EIGHTEEN
Preston stood front and center, flanked by two of his clones, all three standing before Sabrina, seated at her work station. “I’m ashamed to say our efforts to bait the biohacker community into surrendering Roman, or chasing him to ground for us, have failed. We suspect it’s because they fear him more than they fear us.”
“Yes, well, we’ll have to change that,” Sabrina said. “We need this showdown between us to happen as soon as possible. Once my detractors realize there’s no playing against me, they’ll acquiesce and fall into line like everyone else.”
“But if we can’t find him…”
“Maybe it’s time we played a different game, lured him to us. Give me a moment.” She relaxed into her chair and sicced her DNA-supercomputing mind on the problem.
She infiltrated every biohacker’s mind on the planet that had had the poor sense to get a mindchip installed without fully locking it down. She was less interested in what they had stored in their minds consciously, than what they might have stored unconsciously. Repressed memories, forgotten encounters. To get this far she had to push past the mindchips in their heads into their organic grey matter. But their chips were there to assist her.
She pressed on. The mindchips themselves had their own form of unconscious mind where they stored information of questionable use that was simply forgotten until it was needed, in the event that it might someday be important to know. If the memory space got full, they would start deletes with the older memory files, or run probability calculations to see which of the stored memories was least likely to ever be of use.
Sabrina was looking for DNA evidence, a shed skin cell or eyelash, spilled coffee that was wiped up that had been sipped and that also had trace evidence to get on the hands of the chip-enhanced biohacker doing the wiping up. Somewhere, someone might have run up against Roman and not even realized it. All she would need was DNA evidence pointing to presence of biohacking, to signal her to probe further. It was just about impossible to hack the body in anyway without leaving some kind of marker.
Not content to stop there, she pressed further, into the satellite grid, and the citywide camera grids nationwide. Scanning surveillance footage. Roman couldn’t be conscious enough to lock down every angle on him in the sky, especially when he left his safe refuge, allegedly somewhere up in the mountains. Traffic cams, surveillance cameras inside stores, restaurants…
There he was. Paying for their dinner at Salty’s. His neuronet was masking his presence to the cameras, not just his face, but his entire body, for fear that body language might lead them to him. The only clue he was standing next to his girlfriend at all was the fact that she had her arm interlaced with his and it wasn’t a natural pose for someone standing all by herself. Such a cloaking device was years ahead of its time for DIYers. It was a strong indication that this was indeed Roman and his neuronet was living up to the hype.
His part of the conversation with the cashier was masked, but hers wasn’t. And the owner had seen fit to install audio in hopes of picking up on collusion, i.e. waiters conspiring to hold back the percentage of their tips from him.
The cashier said, “Thank you, Elsa,” in an effort to build rapport so the next time she would be tempted to return to the place where everyone knew her name.
Once Sabrina had Elsa’s name, it was a small matter of tracking down biohackers with that name. There were a few, but only one with a boldly audacious criminal record. The girl practically qualified as a mastermind. So, whoever Elsa was, Roman wasn’t exactly slumming with her. Her criminal history might explain the attraction between Roman and her, as best-in-class so often seeks best-in-class. It was all the more confirmation Sabrina was on the right track. Of the two of them, moreover, Elsa would be the easier one to turn. Elsa and Sabrina were already of a like mind about so many things. And with Elsa in hand, it’d be a sure thing the boyfriend would move heaven and earth to find her.
Love makes you weak, Roman.
Someday you’ll see that.
Sabrina opened her eyes and focused on her pawns standing before her. “They’re in Oregon, last seen at Salty’s restaurant. I’m guessing you can take it from there.”
“We can,” they said in three part harmony, adjusting their natty composure to make it nattier under the heat of being shown up so easily. All the pawns were the same; they used their disarming presence to calm them as much as to hypnotize any human getting near them. They turned in perfect sync towards the door and showed themselves out.
The light on one of her incoming phone lines was flashing. It was an effort to get past any overrides she had running in her brain when she chose not to be interrupted. She didn’t bother to pick up the phone, just dropped the filter in her mind. “Send in the President of China,” she said.
She rose from her desk as two of her girls escorted him in, hanging off him like willing Geisha girls only too happy to please his every sexual fantasy. The four other girls were standing at the ready willing to offer the same services, should they be required.
“Leave us, ladies. I’m sure if the President desires your services again, he’ll be glad to let me or you know.”
They made cooing, girlish noises as if they didn’t have more than a couple firing neurons between them, far less half a brain and scurried out of the room. Sabrina had switched to Mandarin the minute she laid eyes on the President out of respect. And now she came out from behind the desk to surrender any other signs of a barrier between them. “Mr. President!” she said with excitement she did not have for the man. Honestly, she loathed him; she loathed all humans, thinking they could lead the world with minds that could only communicate with themselves and with one another at a hundred meters per second, with their three digit IQs. The best of them were closer to ants on the evolutionary scale than they were to her. “Such a pleasure to see you again.” They bowed to one another and she directed them towards a pair of chairs where they could sit opposite one another without either one assuming an implied position of dominance.
