Welcome to the New Guy

Welcome to the New Guy

A Tale from the Files of the Department for Social Justice

New York City, Year 2047 of the Common Era

Simon Gunn was in a hurry, yet he knew better than to show it.

On the streets of New York everyone was in a hurry to get to someplace else. Their home. Their office. Maybe the home of their loved one, which their spouse had best not find out about.

Wherever you needed to be, you couldn’t let the ever watchful eyes of the Abraham AI see you running or even walking faster than anyone else.

Rapid movement got you noticed. Panic, anger, exhilaration got you flagged. The cameras were everywhere, monitoring the vast population of the northern American states with a vigilance even George Orwell would have marvelled at.

Get flagged more than once and you are placed on a watch list. Show up on the watch list more than once a week and you’ll get a snooper AI tracking your movements. Examining your employment records. Sifting through your social media accounts and rifling your bank statements.

Orwell had no idea how readily the governments of the new world would embrace his concepts. Gunn smiled sourly to himself, wondering what the long dead author would think of life in the Northern Block.

He’d probably be pissed that most of the people living here had no idea who he was or what the phrase ‘Big Brother’ really meant. Gunn knew for a fact that his seminal works, such as Nineteen Eighty Four and Animal Farm had been scrupulously wiped clean from the public awareness.

Not a single trace remained anywhere on the Network of his deeply politicised works. Gunn had managed to obtain highly illegal hard copies of the ancient novels and read them as a young man. He’d burned them as soon as he’d finished each one, absorbing their charged visions of a world gone mad.

A world that he found himself living in every day of his life.

The irony wasn’t lost on Gunn and he almost allowed himself a tight smile. Almost. He was on the open streets, with a filter mask covering the lower half of his face and smart glasses covering the upper. Yet he didn’t doubt that the raising of his eyebrows or any change in his hunched posture would signal something to a snooper AI.

In the Northern Block, it wasn’t paranoia to assume ’They’ were always watching. Because they watched everybody, all the time, assessing and judging and deciding your fate.

It was precisely because of this that Simon Gunn had become the man he was.

And for the record, his name wasn’t really Simon Gunn, but it was the name he was using this week so it will do for now.

The Early Bird Coffee Shop

Gunn paused as he entered the coffee shop, using the pretence of removing his filter mask to surreptitiously cast an eye over the patrons and staff.

His smart glasses were hardlinked to the induction stud on his right temple, only able to send and receive data from the neural chip implanted in his skull. Gunn had deliberately removed the wireless data link function from the glasses, making sure no-one could hack the stream.

The data files in his head identified four out of the seven other patrons as semi-regulars like himself. Of the three staff, two were long term employees and the cute lad delivering drinks to the tables had to be fresh out of high school. Unlikely to be an agent but looks could be deceiving.

Gunn placed his regular order at the counter, giving a brief smile of thanks to the pert woman who handled the manual payments then sauntered casually to his usual spot at a secluded corner. It also happened to be out of sight of the two security cameras that watched over the tables and counters.

The door camera would have recorded him as he entered, but he’d made sure to have his back to the lens when he removed his filter mask. A small thing but one of many that he used to keep his image out of the Network as much as possible.

His coffee and bagel had only just been delivered by that fresh faced youngster when the phone rang. Gunn shot the boy a thankful look, which earned him a shy smile in return, then waited til he was out of earshot before taking the phone from an inner pocket of his coat.

“How is the weather?” Gunn said into the phone, letting the image of the serving lad give him a cheerful expression. Just in case a stray camera might be watching him at that moment. “Did you get to your flight on time?”

“It’s sunny and dry, just like we hoped” the male voice answered. “I thought I was going to miss my connection but the airline managed to get me there in time”

A moment of hesitation and Gunn felt his smile falter. He struggled to keep the fake smile in place, looking around the coffee shop with renewed suspicion.

“Oh? I thought we had booked you into First Class?”

