<list:dialogue>
<d: A life span is fixed, immutable.>
<d: Our world does not change.>
</list>
✦ ✦ ✦
The illusion had just been smashed to pieces.
What would happen next?
Perhaps imprudently, I was wondering that too. Surely, the suicides hadn’t been the end of it. This had to be part of somebody’s plan—maybe even a still-alive Miach Mihie’s plan. The ones who had committed suicide were simply the first sacrifices that had to be made so that the plan could be put into action.
“Aren’t you scared?” I asked the Interpol agent.
“Of course I am,” he answered calmly.
“What did you want to talk to me about?”
Vashlov shrugged and began. “It was, I think, about a year ago when my section of Interpol began investigating a certain group. The group consists of powerful elders in various admedistrations and the heads of certain medical industrial collectives, as well as a few scholars and scientists. They were researching ways to improperly access people’s WatchMe and medcare units in order to activate a certain technology during crises.”
“What kind of technology?”
“We’re not entirely sure yet. All we know is that they are able to use the admedistration WatchMe servers to access people’s bodies directly. That, and their ideology reflects strong memories of the Maelstrom.”
The Maelstrom—the years of chaos and mushroom clouds that had opened mankind’s eyes to its true nature and inspired our current lifeist society.
“They—these old people—are afraid that humanity will once again fall into the chaos of those years. There are plenty of theories as to why the Maelstrom happened, but one thing it did prove was that our brains are capable of reverting to barbarism with shocking alacrity. And it only took tens of millions of people to die to prove it. Which is why they moved to put all of humanity under observation—through WatchMe. They call themselves the Next-Gen Human Behavior Monitoring Group.”
I had to collect my thoughts for a moment to process this story of megalomaniacal conspiracy. The man had Interpol ID, and he didn’t seem delusional—it was just that the scale of his conspiracy theory was so grand. He was asking me to believe that all human life was basically under the watchful eye of a select group of people.
“There’s no need to give me that look. I’ll show you my Interpol psych evaluation, if you like.”
“I’m just not sure how to take this.” Of all the things I had anticipated this man telling me, a conspiracy theory was not one of them.
“I completely understand, but you’re going to have to believe me. We do not have much time left.”
“You mean there’s going to be another wave of suicides?”
“Or something like that, yes. On the day of the incident, this group performed a test of their system. Just a test, to see if the technology worked as intended. The test was a success—save for an unexpected mass wave of simultaneous suicides.”
“You mean to tell me that was an accident?”
I found it hard to believe that an organization founded on fear of the Maelstrom, no matter how megalomaniacal, would make a technology capable of ending so many lives and causing so much fear. Wasn’t that exactly what they would be trying to prevent?
“No, not an accident. According to our source, there is another group within this group. Though they share the same objectives, they are directly opposed to the larger group on the issue of the means to that end. A rogue faction, if you will.”
“So this ideological rift within the group was the trigger that caused all those deaths?”
“Rather, what we saw was one act in the confrontation between these two groups. The suicides were a power play by the rogue faction, if you will.”
A little office spat among a group of megalomaniacs, resulting in a mountain of corpses.
“Then why bring this to me?” I asked.
“In order to ask for your help, of course. Rather, we want to help you with your investigation. I’ll be frank. There are elements within Interpol that have not taken kindly to the Helix Inspection Agency inserting themselves into the investigation of the incident. There was quite a heated debate about it. The naysayers felt that this was strictly a criminal case, and that WHO, an admedistration monitoring agency, was using the incident as an excuse to make a grab for more authority.”
“They were probably right.”
Stauffenberg was first and foremost among the expansionists. I had once listened to her give a speech in which she claimed that the Helix Inspection Agency, as defenders of lifeism, had an obligation to deal with any and every threat to human lives or health.
“Even still, with what’s happened, and worse to come, cooperation seems to be the only choice. We do not know when they will make the next move. All we know is that we have to stop them before—excuse me.”
Vashlov put a hand to one ear. Someone calling him on his HeadPhone.
✦ ✦ ✦
<horror>
Unconsciously, I reached up and rubbed the back of my own scalp.
Right inside here.
Inside the gray matter in my skull.
Some old farts, in their fear of the Maelstrom, had built a little medicule network there for me. Our free will was the last thread of ourselves not yet outsourced. Yet there was a mechanism that could take even that away from me, a mechanism controlled by a group of people that didn’t believe in our society, not that they wanted us to believe in it. If that network suddenly ordered me to kill myself, then I would draw the gun I wore at my side and, without a single conflicting thought, shoot myself in the head. I found myself really wanting to know exactly how it would work when the time came.
</horror>
✦ ✦ ✦
This was the result of outsourcing all our bodily functions. By entrusting our bodies to others through WatchMe, we had reached the point where we could no longer support our own selves without those external mechanisms to help us.
Humans are good at dividing up labor.
✦ ✦ ✦
<list:protocol>
<p: Hunt pig.>
<p: Cut up pig.>
<p: Cook pig.>
</list>
✦ ✦ ✦
Food must’ve been a very personal thing for most people in the beginning. Now, the whole process had been divided into so many stages, each with their own specialists. I doubted anyone today really understood the routes food took from its origins to their mouths.
Vashlov tapped me on the shoulder. “Got a news report coming in on Network 24. Check it out.”
I called up a media channel in one corner of my field of vision. I linked to Network 24 and immediately saw the emergency news report tag. A newscaster with a nervous look on his face began reading from the prompter on his AR.
“Good day, this is Edison Carter. What we are about to broadcast is the contents of a memorycel we received at our news bureau just moments ago. The memorycel contains a message from a person claiming responsibility for the recent mass suicide incident.”
“What’s this all about?” I asked Vashlov.
He shook his head in disbelief. “I wish I knew. We’ll just have to watch.”
The self-review committee at Network 24 had a reputation for being a little looser than other media outlets. A short while earlier, the image of a dead soldier appearing in a corner of one frame during a report on the violence in Chechnya had sparked an outcry against the station. Most other media outlets subjected everything they showed to an AI editor before broadcast in order to prevent any possibility of showing something emotionally traumatic. Relatively speaking, then, Network 24 was pretty extreme and as such not entirely worthless as a news source.
“We will begin playback now,” Edison Carter said. The screen went black.
✦ ✦ ✦
<log:media=Network24:id=225-78495hu6ryti5h23j-09>
I’m not sure when they’ll play this, so let me wish you a good morning, a good day, and a good evening.
</log>
✦ ✦ ✦
It was a female voice, heavily modulated.
There was no picture. Only the words voice only in the middle of the screen.
I closed my eyes. Maybe that way I could hear a kernel of the real person—which could very well have been Miach Mihie. Besides, if there were no picture, what was the point of looking at it?