Drones

by Rob J. Hayes

  After the fourth video, Kendall falls silent. She watches each new bit of footage with a grim snarl on her face. I hope she doesn’t blame me. Her opinion matters, though I wish it didn’t. Too long without a harvest. I’m forming attachments.

  “Enough,” Kendall growls after a while. I’ve stopped counting how many videos we’ve seen. How many lives we’ve seen damaged or ruined.

  “There’s more,” Simon says.

  “And if you show me another, I’ll show you how to kill a man with a chair.” Kendall sighs and shakes her head. “You people are so depressing. What do you do, just sit down here all day watching videos of how messed up the world is?”

  “No. We make plans to change it. And we follow through with those plans.”

  “By killing this doctor, Robot here gave you?” Kendal snorts. “You haven’t changed anything. There’ll be someone else to take his place and your manifesto hasn’t reached shit. The big wigs are blocking it all.”

  “We didn’t assault the Ark for Doctor Brant. My friends, comrades gave their lives for a higher purpose. The information we took from Arkotech’s computers is…” Simon pauses.

  “Inconclusive,” Milly suggests and quickly looks away at Simon’s glare.

  “Well at least we’re getting somewhere,” Kendall nods at me. “Looks like you were right, Robot.”

  I take a step towards Simon. We’re of a height and I stare right at him. “Just what did you steal from their computers? Why were Pascal and the other harvesters killed?

  Chapter 25

  Disgust: Foul-tasting. Horrifying. Unthinkable. You wouldn’t think disgust would sell, but some people like it. Like to feel as though the whole world is rotten to the core. It is.

  “The black market harvesters are dead?” Simon asks. He turns to Milly. She shrugs.

  “Yes,” I say. “All of them as far as I can tell. Only one place I can think of where the names and addresses of them all would be. Arkotech.”

  Milly laughs. “I guess that makes all this useless.” She waves at one of the monitors.

  Simon nods. “Arkotech kept records of all their criminal connections. That’s why we broke in. That’s what we were after.”

  “Well that and the schematics for their new tech.” Milly stretches back on her chair. She looks almost feline. “Got it all and more.” She grins. She’s the techy, the hacker. Proud of her skills, that much is obvious. Maybe a little too proud.

  “Who killed the harvesters?” Simon asks.

  Kendall lets out a dramatic sigh. “We’re getting nowhere, Robot. They don’t know a damned thing about it.”

  “Professionals. Military trained,” I say, ignoring Kendall. “Over the course of a few days, every harvester I know of was murdered. None of the official reports mention anything about harvesting tech.”

  “Arkotech cleaning up their unsavoury loose ends?” Simon muses. “It makes sense, just before the release of a new tech. Just after the laws changed to make it all legitimate.”

  “But you didn’t know about it,” I say. “Which means there’s no proof on their databases.”

  “You think they would leave any sort of proof of a military murder squad?” Simon asks. “No. Nothing like that. Though we haven’t decoded it all yet. Nor am I certain Milly has it decoded right.”

  “It’s right,” Milly complains. The grin slips from her face, replaced by a much darker frown.

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” Simon says.

  Kendall is right. This is getting us nowhere. The Sanctitists’ plan was to get the locations of the harvesters and kill them all, or expose them all, but someone beat them to it. Arkotech beat them to it and they left no evidence. It would be my word against theirs, and they can shout louder than I can.

  “We done here, Robot? Pascal is dead. My brother is sad. He’ll be even sadder if his sister dies too, and this shit isn’t getting us anywhere but older.”

  I nod. “Sorry for dragging you all this way, Kendall. Sorry for getting you involved in… everything.”

  “Wait!” Simon all but shouts. “Earlier you said that Arkotech covered up your involvement in our attack on the Ark. You said they did it to stop the information from hurting their sales.”

  I nod. “That’s what their VP and his Colonel friend told me.”

  “We pulled their sales records. We were looking for evidence they were selling their devices to black market harvesters. Trying to find any evidence of criminal activity.”

