Inconsequential Unpredictability

Laney Gords was a quiet girl who enjoyed spending time with her family. She was home for the holidays, taking a much appreciated break from the hustle and bustle of highschool, where she never seemed to meet the right people or say the right thing. The comfort of standing shoulder to shoulder with her older sister, decorating christmas cookies in the kitchen while laughing at a joke her older brother had quipped, was far more satisfying than any highschool party she had seen on her classmates' social media. Megan was just handing her pulling the last batch of cookies out of the oven, when there was a knock on the door. Loud and crisp, unlike the usual timid knocks of the neighbors' kids asking if anyone wanted to play soccer in the street and certainly unlike the short and sweet knocks of the mailman, who was so busy with holiday deliveries he was already halfway down the driveway before Laney even opened the door. This knock echoed through the house, shaking the door in its frame. Laney looked at her brother, who was scrolling away on his phone, silently begging him to answer it. He looked up at her for a moment, saw her pleading look, and clicked off his phone with an over dramatic sigh.

"You're such an anti-social nerd, Lanes. It's probably just the mailman." He teased as he glided past her. Laney shot him a half-hearted glare, not bothering to defend herself, instead following behind him, curiosity overriding her paranoia. Swinging open the door, the siblings were suddenly face to face with a police officer, mumbling something incoherent into his walkie-talkie and glaring up through the open door. Laney's brother straightened up upon seeing the officer, and gripped the door a little tighter. He cleared his throat.

"How can I help you?" An edge of a smile still hung on his lips, him ever being a people-pleaser like their mother had taught all her children to be.

The policee offcer tucked his thumbs through the loops on his belt and shot Laney a lance from behind her brother's shoulders.

"Nothing serious, just here to collect a Laney Julian Gords." Laney edged half a step away from the door, ice filling her blood. "Apparently there's some sort of problem with her Algorithm. The technicians at the stations are freaking out about it." A vein in Laney's brother's neck twitched. Laney stared at it in a daze, noticing how the baby hairs on his nape were illuminated by the light. Her heart was racing. Something was wrong with her Algorithm?

"Uhm." Her brother cleared his throat again, trying to collect his wits. "Right, well, Laney's a minor, is it okay if a gurdian comes with her?" An unintelligible voice garbled from the walkie-talkie again. The officer turned slightly away from the door, and answered in a low voice.

"Retrieving her now, sir." He turned back to the siblings, now fostering a slightly annoyed look on his face. "Listen, I don't reckon this should take too long. I don't exactly know the procedures in this kind of situation, so it would be helpful if you lot just corporated."

Her brother hesitated, before sighing and turning to face Laney with a stoney expression.

"You have your phone on you, right?" Both his hands clasped her shoulders. She knew he was probably trying to comfort her with the action, but it was giving the opposite effect.

"Yes, but there's no wa-"

"Laney, listen to me. You're just going to have to with the officer. We can track you with that driving app, and if anything seems off, we'll drive down there to get you. But he's talking about your Algorithm, Laney. This seems pretty serious."

"Laney shook her head, her fluffy hair swishing against her cheeks.

"No way. C'mon, I can't seriously just up and-"

"Laney." Her brother said sharply. Laney pressed her lips together. Her brother was never this serious. She shrugged his hands off her shoulders.

"Whatever." She said quickly, trying to mask her fear with indifference. She brushed against her brother, trying so hard not to fall apart, not to break down and definitely not to let the tears she felt stinging in her eyes slide down her cheeks.

She shakily got into the cop car, the backseat, where bars 'protected' the driver from her, and where she was utterly and helplessly trapped. The officer slammed the door behind her. The ride to the station was quiet. Laney's mind raced as she sat stock still in the car.

Something was wrong with her Algorithm? How did that even happen? Each citizen's Algorithm was carefully tracked by a team of technicians in the corresponding zip-code police department. The Algorithm predicted and tracked every move the citizen made, making sure it correlated, proving the Algorithm to be accurate. If the Algorithm predicted a citizen was going to commit a crime, the police department was sent to resolve the situation. Police officers were trained heavily in de-escalation, and the whole system had reduced incarcerated citizens and crime rates exponentially since it had been introduced in 2016. It was called the Algorithm because it always reached an accurate solution. It had never been wrong before. Until now.

The car pulled up to the station, crunching the rotten fallen leaves edging the road. Yanking the keys out of the ignition and stepping into the crisp air, the officer led her by her forearm to the front office, walking quickly. Once they were inside, a secretary greeted them with a plastic smile.

"You must be Laney." The secretary said with a monotonous voice. His eyes scanned her up and down, and his fake smile frozen eerily in place. Laney managed a weak smile back.

"Yes." She said, as the officer who had driven her here abruptly let go of her arm and disappeared down a hallway. She watched his retreating back.

"Perfect!" Said the secretary, standing up and opening a door with a large metal plaque on it. The plaque read Technician's Computer Processing Room. "If you would just follow me through here." Laney nodded stiffly and followed him through the door into a brightly lit room. The lights were a harsh, hospital white, and the room was crammed with desks. Each desk had a single computer monitor on it and a built in phone, with little space for much else. In a dimly lit corner in the back of the room was a large metal box with wires drooping out of it. The Algorithm.

Laney felt like she wasn't supposed to be seeing it.

