PARANOIA A1 The Computer is Your Friend
Page 22
Veronica stared with wide eyes at the PDC, then up at Ben-B’s smiling face. She had no idea what to say, or in her case to mmmrrmmph.
Her heart sank further as she saw Regina-G-AFD-5. Ben-B’s GREEN-Clearance second in command wore an identical jumpsuit, a bit more full along the waist, colored pale green with a deep green badge. Her black hair was cut short in typical Alpha Complex fashion—i.e., avoiding a particular fashion so as not to stand out. Though not technically forbidden, individuality often meant treason, and treason always meant trouble.
The two officers retreated to a far corner. Veronica, to no one’s surprise, stayed where she was.
She wondered what was going on. The recorded interrogation covered Ben and Regina’s voices so she couldn’t hear them. She took a long while to realize the corollary: Neither would any bugs. To anyone listening in Internal Affairs, nothing was going on except a routine tutorial in communication skills.
————
Ben asked Regina, “Where do we stand on Operation Site-N-Sleight?”
Regina knew the cameras were broken. Regina knew Ben’s PDC recording masked her voice. Even so, Regina was nervous. She was already up to her neck in fines and couldn’t afford further debt. Yet here she was, discussing treason. “We hacked the Report Treason For Valuable Prizes site. We stole the identities of 32 citizens before Internal Affairs noticed. We pulled in a known hacker and taught him some communication skills until he confessed. We brainscrubbed him and re-educated him as a line cook.”
“Good,” said Ben. “Send me the list of IDs. I’ll recruit those citizens to a contest—something about seeing who’s the most loyal. Standard reward, credits; standard penalty, termination. Being more loyal will raise their loyalty ratings, which will improve their credit ratings. I’ll max out their credit. When I send you the word, arrest them for suspicious financial activity and have them all brainscrubbed. I’ll funnel the credits to the usual accounts.”
In the background, the recorded screaming gave way to a rambling confession of rolling blackouts, fluoridated water, and a quintuple kidnapping.
“What about the winner?” Regina asked.
“It’s not about winning or losing, but the competition. That’s what creates the best results. So brainscrub the winner too. Next, what about Lien-N-Clean?”
“After we took out a million-credit insurance policy on the old Central Station building, a Troubleshooter team showed up to investigate why we wanted the policy. We gave the Troubleshooters free grenades for their investigation; I’m told pieces of the team are still being scrubbed from the briefing room. Since the building was originally a Research and Design lab, we’ve declared a three-block radius—” (Regina checked her notes) “—‘Unsafe Due To Runaway Experiment Into Things Humanity Was Never Meant To Know.’ We can’t use the budget line for the building to launder credits any more, but the 500,000 credits we previously assigned for renovations are clean. My report is ready to go.”
“You’re blaming Pirate for the building’s loss?”
“Right. Give the word and I’ll demolish it in a flashy explosion, then file both the report and the claim.”
The recorded confession devolved into crying and gibbering over a background of mechanical noises—grinding, buzzing, and a high-pitched drill. For a moment Ben seemed to be daydreaming. Then he returned to the matter at hand. “Consider the word given. And Operation Smash-N-Cash?”
“Yesterday Armed Forces discovered last week’s theft from Weapon Supply Cache SECDEF-332 and reported it to The Computer. The Computer told us to investigate. This morning we blamed a traitor working with the infamous Superstar Pirate. I created eyewitness reports and images that put both Pirate and the traitor at the scene. I matched the Pirate description we previously established.”
Now Ben was paying full attention, which always unnerved Regina. “A co-conspirator? Why?”
“I thought we should have someone to arrest. Superstar Pirate obviously isn’t available, so I grabbed some poor sap—just a RED meter maid. I sent her to 4 for communication skills, and—” Regina broke off. She turned to look at the chair.
“I suppose that will do. And the weapons?”
“Um, is she—? Never mind, I don’t need to know. We got 9,000 credits on the INFRARED Market. I’ll launder them through a shell firm tomorrow.”
