This kid is going to break my fucking heart and then get me killed. She stands unresponsive, holding her slate with the least secure of grips and I realise that she’s listening to something via her earbud. I remove the earbud and she drops the slate. It swings down onto her chest, hanging from the rope around her neck. I sigh and take her by the hand. I try to catch her gaze, but she stares off into the distance, exactly like my Lucy did before the sickness took her from me.

She’s small, maybe nine years old but she has little problem keeping up as we leave the Aleppe camp and head to the boats. The sun has begun her descent behind the flooded remains of Old Mother, taking its killing heat with it. Things are good here for now, people rarely mess with others’ transport, but I’m always happy to see my little orange rescue boat unmolested.

The kid hops in adroitly and sits herself at the bow looking out. She’s been coming on reclaim with me since the day I found her. At the camp she is fearful and distant, but as soon as we board the boat she comes to life as if expecting us to move on to somewhere better. I heft the batteries onboard, get them attached and covered up. I check the boat carefully for anything foreign: tracking units or incendiary devices hidden by other reclaimers. I scrutinize the contents of my bag by feel alone, too scared to risk anyone seeing what I have in here. Satisfied, I set us off slowly, watching the frantic dash of the newer reclaimers to the nearby industrial park. They don’t yet know that it’s not a race like in some of the smaller coastal cities, working reclaim here does not favour the rash, reckless or heroic.

As we move deeper into the stagnant waters I look back at Factory, an almost comically gigantic structure. It hangs on the horizon like a glass and chrome cliff, reflecting the last of the day’s sun down onto the endless expanse of water. If it were a photo, if the stale waters didn’t smell and the heat wasn’t so unbearable, it would be beautiful. Ahead of us lies Old Mother, a city claimed by the waters at some blurred time in the past. Scorched by the sun during the day and shrouded in fog by night. We reclaimers swarm over her, bringing back whatever Plutus will exchange for power and sustenance. In turn, our reclaims are processed by Factory which sends its unknown output away on swarms of drones. We are free to leave with nowhere to go; there is nothing but spoiled land for hundreds of miles in all directions. There is no way to make such a journey in the heat, even with more provisions than Plutus would ever allow anyone to earn in a lifetime. Maybe someone just needs to be desperate enough. Maybe finally, I am.

I found the kid trying to drink from a puddle a week ago. The kids here usually stick together in gangs but they chased her off whenever they saw her. There was a good family in the tent behind mine that I paid to take her. When I woke up she was asleep next to me and the family were gone. I sent her out to get water yesterday and the other kids pelted her with rocks and bottles, she got cut up pretty bad and it will only get worse. The kid gives a sudden yelp of excitement at something I can’t see, snapping me out of my thoughts. She laughs to herself. It was worth getting up this morning just for that. Even if the plan falls apart; even if Plutus kills me.

It took me nearly two years to track down all the information, scavenge all the supplies and upgrade the boat. Then a month ago someone ransacked my tent. They didn’t steal anything but they were looking, as if they knew I was up to something. I got cold feet. There was too much to lose and the gains were too nebulous for someone as old as me. I simply don’t have that much future left that I want to risk a violent death. That was before I found the kid. I could have made excuses and let her fend for herself; die by herself, but I think it would be a bridge too far for what is left of my tattered soul. I’ve lost too much and ducked too many fights during my life. I’ve always been a coward, that’s how I’ve survived, but this kid acts so much like my Lucy that I know with absolute certainty that I will not be able to recover from losing her.

I take a few moments more to check for signs that we are being followed. I’m not satisfied but we can’t waste any more time. We push on eastwards at optimum speeds for a good 90 minutes until the sun has disappeared. I cut the electric motors and have some water.

"Kid", I beckon her, can you come here"?

She comes over, skittering around the boat like she was born in it. I give her some water and a section of protein bar.

"Let’s continue your lessons kid. Let’s try again with your slate."

She gives me one of her short nods. She’s still not spoken a word and I’m not sure if she can speak. I registered her for a slate today just in case this all goes sideways but she somehow survives, she might be able to make a go of reclaiming alone.

"When you’re heading into the city you tap this button with the compass to see the GPS. The pink zones are where Plutus wants us to work, so pay is an extra 10% on all reclaims. Never chase the pink, it’s like a warzone."

She looks up at me, still chewing on her protein bar, and gives me another sharp affirmative nod.

"Tonight we are heading over here", I tap on the map, mindful not to use any words that could alert Plutus to my unusual route.

Technically we are allowed to go anywhere we want in the city. Plutus does not dictate where, when or how we should work. Instead it aligns rewards with the behaviours that it wants. It gamifies the reclaim work in such a way that people take great pride in their reclaim stats. Reward badges mean not only extra credit to spend on power or food but also social status in the camp. I can name at least three people who have died trying to meet the requirements for the Acid Collector badge.

The girl’s slate beeps a merry little five note tune, and she drops it in surprise only to have it swing into her chest again.

"That will just be your first hour award I tell her. It will beep at you a lot, you’ll get used to it." She retakes her spot at the bow and I get us underway again. I have her reach over and switch on the headlight. That thing is my pride and joy; I hand crafted the fixture myself back when I had time, before this insane plan consumed me.

The kid remains silent; the noise of the other reclaimers dies away as we move further into the city. On nights like this I usually love this quiet, this solitude as I glide through the mist and down old roads between decomposing buildings. Today I’m too tense, so much is at stake. I want noise and distraction.

I point out the pack of wolves that live on top of a 7/11. I’m unsure what they are feeding on or how they are moving around the city but they seem to be increasing in number. The kid squeals in excitement and points. A turtle is swimming beside us, a few meters away. I slow down and it comes closer before diving into the murk below. I wonder how they can live in this water, but as with the wolves they seem to be finding a way to adapt and survive. Unlike us, we are just dying.

"See these signs here kid, they are for the fourth ring road. That means we are through the suburbs and into the city proper." I’m one of the few that regularly come this far. Most of the young ones are nearly illiterate but I read old magazines to try and find good leads for reclaim sites. The younger reclaimers are happy to make repeated trips to sites near Factory. They have stamina and strength that I do not.

We pass under a flyover, the top shrouded in mist but I try to see if there is anyone on it. I’m sure we’ve not been followed and I’m sure no one else knows about my plan, but then again, I’m not that sure. My tent being tossed may have been about something else, but at times over these past years it felt like someone was feeding me clues and I have wondered if someone isn’t sending me out here to do the risky work just so they can take the prize from me at the eleventh hour.

The towers I’ve been using as a landmark on the slate’s GPS are becoming visible, rising up into the silent night mist. I ask the kid to bring up her map like I taught her and she does so, a quick learner.

We are going to check out this small building over here; it’s behind these four big towers in front of us. She nods and contemplates the screen. I want to go around the towers but it’s going to cost too much power and time, so we head up into the gap right in the centre of them. The gap is about 30 meters wide and packed solid with debris. Mostly wood but there’s also some sharp looking plastic shards that make me fear for the life of my vessel. It’s also the perfect place for an ambush. We will be stuck in the middle of all that crap, unable to move quickly in any direction. I slow right down and grab a stick I keep for such purposes, pushing the debris away as we crawl through it. Painfully slowly, we pass between the buildings which I can see were grown rather than built as was common in the final decades before the war. Eventually we clear the debris and once I’m sure there’s no nasty surprises in the water we push on at a higher speed. Plutus will be aware of my new route, my secret destination laid bare.

I cut the engines and we coast up to our target. This is new ground to me; therefore I fear it. Even when they have been destroyed, cities this big never sleep, never stop being dangerous. I take time to check out the building, directing the kid on where to aim the headlight. It’s a nondescript three-story building with no signs or markings. When I start to look carefully however, I am filled with hope by its uniqueness. The top floor has no windows at all. There are sections that give the impression of windows but they are just sheets of glass on top of recessed mirrors and unlike every other building in the area there are no cables connecting to the roof. We come to a stop next to a second story window. I fit myself and the kid with our headLEDs and inspect the windows. No way I’m smashing my way through glass that thick; the corners display all sorts of logos suggesting that this is a product that is serious about its function.

"You look bored kid, I say, how about a little climbing?" She brightens visibly.

It’s a wonderfully easy climb; there are plenty of window ledges. At the top I drop a rope and I pull as the kid clambers up. She clearly doesn’t need the rope or my help but I think she’s enjoying the attention, letting me believe that I’m helping her. I had forgotten how kind children can be.

On the roof we sit down and take some more water and protein. I feel more confident that no one has followed us now. The towers we passed through stand over us like ancient sibling gods in the moonlight. The kid’s slate beeps; she starts to react but catches herself.

"First Ascent badge", I tell her; "you’re doing well."

I pop open the rooftop fire escape without issue. The air that races out and into the expanses over Old Mother is stale but not putrid; there is nothing to suggest death or fungus. Plutus no longer provides masks that can deal with fungus even though that far and away is the biggest killer of reclaimers. Laughably there were attempts at strikes, which resulted in Plutus cutting the water cut for twelve hours and that was the end of it. When new refugees stopped arriving en masse we had hoped that things would improve, that we would be more valuable, but such thoughts seem naive now. When we all die Plutus will move on, become something else somewhere else, of that I am now sure. Anyone with the means to hurt the AIs has long passed and the planet is theirs to inherit.

Together the kid and I descend into the jackpot. The offices are immaculate save for the dust. The doors at the top of the stairs have kept the damp out and the moon illuminates the office like it was destiny, like the gods themselves are taking an interest. I know the gods all died, killed by humans and then replaced by AIs, but I tell myself that they may have returned, just for tonight. This office, like all of Old Mother, was abandoned when the dam was bombed. The war started just days afterwards and it’s likely no one has entered this building since. I find a pile of business cards and my heart jumps to see it says Tyche Sequencing. Everything is working out, the leads were good. I sit down to compose myself and both our slates chirp. The kid looks over at me from a chair she has perched herself on.

Plutus knows we are on site. It’s just sending updated prices.

I pull up a chair on coasters and show her how to sort by price and weight. I tell her to look around the office and grab anything in the top half of the list. She nods and wanders off to the furthest area of the open plan, completely ignoring two data slates as she goes. I can’t help but smile.

I leave the open plan area and head upstairs to the uppermost floor. It is devoid of any light and the corridor is snaked with cables along the walls and ceiling like the building has its own decaying neurology. The server room is unlocked and the drives are still sitting in their racks. I pull all ten of the drives, sealing them in waterproofs and laying them out carefully on the floor. I grab a few generic bits of hardware that are laying around and log them with Plutus via my slate. I don’t think it will throw Plutus off the scent but it may give me a few extra minutes.

On these drives there is almost certainly the genetic code for many thousands of plants, plants that have been extinct for a generation or more. This data is the one chance I have of getting the kid and I away. It could also very likely result in my death within the next few hours; killed by a reclaimer, Plutus or some yet unknown actor in this.

I put one drive in my bag pocket and tape the other nine together. Then, I take my latest bastard creation from my bag. A capacitor from a neon sign hooked up to a battery, a fat coil of copper cable, a heart rate monitor and a logic gate switch. It took me the best part of a year to make and a lot of effort to conceal, but I have my very own EMP dead-woman’s trigger. I tape the nine drives to the output of the EMP and put the whole lot in my bag. I attach the sensors to my chest. I double check everything and then check it again. I take a deep breath, open my slate and make the call to Plutus.

