by Erik Tabain
The Origin vehicles could transport up to forty bodies at a time, and with a bounty fee of €5,000, each vehicle would generate €200,000 by the time it returned to the processing unit on the outskirts of the city. The vehicles were multi-function but were usually used to transport frozen foods and medical supplies around the city and on this occasion, the full fleet of one-thousand vehicles would be used for the clean up, meaning the removal of all dead bodies from the streets would take around two days, with a gross income of almost one-billion ucas, and that was before any of the organic recycling commenced.
Each vehicle filled with bodies collected from around the city arrived at the processing center, a facility normally reserved for animal waste product processing. The facility had the same stench as an abattoir, with some alleviation through public deodorant so at least it wasn’t as overwhelming as it could have been, and could be tolerated for a certain period of time.
The processing center was as clean and efficient as the collection of the body parts from the street: there was a long conveyer belt, where bodies and body parts were placed on the belt, and whatever clothing that could be removed, was removed by a team of robotic arms and some manual human workers, assessing whether the clothing could be sold and, if so, the likely value.
Most of the personal effects from the bodies had already been pilfered on the streets, but there were still some smaller items found in pockets, such as small rings, personal visual recorders and, in some cases, personal cell devices.
After everything of value was removed, the bodies moved through the processing unit’s central conveyor belt, initially sprayed with hair removal liquid, a primary jet spray wash, and then sanitized with a range of BioMed products—the end result would only be animal food, so it wasn’t the premium disinfectant, but the inexpensive budget product which disinfected anything that could be hazardous, even for an animal, and removed any bacterium and toxins that may have built up in the body.
The next stage involved the crushing of the bodies into meat—everything went in, including skin, bones, organs, teeth—and then distributed into eight different vats, each with their specialist synthetic flavors: traditional chicken, fish, lamb, beef and pork, and some lesser novelty flavors, with the inclusion of vegetables such as potato, pumpkin and carrots, with apple essence.
From here, there were distribution points, channeling the meat into dry and wet areas: dry, where meats were rolled out and cookie-cut into small bite-size shapes, and dried under heat lamps; wet, where the meat was inserted into small plastic sachets, and shrink-wrapped.
The end result was a collection of packaged products in sleek black, fashionable plastic packaging and meat packs that would be sold in premium locations around the world. These were long life products, to be kept in cold storage, in a remote warehouse that was linked into sophisticated supply chain logistics. At the end of this process, there would be over twenty-million individual pet meat products for sale, and at an average retail price of €50 per item, the sale value was around one-billion ucas. The work was nasty, but somebody had to do it and, for a good price, Richard Framton and his Origin company were the ones to do it.
All up, the value of the clean up, just of the body parts, was two billion ucas—and most of this would end up in the coffers of Origin. Some would go back in graft to Biocrime, as well anyone else that needed to have their palms greased to get this job done, provided in one of the more obscure crypto-currencies.
It was the way business had always been performed but, in the modern world, it was just a few swipes at a lightscreen, as well as a few datacalls with the right contacts, and it was a done deal.
Twenty-Eight
The search for Katcher
It was a good day for Marine Lestre. She’d just been authorized to complete the task of finding Jonathan Katcher and, if she was successful, it could possibly net her the greatest crowd-funded bounty ever. But, first, she needed to plan out her strategy—Katcher could be anywhere, cloaked by decoders and in a remote location undetectable by Biocrime scanners.
She roused Marlon D’Souza from his drug-induced stupor to work on this case too—her skills were brilliant but more analytical, while D’Souza’s input tended to be more lateral and more radical, a style of thinking aided by his drug habits.
While the city was being cleaned up rapidly—two-hundred-thousand dead was a great number—the return to technology proceeded at a much slower pace.
Lifebook was just coming back online but the local citizens were slow to go back to their addiction. Lestre decided it was best to create the crowd-fund posting for Katcher early and get the ball rolling—for such a big case, whatever she created would first need to be approved by Biocrime, as they had to be certain to avoid the mistakes from a decade before, when Katcher eluded their net.
Lestre created a new entry through the Biocrime profiling and spoke into her cell device.
“Capture and trial of fugitive Jonathan Katcher.”
As with all of her other postings, an auto-fill voice completed the description:
Jonathan Katcher was the sole cause of the recent revolutionary and counter-social upheaval in San Francisco, caused the deaths of 200,000 citizens, widespread destruction of community property, and undermined the safety and security of all citizens.
In keeping with his cowardly mindset, Katcher has retreated to an unknown location, and we are working towards his capture and trial, and to ensure these types of actions cannot continue into the future. Detecting his location and his capture will enable us to find and delete others who have been supporting this counter-social upheaval, to further protect the citizenry and the community from further harm.
Course of action: Arrest, detention, trial and deportation.
