She cocked her head and looked at him sideways.
“And what makes you think that I want to get to know you?”
He shrugged, then hung his head down.
“You sound like a girl, you know that, don’t you?”
“I think I learned that line from a girl, actually.”
“Yeah? And what happened to that girl?”
“It didn’t work out. But I got to keep the line at least.” He tried to force a smile through his fear.
Sam laughed and then she swam away from him in the water.
“I’ll have to think about it,” she said.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A FEW DAYS after their last meeting, the Inner Circle of Youtopia all sat around the centrol lounge.
“So, is everyone ready?” asked Dealer, who had managed to complete his group-mind app. Today was the first day of testing.
“How do we navigate this thing?” Soxy said.
“You’ll work it out,” Dealer said. “It’s not that complicated.”
“We can set access, though, right?” Gretel asked. “We don’t have to let everyone in at once.”
“Yes, you can adjust those settings. I’m not sure if you’d want to, though. The whole point of it is to have access to the entire GroupMind.”
“How long will it take?” Shy said.
“A few hours. The software has to compress a lot of your information, which is how it sends it so quickly. We might want to get some rest.”
“Anyone for soccer?” Shy said.
“I’ll play,” Soxy said, and the two of them walked over to a virtual simulation of an old table soccer game.
Three hours later, a message appeared on Shy’s com saying that the new software was ready and asking if he wanted to access it. He accepted.
Within seconds, a new application interface appeared on the screen before him. He explored, checking the number of people currently logged in and other statistics of the system. There was a large red button which said “Enter GroupMind” and he clicked it.
Shy felt his viewpoint expanding in a way it never had before, not even when he had taken G4F, the latest in a long line of synthetic hallucinogens. A tingling ran up his spine, culminating in the top of his head and making him feel as though his whole mind were opening up to a broader reality. Five or six other voices seemed to be talking. For a moment he felt dizzy, lost, as if he no longer existed and all that existed were these other people.
“Okay, everyone quiet,” Dealer said. “We’re going to need to be careful how we think. We’re all connected together now. We have to learn to block out certain aspects of one another’s minds and access others. This might take some practice.”
Shy and the others at Youtopia spent the next few days experimenting with GroupMind. They invented a game they called Mind-Reader, which involved trying to get into one of the other player’s minds and working out a number stored there. If the number was in the bio-brain it was almost impossible, but if they moved the number into the tech-brain and stored it on one of the memory bots there, it was almost too easy.
Shy had long ago gotten used to the weird sensation of having different parts of his mind think about three or four different things at the same time, which he could do with his com, but the sensation of someone else using parts of his mind to think about something else entirely was very disconcerting. Being able to tap into other people’s resources, though, gave his mind capabilities that he had never imagined possible.
They soon learned to access sensory information from one another. So Shy could see what Dave or Soxy was seeing or hear what Gretel or Dealer was hearing. They all started bursting out laughing when Shy ate some chewing gum and all the others tapped into his taste sensation.
“Oooh, that’s disgusting,” Gretel said.
“Gross,” Soxy said.
By combining their minds, they discovered they were able to trawl through information at a rate fifty times faster than any one of them alone could have. With his com alone, although Shy was usually able to read three or four articles at once, he often found it confusing. Now, though, he could read ten at once, and not only understand them but process them, make connections between them and all the rest of his knowledge, process them with his creativity, and at the same time be aware of the information all the others were reading and what they were thinking about it.
In order to hack into one of The Corp accounts, the Inner Circle first needed to do some reconnaissance. They split up their targets—the directors of The Corp Australia—and monitored them carefully.
The more information they could get on their enemies, Dave said, the better prepared they would be to deal with them. He wanted to know who they were, how long they had worked in The Corp, what time they started work, what time they finished, what they did after work, what their vices were, and any other information the group could possibly gather.
The key to such a daring raid would be to find a weakness in The Corp armor that hadn’t been exploited before. A poorly protected home network, a hotel room for secret trysts between colleagues where valuable information might be discussed, a chink in one of the coms that could be used to get a visual feed on daily activities—especially those involving The Corp security.
Shy and Soxy were assigned to one of the top execs, Roland Chase, and linked their coms together using the GroupMind software in a way that felt very similar to virtual tantric sex. They didn’t even have to ask what the other was working on—they already knew. They followed up on each other’s hunches, ran cross-checks on each other’s leads and explored each other’s rabbit warrens.
Mr. Chase lived in a well-guarded compound in one of the wealthiest areas of the city—an area where people still lived in houses with gardens, as opposed to densely compressed apartments. Roland, it turned out, had a wife and not one but two different lovers. Using GroupMind and the resources of a number of the other Youtopia Inner Circle members, Shy and Soxy had managed to hack into almost all of the city’s CCTV cameras, of which there were thousands. Using these combined with a virtual tracking bug, which pinged data towers every thirty seconds and sent back location details to a Youtopia controlled server, they were able to keep careful track of almost all of Mr. Chase’s movements.
