Witness reports were collected. People outside the radius who saw their neighbourhood collapse and rise in a wave of debris were asked to repeat their experiences for a multitude of interviewers and forums. These joined the mix of footage that was growing around the mystery of the blackout, catalogued and discussed by every chat and media blast to build a comprehensive picture of what had taken place.
A number of Citizens attempted to draw what they had seen over their shoulders as they fled from the confusion. The streets lifting up like a wave; buildings breaking into shards and clouds of dirty fury chasing them from their homes. Some artist sketches depicted a figure, squat and thick-limbed, standing up amongst the fray. It was fanciful enough to capture the mind of the Weave even before someone concocted the glowing eyes, or the figure rearing back to the sky and bellowing like a titan. Most spectators felt this was just a natural inclination to anthropomorphise an inexplicable event. Those who had run from it could not dismiss it so easily.
~ * ~
Penelope Renaud arrived on foot and was blocked by the wall of armoured Servicemen. She could barely see through the phalanx of marauder units to her zone. Above them — the soldiers and crowd — a swarm of observation drones spiralled over the area, unable to pass the cordon. Up close they were as big as your hand with wings of solar panels that made only an insect’s worth of sound, though the swarm of them produced a tense hum that was increasingly annoying.
Services couldn’t hold back the spectators forever. Public pressure was too great and the media teams, politicians and the curious wanted to see for themselves what was beyond. When the area was declared safe, the soldiers stood down and made room for the people to pass through.
They were told not to go too far and not to touch anything. What Penelope saw was not the home she had lived in, nor the streets she knew. It was wreckage. Some foundation walls stubbornly held up their edges to mark the route of the streets, but Rue de Rivoli was now only a midden twenty feet high.
The group that went through first were silent. Their cameras floated around the scene, pushing their footage out to an equally breathless audience on the Weave.
Penelope had been the mayor of this quartier for seven years, and had lived there all her life. She crouched down and touched the pebbles, struggling to compose herself under the tears that had instantly risen in her eyes. There was so much pale dust; it stuck to her fingers. Then she realised the white limbs she saw in the rubble were not the appendages of statues but the dusted limbs of her constituency.
The new evidence was digested and disseminated. Every dialogue and account was soon accompanied by graphics showing the area before the event, the satellite snapshots of the dust cloud, and then afterwards with the buildings erased and only a hill of detritus in their place.
With all the replaying, and dissipation into new thought vectors, there was a tectonic shift in the civic structure of the World Union. The Will of the people was changing. Penelope Renaud, the mayor of the quartier, was one of the first victims of the civic fallout. With a large portion of her local supporters deceased and the remainder desperate for answers, her status plunged. It would not be long before the Primacy was brought into question and the global governance was reordered.
The Will of the people could change in an instant, theoretically. It only took a significant proportion of the Citizenry to recast their opinions for the hierarchy of society to shift, but there were some unfaltering factors that slowed the pace of change. Firstly, the world being round with half the population awake while the other half slept meant the fastest possible transition from one governing Primacy to another could be twelve hours. The other significant factor in the rate of change was that sixteen billion people had to independently make up their minds. This was not like in the mad old days when people voted for a particular person or faction; choices were not limited to yea or nay or personally vouching for a candidate they would never meet or speak with. Despite the disruption it caused, many people liked to take their time and understand any new choices presented to them.
Citizens contributed the influence of their streams at the detail-level they preferred. For less engaged Citizens the question was always a simple vote of confidence: do you want to keep the current Primacy? And if they didn’t want to decide that for themselves, due to apathy or a humble recognition that others might know better, they could abstain or assign their vote to another person, interest group or voting bloc. Other portions of the population were also accounted for, despite their inability to participate, such as the young and infirm. The Will determined who spoke for the silent proportion, be it teachers or a medical board. Children’s votes were determined by the parent or guardian until the child voiced that they wanted to control their own influence.
Even so, the first influence wave after the manifestation was quick; the fastest change of government since the founding of the civic system. Within a day of the incident, global confidence shifted, determining that the current Primacy were not in control of events and not speaking openly about what had caused the devastation was impeachable. Of course, the standing Primacy could have revealed what they knew, but they were still guided by the Will that had placed them in power; that Will felt the information was best kept restricted and until the Will had selected new representatives this would not change.
The second wave of change came via the passive Will. This wave was bigger and would take longer to flow through. Every mundane decision, from the local pool temperature to arbitrating flight paths, was determined by those who participated, and how much influence they each had. The value of companies and groups rose and fell as people used their services or bought their products. For example, the decision to raise the temperature of the pool affected the support for whatever energy system was in place, which was determined by the ethical and sustainable inclinations of those who took an interest. This gave these collectives a stronger vote to contribute upward in the decision-making tree, forming interest groups for distribution of resources, land rights, research and development; everything.
