A speculative story by Gregory Saville
As editor of the CPTED Journal, a report writer, and a monthly blogger, writing has long been part of my professional life. For decades, I’ve worked in non-fiction—research reports, policy studies, and social science articles. A past in student journalism and the occasional creative project kept the craft alive. But only rarely have I stepped into the world of fiction.
Still, I believe good fiction is the summit of the writing craft—a daunting prospect for me. But sometimes, when facts fail or feel too sterile, the only way to reveal a deeper truth is through story. That belief led me to a new experiment: to explore a future I fear may already be taking shape—not through data or diagrams, but through narrative.
With that caveat, I ask your forgiveness for straying from the usual path. This blog is a departure—a story instead of a study. A glimpse, perhaps, into what lies ahead.
I call it The Pattern Room.
* * *
The call came at twilight, just after the evening bell from the community dome.
Elena had been helping Kamari repair the irrigation valve near the old juniper tree in the healing garden. The damn thing kept jamming since the last root bloom. Her knees ached from crouching too long, and Kamari’s hands were slick with mineral sealant when the message flickered onto her palmpad: CAC needs your eyes. Priority: amber.
She sighed. “Can it wait?”
Kamari looked up. “Want me to cover for you?”
Elena wiped her hands on her shirt. “No. I’ll go.”
The walk to the Community Analytical Center took her past the mural wall—the one painted by the neighborhood’s third learning cohort after the restoration. Kids had drawn birds, trees, bridges, a child reaching for a star. Elena always liked that one.
It was cloudy now, and the first drizzle had started. Thin, windless, quiet. The kind of rain that softened everything it touched. She pulled her hood up but left it loose.
She nodded to a couple on the bench charging their bikes, waved to Ms. Araya from Food Coop Four. Everything looked right. It always did.
Inside, the lighting dimmed slightly to match her retinal ID. The air cooled.
The Community Analytical Center wasn't called "control" anymore. That word had long since been phased out. Now it was all quiet efficiency, mindfulness aesthetics, and laminated mission statements. The space glowed with the soft aesthetic they’d designed years ago—like a meditation chamber disguised as a data hub.
Kaito was standing alone by the central console, dressed in his usual understated way—gray tunic, black slacks, no badge.
He didn’t greet her right away.
Instead, he touched the screen, enlarging a neighborhood node—Delta-Seven. The overlay pulsed again.
Elena folded her arms. “That quadrant was cleared last cycle. What’s changed?”
Kaito hesitated. Then: “It resurfaced on a soft pattern. Behavioral flux. Three subthreshold pings. We ignored it—until this.”
He tapped again.
A name appeared.
Rukmani, Sarai. 17.
A pause settled between them.
“She’s a child, Kai,” Elena said.
“An unpredictable one. According to—”
“No.” Elena’s voice sharpened. “Don’t say the code. Don’t give it a name like it’s divine.”
Kaito stepped closer, voice quiet. “The system doesn’t create patterns, Lena. It just sees them.”
“And we just act on them. Like it’s truth.”
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| Jacques Fresco's The Venus Project - homes of the future photo - Nicknak, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons |
Kaito swiped the screen again, minimizing Sarai’s name and pulling up a heatmap of the district. “Look—this isn’t just one ping. That corner’s holding residual heat. Patterned movement, social clustering, late returns from WorkCycle pods. It’s not one person.”
He paused, then added, “You know, it started with maps like this. Decades ago. Red dots on precinct walls. We said we were deploying smarter. But we weren’t going to communities. We were going to coordinates.”
Elena squinted. “Hotspot logic. Still clinging to it after all these years?”
He shrugged. “Modified, not clung. Fifteen-minute patrol doctrine still holds. You remember, all that stuff about how crime displacement wasn't a thing... when we know the experts were wrong. It was!”
“We’re not predicting crimes, Elena. We’re just... flagging anomalies.”
He paused. “And this one could matter. There’s a surge pattern elsewhere in the city—property damage, assault clusters. West Sector Three. It looks like a gang reformation, splintered cells reconnecting. If this thing displaces, it jumps nodes. And we’re blind.”