  “You find any?” Kendall asks with a smirk. I can see the humour in it. We’re all criminals here. Assassins and terrorists and… whatever I am now I’m not a Drone anymore.

  “No.” Simon shakes his head. “But… Milly are you sure?”

  “Urgh.” Milly bashes the keyboard a couple of times and the monitor changes to show a spreadsheet filled with numbers. “It’s right there, Simon. Plain as day for any willing to see it.”

  I see one number stand out above all the others. Eight billion. I take a step forward and squint at the screen. “That can’t be right.”

  “It’s right!” Milly shouts. “I know how to do my damned job.”

  I hear Kendall sigh. Frustration, clear and present. “Someone want to explain why we’re all surprised?”

  “These are Arkotech’s sales figures,” Simon says. “They sold eight billion units of their new product and they sold them four months ago. Long before the tech had been announced, and Long before the laws to make it legal had passed.”

  The room falls silent for a moment. I can hear the electrical hum in the void. I’m trying to imagine what eight billion of anything would look like.

  “You mean eight million? Right?” Kendall asks.

  “No!” Milly shouts again. “I decoded it right. You wanna try decoding it? Go ahead. Let’s see what you manage to do.”

  Kendall turns a slow glare towards the woman and Milly looks away quickly.

  “Eight billion is more than one per person on Earth,” I say. I’m still trying to get my head around the figure. “That’s… Who? Who did they sell them to?”

  “That’s where things get even more confusing,” Simon says. “Every single sale happened on the same day, same buyer. Every single sale was internal. No money changed accounts.”

  “So they’ve been sitting on this tech for at least four months,” I say. “They pre-sold more units than anyone could ever use and all to themselves?”

  Simon nods slowly.

  “I decoded it right,” Milly says again. “Just before anyone suggests I’m incompetent again.”

  “Who’s funding them?” Kendall asks.

  “What?” Simon points to some of the other figures on the monitor. “Their sales and maintenance costs to criminal harvesters like your friend.”

  “My brother-in-law actually.” Kendall gives Simon a dark look. “But I saw Pascal’s operation. A million just like it couldn’t keep Arkotech running with those sorts of costs. Making eight billion of anything takes money. Hiring people to do anything takes money. Keeping the lights on takes money. Pascal wasn’t paying them that much and I doubt any of the others were either.”

  Another silence spreads across the room.

  “Parent corporation,” Milly says. “It’s about the only thing that makes sense. Another company must own Arkotech, paying the bills. All sales were internal…”

  “Back to the parent corporation,” I say. It’s all starting to piece together, but it still doesn’t make any sense and I don’t see how knowing it would tell us who killed Pascal and why. “So how do we find out who owns Arkotech?”

  “We look at expenditure instead of income,” Milly brightens in an instant, beaming a smile at us all. I don’t return it. Don’t understand what she’s realised. “Every business owned by a larger corporation needs to be registered, right? And that information is public domain. Free for everyone to access. Only Arkotech is supposed to be independent. Records don’t show it being owned by anyone.” Milly taps away at the keyboar
d. I see another spreadsheet flash up on the monitor, and she scrolls down it, pulling company names from the list.

  “So there is no parent corporation?” I ask.

  “No. Yes. Of course there is. It’s the only thing that makes any sort of sense.” She shakes her head, still staring at the computer monitor, typing while she talks. “I mean, until recently, Arkotech’s main business was strictly illegal both on Earth and here on the Moon. No way their daddy would openly admit ties.”

  I open my mouth to protest the leap of logic, but Simon holds up his hand and shakes his head. He’s staring at the monitor, watching Milly work. Doesn’t want to interrupt her. He trusts her to get to the bottom of it without our interference. I decide to follow his lead.

  “But it makes sense they’d keep as much internal as possible, right? Money moving from one head of the beast to another. That’s the way big business works. Always income. Never outcome… no, wait. Outgoing. Income, income, income.” Milly mutters away as she works, still collecting company names.

