Citizen Pariah (Unreal Universe Book 3)

by Lee

  “Kinda.” Garth pretended as if he was driving and Ute resumed focusing on the road. “Anyways, Michael Knight, talking car named KITT and crime-fighting…”

  A Quiet Word

  Si Jane Paulson expected it would be a long time before she grew accustomed to –not only the new powers her office held- but also simply being out in the open; as short as a month ago, the Bureau of Examination had been one of the better-kept secrets in the system. Naturally, there were people in high office who’d always known, but they’d been smart enough to pretend BoE hadn’t existed. As a secret Bureau, they’d enjoyed anonymity of the purest sort. Out in the open, everything the Ministry accumulated would now make those same powerful men and women sweat.

  Yes, yes, BoE’s primary mandate had always been to sift through endless reams of data hurtling through the world’s netLINK servers in an attempt to construct real-time avatar awareness of impending crime and disaster. And yes, they’d been tasked with the effort of watching the people deployed to deal with hotspots and crimes and all of that, but a side effect of so much connectivity and accumulation of information was the eventual unearthing of dark secrets. Things the Chairwoman’s teams of investigators missed. Things the Chairwoman wanted to know but didn’t want anyone else to know. Hidden, BoE’s secrets were ‘unknowable’. Revealed, MoE’s knowledge became dangerous.

  Years ago, when it’d become apparent that people –every person, rich or poor, powerful or weak, intelligent of foolish- paid scant attention to what they did and said through the prote, Paulson had been stricken with a crisis of conscience. She remembered it quite well, dithering over whether she should make a report to the Chairwoman concerning the moral duplicity her avatars had started discovering.

  In the end, she’d alerted the Chairwoman out of loyalty. Loyalty to the Regime and loyalty to the mandate of the office: watch, but never interfere. Never act. At the end of the day, it wasn’t up to Jane Paulson who did what to who or why, but it bloody well was up to her to make sure the act was catalogued.

  That was then and this was now.

  The elevation from Commander in a Bureau to a Minister required a small amount of pomp and circumstance. To the world, she was Si Jane Paulson, Minister of Examination, and her job, the job of her Ministry, was to examine everything that happened on Hospitalis. Same job, same duties, just out in the open. And as they watched, so too would they be watched by everyone else.

  Picking her way through the high-level avatars that’d been preventing her from fully undoing OverSecretary Terrance’s colossal mistake with Garth Nickels, Jane laughed. Her teams had started up a small bet when they’d found out they were being honored by the Chairwoman; half the people in the office believed everyone would behave. The other half thought the opposite.

  Sadly, opposite it’d been. Latelians were quirky. There were sis and sas out there saying the weirdest things on their prote, visiting the strangest sites, suggesting the most awful things to their friends. In short, they were testing the system. Because no one, no one, believed they were ‘just being watched’.

  Jane muttered nonsensically at the mess in the ‘LINKs. It was a treacherous pass, to be sure. A one in a hundred million collision of overwhelmingly rare circumstances had rendered Garth Nickels invisible to their cameras.

  The door opened quietly. Jane looked up, hoping it was Si Tonya with coffee.

  Instead, Jane’s hand was slapping down on the panic button beside her terminal before she’d consciously identified the intruder.

  “In about one minute, two God soldiers will tear through the walls, sa, and pull your head right off your neck.” Jane smiled ruefully. “I may have to convince them that I am not a threat, but I’m fairly confident I’m up for the task. You will not. Naturally, I will then have to explain myself to the Chairwoman. Either way, you will be dead. I have no issue with that.”

  “Oh,” Hamilton Barnes said softly, “of that I have no doubt, Si Paulson.” The Chairwoman’s attack dog seated himself across from the newest Minister to grace the halls of the Chair.

  Jane’s stomach churned and quivered. Her brain told her to run, but her legs refused to cooperate. She slapped the button again, harder. Where were the soldiers and the screaming and the holes in her walls? One of the Chairwoman’s flunkies had assured her that security for MoE was being taken very seriously and that even the slightest pressure on the button would bring soldiers running. They weren’t even very far away; in fact, with Martial Law just around the corner, Jane knew there were ten Goddies within five minutes of their new downtown offices.

