Freedom Incorporated

by Peter Tylee

  “Round the back.” Cookie led them past what had once been a neatly trimmed hedge but had since grown out of control. It bordered what had originally been a customer car park. A single rusted shell remained, crouching on tired suspension, a dinosaur of non-quantum transportation. “If we don’t go through reception there won’t be any record of our visit.”

  “Good.” Dan approved.

  It was surprisingly cold inside the bubble, almost wintry, though it came as a pleasant reprieve from the humid Brisbane air. Cookie weaved a confident path through halls that appeared abandoned. It was clean and smelled like chlorine, but it was dark and Dan couldn’t hear anything to indicate human activity. “Are you sure it’s open on Saturday?”

  “The door was open, wasn’t it?”

  “Touché,” Dan said, feeling ill at ease. “Lead on.”

  They shunned the elevators, which security typically fitted with microchip scanners, and broke a sweat hiking three flights of stairs. Cookie showed them to an antechamber in one of the deserted surgeries and pulled a curtain around their tiny corner.

  Scant protection, Dan thought. Hefrowned, “How many times have you been here?”

  “Enough,” Cookie admitted. “Every so often we have to refresh our identities. He has a machine that… well, you’ll see. Stay here, I’ll go fetch him.” He hurried from the room,leaving Samantha and Dan alone.

  An uneasy silence settled upon them. Dan had the peculiar feeling that Samantha didn’t like him much. Or maybe she’s scared of me?He couldn’t be sure. Either way the conversation wasn’t flowing as it had with Jen. He simply couldn’t think of anything to say.

  Samantha was drowning her discomfort by meticulously itemising everything in the room. She’d pulled the curtain aside with a roll of her eyes seconds after Cookie had departed. The stencil on the glass door read ‘Surgery D’. How many are there?she wondered absently. The walls were white and the tiled floor was as clean as the scrubbers could manager. Thin veins of bacteria, immune to the strong chemicals and disinfectants dumped upon them, flourished in green patches. The only solution remaining was to use a scouring pad and scrape the colony away.

  Large laminated charts of human anatomy covered one wall. A massive brain captivated her imagination and, in her mind, she saw little brown men squirming in mud, not carefully labelled lobes. Two hospital beds dominated the centre of the room, a perfect symbol for the fastidious nursing staff that had perfectly aligned the sheets and folded identical hospital corners forward and aft. One had a hole at the front for a patient’s face, designed for procedures where the surgeon needed access to the patient’s back. She remembered her own operation, in a similar room. Surgery B I think.She shivered when she thought about the scalpel slicing her flesh and the pulling sensation she felt when the surgeon removed her chip. She couldn’t go through it a second time.

  A short, stout man with a ruddy face and tufts of wiry hair sprouting from his potato-like scalp flicked on the lights and temporarily blinded them.

  “This is Doctor Ingles,” Cookie said, introducing them. “This is Dan…uh…”

  “Sutherland,” Dan supplied, easing Cookie’s embarrassment at his momentary blank. He accepted the surgeon’s offered hand and shook hard, noticing how limp and sweaty the man’s fingers were. It felt as if he were shaking cold, long-dead fish and wondered whether he’d trust someone with such stubby fingers to operate on his spine.

  Cookie turned on the electric shades to make the windows opaque, closed the door, and engaged the lock. It clanked with finality, sending a shudder of diluted panic to Dan’s stomach.

  Doctor Ingles smiled vivaciously and said, “So you’ve been chipped?”

  Dan nodded.

  “And you want someone to gouge it out?”

  “Yes.” Dan cringed at his choice of words.

  “It’ll cost five thousand.” The doctor eyed his potential patient with a degree of curiosity. “North American Credits.”

  Dan cocked an eyebrow. “What’s that? About seven thousand Pacific Dollars?”

  Cookie’s analytical mind performed a more accurate calculation. “No, more like thirteen thousand at the current exchange rate.”

  If the fee surprised Dan, he didn’t show it. “I’ll also need a chip selector-”

  “I know.” The doctor smiled. “They come free with the procedure.”

