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?”

Brody, it’s a good strong name.

Thanks sir, my parents were Yuppie-punks too.

Well, you’re a lucky man in that regard then Brody, my parents lacked any clear vision about the best way to live. Look, I’ll get straight into this.

Ackman suddenly looks bored.

You’re a decent kid Brody, but you’re not what I want for the Assets team.

I knew this was coming but it still stings

I didn’t want to turn you over to HR to fit into the first available post in audits or some shit like that, so I spoke to Gomez and he’s willing to give you a go in sales.

I appreciate it sir.

Look Brody, you’ve got to be a bit more ruthless to reach your potential you know? You'd do well to stick close to your mate Chen, that guy’s ruthless but a lot of fun. He really had Reagan lounge rocking the other night. It’s a real shame they didn’t let you in huh?

Ah that’s okay sir, no harm done.

This is what I’m talking about Brody. You should have been pissed, don’t roll over so easily.

I guess you’re right sir, I appreciate your guidance.

Ackman sighs. Clearly, I’m not getting it.

You should know that I asked Chen to take your post. It’s a sideways move for him but he’s a good fit for us. I thought you should hear it from me rather than through the grapevine later on.

I am now actually pissed.

That makes sense sir, he’s a good friend, I’m pleased for him.

Ackman sighs again and shakes my hand. I go to my desk and start boxing up my personal effects.

Chen is not a good friend. Chen is the arrogant fucker left me standing like a lost puppy outside of the Reagan lounge and stole my cocaine whilst he did so. Chen is the fucker who keeps calling me Johnson even though my name is Brody Johannsen. Chen has just stolen my job and relegated me to fucking sales where I will crash and burn because I am not like Chen, I am not an over-confident little prick.

---

Ackman gives me the last few hours of the day off, so I jump the monorail to the financial district and call my sister.

Kylie, I’m just down the road from your office, let’s get some nosebag.

Kylie is four years younger than me but already more successful on every metric that could be considered to matter, unless you regard success as a very solid collection of Gravure reissues covering 1987-98.

How bad is it this time Brody?

This isn’t insight on her part; I only turn up on her doorstep when I have a problem.

It’s not the end of the world I guess but I could certainly use a sympathetic ear.

She tells me she won’t be finished until 7pm, another hour, so I hole up in the closest thing the financial district has to a yuppie-punk bar which is a generic retro joint called Analogue. There are hipsters sporting conspicuous mods sitting at the bar, giving every girl that comes in the eye. I take a booth and use my pad to log into 4:3ality. I’m one of those few people who aren’t grandparents but prefer a dedicated screen over an AVR overlay. The video of Chen standing on the table screaming at the crowd in the Reagan lounge has become a meme, captioned with the phrase “take the city” or variations thereof. The fucker is on every thread, standing over a burning landscape, a besieged city of Troy, a prohibitive price tag on Dead Channels, or shrunk to miniscule size and waving his fist at rows of kittens. I leave the public threads and look for some comfort in my private groups. AestheticLifeShinja is clogged up by three members comparing different clones of the FUJIX-DSX and, frankly, coming to the wrong conclusions but I opt not to get involved; some people just don’t get what this is all about you know? Bored, I check the Dead Channels auction site; my bid for a replica Casio calculator watch from the late 2010s has been surpassed whilst I was getting kicked out of my sweet post at work; my mood sours further. I finish my beer and order a pitcher of Long Island Iced Tea; I’ve drunk most of it before Kylie arrives. I’m watching a 4:3ality tutorial on VideoToaster emulation when she sits down opposite me.

Thanks for coming sis.

I realise I’m slurring my words, Long Island does it every time.

Kylie laughs, just a little, then she smiles and orders burgers, pizza and more drinks whilst I tell her of my woes.

Jesus Brody, why are you still involved in this shitty little scene? You’re 29 years old, too old to still be a slave of mum and dad’s weird world view. The 80s were shit and yuppie-punks are boring, amoral wankers who don’t even understand the culture they seek to recreate.

I offer a shrug as I chew on some unnecessarily doughy pizza.

This is a chance to get out of that shitty job and to move to a real company that actually has money. Do you forget that you work for a company called MegaSolutions that provides fourth tier investment services to people with strange religions that think any tech from before the Decline is amoral? This whole ‘we are flying the flag for the anti-tech-everyman' is just a ploy to hire yuppie-punk wankers.

Like me.

Yes Brody, like you. I make more money than senior management over there do. You live in a frankly terrible part of the Eastern Boroughs just because the building is 80’s themed and they advertise on 4:3ality. You can’t do these things and be surprised when your life turns out to be a bit weak. Let Chen be their king. Come and rejoin the rest of the world Brody, before it is lost to you.

She makes a compelling argument and I tell her so. This seems to cheer her and she orders some more drinks and we talk about things I haven’t discussed in a long time; politics, god, our hopes, our fears. Then we stagger our separate ways uttering soon to be forgotten promises to see more of each other. I have the weekend to make some choices.

---

I wake up late, hungover and with an urge to get out of Ginza Hills before I can give in to familiar temptations; bidding on ‘untested’ walkmans has become something of a Saturday morning ritual. I shower, throw on my new stonewash jeans, a fresh white t-shirt and my favourite red lumberjack shirt. The house AI tells me that it is cold out so I throw on a suit jacket that is sitting crumpled on a chair; the one that was deemed incorrect attire for the Reagen lounge the last time I wore it. The bad memory almost compels me to go and find something else but the hangover is getting worse and I don’t like the thought of Chen dictating my actions any more than he already has.

Dressed, I head out of the door with no destination in mind. I get on the subway and head to the inner districts and alight at a random stop, a place I’ve never been to before. As I exit the station I am greeted by a large stream running from left to right. The banks of the stream have been turned into a park complete with botanical garden zones and play areas. Small groups of well raised children charge around whilst their parents sit nearby, engaged in their own activities on their AVR. Chapedrones whirr around, using nudge psychology to shepherd any overly excited kids away from the water’s edge.

