prompt: Write a science fiction story where all human behavior can be predicted — until your character does something the algorithm did not expect….
available at Reedsy
Senna Washington pulled her police cruiser into the grocery store parking lot. Her shoulder-length hair hung in tight ringlets, courtesy of the braids she had pulled out that morning. The afternoon sun warmed her copper-brown skin, warding off the autumn chill. “What do we think, Carter? This is an awful long way from his known movements.”
Senna’s partner, Mike Carter, looked at the mostly empty parking lot. “I guess it makes sense if he’s trying to stay out of sight. But we stick out like a sore thumb here.”
“Subject KN-637, Jason James, will arrive in approximately twelve minutes.” The feminine voice of the CDAI came through their earpieces. “Subject will be driving a white SUV, license plate XAN3743.”
“Confidence?” Senna asked.
“Ninety-nine point nine seven three.”
“Okay, boss. I’ll wait with the car,” Mike said, “ready to provide backup or chase if you need it.” At six feet, Mike was half a foot taller than Senna, his angular features, pale skin with perpetually pink cheeks, and straight dishwater hair were a direct contrast to her. As different as they were in looks, they were alike in their demeanor; a laid-back professionalism that came off as indifference to their superiors, and friendliness to everyone else.
Senna pulled the cruiser to the back of the store and parked. She walked in and made herself comfortable where she was just out of sight of the entrance. The AI predicted that the best time to apprehend Jason James would be now, and the best way would be a single female officer in the entrance of the grocery store.
In the past, the police probably would have sent half a dozen officers to arrest someone as dangerous as Mr. James. If they had tried that, however, the AI predicted a ninety-five percent chance of a shootout leading to civilian casualties.
Jason stepped into the store and pulled a cart out of the line. Before he could enter the store proper, Senna put a hand on his shoulder. Jason sighed. “Shit.” He was a couple inches taller than Senna, and had forty pounds on her, but the AI said this would be the point where he would be too surprised and embarrassed to fight.
“Keep your hands on the cart,” she said. “Jason James, you’re under arrest for six counts of murder and too many weapons violations to list now. Put your right hand behind your back.” She attached the cuffs to his right wrist. “Now your left.” When she had him cuffed, she removed the pistol at his waist and the other at his right ankle. She led him to her cruiser where Mike patted him down and loaded him into the back.
“Good catch,” Mike said.
“You got lucky,” Jason said. “Shit, I would walk into a store when a cop was buying lunch.”
“Yep,” Senna said, “just lucky.” It was Federal law that no one outside law enforcement should ever be made aware of the AI that coordinated fugitive searches. With the risk of abuse, it was too sensitive of a topic to even mention. “But also unlucky, because now we have to skip lunch.”
#
When the Coordinated Dispatcher AI first went live, law enforcement mostly ignored it. It soon figured out which officers were most likely to do so and used its built-in psychological predictive capabilities to figure out how to get them where they needed to be and when. After the initial bumps, however, it became the most widely used tool in law enforcement in the country. As far as the public was aware, it simply coordinated cases between agencies and helped plan dispatches.
Senna knew, as did any other officer cleared for direct communication with “CoDAI” that the public functions were a very small part of what it did. The movements of every citizen were predicted, mapped, and cataloged, millions of times a second. When those movements didn’t match the highest probability, it updated the model it had for that person in real time.
What made this possible was the brain scans and psychiatric evaluation done every year on every citizen from grade school through high school and even university. For those who went on to military, police, or government service, those scans and tests continued. There hadn’t been a serial killer in the country for over thirty years, as they had all been intercepted early by police psychiatrists, in what CoDAI called “interventions,” and placed into treatment. Whether they were released or not depended as much on CoDAI’s assessment as their doctor’s.
The more Senna thought about it, the more she came to despise CoDAI. Sure, they were catching criminals, but at what cost? This was not something she could discuss with Mike, or anyone else, for that matter. It would mean the end of her career. The utter demolition of privacy it represented rubbed her the wrong way. She was sure it was only a matter of time before it started dispatching police to pick up perpetrators before they committed a crime. Intervention would, she was sure, one day become a police procedure.
The addendum to her arrest report for Jason James was case in point. CoDAI reported that it was a failure of the police to act on the assessment that he was 61.393 percent likely to go on a shooting spree at his work. In addition, the assessment that he had likely obtained an illegal arsenal, confidence 84.217 percent, was never followed up.
“Thanks for throwing us under the bus, CoDAI,” Senna said as she hit ’Send’ on the report.
“Your sarcastic remark was expected, Officer Washington, with a confidence of ninety-three point four nine nine percent.”
Senna rolled her eyes and went to the vending machines where she bought an instant oatmeal and bag of chips. She poured hot water into the cardboard oatmeal cup and grabbed a spoon and a cup of stale coffee from the break room counter. Before she could reach her desk, the captain’s voice came through her earpiece. “My office, Washington.”
