Freedom Incorporated

by Peter Tylee

  The ’31 Ford Fairmont Future Dan had chosen, or the ‘Triple-F’as everybody knew it, hummed when the kick-start blundered onto the ignition frequency. The dash came alive, displaying all manner of useless information.

  “Finally,” Dan muttered, tossing the kick-start onto the floor. He selected reverse on the t-bar, floored the accelerator, and was thrust against his seatbelt restraint.

  Jen stifled one shout of surprise when the car lurched back and another when Dan swung the wheel, spinning the car to face the exit.

  The Raven clutched his opportunity to attack and sprinted after them, emptying his clip of toxic ammunition at the Ford. He wanted to shoot the tyres, or the passengers, or… something, anything. But glass was no match for the full-metal-jacket car. It was fine for puncturing flesh but it had little penetration power. He swore luridly and cursed his omen, which had forbidden him to use metal bullets.

  Dan shifted the t-bar and stomped on the accelerator. There was a whirring sound when the engine fired before the transmission engaged the gears, and for one incongruous moment he thought they’d just sit there, red-lining the engine until it exploded in a puff of smoke.

  A glass pellet shattered his right side mirror just as the linkage collected the correct gear, forcing them into their seats amidst the sound of screeching tyres. It’s certainly got grunt,Dan thought as he flicked on the high beam to compensate for the dim lights in the car park. He was swivelling the wheel without slowing down, avoiding the many concrete pylons as he followed the twists and turns to the exit.

  The speedometer crept up to 190, then 210, and Dan kept the accelerator to the floor until the car was travelling at 260 kph. Then he eased off. The Triple-F was fast, perhaps not fast enough to out-sprint the more recreational vehicles in Elustra’s car park, but it felt exhilarating none the less.The Ford’s tachometer was reading 6,000 and it red-lined at 6,500. He didn’t want to push it any harder; he wasn’t feeling that lucky.

  He turned onto a main traffic artery and quickly overtook three slower vehicles that were at least making pretence of obeying the posted speed limit. It took him a while to recognise he was on the highway heading north, toward his boyhood home of Albury where his parents still lived.

  Jen watched him from the corner of her eye, gripping the seat to steady her racing heart. She’d never driven a car; she’d only travelled in one twice, and never at such a terrifying speed. Danwas tense, nervously scanning the mirror for any signs of pursuit. Five minutes and 20 kilometres later, he relaxed a little and slowed their car to a more respectable pace.

  So, with the thrill of their escape subsiding, Jen began to wonder just who her mysterious saviour thought he was.

  *

  The Raven spat in disgust.

  A stray dog chose that most unfortunate moment to trot through the car park, playfully waging its tail. It stared at the black-clad warrior with its big brown eyes, panting. The Raven felt nothing that even bordered on affection for the canine. It repulsed him. He raised his Redback and aimed it at the spot between the puppy’s eyes.

  Unaware of the danger, the stray continued wagging and panting, and its tongue slid happily from the side of its mouth.

  He didn’t do it.

  There was a skerrick of humanity left in his brain after all.And that repulsed him more than anything – repulsed what he was becoming.

  *

  Jen considered her situation.

  It didn’t look good no matter which way she looked at it. A bounty hunter was tracking her. Only me?She worried about Samantha, who was probably still in the mall with the monster. Okay, a new identity.She had difficulty grasping what that meant. She gave herself a new identity every month – a different microchip in the little box she always carried in her pocket. No, not enough.Her mouth took on a sour expression as it dawned on her what she’d have to do. A new city, a new life, probably no more activism.The realisation hit hard and sunk her good mood. The sudden shift was even more painful because it followed so soon after her recent elation.

  And what of him?She turned to examine his profile. What’s his story?

  “Who are you?” Her voice was barely above a whisper, shock and depression sapping her strength.

  “My name’s Dan Sutherland,” was all he offered.

