The Biocrime Spectrum (Books 1-4)

by Erik Tabain

  “I’m not so concerned about the why,” Capone said, “but whether we should take him to the next stage of interrogation. He’s lying, but everyone tells lies. I’d think we have enough on him but, don’t forget, this isn’t petty. It’s Jonathan Katcher we’re after.”

  “We see this in a lot of Technocrats of his age,” Cargill said. “It’s unusual for Biocrime officers, but it does happen. Life’s questions: ‘where are we’, ‘what are we’, ‘who are we’, and ‘why’. They might mix with natural humans and they see a world they could never have imagined. Existential thought. Meaning. Emotions and feelings. The ones that fall for it start to think that it’s a better world, or a better way of life. Some get over it, some don’t. That’s where Kransich is at the moment. He’s a lost cause for us now.”

  Cargill moved back over to her lightscreen, and brought up Kransich’s profile.

  “He was one of Biocrime’s best officers,” Cargill said. “But over the past three years, he’s done nothing of note—no ambition, hasn’t put up his hand for any promotion, or superior duties. It’s like he stopped working three years ago.”

  “So, in your professional assessment,” Capone said, showing the alacrity of a small dog reluctant to release a newly found bone, “we can proceed with direct memory extraction?”

  “You know that I’m always reluctant to sign off on these processes,” Cargill said with a cautioned look on her face. “I’m never a hundred per cent sure, and there’s always the risk of getting it wrong.”

  “But have you ever been wrong before?”

  “No, but that’s because I’ve always exercised extreme caution, and try and get to as close to a hundred per cent as possible. I’m always worried about these things, but I’ll give you your approval.”

  Cargill moved towards the lightscreen and looked at Kransich’s profile, and the live visual footage from the room where he was seated. She didn’t know Kransich, and had never met him. He was fidgeting on his cell device and she summoned the controller to zoom onto his face. It wasn’t obvious on the surface but she saw a confused man, caught between two worlds, and struggling with his personal demons, wanting to do the right thing for both of those worlds, but succumbing to the age-old human flaw of corruption.

  Cargill had a small glint of sorrow, but she needed to do what needed to be done. She called up another screen with a series of menus, and scrolled down to a list of procedural options, which included ‘Direct Memory Extraction’. She linked the option with Kransich’s profile and had one more glance at Kransich through the visual screen, then summoned the approval button, and quickly swiped the three steps of the ‘Are you sure’ options on the screen.

  Soon, Kransich wouldn’t be a part of either of the two worlds he tried to live in.

  Kransich waited in the room in Zone 43-X, and scanned his cell device for world news and some scientific material from Science Today, one of the more popular sources for research. The latest headline detailed the clinical tests of pyscho-codeine on ants and how the benefits on insects could be transferred to humans to improve awareness and intelligence levels. Showing disinterest in whatever these benefits could be, he swiped across to the old ancient favorite, Scrabble, for a quick word challenge, just to fill in the time for whatever administrative tasks Biocrime needed to complete before he moved into his new undercover world.

  He called up his current game, played against ‘Marguerite’, a player with an average game score of three-hundred and eighty-two, and a high score of six-seventy. He had a poor collection of letters, including ‘Q’, three ‘Y’s, two ‘B’s and one ‘G’, but before he could assess his digital board, two Biocrime agents stormed into the room, apprehended him and applied digital handcuffs before he had even the thought of being able to struggle away, and was whisked into an adjoining room, simply known as ‘The Memory Room’.

  Before he had time to work out what was going on, the Biocrime agents strapped him down horizontally, and injected a powerful sedative, nicomorphenite, a new age hallucinogen, combining phencyclidine and dextromethorphan, with traces of herbal elements, salvia divinorum, psilocybin and mescaline. On its own, it could result in a deep trip and likely death, but the Biocrime agents inserted electrodes into the side of Kransich’s head and connected to a small lightscreen, which enabled Bronwyn Cargill to mix and match the way the drug would manipulate his memory synapses.

  Within seconds, Kransich was meandering between his reality and misty-eyed memories. He fluctuated between his in-body and out-of-body experiences: his incubation thirty-five years ago, his first words, not only from himself, but all of his previous iterations, like a montage of his previous lives mixed into the one experience. His images and memories fluctuated from those of five minutes ago, to those from over a thousand years ago: his recent handshake with Don Capone in Zone 43-X, offering him a new career within Biocrime; on the fields during the Battle of Kosovo in Eastern Europe during 1389, where he was evading capture by the Turks and travelling through a field of impaled military prisoners.

  His memory took him back three years, to when he first met Greta Banda, the many meetings and the sexual encounters, his feelings for her and the overwhelming sensation of engaging in deeper emotions for the first time, hearing the stories of natural humans and empathy, the first time Banda asked him to provide information and secrets from Biocrime.

  His memory finished up with his most recent meeting with Banda, where he provided his final batch of Biocrime data files and material, leaving Banda’s ground floor apartment, and discretely reappearing at the southern autotram station.

  Kransich had gone back and forth between every memory of every one of his cloned iterations, going back to the thirteen-hundreds but, all up, the elapsed real time had been just over three seconds.

