The human race has always been sure of one thing:
advancement. We advanced until we discovered every scrap of habitable land on
this planet. Then we looked to the skies, and advanced till we had seen as many
of the stars as we could or wanted to. We advanced in medicine till we had a
cure for every medical condition, or if we couldn't cure it, we could stabilize
it, and if we couldn't stabilize it—well, the least we could do was make sure
we knew what it was so that nobody else would get it. But the thing that
carried us the furthest through the ages?
Information.
Whatever the term: data, correspondence, history, records;
the most powerful form of information is secrets—what could you know that no
one else did? The closer the secret, the more valuable it was, the more
valuable you were. It didn't matter if the information was valuable to you; its
value was your ability to trade it like currency. Hence, the "pennies and
dimes" were the sorts of things one could find easily over the Internet,
on a computer. The "bills" were harder to find: experiences, redacted
files, secrets one could not afford to write down.
With information prized so highly, the use of computers only
lasted so long. We could build faster computers with more memory capacity that
could fit in the palm of your hand; entire libraries on a chip no bigger than
your thumbnail. Then one day some geniuses got together and decided that rather
than build an external artificial intelligence, why not find a way to utilize
the brains people already had? Everyone knows that only a small amount of grey
matter is entirely capable of performing all the necessary functions we need
our brains to do. Medical technologists developed a small implant called a
receptacle, which could be inserted anywhere behind the ears or at the back of
the head.
Originally, receptacles needed a cord to connect them to a
small external drive that looked like an old-fashioned flip-phone, called a
wallet, by which specific pieces of information could be displayed for verification
and exchanged. Early models attempted to incorporate the unsightly cable into
fashion accessories, but everyone knew an improvement was in order. One
came—the wireless receptacle, which used the invisible, omnipresent aethernet
waves to transmit stored information to the wallet at will.
The more prominent people knew information about everyone
under them. Secrets and personal info were loaded onto cards, and these cards
(called "credibility cards", or cred cards) were held by the Chief
Security Officer of any company. A copy of each cred card from every business
and municipality in Wales was itself combined on a mega cred card, under the
sole property of the Head of Security for the Grand Assembly. He alone was the
man with the most information. And he was a man with many enemies.
His name was Captain George Whitaker, and he was a dangerous
man to cross. He had enough secrets about every Welsh citizen to invalidate any
cred card brought against him, and his own receptacle was several times larger
than the legal rate for anyone else. That way, he was safe, and his job was to
protect the administration of Wales. Anyone desiring to discredit a Member of
Assembly had to go through Whitaker, and very few people ever made it past him.
It would have been "all", if not for one man.
Adam LaRouge, sometimes called "La Rogue", by some
in anger, while others used it as a term of affection: trained both by the
military and who knew how many other elite organizations, he was as formidable
in mind as he was in body. His average stature belied hardened muscles and
lightning reflexes bought with years of intensive conditioning. His gift for
combat typically caused his enemies to overlook his enhanced receptacle and
cunning mind. Adam was a Mercenary, a Witness and Delete Specialist available
for secret contract.
He had trained his entire brain to act like a receptacle,
and any job he was given he took only a few minutes to figure out the fastest
most efficient way to accomplish it. That was what made him so popular among
the high society of Wales. Adam, as well as being an expert Witness—one who
could witness a premeditated event no one else knew about without being seen by
the subjects, and later produce a flawless report as seen from several
different angles, and not just about the subjects themselves but other possible
witnesses—but Adam was also regularly called in for "Deletion" jobs
as well.
The high value of information carried with it the risk of
unauthorized Witnessing, or someone knowing too much, or even just the need to
increase the value of one's information by eliminating anyone else who knew it.
In Adam's profession, there were two modes of "Deletion": Homicide
and cybercide.
Homicide involved killing a person, "erasing a
scandal," or "adjusting the population." Cybercide was much more
difficult and technical. It involved erasing a person's digital signal:
personal info files, any “cloud whisper” or mention over the aethernet of the
person’s name, surveillance recognition, and last of all, disconnecting the
receptacle. It would not kill the person, but with the whole culture being
centered around a cerebral receptacle as a normal occurrence, cybercide reduced
the quality of life to virtually nothing civilized.
Adam moved from lower-middle-class to squarely in the
upper-class citizenry when he landed a job on the Welsh Representative Assembly
Information Tech Hit Squad (known by their acronym, WRAITHS), as a privately
contracted Mercenary for desperate MA's needing information acquisition or
elimination. Adam grew to recognize the wealth of information among the Streets
of Wales, the ground-level that had been abandoned long ago.
As buildings grew taller, so did roads and byways. Small,
personal hovercraft came into high fashion around the late 20th
century, with larger-scale models used for middle-class public transportation.
Social stratification became more than just a hypothetical theory. For Wales
and for most of the world, it was physical reality. The lower classes could not
afford receptacles, so many social activities were no longer an option: travel,
since most public technology was geared toward receptacle accommodation, or
“receptivity”; and information, which had to be passed the old-fashioned way,
via physical clues, handwritten notes, or word-of-mouth. These limitations made
it much harder to verify than cred information, but Adam found out through
consistent use and the forming of relationships based on sharing common
knowledge that very often these people were exactly right in their info. The Streets
were a relatively “safe” place to perform secret crimes and dealings in the
minds of the upper-classes. There was little chance that anyone with a
receptacle would Witness the action, and the Streetwalkers could not possibly
possess the capacity to remember what they had seen with any accuracy, for any
length of time.
It was supposed to be a simple job. Just another deletion
in the life of legendary Mercenary Drake Ross. No one knew his real name, and
until he was able to achieve a legitimate position, no one needed to.
