A green dot bounced toward Dylan in the lower right of his BUI’s periphery, indicating someone was attempting to contact him immediately. It ripped him out of his daydream. There was no information on the contact, so he decided to ignore it, assuming whoever it was could deal with asynchronous communication for now. But the contact was persistent, and several seconds later the green dot pinged Dylan again. Curiosity won him over, and he flung the dot with his hand into the middle of his display and it opened into a text chat.
. . . BEGIN 32 TERABYTE OpenPGP PUBLIC & AUTHORIZED ENCRYPTED CHAT SESSION . . .
[Anonymous 11:13:15] Dylan, loved the jacket you were wearing today, very colorful.
[Dylan 11:13:47] Sorry, who is this?
[Anonymous 11:13:55] Well, anyway, good talking to you.
The chat box vanished. Dylan rubbed his eyes as if he had just awoken with a bad headache. He glanced at his coat, which was draped over the chair opposite him, and as he did so, he once again felt as if his passenger was rubbernecking in his direction. As Dylan’s gaze moved from coat to passenger, he again found Mr. Korak Searle was deeply engrossed on whatever fast-moving objects were displaying on his visual cortex. The sudden mystery of both his guest and his anonymous acquaintance led to a few minutes of indecision, combined with a heightened sense of nerves. Dylan laughed a bit at the absurdity of the moment, resolved that nothing sinister was afoot, and reached out toward his jacket on the other seat.
“A unique pattern." Korak Searle’s voice was monotone, but quite articulate. His red eyes continued to seize in front of him.
Dylan froze with his hand outstretched. He didn’t respond, just stared at Searle. Finally, after several beats, Searle slowly turned his head away from his BOI display and toward Dylan. His eyes slowed their dance, turning from red to gray until they froze upon Dylan, who grabbed his coat without breaking their gaze and quickly slipped it on.
“I’m sorry, I don’t catch your meaning . . . Mr. Searle.” Dylan smiled wide. His nerves were long gone, replaced by a now unquenchable curiosity.
“Your jacket—” Dylan’s throat lurched “—it is quite an interesting pattern. It seems out of place, out of time.” A thin half smile appeared on Searle’s face.
“Uh-huh . . .” Their eyes continued to talk. “Well, thanks, I like—”
“Is it Indian?” Searle interrupted, as though Dylan had not been talking.
“No, Pakistani,” replied Dylan evenly.
“Hmm . . . interesting . . .” Searle nodded as his eyes moved away from Dylan toward the jacket, then finally back toward his own display, where they began to shiver once more, flaring red again.
Smirking, Dylan shook his head slightly and looked out the dimmed front window. His transport was boxed in with others, speeding along at over 150 klicks now. They would be in San Diego in under an hour. Dylan shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket and immediately snagged his right ring finger (which was devoid of any rings) on a sharp edge. He thumbed a small piece of plastic and knew immediately that he held an encryption chip in his hand. He fiddled with it momentarily before clutching the fingernail-sized chip in his palm. He deftly brought the chip up to his BUI, which was attached to his left ear (opposite Searle’s view). His BUI immediately recognized the small chip as an encryptChip and imported the private key contained on the chip into its local memory via secure near-field wireless communication. The small chip hissed—the result of an intentional chemical reaction that destroyed the data that had been there moments before. No sooner had the key been imported than a new chat notification bounced on Dylan’s BUI holographic display. This time the request came from someone named “Simeon.” Dylan quickly motioned the chat to life.
BEGIN 256 PETABYTE OpenPGP PUBLIC, PRIVATE, & AUTHORIZED ENCRYPTED CHAT SESSION . . . AFFIRM THREE TIMES TO ACCEPT PUBLIC KEY AND SIGNED CHAT FROM:
SIMEON:SIM_a8f3de13320b. . .<256PB>. . .34cf6
Dylan looked at the screen quizzically. He was no stranger to sending and receiving encrypted messages between partnered corporations, but he had never seen an open-source implementation. He hesitated, finally allowing curiosity to get the better of him (a simple text chat was harmless, after all). Waving his hand in a downward motion three times, a new message arrived almost immediately:
[Simeon 11:20:07] Hello Dylan, we must talk fast. I am guessing this encryption key will last a maximum of 400 seconds.