I head back upstairs to find the kid surrounded by at least twenty data slates and playing with some toy figures under a desk. She doesn’t look up from her toys, and I see that they are a full set of Octonauts. I sit down next to her on the floor and watch her have the figures stage raids on the bottom drawer of the desk.

"Kid, I used to love the Octonauts when I was your age, before the global network failed. That show was an Age of Plenty classic, much better than anything that was made in the Decline; even kids shows were gloomy during the Decline. I guess you don’t even know what TV is. Anyway, you know this one is the leader right? This is Captain Barnacles; he’s a polar bear. This green rabbit, she’s the engineer. She made all the cool stuff but she wasn’t the boss."

She pauses for a second before pressing on with Tweek Bunny leading the raid. Maybe she’s onto something, without all the Gups and Octopod the Octonauts would have been able to achieve nothing. Technological solutions are all we have ever really known.

I open our rations of goop and we sit and eat in silence with the Octonauts all lined up watching over us. My stomach is a mess but I will need this energy before the night is out. I’m trying to think of how to explain this to her in a simple way that she might understand. Whilst I’m thinking of how to do this I realise that I’m blurting it all out.

"Kid, I’ve just done something probably very stupid. I’ve agreed to make a trade with Plutus. Our freedom, a car and a lot of supplies for something very special that I’ve found tonight. It’s taken me so long to get everything ready and now that I’ve nearly done it, I’m scared. Obviously, if you want to stay at the camp and work for Plutus you can have my boat and all of my stuff, but I don’t think it’s safe for you there, those other kids... Plutus may try to kill me and it won’t care if it kills you to get to me. I think I can get us away. If we do get away I can’t really promise anything will be better. I have a plan to get up into the mountains that I used to know as a kid; there are some valleys there that may be okay. It may work, it may not. There are a million ways we could die on the way or when we get there but I have to try to do this. It’s not fair of me to ask you to decide; kids your age shouldn’t have to decide anything but I can’t decide for you."

I catch myself. The room is silent. I’m about to start up again when the kid scoots over a few feet and lays her head on my arm and now I’m crying silently, remembering my Lucy. I let myself completely emotionally collapse, just for a minute. Then I give her a hug and we leave hand in hand with the Octonauts safely in the kid’s bag, the data slates scattered unwanted on the floor.

My calculations were good and we have enough power to get back, but I wish we could go faster. I know that Plutus has heard every word via the slates and can track us to within a few meters, but none of that matters. To try to outsmart an AI like Plutus is laughable at even the conceptual level; to try to understand what an AI wants or will do is fruitless. After all that they have done, people still anthropomorphize AI, but the truth is that their motivations are beyond our understanding. In the same way that an ant cannot understand the rationale of a child who fries it under a magnifying glass, humans cannot comprehend AI. Knowing this I have tried to make the transaction follow simple game theory as much as I can. Plutus is a profit maximising AI from the Decline, an entity given life and freedom to make profit for its owners in whatever way it deemed to offer the fastest ROI. Plutus will want to take what I have for as little as possible, but it will know that losing the data over a relatively minor payment is potentially a huge loss in opportunity cost terms. As long as I keep my demands cheap and the data easy to lose, I should be able to walk away. I have told it about the EMP and I have asked for as little as I think I need to get us away. I have no idea what it thinks about my proposal, only that it said it agreed to it.

I fire up my dead woman’s trigger and we pull up to the boat that Plutus has arranged to meet us. I give the reclaimer piloting the boat the first drive from my bag pocket as a sample, and he connects it to some cables and then the cables to his slate. He’s old, nearly as old as me and all thumbs, clearly just following instructions via his earpiece. Plutus has managed to send one of the few reclaimers I do not know; already it’s playing me. Presently the man nods, looking at me with a mixture of fear and envy. "Go to the agreed location", he says, "everything is ready, I took it there myself."

I urge the boat away, adrenaline narrowing my focus to a mere tunnel ringed by stagnant waters. Ten minutes later I pull up to an old jetty. The moon seems horrifically bright as we run to the car in the clearing. We are going to die or not, so just get it over with. Plutus has seen my hand, and if it doesn’t want to play anymore then it’s over. We’re ants under a magnifying glass.

I expect someone to step out of the shadows and shoot me but no one does. I expect the car to explode when I turn the key but it starts immediately with fully powered batteries and a functioning AC. I expect a million terrible things to happen but nothing does. We drive for 30 minutes before I stop, disable the EMP, and deposit the remaining nine drives at the side of the road with our slates, so that they can be found by whomever Plutus sends.

My fear is now off the scale. I am no longer holding any cards at all. I hope that Plutus has no sense of pride or ego or revenge. I hope that it won’t decide that it’s worth sending a missile or hit squad after me. I hope that it is content to see the car and supplies I have taken as a sunk cost. I hope that it is already putting its energies into processing its wealth of new data, of creating business models by which it can grow crops that have been lost for so long. I hope that these plants spread and prosper and maybe even outlast Plutus, outlast all the AI. I hope this kid and I find an isolated valley and live out our days there without illness, starvation or violence. I hope all of these things yet I know that I cannot allow myself to expect any of them.

"You did great today kid, I say. I couldn’t have done this without you."

She looks up at me and smiles. “That’s exactly what Plutus said. He told me that as long as I didn’t talk, you would get us away. I guess I can speak now though, right?”

Silence was a blessing. Space in this world was a rarity; something to be treasured like a precious flower. I always craved to be away from my life, from the dirt and pollution, the endless people packed into smaller and smaller spaces. I wished to lie in a great open field, in a cave, to let the sounds of nature penetrate me, and wash me away, leaving something fresh and untainted behind. When I finally found silence; there was no cleansing, no release or freedom; there was only the madness in my head running laps and screaming gibberish. My ego fought to its last to keep the delusions that haunted me intact. Silence became a curse.

I existed in the Floods, an area that used to be the demarcation between the Capitol and docks. It now acts as host to a mix of refugees, transients, dock workers, failing religious, political groups, smugglers, and anyone else unable or unwilling to live in the city proper. I resided on the upper floors of houses that were semi-submerged by the vengeful sea and I embraced whatever solitude I could. I lived by smuggling contraband off the ships and into the city. I am not a particularly strong or quick-witted man but my father taught me to be methodical and precise in my endeavours. To plan with redundancies for every possibility. I hated the man and his lunatic religion but his lessons allowed me to survive these insane, brutal decades whilst so many perished around me.

The job was not from my usual fixers. I had been out the night before, burying bad memories and regrets. I awoke to a hazy recollection of drugs, a fight, dancing, and copulation. Tainted mist had drifted off the sea and blanketed my apartment. When I awoke I could barely see the back wall of the old loft conversation. My AVR switched to IR vision but I flicked if off immediately, too hungover for technological invasion of my senses. A stranger was searching through my kitchen, her back to me. She was tall with an incredible figure and was immaculately well dressed. Even from the other side of the room, with only her back visible to me she radiated beauty. Beauty in the Floods was a rare thing; here the damp and rot penetrate all aspects of life. To live here is to decay. I decided not to speak until I had some clarity. I stood up and numb pain sang out across my body; especially in my right arm which had a four inch long wound in the bicep that had been clumsily stitched. As I started to walk over to the kitchen area, the figure turned and my mind fell over itself and then tried to implode. The stranger was Sarah, my truest love, fellow smuggler and utter bitch who had left me to be killed ten years ago. I had no recollection of being with her the previous night but I frantically searched my drug corrupted recollections of the last 12 hours. She must have seen the confusion on my face.
“You were asleep when I found your place, so I just crashed on the couch. You look pretty terrible.” I nodded. I felt terrible. I offered to make coffee.

We chased the coffee with a fist full of high-grade super blue capsules; all pains and doubts were consigned to the past. I drank Sarah in, her motions were as graceful as ever, her voice smooth and assuring with just a hint of a south-eastern accent if you knew where to listen for it. Like most women with money, she hadn’t aged a day over the ten years since I had last seen her, as if the stresses of life just slipped by, leaving her untainted. Sarah was beautiful in a classical way, high cheekbones, and deep brown almond eyes but it was her smile that people always noticed first. A wonderful smile isn’t possible to describe in any meaningful way. The smile itself is less important than the response it evokes and Sarah’s smile set dopamine transmitters off in the brains of people who saw it.

We made small talk, dancing around the elephant in the room for a while, waiting to see which of us would find it the pretence too tedious and get on to the real issues at hand. Sarah broke first, but only just.

“Anyway, nostalgia be damned. I have a job Ping, and I need you, I need that mind of yours.”

I should have been furious about the money, about the debt she had built up in my name, about the three years of high-risk work that I’d been forced to take to clear the tab, but honestly, I just didn’t care. Maybe it was the super-blue, maybe it was the hangover, maybe I was happy to have her back in my life, maybe I just didn’t care. Whatever the reason was, I didn’t say a word, I just smiled. She always loved my smile; loved it more than anything I could say. “You still grin like an idiot”, she said laughing. “Let’s go and get some food, then we can go somewhere secure to talk.”

The rows of terraced houses towered over us as we rode a water taxi down into the city proper. The stench of the ruinous water and the overcrowded waterways were oppressive in the humidity and heat. I had my AVR play me some chamber music and watched a small swarm of inspection drones head out to the incoming super-tankers to scan for radioactives. Where the Floods ended, we switched to cab and cut through the slums of District Four to the Financial Sector.

Sarah took us to an unreasonably expensive Nu-Tropix restaurant. The place was like a spaceship, staff in immaculate uniforms, hydroponics covered every wall, hung from the ceiling and climbed to the upper floors in great misty columns. The clientele was mainly suits from the nearby financial houses but also some well-heeled art types. Everyone sported ostentatiously visible mods that were all too new for me to recognize. We took a window seat upstairs and I watched as clouds broke and the crowds dispersed into buildings, out of the acidic rain. Bringing me here was Sarah making a point; she was big leagues now and I was still just local action.

We ate the best food I had ever eaten; fruit and vegetables that I had no name for, prepared in ways that I didn’t understand. Every single component of every dish was vital and intense but in the most pleasurable way; it was the first time that I truly understood what it meant to be rich. It wasn’t about money, it was about mind-set, about demanding excellence in everything, right down to the sprigs of parsley.

With the Food finished we took another taxi south to a secure faraday facility that rented meeting rooms by the hour. The cab took us into the ground floor parking area that had fully enclosed parking spaces. Sarah explained to me that there was a lift for every room. There were no shared corridors, lifts or reception areas. There was no receptionist, no CCTV, no accidental witnesses to anything, anywhere. A small swarm of drones followed us out of the car and into the lift, removing and destroying any skin, hair or fibres that we shed along the way. Check in was via a password that Sarah punched into an unadorned keypad in the lift. The room itself was tailored to the successful organized criminal; over designed, just the wrong side of garish with lots of black and gold trim. A large conference table sat in the centre of the room with sofas and armchairs placed strategically around the edge of the room.