Through a camera in the Vue du Monde restaurant, and then another in the Park Hyatt, Shy and Soxy watched as Mr. Chase got cozy with his lovers. The tall brunette with the best legs Shy had ever seen turned out to be Hannah Trello, head of GrowCorp, the alimentation division of The Corp, responsible for genetically modifying and cultivating a wide range of pest and disease resistant crops with super high yields. The short, thin blonde with the bouncy hairdo was Sally Fields, wife of Martin Sheehan, one of Roland’s golfing buddies.
At first, Soxy felt sorry for Roland’s wife, Martha, but then it turned out that she herself had a lover on the side—none other than Roland’s best friend, Wilbur, a tall ex-football with the body of a horse.
“This is better than the sex houses,” Shy said to Soxy as they watched Martha and Wilbur going for it in the kitchen one day.
“Turn that off, Shy. We’re here to break into their bank account, not watch them having sex.”
“You have to admit, he’s pretty good,” Shy said, turning to Soxy and hoping that the display in front of them might whet her own appetite for a little fun.
“Let’s get back to work,” Soxy said. “Where’s Mr. Chase?”
“I think he’s still at work.”
“Do you think blackmail might work?” Soxy said.
“Oh my God, look at this,” Shy said.
“Shy, I told you to stop watching that.”
“No, seriously, check camera four.”
Camera four was the camera embedded above the front door of the house. Shy watched as Mr. Chase’s daughter daughter, Samantha, made her way up to it. Meanwhile, back on camera two, Mrs. Chase was lying spreadeagled on the kitchen bench with Wilbur going strong between her thighs.
“
Oh Jesus,” Soxy said. “Poor girl. How old is she?”
“Nineteen.”
“That’s not what you want to see when you’re nineteen,” Soxy said.
“That’s not what you want to see at any age.”
Shy had never seen anyone jump as quickly as Mrs. Chase did when her step-daughter walked in the door. Within seconds she was on her feet and had her skirt, which had been dumped on the floor, up around her knees. Then just as Samantha came through the kitchen, she shoved Wilbur out the back door.
“Hi,” the girl said, hardly even looking at the older woman, then heading for her room.
“Would you like something to eat?” Mrs. Chase called after her, but Samantha didn’t answer.
“Rude little bitch,” Soxy said.
“She probably wouldn’t have even noticed,” Shy said. “She was pretty cute, though.”
Soxy virtually nudged him.
They monitored Mrs. Chase for a while longer and then Samantha, both of them connected into v-space and for all intents and purposes looking like they were dead.
“I have an idea,” Shy said.
“Are you going to tell me what it is?”
“Mrs. Chase has just had a nasty fright. She’s probably not thinking straight. If we send her an attachment with a Trojan in it, there’s a good chance she’ll open it. Once we’ve got a backdoor into her system, we can more easily access Mr. Chase’s com.”
“It’s worth a try. What should we send her?”
“How about an anonymous message which says ‘we’re watching you’ and contains a video of her antics. She’s unlikely to report that to her husband. And who knows, it might have other uses?”
“Or what about something from Wilbur? Some v-flowers? She’s bound to open those.”
“What if she thanks him for them?”
“It’ll be too late.”
They both laughed.
“Virtual flowers it is,” Shy said.
Shy contacted Dealer and told him what his plan was.
“Great idea,” Dealer said. “Let me get things ready.”
A few minutes later, Dealer contacted Shy and Soxy again. “Have you got the address ready?” he said.
“Yep, all done.”
Soxy had been working on a fake sender address that would make it look as though the flowers had been sent from V-flowers-R-US, courtesy of Wilbur.
In less than a minute, the flowers were sent. Shy and Soxy monitored the link to their Trojan to see if it would be installed or not.
From the house video feed they saw Mrs. Chase’s face turn from serious to a smile, and a few seconds later they received notification that their Trojan horse had successfully been installed on her com.
“What now?” Soxy said.
“Now we’ll have to find a way to use our Trojan to get into Mr. Chase’s system,” Dealer said. “That shouldn’t be too hard.”
“He’ll be much more heavily protected than she is. And much less trusting.”
“Where there’s a Wilbur there’s a way,” Shy said, and Soxy laughed.
“Good work, guys,” Dave said, when they told him what they had done. “That’s going to make life a whole lot easier.”
Salina came over to Shy’s room that night night. After a round of sex, they walked out into the evening together. The day before, she had had a meeting with the priest, who had been given censored access to Youtopia a week ago. Shy asked her if she had heard anything back from him yet.
“Not yet. It’ll probably take a week or two. Nothing ever happens quickly around here.”
“And if they say no?”
“I’ll find some other way to do it.”
“What are your options?”
“I don’t have to go through the schools. Many of the kids who I have shared it with are already sharing it with their friends and siblings, so I think if I just met up with the kids themselves, then it would slowly spread.”
“The trick would be to make sure the kids at the bottom of the pecking order get it first,” Shy said. “That way it’ll spread up through the food chain. If you give it to the leaders, they’ll never share it.”
Salina laughed. “You’re probably right.”
