NO SIGNAL

by Jem Tugwell

  She looked around, desperate for someone to talk to when there were shouts and complaints to her left. The camera tracked to the noise and showed a group of about ten figures in half-green, half-black robes forcing a path through to the front of the crowd. Issac Townsend walked serenely in the middle of the group holding a large floral arrangement that spelt the word Ava.

  The presenter started her own pushing and shoving trying to get to Issac. ‘Sorry, excuse me. Sorry,’ she kept repeating as the camera followed her.

  Issac stepped onto the grass and approached the black section of grass already covered in flowers. ‘Ava’s Shrine’ the press were calling it now. Issac stood for a few seconds before he laid his flowers and returned to his Ultras.

  Don’t want flowers, Clive thought he heard Ava say. I want justice.

  The news channel’s presenter got to the edge of the Ultras and was blocked by a large man.

  ‘Let her through,’ Issac said, and the Ultra stepped to one side.

  ‘Issac,’ the presenter said, pointing at a cluster of Control Rebellion placards. ‘Are your members simply brainwashed slaves to the Model?’

  Issac pushed his palms together, fingers together and pointing away from his body, in the New Modelists’ horizontal sign of prayer. ‘The church brings contentment and peace to its faithful. Control Rebellion are nothing but hedonistic anarchists looking for chaos and gluttony.’

  A couple of Ultras took a step towards the presenter.

  ‘Er… OK, so what do you make of the government’s response to the attacks?’

  ‘Have they made a response?’ he said, smiling at the camera. His eyes glittered with malice. ‘I think all Parliament does is generate hot air. It’s a major contributor to climate warming.’

  He waved into the distance at the eco-catastrophe protesters who flanked one side of Parliament Square with their ‘Action Now’ placards.

  ‘Ask them how much action the government has taken. We all grow impatient. Perhaps these attacks might be a catalyst for change.’

  ‘Amen,’ the Ultras said.

  Now Issac looked straight into the camera. His eyes held Clive, there was something persuasive in them.

  ‘We need changes to the Model to limit consumption. We need to address the unending population boom–’

  The display wall changed to show Zoe’s HUD and Issac was cut off mid-flow.

  Zoe had opened a long message from Cyber, but in a font too small for Clive to read easily.

  ‘Tell me what it says, Zoe.’

  ‘There’s a lot of detail of different routers and dead ends, but basically, Serge was very careful and very clever. He hid his tracks well, but he isn’t as clever as Cyber. They can’t get an exact location, but all three leads can be traced back to the Rouen area. It looks like Rouen is a permanent base rather than a temporary place selected only for the game.’

  ‘Oh, that’s all? No physical address?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Doesn’t really get us anywhere does it?’

  ‘Well, it says that Rouen is at the centre of this,’ Zoe said.

  ‘We knew that,’ Clive said and stopped. He had seen that look in Zoe’s eyes before. She was holding something back, edging him down a dark alley, before leading him to sunshine. ‘What, Zoe? Tell me.’

  Zoe didn’t say anything. Instead, she threw an advert for a lecture tour titled Climate Change: A Catastrophe of Population.

  Issac Townsend’s smiling face beamed back at them from the advert.

  ‘Look at the second date down.’

  Clive did. Four months ago, stop two on the tour was in Rouen. The eleventh date was today. In London. Can’t be a coincidence, Clive thought.

  He beamed. ‘Zoe, you’re a superstar.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  Chapter 78

  ‘Waste of time,’ Lance had said, when Zoe told him their news, but Bhatt’s message said, ‘Go.’

  The lecture was a sell out for weeks before the attacks, but the fear had caused a renewed push for more tickets. The Church had moved the venue to a much bigger hall. It had sold out in a flash and there was still a huge waiting list.

  As Clive approached the entry to the hall, he put his left hand on the barrier. Instead of opening, it flashed ‘No valid ticket found’ on a small screen, and he heard a harsh little buzz of denial. With his left hand still touching the barrier, he used his right hand to select the ‘Menu’ in the top left of his HUD, selected ‘PCU’, then ‘Overrides’ and then ‘Locks’.

