Itty Bitty Bigger World: Light My Fire
Nov. 23rd, 2014 08:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyFICTION FICTION
Most people having the day I'd just had would immediately lurch home and probably sleep it off.
Problems with that: 1) no home to lurch to 2) too nervous and jittery to sleep it off and 3) a mysterious appointment at the capital-F-Federal building.
So I took a random capsule to a random destination, walked a short distance, took another capsule to another random destination, got off early with someone else, and bought fashion gloves at random from a vendor. Fashion gloves that happened to protect from all contact contaminants.
I suppose in theory someone could have gotten a pair of bad gloves into that mix, but they'd have had to compromise several thousand vendors in a twenty mile radius to do it - on short notice.
Then again, someone had rigged an entire tower and either predicted that I would go there or hacked the search algorithm in my ware. So I was feeling more diligent than paranoid.
Task completed, I checked the time. Half an hour to my Federal appointment. So I decided to go near there, to the State of California building a block over, and walk a block between the two.
It just so happened that coincidentally, two squads of CHP Troopers in full battle gear walked me to the front door of the Federal Building and no further, where two stern-faced Federal Protective Service Marines in battlesuits awaited.
Not my idea. As the Polish saying goes, not my monkey, not my circus.
The FPS crew scanned me -- and the troopers, no professional courtesy in that lot -- and waved me through. I heard one murmur (perhaps he thought he was subvocalizing?) "Post 1, Desk, the subject has arrived.")
No line for the metal detector. Instead, the visitor to a Federal facility enters a cage for what is usually a brief scan, genetic ID check and quick duel of legal ware.
The cage locked on both ends and red warning lights flashed from the ceiling.
"Biowar contaminant! Biowar contaminant!"
As the ceiling started to spray out cold water smelling of harsh disinfectant, I immediately stripped off my backpack, then all my clothing including my just-purchased gloves, then scrubbed as best I could bare handed. A voice above directed me to an emergency cabinet containing sponges, scrubbers and a respirator.
I rinsed out my mouth with the ceiling spray, spat, fastened the respirator and cleared it. The air started getting colder immediately. They were scrubbing the atmosphere too.
I rubbed at all parts of myself with the sponges and scrubbers, which is about as much fun as it sounds.
Ten minutes later, the spray in the ceiling cut off.
"Leave your respirator on. Follow the RED LINE to a further decontamination station."
I complied, now freezing cold, to be met by blasts of warm water followed by warm air. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat.
The red line progressed through three separate airlocks with external decontamination at each step.
I felt clean -- but scrubbed clean, with wet pink skin, angry as a scalded cat. At the last airlock, a set of generic coveralls with a Fed style access/identity card awaited me. I put them on, then the last door opened.
A distracted human murmured a greeting as I was set upon by a small flurry of biobots, taking samples and scanning and generally being the intrusive pests that a horde of poorly managed bots could be. The human was clearly tied up in his own smartware, looking at me from every angle a bot could provide.
"Mr. Anderson, I'm Doctor Emerett Douglas, Public Health Service. It appears we caught the pathogen in time. You can discard the respirator now."
I did so. Asking "what pathogen" seemed superfluous.
"I'd like to ask you to swallow these," he said, holding up several small capsules my grandparents would have called "horse pills" for their size. "They will update your biosuite and provide additional monitoring and protection."
I grimaced.
"I don't have a biosuite, Doctor."
"Take this one too." He added a pill to the mix.
"I don't _choose_ to have a biosuite. I detox weekly at my doctor."
The doctor frowned.
"You must have gotten a very small dose. You're still breathing. My professional recommendation is that you take these. If you are still alive to change your mind later, the biosuite is fully reversible."
Plus or minus several million rogue nanobacteria in nooks and crannies of your body. But under the circumstances, I decided to comply. My taxpayer dollars at work, right?
Except that in San San, health care is a right and not a privilege, and if I'd really wanted a biosuite, it would have taken a week to set up the appointment and an hour with a doctor to configure it. Instead I'd be going with some government mish-mash, what a past generation called laughingly "milspec" for Military Specification.
One of the bots provided a bottle of water. I took the pills and swallowed same.
"So Doctor, what nearly killed me just now?"
"Nasty, nasty thing. Attacks neurons in the brain. Encourages them to multiply at reduced functionality. Can't scrub it without damaging the memory. Fatal if not countered."
"Brain cancer?" I mused.
