Saint Fox, our rock n’ roll saviour, he though derisively. What am I now? A revolutionary, a traitor, a refugee? Sounds like the ol’ ringleader don’t even need me anymore.
He reached into his jeans pocket, taking out the saccharine sweet medicine that would wash his doubts away.
Chapter Twenty-Two
BANKROBBER
Benson Bridges was directing a wireless circus. A virtual roundtable would soon take place, a chance to intertalk over the new trade.
He and the other techheads were busiest of all, readying to open up Q&A to the public. They brought methods from the deep web to the surface, making privacy and anonymity available to everyone. They would hide in plain sight, layers of shade in place to block any traces, IPs switching every second. They were in Mumbai, then Auckland, then New York. Even the cleverest hacker could not outhack Benson Bridges and his team of pale-faced, lightning-brained women and men.
Protocols were in place to try and stem the massive flow of users. Intertalk sessions were now open in shifts, restricting the number of users allowed in at a time, transcripts visible to all, updating live so that people could see the answers to questions that others had already asked—how to use the GiveNGet app, what TAKEBACK was, and why it would eventually prove lethal. They would explain how any merchant or individual could keep running their business free of interference—as long as they only accepted the new currency. Everyone had questions—the keen conspiracist, the close-to-the cuff skeptic, the follow-the-crowd youth, anyone who was invested in what the Arcana were doing in some form or another. Now they had no choice but to invest—their lives were at stake.
The overall response had been surprisingly positive, at least from where Benson was standing. When he’d mentioned this to Jeeves, the ringleader had simply declared, The music’s that good. They believe in their Saint.
Benson straightened his specs as he attacked the latest barrage of tedious queries from his current group of users.
Martin110101: So everyone starts with 10,000? No matter who they are? There’s no secret society membership, no Platinum club if I sell my firstborn child to u?
GlassEyeAS: Everyone gets 10,000. Take it and turn it into more. Keep what you earn. Just head over to the site to set up your GGcoin account and download the app. New users instantly get 10,000. Don’t try to set up multiple accounts; it won’t work. App requires a retinal scan—money’s in your eyes.
Martin110101: Sounds simple enough. Better than the “designed to make you lose” system we had.
Z3_Freddie: What about taxes?
GlassEyeAS: They can’t have ‘em.
Z3_Freddie: They’ll be pissed…won’t be able to leech off us anymore. They’ll come after you. Shut it down.
GlassEyeAS: If everyone’s using the new system, what can they do? We just need to outnumber them. Just keep doing whatever it is you’re doing, but bill in GGcoin.
Martin110101: So 10,000 GGcoin’s all I got to my name now. I got 60,000 quid in savings. That’s just gone?
GlassEyeAS: We’re working on a conversion system so that those with savings will get a fair percentage of ‘em back. There will be a cap though. If the amount in your bank account’s in-fuckin-sane, the cream off the top is coming off.
In real-time, Benson waved his fingers around in a mimic of Jeeves’ dramatic swishes, imagining cream-off-the-top money disappearing into thin air.
METAL_MACHINE: Going to the grocer’s is a problem. Everywhere’s a mess. You can’t get in, let alone find out if they’re accepting any alternative currency yet.
GlassEyeAS: They will, but we’ve got a network of members delivering care packages throughout all the major boroughs to tide you over in the interim. Drop-off locations will appear in the app once our delivery people are safe. Or use the infoboards, a lot of great stuff is popping up there, including where to get things you might need during the transition. And check out the pricing charts while you’re at it, we’ve done the maths.
Benson cracked his knuckles as a stream of new users were allowed into his intertalk session. It was going to be a long day.
Sam, meanwhile, felt like a right tit. He’d been assigned to smile, flirt, and give out foodstuffs to the few inner circle members who’d been informed of their new location. He felt like some godawful beauty pageant queen, smiling and waving and repeating words someone else had scribbled on a cocktail napkin. People stopped by to tell him how much they loved the music, tell him how brilliant he was. He gave them his trademark grin, played the humility card, loaded them up with jugs of water and boxes of nonperishables.
Everywhere he looked, there were people congratulating him—older gents he didn’t know, like Jeeves’ mates, or crew members who’d travelled with Saint Fox and The Independence. They gave him accolades for his cleverness and bravado, for saving them from their straight-jacketed 21st-century existence. The crew made him feel particularly awkward. They were his mates, people he joked around with, drank with, and now they were putting him on some sort of pedestal like he weren’t just one of the boys. He’d even used their words in some of his songs—most of the crew were also fans, and some had submitted lyrics through the FoxDen app. Where do I end and they begin? he wondered. Like it couldn’t have been any one of them instead, if only they’d come across the mad orchestrator at the right time.
“Excuse me, darlin’,” he said to a girl whose name escaped him, a pretty brunette in a polka-dotted head scarf. “Just going to pop into the loo.”
He shut the door behind him and leaned against it, feeling the solid wood behind his back. The mirror above the sink was broken, the remaining pieces of glass sitting haphazardly within the frame. His face reflected back at him in shards, cracks, and slivers.
