Snapshot

Nobody had blamed him. Cops in the Snapshot would introduce Deviations; it was the nature of what they did. Still, it haunted him. In here, everyone else was fake, but he and Chaz . . . They were somehow something worse. Flaws in a perfect system. Intruders. Viruses leaving chaos in their wakes.

It doesn’t matter, he told himself as he finished the last of the burrito. Eyes on the mission. The department shrink told him to focus on what he was doing, on his task at hand. He couldn’t function if he fixated on the Deviations.

The two made their way to the corner of Third and Twenty-Second, near rows of little shops. Convenience stores, a liquor shop with bars on the windows. The backs of the stop signs had random stickers from this band or that plastered over them. This wasn’t one of the nicer areas of the city; there weren’t many of those left.

Davis called up the mission parameters again on his phone, looking them over. “I think we should stand inside,” Davis said, gesturing toward the liquor store.

“Makes it hard to chase someone.”

“Yeah, but he won’t see us. No Deviations.”

“Deviations can’t be stopped.”

He was right. Each day, they’d be interviewed about what they did, and data from their phones—which tracked their location—would be downloaded. Their actions were audited by the bean counters in IA, but the language was always about “minimizing Deviation risk in targets.” Never about eliminating the Deviations.

Besides, the phone data could be fudged, as Davis well knew, and signals from outside had trouble reaching inside the Snapshot. So really, nobody knew for sure what they did in here.

Still, Chaz didn’t argue further as Davis positioned them inside the liquor store, which was open despite the early hour. The place smelled clean, and was well maintained, notwithstanding the unsavory section of town. A bearded Sikh man with a sharp red turban swept the floor by the checkout counter. He regarded them curiously as they set up near the front window.

Davis read the mission parameters again, then checked his watch. A half hour. Not much time. They shouldn’t have stopped for breakfast, despite Chaz’s complaining.

The shopkeeper continued his sweeping, eyeing them periodically.

“He’s going to be trouble,” Chaz noted.

“We’re just two normal patrons.”

“Who didn’t buy anything. Now we’re staring out the window, one of us checking his watch every fifteen seconds.”

“I’m not—”

Davis was interrupted as the shopkeeper finally set his broom aside and came walking over. “I’m going to need you to leave,” he said. “I need to close for, um, lunch.”

Davis smiled, preparing a lie to placate the man.

Chaz flashed his badge.

It looked normal to Davis. Just a silvery shield with the usual important-looking embossing. Nothing abnormal about it. Except it was a reality badge. To anyone from the Snapshot—to anyone who was a dupe, a fake person—it wouldn’t look like a normal police shield at all. Instead, it was certification that the men bearing it were real.

And equally, certification that you were not.

The Sikh man stared at the badge, eyes widening. Davis always wondered what it was they saw. They got that same far-off look in their eyes, as if they’d stared into something vast. Stunned. Even a little in awe.

Has a dupe of me ever seen one of those? he wondered. Thinking he was the real me, completely ignorant of the fact that he—and his entire world—was just a Snapshot. Until he saw the badge . . .

The shopkeeper shook himself and looked at them. “Hey, that’s a neat trick. How did you . . . I mean, how’d you make it . . .” He trailed off, looking down at the badge again.

Dupes always recognized it instinctively. Something inside them knew what the badge meant, even if they hadn’t ever heard about them. Of course, most had heard of them, with the privacy dustups recently. Beyond that, the general public up in the Restored American Union had a fascination with the project; it was becoming a favorite of cinema. You could stream half a dozen cop dramas about detectives working inside a Snapshot—though as far as Davis knew, the only official facility was here in New Clipperton.

The cop dramas never showed what the reality badge looked like. It seemed to be some kind of unwritten rule. It was better in your head.

The shopkeeper whispered something softly in his native tongue. Then he looked up at them again, more somber. Chaz nodded to him.

The shopkeeper took it well. He just . . . wandered off. He pushed out the door of his shop in a daze, leaving it all behind. Why work a retail job when you’ve just found out you aren’t real? Why bother with anything when your entire world is going to end around bedtime?

“Want anything to drink?” Chaz asked cheerfully as he tucked his badge into his front pocket. He nodded to the now-unguarded store shelves.

“You didn’t need to do that,” Davis said.

“We only have a few minutes left. No time for chitchat. This was the best way.”

“He’ll introduce Deviations.”

“There’s no way to stop—”

“Shut it,” Davis said, slumping against the window and checking his watch again. Sometimes I hate you, Chaz.

Though he envied Chaz at the same time. Davis would be better off if he could simply start viewing everything in here—even the people they passed—as fake. Puppets created from raw matter and animated for a short time.

It was just that . . . they were exact reproductions, right down to their brain chemistry. How could you not view them as real people? He and Chaz ate the burritos, treated them as real, but were at the same time supposed to pretend the people they met were nothing more than simulacra? Didn’t seem right.