"You could call it that." He paused. "You were at Quincy Tower, weren't you?"
"Yes."
"Who else have you come into contact with?" His tone had gone to cold, businesslike, rapid. Like a pilot whose plane has just announced Master Stall Alarm - Engine Reset Fail.
"CHP lifter, Vallejo Barracks, drop-off and drunkard's walk, exterior of State Building, this building."
The doctor subvocalized rapidly.
I spoke to the air, "Access granted to authorized Federal agents to track my movements in the last 24 hours."
The doctor frowned.
"The CHP trooper you shared a lifter with is dead. The lifter is out of service now. The barracks is going into lockdown now."
Shit. Captain Amy.
"Locating." I must have spoken aloud. "Unknown medical, in transport. Quarantine measures now imposed. Transfer to wet lab. Sedate immediately. Cryonics not indicated."
The doctor now resembled a maestro, making sweeping motions with his hands and fingers while muttering to himself.
It was hard nowadays to tell the difference between a random crazy and a highly skilled professional.
"I was escorted by a squad to my meeting with her..."
"They are in isolation. Video evaluation in progress. Video evaluation complete. You didn't breathe on any of them."
"Doctor, my backpack..."
"Hmmm?"
"Smartgun and kitten bot, both exposed."
"Useful. Transferring to secure storage."
I thought about objecting and didn't. Compared to a dead peace officer, what did a gun and bot matter? The bot at least was easily replaceable.
A man in an old fashioned business suit walked in. I found myself mentally comparing him to Captain Amy and scoffing.
"Agent Boscone, FBI."
"What can I do for you today, other than ceasing to be a vector?"
"That much is appreciated. But that happened after we contacted you, and before you got here. Someone very badly did not want you to talk to us, or took a swipe knowing that you had a pending admit."
"Same question, awaiting answer."
My rudeness was studied. He changed modes.
"How much do you know about nanowar?"
Shitty idea. If you can't fight your wars overtly, do it at the small scale, using human bodies as the battlefield instead of participants in it.
"Cairo Protocol," I replied. "One of those things Treaty Enforcement jumps on with both feet, and fast."
"More than the average. The official line is that biotech is so good that it's impossible. In the real world, things leak through."
"But not in San San, where we hyper-monitor every time someone farts."
"Not usually in San San. But who hates this arcology enough to not care?"
"Terra Liberation Front."
TLF hated arcologies like . . . Hitler hated Jews? One hit Godwin's Law combo. No points. An arcology like San San was the exact opposite of everything they stood for.
"We know TLF. Attacks fail. Leaders have accidents, since we don't have death penalties anymore."
Mysterious deaths surrounding political power have been a fact of life since politics were invented; the world's true oldest profession. Hooking came later, when the first politician wanted to get freaky.
"So not TLF?"
"Someone using TLF as a literal front. Cause unknown. But we have a clue of what they want. ELF just wants to break the planet. The Someone just wants to own it."
"Not easy. When everyone has so much power at their disposal, it's awfully hard to keep the peons in line."
"Not if you can nuke their brains on demand."
"Keep talking."
"The bioweapon you got a whiff of is the ultimate derivation of nanowar. You can literally destroy your enemy's brain, whenever you want. They do what you say or *pffft* you die. Slow if you annoy them. Quick if you're inconvenient."
"What's the trigger?"
The doctor started to speak and stopped. He looked instead to the agent, who nodded.
"The nanoweapon can be triggered by obscure transmissions in the electromagnetic spectrum."
I thought about it.
"That's why he has to take out San San first."
They both stared. "How so?" asked the agent.
"Too much of San San is underground. He'd have to hack the retransmitter systems. For most of the planet, he can transmit from tiny satellite transmitters - you could never find them all - but a lot of San San is both underground and self-sustaining. Even if you were infected, just stay below ground."
"Why not the other way around?" the doctor asked.
"After he kills fifty billion people,. he's committed -- and the other billion or so left are highly motivated to take him out no matter the cost. Right now he enjoys the calm before the storm. But I have to ask, guys, why me? I'm just another annoying middle-aged fart."
The agent politely refrained from laughing. The doctor just stared.
"You're effectively unbribable. The very best have tried and failed. All they can do is kill you -- and you not only shoot back, but don't _care_. The solution to this mess may make the person who finds it very powerful indeed."
"So you need a Hobbit to carry a Ring? Didn't work out that well for him."
