Sir Thomas’s Study, Marq V Penthouse, New Singapore
Friday 28 February 2110, 11:55pm +8 UTC
11:55pm, his watch said, before it was covered by a sharp tug of his cuff.
Sir Thomas poured himself a cognac and, taking the snifter in hand, walked over to his desk and sat down on the leather Siteazy behind it. It was a large desk with a single-shaded light bulb hanging over the middle. In this light, Sir Thomas stretched his arms to his Dev console and thumbed his Dev. The spinning Globe was replaced by Tag uptake numbers displayed over a color-coded world map with the Moon and Mars insets spinning in the top right corner, the Moon on top of Mars. The twin of this image was displayed in the living room next door. But this was a moment he didn’t want to share with anyone.
The number was half a percentage point lower than their minimum requirement. Soon, very soon, he thought. He let out a long breath, almost a sigh of satisfaction, and leaned back in the seat, crossing his legs, the cognac snifter in his left hand. A voice command or press submit, he thought. Press submit — by my own hand is better. But wait, wait until we reach seventy-five percent. By the time the sickness strikes, the figure will be eighty-five, perhaps even ninety percent, and the rest can be taken care of later.
He sniffed in, taking the odor of the cognac mixed with the scent of the leather Siteazy, a strangely comforting smell. Restless for the point zero four percent remaining to complete, he rose, a hand on his hip as he levered himself up, and walked over to the window.
It was a clear cloudless night, stars were visible, and only the light hanging above the Dev on the desk behind him gave rise to his reflection in the armor glass. He looked out, off to his right, over the New Singapore skyline to the EntPlex of SingCom, where the signal would go out from, its red branding casting a rosy glow over the lesser Ents it dwarfed. Sunita was a fool.
He looked at his watch again Just two minutes had passed. Can’t look yet, he thought. Be patient. A quick thrill ran through him: the moment was so near, he savored it, and he waited, like leaving the strawberry off the cake until last — the sweet delay of anticipation. He took another draft of his cognac and saw that his Tag suggestions were running simultaneously across the three newsfeeds he’d selected. Three and a half billion people watching his message of safety and security. He snorted back a laugh, his cognac splashing on the cuff of his outers. He dabbed at it with his fingers and looked again at his watch. 11:59pm. It was time. He thumbed his console and the screen switched back to the color-coded map. He reached out with a pudgy sweaty finger and pressed submit, leaving a smear on the Devscreen where he touched.
I watched in horror, squeezing Mariko’s hand tightly, as the submit button went a darker shade. Sir Thomas had submitted the cull command. The floor-to-ceiling Devscreen lighting the room with the billions of white light tags showing the whole of civilization online suddenly started to go black. In seconds, and from one corner of the screen to the other, the tiny little lights winked out one by one and then the screen went black.
The room lit up again as the screen changed into a document. White background with black type streaming down the Devscreen, coming to stop just off the floor. The title at the top said, ‘A Necessary Evil’. My eyes scanned through from top to bottom, a smile slowly spreading across my lips.
I read.
‘My fellow humans.
By now most of you living in the European and the American Geographics have realized that your Personal Unique Identifier, your PUI, has been deleted. Those waking up tomorrow morning in Asia will realize the same. This event happened at Midnight, New Singapore time, and is a global event. That means that you are not alone. Everyone’s identity has been deleted from all population databases on Earth, the Moon and Mars. There are no backups — it was necessary to delete those too.
This had to be done because over 75 % of you have injected the Tag and the Tag contains a toxin that was going to be released at midnight by Sir Thomas Bartholomew Oliver. The only way to stop this crime against humanity was to destroy all PUIs.
We are now at a crossroads in the history of humankind. We are nameless and being nameless we have no past. We have no property. We have no cred. This would be an easy time for humanity to slip into chaos and anarchy. And if we do, then we have no future.
There is an alternative to anarchy and chaos. Write in your Devsticks who you are and include all the members of your family and where they are. Share this with the first person you can. You should each then give a copy of what you have written to the other person. As you meet others, do the same. This is the only way of collectively establishing who we are. In another 24 hours we will set up sites where you may register yourselves and your families.
Respect your neighbor’s property. Respect and defend their property as if it was your own.
Take care of the young and the old, the young especially. If you see a young person looking lost, ask them who they are and where their parents are. If they do not know, give them shelter but do not take them out of the area that they are in. If you do need to do that, then leave trace of where you are going. Register them if they can tell you their name. If not, provide a clear description and register that.
Parents: if your child is not with you, you should go to them immediately.
There is no cred, therefore the monetary system that we have relied on for so long has gone. If you were wealthy, now you are not. If you were poor, now you are not. Some of you will think of this as an opportunity to grab a disproportionate share of the resources that are currently available. This will lead to chaos. Share what you have with your neighbor and teach them to do the same. In sharing what we have, and respecting what others have, lies a golden future. This statement applies to material and non-material properties.
The future of humanity depends on what we do over the next few days, weeks and months. Think of this as the final triumph of good over evil and humanity will have a glorious future. Think of this as a way to gain advantage over your fellow humans and we will have no future.
