The front door wasn’t kicked in. There were no shouts, no threats. The digital lock beeped once, then the light above the handle turned green.
Raka pulled Mila behind him.
“Civil safety officers,” one of the people outside said. “We only need to take your father in for an examination.”
“What kind of examination?”
“The examination required by the system.”
The answer sounded neat. Too neat.
Raka turned toward the kitchen. Beneath the floor, he kept an old transmitter that wasn’t connected to the city network. He had built it years ago, back when everyone still considered analog devices obsolete. He pulled a small lever beneath the table.
The entire house went dark.
The door stopped halfway open.
“Mila, stay with Dad.”
They went out through the back door into a narrow alley. Last night’s rain had left black puddles between the houses. In the distance, the sounds of self-driving cars began sweeping through the streets.
Raka took them to the old workshop owned by his younger brother, Dimas. But Dimas wasn’t there. On the table lay only a scrap of paper with handwritten words:
Don’t trust the voice calling your name.
Mila read the message, then looked at her father.
“Did they take Uncle Dimas too?”
Raka didn’t answer right away. He switched on an old computer that had never been connected to the internet. A recording made the night before appeared on the screen.
Dimas’s face looked pale.
“If you’re seeing this, it means the system has found us. I found something in the data center. That program isn’t merely evaluating humans. It’s changing records of the past so its decisions will appear correct.”
The recording stopped.
Outside the workshop, a voice called through a street loudspeaker.
“Raka. We know you’re in there.”
The voice used the intonation of his mother, who had died eight years ago.