Jonah’s Env, Unit A, 20th floor, Woodlands Envplex, Woodlands, New Singapore
Thursday 12 December 2109, 5:15am +8 UTC
As I woke up I realized that what had been nagging at the edges of my brain had worked itself out. I knew why I trusted Gabriel, or Jibril in Arabic. It was his eyes: they were like mine.
The escape of Jibril Muraz was reported on newsfeeds globally, and an UNPOL Blue Notice, Contain on Site, was issued. All the major newsfeeds carried it, and his image, this time clothed, was broadcast continuously with appeals for further information. The manner of his escape, however, was a closely guarded secret and known only to those who had to know in order to do their work.
I learned of it in my briefing with the Director, the evening of Gabriel’s escape. My part in the matter of Gabriel had not been released to the feeds. Whereas the bitch from hell, Agent Cochran, had her image repeatedly broadcast, and was reported as saying that Muraz would soon be contained and, ‘no further comment for the moment, thank you.’
I tried to keep busy but it was impossible to think of anything else except what I had been told in that exhausting mind conversation. I had a brief chat with Bill Scuttle, the Senior partner in the firm, and cleared with him that I was going to take a few days self-time and that I’d be back to contribute by Monday. I confirmed with UNPOL that there were no pressing pro bono duties, and I stayed in my Envplex waiting for the sign.
I thought about the sign all the time, worried about missing it. I also thought about my uncle, my so-called uncle. He had murdered my father and is was in a conspiracy to send the planet back into the Dark Ages. It sounded crazy, but I believed it. The fact that I believed it made me think I might be going crazy, but I believed it to my core.
I looked at the Devscreen next to the sleeper. 5:15am. I folded my arms behind my head on the pillow and stared at the ceiling. Usually I am good at waiting. I can be very patient — it’s part of being an arbitrator. But this wasn’t some spat between two corporate enterprises, Ents, raging at each other over infringed copyrights. This was my life. I had so many questions that I couldn’t ask. Who am I? Who is Sir Thomas? Why did he kill my father? What is the conspiracy? Was I under suspicion? Was I being more closely watched? Is my Env bugged? This last thought caused a quick surge of adrenalin and I sat up and looked around my Env. I let out a long slow breath. If it was bugged and I suddenly started looking for them, it would be suspicious. If they were there, the only thing I could do was act normally. As long as they can't tell what I'm thinking they can’t know what I know.
Lying there I tried to recall my first known memory. I was surprised that the earliest really solid memory was of when I was ten years old. On my tenth birthday I had boarded a flight. It was a holiday and I was flying to a summer camp in Italy from London. As I was an unaccompanied child, an Alitalia air staffer was assigned to get me on the airship. When she saw from my PUI on my Devstick that it was my birthday, she gave me a big smile and, putting her face close to mine with that big smile on it, proceeded to tug my right ear lobe ten times. It hurt. And I wished she would stop. That is my first real memory.
I can remember things from when I was five years old, but not clearly. They’re impressionist memories. But from ten years old, I can remember things quite clearly. People, events, the schools, knowledge learned, decisions made, these memories are more solid. My uncle had told me that my parents died just after I was born, and this is an impressionist memory. A sad little boy standing in front of his uncle, being told why his parents did not visit him like the other children’s parents. I feel and remember the sadness but the exact time, place and circumstances have faded.
Another reason I believed Gabriel is that Sir Thomas and I look nothing alike. And from what I had seen from the very scant images of my parents, I didn’t look much like my supposed father, Sir Thomas’s brother. If what Gabriel had said was true, and I chose to believe it was, then everything that had been told to me about the origins of my existence was a lie.
I have the images of their funeral service, but apart from that, only two other images of my parents exist. I am in none of them. I had always thought that strange. Don’t mothers always hold their babies and have an image taken? As a boy it was hard to build fantasies around such flimsy evidence of existence, but still I tried. I can remember that. Lying in my sleeper in the dormitory at night imagining that in the morning my parents would be there to take me home. I tried to remember what I dreamed about, after I turned ten, but drew a blank. I tried to remember what I dreamed about last week. I don’t dream, I realized. I have no dreams.