  A bit robot-like isn’t he?“Yeah?” She snorted indelicately. “Well that’s good to know.” What’ve you been smoking Dan?Then she mentally disciplined herself and promised to keep all future sarcasm to herself. He did just save my life.

  “I suppose I should say thank you.”

  Dan took his eyes off the road for long enough to cast Jen a quick look. “Why do you suppose that?”

  “Because you saved my life.” But Jen was still trying to unravel the mysteries she knew were lurking beneath the surface of life’s latest twist, so she added, “At least, I think you did.”

  That elicited a smile. He even laughed, briefly. “Well if you feel grateful then by all means, thank away.”

  “Thank you.”

  And that surprised him; Dan never thought she’d actually say the words. It didn’t fit with the profile he’d memorised.

  “So who was that?” Jen jerked a thumb over her shoulder and made another attempt to brush the glass from her jeans. She was alarmed to note that several fragments had slipped down her blouse, ending up in her bodice-like undershirt. More were glistening in Dan’s hair. I must have some in mine too, she thought. Wisely heeding Dan’s warning, she abstained from brushingthem out. It was sure to end with splinters embedded in her skin.

  “That,” Dan said, “was the Raven.”

  He said it with such dramatic aplomb that she smiled.

  Dan felt the need to defend himself. “You may think it’s amusing but I assure you he’s no laughing matter. That’s what he calls himself; it’s his call-sign.He never uses anything else; I don’t think he even hasa real name. He isthe Raven. Twenty-four by seven.”

  “And he’s trying to kill me.”

  “Yes,” Dan confirmed. “As I said, the WEF has sanctioned your apprehension and UniForce put a contract on you. The Raven intends to collect.” He paused, wondering how much he should tell her. “Have you ever been scared of something, Jennifer?”

  “Don’t call me that,” she snapped. “I hate that name.”

  If her rebuke had offended him, Dan made no show. “What would you like me to call you?”

  “Jen.”

  Dan added the appropriate notes to the dossier in his mind. “Well, Jen, imagine your greatest fears all bundled together, then amplify them by ten, and you still wouldn’t come close to the nightmare you’ve just seen.”

  She frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

  “He’s not human.” Dan veered into the overtaking lane and passed a black sporty-looking Spyder. “Not entirely anyway. He used to be, a few years ago. Have you ever heard of Project Smart-Stream?”

  “Yes. Back in the ‘30s a conglomerate of computer companies genetically enginee-” She stopped short, understanding what he meant. “No.”

  Dan nodded, something alien glimmering in his eyes. Jen stared at it, wondering what secrets it betrayed and wishing she could peal away the layers off Dan’s carefully constructed shield to gaze at the man underneath. “Yes. He’s a Smart-Stream failure.”

  She grunted bitterly. “They all were.”

  In 2037, an acquisitions team for Global Integrated Systems scoured the planet and pooled the world’s genetic engineering resources into one integrated team. They then applied their super-team to the intellectual problem of creating human children with a fluid-filled space where normal people had frontal lobes. Although they’d abandoned the barbaric notion of carving the frontal lobes from people 75 years earlier, they hadn’t yet given up on the idea that they could compact the human brain toward the rear of the cranium. By that time, scientists had thoroughly established that a brain’s mass was unimportant for human intelligence. The density of the interconnecting neurons, nodes and syn
apses were the critical factors. There’d been countless documented cases of people with normal intelligence but only a shell for a brain – fluid filled the core of their most delicate organ, which restricted synapse activity to a thin rim of grey matter, perhaps half a centimetre thick. Yet the connections between neurons had grown sufficiently dense to allow them to lead normal lives. Scientists had therefore popularly believed that they could genetically engineer humans with brains squashed at the back of the head, thereby leaving a fluid-filled gap at the front, with no impact on intelligence. Indeed, by tinkering appropriately with DNA, they could engineer mice with dendrite densities 170 percent above normal, effectively creating super-mice. So, why not take advantage of this technology in humans?