This hierarchy formed a pyramid of influence that was constantly fluctuating but stable, and accurately reflected the opinions and motivations of the world’s population, or at least the eighty per cent that chose to participate. Since the collapse, or more precisely, since the beginning of the Weave and the spread of the World Union, the focus of the Will had been on rebuilding, bringing the weather under control, health improvements and schooling. Many now felt the threat of the unknown, and perceived that the peaceful tenor of the current decision-making tree was not suitable for confronting an unknown and destructive enemy.
In school assemblies, where students met between classes, they buzzed with expletives while sipping at boosted drinks and swapping notes.
‘Ya all see that?’
‘Cryppy.’
‘Hectic cryppy.’
In the communal halls that stretched their tunnels through the big cities, thousands met with friends and colleagues to pass on the insights they had to offer.
‘My partner’s father said that he has never seen anything like it. And he’s been around a long time; this old guy is pushing one-thirty, though you wouldn’t know it to look at him,’ said a woman to an old friend.
‘And they don’t know who did it?’ her friend asked.
‘Anarchists most likely.’
Even the dymo-gyms with their energeneration machines were filled with people talking as they added juice to the grid.
‘Did you watch the manifestation last night?’ one man asked another man who had a visor over his face.
‘I’m watching it now. I was operating all day and didn’t get out until six.’
‘I didn’t even go to work today. No one did.’
On the open Weave the riot of words never paused. Chatter, blame and hypothesis mixing with rant and rave turned almost every platform into an uncontrollable storm of unfounded propositions.
‘We have t
o start asking the questions. Who did this? Who is responsible for these deaths? And how are we going to stop this happening again?’
~ * ~
It was deep in the night when Ryu Shima first saw the event. He was tall, thin, shaven and patient. On a floating dock, he looked out at a sampan bobbing in the lagoon and the red seconds dropping by in his overlay as his squad approached for collection.
His scheduling was precise. Five seconds until they were in position, fifteen until disarmament, seventeen until the snatch. It was an unusual collection tonight as the small boat was no bigger than one of their armoured suits and they had to approach from underwater. He carefully monitored their heart rates and ceregrams and made notes on their overall performance.
The squad had an agent with them that Ryu had recently processed to solve some behavioural issues. He didn’t approve of using agents — no psi should ever be fully trusted — but when he had to use them, there was a simple maxim to follow in the capturing of psis: use tappers on benders and bots on tappers.
The agent in question had shown hesitation in recent months and, now that he had been reoriented, if he didn’t perform he would be restricted to the islands. Ryu waited and watched the dot that represented Okonta as it approached the boat. For two seconds his cerebral activity flared, normal, but his pulse barely shifted.
‘Clear,’ the agent reported.
The offensive team jumped at the signal and Ryu heard a crack and splash echo across the canals. A moment later the team leader confirmed the target as masked and inert.
‘Well done, Ten. Bring the psi to me and send Okonta back to his capsule.’
‘Yes, sir.’
He opened a private line to the agent. ‘You did well, Okonta. Your behaviour is much improved.’
‘Thank you, Master Shima.’
‘There shall be a reward waiting for you at home.’
‘Thank you, Master Shima.’
At the edge of the dock the water swirled as the armoured units rose up and scrambled onto the landing, forcing the platform to rock back and forth as the new weight settled. One of the soldiers carried a narrow box, like a coffin, on his shoulder and placed it before Ryu.
‘We haven’t done an underwater job since training. That was more fun than I remember,’ the man commented.
‘It isn’t meant to be fun, Three,’ Ryu answered and made a note in his report. ‘That will be all.’
The soldier huddled with the other men and they chattered amongst themselves as Ryu bent over the box to confirm the target’s identity and check her vitals were stable for transportation. He noticed a mark on her arm and with a gloved finger pushed her sleeve back to reveal heavy bruising on her shoulders.
‘Ten, come here. Can you explain these marks?’
The soldier came and looked over Ryu’s shoulder. ‘No, sir. I did not see that. She probably had it before collection.’
‘No. This is fresh. And about the size of a marauder gauntlet, wouldn’t you agree? Who did the collection?’
‘Three, sir.’
‘Have him reprimanded.’
‘But, sir. It was on water —’
‘Thank you, Ten. That will be all.’
Before the man could protest again, an alert came over both their symbiots. Ryu held up a hand to stop the other men speaking. Something was happening in the Dome and he switched his overlay to the incoming scenes.