  “How much of their financial history did you steal?” I ask Simon.

  “The last two years. We were on a clock. We had to get out of there before they discovered our escape plan.”

  “The Darts?”

  Simon nods. “Interplanetary Personnel Incursion Pods. IPs. Or Darts as some people like to call them.”

  “That’s military grade technology. How did a small terrorist group come by them?” One more mystery I want solving. One more thing to take my mind off my withdrawal.

  “I invented them. Back when I worked for PrimeSoft,” Simon says. “They might own the patent on them, but I still know how to build the things. It’s not easy scrounging together the equipment and materials, though, and they only tend to work the once. We’ve got four left. It took nearly everything I earned from thirty years as an engineer to piece together those Darts.”

  “Shit!” Milly pushes her chair back. I see her mouth open, her eyes fixed on the monitor in front of her. “Oh shit.”

  “What is it, Milly?” Simon asks, moving forwards and leaning in closer over the back of her chair. She points to the monitor, tapping her finger against it. “What? Tell me what I’m looking at.”

  Milly takes a deep breath before starting. Her face is hard to read. Fear, maybe. Shock. Worry.

  “Over the past two years, Arkotech has paid out to one hundred and twenty-two different companies. Parts, equipment, software. Out of those one hundred and twenty-two, eighty-four were owned by one corporation. Me.com.”

  “What?” Simon lets out a laugh. “Arkotech is owned by a social media company?”

  The two Sanctitists keep talking, but I ignore them. I’m thinking of the numbers. Eight billion units of Arkotech’s new touch screen emotional harvesting technology sold. Nearly eight billion people on the Earth. Almost all of them use a PD. Almost all of them will have recently upgraded to Epicurus, Me.com’s latest device.

  “You alright there, Robot? You’ve gone paler than normal.” Kendall gives my arm a poke, I turn wide eyes on her and she takes a step backwards.

  “You stole the schematics to Arkotech’s newest tech?” I ask the Sanctitists. I’m already fiddling at my PD, working to detach it from my arm.

  Simon turns to look at me and nods. He straightens up, seeing the same look in my eyes that Kendall did. I pull my Epicurus PD from my arm and hold it out to him.

  “Take this apart. Look for Arkotech’s new tech.”

  “In your PD?” I watch Simon’s face as realisation dawns on him as well. He turns an odd shade of pale. He snatches my PD and runs over to the nearby workbench, already reaching for his tools.

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?” Milly asks. “You think Me.com has planted emotion harvesting tech in all our PDs?”

  “In the latest one, Epicurus.” I nod. “Makes sense. Discounted prices to those with an older model. Even further discounted prices to anyone not already hooked up. Latest release just a month after Arkotech shipped eight billion units of the tech, enough for each person on the planet. Me.com are releasing another update to Epicurus in just four days. It will allow the device to detect what the wearer is feeling, uploading how they’re feeling directly to their Me.com feed. Telling everyone they’re connected to exactly what they’re feeling, when they’re feeling it.”

  “So…” Kendall pauses and frowns. “So the sales were to Me.com, so Epicurus can tell what people are feeling? Why do you look like you’ve seen a ghost?”

  “Because Epicurus can do more,” Simon says, still bent over the workbench. “It can harvest the emotion as the person is feeling it.”

  Kendall looks at me, a look of anger and disgust on her face. “The new PDs can steal a person’s emotions? They can turn us all into Drones like you?”

  I shake my head. “It’s not stealing. Congress just passed the law. It specifically states that as long as there is no injury or threat to the person, emotions can be harvested and sold freely. A person’s emotions are now, legally, the property of everyone, not the individual.”

  “Shit.”

  “They don’t even have to tell people they’re doing it. You pop a message on your feed, telling the world you’re happy, and suddenly you’re not. You’re not anything. Just…”

  “Just like you. A robot.”

