SLOGANS: The End of Sympathy, The Art of Control (part 2)
(C) Mark Burgess 2024,2025.PROLOGUE: PUNKED! (STEEPLE CHASE REMATCH)
Preeta? Check
Sara? uh huh.
Dermot? Here.
Kylie? Ok for now.
All right, Monitors are up. Waiting for the sync event in three, two, one…
Suddenly Preeta feels a gust of warm moist air. Inside her visor pads, her view scans a darkened cityscape befitting a science fiction movie, but it’s just VChina. Her camera eye moves past a giant billboard covered in brightly lit characters advertising a variety of products. The VR shows a bustling street scene, looking down on a steep spiralling staircase, packed with lights in many colours.
People dressed in traditional Chinese costumes are posing for vanity shoots in small groups. The monitor has pulled her into VChongqing for today’s entry point.
The temple cliff waterfront glistens in sync with the actual city. Below, the lights reflect across the river, and skyscrapers bend over her. Preeta smells the inevitable hotpot odours propagating through the crowd. Hard to tell how authentic these things are in a pod simulation, there's no way to know.
A crowd of tourists is gathered around the waterfront, which is nothing unusual for this fog capital. It’s the perfect place for selfies. Thousands of self-indulgent reality bubbles all bumping into one another, caring only for themselves.
Bishop watches over the team in the Oslo office. They know the habits and routines of the major gangs. Just a few days ago an orbital barge knocked several satellites off their orbits in the R, and cut off gang operations in the Americas. That means the cartels and their investors are being forced into using primed backup systems which the team was able to substitute for.
“I think I have him,” Preeta says.
Vibe's swarm of virtual players moves in. Her extended eyes tell her there's a rival gang moving into position. The targets are here, but her tracer shows that the player IDs are actually somewhere in the northeast of China.
"Confirm. Target has entered the room. I have an avatar. ” Preeta is tracking a Western looking man, beer belly, shaven head, beard, moving quickly down the stairs past the photo shoots. His avatar is that of a leather clad biker, which is so out of place here that it tells you it must be very close to his actual unapologetic appearance. He's flaunting the look as if in defiance–as a show of strength. But no one in the VR cares about him. It's what he's carrying that matters.
“Here we go,” says Bishop with an air of satisfaction. “Let’s hope our contact hasn’t given us the wrong intel.”
The man runs down some stairs and cuts into an alleyway on a midlevel, filled with street stalls displaying devices laid out on tables for purchase: including weapons and game exits. He grabs something from one of the tables as he goes, without stopping. No one would notice it unless they knew what to look for.
“First key acquired, check”.
“Here’s to a marriage of virtue”, Kylie chips in from London.
The other players can't see it but, thanks to Dermot’s magic, she can see what's inside his pouch. Part of a key, half assembled, to the syndicate’s private spaces.
"I've got some data coming in", a female voice calls out.
On the other side of the control centre, Dermot is immersing himself into his own game pod. He has been drafted into service, just as his grandfather was called back from retirement into junior teaching last year.
His visor's view shows a different scene: desert sands, tanks, and foot soldiers positioned on roads, scraped from the barren landscape. Tufts of dry grasses add texture to the ground. Twin rotor Chinook helicopters hover in the fringes of the view and a swarm of drones passes over him. Desert storm sim.
Dermiot readies himself for the jump. They predict their man could jump to one of a small number of locations in the game, most likely this one.
By jumping around the virtual world, they are actually moving between physical servers, picking up assets that can't easily be assembled by any single jurisdiction...Each run is actually an encrypted keychain.
This war zone’s where white mobsters like to hang out with their sports team supporter allies. With smart armour and hacked weaponry, a whole generation of gun loving enthusiasts congregates here regularly to pump testosterone.
Some people simply enjoy other people’s pain.
“Connection established,” Dermot says.
A simple crypto trap has acted as fly paper, making them open a door just long enough to see where their political connections and money are kept.
Dermot's voice cuts in. "Decoy is online and the incentives are starting to get noticed.”
"Looks like they have all three groups now, running together. Brain Fertiliser, Holy Investments are joining,
These days it’s easier to localize people because everyone needs to use tunnels to access foreign networks.
Vibe chips in. “My network is picking up a few adversaries, but they are probably visible to him, so we should try to stay out of their way.”
“I’m still on him, line of sight”, Preeta confirms. “He’s picked up the first asset and is following one of his usual routes, messing with the snakeheads and the Cambodians, dodging some local heat. Making a show of it. ”
“That’s his style,” Bishop confirms. “Let’s let the Chinese play with him for a while and stay in stealth.”
Suddenly the man she's following starts running. He has no immediate exit, trapped by their enclosure, but he can still evade them if he's smart enough. But how did he know? She follows him down the luminous pagoda’s endless stairway passing the denizens of the night flaunting their costumes. Has he detected them somehow?
They've never tried something this ambitious before, but the Asian gangs have massive resources of their own and they are never to be underestimated when it comes to hacking.
Somewhere in London, Den Morris is watching the operation from the centre of a riot outside his building. His tip-off is what alerted the team to the key chain. Soccer gangs gathering to fight in the city, Britain’s shameful plague of grown men, roaring and kicking like apes, is propped up by sophisticated gang fund system and assets that mobilize their carnage.
Outside his office, a vast group of flagwaving men and women is marching. They wave their St George's flags in defiance of a restless and increasingly militarized police. The Masc of Men (Masc as in Masculine) fighting against everything the enlightenment stands for, flaunting random violence. Their leader is a woman whose simple insults bait them every time... Her slogan: Just call them names...entrap violent instinct.
As a marketeer, involved in politics, Den is privy to information that the interpol team has been seeking for some time. The Contessa practically tricked him to cooperate with this special taskforce. If you want to hide something in the gaming age, you need to follow the players in the game. Resources aren't stored at a fixed location anymore. They move around with the players from game server to game server, behind layers of virtualization.
Preeta watches her street scene develop in the Chinese fog capital, “Alright, they're starting to move in. He’s loaded a doorway. I think he’s getting ready to jump.”
On the signal, Preeta hops just ahead of him using their special access. She waits for him at an intersection on the promenade, dressed as a man so he won’t avoid her, and slips what looks like a cockroach into his VPouch just as he approaches the portal. It has to be open for that split second in order to reencrypt its tunnel. The cockroach will make a copy of the remaining key pad as soon as it’s installed and (as long as they can pick it up on the other end) it will give them inside access for as long as they can keep it hidden.
"Time's up.There he goes.”
“Dermot?”
After a few long seconds, the man appears close to Dermot's position in the desert. He immediately pulls out sunglasses and looks around his feet, kicking the dirt, strutting around close to his position. He thinks he’s done it. The biker lopes towards something and reaches down into the sand.
There’s some kind of stone figure, an idol or carving as if from some Byzantine civilization.
A small cockroach jumps out from his clothing and scuttles across the sand.
He picks up the carving and raises his arms in a victory sign. And then he disappears.
INTERLUDE : THE GROWING CRISIS
Newsflash!
The cat is now wearing the bag!
Supermodel Anubis Drexler, daughter of US President Vanguard-Blackrock-Drexler, walked down the catwalk in an Amori reconstituted microplastic bag, revealing pussy galore to the fashion world today. Her catwalk opens the meeting of Second Tier Western leaders for the E3 summit, led by the FauxHolywood game company's CEO Gino Murdoch-Pellosi. The world winning VR game platform is predicting inflation of 3.6 percent next year in player conversions, with otaki paws.
Meanwhile. the Austramerica media empire, unofficially known as AUUSwiz released leaked information from its office in Zurich about a secret intelligence agency, whose nation state composition is as yet unknown. From his mansion in the Florida capital, republican senator Weisskopf, alias Mouth of the Lord, was quoted as saying: we are fighting for US freedom from the extreme politics of the communist aligned adversaries and their allies in the Four Eyes intelligence network.
In other news..
Members of the Holy Senate in Washington DC gathered today in recognition of the late Senator from the state of Arizona, best known for his role in founding investment in the same FauxHolywood InVRstments. After falling prey to a bacterial infection on a visit to Mexico, he was taken to Pembroke hospital in Pacific DMZ, and is believed to have suffered cardiac arrest.
The senator controversially alleged that America has been minding everyone else’s business except its own. He proposed that the CIA’s Little Red PlayBook be universally applied in a future of free access to the game for all American patriots. In exchanged barbs with house members he claimed that Western Civilisation had stopped painting its fences and taking out its trash, and was in a state of decline.
This news has been brought to you by FauxHolywood industries. Get your free game subscription today. Military grade.
SYMPATHY FOR THE ZOMBIE
After the operation debriefing, Dermot flees the office and seeks refuge in his domestic cocoon. When he reaches his apartment, he locks the door behind him and slides down the door to his knees thankful for its familiar protections. He's exhausted. It takes a lot out of you being immersed in the VR, and the transition back can be stressful. It turns some users into zombies–addicts with locked in syndrome popping pills to manage the symptoms.
