Flee or Kill: The Future Of Reality TV (Future Forward Book 2)
Page 7
What then did it need to move into a full singularity? To become self-aware and self-programming making it smarter than a Team of humans. He decided this was a good question to ask at some point.
Fok! This is awesome, he thought as the coffee worked its wake-up magic.
The computer continued, "What famous person do you want to peek at and they won't know you're there?"
"Anybody?"
"Yes."
"OK, hmm. How about Carpenter? He is one serious guy." Jake decided he might as well start at the top. His smile grew broader as the caffeine worked even more and the thought of what he was about to do sunk in.
"The Secretary. No problem. You are disconnected from his systems so he can't hear or see you, but you can observe," the machine pointed out as Jake's wall monitor suddenly switched from the mask to a CCTV view of Carpenter and Chambers. "And now we control your hearing," added the machine.
Jake gasped as the Secretary's voice whispered in his ears as the conversation with Chambers continued.
22/05/2167 13:20:00
Abruptly, Carpenter turned back to the young officer, and said, "Thank you for your help Mr. Chambers."
Carpenter decided it really was too bad about the Captain. Fraser was a good man, and he had hoped to bring him along as an ally rather than have this happen. Well, he'd hoped a little bit, anyway. And with that thought, he smiled and began planning.
This will be a really big show he decided. And then laughed. He'd been watching too many historic videos of 20th century comedy television and this phrase kept popping up. "Really big show" indeed.
He stopped pacing, faced the main screen. A wave of his hand reopened his command channels. He paused for a few seconds and decided to play this low-key. He didn't need any suspicious, heavily armed troops in the building.
"Captain Fraser, you and your men report to headquarters. Then you report to me directly." This went directly to Fraser's feeds.
He switched channels to his Chief of Police. "Troop, when the Captain and his men have taken off their armor, have an entire squad of Security troopers take all of them to the holding cells. Ensure they do not resist in any way but if they do, I do not want them harmed. Use stun-level force if they resist. I intend to run the entire Team, one at a time with the Captain saved until last. That will send a clear message to the other teams that if they have a rotten one in the bunch, they'll all be punished."
"Yes Sir. Permission to Comment?"
"Yes," said Carpenter.
"Sir, we will get blowback from the other troops when we punish the entire Team for the action of one man," said the officer.
"Well, if you hear any, tell them to come and say it to me. Tell them to talk to me face to face," Carpenter said, cutting off communications.
Reopening the channel, and without preamble, he said, "The back story is sedition and treason. Make the back story quite clear. And tie them all together informally until the official story comes out. They were all corrupt and their personal accounts show them receiving payments from the Captain." He shut the channel with a vicious hand chop.
He turned to the young officer standing at attention. "Mr. Chambers. I want you to adjust the Captain's accounts to show clear transfers of funds to his Team over the last 18-months. You will put the funds in and backdate them and then remove them as of today's date. I want it to look like they were all corrupt, and we recovered the funds today. Clear?"
A crisp "Yes, Sir," brought a smile to his face. Carpenter turned and ambled back to his desk, eyes unfocused, considering his options. Sat down. Leaned back in his chair, swung around to stare out the windows at the city and the bay beyond, and smiled. He knew this would all work to his favor; he just wasn't sure how yet.
Chambers reflection in the window surprised him, he was still standing at attention in front of his desk. "Thank you Mr. Chambers, dismissed."
22/05/2167 13:22:00
"Did that really just happen?" asked Jake. He stood up, paced around the room. The masked face continued the conversation.
"Yes. What you heard is what happened in real time."
"What do we do about it? " said Jake.
"Do about it? Do what? About what? What's fair? Did all the others deserve what they got when they were forced to run? What were their crimes? Or were they framed as well?"
Jake paused, looked at the mask. Scowled. He tried to decide if the mask was messing with his mind or whether it was serious. He tried a different approach.
"How do we stop them from dying?"
"Why? Are they in danger right now?"
Jake threw up his arms, realized he wasn't going to get the computer to change direction so decided to play this game out to the end.
Jake paused. "No immediate danger. But the Secretary is going to run them."
"The Secretary threatens and arrests many people."
"So, we do nothing but wait until he does something?" said Jake
"Who does something? The Captain? Or the Secretary?"
"You're a pain in the ass you know." Jake's eyelids rose, his mouth became a straight line and, hands on his hips, he waited for the response.
"Be clear. When you make a decision, it's similar to writing code. You have to know what the problem is and what you want to have happen before you do anything. What's the problem here?"
Jake stopped. Took a deep breath. Cocked his head at the mask. He hadn't considered it in that way. If making decisions about people was the same as writing code, he might figure out how to deal with people yet. He smiled, waved casually at the screen and flopped down in his chair. He was certain he had the right answer now.
"Got it. Threats aren't a big problem if they're done all the time. It's only if something happens we have to act," Jake said.
"Why do we have to act?" asked the Computer.