“Yeah, but the ride to the airport got delayed. I had to make it there with another company”

Gunn felt the ice forming in his guts and his hand trembled only slightly as he held the phone tighter against his cheek. The carefully laid plans were coming undone but he needed to know how badly things were going.

How compromised was he?

“How long were you delayed?” Gunn asked coldly, his other hand resting against the coffee he had yet to drink. The warmth of the brew and the pervasive odour of coffee barely registered, his eyes fixed on the front door to the shop.

“Five minutes I think” the voice replied and Gunn had to stifle a horrified gasp of shock.

“Five?” he whispered with a tremor. Five dead Minute Men! He was amazed he couldn’t hear sirens already, the Minute Men thronging the streets in their dull green armour with guns at the ready.

“Maybe more” the voice suggested evenly and Gunn marvelled at how the man could sound so calm. “Will you be sending the rest of my things to me?”

“What?” Gunn gasped out in confusion. He’d forgotten the basics of their communication code and it took him a moment to make the translation in his head. “Err, yes, I’ll arrange that right now”

He disconnected the call, looking at his phone for some seconds until he remembered where he was.

“Is the coffee okay?”

Gunn looked up into the eyes of the server, noting again how beautiful his young and unblemished face was. It had been a long time since he had allowed himself to be with another human being. To feel the simple touch of another upon his skin. To let his real self be seen.

Not today. Not now.

He shot his eyes past the youngster, realising some of the semi-regulars had vacated their seats. A pair of new arrivals were settling down to drink and eat, people his data files didn’t know. At the counter, he saw the same old barista still making drinks but the pert woman who’d taken his order was nowhere to be seen.

“It’s fine, as always” he reassured the boy and took a long drink as proof, smiling at him over the rim of the cup.

“Great!” the lad replied and moved off with a happy expression to the other tables. Gunn watched him go and considered his situation. Right now he was in a public place, surrounded by a number of ordinary people. Witnesses and human shields all at once.

It was the best defence he had until he could think of an escape route. He opened the linked bank file on his phone and quickly tapped in a series of commands. The device acknowledged the transfer of funds from one highly encrypted account to another.

“At least he won’t be coming after me” Gunn admitted ruefully to himself. He had considered not completing the transaction but there were two excellent reasons he had upheld his side of the contract.

The first was that once word got out he didn’t honour his contracts then his role as a Freelancer Agent was dead and buried. No guns for hire would agree to any contract he offered if he didn’t pay up.

The second reason was far more pragmatic. A hired killer who could take down five Minute Men was not someone that Simon Gunn was going to annoy. All the cut-outs and fake ID’s in the world wouldn’t stop a man like that from finding him and doing some very terrible things to his body.

Exactly the same kinds of terrible things Gun had hired the man to do to someone else.

As if on cue, his roving eyes fell on the big holo-screen projected over the main counter. The sound was muted but the large font text that scrolled across the bottom edge was easy enough to read. It showed a scene up-state, where uniformed Police and green armoured Minute Men were surrounding a palatial house.

An excited news reporter was standing at the scene, flashing lights and official looking vehicles buzzing around at her back. Gunn didn’t need to read the scrolling text to know what she was reporting.

A very important government official, one of the senior Senators who reported directly to the President, had been found dead in his home. Brutally dismembered with his head rammed onto one of the iron railings that fronted the gates to the estate.

They didn’t quote that last part but Gunn knew it anyway. That had been what the contract had called for.

A message to the President and his cronies. The only kind of message they listened to.

He put his hands under the table and deftly disassembled the phone, removing the battery and the control chip. Then he took a small device from another pocket and plugged it into the input jack of the phone. It pinged softly after a few seconds, confirming it had wiped all remaining data in the device.

The body of the phone would go into a trash recycler as soon as he left here. Then the battery would be dumped in another and the control chip, a sliver of unbreakable crystalline memory glass, would be flung into a sewer.

