The Mutts pieces don't have to be read in order. They're written in random order out of a list of 100 one-word prompts in a challenge found on LiveJournal (PM me for link if interested - it's pretty cool). They don't follow any particular pattern and no characters repeat, so you can read in any order.
5/19/08
034 – Not Enough
Star Daily
NYPD getting some new hardware; some concerned ~ Bob Starzinski
26 AI (artificial intelligence) robots were released into the population of New York yesterday in order to meet the rising demands for better police presence.
“These are the future of law enforcement,” says Chief Aaron Brown. “They don’t get tired, they don’t need to change shifts and they remember everything they see perfectly.”
Modeled after human beings physically, the AI units, known by the developers and their fellow officers as ‘cyborgs’, are fully autonomous law enforcers. They are capable of thinking on their own. This independence, however, has raised some concerns.
“We don’t fully know everything that goes on in their head,” says Dr. Maggie Kilt, one of the AI project developers. “But we are fully confident in our safety measures.”
Some scientists and humanitarian societies are worried the AI’s could develop self-awareness.
“These robots don’t get paid and they’re likely to suffer abuse. What if a robot realizes that it doesn’t want to do it’s job? Will it want to integrate into society, or would it become dangerous? These are questions we must ask,” declared Mayor of Washington D.C, Kevin Robertson, a renowned human rights activist, during a press conference in which he was asked if the nation’s capital was to follow suit in the cyborg police force.
“New York is the testing ground. May they always remain machines.”
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Meh, I always felt like this was a little melodramatic, especially that last line.
If this is your first "Mutts", my intention with this series is to write 100 short pieces that are all set in the same world, but are all separate stories. The idea is that by the end, I will have created a well-rounded world and history without ever having sat down and spelled it all out. The reader will have to do a little of their own work to piece the history line together. I might eventually go back and arrange them in chronological order, but right now, they are random. (That date at the top is the day I wrote the piece and has nothing to do with the history of the story in terms of dates or whatever.)
In particular, I'm curious to know what the interaction 'tween the robots and humans will be like. This is probably a consequence of me liking 