Work Text:
Day 34
Anderson was contemplating paint colors. Maybe a seafoam or a mint green? A nice, soothing color for the interrogation rooms. Easy to wash the blood off the walls, but without that suggestion that as soon as you walked a suspect in the door, they would be later picking their teeth off the floor.
"Judge Anderson."
Anderson snapped back to attention. "Yes, Chief Judge."
The Chief Judge turned off her tablet and put it back into a fold of her uniform jacket. "I've been pleased with your progress."
Anderson did not need to be a telepath to hear the entirely unsubtle so far.
"Thank you, Chief Judge."
The Chief Judge smiled, polite and very faint, and turned to leave the room. Anderson concentrated, and heard the faint thought as the Chief closed the door behind her: I have very big plans for you.
"Right," Anderson said to herself. "Time for work."
***
Headquarters was a riot of chaos, as always.
Five rookies were wrestling with an angry servo robot, three of them hanging from the single giant claw arm. Not that it was doing any good. The robot flung the three judges across the room and rolled itself forward on dual caterpillar treads, crushing another judge's hand.
Anderson freed her own Lawgiver, standing shoulder to shoulder with the only other judge on their feet.
"You will cease and desist your actions, Servo 1056-A! If you do not comply, you will be decommissioned and assigned as scrape. Do you hear me? You want to be a new hot water boiler?"
The servo switched its optics back and forth between the two judges before finally holding up its claw in surrender. Another judge smashed the machine's power off from behind before it could change its mind.
Anderson reholstered her gun.
"Thank you for the assist, Judge Anderson," the rookie thanked her.
"You're welcome, Judge--" Anderson glanced at the badge instead of intruding, "--Hershey."
Hershey glanced at the powered down robot as it was dragged out of the main entryway toward interrogation. "It's always robots," she muttered.
Anderson covered her smile of agreement and continued on her way to the garage and her own patrol.
***
"Damn robots!" Anderson shouted and ran faster.
She had taken what was thought to be a large floor dispute in Chuck Norris Towers. What she discovered was most of the floor locked inside their apartments while all the AI components had gone berserk. Now, she was frantically running from one corner to another of the floor's public overview plaza that overlooked the fifteen story drop down to the ground floor.
Anderson slid around the corner, neatly dodging a tight stream of high pressure water. The cleaner - one of the high volume, multi-purpose cleaning robots - had already killed two people. It then dumped their corpses in the back of its compaction cart, leaving a bloody trail in its wake. Dying by multiple contacts with a high pressure water blaster was not a clean way to die.
She had managed to break the autolock the local AI computer put on all the apartment doors, but the people would not leave their apartments. Most likely due to fear of looters. Though, it might have also been their fear of her as a Judge. They did not need, however, to be afraid of the cleaner, since she had it entirely distracted for the moment.
Anderson fired another round and cursed when it bounced off the cleaner's armor plating.
"Why are cleaners armor plated?" she asked herself in mock seriousness, ducking down and crawling behind a low, decorative ledge as the cleaner blasted the low wall with another stream of high pressure water. "Because gangs use them for target practice, and we must protect those that help keep our city clean," she quoted from one of the many city manuals she was required to memorize as a Judge. "But what about when the cleaners go crazy and decide they like the taste of human blood?" she asked herself. "No one's bothered to think up that reg yet, have they?"
The cleaner, on the other side of the wall, made a sputtering sound, and the water lost pressure. Anderson waited, and the sound of water trickling out of a hose grew softer. Taking a chance, she crawled to the end of the low wall, grabbed up a piece of broken piping, then slowly pushed it around the edge of the wall and into the robot's view path.
When nothing happened, she smacked the pipe against the cement edge. "Hey, hey!" She smacked the wall again. "You still there?"
Still nothing. She hated robots. She could never hear their thoughts like other living creatures.
Taking an even greater chance, she shoved her left hand beyond the wall and quickly yanked it back in close (she was not taking a chance with her dominant right hand). Still nothing.
Very carefully, she raised herself onto her feet again and slowly lifted her head to look over the wall.
