Tag - A Technothriller

by Simon Royle

  It was 2:15am in new Singapore and the odds on Stanislav being in Utopia were high. She chose an account. ID Pagan Moon. 23, single, here for relationships, dating, sex, chat buddy, and exotic vacations. Perfect, she thought. She took a look at Pagan Moon’s digital image and cringed. Ouch. Resolving to send Moon a message about her dress sense, she hacked the image into something less catastrophic and entered the environment.

  Marty’s avatar, Pagan Moon, landed in Utopia through its main doorway. The usual touts hung around there offering software upgrades to the avatars and accessories. Pagan Moon ignored them all, and walked rather stiffly, Marty thought, as she sent out a stream of code looking for a sexier motion for her avatar. She strode over to Utopia’s map. It was large: over one and a half billion inhabitants, an alternative world with people contributing full-time within it. Her code had picked up a smoother motion than the one the default supplied.

  She turned and saw that three of the touts had taken an interest in her. She ignored them and hit New Singapore on the map. It took her twenty secs to find him. Sitting on a Ferarri V9 SuperAirBike, a SAB, as they were known, in front of Newton’s Circus, he was tanned and muscled.

  Pagan Moon didn’t waste any time. She walked over to him, spreading her legs apart as she stood in of him. She said, “Can we have a chat in private? I mean, really private?”

  He looked at her and leered. She leered back and said, “I don’t think I can wait much longer. I mean, you know. Let’s go. OK?”

  He swung his leg over the handlebars of the SAB. Marty laughed aloud, her avatar Pagan Moon swooned and put her hand on his stomach as she swung up onto the seat behind him. She pulled her body tight against his back and mashed her breasts against it. Dropping her hands into his crotch, she whispered in his ear, “How’s Fatima?” The bulge being fed by his plugged-in biosensors shrank as quickly as it had arisen and he twisted awkwardly on the seat to look at her. He had a guilty look on his face.

  “Is that you, Fatima?”

  “No. It’s the other female on the team. Don’t name talk OK. You know who this is. All right. Get it together and quick. I haven’t got all day.”

  The avatar that was Stanislav’s grinned at her. She saw that his programming was flawless. The Avatar looked and moved as a real person would. It was hard to tell the difference. He gunned the SAB and took off heading south.

  One of the Devscreens in her cockpit changed. Sitting up in his sleeper in his Env in New Singapore, wearing a plain white T-shirt and white boxer shorts, was Stanislav. He looked more imaginary than his avatar but it was Stanislav. In Utopia, Stanislav didn’t have a stammer.

  “Wh- wh- wh- where have you been? I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Fatima has been going nuts and Dom thinks that he is the cause that you’ve not got in touch with us. Where are you and did you blow up the Ga- Ga- Ga- Governors like they said?”

  “Are you sure this is secure?”

  “Ye- ye- ye- yes. We’re still back in Utopia riding around on the bike. Well?”

  “Can’t tell you where I am. That’s too risky right now and no, of course I didn’t blow up the Governors. That was Cochran getting even with me and the Governors. Just goes to show how looks can deceive right? Stanislav, I need your help. I need you to take care of Dom and Fatima OK? That’s the first thing but there are some other tasks that I need your help on. Can you help me? It’s going to be very dangerous, life-threatening perhaps, but if we succeed we’ll save the planet from destruction. Now before we go on remember what I said about stuttering. Slow down.”

  “OK, Marty. Is this real or are you in the character of some cartoon? I knew you hadn’t blown up the Governors – I told Dom and Fatima that you’d been framed.”

  “Stanislav, there’s a plot to kill billions of people. Will you help me stop it?”

  “Are you kidding? Save the planet from destruction. That’d like make me a superhero type of stuff. Of course I’m in. What do you want?”

  “First I need you to tell Dom and Fatima about this chat. We’ll need their help. Second, we–"

  “Who’s we?”

  “I can’t tell you right now. Honestly, the reason is that with what I am going to ask you to do, you stand a high chance of being captured and tortured. So everything I will tell you is strictly on a need-to-know basis. Getting out of this alive will depend entirely on your skill.”