  Cargill collated the visual data from Kransich’s memory batch, called up the data on her lightscreen, and created a share zone with Capone and Lestre. Lestre was the one who would now move forward with the data, with Capone’s oversight. Few words were interchanged between the trio, but Lestre was extracting the information she needed to proceed with her work for finding Jonathan Katcher, and Biocrime now had every piece of evidence they needed to detain Kransich, and apprehend his accomplice.

  “We have what we need,” Cargill said through her lightscreen, as she summoned the Biocrime agents to remove the electrodes from the side of Kransich’s head and move him to the rehabilitation zone, where he’d recuperate in time for his crowd trial, and likely deportation to a universal penal zone.

  Cargill retrieved some of the recent visual material from the data extracted from Kransich’s memory and, together with Capone and Lestre, viewed the interactions between Kransich and Banda on her lightscreen.

  “So, we have a name now,” Capone said. “Greta Banda. Some kind of off-grid revolutionary. Good work Bron. It’s difficult work, but it’s what we had to do. We’ve got all the evidence we need against Kransich and this Banda woman, and then we’ll find Katcher. We’re getting closer.”

  The memory extraction was a very clinical process, but Kransich staggered after he was lifted up by the Biocrime agents and moved into rehabilitation. He would never be the same person again, but his recovery was essential to generate revenues through his Biocrime crowd trial. A feeble and defeated Kransich might gain some sympathy, but a resolute and defiant Kransich was likely to fuel animosity, resulting in a higher guilty verdict and higher crowd-sourced revenue.

  Lestre moved to another part of the lightscreen, and accessed the history of Greta Banda. She’d been off-grid for twenty years, but Lestre secured her DNA details and created a new Biocrime profile, placing Banda back into the continuum. She entered the secure Biocrime profile zone, created a new task entry and spoke into her tablet.

  “Apprehending Greta Banda, key fugitive in recent revolution and theft of Biocrime classified material.”

  The auto-fill voice completed the description:

  Greta Banda has been stealing highl
y sensitive and classified material from Biocrime for three years, and providing this material to key members of the Movement. She was a leading figure behind the recent street revolution in San Francisco and her apprehension will lead to the capture of Jonathan Katcher.

  She is off-grid and was last seen in the apartments of Miller Avenue, South San Francisco, believed to be her residence. Can be lethal, approach with caution, needs to be alive to extract key data and generate high revenues.

  Course of action: Arrest, detention, leading to crowd trial

  Bounty payment: €500,000

  Lestre checked the text and approved the posting, and Lifebook allocated the task to the usual tasking and crowd funding systems. She felt she was getting closer.

  Thirty-One

  An untimely end

  “I’m not a fool.” It was one of Banda’s favorite saying, wheeled out whenever someone stated the obvious to her, partially a defense mechanism whenever she felt she was being undermined. She felt her relationship with Kransich had been coming to an end; it was only a matter of time before Biocrime either caught up with him—or her—and she wanted to extract as much material from him as possible before this happened.

  Initially, she thought the ruse with Kransich might last for a few months, but three years of receiving top level security files from the heart of Biocrime was about as good as it could get. Kransich was a sucker but he was well remunerated for his part within this Faustian pact. Banda never knew how Kransich spent his accumulated black crypto-currencies, but she really didn’t need to know, nor could she care less. She always pondered about Kransich’s motivations—whether it was the money, the dare, the risk of living dangerously—but, ultimately, she received what she wanted, and he was rewarded handsomely.

  Every time they met—and it must have numbered in the hundreds over the past three years—the risk of being found out increased and, as time progressed, he seemed less concerned about ever being caught. For all of this time, had anyone seen Kransich and his approaches to Banda’s apartment? Did anyone care? It wasn’t easy to be completely anonymous in this day and age and Kransich’s decoder serum removed those concerns, each visit adding that extra level of dare and extra level of risk.

  But everything had changed. Since the failed uprising, Biocrime was on additional alert, and Banda decided it would be the last time she’d make contact with Kransich—he had been used for as much as possible, he was expendable, and it was time to move on. And it was the last time she’d return to her apartment.

  Like an advanced chess player, Banda tried to keep one step ahead of her opponents: although she wasn’t aware of Lestre’s surveillance the previous night, Banda had a subconscious hunch that she had to leave her apartment behind, not just for herself, but for anyone else, and decided to destroy her apartment and the pathway down to Anika-6. But pressure and a change in circumstances play on the human mind, and Banda was thinking on her feet, clouded in her judgments. It would have been best to advise someone in Anika-6 about her intentions but, like a failing gambler or someone knowing the odds are stacked against them, she behaved erratically and without strategy.

  Banda secured a patch of Semtex to the base on her apartment, just next to the hatchdoor that led to the smaller tube tunnel down to Anika-6. Because of the lead-plutonium plaster lining, her app link wouldn’t be able to detonate the Semtex package, so she had to improvise and used an old-fashioned technique—a countdown timer on a small cell device, linked to the explosives and set to destroy the building in seventy-five minutes—more than enough time for her to get down to Anika-6, seal the main door, and return to Katcher.

