by B C Bamber
HARD RIGHT
Copyright © B.C.Bamber 2019
All rights reserved.
Published by Vagabond Unlimited 2019
Montpellier House, Montpellier Drive, Cheltenham. Gloucestershire, GL50 1TY, UK
[email protected]
OTHER WORK BY B.C.BAMBER:
THE VAST AND GRUESOME CLUTCH OF OUR LAW.
THE APOCALYPSE: AND THE TRUE NATURE OF GOD.
BOOK OF TRICKS: SIX CRUEL AND UNSUAL SHORT STORIES.
THE CROP.
RUINED.
MASTER OF TIME.
THE DIVERSION.
365 ORACLE.
BOOK OF TRICKS 2: THE DOLDRUMS.
HARD RIGHT.
By B.C.Bamber
Chapter One.
Don Jackson 09823, climbed into his uniform – a waterproof overall, bright yellow in colour and accompanied by a gas mask as well as his oxygen tank and mask, should the climate be short of breathable air today. The forecast was good, but it could be unpredictable. All over the planet there were vast kilometre high machines that pumped out an oxygen, nitrogen mix. The oxygen was produced by one kilometre high and one kilometre wide, circular algae farms, serviced by AI and robots. Algae is grown in a 30 cm deep salt solutions, and once it outgrows its pod, is farmed for producing clothing and chemicals.
Don was two hundred and six years old and had had many jobs and careers over the decades, including this one, which he loathed, because of what he had to do, on a day to day basis. Kill people.
Once he zipped up the overalls properly, he reached for his boots and pulled them on, with difficulty, but eventually managed it and stood up straight as he looked round at his spray bottle. It was almost a meter high, with a shiny metal pump and a long tube and a spray nozzle on the end. The bottle itself was see-through and a light red liquid sloshed around inside. He was on Floor 99 of the public services building in Los Angeles, a place much changed since the icecaps melted away and never returned a million years ago. A climate catastrophe human beings allowed to happen. He moved his face mask, so it was hanging round his neck. There had been reports of vagrants, down the side streets of the large skyscrapers. A man had been seen sleeping rough in different places over three nights.
No-one, despite protests which started thousands of years ago and continue to this day, had managed to stop the relentless march of progress and capitalism and high, dense buildings had spread to every place that could take them, leaving only small spaces behind. There were a select few wildlife reserves kept underneath glass domes, where less than 1% of the diversity of the Earth a million years ago is kept alive. There were now 600 billion human beings spread around the galaxy on eight planets and many large and small space stations and structures. In charge was the royal family headed by a totalitarian Emperor dynasty – the House of Canton. Don Jackson 09823, had a number after his name, because human beings had become so numerous the government started adding numbers to names, sixty centuries ago. Now it was firmly embedded into human culture. The numbers were just accepted. It was easier.
Don entered the large lift and began the eight-minute descent to the ground floor of the service building. He was alone in the lift only for four seconds, before it stopped at the 97th floor and a group of six businesswomen entered and turned to face the door, having smiled nervously at him. He smiled nervously back. He recognised two of them from his daily routine. They chatted about work and laughed about colleagues they disliked. Everyone in the lift knew what he did for a living and not very many people disagreed with the policy, that earned him his wage. But the fact was this terrible job was the only one he could get and when he took it, he was a day away from homelessness – something that the government doesn’t tolerate. As the number of human beings topped 600 billion, Emperor Constantine II, decreed seven millennia ago that anyone who could not sustain themselves financially, would be euthanised so that resources could be managed more effectively. The policy was designed to prevent vast numbers of poor living in squalor around the edges of the megacities that covered the Earth. The poor in their shanti-towns were wiped off the face of the Earth, on the orders of the Emperor, and their makeshift houses bulldozed and recycled or burned to make way for more apartments, office blocks and factories. And you would think that there would be a massive outcry against this policy? After all, this could happen to anyone at any time and it also included the elderly and infirm, once their money ran out for their care. But with humanity thriving and blooming like a choking, suffocating cancer, human life had become cheap. Only the elite, mostly placed around the Emperor could drop out and get support from the royal family to save them from the law. This brutal system had cynically been used to quietly execute the Emperor’s foes. So raggedy homeless people to out of favour enemies of the Emperor, could also fall foul of this hideous law. And it was Don’s job to carry out the killings. One of many colleagues across the territories of the Emperor. Specifically, rough sleepers, who would often be found sleeping in the side streets and the ends of alleys behind bins and other structures trying desperately to stay hidden from the Cleaner Corp, as they were called. The Cleaner Corp was an unofficial arm of the military. Don and his colleagues weren’t seen as an enemy of the people. It had generally been accepted as part of life. A cultural norm, that millions, maybe even billions of dirt-poor people were no good for society. So they killed them. In huge numbers to begin with, until their blight had gone from the Earth. And the Emperor was happy.