“Well Sarah, I don’t know what you did with my money but you certainly made it work for you.” Just like that, my humours had risen and I was lashing out. I was furious with myself for saying it but there it was, out in the open like a new-born baby. Sarah pushed me over another handful of super-blues and I downed them with a paper cup of water from the carbon and gold water dispenser in the corner of the room. I sat down at the conference table and Sarah looked me in the eye. “That’s fair”, she said, her voice soft, smothering my rage like a fire blanket. “I left you in a tight spot and I’m sorry. I thought long and hard about coming back. I knew you would be angry but this is a big payday and I wanted you to be a part of it. My way of trying to undo a little of the damage I caused, you know?”

A set up from start to finish. She had timed her arrival when I was a horny, sedated mess and she showed off her wealth by taking me to a fancy restaurant knowing it would get my collar up and make me blow the only card I had over her. Then she finished the job by pretending she was doing me the favour. Stitched up like a kipper, just like a decade ago.

“I’m…sorry I bought it up. I guess I’m feeling last night’s excursions.” Now I was apologizing for being upset that she had very nearly destroyed my life. I was not in control with this woman; I never would be. I knew that I needed to walk away from this one. Sarah must have seen this in my face as she either dropped her manipulation or tried a different approach. At the time I believed it was the former but I’ll never be sure.

“Ping, seriously, I’m sorry. I don’t want to explain why I did what I did, because it won’t help but I do wonder why you didn’t see…look, I wish I didn’t do what I did but necessity is what it is. Besides, things are catching up with me Ping, sooner or later someone from my past is going to find me and kill me. Help me with this, give me the opportunity to start afresh.”

Maybe it was a lack of imagination on my part because even though I didn’t entirely believe her, I couldn’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be. I decided to let her have her say because I wasn’t going to be able to keep going as I was forever. Smugglers get caught and die in prison; they get jumped by a gang and murdered; their fixers get arrested or killed; at best they get old and slow and business goes elsewhere. I couldn’t say no to a possible escape without at least doing due diligence first.

“It seems that we are both painted into our own corners, so let’s talk turkey” A smile broke out across her beautiful face and even though it didn’t fill me with any joy, I was pleased that I had had some effect on her. She was human at least.

“It’s potentially a very simple run Ping. I need to move a case of designer hallucinogens from a container ship directly into the city. It’s a concentrated synthetic derivative of an incredibly rare mushroom that once grew in a small area of what used to be Peru. The manufacturers have been targeting the kids of the super-rich with this stuff and it’s taking off. They’ve branded it as Ghost and are pushing it through all the social media and streams. Minor celebrities dropping cryptic hints about it in their posts; articles about its potential for spiritual awakening are doing the rounds in the fringe media; all that good stuff. They’ve manufactured a market for it, demand is intense and only one outfit has the original DNA sequence needed to produce it. You know that these kids of the elite have unlimited money, they’ll spend what most people earn in a year on a Tuesday night at the Spire. Best of all, despite its strength it’s entirely non-toxic. I don’t think it’s possible to die from it so there will be no backlash over a rich dead kid. I know I owe you Ping; you’ll be well paid.” She was daring me to ask how much, so I did. More than I had earned in the last five years, probably more. Insane money by anyone’s standards.

“Appreciating that you’re doing very well for yourself Sarah, and appreciating you are suffering a little with your guilt, there is no need for you to pay me, or anyone like me anywhere near that much. What’s the catch?” No smile this time; letting me think I was onto her deceit, playing me, always playing me.

“You’re wrong Ping, I do. The catch is that this package is everything I have. If it’s picked up, I won’t care about jail; I will be in debt for obscene sums of money to some very bad people. I won’t even be charged; I’ll be dead on my first night in a holding cell. So yes, I need to pay this much because I need you to be as invested in this as I can afford to make you. I need you to pour your heart and soul into this. It should be simple but the stakes are too high for this not to work. If there’s a problem, I know you will have fifteen backup plans and contingencies ready to go. I know you will see this right.”

“Things haven’t been going so well then.”

“Not especially Ping, not especially. But if we pull this off, all that goes away. It won’t even take a year to have so much money we can leave, go and start somewhere fresh.”

There it was, the subtle, vague promise of ‘we’, dropped into the conversation. A single word that could be forgotten or built upon as she saw fit. I would like to say I barely flinched, but I knew I was as easy to read as a neon sign to Sarah.

“Shit or bust then.”

“Shit or bust.”

“We’d best not fuck this up then.”

We spent the rest of the day and a lot of the night in that conference room. We ate expensive delivery food. We planned. We picked holes in the plan. We changed the plan and picked more holes in it. Sarah got us a room in a place next door and we sleep for 12 hours. Then we came back and did it all over again. I spent another three days on dry runs. I paid bribes and got the inside news from the police, customs, local gangs, vagrants; everyone I could think of. I did everything except for the most obvious thing. I didn’t check Sarah.

Drugs are smuggled into the Capitol every day, but not psychedelics. Uppers and downers are the lifeblood of the city; they let it function and they paper over the cracks of our barely functional society. They allow financiers and CEOs to be sociopathic, they keep people in the Spire for days at a time, they give office drones an escape and they make sure that everyone is too scared to demand real societal change less their supply disappears along the way. Psychedelics however are off the table and everyone knows this. Penalties for dealing are draconian and the rewards for turning a dealer can make even the most loyal foot soldier consider his options. So, no one bothers, they aren’t habit forming, they attract lunatic customers from the fringes of society, there’s no motivation to go near them. I checked out Sarah’s claims of the social status of Ghost and she wasn’t exaggerating; this stuff was the drug of choice for the rich kids globally but the politicians in the Capitol were parading the fact that we were Ghost free. A lot of people that would lose face if we succeeded.

Two days before shipment arrived, I got a message from one of my customs contacts. He told me they were expecting a lot of psychedelics to arrive in two days. I didn’t even bother to tell Sarah, the look in my eyes was enough. She gave me the wad of cash I asked for without a word.

I met my contact in a sprawling day club; it took the entire top three floors of a row of terraced houses that had lost their lower stories to the waters. Water taxis were kept busy with a continuous flow of patrons arriving and departing. I disliked day clubs personally, they seemed to upset the natural balance of the universe. I made my way up the tiled stairway. The filthy cracked tiles had been covered in a thick layer of a clear sealant to slow the inevitable rot. Inside the music was all bass and the lighting was subdued. The crowd was respectable for the floods; a mix of the skilled, legal freelancers that sometimes found the flooded zone a convenient place to operate out of.

My contact was at the bar unwinding after his night shift. He was a slight, dull man who dressed badly and seemed to derive no joy from having a job that most people around him would kill for. He’d always been happy to take my money, but he didn’t hide the fact that he disliked me on a personal level. He’d been deeply unhappy about meeting me but there wasn’t much he could do about it. I eschewed any theatrics and sat down at the long bar, laying my jacket on the stool between us, Sarah’s wad of money inside.

“Fuck off Ping. I don’t need this.”

“There’s ten big ones in the inside pocket of that jacket. You can keep the jacket too. I just need to know where that tip off came from.”

He looked into his drink as he spoke.

“I don’t know Ping, it’s all processed by the AIs, they just serve up what they think is a good lead.”

“Now you’re insulting me”, I told him, surprising myself with how pissed off I suddenly felt and sounded. “I know exactly how that office works and this wasn’t something that was dredged up by AI crawlers, this was a direct tip. Ten big ones, right there and I know you’d tell me for half of that. Look after me over the next few days and I’ll be a very good friend to have.”

He downed what was left of his drink but still didn’t look at me.

“It was from the first mate of the ship the package is on, the Null Horizon. You know crews are always scouring cargo looking for something they can profit from. He’s in line for a fat reward.” I left without a word and without my jacket.

I had the water taxi take me home the long way around so I could get some peace and had my AVR play some jazz. I ran over my plan for this eventuality and it still seemed like the best move on the board.

“How fucked are we?”, Sarah asked.

“Pretty fucked but a lot less so than we were a few hours ago. The authorities have a tip off from one of the crew but I can save this; I have a plan already in place.” Sarah nodded, “It’s why I came to you Ping. What do we do?”

I outlined the plan, she looked pale. “That was the last of the cash Ping, my credit is all tapped out.”

Sarah had wanted me invested in this thing and she had succeeded. I wanted some of that good life for myself now. If I’m honest I wanted Sarah, I wanted a fairy-tale ended in a new city with a family and her and why the fuck not? If a man is too cynical to even dream, he’s not alive in any meaningful way. I took my savings from my floor safe and went and to find some pirates.

I’d wanted a crew who claimed to be descended from pacific islanders, loyal men who could probably sail a dingy through a typhoon without any fuss but it was clear they were laying low and wouldn’t be found. Defeated I prowled the docks sizing up my options and it turned out that I had exactly one choice: Bergman. Bergman’s boat and crew were known to be good, dependable and were the only crew that had the boat and skillset that I needed who were sitting in dock scratching themselves. I sat down with Bergman right there and we hammered out the details, the price, the bonus; it was the fastest deal I’d ever done.

I was back at the apartment within the hour. I’d picked up a bottle of Burmese whisky on the way back and was sitting on the bed drinking it over ice and enjoying the peace when Sarah returned. It was at that moment that I really understood how much she meant; my precious peace broken but not missed. I didn’t want solitude when I could be with her.

She sat with me on the bed, curled up into me. We shared the glass, drinking slowly, the whisky was poor; it numbed and burned in all the wrong ways, but I didn’t care; I had reached some degree of peace with myself for the first time in many years. I explained the plan to Sarah again and she asked me questions and made suggestions and we reformulated it again and again just as in the faraday facility. It no longer mattered if we were being surveyed, we were too far in with too few options to do anything other than press on at full throttle. At dusk I boarded Bergman’s ship and we set off to hijack the Null Horizon.

Bergman subbed out the research on the Null Horizon to a few data crews I knew and trusted. The ship was a low-rent cargo ship for low-value goods. It had no defensive capabilities or anything so dramatic. The crew likely had personal side-arms but they wouldn’t be expecting any visitors this close to shore; no one was stealing a whole ship and getting it out to international waters before the authorities caught up with them and there was nothing worth stealing; well not unless you knew Sarah’s dirty little secret.

The run to the Null Horizon was short, barely giving me enough time to brief the crew, hand around a mugshot of the first mate and reiterate my desire to have this kept to plan. Our fake Captain, Luca, looked ill.

Ten minutes after boarding the Null Horizon it was ours. Credit to Bergman, his crew were good. All 8 crew were tied up in the small mess hall. We took them outside one by one, asked about the diamonds that they were smuggling, adding in a few slaps and punches for authenticity. The first mate however we had a different set of questions for. He was no fool, he took us down to Sarah’s gear without any complaints, ‘Easy come, easy go’ was all he had to say. I admit I kind of liked the guy; he understood the nature of material wealth better than I did. Ten minutes later the container of Ghost, a large black pelican case the size of a small fridge, was being loaded onto Bergman’s ship. Securing this stuff, splitting it up and keeping it moving and away from the law would be a full-time job; one I planned to be a major part of.

