“Why did you show up late this time? This is your ninth time this year,” Matthew asked.
“Someone gave me a call. Had to answer it.”
“Personal?”
“You could say that.”
“Yuj, that’s the fifth time in a row you have told me that. How long do you think I am going to keep accepting that as an answer?”
“It’s true boss. My cleric called me up.”
“Yuj, you said that the other four times as well.”
“Well he did boss, what else do you want me to say?” Yuj asked.
Matthew leaned back in his chair a bit and away from his monitor. “Why does your cleric even call you up in the first place?”
Yuj paused for a moment. “We got a meeting coming up. That’s all.”
“Yuj, what religion has clerics calling up its members?”
“Boss, I’m a converted Islamic. But please don’t let that change anything between us,” Yuj said with some sadness in his eyes. Yuj looked up to Matthew, but everyone knew that there was still a strong anti-Islamic sentiment among citizens of the Commonwealth, even after so many years. The Isolationist Policy caused that, something that both sides had enacted. The Commonwealth had taken it to a greater degree and built the THEL Shield as an extra measure to make sure the Islamic Republic didn’t spread its influences. It was all propaganda in its own right, Matthew thought.
“Look, Yuj. I don’t care what god you pray to. All I care about is that you show up to work on time. We both hate this job equally. I mean, we both even hate our way of life now evenly. But you still got a responsibility to show up on time.”
“You hate where you are too, boss?” Yuj asked, seeming almost hopeful.
“How many times have I told you that in the past?” Matthew asked, wondering if this kid in a man’s skin ever remembered anything he said.
“So you hate the taxes as well?”
“Between you and me, yes.”
“Well, so do I. And so do others.”
“What do you mean, Yuj?”
“I mean that a bunch of us are getting together to protest.”
Matthew looked around the room. “Yuj, keep your damn voice down. You know they monitor us down here with RIs.”
Yuj lowered his voice to almost a whisper. He leaned in so Matthew could hear him. Matthew also leaned forward as well and started to whisper himself, hoping the sounds from the assembly line would drown out any conversation between the two of them. “Sorry, boss.”
“What do you mean? Protest?”
“I mean that a lot of other people who feel the same way as us.”
“Well of course. You could pick any other person on the street and they will feel the same way as us. It is just that most of them are sheep, they won’t do anything about it.”
“You ever thought about doing anything about it, boss?” Yuj asked.
Matthew thought for a moment. He had conflicted emotions, especially about something as risky as this. “Alright, I’ll hear you out. What is it?”
“In about ten hours a whole bunch of us will be walking out in protest for the last two hours of the shift for higher wages and lower taxes.”
“And you think that will work with a few people?”
“When you got the clerics orchestrating us all together, you got several tens of thousands of people, boss. Think about it. That will create a huge effect,” Yuj said with a smile on his face.
“And you want me to join in?”
“The more people the better. Think we can get Pat and Simmy in on it as well?”
“Doubt it, but I still haven’t said yes to it either.”
“Oh,” Yuj said. “Well do you agree?”
“I agree with what it’s for. When does it start again?”
“About ten hours. We will all get a message saying so; I’ll have you added to the list.”
“Who is sending out the start message?”
“Another cleric named Joseph. He’s supposed to be getting other Arcologies doing the same thing. Can you imagine what it will do?” Yuj said grinning.
“Where does Joseph live?”
“Paris Arcology I was told.”
“And how do we know the RIs don’t know this is happening? They could be listening right now to all of your messages,” Matthew said.
“We don’t use the Central Net. We use VPNs.”
“VPNs?”
“Virtual private networks. We got our own server. It is not even connected to the Central Net. RIs won’t even know it exists.”
“So you are saying that software that can operate thousands of times faster than our brain can will not even be able to know what you guys are planning?” Matthew asked, almost doubting what Yuj just said. He never heard of a virtual private network before that was not connected to the Central Net. How did they even send messages then? They had to use the same relays the Central Net did. Or did they?
“Yes,” Yuj said simply and bluntly.
“Let me think about it Yuj. It is a lot to comprehend right now.”
“Alright, boss. When will you let me know what you think?”
“Give me a few hours. When you take your break I’ll let you know. For now, get to your station and make sure you don’t screw anything up.”
“Yes, boss. There's no reason why I shouldn't be able to practice my religion peacefully.”
Yuj started to walk away but stopped when Matthew said something. “And Yuj. Next time give me a private message saying you will be late so I can give you one of my few excused permissions that I am allowed. I don’t want to lose you.”
Yuj smiled. “Will do, boss.”
Matthew watched Yuj walk to his terminal where he would stand at his monitor and make sure the assembly line in his part was operating on the schedule that Matthew was setting. Matthew knew Yuj was idealistic, but something appealed to Matthew about the protest. If it worked, they would get more money and pay fewer taxes. If it didn’t work he could be written up and Yuj could be fired. He could deal with a write up, so there was no risk for him and his position. So what could go wrong?