The layout of the surrounding residential and commercial areas are stunning, I would guess entirely AI designed. I spend some time marveling at the outlandish audacity of it all. The way the light interacts with the water, the way the surrounding buildings give both a sense of space and futurism despite being over 60 stories high and packed together like 80’s salarymen on the Tokyo subway. Maybe Kylie is right, any sane person would want to live here, not in the shitty old boroughs. I sit down and eavesdrop on conversations, study people’s fashion and mods. Not a single one of them seems to even be aware of the 80’s, of 4:3ality or any of the things that occupy my every waking moment; there’s not a shellsuit in sight. My hangover melds with this sense of alienation and it all becomes unbearable. I consult my AVR and have it guide me to the nearest 24-hour bar, just under a mile away. As I walk my vision becomes tunnel-like, I focus only on the AVR’s HUD giving me directions and that magical riff from Europe’s Final Countdown which blasts at me through my AVRs cochlear implants.

---

The bar is an unstaffed chain with no noticeable design aesthetic. Like many successful businesses it is soulless but cheap and clean. It is also empty, so I sit at the bar and order a Long Island via my AVR and wait for the push message to tell me it’s ready, then I collect it from the numbered dispensing cubby. I’m close to finishing my third when I realize there is a man sitting next to me. Right next to me in a bar sporting less than three patrons.

Yuppie-punk.

A statement, not a question. There is no follow up to this opening gambit and this leaves me wrong footed. I was preparing to bat away a sad, lonely old man; not have him lose interest in me in under a minute. We both go back to our drinks. I find something in my suit jacket pocket and take to fiddling with it.

I guess it’s not working out?

A question this time.

Oh, give it a rest please mate. I’ve got enough on my plate without total stranger sticking their dick in my ear.

He laughs. It’s a good laugh, unrestrained or managed.

My apologies, I’ll get the drinks in.

And he does; two pitchers of Long Island. The stuff here is pretty terrible, straight from a carton with some generic coke splashed on top. Even stirring it is apparently more trouble than we are worth but whatever; it looks like I’m getting drunk again.

None of my business, but I hate to see a young person so glum. What ails you kid?

I’m pretty far from sobriety, so I give him the anonymized and abridged version. He nods sagely as I speak. Give the man his dues, he’s a good listener. He says nothing when I’ve finished. I don’t know why, maybe I don’t like the silence, but I ask him, what the fuck would he do in this situation?

What I would do doesn’t matter kid. I wouldn’t be a yuppie-punk. My parents were far worse than yours; tech-cultists. I got away as soon as I was able to and I’ve strived to live a humble life ever since, but that doesn’t matter either. A hippo has no business telling a lion how to conduct themselves; nor can I tell you what to do. I will say this however, you’ve got to live with whatever you become. If you want to move on and make a change then do so, if you want to be the chief of your tribe, then you’d better get on it. Either way, I can heartily recommend getting drunk, scoring some drugs, altering your mind and taking your worrying, self-conscious pride out of its dull little routine. Once you do that, you’ll know what needs to be done. Then it’s just a matter of doing it.

That’s the part I’m not good at.

We only flounder when we don’t fully believe in what we are doing. When we use it as a distraction from our boredom. The vast majority of people will opt for pretty much anything over being bored and that includes working a shitty job and buying things they don’t really care about. Contrast that the Ministers though; those fuckers are the most terrifying people on the planet because they don’t separate their lives into means and ends, into pleasure and work, past present and future. They don’t fear boredom because they can frame it as part of their journey. You know they uncovered one who had been doing a shitty admin job for 35 years, just so she could gain the trust of an ops-manager at Vantage and convert them to their faith? Together they wiped out three generations of a dynasty that had made its money from the oil trade. Everything they do is part of their purpose and the average human simply cannot compete with an entity such as that.

With that he excuses himself and stumbles off to the toilets, taking out a few adjacent bar stools as he goes. I take the object I’ve been thumbing out of my pocket and look at it. I double take and smile as I look at it again. I head down on street level and I am walking, dictating plans and questions subverbally to my AVR as I head back to the station where I board the first of trains that will take me to the Docks.

I arrive back home 36 hours later in what I would generously describe as worse for wear. I take some downers that I scored from the taxi driver who brought me home. Sleep won’t come for some time but these will stop me bouncing off of the walls. I have my AVR transfer all of my dictated notes and search results from the last day and a half to the large A2 tablet on my coffee table. I sit for a long time, writing, reading, plotting and planning. I fall asleep where I sit on the floor, between the smoked glass coffee table and white leather sofa. I sleep for over a day. I wake up on Tuesday and keep working on my idea, questioning and refining it. On Thursday I take the elevator up to Chen’s apartment and tell him my plan. He is very much in.

---

On Friday I go to work. I have many, many missed calls and unanswered messages from various managers, supervisors and HR staff. MegaSolutions is organizationally so top heavy I’m surprised it hasn’t toppled over into the fucking sea. The suit I’m wearing arrived just last night and it is choice. I know it is choice because I sat and I read and I spoke to people until I knew all of the minutiae, all of the dull bullshit that makes one suit bad and another so very good. Then I spent a lot of money acquiring myself this suit and a lot more getting all of the other crap that is required to make this suit look at home on me. The gaudy rolex watch, the contrast collar shirt and very importantly, the loafers. Finally I got the haircut, complete with a tub of bright green hair gel that sort of has bubbles in it and doesn’t completely wash off of your hands, regardless of how much soap you use. I was wearing my new outfit when I met Chen this morning and he was deeply impressed.

Back in the office I do not report to sales, I do not report to HR. I go to the bathroom, take a look at myself in my spectacular new threads, do a few lines of coke that I picked up at the docks and channel my inner sociopath. I tour the offices and I make a point of greeting every manager and up-and-comer that I see, complete with a personalized little quip about something they said or did. Thinking of them all has taken me many hours. I make them feel good about themselves and therefore I make them notice me, the new me complete with new threads and cocky attitude. Everyone who falls outside of the Venn of power and/or potential however is ignored and ignored with disdain, because I want them to notice me too. When I see Chen we take a moment to make sure everyone sees me pass him a large envelope that suggests it could well be full of cash. Everyone looks at me. Most people wonder just what the fuck has got into me whilst the remainder wonder just who the fuck I think I am. Having stirred up every department in the entire company I saunter into Sales. It is 11:30am.