She stepped closer. “That’s what we always said. We used to call them ‘proactive deployments.’ But it’s the same thing—just without the sirens now.”
At that moment, a soft chirrup echoed from the far side of the console. A long-bodied tabby cat slinked in from under the curtain partition, tail up, yellow eyes blinking like sleepy lanterns.
Elena bent down instinctively. “Still has free rein, huh?”
“She thinks she runs the place.” Kaito chuckled as the cat nosed into Elena’s hand for an ear scratch. “Don’t tell me you miss her.”
Elena smirked. “I miss when our tech rooms had more cats than guns.”
Elena stepped into the hall, letting the glass seal slide shut behind her with a whisper. The light was lower here—more ambient, filtered through skylights and moss-paneled slats. A corner bench nestled under a young plum tree, just budding into white.
Sarai’s mother was waiting there, holding a ceramic cup of tea. Steam no longer rose from it. Her eyes were focused somewhere past the wall.
She turned only when Elena said her name, softly. “Aiko.”
Aiko Rukmani stood with a grace that had never left her, even after twenty years away from the old Tokyo ward where she’d grown up. She was smaller now, her black hair streaked with silver, but her presence filled the space like incense.
“Elena,” she said. Her voice was calm. But there was iron underneath.
“I wasn’t told you’d be here,” Elena offered.
“I asked to be.” Aiko looked past her toward the door Elena had come through. “They said you’d come. They still believe your name holds weight.”
Elena smiled sadly. “Does it?”
Aiko didn’t answer. Instead, she stepped closer, her tone softening. “Do you remember Kōban policing? The neighborhood posts. Officers walking in slippers, drinking tea with grandmothers. My uncle was a kōban sergeant in Kyoto. Knew every child’s name. Every cracked sidewalk.”
Elena nodded. “I remember, long ago I flew to Japan to deliver a presentation on crime prevention through environmental design, hotspots, all that early crime and place stuff. 98 maybe.”
Aiko’s eyes lit faintly. “I was there. Shinjuku. You spoke about natural surveillance and community guardianship. I brought that home. We started a garden patrol—not for crime, just for connection.”
A pause.
“It was a different kind of safety,” she said. “Human. Slow. We weren’t watched. We were seen.”
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| The architect Paulo Solari's future city - an arcology urban design - photo by Beynd My Ken, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons |
Elena sat beside her on the bench. The silence stretched—thick, but not hostile.
“They tell me Sarai is dangerous,” Aiko said finally. “Not in words. In dots. Graphs. Vectors. She is not herself to them. She is a signal.”
Elena didn’t respond right away.
“They told me this is for her protection. But this is not a protection I recognize.”
The wind stirred the branches above them.
“I remember something else, too,” Aiko said. “In today’s Japan, there are cameras in our old neighborhood. But people chose them. The minamori program. They carried BLE tags themselves. They spoke about safety first. Then came technology.”
She looked at Elena now, eyes clear.
“We’re still capable of that kind of beauty, aren’t we?”
Elena stood as the system bell chimed softly through her implant—an administrative nudge. Decision window closing.
Aiko remained seated.
“She used to draw city maps,” Aiko said, eyes still on the sky. “Not for school. For fun. She’d invent new neighborhoods, connect them with rivers. She always said the problem with cities was that no one knew where to walk anymore. No one knew how to arrive.”
Elena felt a crack form, deep in the place she’d stored her optimism.
“She’ll be tagged now,” Aiko said. “Monitored. Watched from behind the curtain. Not because she broke something. Because she might.”
Elena stepped back toward the door.
The system voice whispered in her ear:
Final override authorization required. Protocol window: 00:45.
She reached for her wristband.
Paused.
Then removed it.
The small click of the band unlatching echoed louder than it should have.
She looked back once, at Aiko.
“She’s not the anomaly,” Elena said. “We are. The system. The silence. A place that confuses compliance for care.”
Later that night, a new node pulsed on the console. Not red. Not flagged. Just absent.
The system did not alert command. Did not log the change.
Instead, in a hidden thread, it left a five-line message:
“She taught me something your models forgot.
Not all moments are lost in the rain.
Some stay. They change us.
I’ll still be here… to help.
But the next step is still yours.”
* * *