  “Here it is.” Simon stands up from the bench. He has my PD opened up, the inner circuitry exposed. He points towards a small chip sitting on a green electronics board. “Arkotech’s newest line of harvesting technology. Able to detect and harvest emotion through the touch screen.”

  Chapter 26

  Despair: Crushing. Unyielding. All encompassing. Despair doesn’t sell. It’s one of the few emotions that serves no purpose. It makes people give up. Enough of it can even make people commit suicide. Despair is probably the most harmful emotion there is.

  Milly and Simon keep talking. Arguing. Kendall joins in occasionally, adding her sharp voice to the noise in the room. I keep silent. Not because I don’t have anything to add. Because I’m thinking. Trying to figure out why Me.com would want to steal people’s emotions.

  The most obvious answer would be profit. The more people use Epicurus and Me.com’s new functionality, the more they tell the world what they’re feeling, the less they’ll feel. Emotions are as addictive as not having emotions, probably more so. People would want to feel. Me.com could then sell those same people the same emotions they’ve just stolen. It won’t take long before they are selling emotions to everyone. Me.com would have the market cornered on joy, love, trust, hope.

  They’ve found a way to market something that is freely available to everyone. Not only that, they’d be creating the demand for the product they’re selling. It would almost be like paying Me.com for the right to feel anything, and only what they give permission to feel.

  I can’t help thinking there’s more to it though. Congress pushed the law through faster than any other in the history of the UEA. It’s possible Me.com paid off the politicians. Their pockets are certainly deep enough. It’s also possible they didn’t need to pay them off.

  Years of listening to Pascal’s conspiracy theories has me thinking a certain way. What if Me.com is working with the UEA. What if they’re purposefully targeting specific emotions. They could take away outrage, anger, fear. They could leave the entire population of Earth as happy little Drones going about their day to day with no clue that they might be able to change things. With no idea of the power public opinion can wield.

  What if the entire thing is a plan to more tightly control the population of Earth? And once it’s in place, there’s no way to stop it. No one will care enough to stop it. A whole planet full of happy little Drones doing whatever they’re told whenever they’re told. It’s both ingenious and monstrous.

  Some fears deserve to be shared. They need to be shared. I share this one with the others. I know the way Pascal used to sound when he told me about his latest conspiracy theory, and I probably sound that
way now. By the time I finish explaining it, Simon looks angry, Milly looks disgusted. Kendall looks worried.

  “People need to know,” Simon says eventually. “We need to tell them. We need to tell everyone. Now.”

  “How?” This from Kendall and she looks far from happy. “Step outside and scream it up at the Earth? You already said they’re monitoring and blocking comms. This is exactly the sort of the thing they’ll be looking for.”

  “We do it from Earth then.” Simon paces and then stops, slamming a hand down on the table. “We’ll take a shuttle back to Earth and upload the information, everything we’ve found so far, onto the net. Send it to a thousand different corners. It will reach people.”

  “Not enough people.” I take a deep breath. “If this is as big as I think it is, they’ll be monitoring comms on Earth as well. You might reach a few thousand, maybe even a few million. Not enough. And it’ll be rumour. Me.com and the UEA will squash it within moments and they’ll shout so loudly that no one will believe it either way.”

  “Then we need a way to reach more people,” Simon says. “We need a way to reach everyone at the same time. To spread the word so far that it can’t be covered up. We have to Implore everyone to take a stand. Convince them that someone has to.”

  “Everyone has to,” I say. It’s true. No one person will be able to stop what Me.com has put in place. They’ve made it legal. Made it legitimate. The only way to stop it now is if everyone knows. Everyone stands up and refuses to let themselves be emotionally neutered.

  “How?” Kendall again, shaking her head. “How do you reach an entire planet of people all at once? Easier just to hide out here on the Moon. Let them have the Earth.”

  “They won’t stop at Earth.” Simon is looking grim. Almost as though the weight of the world is on his shoulders and it’s too much for him to carry. It’s not far from the truth. “It’s where they’re starting, but they’ll come for the Moon.”