by Erik Tabain
The antecedents of lightcapture arrived in the early twenty-first century, through a technology known as light detection and ranging, or LIDAR, based on a surveying method that measured distance between objects by using pulsed laser light and sensors. This was a process known as Google ‘street view’ and was used to map urban areas and cities, enabling close-up views of houses and indoor environments: the technology eventually reached its physical limitations, before the merging of electronic and biological data became a possibility.
The first major breakthrough came in the twenty-fifth century through a team lead by the Nigerian scientist, Bennet Omalu, who initially adopted telekinesis technology to enable sampling and recording of historical light data. The first successful experiments were conducted on small microbes replicated in laboratory conditions, and enabled short lightcapture transmissions of around one microsecond. Omalu established a rudimentary device resembling a small solar panel that could access the history of a subject’s molecules, and convert electrical and biological signals into viewable material on an old-fashioned television screen. Over the next thirty years, Omalu extended his program to smaller creatures and was able to recover and record the molecular light history of a pharaoh ant for a two-week period.
The second scientific breakthrough was the extraction and digital replication of genome material from organisms, and storing this digital data into a system which became known as the world memory bank, essentially a bank of high storage data units around the world that were accessed through the continuum, and accessed through a wide range of software tools and apps through Lifebook.
Two hundred years later, it was possible to re-create the light history of all living beings, and by the year 2700, any living being, object, or fossilized material could have its light history captured, extracted, analyzed and reproduced visually.
For many years, the most common way to access genetic memory was through screen viewing on a standard television screen or holographic projection, but developments in experiential software and entertainment in the year 2800 resulted in real-life experiences of history.
In 2918, it was announced at the Lagos Conference on Scientific Research that an estimated 94 per cent of all fossilized material had been collected and historical light retrieved, dating back to 4.37 billion years ago. A team led by Danish mathematician Asger Aaboe created a calendar assessment to 4,376,102,086 years—give or take a few million years, due to instability and inconsistencies in carbon data and capture—where it was agreed by the Copenhagen Agreement of 2917, that this was where the earliest recorded life on planet earth existed. The other six per cent of material was considered to have departed through space, or destroyed.
Lightcapture, genetic recording and the creation of the world memory bank were the major developments of the millennium, along with the upgrading of the internet into the continuum, after which, a series of major corporations developed, including Biocrime and other large-scale entertainment industries.
As more leisure time became available due to mechanization and less productive economic output from manual labor employment, virtual reality re-enactments and visualizations became the prominent form of entertainment, and gave rise to a new industry of historical revisionism.
These virtual reality re-enactments were based on genome data extracted from the world memory bank, and recreated into viewable video material accessed through the continuum two modes. ‘View’ mode, known as VR Watcher, was a simple mode where dates, events and locations could be searched—going back four billion years in time—with the lightcapture data retrieved from the world memory bank and displayed as moving video footage on a lightscreen. Like any other video recording, the visual footage could be scrolled backwards and forwards, and viewed from any perspective.
VR Watcher was a brilliant invention in itself, but the true phantasmagorical experience was through the ‘reality’ mode, a system known as VR Engage. While the ‘view’ mode enabled the viewing of historical material extracted from the world memory bank, the ‘reality’ mode placed the citizen directly into the scene of the action.
The more expensive VR Engage system relied on a cell device app, with a fiber-optics cable connected to the cell device and the other end of the cable wrapped around the upper arm of a citizen, similar to a small blood pressure monitoring machine, wirelessly connected to the continuum. Once the app was activated and locked into a date and location, citizens could nominate the perspective of any being they wanted to experience the event from—human or animal—and then moved into a hallucinogenic state and lived the full experience, as if they were actually there.
The ‘reality’ mode was popular, although it was the despots of history that citizens mainly wanted to experience: the life of the tyrant Ghengis Khan during the 1200s; German fascist dictator Adolf Hitler during the 1930s; the genocidal Attila the Hun from the 450s. Other virtual realities commonly experienced were the French heroine Jeanne d’Arc burning at the stake in 1431, and the 1066 Battle of Hastings from the perspective of King Harold Godwinson’s horse. The mode was also a haven for prehistorical and scientific research, including life from the viewpoint of homo naledi and ramapithecus, and explorations of dinosauria experiences.
Assassinations of political figures were also commonly sought but the experiences from the former republic of the United States of America were the most popular—still resonating in the North America Zone over a thousand years later—and through historical lightcapture and genome extraction, many conspiracies theories were finally put to rest. The assassination of President John Kennedy in the twentieth century was not by John Harvey Oswald, as was commonly believed. The Warren Commission of 1979 was the first to officially suggest the ‘lone gunman’ factor in this assassination, and lightcapture technology confirmed that John Krimmer, working as an operative through the Central Intelligence Agency, was paid to kill President Kennedy through radical elements of the Cuban revolutionary guard. The CIA actually called off the assassination, but it was too late.
