Robots must always fight Robots. 

“Eighteen new hacker cases,” DI Bailey and DCI Murray, of the Manchester Met police heard as they sat in silence and listened to the report being given to the Chief Constable. “The rise of cybercrime is going up. Three days ago, a doorbell camera failed to pick up a robbery because it had been hacked by an expert, and the houses’ security detected nothing.”

“That’s not all; a home computer cloned its users’ voice, and someone used it to speak to someone in a totally unrelated kidnapping case to use to make a ransom demand.”

Murray didn’t recognise the speaker and guessed she was someone new. That was the problem with the police; there were so many people that it was hard to keep track of, and more kept appearing every day. But as her experienced mind went over what she had just heard, she had a horrible and sneaking feeling about what happened in the kidnapping case. 

“What happened?” The Chief Constables’ assistant’s face and tone was grim; he’d likely guessed it, too. 

“The original speaker’s voice was identified, and he was arrested and questioned for nine hours while a search party checked his home. He’s a doctor, for god’s sake. And he had been working on his computer. One of our specialists checked the computer and discovered his microphone had been hacked, and his voice taken. After that, he was ruled out, but he’s been left shaken.”

Murray wasn’t surprised by that. It sometimes ruined lives whenever the police suddenly appeared and took you in for questioning. 

“This can’t go on,” the Chief constable said at last, “its like crime is evolving, and we need to keep pace-.”

“It is evolving, sir. That’s the problem. And we can’t stop it. And we’re not alone; I spoke to a friend of mine who works for the police force in Newcastle; a bank was hacked into, and half of its electronic savings were stolen.”

“Jesus.”

“The good news about that particular case was the hacker wasn’t experienced, and they were tracked quickly, but that was the last straw. The government is preparing something big to tackle all of this.”

“How?” DCI Murray demanded, already feeling her age; damn it, she had joined the police force to catch criminals, real living criminals. On the streets; she’d had a romantic view of the police force catching burglars and robbers, but it wasn’t until she had actually joined and saw the many variants of crimes that she realised kids' books always drew the line between what was acceptable. She was too old to deal with the constant evolutions of technology, and newer methods of communicating were becoming more and more common every day. She was too old for one of those brain implant things, and she didn’t think she could stomach an operation necessary to have one put in her head. “The only way we can catch these hackers is to use hackers themselves. What about the robots that were programmed to break into that jewellery shop a week ago? What’s going to happen with that?”

Both DI Bailey and DCI Murray had been involved in the case. The robots used hadn’t been those cute, innocent commercial toys you found. No, these were a bit more high-tech and appeared homemade. Their builder had been just a kid, but he had at his house many weapons. Several of her team had been hospitalised. She would never get out of her mind the surprised and pain-filled screams of pain as they were hit by nails, of all things. 

The sight had terrified her. 

But one of the clearest things about the whole mess was lines were being blurred. 

The Chief Constable blinked in surprise at her question. “I’m sorry…DCI Murray?” He asked as he struggled to place her face. A part of her wanted to punch him. They’d known each other for 23 and a half years now. “What do you find hard to believe?”

Inwardly wondering where he got the logic to ask her that, Murray went on, “How is the government planning on tackling this problem? We can barely handle it ourselves, and I think I speak for 99% of the country.”

Several people nodded and mumbled in agreement. 

The Chief Constable smiled. “Robots,” he said simply. 

-8- 

When someone pictures a robot, you picture something in the shape of a man, a human being. But robots actually have dozens of shapes and sizes. The robots unleashed on the general public to solve the problems of cybercrime and security came in dozens of shapes and sizes. Police drones, like mini police helicopters, overflew the cities and towns of the country. 

Powered by a power cell the size of a hand, with an uplink to the secure police intranet, these drones were forever flying overhead, awaiting calls and snapping dozens of videos and shots, narrowing down on speeding offences and drug deals, which led to a crackdown on dealers, who were hit quickly. In the past decade, the police of the United Kingdom had been made slowly and steadily toothless, but now with new leadership, the government decided to crack down on it, seeing the new evidence gleaned as an opportunity. Likewise in the London Underground, the Glasgow Subway, and the Tyne and Wear metro, pickpocket offences dropped radically. 

Add the presence of robots, full-size robots, and escorting the ordinary police made many other forms of crime drop. A terrorist act in London was quickly identified, and an AI software that was put into the intranet activated and without authorisation, sent a squad of armed police and robots. The robots overpowered the terrorists and took them and the evidence into custody. 

The AI was questioned and reprimanded, but the AI, proving its intelligence provided a strong argument. 

I AM PROGRAMMED TO CATCH CRIMINALS. THE PEOPLE DETECTED AND ARRESTED WERE IN THE PROCESS OF PLANNING DELIBERATE ACTS OF DESTRUCTION, AND YET NOBODY IN THE SECURITY SERVICES SEEMED PREPARED TO APPREHEND THEM. IT IS MY PURPOSE, WHY DO YOU QUESTION THAT?

The genuine puzzlement of the AI had left everyone baffled, and it had forced many to accept the fact they needed to be proactive, and so they began giving the AI greater autonomy, to the alarm of many who believed it was perhaps too dangerous since AI was still new. But as more and more robots were churned out in Britain, many other countries observed and decided to follow Britain’s example, and they were left spellbound by the results, as more and more crimes were solved and potential ones averted. 

AI systems were given the permission they needed to seek out and discover the dangerous hackers on the internet, and slowly and quietly monitored the ones who were not interested in causing death and destruction in some manner. It was thanks to the AI many of the hackers were caught. They were hit with the force of an atomic

bomb, and while many of them did go to the ground, the majority of them were arrested, and the AI simply hacked the internet to find them, and provided plenty of evidence of their crimes.