Vanadium Dark

by Ben Sheffield

  She had not realized the scale of what she was walking into until she attended a meeting in Fort Hood, ostensibly to discuss medical applications of nanotechnology, and was introduced to the Secretary of State and two Four-Star Generals.

  The nation was about to be transformed in secret.

  It would be huge. The Manhattan Project was nothing next to this.

  They did not have a plan, or a guideline. They just had a problem. Sun-Hi Shin, it was hoped, would supply the solution.

  They needed nationwide surveillance.

  Hundreds of engineers and scientists were flown in under a black budget to help her crack the problem. Soon, it would become a white budget. Billions of dollars would be hers. Her molecular engineering brilliance would be the axle that it all turned around.

  The idea seemed crazy. Could never work.

  She started on it without delay.

  One afternoon, she found herself thinking about covalent bonds between electron shells, and how small you could scale a transducer.

  She drew a sketch. She did some calculations. She drew another sketch.

  Kwan, then five years old, wandered out to see his mother. He regularly went six months or more without this pleasure.

  “Mama... ”

  “What's wrong, Kwan?” Sun-Hi looked up. Preliminary intelligence tests placed his IQ in the two sigma range. Hard not to be disappointed. The in-vitro fertilisation had been expensive.

  “What are you doing, Mama?”

  “The American government's paying us lots of money now, Kwan. They want me to build an animal for them.”

  “Ohh, an animal! Is it big animal?”

  She finished her sketch and added some measurement lines. The page was now broken up into ten- micrometer divisions with a rough chemically-bonded structure in the middle.

  “Of course it will be a big animal. Huge! Massive! Big as an elephant!”

  — (Apocryphal?) story about the naming of Project Elephant

  Part 1: The Shape of Things to Come

  “I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I can't recover this time. I begin to hear voices... ”

  – Virginia Woolf's suicide note

  Washington DC, 2045

  Viktor got off the train at Pentagon Metro, feeling nauseated. The high-speed maglev had crossed six hundred miles in an hour, and so had the lunch in his stomach.

  Brighten up, big guy. You've got two months of looking at videos ahead of you.

  He looked around the crowded terminal for his escort and saw a man standing with a Pentagon badge and a VICTOR KERTESZ card.

  The misspelling pissed him off.

  “That's not my name,” he told the man. “You spell it with a K, as in 'kay, I'm not paid enough to deal with this shit.'”

  The security guide nodded. He clearly was not paid enough to have a sense of humor. “Good day, Mister Kertesz. Please follow me.”

  They walked out the station and into the concourse.

  Every surface gleamed, plated with dirt-repellent alloys. Frictionless elevators rose and fell, eerily noiseless. Three-dimensional holograms beamed images into the middle of the shopping mall. Marching soldiers on a parade ground flickered away, replaced with the image of a barrel-rolling plane.

  Viktor's nausea prompted him to reach into his pocket and dry-swallow a Sycorax. The de-stimulator would hit his bloodstream in about five minutes. Until then, all sound and light was his enemy.

  They approached the main Pentagon building.

  “Did you have a good trip, Mister Kertesz?” The guy spoke like a fucking robot.

  “Well, that answer depends on the goals of my trip. Perhaps I was getting on the maglev to come to the Pentagon to serve a tour of duty as an Elephant Handler. If so, the trip was a success. Perhaps I was intending to electrocute myself on the tracks in frustration at living in a world where I can't even shit without having cameras watching me. If so, I'm here in one piece, so it was a bad trip.”

  “Sir, are you well?” Again with the voice. He was HAL 9000 on valium.

  “I'm not a 'sir.' I don't even have a rank. I'm just the nation's best-paid security guard. But yes, it was a good trip.”

  But that went without saying. In 2045, every train trip was a good one—even in the burned-out center of Los Angeles, even in what had been the San Francisco Tenderloin.

  No graffiti on train carriages now. No seat covers slashed with switchblades.