  “And three new chips,” Dan finished. “All with authority to carry weapons internationally.”

  Doctor Ingles frowned and raised a thumb to stroke his lips. “That’ll cost extra.” He pondered some more. “Say… double. Call it ten thousand Credits even.”

  Cookie piped in,helpfully whispering in Dan’s ear, “That’s twenty-six thousand Dollars.”

  “I knew that,” Dan snapped, irritably brushed him aside. “Done.”

  “Great.” The doctor opened a drawer from a cabinet at the side of the room,extracted two surgical gloves,and started tying a mask across his face. “Strip to the waist and jump on the table.” He was already dragging a tray of medical instruments across the floor and reaching for the floodlight controls. He pressed a button and a shower of brilliant, white, surgical-grade light blasted the table. It outshone the overhead lights a hundred to one and Dan could only guess how hot it was going to be under the dazzling blanket.

  He handed his coat to Cookie and his shirt to Samantha before peeling off his grey skivvy and handing it to her too.

  “Ah, you might want to take that off.” Doctor Ingles pointed at the silver chain danglingaround Dan’s neck.

  He reluctantly unclasped the chain and piled it upon Samantha’s waiting palm. It’d been a gift from Katherine and he couldn’t remember taking it off since her death. “Is this going to hurt?”

  Doctor Ingles smiled gleefully. “Oh yes, very much.”

  “He’s joking.” Samantha giggled. “I didn’t feel a thing.”

  “But I used anaesthetic on you,” Ingles said. “And the administrator confiscated it. She locked it in a safe downstairs and I can’t get any unless you schedule an appointment through reception. I think she became suspicious about my side business when I began rescheduling legitimate appointments, not to mention I was using anaesthetic faster than she could replenish it.”

  Dan paused before entering the shaftof light, reconsidering the operation. An image of his wife’s beaten, bloodied and defiled corpse skirted across his mind. Then the ghastly scene turned to a similarly horrific image of Jen – a prophecy of things to come. It was enough to override his natural aversion to pain, or in this case, anticipation of pain, which in Dan’s experience was worse than pain itself. He eased himself onto the operating table, his skin glowing white under the beam of light. As he suspected, it was hot, and he began to sweat.

  The doctor looked surprised. “I waskidding you know.” He pulled a phial of clear liquid from his coat. “I always have a stash on hand for black ops.” He wondered what kind of nut would volunteer his body to a scalpel without the promise of anaesthetic. “I don’t want you jerking at the wrong moment or I might stab your spinal cord with my scalpel.”

  Dan lay on the table, wriggling until his face was in the centre of the breathing hole. “Just get it over with.”

  The doctor injected Dan with local anaesthetic, careful to ensure he penetrated to the correct depth for the drug to work. It was too dangerous to administer general anaesthetic without an anaesthesiologist to monitor his bodily functions and regulate the cocktail of drugs trickling into his system. Besides, it wasn’t strictly necessary. A local did the trick. The operation was simple really; Doctor Ingles had performed it nearly a hundred times – usually for wanted criminals but sometimes for chipping protestors or people seeking to evade bankruptcy by starting a new life. Either way, he never asked questions. His clientele demanded secrecy and he delivered nothing else. He offered his services to the Australiancommunity,and indeed the world community, with the intention of maintaining patient anonymity. Strictly speaking, that was im
possible; he always knew who his patients were for they paid for his services with their microchips. But he did his best to strike all record of the transactions from the myriad of databases just waiting to absorb financial details. And he treated his patients’ confidentiality with the same sanctity as a priest in a confessional. He was just thankful the law enforcement community, and specifically the chipping squads, hadn’t discovered him yet. Doubtless they’d see things a different way.

  He plunged his scalpel into Dan’s back with surgical precision. Dan felt a pulling sensation and then a little discomfort when Doctor Ingles pulled flaps of his skin aside and used clamps to hold them in place. Then he heard scraping and the vibrations traversed his spine and grated his back teeth. He fought the impulse to flinch; the last thing he wanted wasfor Ingles tosever nerves or slice muscles that he really shouldn’t sever or slice.