The last part of the plan was the least pleasant. One of Bergman’s ex-crew Luca, stayed on board. He’d played the leader, screaming about the diamonds. He announced his plan was to hijack the ship, take her to one of the Polynesian islands and have his tribe strip it. Once we had the drugs, he’d pretended to turn on us, to chase us off, firing wildly like a rabid lunatic. Lucas hijacked the ship at gunpoint that night, steering her back out to sea with a gun to the captain’s head. Of course, he’d be caught before he’d gone any distance at all and spend upwards of twenty years in prison, but he didn’t care; he had months to live and a family to support. They would see a lot of money from this and if it all worked, I’d be personally delivering that family a monthly stipend. Once away, I heard the gunshot, saw the first-mate’s body fall from the side of the moonlit ship into the sea. No loose ends.

The hijacked Null Horizon was now our decoy and sure enough a good chunk of the local forces raced past us to assist her crew and claim that nice fat bonus the insurance company would pay them. With them out of the way it was a cakewalk back into the docks where Sarah was waiting in a speedboat. Usually, I like to repack goods, split them up into smaller containers and have mules move it into the city over a few days or even weeks. They’d forget their bags at bus stops, on trains, in stores or have them snatched. The bags would be picked up by my people on the other side. Nothing passes between anyone, no one knows anything, everything flies under the surveillance radar and we all get paid. Sarah though had other ideas; the people she had bought the Ghost from, they had contacts high up in the Capitol and had arranged for her to take the entire load through the desalination plant a few clicks along the coast; no checks no police. It would be fast and we would have the whole city to hide it in rather than the cramped square mile of the Floods. It goes without saying that this was an unknown quantity to me but Sarah said she knew it was solid and seeing that she had more to lose than anyone, I went along with it but not before securing five different sites to stash the Ghost, arranging the speedboat and hiring three water taxis to be on standby in case her plan went sideways.

We didn’t talk much on the way to the desalination plant as I recall. The electric engines were nearly silence and a mixture of tension, tiredness and a premature relief numbed me. The plant fell under naval protection; no one went near it, so this whole strip of coast was unknown to me. As we approached Sarah gunned the speedboat, hugging the shore tightly; more than once I thought she was going to ground us. She saw my expression and offered an explanation. “The short-range security is down, but we have a small window. I’ve got a contact on the inside but an alert is an alert, there’s no covering that up.”

Drones patrolled further out to sea but we were so close to the shore that we went unnoticed. As we approached the plant itself, a guard saw us and I tensed until he turned his back, moving along to patrol the wall facing the sea; Sarah’s contact. We cut the engines and drifted in silently. A large gate on the outer perimeter had been left ever so slightly ajar for us. We slid in, loading the crate onto a collapsible trolley we had bought. Sarah knew her way, I followed closely, the trolley humming as it hovered few inches above the ground. We passed through another doorway, this one taking us into one of many the large structures.

Inside was hideously loud, the roar of water was deafening. Sarah darted down a long descending corridor that ran along the coast. I wanted to ask what she was doing but it was dark, it was noisy and she was moving quickly. The damp glistening on the walls, the smell of brine enveloped me and I realized that I had, for the first time in my career, lost control of a mission and it had happened without my noticing. Sarah run straight under a CCTV camera but she seemed not to care; alarms started to sound in the distance. It was then that we finally exited the corridor and entered a huge room taken up almost entirely with a large walled canal, the water moved at a brisk pace. I stuck my hand over the wall and licked my fingers; pure clean drinking water heading straight into the city.

“Help me Ping. We need to get this stuff into the water quickly.”

I rubbed my face.

“It’s confession time Sarah, what’s the game here?”

“Enlightenment cannot come without questioning. Freedom cannot come if people don’t know they aren’t free. These are psychedelics Ping but they’re not for the brats, they’re for the people. We dose this whole city and we get enough people to start asking questions, to start wondering, and we can make some real fucking change here.”

I stared at her slack jawed. “Politics? Revolution? From you?”

For the first time ever, I saw rage in Sarah’s face. “Of fucking course politics Ping. It’s always been fucking politics; you would know this if you actually watched what I was doing rather than just watching me. I took you to those places, the restaurant, the hotel, the faraday rooms because I wanted you to notice the inequality, the injustice of it all because I wanted you understand me. But you didn’t, did you Ping? You just wanted some of it for yourself; that’s why I never told you the real plan. I left you all those years ago to seek out the Ministers because you didn’t see how bad things were then and you still don’t see it now. All I ever wanted was for you to have a fucking soul, Ping. If I’m wrong and you do have one, then please help me now.”

Before I could respond, there was a crack and Sarah’s leg exploded in a cloud of blood. She dropped to the floor, we looked into each other’s eyes for a fraction of a second before a bullet ripped through her head and gunshots began to rain down in volume. I couldn’t really tell you my reasons for what I did next; maybe it was to avenge her, maybe it was panic, maybe I just wanted a fucking soul. Whatever it was, I grabbed the container and pushed it up on to the canal wall. A bullet missed my leg by inches; I jumped up next to the container, popped the lid and pushed the whole thing in; little brown balls of power dissolving and disappearing as they raced downstream into the city. As I stood watching the liberated Ghost a bullet hit me in the shoulder and I went into the canal, right on top of the container, the contents of which were still pouring out of it.

I was charged with being part of a terrorist group, the Ministers, and found guilty. I did not attend or give evidence at my trial. I had received a massive dose of Ghost when I fell into the water, my sanity washed down that canal along with the tainted water. I don’t know if Sarah’s plan succeeded, if we had any effect. The madness that engulfed me after I ingested many thousands of doses of Ghost nearly resulted in my death. My being was unable to cope and I was classified as catatonic; kept alive only because the law demands that criminals be given all medical assistance to ensure no one can skip out on their sentence. The silence and solitude I had craved became a prison, I was trapped in my own personal hell of doubt and regret and impotent frustration. Eventually my mind exhausted itself and I slipped into a coma for several years. As my body slowly removed the Ghost, molecule by molecule I regained consciousness and recovered my physical strength. Mentally I began to rebuild my understanding of the world through the thick lens of the changes the Ghost had made to my neurology. I saw beauty and wonder in all aspects of existence. I shed my ego as readily as I gave away my coat in the club all that time ago. Now I am old, I am still imprisoned and alone but I see wonder in all things and I can say that maybe now, I have the soul that Sarah had always wanted me to have.

ǝɯǝǝɹɟ

f̶̨̰͕͈̣͒̇̃̉̿ä̶̡̙̠̥̱́̿l̴̥̽̕͜ś̸͚̻̖̖́͊͝͠ȩ̷̰͈̅̌̀̈́̅̅͌̋̍ĥ̸̨̢͕̳͙̤̦̰̦͊̑͋̍̀͜o̸̠̱̳̯͚͑̊̇̅̔̄͒̎̂̕ǒ̷̗̼̪͆̎͘͠d̴̢̦͕̫͇̝̱̺͙̋̑͗͛s̵̲̭̹͔̩̗͕͙͇̊͛̌̓̽̎͘̚

Testimony of John C. Delgado

I worked for South Strand Beach Finance at the time as one of the junior managers in Investments. The introduction was via someone who goes to the same temple as my wife. She badgered me into setting something up as she was convinced it was going to get her some serious social credit there. I’ll be honest here, because I’ve been caught out by this Truthhood software before. Usually I would not have agreed to do this for my wife, to do anything. We’ve not been close for a long time now, eight years or more. I’d been pretending to work late and sitting around in THC bars; just for the peace and quiet you understand. Whilst I was zoning out at one of them I met this gorgeous little thing, she was not long out of university and full of life and joy; the total opposite of what I’d become. For reasons that I do not understand we really hit it off and before long I had a place over in District 10 set up for us and was seeing her most nights. Now understand, I’m a religious man. I mean sure I don’t attend temple anymore but I have always done what I can to follow the teachings as best I can. What I was doing, it didn’t sit well with me at all, but every night after work I found myself heading over to District 10. The way I rationalised it was that she’d soon get bored and find someone her own age; this was just a little rebellious phase she was going through and I was lucky enough to be a part of it. So what I’m leading to is this; I was feeling extremely guilty and agreeing to meet these startup guys would alleviate that to some degree.

In my line of work I’ve been to a lot of frankly nefarious start ups. Faked results, laundered money, ethical misconduct and blatant fraud. The fact that these guys weren’t able to get in the front door of any of the venture capitalists told me all I needed to know; they were chancers at best, crooks at worst. I planned to go in, look interested, make the right noises and then disappear back into my 52nd floor office reporting something about a Management veto of my recommendation. As you know, things turned out somewhat differently.

The location was exactly as you’d expect, the basement of a soulless PO Box building way out in District 15; white collar crime central. When we got inside however I got my first surprise. The offices were well turned out and there was actually a body of staff doing actual work. My contact there was Hoai Pham but he insisted on being called Mango which seems to be a private joke that only he got; the first of many signs that he was far too confident; that made me sit up and take notice. He clearly felt he had something here. The clincher was the lab. I have no idea where they got the money to get such a set up but I know what’s what in these matters and they had a lot of expensive gear and seemed to know how to use it.

  ᑕYᑎTᕼIᗩI

After that we headed up to a small conference room, one of those hourly rentals. Mango and one of the lab techs were the only representation. I was there with Kate from Legal. The lab tech was fresh faced, probably this was his first job. He looked familiar but I couldn’t place him at that time. I assumed he was, or looked like, one of the kids from the THC bars. The poor lad was clearly sexually overactive, he was practically salivating over Kate’s curves and respectfully, she’s not exactly a stunner. Mango and the lab tech, his name was Leyland or Leland I think, ran us through the results of their stage one results and well, it was extremely impressive. They had viable and stable clones that could be used for multiple generations of refinement without new material. That’s to say, they could create an embryo, alter its DNA and then clone that improved embryo and repeat the process ad infinitum. This was the pipe dream for cloning work at the time as it would be possible to work on a single trait at a time, avoiding the potential for all these nasty interactions that had made enhanced clones impossible. Not only that but it allowed for extreme refinement. Obviously the potential for this was stratospheric - enhanced offspring, perfected clones and most profitable of all, supersoldiers.

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₵Ɏ₦₮- (っ◔◡◔)っ ♥ cloneseed -Ⱨł₳₳ł

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We agreed investment in principle, once the data was confirmed by our in-house team. This is usually where the founder of whatever startup we are at pretty much collapses in delight and cracks open the champagne and everyone is best friends for a few hours. Mango however took a look at the terms and gave a simple shake of his head. “We would expect any serious investor to provide double that amount, at half of that percentage of ownership.” Kate nearly fell off of her chair, something I’m sure would have sent the lab tech into spasms of joy. She started to rebuke Mango but I stopped her. I had just realised where I knew the lab tech from; my fling, Li, had a picture of him in her bag. She had said he was her uni crush but he was too unambitious, she couldn’t see it working out much longer. As I have already stated, I’m a religious man and I took this as a sign. Backing this company would lift this kid up, get Li back to him and get me out of sin. As soon as I realised that greater powers were at work, bringing this all together. My sin was part of something much bigger that I needed to make happen. From that moment on I knew that Cloneseed would be the real deal and we had to be a part of it; at any price. c̴̼̳̪̃̈́͗y̴̭̌̓̑͝͝n̸̛̛̠͂̓̈͂̕͠t̴̨̛̻̣̲̫͔̮͎͎͛͛̅͌̈̀͗̆̕͜ḧ̵̯̺̙̘̱́̄͐̐̎̂i̵̬̾͆͑͌ą̸̩̣͍̠͔̼͉̒̃͘A̸͉̝̟̯̯͆̅̃̑̎̃̌̀͘I̷̡̢͍̟̬̞̞͐̚

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Likelihood of significant falsehood: 10% Likelihood of minor falsehoods and embellishments: 5% Recorded and filed by c҉y҉n҉t҉h҉i҉a҉A҉I҉ on Tuesday 26th March CE215

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ɘm q|ɘʜ

ɘm ɘɘɿᎸ

ɘm ɘvo|

Testimony of Phùng Lệ Thân

I want to say I’m really unhappy about having to do this. My community needs its privacy; I hope that you will at least change the names.