  Now, you could safely walk around with money hanging out of your pockets and feel only bourgeoisie shame at your own wealth.

  Crime no longer paid.

  Electric eyes saw everything.

  As they excited Pentagon Metro, Viktor caught sight of a warning poster.

  NO SMOKING

  NO DRINKING

  NO LOITERING

  NO SPRAY-CANS

  NO VANADO-BRACELETS

  Viktor remembered the Vanado-bracelets: a brief fad among the youth, like the mood rings of fifty years ago.

  They were just bracelets that changed color depending on the number of Vanadocams surveying the area. How had it gone? Red meant high density, green meant low density? Or the other way around?

  When the bracelet turned a chilly slate gray (he remembered), it meant that there were no Vanadocams nearby, and you could safely whip out your aerosol can, your knife, or your gun and do whatever you wanted to do.

  So went the theory, anyway. Viktor had no idea if any of the bracelets worked, but it seemed unlikely that the cheap ones sold for fifteen new cents at corner stores did.

  The irony was, you'd be unlikely to get in trouble for petty crimes. Constitutionally, only one Elephant Handler was allowed to survey the public at once, and they tended to be incredibly backed up with high-priority work from the FBI and CIA.

  But the uncertainty was the point, wasn't it? The Vanadocams were almost everywhere. The knowledge that you could be nailed, could be proven to have committed a crime (and damn whatever your friends and parents and girlfriend said on the subject) —that was the deterrent. And it worked.

  No more graffiti. No more armed robbery.

  No more crime.

  It was almost worth having cameras watch when you took a shit.

  * * *

  At the entrance to the Pentagon building, both men touched a fingertip to the DNA reader mounted beside the front door. It extracted a sample of DNA from their sweat, crunched it against the code samples in its database, and granted them entrance.

  Nobody carried cards any more.

  The machines effortlessly sampled DNA from any part of your body. In theory, you could authenticate yourself with your tongue. But people had been pressing body parts against that thing all day, so you probably wouldn't want to.

  They walked into the building, footsteps echoing in the palatial expanse.

  It was Viktor's fourth tour of duty, and he was still not bored of the Pentagon.

  Seven rings, seventeen miles of corridors, thousands of rooms, nearly ten thousand employees.

  Security checks were performed. Viktor had brought a phone on a contingency basis. It was scanned, tagged, and handed back to him. He received the standard speech on correct usage of the Pentagon's internal network. He nodded in all the right places.

  He'd been an Elephant Handler before. The song and dance was familiar.

  He was escorted to the debriefing room, where he met the Secretary of Defense.

  The Secretary smiled. Brilliantined hair gleamed above a sallow-skinned face. “Ah, hello, Viktor. It's been a while.”

  Viktor nodded. Two years since he'd last ridden the Elephant.

  The DOD allowed nobody to be an Elephant Handler for long. Every six months, the Handler was replaced. Viktor was the current selection in a rotation of five Handlers.

  For one thing, it was silly to trust one person with too many secrets, and people working this job tended to end up with an Aladdin's cave of them.

  Fo
r another, the job was fucking exhausting. Eighteen-hour days, Monday through Friday. Twelve-hour days on the weekend. The necessity to be on call 24/7, in case the Vanadocams were needed for national emergencies.

  The constitutional amendment that made the Vanadocams legal also came with a token stipulation— only one person could use them.

  They were working on repealing that, he was told.

  “How've you been, Wilson?” Viktor asked.

  “Had my gallbladder out last month. Forgive me if I still seem like I'm getting back on the horse.”

  “Who am I to judge? I've spent the past two years handling the CIA's scut work. So what's happened with Project Elephant since I left?”

  The Secretary of Defense gestured for the security guard to shut the door.

  “The Vanadocam Network is still growing. We now have full coverage of ninety-eight percent of the United States' urban regions and eighty percent of rural regions.”

  “Less time wasted making sense of blurry videos for me, then. Anything happening on the software side of things?”

