Chief Prompter Jameson Aguardento woke up from his sleeplike state of obsessive thinking when all sorts of annoying notifications started bleeping from his phone, computer and every other possible device they’d plugged his life into.
Department sent a new file and they wanted him to act on it. No shit, thought Aguardento. None the fucking less.
Double click and there he was again, scrolling fast through the file to try and identify one single fact among all the blabbering, redundant, sycophantic nonsense written by some kind of AI that was trained on decades of human-written, blabbering, redundant, nonsensical horseshit. And I gotta say, thought Aguardento, those AI trainers know their deal because the artificial thing looks exactly as clueless and dumb and meaningless as the real one.
There it is, the fact, buried on page 3. You could recognize it because of all sentences it was the shortest. And the fact was this: Department can’t locate the suspect on a homicide investigation and now they wanted help. Do tell, thought Aguardento. With all the millions spent on drones and computers and severance packages allocated to make sure you fired every competent policeman in town, now a guy hides behind a wall and all the system collapses.
At this point Aguardento closed the file and was ready to drag and drop and dontgiveashit about it as usual. Yeah, let the “detective” care about it. This is what they “trained” him on, right? To babysit a chatbot who pretended to do real police work. Sit tight, wait for the pension and be grateful you still have a job, right?
No, not this time. This time Aguardento double clicked on the file again. I’m gonna solve this, he said to himself. I’m gonna solve it the old fashioned way and teach the Department, and the Computer and all the tech-savies motherfuckers that no algorithm can beat the mind of a Natural Police like himself.
The face of the suspect popped up on the screen. Look at this punk, thought Aguardento.
The name of the suspect was Sigmarillo Ramyrez, 29, a couple of precedents for crypto thieving, of course, which only increased Aguardento’s respect for him. And then, at some point, he apparently kills someone over what? The file didn’t say, or maybe it said it in a much convoluted, boring way that deterred Aguardento from keep reading it.
Sigmarillo Ramyrez. Never heard of him, he thought. What kind of name is Sigmarillo anyway? A stupid name like that, once you hear you don’t forget it, that for sure.
There was a time when the criminal ecosystem of the city had no secrets for him. You couldn’t lift a finger, let alone flee a warrant or murder someone, without Aguardento receiving the whisper from one of his countless informants.
Back in the day, of course. When criminals were still criminals and not these improvised, dumb named, sad looking, crypto thieving, sorryasses parodies of a killer. Back in the day, when something like this happened, here is how he played it out.
All he needed to do was lift his eyes and give Pulaski, his ten years partner, one single look. And even if Pulaski was sleeping at the desk or nursing one of his legendary hangovers, their connection was so strong that the look would have ringed on the partner’s ears louder than an alarm clock. The message was clear: let’s hit the streets. And a minute later streets would have been hit hard on a 15-years old piece of crap departmental unmarked car with a million miles on her. And then, oh boy, let the fun begin. You lousy piece of shit got a warrant out and you’re nowhere to be found? You think you can murder someone on my streets and get a pass just because some lazy patrolman was too scared to knock twice on your door? You think you can hide forever? From me? From Pulaski? Well now, you’re gonna have to think hard and again, because me and my buddy right here are gonna find every piece of family, friends, remote acquaintance you got left on that disfunctional, miserable sequence of disgraceful events that you call a life, and we’re gonna lower the quality of their lives to a level that you can’t even imagine. 3 a.m. in the morning? Enjoying a good night’s sleep, madam? Let me storm into your house and repeatedly ask you about the whereabouts of that criminal you so carefully raised. And let me do that tonight, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow until you will actually be happy to tell me where he is. Hell, you would be happy to drive him yourself to the life sentence he deserves.
Yeah, those were days, but now? What’s the point? He’s got no one left to drive around with. Hell, departmental cars knew to drive themselves these days. Where would he go? He’s been sitting on that desk for so long now that he had no informants left and no feel for the streets. He scrolled the file up and down again for so many times until he was ready to admit to himself that he had not a single fucking clue. Just a name and a face that meant nothing to him. And you know the worst part? He looked at the face of the guy and he hoped they never found him. You murdered someone? Well, maybe you had your good set of reasons, right?
He closed the file and he looked at it, reduced to an icon. An icon that was so easy to grab and drag and drop and let the machine do his thing.
He sent the file without even formulating a proper request and ten seconds later a message appeared on the screen.
Looks like you got yourself a good, ol’ fashioned manhunt on your hands, Chief! Do you want me to solve this for you?