carefully conducted studies to make the Clockmen seem personal, but consistent, and distinct among the crowds.
The time was 10:54:34 am. C4 heard a voice inside.
C4? it said.
Yes? C4 replied.
Situation Critical, it said.
What came next was a wide web of hypertext. The information overlapped and unspoiled after entering C4's database in a single strand that, like a geometrically precise contour line drawing, folded over itself until it formed a distinct pattern, simulating four dimensions of information.
Time for a another Memo2.
The web became a facet of the multidimensional database, a point jutting out from C4's brane.
The memo was constituted by a video recording of Dadalus, the Pteranarchist, landing on a citystreet, walking through the citystreet, walking into a diner, sitting at the diner, and harassing an occupant inside. The occupant was obscured, just out of sight of the video recorder. There was also information detailing the exact relation by the diner and street to C4’s present location.
The memo dredged up all of C4’s files concerning Dadalus, who C4 had never seen before in person, as well as all programming relating to Dadalus. C4 switched to High Alert Mode.
The time was 10:54:35 am. C4 bolted instantaneously, running through the street, yelling ‘Disperse! Disperse! Official Concerns, disperse!’
As C4 ran, files explained the shortest route to Dadalus’ location; it was on C4's level, one building over, on the other side of the building from his initial location.
While approaching the opposite side, C4 saw that the holograph bridge joining the two was packed with people moving in both directions, their density slowing their pace to a crawl. C4 was just now receiving this information. C4 cursed the satellite relays. You would think they could get everything in at once, but there is always some lag at some way station or other3! It would take too long to nudge through the people on the bridge.
C4 sent out a signal to the force panels along either side of the buildings to temporarily shut off. The time was 10:57:49 am.
‘Disperse! Disperse! Official Concerns, disperse!’ Continuing to run towards the brink, C4 calculated the physics of a jump, across 110 feet, onto an level surface.
The time was 10:58:05 am. C4 reached the edge, and at the last possible moment jumped. Putting all required force into the jump, C4 swept up into the air, and out, over the gaping whole below. C4 considered how far down it went, on and on below, while traveling up and up, then paused for a moment in air and began to descend, falling down and down, the wind echoing up against legs, a primal hollow howl.
And then C4 felt himself hit a hard surface, and roll, so as not to break the ground, across the far street. C4 heard screams, and intakes of breath. Then C4 was up and coming out of the roll and into a run with graceful precision, and then was off again.
‘Disperse! Disperse! Official Concerns, disperse!’
The time was 10:58:41 am. C4 felt sensors heightening. His systems were running at 95% of maximum, to prepare for the battle coming ahead. C4 had to be ready for anything with Dadalus, ready with a million contingencies plans, ready to act at a moments notice. There was no way to predict exactly was the Pteranarchist would do.
The time was 10:59:06. C4 was rounding the building and coming upon sight of the diner. ‘Disperse! Disperse! Official Clockmen business, disperse!’ He was upon the diner! 30 feet. 25. 20. 15. 10...
Dadalus jumped through the window of the diner and dove off the edge of the building. The time was 10:59:45 am.
‘No!’ yelled C4. C4 followed, jumping right down after him. The time was 10:59:47 am.
Thirty-two.
Thirty-two.
C4 was counting the seconds. Dadalus had two seconds on C4, exactly. C4 found it eerie how precise the timing was. That was three sets of 32 feet per second. Every second, C4 fell 32 feet more than during the last second, and Dadalus became 32 feet farther away.
Thirty-two.
Thirty-two.
Lights from billboards flashed around him. C4 felt as if on a pathway, leading immediately towards some final point, but with numerous routes available to reach it.
Thirty-two.
Thirty-two.
Below was the Pteranarchist, just out of reach, it seemed, yet the distance was growing. If C4 could just grab his boots, maybe something could be done. But they were both accelerating at the same rate, and the Pteranarchist was falling away. The wings were closed, and effected his fall not in the slightest. If he would just catch the wind right, maybe twitched a little, C4 thought, I will have him. But the gray wings and boots remained out of reach.
Thirty-two.
C4 decided to shift concentration away from the feet below, to think of the other things. C4 started looking at the billboards. C4 found them boring, having no interest in products.
Thirty-two.
Thirty-two.
They fell deeper into the ravine; daylight was leaving them behind. Like entering space, but going in, not out. The light of the billboards, the electronic luminescence, became starker in the absence of the natural.
Thirty-two.
Falling faster now. The billboards became indistinct, abstract. Bleeding streams of light passing by. C4 tried thinking of them as separate entities. A part of C4's brane began counting them. The feet lay ahead.
Thirty-two.
3.14 x 103. Odd. A very close number. C4 passed a billboard that had been short circuited, a very rare occurance. Irrational.
C4 decided to count the light streams. Number of light streams divided by number of possible light streams…added to the total number of billboards equals…
Thirty-two.
The number was pi x 103 to the 103rd digit. Somehow. Maybe. Was there an error? For a moment C4, contemplated pi. For a moment. The time was 11:00:00 am.
Thirty-two.
Opening up before the viewpoint of C4's consciousness was a perfect circle: the kind that can only be imagined. Its image fixed C4 in place. C4 understood precisely where before lay the circle's center. C4 fell towards it. C4 felt the center grow nearer, and as if came forward, the circumference receded. It occurred to C4 that the exterior of the circle was false anyways. A lone border, imaginary. No thickness, no consequence. You could be outside it or inside it without moving. But a center, a center you could find, it was always there: calculated from what was without, and from what was within. Within a certain space. The center grew larger and larger. C4's being spring out from the center of C4's self, growing out, surpassing C4, going beyond. C4 felt the form—no, not the form, only the cages upon the true self, not this crude metal shell—grow beyond, surpassed by the center which surpassed the circumference. The circumference shrank into nowhere and the center expanded out into everywhere, point and border turned upon each other in an event horizon. An infinite loop, inwards and beyond. A mirror reflecting a mirror reflecting a mirror.... It was so clear now! An illusion! Only an illusion that needed not be followed!
Thirty-two.
The time was 11:00:01. C-4 felt as if he was going to explode.
1. In The City, there are two major classifications of robots; Androids and Automatons. Androids are robots made to seem humanlike in appearance. They range from basic machines with plasticine skin to constructs so intricate and complex they bleed, have organs, and can reproduce: basically silicon-based life forms. Automatons are very evidently machines, and go from vaguely human-shaped to a manifold of outrageous, but functional, shapes.
The Autonomous classification means the robot is endowed with Independent Thought Processors. Non-Autonomous robots have no distinct personality and are either aspects of a larger hive mind or golems receiving all commands from an outside source. Though Clockmen routinely share information and files with fellow Clockmen, and receive orders from a central authority, they each have distinct personalities and are permitted to carry out their instructions in whatever method is allowed within the strictures of their Personality Programming.
2. A Memo, in Clockmen jargon, is a set of instructions from Central Command and the accompanying data to put the instructions in context and aid in their efficient performance. Encoded in memos’s is usually a set of instructions which confer a certain duty upon the recipient. It is often the case with Clockmen that these messages needed not be stated explicitly in the memo, as most memo’s contained information that force a Clockman to follow prior Programming.
3. For the purposes of interrogation and personal interaction, Clockmen are programmed to synthesize emotional states.
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