Birdwatchers: A scifi story about surveillance

Note: this is a repost of a story I wrote years ago and put on a different site.  Plz no hurt cheetah bot.  But it seems like the something the security minded people here might be interested in. And, on a more selfish level, showing off work can be motivating. 

Birdwatchers

He adjusted one of the knobs, increasing the intensity from two milliamps to four, but without success.   After a moment of thought, he twisted another knob till the LED display above it read “.015 ampere” and toggled a switch. The monitor went hazy for an instant as the current fed back through the system, lines of distortion twisting the display into a seasick kaleidoscope of wavering phantom shapes. The image coalesced moments later, and nothing had changed. He watched as the view in the monitor bobbed swiftly about, its focus rooted to the scattered seed spread across the pavement. It was an old trick, illegal but still as common as it was effective. He disconnected from the first camera and found another, this one perched high  atop one of the nearby tenements. A cursory twist of the knob brought the image on screen round a full 90 degrees; snow laden rooftops, pillars of black chimney smoke, and the quickly darkening sky blurring past the monitor's vision. Satisfied with the camera's cooperation he busied himself adjusting knobs until the image of a man appeared on the monitor. The man was wrapped in the remnants of several coats, head ducked within layers of disheveled hoods and scarves. The man was walking alone, trudging through the knee-high snow of a disused street. He watched the man a little longer, letting him struggle another quarter mile before he opened the glass cover and pressed the signal button. Though he could not hear it--the cameras did not transmit audio--he knew that the camera let out three sharp squawks. He reclined in his chair, watching the monitor, and drumming his fingers against the armrests as the police arrived. He watched the man gesture wildly and assumed there was  yelling along with it. His eyes flicked lazily between the man and the officers, his fingers still drumming away against the armrest until the first silent muzzle flashes began. The image on screen jerked wildly as the camera abandoned its roost, frightened by the noise. He stared blankly at the monitor for a moment before flicking the power switch and standing up.

   He stretched his back, digging his knuckles into the sore muscles, and attempting to kneed the stiffness away. The console slowly shut down, the hum of the many monitors dying, and being replaced by the dull noise from beyond his office door. He checked his watch, but it had stopped, the hands stilled at a quarter pass three. He considered rebooting the console to check the time but decided against it. He was tired. He took his coat from the back of the chair and his gloves from its pockets and stepped out into the hallway. The hallway was little more than a long corridor, lined on either side with  rows of identical, featureless doors. He squinted against the glare of florescent light on white paint, nearly unbearable after a day in that dark office, and wrinkled his nose at the antiseptic smell.  He blinked away the water in his eyes and started off down the hall, listening absentmindedly to the noises beyond the doors. There was the clicking of keyboards, the squeak of knobs, the hum of electricity and most of all the omnipresent cough that accompanies winter months. As he walked he too felt the need to cough but stifled it, feeling the silence of the hall to be somehow sacrosanct. Only once he had made it to the elevator did he allow himself to succumb to the tickling in his throat. He exited at the lobby, scanned his badge and hand print into the security terminal, and stepped through the first set of doors on the way out. He paused there, between the outer and inner doors, staring at the wind blown snow beyond the door. Already it was cold and he pulled the coat tighter around him, readying himself for what lay ahead.

  The door opened smoothly and he gritted his teeth as he stepped out into the wind.  The dark clouds had exhausted the bulk of their fury during the day and now dropped only an insubstantial shower of pale gray motes which clung like dust to all they touched. The antiseptic smell followed him- it had long ago soaked into his clothing- and mingled with the smell of smoke in the air. He looked up at the great block of concrete and glass which housed his office, its shape so massive and out of place among the brick buildings huddled around it, and wondered what the residents of those century-old tenements thought of their colossal neighbor. He tugged the collar of his jacket higher and started down the street.  The tenements which lined the road were twice his age at least, three and four story  constructs crowded so close together as to merge into an unbroken line of soot-stained brick and iron. Pillars of black smoke rose from unseen chimneys and held aloft a darkening sky, monochrome sunset flowing weakly through cracks in the overcast. He stared idly at the buildings as he walked, hoping perhaps to see a figure in a window, but knowing there would be none. Most of the windows were covered, hidden behind sliding metal shutters or simply boarded shut. He remembered when the windows had been covered by bars rather than shutters, remembered when burglary was actually a concern. The cameras had done away with that and with it the bars. Now a new barrier had been erected to thwart a new invasion; where the prying hands had fallen, the prying eyes now reigned.

