Nick Thacker

by The Dawn (Relics Singularity 1)

  “Well, she’s been all gung-ho about this reapportionment for the last two weeks, and every time she brings it up she seems like she’s just found the Holy Grail or something.”

  “She’s a lifer, man. ‘Anything for the System,’ you know how it is.”

  “Yeah, I know, but she can’t really think it’s going to make a difference, right?” Jonathan asked. He leaned against the doorframe of Roan’s office as he finished the last sip of coffee. It was too hot, but he didn’t notice. He wondered how much else he’d forgotten how to notice over the past three years.

  “She seems to think so. Why?”

  Jonathan frowned. “I don’t know. I guess… I just think there’s something else going on. These ‘improvements,’ I mean. They’re… obvious.”

  “Not sure why the System missed them?”

  “Yeah, exactly. And why they’re popping up more often now. Last week there were three modular adjustments to rack spaces. God, three. Before that, we hadn’t had one in over three years.” He took a breath, thinking. “And every time we find something, it’s like a party. Everyone freaks out like we brute-force cracked an encryp.”

  “People like their job,” Roan said. Jonathan loved that about the man — he couldn’t be moved; couldn’t be swayed into more than slow apathy.

  Jonathan grinned. “Right, I definitely believe that. Seriously, though. Don’t you think those ‘improvements’ are odd? Back-to-back like that, and something the System missed?”

  “No. No, I don’t care that much.”

  “Yeah, I know, man, I’m just talking. Thinking out loud. Let’s grab a drink later?”

  Roan lifted both his eyebrows this time, a rare feat, and answered. “You got it. See you then.”

  Jonathan walked the rest of the way down the hallway and entered his office again. It was well-appointed, at least compared to the others. He had a window, and a couple cushioned chairs. There were never visitors, not down here. But they came with the office, so he didn’t have them removed.

  He plopped down into his chair and waved his hand over the screen to wake it. It was almost as he’d left it fifteen minutes ago, with a minor change: the blue progress bar that he’d left at 26% was blinking at 100%. A dialog window had popped up over that telling him the update was complete.

  Finally, a small ticker at the bottom of that window displayed a clock counting upward, timing how long ago the update had finished. “Update completed: 17 seconds.”

  Perfect timing. The seconds clicked upward, and Jonathan leaned back and waited for the next update request to ding into his inbox.

  Each update had to be manually performed — a human, sitting in front of a computer screen, had to click each update to begin the process, wait for it to complete, and then wait for the next one to appear.

  It was the epitome of mindless work, but it was his work. The System had decided it needed him, if only for this brainless task, each and every workday. For the honor of providing the System this crucial role, Jonathan Rand would be paid handsomely: 79,500 Current per annum.

  500C shy of hitting the next tax bracket, so he was grateful the System had the decency to leave it there.

  But still — it was mindless work, and certainly something he could teach a kid to do.

  The next update dinged into the inbox, and he clicked it and started the process. He read the undecipherable label, an annoying habit he’d found himself in.

  B67458RA34

  It told him nothing, except that a reassignment was involved. “RA.” The rest of the numbers and letters were always useless content, only there for logging purposes in the System’s records. They weren’t even chronological.

  “Reassignment,” he said to himself as he leaned back in the chair and watched the progress bar count upward. “Wonder who’s getting fired today.”

  Jonathan swiveled left and right, another habitual dance he’d developed after three years of mind-numbingly dumb work, and closed his eyes as he waited for the installation to finish.

  MYERS

  IT MUST HAVE BEEN ONLY fifteen minutes later when Myers awoke once again. A noise. A shuffling sound, then silence.

  He looked out the peepholes he’d made on each side of the kiosk, trying to discern movement in the darkening sky. It was either already dusk or there was some sort of storm blowing in. He couldn’t tell.

  Another slight shuffling sound caught his attention from behind him, and he turned as silently as possible. He waited an entire minute before moving again. Probably a rat or small animal, he told himself.

  The shuffling sound did not return, and he was again alone with only his thoughts to keep him company. He was already lowering himself back down to the floor to try to sleep through the night when the glass exploded behind him.

  The glass in front of him followed immediately after, and Myers instinctively ducked farther down below the windows.

  It was only then that his brain processed what had just happened.

  A gunshot.

  Someone had shot at him, and missed, blowing out the front and back windows of the small kiosk.

  Myers panicked, curling up into the corner of the kiosk. Maybe they’ll leave, he thought. As soon as the sentence entered his mind, he knew it was ridiculous.

  They’d taken a calculated shot at him, and they would have gotten him — probably right in the back of the head — had he not decided to lay back down and go to sleep. He also realized he had likely given away his position by scrubbing the glass clean in small circles on each window.

  He cursed to himself, then took stock of his situation. I’m a sitting duck in here, and they’re either going to try to kill me again or come see if I’m dead. Either way, I’m dead.

  The safer plan — if there really was one — was to try to make a break for it.

  He stood up into a crouch, calculating his escape. To his advantage, the shooter was behind the kiosk — the glass at the rear of the small building had blown slightly before that in the front. Assuming the attacker was far enough away, and mostly behind him, that meant he could at least run out the door and straight forward, using the kiosk as cover to give himself a few precious seconds to get away.