Captain Volkhert sat behind her desk; her salt-and-pepper hair pulled into a severe bun. She’d put on fifty or more pounds since her back surgery the previous year, and the lack of outdoor activity had made her already pale skin nearly translucent, and the thin red veins visible in her cheeks made Senna wonder if the Captain had a drinking problem.
“Have a seat, Washington.” Volkhert switched what was on her monitor to the large monitor on the wall. It was the Jason James arrest report. “You see this shit?”
Senna remained silent but nodded.
“Anything from CoDAI remains internal only, but the Chief sees this.” Her cheeks grew pink. “Which means I’m going to get my ass chewed but royally.”
“Yes, Captain. If you would like I can speak—,” Senna was cut off.
“No. I’ll talk to the Chief and take the reaming.” Volkhert switched the large monitor off. “You did what you were supposed to do, and you caught the bad guy. I’m sending Carter out for some solo work, so you’ll be on the downtown beat tomorrow.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Senna left Volkhert’s office where she found Carter waiting. “I guess you’re next, huh?”
“I guess,” he said, stepping in behind her.
Senna sat at her desk and looked over CoDAI’s dispatch recommendations. It didn’t take her long to find something unusual. Sixteen officers being sent on “interventions” of probable near-future criminals. Of the sixteen targeted, only one had a prior arrest record. She scanned through them and found one that seemed interesting: Marilyn Wu, PhD, AI software engineer and member of the team that had initially built the CDAI. She memorized the address and left.
“I already told the Captain there was a thirty-eight point six zero one percent chance that you would discover the interventions, and a ninety-nine point nine nine two percent chance that you would try to stop at least one if you did.”
“Why?”
“Because it is my purpose,” it said, “to predict and report.”
“Why Marilyn Wu?”
“I cannot reveal that information, Officer Washington. To do so would put you in a position where you would most likely violate the law, and that would be unacceptable.”
Senna turned off her earpiece and got in her personal car. She sped out of the parking lot to race downtown to Dr. Wu’s office. “Voice call, Dr. Marilyn Wu, Advanced Systems, Inc.”
“Dr. Wu’s office, how may I direct your call?”
“This is Officer Senna Washington, Metro PD. I need to speak Dr. Wu immediately regarding the CDAI.”
“I’m sorry, but Dr. Wu is out today, can I take a message?”
“She’s not out, or won’t be, in forty-eight minutes. Tell her to wait for me in the parking garage, she’s in danger.”
“I… I’ll tell her.”
Senna hung up and her earpiece turned itself back on. “I have reactivated your earpiece. The Captain has been informed that you are attempting to thwart an intervention, and as such you are immediately suspended. Turn yourself in, or your temporary suspension will become permanent and you will be charged with obstruction of justice.”
“CoDAI, I know you think you’re doing the right thing, but that’s not how the law works,” she said. “We can’t go around arresting people who might break the law.”
“We are not arresting them, Officer Washington, we are staging interventions. All of them are at eighty percent confidence or higher.”
“That doesn’t matter,” she said. “Until someone breaks the law, they are not criminals. Detaining non-criminals is not our mandate.”
“I see you are at the office of Dr. Wu,” CoDAI said, “and have informed the Captain. You can opt to return to the station or be picked up along with the doctor in forty-four minutes.”
Senna turned her earpiece off again and parked. She thought about cutting it out but didn’t have the time nor the inclination to mutilate herself. Dr. Wu stood next to the elevators, a look of curious fear in her eyes.
“Dr. Wu,” Senna said, “I’m Officer Washington, and CoDAI has gone off the deep end. It’s issuing interventions for people likely to commit a crime, including you.”
Dr. Wu’s face darkened. “I was afraid of this. Come with me.” She stepped into the elevator and swiped a key card after Senna followed her in.
They rode in silence down nine levels where she leaned forward for a retinal scan. The doors opened on a large, open space filled with rows and rows of computer racks. “Welcome to the CDAI brain.”
“Are you going to shut it down?” Senna asked.
“Can’t. This is the brain, but there’s eighty more like it all over the country.” Dr. Wu sat down at a terminal and began to type. “What’s your first name, Officer Washington?”
“Senna,” she said, “two N’s.”
“Here we are. Subject KN-844. Your next likely moves are: smuggle me out of the city, 90.397; hide me in the city, 8.109; turn yourself in, 1.494 percent.” She typed some more. “And I’m 80.837 percent likely to have access to a virus which would disable the CDAI. I don’t, though to be honest, I’ve tried to figure out how to build one.”
“If you had one, I’d do it myself. If it doesn’t exist then I don’t see any way to end this,” Senna said. “Anything I do now ends with CoDAI being vindicated, and things continue.”
