by Erik Tabain
“It’s best if we go through—”
“—shut the fuck up—you’re number five in this place, Capone, let’s listen to the number two.”
Cowered, Capone stopped talking and retracted his thoughts: ‘El’ was angry and in these circumstances, it was best not to intervene. The Deputy Brian Kasprovich—on level fifty-nine, and second in the hierarchy—took over proceedings and summoned up the lightscreen, which displayed a number of points of action to reclaim the streets of San Francisco and restore order.
Kasprovich spoke directly to the points on the screen, displayed in a stark presentation: solid black for the key points, shaded charcoal for the lesser points, and the estimated budget cost of implementing these actions at the bottom of the screen.
“What we know so far through our private networks,” Kasprovich said, “is that this is a worldwide event—we can tell that it hasn’t been anywhere near as effective in other zones, so we can safely say that it’s focused in the San Francisco region—”
“—well,” Luanda interjected, “we do like to think of San Francisco as the center of the universe.”
The table broke out into laughter, much in the way underlings humor the boss after they’ve uttered an insipid joke, but the humor had resonance and broke the ice somewhat. The rivalry between San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Chicago had existed for over a millennium, with each city trading places in the jockeying for grand supremacy, but it was San Francisco that had reached the pinnacle after Biocrime headquartered in the city four hundred years ago and seemed to keep an unassailable lead over all the other major cities in the world.
“We’re just lucky this didn’t happen in New York,” Kasprovich said as the mirth started to die down. “But the longer it goes on, the more likely it is to spread to other regions to the same level.
“It seems that Katcher’s viral videos and hacking—wherever it came from—sophisticated as it is, was released prematurely, without final testing—which explains why it hasn’t taken off as well in other regions—some of their systems operate on different bandwidths, meaning that it didn’t hack too much of Biocrime and Lifebook in other areas—there was enough critical mass that remained to either stymie any counter-social activity.”
“So, this is some good news so far,” Luanda said, thinking out aloud. “If we know that it was released prematurely, they—whoever they are—were probably startled and decided to release now. And if it’s working so well in San Francisco—it’s where Katcher lives—it probably started here. What about other parts of the America Zone? How have they been affected?”
“From what we can tell,” Kasprovich continued, “it’s virtually all of the America Zone, anywhere that operates on the same bandwidth, and within a contiguous geographic space. Los Angeles has had a series of riots—usual street rat and sub-culture stuff—you know, face masks, petrol bombs, upturned vehicles—people trying to be the modern-day Che Guevara. New York is always on its own tangent, but the same as many other places—low-level violence, street marches showing their ‘unhappiness’—whoopee do. New York’s a money hub—it’s like Shanghai in the Asia Zone, citizens just want to make money and live their lives—even the natural humans.
“There’s been a few street marches in London and Sheffield in the Europe Zone—the usual stuff they have over there, you know, those guys with anonymous masks—several thousand of them, but easily dismantled.”
“How many have been killed?” asked Luanda.
“Our reports say maybe ten thousand world wide,” Kasprovich said, “not counting what’s happening in San Fran. Coders in other parts of the world managed to stop the hack before it went viral through the systems, and deactivated all laser guns. Katcher’s hack is meant to be self-replicating, and keep one-step ahead of any attempts to recode to destabilize the virus.
“I must say, it’s a beautiful piece of coding work—we managed to stop it in its tracks in other parts of the world—other zones, like L.A. and New York are manageable, but the real problem is here in San Francisco. The virus is out of control, and so is the city.”
“Okay, what I’ve heard so far has calmed me down somewhat,” Luanda said. “Don, what’s our course of instruction?”
“San Fran is still dire and very serious,” Capone said. “I’d say other parts of the world can manage themselves. Our reports through the private networks add up to about thirty-thousand dead—that’s in about six hours—our intel from up here is that it’s mainly street rat and no-hoper punks that have taken up the cause, and other citizens have bought into it—mainly because their systems are down, and they’ve swallowed all the propaganda streaming everywhere. It’s not only Technocrats that have been killed, but natural humans too. Seems like Technocrats are doing the killing too. There are no political activists or political strategists—they’re people that have been licenced to kill, and have the means to do it.
“So, the best way to act first?” Capone continued. “We remove their means of killing—all of our efforts now have to be decoding the laser guns—not just the killing mode, but the stun mode as well—completely.”
“Well, that’s a good start,” says Luanda. “But then what? We’ve still got mayhem on the streets—albeit without the guns—we’ve got to get back Biocrime and Lifebook—and get Katcher’s crap off the screen. What sort of timeframe are we talking about?”
“We’d have to talk to tech to confirm,” Capone said, “but we’d have to code to get ahead of the virus—it’s like a hamster in the treadmill—we have to keep coding just to keep up, but then do a super batch of code just to leap ahead. And then keep coding. Then we can bypass the first part of the code and disarm all laser guns. That might take a day or two—”
“—a day or two!” interrupted Luanda. “That will result in a million deaths! We’ll have to work faster than that.”