Gunn settled back, coffee in his hands, mulling anxiously over what to do next. He stiffened when a pair of Police officers sauntered past the windows of the coffee shop, a blue-painted mechanical walking stiffly in their wake. The mechanical was one of those robot soldiers you saw everywhere, tall scary looking monsters covered in armour and carrying enough firepower to kill a small army of soldiers. Or civilians, depending on how the local cops were feeling.

They continued walking past and Gunn let himself relax. He knew he had taken all the precautions he needed to, just like he always had. As soon as he finished his coffee and bagel, he would walk out of here and never come back.

That was his habit - never keep going to the same places or meet the same people. Patterns allowed them to identify you, to find you and to hurt you.

Gunn was too smart to be caught.

He drank the last of the coffee, sad that he wasn’t going to be able to drink here again. The barista knew his craft and he raised his empty cup to salute the man. Except he wasn’t there. It was somebody else, a sallow faced guy with long braided hair who was now working the machine.

Gunn frowned and looked around, using his smart glasses to assess the people in the coffee shop. Of the eight people in the place, including staff, only two came up as registered in his data files. He cast about for the handsome youngster and relaxed when he spotted him coming from the kitchen area, his arms laden with a pair of plates to be delivered.

Not ideal but safe enough for the moment. He contemplated the bagel sitting untouched on a plate, the cream cheese and mock salmon peeking out from inside. The salmon was made in a big factory up north in Canada, meaning it tasted fresher and more like the real thing than anything made locally.

It would be an awful shame to waste it.

He had already decided to abandon his brunch, risking the danger of leaving it uneaten against his need to get into hiding, when a grey suited man stepped up to the table.

“Mind if I join you?” he enquired politely. Gunn glanced up at the stranger, seeing a bland looking face that matched the unremarkable grey suit he wore. It was the kind of face you’d get if you blended thousands of people’s images together, a melange of vague features that reminded you of everybody and nobody at the same time.

Utterly forgettable if it weren’t for the eyes.

The eyes were pale blue, almost glowing against the pallid face that surrounded them. Like the headlights of an oncoming truck and Gunn was a deer halfway across the road. Without realising it, Gunn had sat himself back down into his chair and regarded the arrival with tight, frantic eyes.

“It’s okay, I was just about to leave” he managed to stammer out.

“But you haven’t finished your bagel” the stranger said mildly, as if reproving a fussy child for not eating their supper. “It would be a shame to waste it”.

The words were flat and uninflected yet they sent a spike of fear through his spine. He’d thought almost exactly the same thing bare moments before! Without invitation the unexpected guest sat in the chair facing Gunn, hands laid flat on the table top.

“Who are you?” Gunn breathed out, forcing himself to remain calm. The coffee shop still had plenty of people inside and he was reassured by their unwitting presence. Nobody, not even the agents of the Northern Block would be willing to start a fight in such a populated spot.

“Me?” the bland man answered. “No-one of importance, but for convenience you can call me Agent Johnson if that helps”

“For which agency?” Gunn questioned the man, his left hand dropping surreptitiously below the table. His fingers brushed the slim metal wand he kept fastened under the edge of his coat, loosening the weapon with slow, careful movements. His eyes never left those strange almost hypnotic orbs of the agent, willing him to remain focused on his own blank face.

“You probably have not heard of us, Mister Gunn” Agent Johnson replied calmly. “We are a small department with only a handful of staff scattered across the three nations”

Gunn was surprised at the last comment, since it was rare to encounter any agency that had jurisdiction over the three nations that historically formed the Northern Block. What once had been the sovereign nations of Mexico, Canada and the United States had coalesced into a kind of unified state after the disasters of the Global War and the Viral outbreak that followed.

Each nation kept their own nominal government and leadership, with the Block ruled by an awkward and often conflicting triumvirate of power mongers. For all the supposed unity of purpose that the Northern Block was meant to represent, it was a fractured union at best.