  “Your UI has been upgraded, I'm told. Better z-axis mip-mapping, or something. I've instructed the tech wonks to print a full list of new features and commands and leave them on your desk.”

  “That's good. Looking at things from high altitudes was a pain in the ass. When do I start?”

  “Immediately, if you like. All systems are operational, and all they need is you.”

  “Let's do it.”

  “Private Cole, issue Mister Kertesz security privileges to the Zoo.”

  * * *

  Viktor finished the final round of documents, affixing a digital signature to various forms. The Pentagon was beautiful. It was also a hateful place that buried you in paperwork every time you farted sideways. They didn't even play the Dragnet theme in the elevator.

  He was escorted to the basement of the Pentagon, beneath the Mezzanine.

  As he passed through the chartreuse-carpeted antechamber outside the Zoo, he noted again the huge fountain at the center of the room.

  Water steadily dripped through a pipe into a huge marble basin, each drop disturbing the pristine surface of the water.

  Three million people had died in New York. There were three million drops in the basin.

  Each one represented a tear.

  Viktor found the display crass. Over-dramatic. Was there not room for such a thing in the memorial room? He never expressed these views out loud.

  Someone would have given him either a lecture—that it was a reminder of why such a thing as Project Elephant was now necessary—or a split lip.

  His mouth got him into enough trouble already.

  He swiped the DNA lock with the back of his hand, and the door slid open.

  He entered a vast, sepulchral space, filled with the faint humming of machinery and electronics. Azure lights cast eerie shadows. He heard a keyboard tapping to his left. Joyce, his secretary, smiled and waved. He remembered her from his last stint here. Elephant Handlers came and went. Joyce stayed.

  “Looking good today, J-girl.”

  She laughed. “'J-girl' is freshly fifty, and not happy about it. Good to see you again, Viktor.”

  They were the only two people in the Zoo.

  In rooms above them were analysts and dispatchers, ready to receive encoded bits of evidence from the cameras and forward them to the press, to the FBI, to the CIA, or to wherever else was required.

  But operating the Vanadocams was his show and his show only.

  Viktor found his desk.

  He saw his shaven face reflected in the computer screen. The desktop computer was for processing his workflow, and reading email.

  He sat down in the ergonomic body-fitting chair and began to reacclimatize himself to the controls.

  Yes, they'd added some new things. Extra buttons, extra controllers.

  Then there were the unassuming goggles that allowed him to view the Vanadocam data. He hoped they'd made the goggles more comfortable. He would wear them until they just about fused to his head.

  “Joyce, how many active files are there?”

  “Uh, two hundred and ten since Robertson left.” He presumed that Robertson was the last handler. Clearly, he'd already gone.

  “Two hundred and ten? Fuck that noise. Any cat-twos or worse?”

  “No.”

  “Send me through a cat-seven. I'll warm up on it.”

  The cases submitted to Project Elephant were categorized in priority from one to seven, with one being “repent your sins” and seven being “hardly worth the effort.”

  Project Elephant was supposed to be about ensuring national security, but for less serious cases you could pay to have a matter looked at via Vanadocam. These things were meant to defray the project's immense operating costs, which threatened yearly to drown the budget in red ink.

  Viktor didn't mind.

  Busting a carjacker was always fun and easy.

  A case appeared on the screen.

  CASE FILE NO. 43257889

  CATEGORY: 7

  MAGISTERIUM: PRIVATE/CIVILIAN

  PARTICULARS: LEGAL DISPUTE

  Viktor read the case notes.

  Old woman passes away in a hospital in Maryland. Will shortly amended before death to benefit distant cousin and to exclude close daughter. Signature proven legitimate by handwriting analysis. Daughter curious about conditions under which the signature was obtained.

  The case contained a ton of information: times, dates, places, locations, even photographs of the parties involved.

