The radiation levels have died down now, and the city is now habitable, from a radiological standpoint–but the behavior of the automated systems, although designed with benign intent, now makes entry to the city very dangerous.
Mitch, the protagonist, resolves to go into the city, somehow get control of Central, and reprogram it so that it will be an asset rather than a hazard for future human occupants of the city. The first thing he sees is a robot cop, giving a ticket to a robot car with no human occupants. Shortly thereafter, he himself is stopped for jaywalking by another robot cop, and given a summons to appear in traffic court. He also observes a municipal robot mailing out batches of delinquent utility-bill notices to customers who no longer exist.
Eventually Mitch establishes contact with Central and warns it that a group of men are planning to blow it up in order to have unhindered access to the city for looting…that the war is over, and Central needs to revise its behavior to compensate for the changed situation. The response is that he himself is taken away for interrogation. He hears a woman crying in an adjacent cell—she has been arrested by a robot cop for some reason or other, and her baby was separated from her and is being held in the city nursery.
“They won’t take care of him! They’ll let him die!”
“Don’t scream like that. He’ll be all right.”
“Robots don’t give milk!”
“No, but there are such things as bottles, you know,” he chuckled.
“Are there? ” Her eyes were wide with horror. “And what will they put in the bottles?”
“Why-” He paused. Central certainly wasn’t running any dairy farms.
“Wait’ll they bring you a meal,” she said. “You’ll see.” “Meal?”
“Empty tray,” she hissed. “Empty tray, empty paper cup, paper fork, clean paper napkin. No
food.”
Mitch swallowed hard. Central’s logic was sometimes hard to see. The servo-attendant
probably went through the motions of ladling stew from an empty pot and drawing coffee from
empty urn. Of course, there weren’t any truck farmers to keep the city supplied with produce.
Mitch observes that inmates in the surrounding cells have all starved to death while Central and its subunits went through the motions of feeding them.
Mitch and Marta manage to escape, as Central calls in vain for human guards–who don’t exist anymore–to assist its unarmed robots. Eventually, Mitch is able to reach the house of the former mayor, assert (via code-cracking) the mayor’s authority over Central, and gain control of the system.
The behavior of Miller’s automated city-system…feeding people with trays that contain no food, arresting people for minor offenses and putting them in an environment in which a child could see that they would starve, sending out utility bills to nonexistent customers, calling for assistance from personnel who haven’t been around for years or decades…closely models the state to which bureaucracies–i.e., robots made of human components–tend naturally to evolve.
While we associate bureaucracy with government, it exists as well int he private sector. In a prior professional life with a Fortune 500 company, there was always the choice when presented with a problem; you could follow procedure and guarantee failure or you could try something new and different and have a 50-50 shot at success. Want to guess which one was the safer option?
I will also add that at the field level said company now hires employees remotely. Local management has no say in the process. It is entirely conducted remotely by HR
Procedure just doesn’t become a tool of conscious expansive tyranny but a refuge, a version of only following orders. The circumstances regarding P’Nut and Fred are not only tragic and heart-rendering they are also ridiculous. Leave aside the raid in the first place, who sends that many people for that period of time?
I’m going to guess that the state government agency received a complaint and middle-tier management thought through the choices. If they didn’t investigate the complaint it would sit on the books, best take it seriously by following procedure. If they were going to investigate a potentially hostile situation, then best follow procedure to the letter and like a SWAT raid send enough people to make sure there was no resistance. The P’Nut did his don’t tread on me, the agency followed antiquated rabies procedures and killed him. Not sure what the reason was for Fred.
Safety in procedure.
Keep in mind procedure can never mirror reality, it is only a written approximation of it. In today’s grievance culture with identity politics it becomes even worse because to grant any discretion at the “customer” level is to invite legal action.
That doesn’t even get into malicious actions of bureaucratic aggrandizement and and the sins petty tyranny.
Btw… I had to renew my license the other month and my experience was great… in and out in 20 minutes including an eye test. Of course I spent a few minutes before arriving in preparation, but the experience was much better than say trying to return a defective item at a store or getting a discount on distressed merchandise.