Economic Science Fictions
Page 14
In 2061 80 per cent of the human race resides in urban areas, the majority of them in large cities. Neurode, meanwhile, has become the core munition for approximately 85 per cent of the globe’s CorpoNations. Given the stick and move politics of martial engagement evident in the Holo Wars, it means that no one has either the time or the money to fabricate a copious slew of Pain ©Amps. There is no option but to restructure and re-engineer the ways in which humans dwell in large nodal agglomerations. Being the first CorpoNation to trial a site-specific pain-harvesting environment, Pfizombia quickly comprehends the fiscal pragmatism of simply redistributing human activity within cities that already exist. Detroit, the neo-Renaissance exemplar of white flight in the mid-twentieth century, is the model. Downtown areas of four miles are walled and become the circumferences of the ©Amps. Concentric rings of presence and activity encapsulate the central tenet of quantitative uneasing, so that a typical cartography reads like this.
Central reservation: Pain ©Amp.
Ring 1: planted wilderness around the city filled with genetically modified poisonous plants, creating an impenetrable toxic verdure.
Ring 2: sheer concrete ground on which escapees are easily traced and targeted for extermination by drones.
Ring 3: holo tech, compounds and technology sector.
Ring 4: residential – suburbs.
Ring 5: commercial and medical.
Ring 6: residential – suburbs.
Ring 7: industry.
Ring 8: agriculture.
For those at the centre of this discoidal seer, voluntary entry becomes a murky business. With so many CorpoNations adopting the system, the required numbers of Pain ©Amps far exceeds the numbers presenting themselves of their own volition. Prison systems are bled of their low- to middle-security inmates, the homeless are rounded up, any remaining psychiatric hospitals release their charges, and those with little material wealth are ‘persuaded’ to support the collective drive. The existing downtown core of a ©Amp is cut up into the most puritanical of living circumstances, in order to jam as many pain-producing bodies in as possible. All living chambers are mic’d up and feed meters connected to the Pain Power Grid. Monthly readings are taken to keep track of the duration, volume and pitch complexity of the inhabitants’ recordings. No stone is left unturned, and it won’t be long before the chamber’s brick, wood, metal and cinder block is itself treated as a recording materiality, capturing electrical mental impressions from traumatic events. Stone tape for a holo cause.
After 11 years of Neurodal conflict, the majority of major and middle-sized cities around the world have been re-engineered to become Pain ©Amps. It is now 2073 and the pain quotas necessary for holo conflict have been far surpassed in all CorpoNations. The recorded reserves have accrued to become stockpiles of sonic excess, layers upon layers of affliction that translate into tabulated wealth, once they have been mastered and valued. Trading began in 2068, but it has taken five years for a global consensus to be reached that ratifies pain’s existence as a currency. It joins the seven major cryptocurrencies as a legitimised form of exchange and shares their virtual liquidity, but this is where the formal parity ends.
Whereas the numbed anonymity of the cryptocurrencies is stamped into equivalent digital markers, the fungibility of this new form of exchange is difficult to establish due to the diversity of strains that have been cultivated for Neurode. Due to the inexhaustible nature of pain, however, and the communicable nature of the emotional economy that forms around it, it flourishes. An algorithmic gate compresses the volatile spectrum of evaluation – flattening the peaks and troughs – and soon it is on the lips and in the ears of every broker from the Virgin Kingdom to PashaBaijan. Finally, the abstracted essence of trade and the obscured corporeality of exchange are about to be accurately labelled. Those seemingly arcane designators of worth inherent within every form of currency over the past 4,000 years, ever since the Sumerian trades within the Fertile Crescent – updated. The name of the new currency: Pain Coin.
7
AT392-Red
Khairani Barokka
Security Operations
World Headquarters
Suite XX-A
2001 Hami Road
Changning, Shanghai
World’s Republic of China
Date: 35 May 2087, 25 Hrs. SCST
Case Designation: AT392-Red, 35 May 2087
Subject: Case Summary, Arson Incident AT392-Red
To: Your Honorable Judging Committee Members of World Headquarters
Your Honors,
What follows is a summary in as much detail as possible of all knowns that have thus far availed themselves to us, Security Operations of World Headquarters, with regard to Arson Incident AT392-Red at the World Headquarters in Shanghai, World’s Republic of China, which took place from roughly 04.00 to 20.10 on 35 May of 2087.
Order of Events (at this time):
20.10: Security Officer Lewis was on duty supervision of the feed from Camera 367, in which at 20.10 he found a person appearing to be a woman of dark brown skin and shoulder-length black hair, wearing a dark jacket, shirt and pants, falling from the air vent into Room 78, the location of all of WHQ’s electronic servers. The Suspect was then observed to be looking for, and then finding, Tower 93b, which just a week previously had been identified by Goldman Barclay Security Consultants as being a security risk to our operations. The Suspect then took out what appeared to be a sealed pouch, opened it and poured a black liquid resembling oil onto all sides of Tower 93b. She then set fire to it with a match. At this point, SO Lewis had already alerted all SOs on duty, several of whom (SOs Thomas Wu, Laura Li, Sheena Marcus and Fachri Bakrie) swiftly entered Room 78, and apprehended the Suspect. SO Lewis attempted to alert all officers at Level 4 Clearance, but found communications systems had begun to shut down. He happened upon Dr. Saraswati, Resident Toxicologist, in front of the Camera Feed Room, who began to conduct assessments of toxicity, and alerted Mr. Sulaiman, Head of Communications Systems, at his home.