  “I am afraid the button won’t work, si.” Hamilton said apologetically. “I need a quiet word, and God soldiers are anything but quiet.”

  Jane hit the button one last time in the desperate hope that it’d work. She pouted. “My people?”

  Hamilton held up a hand. “They are fine, si. They are working like industrious bees, tabulating, recording and assessing the crimes of the people as ever. What do you do with the secrets you uncover?”

  “That’s restricted information, sa.” Jane settled back into her chair, eyeing the avatars on her Screens. She was so close to making Garth Nickels visible to the world. So close. “How did you get past them?”

  Hamilton tilted his head to one side. “Have you not checked your docket for this morning?” he asked softly. “You have an appointment for right now.”

  “I don’t do appointments. This Ministry reports to one person and one person only, and answers no questions from any source.” Jane retorted, opening up the calendar function on her prote. “I …”

  There was a name on her calendar, and it was for right now.

  “When confronted with the obvious truth of my appointment, even the most security-minded of your staff let me in.” Hamilton explained. “A facet of their implicit trust to ‘LINKs I would work on correcting, if I were you, Si Paulson.”

  “Our ‘LINKs are unassailable, Sa … Barnes.” Jane’s stomach –already a riot of conflicting desires- plummeted. She felt her face go sickly green and cold to the touch. A faint, flickering smile crossed the man’s lips. “You … you aren’t real.”

  Hamilton gestured, and Jane’s Screens burst to life with footage from News4You. He knew the scenes well; he’d been watching them almost continuously since his resurrection. He was sickened and outraged at the Chairwoman’s decision to implement the Gunboys, and even more disparaging of the OverCommander’s willingness to carry on. “Neither are these, and yet, here we are, Si Jane Paulson, Minister of Examination.”

  Once upon a time, in the very earliest days of the Bureau’s existence, Jane had found a … a blip. A microscopic hiccup of non-data, a weird inverted burp of … silence that’d been at the center of a slaughterhouse. She’d passed the information to the then Commander for BoE, who’d greedily claimed the discovery for himself.

  Two days later, another silent blip. This time, around a car crash claiming the lives of her supervisor and his entire family. That day, Jane Paulson had programmed their avatars to discard any microscopic bursts of anti-data. The day after that, she’d been elevated to Commander. Jane wasn’t a fool. There were secrets out there that needed keeping. The man sitting before her, plain as day was perhaps the greatest secret of all. The Most Loyal Man. In her office.

  “There … there are whispers about you in the intelligence community.” Jane stammered at last, unable to think. Hamilton smiled that sad smile of his again.

  “What is it they say about me, Si Paulson?”

  “They call you The Most Loyal Man.” That one always confused her. The system was full of loyal men. “And the Chair’s Attack Dog. Among other things.”

  Hamilton laughed at that. “I certainly am on a leash, though I find myself in possession of a rather long one this time around, Si Paulson. What else do they say?”

  “They … they say that you are allowed to do whatever you want in pursuit of protecting the Chair’s interests.” Jane hit the button again. She didn
’t know what else to do. She toyed with the idea of screaming, but the solid look of determination that carried over the man’s curiously sad countenance suggested she not.

  “And how do you feel about this … freedom?”

  Jane bit her lip. Freedom was a funny thing in Latelyspace. You were free to do whatever you wanted so long as the Chair told you you were allowed. The funny part about the whole thing was sometimes you didn’t know what you weren’t allowed to do until you’d already gone and done it. In her mind, Jane summoned half a dozen inexplicable crime scenes of unparalleled violence containing at their core ‘The Barnes Blip’.

  “You … you are free to serve the Chair, Sa Barnes.” Jane nodded. It sounded like a good answer. It was undeniable that the course of this conversation could very well dictate the length of her life.