They sat down at a table outside a restaurant and watched the passing procession of people. Salina took Shy’s hand. A waitress came out and they ordered their meals.
Just as they were finishing off dinner, another couple sat at the table opposite them. Shy couldn’t stop himself from staring at the woman, who kept glancing at him and smiling every time their eyes locked. She was tall, German maybe, with that golden German skin and thick gold-blonde hair pulled back tightly around a modelesque face. Shy couldn’t help wondering if she was genetically modified, although she looked a little old. The first widely available genetic modifications hadn’t come onto the market until about twenty-five years ago.
“What do you keep looking at that woman for?” Salina said to him when he turned back to see her angry face.
“She’s very attractive, don’t you think?” Shy asked, without even thinking about it. He had thought that being Homo novus, Salina would be immune to jealousy in the same way that he and most of the others in Youtopia seemed to be.
“Would you like me to leave, so you can go and talk to her?” Salina said.
“What? No. I was just commenting on how attractive she was. You’re not jealous, are you?”
Salina looked down and played with her fingers. “A little.”
“You’re Homo novus. Homo novus don’t get jealous. At least, not in Youtopia they don’t.”
“But I’m also Guatemalan. Don’t forget that. And Guatemalans get very jealous!”
“I’ve never really understood jealousy.”
“You never feel jealous?”
“No, I don’t think so. People have described it to me, but I really don’t think I’ve ever felt it. I mean, what is it anyway? Do you feel jealous if your partner has lunch with someone else?”
“No.”
“What about if they play a game with someone else? Is that cause for jealousy?”
“No.”
“So, what’s the difference? Why jealousy just if they have sex with someone else? Or like someone else?”
“So you wouldn’t feel jealous if I went and started kissing that guy over there?” Salina pointed across the restaurant.
“Why should I?”
“Because I’d be abandoning you.”
Shy felt his stomach filling with warm, heavy blood.
“No. It would probably turn me on.”
Salina looked slightly put out. “Don’t you want me for yourself?”
“I don’t, that’s the thing.”
“Well, maybe you just don’t like me enough, then.”
“I really don’t think that’s it.”
Salina looked up at him and stared at him for a moment with both curiosity and desire on her face.
For the rest of the meal Salina was quiet. Shy felt bad about having been caught checking out the woman, and kept his gaze firmly fixed on his dinner partner.
By the time they left the restaurant, Salina seemed to have calmed down, but by then Shy was starting to question the whole basis of their relationship. Despite his strong desire to have sex with her again, it probably wasn’t really fair to her to do so. She was starting to get too attached to him.
Salina left him, saying that she really had to go home.
Over the next few weeks, the group at Youtopia managed to hack into Mr. Chase’s com using the back door that they had installed in Mrs. Chase’s. They still hadn’t managed to access the information stored in his tech-brain, where they hoped to find access data to his accounts, but they were able to get access to his visual and auditory senses, thus seeing and hearing everything he saw or heard.
Shy and Soxy were given the job of monitoring him. For eighteen hours a day, the time Roland spent awake, they took in turns living inside his perceptions.
It was during
one of these sessions that they discovered a very interesting thing about him. Roland Chase kept a number of offshore accounts, which he periodically deposited money into directly from some of The Corp’s corporate accounts.
The Youtopia group all discussed this among themselves and decided that this little loophole in Mr. Chase’s financial transactions would provide them with the perfect opportunity to raid The Corp’s accounts. Not only that, they would be able to blame the entire thing on the CEO himself.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE EVENING AFTER his job interview at The Corp, Harvey went to visit his best friend Sid, who lived in a third story apartment. Harvey stepped into an elevator, where a blinking blue fluorescent globe lit the sleeping body of a homeless man. Sid had explained to him that the blue light was to stop junkies shooting up in there, as they couldn’t see their veins. The lift wobbled and shook its way up three stories and shuddered to a halt. For a moment, when the doors didn’t open, Harvey wondered if he might get stuck in there along with the stench emanating from the creature on the floor. As he looked around for the emergency number, the doors slid slowly apart.
Sid shared his apartment with three genetically modified cats and a hallucinogenic cactus collection. The place, as always, smelled of cat pee. Sporting a badly kept beard, Sid wore a brown woolen jumper that hung low over his bulging waist and a pair of ugg boots up to his knees over some tracksuit pants. He stared at Harvey, his eyes the kind of crazy grey, like wet concrete, that made Harvey suspect he was permanently stoned.
Sid wrapped him in a bear hug and Harvey felt all his earthly pretensions leaving him as the door swung closed. He took his suit jacket off and hung it on the back of a chair in Sid’s kitchen. Then he flopped into one of his lounge chairs.
“Big day?” Sid said.
“You could say that.”
“Where have you been?”
“Job interview.”
“Yeah? Who with?”
“The Corp.” Although Harvey himself had nothing against The Corp, and in fact was very happy about having gotten an interview there, he knew that Sid’s philosophy was completely different and that Sid wasn’t going to react well to this news.
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