20.21:Current levels of toxicity in the water and air of World Headquarters were confirmed to be of Adequate Human-Friendly Le.vels by Dr. Saraswati, Resident Toxicologist. This news was relayed by all Security Officers on Levels 84-GX down, as our PA system has been compromised. Dr. Saraswati also identified the liquid poured on Tower 93b as a yet-to-be-determined synthetic form of slower-burning crude oil. She is continuing her laboratory investigations of this substance.
20.24:Mr. Sulaiman, Head of Communications Systems, arrived at WHQ from his home and assesses all relevant systems. Damage has been found to be 100% to PA system, 85% to all email servers, and 100% to all consoles.
20.25:Suspect arrived in WHQ’s Holding Cell, escorted by Security Officers Wu, Li, Marcus and Bakrie, who proceeded to apply to her Medium- to High-Intensity Procedures 15 through to 23, simultaneously. The Suspect then handed them the following missive in natural ink on synthapaper form, handwritten, which I have transcribed below:
In the year 2067, we lived in the wake of disasters induced by Biodiversity Credits, which had allowed for the previous twenty years the wholesale destruction of all rainforest wildlife still extant in Asia, by ‘preserving’ rainforest land in North America, Africa and South America in its stead. For each hectare of rainforest cut down and converted into plantations, mines, roads, housing, factories, and technological infrastructure, another plot of rainforest elsewhere was ‘protected’. This rainforest ‘preservation’ in those three continents displaced millions of forest inhabitants, contributing to our then already decades-long Global Refugee Crisis, and, through mismanagement, inadvertently contributed to what was essentially forest monoculture. They shifted the blame and shame around on a map; they shifted lives and ruined them.
So we would have been forgiven for mistrusting the announcement, on 19 April 2067, of the mass introduction of Accessibility Credits to the World’s Republics, by unanimous decision o
f all seventy-two World Chancellors. We of the crip and disabled and D/deaf ilk, and all others whose lives have long been affected by disability and the need for increased accessibility and inclusion, felt particularly horrified by this decision – essentially copying the system of Biodiversity Credits, applying them in inhumane ways to human lives. The explanation for this system was ensconced in a 2,892-page volume that the World Chancellors must have known would deter examined, thoughtful reading by the masses. Having plowed through this volume, however, it was immediately apparent to activists the world over how malicious these Accessibility Credits really were.
By this doctrine, which was applied in the year 2076 in full, a private apartment building in Hong Kong gaining elevators, and its staff being given one-hour ‘Inclusion, Accessibility, and Disability Awareness Training’, led directly to leeway being given to a local government seat in Indonesia to further undercut funding for over a million disabled citizens’ needs. Applying arbitrary numerical value on a scale of one to ten to everything from cancer treatment to hearing aid provision, affordable therapy sessions, accessible transport to and from workplaces, and a woman’s right to painkillers during menstruation, Accessibility Credits functioned as a system of geographically bound Shifting Limits, our rebel forces’ preferred name for such egregious policies. If 65 people with chronic fatigue in Greater London have already requested sick leave, 200 children in the area lose their chance for D/deaf-inclusive education that year. If 3,000 surgeries in the Greater Jabodetabek Area of Indonesia have been conducted in a year, 95 teacher trainings on dyslexia were cancelled for the next 12 years. Value systems have always been arbitrary, but this extreme cruelty in the form of mathematical calculations is sickening. It has impacted all on the Rebel Forces deeply, on the visceral level of our own bodyminds, our own family members’ bodyminds.
AC Values assigned to a particular Social Module, whether covering physical therapy, PTSD specialists, audio description or cerebral palsy workplace awareness training, have been assigned arbitrarily by AC Value Managers, also elected arbitrarily. Worldwide, on average per year, only less than 4 percent of AC Value Managers have been D/deaf and/or disabled. This is nothing less than oppression by those deemed able-bodied.
The destruction of lives in this manner, spreading across the world for the past 20 years, has ancient roots, and has had the wherewithal to further destroy what few foundations of social welfare we have enjoyed, wherever we are. In 2016 disabled people were already the world’s largest minority. Many D/deaf and other languages were already under threat of extinction. Millions lived without the care they needed to survive; millions were demeaned and assumed to need certain kinds of ‘frivolous’ care, thus being eliminated from entry into the public sphere, denied from living decent private lives. Access and inclusion were widely presented in terms of charity. The freak shows of our colonial pasts reared their heads across all media. There has always been resistance, however.