  Hamilton applauded, reveling in the feel of his new hands. He’d been so very old at the end there, with that stomping death. His new body was remarkable. The Chair’s legendary assassin wondered at the effort both Alyssa and Hollyoak had undertaken to modify his resurrection chamber. Chairs and scientists had been trying for centuries to upgrade the system only to fail. For the first time since the beginning, Hamilton Barnes was excited about what he could do.

  “That is a very good answer, Si Paulson.” Hamilton leaned back in his chair. He read through a few lines of the secrets the MoE avatars and their human components were uncovering. The world was rife with deception and secrets. “A very good answer.”

  “Why … why are you here?”

  “To determine the extent of your loyalty, si. When you and I sat together in the Chairwoman’s outer offices, your proteus inadvertently detected the ‘LINK signals emanating from my body.” Hamilton smiled apologetically. “I apologize for that. This new flesh has a tumult of secrets and I am not yet master of them all.”

  “I … I won’t say anything.” Jane stammered, close to tears. She hated that about herself. For a woman with a theoretically endless source of power, she often cried at the drop of a hat. She bet the Chairwoman never cried, not about anything.

  Hamilton allowed a thin smile to cross his lips. “Excellent. Another good answer. You have learned the lessons of office very well in a remarkably short period. I am impressed.”

  “Good. I am glad.” Jane rose, gesturing towards the door. It was a tactic she’d learned from watching old videos of the Chairwoman dealing with functionaries. It inevitably got mulish sis and sas motoring towards the door before they even knew what was happening.

  It didn’t work on Hamilton Barnes. The terrifying man sat there, glowering at his hands, then just as abruptly, eyed her like a predator. What science could make a man like this? What did he mean by ‘this new flesh’? She went back to her chair, confused about … everything.

  “But who are you loyal to, Si Paulson?” Hamilton folded his hands in his lap. “Or perhaps I should add ‘what’ to the question.” He nodded. “Yes. Who or what in this system are you loyal to, Si Paulson.”

  “I … I don’t understand the question, Sa Barnes.” It was hard to think when all she could think of was trying to claw her way through one of the walls to freedom.

  Hamilton nodded, allowing that it was undoubtedly the first time anybody’s loyalty had been questioned in precisely that manner.

  What Hamilton wanted from Si Jane Paulson was an answer to a question that had been plaguing him since he’d risen this morning.

  Barnes clarified. “Are you loyal to the Chair, the Chairwoman or Latelyspace?”

  Jane wanted to ask what the difference was, but in a burst of insight saw quite clearly that a wrong answer would end her life. Mind working anxiously, Jane examined each option as quickly as she dared.

  The Chair was the foundation of rule. It was an idea. You could be loyal to an idea. At the end of the day, every type of government in existence was nothing more than an idea that people –more or less- agreed to believe in. Invariably, all of those people asked one person to be the idea.

  The person who sat in the Chair was the physical representation of the idea. You could easily be loyal to the person; you didn’t get to be Chairperson by not following the ideals set down by the original Chairman. It just didn’t happen. The checks and balances, the systems and laws … all of that prevented the wrong person from sitting down and taking over.

  But if there was one thing that Jane Paulson had learned in MoE was that people did the wrong thing all the time. They did it as easily as breathing. People –Latelians most of all- weren’t stupid. Any rational human being who'd navigated from childhood to adulthood knew –to within a few degrees of responsibility- what was right and what was wrong and still … still they chose wrong. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes because they thought they couldn’t do any better, sometimes because doing the right thing seemed bloody impossible. The Chairwoman was no different.

  Jane’s eyes flicked from the curiously complacent grey eyes in Hamilton Barnes’ head to the Screens, where Gunboys were frozen in the act of pummeling a Trinityspace cyborg of terrible power.

  Hamilton smiled. He was in the presence of a wondrous moment. A woman was waking up. A thrill washed through the fresh meat of his body.

  Jane let her mind wander down the new path that’d suddenly presented itself. The Chair was the idea and the Chairperson was the physical representation of that idea, but … but the people allowed the idea to persist. She blinked, her brain slamming into her skull for all it was worth.

