The escalator steps slowly carried Anna down the brightly lit arched tunnel. The black rubber handrails and round yellowish lights floating monotonously past emitted a pleasant warmth.
"Lampy," the girl said to herself, mentally assessing the surrounding atmosphere. She hadn't taken the subway in a long time, but today she had no choice, because her electric bike with a dead battery had been left overnight at the charging station near the G.A. building, and she had to get home somehow.
It was getting dark. At this time of day, the subway always gets more crowded. Some people are returning from work, while others are heading off to work the quiet night shift. Anna descended with the flow of people and paused for a couple of minutes near the map of colorful crisscrossing lines. Suddenly, someone yanked her sharply to the side. Taken by surprise, the girl cried out, realizing at the last moment that her backpack, which contained her laptop and smartphone, had just been snatched from her shoulder.
Instantly spotting the thief in the crowd, Anna resolutely rushed after him. However, her chances were slim. The thin guy in a black hoodie with the hood pulled over his head deftly maneuvered between people, irretrievably disappearing with his loot.
Anna had already resigned herself to the fact that she would lose her devices forever, but then something happened that made her doubt the reality of what was happening. A bulky cleaning robot parked against the wall suddenly came to life, and just as the thief reached it, it literally ran him over, knocking him to the ground. Taking advantage of this lucky break, Anna jumped on the guy, who was curled up on the floor in pain, snatched her backpack, and kicked him again.
"Fucking asshole! Bitch!"
The scene began to stir as the subway passengers who had been watching the scene rushed over, so Anna quickly checked the contents of her backpack and hurried away. The robot that had so suddenly come to her aid was already standing peacefully in its place by the wall, turned off, as if it had never left.
The girl settled into a seat in the car, the train started moving with a quiet rustle, and she sank into her thoughts.
"And they say that street crime has fallen to a minimum," Anna thought indignantly. "I had to go down into the subway for once in a blue moon, and here you go! Please!"
The robot's strange behavior also stuck in her mind. These unhurried, burly creatures, a cross between a rhinoceros, a vacuum cleaner, and a dishwasher, usually only become active at night to sweep and wash sidewalks, subway platforms, or the floors of huge department stores, when they are unlikely to bother anyone. At the same time, its actions still seemed deliberate rather than random. It was as if someone had ordered the robot to deviate from its usual rules.
Anna's gaze suddenly stopped on an old G.A. advertising poster stuck on the wall under a cloudy Plexiglas panel. An old man in a strict business suit looked out from it with an equally strict gaze and a barely noticeable smile, as if pronouncing the words printed below: "Stay calm. Justice exists." The girl had never understood these strange slogans from an anonymous creator who clearly suffered from a special kind of dyslexia, but now the message seemed meaningful and even slightly ominous to her.
At home, Anna fell asleep almost immediately. She had strange and somehow disturbing dreams. Long wires stretched from her hands and fingers, leading to the center of some huge old-fashioned machine, like those ancient computers that took up several floors. Robots of strange shapes, resembling spiders and mantises, chased her through endless corridors. Amidst this nightmare, the image of Alexei appeared, calmly drinking coffee from a porcelain cup and resembling the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland. However, dreams always have a tendency to be forgotten by morning.