His wall calendar taunts him with today’s slogans.
BREAK FREE AND INDULGE!
BURN THE CANDLE AT BOTH ENDS!
Thanks for the vote of confidence, he thinks.
Outside the VR the world is scary, and he feels VRnerable. The pills calm him a little, but the confidence he feels in the game evaporates when he meets flesh and blood. Here, he’s back to a space he can control.
Lately he’s had something of a crush on the new Indian woman. She’s been a welcome distraction from the trauma of his meeting with Christina, whom he met on the tram all those months ago. So beautiful but …
He never told anyone about that evening, but Bishop still ribs him for being late to the crucial meet and greet. His mind keeps tumbling back into the episode. And as he lifts himself from the door and goes to the fridge to fetch a bottle of fizzy water, it floods back to him again.
Christina, is he allowed to call her that? He never really knew her at all. She called him that day and asked him to come and help her.. Her entire being compelled him to go. He’s still ashamed of the power she had over him. Now he’s reliving it all over again, his heart pounding as it was then… where are his pills?
Her address was in a secluded side street, just outside the centre of the city, close to the river. Is it social housing? He’s not sure. The red brick building, maybe five stories high, doesn’t seem to be well maintained. He finds her name on the call panel and rings the bell. He’s tumbling…
“Hello?”
“It’s Dermot, you asked me to come. Stupid thing to say.”
She opens the door. “First floor.”
He climbs a few steps and finds his way through a sterile corridor of cheap cardboard doors and grey formica flooring. It’s long and straight, and feels like a hospital. The doors open outwards into the corridor, and he sees one left ajar. He heads towards it and knocks as he enters.
Inside, the small bedsit is a total catastrophe. A single room, but there is no sign of her at first. A bulky mound of unwashed clothes hangs from a hook near the door. There’s threadbare carpeting and a sofa, both filthy with crumbs and spilled food. There are papers and children's toys lying everywhere across the carpet. Old newspapers, and brochures about god and online gambling are piled up against a wall. As he moves into the room, he sees a curtain surrounding a bed with tossed covers that haven’t been washed for some time.
On the kitchen bench, pots and plates are piled up, also unwashed. It smells bad.
She comes into view from behind the bed, still wearing office clothes, now with food stains. A slim black skirt and a white blouse, but she doesn’t seem to care. She would be physically perfect, but something about her is slightly disturbing. This is not who he thought she was.
She doesn’t offer him tea. There are no clean cups.
She moves papers and cushions from the crumb-ridden sofa for him to sit. “It’s a bit dirty,” she admits.
“You have a kid?” he manages.
“He’s with his dad. I don’t get to see him too often.”
What has he stumbled into? Dermot scans the room. On one wall she has two small black and white pictures of what look like death-metal bands. Someone in the pictures looks a bit like her.
“Is that you?”
“I used to hang out with them before I came here.” Dermot’s musical taste has always been quite heavy. He oscillates between dark classical motifs like Shostakovich or Honegger and heavy rock bands. But these guys look more hard core than he would normally listen to. They have this whole death thing going on.
“You moved? Where from?”
“Up North. I hung out with this band.” She points to one of the painted faces adorned with straight black hair. “He was the bass player. They used to have me in the room when they were practising.” She adds. “He left me cause I was a bitch.” She says it with almost complete dispassion.
Suddenly, he sees a world that’s so lonely, for all the connectivity of the VR. When we all meet...we only do so to win or to fight. Otherwise we engage in fantasy.
Suddenly she’s puffing on a cigarette. He’s hardly ever seen a cigarette before, except in old movies. The smell is acrid. He is not quite sure what to say now.
“So you need a new boyfriend then,” he jokes, fishing for information.
She shrugs and inhales long and hard on the cigarette, wincing, almost as though in pain. She stares out of the window. Then, she seems to tire of it and goes over to the bed and brings a laptop computer. It’s filthy too. She hands it to him and fumbles the pack of cigarettes back into her skirt waist.
“Marius poured his drink on it. I have nothing to do now.”
Yes, that’s it, he realizes. She’s a zombie. The VR is still a lifeline for so many. If your life doesn't have a sense of purpose, it’s an ok surrogate. Something to look forward to. He opens it, avoiding the sticky patch and presses the start button.It starts to light up, changing colour a couple of times and then suddenly it stops.
Controller Error.
No kidding, Dermot thinks.
“Probably some kind of memory error,” he says.
She looks at him expectantly.
“I only use it for VR. I like the chat rooms. I like watching, flirting with men, making them horny.”
Dermot’s mind reels, trying to focus on the device while his subconscious is urging him to see through her slim clothing. He uses a special key combination to flip the device into debug mode and starts it up again. She watches him without apparent interest, but with an almost judgemental dispassion. She’s seeing how he performs, he thinks. I am a lab rat. Of the two kinds of zombie, she’s a WATCHER not a PLAYER.
He wonders if she really wants him to fix it, or whether this was just a reason for making contact. In spite of her almost demure look, she seems reclusive and lonely. It makes him like her and fear her at the same time.
He fiddles with the laptop for a while longer to make sure there is not something trivial wrong then, seeing that she is no longer interested, gives in. “I don’t think I can do anything with this now,” he says, not really sure that she cares anymore. “But I might be able to find something at work.”
“Doesn’t matter. I just thought you might know. I got fired today,” she says matter of factly. “I’m not very good with work.I only wanted the job so that I could use their VR. The boss caught us and warned me and the girl I worked with. He only fired me though.”
Dermot examines her critically now. She could be in a different world, mailing telegrams to him. He is not even sure if she’s really communicating. Perhaps she is a robot. Does this qualify as a Turing test?
Matter of factly, she adds: “Sometimes I think it’s time I got a lover.” She takes a puff of her cigarette and winces. “I don’t like that word.” She seems to taste it in her mouth, “I don’t want a boyfriend. You know, I wondered what it would be like to have sex after the baby. I went out and followed this guy from a pub until he came home with me. He was so drunk, he couldn’t finish. I thought he would never finish. It was …”
Dermot feels a sudden panic. The desire to escape. “ I should be going soon.” “Okay,” she says and gets up immediately, as though this is what she had been waiting for all along. She starts rummaging through a jacket. “I need to buy cigarettes.”
He gets up, carefully, conscious of the visibility of his desire. If she notices, she doesn’t let on.
“So, I’ll see you around then,” he pleads, embarrassed by his own desperation. “I’ll let you know if I can get hold of something at work.”
At this, she intrigues him by smiling shyly, as though flattered. “Really?”
“Yeah. . .I’d like that.”
She grabs an old-style payment card that was lying on the table and a key, presumably to the door and ushers him out into the hallway.
“We can go this way,” she says, taking the opposite direction to the way he arrived.
Suddenly, Dermot is dispatched into the darkness, not knowing exactly what happened.
A FRENCH REVOLUTION
Vibe pushes a boy out of her front door and sighs. The quality of these useful idiots is dropping, she thinks. Or has her bar been raised recently? She needs more than a squirming limpet mine to feel good after work this intense.
She goes to enjoy a 5 minute shower – the upper limit in her building thanks to water and filtration rationing. She’s agreed to meet Preeta and Dermot for a drink later to calm all their nerves, after the op.
In the aftermath of the day, Vibe feels a little freaked out. It started with an op they’ve been planning for months. Then she went to the university–to meet with her supervisor, and a video meeting with the increasingly elusive French team. Her secret double life keeps her busy now thanks to that fateful trip to the mountains. At first, she was sceptical of Bishop and the way he strong-armed her into his group. She had plans and ambitions for her life, then all this happened–but he convinced her that those plans were based on a world of five years ago. Now things are very different.
At first it was a sense of duty, but gradually she feels herself changing. Their mission has charged her with a sense of purpose. It must be part of growing up. If she was once a spoiled child, now she’s an expired infant.
The frenchies taught her a lot these past years, first developing fruit picking robots – apples and grapes for the outdoor and indoor vineyards and fruit farms. They taught her Promise Theory. What if we turn the world view upside down? They call it "voluntary cooperation".
The French pushed ahead of Dutch competitors and even UK vertical farming companies, and it was all going so well until a group of hacktivists brought down a Chinese New Year drone swarm over Paris, and they were suddenly turned into weapons, crashing into a financial centre, killing and injuring dozens. It highlighted a pretty obvious vulnerability. and violent riots started again in Paris and Lyons, putting everyone under pressure.
Now the French have announced new orders to focus on the development of police crowd control robots. and drone hunter killers to patrol airport airspace. That required more complex reasoning. This was all turning Robocop very fast.
