Kaleidocide by Dave Swavely Page A

visible in the daytime, but were now washed out into the middle shades of gray by the prevailing weather and indistinguishable from the old, dirty snow around them. The only nocturnal survivor from the bright colors of the day was taxi-yellow—not the thick river that carpets the streets during business hours, but smaller trickles flowing here and there, enjoying much more freedom of movement in the almost deserted sprawl.
    A generation ago, no one would have believed that the business district around Wall Street would again become a veritable ghost town after dark, but no one would have predicted the destruction of the World Trade Center either, in the generation before. Crime always increases when an economic crisis occurs, especially after a series of them, and the recent proliferation in this area had been enough to justify the curfew. Just as the 9/11 disaster symbolized how vulnerable the United States had been to terrorists, the quiet on these night streets now showed how much of a threat organized crime was to the American Confederacy.
    So the denizens of this New York night were primarily criminals whose hope of profit was enough incentive for them to risk breaking the curfew. They had dominated the night in this area for decades, ever since the gradual attrition of NYPD officers working the late shift had dwindled their numbers down to an ineffective ratio. In fact, there were times during that sad epoch in New York history that the only police on the streets at night were those who were paid to look the other way. This “surrender” of the night was understandable, because prior to it over 95 percent of all NYPD casualties had been occurring after dark.
    But in recent years, things were changing, thanks to some more ambitious leadership in the city and the decentralization of the American government, which freed up more money and encouraged more self-interest at the local levels. Inspired by the grand experiment of Saul Rabin’s Bay Area Security Service in San Francisco, the NYPD hired and heavily subsidized a native rent-a-cop outfit called Garden Safety Services, which was transformed into Gotham Security. City legislators instituted the curfew and (also following the BASS model) granted “freedom of deadly force”—a license to kill—to these “Dark Knights.” During these early years of the program, however, they were often referred to as the “Dead Knights,” because the criminal organizations that had become entrenched in the city night were not prepared to give up their own operations without turning the Big Apple into a bloody battleground.
    Though the costs were already high, however, the New York government and Gotham Security were continuing the fight and expecting to win at least some modicum of law and order before too long. Enlistment had not been a problem so far—there always seemed to be people with a military or law enforcement background who wanted more action and were willing to put themselves at risk for a five-year term, after which they could retire comfortably. The “career path” was therefore similar to that of a professional athlete—except that an athlete doesn’t find himself in a vicious firefight about once a week. Each agent had to take his chances for five hours every night, four nights a week, during the street patrol or “hard” shift. The other half of their night—the “soft” shift—was spent in a safer location, often babysitting one of the big buildings. And so far this had been a good year: in its first nine months, less than one in five of them had been killed or incapacitated. That was slightly better than the statistical average since the founding of the company—the employees all had about a 25 percent chance of buying it before their five years were completed.
    On this particular night in early November, two future statistics named Korcz and Stephenson sat in their patrol