All of the desks were empty; chairs pushed back in various angles, the occupants having left in a hurry. One desk, near the middle of the room, was surrounded by people. Men and women in khakis and button up shirts were crowding around a single computer, murmuring with frustration, confusion and worry. The secretary cleared his throat. A few technicians turned to see who it was, and upon seeing the secretary, hurried back to their desks. Soon, everyone was seated and quiet, cautiously glancing at the secretary and Laney as they walked to the center of the room. One technician remained standing, upright and alert, beside an empty desk. He watched warily as they approached; shifting from foot to foot.

"This is hers, I presume?" The secretary addressed the technician. He nodded solemnly. "Excellent. Now you may get this sorted out. Inform me when you are through, so that I can make the proper arrangements, based on your conclusion." He turned toward Laney and gave her another plastic smile. "It was lovely meeting you, Ms. Gorbs." He walked out of the room, closing the door behind him. In his wake was an unnatural silence, as the technician, his nametag read Alessandro, staring at Laney uncomfortably, and the hum of the Algorithm whirring steadfast throughout the air around them. Laney kept eye contact with Alessandro, trying to seem unintimidated.

"Right." Said Alessandro suddenly, his voice seeming louder than the environment warranted. "Do you know why you're here?" He sat down, his back facing Laney.

"No." Despite all her efforts, Laney's voice came out feeble and afraid. She clenched her fingers around the hem of her jacket. Her eyes drifted to the computer that Alessandro was staring at intently. On it was the security footage from her school playing on a three second loop. The particular shot was of her, leaving the girl's bathroom. Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. "The officer said something about my Algorithm? That something was wrong?" She looked to the side, and a few technicians quickly ducked their heads down, pretending to work.

"That is correct. This is the first time anyone's Algorithm has ever been incorrect. I wouldn't've noticed, but the computer alerted me of the anomaly, some failsafe installed years ago." Alessandro was speaking very fast, and Laney was trying to keep up. "I called the Central, but they dismissed it, due to its lack of significance. But I don't think they underestimate what this error could implicate." Laney was still, wondering why she had been called in here, but too scared to question it. Alessandro turned around, looking Laney in the eye.

"Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"No." Laney said, frightened and irritated. "I don't. That video of me looks completely normal."

"That's the thing." Alessandro said, eyes brightening. "It is. It is completely normal. Yet, unpredictable. The Algorithm failed to predict you would walk out of the bathroom at," Alessandro quickly glanced back at the monitor, before turning back to Laney, "12:39.08 on Monday last week. It was off. It incorrectly predicted where you'd be." Alessandro stood up again, now at eye level with Laney. "You broke the Algorithm."

"Wait," Laney took a step back, wanting to distance herself from Alessandro's intensity. "If this happened last week, why did I get dragged here today?"

"The system double checked itself, not believing its calculations were off. I didn't get the notification until this morning. Then I had to follow a bunch of irrelevant manual protocols, to check the machine's calculations." Laney looked at the video footage of herself. It seemed predictable to her.

"So what happens now? What are you going to do to me?" Alessandro's intensity diminished slightly. "Nothing much, the Algorithm will just track you a little more diligently, calculate a few more equations than it did before. The system will register you as a threat, but you won't be arrested or confronted unless it actually predicts you will commit a crime." He gave her a once over. "Which I doubt it will."

"So why even bring me here at all?"

"I wanted to personally inform you, Laney, that you have officially broken the algorithm. Do you know how many people have dedicated their lives to becoming unpredictable? No one's done it. But you. You did it, by simply being yourself. You are special." Alessandro's eyes were alight with admiration and awe. Everyone else was silent, listening to his every word.

"So I can go home?" Laney asked. No matter how 'special' she was, or how groundbreaking this was for Alessandro, all she wanted was to be home, decorating cookies with her sister, watching movies with her family.

Alessandro sunk into his chair. "Yes." He turned away from her, eyes watching the moment where something, anything, could have happened, but didn't. "You can go home."

Laney looked at Alessandro, waiting for some sort of cue, but when he gave none, she turned on her heel and awkwardly made her way to the exit, avoiding eye contact with the technicians who stared at her as she passed. When she opened the door, the eerie silence and hum of the room was replaced by the beeping of a phone in the front office, the sound of footsteps hurrying down the hallway and the whining hum of cars as they passed on the nearby room. Laney felt her tense muscles relax, as she let out a breath or relief. She didn't ever want to go back into that room. Something was unnatural about it.

The secretary turned his head as he heard the door open.

"Done, so soon?" Laney nodded, feeling drained. "Don't worry, I received Alessandro's message. Your brother has been contacted, he said he's on his way to pick you up." Laney thought it was quite rude that they had dragged her from her home, and didn't bother giving her a ride back. "You can have a seat over there." The secretary pointed to a row of dingy chairs against the walls. Laney slumped into one, happy for all of it to be over.

Four days later, Laney lay dead in her bedroom. Her crimson blood soaking through her sheets and staining her mattress. The day before, Alessandro and congruent technicians had synchronistically killed every officer in the building where they worked. Luckily, a nearby Computer Processing Room was informed of an anomaly, but by the time the first responders had arrived, it was too late. The Central Processing Room of the state, reviewed the footage to find out what had gone wrong. A calculated tragedy such as this hadn't occurred since the Algorithm was implemented. To their surprise, Alessandro had written a letter to the local media, begging the citizens to take action against the Central Control, for the Algorithm was stoppable. The adjacent technicians had all been emotionally altered by Laney's inconsequential unpredictability. The Central Control thus determined Laney Julian Gords as a threat to peaceful society and had her removed.

Her mother found her corpse on Christmas morning.