[ WP ] A Minor Event

Jason's eyes were drawn to the woman as she walked toward him down the street. Her face was a mask of seriousness, but she was beautiful behind the her no-nonsense glasses. She marched intently past the slower pedestrians, ponytail swishing as she deftly side-stepped an elderly couple. Heels clicking on the sidewalk, she looked both professional and sexy in her business skirt. She was prefect. 
 
 He had read enough about street photography to know that he was well within his rights to photograph someone in public, yet he still felt self consciously creepy about it. He raised the camera to his eye, pretended to be examining the building across the street. As she passed by he turned and clicked the shutter. She frowned, walked around him, and marched on. He checked the image on the view screen. Perfect. 
 
 The camera -- Jason's new toy -- was state of the art. Within seconds it had wirelessly transferred the image to his phone, where it was automatically uploaded to his online backup storage. From there, several actions were initiated. The original image was archived, and the photograph was put through a series of algorithms, making default color adjustments and applying sharpening masks. Another process scanned the picture for faces and ran facial recognition algorithms against them. If it had identified Jason's face or any of his friends, the photo would have been tagged with their names. The software processed the woman's face, and found no match. Meta data added by both the camera and the phone were analyzed, and the picture was tagged with Jason's location. The corrected and tagged photograph was sent back to his phone, ready to be uploaded to any of his various social media accounts with the touch of a button. 
 
 Jason declined to share the image, both pleased with the results and still feeling somewhat creepy for taking it. He turned his eye back to the street, looking for another subject to photograph. 
 
 On the backup server, yet another script was running. For over two years it had executed silently, processing every image that was uploaded, all without the knowledge of anyone working for the photo backup service. As it had trillions of times before, on this website and many others like it, it analyzed the photo, taking note of the meta data, performing its own facial analysis. It processed the girl's face and moved on. It found another face in the background -- a man stepping off a bus. No match. Two faces approaching from the other direction. No match. A man walking behind the business woman and checking his watch. Match. 
 
 To be sure, the software ran the man's face through another series of algorithms. Match. Match. Match. For the first time since it had begun running, the program sent a brief message and a copy of the photograph back to its creator. 
 
 Three hundred miles away, a machine beeped. A man in a dark blue suit read the message, blinked, and read it again. He leaped to his feet and sprinted down the hallway of the immense building where he worked. He was winded by the time he reached his employer's office. She frowned at him over her enormous wooden desk as he caught his breath. 
 
 `` Madam President,'' he said, `` We've found him.'' 