“We will,” Capone said, “but it’s all dependent on whether Katcher’s team is still coding and adding, and whether there’s others around the world that are coding as well. It’s quite a sophisticated code—if we put all of our resources into disarming the laser guns—and that’s fucking important, let me tell you—reactivating Biocrime and Lifebook will take longer.”
“We’ll make these fuckers pay,” Luanda said, “but we got to get things in place first. Stop the guns, get back Biocrime online. Okay, continue with your work, let’s meet again in a few hours.”
The meeting ceased and the officers dispersed to their respective duties. The sixtieth floor was a hive of activity and the buzz of soft communications between staff and sounds of the scenario-acting from the war game room highlighted the urgency of the task ahead in this high-stakes game.
Luanda took Capone aside into one of the antechambers of the penthouse. “Sorry about the personal abuse Don, I gotta show them who’s boss and you’re my best fall guy.”
“It’s okay El,” Capone said, unsure of where exactly he stood with Luanda and who in the upper echelons she was trying to play him off against. “We gotta work fast though, we’ll get through this.”
It was nightfall and a scan across the skyline of San Francisco showed a stream of fires burning in apartment blocks. It was twelve hours since Katcher’s viral videos and hack were released, and the murder and mayhem on the streets continued on the streets, unabated.
It was strenuous for the team at Biocrime to continue working at a rapid pace, knowing every minute away from finding a solution was causing numerous deaths and they couldn’t do anything to stop this—for now—except for continuing to code and work out different permutations to stop the viral attack. Their team of five hundred programmers and coders were de-hacking and de-activating lines of codes that kept diverting and replicating themselves. It was furious hand-coding and installation of bugs and apps that multiplied reams of anti-codes and data tasks, and collectively trying to determine the best point to commence dismantling code that had destroyed the continuum. The most essential part of their work was to deactivate
all the laser guns, and they were coding as quickly as they could.
From his vantage point on level fifty-six, Capone could see the violence on the street and, at this stage, there was little he could do about it. Because it was nightfall, the wave of attacks continued, and the twenty-four-hour activity of the city continued the endless loop of terror, looting and murder, as if there was never enough energy that could be expended on the lust of revenge, blood and larceny.
“What’s the estimation now,” Capone asked, looking over at Officer Dyson’s lightscreen.
“The best estimate we have,” Officer Dyson responded, “is that we can end this by four o’clock tomorrow afternoon. But there’s a lot of things that have to fall into place for us to achieve that. It’s a unique virus that keeps replicating—whatever counterhacks we put into it, it puts up another defense and recodes to put itself ahead of ours. We have to get ahead of it, once we’re there, we can disarm the laser guns. But we have to get there first.”
“And I guess there’s no point in sending out any Biocrime supports or armored tanks?”
“Nope. They’ll just be butchered by lasers. Sure, we’ve got our own, but there’s just too many on the streets. Stop the guns first and—if we can do that—and then we can close down the streets.”
It was difficult to shut down a city of thirty million, but that’s what Capone had to do. In the heat of confusion, there was always a fight-or-flight instinct that engulfed most behaviors and responses, and there were many Technocrats—and some natural humans—that were beginning to leave the city behind, unsure of where to go, or what to do. But anywhere, no matter how difficult it would be to get there, would be preferable to the terror that had reached the streets of the city.
Through his high-powered telephoto lens, Capone saw these people leaving the city. Scanning through other parts of the city, he could see that in some areas, the violence was not severe, almost as though the initial part of the uprising was to release tension from the assortment of social misfits and deviants and let the rest of the world know what they thought—but other parts of the city seemed to have more intense action continuing. Capone assumed it was the more hardline element and probably the off-grid street rats aligned with the Movement—people who would latch onto any bandwagon that was coming through and they had nothing to lose. This was their time, and they would lap it up as much as they could.
While he was scanning through other parts of the city, Capone received a message from Luanda, requesting his presence in the penthouse.
“Janet, I gotta call from El, asking me upstairs.”
“Well, off you go then. I’ll just save the city myself.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll give you a medal once we’re done, and maybe a move up to level fifty-seven.”
“Wow, closer to the President’s drinks cabinet. Can hardly wait.” Capone loved Officer Dyson’s cynicism and gave her a mock-general’s salute while he collected his datacard and his thoughts, and moved towards the elevator.
Capone elevated up to Luanda’s penthouse, and upon entering the room, could see she was enthused about something. He’d been one of Luanda’s favorites for some time—she enjoyed his humor, his laid-back nature, his professional approach to matters, while keeping his team engaged with his level-headedness. He was the fifth in line at Biocrime, but wasn’t as crusty and serious as the others, certainly not like Brian Kasprovich.
“Check this out,” Luanda said, motioning Capone to her lightscreen for a close-up scan of four people. “I haven’t shown the others yet, but who do you think this is?” she said, as she pointed to slightly blurred disheveled face.
“It’s Jonathan Katcher! How did you get this?”
“He made that live speech a few hours ago,” Luanda said. “He was only live for about a minute, but we got some shots on the ground through our patched up surveillances. Some techno sent it through on her PPN—she’ll get her reward later—we can get some imagery from the ground, and it’s not a real-time set up, but we should be able to locate him—once we get past the viral code.”
