Eventually, everybody started to look the same. As the faces moved in their endless procession across the computer screen, there was, or so it seemed to the men and women in the basement of State Surveillance, only one, rather unimpressive face. Beautiful faces, charming faces, dull faces, alert faces, ugly faces, cruel faces, kind faces—they merged into one standardized face, a face placed at the exact median point of the spectrum of all faces.
They were not hostile to it. Some even recognized it as their own. The unique fingerprint, the sui generis snowflake—these were mythologies. Fortunately, they were only responsible for fact-checking the computer’s facial analysis, comparing the data it collected to the archive. It was never wrong.
If, for some reason, facial analysis couldn’t determine someone’s identity—say, because the person in question was wearing a medical mask or a pair of oversized sunglasses—they could identify the unique signature of the heartbeat or perform gait analysis. You could even swoop in a drone and identify trace DNA left a few paces behind your target. They hadn’t encountered someone they couldn’t identify in over a decade, once facial recognition software had developed to its optimal level.
They had various reasons for taking the job. Most commonly, they had been shuttled onto the analyst path by the forces around them. Their exam results, their grades, their biometrics, their genetic assessments—in aggregate, these herded them onto the path of the surveillance analyst. To some, the minority who still possessed an element of curiosity, it seemed like it would be fun: the ultimate form of people-watching.
But the mediation of screens had a flattening effect. You got bored with it after a few days. Occasionally, the cameras identified a subversive—usually in disguise, so you had to fall back on the additional, aforementioned identification methods. But there were fewer and fewer of them these days, and ordinary crime was remarkably low. You caught the occasional litterbug or pickpocket and hurtled them into expedited exile, but that was about it.
The surveillance analysts’ lives went on much like everyone else’s, submerged in the low hum of routine—until one day something wholly unexpected happened. They encountered a man they did not recognize.
He was sitting on a bench in the public park—a mere block away from State Surveillance, in fact. He didn’t appear to be doing much of anything, which was not, in and of itself, a crime, although it was highly unusual. When the first analyst noticed that the computer couldn’t determine the identity of the face, he tried heartbeat analysis. Strangely, it clarified nothing.
None of the analysts had encountered a situation like this in years. Every person they encountered was easily sortable, fileable. The man didn’t really look like anybody else. Yet, he was not so radically different. In fact, one of the analysts mused to himself, in any other person, you could maybe find a trace of his features. Just a hint, here and there.
At the same time, his face was nothing like that dull, average, median face to which they’d all grown accustomed. It was exceptional, totally exceptional—but somehow comprehensively human as well. It gave them all a chill.
They sent a drone in the area to fly down and hover over the man seated on the bench. The man didn’t seem to notice it. The drone sent down tiny, invisible nanoprobes to take a sample of the man’s DNA. Yet, when the drone report returned, it was also bafflingly inconclusive.
The surveillance team hadn’t made physical contact with any of the people they’d surveilled in years. Drones took care of everything. But, in this case, they were struck by an irresistible compulsion. After all, the man was sitting just down the street. Technically, there was nothing in protocol to stop them from running into the park and making a citizen’s arrest—or, if there were no grounds for an arrest, an interrogation.
When the first analyst floated the idea, the others found themselves wanting to agree. They were disconcerted. They tried to argue against the notion just to make sure there were no logical flaws in their thought processes. They decided the situation was anomalous and justified anomalous behavior. The higher-ups couldn’t quite object.
With a few of them left behind to man the computers, the group of analysts walked down the street at a brisk pace. They couldn’t help feeling sheepish and vulnerable. They weren’t used to being out on the street during the day like this. They couldn’t help feeling that they had become part of the great mass of the surveilled.
When they reached the park bench, the man was still sitting there, calmly, not doing much of anything. He turned his face towards them.
They displayed their State Surveillance identification badges. “Who are you?” they asked. “What are you doing here?”
Their questions lacked the authority they should’ve possessed. They sounded desperate.
“Me?” the man said. He smiled. “I’m just passing through.”