  Banda knew Semtex was a powerful explosive, and she also realized the package would not only destroy her apartment, but also the one-hundred and forty-three others in the block—as well as killing anyone who happened to be inside at the time. But it would also block off access to Anika-6, and any evidence leading that way: for her, that was the most important factor.

  She collected the data she’d received from Kransich the night before, and slithered down through the tube tunnel for the last time, crawling through the larger exit point and then to the circular chamber going down to Anika-6. Banda was clear and methodical, and used her lightpen to guide her way down to the control door. As she approached the control door to Anika-6, her timer showed there were forty minutes to go before detonation. She reached out to the genetic lock to open the control door, but it remained firm. Confused, she waved her hand over the lock, and then moved her body closer to the lock, but still it held firm. The genetic lock was synched to Biocrime profiling and as soon as Marine Lestre activated Banda’s genetic coding through the continuum, her ability to access the genetic lock into Anika-6 was rescinded.

  Banda thumped the door, but it was no use—the thickness of the door meant nothing could be heard behind the barrier. She accessed her cell device, but the signals couldn’t penetrate the wall either. Someone—Katcher, Newton, or another underling—might be able to see her from their lightscreen in the one of the tents inside Anika-6, but no-one was expecting her right now and they all would have assumed Banda could let herself in through the control door. Banda weighed up the risk of either waiting for a chanced glance at the surveillance screens from someone on the inside—and who knew how long that would take—or moving back to the surface as fast as she could.

  If she stayed there and waited, she’d suffocate from the dust coming through the tunnel from the explosion. She started to panic and looked down at her timer—thirty-eight minutes before the Semtex exploded and if she was to survive, she would have to reach her apartment in less time than it took for her to come down—going back uphill—and disarm the timing mechanism.

  Realizing she didn’t have time to waste, Banda started running back up the circular tunnel—it was hot, the air was sparse, and she wasn’t clear about whether she’d be able to make it back in time. There were now thirty-three minutes left, and Banda needed to balance her timing, the air, and her ability to run—if she ran too quickly and exhausted herself, she would faint.

  Twenty-three minutes. Banda was panting, breathing heavily and sweating profusely. Her lightpen reflected light from the walls of the circular tunnel, but the non-descript nature of the walls gave her no clues for how close, or how far she was from safety.

  Fifteen minutes—Banda was sure she was getting closer, but that was based on a feeling, rather that any empirical evidence that might have mentally collated in her mind over the years. She’d been up this tunnel hundreds of times but she always travelled at a much slower pace and on this occasion, she was racing against a finite amount of time and space.

  Banda came across the small part of the entrance tunnel, back to her apartment. Her timer indicated nine minutes before detonation and she was certain she could make it back in six minutes—but the stress of dealing with the life or death circumstance had left her totally exhausted and drained of energy, and unable to clearly think through the few strategies available to her. She was already committed and couldn’t go back down or stop now—she just had to push through to survive.

  She pushed and pushed, and pulled in as much air as possible to gain an extra level of energy. It took longer than she expected and her timer was down to two minutes but, at this stage, she didn’t want to waste time by looking down at her timer to see how much time was left. She finally reached her destination but struggled through the hatchdoor of her apartment to the point where she was just seconds away from the Semtex package and the detonator. She could see the detonator and reached out to deactivate it, but time had run out.

  Death came quickly for Banda and much faster than the many citizens killed in the East End Bombing. She didn’t have the benefit of her life moments flashing in front of her for those final seconds: her birth, her life as a child, or the time she spent with her parents, who motivated her and inspired her towards a revolutionary life. There was no chance of reliving her moments with the Movement, or with Jonathan Katcher or M
ichael Kransich, or the short experience of the failed San Francisco uprising.

  Her home of the past decade had blown up, along with the other one-hundred-and-forty-three apartments in the building. It was early afternoon, so not as many natural humans were home but, all up, fifty-four people were killed. There would be times in the future where Banda would be idolized by the next generation of activists for her contributions to the Movement but, for now, her body parts were strewn about in the basement of her apartment, and covered by seven levels of concrete and apartment rubble.

  Even though San Francisco was still cleaning up its streets and rebuilding after the aftermath of the uprising, the news of the blast at Banda’s apartment travelled fast. The datastream on Lestre’s lightscreen flashed with a news alert—a citizen’s report and story timeline about the bombing of an apartment block in southern San Francisco. Just like the East End Bombing several months ago, this was a big news event, with streams of citizen journalists recording the event, narrowcasting and broadcasting from the site.

  Lestre had been scanning the area for further clues since the time she recently created a Biocrime profile for Greta Banda, but as she delved further into the typographical display and scanned through the topographical data, she calculated the bombing she saw in the news reports was in the same apartment block she saw Kransich enter the previous night. She switched into the DNA reading mode on her lightscreen, narrowed it down to the bombing scene and links to Banda’s profile. But instead of the DNA coding depicting one location, the lightscreen picked up a number of readings, scattered over three hundred yards. Lestre quickly realized Banda was in the blast, and her body parts had been spread over the site, as well as remnants from the other fifty-four people that died in the blast.