  Global Integrated Systems advertised heavily and over five years lured 50,000 rich parents-to-be into the expensive pilot program. Meanwhile, biologists and cybernetics experts were busy perfecting grafting procedures by practicing on electronic bridges to assist spinal injury patients to walk again. The operations were successful – so successful that they quickly tackled something more difficult. They moulded realistic synthetic eyes and mended optic nerves to give the gift of sight to the sightless. Next, they perfected the process of grafting human nerve tissue directly onto electronic circuits. It wasn’t as hard as everybody had assumed. They were, amazingly, on track to meet their obligations for Project Smart-Stream. They had to wait 18 years between altering the genetic code of their first human guinea pig and completing the process. The subjects had to achieve maximum cranium growth before they could undergo the operation.

  So, on July 7th2056, a team of surgeons and engineers entered the operating theatre with their first teenage subject. They bled the spinal fluid from their subject’s cranium and integrated that generation’s most powerful computer directly with his brain. A coma ensued and they postponed all scheduled surgeries until they could ascertain the success of the first operation.

  Two days later the test subject awoke, screaming in pain – not caused by the surgeons’ scalpels but because of the overload on his brain. He lived a week in agony until he learned how to control the impulses generated by the Global Integrated System grafted inside his head. The project leaders promptly deemed the operation a success and proudly announced that their patient was recovering and that they’d learned a lot.

  So the butchering of innocent teenagers continued, and the surgeons’ technique improved. After a month they’d slashed the recovery time to three days. And the cyborgs, manufactured in the fluorescent white of laboratory conditions, blitzed their creators’ highest expectations and their parents’ greatest hopes. While the combined mental muscle of Global Integrated Systems’ top engineers had been unsuccessful in creating true artificial intelligence, their genetics division had created something even more horrifyingly impressive – enhanced human intelligence.

  The very public success of the project led more timid teenagers with holes in their heads to undergo the operation. And natural, unaltered teenagers looked at their parents with hurt in their eyes. Occasionally the surgeons and engineers had a failure and a young adult would die on the operating table, but the media’s onslaught of positive feedback easily drowned those cases. Besides, it was easy for Global Integrated Systems to sweep the botched cases under the carpet. Their official – law required – records showed no trace of failure.

  Before Project Smart-Stream, genetic engineering had been relatively placid, concentrating on curing previously incurable diseases. Geneticists had discovered that manipulating human DNA too much in favour of intelligence, looks, stamina or health created other, worse, problems. The scattered test subjects were psychologically unstable and their longevity was appalling – an average lifespan of 16 years was not an achievement of which they could be proud. Mother Nature, it appeared, took offence at humans tampering with forces they knew nothing about.

  But the genetic modifications Global Integrated Systems had patented to prepare a human head for one of their computers had hit the jackpot. All the modified humans were stable – a miracle that entitled the scientists and engineers to more than one rowdy cocktail party.

  New classes of social segregation were in the throes of forming. By the year 2057, employees were falling over themselves to seize a cyborg. And cyborgs, despite their tender age, were infiltrating the most prestigious areas of society. Some companies begged cyborgs to be their CEO; others shunned them and resisted any penetration of their ranks by what they termed ‘an abomination of God’s will’. Still, thecyborgsflourished. Soon they held important positions across a broad spectrum of society from police officers, managers and lawyers, to doctors and engineers – themselves contributing to the evolution of human technology and the cyborg forging process.

  Yet in 2058, roughly two years after the first successful implant, something went wrong.

  Very wrong.

  Nobody could identify exactly what happened, or why it happened. But the cyborgs became unstable. Hundreds of them went, what the courts termed,‘criminally insane’. All operations ceased and squads in riot gear sealed the cyborg factory amid the mantra of an angry mob ranting in front of the hospital.

