The Biocrime Spectrum (Books 1-4)

by Erik Tabain

  Officially, he was senior ‘project satisfaction’ manager at Biocrime, but in reality, he was a high-level security officer and, like many of his other fellow managers, had high-level access to data, if he ever wanted it. He was a part of the trusted upper echelon and was one of only around two hundred people on the planet that had been injected with bypass serum. He had been at Biocrime for a decade and it was his job to ensure everyone in profile data management was analyzing and working to their full capacities. And, supposedly, maintaining their work enthusiasm.

  It was critical, but nevertheless boring work and Kransich preferred to do this, rather than just receive his basic universal income. During his idle times, he would access his own genetic data and access The Lineage Code, a popular entertainment app where citizens could access the lineage of anyone on the planet, provided they were in the continuum and in Lifebook.

  Kransich had scoped his lineage through the America Zone and back through the Europe Zone, and through to the German republic and Serbian empire of the thirteen-hundreds. Of course, every citizen linked back to a collection of common human cells of around seven million years ago, going back through homo sapien, Cro-Magnon Man, homo habilis and ramapithecus but, for Kransich, the thirteen-hundreds era was the time he found most fascinating. After accessing his genetic history through the world memory bank, he discovered that his predecessor, Marko Kranzić, was first cloned in the year 2280, and had been reproduced 17,345 times in the past 1,054 years.

  He was bored, liked doing something different and lived close to the edge, as well as being a bit crooked too. He was one of the slowly growing band of Technocrats that had become more like natural humans in character and desire, adopting the philosophical and existential questions of ‘what does it mean to be human’. He wasn’t dissatisfied with his life but, unlike many Technocrats, he wanted to believe there was more to existence than just profiling miscreants and undesirables, detaining them to ‘re-educate’ them or, in the more extreme cases, sending them away to die.

  He’d been selling Biocrime technical and software material to Banda over the past three years and realized that with his DNA deactivated, he would never be discovered and, as a Technocrat, he’d never be suspected either. Since his relationship with Banda started, he earned the equivalent of around €800,000 in black market crypto-currency: it was undetectable and able to get him most of the things in life he’d ever wanted. And the great sex he was having with Banda was an added bonus.

  The crypto-sphere was always just that one step ahead of Biocrime. If one avenue to black market currencies was closed down, another one would pop up elsewhere, like a cat-and-mouse game. Sometimes, crypto-gangs would create bypasses and software patches that would send Biocrime teams into technical cul-de-sacs, taking months before they could detect they’d been deceived. They’d eventually almost catch up, but never quite, which meant crypto-currencies were always part of a buoyant market, with a host of willing traders, buyers and sellers.

  Banda’s role was to provide these data secrets and software plans to her underground technical team, in exchange for the black market cryto-currencies. Although she despised Technocrats, she was pragmatic and always scheming to work out ways of accessing knowledge and information valuable to the Movement.

  She discovered Michael Kransich—he had the right access, and had the psychometry that suggested he could be recruited with the right incentives. For her, initially, Kransich was a tolerable fool, even though he was highly credentialed and highly intelligent. As the emotional barriers between them came down, she was unsure if she had feelings for him, but she convinced herself that because he was a Technocrat, she couldn’t be in love with him.

  Kransich also provided details for bypass access to Lifebook, where Banda matched up details and blood samples of off-gridders that had died—either through accidents, or natural causes—to create a bank of plausible Lifebook accounts, where Biocrime was deceived into thinking their own security officers had added lost off-gridders to the system, when in fact, Banda used her own fabricated credentials to create working Lifebook accounts.

  Although his information and material was invaluable to the Movement, Kransich was always going to be a fall guy, dispensed with after Banda got what she needed from him, but it seemed like there was always more Biocrime information she could gain from Kransich—for the right price—and he seemed like good company.

  Ten

  Going underground

  The continuum, Lifebook and all associated surveillance recording technology were less effective in subterranean and submarinal areas. Biocrime knew this, but was not prepared to apply expensive resources to research and develop new technological systems that could change this. As far as Biocrime was concerned, nobody worth pursuing could survive in an underwater community, and certainly not be able to sustain themselves for long enough to be a threat. Very little was known about the sea and oceans, except for underwater topography. Even though submarinal exploration commenced well over a thousand years ago, only around three per cent of the ocean floors had been explored, and remained a deep dark secret. And, with Biocrime existing as a vast amoral corporate business venture, there was no need to invest large amounts of financial resources into something that was not going to generate profits.

  Going underground was a slightly different matter—while the continuum was ineffective underground, making it difficult to extract genetic recording in these areas, Biocrime determined it was best to be vigilant for any possible human counter-community activity. It performed irregular and random geological scanning to compare physical underground structures—where newly created and illegal underground caverns could be investigated and, if necessary, destroyed. Biocrime tolerated smaller cells of activism, and accepted they were always going to exist. The only issue of interest to them was the large-scale resistance, and they were certain they had removed the larger cells and existing networks.