Jake jumped up, stomped to the sink. Poured a glass of water. Turned to the mask.
"We don't want the Captain to be killed. Isn't that obvious?" Jake wasn't sure the computer would recognize sarcasm.
"Why? People are killed quite often, aren't they?"
Jake paused, stared at the mask. This might be tougher than it looked he decided.
"So what should we really do? " Jake asked.
To silence. The mask faded. Jake had asked the right question, and it was up to him to find the answer.
"It's not right," said Jake to the silence. "All of this is just not right. Fokking Carpenter."
22/05/2167 13:30:00
<6t94whp> :"As you worried me in the beginning."
<6t94whp> :"It always is."
<6t94whp> :"Are we agreed on pausing and monitoring or is there another action?"
A series of "Agreed" came back, including one from
The secure network dissolved.
22/05/2167 13:35:00
Jake stared at a blank wall and tried to order his thoughts. "Fok. I didn't expect that. I assumed it would be as boring as hell, his giving orders to staff. Sure, I hoped it would be good but that's... that's... I have no idea what that was. Fok! Is that how things really work? Fok! Is that how he decided to kill my mother? Well, fok him."
He didn't quite bounce, didn't quite run, but moved randomly around his apartment touching and pushing off the wall
s to walk in a new direction. All the while, the silent Guy Fawkes mask watched from one wall screen.
Jake knew he was on his own to make or not make a decision about this. "You're not going to help me on this are you?"
The mask gave a slight shake of its head. It didn't tell Jake that others had come before him. Some had succeeded easily with their first independent steps and some hadn't survived.
Jake didn't know what to do.
"What if I help? What can I do?" he asked the mask. The mask didn't respond. Jake turned and pushed off another wall.
This isn't right, he thought.
"What if I just give the Captain a warning and then disappear?"
The mask didn't respond but did open its eyes slightly. Jake knew it was listening.
What the hell should he do? If Carpenter found him, he'd be dead. No matter how much he enjoyed this command module, this was serious shit. If the Captain could be sent running, what chance did he have?
"I'll be fok-meat myself if they catch me and I'll last about as long as that last runner. Two hours. Seriously! I could make more than two hours," he said turning pushing off the wall again and turning to the mask. Or maybe not he thought.
The last thought was accompanied by a bitter smile. Memories of school athletics returned and how, excited to be in a game, and oblivious to the switch in ends at half time, he'd worked hard to scored on his own goal. To the vast amusement of the entire school, including the teachers, the video went viral. Stunned fokker he was. That story was told and retold by the athletes and popular kids for the next two years until he graduated and never saw those people again.
The mask nodded but remained silent.
Jake kept pacing and pushing off the walls.
The mask's eyes continued to follow Jake's progress around the room.
Screw 'em indeed. Those jocks are likely gainfully employed in some sweatshop and have absolutely no idea what's going on around them. Sheep being led to slaughter he thought.
"You may be underestimating other people," said the mask.
Like many computer experts, Jake didn't think much of those who didn't understand advanced computer code. In his opinion, they were not as smart as he was. He never stopped to consider other equally intelligent people might look down on him for not understanding their specialty.
"What the hell." He said it directly to the mask and the intent was clear.
The computer followed procedure and sent untraceable messages to members of Anonymous. "Stay hidden and off the Nets. Sequence free-01 beginning."
The mask asked, "Are you sure?"
Jake hesitated, looked at the mask, nodded and gave a short palm-up motion with a finger-wiggle at the end.
Just like this Jake thought. Just like this, slow and steady. Emphasizing the correctness of his next hand motion, he added a sub-vocal order, "Open sequence 749AZ." A secret communications channel opened. He pulled the Captain's Team comm-channel from the myriad of similar options. "Set message to open, immediate post-message, run server-side-delete-24. Delete all the way back to direct access point here." An imperative hand chop set the commands in motion.
The mask didn't interfere. Jake was on his own, to pass or fail in this real-world exam. It didn't disappear but faded to a dull grey as Jake worked.
Jake sent a simple message, directed to the private eye feeds of the Captain and his Team. "You are to be arrested. Sent on FOK. Don't go back."
In a ballet of motion, hands waving, head bobbing, Jake shut the backdoor, backed out of the network, wiped his tracks behind him with his custom programming and smiled to himself. He'd done it again and his software had worked perfectly. He stared directly at the mask, watching it darken back to its normal shade of inky-black.
"Yeah, I know it was a risk, but you have to take them every now and then. You've given me this stuff and you expect me to use it. Don't you?" Not waiting for an answer, he kept talking. "Between your systems and my server programming, I'm fine. It worked before, it will work now."
"Are you hoping this is true or do you know this to be true?" asked the computer.
Jake stared at the screen, his mouth opened as if to speak but didn't. He was learning. "I'm going dark. There's little point in pushing my luck. I'll review my software again to improve it. Between that and you, I should be fine."
He said the latter in more in hope than in belief and both of them knew it.