  But by then, 14,389 successful cyborgs were walking amongst the population. People were scared, and understandably so. By the end of that year, 40 percent of the cyborgs had gone insane and died by their own hands,either in clear-cut cases of suicide or in front-page incidents of horror. A handful of rebellious cyborgs held the United States of America to ransom by masterminding the takeover of the government. However, their equations hadn’t factored that the true rulers of the country weren’t in the government. Cold-hearted CEOs, the true masters of the world, convened and decided to storm the Whitehouse,which had disastrous consequences. The cyborgs may have miscalculated but they weren’t stupid, they’d prepared for that contingency.It took three months to clean up the havoc they wrecked just by pressing mental-buttonsin the microsecondsbefore nine-millimetre bullets shredded their flesh and punched holes through theirevil-spawning computers.

  Fear overwhelmed any benefits that society may have derivedfrom the justifiably eschewed cyborgs. Several religious organisations established hotlines repeating, “We told you so!” to anyone brave enough to phone. Some even tacked a graceless, “Welcome back,” on the end. But the remaining cyborgs scattered, keeping a low profile and blending with society – a society that wanted them dead.

  The WEF held Global Integrated Systems liable and forced them to pay restitution. So, the giga-corporation set aside 0.04 percent of their net worth to appease the population. Amazingly it was enough. But they didn’t slow their research. Even as the Raven went about indiscriminately slaughtering targets, the geneticists were trialling variations on their original cyborg theme and the engineers were designing better ways to shield the human brain from a computer’s electrical impulses.

  Now that Jen knew what he was, thinking about the Raven sent goose bumps crawling across her skin. She diverted the conversation with a shiver, asking, “So how do you know all this?”

  Dan’s face looked chiselled from stone.

  “How come you were in the right place at the right time? And how do you know who I am?” Jen’s suspicion elevated to a new kind of dread. What if he’s dragging me off to something worse than death?“Were you tracking him?” She gulped and closed her eyes in revulsion, already knowing the answer. “Or me?”

  Dan opened his mouth, but it was a long time before any words escaped. “I…” His mind worked furiously, wondering how best to appease her, especially since the truth was hurtful and ugly. He hadn’t technically arrested her yet; she’d freely chosen to accompany him. But if she tries to escape, I’ll have to arrest her formally.It was the right thing to do, he was sure of that. The WEF wants her. She musthavedone something wrong.He tensed, his attention shifting from the road to the girl sitting next to him. “I work for UniForce.”

  “You’re a bounty-hunter,” Jen sneered.

  A tense
silence settled in the car.

  “So how much am I worth?”

  “One hundred thousand,” Dan said, deciding honesty was his most useful tool.

  “Is that all?” The Pacific Dollar had devaluated recently and it was far from flattering.

  “Credits.” North American Credits were worth nearly twice as much as Pacific Dollars. It still wasn’t a fortune – it never was – but it was better.

  Great,Jen’s mind leaked sarcastically. Then it needled her with, I told you so.

  “Shut up,” she whispered to her inner voices.

  “What?” Dan asked, not quite catching whatever she’d muttered.

  “Nothing,” she said, and then sulked in silence with arms folded and a pout on her lips.

  *

  Samantha left the store with a weight lifted from her shoulders after returning the garment. Sure, she wanted it. And bigger breasts to go with it,she thought. But resisting those impulses was her first line of defence against the capitalist fever that was sweeping the globe. Jen’s right.It steadied her resolve. But it still sucks.Because, no matter which way she looked at it, she wantedthose things, she desiredthem. She tried to tell herself that unfulfilled desire built character,but it didn’t help much.

  She strode back to their rendezvous, feeling pleased with her self-control and wondering whether Jen would want to celebrate with an ice cream. She doubted it, but it was worth asking.

  The mess in front of the clinic made her freeze. Jen?

  There was no sign of her friend. Someone had torn the cushions from the bench and strewn them on the floor. She peered closer and the glimmer of glass caught her eye. What happened?

  A squad of security officers chose that moment to burst from the clinic and scatter in predetermined directions. Samantha kept walking, trying to look natural. Fear gripped her lungs and forced them full with a hiss. She ordered herself to breathe normally and strolled as casually as she could back into the crowd, but she had more than butterflies fluttering in her stomach – they felt like small birds.