"Oh shit--" and she ran like hell as the cleaner charged full speed and crashed through the wall like it was cheap plaster instead of cement.
She had no idea cleaners could move quickly. They were big, cumbersome black cubes with blinking lights. Why would they need to move quickly? Well, if it could ram through a cement wall, then--
Anderson jumped up onto the walled edge of the overview and held still. The cleaner took the bait and charged straight at her. At the very last moment, she dived to the side, and turned to watch the cleaner crash through the wall and go over the edge of the plaza, falling fifteen stories below.
She squinted down at the wreckage on the lobby floor, fairly sure that that sort of fall would destroy the AI controls. Or, at least, damage it enough that it could not get up and harm more people.
Her backup had arrived just in time to watch the cleaner smash into the ground, dumping its bloody cargo across lobby floor.
Dredd looked down at the cleaner, than looked up at Anderson. "Are you injured, Anderson?"
"No," she shouted down. "But I have several citizen casualties on the 16th floor. The AI is blocking all outward distress calls." She slid down to the ground and leaned against a pile of debris. She had done a lot of running today. "And can you do me a favor and shoot that thing in the CPU?"
She closed her eyes and heard instead of saw Dredd put three bullets in the destroyed cleaner.
"The robot has been decommissioned. We are heading up to you now, Anderson."
"Sounds great," she muttered to herself. "--Argh!"
"Anderson!" All the judges shouted up at her.
She looked down and found a child's pet robot making angry electric pixel faces at her from ankle level. Pet robots were plastic globes with wheels and claw arms that made expressions and noises to communicate to people. It made several angry beep noises at her when it finally had her notice and shocked her again with a taser it had clutched tightly in its claws.
"You little--" Anderson shoved her gun against the pixelated face. "I don't care if you're sentient. Cut that out, or I blow your electric little face off."
The pet robot made another series of angry beeps and whirls, then shut itself off, the taser falling out of its claws.
"I'm fine! Fine! Get up here! There might be multiple, small contacts still at large! Low danger!" She kicked the powered down robot. "I fucking hate robots."
***
There were demonstrations, sometimes. Parades or group sit-ins that demanded the right to vote back. The return to democracy after over a century under dictatorship and Judge rule.
The Chief Judge did not like demonstrations. "Demonstrations lead to Block Wars," she would say.
Like today.
Anderson ducked behind a pillar under one of the Boomway passes, trying to steal a quick moment to reload. The demonstration itself had been peaceful, under the strict eye of three dozen street judges. It would have broken up without issue if someone had not thrown that molotov cocktail into the crowd. She had heard the citizens' cries of agony both inside and outside her head.
She smacked a fresh magazine into place and readied herself to run again. Reaching out with her mind, she tried to pinpoint any of the minds that had her pinned down. It was chaos out there. Finding a rational thought was like finding a needle in a haystack.
Anderson took a chance and darted out, aiming for a new line of cover behind several burnt-out cars. Someone grabbed her ankle, and she went down, face first, on the cement.
She wriggled herself onto her back before her attacker could get on top of her, and the citizen got an elbow to the face for their trouble. She kneed the man (she was very confidant it was a man at this point) three times in the groin and shoved him off. She rolled to get back on her feet; the man grabbed at her calf this time. Anderson ripped her knife from her thigh belt and stabbed the man in the hand, arms, and face. That time, she was able to get up and run for cover: a burnt out husk of a cleaner robot. She would be annoyed at the irony later.
She did a quick physical check: blood, yes, some hers but mostly the attacker's. Lawgiver still in place, two more magazines. Knife, still had it. Helmet gone, though.
"Crap," she muttered. Without a helmet, she was asking to be shot in the head.
A body rolled into her cover, and she raised her knife for a quick slash.
"Friendly, friendly!" the Judge shouted at her as he uncurled from his roll. And continued to uncurl.
"Judge Giant," Anderson muttered, and tucked her knife back into place. She pulled out her Lawgiver instead, and tried once again to reach HQ over her comms.
"Judge Anderson. Lost your helmet, I see." The giant street judge checked his own weapon.