He had the wand in his left hand now, thumb over the activating stud, ready to deliver a few thousand volts to whomever he touched with the thin metal spikes at its tip. The stun wand was a common enough self-defence weapon that he could carry it without needing a special licence but in the right circumstances it was highly effective.

“That didn’t answer my question, Agent Johnson” Gunn said, moving his right hand to lift the bagel to his mouth. He had lost all appetite but it drew the Agent’s attention to his visible hand, giving him the opportunity to strike with his left.

“The Department for Social Justice” the Agent told him with a trace of a smile on his bloodless lips.

Gunn couldn’t help but laugh, nearly choking on the bite of bagel he’d just taken. He swallowed painfully and gave the man a deeper, appraising look.

“They don’t exist” he asserted, his confidence growing once more. “It’s just a myth that parents tell their children to stop them being trolls on the Network. A bogey-man the media likes to blame for unexplained disappearances of Net Divers and the like”

“We do like to maintain a low profile, that is true” Agent Johnson nodded agreeably, that same minimalist smile still curling up the corners of his mouth. “Our Agents don’t reveal themselves very often, and when we do the subjects are not usually able to tell anyone about it afterwards”

Gunn lunged with the stun wand under the table, ramming the twin spikes into the thigh of Agent Johnson. The man didn’t move, didn’t even tremble or blink an eyelid as ten thousand volts surged through the conductive spikes and into his flesh.

What he did do was reach down and pull the wand from his trouser leg and place it on the table between them. Gunn looked at the man with wide-eyed disbelief, unable to move a muscle, as if he had been the one hit with the voltage.

“Now that the pleasantries are done I’d like to tell you a story, Mister Gunn” Agent Johnson told him. “It is quite pertinent to this moment so please be so kind as not to interrupt me”

Gunn swallowed loudly but found himself unable to speak so he nodded his head slowly. His mind was telling him to get up and run out of there as fast as he could, if only his body was willing to listen.

“You are aware, I am sure, of the Artificial Intelligence known as Abraham” the Agent began. “It is one of a small number of extremely powerful entities that oversee each of the major power blocs around the world. They assist the human-led governments in managing their affairs, offering super-human intelligence in the governance of their domains”

Gunn nodded again, not trusting himself to speak aloud. This was kids stuff, knowledge that every person on the planet - and the off-world settlements - learned in the first days of school.

“What is also the case is that every AI is comprised of multiple quantum processors, linked together in parallel or series. The Abraham AI has over nine thousand such processors linked together, although only a small fraction actually make up the the mind of the machine intelligence”

Agent Johnson pointed over his shoulder at the coffee shop window. Gunn turned his head and saw a pair of Minute Men standing outside, their faces hidden behind the armoured visors of Ceramite helmets. If he hadn’t been scared witless at that moment, he’d probably have pissed himself.

“Most people assume the remainder of the huge number of processors are installed into the Minute Men clones” the Agent said flatly. “It is a belief that the Abraham AI encourages and there are few people outside of our Department who know otherwise”

“But there are thousands of Minute Men, all over the Northern Block!” Gunn responded in uncertain tones. “We see them everywhere, every single day”

“There are around three thousand, four hundred and fifty to be exact” Agent Johnson said with cold authority. “However, since they are clones and are equipped with the same weapons and armour, who can tell?. They are moving around all the time, which gives the appearance of a greater number than is the case”

“Why?”

“So that Abraham can use the other six thousand quantum processors for something else” the Agent answered with another vaguely menacing smile. “Something far more important than the useless posturings and machinations of the human governments”

Gunn wasn’t a stupid man. Ruthless, ambitious and greedy - that much was true. When he absorbed what Agent Johnson had revealed, he knew with cold certainty that he wasn’t going to be able to tell anyone about what had happened here today.

He’d never expected it to come to this, but he had always prepared himself for a final escape route. His right hand snatched up the data scrambler from his pocket, ready to jam it against the induction stud on his temple.

It would wipe his machine memory and send a fatal feedback into his organic brain. He’d be brain dead in seconds.