A song was stuck in his head. One of his own, a new one, the melody rough and dissonant, a mash of frenetic guitar notes at war. The lyrics in his head repeated something about being invisible, about disappearing.
Would he ever sing again in front of thousands, now that he’d played his role in Jeeves’ grand design?
He reached into his front pocket, taking out the tin cigarette case he now kept on hand at all times. A scratch-marked Bettie Page pin-up adorned the front cover. Written across her, barely legible, was the word TITS in black permanent marker—Sailor’s handiwork. In fact, it was his cigarette case.
It’d been at least a week now since he’d seen him, maybe two. Sam was almost certain he was shacked up somewhere with some petty old queen, someone who was bad for his health and even worse for his mental state. He really hoped that everything between them wasn’t completely fucked. Being best mates who flirted a lot but never did anything about it was an arrangement that worked well for Sam; he got emotional gratification out of it without having to get too close.
Sam wanted to pretend that what happened between them had never happened, and just go on with their lives like before.
He missed his friend.
Ringing up Sailor’s cleverband only got him the male-voiced auto-recording again.
“Sailor, Sailor, Sailor. You’ve got to come home sometime,” Sam reprimanded his voicemail. “Anyway, I’ve got some big news. Your money’s no good here. Ha ha, get it? Yeah. Jeeves pulled the trigger. I’ll fill you in on the details if I ever see you again.” He ended the call, staring blankly at the cleverband on his wrist.
Sam took out three round, white pills—methadone this time, sickly sweet and procured from a clinic on the pretense that he was trying to get clean. He’d worn translucent brown sunglasses and a hoodie over his bright red hair. No one at the clinic had recognised him, or at least he told himself as much.
He swallowed the pills with water from the tap, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth, his other hand pressed against the medicine cabinet. When he slid his hand downwards, a piece of the broken mirror glass cut him. He cursed, sticking his finger in his mouth, the taste of iron mixing with the bitter residue left behind by the pills. His grin in the mirror was twisted, his
eyes two black daggers shooting backwards into himself.
Soon there would be no bright colours or exclamation points in his mind, no phantasmagoria, stage lights, or fireworks. No pound signs, dollar signs, green GGcoin circles with smiley faces. Just a warm, warm feeling in the pit of his stomach and in his head.
Someone knocked at the door.
“Oi, busy,” he managed.
“Sam, man, it’s Bez. Hey, I only got a second. You’ve gotta get back out there, people seem less nervous when they can see you. Just hang out, pick your nose, whatever.”
“Just give me a minute,” Sam said. He swallowed dryly. His reflection squared his shoulders back in the shattered mirror, then hunched over again of their own accord.
“You okay in there? Can I come in?” asked Benson.
Benson entered on a no-reply. “Jesus, man. You look like shyte.”
“I just need a nap,” Sam said, sliding down against the wall beside the tub.
“You’re on some sorta junk, aren’t ya? Took this rock star thing too literally.” Benson peered at Sam cryptically through his specs, edging closer to him in the cramped loo.
“Thought that was my role in this whole thing. Some pseudo rock n’ roll messiah—but just a fake-out, a trick of the light. Something you toss aside when you don’t need it anymore.” He tasted chalk and bile on his tongue.
“You’re full of shyte,” Benson said. “C’mon.” He hauled the lanky and uncooperative frontman up by his arms and led him back out into the hallway. “Things are going good, man. Everyone’s happy—this is what we wanted. People who weren’t so sure about it are feeling better with the info and hookups we’re giving them. People who want to see our heads on spikes with our intestines twined around them in flower-shaped bows, well, they’re still out there looking for the spikes.”
Sam’s face twisted into a grimace. “You know, my songs...some of the best lyrics came from the fans. Or Kit. She’s like a songwriting genius or something.” He waved his arm around aimlessly. “All of them out there, all of you—you made me look good. Smoke and mirrors.” His throat was dry as he swallowed. “There anything to drink?”
“Grab one of the water bottles from the supply kits, but drink it in the kitchen,” Benson said. “Jesus can’t be seen eating his own loaves and fishes. Now plaster on that grin of yours and get back to saving England.”
“I’m going to bed.” Sam said, leaving Benson to his more important work. On shaky legs the rock star made his way through his devotees, his pain washing away by the second into a white, warm fog of dull bliss, where he lived on a cloud, and didn’t owe anything to anyone.
Chapter Twenty-Three
REBEL, SWEETHEART
Wildly conflicting reports of what is being called the Dot virus continue to abound. While some sources are reporting the whole thing to be a hoax, others claim that the initial symptoms of the virus have already taken hold.
Meanwhile, the top technicians in the country employed by the Dedicated Dot Crime Unit are working round the clock, analyzing P.O.S. terminal tech to try and determine the nature of the threat. Remaining resolutely composed in the face of bioterrorism, the DDCU has stated that the primary aim in their investigation is to disarm.