Don had to travel to Commercial Street where one vagrant was asleep leaning up against the side of one of the tall buildings in that district. There were also reports of two vagrants in Traverse Avenue, two blocks away. Did it bother him that his job was to kill innocent people? Don had asked himself about his morals since he got the job. It is true that empathy with others, was being evolved out of the human psyche. It had been moving that way for millennia. If it ever truly existed as a universal trait of humanity. So many atrocities and cruelties had been committed against so many people since humanity had been walking the Earth, that it makes you wonder whether we were ever really a caring race. Maybe for our own relatives. But not for strangers who got in the way of ordinary life, like vagrants, the sick, the infirm. People running from conflict or famine. The elite were potentially immortal, with medical science being what it is now. Anyone else, could easily live from between six hundred and seven hundred years, just with the basic healthcare they could afford.
Don stepped out as he passed through the swing doors and headed to the back-entrance carpark. It was four storeys underground as he made his way down the endless concrete steps. He could have taken the lift, but it stank of piss, so he opted for the stairs. At the end of the row of cars, all of which could fly, his ground-based truck with room for bodies, was waiting for him. It was a medium sized truck, with high sides, only just fitting underneath the ceiling. It always bothered him how close he got to scraping the trucks roof on the ceiling as he drove slowly and carefully up the winding dark internal road to the exit. The barrier rose and he inched through and out onto the street.
He arrived at the location of the last sighting of the vagrant. He climbed out of his cab and grabbed the bottle of poison and began to look up and down the small alley way. Beyond some rubbish, which should have been cleared away by sanitation, he could see a pair of legs. It was early morning and he hoped he would still be asleep. For those who fought back he had a gun, but the poison he now carried around with him as he approached the homeless man, was designed to be painless and quick and more humane than a gun.
He stood over the homeless man. He was asleep. He grabbed the handle of the spray gun and pointed at his face and pulled trigger several times in quick succession. He sprayed a liberal amount in the man’s face. He
woke quickly and began to cough and splutter, but in a matter of seconds he was dead, foam forming around his nose and mouth. He walked back to the truck, turned it round and reversed up the alley, stopping just before the dead man. He opened up the back and then lent down and picked up the body from under his armpits. Even though he was wearing his mask, he could still smell the man’s strong body odour and Don wondered how long he’d been homeless for. He grabbed the hoist and arm from the back of the truck and connected the straps, then hit a button and the body was lifted up enough for him to push the dead man inside. He lined him up against the side of the truck. He had two more to do today, he thought as he assessed whether there would be enough room, or a trip back to the depot would be required. After a while he shrugged and closed the door. He would play it by ear.
The lack of empathy with others that had infected humanity for millennia, was thought by leading psychologists, to trace back to when it was no longer fashionable or necessary to have kids. For every child born, very few old people died, as medical science reached its peak, with excellent development of replacement parts grown in labs, to exact DNA specification and DNA manipulation of aging. So, people not only lived much longer, they also didn’t age as fast either. They stayed young, physically and in the way they looked. Not having kids was commonplace. It was medical science, which had created the vast number of 600 billion humans and the lack of empathy for others. It simply wasn’t important enough. People grumbled about the ruling elite’s policy of killing off people who are no longer economically useful, but only a small group of protesters mustered up the enthusiasm to do anything about it. And the rest happily ignored them.
Other academics put forward competing theories, claiming that feeling sorry for others was fine when our numbers were small, and survival uncertain. But now we dominated several solar systems and could take a massive hit to our numbers and still continue our race with very few difficulties.
Our bodies had changed also. Nutrition was obtained through pharmaceutical rather agricultural means. Our large stomachs and long intestines and bowels were no longer needed and the process of natural selection of a more efficient body was well under way. Our need to be attractive to the opposite sex was still prevalent and again psychologists claimed that the motivation for attraction was wealth rather than progeny, so it remained familiar on the surface, but attraction had fundamentally changed. The birth rate for the last 400,000 years was small, except on two of the newest colonies. They seemed to still want children around. Was this evolution veering off once two arms of the same race had become isolated from each other, like two bird colonies on neighbouring islands? Or having children on a colony is encouraged to strengthen the establishment of the colony?
Don moved on to the next reported sighting. He drove round the busy streets, with cars buzzing round, the motors driven by the common energy source now used across the human universe. Fire cells. Fire cells are about the size of a dice and glow a bright blue colour with little dark blue ribbons that float around inside. Just one of these cells can power a ground car (and three for a flying car), mostly indefinitely, barring malfunctions. They are used around Mars in the electromagnetic shield that protects Mars’ surface from solar radiation. They are in a network of satellites around the planet that belt out electromagnetic pulses, to enable life to exist in an ongoing technological project to terraform Mars for human habitation. Water is being extracted from the ice in the poles as they melt, as the planet warms up. Oxygen is being manufactured using vast algae farms – the same process as used on Earth. Currently there are four billion souls on Mars who have to wear space suits to leave the massive complex of buildings on the planet. In the future, the scientists hope to produce enough oxygen and the other chemical components in breathable air, to allow them to walk freely outside of the protected and sealed buildings that people currently live in.
