by Erik Tabain
Through crowd-decisions and the limits that became socially and publicly acceptable, and through many technological changes, the CX-44 laser gun became the common form of personal defense weapon—the two-mode gun with stun and kill features—controlled and authorized by Biocrime and with the kill functions that were available to less than one per cent of the population.
Drug-fueled street rats like Gavin Pinkston were social catastrophes in-the-waiting—access to guns for these people made them lethal killing machines and once they smelled the blood of their victims, there was no turning back.
At 9:00 hours, when all guns were deactivated, there was still no let up. To be sure, the guns were silenced, but the combination of drugs, hallucinations, vengeance and the knowledge of being able to act with impunity, was still a destructive force.
Pinkston was dead, but there were many others that were picking up where he left off, appropriating any weapons they could find: wooden pickets, iron bars, sharp objects, knives and, if they could lift them, broken concrete slabs and rocks.
There was still a large danger on the streets but, without access to guns, the balance of power shifted to a more even keel. Technocrats could now defend themselves again, and take out the more destructive elements surrounding them. And without guns on the streets, Biocrime could now activate their retrieval services and reclaim San Francisco, street by street.
Within an hour of the guns falling silent and through their personal private networks, Biocrime headquarters had authorized the release of their tank services from their barracks on the outskirts of San Francisco—these were the most expensive services Biocrime had, and all partakers and contributors to the clean-up would be paid in arrears, once the streets had been cleared up and Lifebook was back on line.
There were four hundred and seventy security tanks available to Biocrime, each with around fifteen service officers and robocops—a task force of over seven thousand—and all were navigating their way through the city, beginning from the perimeters and working a pathway through to the center. They couldn’t be a match for the million or so citizens on the streets armed with laser guns, but now the gun threat had been entirely removed, violent miscreants and street rats were easy pickings for these large tanks.
They positioned themselves on the outskirts of the city and moved through in a web-like structure. Each tank monitored hot spots throughout the city and their surveillance sensors pushed the other four hundred and sixty-nine tanks into a different direction all over the city, to the next available problem spot. It was a massive co-ordination process, and while most of their actions were ultra vires—they killed with impunity—they had a job to do and had to restore order as quickly as possible.
All of the actions of the security officers and robocops were visually recorded as they went ahead with their work—they had to if they wanted to recoup the massive costs of this operation through crowd-funding—and beamed back to Biocrime headquarters.
Looking out from his level fifty-six vantage point, Don Capone inspected the street damage with his high-powered telephoto lenses, and there were more access points appearing on his large lightscreen, where he could call up visuals from any of the four hundred and seventy tanks on the streets.
It wasn’t pretty: he motioned up one screen from Tank 386, in the heart of downtown San Francisco—there were thirteen Biocrime agents rounding up a team of street punks. They disarmed all thirteen of their appropriated weapons and shot them on the spot, moved their bodies to the side of the street, and moved on to the next location. So much for the ‘do not kill’ motto of Biocrime.
In essence, Biocrime’s actions now were to stop the violence, and clean up the streets, but it was also a message to others that the uprising had failed and there were consequences if they didn’t desist, disassemble and go back home to their apartments.
While he was viewing incidents from the streets on his large lightscreen, Capone summoned up research documents published several centuries ago by the medical journal, Lancet, relating to the psychological affects of universal income levels on the citizenry, income differentiation and collective punishment and crime. He was working on new strategies to implement after the uprising was put down—he didn’t want to get ahead of himself, but he was confident by the end of the week, this would be all be over, Lifebook would be back online, and the clean-up operations and rebuilding of the social system could commence.
He was also confident because he could tell through the global Biocrime intel, that the uprising was almost non-existent in many other parts of the world, and the few hotspots were it did flourish in Los Angeles, New York and London had been quelled, mainly through a loss of interest from the populace, and stronger security presence in the field.
He looked over to Officer Dyson—it was early afternoon and she hasn’t slept for thirty-six hours. He’d had his power naps, topped up with synth coffee, but she was the real trooper.
“You’re not tired?” asked Capone.
“Of course I am,” Officer Dyson responded, eyes glued to her lightscreen. “Wouldn’t you if you hadn’t slept for almost two days? I’ll take a nap when the time is right.”
“Any updates? I’ve got the vision coming through from our tanks in the field. It’s hard to watch, but since the guns went down, we’ve made a lot of progress.”
“Well, I’ve got nothing that you haven’t got on screen. I’ve just got a summary of what’s happening on the ground—one-hundred and fifty-K dead, Biocrime doing their sweep through now—probably another ten thousand dead from that action. We’re still working on getting Lifebook back—probably three or four more days for that.”
“And any updates on Katcher?”
“No, he’s disappeared, the cowardly cunt,” Officer Dyson said nonchalantly. “He might have been killed but we’re not sure. We’ve picked up an I.D. on the location of Scanlen and Renalda—nothing on them in our archive—as we expected—but they’re gone. Dead. I’ll get the scans up for you.”
