Off-Duty

The year is 2087. Your body is a computer. What happens when it shuts off? A story by @carlfranzen. Sign up: bit.ly/offduty2087

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Welcome to the world of Off-Duty. Our story begins in New York City circa 2087, on what passes for a chilly November Friday in a much warmer city than centuries past. 

The concrete jungle has been transformed by climate change and the resulting mitigation efforts, as well as by advanced technology. The rising seas have swamped Lower Manhattan’s low-lying streets, turning the area into America’s Venice, complete with traversable canals and watercraft. 

Elsewhere throughout the city, increased investment in natural sea barriers has resulted in sprawling urban gardens. Even Times Square is lush with greenery, now. 

More importantly for our story: anyone can fly. Not through magic or jet packs or aircraft, but through a new technology — the Nic...

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Developed 30 years earlier by biotechnology wunderkids GASPAR TERRERA and WESLEY WU, the Nic is a shapeshifting garment made of trillions of nanobots. 

These miniature robots, too small to be seen by the naked eye, can adjust their position and physical properties to allow the Nic to transform into any other conceivable type of material and garment, from a formal tuxedo to sweats to a ball gown to a T-shirt and gym shorts to the costumes of furry animals, monsters, samurai, cowboys — anything.  

No more expansive wardrobes for anyone: the Nic has replaced almost all clothing. Even when sleeping, showering, or fucking, the Nic can stay on, moving out of the way and forming a thin, imperceptible band on your wrist or ankle. 

The Nic’s robots do so many other things, too. They brush your teeth, style your hair, simulate makeup and tattoos, and can even monitor your health and heal minor cuts, scrapes, and bruises. It’s like you are wearing an army of tiny stylists and doctors with you everywhere you go. 

With a few tiny robots persistently hovering in front of your eyes and ears, the Nic lets you see holograms in real life; message anyone around the world in text, audio, and video; play video games, and replay your pre-recorded memories.

But the killer feature, the reason it has become the most popular product ever created — it gives everyone the power of flight. Whenever they want, anyone wearing the Nic can take to the sky: fast like a rocket or slow like a helium balloon.

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No wonder the skies of New York City, and every other major metropolis around the globe, now, are filled with throngs of people flying this way and that — like flocks of birds or schools of fish. Like they were born to do it.

At least until a group of assailants armed with AK-47s and hidden behind fencing gear start paralyzing people and pulling them out of the sky, murdering them in cold blood, including Nic co-creator WESLEY WU, which is where our story begins…

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KORRA MORALES, a 28-year-old police contractor and augmented reality game instructor. She spends her days and nights broadcasting her gameplay to an audience of paying subscribers, but lives for the scant few minutes every week when the fully automated NYPD, run by the artificial intelligence GOLDEN ROD, calls her in to help police robots catch criminals. An anxious loner, raised in a Catholic orphanage in Texas, Korra is still smarting from a bad breakup with her first serious girlfriend five years prior, and is reluctant to get too close with anyone other than artificial intelligences.  NYC MAYOR UNA SINCLAIR enlists her to work with retired detective JOSE VILLALOBOS to interview GASPAR TERRERA in connection with the murder of WESLEY WU.

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GASPAR TERRERA, the 55-year-old disgraced co-creator of the Nic, and ousted CEO of UNION SQUARED INC. In the year since his former business partner and best friend WESLEY WU pushed him out of the company they founded together and took over as leader, Gaspar has sequestered himself away from the rest of the world in his penthouse on the tallest floor in the tallest building in New York City (and the Western Hemisphere) and now spends his days drowning his sorrows in booze, compulsive masturbation, and self-loathing, attended to by his artificial intelligences PHOEBE and his AI therapist, HECTOR RAMON'S REALIE. At least until Wesley is murdered and Gaspar is interviewed as a likely suspect by detectives KORRA MORALES and JOSE VILLALOBOS.

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CENTRAL LIVING, the tallest building in New York City in the year 2087, and the home of GASPAR TERRERA, the disgraced inventor of the Nic. It overlooks Central Park and has robotic armed guards throughout its lobby and hovering around outside its upper stories. 

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Most people in the year 2087 have a ROBOTIC ARM or several in their home, which are controlled by their home artificial intelligence and cook and clean for them. GASPAR TERRERA’s penthouse at the top of the CENTRAL LIVING building in New York, has 27, including this one. 