A slim young hand lashed out and grabbed his own, stopping the device before he’d gotten it halfway to his skull. He looked at the bright faced young man who served his coffee in stunned silence. The kid had appeared out of nowhere, moving faster and exhibiting a strength that no un-Enhanced human could possess.

“Please don’t do that, Mister Gunn” the youngster chided him, casually forcing his hand back onto the table. He remained standing at Gunn’s side while Agent Johnson pried the scrambler from his fingers and laid it next to the stun wand.

“He’s one of yours?” Gunn cried out in shock. Agent Johnson gave him a look that was almost feral as he replied.

“They all are, Mister Gunn”

Gunn looked around the coffee shop as all the patrons and the barista returned his stare, faces impassive and closed like they were machines without any charge left in their batteries.

“We’ve been after you for some time, Mister Gunn” the Agent explained to him in measured tones. “You have always been so very careful, so it took a lot of resources and bodies to identify your pattern of movements and behaviours. It was only a week ago we got a definite look at your face, matching it to the posture and body profiles we had obtained”

“If you were so certain of who I was, why did you let me set up that latest contract?”

Agent Johnson’s smile never wavered but the eyes suddenly looked feral, narrowing like a street dog about to attack.

“The Department had already decided the Senator needed to be dealt with, in as spectacular a fashion as possible. Your killer was quite satisfactory for the job and we are planning on using him again, once the necessary modifications have been made”

“What?” Gunn gasped. “He’s already out of the country!”

“No, he isn’t, Mister Gunn. Our Agents intercepted him as soon as he finished his call to you”

Gunn knew in that moment that everything was over. All his careful planning and attention to detail had ultimately failed him. He slumped in his seat, a picture of miserable defeat. The young man let go of his arm and stood impassively at his side, watchful and waiting.

“So what happens now?” he asked his companions, his captors. “I disappear without a trace? A bullet in the back of the head and an unmarked grave someplace?”

“How about I tell you the rest of my story, Mister Gunn?” Agent Johnson responded mildly. Gunn nodded his agreement, eyes grown sullen and grey as he regarded the man. It wasn’t like he had any other options left open to him.

“Silence means assent” the Agent said, like it was a mantra from some corporate manifesto. Probably was, Gunn mused sourly. It was the sort of thing he expected to be carved over the entrance to wherever the Department for Social Justice was located, if they had anything like a public building.

“Those six thousand quantum processors are installed into ordinary people, Mister Gunn. People like you, or that gentleman at the coffee machine or even the young server standing at your side” the Agent began. “People you’d walk past on the street without noticing them, who’d serve your food or take your bags up to a hotel room. Ordinary, unremarkable people of all kinds, of all ages, just another citizen of the Northern Block”

“Except for one important difference, Mister Gunn. They have all committed the vilest and most unimaginable crimes against their fellow citizens. The sort of people who, if dealt with by the usual process of justice, would be incarcerated or executed”

Gunn lifted his gaze to meet the glowing eyes of Agent Johnson, confused and terrified in equal measure.

“The barista over there killed four children at a day care centre he worked at” the Agent told him, pointing at the pale, drawn face of the guy at the counter. “The young man who brought your coffee and bagel butchered his girlfriend’s parents and brother with a hunting knife because she said she was going to break up with him”

Gunn twisted his head, looking at the beautiful boy with sudden revulsion.

“I killed them while she was asleep in the next room” the youngster said calmly. “Cut their throats and watched as the blood covered the sheets and soaked into the mattress. It was the most wonderful thing I have ever seen”

“Are they all monsters?” he almost sobbed. Almost, because at his core Gunn knew he was not all that different. He had never pulled a trigger or thrust a blade into a living body, yet he had orchestrated dozens upon dozens of exactly those kinds of awful deaths.

“All of us in the Department are monsters, Mister Gunn” Agent Johnson assured him. “But please do not think that any of us have escaped our due punishment”

“How?” was all he could breathe out.