The cowardly cunt. Capone focused on those words—he didn’t need a supreme genius to realize that was the Biocrime propaganda campaign against Katcher in a nutshell. Not exactly those words, but the sentiment. If Katcher was still alive, and they captured him, he’d be set up as a traitor who left his cause, left the battle to others to fight on his behalf, and scurried off like a rat in the ranks. He spoke to rally his troops for all of one minute and, when the going got tough, he sought shelter, rather than fight from the front. It wasn’t the real story, but it would become a brilliant entrée into the propaganda war against Katcher.
If Katcher was still alive, once the crowd-trials were set up, Capone could see massive revenues coming in for Biocrime and a high rating in the verdict. And, for Capone, a possible move to level fifty-seven, or even higher.
“I’ve got this report almost completed,” Capone said. “Let’s go up and see Luanda in about thirty minutes and after that, you can have a nap. And that’s an order.”
“Okay, captain. I’ll get my work ready and we’ll shoot on up.”
The elevator up to the penthouse was a steely cubical, no frills, and a basic design. It was only another four levels up but Capone noticed the streamlined look of the steel and the platinum finishes. He rarely took notice of the details, but today he felt was on the verge of a grand achievement, and challenged himself to appreciate the finer points of the interiors. These were all common features of modern architecture—sleek finishes to streamline thought processes and productivity. Neutral colors to avoid influence of thinking and workflow in any way: an extension of the feng shui in his own office, the type of thinking Biocrime wanted. Clear and pure results without interference.
Luanda greeted Capone and Officer Dyson once they came out of the elevator: she was a lot more satisfied than yesterday and the pathway to a solution was much clearer today, even though there was still a massive amount of work that needed to be completed before she could claim success.
“It’s looking much
better than yesterday,” Luanda said. “I’m up to speed on all the facts, but let’s hear what our next steps are straight from the horse’s mouth.”
“The guns have been deactivated,” Officer Dyson responded. “That was a big step—ahead of time at nine o’clock this morning. We estimate there’ll be up to two-hundred-thousand killed on the streets—because the guns had high killing rates, there won’t be too many serious injuries on top of that, so there’ll be lower follow-up medical costs—that’s an issue for BioMed anyway.”
“Lifebook—that’s the big one—when’s that coming back on?” asked Luanda.
“We estimate three more days—the big issue was getting the guns deactivated, and we’ve now got all the tanks from the outskirts of the city into field. That’s pretty much stabilized the situation, but it will take a few more days to clear out the riff-raff.”
“And the other big one—Katcher—any sign of him?”
“No, not yet. No sign of him dead or alive. If he’s dead, we’ll locate his body when Lifebook comes back online. If he’s still alive, that’s something we’ll have to work out later.”
“Don, what about that surveillance stalker you had on the case—Lestre?”
“She’s our best,” Capone said. “But, like everyone else, she can’t do much until Lifebook comes back online.”
“Well, authorize her to make a posting for the capture of Katcher—if he’s still alive. And money, what about the money?”
“We’ll work out the strategy—which we’ll test through a confidential focal group—but the essence of it is to depict Katcher as the deserter, the useless cunt that tried to set up a revolution the second time around, couldn’t his act together and, when the going got tough, he fled.”
“Anything else?” asked Luanda.
“Another recommendation is to tithe the universal income for natural humans in the San Francisco region—it’s collective punishment for Katcher’s actions, destroy his legacy, and incite hatred for Katcher among humans and Technocrats too—the guy who failed the revolution, has now caused their living standards and income to drop, as well causing the destruction of half of the city. It’s an argument we can’t lose.”
“And the other major issue—the leaker in our own ranks?”
“Lestre and her team will be onto that as well—we were down to checking our last fifty security officers, but that was before the uprising. These will be big crowd-trials, but if we can get the source of the trade of secrets, this will be the biggest ever—the source of revenue will more than pay for the destruction on the streets, and a handsome windfall for Biocrime.”
“And maybe a windfall for Captain Capone and Officer Dyson,” Luanda said. “Thank you for your work. It’s not quite time to start measuring up curtains in the upstairs floor, but there’s always the possibility of a move.”
Banda and Katcher slept for as long as they needed to, but Katcher was the last one to arise and he groggily woke up to see Banda seated at the end of her mattress, sipping on a synth coffee.
“How’s your shoulder?”
“Still hurting and burning,” Katcher said. “Much better than last night, but still hurting.”
“How many nanomeds did you take?”
“The three high-powered ones, two for the shoulder, one for the lump.”
“You might need a bit more to top you up. A synth for you?”
Katcher nodded. He needed an upper after the drowsiness caused by the nanomeds. The pills he took were the more advanced onset nanomeds, the strongest form available. They were a concoction of narcotics to ease the pain, but also relaxed the body so all of its energy went into tissue repair. While Katcher slept, the nanobots in the pills travelled through his bloodstream, working on his injured shoulder and facial lump.