————
Ben’s attention drifted to the audio recording, where he was demanding information about Superstar Pirate. He’d arrested, questioned, and terminated many, many people for aiding this sector’s Public Enemy #1. Enhanced interrogation had revealed many, many leads to the racketeer’s base of operations.
It testified to the effectiveness of IntSec interrogations that so many citizens would squeal in such detail on a traitor who didn’t exist.
Superstar Pirate—as only Ben and Regina knew—was a bogey, a strawman. Ben had created him whole to take the blame for his own traitorous schemes. And the whole plan was working brilliantly.
Ben-B was rich even by the lofty standards of BLUE Clearance. All his enemies across the clearance spectrum, from drug-happy INFRARED drones to rival BLUE officers, had been successfully and permanently dispatched. These days even his INDIGO boss left him alone. He had arrived. Sure, he’d left behind a pile of innocent bodies—though then again, was anyone truly innocent?—but that was the way to climb high.
As for the officers and low-clearance idlers working under him, he looked on them with a magnanimous heart. His contests brought out their best; by Ben’s standards, few management techniques worked so well. His competitors, pitted against each other for advancement or self-preservation, unearthed skills and internal resources they’d never known they had. Some competitors even survived.
Regina, for one. “Ben, I was wondering if I could—well, if I could have more than my usual cut this time.”
Uh-oh. Regina might need to be encouraged with another contest. “Why? Twenty percent isn’t good enough?”
“IntSec has started charging interest on my old fines. If I don’t pay them soon—well, you know how interest rates work.”
Regina was useful, no doubt about that—but this was sounding like trouble. “I’d like to help you.” Ben reached out and rested his hands heavily on her shoulders. “You’ve been loyal to me, and trustworthy as well. Trust is important, Regina-G. An extra hundred credits.”
Regina looked away. “That’s better than nothing, I suppose, but—”
“Agreed, then. Anything else?”
She showed Ben her PDC. “We have a potential problem. One of my packet sniffers in the Internal Affairs server found this C-mail.”
He read. He frowned, chuckled—a tense chuckle—then raised his eyebrows. “Forty-eight percent? When did our Security Efficiency Rating fall to 48%?”
“Every time we have Superstar Pirate get away with something, that’s a crime we don’t solve. Internal Affairs probably thinks we’re working with him. Keep reading—you’ll see they want to investigate. What should we do?”
Ben stared. “Why didn’t you hack the SER to raise it above 64? You have the skills.”
Regina just looked away.
“Sloppy. I shouldn’t have to tell you everything. Consider that hundred-credit bonus rescinded.” He thrust her PDC back into her hands. “But—but—not a problem! We just need to arrest, convict, and terminate the notorious traitor Superstar Pirate. That will bring our SER above 80 at least.”
“Eighty-seven. I checked. But how do we arrest someone who doesn’t exist? Wait—you don’t mean—?” She backed away.
“Relax. You’re more important to me alive. Besides, that would raise questions about my competence. My number two, Superstar Pirate all along? No, we need someone completely ignorant.” Ben mused aloud. “He fails to confess even under interrogation—we say ‘Only someone as strong-willed as Superstar Pirate could maintain his innocence’—the lack of evidence is all the evidence we need! I’m brilliant! What have we said Superstar Pirate
looks like?”
Regina thumbed through her PDC. “Tall, skinny, short wavy hair, prominent nose, traitorous gleam in his eye, traitorous laugh, traitorous gait, traitorous—”
“I get it. Find a patsy who matches the description. Make sure his record is suspiciously clean. Update the Superstar Pirate description with more features that match his. Then send a squad of goons to arrest him. Today! I’ll take it from there.”
The PDC’s recording turned from harsh words to manic screaming. Regina agreed and left quickly, avoiding the RED in the chair.
Ben listened to the recording, daydreaming again. He walked to the chair and leaned over Veronica. Her eyes were red and puffy. Ben couldn’t tell where the sweat ended and the tears began. “I do love a good questioning. There’s such a competitive element. I ask, they dodge—I feint, they parry—I drill, they faint—good stuff.”
She nodded.
