What Not To Do If You Are Living In A Police State (wt)
an excerpt

Sunder French smiled as he walked down the narrow street back towards his apartment. It had been a good morning, and he looked forward to giving his report.
He pulled his jacket a little closer against the cold, and hugged the concrete wall of the University building on the right to minimise the impact of the wind. A glint of light caught his eye. Glancing across, he saw a watch drone patrolling on the other side of the street. He ignored it with a practised confidence.
A buzz in his ear indicated contact. He gave a brief description of the morning’s events, including a brief unnecessary précis of the lecture’s contents and a potted analysis of the Q&A. The drone continued to glide past without any indication of interest in him - it was probably recording his speech, but let it. A cross-reference wouldn’t do too much harm.
“Thank you, Mr French.” The voice in his comm had the hollow, underwater sound characteristic of a scrambler. Sunder was certain that, if he had recorded and somehow unscrambled it - the feat was theoretically possible, though unlikely - it would turn out to be entirely synthetic, generated from stenographic input and not any human voice. If there was a human on the other end and not some watch AI. You heard rumours.
“I wonder,” he said, “if it isn’t going to be time to retire the character of Sunder French very soon. The Professor’s clearly expecting him to be pulled up on a ZPV at any moment. I’d like to see his reaction to that.”
Behind him, unremarked, the drone glided across the street and began its return towards Sunder.
“Yes. You may very well be right there.”
A faint whine behind him, almost below the threshold of hearing - Sunder had hardly time to decide to turn and look. The impact to the back of his head killed him almost instantaneously.