[DylanD 11:20:36] Who are you? How did you get me the chip?
[Simeon 11:20:45] Later. Just read.
[Simeon 11:21:12] First: your passenger—he’s not what he seems. But I’m guessing you already knew that.
[Dylan 11:21:15] Why?
[Simeon 11:21:18] Second: we must meet in person. I have vital information about your company’s dealings with major corporations and governments, and I need your help. Many people need your help.
[Dylan 11:21:21] What are you talking about? Who is this? Is this a joke?
[Simeon 11:21:25] Third: assume you are being watched at all times, because you are. By several parties.
[Dylan 11:21:30] OK buddy, funny shit. Who the hell are you?
[Simeon 11:22:33] Don’t tell me you haven’t thought of the ramifications of what you are creating. You know damn well what your new virt tech could do if used maliciously. You know firsthand.
[Simeon 11:22:37] We’re getting off track. Here’s the point: I want to meet with you this weekend.
[Dylan 11:22:39] Are you for real? This has to be a joke, right? Who are you??
[Simeon 11:22:40] I’m a friend—rather, I hope to be.
[Dylan 11:22:45] Look, sorry pal, this is ridiculous. The only coast I’ll be visiting this weekend is in San Diego where I’ll be surfing.
[Simeon 11:22:47] In your deathTrip, you had a wife, right? Sabrina? Was that her name? Do you believe she was a real person?
[Dylan 11:23:01] Type faster.
[Simeon 11:23:14] We have reason to believe your failed deathTrip was . . . intentional. Malicious.
[Simeon 11:24:10] Dylan, still there?
[Simeon 11:24:15] Dylan?
[Dylan 11:24:17] ?
[Simeon 11:24:19] What?
[Dylan 11:24:24] Type More. I need more before I even begin to believe you.
[Simeon 11:24:45] We have your entire deathTrip. Your name was Dalton. You grew up in the state of Washington, went to Catholic school. Your mother died of odd circumstances, possibly suicide, or murder, or both. You met Sabrina, your first wife, in college before you dropped out. You lived hard, and you played hard. I even know what Sabrina told you on her deathbed.
[Dylan 11:24:59] How the fuck do you know this?
[Simeon 11:25:12] Meet with me, and I will tell you.
[Dylan 11:25:20] If it wasn’t an accident, or an error, or a bug, or whatever, then who caused it?
[Simeon 11:25:27] Meet with me, and I will tell you.
[Dylan 11:25:33] No. You have to give me more to go on.
[Simeon 11:25:39] This is risky; we are over time.
[Dylan 11:25:47] I need more.
[Simeon 11:26:01] Your great-uncle’s accidental scrambling was not accidental. And neither is your own botched deathTrip.
[Dylan 11:26:11] Are you suggesting they are related?
[Simeon 11:26:16] I’m not suggesting.
[Dylan 11:26:24] What? Why? This is impossible.
[Simeon 11:26:38] No, it’s not. We are way over time. That’s all. Meet me and I’ll tell you everything we know.
[Simeon 11:27:09] Details: Washington Coast, Oyehut Indian Reserve. It’s off corpSoil, it’s not even state or public land. There’s a small casino on the beach near an old ghost town called Ocean Shores. Use secure, encrypted debit only. Take PUBLIC transportation to Olympia, rent a car to get to Ocean Shores. Once there, stay off the autoTrans. And whatever you do, turn OFF your BUI, or any other networked device on your person. Go completely dark.
[Simeon 11:27:09] ?
[Simeon 11:27:10] ?
&
nbsp; [Simeon 11:27:12] ???
[Dylan 11:27:15] OK! I’ll consider it.