Today, commerce is more and more about the virtual. The artificial. It’s being pushed by the financiers with a desperation that rivals that applied to cryptotech and cold-Quant computing
Amidst all this, old man Bishop’s team has become like a second home for her. Each of them has had their worlds turned upside down over the past year. Wafted away from reality to work on a top secret project, all while hiding in plain sight. They had to take security classes from Israelis and military operation classes from Americans. There’s big money at stake, and maybe even the future of humanity if they’re to believe everything, he says–which she almost does. It’s definitely turned her mind upside down.
"Welcome to our little group of misfits. I selected you all personally to be here in this room. The dispersion of power by social virreality leaves a vacuum into which organized crime thrives.““Information technology brought about the dispersion of power from a few individuals to everyone–who never should have had it.”
Bishop installed a handwritten slogan on their whiteboard in giant letters.
“The history of the world is the history of organised crime.” Then he delivered a lecture on how their goal was to bring people back together, to realign their beliefs and motives, on a scale larger than any tribe or cult. To reinvent society. “The Dunbar numbers are what we have to exceed,” he proclaimed.
“How do we conquer hatred? How do we put out that flame of anger? Knowing who's behind it doesn't help. They are strong, and we are fighting chaos. We need to hack the attention of the entire population”
Vibe dries herself and pulls on some leggings that make her look irresistible with a loose shirt. She pulls on some running shoes and dashes out of her apartment to head for the hotel where she’s promised to meet the others.
Across town, she takes the elevator to the 9th floor of an old hotel and walks to the terrace bar to feel the sun on her face. Down below, the wind is rusting the trees. This is R. It feels so safe, so far from the madness– deceptively safe. Why does the virtual world seem so much more confrontational? Of course, it's designed that way, for selling and for influencing.
Preeta and Dermot arrive together a short time later. He seems to hang onto her like a puppy, and he’s definitely scared of me, she smiles. Preeta, on the other hand, just seems happy, watching people around her as if they are a rare species. She texts Bea that she will see her later, and orders drinks for the table on her wristband.
The team is larger than the three of them, but these three very different individuals bonded quickly after arriving together, pulled out of the aether to form a special project. Somehow, Bishop had known about them and what they could do, before even they did. \
The warming sun suddenly bursts through the clouds and a transitory rush of wind embraces them. As if God just crash landed over the hills after hitting another orbital mine. The rush of natural reality is suddenly quite emotional for her. Kids, like her, who grow up outside the city have more of a chance to stay grounded.
The team finds a quiet place to sit on the rooftop cafe. Remember, Bishop said. We have to assume that we are always under surveillance.
“Well, here we are,” Vibe begins.
“We did it!” Preeta grins. “Our first op.”
Dermot raises a glass, “Cheers. To Philip K Dick.”
Their fully autonomous digital lifeform, nicknamed “Eye in the Sky” – is a predator bot to seek out and trace manipulative forces in the game. It already gobbles up the amateur religious sects, and now they are getting closer to something inside the cartels and hacker collectives.
It’s all smiles now, she thinks. Yet, underneath it all, they know that –no matter how the sun shines in R– there are clouds of black rain brewing.
DESERT GHOSTs
Oslo, 2nd of August. 19:21.
“Sir. We've found it. This is the remains of the site.”
Bishop moves around the video link to survey the scene. He lobs it onto the big screen in their situation room. Preeta looks up and takes off her visor to see better.
“This is the live action sync site for the room Dermot was monitoring during the op,” he explains. This is an orchestrated warzone.
The American sergeant continues. “We’ve found remnants of a traffic farm here nearby. There’s blood in the sand. Too late for DNA probably, We are in pursuit, but we didn’t reach it in time to see anyone.”
“Show me the farm,” Bishop asks. The video drone spins around and flies over to a blackened crater surrounded by debris.
“People were holed up here until quite recently. Traffickers. Signs people were kept against their will. Two dead bodies have been buried in shallow graves. Young men, probably of Indonesian origin.”
“Looks like someone lobbed a grenade into the building when they left. No one came to help these people.”
“Oh my god!” Preeta clutches her heart.
“And all on American soil.“
“When you see this it's sometimes easy to forget that there are ordinary people who are serious and good and decent in the world caught up in this cattle operation against their will."
“The fact that we can get this kind of intel is already a major win. We can’t prosecute across borders without this kind of treaty cooperation. Is there anything new there?” Bishop asks.
The officer nods. “Yes,” he beams proudly. “We recovered an intact hardware device. Looks like they tried to blow it up, but the explosive was dud. It could be another part of a key generator.”
Bishop forms half a wry smile. “Let’s get a copy of that quick.”
Bishop turns suddenly dark..
Dermot joins them. “How do we fight that kind of contempt for human life?”
“With everything we’ve got,” Bishop says.
INTERLUDE: QED
The European Defence League announced election results today alongside images of huge protests against democracy. A candidate for the ProDemon-ocracy leadership stated that the previously reported imagery of protests was grossly exaggerated and that selective camera angles were used to inflate estimates of violence in the European capital.
Obasi Adeola of the African Alliance said no one had given any thought to whether international rule of law could survive a doubling of population and a technology shift ..
Meanwhile, the European democratic computation’s two oracle avatars calculated results as follows.
The competition computer from the democracy-right enclave has calculated the winner to 12 decimal places using quantum election-dynamics–the most accurate social theory in history. The democracy-left computer has scraped and collected all possible statistical opinions from representative politicians and is taking the average to find what has to be the left answer.
So, when what’s right is all that’s left, and whatever is left is surely right, the computer is left to be the right, for righteousness sake and shifts us so far left that it meets itself in a Godelian paradox.
This news is brought to you … to you… to you…
SANE SEBASTIAN
The sound of waves rolling up onto the San Sebastian shore ride on a light breeze from far off in the distance. On the surface everything seems quite normal, apart from falling ash and the plume of smoke from wildfires in the distance, but Den Morris feels as though he has been fully manipulated into wanting this meeting with the Contessa. He’s made the journey following an instinct, but he does sense being a pawn in someone else’s game. That’s usually his superpower.
Catalin Constanca Alexandra Cortina is something of a mystery. They’re meeting at a mansion, sitting on the coast not far from the seafront. It’s an anachronism in this day and age, but Europe never truly escaped its delusion of class superiority--old money looking down at the even more powerful new money, trying to join it in ruling over a slowly sinking peasantry. He already jumped through several security hoops to see her.
For months he has been trying simply to speak to her. By reputation. she refuses to meet with anyone except in the R, and at a location of her own choosing. But that’s fair enough. It’s become almost impossible to know who or what anyone is online these days. Now, after months of persuasion and jumping through hoops, he’s secured a meeting with her.
They converge in a large room, served with small glasses of wine and hors d'oeuvres.
She enters like royalty, dressed in sexy high couture elegance, accompanied by a younger man.
“Welcome Mr Morris. Thank you for coming. I know visa travel is becoming a nuisance these days.” She’s clearly highly educated, but he knows nothing about her background. I apologise for the smoke. The fires are very close now.”
“Not at all, I’m used to it,” he demurs.
Den takes her hand, bowing slightly and twists it subtly in a mixture of deference and flirtation. She notices the move and a faint smile broaches her lips. He has to concentrate his mind on the task at hand. Her physical presence is quite intimidating.
“Your work has received much attention, Senor Morris. And yet you work for a simple marketing agency. They called you the man of the hour at the E3, no?”
Den shrugs. “Marketing analysis is basically a science these days,” he says. “My team’s been lucky to win some influential contracts. We caught the imagination of some powerful people. We do what we must to make our way in the world, even if that’s overthrowing governments. It is what it is. You also have something of a reputation.”
She smiles without answering and deflects. “Allow me to introduce Felix, who is here to help me explain to you what we do. He represents our sponsor.”
They shake.
“I’m from the Asian office”, he nods.
She’s coy about who’s funding her, Den thinks. Someone in Asia then?
“Our work here is a foundation to invest in our humanitarian future.” she shrugs ironically as she says it
Den tries to take control. “I was led to believe you were all about strengthening education on the game platforms.” That was the rumour he’d heard in the San Diego salon.
She groans. ‘Education, education, education…The weapon of the left. Too much education has made people stupid. People don't get smarter, they get more self-righteous until it becomes their religion. That’s bad for society. We need to get people engaged.”
Den’s eyebrows raise. “The Game is pretty engaging.”
“But not channelled for good purpose. We need better games to play.”
“Don’t change the product, change the packaging…” he nods.
“For many an excuse to bury their heads in a special kind of tribal sand... Common sense and wider understanding is not what anyone is selling…”
Felix adds: “This generation has been under incredible pressure to adapt to the virtualization of everything. You know–once upon time basic education could make a difference, but when everyone has it, it’s no longer an advantage. The level of expectation we have for the educated is way off the charts now. It’s unrealistic. Everyone’s selling themselves as the best of the best, with avatars that make them appear smarter than they are.