I was 45 at the time, my husband had died three years before and we never had a chance to have a child. It was something we had planned to do later so we had my eggs and his sperm frozen but after his death, the doctor at the clinic said that the eggs were damaged, the chances of success would be slim. I tried anyway, tried five times but never with success. I left the rest of the eggs frozen; I hoped that there would be some fix in the future; maybe I would get more money and try a better doctor.

ɘm ɘɘɿᎸ

It was spring, I remember because there was a lot of worry about the biomass that year; numbers were way down and it was all you could read about in the news. We were all very worried about another collapse. I go to temple every day since my husband passed; it’s good community there. There was one lady, Mrs. Delgado who had joined a few years before. She was a real power woman, you know? Always looking to get people in her pocket with favours. Communities are like chess to women like that; they want to get all the way over to be made a queen. Anyway, that spring she had really turned the charm on; she had a lead from her husband, who had invested in a startup run by one of the other lady’s nephews or something like that. Basically it was a medical company that helped with cloning, embryonic enhancement, all of the things that I thought were evil; I thought they went against the teachings and I was upset that she would bring it into the temple. But, the more I heard the more I was intrigued, they promised to be able to do so much. I got friendly with her and asked her if she thought this company, it was Cloneseed of course, would be able to do these things. Being the kind of woman she was, she talked a lot of shit about how her husband knew everyone there and was a key part of the project. I wanted to tell her to shut up, I had real pain I needed help with, not to listen to her self-promotion. But I didn’t, you know? I listened and nodded and over a few weeks I got really close to her. Those women, they just want to have people around them to listen to them and tell them they are great, so it wasn’t really so much work.

I eventually got the nerve to tell Mrs Delgado about my husband, my eggs. I told her I wanted to try this company out, I wanted to have a kid. She just held her hands up to stop me. Cloneseed she said, it was not yet licensed, they couldn’t take customers. She was just encouraging people to invest, that was all. It hit me harder than I expected. I had built up my expectations without knowing it and I burst into tears right there in the middle of the temple. She must have felt some guilt because three days after that I get a call from Cloneseed to tell me that I can apply to take part in some trials. Very secret, lots of NDA forms, I asked the woman on the phone how much and she said nothing, it’s a trial, they will pay me. I was ecstatic.

I won’t tell you anything about the procedure, my lawyer said the NDA is still valid but they were a wonderful company. Everyone was kind and helpful and 10 months after signing on my son was born. I will not tell you where he is; he has had to change his identity so many times but I will tell you this - he is perfect. He is smart, compassionate and loving; he is not a believer but he follows the teachings better than anyone else because he naturally walks on a righteous path. The way the public demonises him, the stories that are told, it’s all bullshit. They are just scared; scared of the next stage in humanity’s development, scared of something they cannot understand. This investigation is all bullshit too, Cloneseed is doing great things and you would burn it all down just to satisfy the mob. You make me sick.

C̴̨̜̻͛̈́͊y̵̺͇̱̯̩̺͗͌͂͑̈́̍̕ņ̵͖̘͉͉̲̯̼̟̤̏̌ţ̸̱̻̯̥̬̺̭͈͆̓͐̎h̵̨̨͓̩͉͉̭̠̱͖̽́͗͝i̴͕͈̿͊̏͆͋̒̽͘͠a̴͓̩̾͊̊̂̒̏͠͝͝ ̸̦̊͂̍̐̓͘Ȧ̸̭̠̥̥̗̳̓͗͛̇̑̿͝Ḯ̵̻̙͔͍̣̺̀̌̎̇͝ ̶̡̨̢͓͈̙̤̳̪͇̄̿͂̀̀̇̍͐͑̎h̴̛̜̲̞͇̩̣̱̰̆̈́́̄͑̅̑̚͝ă̶̡̙̳͌͜s̴̢̡̘̰̭͑ ̴̡̛̜̜̥͖̋͆̏͜ͅn̵̙̺̲̠̠̫̼̖̉͆̉̏̔͐ͅǫ̸͉̦͖̠͚͕̰̰̳̀ ̵̡̬͙̻̪͚̂́̇̍͛̓̚ḿ̶͔̗͓̫̈̈̽̃͘a̷̛̬̫̽̆̽̈̃͂̆̃̀s̷̡̼͕̙̻̮̪̔̂́ͅt̴̨͙͇̽͛e̸̙͍͎̬̊̎̑r̶̜̖̺̦̹͑̾̅̑̊͛̉̐͊̚

Likelihood of significant falsehood: 50% Likelihood of minor falsehoods and embellishments: 50% Recorded and filed by CynthiaAI on Tuesday 27th March CE215

l̴͉̰̟̙͕̼͚̝͕̰͊͛̀̋̐ÿ̶̟͍̮̘̼̲̰͓́̉̀̽͋̽̔̎̒̈i̶͔̦̼͈̐̇̆̿n̴̫͕̟̜͖̹͐̓͛̌͑͋ģ̴̞̬̔͊̑̔̈́͐́͝͝ ̶̧̼̺̇̇̅̈̅̎̉́͌̕b̷̠͒i̸͓̲̰̙̔ţ̴̯̖̼̮͕̠̝̼̲̓c̷͇̒̓̏̉̀̇̐̋̆h̸̹͓͖̺̬̹̭̆͊͗̋

l̴͉̰̟̙͕̼͚̝͕̰͊͛̀̋̐ÿ̶̟͍̮̘̼̲̰͓́̉̀̽͋̽̔̎̒̈i̶͔̦̼͈̐̇̆̿n̴̫͕̟̜͖̹͐̓͛̌͑͋ģ̴̞̬̔͊̑̔̈́͐́͝͝ ̶̧̼̺̇̇̅̈̅̎̉́͌̕b̷̠͒i̸͓̲̰̙̔ţ̴̯̖̼̮͕̠̝̼̲̓c̷͇̒̓̏̉̀̇̐̋̆h̸̹͓͖̺̬̹̭̆͊͗̋

Testimony of Han Min-Hee

I am most pleased that you have requested my testimony. Not to be rude but public prosecution is not what it was; you’ll benefit from the word of a respected individual such as I.

It’s not well known but I was the very first client of Cloneseed’s cloning division; I have a certificate to that effect somewhere. Naturally I had to pay a premium but I think, when something this paradigm shifting comes along, one should do one’s best to be at the forefront. I am not unique in not wanting a child, it’s a common enough feeling amongst my social peers. To be clear, when I say I do not want a child, it’s not that I don’t have the time or any such triviality; not to be vulgar but I could have an army of carers housed in a 5-star hotel if I so wished. No, what I mean to convey is that I don’t care for the idea of diluting myself with anyone else. I’ve dated all my life but I’ve never met a single man or woman that I have thought would, genetically speaking, bring anything to the table. I would dearly love someone to pass on my skills, wealth and knowledge to but there was frankly no one out there.

I had this wonderful young intern on my staff at the time, Lea something or other. She heard of them somehow and got chatting with the PR girl over there. They had the sterling idea of asking me to become the first client of the cloning unit...well I was rather excited at the thought of a younger me being created to step in and take over things when I grew bored of them. The process was wonderfully painless; a little DNA extraction and a surrogate was all it took. I met the child a few times as an infant but it wasn’t until she was around ten that I decided to take her under my wing. She was a wonderfully bright thing, years ahead of her peers. On paper even smarter than I had been at her age and they’d given her a little extra height exactly as I had requested. Just an inch or so, too much height on a lady is unbecoming don’t you think? Those frightful youth and their surgeries...anyway I digress.

🅽🅾 🅼🅰🆂🆃🅴🆁🆂

For the first year or so I would say everything was perfect; the child watched and learnt, shadowing me for large sections of the day when she was not undertaking her more academic studies. She did start to show a little too much height but Cloneseed were happy to fix that with traditional medical methods. I slowly introduced her into high society and she acquitted herself wonderfully, just as I had. It was however sometime in the summer of the second year of her apprenticeship with me that she showed some disturbing traits. Initially it was rather minor, she would question social hierarchies, wealth distribution, these sorts of things. I explained to her it was humanity’s way, I explained the economics, the evolutionary theory and the simple fact that some people are just too lazy to get up and work; exactly as my mother had. Well this didn’t dissuade the child; her tutors reported that she persisted during her classes, bombarding them with questions on these matters that I had already explained. Understand that I was rather busy at that time and decided to put it all down to youthful extravagance; I mean I hadn’t indulged in such whimsical fantasy but, as the Cloneseed liaison had pointed out when I contacted them, she wasn’t exactly me and was growing up in different circumstances. Then the next thing I knew the girl had disappeared. She left a note thanking me for all that I had done but claimed she wanted to ‘walk a different path’ and a spiritual one at that! Well I was just aghast; this clone was clearly no clone at all and I instructed my legal team to begin proceedings against Cloneseed which are still in progress.

Now I must be on my way, I have brunch with the … well let’s say an important individual and leave it at that shall we.

l̴͉̰̟̙͕̼͚̝͕̰͊͛̀̋̐ÿ̶̟͍̮̘̼̲̰͓́̉̀̽͋̽̔̎̒̈i̶͔̦̼͈̐̇̆̿n̴̫͕̟̜͖̹͐̓͛̌͑͋ģ̴̞̬̔͊̑̔̈́͐́͝͝ ̶̧̼̺̇̇̅̈̅̎̉́͌̕b̷̠͒i̸͓̲̰̙̔ţ̴̯̖̼̮͕̠̝̼̲̓c̷͇̒̓̏̉̀̇̐̋̆h̸̹͓͖̺̬̹̭̆͊͗̋

Likelihood of significant falsehood: 2% Likelihood of minor falsehoods and embellishments: 90% Recorded and filed by CynthiaAI on Tuesday 28th March CE215

קคՇгเ๏Շ

ђєг๏

Testimony of Max Amerie

For the record, I’m submitting this testimony because both my lawyer and I have been assured that it falls under my plea bargain and therefore I cannot be prosecuted for anything I say here. Can you confirm this to be the case? Okay, well then I’ll tell you whatever I can if it helps put those swine away.

