Sector Check

Doctor Isabelle Isaac had shucked her lab coat onto a hook next to the entryway. She exited with you in hand and you now saw her sweater was actually a sweater vest. With her arms freed from sleeves you could observe the doctor up to her gently freckled shoulders. She had a tattoo high on her right bicep that had not been in your medical records of the doctor. It must have been fairly new. Added within the last two months. Your pattern recognition was unable to match it to anything existing in your databanks, so it was an original design perhaps. It wasn’t exactly tribal, and looked to be vaguely symbolic of a bird. Or insect? There was ambiguity to its shapelessness. You liked it.

You didn’t so much as get a tour of the Airmed Tech facilities as you confirmed the map of the building layout stored in your memory to the actual physical spaces the Doctor swept through. You added all the details you picked up that were missing from your version of the blueprints, which were structurally identical but bereft of all the furniture, equipment and ornamental things that wouldn’t have been included. You didn’t have to think about any of this process of course, not consciously. The ease of cataloguing was mainly thanks to the degree of visual acuity your sensor had, whenever it wasn’t obscured by a cubicle or copier or wireless charging station.

After committing every inch of the inside of the elevator to mind, ostensibly for all perpetuity, you listened to the click of Doctor Isaac’s strides through the still brightly lit foyer. It was nearly fifty-eight minutes past midnight, the building having emptied itself of all other staff and employees several hours ago. There was however still one other presence you noticed as you approached the glass doors. A cleaning android worked quietly by the foot of some stairs that lead up to a floor of conference rooms. It was the latest state-of-the-art Dyno-model service android, crisp white shell glossy like the tiles it was carefully mopping. It was humanoid in shape, in a friendly, skinny and unthreatening way. All smooth, rounded parts, cylindrical limbs, joints able to move fluidly and efficiently and most of all in silence. It was an advertisement for the Dyno-88B as much as it was actually being deployed here for cleaning duties.

“Good night, Abe,” Doctor Isaac called to it, even waving, but she didn’t give it more than a cursory glance as she stepped through the doors that had slid open when she drew near. The Dyno-88B turned its head at the voice and you observed the featurelessness of its face. Its head was shaped like a large smooth pill, and under the white glass two glowing green lights ‘blinked’ after the doctor. It almost mimicked an expression of surprise, but you knew there was no spark behind this machine’s imitation of eyes. Without a proper command given to it, the service robot only one person ever called ‘Abe’ resumed its mopping of the pristinely clean floor.

The streets were quiet too. No traffic, or even any vehicles were docked in the parking bays. Bright street lamps shone down in a way that fuzzed the shadows of Doctor Isaac as she passed. If you ‘looked’ straight up it made the sky beyond the glare completely pitch black, no stars able to penetrate the opposing brightness. Your attempts to measure air quality were hindered by the fact you couldn’t sample any air, not equipped with any other intake sensors other than the visual and aural, but you could observe Doctor Isaac’s bodily responses to the environment and noticed no trouble with her breathing, even as her pace quickened around the street corner.

You picked up a distant thudding noise, which grew as the Doctor was heading for its source. The bright streets gave way to an area illuminated in more spotlit fashion, deep shadows cutting into parts of alleys the street lamps couldn’t quite reach. Nothing hid in those shadows though, your perceptions able to penetrate the darkness, and then more colours than the standard stark white of artificial luminance drifted into your sensory range. The thudding had been the bass of some loud music, several tightly packed buildings each emitting their own distinct rhythms and melodies into the street you had been carried to. Despite the swirl of clashing sounds of different songs drifting into each other and competing to be heard, you were able to pick out and identify which notes belonged to which musical piece based on the directional cues, which also indicated their sources. More automatic cataloguing occurred, and one particular song grew more distinct as the Doctor honed in on the squat structure it originated from.

The sign above the door suggested that this place was called Zayne’s. Or it was of Zayne’s proprietorship. Or both. Or none. It wasn’t in any of your records, although you did only have a limited sector of the city layout (mainly just the immediate surrounds of the lab) stored in your databanks. The building itself didn’t look like much more than a wide, black box, but the neon pink signage and that same fluorescent glow around the entire edge of the door impressed an elegance upon you. A sort of simplicity of style.

The woman you were with gestured to an unseen sensor embedded in the door, although you had already detected the faint electric hum of the camera watching the outside. Guarding. It took only a few seconds for an abrupt chirrup to sound and then the black door swung inwards, not completely but enough for that thumping rhythm to leak through, and Doctor Isaac slipped inside with you in hand. The door shut silently.