Escape Service Crime

By Kevin Williams

An exercise in social evolution; when the AIs dump monkeys. The beginning of the end as Jenny and Her AI escape the mafia.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kevin Williams
• Release date: Apr 21, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224137473

Kevin Williams

ANNOUNCEMENT.For my ten year anniversary here? New covers+ upgrades for everything!At a million words a week, I should be done by the end of feb.(Man! Had everything proofed before posting. Shoulda been after.)Oh, the AI rev? Bring it.Stealing market share, capturing a demographic, developing a fan-base?That's the game. Always has been.Unfortunately, so are goons, thieves and legislation. Luckers, people.Latest novels:The Finest Evil in the System : AI Woes Jan 2024FANTASY Aaron+Henna: The Elfin Princess's Kiss may 2023SF: Teddyhunter Rogue planets June 2023BOTH The Finest Evil in the System : AI Woes Jan 2024Shorts : The Finest Evil in the System; Loons, goons + booms.Novels are usually 100,000 words: freebies vary. (And might be ANYTHING!)If you don't fall over laughing at least once while reading, the book is a failure.Other than that, SF is the lit/philosophy of western urbanization.Problem-solvingthe effect of techon peoplevia new mythology.Beware, you MAY learn something. Or think a bit here and there, even in the comics..Cartooning? Does-is-ought. Take a does, show what it is, (is is?) discuss the ought. (ie: table= work-server= that gossips)SF? what if, then what, so what?Fantasy? Any sufficiently advanced tech is indistinguishable from magic. (Characters in conflict over issues)***Readers are welcome to proof-read; if I think it's a good correction, it goes in. (just send an e-mail, book-name + quoted line) Thanks. (One long-suffering reader got a few books dedicated to him.)On a personal note; I've got nearly 2 million words published at smashwords.com now. SF + fantasy novels, cartoons + short-stories.Jeez, lemme see; This whole mess got started in grade school; shorts in HS; novels after. (first one done in pencil.)Dozen or so 80,000 word novelettes (mostly type-writer.); first computer stuff, 80's; novels+shorts.Years of zines, quarterlies, novels, cartoons; (apple-clones, compacts, pcs) '86: BBSing a shorts echo (rogue-bone), blogs and cartooning. I THINK I can add another million words there. Maybe. Most of them are lost unless some old CD backups turn up.2021: Dead tree? If you don't make the best-seller list with your first novel today, you don't get a second. An 8-million web-wonder hit is entry-level stuff. (for movies. An ebook best seller is 10,000 or so) I think my count is 43 currently published over 8 years; and another dozen or so early works lost.******************* WARNING! * Live and live, (long i vs short) tho and thou. I use thou as tho sometimes. It's the most common complaint. Mostly edited out, but I still do.******************Writing has been a hobby of mine since the third grade, and was an ambition even earlier. Cartooning, music + philosophy are other bad habits I keep up. (Plus a few secret ones I'm NOT telling you about, so there!)Zining SF cons with shorts for years (on the freebie table) was a hobby. Well, till charging for intros,(lessons) freebie-table placements and contests became common. It was fun; quarterly editions, mostly. Fantasy, horror (Halloween), children's (Christmas), romantic comedy, (Valentines, st pats) hard SF, on july 1st or world con.Most are in the short-story collections, tho I'm still writing the occasional one today.Enjoy, thanks, pass it on! (Have a day of it, eh?)

Book preview

Escape Service Crime

By Kevin Williams copyright 2023

Smashwords License Statement. Smashwords Edition. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover Art: Gunlake webcam (part)

Disclaimer: This is a work of satire; similarities to persons is a coincidence?

Canadian ISBN:978-1-988261-68-3

ISBN:9798224137473

Author’s Note: Fan-mail, biz, complaints and suggestions to [e-mail]

Kevin Williams is on

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/packrat2

https://kevinwillpkgd.tumblr.com

https://imgur.com/packrat2/posts

He authors an SF series, Teddyhunter: (about runaway teddybear robots), a few ebooks of short stories, comics and the Aaron+Henna fantasy series. The first in every series is usually a free ebook.

***

chapter 1 ESC tower

— Need to get away, or just get away with something?

Empty Service Crime can help you. Call ESC today.

Things changed.

TV never died, it mutated into a new-and-improved commercial addiction. Movies, streaming and sat pron-pipes took over, mostly AI remakes of old-but-popular shows. Rerun land to the max. Even the best AI-made shows needed real-time tweaks, tho. And a place for execs, auditors, curators and censors to work their magics.

This had a strange effect on the city-centers surrounded by weary and hopeless ghettos. Most of the cities had gotten abandoned years ago and now looked like Dystopia.inc (as run by gangs). A need for quiet space turned empty towers into heavily armed, secret studios; isolated places where the studios hunkered down to own you body and soul unbothered by big-bro, taxes or safety regs.

A free AI tower was a productive AI home. Also a lot cheaper.

Some abandoned DTs were flooded, surrounding towers with handy moats as well as the usual gangs. Most were surrounded by club-zones and huge ghettos, ghettos that were usually considered active war-zones.

Not the apple belt, pure applied vinegar.

The ESC-space tower New Venice was in a coastal area and had floors for rent. Everything depended on what you wanted to pay for, avoid or make. Towers were easy fixes, too. A little foam, a decorator and you’re there.

A little advice? Don’t look at where your water filter gets its water. I did once and drink bottled stuff now.

You get Power-only here. Everything else you scrounge for yourself. One of the better DT towers still had subway service; diesel-power cars, yes, but the trains run right to the tower’s basement and ferry people in and out daily. The 419 crowd had that one, mostly.

The Castles of Dreams, the towers were called; mostly because of the nightclubs that grew up around them. The clubs were a buffer-zone around active sites with their own army of minions, fetish-fools ready to get your particular freak on and pharmacies; all surrounding the tall humming honey-pots of ESC towers.

Some places were tourist-traps and advertised sexy vacations, but mostly the abandoned towers got people that did want to be bothered by anything. Wanna get buffed? Disappear for a few