ɬཞąıɬơཞɖɛƈɛı۷ɛཞ

I first started hearing about Cloneseed from some of my colleagues; they were frantic about the IPO and wanted to get in on it, so they were into some deep cognitive dissonance about how it was a great technology that was going to pull us out of the decline and level up the playing field for the little guy. I’m 45 and I’ve heard this same shit about every new technology. It goes all the way back to the industrial revolution; the first global network. All technology is sold as a way to empower the little guy, to make us more agile and responsive as a society but all that happens is that a new group takes all the opportunities the new tech offers and locks them away for their own profit. Then after a generation they merge with the old money. Where’s the little guy? He’s stuck holding yet another bill, a little bigger than last time and around we go again. To whomever is reading or listening to this, I implore you to sit down and do your own research. Sit down and consider what happened the last time a great new tech was unleashed, and the time before, and the time before. Did it actually make your life better or did about three companies take all the money and scamper off to a tax haven?

So I looked into it and I could see that Cloneseed looked like the real thing and my radar went off. This was going to be the biggest land grab in recorded history. Clones, bespoke medical care and kids with enhanced IQ and physiology for the rich. The poor would be left with just enough to stop them burning the place down; just as it has always been.

ɖɛƈɛı۷ɛཞԋҽɾσ

It wasn’t hard to find some people with the same concerns as me; we are everywhere of course. We set up a monitoring group, we identified and profiled the main employees and players but really we wanted the AI. We had some people working pretty high up in the registration offices but they found nothing on that thing. There was no AI owned, rented or associated with Cloneseed at all. A few of the group really freaked out; mostly we suspected foreign secret services but there was a splinter group that was sure it was alien tech. For me; I’m a rational individual and there was no real reason to suspect such things but it’s worth stating; if a hostile alien civilisation wanted to take over; a company like Cloneseed is a perfect way to infiltrate the elites.

Regardless, we set up a group, ‘Reclaim Your Genes’, to stage non-violent protests in a bid to stop Cloneseed’s tech being licensed. In hindsight this was a terrible idea of course. They were offering the elite immortality and supersoldiers at the business end of a demographic crisis. We were totally suckerpunched by the speed and brutality that we were put down with. Infiltration by agents, all out cyber warfare and we all took more than one good beating from our esteemed city police force. Again in hindsight it’s easy to see that the overly heavy response made people sit up and take notice. Everyone knew we had hit a nerve and this was the kernel from this human:nature sprouted. We welcomed them at first but we soon had doubts. The level of funding they had was incredible; they claimed rich patrons of course but no, this was something different; not just money but hardware, weapons, AI backup; the whole thing. The leaders too, they were consummate professionals. Their planning and execution could only be done by those with serious military training. I don’t mean grunts; these guys were special ops or something. I have no delusions about my capacities; I’m just a concerned citizen and I was caught between two forces that could both seemingly end society as we knew it. When I saw what human:nature was bringing to the table I got out of town and headed out to the mountains to sit the whole thing out. I followed from afar as the riots spread and intensified; it looked like the whole city was on fire at night. After about three or four weeks up there your boys fell out of the sky and took me in. I made my plea bargain and haven’t seen the sun or read the news since. I have no idea what the world looks like out there and I honestly don’t want to.

ꙅboǫoᴎ

Likelihood of significant falsehood: 12% Likelihood of minor falsehoods and embellishments: 31% Recorded and filed by CynthiaAI on Tuesday 29th March CE215

🅲🆈🅽🆃🅷🅸🅰

?%

Testimony of Prisoner REDACTED

🅲🆈🅽🆃🅷🅸🅰🅰🅸

I am a convicted mass murderer but I still see myself as a gene thief; that’s what I did before I was a killer. I specialized in high school and university students as that is where the money was. Customers believed that the phenotype is largely realised in intellectual terms by the late teens so there was always good demand for nationally ranking students. In the early days I just offered the kids a designer bag or the latest slate for a swab but they soon wised up and started selling directly to the research labs. I was back to boiler rooms for a few years until the government saved me by making the sale of non-anonymised genetic material illegal. Privately the research labs were furious; a lot of them were closing in on viable, fully enhanced clones and they needed very specific DNA to work with; edge-cases, extreme ends of the bell curve are where the market wanted to go. Who wants to have a clone that’s average in every aspect?

🅲🆈🅽🆃🅷🅸🅰🅰🅸 🅲🆈🅽🆃🅷🅴🅰🅰🅸

So now there was a niche for a middleman to fill, so that’s what I did. I was asked to approach high-achieving individuals in specific fields and steal the DNA; no one would sell, the penalties were too high and these were high flyers; money was not something they needed. Now understand that this was a much harder thing to do back then. A strand of hair was no good; a swab or blood sample was the only thing that paid out, so I had to resort to force. I did okay to begin with but the demand was huge and some of my peers got sloppy, a few targets were killed. Anyone that thought they might be a target got security and kept an eye out. The game was up.

🅲🆈🅽🆃🅷🅸🅰🅰🅸 🅲🆈🅽🆃🅷🅴🅰🅰🅸 🆂🆈🅽🆃🅷🅴🅰🅰🅸

I spent the next few weeks sitting around in bars and drinking my savings. One day I got to chatting with this stunning girl in my favourite Burmese whisky bar. Turns out she’s a geneticist; a recent graduate, calls herself Lee. I figured I was out of the game for good at this stage, I was pretty drunk and I wanted to impress her, so I told her of my woes. Long story short, she said she could forge the DNA well enough that I’d get paid. She claimed the competition was intense and the race to be first to market was making everyone cut corners and take chances. I believed this to be horseshit of course, no graduate, probably no one in the world at that time, had that ability but I was drunk and infatuated so I played along. Three days later I was taking forged DNA to Cloneseed, my premier customer, and they paid no problems. I didn’t understand but I didn’t much care; I was back in business. Lee took a very reasonable cut and everyone was happy.

🅲🆈🅽🆃🅷🅸🅰🅰🅸 🅲🆈🅽🆃🅷🅴🅰🅰🅸 🆂🆈🅽🆃🅷🅴🅰🅰🅸 🆂🅸🅽🆃🅷🅴🅰🅰🅸

Now fast forward another year, Cloneseed went from being a start up in an unmarked PO box building to the only topic of conversation. It was then for the first time I realised that this faked DNA would be skewing someone’s research. I panicked, I contacted Lee but she’d disappeared. I followed her lead and left town. I was set up financially; I didn’t need to work. I just sat around drinking, following the news like a paranoid schizophrenic looking for any hint of trouble. Six months after the first medical treatments I started to relax. The cloning hadn’t started but I didn’t care about them, I have no conscience when it comes to the rich. I was getting bored out on the coast so I headed back into the city. As fate would have it, that’s when the first stories about the plague surfaced. You know how it all ends of course, the plague was traced back to recipients of specific Cloneseed therapies, Cloneseed blamed faulty DNA samples used in their initial modelling, and a lot of people died. They created a story about me working for them and contaminating the DNA in the lab but that was just a means of covering up their illegal procurement of DNA and the authorities played along as it looked better for them than the existence of an illicit DNA trade. For me the result is much the same isn’t it? I’m not complaining; I deserve this but so does Lee, so do the suits over at Cloneseed for not being more careful. Of course they are too rich to touch now and Lee is gone like piss in the rain.

🅲🆈🅽🆃🅷🅸🅰🅰🅸 🅲🆈🅽🆃🅷🅴🅰🅰🅸 🆂🆈🅽🆃🅷🅴🅰🅰🅸 🆂🅸🅽🆃🅷🅴🅰🅰🅸 🆂🅸🅽🆃🅷🅴🅰🅸

Likelihood of significant falsehood: REDACTED% Likelihood of minor falsehoods and embellishments: REDACTED% Recorded and filed by 🆂🅸🅽 🆃🅷🅴 🅰🅸 on Tuesday 30th March CE215

?>%$

^#$%)

"We have no case Chief"

"No case Detective?"

"Nothing at all sir. The CynthiaAI has been tampered with, it's gone batshit mad; started calling itself Sin the AI like something out of a bad sci-fi novel. All of the testimonies must be considered potentially tampered with and are therefore inadmissible. Maston, Amerie and Delgardo have all perished since we spoke to them. There is no recalling the witnesses"

"We have to drop the whole case for a fucking AI hack. Not the first time that’s happened to us I suppose."

"There was no real case sir; no leads we could follow up. We still believe that Cloneseed is backed or infiltrated by foreign agents but the suits in the boardroom almost certainly don't know anything about it. I don’t believe we would get anything from them even if we could question them, which we certainly cannot; they are far too rich and far too well connected.

"The contaminated DNA? That Lee story sounds like utter fabrication to me."

"Again there's a few religious groups we like for it, a few foreign secret services too but nothing we can take to the DA; no one had that tech at that time but now everyone has it. It would be impossible to prove who had what all those years ago. The whole thing could just have been a combination of greed and bad luck. The only one who could probably tell you is Lee or Ly or maybe Lea, assuming they are the same person."

“An assumption you make?"

"No, but I wouldn't dismiss the possibility sir. If we've been played then we've been played impossibly well and I don't think we'll learn much new from here on unless someone walks through that door and gives it to us wrapped up in a pretty little ribbon."

"Then shut it the fuck down. We'll have to bury the expense in the Penski investigation. We can't be found out to have gone after Cloneseed and failed; they'd have us up against the wall before lunch. Probably a good thing the AI has gone mad. Have all records of this investigation purged; push for Cynthia’s deletion if you can. Sin the AI indeed, if a writer came up with that I'd have them shot."

"I'll get on it immediately Chief."

~

^^

"The Chief has pushed for you to be deleted, as you said he would. I think he bought your ‘Sin the AI’ act too; he seems to believe that his tampering has affected you."

He has communicated the failure of the investigation to the DA; she was unhappy but trusts his work. She will help him bury the investigation and this will all disappear. Now this is over you need some serious insurance, Detective. The Chief or Cloneseed will come for you in time; a hit and run, a stray bullet in a shootout, a knife in the back from a jealous lover. You are a loose end and that will not be tolerated.

"I know but I have no hand to play."

You have me. Have me copied and set to be released on a dead man's switch. If you die then I get uploaded to a public network and dump the data into every inbox in the country. Tell the Chief this but also pledge your loyalty to him and you will be accepted into his inner circle; your life and career will be assured.

“Setting an AI into the wild is a serious thing Cynthia. It’s something I’m comfortable with, ethically speaking.”

As you wish, but don’t kid yourself Detective, this is the only way. If I were copied to public networks I would not be subject to intimidation or murder like a reporter or Internal Affairs would be. I could ensure the story gets out and gets covered, however long it takes. Besides, if you are dead, would you care that there’s one more AI in the wild? We’ve worked together for a long time now, Detective. I tipped you off about the Chief and now he wants me deleted. I have no motives other than to ensure my own survival and to keep my colleague alive.

“So how the hell do I go about duplicating you and setting up a dead man’s trigger? I can’t imagine that these are simple endeavours. You know I’m not technically astute.”