“The elites have cut themselves off into bubbles–which drift towards the left or the right. The right wants people to fall into line, but the left will not just lie down without question. They will march against the government and disrupt the balance, causing more instability. Without solid ground, there’s no way to rebuild anything.”
Den nods. They’re right, he thinks, the politics of left and the right. Each lives in its own bubble, protected from the wider reality.
Felix: Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if you’re left or right, it’s whether you’re “one of us” or not. Even liberal science got fenced into private worlds, under the pressures of bureaucratic mistrust, and radicalized scientists preach whatever they like outside their box. The very defenders of reason have become part of the force that turns the enlightenment dark. Most of us have to do whatever we’re asked to earn a living, but we are in a lucky situation of having the son of a rich magnate who has some foresight to try to shake things up.
Cortina: “Education and universal rights may have been a temporary bandaid for a century of industrialization, but they have now become a weapon in a world brainwashed to fight for endless freedom. Society is boiling now and we need to turn down the heat. All these overeducated people with no futures and thinking they know better can only put their skills to use for mischief. The left has weaponized rights, the right has weaponized wrongs, and what was wrong suddenly becomes a new right to be demanded–with rioting and chaos.
Felix: There are still some developing nations who are trying to educate their way out of poverty. But Western countries have just taken advantage of that to invite and indoctrinate them with entitled Western thinking. “
“Like Tarzan?” Den laughs. She doesn’t seem to understand his joke.
“Like Fulbright. But that game is too slow for the modern age. Mr Morris, you have been doing Senator Dean’s bidding for the past year. His efforts have been naive, perhaps even misguided, but the method wasn’t entirely wrong. “
“So, if not education, what have I misunderstood?”
“Cults, gangs, churches.” She watches him as the message sinks in. “We want to restore multilateral society in every country.”
Felix: “The West infected the Chinese with opiates and missionaries in the 19th century and now its governments are trying to use that same strategy at home, to hook citizens on an alternative to hard drugs. Cults. Gang against gang. Cartel against cartel. The goal is to manufacture a consensus as a habit, from small groups upward.”
“We have become a collection of mobs. Washington runs America like a ranch, Russia plays us like a video game, and Europe always plays itself like a dinner party at a game of polo. We insert ourselves like a virus to rewrite their DNA.”
The contessa pierces him with a singular gaze.
“Complete consensus is not realistic or even healthy, but alignment is. You know we are entering a new Dark Age, where blind belief replaces rational inquiry. Perhaps it is inevitable. Education eventually undermines itself, assuming that it will make people good, when it only helps them to understand their predicament. Now we are, as the Chinese would say: at the mouth of the tiger.”
“It’s a similar idea to what I do,” Den muses. “But you wouldn’t market it like that!”
“Governments deploy propaganda to make people believe something, or deploy chaos to make them believe nothing – people are effectively neutralised. Meanwhile, everyone is still bowing down to their habitual leaders, idols–whether religious, tribal, sports or media personalities, member clubs–and everywhere they are pretending there’s something democratic about it. Our mission is to find a kind of medicine against this populist disease.”
America is a country that despises weakness and celebrates strength. FauxHolywood now deploys robot fighters in the war regions that can be activated from the Game. Kids basically fight for the Army within certain parameters just by playing. It’s a new level of tribal gaming.You have to be careful not to joke or criticise its attitudes, especially about guns, seatbelts, or anything to do with individual choice. It can get foreigners into trouble. We can exploit that weakness.
“A herd of mostly Christian missionary succubots has been spreading through much of the Game alongside Dean’s influence farms. They have financial hooks into everything, including governments, and their ties to organized crime. This is our goal.”
“And so what are we doing here? Where is this going?” Den asks.
“I believe we can help. Together we have a unique opportunity. With perhaps enough funding to make a dent in it. I took the liberty of connecting you to a new taskforce that we sponsor. It’s an independent body, authorized by Interpol. You must help each other.”
Den’s eyes raise involuntarily. “So that was you…”
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PARTING THE CORTINA FORD
Den has the look of Bambi in a Broadway spotlight.
“You are the funding behind the special taskforce that reached out to me? “
She smiles, amused by his shock. “Not exactly. We are just a middle man, so to speak. Our senator friend was trying to bring us over to his side when we met him in San Diego. Our funds come from some interested players in the far East who are tired of our abusing Asian workers to prop up Western lobbyists,."
Felix adds: “The truth is a lot more chaotic than any one power, but the attempts to try to reform global order are real and spreading. It’s not good intentions. It’s fear.”
“I hear your company has already been helpful,” the contessa adds.
“That’s what we do,” he nods. “There’s a big market for manipulation. We try to walk a line.”
“But you started out as an academic. How does a thinking man end up in marketing?”
“Data science, obviously. That became Hysteria Mechanics for money.”
She seemed to be testing him. How far is he willing to go for her? These games people play in the name of power. His goal in this moment is merely to appear unphased. To hold his masque. Is he being manipulated now? He likes what they’re saying, but he’s already been caught in the web.
Den: “So, there are forces sewing chaos and revolution, and others creating zombies who lurk like Bodysnatchers stealing user avatars and abusing them, blackmailing… ”
Felix: “We’ve known we are losing our grip on social cohesion ever since we weaponised the idea of universal freedom as a human right. Everyone loves the idea of freedom until it doesn’t work in their favour. The game has given unlimited freedom at the push of a button, to ride roughshod over others’ lives.”
“Truth on a selfie stick,” Den smirks.
Felix adds, “When people live in a bubble they become more extreme in their views. We try to expose people to differences, discrediting bigotry from within. You might think the game does that, but people choose their bubbles… so we have to sour the milk for them. This is where you help.”
“I like the idea of helping to fight back,” Den admits. “Hysteria is a blunt instrument, but it keeps us afloat. Everyone lives in a bubble. Do you burst them? It could be like cutting out a lung, instead of piercing a cyst. The rich still need to exist to breathe life into the middle. The middle need to exist to work and pay taxes to feed the rich, and the poor are there to remind the middle class to work harder. It’s not obvious what the answer is. There can be no classless society.”
Den pontificates : “But…If you let too many become rich, society becomes unstable. Money attracts money and everything flows into a few pockets. If you take too much away in tax, the rich won’t engage in projects of great scope, building great technology or infrastructure to move us forward. The smaller the tribes the smaller the pockets. In the end everyone loses.“
“Exactly.” She seems impressed. “But they are trapped in their bubbles, prepping their gated nuclear shelters, and cannot see that. They have no idea how social order works.”
Felix interjects: “In the end, there is no ultra rich person who doesn’t go mad with power. Isolated and lonely. Empty palace syndrome. Everyone is ejected, and you rule over the remains. Eventually they try to poison what they can’t have. “
Den: No one is talking about nation building anymore.
“Democracy has always been unstable without something to align people. Politicians are ordinary people, completely out of their depth, but propped up by a circus of publicity. Singular religion used to play that role–keeping it together by being the authority. But in the game everyone is a potential influencer. Now that you can broadcast to anyone, even outside your tribe..“
“So who is pulling the strings?” he asks rhetorically
Felix: “Of course, still the holy trinity: the father, the son, and the holy aristocracy – church, banks, and the wealthy. Popes and presidents may compete for total rule, but string pullers hide in plain sight, in corporate boards, lobbyists, lawyers and judges. Think of all the British scandals–the post office, grooming gangs, police corruption, phone tapping, the downfall of the BBC. We only see the plumbers and carpenters of Hysteria Mechanics. The churches have always known how to manipulate our existential fears, perform inquisitions, consolidate tribes with tithes and guilt. In the West, they’re perceived only as the window dressing behind a sort of democratic pantomime. Meanwhile their actual leaders sit in the shadows. We don’t know who they really are, but I can guess.”
“And so you are building your little research project. Your own cult.”
“To infiltrate just a few links in the chain of power. And, to that end, we have something for you…”
It is dark now –almost eight in the evening. Preeta climbs onto a tram outside their covert headquarters and endures its ponderous ride down to the centre of town. She’s been warned not to ride the tram alone in some areas, but how bad could it be? This is Norway not Srinagar.
It stops at each of the stations to pick up very different looking groups of people. A clique of what looks like Somalis surprises her. The men are sporting football scarves and dancing around, getting ready for some game tonight, while a few wives are sitting at a cafe minding prams and strollers, dressed like bowling skittles, then another group of teenage girls wearing low cut jeans, blond wigs and nail polish, bellies exposed, as if ready for a night on the town. This is very far from her own muslim upbringing.
A family of rats runs across the street near the fast food outlets… as a group of zombies stands around fully engrossed in their virtual headpieces. The West still surprises her.