It was hard to frame Sir Thomas in my mind as an evil person. My inheritance from my parents, under Sir Thomas’s management until I turned eighteen, had grown substantially, and I didn’t need to contribute to earn cred. Sir Thomas had also seen to my education and placed me in different schools throughout my youth. He said in speeches that my circumstances were what led him to form the Oliver Foundation, a globally recognized scholarship program for orphaned children.
We had neither lived, nor traveled together. We would meet usually in a meeting room set aside for the purpose at the school or academy I was attending. In one sense I grew up surrounded by people, in another I grew up totally alone. It struck me how little I actually knew about my uncle and I realized that this was not a good thing. I had to know more.
Why did you murder my father? Just to think of that spun the thoughts in my head into a whirlwind. As a society we abhor violence in any form, mental or physical. We are taught from a young age that it is the basest of behaviors, that murder is the most heinous of all violence. The finality of it extinguishes all hope and leaves nothing but negative energy. That my uncle could be capable of such a thing shocked me to my core. Somewhere out there was a man who had answers for me, my brother, he had said, and I believed that too.
Perhaps it was this unsubstantiated, born in the gut sureness that had thrown my thoughts into such confusion. I couldn’t work it out. Usually I am a skeptical person. Not negative. I’m optimistic, but I’m also pragmatic, and therefore skeptical. It wasn’t usual for me to believe in something without having solid evidence to justify that belief. Here I had no such evidence, only an event foretold coming to pass. But there was something else that made me believe Gabriel and it had nothing to do with evidence. It was his eyes.
As much as I wanted to just lie in the sleeper, the lack of a sign gnawed at my conscience. He had told me that he needed my help on a matter of ‘global importance’. It was difficult to sleep with those words constantly in my brain and I felt guilty just lying there. I should be doing something, but what? Wait for the sign. I tried to think what he would have wanted me to do and the only thing I could come up with was to make myself available for discreet contact.
A part of me, a really significant part of me, was afraid of my uncle. To my knowledge I had never met a murderer and just to know that about someone was terrifying. I pushed that thought away with the less sure one that Sir Thomas didn’t know that I knew what he was. The trifling comfort it provided allowed me to sketch out a plan of action. Act normal but try to find out more about Sir Thomas. If Gabriel was smart enough to figure out how to get into and out of the Deep just to meet me, then for sure he was smart enough to send me the sign irrespective of what I was doing. I climbed out of my sleeper and walked naked over to the Clearfilm desk in front of the window that looked out over the causeway to Johor.
I was about to turn on the Dev on the desk, but my hand stopped before it touched the small red button that would bring it alive. What was I going to do on the Dev? Was anyone watching? Would not using the Dev create suspicion? I had to keep up appearances. I had to make it look as if everything was exactly the same in my life. The Dev suddenly became a threat in my mind. We called it Dev, short for Device, the ubiquitous apparatus that provided us with the means of communication. In the twentieth century when personal computers were first invented, they were indeed personal, but by the end of that century most of them were connected to the Internet. The Internet and another invention, the mobile phone, caused the convergence, Dev, that made terms like phone, computer and camera almost obsolete.
I had always thought of the various Devs that I have owned as ‘friends’. Not in the sense that I want to take them out for dinner, although I have done that often, but rather that whenever I have been alone, I have always had the Dev to keep me company. Music, flicks, even characters that had conversations with me, some of which I created, the Dev was always there, to fill that gap. With my newly acquired habit of thinking like a criminal… no that isn’t right, not a criminal, a spy, yes that is how I have to think, as a spy would think… Devs had become dangerous.
I pressed the red button and the Devscreen instantly came alive. The time in the bottom right corner read 5:30am. The usual time I woke up.
I said, “Global newsfeeds main living space screen.” The floor-to-ceiling screen, which ran along half the wall occupied by my double sleeper and the relax space with its long sofa and two Siteazys, displayed the global newsfeeds. I had the large center image set on Bloomberg-Reuters, a financial news channel. Around this large square, twenty other news channels displayed. I could change channel by voice command or Devstick which was tuned to function as a remote control for the main Dev in my Env.