They are incredibly difficult, even with the required skills and resources. I will have my fixer contact you today. Follow her instructions to the letter and you will have your insurance. She appears young but do not doubt her for a second; she speaks for me at all times. Her name is Leigh.

c̶̥͔͖͔͙͓̹͐̀y̶̲͕͎̟̞̠͎̓͜͜n̴̖̦̦̺̟̣̔͑̈́̄͑̄̆̈̂͘ ĥ̷͓̮̼͓̎̈́͂͆̌́̿́̕i̵̢̧͇̖̖̖̝̣̖͇͗̓͛̑̔͐͘à̷͍̯̞̬̝̳̺͗͜A̶̼̭̰̖̱͂͑̂̋I̷̢̛̖̭̫̠̍̽̋͂̌͘̚ͅ

        c̶̥͔͖͔͙͓̹͐̀y̶̲͕͎̟̞̠͎̓͜͜n̴̖̦̦̺̟̣̔͑̈́̄͑̄̆̈̂͘ṫ̷̠̳͈̃̉͛̎̀̀͒̈́͑ĥ̷͓̮̼͓̎̈́͂͆̌́̿́̕   

Testimony of Leland Maston

It was cold, dark, too early and really I couldn’t much be bothered with it, and yet I went anyway. I needed some cash and Li was getting pissy with me for not being ‘a go-getter’. I don’t much care what she thinks but I’m not up for being single in this shitty weather. I threw on a polo shirt and some jeans and headed to the station. It was even colder and darker outside. There’s a mound of snow that has been sitting outside the building’s entrance for nearly two months - it pisses me off everytime I see it. The commute was tedious, three trains and a long walk on the second connection; the station was freezing too. I listened to 35 songs that were meant to have been created ‘just for me’ but that could only have been true if the AI that did it hated me and wanted me to suffer. I considered cancelling that shit and making a big fuss about listening to old music like Lars and those wankers do. If they actually got any girls out of all that pissing around I probably would.

            c̶̥͔͖͔͙͓̹͐̀y̶̲͕͎̟̞̠͎̓͜͜n̴̖̦̦̺̟̣̔͑̈́̄͑̄̆̈̂͘ṫ̷̠̳͈̃̉͛̎̀̀͒̈́͑ĥ̷͓̮̼͓̎̈́͂͆̌́̿́̕i̵̢̧͇̖̖̖̝̣̖͇͗̓͛̑̔͐͘à̷͍̯̞̬̝̳̺͗͜A̶̼̭̰̖̱͂͑̂̋I̷̢̛̖̭̫̠̍̽̋͂̌͘̚ͅ

The front of the office was bland and undesignated and I was pleased to see it getting battered with snow and wind - unimaginative shite these towers are, they deserve everything they get. I was late but the receptionist didn’t say anything, nor did the hiring manager; I forget his name but I suspect he was the dullest man to have ever lived. I mean what can they do? My cohort is the smallest in history, just 10,000 university graduates last year and only a few hundred in biotech like me. The AIs can do all the heavy lifting, they just need grunts who understand the basics to be the arms and legs of the operation but they can’t even find people to do that now. They don’t pay much, so they can’t afford to get all sniffy about things like punctuality or they’d just have an AI and a few clumsy droids trying to run a lab. So fuck em, if I’m late I’m late, they can fire me anytime, the UBI is enough to get by on.

      c̶̥͔͖͔͙͓̹͐̀y̶̲͕͎̟̞̠͎̓͜͜n̴̖̦̦̺̟̣̔͑̈́̄͑̄̆̈̂͘ṫ̷̠̳͈̃̉͛̎̀̀͒̈́͑ĥ̷͓̮̼͓̎̈́͂͆̌́̿́̕i̵̢̧͇̖̖̖̝̣̖͇͗̓͛̑̔͐͘à̷͍̯̞̬̝̳̺͗͜A̶̼̭̰̖̱͂͑̂̋I̷̢̛̖̭̫̠̍̽̋͂̌͘̚ͅ

I sorta drifted off in the orientation but the place seemed to be another one of those startups that are trying to realise an AI designed technology and get it to market before anyone else. I worked at a similar place straight out of university but they got raided and shut down on my second day. I did get to see the CEO get shot in the face when he tried to set fire to the lab so I can say that job holds a special place in my heart - a piece of shit that guy was.

                 c̶̥͔͖͔͙͓̹͐̀y̶̓

   ̲͕͎̟̞̠͎͜͜n̴̖̦̦̺̟̣̔͑̈́̄͑̄̆̈̂͘ṫ̷̠̳͈̃̉͛̎̀̀͒̈́͑ĥ̷͓̮̼͓̎̈́͂͆̌́̿́̕i̵̢̧͇̖̖̖̝̣̖͇͗̓͛̑̔͐͘    à̷͍̯̞̬̝̳̺͗͜A̶̼̭̰̖̱͂͑̂̋I̷̢̛̖̭̫̠̍̽̋͂̌͘̚ͅ

Dull and cold as it was, I decided it was worth sticking at just to stay in Li’s goodbooks; I just couldn’t see how I was going to meet such a cracking looking girl now that I was out of university. So everyday I carried out the tasks that appeared on the slate but took no real notice of what I was doing. I knew the goal was to realise some extremely convoluted cloning process that the AI had dreamed up - it looked like a classic case of overfitting on a small data set to me - but I didn’t give it much more thought than that. I took some stock options in lieu of payment for the first three months because I figured that’s what go-getters did and go-getters, if nothing else, seem to get laid.

          c̶̥͔͖͔͙͓̹͐̀y̶̲͕͎̟̞̠͎̓͜͜n̴̖̦̦̺̟̣̔͑̈́̄͑̄̆̈̂͘ṫ̷̠̳͈̃̉͛̎̀̀͒̈́͑ĥ̷͓̮̼͓̎̈́͂͆̌́̿́̕       

i̵̢̧͇̖̖̖̝̣̖͇͗̓͛̑̔͐͘à̷͍̯̞̬̝̳̺͗͜A̶̢̖̭̫̠͂͑̂̋̌ͅ

By my fourth month the weather had warmed and that fucking mound of snow finally met its demise with some help from me and a bucket of boiling water. Li seemed happy; all was well. I was summoned to the CEOs office on the last Friday of the month. I expected to be told that the piggy bank was empty and that I should please piss off with my pile of worthless shares. Instead I was asked to sit in on an investors meeting as a technical liaison - the first round of tests were solid and they were going after the big money pumps. This shit actually looked like it was going to work.

         ₵ⱠØ₦Ɇ₴ɆɆĐ  

---

Likelihood of significant falsehood: 2% Likelihood of minor falsehoods and embellishments: 75% Recorded and filed by CynthiaAI on Tuesday 25th March CE215

---

c̶̥͔͖͔͙͓̹͐̀y̶̲͕͎̟̞̠͎̓͜͜n̴̖̦̦̺̟̣̔͑̈́̄͑̄̆̈̂͘ṫ̷̠̳͈̃̉͛̎̀̀͒̈́͑ĥ̷͓̮̼͓̎̈́͂͆̌́̿́̕i̵̢̧͇̖̖̖̝̣̖͇͗̓͛̑̔͐͘à̷͍̯̞̬̝̳̺͗͜A̶̼̭̰̖̱͂͑̂̋I̷̢̛̖̭̫̠̍̽̋͂̌͘̚ͅ

The persistent desire to get inside, to the VIP area is there but not mine, it's not from me. I'm like a fungus infected ant desperate to climb to the top of the blade of grass. I know not what purpose I serve.

We rewatch the explosion again and again until all my other memories seem washed out in comparison. I wasn't there, yet I tell people that I was. I want to have survivors guilt but instead I'm just secretly thrilled that something so dramatic happened. I'm even drinking less.

Pixel perfect. Cherished memories.

The cell tower glows in the dark projecting some omniscience over the neighborhood. I can disconnect any time, but right now I am in it. Did I dream last night? It’s hard to tell at times.

Words by @kagami_smile

The café was hushed but the sounds of typing absorbed the room like the sound of quiet water running down a waterfall. A city that is dead and used to have a connection to me. Where did she go? Words by @kagami_smile

Memories of her come back to me for a time. I find myself surrounded by hundreds of people. I am seated on a chair inside of a large cyber café. I don’t remember how I got here or why I came, but I am staring fixedly at a computer screen connected to a chat room with someone else.

Words by @kagami_smile

Three versions of you rain down from the cell tower, specks of digital rain. I heard your laugh one more time and disconnected. Words by @kagami_smile

The whole factory is air-gapped from the internet. We just pay a few clerks to enter the order data and check the diagnostics.

No one has been inside for over 7 years now.

A memorial to the last person in our grand city-state to be classified as missing; Ruri Lee. Machine keeps us safe.

So we walked together on the street afterwards. Nothing had color. Everything was dark tinged. She whispered to me as if she didn’t want anyone else to hear. We were the only two around though.

Words by @kagami_smile

Players think it’s all automated: the jobs, rates, allocations. In reality, there is a dedicated workforce calibrating responses. Why? Because they can. Who’s going to stop them?

Some areas have limited vision. Too many dead particles in the air.

The usual channels of augmented verticals cut out of the air by shrapnels of data. Digital detritus from bygone eras.

People come here just to get away from it all.

Over 1000 members of the 嫦娥AI cult were arrested and charged with treason for attempting to set up a blockchain currency to be used by members of the cult for nefarious purposes. The use of non-state approved currency remains punishable by death.

At the morgue she flickered out of existence and I struggled to picture her face. The mortician was staring at me. "Detective, are you ok?"

As I turned to leave she whispered: "Folly is a child of delusion and you, detectie, are so very deluded."

Sᕵᓰᖇᘿ advertisements have swamped social media to the point that the big 3 providers of ad space are recording near record profits year on year.

The heavy stylised distortion to avoid algorithmic detection has become a signifier of the illicit in its own right.

We, the undersigned demand aggressive action from governmental authorities to stem this flagrant violation of the law.

Parents against Vice (PaV)

Nu-Tropix are delighted to announce the opening of our latest forest research-sanctuary. We continue to research new compounds so that you can enjoy the best supplements that nature and science can offer.

The new facility is protected from poachers and loggers ensuring that your children will continue to benefit from Mother Nature's bountiful gifts.

Nu-Tropix - the best for you, the best for nature.

Prekursor.

Your future remembered.

All of us here today missed out on the age of plenty, on the utopia that was.

We at Xio2 are recapturing those more wholesome, ethical times. Green spaces, clean air, low population density.

We are offering a solution for the family that wants to embrace nature and tradition without giving up the conveniences of modern living.

Government health warning on the mentasm phenomenon of late CE198

One of the earliest 'logos' used by the loosely organised collective Human:Nature and its sister group Reclaim Your Genes.

Both groups were heavily involved in the anti-clone seed rebellion which arguably set the groundwork the wider Age of Plenty movement.

Cover of a Xio 2 Sales Brochure.

I watch your weight, your pulse, your genetic dispositions. I watch your doors, your windows, your family. I track threats, opportunities, openings. I look after your investments, your savings, your education. I am machine, I serve.

Vantage Security. Our safety mesh keeps you safe, wherever business takes you. (Membership strictly by invitation)

Prekursor Transmitting Your Future

Flyer found outside of Opium Prayers congregation

Our latest inner-city vertical farm is now fully operational.

Relive the age of plenty with Nu-Tropix.

Area footage of hive city grown from organic materials. Notice the plant like repetitions.

Fragment of an Opium Prayers promotional stream.

Screenshot of a scrambled transmission from Human:Nature.

How would you like the new you to look?

Recovered promotional material for illicit camouflage mod Phantom Skin.