Further instructions will follow.
With great respect and humility,
Gabriel Alexander Zumar. New Singapore, 1st March 2110, 12:01am.
Elder brother to Mark Anthony Zumar.
Husband to Martine Shorne Zumar.
PRESS HERE to see the evidence against Sir Thomas and the reason we had to delete the PUIs.’
Gabriel’s virus had succeeded in preceding the cull command — the virus attached to the messages I sent from Wigley’s house. The letter we had worked on was proof that the cull command had failed. Our virus had deleted all PUIs in existence. Now none of us had a name.
As the document scrolled large on the living room wall, the icon hovered over the ‘PRESS HERE’ in the last sentence of the letter. The crowd was silent.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said to Mariko, softly whispering in her ear, my eyes flicking to the hallway. As we walked down the hall, the door to Sir Thomas’s study opened and Charles, seeing us, ran the few steps to block the door to the outside. He stood on the balls of his feet, his hands by his sides. I pulled up and Mariko stepped in front of me, smiling and holding out her hand to Charles. I thrust my thoughts into his brain; his eyes shifted and he smiled at me. Thinking in Mandarin.
The loss of focus was enough and Mariko fired the Maloo-modified Devstick, twin darts appearing in Charles’s chest. He looked down at the darts as if offended and fell to the floor. Two pools of blood marked the spot where the carbon fiber bolts had entered. His legs started shaking, twitching and then they stopped and he fell slumping against the door, his dead eyes staring at me, still offended.
Sir Thomas appeared in the study doorway as Mariko hit the button and the outer door opened. She went through.
“Take care of yourself and our child,” I urged as I shut the door on her, and locked it.
Glancing down I saw the butt of a gun sticking up from Charles’s armpit. I quickly knelt, grabbing it and pulling. But it didn’t come free. I looked up, fumbling with the catch of the holster over the hammer of the gun, as Sir Thomas advanced, his hand going into his jacket and pulling free the dagger he had used to kill Shido, which he or Charles must have retrieved.
I was too slow and Sir Thomas was on me before I could free the gun. His arm swept back for the blow, but I reached out with my mind and screamed, “Stop!” throwing the thought into his mind. He reeled back as if I had struck him. I held the thought and wrenched at the gun butt. It came free. But the effort caused me to lose my grip on Sir Thomas’s mind. His arm swung up and I twisted sideways. The dagger cut through my outers and blazed a trail of pain across the left side of my stomach.
Sir Thomas saw the gun as I rose from my knees. He turned, running for the door of the study. I brought the gun to bear, scrambling to my feet, but I slipped on Charles’s jacket, the cloth sliding my foot out from under me. I went down hard. Seeing Sir Thomas disappear through his study door, I scrambled up again, ignoring the searing pain from the knee I’d twisted in my fall. In three strides I was at his study door.
He wasn’t in the room. The clearfilm doors to the balcony were open, curtains, billowing in with the breeze. Gun extended, I limped, dragging my left leg behind me as fast as I could, across the room to the balcony, and edged my way around the door. The curtains blew in my face, tangling with my vision. Pushing them aside with my left hand, I stepped out onto the balcony, quickly turning left and right. He wasn’t there. He’s gone back inside, I thought, but a glance at the doors to the living room and his bedroom confirmed they were shut.
Then I saw it. A black rope tied off the railing of the balcony. I limped over to it and looked down. It ended just above the floor of Topside. I peered out and saw him, running, surprisingly fast for his age, towards the walky that lead to the golf course. He disappeared from view under the trees that shaded the walky. I looked down the rope: it was a good fifteen meters to the floor below me. With my damaged knee I wasn’t sure if I could make it and turned to go back inside and get the Lev.
I heard the savage thumping of a copter’s blades and turned as it came into view in the red glow of the SingCom sign. It flew in closer and I could make out Marty in the pilot’s seat. She gave me a thumbs-up and then made a sign with her thumb and little finger extended from a fist and held up to her ear. Devstick, I thought, and pulled the Devstick from my jacket pocket.
“Mark, where is he?”
It was Gabriel. He was in the copter — I could hear the blades in the background, Gabriel shouting over their noise.
“He’s run out onto Topside, headed for the golf course. I’m going after him. Can you track him for me?”
“Yes, but hold on for a sec. We’re going to drop Maloo off to take care of the other Hawks. Don’t worry about Mariko, she’s signaling us. She’s on the roof.”
The copter swept over my head and I could only see the tail, then Maloo, as he swung out and dropped down on a hoist. Looking at me, with a machine gun strapped over his shoulder, he grinned. He dropped but swung in and on top of the roof of the penthouse, disappearing from my view. I plugged in my earpiece and shoved the Devstick back in my pocket and the gun in my trousers. I grabbed the rope.
I held tight as I swung over the balcony. Though I had never done this before, I had watched a film of people abseiling down buildings. I stretched my legs out straight and held the rope tightly. Then my body twisted in the gust of wind blown downwards by the copter as it circled away from the roof. I banged against the wall, the pain from my knee shooting through me and almost causing me to lose my grip. But I held on. The gun slipped out of my waist and went down my bottom outer leg. I heard it clatter on the floor below. I looked up but my hands slipped on the smooth rope. And I slid. Bumping the wall, sending spikes of pain from my knee, I held on as tightly as I could despite the rope burning my hands.