The doctor looked puzzled. The agent clearly did a quick literature search, read an expert system synopsis, and replied gallantly, "Frodo survived."
"But the Shire had been wrecked. Living in a world where someone can remotely kill you... do we know for sure that this thing doesn't, oh, trigger when you see a pattern in the optic nerve? You could goatse the planet with one hack."
The doctor frowned, in that way that doctors do when they have bad news but it isn't their bad news.
"Visual is possible. Audio is easier."
_And his name shall be a killing word_, I thought to myself, but did not share the reference.
"We need you in on this," the agent said definitively. "In fact, we need you _in charge_ on this."
"You have a President," I muttered.
"Well... " He trailed off so I helpfully said the thing he could not.
"There are what, three states still holding elections, and that only because San San allows hobbyist elections? The House doesn't have a quorum and the Senate can't pass laws by itself. The guy who got elected President spends most of his time doing cigar porn? Yeah, I know."
"Well, he does know about this crisis and he did fill a vacant position or two." The agent handed me a proclamation.
"The House may not be much, but the Senate vote confirming you went in. Six to zero. Congratulations, Secretary of Defense Alan Anderson."
I wanted to laugh or puke. I did not really want to puke; I needed that biosuite and probably quite badly. So I laughed.
"No, really. You know your Constitution. Where does the SecDef fall in the line of succession?"
"Sixth. Am I to guess that you are Attorney General and the good Doctor here is the Secretary of Health and Human Services?"
"Yes and no. I am A.G. and the doctor is the Surgeon General, although he refuses to accept it."
"These titles don't mean a warm pitcher of spit. If I were actually SecDef, that means the gentlemen in battlesuits out there would take my orders."
The doctor looked shocked. "No, because they're security guards and the Federal Protective Service works for GSA."
"Yes, because the Marine Corps transferred to the GSA when the Department of Defense was shut down. The Marines just transferred back if this --" I shook the document -- "has any validity at all to it."
The agent nodded. "You are correct."
Wow, my very own toy army. Eight Federal buildings, average of 12 guards each, maybe 100.... oh, wait, the Treaty of Cairo... 'one hundred ceremonial personnel shall be allowed to each treaty power...'
Not trivial at all. This was Real Serious Shit.
It's not every day that you're made a general.
It's not every day that you're in a fight for the survival of the human race, either.
\\\
Most people having the day I'd just had would immediately lurch home and probably sleep it off.
Problems with that: 1) no home to lurch to 2) too nervous and jittery to sleep it off and 3) a mysterious appointment at the capital-F-Federal building.
So I took a random capsule to a random destination, walked a short distance, took another capsule to another random destination, got off early with someone else, and bought fashion gloves at random from a vendor. Fashion gloves that happened to protect from all contact contaminants.
I suppose in theory someone could have gotten a pair of bad gloves into that mix, but they'd have had to compromise several thousand vendors in a twenty mile radius to do it - on short notice.
Then again, someone had rigged an entire tower and either predicted that I would go there or hacked the search algorithm in my ware. So I was feeling more diligent than paranoid.
Task completed, I checked the time. Half an hour to my Federal appointment. So I decided to go near there, to the State of California building a block over, and walk a block between the two.
It just so happened that coincidentally, two squads of CHP Troopers in full battle gear walked me to the front door of the Federal Building and no further, where two stern-faced Federal Protective Service Marines in battlesuits awaited.
Not my idea. As the Polish saying goes, not my monkey, not my circus.
The FPS crew scanned me -- and the troopers, no professional courtesy in that lot -- and waved me through. I heard one murmur (perhaps he thought he was subvocalizing?) "Post 1, Desk, the subject has arrived.")
No line for the metal detector. Instead, the visitor to a Federal facility enters a cage for what is usually a brief scan, genetic ID check and quick duel of legal ware.
The cage locked on both ends and red warning lights flashed from the ceiling.
"Biowar contaminant! Biowar contaminant!"
As the ceiling started to spray out cold water smelling of harsh disinfectant, I immediately stripped off my backpack, then all my clothing including my just-purchased gloves, then scrubbed as best I could bare handed. A voice above directed me to an emergency cabinet containing sponges, scrubbers and a respirator.
I rinsed out my mouth with the ceiling spray, spat, fastened the respirator and cleared it. The air started getting colder immediately. They were scrubbing the atmosphere too.
I rubbed at all parts of myself with the sponges and scrubbers, which is about as much fun as it sounds.
Ten minutes later, the spray in the ceiling cut off.