The squad kept silent, themselves tapping into the Paris footage to watch a dust storm shred the Louvre and the whole quartier become consumed by billows of pale dirt.
Ryu thumbed the verification tab and closed the lid of the box. ‘Process this one and get straight back to base.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Stay alert in case I need you.’
‘Sir, yes, sir.’
~ * ~
There is a rhyme taught to children that is intended to help them learn the basic cause and effect of civic value and Ryu mumbled it to himself as he watched the ebb and tide of the global stream of consciousness.
Jack and Jill went up the hill
To see who was the faster
When Jack broke his crown
His vote went down
And Jill became the master.
Like most, Ryu Shima watched the footage on the Weave with great interest, but his interest was perhaps greater because his value was rising because of the event. As the local enforcer of the Will for the last five years, he had a proven record of effective psi collection and community administration.
Every person in the World Union has what is known as a stream, which logs all their activity on the Weave. Everything they view, endorse or connect to, as well as what is recorded from physical life. Civic status is partially tied to how many other Citizens took an interest in a person’s stream, and to what level.
As more people on the Weave became aware of Ryu’s history and his way of thinking, his vote began to lead the way on a number of categories and issues. He made sure his supporters knew that he was taking an active interest and was attentive to the situation and there was no suppressing it now; the Primacy had seriously erred. He found the clip from the Dome satellite feed particularly riveting. Overlays calculated the measurements and readings as the dust stretched down Rue de Rivoli. A tornado of unknown force that reached over five hundred metres. Such a demonstration of power was unprecedented.
He had his suspicions about what had taken place. The lack of forensic evidence left only one possibility: a psionic attack. As his position elevated, his permission level rose and his stream could now access the reports and minutes from the undisciplined Pierre Jnr hunt which, as far as he could tell, had provoked this violent eruption in one of the Dome’s most venerated areas.
The psi’s file made light, but interesting, reading. One capture and one escape, then managing to stay off Services’ radar for two decades. Despite his alpha-type, Peter Lazarus had remained hidden and inactive until he was thirty-five. Everything about this case was feeling wrong.
For the first time in decades there was no recorded evidence of an attack. No pictures, no sound, no footage ... nothing that revealed the source. No direct recording of history. There was one satellite view that showed little more than a smudge on a screen, and there were erratic testimonies from witnesses who were on the edge of the event; all of those closer were dead or incoherent.
Had this group really found the mythical boy? Or was this the psi rebellion Ryu had been expecting his whole life? It seemed an odd coincidence that within weeks of a psi fugitive volunteering himself they managed to locate Pierre Jnr. After the boy had been eight years in hiding, they drew him out almost instantly? It was more likely that this Peter Lazarus had led them into a trap.
It was as piecemeal an operation as he’d ever seen and he knew that there was really only one person suitable for the job of stopping Pierre Jnr, and that was himself. He was divided between the need for rest and the need to study. The decision was made for him as more and more information became unrestricted for him. He experienced repeated satori as his world was widened a jump at a time.
~ * ~
The Shimas were an old family, well established, able to trace their heritage back to before the collapse. Even before the Dark Age passed, the family was flourishing and Shima Palace was the biggest single structure in Yantz.
There were eight levels to the palace. The top two floors were reserved for the Alpha of House Shima, Yoshiko Shima, and her partner and Regent, Hachiro; Ryu’s mother and father. Ryu occupied the third floor from the top, followed by his sister Sato and then his brother Takashi on the fifth level down. The next two levels were for the extended family who had more shifting statuses, and two more siblings who were yet to come of age.
At 3.14 a.m., Yantz time, Ryu’s value rose enough to trigger his family’s civic insurance and a guard team stationed themselves around the palace and outside his door. He hailed them through his symbiot and verifi
ed their identifications. It was then he started calling people.
He knew his brother would be awake already — Takashi never really slept. He took naps between functions, for data to compile and render, or to digest information in his brain. The Shima brothers had trained together as boys, and Ryu often relied on Takashi to run data and even access information that neither of them were officially privy to.
Ryu connected through to his younger brother and was glad he hadn’t visited in person. There were many ways in which the two were not alike, hygiene and lifestyle amongst them.
Cannabis was not the only flora bent into new species over the last century of do-it-yourself genetic farming, but it was the most popular one for bio-inventors and it now existed in such diversity that everything descended from the original plant was referred to as mesh. Chew it, smoke it or let it dry in a canister under your nose; each method had a different effect. Takashi was hooked on it and the only time he left his room was when the family forced him to be involved or when his horniness drove him to expand his harem and go doll shopping.
The Hunt for Pierre Jnr Page 9