  He didn’t have time to develop a more in-depth plan. He made a run for it, moving out the door and into the cooling evening air as fast as his tired, old legs would take him. Myers kept running, the dry riverbed on his right, winding through the city.

  When he felt safe enough to turn, he tried to move left abruptly enough to throw off anyone chasing him. The turn hurt his knee, but the pain would have to wait.

  He’d almost reached the next street when a bullet smashed into a stone wall, directly behind him. The sound of the actual gunshot followed a half-second behind, both alarming Myers that his getaway had been foiled and allowing him to realize that the attacker was far enough away that it was difficult to get a solid bead on him.

  He slid into the alley, taking only a brief moment to catch his breath. The attacker knew where he was, but he was far enough behind him that he was safe for now, and out of sight. But he couldn’t stop. Not now.

  Myers kept running, though it was merely a slight jog by now, and even that was stretching it. He slowed to a walk, realizing that he was traveling almost the same speed as when he was “running.”

  “Hey.”

  The voice came from behind him, and Myers almost fell to the ground. He turned, raising his hands above his head. “D — don’t shoot.” His voice was raspy, almost inaudible.

  “I’m not going to shoot you. I —“

  The voice stopped as its owner stepped into the remaining light of day and saw Myers up close.

  “Oh, holy…”

  The man talking was young, easily under thirty, and Myers was first struck by his eyes. They darted left and right, but it was clear they didn’t miss a thing. His body stood ramrod straight, knees slightly bent and ready to spring into action.

  “What? Who are you?” Myers asked.

  �
�Don’t worry about that yet. You need to get out of here. Why’d you come here?”

  “Come where?”

  “Here, idiot. Istanbul.”

  Myers shook his head. “So this really is the city?”

  The young man stared at him blankly, his eyes now focused intently on Myers. “Are you insane? Go!”

  Myers almost sprung into action from the intensity of the man’s voice, but his feet, having been tortured and beaten for two days, remained firmly planted in place.

  “Seriously. Go. I don’t know what else to tell you, old man, so you’d better get out of here.”

  “Where am I supposed to go?” Myers asked.

  “God, you’re wasting time!” the kid said, his voice a raised whisper. He seemed to process something for a second, but then said, “Fine. Your funeral. Come on.”

  Myers had no choice. He followed the man as he turned and ran down a narrow side street between two buildings. He was much faster than Myers, and probably even if Myers wasn’t sore, tired, and wounded.

  “Where are we going?” Myers called out.

  “Stop talking, or you’ll get us both killed,” the man said as he ran.

  Myers followed along until his legs could carry him no further. “St — stop, please,” he whispered, trying to project his voice enough to be heard.

  The man stopped and shook his head, then turned around. “Fine. You win.” He motioned to the left, and Myers looked over.

  It was a tall, stained-glass window. A church. Next to the window stood a massive wood door. It was open slightly, no more than an inch.

  “We’ll camp here for now, but you’d better be ready to move when I say so.” He paused and examined him, as if noticing Myers for the first time. “Looks like you’ve been through a bit already, old man.”

  Myers frowned and opened his mouth to argue. What’s the point? He thought. He’s right.

  He looked down again and saw the aging, frail body he’d seen earlier. He sighed, then entered the church, closing the door behind him.

  SOL

  SOLOMON MERRICK CLICKED A NEW magazine into the long-range EHM Triplex rifle and muttered under his breath. He’d wasted two shots, and now he’d lost his prize. Sol stood and grunted under the weight of the EHM-made bodysuit and approved ammunition. He’d chosen to carry more rounds for this hunt in order to stay out longer and make a wider arc through the city.

  Istanbul was home for him, at least for now, and he hated it. Born in Cincinnati, this was literally halfway around the world from his comfort zone. He’d spent most of his childhood in Ohio, then most of his early adulthood in Seattle. It had taken time to adjust, but he was getting there. There was work here, and it didn’t matter anyway — he couldn’t go back.

  Sol shifted once more, feeling the survival backpack and ammunition sling settle into place on his back. He held the rifle with both hands, staying ready in case he got another line of sight on his target, and started walking.

  The mark had turned down onto a city block near the old Anglican church. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard of someone going to church, at least to any of the old religions. But it had also been awhile since he’d been part of society at large. Maybe in the other cities there was still religion.

  Sol took a shortcut through another alley, hoping to cut off the mark from advancing around his left and getting behind him. He had the upper hand — not just in weaponry, but in knowing the city as well as anyone. There would be little room for the mark to escape around the side. This side of the dried-out riverbed was narrow and held a few larger buildings, like the church, but was otherwise mostly smaller homes and shops. There were only three blocks between the river and the walls, so Sol was confident he could station himself in a place high enough to see any movement.

  He’d found the mark once already, and it seemed too good to be true. Injured, weak, and obviously exhausted, this was going to be an easy pull.

  Sol stopped short as he neared the block of homes that surrounded the centralized church. He’d forgotten to log the mark, a standard adopted and followed by everyone using the Boards.