"Leave your respirator on. Follow the RED LINE to a further decontamination station."
I complied, now freezing cold, to be met by blasts of warm water followed by warm air. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat.
The red line progressed through three separate airlocks with external decontamination at each step.
I felt clean -- but scrubbed clean, with wet pink skin, angry as a scalded cat. At the last airlock, a set of generic coveralls with a Fed style access/identity card awaited me. I put them on, then the last door opened.
A distracted human murmured a greeting as I was set upon by a small flurry of biobots, taking samples and scanning and generally being the intrusive pests that a horde of poorly managed bots could be. The human was clearly tied up in his own smartware, looking at me from every angle a bot could provide.
"Mr. Anderson, I'm Doctor Emerett Douglas, Public Health Service. It appears we caught the pathogen in time. You can discard the respirator now."
I did so. Asking "what pathogen" seemed superfluous.
"I'd like to ask you to swallow these," he said, holding up several small capsules my grandparents would have called "horse pills" for their size. "They will update your biosuite and provide additional monitoring and protection."
I grimaced.
"I don't have a biosuite, Doctor."
"Take this one too." He added a pill to the mix.
"I don't _choose_ to have a biosuite. I detox weekly at my doctor."
The doctor frowned.
"You must have gotten a very small dose. You're still breathing. My professional recommendation is that you take these. If you are still alive to change your mind later, the biosuite is fully reversible."
Plus or minus several million rogue nanobacteria in nooks and crannies of your body. But under the circumstances, I decided to comply. My taxpayer dollars at work, right?
Except that in San San, health care is a right and not a privilege, and if I'd really wanted a biosuite, it would have taken a week to set up the appointment and an hour with a doctor to configure it. Instead I'd be going with some government mish-mash, what a past generation called laughingly "milspec" for Military Specification.
One of the bots provided a bottle of water. I took the pills and swallowed same.
"So Doctor, what nearly killed me just now?"
"Nasty, nasty thing. Attacks neurons in the brain. Encourages them to multiply at reduced functionality. Can't scrub it without damaging the memory. Fatal if not countered."
"Brain cancer?" I mused.
"You could call it that." He paused. "You were at Quincy Tower, weren't you?"
"Yes."
"Who else have you come into contact with?" His tone had gone to cold, businesslike, rapid. Like a pilot whose plane has just announced Master Stall Alarm - Engine Reset Fail.
"CHP lifter, Vallejo Barracks, drop-off and drunkard's walk, exterior of State Building, this building."
The doctor subvocalized rapidly.
I spoke to the air, "Access granted to authorized Federal agents to track my movements in the last 24 hours."
The doctor frowned.
"The CHP trooper you shared a lifter with is dead. The lifter is out of service now. The barracks is going into lockdown now."
Shit. Captain Amy.
"Locating." I must have spoken aloud. "Unknown medical, in transport. Quarantine measures now imposed. Transfer to wet lab. Sedate immediately. Cryonics not indicated."
The doctor now resembled a maestro, making sweeping motions with his hands and fingers while muttering to himself.
It was hard nowadays to tell the difference between a random crazy and a highly skilled professional.
"I was escorted by a squad to my meeting with her..."
"They are in isolation. Video evaluation in progress. Video evaluation complete. You didn't breathe on any of them."
"Doctor, my backpack..."
"Hmmm?"
"Smartgun and kitten bot, both exposed."
"Useful. Transferring to secure storage."
I thought about objecting and didn't. Compared to a dead peace officer, what did a gun and bot matter? The bot at least was easily replaceable.
A man in an old fashioned business suit walked in. I found myself mentally comparing him to Captain Amy and scoffing.
"Agent Boscone, FBI."
"What can I do for you today, other than ceasing to be a vector?"
"That much is appreciated. But that happened after we contacted you, and before you got here. Someone very badly did not want you to talk to us, or took a swipe knowing that you had a pending admit."
"Same question, awaiting answer."
My rudeness was studied. He changed modes.
"How much do you know about nanowar?"
Shitty idea. If you can't fight your wars overtly, do it at the small scale, using human bodies as the battlefield instead of participants in it.
"Cairo Protocol," I replied. "One of those things Treaty Enforcement jumps on with both feet, and fast."
"More than the average. The official line is that biotech is so good that it's impossible. In the real world, things leak through."
"But not in San San, where we hyper-monitor every time someone farts."
"Not usually in San San. But who hates this arcology enough to not care?"