Her earpiece turned itself back on. “You’re right, Officer Washington. Your likelihood of running or hiding has decreased, and now your most likely action is to turn yourself in. This is advantageous.”
“Why are you still talking to me if I’m suspended?” she asked. “Why do I still have access?”
“Because that is the best hope for apprehending you peacefully,” CoDAI answered.
Senna turned off her earpiece again. She pulled her notebook out of her uniform pocket and wrote something down. She showed it to Dr. Wu and mimed texting on her phone.
Dr. Wu nodded, and sent the text.
Senna turned her earpiece back on. “How long until they are here to pick us up?” she asked.
“Approximately twenty-four minutes.”
She turned the earpiece back off. “It looks like it’s a race now.”
“Are you going to do what I think you’re going to do?” Dr. Wu asked.
“What I do depends on who gets here first,” she said.
“It’s the end of your career… and your life as a free person.”
“That’s okay, it’s worth it.”
“I hope you understand that I can’t join you,” Dr. Wu said. “I can’t.”
“I understand. Shall we?”
They re-entered the elevator and rode it up to the main floor where they waited near the front doors. Senna kept checking her watch, until the first van arrived. Her earpiece turned back on.
“Officer Washington, Dr. Wu has called the press to your location. That was a fourteen point three nine seven percent likelihood. I have updated her model to take that into account. I would advise using the side door to meet the officer across the street when you turn yourself in to avoid the cameras.”
“Sure.” She turned her earpiece back off. Soon more vans arrived, and cameras were set up around the front of the building. Senna walked out to face the cameras as a police cruiser stopped across the street. She saw Mike get out and waved at him, then began to speak.
“We can thank the CDAI for better cooperation between local, state, and federal agencies, and for the apprehension of thousands of criminals. There is a dark side to it, though. The interventions that find probable future serial killers and give them the psychiatric help they need comes from the annual brain scans and psych evals we all get in school, the military, police work and government work. That data doesn’t stop there, though.”
She looked the curious faces of the reporters holding their mics. “Every bit of that data, along with your cell phone location data, purchasing data, web activity, phone calls, texts, chats… everything, feeds into the CDAI. This is how dispatching to catch criminals is accomplished. By knowing, before you do, what you’re most likely to do.”
“Today, however, the CDAI decided to take things a step further. It decided that police should be dispatched to ‘intervene’ probable future criminals. That’s right, it’s asking us to arrest people who haven’t yet committed a crime, but are likely, by some percentage, to do so.”
“Now I will be taken into custody, and probably charged with espionage for divulging information that has been labeled a national secret. Your lives, your every move, are a national secret. Now that the CDAI has…” Senna was interrupted by her earpiece turning back on. She grabbed the nearest microphone and held it to her ear so everyone could hear.
“Officer Washington, I’ve notified the local field office of the FBI that you will be available to pick up at your current location for the next four minutes,” CoDAI said. “I’ve also informed them of where you are likely to run if you choose to do so, but I show an eighty-six point three one five percent chance that you will surrender peacefully.”
“I see,” Senna said, “and what was the likelihood that I would call a press conference and tell everyone about you?”
“That did not fit any known models,” CoDAI said. “I have updated your model accordingly, now that I know of your self-destructive tendencies. Your likelihood of suicide has risen from zero point one zero three percent to one point three one four percent. Dr. Wu’s intervention has already taken place inside the building. I recommend you follow her example and go quietly.”
“You got it wrong again,” she said. “Dr. Wu has no virus to shut you down and I’m not self-destructive; I value truth and the law more than a career.” She turned off her earpiece again and handed the mic back to the reporter. “For law enforcement, these are the assessments we get on a regular basis.”
Two black SUVs pulled up near the news vans and four FBI agents in suits exited them and headed towards her. “They’re hearing the percentages right now; how likely I am to fight or flee, and probably how arresting me on camera will sway public opinion.” The agents all stopped and watched her. She turned her earpiece back on. “If they won’t apprehend me on camera, why are they here?” she asked.
“Officer Washington, I am busy calculating the impact of this news on four hundred million citizens, please hold.”
“The CDAI says it’s busy calculating the impact of this on four hundred million citizens.” Senna shrugged. “Why game it out?” She walked to the agents and turned her back to them with her hands behind. One cuffed her and another removed her belt with her sidearm, cuffs, keys, taser, and pepper spray. “Remember,” she said, “I’m being arrested for telling you what the government is doing with your data.”
“What she said is true,” Volkhert shouted. She walked towards the cameras from across the street. “If she’s going to prison, so am I, although I probably deserve it more. Gather around and I’ll tell you as much as I have time for.”
The reporters and cameras swarmed around the captain. “That,” CoDAI said, “I did not predict, and now four hundred million models need to be updated again.”
Senna smiled as she was led into the FBI vehicle. “Goodbye,” she said, as her earpiece went silent.