The Hunt for Pierre Jnr (11 page)

She smiled at him, and he smiled back at her. ‘Am I your mother now?’

‘Yes, and now we must hide, until it is time.’

‘I love you, Pierre.’

‘I love you too, Mother.’

~ * ~

Pierre Jnr is

confirmed alive on

April Seventh, 2159

~ * ~

To the outside world, it looked like an explosion. Even as the ground still vibrated, the streams of nearly two hundred thousand people flooded the Weave with recordings as they ran for their lives. Walls cracked and blocks fell from above. Many didn’t reach safety and their avatars froze on the last messages they projected.

Around the world, daily life halted. In the hours following there was nothing else worth thinking about. The Weave was dominated by the events in the Dome. Along with thousands of surveillance flies, a terrified world watched as the cloud lost momentum then slowly spread out into a fog.

The surrounding area was evacuated as soon as it began, Citizens fleeing north and south in a rush of squibs and jets. Soldiers and other personnel took control quickly, processing witnesses in a battalion of medic tents. Even when the threat seemed to have passed the exodus continued.

Services cordoned off the assaulted area and none protested. Teams of transports landed and armoured soldiers rapidly spread out, checking every street and building. At the cordon, Servicemen formed a two-deep human perimeter, one facing into the hot zone, back to back with a soldier facing out at the crowd and the swarm of remote cameras.

The natural airflow took an hour to dispel the cloud, by which time Services had erected a wall that blocked intervention from non-Services personnel. No cameras or sensors were allowed through. Nothing was allowed to fly overhead. Not until they knew what had happened.

Every kind of check was performed. Team after team of scientists and experts were let behind the fence to perform their tests: radiation, explosives, distortion, chemical and bacterial, but nothing was out of its ordinary range for the area. At least that was what they reported into the Weave.

Most of the Citizenry of 2159 hadn’t been alive for the most recent Dark Age. It was fifty years since the Örjian blitz and, as educated as the older generation could make them, the majority had grown up surrounded by the authority of Services and the security of the World Union.

That this event in the Dome went unexplained was unacceptable. Though nobody knew exactly what had happened, opinions and suspicions were quick to build. Some pundits speculated it was the actions of an anarchist group, but none were known to have such destructive capabilities or inclinations, and none claimed responsibility.

Around the world people stopped what they were doing to watch and rewatch the scant evidence that had been captured. A minute of satellite grabs, looping like a slideshow, showed the Paris street from above, obscured through the Dome roof, as the dust cloud appeared, twisted like a tornado then stopped as suddenly as it started.

Most people in the twenty-second century liked to believe that violence was something the world was evolving away from and this disturbance was a significant breach. A smaller population, mostly Services enrolled, knew the world wasn’t as peaceful as it seemed, and presumed it was either another eruption of tensions or a criminal syndicate with aggressive factions that needed quelling. Most Citizens didn’t like to observe this aspect of the world too closely; after all, that was what Services was for.

Witness reports were collected. People outside the radius who saw their neighbourhood collapse and rise in a wave of debris were asked to repeat their experiences for a multitude of interviewers and forums. These joined the mix of footage that was growing around the mystery of the blackout, catalogued and discussed by every chat and media blast to build a comprehensive picture of what had taken place.

A number of Citizens attempted to draw what they had seen over their shoulders as they fled from the confusion. The streets lifting up like a wave; buildings breaking into shards and clouds of dirty fury chasing them from their homes. Some artist sketches depicted a figure, squat and thick-limbed, standing up amongst the fray. It was fanciful enough to capture the mind of the Weave even before someone concocted the glowing eyes, or the figure rearing back to the sky and bellowing like a titan. Most spectators felt this was just a natural inclination to anthropomorphise an inexplicable event. Those who had run from it could not dismiss it so easily.

~ * ~

Penelope Renaud arrived on foot and was blocked by the wall of armoured Servicemen. She could barely see through the phalanx of marauder units to her zone. Above them — the soldiers and crowd — a swarm of observation drones spiralled over the area, unable to pass the cordon. Up close they were as big as your hand with wings of solar panels that made only an insect’s worth of sound, though the swarm of them produced a tense hum that was increasingly annoying.

Services couldn’t hold back the spectators forever. Public pressure was too great and the media teams, politicians and the curious wanted to see for themselves what was beyond. When the area was declared safe, the soldiers stood down and made room for the people to pass through.

They were told not to go too far and not to touch anything. What Penelope saw was not the home she had lived in, nor the streets she knew. It was wreckage. Some foundation walls stubbornly held up their edges to mark the route of the streets, but Rue de Rivoli was now only a midden twenty feet high.

The group that went through first were silent. Their cameras floated around the scene, pushing their footage out to an equally breathless audience on the Weave.

Penelope had been the mayor of this quartier for seven years, and had lived there all her life. She crouched down and touched the pebbles, struggling to compose herself under the tears that had instantly risen in her eyes. There was so much pale dust; it stuck to her fingers. Then she realised the white limbs she saw in the rubble were not the appendages of statues but the dusted limbs of her constituency.

The new evidence was digested and disseminated. Every dialogue and account was soon accompanied by graphics showing the area before the event, the satellite snapshots of the dust cloud, and then afterwards with the buildings erased and only a hill of detritus in their place.