  For this reason, existing caves, natural tunnels, or disused mine and train shafts presented the best opportunity for the Movement to organize its resistance. The development and sustainability of this network was a slow and painstaking process developed over many years and these underground cells were connected to the outside world through old style hyper-fiber-optic cabling and food supply chains, where food and nourishments were transferred through a complex link of underground passages, some up to five miles long.

  There was a good reason why subterranean and submarinal human endeavor had moved at a glacial pace over the past millennia. While there had been a fascination of the underground and what lay beneath the oceans through literature and popular culture, there were physical limitations to what could be accessed and what could be achieved in these areas. Aside from the extraction of a diminishing supply of metals, no-one ever went underground for any kind of useful purpose.

  But the Movement was a step ahead in their thinking of practical application, which meant a resistance group such as the Movement always had a good chance to succeed in the underground. This most recent underground establishment was located in the outskirts of San Francisco, a city with a network of thousands of disused underground tunnels, and this one was located not far from Banda’s apartment.

  While most of these tunnels and networks had been catalogued by Biocrime, there were several that had been used to illegally dump nuclear waste products, sealed in the 2300s with protective sealants and considered too dangerous for human activity, let alone for anyone to live down there. The original exploration of urban tunnels began in the 1970s with a group known as the Suicide Club, a secret society credited as the first extreme urban exploration society, also known for anarchic and anti-establishment activities. This speleological fad continued for around four hundred years in the San Francisco area, before it become too dangerous and remained in the realm of a few diehards and misfits.

  The Movement used the Suicide Club as an inspiration for its subterranean activity and constructed ‘Anika-6’, its most recent undergroun
d location, created almost a decade ago. It was named ‘Anika’ after the famous scientist from the 2400s—Anika Serafian—and the ‘six’ referred to the sixth underground location created by the Movement in San Francisco—established soon after Banda commenced her relationship with Kransich, and technological advances made it possible for natural humans to exist in this type of subterranean zone.

  And the Movement had two good reasons to feel secure in this zone. Firstly, inside information provided by Kransich showed Biocrime had written off this zone as an area of interest, due to the understanding the tunnel area was radioactive and dangerous, and although the waste materials were over a thousand years old, Biocrime knew there was enough radioactivity to create dangerous conditions and had the belief that no-one could survive there for a long period of time.

  Secondly, through their own speleological research, the Movement uncovered a branch of smaller caverns beneath this tunnel that was not easily detectable by above-ground scanners and sonar, due to its depth and the presence of radioactive material, and a layer of lead-plutonium had seeped into the area, which shielded the continuum from passing through.

  Kransich’s documents outlining Biocrime’s secret technological research and developments had advanced the Movement by many decades, where they were able to adapt Biocrime’s technological advances into their own research and systems, creating a range of products and technologies that could bypass the continuum and avoid detection by Lifebook and Biocrime.

  There were two software developments at the pinnacle of achievement by the Movement—the decoder, and the emulator—both created by Maverick Weller, a software genius and one of the Revolution Five who predominantly resided in Anika-6 and was responsible for counter-surveillance and software interception. Theoretically, hackers like Weller knew it was possible to bypass Biocrime, but even with their team of expert hacktivists and computer scientists, they hadn’t been able to get close to cracking the code. Having access to Kransich changed this.

  He had sold the secret data to Banda for the sum of €200,000, and Weller and his team then spent another six months coding, recoding and testing—and achieved the major breakthrough for the Movement which enabled them to develop and design decoding and emulation apps that scattered genetic light material, and made it bypass the continuum and the world memory bank.

  The decoder was an app uploaded into a cell device, synchronized to individual DNA, and once installed, could scatter and disperse that person’s genetic recording. It exuded a combined ferric and plutonium three-yard zone and was based on Biocrime’s DNA bypass serum but had the advantage of avoiding an injection and being able to be switched on or off at whim.

  The other software creation was the emulator, also an app uploaded into a cell device, which manipulated realtime surveillance cameras into creating false visual footage for display to the outside world through the continuum and Lifebook Live. It was visually seamless and as soon as the emulator app was activated, it would suspend the Lifebook Live footage for that person’s account from real life material, and transition to fabricated video footage created by algorithms programmed to insert innocuous daily life scenes. When Banda was linked up to the emulator app, it meant she could be cloaked from the continuum and out of the purview of Lifebook Live, and whenever she met with Kransich or descended to the underground, surveillance stalkers that happened to spy on her would only see fabricated images of her in her apartment, even if she wasn’t there.

