Gwen strode into the cafe, the elegant Asian woman taking a look
around before she spotted her friend and made her way through the crowd
towards her table. Alexis looked up with a smile, her expression
becoming grave as she took in the look on Gwen's face. The other woman
settled into a seat, a waitress quickly took their orders, and then was
gone.
"What's wrong?" Dr. Alexis Jameson finally asked, the dark
haired beauty looking over at Gwen worriedly. The other woman was
visibly angry, an unusual sight to say the least. When Alexis had dated
her Gwen had never gotten angry, at least not so one could notice.
Seeing her like this was profoundly disturbing.
"The mayor has ordered the police force to go after the
Freewills," Gwen said crisply, "probably due to pressure from the
governor."
"How can they think..." Alexis stammered, "on what legal
grounds..." She shook her head, regaining her self control. "Obviously
they think they have the legal grounds, or you wouldn't be here talking
about it," she scowled.
"The manufacturer, who's also in on this somehow, is claiming
that we can reclaim the Freewills as pieces of errant property," Gwen
answered. Her hand tightened on a napkin, "As if the Freewills would go
that quietly."
"That won't hold up in court," Alexis noted softly, her
expression thoughtful. She looked up at Gwen thoughtfully, "Why are you
telling me this?"
Looking visibly uncomfortable about it Gwen quietly admitted, "I
want you to pass this on to the Android rights groups you used to know.
There is no way I want to bring in... people, who haven't committed any
real crimes."
Alexis looked across the table at Gwen, her expression one of
honest surprise. "You could get into a great deal of trouble with your
superiors over this," she finally said, reaching out to put her hand
over Gwen's white knuckled grip on the napkin.
"That's my problem," Gwen answered her simply. A bit more
intensely she asked, "Can you get the information to them?"
"I can," Alexis nodded. "How long do we have?"
"The official announcement is going to be tomorrow morning,"
Gwen answered, "the police forces are all being briefed on it now."
"Then I'd better get going," Alexis said apologetically as she
grabbed up her purse and jacket from beside her seat. A grim smile,
"I'll let you know when I have news."
"Thanks," Gwen sighed as the other woman strode out of the cafe.
The redheaded waitress blinked in surprise, the two drinks she
carried on her tray held rock steady. "Are you going to be dining
alone?" she asked.
"Hmm," Gwen sighed. She gestured towards the other drink, "Leave
that one here, too. I think I'm going to need it to get through today."
"Right," the waitress set the other glass down, her movements
smooth.
'I don't think most people would notice, but she's an android,'
Gwen realized, 'probably a Freewill. And tomorrow, my job is going to be
to bring girls like her in by force.'
"Is there something wrong?" the little waitress asked her, her
name- tag catching the light as she looked down at Gwen worriedly.
'Ariko,' Gwen found herself noting the name. "Nothing, Ariko,"
she said to her gently, "thank you." She slugged the first drink down
smoothly, then without any hesitation she grabbed the other drink and
slugged it down too.
Ariko looked at her curiously, "Would you like two more?"
Gwen made a face, "Probably, but I'd better not." She used a
cash chip to pay, leaving the girl a generous tip before she left the
restaurant, lost in her thoughts.
In another part of the city's great towers a young woman was
just getting home. Beth sighed to herself softly as she closed her
apartment door, relaxing just a bit as she dropped her bag. The little
redhead slipped her shoes off, then hung her jacket up in the closet
before going down the hall towards the apartment's living room. Half of
it was pretty typical, couch, TV, a table for eating, etc. etc. just
like anyone else's living room.
The other half of the room clearly showed Beth's fascination
with all things electronic. Her computer system was a hybrid machine,
with several open cases and equipment spread out all around, multiple
monitors providing access to several subsystems. On one wall schematics
of an Android hung, markings showing where best to shoot to disable it,
and several hand weapons lay there partly completed on a nearby
workbench.
Beth reached up to touch the Android schematics, then in a
sudden gesture she tore it down off of the wall. "Crap," she muttered to
herself angrily, crunching up the paper before tossing it angrily
towards an empty corner. She sat down at the computer terminal, typing
rapidly, alternating between four keyboards as she watched the screens
intently.
There were several sites that the Freewills used, several of
which she had not chosen to reveal to her employers. A girl had to keep
a few aces up her sleeve just in case she needed to prove she was a
miracle worker. Bouncing her links through several remote servers she
blurred her trail, hopefully preventing anyone from tracing her signal
back.
With a bit of surprise Beth found that there were a few posts
already up there mentioning a possible police crackdown on the Freewill
population. 'It looks like there's a high level leak,' she noted, but
saw that the news wasn't being taken all that seriously by the other
posters. The basic response was, "So what else is new?"
"So what do I do now?" Beth muttered to herself. Chasing down
dangerous rogue Androids had never bothered her very much, honestly.
Machines with a busted brain, that was how she had always looked at
them, but the Freewills... that was messier.
Beth had found out about the message boards where the Freewills
talked, cautiously joining in their discussions as part of her job. It
had taken some time before she earned their trust, before they would
open up to her, but eventually she began to learn about them. They were
so... ordinary, with cares and worries that were not all that different
from her own. They cared, they loved, they felt so very much like any
human being.
She leaned forward in her seat, Beth's fingers flying across the
twin keyboards as she hacked into one of the few systems that she had
declared off limits to her skills. The police server's firewalls were
pretty good, but she was better, having just the right ice to handle it.
The system managers were awfully arrogant, as Beth found no other
substantial defenses beyond the powerful outer wall. She searched
through upper levels of data, swiftly looking for the right documents,
accessing through assumed names and copying the records to disk.
The Mayor's orders to the chief of police regarding the
Freewills, the Chief's briefings, key details of the corporate pressure
applied from up above, she bundled it all up as a zip-tachment. Beth
wrote the worm carefully, structuring it to self-destruct after 24
hours, then attached the data. The worm would display those documents to
every system it infected, programmed to go in through back doors most
people didn't know existed.
One keystroke would send it out, but Beth hesitated. She
wondered what Kate or Jen would think, what Gwen would say. 'But if I
don't do this,' she asked herself, 'can I live with myself in the
morning?'
Click! 'Enter' was struck, and it began.
A few hours later in her suite across town Jen held then phone
to her ear, listening to it ring. 'Damn it Kate," she muttered as she
hung up, "where are you!" She had been trying to reach Kate almost as
soon as she got home, to no avail.
She wasn't sure what to do about the upcoming actions against
theFreewills. Being a member of the Chasers meant a lot to Jen, and she
didn't want to loose that. Add the fact that technically they should be
going after the Freewills and you had a very conflicted woman.
'What am I going to tell Gwen tomorrow?' the beautiful blonde
wondered as she strode across to a chair in her living room, flopping
down into her seat. 'What am I going to tell Kate?' She activated the
television with a word, then froze in shock.
"...... information about a planned crackdown on the Freewills
has been spreading across the net like wildfire. The Mayor's office has
been buried in complaints, and the police are refusing to make a
statement at this time."
"Proponents of Android rights have already began pushing through
a legal challenge, and the current status of the crackdown remains in
doubt."
Jen muted the sound, her expression one of stunned shock. A
slight smile teased her lips as she blurted out in relief, "Well, all
right!"
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