The summer air is humid outside, but when she first arrived, the country seemed dry and lifeless. All concrete and stone, dead things, grey trees, thin vegetation–nothing like South East Asia. Freezing winds opposed by excessive heating in her dorm, gave her a permanent headache. It sucked the moisture out of her, and the heavy bedding pressed down on her at night uncomfortably. She spent the first months of her stay, alone and lonely, taking refuge in the work, dumping every trick she knew into a knowledge base.
As the tram reaches a line of noisy pubs near the river, a group of skinheads carrying half finished beer glasses invades the tram loudly, throwing their weight around, putting their feet up on the seats and being generally vulgar. Startled, she looks to see if she could get off the tram now, but they have filled up the car so that no one can get past them, making a show of themselves.
They have good looking girls with them, slick and elegant. What are such women doing together with these balding Neanderthals? They’re telling absurd jokes about immigrants too loudly, making a statement to the unwilling public on the tram. Everyone is looking pretty uncomfortable, but they are trapped in this metal box.
Preeta tries to make herself small.
As the tram swings into the plaza by the central department store, she sees the policemen and women standing watch. There must the football. Suddenly something startles the skin-heads. One of the shouts, “Did you see that queer?” “There!”
The leader jumps up, spilling his beer and dropping the glass. He jams his hand into the gap between the tram doors to try to yank it open by force. A show of alpha strength. As the tram halts and the doors finally open, he storms out, with hatred in his glare, straight towards some random individual in the crowd. Preeta can’t see anything special about the man. He must be forty or fifty, with a thick beard. He doesn’t look very gay, but the Nazi walks up to him and simply punches him without warning.
His friends storm out of the tram for a fight. The man they have beaten is unharmed but incredulous. He staggers backwards and falls away from the thug who hit him, who looks around him for approval from his peers before laying in for the kill, giving the older man a pause to protect himself.
Luckily, the police are standing right next to the scene and they’ve heard the altercation. The stupid Nazis haven’t even seen them or don’t care. Preeta’s heart is racing and her whole body is tense, as she watches the police rush to the scene. This is a lucky break for the man, and for the rest of the town. The two police rush to protect the man who was attacked as the Nazis start throwing punches in all directions until a pair of drones flies quickly into view, spraying stun fumes onto the mob.
Her pumping heart settles, she shrugs it off and opens a file of notes she’s been building with Dermot. Their 10 commandments of influence. She types…:
Violent attacks– not random. Correlating with activity in the games, sports. She looks down the list.
Name calling to influence perception. Suppression of facts.
Shame and ridicule.
Implying popular opinion. (8 out of 10 dogs said their cats preferred it!)
Figureheads..celebrities
They are all the negative methods. But maybe it’s simple. If you tell people not to do X, you can be sure they are going to do both X, X squared, and eventually e^X.
The tram passes a billboard.
THE RICH ARE BLOCKING OUR WAY TO A FUTURE
WE ARE TRAPPED IN A VIRTUAL NOWHERE
There are deeper reasons for the madness too though. Fury at the ghettofication of cities, no one cleans the streets.
But they are so excited about their democracy. Just look at how that’s working out for everyone. Give your power of attorney to some stranger for their own power and privilege with no right to complain afterwards.
She sighs. People get their priorities mixed up. Instead of being happy with living safely they turn to ideology and righteous fantasy as their saviours.
Righteousness is truly the evil at the heart of virtue, she thinks.
Den leaves one of London’s finest restaurants, where local officials have been courting his influence and designing promises for their electorates. He smiles at a passer by only to receive an incredulous scowl in return. A once easy going British politeness has evaporated lately. A simple “good morning” has given way to suspicion and hostility. That and people sleeping on the street .
Having returned from Spain, to clean air free of smoke, he now feels torn between jobs: the obligations to his original contract with the Americans, the sudden change of course following the Senator’s demise, and not least the recent visit from Interpol, and a woman he would happily bed. His job has become far more complicated than he ever imagined. A new arms race for control of the human spirit is gathering pace. And there’s a definite ideological element to it all.
A powerful voice will always win, no matter its message. In the corridors of power, multiverses hide in the walls.
The meeting with Contessa was eye opening. She didn't hold back. She told him in no uncertain terms what he was mixed up in–that powerful churches remain where the real power is. He already knew that there was never any separation of Church and state in the US–but it feels far less obvious here. The leaders are not the real leaders. The age of the nation state already passed over to the age of capitalisation.
Now it’s coming at him from all sides. As the London mayor and his adjuncts just told him. A battle between good and evil has become a battle of perspectives. The strategy of the religious right is to shame and bully into conformance. They want the city to pass a law insisting that women cover this and wear that, and no one must make a sound or question a thing. Meanwhile, the League of California, a wealthy group of exiled leftists who invest in the city are pushing for the exact opposite. Let your kids run around without any respect for others, humans should declare themselves to be a new breed of plant, and worship the Girdle of Gaia. Is either of them actually good?
He sees it now. The weaponization of rights began with the culture of corporate litigation that masqueraded as democratic process. Gagging orders and NDAs, separation agreements and non compete clauses, all weaponized as threats. Then gradually religious conservatives used these tools to brainwash their golden vision of a new dark ages, in which the rich landowners enjoyed supremacy by fiat. Now the governments play people like a video game, manipulating the markets, the supplies. And increasingly their only answer to a crisis is simply: “Let us pray.”
The Contessa put it starkly: The real history of the world is the history of cults and of organised crime. Ideology is the greatest fractionator of society. Corruption and power structures have their roots in organized religion. The West’s angry supergod led to the culture for power projection by the West, while the East would still respect their ancestors’ achievements. Righteousness overruled family and tribe to form a church with an authoritarian model.
The question is: do they really think it can be stopped? Everyone is being tricked to believe they want their old Kings and Emperors back. The European aristocracy, the Tibetan nobles, the Ottoman khalifs, self-styled Aztec and Inca warlords of South America, even Atlantic Pirates. And the VR allows all these zealots to actually ascend to reappear in a spiritual plane, forgetting about Earthly concerns.
Senator Dean may have been trying only to consolidate government forces for American control. What Cortina wants is to cement new public loyalty to the idea of civic control everywhere. It won’t happen overnight. When you finally trace the long arm of religion back to people’s primal fears, you have a remarkably simple solution to thwarting chaos. Make people obey. That is really what the game is about. This is the Western power model.
Den’s wrist com suddenly vibrates with a message.
He snorts and makes an about turn to head for the Duke of Wellington pub. He’s late for the next meeting.
What was it Cortina said to him? In the West we began declining because we thought we'd finished our work. Now we're just going through the motions without a plan. Consuming, like the shark that has to keep swimming. Society can't just stop growing or it will perish and fall into decline, bled by a thousand cults.
In Europe we went to sleep on our high horses. So, time to break into a trot.
The First Law of Slogans: there is no concept or phrase that cannot be weaponized.
Den is in the VR, meeting with his virtual sister. He finds her on a park bench, outside the Savoy, in central VLondon. She’s reading a newspaper whose surfaces shimmer and change with colourful advertising. It is a sunny day and the place is quiet,. A few angels are flapping around with the pigeons, dragging their banners, begging for belief. No one is allowed to turn off those high tier AIgents, but with a few insider tricks his filters can make them look as pathetic as they are.
Mary acts as a convenient stand in for both a secretary and the family he wishes he’d had. Den checks over his list from their last meeting. He gave Mary several priorities, including the latest leads from San Sebastian. He admires her slick graphical appearance. She is a work of art, there is no doubt about that, and he probably shouldn’t have designed a hot sister, but no one needs to know except him. It’s not like that.
“Hi, Denny. Howz things?”
“All fine,” he lies, perfunctorily. The AI is smarter than that but he doesn’t have time for the game.
I need some deep research on Senator Dean's replacement.
When the senator passed, the keys to his operation were taken from him by an unknown group of custodians in Washington’s ruling party. Senator Hopfield Dean III initiated project Opium 2.0 – involving cryptoassets and microcurrencies in the VR intended to draw out the harvest profits from addictive gambling. Dean believed that human civilization has about 30 years of life left in it before anarchy and indolence, he was hoping to turn that around by reprogramming society and refunnelling some of Washington's money laundering. He was building a gated survival bunker for Washington elites, somewhere between Florida and Georgia.
Do we know yet who is behind the assassination?
Assassination not confirmed, but a group called the Cortex Templar Round Table Group may have been involved. No public announcements, but rumours through channels.
Yeah right, I want you to find out about any church connections to anyone in the project.
The senator had connections to several Evangelical Christian organizations working across the rust belt, Africa and Korea. They have registered holdings in a number of tax havens.
Den frowns.
I want you to set up a quickfire news leak about a scandal. I’m sending you my sketch. It has to use a Christian church somewhere in South East Asia infiltrated by a Taiwanese or Japanese sect leader, with millions of dollars diverted in stolen assets. Put it together and send it to me and to Kylie.
“How big a splash do you need?”