  For a low priority dispute like this, the Elephant Handler was at perfect liberty to throw your case in the trash if it was confusing or unclear. Viktor's time was too valuable to waste on wild goose chases. Obviously, the daughter had spent large amounts of money for Vanadocam analysis and was careful not to let this happen.

  He entered rough location coordinates into the mainframe and selected a camera angle. Last, he selected a time. A week in the past.

  He hit ENTER and put on the goggles.

  He waited a moment, several thousand data streams converging, and he was there—a virtual-reality world.

  It was bright, simplified, and cartoonlike. The Vanadocams only had limited computational ability. But it was unmistakably a real place. He was viewing the outside of the hospital. People were poised in the moment, still as statues. A bird sat on a tree, frozen with wings outspread, ready to take flight.

  He was looking a perfect snapshot of the past. A snapshot that was his to explore, and exploit.

  He roved the camera through the hospital door, up the stairs, and through into the palliative care ward.

  Occasionally, his view blinked to black as the camera's viewpoint passed through a wall, where the Vanadocams could not go.

  Finally, he found himself in a room with an old woman lying in a bed. Her blue hospital gown hung loosely off her wattled skin. He referred to the case photo. It wasn't just a her, but her.

  He rewound at 20x speed. He needed to find a specific meeting.

  He watched shadows sweep dramatically across the room as the hours rolled back in a matter of minutes. Nurses and hospital orderlies raced in and out of the room with frenetic, insect-like energy.

  Finally, he hit pause.

  There were two new people in the room. Neither of them wore hospital clothes.

  One was in the process of handing a piece of paper and a pen to the old woman.

  Rewind.

  Play.

  The scene lurched to life. The man put the paper in the old woman's hand and mimed a scribbling motion.

  She shook her head.

  Neither of them smiled. The old lady didn't look too happy either.

  The taller man's lips flapped. What he was saying was lost to history. The Vanadocams did not record audio.

  Viktor referred again to the photos attached to the emails. The distant cousin. He was sure of it.

  The old woman shook her head again.

  T
he cousin walked over to her, towering over the bed. Viktor watched the woman shrink away.

  The cousin reached down and touched his hand to hers. A comforting gesture. Viktor took a screen capture.

  The cousin's lips moved again.

  This time, she nodded, took the pen, and signed the form.

  Viktor took another screen capture. Then he thought better, rewound the last few seconds, and took a video capture.

  The Elephant Handler's job was to collect evidence. The more comprehensive the evidence, the better. It all had to stand up in court, and he did not want to waste time looking all this up again because a judge thought his evidence was unclear.

  The piece of paper was signed and handed back to the shorter man. Was he the cousin's lawyer?

  The case seemed straightforward. For whatever reason, the cousin had been able to convince the old woman to issue a revised will. The evidence documented a consensual signing.

  Perhaps the old woman was senile or mentally incompetent, and the daughter could challenge the will on those grounds. But that was none of his business.

  But her frightened face...

  Viktor rewound the video. Then he swiveled the camera around. Now he was looking at the two from the old woman's perspective.

  He zoomed in on her hands.

  Play.

  The cousin walked over and placed his hand on the old woman's hands.

  Viktor zoomed in closer. The video became blurrier and blurrier—the Vanadocams were not dense enough to capture sharp detail this close.

  He hit “Artificial Sharpen,” and jagged polygonal lines appeared instead of blurry smears. Not perfect, but better.

  “Oh, not nice.” Viktor breathed.

  The cousin had taken the old woman's little finger and was twisting it.

  The way out seemed clear.

  He saved copies of the two hands touching from several angles and several resolutions. Document, document, document. It wasn't the biggest part of the job. It was the only part of the job.

  He took screen captures of the old woman's fear-stricken face and the cousin's sneer.

  He attached them all to a case reply and spoke some words into his microphone.

  “Case file number four-three-two... uh... five-seven-eight-eight-nine. Operator's opinion: signature obtained under duress. Observe the four attached videos. He's pretty clearly hurting her. Please forward these to your legal representation.”