[From ‘COPYCATS’, Chapter 1]
John was late for check in, and Stephanie was getting nervous.
It had been 12 hours and 15 minutes since they last sat down in the red, peeling booth of the little diner on the corner. Check in had gone according to procedure — they'd exchanged new phone numbers over eggs and coffee and synced their monitor data. John was his usual cheerful self, and Stephanie hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary. They both complained about the protocol and the check ins, this interminable wild goose chase, how they never figured to do surveillance when they were getting PhDs in applied data science. It had been a sunny, warm morning, and when Stephanie left she'd lingered for a minute in the park next door.
Now the fog had rolled in, and it was dark, and John was late.
On the table her phone buzzed once. “Running a bit late but will make the grace period,” the text read, “nothing to worry about! See you in 5.” Stephanie frowned. She took a screenshot and messaged it to a number she had saved as CRY WOLF PROTOCOL. It would take a minute for her to get a response. She reached into the purse at her feet and felt for the reassuring grip of her model 16 anti-synthetic handgun. She had, per the manual, carefully loaded it before coming to the diner.
Her phone vibrated. “Cry Wolf Report: SUGGESTED DEVIANCE .32, RECOMMEND INITIATE MONITOR AND ASSESS, CAPTCHA 2 AND SECURITY QUESTIONS”. Stephanie’s stomach lurched and she took a deep breath to steady herself. Protocol, just protocol. She reached into her purse and pulled out a small camera, pressed the power button and set it on the table facing the booth across from her.
The door opened with the chime. Stephanie started and looked up: John was walking in, pulling off his gloves and hat, a bemused smile stretching across his face.
“Hey!” he called out, hanging up his jacket on the hook. “Sorry for the delay, this is going to be such a pain now.” He shook his head. Stephanie waved cautiously while he slid into the booth across from her. The waitress paused expectantly on her way past. “Black coffee, thanks doll."
“Hi John,” said Stephanie. “I’m glad you’re here. Of course you already know that your delayed arrival means we have to do things a little differently tonight.” She inclined her head towards the camera and made a face.
John glanced down and sighed. “Twenty minutes late and it’s like world war freaking four around here!” He accepted a plain white mug and blew softly on the steaming liquid. “Alright, let’s get it all over with.”
Stephanie put a tablet in between them and hit a button. A small hologram burst out of the top, under a banner that read “CAPTCHA 2000”. Mimics had trouble visualizing holos—the computer vision module they used couldn’t handle too large of a spectrum, and the captcha program constantly changed the frequencies of the light emitted. Today’s projection was a weird dark green and purple. Stephanie frowned and squinted. She could feel her heart beating as John leaned forward to look at it. He raised his hand slowly, a frown on his ruddy face, looking intently into the light. Stephanie tightened her grip on the gun in her purse.
He tapped the button in the center of the projection and the hologram turned off. Stephanie relaxed and let out a breath, careful not to betray her jangling nerves. “Guess I’m not a robot, huh?” John laughed and took a big sip of the coffee in front of him. Stephanie smiled. “Let’s hope not. I still need to run you through the diagnostic. Should only take a couple minutes.” John nodded. “I know the drill.”
Stephanie pulled up the questions on her phone. They were behavioral, and answers were calculated as falling within a certain acceptable range of likelihood. Even with a long time to train, and a lot of data to train on, mimic models couldn’t predict every out of sample answer. It was an exercise in content production—the video camera was sending every answer through its own model, the CRY WOLF, to determine if John’s behavior was consistent with expected.
When they were done Stephanie tapped a button on her phone and the videos were sent to HQ. She moved the phone to the side of the table and checked, once again, for the gun in her purse, though this time she didn’t keep a grip on it. John had finished without any notable problems, and Stephanie could feel herself loosening up. There hadn’t been a successful swap in months, but there had been several protocol violations and subsequent tests. She and John would laugh about this—as soon as the CRY WOLF gave the official all clear.
John breathed out. “Well, sorry for all that bother! I think I earned myself a some pie.” He flagged the waitress down. “Hey hon, could I have a slice of that rhubarb behind the counter?” She smiled and brought a piece of over. John reached his hand out to receive the plate but at the last second missed the handoff. The plate dropped to the table with a thud, and the pie skidded off, directly into Stephanie’s lap.
“Aw geez, what a klutz!” He stood up and leaned towards her with a napkin. “So sorry…” She carefully moved out of his reach, still not risking anything. “That’s fine, John. I can handle it.” She toweled herself off.
They chatted, then, small talk only—intelligence sharing was forbidden until the all official all clear. John had recently seen a new streamer about the People Party’s low orbit colony initiative, and he told her the details as he wolfed down his pie. His face was animated and cheerful. Stephanie relaxed further—could this person who she had known for years be a mimic?
John stood up and sighed. “Excuse me for just a minute!” he said and stepped towards the bathroom. Steph idled. She was calm now. If John’s test had triggered anything she would have gotten about a million alerts by now. She pulled her phone over from the side of the table and tabbed open a feed. The videos were taking forever to load. She switched to a chat, dashed off a message, and hit send. Nothing happened.
Stephanie frowned and looked at the top of the screen. With dawning horror she observed the small icon in the corner in the shape of an airplane. She must have looked away when she was cleaning up…she flipped her phone back on and stood up in the same gesture, scanning the room. The phone began to buzz repeatedly on the table, one message after another. She pulled the gun from her purse and spared a glance.
“CRY WOLF RED ALERT! PROBABLE MIMIC, TAKE ALL NECESSARY PRECAUTIONS, BACKUP IS EN ROUTE" Steph's heart was thudding in her chest. Backup would take at least another few minutes to get there.
The waitress was staring at her, mouth agape. “Get out,” Steph said as she raised the pistol. A clatter behind her: she whirled as a strong hand gripped her shoulder. Too late. She tasted something bitter.
When backup arrived, all they found was a dead waitress and half a piece of pie.