by Erik Tabain
“Ah, Gordon,” Lestre said, “just the man I want to see. Remember those deep DNA search tools you’ve got?”
“Uh ha. What about them?” asked Lumbardo. “They were beta tools and not fully tested, but for a small fee you could use them if you want.”
“If I what? Fuck Lumbardo, just send them through—I need them. Urgently.”
“Well, what are you trying to do? They might not be the right tools.”
“I need to get some interpretive DNA and predictive lightcapture sampling. I’ve found someone that doesn’t exist—”
“—this I’d like to see,” Lumbardo interrupted. “You’ve found someone that doesn’t exist. You’ve solved the eternal philosophical paradox of all time. I exist, therefore I’m not, the absence of presence, all in one fell swoop—”
“—look, don’t be a stupid fuck. You know what I mean. I’ve come across someone that doesn’t exist on Lifebook or Biocrime.”
“That’s probably just someone off-grid—could be just a low-life human,” Lumbardo said.
“Sure, I realize that, I wasn’t born yesterday,” Lestre responded. “But if a Biocrime security officer meets up with them, I think it could be a lot more than that, don’t you?”
“Oh. It’s not the Kransich guy you were talking about?”
“That’s the one.”
“I’ll send the tools through the PPN—I’ll be over in five.”
The tools Lestre wanted were straight from the beta testing lab at Biocrime, which Lumbardo purchased with black crypto-currency. He knew Biocrime officers sometimes sold internal materials on the dark net, but they were usually items of commercial interest: he’d not heard of operational matters being leaked out before. The beta software, codenamed Karl-499, was created to fill in lightcapture gaps in case of technical glitches, and detect attempts to circumvent Lifebook and Biocrime profiling, including Biocrime’s own decoder and lightcapture cloaking system.
The software was still in its rudimentary and developmental state, but would complete the holy grail of full and permanent lightcapture—predicting and suggesting DNA evidence and light, in those cases where it had been removed or destroyed. It was still another decade or so before it could be completed, but it would then fully enable Biocrime to surveil any part of the surface world, even if the DNA evidence didn’t exist.
Karl-499 could only provide small samples of information, but tried to match up any data or information—such as from Lifebook—and provided clues or samples for actions that may have taken place in the past.
The rap on the door was not as loud as Lestre expected, and she barely heard it, but it could only be Lumbardo at this time of night and she eagerly opened the door to let him in, replete with his advertising banners and messaging, even at this late hour.
“I think you’ve got something, very promising. Is he up to speed on this too?” Lumbardo asked, glancing over towards D’Souza.
“He’s on all sorts of things at the moment,” Lestre said. “Best to let him sleep. This needs some literal thinking, not the spark in the sky or some obtuse thought patterns. Check this out.”
Lestre moved the lightscreen towards Lumbardo—she’d already activated Karl-499 and accessed key data material from Katcher from over the past three months.
“Look,” Lestre said, pointing to several snippets of visual footage on the lightscreen. “This is during the time the viral code was first released—Katcher at the community hub, finishing up his stupid lecture, and then walking on his way home. Fast forward: the autotram, his apartment, cooking, watching his lightscreen. But then, check this out.”
Lestre pointed to another piece of visual footage on the lightscreen. It started off exactly at the same point as the recorded light data, but then had some variations where Katcher was walking somewhere else, and with another person in tow. The footage was not very clear, but they could definitely see Katcher and a woman, walking off towards the food area nearby.
“Check all the Lifebook data for Katcher’s lecture on that day,” Lumbardo said. “Now, let’s see. Thirty-one arrived on the day, looks like there’s five off-gridders, and there was one newbie on the day—DynaMiteMax. That’s odd—DynaMiteMax enrolled to go to six sessions, but didn’t attend one of them.”
“Hang on,” Lestre said. “I’ll upload the visuals from Biocrime from the uprising—Karl-499 can predict obscured images of people? We’ve got a few citizen images from the day Katcher made that speech last week—”
“—if you think a one-minute speech is a speech,” Lumbardo interrupts, “then go ahead…”
Lestre admonished Lumbardo with a roll of her eyes, but continued. “My high res photos from the apartment and the photo of the speech—compare them.”
Lumbardo loaded the photographs into Karl-499 and within twenty seconds, completed the complex algorithms and produced the results on screen.
“We’ve got a few affirmatives,” Lumbardo said. “It’s confirming Katcher, Scanlen and Renalda, but also confirming the other woman in the photo, and the woman that accompanied Katcher after his lecture, and the woman you took a photo of a few hours ago are the same person. I’d say DynaMiteMax is the woman you saw in the apartment a few hours ago. And I’d say that she also receiving the materials from Kransich, and providing Biocrime secrets to the Movement. Well done, Marine. I think you’ve cracked the first part of the job.”
Thirty
Memory extraction
Don Capone’s face when it appeared on a lightscreen was one of those faces that appeared more surreal televisually. His jaw seemed more jutted than it did in real life, and it made him look less animated. Still, his enthusiasm couldn’t be masked when he accepted the datacall from Lestre and she explained what she saw and how she thought Kransich was implicated in the uprising.