22/05/2167 13:36:20
Five miles outside city limits, the Captain and his Team practiced their heavy-suit, combat-readiness exercises. The countryside around the city was low grassland with small pockets of rock and swamp. Large industrial farms covered most of the open ground but there was a sizable military training area that was half grassland and half forested. The smell of cattle manure was heavy in the air this morning, but it was filtered out by their suits' purification systems.
"Two heavy-suit days in a row. Captain, these boys are having too much fun. We might even have a barbecue tonight," said Sergeant Price.
"Then work them harder if you know how, Sergeant. We'll deal with the food later."
Sometimes the cattle from the large feedlot in the next property would jump the fences and were considered fair game for any troopers who discovered one during exercises. More than one overnight practice session included a spontaneous barbecue much to the delight of the troopers and annoyance of the farmers. The farmers were convinced the cows didn't just jump the fence but were assisted by several power-suited troops. It was a sore point the Corporation refused to repair.
The Sergeant smiled and opened his comm to order, "Emergency suit-off drill, get those socks off, sprint one mile out to the obstacle course, run it, sprint back, suit up. Last man does it again," he ordered.
The Team, including the Captain, heard the challenge and started stripping off the armor. While each of the Team members was fit enough to complete the course a second time, none wanted to come last nor be the target for Team jibes for the next few weeks.
The Sergeant opened a private channel to Captain Fraser. "Side bet? Two beer." Then watched him take the message.
They met eyes.
The Captain grinned and sent, "Six beer and loser doesn't drink tonight. Make it worth my while Sergeant."
A message rolled across their eye feeds,"Captain Fraser, you and your men report to headquarters. Then you report to me directly.."
The entire Team stopped.
"You saw it, suit it up. We got orders from the man," said the Captain.
The Team started packing equipment and putting the suits back on in the efficient way of well-trained troops. Within a few seconds of each other, all were ready to return.
"No sense wasting two miles when you slackers need more fitness training," the Captain said. "Last man stripped down at the barracks buys a round. Zero use of assists." He then set a torrid pace that quickly had the Team panting without the servo assistance of the battle suits.
Jake's message scrolled across the team's eye feeds. "You and Team are to be arrested. Sent on FOK. Don't go back."
The Captain stopped immediately, and the rest of his Team followed his example. As they closed around him, they all raised their face shields.
"What's this, Sir?" the Sergeant asked.
"Ah shit, fokking shit," he said. He flicked Palmer's secret comm code, waited three seconds before receiving an automated message, "This code is no longer functional. Please reroute your message." He disconnected.
"It turns out we've got a problem. I've been ordered taken because of a relationship I had with a tech guy and some software we were independently developing. We were trying to backdoor the Secretary - figure out what he was doing and maybe set ourselves up for some promotions. Carpenter looks like he's going to set a precedent. Anybody who knows me is going to be guilty as well. It's called "guilt by association." I screw up and you guys get to pay for it. You screw up and I get to pay for it. Normally, it wouldn't call for being run but who knows what he's thinking. B
etween us all, it'll be a series of chases to keep the crowds happy for two months."
"Who sent the message, Sir?" asked his Sergeant.
"No idea," said Fraser
"Shit," said the Sergeant. "We're done."
The Captain nodded agreement as he decided on his course of action. He had already eliminated returning to the city. "Yeah, Carpenter is likely going to run us all."
"Sir. Not sure I agree. I've done nothing wrong and there's no reason Security should take me," said Smythe.
Nine pairs of eyes looked at him, absorbed and analyzed what he said and what they knew.
"Do you think Carpenter gives a flying fok what you did? What about some of those we've chased? What did they do other than piss off that maniac? And I'm your commander so you're chase-meat as well. He won't trust you. Better to just run you than not know what you'll try to do to him," said the Captain.
"I didn't do anything!" shouted Smythe.
"Smythe. I know." The Captain paused, looked into the eyes of each one of his men one-by-one around him. " None of you did anything, I did it all. Every other Captain is trying to do the same thing but I screwed up and got caught. It's not fair but who said the Secretary was fair? You know there's nobody in the cage right now for running, and you know we'd be a great show. So you decide if you trust Carpenter enough to go home. That's the bottom line here. Do you trust Carpenter will do the right thing by you? Me? I'm headed east. I've got a heavy-armor suit and once I take it off, I'm at Carpenter's mercy. And that's not a place I want to be right about now under any circumstance. He may kill me, but he will not get the chance to hang me or chase me. If I have to go, I'm going on my own terms. The only question is if you're with me. It's up to you. But I don't want to stand here talking about it for much longer as there's time involved now. Who's coming?"
The Sergeant started, "I'm in. I don't trust Carpenter, that cross country runner was an old friend of his. If he'd run him, he'll sure as hell run me. If I have to go, might as well go fighting or trying to. I won't give that bastard the pleasure of killing me himself or making me run without weapons when I didn't do a damn thing."