“I must go and attend to business now. Please enjoy yourselves. This is our night.” Sir Thomas squeezed my elbow and, grinning, walked off through the room, speaking to Charles before going into his study. I glanced at my Devstick — it was 11:50pm. Suddenly the lights in the room dimmed and on the far wall a huge Devscreen displayed a spinning globe. Earth. The crowd in front nearest the wall moved back as others moved forward. I walked with Mariko over to the edge of the crowd near the hallway exit.
Chapter 37
Wharf Three, Warehouse 21, Jurong Island, New Singapore
Friday 28 February 2110, 11:50am +8 UTC
Gabriel leaned forward in his seat and put his hands on Cochran’s shoulders.
“I’m sorry you had to listen to that. I didn’t think he would kill her,” he said. “But now you know what kind of man Sir Thomas is. There is no loyalty in him. Just self, an evil self. You can let him get away with this or you can help us destroy him. Which will it be?”
Cochran’s sightless eyes stared wide. Tears flowing down her cheeks. She sniffed loudly and breathed out. Sunita had died for her. Sir Thomas had killed her.
“What do you want?” she said in a voice that was almost a whisper.
“Call UNPOL and take the Blue Notice off Martine Shorne and me. Explain we were working undercover for Flederson and are now working for you. And get us clearance to fly the assault craft to the roof of the Marq.”
A sob wracked through Cochran.
Gabriel looked at her. The hatred he felt, turned to pity. He couldn’t avoid the emotion.
Cochran snarled a savage cry from deep back in her throat, but it ended in another body-wracking sob, her mind screaming. “Don’t pity me. Don’t.”
Gabriel, his hands on her shoulders, pulled her into his embrace, holding her tight. She stiffened at the contact and then went limp. “You’re right,” he thought as clearly as he could, projecting the thought into her anguished mind. “Pity is wrong. Really it’s sorry I feel. Sorrow for the pain you’ve suffered. You’re as much Sir Thomas’s victim as the rest of us. Sharon, come with us. Look into my mind now. It’s open to you. Look and see that I am your friend not your enemy.”
Sharon heard the word 'friend' and latched on to it, like a person sinking in quicksand stretching for a branch. She tentatively reached out and entered Gabriel’s open mind. It was a vast universe of warmth, golden, and its intensity made her gasp. She sobbed and he hugged her tightly to him. Tears from her blind eyes.
“How can I go with you? I’m blind,” but even as she thought it, she knew she could and would. The walks in the dark she took every night were no different than this. She could see with her mind.
“Sharon, if you trust me, then stay with me and look at the world through my eyes.”
His words spurring hope, she searched and saw herself as he straightened away from her, his hands still on her shoulders. He smiled at her — she felt rather than saw it — and through his eyes looked at herself in a way she never had before.
Chapter 38
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.