  He sighed, stopped, and placed the rifle against a wall next to the road and swung the backpack off his shoulder. How much will this cost me?

  It had only been fifteen minutes since he’d seen the mark, so maybe it wasn’t going to cause much of an issue. Still, every little bit counts.

  He took out the palm-sized terminal, a handheld communication device, from his backpack. It was small enough to carry in a pocket, but Sol hated the bouncing feeling he got when there was anything other than legs and air inside his cargo pants. He opened the channel he was looking for and entered his pID credentials.

  The screen went black, then lit up with the multi-regional Board home screen. He waved a flat open palm downward to scroll, then made a tapping motion with his middle finger when he came to the proper link on the page. Retinal sensors on his optic nerve interpreted what his eyes were focusing on, then sent the wireless signal to the small device and clarified which link, exactly, he wanted.

  The local Board displayed immediately, listing the marks in reverse-chronological order, starting with the most valuable at the top of the page. He switched to the other tab, listing them in order of newest-released first. There at the top of the page sat his very own mark. A thumbnail image of the mark’s face as it was last publicly known was listed next to his name — Myers Asher — and a few pertinent details:

  Last sighting: (N/A)

  Projected region: (N/A)

  Estimated SOT: (N/A)

  Estimated Value (Current): 65,000

  This was good news. Sol was the only one tracking Myers Asher so far, and he intended to keep it that way. Still, he needed to log him. It would change the data and make Istanbul the location of the next hunting frenzy.

  If Sol didn’t bring him in before all that.

  He focused on the Last Sighting link and flicked his finger downward again. The page changed again, a mere split second passing before the new page was fully loaded. The intelligence inside the programs these days never ceased to amaze Sol. With 99.99% accuracy, server-side scripts projected the most likely option for client-side interactions. In this case, “they” guessed what link Sol would click, based on his current location, workforce placement, and a matrix of variables simply referred to as “Assumed and Associated Interest.” It was amazing to him they didn’t just click the link for him, almost as though by waiting for him to decide they were mocking his far inferior human processing speeds.

  AAI was a mixture of past, present, and projections, taken from his purchase history, family status, list of accounts, and a plethora of other pieces and snippets of information that had stuck with him his entire life. The database collated the information and fed it to the powers that be, and thus created the matrix AAI for his person.

  It was disgusting, honestly. His entire life he’d grown up in a world of ever-increasing speed, memory, and storage enhancements, both for humans and computers alike. When the two species, dancing around each other for generations, finally melded closer and the future pointed toward one shared sentience, it seemed already to be too late to go back. He’d fought it as long as he could, but now Sol felt more robot than human, even though he had only a few of the available enhancements his race largely had access to. Three-Dimensional Retinal Supplementation, Cardio-Ventricular Enlargement, and Biological Storage Enhancement were the only three he’d opted for before losing hope in human society and accepting his life of a drifter.

  He was a forty-three year old man who could run at 70% capacity virtually forever and could remember more information than a human being learned in a lifetime.

  And at what cost?

  He looked around at the remains of the city once called “Istanbul” and shook his head. It had been a long time — and well before BSE was available — since he’d studied history, but he knew there were many countless of generations before him who’d called this place
home, and the many times it had changed hands between rulers of men who conquered entire nations.

  Sol considered engaging a secondary virtual screen to run a quick search on the history, knowing it would only be a three-second diversion, but resisted. No point in giving these things more credit. He wanted to fling the portable unit through the window of the dusted-over bread shop in front of him.

  Instead, he allowed the device to pull in its exact coordinates and insert them onto the page, immediately publicizing Sol’s location. He did a few quick calculations and added the last piece of data the Board asked of him: Estimated Speed of Travel (SOT): 3-4km/hr.

  Sol accepted the update and the screen shifted back to the Board’s default page, listing the marks by descending value. Myers Asher was already on top, but he noticed the “Estimated Value (Current)” jump upward from 65,000 to 75,000. Would be higher if I’d done this sooner.

  Satisfied, he shut his eyes and opened them again while looking down at the device to turn it off. He placed it back in his backpack and slung it over his shoulder once more. He grabbed the rifle, checked it for any dust or debris, and started moving again.

  He knew Myers Asher was the type of man who craved order. He needed to have a plan. Sol thought about what he would do in that situation. He figured the man would hole up somewhere relatively safe, yet relatively open, providing him a decent line of sight to any would-be attackers, as well as numerous exit strategies.

  As he considered this, he gazed up at the tall bell tower of the old Anglican church in front of him, guarding over the rest of the block and neighborhood square.

  That’s where he’ll be, he thought. That’s where he wants to stay tonight.

  He considered rushing into the church, gun forward, ready to take out the mark and call it a day. But Sol needed to wait. He needed the time to pass, and as long as he made sure he didn’t lose track of the mark or let anyone else get the jump on him, it would only improve his outlook to wait until the next morning.

  He made a quick plan to check the outside of the building, to see if anyone had in fact entered it. He then measured the different entrance and exit strategies to and from the church and took a place above the bread shop in a second-floor loft with a large, broad window on two sides. Anyone moving in on his quarry would have to answer to Sol first.