“So, Kransich is the leaker,” Capone said, almost with a nonchalance that suggested he’d seen this type of act over the years, if not to this level. “He was pure when he was first enlisted, but I guess it’s a bit like those religious priests from yesteryear—you know, close to a non-existent God, being the model of excellence to everyone in the community, yet, behind the scenes, fucking married women, abusing young children, taking drugs and pilfering the coffers of the church.”
“You don’t seem surprised,” Lestre said. “Were you aware of Kransich or any others?”
“Kransich does surprise me,” Capone said, “and I didn’t suspect. But it sometimes happens to security officers after a while—they’re highly intelligent—but that’s when they start getting into personal philosophy, query their existence, all those questions—‘why was I born in an incubator, not inside a mother’, ‘why me, not them’. And the good old one—‘what does it mean to be human’. I’m sick of all that bullshit. Why not just do your job and not worry about those sort of existential things?”
“Perhaps you might be the next one to crack, Don. How long have you been at Biocrime? Fifteen, twenty years? So close to the top of the food chain, and you’ll crack—that’s what will happen.”
“Unlikely. I’ve not had one scintilla of questioning or a sniff of the existential crisis. I’ll be in this job until the grave, not wasting my time thinking about whether it was better to have monkeys as my ancestors, or born into the hospital incubator.”
“So, what’s the next step,” asked Lestre. “Detain Kransich, shine the light above his head, waterboarding, play some loud pop music, psycho-torture?…”
“You love the old-school practices, don’t you,” Capone said. “So I don’t think I’m going to disappoint you. We start off with the easy way. Offer up all sorts of inducements for information exchange—promotions, say that their actions have resulted in Biocrime being able to make arrests and deportations, they’re being moved to a special undercover Biocrime unit that trades secrets with the Movement. They’re always surprised to hear about this—which they should be, because it doesn’t exist—and begin to believe their actions are part of their expected work.
That preps them for the next stage, which I have to admit is on the verge of torture. Give them a batch of hallucinogenic drugs which plunges them between near death and the afterlife and they’ll just about cough up anything. We can only do it once, because it fries their brains, but we usually get the information we need.”
In the early morning hum of the Biocrime office environment, Kransich was scanning for any other data he could provide to Banda when the message came through on his lightscreen.
Michael, there are new opportunities within Biocrime and wanted to hold a quick meeting to gauge your interest. Meeting can be held at 13:00. Signal Y to attend, N for another time.
Thank you, Mikhalia: People and Resources.
Kransich started to panic. ‘Mikhalia’ was a synthetic bot, and these were routine messages sent through occasionally, whenever Biocrime had vacancies for superior work, or additional tasks in times of crisis, such as the recent uprising. Kransich refused offers over the past three years, and assumed the people and resources unit had given up on any work promotions for him and had pushed him out of the information loop.
Why now? Had they suspected something? He read through the message again—there was no ‘out’—there was no option to say ‘yes, he was interested’ or ‘no, he was not’: it was only an option of when to have the meeting—now, or later. It was 10:44 and Kransich needed a few more minutes to collect his thoughts. Do they have anything on me? Is this just routine? Is it to enlist more people after the uprising? If I select ‘N for another time’, does it suggest to Biocrime that I’m stalling?
Kransich summoned his lightscreen to respond, sent a ‘Y’ to ‘Mikhalia’, and received an immediate confirmation.
Meeting confirmed for 13:00 in Surveillance and Operations, Zone 43-X. In attendance: Officer Capone.
Thank you, Mikhalia: People and Resources.
Kransich had sweated for several hours before he managed to compose himself, and he arrived at Zone 43-X in the Biocrime building at 12:58. As he entered through the door, he was greeted by ‘Ramona’, a holographic assistant who confirmed his approach and attendance.
“Michael Kransich, thank you for attending the meeting today. Mister Capone is waiting for you inside. You’re a few minutes early, but you can go straight through.”
Although she was a hologram, ‘Ramona’ was discrete and professional, and always a welcoming sight to all that ventured into this office.
“Thank you Ramona,” Kransich said, as he entered the antechamber of the room where Capone was seated. Capone summoned Kransich to come forward, without making eye contact with him.
“Sit,” Capone said as he pointed, and Kransich dutifully proceeded to seat himself in the comfortable recliner, unable to determine whether Capone was being naturally curt, or because he had suspicions about him.
Capone shuffled around on his lightscreen, reading data and moving back and forth between his lightscreen and his cell device. Occasionally, he put up his finger to indicate ‘one more minute’ but Kransich knew this routine. It was to put the guest on edge for that extra period of time, pushed up their anxiety levels, and lowered their resistance so they’d provide more open answers to questions. As well as increasing the chances of becoming severely impatient and annoyed.
It was an entire seven minutes before Capone finally got down to business, but for Kransich, it felt like seven hours.
“I’m sorry about that Michael, but there’s always things on the go,” Capone said. “Pleased to see you again, it’s been a while.”
“Yes, it certainly has,” Kransich responded. “Good to see you too, and hope I can be useful.”