Drake received the familiar manila package with grim
satisfaction. From the insulated envelope, he pulled out a thin, clear silicon
membrane. An “application.”
The membrane had been treated with chemical ink, one that
reacted only to human skin, one that burned and seared its message into the
skin of the recipient. Softer skin was not as painful, but the message didn’t
last as long. Too many applications in one area seared the skin and made the
applications excruciatingly painful as the chemical burned through scar tissue
to take effect. The inside of the arm was a common place to receive
applications. The skin was soft enough to take as many as twelve applications
before searing over. Other common places were the shoulder or the abdomen. If
the inside of the arm was spent, most Mercenaries would move to the back of the
hand before daring to apply with the back of the arm. The chemical burned the
hairs down to the roots to reach the skin. It was always painful, because once
the hairs were gone, the skin had already seared over, and there was nothing
else for it. Cruel gang-lords typically gave reluctant victims repeated
applications on their legs, and vendettas were self-applied to the
well-calloused heel. On soft tissue, the message lasted a few minutes, and it
was very faint. Over seared skin, the ink burned darker, and the scars were
visible for several hours. Heel applications remained for years, and the person
was reminded of its presence with a shooting pain up their entire leg for years
afterwards.
Drake rolled up his sleeve. There was no hair on his
forearm—the mark of a career Mercenary. He carefully laid the application film
just below the wrist and set his teeth. The burning began, and Drake forced
himself to stare at where the message would appear. The sooner he read it, the
sooner he could remove the film.
Delete: Desyre Maloney. Cybercide.
His hands were stiff with pain, but Drake used the rigid
claws of his fingers to scrape the film off his skin. He knew his orders; he
paused for breath as the film dropped from his fingertips. He flexed his
fingers and massaged his palms to relax the muscles. Already the message was
beginning to fade.
With calm born of expertise, he opened his comp-unit and
began pulling out data concerning Desyre Maloney: her address, history,
aethernet accounts, any mention of her name anywhere in the Cloud—that ever
present breathable aethernet connection shared as common air between all
citizens of the world. Within an hour, it was done. Anyone who had ever heard
the name Desyre Maloney would no longer remember it. The more they breathed aethernet
cleared of her name, the more the “fresh” Cloud would replace and overwrite the
old. Now came the tricky part, the one Drake was good at: the final stroke,
severing the receptacle connection. For that, he would need to leave his
Fortieth-Level home and travel upwards to her address and Witness the final
stage of her deletion. Then he would be paid; no doubt the customer was someone
of excessively high status. Desyre’s address would require Drake to penetrate
the Skyline of Wales, the uppermost levels of the city. It wasn’t often that he
went there. He grabbed his “credibility” card and slipped it into his
trench-coat pocket, along with his digital “eraser”: a device that could
disconnect a specific receptacle frequency from a distance. He was careful to
seal the door behind him; wouldn’t want any unwelcome visitors walking in while
he was out on a job.
A hovercab awaited him just outside. Drake glanced down
as he stepped inside. He could see the Streets, a quarter of a mile below him.
Up in the Skyline, a full mile above the ground, the aethernet was so thick
that it blocked the “unseemly” area from view. Drake scanned three small
“factoids” from his receptacle to pay for his trip: he recalled them as they
slipped from his wallet-screen to the driver’s.
“The first black man to be elected President of the
United States was Barack Obama in the year 2008.”
“Emeryn Vreitnach was born in Gellyndwychoch.”
“Singer Dorothea Wystromme likes to bowl on the
weekends.”
The driver nodded, satisfied with the amount. “Where to?”
“Sixty-two-fourteen, Aerynn Block,” Drake told him.
Twenty levels up, six units west, and three north from their current location.
“Hang on,” the driver instructed, and as he switched
gears, the hovercab soared upwards. When it reached Level Sixty, the hovercab
detached from the riser and caught a west-bound airstream. From there, it
attached to the northbound lane that brought him to a stop at the bay of Aerynn
Block.
“Wait here,” Drake knew it would only take a few minutes
for the eraser to do its work. He stepped from the cab onto the “streets” of
Aerynn, fully enclosed and climate-controlled. He activated the locator beacon
on the eraser. It latched onto the receptacle signal for Desyre Maloney, and
Drake stood in the shadows across the street from the house as he watched the
signal strength climb to full capacity.
97%...
98%...
99%...
100%.
Drake pulled the trigger. The numbers immediately
plummeted.
76%...
48%...
32%...
19%...
7%...
3%...
2%...
NO SIGNAL.
It was done. Drake checked the time stamp. 11:15 AM.
Record time. The payment in credibility would be waiting for him in his
mail-slot. He could buy himself a nice supper with it.
Drake returned to the hovercab.
“Return.”
The driver glanced at him, “That’ll be two bits more,
gov.”
Drake sighed and pulled two more blurbs, general ones,
out of his receptacle. He displayed them on his wallet. “Will these do?”
The driver nodded; he was just amassing info, he did not
care how general it was. In the Low Levels where he lived, he could always find
someone who didn’t have the same bits he received from his passengers.
Drake rode the hovercab back to his home, but the minute
the cab detached from his door, a Security Vehicle pulled into its place. An
Information Security Officer emerged.
“Adam LaRouge?” he asked.
“Yes,” Adam—known as Drake Ross only by his professional
contacts—verified, “I am Adam LaRouge.”
“You have been summoned before the Security Council. Come
with me.”
Deep in the heart of the Streets, Drake bit his lip at
the memory. That day was the last time he had ever said “I
am Adam LaRouge.”
Wow. When I first saw the title of this I assumed that it was a fantasy or historical fiction. Once again you've taken my expectations and completely turned them on their heads to make something innovative and new. I look forward to hearing more of these excerpts! :D
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