Seven
Modernity in the fourth millenium
After her slow start to the day, Lestre decided it was best to head off to the gym—her regular was the twenty-four-hour Anytime Fitness center just three minutes away from her apartment. If anything came up on her Biocrime account, she could easily access the details and any updates through her cell device.
Almost as an afterthought, before leaving her apartment, she checked on the three incubator kits in the corner of her workroom—two months earlier, Lestre and D’Souza decided to embrace their civic duty to bring three more Technocrats into the world—many others were incubating six or seven fetuses, but they felt three was the right number for them at this stage of their lives.
She switched on the lightscreens on the side of each incubator, and flicked between pages of progress numbers and data, and finally onto the image of each eight-week fetus floating in amniotic fluid. She carefully inspected the eyes and the small developing hands and smiled as she switched off the lightscreens.
Lestre was six-feet-two, thirty-six years old, slightly overweight with dark shoulder-length hair, but she didn’t look different to any other Technocrat. In the year 3034, six-feet-two was the global average height for men and women—both natural humans and Technocrats. Very few citizens worked in a location away from home and because of this, gyms were the most common physical activity centers, usually filled with rows of treadmill cubicles and cycle blocks for general and standard activity, with more advanced options, such as weightlifting, for those that wanted it. The universally recommended aerobic–cardioid action was one-hour each day and there was no shortage of locations for those that wanted to fulfill this level of activity and exercise.
As soon as Lestre walked into the gym, €2 were eked out of her universal account. It wasn’t much and because there was no physical exchange of funds, as had been the case for almost a millennia, she didn’t notice it. Depending on what she did at the gym, the extracted amount remain
ed at €2, but if she decided to spend an extra weights session, or finish off her session with a sauna rather than a standard shower, it would cost a total of €3. All seamless and transferred from her universal income account, to the universal income account of the gym owner.
Because it had been a slow day, Lestre decided on a sauna that lasted twenty minutes and, when she finished, she motioned a message to Gordan Lumbardo to meet at their regular haunt, The Old Soviet in the South Beach food zone.
After she completed her gym session, Lestre walked out onto the street and waited for an autobus. The autobus was the common mode of transport in San Francisco, an autonomous vehicle system controlled by passenger intentions and nominated destinations. The system aggregated existing passenger destinations with those waiting for transport on the streets, and indicated the likelihood of the autobus taking a new passenger directly to their destination.
Lestre checked her cell device and a list of numbered nearby autobuses appeared on her screen, with a range of different ratings—64 per cent, 38 per cent, 76 per cent and 94 per cent. A rating of 94 per cent meant the autobus was likely to go through a direct path to her destination, with only a short walk at the end. She summoned her cell device to accept the autobus numbered 4768 and, within minutes, it arrived.
As she boarded, the scanner on the autobus captured her DNA through the continuum—it recognized the messages she’d sent to Lumbardo and the plans to meet at The Old Soviet, calculated the likely travel and automatically deducted the €2.24 fare from her universal income account. If she changed her mind, or decided to go elsewhere, the scanner would re-arrange the fare and deduct the new amount. And all of this happened within a microsecond. Ten minutes later, Lestre alighted the autobus and headed towards The Old Soviet, where she could make out Lumbardo’s profile sitting at the back of the café, looking out on the marina and sipping on a synth latte.
Food zones were common in metropolitan areas, usually made up of small cafes and restaurants that sold similar food, but were differentiated by marketing, colors and service types. The Old Soviet had a yellow and red décor with old communist-era block-style lettering from the 1950s in its logo. Very few citizens knew the link, but Lumbardo vaguely recollected the relationship with old-style command economies and reveled in the irony of a café badged up in old Soviet styling, but operating in a supra-capitalist world.
The Old Soviet was typical of many other medium-cost cafes around the world, with a three-point business model seemingly the best approach to maximize revenues and keep down costs—a sophisticated food processing unit that could produce any synthetic meal on the menu, a virtual holographic waiter to accept orders, and a human waiter or robohelper to physically bring out any food or beverage that was ordered to the table.
Clothing hadn’t changed much over the more recent centuries, but had become more streamlined and basic, usually differentiated by colors and patterns. Essentially, there were two types of clothing: cheaper branded clothing, and more the expensive unbranded style.
Lumbardo, the natural human in the midst of Technocrats. He loved the irony and he loved the contrariness of his life. He was brash, upfront, and loved all things commercial. And money. He looked like a walking advertising billboard—not only was his clothing cheap, but he generated advertising revenue, or Ad-Rev, with a large advertisement on the back of his T-shirt, and another two smaller advertisements on the front. And another on his cap for good measure. His advertising zones were matt woven screens with revolving messages—they weren’t too garish but subtle: advertisers realized long ago their messaging had to be targeted and all about being ‘on brand’. There was no time for jingoism, or in-your-face marketing.
His Ad-Rev was based on where he was, who he interacted with, and with how many people—all clocked up on his tablet app which generated income in real time. And that was also how he got his exercise, walking around the streets of San Francisco, ‘talking’ to people. In his mind, it was an easy pathway to an annual income stream of €29,000, and a nice addition to his €260,000 stalking income.