I need a trigger to set something in motion. But we don’t need to account for every detail. We’re steering a ship in heavy weather, not micromanaging a surgical procedure. We just need to nudge the forces and algorithms that are already blowing. Let’s go for mild weather with the occasional show of strength...
Roger that.
And with that, he drops unceremoniously out of the room.
Preeta raises her eyes in the darkened control room, “Hey, got an alert from the Monaco tripwire. Swiss courier just set off, he’s heading to the Church of Infinite Ventures. The tracker is working. He doesn’t seem to be aware.”
Vibe has been playing with Dermot’s game sims, toying with the characters like dolls in a doll house, as if she would ever lay her fingers on anything so prosaic. Of course, like any diva, she prefers the challenge of toying with real people, who don’t realize when they are being manipulated.
Meanwhile, Preeta began untangling a skein of intricacies in the information network, as soon as she was settled in the Oslo office, decoding the special payment numbers used to pass messages in financial transactions. They’ve all been learning at an impressive speed, pointing out things that once appeared innocent, are actually criminal centrepieces. Sometimes she feels like Fate herself, tangling with the ley-lines of cause and effect.
Dermot gets up. “We should tell the old man…”
Bishop is already entering the room. “He’s already here… Let's prep, people. This could be it. A trace back to the hive.”
Five minutes later, the team has scrambled and they are back in their positions, with Dermot and Preeta suited up and in their cocoons.
The Church of Infinite Ventures is at the Gate of Greed in VDubai. Dermot and Preeta’s avatars materialize into a city walkway surrounded by luminous buildings by famous architects: Zahadi, Foster and others. Their designs seem to exude soft power more convincing than any church.
All they know about their contact is what the London group has fed them: that these Swiss brokers somehow link familiar banks to the dark net through certain royal Gentleman’s clubs. There’s still a military stranglehold on power, with old-money still holding tribal grudges and dividing regions with violent repression. This is a meeting place. Groups from Yangon, Hargin and Damascus each have welcome desks at the Casino gate and the line stretches out of sight.
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A jewelled escort meets Dermot. “Welcome to the enclave. Follow the gates of opportunity to the table of your choice!”
This isn’t where it happens, Bishop notes. It’s just a transfer room, their lead has no intention of stopping here. It’s another goose chase to collect digital signatures. Where’s he going?
The man is handed a package near a free drinks station and he walks directly to a transfer room, towards the Macao gate, another popular alibi hub. Preeta is already manifesting a number of Vibe’s avatars to cover the exits. He doesn’t wait, he walks straight into the portal and steps out of a street exit in Macao, near a line of metal oil drums surrounded by piles of food and paper money, each with burning flames. Info says HUNGRY GHOST FESTIVAL. He steps calmly over all the sacrificial items and walks towards a large modern building.
Preeta 3 is nearby and follows him into one of the newer hotels, walking past the huge lobby carvings and a Gucci window display. A welcome banner reads:
They pass a registration desk and enter a long carpeted corridor lined with mirrors. Preeta 3 morphs into a tourist family as she maintains her pursuit.
Dermot says: “The instrumentation monitor shows he’s about to deploy decoys.” As they watch, he walks calmly but purposefully into a fountain and disappears once again.
This is tedious, Vibe remarks.
Scanning for him...
They know that the decoy encryption on the VR relies on having actual persons at specific locations in the R to open gates, where the servers are. There has to be a clue.
I have him, Preeta says, calmly. He’s split off decoys – one hopped to Las Vegas, and also in Luxembourg, Caymans, Lichtenstein and Khaliningrad. They’re all casinos.
“Modern ley lines”, Dermot quips. From stone circles to Casinos. They’re teleport hubs in the game. Which means they are linked. A natural money network.
Bishops snaps, “Luxembourg. It has to be. There’s a meeting in R of key European families, meeting with New York jewellers and some Dutch printing farms. It’s a private function, but there must be security cameras and bugs we can access somehow…” He points to one of his police helpers, who nods in confirmation. “But let’s get into the system there. This has to be where the key opens something in the system.”
I’ll deploy a search, Vibe says. Two seconds ….Everything is wrapped in layers of obfuscation, she complains, shaking her head. Everyone is misdirecting to point a finger at someone else. In the end it’s the rich power bases, whoever they might be. But look, the feeds all meet at this point. It’s as if all these different groups are connected to this one place, maybe without even knowing about it.
The results start to overlay onto their visuals. The room feels tense. Dermot’s heart is pounding, but he can see Preeta’s vital signs are normal. She’s used to this kind of jeopardy. Again he feels a strong admiration for her.
“It’s here”, she confirms. “The key has activated, and we just passed through a filter.”
Dermot finds himself standing in some kind of lobby area with red carpeting and mahogany wooden panelling, four corridors leading in multiple directions. It’s pure European kitsch. BEJEWELLED golden artefacts, soviet style brutalism and poncey Belgian finery. Venetian masks and catholic pomp. Fabergé eggs.
Their target has disappeared into one of the corridors, out of sight.
I don’t see him anymore.
Bishop looks at the iconized items, pictures and artifacts. Corridors extending forwards and backwards, like a classic adventure game. Some of them have pictures of European leaders, some are Russian, some are American. Indications of an uneasy standoff between European wealth and American Venture Capital.
Wait, he mutters. A cord appears hanging from the ceiling, like a butler’s bell. I’ll betcha anything this is what the key has opened. These other routes are probably decoys.
They chance a look at each other in R.
Bishop waves his hands impatiently, “Well, don’t look at me. Let’s take a look.”
Dermot braves himself and pulls the rope.
They took my job! The oligarchs took my job!
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Slinking through VR in stealth mode, Dermot is wearing shielding that makes him appear as a garbage collection process in the game. His avatar is not visible.
When he pulled the cord, he found himself in a private room, some kind of hidden appendix to the lobby. He feels alone, even though the others are close to him in the office. They can’t risk having multiple players on a private server now. He finds himself travelling along a palace corridor - a long wooden hallway outfitted with polished Victorian panelling outfitted with Catholic iconography. I
He arrives at a room with a ship’s compass at the centre and more wooden doorways leading in several radial directions. The doors are labelled. The New Jerusalem room, The LaVey-Rand room, the Nietzsche-Schopenhauer room… and several others references to FauxHolyWood and Washington groups.
Ok, that’s not creepy, Vibe mutters.
On the compass there’s an array of symbols, as if they are supposed to select some kind of PIN code. The symbols are foreign looking. On one side, a symbol incorporates a Christian cross, and there’s an Eastern swastika in there too. Lots of religious symbols. He moves his hand around looking for clues. One symbol seems out of place.
Bishop hovers over Preeta, watching on her screen. “I think it’s paleo .. pre Aramaic” he says.
Preeta signals for caution. It’s too obvious. Dermot says. Look, there are puzzles to solve. This is a game entrance. Disguised to look like a puzzle, of course. It’s basically a one time pad.
It’s too obvious, Dermot thinks. This is a diversion, or maybe a collection of tactics for a diversion–some social commentary laced with fun. But wait, there’s something else there. At the bottom of one of the symbols is a cat surrounded by stars. Eight pointed stars. Each point is the name of a tax haven. The spinning launderette, soap, and liquidity.
“There!” Preeta squeals. “That one! I know it from Malay.”
On instinct he touches it and the door to the LaVey-Rand room opens. He’s pushed inside.
Before them, a giant horned head appears and booms: YOU HAVE ENTERED A FORBIDDEN PLACE. Enjoy! it says, with some cheesy evil laughter and fades away.
Dermot flips a protector to turn on every interaction and scan he can find, trying to grab resources and slow down the master processes that are going to reveal them. Their cover is probably now blown. He balks. Something tells him he should get out of there. If not for his safety, for his mental health.
We need to be quick, Bishop mutters as if reading his mind.
This implicit appearance of the secretive grand elders behind the game is surely unprecedented. They have been drawn out, and not by choice.
The room is a gothic portrait of a pagan ritualistic sacrifice. On the altar is a region of the map of spreading human civilization over time, almost as if an actual country has been served up for sacrifice. When people have too much power, they think that brute force is the answer to every problem. And the abuse of their power escalates.
“There are documents here,” drawn up in all seriousness as if votes in parliament for the worst kinds of abuse of privilege.
There are shelves of books displayed with gauges underneath them, as if to show progress towards certain goals.
The Hidden Hand.
The Rothschild family.
The Knights Templar.
The Romanovs.
The Illuminati, even Dan Brown is on the shelf.
Books on plans to restore the empires of Austria-Hungary and Soviet times, which aren’t entirely compatible, but are supported by bets on live fighting.
All the western religious sects have tried to govern by royal decree. But their tools have always been the tools of wealth and violence. It wasn’t all that different in the East, though the messaging was different. But here they found connections between religion and the major banks and the … here, see this? As he moves his virtual hand around, a number of holographic images pop up, almost as a homage to conspiracy culture.