“The quantum processors control every aspect of our flesh and blood bodies. A kind of Limited AI lets us walk and talk like normal citizens, operating us like living corpses. Except our organic minds are still inside of our skulls, trapped in a prison where our screams of agony and torment cannot be heard”

Gunn glanced at the people who sat and stood around the coffee shop, all of them so normal looking bar their blank expressions and dead eyes. Living robots, bound into the quantum network of the Abraham AI.

“They don’t look like they are being tormented” Gunn blurted out, facing Agent Johnson. “I think you are just trying to scare me into confessing my crimes!”

“No, every word I said is true, Mister Gunn. I was once an office manager right here in New York, highly regarded for my excellent organisational skills and managing of over fifty dedicated employees. On the weekends I would take long drives in the country and look for solitary travellers, usually attractive young men. I’d take them somewhere secluded, drugged and bound, then carve their bodies apart with vintage surgical tools”

“Would you like to meet the old me, Mister Gunn? I can bring Vincent out to tell you all about himself”

Agent Johnson’s eyes rolled back in his head, his arms laid flat on the table, as if he was pretending to be a psychic medium channelling the ghosts of the past. Then the head snapped forward, eyes wide and staring as the screaming began.

“DEAR GOD! PLEASE KILL ME! I’M BEGGING YOU! DON’T LET THEM DO THIS TO ME! PLEASE, I’LL DO ANYTHING YOU WANT! JUST END ME…..!”

“That’s enough of that, Vincent” Agent Johnson said calmly, coughing a little as one hand rubbed at his throat. “He’s been in there for quite some time now and I am afraid his body is beginning to fail. It is time for me to find a replacement, someone to take over my role in the Department”

“Who?” he managed to ask, voice catching on that solitary word.

“I think we both know the answer to that question, Mister Gunn”

Hotel Excelsior, New York City

Gunn looked in the mirror, running one pale hand over the close cropped hair of his scalp. The faint incision marks were already fading thanks to the Fast Heal serum that he’d been injected with, barely noticeable unless you looked close enough.

He straightened his tie, a pale blue one that matched the dull grey of his suit without standing out. Eyes of hooded grey looked back at him from the mirror and he allowed himself a faint smile.

The smile of an ordinary working man, about to head to his office job downtown. A man that people would glance at and walk past without another thought.

Not invisible but something even better. Anonymous.

A subtle knock echoed from the door to the apartment. Gunn checked the external cameras that watched over the apartment by reflex, although he already knew who it was. He could see their icon shining brightly in the quantum network, beyond which lay the thousands of other stars of the Agents and Minute Men.

At the very centre of the vast constellation shone the brilliant pillar of light that was Abraham, watching over his flock with unsleeping vigilance. Gunn switched his viewpoint back to the physical world as he stepped briskly to the apartment door.

He unlocked it and swung it open, seeing the familiar face of a fresh faced young man. Today he was wearing a nondescript suit like Gunn’s, cheap and serviceable, exactly the kind of thing an intern could afford in their first job.

“Agent Thorsen” he greeted the youngster.

“Agent Gunn” the other answered. “We have a lot of your files to go through and take action on. Are you ready for what comes next?”

“Of course” Gunn replied as he shut the door behind him. It was going to be some very busy months ahead as the Department reviewed his extensive list of contacts and old jobs, deciding which needed immediate attention and those that could be put off for the time being.

Gunn looked inside of himself, checking on the condition of his prisoner. An image sprang to mind, of a madman beating his head against the quantum walls of his cell, eyes wild as he screamed incoherently, tears and snot dribbling down sunken cheeks.

“Everything is exactly as it should be” Agent Gunn said.

END

Thanks for reading this little tale. It is meant as a kind of warm-up for the next ABC tale that will be set in the Northern Block. I expect it will be some time before I get around to writing that story, provisionally titled ‘ABC - The Lazarus War’ but you never know how the mood will take me.

All the best,

Paul Mitting