  Speaking very slowly with his hands on his hips and his head to one side, Stanislav said, “Oh please Marty, I may be a virgin but I’m not dumb. I already said that I would do this. No need to make it more exciting for me. OK?”

  Marty laughed. “It’s great to see you. How are you guys holding it together?”

  Stanislav sat down and his face loomed large in the screen as he leaned forward nearer the camera. “Not good, but OK.”

  His comment made Marty feel guilty. It was irrational she knew but they were her team and they were struggling without her. She couldn’t do anything about that now but made a mental reminder to try to stay in touch with them as much as the chaos to come would allow.

  “What’s Cochran got you guys tracing?”

  “We’re still on the runner. We got given other stuff after you left but then when his letter came out she put us back on him.”

  “OK, here’s what I need.” Stanislav had leaned back from the camera and it looked like he was watching something else as he wasn’t looking at her. “Stanislav?”

  “Yeah, sorry, just checking to see that nothing is on to our chat here, but we’re cool. OK go ahead.”

  “Has Cochran got you guys looking for me?”

  “No, but she did order us to report any contact from you on pain of instant containment of aiding and abetting a fugitive if we didn’t.” He grinned at her, “Looks like I’m back in the crime business.”

  “No, you’re not. Very much the opposite. OK then, what I need you to do is build an ironclad story around finding my location and then report that location to Cochran. Build up some trace around it and be aware that with the embarrassments the runner and I have given her lately, she will want to be absolutely sure that you are right. So be sure. Can you do that?”

  “Yeah.” Stanislav put on his bored expression – his ‘this is too easy’ look.

  “When she is ready to come and get me, let me know. Now, we need to set up a link between us. Can I leave that with you. It must be secure and easy to check.”

  “Utopia’s best. I’ll set up a dead drop and message you from there.”

  “That sounds fine. I’ll leave my hooks in their member base then and wait for your message. There’s one more thing and this is the skillful part. You have to wait for my signal before you get Cochran to make her move on me. You’ll only have a very small window, perhaps no more than fifteen or twenty mins to convince her to move.” Stanislav straightened from his slouch and flashed her a quick, cocky grin.

  “Na- na- na- no problem.”

  “All right then. I have to go. Give my love to Fatima and Dom and take care of each other and be very careful. OK? Cochran is a very dangerous person.”

  Stanislav grinned at her again, and a twinge of conscience hit the pit of her stomach. He’s so young. Is it right for me to do this? Put him in this danger? The stakes are so high that the end justifies the means. Oh boy, what a slippery slope this is, she thought. His image disappeared from her Devscreen and she placed her palm where his face had been, just for a sec. She coughed and cleared her throat.

  Sitting in the room next door, Gabriel heard the murmur of Marty talking as background noise. It was there but he didn’t pay it any attention. He was focused on his code. A Dev runs on code. The code he was writing had to be small, very small, and therefore it had to be elegant. The idea for hiding the code was simple. Make it very small. The problem with that is that the code has to do a lot. It has to find and destroy the list. Failing that it has to destroy the databases holding the PUI records of all humans. He also needed to figure out a way to get it into Sir
Thomas’s Dev without any alarms going off.

  A borrower, he thought. That’s what it can be. I can string together a sequence that when activated borrows the code from other code in the Dev. Then it’s just a wait for start sequence code and a sequence code. That would keep it small.

  He reclined in the Siteazy and using both hands brushed his hair back and sucked in a long breath. And held it. He closed his eyes and cast thoughts aside as they came. Clearing his mind. He pictured himself with an old fashioned broom sweeping dry leaves off a bare cement floor. Slowly, he exhaled through his nose. More thoughts snuck in. The broom went back and forth, back and forth. Let it go. He opened his eyes and stretched his fingers onto the input tablet in front of him. He began to type.

  ***

  Mariko lay on the molded plastic sleeper. The room that she was in was two meters long and three wide. It was colored white. It reminded her of the White Room in UNPOL. She’d had a tour when that room was first built. This room had none of the special effects of the White Room but it was still a long time. All she knew was that she had been stupid. How could she not have been more aware? Dumb. She suspected that it must have been Sir Thomas who had grabbed her but she didn’t know. She hadn’t seen anyone. She idly wondered how long it would take for her to go insane if she was stuck in here for a long time. Don’t think like that. Basic crisis training, stay positive and look for a solution. She assumed she was being watched. The meals gave some clue - she knew from her biological clock when she was hungry but as they had drugged the food she had no real idea of time.