“So far, every attempt to remove the virus has been thwarted due to the program’s overwhelmingly complex level of encryption,” claims Yasmine Mattoo, a DBA specialist employed by DDCU. “Technicians on our staff and experts who have been brought in have gone sleepless for nights attempting to extract the virus from the system. But like any smart virus, the more it’s attacked, the more it mutates and grows. The dreaded red question mark is spreading—it’s showing up now on cleverbands, tablets, vending machines, any touch-sensitive surface that extracts payment from the Dot.
There is no way to remove the virus without damaging the technology it runs on,” Mattoo continues. “This would, in turn, harm the entire network through which all the nation’s electronic data systems are connected. Everything runs on the same interlaced frequencies, and shutting it down would mean a nationwide technological blackout.”
The little silver dot as ubiquitous a part of the human body as one’s belly button is now the Achilles’ heel of the nation. Within a few short days, the virus has gotten in everywhere. It started at various locations where members of the ubiquitous Saint Fox fan army were employed—at Tesco, Asda, Argos, Sainsbury’s. Spidering its way across the electromagnetic stratosphere, it has spread across the entire country, so far appearing limited to frequencies within our national borders.
Safety warnings have been issued. Police forces are stationed around every corner, though it appears that they are not yet authorised to take any particular action. Presumably, the authorities do not yet know what action to take.
People are refusing to leave their houses. Those who have long ago prepared for doomsday are going into their bunkers, unearthing their emergency rations. Others, however, are going about their business as usual, rolling their eyes at the latest nationwide scare that can’t possibly be true. And though many major stores have temporarily closed their doors, your odds of finding your milk, sausages, and whatever else you need improve if you’re willing to travel a little further to a less-populated neighbourhood, or patronise a smaller shop.
There, at these shops that are staying open during the mayhem, shoppers swipe despite the risk. They swipe right across the big red question mark that is the Pay Now square, and go on with their lives as before. The price they pay for their bravery or foolishiness?
Nothing. At first.
Then, the symptoms begin.
Dr. Christopher Wender, a top neurologist at Saint Thomas hospital, had a few words to say about our newest epidemic:
“The beauty of the disease is in the psychology of it. It starts in the mind, slowing things down just a tad but increasing sensitivity—to loud noises and light, in particular. Many afflicted have reported that one of the first symptoms they notice is that they ‘hear things’. They start to believe the adverts are talking directly to them, they hear their names shouted in the streets on their way to work, while sitting alone in coffeehouses, on satellite radio programmes. Their minds fill with things that simply aren’t there.
Memory is soon affected as well. The transfer of information between short term and long term memory becomes a broken bridge. Important dates, names, and places fall through the cracks. People misplace things, forget where they parked their car, forget to turn off the stove, forget about appointments they’ve made.
Some of the physical symptoms reported thus far are nausea, headache, congestion, indigestion, constipation, diarrhea, insomnia, dry skin, fatigue. Weight loss in some, weight gain in others. The stomachs of some refuse to hold down food, while others are compelled to feed themselves constantly.
We’ve speculated that the virus is a sort of synthetic biotoxin, a series of electrical sequences that the body recognises as its own. A touch to any P.O.S. terminal transfers the virus through the Dot. The electrical signal then continues its current through the bloodstream, and in rapid-fire time to its intended destination—the brain. Once there, neuronal activity causes strand breaks in DNA, altering the genetic code in a way similar to Alzheimer’s, mimicking symptoms of various known disorders along the way so that it’s hard to pinpoint, and even harder to treat.”
The latest reports show that approximately 1 out of every 50 citizens is infected. Every hour, reports flood in of new incidents, and new symptoms. Doctors have begun turning patients away, as too many are coming in at only the mildest onslaught of symptoms, fearing the worst—that the disease is in fact fatal, though the first fatality linked to the virus has yet to be reported.
There’s been talk of returning to cash exchange, at least temporarily. This would be fine for small items, but makes major transactions impossible, considering that when the country switched over to the Dot, the recycling programme that was simultaneously put into effect—cash for electronic credit—means th
at hardly anyone now owns more than a few bills, save for those they kept as souvenirs.
As the country reels in chaos, those who have a moment to spare to collect their thoughts all seem to be asking the same questions:
Where is His Majesty’s government, and why have they not responded? What is their plan to control the situation? What can be done to repair both the electrified economy and thousands of ailing citizens?
Their silence leads us to believe that, like us—they simply don’t know.
– Dominic Baggs, BBC News
Harold Waterman waved his hand, closing the holo window displaying the article, frowning with as much disdain as he could muster. Up in his ivory tower he sweated and drank, but in front of others, he maintained a carefully crafted appearance of composure.
“Sir, you have a phone call. It’s President Ellis.”
“Thank you, Ben. I’ll take it in my office.” Waterman sighed heavily. He was exhausted, his face drawn and sallow. This morning his wife had been sure to point out that the grey in his hair was starting to show again; he would have to dye it soon.
“This is Prime Minister Waterman. I’ve been waiting for your call, President Ellis.”
The Rise of Saint Fox and The Independence Page 14
