"Paul Di Filippo - And The Dish Ran Away With The Spoon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Di Filippo Paul)

amounted to about one hundred cases in a
standard six-hour shift. This was a lesser
workload than the home-operators endured,
and the pay was better.
The only drawback was having to retina in at
headquarters, instead of getting to hang
around all the creature comforts of home.
Passing under the big sign that read TIA four
days a week felt like surrendering part of
myself to Aunty in a way that working at
home for her had never occasioned.
After two decades plus of existence, Aunty
loomed large but benignly in the lives of most
citizens, even if they couldn't say what her
initials stood for anymore. I myself wasn't
even sure. The agency that had begun as Total
Information Awareness, then become
Terrorist Information Awareness, had
changed to Tactical Information Awareness
about seven years ago, after the global
terrorism fad had evaporated as a threat. But
I seemed to recall another name change since
then. Whatever Aunty's initials stood for, she
continued to accumulate scads of realtime
information about the activities of the
country's citizens, without seemingly abusing
the power of the feed. As a fulltime
government employee, I felt no more
compunctions about working for Aunty than
I had experienced as a freelancer. I had grown
up with Aunty always around.
I knew the freelancer's grind well, since right
up until a year ago I had been one myself.
That period was when I had invested in my
expensive Aeron chair, a necessity rather than
an indulgence when you were chained by the
seat of your pants to the ViewMaster for six
hours a day. It was as a freelancer that I had
first met Cody.
One of my software agents had alerted me to
some suspicious activity at the employee
entrance to the Senate Casino just before
shift change, a guy hanging around longer
than the allowable parameters for innocent
dallying. The Hummingbird drone lurking
silently and near invisibly above him reported
no weapons signatures, so I made the decision
to keep on monitoring. Turned out he was
just the husband of one of the casino workers
looking to surprise his weary wife in person