  She had expected to be questioned. But it never happened. A positive sign, she thought, and fought against the despair that the reason they didn’t need to question her was because she had been eliminated. Pushed into a hole and forgotten. No, they still feed you. Stay positive and in control of yourself. She hadn’t said anything. Hadn’t asked why she was being kept captive. She was following training. Do not provide any unnecessary information unless you really have to. Asking why she was here was irrelevant.

  She’d adopted her ‘hard face’ for the benefit of whoever might be watching, and tried not to think about Jonah and how he would be feeling with her gone. She knew he would blame himself for not being able to protect her. She knew that and smiled. Him protect her – it was a funny thought that distracted her from her surroundings for a sec. She felt guilty for not being there to protect him. For exposing him to the dangers of her captivity. Don’t. Pointless exercise. Guilt is negative. Use the time you have.

  She closed her eyes to the light in the room and continued to write the poem she had been working on. It was in her head. She carefully thought of each new word before adding it to the ones already there. By her count she’d spent about three hours on the last word and she smiled again. It had been worth it. Torpor. Euphoria in Torpor. A whole new line to think about. The luxury of having an entire day to think of a single word to describe something. Captivity. Bring it on.

  ***

  Maloo had left Melbourne traveling in the same Levtube but leaving fifteen mins before Jonah’s. He shifted his bulk on the seat and stared at the little white dot progressing its way down a line of connected white dots. He formed an image in his mind. A future bark painting or maybe rock. Yeah, rock.

  Maloo was going to Bangkok to set up the Wigley kill. Jonah would be the one to do it but Maloo would prepare the ground. He shifted the backpack containing his clothes to a more comfortable position on his lap and leant his elbows on top, his chin cupped in his hands. His massive shoulders and the look on his face gave him the appearance of a bull about to charge. Yet he hated violence in all of its aspects. It was the only thing he did hate.

  A while later, he took a hand off the backpack and felt in the pocket of his bottom outers. The diamonds were still there. All two million creds’ worth. Easily enough to get what he needed in Bangkok and pay so well that no one would say a thing for fear of losing the rich life ahead of them. He glanced around the Lev. None of the other five passengers had noticed his surreptitious feel of the stones.

  The painting continued to develop in his mind. Connected white dots, large to small diameter. Two lines next to each other. A white rectangle. A sorry business, he thought in Waalpiri, using the term they use for a funeral. To represent six billion, the stars in the sky as people. He wondered how this painting would unfold.

  ***

  Cochran landed her new Bell 400 VTOL (Vertical Take Off and Landing) Turbo-charged Heliocopter on the lawn in front of the SingCom residence. The copter’s blades retracted with a whir and clunk into the space behind the pilot’s seat where she sat. She exhaled steadily and softly. Red-lining it all the way in, in a straight line, she’d covered the distance from UNPOL in 1:59 min. Her mind flicked back to Jonah getting into the Lev in Melbourne. An intuitive sense of unease rose in her gut. Something was wrong with him being out of sight for three days with Annika Bardsdale.

  She climbed out of the angular nose of the Bell’s cockpit and stood beside the machine. The warm New Singapore night quiet on the dark lawn. Tomorrow, no today, she thought with a glance at her Devstick - it’s 2:18am - I’ll get the little fat Arab girl, Fatima, to run a scenario on Bardsdale and Jonah. Thinking of Fatima made her think of Marty. She looked at the mansion in front of her, biting her lip. Bitch. She felt bested by Marty and hadn’t forgotten any of the slights or her arrogance. But I got you, she thought. I got you good.

  No you didn’t. She escaped. You don’t have her. You didn’t think she’d get away. You thought you would pick her up the next day. You failed. Again.

  She didn’t like this voice. And it was speaking up more often. The more she succeeded, the more the voice had to say about her failings. She wanted to stop it but she didn’t know how. It seemed it was never satisfied.