“This is Kathy Peterson reporting for Bloomberg-Reuters, back to you, Jeff.” Commodity prices ran along the bottom of the screen: gold was down, titanium up. I switched channels to legal news. The screen showed an earnest-looking blonde-haired lady, perhaps in her sixties. Although age is hard to tell, she looked like she could be someone’s grandmother. She was listening to a question from an interviewer who was off-image.
“…And then what are the implications for privacy? The government knows where you are at all times…”
I turned the volume up a little and walked over to the food prep area just off the relax space. I was lucky to find this Env. It was large, big enough for a family of seven, and I had taken it on a long lease with the condition of significant remodeling. I had retained one of the rooms for guests. It had never been used. The rest of the walls in the Env had been knocked down to leave one large space. In that I had created four distinct sections: The food prep area, the relax area, and the sleeping and working areas. The open space of the Env was about three hundred square meters, large by anyone’s standards, but I had taken the lease at the time when the economy was in a down cycle.
The interviewer was still speaking. “You’re online, literally on display to the globe, so what does this mean for our privacy? We’re already open at all times to government inspection. Doesn’t this mean that anyone anywhere can tune in to where we are and track us? Isn’t that an enormous security concern?”
I opened up my fridge and pulled out a carton of orange juice. The freshness indicator on the box showed green, so I poured myself a glass and taking it with me walked over to the relax area and sat in the Siteazy in front of the screen. I took a sip of the orange juice.
The blonde woman nodded her head. “Barry, before I answer your question, I’d like to get this into perspective because there’s a few assumptions in your question that are simply incorrect. Firstly the new Personal Unique Identification Law, or to call it by its commonly known name, the ‘Tag Law’, does not mean that anyone can suddenly zoom in on an image of you. Far from it. The same processes and protection we have as individuals today will still be in place. No one is advocating removing those. Through your own personalized profile page you will be able to set up more privacy conditions than what we have now. The only difference between this law and the last is that having an embedded PUI is a lot more convenient than having to carry around a Devstick. This law is about more privacy, not less. Bo Vinh’s words on this are appropriate and I quote…”
“We’ll have to hold it there, June, while we take a quick suggestion break. Don’t change feed — we’ll be right back with June Masters and the rest of our panel to talk about the ‘Tag Law’ and what it means for you.”
The feed switched into a suggestion for the new Mercedes-Benz electric vehicle. The EV looked sporty enough but I wasn’t tempted. Living in New Singapore and spending most of my time in the city I had little need for an EV. I changed channels. It occurred to me that I was probably behind in voting and changed to the UN Vote channel. The popular vote, ‘Popvote’, was Bo Vinh’s idea and he used it to great effect in ridding the world of the nation states. He set up the first online voting site where, through authentication of your identity, you could vote on any issue happening in the world of politics. Pulling people of all nations to the site with his commentary, he used it as a platform to demonstrate to nation leaders how far off the mark they were with some of their policies. And in many cases how far they had drifted from the wishes of the people that had voted for them.
I was behind in voting. It is compulsory to vote, and if you don’t, your vote is counted as undecided, and depending on the ranked importance of the vote, you can be fined. It isn’t a large fine and can be paid in either contributing time to a listed cause or in cred. I scanned through the list of votes, scrolling down from the most current through to the last vote I’d made. The list was mostly City council votes for New Singapore, as a resident there I had to vote on those, and there was only one Global vote that I had missed. That had been to develop a new City in the ocean off the Maldives. I would have voted yes but was too late. I credded the fine and changed channel back to the panel discussion. A suggestion for a new slimming regen unit was just finishing, yours for five thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine cred, and then a tanned and serious looking Barry came back.