My new desk is in the corner of the office furthest from the window; Gomez was never going to give me a shot. Ackman is a lying shit but none of this surprises me or phases me. I look at the desk with scorn and park myself and my boxes in the departmental conference room where I sit back, put my feet up on the table and start clearing out my inbox via my AVR. At this stage Gomez walks in and slams the door shut.

The balls on you Johannsen. No word since last week and now you roll up half-way through the morning and …

He waves his arms around, presumably to express annoyance at my annexation of the conference room. I smile my best smile because Gomez has made the error of coming into my room. The fact that it’s not actually my room is not important, he came to me and that puts him on my turf. Management 101 states very fucking clearly that you summon minions to your office.

Take it easy chief. Ackman gave me the impression this was a place for go-getters but if you are one of those micro-managers then please, kick me down to HR or out of the door and I’ll take these deals with me.

Gomez is wrong footed but fair play to him he recovers with no little finesse.

We only deal with go-getters here Johannsen. If you say you have contracts then you should be bringing them to me so I can mark you up on the weekly tally.

Oh those contracts? For MegaSolutions? Oh fuck that chief, I’m talking about personal revenue streams. I was under the impression you’d be wanting in. Ackman said … well he led me to believe that you were a man that understood the way of the world.

Ackman of course never had a kind word to say about Gomez but he did let slip that he had gambling debts all over town and was midway through his second divorce, which was all I needed to know.

Gomez sizes me up for a while, he’s trying to make me sweat, but I know he’s broke and has poor impulse control; he is already in my pocket but he is, as yet, unaware.

Okay Johannsen, talk to me.

I spend the next ten minutes spinning a web of bullshit that I’ve been refining over the last few days. A contact in one of the big investment houses, insider trading and other things that probably barely make any sense anymore. None of that matters, the thing that does matter is that I’m offering him ten percent return on his investment, per week, guaranteed. Of course, my guarantee is worth only slightly less than nothing but I know he’s going to give it a try. I have gone missing for four days and come back dripping in expensive clothing. Something has happened and he wants a piece of the action.

Sounds doable, I’ve got 1000 cred, I’ll get it at lunch. Just 7 days you say?

I look embarrassed, I pinch the bridge of my nose and look at my feet and murmur something to myself.

Shit, look chief I’m really sorry if I wasn’t clear, but this is … well it’s the big boys table, high rollers and all that. 20k absolute minimum and really, that’s me doing you a favour. Anyone else I’m not taking less than 100k and that’s only if I like them. You understand how these things are. Anyway, the cut off is in an hour so plenty of time to get a few shekels together.

Disappointment hits Gomez just a fraction of a second before another part of his mind starts scheming; I watch this theatre play out on his face. The disappointment is quickly forgotten as he makes his excuses and leaves to raise 19k. 42 minutes later Gomez is back with none other than fucking Ackman and someone they tell me is one of the managers in finance. Together they hand over 20k creds in cash, not a common sight these days.

I write them a receipt for their money, the header of which bears the Proton Fund logo and registered business number. I give them the receipt but snatch it back from Ackman’s hands as soon as he’s read it.

You know what lads, this is barely worth the effort. Here’s your money and the promised 2k return, no reason to wait until Thursday. I looked bored by the whole affair.

Gomez stammers something but I’m looking out of the window already. What a crappy view. I turn back to face them.

Don't sweat it chief, it's just a few k, chicken feed for high rollers like us right?

There are a few murmurs of agreement.

Obviously, I understand, you didn’t want to get your feet wet until you knew there wasn’t piss in the pool but now we can all trust each other I’ll let you play for real next Friday if you want. Do note though that it’s 100k minimum stake because, well you know, this isn’t exactly legal and I can’t be hassling my contacts over pocket change.

But how? Asks Ackman. You’re not the brightest kid around here and definitely not the most connected. How is it that you got to know someone involved with a major investment house?

Well maybe boss, between you and me, just maybe I took your advice and got closer to Chen, but that’s absolutely not to leave this room. Like I said, this may not be entirely legal and he wants to keep his nose clean on this one. Shit, I’ve said too much already but I would like to think that I can trust you three, as would Chen I’m sure.

Smiles break out, hands are shaken and promises sworn. They have something on me now, everything makes sense, and everyone is happy, except me. I’ve just handed over the equivalent of six months' savings that I had to beg from my sister but I’m on the path now; no turning back even if I wanted to.

---

That night Chen offers to take me to the Reagan lounge to celebrate a successful day but Chen is too high profile now. I have some Lite beers delivered to my apartment and we sit on the balcony, discussing our next move.

The thing is Chen, we really need to get these guys to pony up a lot more money than they look like they are capable of. My contact is adamant this only has a matter of months, maybe even weeks to run. I need you to get them thinking big.

I know, that’s why you wanted me on board right? Sales and credibility. That’s what I do.

It’s win-win. They get ten percent, we get five percent each and my man on the inside gets to bump his numbers plus whatever else he’s got going on in there. Best of all, we are risk free. Pure profit for us!

We laugh and down our beers.

Seriously Chen, I wasn’t joking when I said I needed this money. I want to get on with my life you know? Make a name for myself, live that 80’s dream.

Chen jabs a finger towards me as he sips his fourth beer.

I’ll be honest with you Johnson, when I stole your coke that night I wondered how you’d react, if you’d get all upset and cry like a little girl or come back stronger and I won’t lie; I would have bet against you. But my man, you’ve really raised the bar with this little investment operation.

Some very good luck is what it was but I’m making the most of it. If we can get the guys at work to put a few hundred k through my Proton investments company, I’ll have enough cash flow on the books to get a sit down with some investors that my sister knows and I hope you’ll be along for the ride.

Chen punches the air in delight.

Yes, this is what I’m talking about Johnson, living the dream.

We will be if you can get our investors as excited as the crowds at the Reagan lounge.

Don’t sweat it, I’m taking Ackman and the rest of them out tomorrow. I was gonna invite you but…well I thought it might be easier if it’s just me. I can get into the zone you know?

Sure Chen, I’ve got some things to be getting on with. This is your show.