In one fell swoop in 2076, Accessibility Credits sounded the death knell to almost all activism of preceding years. It was argued that we did not have the right to demand all hospitals in Thailand have working elevators, as a corporate sponsor of hospitals in Wales had taken our Credits. It was argued that the drugs we psychiatric system survivors needed to survive were not available in El Salvador, as the funds for those had been usurped by ACs in Finland.
It has long been time to act, rather than react. Ten days ago my mother and father were told my education could not be furthered, due to lack of funds to allow for public transportation to and from my university. My father and mother, both already suffering from depression, and unable to receive care as a result of public health cuts to local psychotherapists, left our house at 3 a.m. the next morning and have not since returned. This action upon World Headquarters Shanghai has long been planned, and long been rehearsed, but this was that small straw that broke my back. We are dying, diseased, suffering, mad, poor and furious for reasons outside of ourselves. We exist in multitude. We organise thoughts between ourselves, but act individually.
We are done taking from you. We are done taking from you. We are done taking from you.
20.30:A missive has been conveyed to all WHQ officers’ workplaces, as well as home addresses, from my own personal email, briefly stating known facts at that time. In this communication, I also asked all regular work to be suspended for the next 50 hours while damages are ascertained in full.
21.00:WHQ Doctor DeLaria was summoned to the Holding Cell with her equipment in order to conduct an hour-long Disabilities Assessment. Dr. DeLaria found our inmate’s capabilities to fall into Category 265Q of the World’s Republics’ Accessibility Credits Assessment Guidebook, as well as under DSM-CXI’s Guidelines. She determined that the Suspect refers to herself as Annah.
We are at the present moment unaware whether or not accounting changes of the past two years – which led to the 2086 Revolutions in the number of calendar days and daily hours used in the World’s Republics, in order to allow for maximum productivity, and worldwide enforcement of Biodiversity Credit schemes at the lead of numerous illustrious corporations and other persons – are connected to this splinter group’s reasonings.
The assailant is currently continuing to claim that she is operating alone and without any outside assistance, an assertion we deem highly unlikely, considering the assailant’s physical and mental capacities, which, we repeat, have been found to be of Category 265Q under WHQ Doctor DeLaria’s hour-long Disabilities Assessment.
We have information from the Chief of Intelligence at Accessibility Credits, Inc., which works together with all the World’s Republics, that the leader of this rebel team was denied ACs repeatedly over the past two years, and lives in a great deal of suffering. It is likely that this suffering will provoke a power vacuum in leadership even given no intervention. However, our previous levels of assumed organisational capabilities and intelligence appear to have been miscalculated. There may be value in not underestimating what is to come.
We understand and are grateful for our freedom to make our own judgments regarding Medium- to High-Intensity Punitive Actions, in order to extract the maximum amount of useful information to aid your decision-making. We would like once more to iterate our continued attempts in the service of this extraction.
Our Honourable Judging Committee, rest assured, we will continue to inform you of any further information we glean, and await further instructions at your discretion. We remain your loyal colleagues in service of the World’s Republics.
Due to the being-assessed damage to servers and consoles that has been incurred in the last four hours, limiting all WHQ employees’ ability to access personal and professional emails, telephone addresses and video chat identities, I am forced hereby to rely upon my personal laptop computer, personal vintage Wi-Fi device, and personal antique email account, used herewith, wontleadchuwrong@hotmail.com.
The Honorable Chancellor of Shanghai World Headquarters, Melissa Brown, has also authorised me to inform you that she will also be using her personal antique email address, mbrown356.q@gmail.com.
I will immediately notify Your Honorable Committee Members should any other alternative modes of communication be usable for your loyal employees.
Signed,
[Adam Chu]
35 May 2087
Adam Chu
Chairperson of Security Operations
World Headquarters
Suite XX-A
2001 Hami Road
Changning, Shanghai
World’s Republic of China
8
The New Black
Nora O Murchú
She woke up, not really remembering when she had laid down.
She had been working overtime for the past while.
The blinds were still up and the grey was seeping in.
Looking over to the clock, the LED digits blinked 5.37.
Nearly time.
…
She lay there looking at th
e ceiling.
…
I could get up, start early on some Content, I guess.
…
She closed her eyes again.
…
The alarm sounded.
6 a.m.
She reached over and turned it off.
She stretched while getting up and walking to her desk.
She looked at her device.
When had she turned it off?
It was never off; always in sleep mode.
They must have updated.
It had become common in the past month.
New devices had been sent out and the software hadn’t been compatible.
There had been many bulletins about it and numerous updates.
They had promised another.
Hopefully, that was it.
Sitting down to her station, she turned the device on.
It booted up, glowing in the early morning grey haze.
The coffee machine started behind her.
…
It was always a bit slow to start in the morning.
But she didn’t mind.
She liked to take her time.
Quality Content was what they preferred now.
The recommendations about Time-Based Content Trending from the latest bulletins had been useful.
Her latest strategy was to examine and look for common characteristics among grouped content over long durations.
Then she would move these groups to her assigned platforms.
Her work as a Content Wrangler was a recent promotion from her previous role in which she would clean and filter Content.
It allowed her to monitor her Dashboard over several devices and move from her station throughout the day.
…
It hadn’t always been like this.