  The barrier flashed ‘PCU’ and opened. To his right, Zoe was completing the same process at her barrier.

  They both stepped through and headed to the main lecture hall doors. The hall was packed, and they were hit by a wall of warm air. Everyone was staring at the floodlit stage and Issac. Not a spare seat anywhere, so they stood at the back and leant against the wall.

  A young man in a bow tie that seemed to be the uniform of the lecture hall staff approached them in a fast walk.

  ‘You can’t stand there. It’s a fire risk. This is an emergency evacuation route.’

  ‘We won’t still be standing here if there’s a fire,’ Clive said.

  ‘You still can’t stand–’ he started, but Zoe must have thrown her Cyber-Terror Police ID at him as he shot off like a mouse seeing a cat.

  Clive had misused his police powers and checked on Sophia. She was here somewhere. He scanned the seats, taking in the silence of the audience’s rapt attention, but couldn’t see her. He focused on the stage. Issac was in full flow.

  Zoe was reading something on her HUD. ‘He’s been going a while, but there’s an interval halfway through,’ she said. ‘Maybe ten minutes more.’

  Clive nodded.

  Issac moved to the centre of the stage. The massive display wall behind him changed to show what looked like blue discs and jagged, purple balls. The caption read ‘What is cancer?’. Clive guessed that the blue discs were meant to represent normal cells and the purple balls must be cancer cells. He frowned, not sure what cancer had to do with religion or climate or even population.

  Issac spoke. Clear and compelling.

  ‘A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells. The world’s population has exploded: 1bn in 1800, 1.6bn in 1900, 2.5bn in 1950 to 10bn now. It’s an uncontrolled multiplication of people. When we behave like this, humankind is a cancer on our planet.’

  A line-graph of the world population over time overlaid the image of the coloured discs. The scale made the line seem almost vertical.

  ‘All of the world leader’s efforts are focused on the treatment of the symptoms. It hasn’t worked. The disease of humankind is so far advanced that only radical surgery will give the planet a chance of survival. We need to cut out our cancer. The operation will demand the strength to make difficult decisions. The pain may be intense.’

  He paused and the image on the display wall changed to a graveyard.

  ‘Before modern medicine, death eliminated people almost as quickly as birth produced them. The population rose very slowly, then rich countries developed modern medicine – “instant death control”. Death rates plunged. They wiped out major diseases. Now science threatens to wipe us out.’

  Issac pushed his hands together into his usual horizontal prayer. ‘Why have people insisted on breeding way past the point of no return? The birth rate is driven by the ceaseless biological urge to dominate through numbers, with no thought of the burden it places on the planet.’

  The screen changed again. Half of it showed a field of lush corn, the other showed a post-apocalypse field scorched of vegetation.

  Issac opened his arms wide to suggest a question.

  ‘The root of the environmental catastrophe is clear to see. It’s “Too Many”. Too many factories, too many flights, too many pesticides, too many carbon pollutants. But these are effects. The cause is too many people. We need a conscious regulation of both consumption and human numbers. We need to bring the world population unde
r control, by reducing the growth rate to zero or making it go negative. We need to do it now.’

  There was a swell of agreement from the crowd.

  Issac gave a small bow. ‘After the break, I will outline the optimum population-environment goals for the world.’

  ***

  Clive and Zoe walked along the corridor that ran behind the lecture theatre’s stage. There were lots of doors, but it was obvious that Issac must be behind the one the two Ultras were guarding.

  The Ultras both took a half-pace towards the centre of the door as Clive approached, completely blocking the door.

  ‘Move,’ he said, but they looked past him like he wasn’t there.

  ‘Issac Townsend,’ Clive shouted. ‘Police. We sent you a message. We need to talk to you. Now.’

  Nothing happened, and then the door opened. Issac smiled out at them. ‘Citizens, please allow them to pass,’ he said, and the Ultras parted and allowed Clive and Zoe into the room.