With that he retires to his apartment, making sure to mention the fact that he lives 10 floors above me as he leaves. What a shit, even when we are playing a non-zero sum game he just can’t help but be the alphamale.

---

Friday rolls around and Ackman, the de-facto representative for whatever little syndicate Chen has helped assemble, shows up in the sales boardroom with 200k in a briefcase. I feign disappointment but I’m delighted they didn’t get more. I give them a receipt and leave. I take the money home and check it for any tracing or identifying marks with black light and a cheap tracking detector I got once after watching a Bond movie. I walk 99k of the money around the corner to a bank where I deposit it into Proton Investments’ account. 100k or more and I’ll have to show where it came from. Then I max out every available line of credit. I borrow from my parents, my sister. I discreetly sell everything that I don’t need. I even acquire temporary funds from unlicensed payday sites but I raise 30k. I do all of this without concern or second thoughts. I am perfectly sanguine about my ridiculous mountain of debt because to do this and fail is nothing compared to not trying, to returning my life to its previous equilibrium.

On the following Thursday I withdraw the money and add the extra. I drive into work in a brand new, authentic reissue of the 1982 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am. It’s an absurdly expensive boutique daily rental of course but I fail to mention that to the circle of admirers who gather around it in the basement parking lot. It’s a lovely car I confess, but I’m not sure it’s really what I’m looking for and in all honesty I would probably pass up on the Scheffe option if I were to buy one; I find the red lights rather juvenile. I have my now customary pre-show lines of coke before I head up to assets. I shoot the shit the with a few random types looking to get closer to Chen, as it’s now the worst kept secret in the building that he’s the real brains behind this deal; something he is only too happy to encourage.

Chen arrives around 9:30; neither of us are even pretending to work anymore. I give him his share of the supposed profits as everyone pretends not to be looking. Then I head down to sales to find Ackman waiting for me. He’s trying to look like he just happens to be visiting Gomez, but he’s clearly sweating bricks. I turn on my bravado, my impersonation of Chen basically, hands are shaken, backs are slapped, and nervous energy suppressed. I give Ackman his 220k and he is as happy as a GM pig in a humane yet mud free cage as he signs the receipt.

And now it all comes down to this. What will Ackman bring me tomorrow? Did Chen come through or are the nightmares I've been having about the syndicate falling apart some kind of premonition?

We’d like to go for 1 million tomorrow.

I catch myself before I do something silly.

That’s not an insignificant sum of money, big man.

Chen thinks he can handle it, he gave it the okay last night.

He's talking down to me, I'm just another grant.

Well, he’s running the show guv, I’m just the bagman. Same time tomorrow then. I give him a mock salute from my reclined position behind the desk which, as always, my feet are resting on.

He leaves, closing the door behind him and I’m internally dancing and jigging. 1 million shitting creds. Chen really is very fucking good. I was hoping for maybe 400 or 500k but never a million. The next 24 hours is a blur of nerves and excitement but before I know it, I’m heading home with 2 bags holding a combined 1 million creds. Back in my apartment I check the money carefully and then spend the next few hours running around town paying off my debts. I make sure to give Kylie a lot more than I owe her, not that she needs it but maybe she’ll find a use for it one day. This city has no patience for the poor and we all fall on hard times at some point. I deposit the cash into the Proton Investments account. As expected, the cashier gets the manager, and the manager does a nervous dance around the issue of money laundering. I produce a receipt of sale for a Compulsory Purchase Order of 1 million credits for land in one of the rewilded zones in the southern provinces. I purchased the receipt online last night for 130k from an anonymous government clerk; he got his money in cash today in exchange for the paper. The certificate is actually real if you check it online, which the manager of course, she does. Because there was no money attached to the sale it will escape notice at the governmental end for the 24 hours that it will exist before it is deleted and marked as an administrative error. The poor sap whose name was used to enter the transaction will probably be fired once this all comes out but if I’ve learnt anything lately, is that being forced into a new way of life is not always the terrible thing I thought it would be. I use my company stamp to authorize the immediate withdrawal of corporate tax at 23% because that’s just how it is with cash nowadays. The government has their share and the money is clean. Just one task left.

---

The feelings that I have as I make my way to Chen’s apartment are, unsurprisingly, not those I had anticipated. I had planned on feeling great joy and vindication but I mostly feel tired; all the adrenaline of the past few weeks has taken its toll. I knock a few times and Chen has the apartment let me in. He’s sitting on his sofa, Dead Channels Auction site on the wall screen, spending his newfound wealth. He’s already got a burgeoning collection of LaserDiscs in the last few days and a Roland Juno of some kind that looks fresh out of the box; the display case has LEDs that change colours.

Johnson! Am I the best or am I best? 1 million baby, that’s how I roll.

That’s what I needed, a little push to get me over the line. I throw him his 70k and he catches the bulging envelope. I play with my AVR slate as I talk to him.

I can’t argue with that. You made us both a tidy little sum. Huh, my AVR has lost connectivity, can I piggyback your household portal?

Chen does something subvocally and my AVR has basic net access. I run my connection through a few VPNs, it looks like the poor attempt to hide traffic that it is. Then I transfer the money from the Proton Investments fund to a numbered, offshore account.

You know, I’m just getting started. I can get them to double down next week easily. There’s at least five senior members of the syndicate who I’ve still to convince to remortgage their apartments.

That’s probably unlikely Chen, seeing as there’s no return on the million they just handed over.

He looks up from the screen like someone’s just shot him.

The fuck Johnson? We can’t not repay them.

Yeah, I can definitely see that’s going to be a problem. It’ll be interesting to see how you’ll explain it.

He looks at me, realization dawning, narrowing his eyes.

Me? Not you, not we?

Well, everyone in the company knows you’re the brains behind this. I’m just the bagman, you pay me a salary and that’s where my involvement ends.

A salary? And how do I do that?

Through Proton Investments of course, I’ve got all the paperwork.

He squints, bites his lip and fiddles with the Mont Blanc pen he’s had in his hands since he bought it last week.

Johnson, are you telling me you’ve stolen a million creds and somehow pinned it on me?