[Simeon 11:27:31] You better do more than consider, we need you as much as you need us. We are way over time. I will be at the bar around seven p.m. on Saturday, probably a little late and a little lit. See you then. And remember, absolutely NO networked devices. Powered down, batteries out. Public transport only. Go dark.
The chat window dissolved peacefully, unlike the lines of worry now firmly etched onto Dylan’s forehead. He’d spent months recovering from his deathTrip, and this man had just cast his entire experience into question within minutes.
As Dylan questioned his sanity, Korak was again whispering inscrutable frustrations, his red eyes ceaselessly twitching away all the while.
Chapter Four
Sindhu R. was born in a small fishing village along the ocean, just south of Chennai, India. The only child of a modest, lower-class fisherman, Sindhu’s mother had died during childbirth, leaving father and daughter alone in a country where loneliness was at a premium. Sindhu grew up bathing in the putrefied waters of the Indian Ocean while feasting on rotten meat and bacteria-laden, genetically altered vegetables. Her childhood consisted of twelve-hour workdays, six days a week, spent under a sweltering heat that radiated off of southeast India’s expansive and shimmering beaches. Hundreds of children battled vagrants for space on the beach as fishing boats floated offshore. As the boats came in, the children waded into the debris-infested ocean waters carrying buckets, nets, and crates. The day’s sickly catch was promptly unloaded, to be sold in the markets the next morning. The only respite came during the summer months, when the heat became so unbearable that the beaches would clear for several hours during midday as people everywhere sought some semblance of shade.
As the sun finished its day, Sindhu’s was just getting started. In the dusky, polluted light of late afternoon, she and her father would walk, hand in hand, back to their hut: a rusted metal shipping container, one of thousands constructed within their village by the Indian government during a rash of building to combat the rampant population growth of the twenty-first century. Sindhu and her father were lucky to have any shelter at all, even if it radiated heat like an oven. Once home, Sindhu would eat a quick meal of rice, lintels, and carrots that looked as if they’d been given growth steroids (because they had). On occasion, Sindhu’s father would thieve a portion of his catch and they would feast like royalty. After her meal, Sindhu would unlock her Net-connected, government-issued school tablet. She would attend a full six hours of virtual classes. After six hours of sleep, her day would repeat, starting with selling their previous day’s catch at the local market.
Sinhu’s father, Ramachandran, had married Sindhu’s now-deceased mother, Tamalika, when they were twenty years young. An arranged marriage between families of common class and village, love followed soon after their ceremony. With the passing of their first anniversary, the Indian government had initiated a countrywide mandatory health and population-enforcement procedure. It was the largest organized health effort in the history of the planet. The government decreed that genetic-based enforcement of childbearing was to become law. All women under thirty years of age were required to receive a gene-altering compound, administered intravenously, eliminating the ability to bear children without an “unlocking” agent. Henceforth, married couples were required to apply for a “child exception,” the granting of which would allow for administration of the unlocking genetic agent. Exceptions were granted primarily based on wealth and cultural standing. Not coincidentally, exceptions were more readily handed out to people matching historical caste names from generations past. The Indian state of Tamil Nadu had been progressive in eschewing caste status in the twentieth century, but capitalism slowly created a new caste system based simply on tax brackets. Isolated exceptions were made for exemplary genetic matchmaking, such as a pair of well-built Olympic athletes, but these exceptions were rare.
The government had sold the population-enforcement act as a necessary requirement for population control to ensure the nation could support their citizens as they aged, with the added benefit of free health care available to all of India’s impoverished. Thus, elemental disease screening and basic inoculations were provided to all citizens as part of the new law. The benevolence of the health screenings did nothing to quell the uproar over the heavy-handed enforcement of the childbearing laws, however. Proponents cited childbearing restrictions in neighboring China and Thailand as precedents, but opponents were quick to point out that those programs were not enforced at the genetic level. After years of debate, however, the law was passed and the enforcement began. The clinics started in the south, and with the help of over a hundred thousand soldiers, the entire country was screened and administered within six short months.
