Chapter 43: Park Patrol

Several days later, Arron and Kix were zipping down the highway heading towards Sector 11.

“Tooth, fill us in on the details,” said Kix.

“It's fairly simple compared to yesterday's activity,” said Tooth, his head floating above the APC's dashboard. “You two are to head to Sector 11 Zone 3 and patrol the large park. There has been a large uptick of violent crimes and undesirable actions happening there lately. Sector 11's chair Representative for the party of Mother and Father personally asked the chief to send someone to clean it up. So you were picked by the chief to complete the task.”

At the Sector 11 border checkpoint, Arron and Kix were quickly scanned and waved forward.

“What type of problems can we expect to encounter?” asked Arron.

“The usual, drugs, theft, attacks on others.”

A short time later the two pulled up to a tall parking garage. When Kix NerViz cloud chip was scanned and he paid for the parking platform, the APC was given a high priority designation. The platform shot up a short distance and placed the APC near the bottom for quick access.

“Everything is so... green,” said Arron as they walked to the park's entrance.

He had grown accustomed to the black and gray of the many paraconcreet / parasteel buildings and streets that made up each Sector of level 1. The only other color came from the holo-ads... when they worked.

The park was several city blocks wide in both directions, it stood out greatly from the towering buildings that rose up several hundred stories on all fours sides of the park. There was not a single building inside the park.

Starting from the entrance tens of moving sidewalks branched out into many paths that moved through the many carefully placed trees and neatly trimmed bushes. The bushes were grown so that they formed a maze for people to wander while they listened to the soothing chatter of the songbirds in the trees.

Arron turned his attention to the direct center of the park where there was a small lake with dark water. Surrounding the lake was a wide green grassy area that was filled with thousands of people who were picnicking. In some parts of the grassy field, people were playing different sports or tossing metal balls for their robotic dogs.

“This is quite amazing for something like this to be inside the city. I feel refreshed just seeing everything and listening to the birds,” said Arron as they reached the Parks entrance.

“It's nothing special since it's all fake,” said Kix dismissively.

“Really?”

“The trees, bushes, grass, all fake. The small lake was man-made. This was the first park of its kind on Level 1 and has been the testbed for all of Mother and Fathers’ beatification prototype equipment and devices. The park that is being built in Sector 12 was modeled after this one. The park was made with the mindset of only needing a bare minimum of upkeep while giving people a place to feel at peace.”

Two hovering security bots had been waiting for them near the park's entrance. As soon as they picked up the M1 signal from Arron and Kix's badges they quickly floated over to them and took a discreet position several paces behind them.

“Are these guys our backup or our nannies?” asked Arron.

“Both. Let's pick a path and start patrolling,” said Kix, ignoring the security bot floating behind him.

Several teens shot past Arron and Kix. All but one of them were wearing hoverboots that shot them forward down the moving sidewalks into the park. The last teen in the group was speeding along on a hoverboard, occasionally kicking the air with his left foot to keep up his speed.

Arron could see that there were several such groups of teens and older people wearing hoverboots or using Hoverboards to speed through the many branching paths of the park.

“It's the only legal place to use them in Sector 11,” said Kix once he saw Arron staring at the passing groups.

As they were slowly walking down one of the paths, Tooth's head popped up in the top right of their helmet’s visors.

“New orders. Just now there was an attack on one of the park's security drones. Sending you the last moments recorded by the security drone before it was destroyed. You are to arrest this man if you see him.”

Ding!

Arron's NerViz notified him of a new file sent to him. He tapped on the blinking icon above his wrist datapad and a video immediately started playing showing the perspective of the drone.

“Alert! Stop criminal! You are violating the law!” said the security drone. It was flying towards a scrawny man dressed in all black with a black hood covering his head.

“What law?” asked the man.

“Covering your face from facial recognition!” said the security drone as it reached out its metal claws to grab the man's black hood and face mask.

“Recognize this.”

Bang! The holovid stopped there when the security drone was hit with a metal crowbar.

“How are we supposed to find someone without any name or face?” Arron.

“There can't be that many people wearing all black,” said Kix.

“The target's last position was near the south entrance heading north,” said Tooth.

As they walked down their current path looking for suspicious people a cute Brown chipmunk ran out into the middle of the sidewalk stopping in front of them. Its nose twitched a few times as it looked at Arron and Kix's for a quick second before running over to a tree and disappearing into a small hole.

Up in the branches of the tree, there was a blue songbird that was cheerfully chirping. Its head was slowly following Arron and Kix as they passed by.

“For some reason, I have a feeling we're being watched,” said Arron.

“We are,” said Kix pointing to a red bird in one of the trees as they passed by.

“Like I said everything in this park is fake, that includes the animals. They're all fitted with facial recognition cameras to catch people in the act of crimes when they think no one is looking.”

“Soon, the experimental beautification project will be expanded to place trees and chirping birds in every civilian zone to liven up the zones and boost the citizen’s morale. This will also allow Mother and Father to discreetly strengthen the surveillance of everyone without causing many problems.”

“That person looks suspicious. Let's go see what they are up to. It's probably just a junky,” said Kix, pointing to a woman sitting on a wooden bench next to one of the moving paths.

The woman was looking around nervously. Her head was jerking around from side to side as she looked from one place to another.

“Ma'am are you okay?” asked Arron as he stepped closer to the woman. “You can't use stims in public.”

The woman jumped in fright at the sound of his voice. She shot up to her feet and stared at Arron with a wild look in her eyes. Without warning, she jumped on Arron and started cussing and spouting all kinds of words at him.

Arron managed to hold the crazy woman away from him with one hand.

“What the...”

Ding! Arron received a notification on his visor. At the same time, the security drone floating behind him flew forward claws outstretched ready to pounce.

Both Arron's and the security drones CantZei speech recognition programs had flagged one to the words that the crazy woman had spouted out in her mad salad of slurred words and cussing.

“You're under arrest,” said Kix, pulling out a pair of magnetic cuffs.

“What for? I've done nothing wrong!”

The security drone floated menacingly next to the jumpy woman. In a robotic voice it listed off her crime: [Charge: 250K credit fine for violating the hateful speech law #32.]

“Stand up,” said Kix.

He led the woman over to one of the trees and turned the woman around so her back was facing the tree. A square hole opened and accepted the magnetic cuffs locking the woman to the tree.

“I'll let you stay here and sober up. We'll be back here later to pick you up.”

“You're going to just leave me here? What if I have to pee?” asked the crazy woman. She was only now starting to realize the seriousness of her situation as the effects of the stims wore off.

“I'm sure you can figure something out,” said Kix with a wave of his hand. With that, both Arron and Kix walked down the pathway looking for suspicious people and their main target.

“Do we really have to arrest her for saying a word?” asked Arron.

“Hey don't look at me like that. It's not like I love doing stuff like this, but she violated one of the hateful speech codes that Mother and father have put in place to protect everyone. The violation has already been logged at both the M1 headquarters and the Office of Reason. If we don't arrest her we'll be in some serious trouble.”

“How are we supposed to remember all the illegal words?” asked Arron.

“That's what the CantZei program is for. It makes our jobs easy since its database gets an update every week from the Office of Reason. It's based on the recommended list given to them by Mother and Father.”

They searched the whole park for the person who had attacked the security drone but could not find them.

They had however arrested over ten other people for various violations. Ranging from speech code violations to attacks on other people and littering.