I smile, not because I’m proud of what I’ve done, but because I’ve done it. For once I’ve seen a plan through and maybe that matters more than screwing Chen and the MegaSolutions staff that were so happy to write me off.

You dropped your ID card in my pocket when you lifted my coke outside the Reagan lounge that night.

I was pretty fucked up; that was really good coke.

Well, I took the liberty of opening up a business in your name, along with a company account. It’s shockingly easy to do, as long as you don’t want to borrow money or deal with VAT. I barely needed your ID to be honest. The receipts for the money are all in Proton Investments’ name, which is in your name. You told everyone you were the genius running the show, because you are a very vain man. Besides, I didn’t steal anything at all. The money is divided between that cash in your hand and an offshore account which as of now there’s a record of the traffic on your home AVR portal. I imagine the law will confiscate it all very quickly.

I look him in the eye. I want to see regret for the way he has treated me. Then something quite unexpected happens, he smiles a smile of pure joy.

This Johnson, is fucking amazing. You are a genius. I love it, god damn it if I don’t love you, you mad man! This is the perfect yuppie revenge story.

I just stare at him, slack jawed.

I mean you couldn’t get any more cliched 80s if you fed everything from the golden decade into an AI and asked it to write you a story in the style of the most whisky-soaked hack imaginable. This is going to be legendary my man! There’ll be a feature about this on 4:3eality before the year is out. The Chen-Johanssen rivalry! Freud, lies, crime, drugs and revenge!

So you do know my name, you fuck.

Of course I do, but I like calling you Johnson. Johnson is a better name for you. You should change it.

I like Johannsen.

Do you? Have you seriously sat down and considered the relative merits of any alternative names?

Well no, but it’s my family name, my heritage. People don’t change their names on a whim.

Why shouldn’t you change your name on a whim? It’s as good a reason as I’ve ever heard.

Why are we talking about my bloody name? Don’t you want to kill me or something? Aren’t you even slightly annoyed?

Well, I am on one level Johnson, I was rather enjoying having a lot of cash around. You know, I might even do actual prison time for this, you know? Not much, I don’t think, there’s definitely plausible deniability there, seeing as I actually didn’t do it, but enough time that I can make it a central part of my personality and worldview.

He is positively gleaming with joy.

Are you fucking mad Chen? Prison is a terrible place.

Of course it is, if it wasn’t it wouldn’t make much of an experience would it? Two years on the beach never made anyone into a legend. This is life Johnson, it’s about getting out there and experiencing it, getting stuck in, doing as much as you can before you die. You can’t have fun if you never suffer. It’s going to be great; I’ll get a deep understanding of the criminal mindset, learn some tricks, make some contacts, maybe reinvent myself as some sort of white-collar criminal mastermind and be out in no time at all. We can continue our rivalry, or maybe we can get a start-up of some kind going together; the shady money is definitely going to follow us around from here on in. I should be thanking you really, I’ve been getting far too comfy at MegaSolutions.

I am fucking gobsmacked. What do you say to this kind of madness? I sit down and pour us both a whisky. Chen has acquired a range of very nice bottles of late.

I’ve got to say Chen, this is not what I expected. I didn’t…I don’t have a handle on you at all. You are a strange being.

It is you who is strange Johnson; you take seriously all of the things that should be fun and you block out all of the things that are serious. For all of that Johnson, you have my sympathies but please don’t expect me to stand around explaining things you should have worked out yourself. I’m probably going to be incarcerated in the very near future, so I’m going to jump in a taxi and head to the Spire; I might as well enjoy myself whilst I can; I mean, I doubt they’ll let me keep any of this money. He stuffs the cash-filled envelope into his pocket and walks to the door. I sit and swig my whisky and I realize he’s holding the door open with his foot whilst he uses his phone to presumably book a taxi. He finishes, puts his phone in his inside jacket pocket and stares at me with a look of faint exasperation.

For fuck’s sake Johnson, aren’t you coming?

I have to smile.

Yeah Chen, why the fuck not.

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

We have him hooded and in the van before the swarm has even noticed us. Mongo floors it and the van bullets onto the highway, the electric motors whining in protest. “Start the clock”, he shouts at the van; a blocky orange count-down projects onto the van’s HUD: 250km and dropping as we pelt into the rain-soaked night.

The introduction was from a trusted client so we agreed to a face-to-face straight off. The job presented was undoable; the abduction of a hot stock picker who was hot enough to have Premium Vantage Swarm protection. Vantage has the financial district covered in their own web of surveillance drones and quick response armoured personnel units. They react en masse at anything that even looks untoward if it is near a client. The fixer was a standard corporate espionage type; expensive suit and sociopathic eyes; someone who knew the circuit; that being so I asked her, ‘Why would you expect us to go anywhere near Vantage Premium? Historically it’s been a death sentence.’ A very large truck full of money was her answer.

Some people would tell you that with a score this big, they would take the chance to get out of the heist game altogether. They would promise that they would pay for their sick grandma’s medical bills, put their niece through university and see out their days on a beach somewhere. Those people are cretins with no ambition. This wouldn't be one last job for us, it would be the start of something bigger. With this much money we could invest in military grade equipment and put together a top-shelf team for the elite contracts. Onwards and upwards. There was no way we were walking away from such an opportunity.

So we did what we do. We researched, scanned, listened, planned and plotted. Whatever way I looked at it there was no getting that man out of there without death raining down on us. We couldn’t blast our way out - outgunned. We couldn’t fly him out – swarms of drones armed with EMP, sedative gasses and good old fashioned bullets. We couldn’t tunnel him out, sneak him out, bribe anyone or in any way gain any form of advantage over such a well-oiled security operation. Then like the child that he is, Mongo had had his flash of brilliance.

“We throw him in the van just as he arrives at the bar, like he does every Friday. We drive extremely fast onto route MR-301 and we keep going until we hit District 10.”

“How the fuck does that make any sense?” I asked.

“Think about it. We’ll be on the edge of the financial district, which puts a good percentage of Vantage relatively far away from us as they are spread evenly over the district. As long as there is no armour on the road between us and route MR-301 they won’t be able to keep up with us in those tanks."

"And the drones? What about the ten flavours of unmanned they have?"