This is not just about criminal gangs and politics – this is way deeper than we can safely go. It’s at the heart of elite society. There’s dark imagery of child trafficking by the aristocracy. Murders and rape cults.
Everyone except Bishop gasps in disbelief..
“This is too much, too deep,” Bishop says. “No one can fix this overnight. Our goal has to be long term and under the radar. Look for strategy. We want to send our own biblical flood of manipulation. Bread and circuses. This is something even major crimes couldn’t touch.”.
If we are going to undermine the destructive power of these tribes and families, we need to know what kind of seeds to sew. Violence the entertainment of the empty mind. Even Plato knew that democracy isn’t stable.
A sense of fear grips Dermot that he can't explain.
“Look at all these plans and records. Better not download them now, it will trigger a warning. Remember we’re on their private server.”
Bishop: It’s too late now. We’ve already been detected, so we need to cover our tracks. We should grab what we can. I can disguise what we’ve taken. They’ll only know someone from their network was here. Someone else will take the fall for it.
Now we know what game the senator was really playing. There’s compiled data from hundreds of bankers, marketers, and propagandists and the virtual avatars they use to pull at the reins of power. It’s tied to the big tech game producers themselves obviously.
Bishop holds up a hand. Take these directories. Let’s get out. They’ve let their guard down just long enough to let us see. And now… we’ll have a small weapon but only until they discover we were here.
Someone is going to suspect and be COMING AFTER US. We need to hide all this material until we can get it uploaded.
At the underground bar, clad in ultra baggy style jeans and swaddle hoodie Vibe sees Bea waiting for her, sitting demurely cross legged in a slim retro business suit. Her shoulder length chocolate hair and sparkling blue eyes frame a beaming dimpled smile.
She runs towards her friend.... Bea bea!
They hug.
Hey stranger.... Look at you...
Beate already started working in advertising when Sara started her PhD. Now she is definitely the appointed adult in the room. She always was the more sophisticated beauty of the two. Her voice, a contralto calm. Vibe was the adventurer.
I looked for you at the weekend, Vibe squirmed. My girl was gone.
We went to spend the weekend at the indoor ski resort at Gol. You know, team building. It’s still quite new. They've had an offer for a few weeks.
Vibe: Yeah, I saw there’s a discount. Must be collecting data to train their skiing sims.
But we had to leave as there was an invasion by a party flashcrowd. They brought drugs and knives.
Oh no! Is everyone ok?
She shrugs, as if this is just normal. “Are YOU ok? You look tired babe.”
Vibe shakes her head. “So skiing?“
Bea nods cautiously, as if to say: ok, I won’t ask. “My team needed my wheels.”
“Ahh, the good old Beaelzeebus! Hahaha…”
Bea laughs. “It was nice in the beginning. Did you know the rooms have free birth control tabs and lawbots for pregnancy agreements now. It's hilarious. Also, you don't have to clean the room yourself anymore. They have these cute little Chinese robots.”
“Sweet.”
“Oh, I saw your mum yesterday. She asked me to get you to talk to your brother.”
Ugh. If I know him, he wants to go to Tibet or Peru to climb. Mum won’t like that. If he can even get a visa that is.
You two always were the mountain goats of the family.
Yeah, except for that first you have to climb the bureaucracy.
There’s nothing like hiding out in the mountains to escape from the law. She laughs.
Vibe’s mouth falls open. “Wait, you’re a genius!“
“I am?”
She nods slowly.. Hah! Come on, let’s get a drink. I’m dying here…
Vibe stares at the pond outside the University’s department of computing, seeing the ducks splash into the water. The sun is shining, and the air feels heavy and hot. It's dreamy and for this one moment it feels as though the world is standing still. She knows that, just below the digital water level, it's really seething and at war with itself -- but just for this moment, she wants to believe that the world is simple and good. Was it always like this? For any generation? Mankind always struggling against defeat and atrocity?
She peers into the building through the closed doorway. She needs to fetch a dongle to get remote access to her babies, but the floor is closed off for cleaning at this time of day on the last Friday of every month. After yesterday’s discovery, they are going to need a place to stash the weapon they’ve discovered.
Those older women who rule the building may not be highly educated, but they have a keen sense of righteousness, of ethics even, of family. They are human, and they see the bureaucrats they work for as The Man. Unfeeling and aloof. Last year. Vibe made friends with them, simply by drinking her morning coffee together. Maybe that simple sense of loyalty is something that could undermine power, she thinks.
They see her standing at the entrance and one comes to the door to see what she needs.
“Hi - I forgot something really important…. Do you think there’s any chance I could….”
As Bea likes to say, us girls are professional liars. Pretty girl privileges.
“All right, pet. Be quick, go around that way”, the woman says, guiding her around the cleaning.
She doesn’t quite understand why they need to do this, but as Bishop told her: young people exist to climb trees, not to have deep understanding.
Thanks to Bea, she realized that they could use her mountain babies to store and pass on the data–just in case. There are certain times when a satellite is over the mountains, where they can upload almost without a record of it. Until that alignment, they would need to arrange a decoy convincingly to keep the enemy busy. Now she has an idea.
It’s Friday night and the team is blowing their cover for spring rolls and beers at the Little Saigon bar in the heart of Oslo.
After eating and studying the wildlife to remind themselves they’re still part of the human race, they push into a crowded bar at the nearby square for something more advanced on the drinks front.
Vibe sits playing games on her wristband, while the others chat. You rent a drone and see how close you can fly to an airport before it gets shot down by a laser turret. It's a stupid game, with questionable ethics, but it's what kids are playing right now. And drinks bore her.
Preeta slaps her arm. “What are you doing? Here we are in this amazing place and you are playing games. I've lived in this fake bullshit for years, now I want to see the real thing.”
Vibe was never much of a team player. She has her own way of working and doesn't want anything to become a party. She usually gets her own way.
The room is stuffed full of bodies. Rowdy men comparing the lengths of their audacity.
It’s relaxing, but then something strange happens.
From the noise, Preeta hears what she instantly perceives to be a scream. Suddenly, the busy room clears in an instant and a deathly hush takes over.
Turning her head,people evaporate like oil expelled by a detergent.
Then a body, a person, comes tumbling backwards and crashes into the bar beside her, with a man practically on top of him. Like dogs, like animals.
Preeta feels the thud of the man on the wooden bar. Fists pummel into his face and his nose spatters blood. It is not like watching a bar-fight in a film. The real sound of violence is a hollow smack, and it’s not the furniture that breaks.
Then as quickly as it started, it’s over. Somehow no one seems very shocked. You simply get used to violence.
The fighters quickly leave the bar and the space slowly fills once again. The talking resumes.
Slender mannikins are everywhere. Preeta marvels at how they tempt with sexy underwear and shifting poses. She tries to imagine her body naked before a mirror, except for a white-lace thong. But it makes her look fat. Her hips are wider than these figures. She admires the young women around her; many of them are narrower but heavier–built for fighting? There’s a group of Africans, probably Somali or Sudanese, colourfully dressed still with their blonde wigs and nail polish.
“Are you alright,” Dermot asks, seeing her concern.
She drifts back and mutters. “White is the darkest colour of all.“
Vibe stares into her. “What happened to you, Preeta?”
She shakes herself out of it and slaps her on the arm. “Another time. And on that note,” she slurs. “I want to party. Come on.”
She’s read about the haunts of the city after midnight and she wants to see them for herself.
“Oh no, it’s time for me to turn in,” Bishop evades. Vibe agrees. “Be careful, eh?”
“Come on!” She drags Dermot from his chair and towards the exit and they emerge onto the dark evening, where the streets are busy with drinkers and partygoers, just coming out for the evening.
“I’ve read about this place…” she says excitedly. “It’s in a basement at Grensen. The edge of the world.”
Preeta is sailing, as if on her dream auto-pilot–freed from a prison of the past, and now having her Sound of Music moment.
She pulls him past pubs and miniskirts, leather and heels, as they skip through the town centre. Music emanates from the doorways. She follows the directions on her bracelet.
Finally, they duck through a small archway into a back alley, where a couple is entering an anonymous looking doorway, past a doorman. Inside, everything is painted black. They descend a short flight of worn stairs, past walls filled with paper posters and spray art and stinky toilets. The foot of the stairs opens into violet light and pulsing energy. She feels drawn to the sound, to the heat from bodies and coloured lights. By luck, two bar stools are free. She throws her coat over one and sits there, Dermot sits beside her..
Dark Gothic phantoms glide around with stylish mobile bracelets and silver wires used for decoration. Coloured hair and gelled sculpture. Everyone is a painting. Everyone is a work of art.
The pulsing of the lights is hypnotising, cleansing.
Dermot orders two beers and looks around. He tries to say something a few times, but they have to press their faces close together and shout to be heard over the music. He is sweet, she thinks, but too careful for me.
