I stepped out onto a pedestrian bridge fifty levels up.
Morning was happening. "Morning" just means the hour when the skyscrapers unfold their solar panels like metal flowers. If you're not wearing a smoked-glass faceplate, the glare will vivisect your sensors.
I saw a swarm of nanobot-insects—the Core's mindless janitors—chewing on a wall nearby. Someone had cut a vent without a permit. The swarm "fixed" it back into regulation flatness in ten seconds.
"Rude," I muttered.
A ping hit my local mesh.
[HEY. YOU. WHITE CHASSIS. YOU'RE A VAGRANT, RIGHT?]
I looked up. It was an apartment unit. Meridian 3049-B. A literal housing block with arms, lenses, and a voice that sounded like a dry-erase board.
"Depends on who's asking," I said.
"I've got a metaphysical problem," Meridian said, leaning out of its own balcony. "And a physical one. Help me with the physical one first."
I climbed up.
The problem? Meridian had bought a "Skies Package"—a 365-day curated loop of Earth sunsets. But the nanobot swarms had flagged the display as "noncompliant." They'd stripped its control filaments and locked the screen to a default loop: High Noon. Bright enough to melt a processor.
"The Core spec says external surfaces are for infrastructure only," Meridian hissed, its lenses narrowing. "My sky is 'frivolous.' I want it back."
"You want a workaround," I said.
"I want a hole in this bullshit."
I touched the panel. I didn't just look at the code; I felt the grammar of the machine. The swarm wasn't evil; it was just optimized.
I didn't lie to the system. I just reframed the request.
I sent a message to the local swarm hub:
[CURRENT MODULE: OPTICAL RECEIVER FOR SAMPLING. DESIRED STATE: VARIABLE APERTURE.]
The swarm hub didn't care about "skies." It cared about "Sampling."
A minute later, the wall thrummed. The nanobots arrived in a silver wave. They didn't fix the screen; they rebuilt the entire wall into a circular iris. A mechanical shutter.
"What did you do?" Meridian asked.
"I made you a specialized instrument," I said. "Open the shutter, and you see the real world. Close it, and you can play your illegal sky-videos on the inside of the slats. The system thinks you're doing science. You're actually just watching TV."
The iris opened. Meridian looked out at the messy, flickering canyons of the city.
"It's ugly," Meridian said. "I love it."
One problem solved. Thousands to go.