   Somewhere above him he heard a rustle and looked up in time to see a flock of birds abandon their perch along a rooftop ledge. He watched them vanish silently into the advancing dark.  He wondered if someone somewhere was watching him slowly fade away on a monitor. He was almost home when a group of children burst from an alley along his path and  ran out onto the sidewalk in front of him. He stopped and so did they, both noticing the other at the same instant. In the ensuing silence he felt the urge to smile, but found himself unable to. Before he could say anything they had turned and fled back the way they came. On the ground lay a small bag of birdseed, its corner torn and its contents spilling slowly out into the snow. He picked up the bag and tucked it into his pocket, kicking snow over what had already spilled out. He looked down the alley, but the children were already gone.

   The last vestiges of light were draining from the sky as he reached to his apartment building, stepping carefully on ice-coated concrete steps. The doorman cowered and looked away as he mounted the stairs toward the upper floors. The stairway was old, its timbers rotten and darkened by countless damp years, and the wallpaper had peeled and fallen, revealing the crumbling drywall within.  There was an old smell of sour milk in the air, mixed with new aromas of cooking food and burning wood. He let himself into 306 and closed the door behind him, shaking off the snow as he passed through the threshold. He could hear yelling from one of the rooms around him and for a time he stood and listened. The sounds were unintelligible but too rare to ignore; such expressions had faded from the outer world, surviving only in seclusion. He stood with eyes closed, listening to the duet of baritone and mezzo-soprano, and quietly took all the beauty from it. The voices vanished soon after and again he felt the weight of exhaustion upon him. He lay in bed for a long time, listening, willing the voices to return, but they did not.

   He awoke the next morning and stretched his back, grimacing as he did so. Before he left he stood before the mirror and looked at himself, checking his expression. His reflection stared back at him, its face a mask of utter inscrutability. It was still dark as he left, the fresh snow glowing pale orange beneath the staggered streetlights as barely visible flecks of ice continued to fall. The wind had long  since died away and he walked as through a dream, lost in soft luminescence beneath a sky of gray cotton. The great panes of glass glowed within the concrete block and he watched the edge of sunrise peek over the rooftops as the elevator doors closed. Into darkness he fell, the smell of antiseptic growing stronger until it burnt his eyes and stung his throat. The elevator opened upon a changing room, rows of polished aluminum lockers lined the walls, and a wash basin ran through the center. He stowed his jacket in a locker and pulled a shrink-wrapped package from a dispenser bolted to the wall near him. Sealed within the package was a chemical suit, white and tissue paper thin, and a pair of latex gloves. The basin was filled with some sort of disinfectant which burnt as he washed, donning the suit and gloves after doing so. Beyond the changing room lay a corridor lined with polished metal stalls, some open, some closed. He found an open one and stepped inside, closing the door behind him.

Inside the stall was uncomfortably small, barely wider than his shoulders, and just long enough to accommodate himself and a table opposite the door. The walls were polished smooth, save for two apertures in the far wall. The aperture on his right contained a variety of surgical tools, but the other was empty. He slid open a panel on the surface of the table and pressed one of the buttons hidden there.  There was a hiss of air and moments later a camera appeared, dropping from a recessed pipe in the ceiling of the left aperture. He retrieved the camera and inspected it, careful not to break the paper cuff which encircled its wings. It wasn't a model he recognized, some new breed of pigeon or dove, but  with a dark reddish plumage. He set it on the table and pressed a button; the surface of the table hummed and the camera convulsed momentarily before collapsing. He selected a scalpel from the right aperture and cut away the paper cuff before beginning his work. He carefully peeled back layers of skin, fat and muscle until the spine was visible. Between the scapula lay a length of copper wire, tightly coiled, and fused to the spine in several places.  The camera began to stir and he had to stun it again before continuing. He split the flesh up the neck, following the wires along the spine till he reached the skull. A hatch had already been cut into the rear of the skull and secured with metal clasps, which he opened and peered within. The circuits piggybacked on the optic lobes were in working order, but the rest was hidden by a mass of discolored flesh and mucus. He cut into the tumor and out spilled blacked flesh and pus which he hurriedly wiped away. He stood with his scalpel hovering over the rotting tissue, his eyes scanning it carefully as minutes ticked by. Finally, he set the blade aside impotently, closed the skull, and stitched the incisions shut. He watched as it slowly recovered, drunkenly rising to its feet and scanning the room with dull, twitching eyes. He opened his suit and reached into the pocket of the clothing beneath it, retrieving the bag of birdseed from the day before. He spread some on the table. It ate and he watched, though it ignored him. He reached a hand out to touch it, but it hopped away, its eyes never leaving the scattered seeds. When the seeds were gone it stared at him, black eyes without  a glimmer of understanding behind them. Without taking his eyes off it he lay his hand on the table's controls, twisted a knob to its maximum setting and pressed a button. The table hummed loudly and the camera collapsed. It did not move again.