“Know why I used this recording? We disabled the cameras but not the microphones. Disabling both would be too suspicious.” He pulled two cables from his jumpsuit’s pocket and plugged them into a battery pack on his belt. The cables ended in alligator clips, one black, one red.
“Hrmph mrr mrphr!”
“Sort of.” Red clip on one earlobe, black on the other. “Operation Smash-N-Cash. I know you’d confess to it. Am I right?”
She nodded violently.
“Good, because you already did. Your confession is ready to go. But I can’t take the risk of Internal Affairs teaching you to communicate. You might tell them about this private meeting. And—you know, I wouldn’t tell this to just anybody—Internal Affairs frightens me. No, really. Internal Affairs—that would be bad.”
She just looked at him.
“But you—you’re helping to prevent that.” Ben stepped back. “Be proud—you’re raising this precinct’s SER.” He pressed a button on his belt.
On the recording, the interrogation was ending as the subject had an unfortunate heart attack.
Ben-B murmured, “It’s all a competition.” When the recording stopped, he removed the wires and called for cleanup.
3: Locker rooms are rarely this interesting
Mandate CPPM 349.62/e: All CPU workers on duty are encouraged to keep a small edible snack on their person, so that in food-deficit-related emergencies (including but not limited to low blood sugar or obvious stomachal borborygmus) they can quickly eat said snack and remain on duty without breaks as defined by Efficiency Improvement Directive $UPDATED_EID_NUM.
Mandate CPTM 449.89/a: In Mandate CPTM 349.62/e, the word “encouraged” is redefined as “mandatory” and the word “snack” is redefined as “FunFoods brand soylent-based edible product.” This mandate is sponsored by FunFoods. “Buy FunFoods today and avoid arrest!”
Clarence-Y—tall, skinny, short wavy hair, prominent nose, no gleam of any kind in either eye—reached the Merit-N-Trust Work Center with Ignatius quietly asleep in his hidden pocket. Merit-N-Trust CPU was a service firm that organized work assignments for CPU. The loyal workers at Merit-N-Trust took pride in their job, mostly because they didn’t have to do it themselves; they told parties of the second part to do jobs dreamt up by remote and anonymous parties of the third part. Some called it lazy; Merit-N-Trust called it workflow management.
The building itself towered ominously in the popular Alpha Complex architectural style of Built Cheap And Budget Surplus Pocketed. The dark gray asbestos-crete walls, once smooth, showed an efficient space-filling network of spidery cracks and shallow holes. A lack of windows—or, more positively, a vigorous abolition of anything windowlike—kept workers inside from losing efficiency by looking out and remembering a life beyond their cubicle.
Merit-N-Trust had awarded the contract for the Work Center to the bidder with the largest “voluntary monetary display of gratitude for inclusion in the bidding process.” Build ‘Em Now HPD, a licensed construction firm, won the contract and quickly subcontracted to whomever could cover the costs of their previous display of gratitude plus a little something extra. This process was iterated seven times until Merit-N-Trust inadvertently subsubsubsubsubsubsubsubcontracted their own contract. They promptly bought, for 1 credit, a foreclosed property scheduled for demolition and, with minor renovations (such as bricking up the windows) and not-as-minor gratitude payments to the local building inspector, the facility was declared safe for citizens of YELLOW Clearance or lower. Merit-N-Trust paid itself the two million credits allotted for construction and used the profits to pay for a management seminar in the pleasure domes of VDF Sector.
Passing a scrubot in valiant battle against graffiti (“People called Yellowpants, they go, the house”), Clarence presented his ID to the guardbot in the crumbling archway. “Clarence-Y-SKL-1,” he said cheerfully, “currently assigned to this Merit-N-Trust Work Center as a CPU efficiency auditor. I am returning from a successful field assignment. I am not a Communist, mutant, nor traitor of any kind. I request permission to enter.”
Guardbot LAR/E 0058466975, a tall metal monster with more weapons than most people have teeth, looked down at Clarence with six eyes. “Welcome citizen please present your identification ten seconds until indiscriminate weapons fire.”
