Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

This is the Doctrine’s contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop.

Hosted by Denise with one thing on her mind: sentence count (Hint: rhymes with Six)

If you’re a new Reader (or a regular Reader who might want to refresh their memory) here’s an opportunity to read the story from the beginning. The link to ‘…of Heroes and the MisUnderstood‘.

Prompt word:

REMOTE

[GCHQ London Branch]

The city of London, with an estimated 627,707 cctv cameras, remote microphones and drones nesting in the clouds, could be thought of as, ‘the city that never sleeps’ but that characterization would not be fair, (or accurate), to either it’s citizenry or it’s surveillance system; in the case of the former, one’s sanity requires the personal privacy of sleep, while the latter thrives on constant awareness, albeit digital and thoroughly un-human.

“Yes, Leftenant Custos, something the AI can’t explain, I assume,” The LMN (Live Monitor Nexus) was a subterranean hectare of monitors and operators; the Watch Supervisor, Colonel Villicus, had sedgway’d down and across the ruler-straight aisles of the heart of the GCHQ until he stood behind the young man.

“The oddest thing, sir, a common speeder at first, but when I ran it’s path backwards, multiple gunshots, originating here,” the image on his monitor was a single family house and a very expensive car with four flat tires in the driveway; anticipating his supervisor’s question, “Yes those are two dead bodies on the opposite side of the street, but that’s not the oddest thing,” running the tape forward showed a van pulling out of the driveway, both men cringed as it sideswiped a parked car without slowing, racing out of the neighborhood until it was in a commercial area when, seemingly for no reason, tipped over and, sliding along on it’s side, came to rest in the middle of an empty intersection.

“Now, watch this,” pulling back on a joystick control, the perspective zoomed up and away sufficiently to bring two additional vehicles, a motorized rocket launcher and a helicopter into view; Lt Custos wisely decided not to comment on the rarity of such equipment on a London village street on a weeknight.

Colonel Villicus’s fingers flew over the keypad Velcro’d on his right wrist, activating an array of additional filters, including infrared, and the immediate result was the addition of the green-on-green silhouettes of four people, all moving towards a vehicle which, after a moment of hesitancy, sped in the opposite direction from the military-grade equipment.

A tone sounded from somewhere on, (or in), the person of the Supervisor, prompting a passable mime of a dog hearing an unexpected sound; resting his hand on the younger man’s shoulder he whispered, “Notify the locals, tell them this is a classified SAS training drill and all they need do is divert traffic until we give the all clear.”

The post Six Sentence Story “…of Heroes and the MisUnderstood” [Part 1] first appeared on the Wakefield Doctrine.