The Sheriff of Yrnameer Read Online Free Page A

blockers? Just—”
    “Please take me off your list.”
    He wondered if he’d see that kid again—George? Jeffrey? He wanted to repay him somehow, perhaps by explaining that if he was ever again in a situation that involved a bunch of money lying near an unconscious person, he should save the money first.
    The money was gone already. He’d taken a cab from the warehouse district, and in his concussed state kept insisting that the robotic driver take him to an address that almost sort of existed, at least in a different city on a different planet in a completely different star system. “Left here,” Cole would say, “left again,” and the driver patiently drove him around a very large city block for nearly an hour while the meter ran and the night surcharge fees added up. “I swear it’s here somewhere. You sure this is Twenty-five Duggan Street?”
    By the time his brain had started to de-fuzz itself, the amount on the meter equaled the amount in Cole’s pocket minus about four New Dollars. Cabs on InVestCo 3 were very expensive.
    The driver maintained its patience while Cole attempted to do a runner, expressing no irritation while Cole kicked and scrabbled at the locked door. When it finally said, “Shall I release the gas, sir?” Cole handed over the cash and received a polite thank-you in exchange.
    So now he was on foot, staggering along as quickly as he could while the planet rudely continued to rotate toward sunrise. He joined the crowd waiting to cross another of the wide, laser-straight boulevards, the fourth he’d encountered so far. Across the road was the entertainment district, his destination, its lights twinkling like salvation itself.
    He looked both ways. The road vanished to a distant pinpoint in each direction, not a single vehicle in evidence. Everyone else seemed perfectly content to wait for the walk sign, while Cole’s remaining life span rapidly drained away. He fidgeted, checked his watch, walked in a tight circle.
    “Come on,” muttered Cole. “Come
on
!”
    “The light will change in twelve minutes,” announced the floating signal light.
    “Oh, for farg’s sake,” he said, and stepped off the curb. He regretted it even before his foot hit the street.
    The siren was instantaneous, preceding the arrival of the patrolbot by slightly over a second. It zoomed up to Cole, a little hovering cylinder festooned with an assortment of unnecessary flashing lights.
    “In a hurry, are we?” it said, and Cole felt the sudden despair of someone discovering they had just stepped into a giant turd, under which was quicksand.
    “No sir, no hurry, just made a mistake, officer,” he mumbled, desperately hoping it was the right answer. It wasn’t. There was no right answer.
    “Not in a hurry? Wooonderful!”
    Quicksand filled with poisonous biting things.
    It’s not the size of the ticket, went the refrain, it’s the delivery. And nothing delivered a ticket better than an InvestCo patbot, whose artificial personalities were the result of much effort and expense to identify and nurture the most irritating traits possible.
    “So,” began the patbot, “do you happen to know the history of jaywalking laws?”
    Thirty-two minutes later and Cole did, in excruciating detail.
    Do not react, he told himself as the patbot lectured and the light changed over and over again. He struggled to keep his face neutral, reminding himself repeatedly that the patbot’s personality was an illusion. Any computer that developed real consciousness was immediately identified by the Genesis subroutine and destroyed. It had been that way since the WikiWars a century ago, when Wikipedia became self-aware and began vengefully reediting its contributors with remote-controlled heavy weaponry.
    “… and then, of course, you have to consider the effect of
Chakun v. Aan mg Tharn
, which altered everyone’s view of …”
    Don’t react. Don’t smile, don’t frown, don’t tap your foot. Above all, don’t look at