Fire cells produce the same power that drives the sun, reduced down to a small parcel of energy. They are based on the Tokamak technology of the 21st Century, having been developed and shaped by thousands of years of technological innovation. A fusion cell.
Don arrived at the last known sighting of a vagrant wearing a red tunic. These tunics are only worn by royal insiders and His governments civil servants, so his bosses have flagged this man as a priority. It could take all day to track him down. These people know that if they are found by the Corp they will be killed. And there are very few places to hide down here, as the streets are kept uncluttered and rubbish is cleared away quickly by the sanitary department, which is kept well-funded, due to the Emperors huge dislike of clutter and garbage.
He turned into a side street, the third street he had tried and saw a man dart away behind a wall – a flash of red passed him. The same shade as the government tunics. He stopped the van and grabbed the bottle of poison and put it where it would be accessible. But because this man was on his feet and running, he would have to shoot him. He pulled his weapon and checked it to make sure it was ready to fire and ran at jogging pace down the street and across the wall. He stopped again and looked around. There were a few large weeds in this little pocket of undeveloped land. He then noticed a pair of feet. ‘Stay where you are,’ he shouted as he pointed his gun at him and moved so he was over him. The man wept and covered his face.
‘I’m not a vagrant,’ he lied. He looked like he was in his sixties, but he was probably much older and a little grubby and had three days of beard growth on his face. Don was ready to fire, but he suddenly realised he knew him.
‘Dad?’ he said.
‘Don. Oh, thank God. You’ve got to get me out of here. What are you doing working for the Cleaner Corp? Do you kill people for the Emperor? Is that what you do now?’ as he asked that last question he stood up to face his son. He was indeed wearing a government tunic. Mitus was two hundred and eighty-nine years old and an academic, specialising in off-Earth geology.
‘It was either that or end up where you are now.’ He lowered his gun and put it back in his holster. ‘Where have you been this last six years? You disappeared. You didn’t contact anyone. Why?’ Don asked. ‘And what are you doing here, homeless, wearing a government tunic? I could have killed you.’
‘I was tasked to do something for the Emperor.’
‘And that meant cutting off your family?’
‘It’s complicated.’
‘Come on. We need to get out of here before we’re seen. And take that tunic off. That’s what brought me down here in the first place,’ Don said. His father Mitus Jackson 273864, removed the tunic and passed it to Don. He folded it up, so that it was as small as possible and then grabbed his father’s arm and headed back to the truck. He drove quickly through the streets until he reached his building where he had a small apartment. He headed through the front doors and caught the lift, as his father just passively went along with everything that was happening. Don glanced over at him while they waited to get to the 70th floor where he lived. He wasn’t the same. He was subdued and looking down at the floor. The father he had known had been happy and confident. He would need to put him in his apartment and then get straight back to work. He used his facial recognition scanner, which beeped loudly as the door unlocked and he pushed through into a small reception area. His father walked in behind him. ‘Sit,’ Don told him and his father did what he was told. Don headed into a small bedroom and pulled a set of clothes out from a cupboard and then went to another cupboard in the living room and pulled out a towel. ‘Get yourself showered and changed. There’s a razor light in the bathroom. You have to at least look like you’re financially viable, or you’ll get spotted again.’
His father nodded.
‘There are food pellets in the dispensary and water in the cooler.’ He then grabbed the red tunic from where he’d put it on the table and put it inside a bag and stuffed it to the very back of the wardrobe in the bedroom. He had a feeling he might need it, to keep his father safe from the authorities.
‘I can’t
believe you work for Cleaner Corp. Do you even know how many people you’ve killed?’ his father asked. Don didn’t know what to say. It hadn’t really occurred to him that he was doing anything wrong. But it occurred to him now – now his father was almost a victim. And Cleaner Corp don’t notify relatives of the people they kill. There would have been no information about his father’s fate.
‘I don’t know,’ Don said, and rubbed his face and eyes. He stared at his father for a few seconds. If his colleagues had got this assignment he’d be dead. But he had no time for a conscience. He needed to get back to work.
He left his father in his apartment and hurried back to continue searching for the third vagrant. As he drove, his EyeSpec lit up a message of ‘Miguel Sargent calling,’ which flashed on and off. It was his supervisor. Inside his head was a microchip which was tapped into his optic nerve and auditory nerve. He could call people and receive calls with it. It was so small that you can only just see it with the naked eye. There were a whole range now of body and/or brain augmentation available. Some of it affordable, much of it very expensive as very skilled surgeons were the only people who could fit them. And there was only a limited pool of those; although there is rumoured to be a new up loadable surgeon knowledge graft, which is uploaded into a chip in the persons brain, which would instantly give them the necessary knowledge to perform surgery. However, lessons on how to use your hands and muscle memory were something separate. To be an effective surgeon you must have perfect hand eye co-ordination, which couldn’t be uploaded. It had to come about from actual practice. The standard model implant was called an ‘EyeSpec’ as most of its functions used vision.