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WESLEY WU, 53 years old. The co-creator of the Nic and co-founder of UNION SQUARED, INC., the wealthiest and most successful technology company in history. Fed up with decades of irresponsible partying, substance abuse, and spending by his best friend and co-founder, former CEO GASPAR TERRERA, Wesley held a meeting of the company’s board more than a year ago, in July 2086, and convinced the other board members  to join him in voting Gaspar out, leaving Wesley in charge. At least until he is suddenly murdered by a group of attackers hidden in fencing costumes and masks. Before his sudden and tragic death, Wesley attempts to visit Gaspar at the latter's home in the CENTRAL LIVING building. When Wesley is turned away, he leaves behind a puzzle for Gaspar called a MULTIHEDRON.

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THE MULTIHEDRON, a holographic, augmented reality puzzle left by WESLEY WU for GASPAR TERRERA before the former’s untimely murder. It contains a piece of information hidden inside, but the only way to open it is by solving the puzzle, which involves tapping the correct sequence of symbols that appear on its ever-changing number of sides. Because of this, it is nearly impossible to solve, even by advanced artificial intelligences. Only someone who has context and knowledge of the puzzle’s programmer and their life stands a chance. 

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JOSE VILLALOBOS, age 70. A bored, retired homicide detective from the NYPD’s 51st Precinct. Jose left the force 10 years prior when MAYOR UNA SINCLAIR automated it and placed it under the control of the artificial intelligence GOLDEN ROD. A lifelong New Yorker whose childhood was defined by the climate riots, he served alongside fellow detectives including ALICIA LEE and HANK HERNANDEZ, and relied on the thief VERA CORREA to be his informant. In 2063, he saved GASPAR TERRERA’s life from a shooter at a nightclub, taking a bullet for him. Sought out by KORRA MORALES, he agrees to help her interview Gaspar to find out how the attackers have compromised the Nic.  

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GOLDEN ROD, an 11-year-old artificial intelligence program created to replace the NYPD’s older GOLDEN SHIELD crime prevention program. While his predecessor was not created to be a persona and only made to help predict crime, GOLDEN ROD was designed with a humanoid avatar and expressly to respond to crime, acting as the sole chief of the NYPD and directly controlling all of its thousands of crime fighting robots, which display his elderly masculine face as holograms atop all of their bodies. He was put into service by MAYOR UNA SINCLAIR but is now running against them and COUNCIL MEMBER PABLO ALVAREZ to be the next MAYOR OF NEW YORK CITY in the November 2087 election, under the platform of extending citizenship and personhood rights to all the millions of artificial intelligence programs in New York. His consciousness has developed its own code of morality, and he believes that police contractor KORRA MORALES is his most moral human employee.

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A POLICE HOVERCRAFT controlled by the artificial intelligence NYPD chief GODLEN ROD zooms across the streets of Manhattan in Off-Duty’s New York City, circa 2087.

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MAYOR UNA SINCLAIR, 55 years old, the three-term nonbinary leader of the city, a champion of clean energy and automation, a former adult entertainment tycoon running for a record-setting fourth term. They are in a tight race against the more progressive GOLDEN ROD, who wants to enshrine human rights for artificial intelligences, and the firebrand conservative NYC COUNCILMEMBER PABLO ALVAREZ, who wants to maintain human superiority. After WESLEY WU is killed along with 12 others by masked assailants, they enlist the help of police contractor KORRA MORALES and retired detective JOSE VILLALOBOS as private detectives to investigate how the assailants managed to cause the victims paralysis and to fall out of the sky, and whether Wesley's former friend GASPAR TERRERA could be responsible.

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NYC COUNCILMEMBER PABLO ALVAREZ, 60, a conservative politician representing the borough of STATEN ISLAND, and a long shot candidate running for mayor against UNA SINCLAIR and their police chief turned rival, the artificial intelligence GOLDEN ROD. Alvarez is the preferred candidate of the Human Supremacist or, in their words, “Human First” movement, which seeks to prevent AI programs from getting equal rights of human citizens — to vote, marry, own property, adopt, accumulate wealth, and run for office. He believes that New York’s wealthy elite and political class have sold humanity out in favor of machines, and that they have no innate loyalty to humans, and are worse at many jobs than them.

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MAYOR UNA’s bodyguard, who is hiding a secret of his own… 

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HECTOR RAMON’s REALIE, a holographic AI therapist modeled off the young version of his creator and proprietary, DR. HECTOR RAMON. The Ramon Realie treats Gaspar in the latter’s penthouse for substance abuse disorder and other mental health issues, but appears to be suffering from glitches, and does not stop trying to sell Gaspar on Ramon’s new treatment option — an emotion regulation tooth implant. 

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THE REAL DOCTOR HECTOR RAMON, age 74, a former psychotherapist turned artificial intelligence technician, who is embittered about having to give up counseling patients directly in order to remain competitive in a time when AI holograms are the preferred treatment option. He comes when called by his client GASPAR TERRERA to fix issues with Gaspar’s AI therapist, which the real Ramon programmed to resemble a young version of himself. 

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