The Elias Anomaly

Eight

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As Dulcie floated towards the edge of town she knew that she had located the anomaly. Crowds had gathered on the main thoroughfare. They had arranged themselves in the usual pattern adopted by those spectating a gun duel.

As she arrived some of the crowd were shouting and whooping, whilst others were inhaling sharply. A figure dressed in a dirty yellow shirt, a pair of torn black trousers and owning only one shoe lay on the floor. Above his head, nestled in the dirt before him, was the curved, black shape of a revolver.

"Come on, chicken shit!" a man dressed in typical Nonem cowboy garb was shouting at the prone figure. "Pick up the gun and let's get to it!"

"I really don't want to," said the man on the floor. "Please..."

"Don't make me beat you again, boy," the cowboy warned his reluctant opponent. "'Cause anyone will tell you that I aim to do it if you don't stop acting like a sissy."

Dulcie had never had much contact with Nonem. It wasn't her thing. The environments weren't interesting and the bots were simplistic. She pulled out her control tablet and froze the scene.

She supposed she would have to rearrange everything when she took the rogue bot away. It could cause a major glitch if other bots got caught in the middle of this gunfight encounter with no living opponent. So that was the afternoon gone, she supposed.

She decloaked and looked about for any signs of life from the crowd. You never knew there might be a few socialites hanging about.

"Anyone here," she called. "Endoverse Technical Services. There's been a minor glitch in this scenario. I am about to gauze the town so unless you want to be stuck here for the duration of the repairs I suggest you make yourself known."

"Who are you?" said a panicked voice from the floor. "What the hell are you talking about? What's going on?"

Dulcie looked down and her jaw dropped open a little. There was a twist, Berrow was right, this wasn't a bot. That would explain how he'd triggered the gunfight scenario. Bots weren't supposed to be able to trigger scenes.

This small mystery solved didn't really help matters. If the anomaly turned out to be a rogue bot, well, then you reprogrammed or erased the bot in question. You reset everything back to baseline. Everyone went on with their day.

As this was a player the question became: what the hell were they playing at? Everything Dulcie had heard about this weirdo so far told her that he was playing the strangest of games. He'd hacked the service tunnels and been thrown in the brig on a player vessel. Now he was involved in a Nonem gunfight but he was acting like the reluctant cowboy.

Was this some kind of bizarre hacker with a perverse masochistic streak? Whatever it was this guy had to be someone who came from somewhere. She swiped her viewpane over his face as he picked himself up off the floor and dusted himself down.

Every detail of his performance, a better term for his behaviour eluded Dulcie at this stage, was nuanced. Every action and inflection perfectly consistent with one scenario. He looked battered, tired, frightened, fearful. His narrowed eyes slid around the frozen Nonem crowds. A twinkle of amazement conveyed the impression that he was taken aback at their motionless tableau.

The viewpane told her that this anomaly was not a person, but he did have an asset number. The viewpane was telling her that this guy was a bot. This was impossible, all the bots within a quarter mile of their location were frozen at Dulcie's command. This guy wasn't frozen, ergo this guy wasn't a bot.