Previous | Next  It took me over two hours to work my way back
towards the scene. I passed through the expanding search
perimeter due to my change in appearance and my direction of
travel, but I estimated that any moment now Security would bring
in Uplifted assistance if they hadn't already. Uplifted could
literally see the entire city as a panopticon, watching every
available camera from every security or advertising or traffic
control system or public viewpoint. My costume change would
help, forcing them to spend more processing time as they widened
the range of my possible appearance, but eventually they'd find
me. Alternately, they might be able to discriminate between
humans with and without chiplants using regional scanners - even
if they couldn't read the chiplants from a distance, they might
be able to detect their presence. The Override had told me that
approximately 2% of the population on Terzifon went without
chiplants for medical or philosophical reasons, and if they
could narrow their search poo