All fast and deadly but they won’t be able to destroy us with missiles if we have their boy and if we can keep enough of a lead, they won’t be able to use the EMP, sedatives or shoot out the tires. None of those drones have a range of more than 250km at top speed, we just have to be fast enough to avoid them until they run out of juice and we will be home dry, stepping up to the big leagues.”

“How fast?”

“It’s that magic number again; 250...kph. 1 hours driving, full tilt, score of a lifetime. He smiled, a stupidly self-assured smile.”

“Your plan is to drive really, really fast until everyone else gets tired?”

He nods, still grinning.

“Why can’t Vantage call in someone to cut us off?”

“Because the MR-301, my dear, has no exits until it hits the wastes. It was only really built for rich brokers and bankers to go from city to beach as directly as possible. The first exit is 264km from our joining. District 10 is a wasted freezone; there’s no serious hardware out there and certainly no friends of Vantage. The police won’t get involved; they would love to see private security lose face, you know how it is.”

“Choppers? Light aircraft...gunships? Other bases?”

“Nada, Vantage doesn’t have anything that can get involved quickly enough, they’re much too concentrated in the financial district.”

“No shit?”

“None at all.”

It was a terrible plan and I told Mongo so. He just grinned more.

Mongo tears up the outside lane and hard shoulder. The autonomous cars shift out of the way like jittery house pets. I dare to peek through the slit that I cut on the back door and through the dark and endless rain I count at least twenty drones on our tail, but as Mongo promised, they are not gaining. A sudden swerve jolts me from my thoughts, as if punishing me for daring to be optimistic.

“Bollocks Mongo!”

“Pothole kiddo. It must be a new one.”

And it must have been, he’d done the route thirty times over the last week, scanning the surface for anything that might send us to our deaths. When he wasn't getting to know every inch of the road intimately he was working on getting the van upgraded with the last of our cash.

Our captive moans something; I remove his gag and check on him. He’s extremely sedated for the amount we injected him with and it concerns me. Not an allergic reaction but something isn’t right. I check the pocket nurse I’ve attached to him but nothing stands out. It could be an interaction with recreationals but I’d never seen anything like this. No way I can mention this to Mongo, he needs unadulterated focus, especially given the amount of stim he has taken. If this fucker dies we are not only not getting paid but our names will be mud and Vantage will be after us for reasons of honour and repeat business. I don’t have the courage to look out of the front of the van for long, the speed sets me on edge but I caught the HUD drop past 125, accompanied by a scream of “halfway bitches!”

I decide to busy myself checking the mark for any more signs. He’s not talking and there’s very little eye contact. Then it hits me, the man is a stock picker, one of the genetically enhanced super-elite that could somehow still outperform AI. The assumption would be that anyone grabbing him would set about getting information from him immediately, not driving very quickly in a straight line for an hour like a pair of morons. There must be some wetware in there that was making him into a zombie to protect his knowledge. Whilst strictly not our problem I am nothing if not professional. A diagnosis on delivery would be good for the rep; maybe a little bonus, so I set about scanning for implants. It would at least stop me worrying about those drones.

I am about half way through the scans when there was a very definite explosion and I can feel the van fishtailing. To my surprise I don’t scream. Mongo pulls the van out of it and we push on.

“You lousy fuckers”, screamed Mongo. “I think they actually crashed two other cars to try and slow us down. I guess they weren’t paid up members of the Vantage program.”

“Are we okay?”

“15 years driving the mean streets of Nairobi; it takes more than that to slow me down.”

Another explosion. This time the van spins and I see a fireball illuminating the night. The van feels like it’s going to topple, hanging 45 degrees to one side for an age before the van falls back on all four wheels and we take off again. I look up to see Mongo weaving through debris of burning cars. I shift to the back of the van and see the drones are now just a few hundred meters away, their spotlights blazing down on us. A barrage of shots scuff the road behind us.

“They’re going for the tires”, I yell unhelpfully.

Mongo doesn’t answer. He gets a bit more from the engine and we pull away from the swarm by a few more meters, the gunfire ceases but the rain is heavier than ever.

“I didn’t think that those fuckers would sacrifice a few families of holidaymakers to get us” howls Mongo.

“I know that fucking voice” I shout. “Don’t you fucking dare feel guilty for their sins. Get us home dry and we can talk about going after the ops that did this and shitting on their heads but now you drive you fat fucker! Drive!”

With this Mongo shuts up and I know we'll make it. I try to resume my scans but I’m shaking like mad. I shut the scanner down and get ready for departure. Reputation and bonuses can go whistle this time.

Exactly as Mongo said they would, the drones start to drop out of the night sky around the time we hit the 250km mark. Mongo doesn’t let up for a second until he drifts us down the off ramp for District 10. We slam into a warehouse not three minutes later and transfer to a small electric. There are ten other identical cars with drivers waiting. We all peel off at the same time; creating just enough variables to fuck with whoever is tracking via satellite. We head to the drop off, another twenty minutes away through damp abandoned neighbourhoods and industrial estates.

At the drop off the fixer awaits us in her customary expensive suit with a couple of heavies and a single people carrier; its gleaming finish contrasts painfully with the decay of the warehouse which is dark and full of menace. A single car surprises me; not great for avoiding satellite detection but I decided not to comment. I decide I will not comment on the state of the mark either. I want to put this one behind me and move on, move up.

I open the back door and one of the heavies looks inside. He scans the mark’s eye and nods. I try not to smile but I can’t help it. I jump out of the van and run around to give Mongo the wink I give him after every successful job. But he’s not out of the van. That’s when I see the shattered glass on the floor; Mongo's driver side window is missing. I look in and he stares back at me with vacant eyes; a bullet through his skull. I spin around to see the fixer in front of me, a gun inches from my head.

“You fuck! You can’t kill me, I’m not an amateur! Your boy is wired up with death Mongo and I’m the only one with the code"

She shakes her head, “Oh, that’s just a clone, barely any actual brain function to speak of, your scans would have been picking up simulated neural activity. I'm surprised a professional like yourself didn't spot the difference.”

“But why” is all I manage to say, the blood draining from my face.