With all the replaying, and dissipation into new thought vectors, there was a tectonic shift in the civic structure of the World Union. The Will of the people was changing. Penelope Renaud, the mayor of the quartier, was one of the first victims of the civic fallout. With a large portion of her local supporters deceased and the remainder desperate for answers, her status plunged. It would not be long before the Primacy was brought into question and the global governance was reordered.

The Will of the people could change in an instant, theoretically. It only took a significant proportion of the Citizenry to recast their opinions for the hierarchy of society to shift, but there were some unfaltering factors that slowed the pace of change. Firstly, the world being round with half the population awake while the other half slept meant the fastest possible transition from one governing Primacy to another could be twelve hours. The other significant factor in the rate of change was that sixteen billion people had to independently make up their minds. This was not like in the mad old days when people voted for a particular person or faction; choices were not limited to yea or nay or personally vouching for a candidate they would never meet or speak with. Despite the disruption it caused, many people liked to take their time and understand any new choices presented to them.

Citizens contributed the influence of their streams at the detail-level they preferred. For less engaged Citizens the question was always a simple vote of confidence: do you want to keep the current Primacy? And if they didn’t want to decide that for themselves, due to apathy or a humble recognition that others might know better, they could abstain or assign their vote to another person, interest group or voting bloc. Other portions of the population were also accounted for, despite their inability to participate, such as the young and infirm. The Will determined who spoke for the silent proportion, be it teachers or a medical board. Children’s votes were determined by the parent or guardian until the child voiced that they wanted to control their own influence.

Even so, the first influence wave after the manifestation was quick; the fastest change of government since the founding of the civic system. Within a day of the incident, global confidence shifted, determining that the current Primacy were not in control of events and not speaking openly about what had caused the devastation was impeachable. Of course, the standing Primacy 
could
 have revealed what they knew, but they were still guided by the Will that had placed them in power; that Will felt the information was best kept restricted and until the Will had selected new representatives this would not change.

The second wave of change came via the passive Will. This wave was bigger and would take longer to flow through. Every mundane decision, from the local pool temperature to arbitrating flight paths, was determined by those who participated, and how much influence they each had. The value of companies and groups rose and fell as people used their services or bought their products. For example, the decision to raise the temperature of the pool affected the support for whatever energy system was in place, which was determined by the ethical and sustainable inclinations of those who took an interest. This gave these collectives a stronger vote to contribute upward in the decision-making tree, forming interest groups for distribution of resources, land rights, research and development; everything.

This hierarchy formed a pyramid of influence that was constantly fluctuating but stable, and accurately reflected the opinions and motivations of the world’s population, or at least the eighty per cent that chose to participate. Since the collapse, or more precisely, since the beginning of the Weave and the spread of the World Union, the focus of the Will had been on rebuilding, bringing the weather under control, health improvements and schooling. Many now felt the threat of the unknown, and perceived that the peaceful tenor of the current decision-making tree was not suitable for confronting an unknown and destructive enemy.

In school assemblies, where students met between classes, they buzzed with expletives while sipping at boosted drinks and swapping notes.

‘Ya all see that?’

‘Cryppy.’

‘Hectic cryppy.’

In the communal halls that stretched their tunnels through the big cities, thousands met with friends and colleagues to pass on the insights they had to offer.

‘My partner’s father said that he has never seen anything like it. And he’s been around a long time; this old guy is pushing one-thirty, though you wouldn’t know it to look at him,’ said a woman to an old friend.

‘And they don’t know who did it?’ her friend asked.

‘Anarchists most likely.’

Even the dymo-gyms with their energeneration machines were filled with people talking as they added juice to the grid.

‘Did you watch the manifestation last night?’ one man asked another man who had a visor over his face.

‘I’m watching it now. I was operating all day and didn’t get out until six.’

‘I didn’t even go to work today. No one did.’

On the open Weave the riot of words never paused. Chatter, blame and hypothesis mixing with rant and rave turned almost every platform into an uncontrollable storm of unfounded propositions.

‘We have to start asking the questions. Who did this? Who is responsible for these deaths? And how are we going to stop this happening again?’

~ * ~

It was deep in the night when Ryu Shima first saw the event. He was tall, thin, shaven and patient. On a floating dock, he looked out at a sampan bobbing in the lagoon and the red seconds dropping by in his overlay as his squad approached for collection.

His scheduling was precise. Five seconds until they were in position, fifteen until disarmament, seventeen until the snatch. It was an unusual collection tonight as the small boat was no bigger than one of their armoured suits and they had to approach from underwater. He carefully monitored their heart rates and ceregrams and made notes on their overall performance.

The squad had an agent with them that Ryu had recently processed to solve some behavioural issues. He didn’t approve of using agents — no psi should ever be fully trusted — but when he had to use them, there was a simple maxim to follow in the capturing of psis: use tappers on benders and bots on tappers.

The agent in question had shown hesitation in recent months and, now that he had been reoriented, if he didn’t perform he would be restricted to the islands. Ryu waited and watched the dot that represented Okonta as it approached the boat. For two seconds his cerebral activity flared, normal, but his pulse barely shifted.

‘Clear,’ the agent reported.

The offensive team jumped at the signal and Ryu heard a crack and splash echo across the canals. A moment later the team leader confirmed the target as masked and inert.