"Terra Liberation Front."
TLF hated arcologies like . . . Hitler hated Jews? One hit Godwin's Law combo. No points. An arcology like San San was the exact opposite of everything they stood for.
"We know TLF. Attacks fail. Leaders have accidents, since we don't have death penalties anymore."
Mysterious deaths surrounding political power have been a fact of life since politics were invented; the world's true oldest profession. Hooking came later, when the first politician wanted to get freaky.
"So not TLF?"
"Someone using TLF as a literal front. Cause unknown. But we have a clue of what they want. ELF just wants to break the planet. The Someone just wants to own it."
"Not easy. When everyone has so much power at their disposal, it's awfully hard to keep the peons in line."
"Not if you can nuke their brains on demand."
"Keep talking."
"The bioweapon you got a whiff of is the ultimate derivation of nanowar. You can literally destroy your enemy's brain, whenever you want. They do what you say or *pffft* you die. Slow if you annoy them. Quick if you're inconvenient."
"What's the trigger?"
The doctor started to speak and stopped. He looked instead to the agent, who nodded.
"The nanoweapon can be triggered by obscure transmissions in the electromagnetic spectrum."
I thought about it.
"That's why he has to take out San San first."
They both stared. "How so?" asked the agent.
"Too much of San San is underground. He'd have to hack the retransmitter systems. For most of the planet, he can transmit from tiny satellite transmitters - you could never find them all - but a lot of San San is both underground and self-sustaining. Even if you were infected, just stay below ground."
"Why not the other way around?" the doctor asked.
"After he kills fifty billion people,. he's committed -- and the other billion or so left are highly motivated to take him out no matter the cost. Right now he enjoys the calm before the storm. But I have to ask, guys, why me? I'm just another annoying middle-aged fart."
The agent politely refrained from laughing. The doctor just stared.
"You're effectively unbribable. The very best have tried and failed. All they can do is kill you -- and you not only shoot back, but don't _care_. The solution to this mess may make the person who finds it very powerful indeed."
"So you need a Hobbit to carry a Ring? Didn't work out that well for him."
The doctor looked puzzled. The agent clearly did a quick literature search, read an expert system synopsis, and replied gallantly, "Frodo survived."
"But the Shire had been wrecked. Living in a world where someone can remotely kill you... do we know for sure that this thing doesn't, oh, trigger when you see a pattern in the optic nerve? You could goatse the planet with one hack."
The doctor frowned, in that way that doctors do when they have bad news but it isn't their bad news.
"Visual is possible. Audio is easier."
_And his name shall be a killing word_, I thought to myself, but did not share the reference.
"We need you in on this," the agent said definitively. "In fact, we need you _in charge_ on this."
"You have a President," I muttered.
"Well... " He trailed off so I helpfully said the thing he could not.
"There are what, three states still holding elections, and that only because San San allows hobbyist elections? The House doesn't have a quorum and the Senate can't pass laws by itself. The guy who got elected President spends most of his time doing cigar porn? Yeah, I know."
"Well, he does know about this crisis and he did fill a vacant position or two." The agent handed me a proclamation.
"The House may not be much, but the Senate vote confirming you went in. Six to zero. Congratulations, Secretary of Defense Alan Anderson."
I wanted to laugh or puke. I did not really want to puke; I needed that biosuite and probably quite badly. So I laughed.
"No, really. You know your Constitution. Where does the SecDef fall in the line of succession?"
"Sixth. Am I to guess that you are Attorney General and the good Doctor here is the Secretary of Health and Human Services?"
"Yes and no. I am A.G. and the doctor is the Surgeon General, although he refuses to accept it."
"These titles don't mean a warm pitcher of spit. If I were actually SecDef, that means the gentlemen in battlesuits out there would take my orders."
The doctor looked shocked. "No, because they're security guards and the Federal Protective Service works for GSA."
"Yes, because the Marine Corps transferred to the GSA when the Department of Defense was shut down. The Marines just transferred back if this --" I shook the document -- "has any validity at all to it."
The agent nodded. "You are correct."
Wow, my very own toy army. Eight Federal buildings, average of 12 guards each, maybe 100.... oh, wait, the Treaty of Cairo... 'one hundred ceremonial personnel shall be allowed to each treaty power...'
Not trivial at all. This was Real Serious Shit.
It's not every day that you're made a general.
It's not every day that you're in a fight for the survival of the human race, either.
\\\