Clarence looked at the laminated card in his hand, then back at the bot. He waved the card frantically. “Here! ID here! Right here!”
One of the bot’s eyes glowed red and a stuttering red line ran over Clarence-Y’s card. “Error scanning identification possible traitor six seconds remaining.”
Clarence jumped up as high as he could, bringing the card to the guardbot’s bristle of lenses. The bot counted down to one, then beeped. “Identification accepted welcome you may enter this facility.”
Clarence sighed and put his ID away. “See you tomorrow, Larry,” he said as he walked past.
“Citizen Clarence-Y-SKL-1,” guardbot LAR/E said, “this unit appreciates being allowed to simulate scanning failure to test security parameters guard duty can be uneventful and the occasional simulations maintain integrity of software routines should a real emergency occur.”
“Not a problem, Larry. TSPM 331.71/c says citizens should help bots feel appreciated. Besides, with all your guns on safety, what could happen?”
“Safety.” Guardbot LAR/E fell silent. Its weapons clicked softly, once each. “Affirmative weapons were on safety all along nothing irrecoverable could happen have a nice day.”
Clarence entered the center and began the improved Merit-N-Trust employee return procedures:
1. He logged in at a CPU work station with his assigned name and password;
2. wrote his name and return time on the paper sheet hanging on the wall above the terminal;
3. waved at the RED-Clearance citizen behind a circular desk who wrote his name and ID down on another sheet;
4. rubbed his face with SPF 75 anti-melanoma cream;
5. put his head in the Safe But Accurate Retina, Tongue, Teeth, and Widow’s Peak Scanner;
6. signed his name on another sheet indicating he had read health warnings about the scanner;
7. recited Happiness Hymn #44 (“The YELLOW Mellow Fellow”) into a voice analyzer;
8. signed the form permitting CPU to sell the recording of his recitation to other firms for use in commercials and jingles;
9. signed another form stating he had signed the four previous forms;
10. signed the Form Revision Form stating it was three previous forms, not four;
11. slid his identification card through a reader;
12. verified the ID card he currently possessed had the correct name, picture, current residence, three former residences, signature, fingerprint, tongueprint, voiceprint, and urine pH level;
13. signed a form verifying he was correct when verifying the ID card was correct;
14. signed a form agreeing he was free from mutation, treason, unhappy thought, or weird dreams involving crisp apples;
15. and completed a brief five-page survey about the preceding employee ret
urn procedures.
Clarence felt proud he himself had cut three minutes off these procedures. Citizens spent less time waiting once the health warning was placed after scanner use.
Now officially returned from the field, he went straight to the locker room to change into civilian clothes. Although both outfits comprised identical yellow jumpsuits and black shirts, Mandate PLPM 100.45/p required citizens to own (and therefore purchase) backup clothes.
In the locker room, Merit-N-Trust had gone for a bright and cheerful design plan. Studies showed “bright and cheerful” improved worker efficiency and decreased the chances of a disgruntled maniac killing co-workers. After 20 years without maintenance, the room still technically qualified as “bright and cheerful” as defined by several recent mandates with grandfather clauses. Faded yellow paint covered the walls and lockers with legally-defined cheer; the myriad rusted dents in the lockers doors were defined as lending character (HPPM 620.80/a) and showcasing their utility (PLPM 335.63/e). The original steel-slat benches had been scheduled for replacement with expensive upholstered seats, but at the last minute had been preserved as “designated historic seating technology” (RDPM 888.38/t).
A dozen efficiency auditors filled the space, efficiently changing out of their yellow work jumpsuits and efficiently chatting about the day’s assignments, pausing at each change of subject to assess, according to Mandate CPPM 640.91/f, whether discussion of a given assignment was treason. This lent a strange staccato to the conversations.
Clarence proceeded to his locker at the far end of the room. He paused mid-step. The locker door was covered with blobs of wet toilet paper.
He ignored the snickering from the other Yellowpants. When he reached his locker, the snickering erupted into outright laughter.
“What’s the matter, Clarence-Y?” said Geraldine-Y-PRI-4. “Something wrong with your locker?”