Chapter 6
The first experimental Arcology was built in what was Berlin, Germany. The experiment failed as the Arcology descended into anarchy due to food issues and psychological issues due to low flat ceilings. Too heavily based on manufacturing goods and producing more energy than what would be needed for over a century, the Arcology did show architects what needed to be redesigned. This gave birth to the self-sufficient Arcology model that is used today. Still, to this date four of the 548 Arcologies in existence are in a state of Anarchy as methods there to contain gangs and riots have failed. Six Arcologies have democratically elected governmental officials. The majority of Arcologies, 512 of them, are owned by single individuals whose investments have put them into wealth brackets far above the rest of humanity. However, all of the domes in almost all Arcologies have a democratically elected mayor with an overarching appointed governor. Many own more than one Arcology. The rest are owned by multiple corporations or some even owned by a single corporation itself. The 548 Arcologies contain almost all of humanity, which is approximately at a population of eleven billion worldwide. Daily necessities, electronics, water, energy, and some luxury items are produced in every Arcology in sufficient quantities for its population. The only items imported into Arcologies are the massive amounts of food from the Earth Ring as well as medical supplies from the zero gravity industrial sections in the Earth Ring, differentiated luxury items from other Arcologies, high end electronics, and other manufactured goods made in the large industrial sections of the Earth Ring. With only twenty more years until the Earth Ring is completed, the next super project planned and already funded to be completed is the Solar Array Project that would eventually envelope the Earth Ring itself. The planned project will produce enough solar energy to reduce dependence on fusion generation. It will also allow for further growth of water producing and recycling facilities on Earth for it
’s Arcologies to support the ever growing population, rather than normally supplying the fusion generators.
-The History of the Earth Commonwealth
“Darvin, could you pay attention to where you are walking?”
“What makes you think I am not?”
“You walked into a pole…” Exsid said while shaking his head.
“It wasn’t there the last time I walked around here,” Darvin said with a fake innocent smile.
“That’s because it was embedded into the ground, upside down.”
They had walked for the past hour carefully and taking in the sights. Smoke still rose from many buildings in the Ring. Windows were smashed, ceramic walls had cracks, and the streets were nearly empty of people. Trash, wrecked cars and other debris was everywhere. It was a sobering sight when they saw the people lying dead in the alleys between the buildings. Robotic cleaning crews were hard at work with removing the dead. Updates coming from the temporary Headquarters were showing they relocated to a building inside the Ring’s outer structure. Their estimates have put the death toll at ten percent of the population. Twenty thousand people dead. And it showed.
They walked the last mile in silence, coming to the crater that used to be Police Station Two. The basement structure underneath the building was showing a few floors down. Steel was twisted, warped, and ripped apart. Darvin could even see where the five feet of dirt ended onto the steel base of the inside of the Ring. The dirt gave the humans a comforting sense, something that was psychologically pleasing to the inner depths of the mind when outside of the Ring laid almost instant death.
A police station of the Rings had six floors, two of which were above ground and the rest were buried into the myriad superstructure of the Ring itself. The lower four floors of the police stations were cut off from being accessed underground. Air and water all came from above ground while other buildings would get it from the main lines below. The buildings on the inner Ring surface rarely had basement floors. Most of the structure itself devoted to making the basic necessities for the inhabitants, such as food and recycled air and water, as well as processing the large quantities of metal and fusion fuel the whole Jupiter system craved.
There was no one around the structure or what was left of it. Darvin and Exsid jumped down into the first lower floor of the structure. The first sight they saw was their dead brothers. Darvin walked over to one group of them, seemingly all lying on top of each other. He bent down and looked at the wounds of his fellow officers. “These… officers were not killed by the blast,” Darvin said at last as he stood back up.
Exsid was touching a dead viewscreen built into a table that was still upright, trying to see if it had some life still left inside. “Darvin,” Exsid said as he looked over at him.
“They were all shot. All of them,” Darvin said as he brought his hands to the top of his head.
“Darvin,” Exsid said a little louder than before as he walked over to where Darvin was standing.
“They are just lying there. Just like him. Just lying there.”
Exsid reached Darvin and shoved him just enough to turn him around and away from the corpses. “Snap out of it,” Exsid said sharply, then stopped himself to talk softer. “They are not him. You want to find these guys who did this? Then let’s find out where the damn Chief here went. Wherever he and the General went, they will be there.”
“I can’t take it sometimes. How can you just go up to random people and do this. No matter how many times I see it, I can never understand why. I can connect, somehow, but never understand.” Darvin walked away from the scene and towards the hole to the deeper levels. Psychologists had said it was the incident with Darvin’s father and mother that made him uneasy about seeing dead bodies.
Exsid watched as his partner walked away from the scene, understanding every word that he spoke. He used to wrestle with the idea, but Darvin needed to figure it out for himself just like how Exsid did. Self-discovery was the best method for some things like this. Darvin’s connections to the crimes were deeper than Exsid’s, even with all of his years of experience that he had over Darvin. It was the main reason Darvin was able to solve all of those cold cases that kept him on the job, but sometimes Exsid wondered about Darvin’s state of mind even with all of the weekly psychologist visits. “Just turn off that damn nerve blocking program you got running. I can tell by the way you’re walking. Jump down to the next level with me with that on and you won’t even know if you broke your leg.”