  Implanting microchips was easier. ‘Surgeons’ simply used an instrument that looked like a nail-gun with a mounted television. It used sensors to align perfectly with the correct spinal segment and fired a chip like a dart into the misfortunate person’s back. A quick pinch and it was all over. Dan vividly remembered his chipping. They had offered him candy on his way out, as if he’d been a good boy. But when you have sixteen billion people to chip, you wouldn’t want to waste time. Actually,he corrected himself, they only chipped twelve billion.The poorest African nations couldn’t afford the massive capital outlay required to microchip their citizens. It effectively severed them from the rest of the world, isolating them in their own squalor. None of the giga-corporations voted to assist them; after all, you can’t profit from people who have nothing.

  Dan heard Doctor Ingles sigh triumphantly. “That’s it.” He undid the clamps and carefully stitched the wound. “All done.”

  “Really?” Dan had imagined it would take longer.

  Ingles offered Dan a peek at the tiny black capsule he’d dug from his back. “Here it is.”

  He studied it. It’s so small.He’d expected something larger, something more sinister. It was the size of a grain of sand, covered with a reddish tinge of blood.

  “Come with me.” Ingles switched off the overhead light and flung his gore-smattered gloves in the medical waste bin stationed beside the door.

  Dan dressed and all three followed Ingles into his private office, a messy consulting room filled with volumes of useless medical texts. Dan didn’t understand why he held onto the dusty tomes, all the information he needed was more readily accessible online. Doctor Ingles ran a scanner over Dan’s chip and deducted the fee from his account. Next, he opened a bar fridge recessed in one wall and reached pasta row of urine samples to grab a small purse. He extracted a dozen microchips.They looked like black rice, rolling across his palm.

  “Give me your chip selectors.”

  Cookie and Samantha surrendered their link to electronic life and he plugged them into a special reader that fed the data into his computer. He inspected both profiles and asked, “You want the usual?”

  Cookie nodded. “Yes, please.”

  Ingles pushed his thin-framed spectacles back onto the bridge of his nose and pecked at his keyboard, frustrating Cookie with his typing ineptitude.

  “Come on then, take a seat.” He waved them to the chairs scattered haphazardly about the room. Only Dan declined, preferring not to place pressure on his fresh sutures.

  The enterprising doctor selected several profiles that appropriately matched Cookie’s physical description, impregnated the data onto chips, and lined them up neatly on his desk. Then he performed a similar service for Samantha, careful to ensure the ethnicity field read Korean – though he slipped one Japanese profile in, doubting anybody would notice the difference. Hers were more expensive because it was harder to get legitimate Asian profiles.

  Finally, his eyes rested on Dan. He estimated his height and weight and typed the variables into a search window. Dan was midrange so billions of people fit his physical description worldwide and since Ingles had hundreds of cached profiles, dozens matched Dan. But permission to carry weapons internationally was another matter entirely and it slashed the viable records to three. Unfortunately, one potential profile stipulated brown eyes and Dan’s were clearly greenish-blue. “I only have two chips that meet your requirements.”

  Dan’s gaze narrowed. “If that’s all you have then that will have to do.”

  “I’ll knock a thousand from the price.” When impregnating the chips he added the refund to Dan’s linked account.

  That left him with three neat rows of microchips and he spent the next ten minutes painstakingly prising the covers from the chip selectors and swapping the chips. Then he checked the validity of every profile by switching between them and running the device past his scanner. They all scanned correctly.

  “Okay, we’re done.” He tossed the selectors to their appropriate owners. “Here are your new lives, less a few thousand from your accounts.”

  Dan checked his watch, pleasantly surprised. “Good. We might just be in time… if he’s working today.”

  *

  Saturday, September 18, 2066

  N.S.W. Police Department, Parramatta Office

  16:35 Sydney, Australia

  Simon hated the Saturday shift.