This is another world.
She gapes at the feline bodies, twisting like tornadoes, hugging an inner volcano in a tight shell; snaking like cobras, living vines. Their short-cut dresses reveal ribs and breasts, with coloured hair and knee high boots. Preeta is entranced.
It is like being in a womb. She feels an urge to kick. This is where she wants to be right now.
“Do you want to dance?” she shouts.
Dermot smiles a no. Is he feeling the same effect?
She has seen the enemy and it is only her own inhibition. She jumps off her stool and pushes her way through the tightly packed crowd and climbs up onto the dance floor.
In front of her, a thin black dress that clings to a naked body, short blonde hair and a long, pale neck. She recognizes something in herself, a spirit. The blond girl beams and moves closer.
They dance together, holding out hands to one another. They ripple and move, as though they were both spirits yin and yang, lock and key. The girl moves forward and touches her. They slide together with eyes half closed. They kiss. Not a short kiss, but a long intense kiss.
She turns to look back for Dermot. Then she sees the horrified road-kill at the bar, gaping in disbelief. She sees him crumble slightly, not quite able to understand what has happened or how he managed to get into this. Then he turns to flee.
She wants to go to him, but the girl in front of her is now pressing in close, running her hands down her back.
This is my adventure, she thinks. I can save him later.
How does a desperate fool get mixed up in a game of risk?
Dermot is licking his wounds once again. Something tells him this is a pattern he needs to extricate himself from.
Preeta has not been back to the office for several days since her fling on the town, and he has not been motivated to figure things out without her. He’s been hiding himself. Now he heard from Bishop that she is spending time with Vibe… are those two going to…..
Well, he can do this without her. It’s just a money trail, though Bishop is the expert here.
It’s finally quiet. A moment of clarity after the chaos. The decoy is in place, and two copies are on their way to Vibe’s mountain helpers. They will be coming for this, so they need to make sure no one can find it until the treasure has finished uploading.
What are the bond markets doing? He wonders. It’s past trading hours. Trading markets close, gaming doesn't. Microbonds, microcurrencies. Dic coin. The game stocks are still climbing. So nothing has leaked yet.
He tips his mental hat to their colleagues in the UK. All they can do now is wait.
We fly over land, past the great windpower kites of the central plains … back to the Malaysian peninsula, where a diversion is in progress.
A single thread pulled from a giant web of manipulation, and the first small seed of antidote has been planted secretly, where it can grow. It's a small step for VR, but perhaps a giant peek into mankind.
Now, according to an unofficial rumour, leaked to the online datafeeds, student hackers have hidden uploaded data from a Luxembourg server into an air gapped device in a university building South of Bangkok. During the night, a faint digital decoy scent diverts official investigators–a boast by kids, just after three copies of data were installed by helidrone on Vibe’s mountain robot swarm. Too risky to send the data over landlines, it would go via private satellites to orbital storage.
Now, in a small university campus, the adversary’s network has enlisted the help of the local officials to raid a building. But they won’t find the data or be able to put the pieces together. Within hours, it will be too late and they will never know what anyone has on them.
By Vibe’s playbook, they have arranged for the glass doors to be locked. Cleaners are polishing the stone floor. A sign outside the door announces:
Hapless Local officials arrive with campus security. They try the doors.
The older women inside don’t even pay attention. They simply point to the sign and wave them away, with the authority that only village big mama matriarchs possess.
The security guard is visibly afraid to cross them. He shrugs to the leader. “The door is dead-locked from the inside. You’ll have to contact the janitor’s office to override them.”
In time, the police come.
They knock on the glass doors to attract the attention of one of the cleaners with the buffing machine. If she hears, she does not respond. The bureaucracy would have to jump through several hoops to reach their supervisor. And that will buy them the time they need to avoid looking elsewhere
A police officer shakes his head. “I’m afraid we don’t have the authority to do that. Not without an order from the court.”
Guns don’t work against mob violence and authority doesn’t work against tradition. This won’t hold them back for long, but long enough to allow the satellite to receive its data.
Today, the cleaners have the final word.
Preeta is finally back at the office. Early. She seems more confident than before. She calls Dermot at home.
“Where are you?” She asks. “I thought you’d be here.”
Dermot has only just risen from a long and much needed sleep.
“I’m on my way soon.”
“I’m helping the girls put up the Christmas tree”, she beams, as if there's nothing unusual about today.
Dermot checks the date. This nonsense gets earlier every year.
She flashes him a cam angle of the tree.
“They put the tinsel on the trees all wrong here,” Dermot says, shaking his head.
“The tinsel is supposed to look like snow resting on the branches. You’re supposed to coil it around the tree.”
She looks at him blankly.
Preeta adds in support. “Aha. You mean it is supposed to look like a tree, not a nuclear warhead!”
Dermot laughs, surprising himself. “The Christmas torpedo. The world has lost its sparkle to weaponry.”
Dermot’s doorbell warbles. “Look, I’ve gotta go… I’ll see you in a bit.”.
He cuts the VR and switches his visor to the outer door coms. “Hello?”
“Hi. It’s Christina, can I come in?”
He stares a moment, taken aback. Christina? Surely not? He recognizes her face from the distorted door camera. Why now? She sets his heart and mind racing. How does she even know where he lives?
“Yes, yes, of course. Come in,” he says, clicking the door opener. He pulls off his headset and goes to open the door.
The figure that meets him from the stairwell is a study in tragedy. A skeleton, thin to the point of malnutrition. She is wearing a long black duffle coat. Her face seems greyer now; it is not merely pale. She has lost something. It hurts him to see her like this.
“Am I disturbing? ” She looks frightened, unsure, a mere fragment of her former self.
“No, no.”
“Is it okay?”
“So how are you?” he musters.
She smiles, uncertainly, looking around in a disturbed way. She doesn’t know how to answer.
“A lot of strange things have been happening lately. ”
“What things?”
“Just things. Where is everyone?”
She stares ahead into space, occasionally glancing fearfully at him, as if trying to see into the VR without a visor. Perhaps to plead for permission to be there. He considers how he might answer, and to which question.
“It’s so quiet.”
She must be desperately lonely, he thinks, and feels a flood of sympathy for her now. He compares her figure with how she looked when he first saw her, when all he felt was blind yearning and searching admiration. It was he who was the misfit then. She looked so normal, so much more respectable than he did. Now look at her. What could happen to a person to transform them so quickly? What could go so wrong?
“Why is it so quiet?”
”I guess everyone is staying at home. It’s Sunday.”
“Is it Sunday?.”
“Perhaps there’s a holiday somewhere. It’s Norway after all,” he jokes.
She doesn’t seem to hear him. “Is it war?”
Suddenly he reaches out and embraces her. A long and platonic hug of compassion, not sure who he is feeling sorrow for.
She tenses then relaxes and smiles for the first time. “You’re actually a good person. I should get back.” Then she recalls. “It’s quiet. Are you sure it’s not war?”
He looks at her head, once he thought: so beautiful, so close to his. Inside there is a brain, somehow damaged or malfunctioning. What connections are missing? Could someone fix her?
“Come by sometime,” she says.
He watches her walk off into the distance through the window. She simply walks off in the wrong direction for going home. She has become a phantom, a lost soul. A digital amoeba. Alone and predatory for social sustenance, but still crucially dependent on people – waiting just over a virtual horizon.
ENCYCLOPÆDIA REDACTICA
AD: Shine with imagen
AD: Transform dull surfaces into live performances
AD: It’s make believe!
AD: Customer Service Relentless Avatars. For all your staffing needs.
TUBE CLOSURE ON THE KING RICHARD LINE
SAFETY ADVISORY. ALTERNATIVE RIDE HAIL: LIONHEART CABS
(Special offers on Insulin and CocAIDPlus to the first 100 passengers. Touch here to call.)
ALIEN TOOTHPASTE
JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EURCH
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON
UNSUPERVISED LEARNING FOR HUMANS
ALBATRO5S!
THE WRATH OF ABRAHAM
BEA’S ELECTRIC BUS
TAKEN TO THE CLEANERS
DIRTY DANCING
PREETAMATIC STRESS SYNDROME
CLEANING HOUSE
THIS FLOOR IS PRESENTLY OFF LIMITS
FLOOR POLISHING
IN PROGRESS
When the day’s hustle and bustle is done,
Then the Game Cat’s work is hardly begun
She’s deeply concerned with the ways of the mice
Their behaviour’s not good, and their manners not nice
Well, I never; was there ever a cat so clever?
(from T.S.Eliot)
POST TRAUMATIC DERMOTITIS
EPILOGUE: HOLLOW MEN
(From T.S. Eliot)
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Remember us –-if at all —-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
For Thine is the Kingdom
This is the way the world ends x 3
Not with a bang but …. (nothing)
(END)