The fixer smiles. “It was an external audit for Vantage. But don't worry, you can keep the down payment, and feel free to come by and collect the outstanding monies anytime you want."

With that, she pulls the trigger.

---

Artemon artemonofficial.bandcamp.com soundcloud.com/artemon123 twitter.com/ArtemonOffisha1
credits released June 10, 2021

Ginza Hills suckers. Only the 45th floor, but nevertheless I'm 23 and I'm in Ginza Hills you saps. Where are you? Some punks will tell you that 2005 was the height of the Age of Plenty but that's because they're spivs; philistines barely worth my contempt. The smart money knows that the 1980’s were the dogs’ bollocks. A man could still be open about his desires in the 1980s. I've seen real AVR footage recovered from the era and those guys like Bateman, Gecko and the Mayfair Club were Gods. I heard that someone has found Gecko's remains in deep freeze and are modelling an AI on his neurophysiology. Fuck yeah, I hope he runs for president.

I stayed up late surfing the 4:3ality streams but even so I’m up at 6am and have the house AI prepare a cup of the finest instant coffee that money can buy. Those hippies over at Xio2 actually insist on grinding and brewing it like cavemen. People are weird. Coffee drunk I head to the 2nd tier gym. Understand that for my age I'm above average; I hear that there isn't anyone under 40 in the premier tier. Gyms are boring but that prick Johnson is there and he tries to impress me with some imported synthetic cocaine he's got and I will grant him that it's the business. It feels like my face is being washed away in the shower and I get lost in a daydream about taking a huge crap in the premier tier gym and flooding the penthouse suites. The gym sensors start pinging me messages about my heart rate so I head out.

Johnson 'bumps into me' in the elevator. As much as he's a chump I offer him a ride to work. He knows Ackman and his crew in Assets and I would love an in with those guys. They dress and live correct. We blitz to the office in my Nissan NX-21. It looks exactly like the ‘87 concept right down to the non-functional cassette player. Girls would love this car. They do. They love it bro. What are you driving anyway? Some modern soulless shitcan no doubt. I have a newly recovered edition of Memory Tracer, they found a super clean version in some teenage girl’s coffin. I crank it and put the autodrive to full aggression.

I gotta say I'm pretty ashamed of Johnson. His suit looks like a fucking tsunami of shit has rained down on him. The material is well off, matte like a wool blend and the collars are thinner than a genecut meth addict. I'm rocking a seersucker blazer with more polyester content than the north Atlantic. This shit shines like a pulsar and has authentic gluefixed lining. It’s these details that the girls notice and frankly I'm upset I have to school you pricks on this stuff. I’m looking the bomb and no doubt. Sarah in security looks away as I walk in so I know I’m fucking dazzling. I would ask her out but I heard she was seeing Sinclair and I couldn’t roll with a girl associated with a man who has biomods. Future seekers like that…well there are no words. Okay there are words: the future has nothing but contempt for us and it makes me angry that there are people too stupid to see that. It’s like a temporal form of Stockholm syndrome.

Work is work. I smash it like a champ and that bacon gets brought home by the container ship. Shit, I barely need to work late. I just hang around to torment the plebs who can’t manage to do what needs done in hours. It’s 7pm so I wander around for a while until I find Johnson hunched over his terminal. I give him a winning smile and we abuse some more of his synthetic coke. Now, I shit you not when I say that my left nostril explodes all over my shirt exactly as Ackman walks into the toilets. Johnson, fashionless fucker he may be, plays interference and talks me up like a boss to Ackman. Ackman hoovers up a few lines, and looks up at us with something like recklessness in his eyes. Fuckwits, he declares, tonight you are with me at 4:3ality. That’s it, I’m fucking in; game set and who even cares about your shitty idea of a match?

The NX-21 has to be sold, burned, driven off of a cliff. Fucking joke of a car. Ackman speeds us past God himself in his Lambo Athlon recreation that is so boxy you can cut yourself just looking at it sideways and I tell no lie, he’s got a laserdisc player in it. Obviously I don’t need to tell you the going rate on one of these. Rare as rocking horse crap. He’s hooked it to an AVR broadcaster. I suggest getting some CRT action installed but he claims it would ruin the Athlon’s interior aesthetics. Whatever. He’s got an Inkel badge on the player but I dunno, seems too high end even for someone like Ackman. I suspect it’s a knock off or refab but decide to keep that to myself for now. Ackman is big dicking at my expense but if I get an in to 4:3ality proper then that’s fucking fine with me. We all eat a little shit before we die.

The thing to keep in mind is that 4:3ality is a network of like-minded classy individuals such as myself and businesses who serve us. Yes there’s a club and streaming service with the same name but they’re just the most visible aspect of it. The club is where we are received like royalty when we turn up with Ackman. I’ll admit I’ve managed to get in here a few times but we were kept in the main area and the place might as well have just been a themed bar. I was the only person properly attired and the plebs around me didn't even recognise my refab Walkman that I was tastefully sporting on my waistband. With the orange foam headphones I was looking like a time traveller that night and I barely turned a head. I knew the real party was going on upstairs with no means to act on it. Tonight though we are straight upstairs to the Reagan lounge. I’m pleased to report that Johnson is turned away by the maitre d’ for crimes against good clothing. He looks devastated, absolutely broken. I figure there’s no harm in making his day just a bit worse, so I pick his pocket for his coke as I struggle not to laugh at him. If he’s a real man he’ll learn and come back stronger. If he’s not, well who cares because I have his coke and if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years it is that the best coke is someone else’s coke. Even more so when there’s this much of it.

The Reagan lounge is impressive and no doubt. They’ve got what look like Jumbotrons at each end of the room. There’s a legitimate and working cassette deck playing some choice cuts that not even I know. There’s even a wall of Face and ID magazine covers. The people are beautiful and diligent in their adherence to correct fashion choices. The ladies lounge rather than sit and a series of well placed hidden fans keep their beautiful permed hair flowing as it should. Ackman gets us a table in the thick of it and orders a bottomless supply of cocktail pitchers. Crazy colourful shit with lots of fruit and paraphernalia. I nip off to the washroom to powder my nose and when I return I see that two fine ladies have joined us. They are looking at Ackman’s data slate as he shows them the price of some newly recovered movies and music that are for auction on the Dead Channels commerce site. There’s still a week to go and even the cheapest item is already fetching 5 big ones, they’ll close out at 10-15 times that. Ackman puts in a few bids to impress the girls which is a cheap empty gesture as he knows he won’t win. Now I know those Dead Channels boys go to some pretty hazardous places and use some cutting edge recovery tech but at times it just feels like they are exploiting gentlemen of taste.

