Juris Ex Machina

Flashmob

“ATTENTION, SHOPPERS,” flashed the message. Beneath was a business name and a time. Nothing more.

The designated location was relatively close to where Rainville sat, but still on the other end of the Financial District. He’d have to scarf down the rest of his Skyburger if he was going to make it there in time, and he regretted ordering Triple Extra Spicy.

Rainville chewed faster, shielding his console from falling bits of synthesized meat and spiced curry with one hand as he accessed site maps and forum posts and other intel related to the store with the other. It was not a popular target because it lacked a rear entrance, but by the same token, less popular targets often had less wary security staff.

He placed his console atop a reflective icon molded into the purple antibacterial plastic of the restaurant table and craned his neck to continue using the device while the restaurant debited his account for the meal. “Thank you for dining at Lunch & Munch!” the console exclaimed, “We hope you enjoyed y—” Rainville cut the voice off by confirming his bill without stopping to look at it. With a flick of his wrist, the console rerolled itself into a neat cylinder and slipped into his pocket.

He hurried to the mag-rail subway station across the street, bolting onto a subway car seconds before it lurched into motion. With Christmas coming, there was a certain expectation that any nineteen- year-old, living on his own now or not, would provide decent holiday gifts. Maybe he’d even extend an olive branch to his father, pick out something nice for the old man, get them back on speaking terms again.

Rainville was self-employed, repairing electrophotonics. He could afford to buy gifts but felt they meant a lot more when he’d taken personal risks by stealing them. Ironically, this added significance couldn’t be revealed to their recipients. Most of them would just be pissed at him for shoplifting. Life was funny that way.

He took the mag-rail two stops to the RetroMall of Atlantis in

Arcadia’s city center. Ancient by City standards, the RetroMall repre- sented living history, recreating a place where generations past had gathered during the colder seasons to celebrate their lameness. It was built before the dome was erected over Arcadia, when weather still affected Arcadians’ day-to-day lives. These days the outmoded facility still saw commerce, but its ironic decor was looking a bit ragged. Hokey electroluminescent floor tiles flashed primitive animation of fish and mermaids and streams of bubbles. “Follow the green bubbles to savings!” flashed a tile indicating a long-closed department store. The mall’s food court was ruled over by a giant animatronic King Neptune, waving his trident and welcoming shoppers to his aging retail shopping kingdom. Water cascaded down mollusk-shaped catch- pans before collecting in a large pool at his feet.

Beyond the food court lay his objective. The location, a store called Darrow’s Technological Goodies, was bedecked in dingy “SALE!!” banners and garish flashing lights. Based on the number of people milling around in the store, he was not the first Shopper to arrive. Good. Arriving first only seemed to stimulate the memories of store clerks. He wandered back through the shop toward the less mundane items. The entertainment aisle was already crowded with people, leaving no clean escape route when the shit hit. Fucking amateurs.

Rainville passed through an aisle piled with animated T-shirts, and then a jumbled display of snow globes containing their own miniature weather systems. He veered into the photonics aisle, just as a dumbass in a trench coat ran by with a Swordblade Holographic Game Imager under his arm. Trench Coat’s adrenaline level had exceeded the design tolerances of his body. Mid-stride, his foot clipped the edge of a pyramid of artificially intelligent bears. They teetered before collapsing into an aisle-blocking auditory torrent of “Hi, I’m Twispy!”s and “Can I have a hug?”s and “I can tell when your friends are lying!”s. Trench Coat stumbled over the bears, increasing his speed to an even more reckless level as he flew around a corner toward the registers. The stupid fucker obviously hadn’t checked his time synchronization daemon, in clear violation of Rule #3: Synchronize Watches. His chrono was way off. Odd. Synchro daemons should have kept the consoles of everyone in Arcadia calibrated to the same millisecond. Anyway, the commotion of his solitary theft would make a nice diver- sion in ninety seconds when the real flashmob started.

At the tick of 12:46:34, chaos reigned supreme.