  Banda patched the latest batch of data from Kransich into her cell device, and prepared herself to go underground. As part of her preparation, she wore light clothing, tough but lightweight boots, and covered herself with a thin plastic protective suit to avoid the grime from the tunnel on the way to Anika-6.

  She switched on the emulator app on her cell device, which intercepted and scattered her genetic data, and if anyone was to retrieve data from the world memory bank, or surveil her in real time on Lifebook Live, all they would see was the fabricated video of Banda in her apartment, going about her daily activities.

  Banda took her cell device and lightpen, exited through the floordoor in the laundry and slithered through the lead tubing that provided access to the autotram tunnel. After a few yards, there was a junction point that provided two options: continuing along the tunnel leading to the back of the autotram station, and another smaller point that took her down to Anika-6.

  After she reached the junction point, she went through another slender lead tubing. It wasn’t quite commando style, and wasn’t totally comfortable, but was a five-minute crouch walk to a larger tunnel: another tunnel wide enough for two people to walk through. The walls at this level were covered by a thin lead–plutonium layer, an amalgam that deflected sonar tracer movements from above the ground. It wasn’t a hundred per cent foolproof on its own, but it deflected enough genetic recording and lightcapture to avoid any detection through the continuum or Biocrime surveillance. The lead–plutonium was another remedy direct from Biocrime, thanks to the work of Michael Kransich. The cost for this information was €50,000 but the value to the Movement was priceless.

  A thirty-minute walk through this small circular tunnel led to a larger cavern, and the location of Anika-6. The key underground environment for the Movement, it was a network of well-connected small natural tunnels and caverns—housing around fifty hacktivists working across four smaller caverns. There were around six hundred in other areas dispersed in autonomous cells of roughly the same size in more remote areas around the North America Zone, but Anika-6 was seen as the central cell, although each cell was designed to allow the others to carry on with their work, in case one cell was destroyed or detected by Biocrime.

  The caverns in Anika-6 were not massive—the larger caverns were the ones that could attract interest from above-ground Biocrime scanners, but the smaller seemingly disconnected ones were more difficult to scan, and along with the higher levels of radioactivity, it was easier for this underground crew to remain anonymous.

  By the time Banda reached her destination, she was four-hundred yards underground. She reached a thick control door made of tungsten and titanium, designed to withstand external explosions and land movements, genetically locked and synchronized with Biocrime profiles—another technological benefit gained from Kransich—so anyone with DNA coding matched to Biocrime profiling couldn’t deactivate the lock. Banda was off-grid, so she used her finger to deactivate the genetic lock and, after passing through the entrance, moved into a vestibule that separated the circular tunnel and the main part of Anika-6. Banda then deactivated the vestibule door and entered the cavern, and closed the doors behind her.

  In this cavern, there was a team of twelve tech-heads led by Maverick Weller—he wasn’t the best in the field, but he more than made up for it with his zealotry and fierce dedication to the Movement. Weller was intense and always cut to the chase quickly: he had no time for losers or people not committed to the movement.

  Weller looked the part in his role as a hacktivist—long swirling dark hair, a five-day growth, with a maniacal stare and permanent smile that almost resembled a Guy Fawkes mask—all housed in a black hoodie with a skull logo on the left crest.

  “Got some more of the good data for me?” an impatient Weller asked, as Banda handed over her cell device to him.

  “I haven’t had time to check, but there’s always something we can use.”

  Weller connected Banda’s cell device to his lightscreen and started the slow data transfer to extract the contents.

  “We haven’t the same data speed as upstairs you know, so it will take a few minutes,” Weller said, apologetically.

  Banda surveyed the cavern and saw a row of light panels among the circus-tent structures, against the backdrop of stalactites and stalagmites. It was a busy scene, with the teams of hacktivists and programmers gesturing and summoning towards their lightscreens, casually and calmly issuing coding instructions to produce computations for the vast range of projects they were workin
g on.

  “What are they up to?” asked Banda. It was partially idle chit-chat, but she wanted to make sure they were on task and ‘on message’.

  “Just the usual about-ground surveillance,” Weller said, “keeping one step ahead of Biocrime. Lachie over there picked up some chatter about a routine underground surveillance coming this way, but we’re not sure when.”

  Underground surveillance by Biocrime was something the Movement needed to keep a track of. As well as low-level detection for subversive underground activity, Biocrime prepared random high-grade inspections, on average, every four years and, as the Anika-6 area was last scanned four years ago, the area was due for another inspection soon.

  Weller and Banda assessed the latest batch of data from Kransich, motioning and summoning a range of documents on the large lightscreen, and looking for any data that could either be useful for above-ground monitoring or protection of the crew.

  “It’s mainly the usual admin crap, but look at this one,” Weller said, pointing to the Biocrime maintenance routine for subterranean scanning. “Looks like we’ve got low-grade scanner coming through soon. Details about when and how many Biocrime people are involved. Small, just four or five officers.”