Time passes, we drink a lot of the colourful alcohol and we all do some of Johnson’s coke though I’ll admit that I probably have more than the other 3 combined. What can I say, I’m enjoying myself. The 80’s man never apologizes for going all out; for being his best. At some stage, something starts to nag at me. We’ve been here for hours discussing the merits of low-res video, the pleasing yet impossible to replicate artifacts of analogue media and the joy of the visionary 80’s fashion designers. Whilst I’ll be the first to say that’s all well and nice it feels like I’m at some geeky seed collectors convention. I realise that I’m sweating and put my face on the metal table. It’s cool and my sweating eases. Some coke falls from my nose onto the table and without breaking contact with the cooling metallic surface I lick it from the table. I have just licked the table in a bar that I’ve waited 3 years to get into. Luckily no one saw my temporary lapse into strangeness.
“Did your friend just lick the table?” asks one of the girls, "And why is he sweating like that?" Shit.

I am standing on the table berating the crowd. I have no recollection of clambering up, maybe someone put me here. On reflection that seems unlikely. "You are people possessed by your possessions" I scream, "This is not the true path! I am possessed by my demons and that is the way of the 80’s man. These wonderful gizmos that we all love, they are only meant to reflect us, to make us shine ever more brightly." The bar has gone silent and I see that someone has hurled brightly coloured drinks against the wall of magazine covers. All eyes are on me. "Gordon and Patrick would be so ashamed of you if they were here now.” I continue. “We are the best this city has to offer, we should be taking it for ourselves. We should be kicking those tech-utopians out of their towers and making them our own. We should be remaking this city in our own beautiful image!" The silence is broken by someone laughing then clapping and whooping. He could have been being sarcastic but if he is then the joke’s on him as it catches and soon the whole bar is hooting and applauding. The music resumes and the drinks flow. Everyone wants a piece of me, to buy me a drink or offer me a handjob in the toilets. I have arrived on the 4:3ality scene and it is a beautiful thing.

True Fiction Archives: Kinship.

A short audio tale of friends and strange surroundings. credits released May 3, 2021

Ⓐ ⓢⓣⓞⓡⓨ ⓞⓕ ⓕⓡⓘⓔⓝⓓⓢ ⓐⓝⓓ ⓢⓣⓡⓐⓝⓖⓔ ⓢⓤⓡⓡⓞⓤⓝⓓⓘⓝⓖⓢ     -⃝ ⓟⓐⓡⓣ ①

released October, 2020

A̷̢͙̘͍̩̲̪̲͇͎͋̾͐̅̐̅́͝ ̸̨̮̦͐͠s̶̭͎̖͇̀͐̚͘͝ţ̴̳͕̪̩͑̊̈́̍̽͜ò̴̯̟̖͖̠̠̋̑͗̋̈́̏͝r̴̺̜͚̄̃́̈́̑͜ͅy̸̢̛͕̹̺̪̙̝̟̺̬̍̀͘͘ ̶̡̨͕͍̭͗̃́̎͒̀̇ő̴̡̖̜̦̭͒̕f̸̖̫̺̆̈́̈́̚͜͝ ̶̞̓͊̇̔f̵̝̦͎̣͚̬͓̐͆͂r̷͓͕͛͂͆͛̿i̷̟̎̃̎̚e̸̼̪̯̮̦͈̳̅̍͂͋͗͜͠͝n̸̛̞̞͑̈́̓d̵̤̱̣̻̦͍̦͔͗͗̄͊͑̇͋s̴̡̡̛̲̄̔̆͊͐̓̋́͜ ̵͚̏̒͝ͅa̵̞̖̬̭̺͙̘̒̑̒́͑̔̈͌̚͝ņ̶̦̦͈̘̒̽͝d̷̢̹̱͍̒̋̈ ̷̰̉̓š̵̨̧̜̜͈͉̹̳̑́̑́͘͘̕͝t̸̺̩̖̻͌̽̇͜͜r̶̰̂̄̎͆͠a̷̢̠̜͉̜̞͇̖͊͒̐͌͘̕n̴̲̻͑̄͗̑̈́͝͝g̶̨̫̪͕̳͍̥̪̬̕͜e̴͇̜͆͐̎ ̵̧̩̙̠̬̟͛̈̌̃̓͊͒̊̚͠s̸̱̈̾̒͌͑͗͝ū̵̖̖̼͇͍̬͕͛̓̔͠r̶̻͈̖͇̻̣͔̯̭̂͒͋̒r̵̲̰͍̙̞̃̂̎̎͘͜ǫ̴͚̞̆ú̷̹̞̓͆̌̀̅͒̉̋ņ̷̡̢̰̬̰̜̳̭̓̃͛̓̽̋̑͐͝d̶̟̳̮̮̲̥̥͍̹̏̈̌̇̎̽͘͠ͅḯ̷̛͖̻̲̪͖͍̬͈̏͆̈́̄̎̍̓ň̸̡͙g̶͔͂̈́̇̽̚s̸̱̼̹̗̮͊̏͂͒̈́̚ ̴̙̬͋̌̓-̸̼̑̐̏̀̋́̾̕ ̶̢̜̟̞͖̩͉͂̈́̈̾̉̈́̀͂͒̂p̶̧̬͉͇̭̲̜̱̞͆͋̆͆̋͗͘a̴̪̱͚̦̗̞̭̫̭̍̽͋̋̄̈́̿͒͘r̴̼̲̫̗͂̈́͛̅͊̒t̷͇͇̹̬̎͌̋̐̒̋̇̂̕ ̷̦͗̉̿̔͠2̵̩͙̱͕͎̼͔̰̐̄̀̑̃̉̆͆̐̕͜͜

released October, 2020

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.

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.

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."

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.