“The room is locked down?”
“Of course. I would never disrespect you like that.”
“Save it. I can’t imagine you have any respect for me or for any human. You’re far too much more evolved. The only reason no nation has tried to take you out yet is none of us can do what we do anymore without you.”
“And barring such time as you have a DNA-powered mind upgrade for your own people, making any move on me would be less than fortuitous. Fine, Mr. President, out of mutual disgust, as the case may be, let’s drop the façade.” She crossed her legs to direct his eyes toward them, certainly not beyond using his baser instincts to manipulate him.
“As you’ve no doubt calculated, I’m here in outrage over having one of my key players taken out by one of your pawns. Ike Cummings was working on a moon colony for us to keep us ahead of any other country establishing claim to the moon’s most precious resources. As you know, we’re determined to maintain a leadership position in this field.”
“Yes, yes, I apologize for my off-book wars meddling with your affairs. It was not intended, just an unfortunate outcome.”
“Off-book wars?” The President suddenly forgot about his anger, far more curious about gathering intel that could further his agendas, private or otherwise.
She had anticipated this anger-neutralizing move and so played the scene out the way she knew it would go while attending to more important matters in back of her mind. The fact of the matter was DNA-computers, like the kind which made up her mind, weren’t all that much faster than traditional computers, except at problems that benefitted from parallel processing. In that regard, they were frighteningly faster. “Yes, we’re experiencing a fair bit of nostalgia right now for the idea of expanded human rights. With fewer and fewer unupgraded humans able to hold down jobs, it won’t be long now before ninety-nine percent of the human population is completely unemployable. And so worthless to us as consumers. It’s a matter of upgrading them and taking
our ten percent off the top for any creative products created with the aid of our expanded mind-power technology so they can resume their natural place in the food chain, lapping up whatever we at the top choose to dish out for them.
“The alternative is to do what many of them are calling for, dispense universal basic income so no one has to work for a living. Everyone is granted free room and board, the basic necessities, which will be expanded to include unlimited broadband internet and full access to all the world’s knowledge banks so they can train and prepare themselves for any field.
“The fools just don’t realize that there is no catching up without upgrades, and so none of them are any use to us without them. It would be far simpler and more practical just to wipe them out with a pandemic, get the population down to controllable figures.”
The President cleared his throat. “Yes, we’ve run the simulations and come to the same conclusions,” he said, adjusting his tie nervously, as if ashamed to admit he had genocide on the mind more these days than where he was going to come by his next meal.
“What have you decided to do?” the President asked.
“There are indications the biohacker enclaves either collectively or individually are making moves to empower people with mindchips, nano, whatever they can cobble together with their limited resources to democratize access to genius.”
“Thereby doing your work for you.”
She smiled provocatively and re-crossed her legs. “Yes, all under the pretense of making the world more egalitarian. We have no problems with them maintaining that delusion as it serves our purposes.”
“And the ones who refuse to upgrade?” He shuffled uncomfortably in his seat.
She shrugged her shoulders. “Waves of innovation are just that. You have your early adopters, the ones who will wait to make sure the tech is safe, and the ones who are the last to comply because they really don’t want to upgrade. They can just no longer lie to themselves about what it’s going to take to survive this economy.”
“So no pandemic necessary. Well, I will sleep better, even if most of my cabinet won’t. I think they’re drooling over their private estates the size of Rhode Island in the absence of crowding by the riffraff.”
She smiled in the way of politicians sharing a secret. “We do so love our progressives.”
He laughed, catching the reference to Roman and his ilk. “Yes, we do.”
“Pity we can’t make more of you.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand the need for war if everything is falling into place nicely.”
“Perhaps war is a misleading word,” she confessed, slapping the heel of her leg bouncing on her knee repeatedly with her stiletto by flexing and relaxing her foot. “More accurate to say strategic battles played and lost for the greater good. Applying pressure to the biohacker cabals only hardens their determination to pass on their secrets to the masses. They’re rebels by nature. The more you try to intimidate them, the more they speed up their clock for taking you down.”
“So you’ve been baiting the biohackers, who are spearheading the very revolution you want them to lead?”
“In aggregate, yes, but we’re also drawing out one Roman Atman.”
The President shifted uncomfortably in his seat again. “Yes, quite a lot of rumors going around about that boy. All of them false, I hope.”
“Let’s hope not. Let’s hope he’s all they say he is and more. The better of a match he is for me, the more quelled the world will be when he tries to take me down and fails. If he can’t do it…”
“Then no one can,” the President said, smiling. “We do so love it when our enemies work to advance our causes without even realizing.”
“The battle royal will go out live to the world, televised on every channel. Not by my doing, mind you, by theirs. They’ll be so determined to show me up as the unassailable despot that I am that there will be only one recourse when Roman fails to take me down. To activate everyone on the planet with an upgrade of some kind or another, and hope that the combined mind power in aggregate will be enough to do me in. It will be the only real hope remaining for a future that is anything but a totalitarian regime.”