  They lived in a Regime, though. The Chairwoman had all the power. She possessed the Prometheus Device and she had access to the theoretical First Main. She had the ear of the OverCommander and the Watergate Men and the Sigma. There was nothing she could not do, should she will it to be so.

  Without people, though, there was just a woman on a chair. Last night, on systemic television, Chairwoman Doans had announced her ultimate goal, the reasons behind her discourse with the Trinity Representatives. Space. They needed space to grow and to live. She was doing as she’d done for the people.

  “I … am loyal to the people, Sa.” Jane blinked back a tear. She felt like she’d done something wrong and couldn’t turn back. Her life had been easier following the rule of the Chair. “Without people, the Chair is just a chair.”

  “A rather uncomfortable one at that, Si Jane.” Hamilton said wryly. “In Trinityspace, they say ‘heavy is the head that wears the crown’. Here in Latelyspace, one could just as easily say ‘sore is the ass that sits in the chair’.”

  Laughter poured out of her. Bright, glorious laughter. She’d passed a test. Possibly the test. For the rest of her life, Jane Paulson would know what it was like to look death in the eye and to laugh with it. With him. “Now what?”

  Hamilton pointed his chin at the Screens. “Would a woman loyal to the people –dictator or not- reveal something as hideous as these … Gunboys? Would she even allow them? I have replayed the footage a thousand, a hundred thousand times, Si Jane, and in the listening, I have heard those two men cry in anguish.”

  Jane shuddered at the memory of those piteous bellows. Worse still, the last frantic seconds of the one Gunboy’s life, where it’s … his … comrade had reacted with obvious, desperate concern.

  Hamilton continued after Jane sighed. “No man, no matter how loyal, should be asked to endure such a crime. No person should look at the Gunboy Project and think ‘this is wise, this is good, this will help us grow’. Yes, we live in a Regime, yes, our lives are not our own, no, we do not need to know everything, no we should not be given free and autonomous control over our own lives. Humanity is –at the best of times- barely capable of choosing the right breakfast foods to eat. Our moral compass points directly at ourselves nearly one hundred percent of the time, Si Jane, and so yes, a Regime leader, a Chairperson does need to exist, to guide us with a firm hand, a resolute hand, like a mother or father would for an unruly child. Without that guidance, we would burn down our homes inside a week.”

  He wille
d the News4You footage to resume. As the Gunboys tried to murder Chadsik al-Taryin, he continued. “These Gunboys are not representative of what Latelyspace needs, Si Jane. We, the people, trust in the Chair, trust in the Chairwoman, trust her to do what we need doing. As a child would trust mama and dada to raise us up right. That trust has been abused. As you … as everyone has seen. What parent would want their offspring to grow into such beasts?”

  Jane ignored the tears running down her face. It seemed to be a day for crying after all. “You are speaking of treason, sa.”

  “I am?” Hamilton tilted his head to one side, read through the avatar data Jane had been working on before he’d walked into the room. “What do you think I am suggesting?”

  “A coup. The only person capable of legally engineering one is the OverSecretary. Any other discussion of ousting the legitimate Chairperson is tantamount to treason.”

  “You misunderstand me, Si. I want Chairwoman Doans right where she is. Her goals for Latelyspace are, in their own way, exactly what we need. She is not wrong. We do need to grow. Though her loyalty vacillates, the Chairwoman’s endgame needs to remain. This planet alone plays home to more than thirty billion people. In many instances, this is more than some systems in Trinityspace. What I need is something more … esoteric.”

  “I … I don’t … what do you want, then?”

  Hamilton smiled again. “The man. Nickels. He is a lodestone, Si Jane, a lodestone of change and a harbinger of destiny. Of this, I am certain. The Chairwoman imagines him to be a great destructor, an agent of chaos, a tool for Trinity’s own dark plans. Recently, I have had my horizons expanded. I have learned a thing, Si Jane, and it is this: Without chaos, there can be no order. Without destruction, no growth. Death brings life.”

  Jane laughed again, this time with scorn. “Sa Nickels is at the center of every major catastrophe this planet has experienced since he made planetfall nearly two months ago, Sa Hamilton. I think you are mistaken.”