   That night he stood outside door 307 and listened to the voices within. He could not understand them, their  voices barely audible even through the thin drywall, but he listened none the less. He tried to imagine what they looked like and thought they must be beautiful. There was a warmth in that dull, indistinct murmur, and he breathed it in, trying to infuse some of that warmth into himself. He could smell the food beyond the door and feel the heat of the fireplace where it cooked; could feel the softness of the great overstuffed chairs which must surround the hearth and he basked in the glow of the smiling faces which inhabited them. A door slammed somewhere downstairs and he was cold again. He started to knock but stopped, knuckles resting soundlessly on the lacquered finish of the door. After a moment he stepped away and entered 306, leaving the voices behind him. He sat on the edge of his bed and stared out the unshuttered window into the uncertain world beyond. Motes of snow, glowing like embers in the pale orange of the streetlights, drifted down upon the city beyond the glass.  The whole of the visible world beyond the window smoldered in that orange light, black and gray with  cracks of cold heat, ash and embers of ice. He opened the window and scraped the snow from the sill, replacing it with a handful of birdseed from his pocket. He waited, watching through the glass till his eyes grew sore, as the city burned in its own fire.

   The figure which stared back at him from the depths of the mirror the next morning was gray as the snow which fell beyond its window. He touched his fingertips to a sunken cheek and wondered where the warmth that flesh once contained had gone. He left his apartment late and was on his way to the stairs when the door to 307 opened beside him. The man who had opened the door was not beautiful, nor was the woman behind him. They were shrunken and hollow, scarecrows of flesh with unseeing eyes and pallid faces. The room behind them contained no hearth, no warm chairs, good food or smiling faces; all that lay beyond the threshold was cold drywall and harsh fluorescence, a smell of sour milk and sweat. They stared at him, their black eyes without a glimmer of understanding. He tried to say something, to do anything except stand and stare, but the door closed. The hall seemed cold now, colder then it had ever been; there was no longer any warmth from 307 and there never would be again. 

      He sat at the console with his coat on, still cold even with the radiant heat of the monitors. He manipulated the camera idly, turning knobs with the tip of his finger as the screen swayed drunkenly about. The streets were empty, save for the other cameras, and he flicked his vision from one to the next in a halfhearted attempt to find something worth watching. It was hours later that he found them, still spreading birdseed as they had been the day before last: they were a cloud of steam and gray synthetic against the dirty snow, a cluster of mittened hands and booted feet spreading seed incredulously before the eyes of the camera.  They committed felonies while laughing to themselves, years of their lives spent with each handful thrown carelessly into the snow. Chances were that some other camera had picked them up already and that the alarm was only moments away. He watched them  and waited for the inevitable terror, the futile race through knee-high snow. But it never came and he watched them walk till finally, they disbursed, each child vanishing down a separate path.  He leaned back in his chair and stared blankly at the ceiling, drumming his fingers on the armrests. He wondered how long it would take for the feed from his cameras to be analyzed and his negligence discovered; Maybe a day, probably less. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, clenching the armrests till his fingers ached. Finally, he stood and, without pausing to turn off the console, walked out of the office. He scanned his handprint and badge, leaving the latter behind as he escaped into the street. Light streamed down through the cracks in the cloud cover and rain fell softly on concrete, washing away the soot and staining the remaining snow black. The chimneys lay dead, their pillars of smoke long since vanished, and the sky loomed down upon him, threatening to fall.

      He walked home, up the stairs and through his door, not bothering to remove his jacket as he sat upon the bed. Beyond his window a bird huddled on the sill, picking half frozen seed from the melting snow. It was red and black, soot and brick, and watching him as it ate. It finished the seed quickly but remained on the window sill, staring through the glass at the figure on the bed. He lay back, resting his head on the pillow. The bird turned from the window and faced the world outside. He closed his eyes. The bird called out, three sharp squawks. He was tired.