  It was a simple dressing room with a plain table and chair. The table had a jug of water on it.

  ‘Drink?’ Issac asked, but both Clive and Zoe shook their heads.

  ‘All that rhetoric about population control, is that Church policy now?’ Clive asked.

  ‘It always has been. We’ve always been against consumption and excess. Excess includes people and their constant need for instant gratification. How can we save the planet when people want to click a button and have the product delivered? Do they think of the cost? The carbon production of the factory in China, the aeroplane flying it here. The car delivering the package may be electric, but so much electricity is still produced by burning carbon fuels. It’s all part of the human disease.’

  He likes the sound of his own voice, Clive thought.

  ‘And you planned the recent terror attacks to promote your population control agenda,’ Clive said.

  Issac seemed puzzled. ‘How am I implicated? You have proof?’ he asked.

  ‘All of the activity and planning for the attacks came from Rouen. You were there recently.’

  Now Issac laughed.

  ‘And the hundred thousand or so people who live there. Are you going to arrest them all?’

  ‘You can’t be serious about population control,’ Zoe said.

  ‘No, Ms Jordan? What’s your solution to the climate disaster?’

  ‘You could manufacture things locally and avoid the air freight.’

  Issac looked pityingly at Zoe. ‘Then you have hundreds of people all doing the same thing. Wasting scarce resources on inefficient duplication. You’ll make it worse.’

  Issac leant forward, and beckoned Clive and Zoe closer like fellow conspirators.

  ‘I doubt you’ll stay for the second half of the lecture, but the solution is clear. Let the purity of a life conforming to the Model bless each of you, for iMe can control consumption.’ He lowered his voice.

  ‘And with upgrades, it can provide the population control we need. We can turn the unworthy off.’

  Chapter 79

  The morning brought a cloudy but bright day. The clouds seemed to have somewhere else they wanted to be, as they scuttled past, pushed along by a strong breeze.

  At least the health and safety clowns hadn’t stooped to naming a breeze as a health hazard, Clive thought, but how soon would it be before the rustling of the leaves and swaying twigs were a ‘falling from height’ risk? Or the seeds picked up and carried on the wind a ‘risk to eye and lung health’?

  Clive pushed through the PCU office door.

  Zoe was already there, fingers waving as she used her HUD, but she looked tired. ‘Morning, Boss. Can’t get that Issac out of my head. He wants to turn people off. Kept me up all night.’

  ‘Me too. I’d be on his unworthy list for sure.’

  ‘It’s not all about you, Boss,’ Zoe scolded.

  One of the window seals in the PCU office must have failed as the wind was whistling inside the office. It made the wind sound much stronger than it was, and made the office sound like they were trapped in a remote cabin, surrounded by something sinister. Something scary.

  The problem was that if Issac got his way, the something scary was already embedded in their necks. Would it be like the game controllers? A ten second countdown to death? No time to say goodbye to those you loved.

  They had no evidence on Issac other than a trip to Rouen. With no iMe in France there was no way of tracking where he went and who he met. No way to find a secret meeting with Serge.

  ‘You manage to find any other links to Rouen, Zoe?’

  Zoe pursed her lips and dropped her eyes. ‘Nothing. I scanned the last year. Loads of events, loads of travel, but nothing that looks like a lead.’

  Maybe Lance was right. The whole ‘game’ had been well organised, but did a foreign government really have all the local agents needed to transport the game controllers, find the butchers shops, and the drop off points?

  The wind sounded stronger, adding to Clive’s sense of isolation.

  Ava waited on Clive’s shoulder. Her tone was more demanding. Try harder.

  ***

  The wind noise in the office had dropped during the late morning. The lack of progress was compounded by Clive’s research on terrorist conviction rates and made his mood darker.

  The common theme seemed to be that the actual terrorist committing the offence might get convicted if they didn’t blow themselves up or get shot by the police, but the power behind the attacks – the planners, financiers, and ultimate leaders blended into the background. They hid behind cells where members knew as little as possible and couldn’t give any real evidence that hurt their leaders. They got away. They planned their next attack.