Crowd pledge: €10
Below the main screen, Lestre collated a series of visual montages, depicting scenes of the aftermath of destruction, actuality footage of wild street gangs shooting their laser bullets at unarmed Technocrats in their apartments, hyperlinks to Katcher’s history, and a series of articles about the technicalities from his previous trial in 3024, and how it was highly unjust that Katcher avoided capture and deportation at that time. It was a highly emotive posting and framed Katcher as the sole architect of the upheaval. Satisfied with her work, she needed an audience of support before she delivered it to Biocrime for their approval.
“Marlon? Come and check this out before I send it to Capone.”
D’Souza dragged himself over to check the posting on the screen, nodding his approval.
“It’s fine,” D’Souza said. “Biocrime will want to add their part to it too, change a few words here and there. It’s good. But the key is how are you going to find Katcher? He could be anywhere—he could even be dead.”
“Well, if he’s dead,” Lestre said, “that would be great for the community, but not good for us or for Biocrime—no money for his capture, no show trial, no deportation. We need to find him alive. Where would you start?”
“At Biocrime itself,” said D’Souza. “There was a suspicion of those agents that were handing secrets to the Movement. It was down to the last fifteen wasn’t it?”
“It was, but they couldn’t be sure about all the others either. It was old-style policing work—where were you, why and all that sort of questioning. They’re no good at that psychological interrogation anyway, but then the upheaval started. They had other priorities.”
“Biocrime is outside of the lightcapture system, right? Why not bring it into the system, just for a few days and see what happens?”
“Fuck, don’t you think they would have already thought about that?”
“Maybe. But they haven’t done it—”
“—no, but it’s not like they can just flick a switch and that’s it. Plus all the security and hacking issues. They just wouldn’t do it.”
Lestre liked D’Souza for his ability to think outside the square and come up with ideas that nobody else would think of but this one seemed too
far outside the square. She sent through her proposed posting for the capture of Jonathan Katcher to Capone and pondered D’Souza’s suggestion to temporarily include Biocrime within lightcapture and genetic recording—she didn’t think it would be accepted, but would try.
One hour later, Lestre’s lightscreen lit up with an incoming datacall—it was Don Capone and, as D’Souza suggested, there was a series of minor changes to the text of the posting, as well as the addition of more visual footage and historical material and information about Katcher—all negative, of course.
“Marine? We’ve removed the embargo on the posting and it’s ready to go—our legals also changed the Biocrime revenue percentages from fifty to sixty-two per cent. I can’t do much about that—nor can you—but they want to extract as revenue as possible to support the clean up. I hope you understand.”
Lestre wasn’t in a position to do anything about the change in revenue percentages but a big case like this, if solved, would lead to untold personal revenue. She wasn’t fussed.
“If I complain, no-one’s going to listen,” Lestre said, “so what’s the point? I’ll make the posting go live in a few minutes. One other thing Don—is it possible to include Biocrime within lightcapture and the world memory bank, even temporarily?”
“Of course it is,” Capone said, “but why would we want to do that? Every hacker and scammer would be into us as soon as we opened it up. Is this about finding our leaker?”
“Yes,” Lestre said, “I’ve been thinking through every option and possibility, but finding our leaker will lead us to Katcher. Even we can get a rough location—or can find out if Katcher is still in San Fran—it would be a big help.”
“We thought about that option, but the security risks to Biocrime are too great. We’ve already asked our data officers if there are any options along these lines, but everything leads back to security issues that we can really budge on.”
“Okay,” Lestre said, accepting that it was a stupid idea in the first place. “Can you send me the details of the remaining fifteen officers that we need to check? I’ll do some psycho-testing on them.”
“Sure, but you’ll have to come into Biocrime for these ones. This stuff never leaves our domain.”
Lestre wanted to move on this quickly and prepared herself to go to the Biocrime headquarters—she allocated her approved posting and let it sink into Katcher’s Biocrime profile. The posting was distributed through the continuum and allocated to GoFunder.
Soon after Lestre allocated her posting, Katcher’s Biocrime profile was prompted on watch lists all around the world. While Lestre prepared for her visit to Biocrime headquarters, she monitored her lightscreen, and within several minutes, the GoFunder crowd pledge to find Katcher increased to €3,000. As she exited her apartment door, Lestre glanced over to the lightscreen and the figure increased to €8,000 and by the time she arrived at Biocrime headquarters—just over forty minutes later—the bounty had increased to €125,000.
If Lestre could find Katcher, she would crack the jackpot.
“How’s your shoulder feeling now?” asked Greta Banda, rousing Katcher from his deep slumber.
Katcher awoke and gained his bearings, unsure how long he’d slept for. He momentarily had a blank mind before he remembered the events of the preceding days and composed himself for about twenty seconds before responding to Banda.
“Still painful but it could have been worse. I’d forgotten how painful those laser bullets are.”
“They’re not used for fun. They’re meant to hurt.”
Banda’s response annoyed Katcher, and he wondered whether she fully understood the events of the past few days and the gravity of the new situation.