Anderson could not help but overhear his thoughts. Giant had shot a young man in the face when he refused to drop his weapon: a fleeing child had knocked into his elbow and ruined a clean chest shot.
"Yeah, well," Anderson hedged. "It didn't go with my purse."
Her comms suddenly sprang back to life. "--repeat, back up is incoming for all Judges on the ground. Regroup, regroup--"
Off in the distance, they could hear a hoverjet making its way closer, and a man on a megaphone shouting, "Citizens, you will disperse and return to your homes, or you will face judgment under regulations--"
Beside her, Giant let out a breath. "They let the Old Man out. We should probably make a run for it before he decides to nuke the whole sector from orbit."
"You're kidding," Anderson said as she limped after the big judge, images of Dredd dropping a nuclear warhead on the city fresh in her head. "No, seriously, you're only kidding, right?"
***
The servo robot made another series of whirls and beeps.
Anderson frowned. "I still have no idea what you said." She shouldered the rocket launcher into position, trying to remember if this was a model she needed to aim a little off center for wind sheer. "But unless you're going to try to stop me from shooting that thing that we are 90% sure is the master AI control node, I'm okay with that."
The servo whirled again and tugged frantically at her arm. Not taking the rocket launcher from her, but still trying to get her attention.
"Damnit, I don't understand!" she shouted. "And we don't have a lot of time. That rogue AI could have control of the city's nuclear stores by now! It could have infected even more of the robot population with its control virus. Are you on its side?!"
The servo let out an even angrier whirl of beeps at the accusation.
"Then why are you stopping me?!"
Its single claw arm grabbed at the rocket launcher. Anderson made to fight, going for her Lawgiver, but the robot shoved the muzzle of the rocket launcher further down instead of trying to take it away.
"Down? You want me to hit it further down?"
The servo whirled again, pointing further down the rock wall where the massive AI had hidden itself in the old ruins of Washington, D.C. They were deep underground, in one of the old subway tunnels she had only heard about from history books. And there was a very big drop between her and what HQ was fairly sure was the main AI node. Wipe it out, stop the attempt at a full out Robot War. In theory.
The servo pointed frantically again with its claw. It wanted to live as much as she did. The AI was reprogramming and wiping all other robots' individual minds, making their bodies its slaves. The servo would die if she failed.
Overhead, she heard it again. Millions of steel claws against granite. Thousands and thousands of pet robots that had been wiped and were now little killing machines that liked to rip the flesh from your face and set your insides on fire.
"Right." She took careful aim through the view scope, deciding to throw it all in the air and aim for dead center, just below the node. "Hope you like living as much as I do."
And fired.
The rocket took .32398 seconds to reach its target. It took another .5 seconds for the cliff wall to buckle under the sudden strain and collapse, and another entire four seconds before the AI node finally crashed out of sight, down even further below the old metro ruins.
It took just over eight seconds for the army of converted robot pets to reach Anderson and the servo. The many-legged robots froze, then dropped dead at Anderson's feet.
"I think that means we got the right place."
The servo smacked Anderson on the back with its claw, and she went down on all fours, the breath knocked out of her. The servo made some sort of apologetic noise (at least she decided it was apologetic).
"Yeah, I'm okay. Now." She sat up on her knees and looked up. And up. "We just have to figure out how to get out of here."
***
The Chief Judge asked Anderson into her office after just over six months on the street.
"Judge Anderson," she greeted.
"Chief Judge." Anderson saluted.
"Do you know why I am speaking to you, Judge Anderson?"
Anderson looked at the Chief Judge, at the tablet in her hands, then back. "You have a proposal for me, sir."
The Chief Judge smiled. "Glad you don't have to always read minds, Anderson."
The Chief handed her the tablet. It lit up on a splash screen with simply the words "PSI-Judge". Anderson held the tablet for a moment.
"Sir, does it involve robots?" she asked.
"Robots?" the Chief Judge repeated.
"Does your proposal involve robots whatsoever?" Anderson clarified.
The Chief Judge bit back a laugh. "Not at this time, no, Judge Anderson."
"I will take it under consideration. Sir."