I held on just enough to slow my descent and hit the ground, my good leg taking the strain. A glance at the palms of my hands to see they were marked by a solid raw red stripe of blood and burning.
I got up and stumbled over to where the gun lay, picked it up, checked it over, and though I knew nothing about guns, it looked OK — the magazine was still in place. I got my bearings. The walky was twenty meters away. I started towards it and collapsed. My leg wouldn’t take the weight.
There. Off to the right of me, less than five meters away, was a Devcaddy. Sir Thomas’s Devcaddy — I recognized it from our game. I pulled myself up onto my good leg and hopped over to it. Each hop jarred with pain and I nearly fainted before I got my hand on the handle of the Devcaddy. I stood on the platform by the wheel with my good leg. The other I swung around with my right hand and pulled onto the platform by the other wheel.
I pressed the on button and the Devcaddy said, “Good morning, Sir Thomas.” I hit silent on the Devscreen and twisted the throttle set into the handle, taking the gun in my left hand as the Devcaddy surged along the path and bumped up the ramp onto the walky.
“We’ve got him on infrared. He’s on the golf course. We’ll fly ahead and cut him off,” Gabriel’s voice came through loud into my earpiece. I had forgotten it and was surprised it had stayed in during the fall. I focused on staying on the DevCaddy, my palms burning where they grabbed the handles.
I saw the sign on the walky for the UNPOL Executive Course and swerved hard left. Fifty meters farther on the left, a sign said 'ninth hole' and the walky had a gap leading to a path. I took the gap and Gabriel’s voice came over the earpiece again.
“He’s somewhere around the first green but we’ve lost him. There’s some kind of heat flare there and we can’t see through it. We’ll track up to first tee and work our way back to you.”
We hadn’t got to play the first but I remembered the layout from the virtual game. Trees, forest really, all the way down to the green and surrounding the green as well. I turned the Devcaddy and twisted the throttle as hard as I could, the pain screeching through me fueling my anger. I flew down the path and slowed the Devcaddy to cut the noise from its tires on the surface.
I stopped. Far off I heard the Heliocopter’s turbines wind down and stop. Gabriel and Marty had landed. The night was quiet. I was panting loudly and struggled to get my breathing under control, to make less sound.
“Can you see him?” I said as quietly as possible. The mic in my earpiece muted and Gabriel came on.
“He’s in there somewhere but I don’t know where. Towards the back of the green, I think. Wait for me. I’m coming.” Gabriel was obviously running, his words were ragged breaths jolting in time with his strides.
I could hear a loud humming off to my right and saw two large circular exhaust vents, used for sucking stale air out of the roof of New Singapore. They weren’t in the virtual game, I thought. Hopping as quietly as I could, I made my way around the edge of the wood, the gun back in my right hand. I edged around to get closer to the vents.
I stopped again and listened. Nothing. No sounds except the loud whirring hum of the vents. My back against a large tree, I edged around it, gun extended and thought “Where are you?” reaching out with my mind, feeling for him.
My mind was noisy. The hum of the vents and the pain in my knee dominating, but I focused hard, seeking out the pulse of Sir Thomas’s mind.
Oh no, he’s behind me! I thought as I found him and he came crashing into me. The dagger flashed in the dark. I twisted and my leg gave way, the gun flying out of my hand. We both went over backwards, the top of his head butting my jaw, and we tumbled backwards into the bunker on the side of the green.
We rolled to the floor of the bunker, him on top of me, smashing his fist into my chest as he rose, kneeling on me. This is how Wigley died, flashed through my mind. Sir Thomas reached up grasping his dagger with both hands above his head. I shouted the thought “Look out! ” into his mind. He hesitated and I twisted as hard as I could, just as he struck, and rolled away in the sand, his blade slicing into my back. I rolled over again and pulled my own dagger from behind my back where it was wedged into the waistband of my bottom outers.
He turned just as I lunged at him, his left hand thrown out as if warding me off, sand flying into my face, blinding me. I surged forward and brought the dagger up as hard as I could. It hit something solid and then it gave, sliding in as far as the hilt, a liquid warmth covering my hand. I twisted the dagger’s handle and, shaking my head, opened my eyes.
His face was cents from mine, eyes bulging. Staring at me. He sighed and went limp. Squatting down on his haunches. I followed him with my hand still on the dagger, still pushing it in. My good knee slipped in the sand but I grabbed his shirt and held on, dragging myself through the loose sand to kneel in front of him.
“You could have had it all,” he said in a whisper, shaking his head, blood welling out of the corner of his mouth.
A white hot rage surged through me, pure white hot hatred, and I yanked the dagger from his stomach.
“I had it all and you stole it.”
He smiled. I swung as hard as I could, the dagger a blur as I cut his throat, slashing through. His hand went to the gaping wound — he tried to say something, his mouth opening, but no words came. He gasped, and grunted, blood spurting between his fingers, and fell face-first past me into the sand.