2000 hours

At exactly its appointed time, the door to my workbox slid open. Out of habit, I stood as I would at the end of a regular shift, but this time instead of simply feeling tired, I also felt ill as I walked down the corridors and stairwells to the ground level, barely noticing how empty the building was—two hours earlier the place would have been stuffed with a concatenation of auditors shuffling shoulder to shoulder from their workboxes on pilgrimage to their nightboxes. The empty building smelt strange.

Just as the building was empty, so were the walkways to the commute platform and the platform itself. The open space and noticeable lack of sensory input was unsettling and I wondered with a pang of panic how I would get home, full well knowing that it was forbidden to sleep in public places. I needed to find a place to hide, somewhere to continue work on the problem of too many eights with my personal interface.

A service routine put an end to that idea. The silver sphere scuttled up to me on its eight spidery legs. "State your purpose."

"Purpose? I'm just waiting," I explained to the machine.

"Insufficient response. State your purpose."

"Ah, Task J-3-0-T? Too many eights?"

"Clarify. Is that a question?"

"No, it's a purpose."

"Purpose accepted. Please make your way to this location." As a map request appeared on my interface, the machine explained before it moved off, "A transbox will carry you to your home section."

I accepted the request and the map appeared as a green, slightly translucent follow-line over my primary vision, visible only when I tilted my head up twenty degrees. I followed the guide to a place I'd never been before—okay, I'm going to stop noting at this point that I've never seen this or that before because pretty much everything that happened to me from the time of my pax rejection was a first for me—At the end of a stairway, I was led right out of City. Outside was a forbidden place and so strange that, for me, it may as well have been another planet.

There were old, seemingly abandoned buildings made of now-lost materials. The transbox buzzed up just as my feet touched the dirty street. This box was different to the floating ones we use to get to home section. This one was smaller, and, while it was still white (like just about everything in City), it had six small black wheels that would roll directly on the ground. The shiny transbox really did look out of place next to the broken buildings.

The hatch slid open as I approached the box. I climbed in and sat on a padded bench facing the large front window. The hatch slid closed, and the box moved off with a whirr; it was a lot slower than the commute boxes. I stared out the window at the passing strange scenes, and wondered if anyone or anything could live down here. The buildings all had irregular shapes and styles, and most of them were falling apart with windows broken or covered over with rusting sheets of metal.

After a few minutes of riding inside the transbox, I'd become used to the new scenery and found it incredibly interesting. So much so, that I'd almost forgotten entirely about my problem. But too many eights flashed back to my attention when it occurred to me that, what if the answer to my problem was here in the wreckage of old City? I started paying close attention to everything I could see, looking for clues that related to the number eight. There was plenty of material, but all of the eights seemed totally random, like buildings with eight windows on each floor or eight storeys; or eight capped poles along a street; or a group of eight people blocking the road ahead.

They were bad people. Discordants. City called them a human pestilence and warned us that they were capable of the worst of things. Luckily discordants knew better than to find their way into City, but I never had imagined that they would be so close.

None of the discordants were dressed the same, but all were grubby; three of them were beakers, called such because of the beaklike masks that they wore. The cavity of each beaker's mask was filled with rags dampened with chemicals that would provide them a state of continuous narcosis. The beakers were particularly dangerous.

The transbox stopped and issued an announcement for the discordants to clear the way. I could see everything from the front window and noticed that one of them, a black-overcoated beaker, was rigged with a machine I recognised as a virtualiser, a routine that could record a real-world scene in more realistic three-dimensional detail than even the most sophisticated personal visual interface. They were pointing the machine at another discordant, not a beaker. This one, who didn't even protect her gender, was wearing a black shirt with horrific curse words printed in big white letters on its front, she looked at me in the eyes and exposed her lower teeth like fangs. I recoiled as she drew a heavy hammer from her belt and threatened me with it.

A small one that must have been a child brought something over to the woman with the hammer, they were carrying it at arm's length, it was white and furry and squirming to get away. It was a living animal!

The older discordant took the animal roughly. It squealed and tried to bite, but she had it by the back of the neck so its fierce defence was ineffective. They all laughed at the poor creature's discomfort. The visualiser moved in close to the one with the squirming animal, now pinned to the ground with a hand around its neck. I watched as she lifted the hammer high over her shoulder and brought it down fast, burying it into white fur. There was a terrible screaming sound. She struck the poor thing again and again as blood splattered up over her face. The others were cheering like this was the best thing they'd ever seen.

I was shaking and felt like vomiting when the killer lifted her weapon up and screamed some curse words before running up to my box and smashing at the window with all her might. The strike was ineffective against the polymer of the front window and I suddenly grew angry, so angry that I couldn't contain my emotion. Shoulders and arms taut, I was screaming at the discordant. The sound, so loud that I thought that I might make myself go deaf. In that moment I would have ripped out her throat with my fingernails and watched with so much satisfaction as her blood spilled all over.

Much to my surprise, my violent outburst seemed hilarious to the discordants and they all laughed. The one with the hammer tried even harder to get into the box. The world spun around me. I felt small and insignificant for I could see their point; only a coward would posture like that, nice and safe behind plastic. Again, I was a coward.

All of the discordants converged on the box and began rocking it from side to side. Some were smashing at the windows with metal sticks and others threw bricks and great big hunks of cement. They pushed the box over onto its side, and I fell, winded. The smashing continued as they tried to force their way in through the floor. I can't remember how long I was lying prone, but soon Security moved in. I could hear the machines before I could see them; the buzzing of their rotors was distinctive. The discordants heard them too, because they scattered. But not before one of the beakers spray-painted a glyph onto the front window and, before running off, flipping me a sign with their rude finger.

Through the window, I watched the routines buzz in. There were three of them with their thin, long legs turned upright and tipped with rotors. They landed by turning four of their appendages down as legs and, when on the ground, their upright arms became bladed weapons. One landed right next to the box and forced open the side panel that was now the roof, two of its arms acting as reverse pincers. I was able to climb out and get a better look at the routine. It wasn't one of the small ones we see in the commute sector, but one of the big, mean machines we sometimes see during the morning announcements where they show us City testing its defensive capabilities against captured discordants.

"Are you harmed?" The machine's inquiry came directly via the sensory inputs to my interface.

"No, I'm fine," I replied out loud—although to be honest, I was somewhat shaken.

"Good. We're going to send you to the nearest safe area. City will send a new box to take you to home section."

I thanked the routine and accepted a new map request. It indicated that I walk down the street past the pulverized animal on the road. Without hesitation, I climbed out of the box and followed the path.

Passing the dead thing, I tried not to look at the mess that had been breathing just minutes before. I vomited and it took a few minutes for me to compose myself. Before moving off again, I looked back. The street, which had been a war zone only minutes ago, now was still and silent. I listened for the sound of discordants being hunted down and straightened out by the eight-fingered hand of justice—Security's motto that they drilled into our heads as children—perhaps one too many eights—I couldn't hear a sound. The street was still.