‘Useful’. It was a word Capone focused upon in his mind. Fucking useful. In front of him was someone on the inside who had traded Biocrime secrets, probably amassed a personal fortune, aided and abetted a revolutionary cause that had killed almost two hundred thousand people and caused untold damage to the city of San Francisco. And he wanted to be ‘useful’? Capone pondered for an extra minute or two. If he could reach out with his bare hands and throttle Kransich, he would, but there was a process that had to be followed and, besides, they hadn’t received full confirmation of his actions.
“Stating the obvious here,” Capone said, “but there’s been quite a lot of mayhem in the outside world, and it seems like Jonathan Katcher has been one up on Biocrime, and we don’t know why. As you can understand, we need to cut this off at the head, and we’ve decided to create a new team to directly deal with the Movement—like an undercover team—and we wanted to include our best agents in this team. Of course, the main part is to capture Jonathan Katcher, but we need to get back to being one step ahead of the Movement, not the other way around. We’re just gauging your interest—higher grade, higher responsibilities, higher income.”
Kransich wasn’t sure what to expect, but he arrived at this meeting with his best poker-face to cover any secretion of guilt and other misdemeanors. Unknown to Kransich, behind the walls of the room in Zone 43-X was Marine Lestre and a small team of behavioral scientists and psychoanalysts, assessing every single move on Kransich’s face through remote visuals, analyzing every skin fold and muscle twitch.
“Of course, I’m available to work on the capture of Jonathan Katcher,” Kransich replied. “Nothing would give me greater pleasure. I could start working on an immediate plan.”
“But,” Capone said, “before we can introduce agents to this deeper level of work, we need to know everything about them—any crypto-work, trading secrets, spying—just so we can get a handle of what we’re dealing with. As you know, Biocrime itself is a zone free of its own lightcapture technology and exists outside the continuum—you and me can get up to anything we like. It’s a system based on trust, and that’s how we make this whole system work. Is there anything we need to know about you?”
“Like what,” asked Kransich. “I’m clean, always have been, always will be.”
“Look, we all dabble in some sort of illegal activity,” Capone said, “something we might not be proud about, and live to regret it. Even me, I was short of a little bit of money, the universal income wasn’t working for me, nor was the salary I was getting from Biocrime—I just wanted that little bit more. So, I traded some Biocrime patents on the black cryto-market—no-one ever knew, and look at me now, five levels from being the boss of Biocrime. And you? Anything of that nature?”
“No,” Kransich said, “nothing of that nature.”
“If there is, you know, we can make things ‘go away’,” Capone said, moving his hands up and giving his words air quotes. “Just to have that level of trust—we all do it, but we’re friends here. We can scrap any of that, and ignore it, we have the means to do that. But this is like an amnesty—because you’d never be able to do any of that when you move to the next level. And this would be the only chance to expunge these details. If we find out later on though, well, you’re fucked.”
Kransich was unsure whether Capone was telling him the truth. A high-level security officer close to the top at Biocrime engaged in illegal actions? Unlikely. Was Capone bluffing him so he would reveals his misdemeanors? He imagined any trading of secrets would be severely punished, not through death, but something close—deportation to a universal penal zone.
Did Capone know what he’d been up to? Kransich believed it was impossible because of his decoding—he was invisible to Biocrime on the inside, but he was also invisible on the outside. He correctly assumed Capone was bluffing, and quickly synthesized his answer into a clear succinct response.
“No, there’s nothing that I’ve ever done that’s illegal or counter to Biocrime’s intentions,” Kransich said. “Nothing whatsoever. I’d be happy to move to the uncover unit.”
“Fantastic,” Capone said. “I’ll just confirm the psych-ops and then we’ll take to you to the next level of approval.”
Capone moved out of Zone 43-X, and into the room behind, where he greeted Bronwyn Cargill, the lead psychoanalyst for Biocrime, and he
ad of the behavioral science team. Her smallish and demure appearance hid the fact that she was one of the best analysts in San Francisco, and was able to determine the veracity of people’s inner thoughts.
Capone was keen to put Kransich through direct memory extraction, where receptors were inserted directly into the brain and could extract individual memories, going back all the way to inception and beyond. It was an extreme measure, and was only used in extreme cases. Direct memory extraction plunged the recipient into a half-way zone between death and afterlife, could only be done once, and left the recipient psychologically damaged for the rest of their life. And the process needed a special authorization from Bronwyn Cargill, backed up with evidence.
“What do you think, Bron?” asked Capone. “I think we’ve got our man, but it’s all circumstantial. One of our freelancers sighted him off in the southern San Francisco zone, heart of the natural humans. It’s a smoking gun—without the smoke.”
“Yeah, I like that Don,” Cargill said. “A smoking gun without the smoke. Where do you get these dumbs phrases from?”
“From the heart of my ass, I’d say. You like the way I said I was engaged in trading secrets, illegal activities? You think he believed it?”
“Of course not, you think he’s a fool?” said Cargill. “But he’s lying through his teeth. Look at this.” Cargill zoomed into a part of her lightscreen that showed visual footage of Kransich’s iris and then his eyebrows, to show minute eyebrow twitching, a slight dilation of pupils and a glowing iris. “He’d be great at poker, but he’s in denial mode. The question is why.”