The facial lump was left alone—that would heal itself over time, and localized pain killers and disinfectants were released to stabilize the wound. The shoulder was where the main damage was, and the nanobots inspected and repaired the internal damage. Luckily for Katcher, it was mainly muscle damage and because the laser bullets he received were ricocheted, they only went two inches into body.
While he slept, and once the nanobots had completed their internal repair and diagnostics, they sent a laser signal to a small medical robot in the Anika-6 medical room to start up and patch up the external work. About the size of a child’s hand, the medical robot resembled a wafer-thin metallic spider, similar to a large cellar spider. It walked along the ground, climbed onto Katcher’s sleeping body, positioned itself on his left shoulder and started to perform the needlework required to close up the wound.
The sutures surrounding the wound were precise and perfectly formed, a total of eight stitches. His shoulder would be sore for a few more days, but the nanopills ensured that he’d make a full recovery.
The small leftover team at Anika-6 was setting up the links between their private data systems and the outside world—they only had the remnants of the Biocrime surveillance system through their personal private network, but it was enough to let them know the uprising and their actions to implement it had failed.
Banda brought the synth coffee over to Katcher’s resting place and sat down next to him, her body language suggesting a half-way point between defeated disappointment and delusion.
“We acted too soon,” Banda said. “Too soon.”
“You can’t just keep waiting for the right moment,” says Katcher, “you have to act when you can.”
Banda rightly felt like it was the end of the world but Katcher tried to enthuse her with the same words he used with Newton the night before.
“Every revolution has its time and place Greta. This might have been fucked up this time around, but see it as a testing ground. The work that we’ve done will make it easier for the next group of people. And the next people after that.
“We’re just a passing part of this, just like all the people before us over the past thousand years. Our time will come.”
“But we won’t be part of it,” Banda said. “I wanted to see this happen, and I wanted to see it happen now.”
“Well, just imagine if there was a group of people three hundred years ago that achieved what we have today,” Katcher said, “our role would be so much easier. Consider it a gift to our future generations.”
“If there is a future generation,” Banda said. “If Biocrime catch us, that’s it, we’re mincemeat. Off to that fucking stupid island in New Zealand.”
“It might not get to that. We’ve got a few more days here; let’s recover, recuperate and work out our next steps.”
Katcher let his thoughts drift. Always the optimist, he saw the actions over the past few days as a victory, and would continue to do this. It was partially the effects of the narcotics from the nanopills, combined with the synthetic coffee, that were giving Katcher the ability to think clearly, but he felt powerful, even if this power was buoyed up by opiates and self-delusion. He would ponder and think for several hours before fading back into a deep sleep. He would also recuperate, for sure, but there was another series of dramas to follow, just around the corner.
Book 4: End Of Memory
“We are the offspring of metropolitan annihilation and destruction, of the war of all against all, of the conflict of each individual with every other individual, of a system governed by fear.”
—Ulrike Meinhof
Twenty-Six
Taking back San Francisco
Don Capone looked out over the San Franciscan horizon, a sight he could never get sick of. It was day five of the uprising, but as the on-ground surveillance became more complete and more sophisticated, he could see the progress of the operations. It wasn’t quite time to instigate the clean-up: the first task was to restore order on the streets, and while there were still many skirmishes on the streets, San Francisco was a city of thirty million and to reach this level of progress within five days was still quite an achievement.
“We’ve got to update Luanda
in about forty minutes,” Capone said to Officer Dyson. “Progress on Lifebook? Still a few days away?”
“You’ve got it,” Officer Dyson replied. “This has been the fastest development of apps, bots, algorithms, hand coding—you name it—I’ve ever seen.”
“You’d hope so. How many thousand people are working on it?”
“The hack damaged quite a lot in Lifebook and Biocrime, including back-ups. And back-ups of the back-ups. All this predictive stuff, binary and trinary code. We’re doing well, but still a few more days to go.”
“How many more days do we have to listen to Katcher’s shit for?” asked Capone. “At least we can bypass a lot of it up here. Down there? I’d be ripping up a few of those screens too. It must be like waterboarding torture.”
“It goes hand in hand,” Officer Dyson said. “When we get Lifebook back up, that’s when Katcher’s stuff comes down as well. And then we can start work on finding him, who’s behind this, and finding the mole within Biocrime—that’s if it’s just the one.”
Capone and Officer Dyson collated their data, and hurried up the elevator up to Luanda’s penthouse office. They exited the elevator into a full meeting with all the ‘second-in-charges’, support staff, tacticians, strategists—Luanda, as usual, was heading the table and, by now, there were around forty people in the conference room.
“Friends,” Luanda started, “we’re starting to get on top of this crisis, the biggest to hit our city, and the world, in over forty years. We hope to have Lifebook and Biocrime profiling back online within two days, the streets have been stabilized and then the clean-up operation begins. And, of course, the small task of finding Jonathan Katcher, and all the people behind the uprising.