Department of Student Loans, Kidnap & Ransom
Page 9
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Mick was in a good mood, especially after Ally told him that Plan B would be to take a sailboat to Cuba. He had been there once before and it was good fun. It was also a safe place for a debt runner trying to hide their face: people with tech enhancements, including audio or visual surveillance implants, were turned away at the airport if they were dumb enough to come to Cuba with any sort of enhancements. Those with implants were actually welcome to enter Cuba, but they and their baggage had to first go through a zapping booth – basically a box that runs an unpleasant electric current through your body, destroying your implants. If you had an implant that was vital to your life support, then Cuba wasn’t for you. It was a nice relaxing Luddite anti-tech holiday spot, aside from a few minor issues.
As well as its attitude towards audio and video recording devices embedded onto people, Cuba was also known for casinos, brothels and Haitian-Dominican hemorrhagic fever (also known as ‘Cubola’). Evangelical leaders throughout Cuba enthusiastically spread rumors that Cubola was sexually transmitted, and that you could get it even if you used a condom. The truth, according to the The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Spokane, Washington, was that you could catch Cubola from toilet seats, door knobs and handshakes. Furthermore, the natural reservoir for Cubola was not prostitutes, as claimed by Church leaders, but rather pigeons.
And despite the name, you would be perfectly safe in Haiti or the Dominican Republic. The disease was endemic only to Cuba. The casinos in Cuba had bribed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to name it after their Caribbean neighbors in order to not scare away gamblers. Unfortunately for the casinos, a virtual reality immersion sharing forum that specialized in East Asian comic porn (and radical pro-cyborg tech implant libertarianism) started a campaign to informally rename the virus ‘Cubola.’ The campaign against the anti-tech Cubans was successful. As for the virus, there hadn’t been a serious outbreak in three years, which was reassuring. However, the fatality rate was 73%, which was somewhat less reassuring.