“Thanks for staying with us. We’re talking about the new ‘Tag Law’, set for global PopVote Saturday 15 March 2110. Joining me on the panel are June Masters, President of the Goldman School for Public Policy, Andy Haas, former Head Justice of the Permanent Court of Arbitration and currently advisor to the New Aspiration Party responsible for proposing the ‘Tag Law’, Dan Quigley, of the Conservative Christian Party who support the Law, and last but certainly not least, Annika Bardsdale of the Social Responsibility Party who are opposed to the new Law. June, if I can start with you. Just before we went to the break, you were talking about the difference between the existing law and the new law.”
“Yes, Barry, thank you. As I was saying, the new ‘Tag Law’ provides more privacy. In the words of Bo Vinh: ‘Having nothing to hide from each other is the first step to having nothing to fear from each other,’ and that is what this Law is all about. No more carrying around a Devstick to prove our identity — it becomes a part of us. What could be more human?”
“That’s a dangerous thought, June, using technology to define what is human. Suppose the Tagged identities are hacked? What then? Your entire life is on display to someone?”
“Annika, our entire lives are on display right now. If a hacker wants to get into us and they’re skilled enough they can steal your identity right now — it happens all the time. With the Tag that will become much harder because you are the device. The Tag embedded in your arm is protection against identity theft because any action that doesn’t match your current location will immediately be seen for what is. You have to go beyond emotion here and understand the logic.”
I took another sip of my orange juice. I can’t say I liked the idea of having anything inserted into my body, but the idea of the Tag appealed to me on a number of levels. Firstly, it would cut down crime which has been rising steadily. Secondly, there really was no difference between an embedded Tag and a PUI on a Devstick. Well, the only difference is that your hands are free — but I guess you could say your hands are free if your Devstick is in a pocket or clipped to a belt. Even so, a one mil tag embedded in your upper arm is still more convenient to carry around.
I thought it would make shopping easier. Just step up to any Dev in any shop space and speak or key in your password. No more waving of Devstick at the shop Dev. If I understood it correctly — and privacy is not my area of expertise under the law — but location and other personal data belong to you. Ents have to delete any data that is yours within one month of acquiring it, unless you give them permission not to. In which case they can hold your data but not resell it to any other party without your express permission. You have access to any data the government holds about you, except where such access is deemed to be a threat to the Nation, and then you require a court order.
The security around personal data is massive, but then again I’d also just seen what Gabriel could do to those systems and that worried me about the Tag. What if someone could hack the data? What could they do? Well, nothing more than what they can do now, and that was why I though the Tag Law would be passed. March 15 — I had to remember to vote. I picked up my Devstick and marked it in my calendar. The time on the Devstick showed it was nearly 5:45am. I got up and swallowed the rest of the orange juice, taking the empty glass back to the food prep area. After putting the glass into the sanitizer, I headed for the shower.
I think up some of my best ideas while showering, but not this time, and I got it over with as quickly as possible. “Fast dry,” I said, and a blast of warm air hit me from above, driving the wet from my body with its force. No sign yet, a ton of questions and I have to maintain a normal life. That summed it up, but it didn’t help. Frustrated with it all, I looked at myself in the mirror. Who are you?
Standing there, examining my reflection, I realized something else, something I recognized but wasn’t familiar with — fear. I was scared. I ran my hands through my hair and a down my jaw line, feeling the stubble that had grown there. I had to get a grip: these thoughts were leading me nowhere and being scared, while a natural response, was counterproductive. I had to do something, but what? And that’s when it hit me. Take a vac. Get away from all of this. If Gabriel needed to find me he could, I was sure of that, and suddenly the idea of taking a vac grew. Would it look suspicious? No, not if I told Sir Thomas in advance and made it seem like I was rewarding myself with a hard-earned spell of relaxation.
Feeling a surge of energy I went back out to the living area and said to the Dev, “Find me a list of Vacenvs within one hour’s travel time from here. Search criteria: clean white sand beach, stand-alone bedroom or cabin, occupancy less than twenty percent, with sailing craft for rent within one kilom of Vacenv.” A list of Vacenvs came up. It wasn’t a long list as December is always high season in South East Asia which is where the map and list had focused, given my criteria. While looking down the list I thought about what I would write to Sir Thomas. It would be better to send him an email as I didn’t trust myself not to show emotion if I was looking at him. I’d just write something short but ask if he had any further leads on the runner — that way it would look as if I knew nothing. I called up my comms program on the Dev and, selecting Sir Thomas from my list of contacts, dictated.