“We were lucky to get out of there alive,” Katcher said, “but we won’t be able to stay here for much longer. Once they’ve got their systems back online, they’ll be looking for me.”
“They’re already back online,” Banda said, “while you were sleeping. Our work is down, and Lifebook is back up. Silas?”
Banda summoned Silas Newton from his workstation to bring a cell device to show Katcher how far things had moved above ground.
“Lifebook is back online, Biocrime profiles have just started up too,” Silas said. “You might be interested in this profile Jonathan. Looks like they’re after some special kind of renegade…”
Katcher glanced at the cell device, which depicted his full profile and posting outlining his bounty and capture, the large flurry of digital crowd data streaming down the screen, so rapid that it was almost indecipherable. But there were enough key words streaming down the screen for Katcher to understand the general nature of the animosity towards him, something that always been simmering under the surface, but unleashed through the posting released by Marine Lestre: ‘traitor to the Movement’; ‘kill the cunt!’; ‘to the penal zone now!’; ‘death too kind to this fukker’; ‘get the coward!’
“Four million ucas already… that’s some bounty,” Katcher said, scanning through his profile on the cell device. “You guys aren’t thinking of turning me in are you?”
“We’ve got more than that in our third rate crypto accounts,” Newton said. “But if you don’t behave…”
It was all gallows humor. Katcher knew his situation was dire, the Movement had taken a huge step backwards, and he was responsible. He always held the belief that actions needed to be instigated whenever the fine slither of opportunity arose, not endlessly waiting for the perfect occasion that never arrived, or situations determined by others. He was firm in his philosophy of working tirelessly for the future of the Movement, even if it took another millennia of time and effort to achieve its final goal.
He thought of the antiquated idea of the return to Zion for Jewish people and how that, essentially, was a one-thousand-year idea that only gained traction in middle of the nineteenth century. It developed into a major international flashpoint in the Middle East for around three centuries and was only resolved after the role of China in international diplomacy superseded the role of the United States of America towards the end of the twenty-second century. It took time, but it was one issue that was resolved after the great effort by many.
He recalled other instances. Large edifices throughout human history took centuries to crumble—ancient empires, Rome, Britain, the Soviet Union, America, Russia, China—they all dissipated, even when least expected. The modern age was all based around entropy, and with the downfall of empire and religion, language and difference, issues like the Israel–Palestine conflict seemed to fall into insignificance, and age-old enmities were wiped away through an age of economic freedom and opportunity.
Would Biocrime fall by the wayside in the same way? For Katcher, it was a culmination of all the problems of empire: competitive nationalisms, corruption, propaganda, greed, all wrapped into one major problem for society. And all implemented and managed by heartless Technocrats that wanted to exploit the human condition and the tendency for human societies to gravitate towards fascism when faced with fear.
How would Biocrime fall, and what would take its place? When would this happen? What would happen between the Technocrats and natural humans? Would they all manage to live happily ever after, just like the Jews and Palestinians did in the twenty-second century, after the sands of time washed away their differences?
Katcher was unsure of the answers. A part of him wanted to remain in Anika-6 and secure everything they had here for others to take the Movement through to the next step. He knew Banda wanted to return to the surface and fight, but was that really the right answer?
He felt the Movement was not so much a political or economic struggle, but a biological one, and he was fueling his own doubts about whether he was the right person to take the next step. Was he the coward the citizen crowd was calling him, or was he positioning the Movement for a future that might not be resolved for another thousand years? His introspection was interrupted by Banda’s impatience and her desire to get things moving again, even
through she was unsure about what this should be.
“We have to get Biocrime intel on what their next actions are going to be,” Banda said. “Secure our data, and then get away from here.”
“But then what,” Katcher asked. “We’ve got our decoders, but how long before Biocrime reprograms. We’d be sitting ducks above ground.”
“We still need to find out how much time we have. I’ll make the call to Kransich.”
“Kransich? You don’t think Biocrime might be clamping down a bit and maybe doing a bit more monitoring?”
“We’ve had secure conversations and data for three years through our PPN—I’ll make a deal with him and see what he can do for us. He’s a sucker and a risk taker. He’ll do it.”
Banda swung into action quickly and, after she secured her personal private network, she could see she still had a clear communication available directly though to Kransich. Katcher was correct in suggesting Biocrime were in the process of clamping down their security and monitoring their internal officers, but that would take additional time and resources from Biocrime, and until this work was completed, Banda and Kransich could continue with their secret liaisons.
She sent a request for a datacall to Kransich and after several denials of service and unconnected calls, she finally made contact.
“Michael? We’ve got another deal.”
“Greta, I can’t do it,” Michael warned. “It’s too risky after the upheaval—it always is after any sort of drama, and this is the biggest event in over fifty years. I can’t.”
“What about five-hundred thousand ucas?”
“It’s not the money, it’s the security risk and the chances of being caught.”
“You don’t think after all this time we would have been caught before? Our systems are secure and will be for as long as Biocrime is outside the lightcapture system.”