“Yeah, yeah. I got it. But you got to admit that would save a lot of pain.”
“That program kicks in standard at the auto-threshold. It’s that dumb override you somehow managed to program into it.”
“And if you would bother to read the news you would find out that that override is standard among people my age. Guess you’re getting too old. Matches that belly of yours,” Darvin winked over to Exsid and then jumped down to the second lower level. At least Darvin is somewhat back to normal, Exsid thought. He always had these fits because of how he watched his father and mother die, no matter how much Darvin denied that major life event affected him.
Exsid walked over to the edge of the broken floor. “Hey. I got abs just like you and everyone your age as well. They are just hibernating.” Exsid jumped down to the second lower level right next to Darvin.
“Hibernating! You got at least ten pounds of fat covering them. Must be that beer you’re drinking during your Grav games.”
“Shut it already. Tell me though; you got the building’s schematics up in your Exovision?”
“A bit different than our station, but yes I got it minimapped.”
“Where’s the Chief’s meeting office?” Exsid asked as he bent to look down the broken lip of the second floor.
“Literally right below where you’re standing,” Darvin said as he walked over right next to where Exsid was.
“Seems like the blast was on the first floor above ground. The penetration rings are smaller as we got deeper. That means they could have been trying to cover up any evidence with the debris from the upper floors left over by the blast. I just want to know what they are trying to buy time for.”
“Well that’s why we get paid the big bucks,” Darvin replied with a smirk on his face.
“Helium-3 miners get paid more than us by far. And all they do is just make sure the nozzlers are running and sucking up that atmosphere.”
“Exactly why we get the big bucks.”
“Ah, just be careful where you land. Everything is uneven down there with all of that broken metal.”
They both jumped down, landing on a steel girder that lay exposed on the floor. Around them was the ruin of the Chief’s main meeting office. They both looked around, noting curiously the lack of bullet holes in this area that was more evident in the floors above. Only one wall had some small caliber holes inside of it. Darvin walked over to the ruined door that was smashed off one of its hinges and leaning limply off to the side, looking through to the other side as if he expected to find some bodies clad in black body armor. Instead, what he did find surprised him.
“Exsid, I got a dead Marine over here. Bullet wounds, large caliber or just some hivels,” Darvin said, making a reference to the high velocity rounds of a gauss rifle.
“Looks like he tried doing a standoff.”
“Yeah, but look at the far wall were he would have been shooting.”
Exsid looked up towards the wall that housed what was left of the elevator column system for the station. The wall had more holes in it then wall that were left. “Whatever he was shooting at, he sure put up a hell of a fight trying to stop them. Let’s get back inside and see if there are any bodies underneath the rubble.”
They walked back into the ruins of the meeting room. Together, they took a section of the floor and lifted it up. Nanotically boosted muscles and reinforced bones prevented them from tearing anything as they together lifted and flipped over the two ton section of flooring. What they found
was the remains of a wooden table and four chairs.
“That’s real wood,” Darvin nearly yelled with excitement. “He must have paid a ton to have this imported from Earth. Only the far north there produces wood. Everything else is like wasteland.”
“Let’s skip telling our Chief Burns that tiny piece of unneeded information. But we do have some blood splatter.” At least Darvin isn’t freeing out again, Exsid thought. He must still have some part of that nerve blocking program running still.
“Doesn’t look like splatter from a bullet wound. What’s your Scanner telling you?”
“DNA of the Chief and the General that was given to us from the Marine Captain.”
“I got to get me one of those things. Built right into the retina.”
“You’ll get it in thirty years or so.”
“Not fair I say.”
“Yeah, well let’s see if we can find anything else around here.”
Darvin started to walk towards the ruined door again. “What do you think we should find?”
“How am I supposed to know? Nothing like this has ever happened before. We had less than four hundred officers for a population of two hundred thousand. This type of crime just doesn’t occur here. This isn’t Earth’s Arcologies.”
“Yeah well there’s a ton of this gray dust getting all over my boots.”
“Gray dust?”
“Yeah,” Darvin said as he started to wipe it off of his boots.
“Wait a second, stop that and come over here.”
“What?”
“What would create small mounds of gray dust like the one you stepped in?” Exsid asked, as much to himself as to Darvin in hopes that somehow he would have read something about it somewhere. Exsid always wondered where Darvin read his ‘news.’ It was never on the main news feeds that Exsid tuned into every now and then. Exsid turned his scanner onto the gray dust. “It’s nanomachines.”
“I got nanites on my boot?”
“Yeah, deactivated though.”
“Any idea what they do?”
“Not a single idea. It isn’t coming up in the main database in my personal storage.” Exsid paused for a second. “Or even on our server’s database.”
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