  It always dragged on forever. He consoled himself by remembering he’d have Monday off. A smile crept onto his lips and a set of pearly teeth shone amidst his dark-skinned face. He didenjoy that about a weekend shift: being free on Monday when everybody else had to go to work. He leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, dreaming about watching midday television in his pyjamas with a cold beer in one hand and the remote in the other. It wasn’t exactly a productive way to spend the day, but it was relaxing, and that was precisely what he needed. It wasn’t that the job was too much for him. If anything, it wasn’t enough. He needed more to do. He was tired of paper-shuffling cases and cleaning up other officers’ shit. Worse still were the UniForce cases, dead ends despite obvious culpability. It vexed him. They could get away with anything. Nanotoxin for Christ’s sake!The smile gave way to a frown as thoughts of work again plagued his mind.

  He returned his attention to the news, which he’d been browsing for most of the afternoon. Not long now.Simon was itching for five o’clock when he’d bolt for the door in anticipation of his private weekend. Browsing the news was the easiest way to pass time. Nothing interesting had happened. Same old shit.The only online paper he subscribed to was blabbering about a lucrative trade agreement that had arisen from the latest European Economic Forum, a politician found guilty of stalking little boys, and how the entertainment industry was going wild with a band that had pioneered a ‘brave and original’ sound. The only smidgeon of news stirring his interest was a snippet about UniForce’s CEO. It speculated that he was either too sick to attend their recent shareholder meeting or that he was dead. Simon shrugged. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

  A commanding knock at his door roused him from his reverie. “Come in.”

  He looked up to see Dan Sutherland waltz into his office and confidently shut the door behind him. “Dan!”

  “Hey Slime.” Dan had always called him that. It was a joke that went back a long way, back to when they were both rookies in the precinct, around 2056. They’d been on one of their customary drinking binges, which in hindsight had always been somewhat stupid, and it had resulted in a now unmentionable dare.

  “My God, what brings you to this pitiful part of the world?” Simon extended a friendly hand, pleased when Dan gripped it with as much gusto as he had in times past.

  “Just wanted to make sure you were still alive.” Dan smiled stiffly. “I see they’re still suckering you into accepting Saturday shifts.”

  “Yeah,” he said nostalgically while waving at the seat opposite his desk. “Sit mate, sit.”

  Dan hesitated a moment before squatting awkwardly on the edge of the seat. The anaesthetic was wearing off and he felt stiff. It hampered arm movement and he
wondered how long he’d take to recover adequately. With what he’d planned, he’d need to move unhindered. Doctor Ingles had slapped a thin dressing over the wound but it was weeping so heavily it had already soaked through.

  “Jesus!” Simon couldn’t wipe the grin off his face. “How’ve you been?”

  Dan fought the impulse to shrug. “Oh, you know, getting by. Things could be better.” Now there’s an understatement.“But they could also be worse.” Oh yeah? How?“And you?”

  Simon nodded emphatically. “Yeah, good. Work’s still the same old shit, but things are going well.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.” He eyed Simon’s belly and his face lit with a genuine smile. “Putting on a bit of weight, aren’t you?”

  Simon sucked his gut in and looked offended. “I have it covered.”

  “I can recommend a great dietician if you’re-”

  “It’s covered.”

  “Are you sure? Because-”

  “Dan!” Simon tried to look as thin as he could.

  Dan loved teasing his friend. At some point in the past their friendship took a sadistic twist and they began derived pleasure from insulting each other. But neither of them took it seriously. “Okay mate, just thought I’d offer. How’s Maureen?”

  Simon clucked his tongue and his eyebrows shot up. “Now there’s a fiery one. I caught her in bed with another man.”

  “Ouch.” Dan winced for his friend.

  “In our bed.”

  “That’s disgusting.” Dan’s wince turned into a look of revulsion. “What’d you do?”

  “I didn’t have to do anything,” Simon replied. “We never said a word to each other. She just packed her bags and left in silence – with him. That was the last I saw of her. Good riddance if you ask me, she had some bloody annoying habits. It’s him that made me want to puke; he invited me to make it a threesome.”