42
The story broke the scheduled Hier Media news cycle around 5:30 in the evening. No immediate response followed, from either the Net or other television stations. In the first half an hour, some of the execs at Hier even breathed a sigh of relief at the tranquil reception. Not long after six, though, the story took wing and flew through every node, wire, and home in London. Internet activity exploded, grumbling in kitchens and street corners sprouted from seed and blossomed into full public outrage.
The information was so complex that broadcasters and viewers could hardly figure out where to start. There were so many parties involved, so many names, and so many crimes. Experienced journalists knew already the story would be “breaking” for weeks to come. News first centered around Cassius Bellick himself. Who is he? Why haven’t we heard of him? people asked. It wasn’t long, however, before coverage slipped into the murky nether reaches of his wrongdoings.
And again, where to start? His shadowy enterprises within Biomerge burned like a coal in the people’s shoe. Released documents showed his involvement in multiple projects of human engineering. The first was almost too fantastical to believe. Biomerge scientists, under the supervision of the company’s board of directors nearly fifteen years ago, had undertaken a project to engineer a small “first crop” of human soldiers. These beings, according to one document, were meant “to be large, much larger than an average human . . . Endowed with strengths to match their utility . . . [and] just intelligent enough to follow directions.” By some accounts, the company had succeeded in much of what it set out to do, but with disastrous results. The three creations, genetically engineered with thick skin, dull minds, enormous strength, and unheard of stature, were born motherless into a world of sterility and control. Unfortunately, they did not possess the desired deference to authority that was to have been their saving grace in the eyes of the board. For the first year of their lives the triplets, who because of their dim mental capabilities could rarely keep their own names straight, were raised by Bruna, a very large female chimpanzee. It was deemed too unsafe to put these large children with human carers. The triplets took an immediate liking to Bruna, at least until they had reached the age of three and began to near her size. Poor Bruna’s life expectancy was thereafter terminally brief.
People listened to the tale in stunned disbelief. Their ideas of fantasy slowly merged with their ideas of the present. Where were the creatures? everybody asked. For this, there seemed to be no definite answer.
While this story grasped the fear of the people, the SEEDS program simply and purely offended them.
This program had been dreamed up over three decades prior, not in the mind of a scientist, but in the imagination of a creative, Cassius Bellick. After ten years of exhausting planning, Biomerge selected a generation of children to play host to their experiment, most of whom were orphans living in foster care or with adopted parents. With a secrecy that amazed and now worried the public, the company had taken nearly two thousand children and augmented them with a series of brain implants designed to give scientists, psychologists, and technicians complete access to their minds. The process also required a great deal of work by the company itself. Without often and careful observation the implants would prove worthless because each had to be trained and tailored to the infant’s mind. The original goal of the program seemed uncertain from the start, but embedded deep in the release of files, the testimony of several directors and scientists affirmed their own purposes for participating in such a morally diluted project. Reasons were always personal, but ranged from interest in philosophy of mind to the development of more advance human-computer interfaces. Most were well aware of the project’s questionable invasion of privacy—but still believed they were doing good.
As the children grew, the program expanded. Still it was managed under Mr. Bellick’s guidance and strong hand to hide below the public awareness. A breakthrough came sometime not long after the children reached puberty. After years of invasive observation, the program was in the middle of a steady but disheartened march. Those workers who had joined for the chance to create a new world were then starting to regret their decisions; their work had gradually turned into the dull repetition of data collection, completely free of the creative opportunity most had hoped for. So, in this time of malaise the program seemed almost accidentally to come to fruition. The testing, training, and surveillance at once synthesized with the collective algorithm the computer scientists had been working on, and gave access to the thoughts of each of the subjects.
A momentous event, everyone thought, and one that morphed the program itself into the second stage they had been awaiting so eagerly. Finally, these brilliant minds could stop training machines and start peeking into the developing brain—with a free hand and free reign. Mr. Bellick made sure that information reached the right circles around the world and money poured gratuitously into the company.
The second phase had been more difficult to analyze. The data was neither corrupted nor missing, but it had an incredible depth and complexity. Trying to make sense of it was like watching ants from a skyscraper. It was simply too soon for those responsible types within the media to have finished sorting through all the issues.
And then there was so much more to talk about. More, even, with succulent political ramifications. Documents on Bellick’s computer implicated by name a number of PMs instrumental in drawing up and passing both the Within Reach Act and the Proof of Property Act. A long list of donations, gifts and less quantifiable perks formed an enormous paper highway from the corporate to the political arena. People, happy as they had been at the time of the acts’ passing, now thought en mass about the privileges they had so idly let slip away. By 6:05, many desperate politicians, smelling new scents as the political winds shifted again, had made public statements, speeches, and, in a few rare cases, apologies—all these naturally aimed at saving livelihoods, income, and political grace. Some were even so bold as to state publicly that they had begun to draw up a new set of laws that might counteract those in place now.
