Windowsill
“I sat by the window, looking out into the grey rainy city. Sipping my coffee, I surveyed the scene: A handful of people walking the streets carrying bright red government-issued umbrellas, the old vine-covered residential building across the street in a state of half-demolition, and the whirring of the occasional police drone. It had only been a couple months since moving in but everything felt exactly the same, civilian residences all felt the same. I got up from my creaky wood chair to wash the cup when I heard it—a gunshot. Not an ordinary gunshot either, not some licensed stun pistol, not even a police concussion gun, a real honest to goodness gunshot. I rushed over to the window; two men stood far below, one of them holding a small handgun. Several drones were converging on his location, snapping on their spotlights and hovering still when they got there. The man on the right tried to get the one with the gun to drop it, but as he did so one of the drones immediately sent a tiny dart whizzing toward him. It struck him in the back and he slumped to the floor. The guy with the gun stood still for a few seconds, and then, in a single motion, let off several shots at the drones while rolling beneath a nearby parked bus. I’d never seen anyone do that, nobody ever runs, if you’re caught, you’re caught… right? The drones drifted towards the vehicle, one of them a little lopsided from a now-broken rear left rotor. As I stood there, palms pressed against the glass in anticipation, nothing, nothing for a solid 3 minutes. The drones just hovering there waiting for the inevitable, and then the bus drove off, no driver, it just drove off. And he was gone. Hotwired the car from underneath I suppose…”
The officer looked up from his notepad, “and you don’t know who the man is?”
“No sir” I replied.
“Ok, we’ll just be a few minutes more, it’ll take a little bit to get the memory sweeper up here” he said. He sounded like he had done it a million times before; he probably had.
“But I don’t know him… why do I need a sweep?” I asked. Presumably this wasn’t the first time, I had several on my record, but it was never a pleasant experience not remembering things, plus I myself was curious who the man was.
“Typical security protocol” he said, hardly paying attention now as he checked off little boxes on his clipboard.
A few minutes later a group of blue clad technicians rolled in the intimidating device, with its shiny hemispheric emitter. A few minutes later and I’ll be sipping coffee at my windowsill again, wondering why it feels strange, like I already had coffee today...