  The Terror department were busy chasing the people who had claimed responsibility, but when Clive checked their progress on his HUD, there was nothing concrete.

  They were all chasing smoke.

  Clive decided to follow a trail of research that centred on Issac. The Church of the New Modelists seemed to have some conflicting gender identity arguments. Their website touched on ‘binary-gender church membership’ to ‘engender a strong and worthy citizenship’, but Issac had written papers arguing that outside of the church’s members, an individual’s choice to live outside traditional gender roles was acceptable. Desirable even, as a proliferation of same sex partnerships was likely to lower birth rates compared to heterosexual partnerships.

  Clive followed the references in one of Issac’s papers to an old paper written by the Vatican called Male and Female He Created Them. Clive didn’t read all thirty odd pages, but it seemed to be advocating the same binary gender definitions and countering the scientific view that gender was a spectrum. The paper pitted the church against science, and Clive ran that as a new search.

  It produced over a million results. He tried a different search: ‘Church versus science, gender, Rouen’ and pressed ‘Send’.

  Two hundred thousand results. He added ‘Issac Townsend’ to the search string.

  A much smaller set of results and on page four, mixed in with all the papers he had found earlier was the gold.

  ‘Zoe,’ he said, the excitement bursting out of him. ‘Look.’

  Zoe’s head snapped up, but the display wall still showed the scrolling ‘Safety First and Safety Last’ briefings from the government’s latest initiative. ‘What?’

  ‘Wait. Got overexcited and forgot to throw my HUD.’ Clive flicked his wrist and the display wall redrew to show a large group of people, bunched together, all trying to seem the most important and the most involved. They were standing under a long, covered walkway, with steps and market stalls behind them.

  ‘Look at the hairstyles. That’s a long time ago,’ Zoe said. ‘What’s so exciting?’

  ‘Pre-iMe,’ Clive agreed. ‘Look at the faces, age them a bit.’ Clive moved the mouse over a young woman in a grey power-dressing suit with big shoulders.

  ‘That’s the Prime Minister.’

  ‘Ye
p, she was a junior minister then. See who’s two rows behind her?’

  ‘Karli Neilson, she worked for the Gender Equality Commission back then.’ Zoe’s eyes were darting over the faces, trying to see who else was there. ‘Issac,’ she shouted, matching the excitement of Clive’s earlier outburst.

  ‘Yes, and look on the far right of the picture. It would have been his far left so he could have stood there on purpose.’

  Zoe scanned the edge of the image, yelped, and ran to the screen. Her finger touched on a face, partly hidden by the person in front of them. ‘Miles Raven.’

  ‘Bingo. They’re all there.’

  ‘What’s the picture from?’

  ‘A conference against gender intolerance, but best of all… It’s in Rouen. It’s the Church of St Joan of Arc in the Place du Vieux-Marche. Apparently, it’s on the site where Joan of Arc was burned for heresy and cross-dressing in 1431. The conference used her positive image as a brave woman who had to dress as a man as a symbol of hope about the changing times. Probably, also a dig at the Catholic Church.’

  ‘All these people have a link to Rouen.’ Zoe turned to look at Clive, her eyebrows narrowing. ‘Strange Issac didn’t mention it yesterday.’

  Chapter 80

  ‘Before we take this to Bhatt and Lance. I’ve got something for you, Boss,’ Zoe said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You remember both Lilou and Sully said the selection process went from ten to seven to five to four? Well I’ve had lots of searches running over the last thirty-six hours. Looking for that pattern.’

  ‘And?’

  Zoe pinched her finger and threw her HUD. ‘One finally came back with something useful. What do you think about this?’

  The display wall redrew to show the tweets of a film blogger called FilmOPhil.

  ‘The account belongs to someone called Phillipe Blanc. It’s been open for years and he has thousands of followers, but Phillipe died six months ago. Not surprisingly, there are no posts for a while and then recently they started again. But the style of the entries is different.’

  ‘OK… like someone bought his account?’