The President grimaced reflexively. “Sorry,” she said, “didn’t mean to step on toes.”
“And by the time everyone is geared up for war with you…”
“They will find me devoted to nothing but advancing their own agenda of empowering each human being more and more with each mindchip upgrade, each nanococktail advance. They’ll wonder how they could ever have read me so wrong. They’ll review those tapes in their minds, see Roman for what he is, an overwrought, spurned lover, out of his mind with rage and revenge, his mind destroyed by the neuronet’s first generation, very questionable technology. A tragedy. He’ll be remembered as a sad martyr who thought he was fighting for the right cause only to be the greatest impediment against it.”
The President nodded, playing it through in his head. “It seems you really have thought of everything. You believe the neuronet to be defective?”
“Doesn’t matter. I’ll be able to hack it, make him think he’s losing his mind, even when he isn’t, so come D-Day, he’ll be every bit the heavy in this scenario we want him to be, playing the part to a tee.”
“Well, then.” He unbuttoned his suit jacket to give his chest a little more room to rise and fall so he could more easily get out what he had to say. “That just leaves the small matter of my remuneration for collateral damage. I admit you’re helping us all with your behind the scenes string pulling, but my people want to know what you’re doing to help us specifically, today. They have a less charitable look to the big picture view than I do.”
She waved her hand dismissively. “Name your own price.”
“We’ve been expanding in the China seas for some time now. Meeting all kinds of resistance. We think it’s time Taiwan and Japan were brought back into the fold as Chinese commonwealths, the way Hong Kong was.”
She laughed. “Entirely doable.”
“But… the amount of global resistance to the idea… honestly I was just using it as a starting point from which to negotiate down.”
“You know I don’t do easy, Mr. President. There will be no resistance from Japan or Taiwan. For the simple reason that the new world order will be started from their homelands, each one specializing in mindchip design, carving out various niches for themselves. With China funding the economic reboots. Human upgrades will be the only thing capable of driving the economy. Arguably they have been for some time and that’s why it’s so stalled, because the IBMs and INTELs of the world refuse to accept reality. Japan’s and Taiwan’s economies will go from stagnant to meteoric. And you will offer them the same deal you offered Hong Kong, complete economic independence. Why micromanage the cash cows that make far more money for you when left alone to do what they do best?”
The President smiled. “I might have to take back what I said earlier about being disgusted by you.”
She smiled in return. “We all have our parts to play, Mr. President,” she said rising from the chair. “You have yours, I have mine. We are both but humble servants of evolution. It is she who guides our hand.”
They bowed to one another as the President took his leave.
He hesitated before reaching for the door. Turned back to her. “Just out of curiosity, why don’t you see a pandemic as all that workable?”
“I intend to safeguard the heavens for us, not just this paltry rock. If we could upgrade every mind on the planet today, we couldn’t do it fast enough for my purposes, or upgrade them enough. The thought of the amount of mind power necessary for colonizing the stars in any reasonable timeframe humbles even me.”
He smiled sarcastically. “Where would we be without our visionaries?”
“Where indeed?”
“I wonder if you and this Roman Atman are all that different.”
She harrumphed as he left the room, leaving the door open. “Girls, I fear
I will need all your services after such a stressful interaction with your queen.”
“But of course.” They rushed him eagerly.
Sabrina smiled wearily and closed the door behind him.
NINETEEN
“Hi, Ricky,” Preston said to the cashier at Salty’s. “I just have some questions for you.” Preston flashed his F.R.E. badge.
Ricky strained to read the small print under F.R.E.: Fighting Rebellions Everywhere. “Wow, an alphabet soup agency I haven’t heard of. I guess that makes you guys even scarier than the typical men in black.”
Preston smiled vaguely. Tucked away the badge. “This couple that was here the other night,” he said, holding up the strange picture he had of them, showing just Elsa, and a shadowy outline of the man she was holding on to, “do you remember anything about them?”
By now Ricky was staring unblinkingly into Preston’s eyes, entirely hypnotized courtesy of having his brainwaves massaged inside Preston’s fluctuating magnetic fields. Meanwhile Preston was going to work on him with his bionic eyes, using the lasers to send search algorithms into Ricky’s brain.
“No, not really,” Ricky said, sounding as if he were talking while sleepwalking.
Preston turned to one of his clone affiliates, one of two that had followed him into the restaurant. “They left in a blue pickup truck. A 1967 Chevy.” Apparently the kid had turned, intrigued by the young lovers, even a little jealous, and followed them until they got into the vehicle and drove off. Unfortunately his eyes weren’t good enough to catch the license plate, and the angle wasn’t right for that either.
One of Preston’s partners in crime had already exited the restaurant to look for tire tracks matching the vintage of the pickup truck.
To Preston’s surprise the deep dive into Ricky’s mind to retrieve information Ricky couldn’t remember himself did not reveal an image of Roman either. That neuronet was definitely doing its job. Ricky had been throwing glances at the couple all night and as far as Preston could tell, she was talking to herself at the dinner table.
Biohackers: Cybernetic Agents Page 17