While the more vociferous, erudite, and metropolitan Indian citizens had been debating and protesting the plan’s merits for several years, the poor and unconnected—the slum residents and lower-class villagers—had never heard of the plan prior to its enforcement. Like the diseases being screened for, rumor of the enforcement spread, and the prospect of restricted childbearing created a fervor to get married and pregnant before the enforcement. A counterproductive baby boom exploded from south to north, an event that many scholars should have seen coming, but hadn’t.
Ramachandran and Tamalika had heard the rumors only a few weeks into their marriage. In the following months, they had tried desperately to become pregnant with no success. Tamalika cried to the Gods as she waited in line for hours on the day of their village’s screening. Thousands of soldiers organized the villagers into large groups and then smaller lines, until finally Tamalika was ushered into a tent at the exact moment a rare and particularly destructive monsoon arrived upon the coast. Rain pattered the tent as if Tamalika were inside a drum and God herself was outside beating a rhythm describing anger and decrying fairness simultaneously.
Nine months later Sindhu was born, and Tamalika cried with joy as she held her newborn child and the life passed out of her eyes.
Sindhu’s diligence in her studies was born from a natural curiosity for learning, rather than any pedantic responsibility preached by her father. In fact, Ramachandran rarely had to remind his daughter to do her schoolwork—it was typically the highlight of her day. Eventually her curiosity paid off in the form of consistent excellence during testing, allowing her the extraordinary opportunity to attend a realWorld examination. If she tested well in realWorld, she would be granted the option of attending realWorld school full time. Many villagers and slum dwellers had learned methods to cheat in their virtual studies (no small feat, given the biosecurity protocols of the government-issued tablets) such that they were given the opportunity for the realWorld examination, but nearly all chose not to attend, as they knew a human-monitored test would result in failure. (Only the very wealthy had the means to cheat on those.) Sindhu attended.
The day of the test was a watershed moment in Sindhu’s life. Her father took the day off and accompanied her to the city of Chennai. Once known as Madras during British rule, Chennai had quietly transformed into the largest city in the south of India: a burgeoning metropolis brought to life by an explosion of technology and manufacturing. They took the train, a four-hour ride north on a dilapidated, hundred-year-old rail system. Ramachandran fought off hordes of fellow travelers to gain two adjoining seats in the back of the third-class passenger car. Sindhu avoided eye contact, focusing on the holes in the floorboards by her feet where streams of railway tracks merged into a solid brown as the cars sped up.
The day blurred together, much like the tracks in the floorboards. They arrived at a large train station late in the morning, surrounded by a bustle of people who were late getting to work. At once, they transferred to a monorail system (only half as antiquated as the train) and shuttled their way to the testing site, a towering government-built high-rise just outside of downtown. The test went quickly, and Sindhu knew she had not missed a sin
gle answer.
She spent the remainder of the afternoon touring the sprawling city with her father. Westernized culture danced with technology. Skyscrapers reached for the heavens while avoiding eye contact with the crumbling infrastructure at their feet. Retrofitting projects appeared around every corner with an antique stucco architecture being replaced by media-enabled exterior walls. Western fashion—vibrant colors, dynamic media-enabled clothing, and even some dynamic body art—swirled around Sindhu. Advertisements were everywhere: holograms, 3-D video, laser displays. Single-person solar-powered taxis sped chaotically, each with a different advertisement rolling across their small hoods. Even the corner market was impressive; easily fifty times larger than the single market in Sinhu’s small village. Technology powered everything: Transactions were done electronically, even when bartering; colorful logos emblazoned even the simple baskets that held fruit.
Sindhu had been in such awe that talking had become difficult. Her father’s reaction wasn’t much different, until finally they reached the ocean. Although the amount of people at the Chennai beach was exponentially more than in their village, the beach itself was so expansive that it felt proportionally similar. Further, the act of fishing in Chennai was not so different from their own village. The awestruck pair found a safe place to sit among the throngs of people, and both took a moment to catch their breath.
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