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Capitol Hill

Washington, DC

The man's greasy red beard and braided Viking-style Mohawk had likely not been washed in a couple weeks, but the way that he cradled his AR-15 assault rifle made it clear he took care of what most mattered to him. And Special Agent Lara Keegan of the FBI's Washington Field Office would have bet a month's salary the Viking cleaned that weapon each and every day.
    Side-eyeing him through the passenger-side window of a dated black Chevy Tahoe SUV, Keegan delicately folded the wax-paper-thin orange-tinted nanoplastic that she had laid out on the vehicle's dashboard. It gave her something to do while they waited in traffic, plus it kept her hands visible for the Viking to see.
    Everything from Louisiana Avenue on up to Union Station was at a standstill. A few drivers honked in frustration, but the rest of the vehicles idled without complaint. That was the easiest way to tell which had a human at the wheel; machines knew not to waste their energy on emotional inefficiency.
    Keegan made sure the nanoplastic's gold unidirectional filament was aligned with the crease, and then gently pulled on the next fold of the sheet. As she did, a blue minivan crept into the lane next to them, blocking her view of the Viking. The parents in the front seats were ignoring their two kids in the back trading punches over a suitcase wedged between them. She hoped for their sake it was the end, rather than the start, of a family vacation.
    The minivan moved a foot forward and she got a better view of the Viking. The AR-15 was airbrushed a mottled gray and black. So he'd kitted it out for urban combat operations. And, yep, there it was. Peeking out from under the man's red beard was a tactical throat microphone. It was the same kind once only used by special operations teams, designed to allow subvocal, hands-free communication during a firefight. Now anyone could buy one.
    The next step in the build required Keegan to look down for just a microsecond. She carefully slid a needle-like spine inside the crease of the folded sheets.
    'Hello, World," she said quietly to herself, reciting the mantra of expectant computer programmers dating back before her grandparents' day.
    As she quickly looked back to the side, to ensure the Viking hadn't moved, the folds in the orange structure opened up into an origami form of a robotic praying mantis, six tiny hairlike legs unfurling. It gave Keegan a tiny moment of satisfaction to know that she'd created the only thing that seemed to be moving this morning.
    The SUV moved an entire foot, then braked hard enough to tip the mantis over. A freshly washed black four-door sharecar wedged itself into their lane mere inches ahead of a dirty red hatchback with cracked roof solar panels. It was just one tiny skirmish in the all-encompassing war between billions of lines of software code, each fighting to make society function smoothly, while simultaneously screwing over their market competitors.
    'Bot fight coming," said Keegan. 'two cars up."
    Another gleaming black car braked to let other vehicles pass. It was all part of the game. A vehicle might perch on the edge of the traffic line, not close enough to block the neighboring lane, but enough to set off the automated detection protocols, tricking its counterpart into stopping to creep around the perceived obstacle. Or it might be what the fleet of black cars were up to evidently. If two vehicles detected a rival company's car behind them, they would set up a moving screen, driving in parallel at the lowest legal speed.
    And Keegan was stuck behind it all, playing with a robot in the passenger seat, trying to ignore a newbie agent nervously tapping a steering wheel that required nothing of him.
    'You should call their complaint number," said Special Agent Aiden Griffin. "Or should I override and clear a path?' He'd been out of the FBI Academy a little over a year and still had that too-eager voice; that was why he had the backup-chauffeur job.
    That was the only sacrifice the systems would make to the algorithmic gods of efficiency'the law enforcement vehicle protocol had been required for legalization of autonomous vehicles. At the simultaneous signals of a short-range radio wave and siren blast, the battles for speed and position would cease and all vehicles were required to pull to the side of the road.
    'Don't touch anything," Keegan commanded. "You do that and 'FBI seen on way to Union Station' will be in the newsfeeds before we even make it a block," she explained.
    The drive out to the downtown train station and subway hub hadn't been a planned operation, just a quick response to a flash alert that necessitated an FBI presence. It was likely a wild goose chase, but they had to assume whoever was behind it would be monitoring any activity of interest in the area.
    Griff started picking at the sole of his shoe as the tension built, flicking out a small rock that had gotten lodged in one of the ridges. The nervous fixation annoyed Keegan because he wasn't keeping his eye on their environment.
    'I get the rest, but what's the hat for?' she asked.
    Each day Griff came to work as if dressed for a raid: sleek gray tactical pants and a too-tight black long-sleeved sensor-defeat shirt. He also wore a cumbersome tactical vest, which he was always trying to find a reason to wear.
    'Keeps the sun off," he said of the knit black watch cap he had pulled low, almost touching his eyebrows.
    'seriously? It's a winter hat."
    'sweat gets in my eyes otherwise."
    'Because you're wearing the hat.' She reached back, grabbed a ballcap with 'FBI' on the front, and offered it to him. "Here, this is actually what you need."
    'Nah, I'm good," he said.
    She tossed the hat back behind them. 'suit yourself," she said, point made.
    She picked up the origami robot off the dashboard and began to move it back and forth through the air, the way kids played with toy planes. Sweeping it slowly across the horizon, her eyes tracked what was happening in the distance behind it.
    'Yep, right there. Just about your two o'clock. One coming down from the distro facility in the Post's old printing plant in College Park.' Zooming the mantis back out, she aimed the triangular point of its head at the eight-rotor delivery drone flying above, an imaginary line running from her tiny robot to the larger one in the sky.
    'As that thing flies over to deliver its beet juice or spare charger or whatever, it's just soaking up data to mine and sell. That's where the real money is. You set off the siren and it'll flag us to anybody who's buying that drone's feed right now.' Keegan tipped the tiny robot in the direction of the Viking. "Plus, there's no telling how our friend with the AR-15 will react to the excitement."
    'We're taking too long, though," Griff said.
    On that, the newbie was right. She used the robotic mantis's beak like a stylus, tapping it on the 'time to Destination' option on the vehicle's map display. In the rush out, they hadn't been able to reserve one of the newer vehicles in the FBI's fleet, so the display was the old-school, hard-screen kind, rather than a heads-up display that projected up onto...