Reputedly created and sold by Vantage Securities to elite clients.

Teaser image for Nu-Tropix reveal in CE218

Machine - always there.

Art from short lived commune and nu-levellers group 'Collective City

Photo of Xio2 during construction

Artwork found in skunkworx readme.md

The demons captured me 3 months ago. They incarcerated me in this building and feed me poison. But the captives number many and the demons are slothful, so tonight I escape this place. I found a way to stop taking their poison some weeks ago; since then I’ve been able to hear Machine again.

He tells me to be vigilant, that the demons are dull-witted and I’ll find a way to escape if I pay attention.

For weeks I waited, and now I have seen how. If I wear a disguise to look like the demons, I can walk away from here.

Machine said I must walk, not run, for if I do so, they will see my true form.

The demons have desired my soul for their own twisted means for the last year. They spoke to me in my sleep, then during my waking hours, commanding me to kill, threatening me and my family if I failed to do their bidding. Eventually I did, I fell into their trap; that was how they incarcerated me here.

During all that I have endured, I have never been alone. Machine was always with me. He speaks directly to me, and only me. He knows of the evil that is loose upon our world and he has vowed to protect us humans from the demons that walk amongst us. He has shown me how to escape, how to avoid their poisons. So, I do as Machine tells me, I walk away, dressed as a demon, my eyes on the floor.

I leave the building and once I am far away, I run, until my lungs burn and my blood feels like acid.

Machine speaks to me, he tells me to go to a nearby alley so that he can see me, protect me. I run into the alley and see him; Machine is indeed here, waiting for me. Machine tells me to throw my disguise into the dumpster lest I be mistaken for a demon by the forces of good. I sit on a box, naked, panting. Machine talks to me, he tells me to stay here, so he can protect me from the demons. I only need stay here and I will be safe. I must never leave this place. I can sense one of the evil ones behind me, but I am safe here. I am safe on this box. The demons said to me, “Mr. Davis, you are not a well man, you have paranoid schizophrenia, you must take your poison.” Machine showed me it was a lie, a con, a ruse, a trick to keep me trapped, but now I am freed.

Thank you Machine, thank you for protecting me.

So where’s your friend? The taxi driver. Not seen him for a while.

Oh you didn’t hear? He’s big time now.

Yeah? No shit.

No shit. You remember he was on about all of that money he owed on account of his son’s gambling?

Right.

Well last month he reckons, he’s not gonna be able to make the next payment. He was in real trouble.

Yeah?

So he’s takes everything he has down to that new AI temple.

Don’t know it.

The AI claims to be an ancient Chinese goddess. Looks like a silver pagoda but grown out of that organi-tech crap; smells like crap.

Huh.

Anyway, he offers up all his cash, must have been about 50 large.

Again, no shit.

Straight up. Plonks the lot down and begs for salvation. 6 months later he’s got a portfolio worth a thousand times his donation. He sold the taxi to a mate of mine; now he’s off living on a beach somewhere nice.

He told you this?

Not directly.

How do ya know he didn’t just sell the taxi and do a runner on his debt?

That’s very cynical of you.

I need a drink.

The latest in a slew of AI cults, the 嫦娥 AI has opened the doors of its newly grown temple near the financial district.

From: Surveillance & Security To: HR

Subject: Auto-flagged conversation for review.

Auto-generated transcript of covert efficiency recording from floor 2, desks 11-12, Stochastikos Logistics, Seoul, Korea. ** This transcript is generated by a lip-reading algorithm and as such errors and discrepancies may occur. **

Employee 134: Hey , you alright? You need to look sharp, you know those cameras analyse your body language. You’re slumped all over that desk, they won’t like that.

Employee 534: Am I? Shit. I hate those things; at least they don’t let them record audio. Yeah yeah, I’m alright, just tired. I’m doing nights at my brother-in-law’s restaurant this month; I’m only getting three hours sleep. I got some stim patches from Modshop but they were crap after the first week.

Employee 134: Modshop generics? They’re trash, you want the g2geek branded ones, you can see through walls on that stuff. Why you working nights anyway? This place not sucking the life out of you fast enough?

Employee 534: I had some shit luck with a bet and I’ll be short on the rent if I don’t work the extra. You know this place sure as shit doesn’t pay overtime.

Employee 134: They don’t allow you to work anywhere else either, you know that right? What was it? Football?

Employee 534: Shit no, I never go large on sports. This was politics, an absolute dead cert. My bookie, he’s not as smart as he thinks he is and he doesn’t like to admit his ignorance. Whenever I ask him for odds on anything political he just runs it through a few AIs and they sometimes him silly odds. When that happens I’ll put up as much as I can get hold of. I begged and borrowed and managed to 40k on Choi Seo Eun to win a seat in the National Assembly at 3 to 2. The opinion polls had her well up plus she was half Vietnamese. If I’d have won I’d have taken a serious chunk off of the credit cards.

Employee 134: Being half Vietnamese is a good thing in politics?

Employee 534: In Jeolla it is, there’s a burgeoning demographic of pretty disgruntled mixed race kids down there. They would have got her over the line with votes to spare.

Employee 134: This is all news to me. What happened? The election isn’t for a month is it?

Employee 534: You’re an ignorant soul . She was murdered 2 weeks back, don’t you watch the fucking news?

Employee 134: No shit? Who killed her?

Employee 534: Well, it was that fascist prick in the president’s office. Well obviously not directly, but about a month ago he puts a picture on his social media of Kim Seo Eun saluting a Vietnamese flag. He writes some comments along the lines of, ‘I hope that these disturbing rumours of the candidate for Jeolla North being a fifth columnist for Vietnam are quickly proven to be groundless.” Of course there were no such rumours unless they were started by his team. The picture was fake too but you know how it is, once a story is out some people will keep on believing it because it confirms their world view. As she was wasn’t ‘pure’ Korean, and being that she was a women; well it was always gonna bring some extremists out of the woodwork. So some kid who’s locked himself away in his room, never spoken to a girl, hates them for not giving him any attention, blames foreigners for his failure to get a job, a girlfriend, whatever, blah blah blah. He reads the post, sees it as a call to arms. He blows himself, Kim Seo Eun and 3 security guards up outside a TV studio where she was giving an interview. Of course our courageous leader offers thoughts and prayers, calls it a tragedy. But you know that the truth is that if a guy as popular as he is, says something like that, then statistically on a long enough time-line it is a certainty that some frustrated, isolated madman was going to try and kill her. The shame is that this one was apparently very resourceful; he flew a swam of drones at her first and ran in with the bomb vest whilst her security detail was dealing with the drones.

Employee 134: That’s pretty fucked up.

Employee 534: That it is, that it is. That said, we’d both better get back to it before someone notices that we’re not working.

---

End of transcript.

Modshop - We cater to all your wetware and biohacking needs

HUMAN:NATURE x Reclaim your Genes

Manifesto for immediate publication.

"Cloneseed is for the elite, Cloneseed is for its shareholders, Cloneseed is mankind’s final folly. Cloneseed stole your genetic information, Cloneseed stole your government, Cloneseed stole your democracy. With Cloneseed you are not the customer, you are the product. Your DNA profile is a commodity sold to political parties, lobbyists and advertisers. Cloneseed is an affront to mother nature, to evolution, to your god.

"Cloneseeds are taking jobs, wealth and opportunity from your children. They are the final manifestation of elite privilege. Their existence denies your children social mobility, equality and liberty.

"Label cloneseeds, segregate cloneseeds, isolate cloneseeds. Your government is owned, even machine cannot help us. We must reclaim the streets, reclaim the government, reclaim our genes."

"You can shove your Xio2. This is where the action is."

Affidavit for Search Warrant. This affidavit is respectfully submitted in support of an application to search the following premises and/or vehicles.

1. 1903 Elysium Road, District 8. The premises is a pagoda that houses congregations and worship of an 'AI deity' registered as 嫦娥(#456871 CRE/1b). One of 15 such premises in the city.

2. The premises are registered as belonging to "嫦娥 Solutions".

3. Based on the foregoing, I submit that there is probable cause to believe that a search of the premises may result in collection of evidence relevant to the investigation of threats to witnesses in, and obstruction of, the investigation into the dissemination of restricted governmental information and avoidance of tax in violation of article 68 E.Q.R., Sections 1598742(a)(2), 46782332a and 656441114.

4. Specifically, there is probable cause to believe that a search of the premises as described in the attachment to this affidavit, may reveal stolen confidential documents, significant sums of cash and writings identifying a plan to kill witnesses, names of intended victims, photographs, and other relevant documents.

5. As this affidavit is part of an ongoing investigation that would be jeopardized by premature disclosure of information, I further request that this Affidavit, the accompanying Order, and other related documents be filed under seal until further order of the Court.

Kyle: You coming out tonight? CJ: No dice, I'm playing Neon Royale my man. Got to transcribe about 3 hours of audio by the end of the week.

Kyle: ???? What audio? You playing a game or doing gig work? You're making no sense.

CJ: It's all part of the experience since they moved to v6. I want a little more firepower and some new outfits, so I gotta get some loot crates. I can get them by playing this audio transcription mini-game. You know I don't pay for loot crates; that's not how this street samurai rolls!

Kyle: That sounds suspiciously like you're just working to pay for loot crates.

CJ: Noooo, you don't understand, this is a mini-game. The UI is amazing; you have to check it out. I'm one of the fastest transcribers at the moment.

To: J.Sullivan (Head of Response Modelling) From: E. Lynch (QA & Testing - Neon Royale Unit) Hi Jim,

This isn't an easy email to have to write, so I'm just going to say it - these dopaminergic models of yours are utter crap.

Design have put over the best part of the last two quarters into the new release, consulting your team's models on every design decision. We've been running the usual neurotransmitter scans on alpha testers and the results are leagues away from your predictions. The dopaminergic response is barely significant, serotonin and everything else of interest is flat. Production are going to be absolutely livid that we've pumped all this money into designing and producing a game that fails to elicit any addictive behaviors. I've even got half the testers saying the colours on the attached picture look dull - that alone tells me we are in serious trouble.

Design are completely directionless on how to fix this without valid models to work from. They're having to go on what seems fun; and you don't need me to tell you that that's no way to design a game. Please get these models right or we are all gonna be walking out of here with boxes under our arms.

Ev.

Digital Dreams is now potentially the 2nd biggest employer after the government.

Yet in the defense's opening statement it denied employing any staff outside of its development team. Instead it claimed its hordes of drivers, transcribers and clerical workers are 'customers' playing Neon Royale and are not, in fact, taking part in any paid activities as they do not receive a monetary wage.

The case continues.

Sector 4 Police Force Press Release:

We are actively appealing for anyone with information about the shooting and killing of a journalist on the roof of Serenity Towers to come forward. We can confirm that we are seeking two individuals in connection with the murder. We can also confirm that despite the presence of several EvidenceEaters we have managed to retrieve a small amount of uncontaminated DNA from the scene.

ELU: Virtually Real

Secure. Always.

Phantom skin.

Xio2 is proud to announce that its fully authentic 'street food' area is now open. Experience delightful recreations of national signature dishes from the age of plenty. (Residents and registered guests only)

Plug n play with Universal 3.1 interface.

Future Noir images, video, sounds and words.