  You lost. You lost Martine Shorne and you lost Gabriel Zumar. You had them both –

  Wait. Shut up. That’s it. That’s where I’ve seen him before. Walking with Bo Vinh. The images that Shorne presented. Jonah James Oliver is Philip Zumar’s son. Gabriel, the runner, is his brother. And Sir Thomas made him his nephew. But why? She chewed her lower lip and folded her arms across her chest. Then, twisting her upper lip between a thumb and a forefinger, she contemplated her revelation.

  Cochran strolled slowly across the lawn to the door of the mansion, thinking it would be hard to sleep now, wondering if Sunita would be awake.

  Chapter 34

  Time To Kill

  Outskirts of Bangkok, Outside the Residence of Jonathan Wigley

  Friday 14 February 2110, 10:25pm +7 UTC

  The cicadas sang loud enough to cover the sounds of me climbing over the wall. I felt an urgent need to urinate. A mosquito buzzed around my ear. I felt it land and a moment later took a hand off the ladder that went up the wall in front of me to rub the bite.

  I needed to urinate badly. I knew it was nerves but I still needed to pee. I couldn’t. It would leave too much trace. I thought about getting off the ladder and retracing my steps along the bottom of the wall to the Titan parked half a kilom away but dismissed the thought. I brought my bladder under control and took out one of the small sealable bags that Maloo had given me. I took out my cock and put it in the bag. Closing the seal around my cock, not too tightly, I relaxed.

  My pee sounded loud to me as I scrunched over, crouching and hanging off the bottom rung of the ladder that went up Wigley’s wall. I changed angle so the splash would hit the side of the bag. It was quieter. I squeezed out the last drop and shook off, taking the bag off my cock, sealing it and placing it in a zipped pocket. On my way to kill someone with a bag of my own pee in my pocket.

  Focus. I softly breathed out. I was hidden from view by the trunk and branches of a tree. I started to climb, one hand over the other. As I climbed, the sound of my heart thumping in my chest beat out the cicadas. I stopped, listened. The cicadas came back. In the far distance, a dog barking, music playing, jazz.

  Reaching the top, I exten
ded the ladder. I had to control my breathing. There was a light in a downstairs window. I looked around. Nothing. Nobody moving. No one in sight. I started out to cover the gap. It was about three meters. Moving forward in a crawl, hands and feet on the pipes of the ladder, I crossed the gap between the wall and his balcony. I crouched below the railing, hidden from the street by the pillars of the Greco-Roman style mansion. If Gabriel was right, this was Wigley’s room.

  I reached into the black coveralls and felt for the handle of the dagger. I had to move. Move. The panic came on slow but strong. A light in the room went on, illuminating the back of the curtain. I realized that the light was turned on by Wigley, turned on by the man I was here to kill. I kept my breathing as shallow as possible but it seemed to speed up each time I tried to keep it quiet. No, I can’t do this. I can’t kill. I swallowed and licked my lips. My tongue was so dry that it stuck to them. I crawled back over the bridge to the wall, looking around me again. No one saw me. I went back over the wall and down the ladder to crouch behind the tree.

  I slowed my breathing. My brain cleared. I heard the cicadas again.

  My thighs ached from crouching. I cleared my thinking. Far off I heard a fight erupt among a pack of dogs. It’s not a choice. You have to do it. There is no other way of getting past Sir Thomas. None. If you don’t do this, you die, Mariko dies and maybe six point three billion people die. Or he dies. It’s either all of them or just Wigley.

  I took my Devstick part way out of my inside pocket, shielding its light with my coveralls. 10:29pm. All of that happened in four minutes. It has to be done.

  I swallowed. My throat was too dry. I opened the coveralls again and took a sip of water from the bottle that Maloo had provided. Don’t get dehydrated. I went up the ladder swiftly. I slowly raised my head over the wall and took another look around. Still nothing. I noticed that the cicadas had stopped. The night was still. The faint scuffling of rubber shoes on the rungs of the ladder was all that I could hear as I made my way to Wigley’s balcony. I went into a crouch against the railing and waited.