Dear Sir Thomas,
Hope you are well. I am planning on taking a vac. I just wanted to check with you that I personally am in no danger from the runner that escaped? I was thinking about going to a beach in the Southern Thailand Geographic. In your opinion is it safe for me to do so? I should be gone for three or four days — I’ll bring you back some of that whisky you like.
With warm regards,
Your nephew,
Jonah.
Jonah James Oliver
Arbitrator at Law
Coughington and Scuttle
My signature appended itself to the message automatically. The ‘Chatnip’ app gave me a list of my ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’ to delete, which I did. I thought it looked a bit too formal but then I always attach my signature to my emails. Just stay normal, keep everything as normal as possible, I thought, and said, “Send.”
I turned my attention back to the list of Vacenvs and one looked particularly interesting. A tiny Vacenv in a small village called Tha Sala, about fifteen kiloms north from Nakorn Si Thammarat further up along the coast. Using the Changi Lev port, I could reach Phuket within ten mins, and then catch an airship transport across to Nakorn Si Thammarat. I could be on the beach in Tha Sala within an hour of leaving New Singapore. The Lev between New Singapore had only finished construction last year. The final section of tube was put in place in November, ready for pumping out the air. The resulting vacuum allows us to travel at eight thousand kilos per hour, with high speed mag-lev, in the little sixteen seat pods that we call Levs. The idea was adopted for building elevators and many buildings now have the Lev tubes coiled up like a giant spring either inside or outside of the structures to which they provide transport. They were first called Vactrains but when the pods came along and they were put in buildings, trains just didn’t fit anymore. The Transatlantic Lev can take you from London to New York in less than an hour.
The Geographic of Thailand had standardized on South East Asia Time (SEAT) back in 2020, as had Indonesia, so I hit the comms button next to their name. The hands of a little clock started spinning where my finger had touched the screen. The hands spun some more and then I realized I was still naked. I quickly turned off the cam on my Dev and went to voice-only mode on my side. The clock hands disappeared and a man, standing on a beach, his back to the ocean appeared on my Devscreen. He looked Thai, was wearing a sarong and had a large fish dangling from a meaty fist.
“Sawasdee Khrap, good morning, Mr Oliver, my name is Bank. Please excuse the fish — I was just on my way to the kitchen when I heard your call. How can I be of service, sir?”
“Good morning, Khun Bank. I’m thinking of staying at your Vacenv for a few days. Do you still have beach front cottages available?”
“Yes we do, Mr Oliver. We’ve just opened and are still in soft launch so we’re not doing any marketing right now. In fact we only have two other guests staying here tonight. When were you planning on arriving, sir?”
“I was thinking about coming over there before lunch. Could you arrange a car for me? I’ll call you when I’m boarding the airship.”
“Certainly, Mr Oliver. And I take it you would like one of our beach cottages is that right, sir?”
“Yes, that’s right. As near to the sea as possible, OK?”
“Yes Mr Oliver, thank you. So we’ll look forward to seeing you around lunchtime then.”
“Yes, thanks, and save me some of that fish for later,” I said. His face broke into a grin and he gave me a thumbs up as I cut the call. I felt better. At least I was doing something, moving. It had to be an improvement on sitting around brooding over the circumstances I found myself in. I looked across the room at the clothes racks by the sleeper, and frowned. I didn’t have any clothes that were suitable for the beach. Everything I had was either formal or smart-casual. Do clothes define a person? Probably not, but they do tell you a lot about someone’s lifestyle, and mine spoke volumes. The last time that I had taken any time off, ‘self-time’, was when I had just arrived in New Singapore from the Scotland Geographic. All I ever do is contribute and sleep a dreamless sleep.