Lestre walked into The Old Soviet and summoned the virtual waiter for a synth long black. It was €2 if she retrieved it herself from the food processor, or €3 if the waiter brought the beverage out to her. She wanted to impress Lumbardo and requested the waiter bring her order over to the table.
“Gordon, the main man. What’s happening?”
“Hello Marine, it’s good to see you,” Lumbardo said, as he stood up to greet Lestre with a firm hug and a kiss to each side of her face.
Lumbardo’s advertising zones registered Lestre had arrived and up splashed a slow video animation of her favorite synth coffee, Amore, and a message to let her know there was a discount only for today at the vendor just fifty yards away, or a twenty-nine second walk. Or if she purchased now and accepted delivery by miniature drone, it would be delivered within the next day.
He’d receive €0.1 just for this animation playing, even if Lestre didn’t watch it, and he’d receive five per cent of any purchases she made of Amore coffee over the next week.
Lestre and Lumbardo settled in their tables and got down to business.
“What’s happening?” said Lumbardo, throwing the question back to Lestre but, after a slight pause, knew he’d have to continue with a response. “Usual stuff. Some low-rent activity, usually young hoods who should know better. But, you know how it works, they’re now in the system, might reap some rewards in the future. Working on a big fish that I might get in a couple of week’s time. The usual.”
Lestre was humored by Lumbardo, with his ostentatious short stubby look and balding head, but she knew he was good for business and as long as he generated work for her, she could bypass the image of a man that resembled an advertising billboard. She’d never known his age but guessed that by now he must be in his late thirties, and the receding hairline was the giveaway.
They’d known each other ever since Lumbardo moved to the neighborhood fifteen years ago. Lumbardo was a natural human, but his zealotry and dedication to law enforcement and crime prevention attracted her to him. They were friends, almost a love–hate relationship, but never with the full personal trust—it was the balance of tension that was typical of the very few human–Technocrat relationships in the world.
“You’re not getting bored with it are you?” asked Lestre.
“Nope, I love it. That and walking around like a billboard—what could be better in life?”
“I’m actually getting sick of the mundane,” Lestre said. “I love the surveillance, but it’s getting harder to get the more interesting cases. Crime is down overall.”
“Well, maybe if you were born through a vagina like me, you’d work out a way of getting more of those big guns.”
“Fuck off Gordon. That’s such a well worn cliché, I’m sick of it.”
“Well, the truth hurts sometimes, doesn’t it.”
Lestre ignored the teasing from Lumbardo, and started to focus on food. They were both creatures of habit—Lestre ordered the plain meat burger with fries, Lumbardo ordered the fettucine pesto with a side salad—€14 each. From the café kitchen the familiar low hum of the food processor could be heard, and then a soft ‘ding’, which announced the food was ready for eating.
It wasn’t real though—totally synthetic. There was no difference in taste or texture when compared with traditional food, but the food was manufactured in the food processor from an insect-based paste, modified and shaped by the machine. And the paste used by food processors was insect-based for two reasons: environmental crises during the early centuries of the second millennium resulted in many agricultural and harvesting lands disappearing through subtle changes in climate; and edible insects were found to contain high quality protein, vitamins and amino acids for human consumption, as well as creating less greenhouse emissions, and a high food-to-land conversion rate.
The meal was highly nutritious and, at €14, cheap, affordable and convenient. There were
upmarket restaurants and cafes in the Downtown area promising ‘real food’ and the original eating experience but why pay €90 for a burger and fries when you could have the same for a fraction of the price?
The aroma of the food satisfied Lestre—she was hungry but her appetite would soon be sated and the conversation with Lumbardo, more bearable.
“You still thinking of heading back to Biocrime?” asked Lumbardo, in between the scoops of fettucine that smudged his lips with green artificial pesto. “They could probably do with someone like you at the moment.”
“No, not seriously,” Lestre said. “I only think about it when there’s not much going on freelancing. It’s always greener back on the other side, until I think about the reasons why I left in the first place. Treated like shit, accused of being a traitor, fucked around by bosses—in more ways than one. No, I’ll only go back there in a fit of desperation. Or if they come to me, licking my boots.”
“Well, I heard a rumor,” Lumbardo said, “that some Biocrime secrets are being traded out to the Movement, and they don’t know how. They might come back to you and lick your boots.”
“Everyone has heard those rumors, but it’s probably Biocrime pushing it out just to keep a level of fear among the citizenry. That’s the business model. That’s what it was like when I was in there.”
“Possible. My rumors also say there’s a bigger underground network of the Movement—somewhere—but they’ve managed to avoid detection and is totally off-grid.”
“I’ve heard those rumors too, but there’s a whole level of garbage out there on the continuum. The citizens know it’s garbage too, but keep wanting to believe. Just like flying saucers and spaceships from alien galaxies.”
“Maybe.” Lumbardo was onto his final scoop of fettucine, and moved on to sip from his synth coffee. “Keep a lookout for Katcher. It’s just a hunch but someone like that can’t lay dormant forever.”