“And there’s Scanlen and Renalda there too,” Capone said, looking at the image. “I thought they were both dead.”
“Scanlen, no. He disappeared—we assumed he was dead, but just didn’t have any proof. Renalda, yes—well, she was supposedly dead, I remember the funeral from years ago. Maybe they set up a sophisticated hack on Lifebook. Who knows, but it doesn’t matter now. We’ll be able to get their approximate locations and try to find them once Biocrime is back online.”
“And who’s this one?” asked Capone, zooming in on Banda’s partially obscured face on the lightscreen.
“Could be anyone, but it’s hard to make out. But if she’s with Katcher, Scanlen and Renalda, she’s probably someone that’s important to the Movement. Or Katcher’s fuck buddy? She looks cute.”
“We’ll scan her through the Biocrime back-up,” Capone said, “and find her profile. Unless she’s one those off-gridders, then it’s anyone’s guess.”
Katcher and Banda were on the streets, a cool San Franciscan evening, moving against the crowd, swathing through back lanes and alleys, trying to get back to autotram station that could take them back to Anika-6. Many hours had passed since Katcher’s viral videos commenced and, like many other people, they’d been trying to get back to wherever their safety zone might be—for Katcher and Banda, they decided their best chances were to return to the underground. There was likely to only be a few people back at Anika-6 but they had to get back—above ground was not safe for them.
The mania from the hours before had subsided—there were still sporadic groups roaming the streets, instigating mindless attacks and pilfering. These were the people they needed to keep away from, not because these people were politically inspired or intellectually motivated, but bands of bored drugged-crazed lunatics that trawled the streets for an opportunity for more plundering and killing. The social contract that had been patched through the continuum had been broken, and would remain broken until its main tool of order and control, Lifebook, went back online. Until then, the disorder and chaos would continue.
Many of the large billboard lightscreens on the sides of apartment buildings had been vandalized—some had their screens damaged so only a quarter of the pixels were displayed; some had their loudspeakers broken off; others had their power supply cut off; others had been completely ripped off the sides of large office buildings—no mean feat, as some of these lightscreens were almost three-hundred feet tall.
Katcher was in two minds: the uprising that he’d been after for a long time had kick-started, but he felt like he’d abandoned the people that he encouraged to rise up. But he started to think that it wasn’t the Movement the people supported, just the chance to engage in payback brutality and an orgy of killing. For Katcher, violence could be a means to an end, especially as he had practiced it in the past himself but, in this case, he wasn’t so sure.
“Any sign of Scanlen and Renalda on the PPN?” asked Katcher.
“They’re just further up,” Banda said as her eyes gleaned over her cell device to show two blue dots on a basic map, indicating Scanlen and Renalda were about five-hundred yards away, in a location near the autotram station. “But it seems they haven’t moved in a while, so they’ve probably holed up somewhere.”
Along the way on the main streets, they saw smashed windows, graffitied buildings with ‘Fuck Biocrime’ sprayed onto them, some with ‘Fuck Katcher’, and others with the standard tagging and scribbles that had dominated cityscapes for over a thousand years. They passed some bodies on the streets, but could also see in the apartments above, the scrapings of laser bullets on walls, and the spray of blood on many balcony walls. This had become a movement not of revolutionaries who were trying to make the world a better place, but a world of nihilistic and anarchic revolt, one that damaged as much as possible in its path.
They were moving closer to the personal private network signal for Scanlen and Renalda
, but this area had an even greater scene of carnage. It was the aftermath and the masses had come and gone: the main apartment block was on fire, and several vehicles had been overturned and blasted. The personal private network signal led them towards the back of an overturned vehicle and they were overcome by the putrid smell of burnt bodies. There, amongst several other bodies and strewn debris were Scanlen and Renalda, both with laser bullet marks at the back of their heads and through their upper bodies.
“Fuck. Fuck! They’re gone. Any signs of their decoders?” asked Katcher, as he leaned closer to the bodies of Scanlen and Renalda.
“No, gone,” Banda said, scanning the bodies with her cell device. “Nothing. All gone. Killed by the people they were trying to save.”
Trying to save. These were three words that momentarily grated Katcher. There was something sanctimonious and condescending about how the words sounded and they way they came out, as if Banda was on a mission to create the world in her own image, rather than comprehending a diverse world of different perspectives.
Katcher didn’t have time to deeply analyze his thoughts—correlating the awful stench of burnt human flesh with the fact that it was coming from people he knew well, as well as the need to find a safer location underground, clouded his mind.
“Maybe these people don’t want to be saved,” Katcher said. “Let’s go. Get back to the underground.”
They were distressed but had to check their emotions until they got to safety. Scanlen and Renalda were close to the Movement, but they were now gone and it was best for Banda and Katcher to retreat and plan their next moves. This was a revolution, but not in the way they had planned or had expected. Banda and Katcher were angling through the backstreets and alleys, still surrounded by the continuous viral videos of Katcher promising an end to oppression and overrule by Technocrats and Biocrime.