All this ancient history led inevitably to current events. Bellick’s exposure now made Mollec’s landgrab impossible, for though the company was not in so nearly as dark a spot as the man himself, their ties would eventually be discussed. Now, the political climate was tentative at best; fearful politicians, a shocked and angry populous, and journalists for once in a lifetime ready to keep everyone honest, honestly.
The Villa parties were to continue that night as scheduled.
The vehicle for all this was the personal stories of the downtrodden. The video of the refugees had finally made it into the world consciousness. Media moguls sung their praises as heroes of the people and some denounced them as mild-mannered terrorists. Netizens from all over the globe knew their names and faces. Human rights organizations cried out on their behalf, and the people in London, subject to the ubiquity of the story, began to search the streets. The footage was ripped from Muninn, cut for length and pasted onto every wall of the Net. By 7:00, millions of Londoners had seen it and the empathy of the people quickly turned the situation on its head. It wasn’t long before a full-scale hunt was underway for Bellick and the Three Ogres.
Footage of Hurn burned through the unlit regions of the Web, and, though people feared what he could do, outrage at his violence never percolated so much as the appreciation and even jealously of the spirit he embodied. His story was one of weakness in the face of loss, and too many people feared the same loss; empathy has never been the strongest emotion of the people, but when it stokes the engine of mass worry it is as powerful as any other. Hurn had lost others, then lost himself. History is riddled with the same powerful failures. Besides, every generation alive wanted his power for themselves—who would turn down post-modern wizardry?
The police put a warrant out for Hurn’s arrest—as well as the arrest of every member of the team of which he was the leader—but even they knew that if the news reports were true they would never be able to apprehend him, much less keep him in custody. Not, at least, without a small army and mass casualties. In the country’s history, he was the first criminal deemed (unofficially) too dangerous to pursue.
Ms. Omid watched from Dev Paton’s office at Hier Media as the story evolved from incarnation to incarnation. It was now 8:15 and the parties under the Villas were just getting underway in other parts of the city, but it would still take more time to wrench people’s attention from the blossoming controversy. She had a front seat to the whole affair and watched with amusement as the networks scrambled to balance the two news stories. The Villas were all lit like beacons, their skins tattooed with dancing protean colors. People drunk with the light danced at the bases of each superstructure, but, Ms. Omid felt, the mood in the city was still not quite right.
Somewhere in the building the whole cast of characters was waiting to talk with Dev and herself. The three boys—Jay, Faraji, and Billy—had arrived an hour after the story had broken, looking for somewhere to stay and to her amazement asking after her by name—it seemed Jay had not lost faith in her. Ms. Omid had nearly cried to witness Nkiruka reunite with her son and again when an elder couple had shown up in the lobby introducing themselves as Alice and Rip Kingston, who greeted the other boys with the same loving emotion. She didn’t know what she would do with the group, or even what she could tell them. This wasn’t her company, and, though she was watching with hawk’s eyes, she had no idea how this would all end. The good news was the government had already granted them protection and temporary asylum. The bad was that they still could not tell them they were safe, or how this would all end.
Jay and Billy had asked and asked after their brother and his companion, Rosie Holgrave, who Ms. Omid now saw as the key to this situation. The girl was one of the first generation of SEEDS, and according to documents Jay had shown her, Hurn’s daughter. What that man would do next after seeing that his savior and provider had betrayed him was anyone’s guess, but hers was that he would go looking for either Bellick or Rosie. She glanced at the screen in front of her and then to Dev, whose eyes were flickering from side to side following each line of text. Maybe Hurn, like them, was still reading.
Look at this, Miss,” said Dev as he leaned back in his chair. “This one’s not so old. Only from three weeks ago.”
He put up the document on the large monitor on the other side of the room, and she took a moment to read it. She hardly knew what to say. She opened her mouth hoping she would be able to say something.
Unbelievable.”
Looks like the two of them were made for each other.”
The document in question centered around Rosie and Blake and their imprisonment in a Biomerge facility. It was clear that whoever wrote it never thought it would leave Bellick’s computer; it was too frank, too pregnant with secrets.
It seemed that the initial goal of penning them together was to purposefully bond them and use Rosie as a means of following Blake to where his family and friends were hiding. Ms. Omid read the document over and over for every last detail. Bellick’s staff had found Blake in the police incoming reports and quickly found the connection with his brothers and the Kingstons, whose address had already been “gleaned from interrogation of another source.” From this point, there was surprisingly little resistance to the Spotters. They had managed to switch Blake to a different holding center, and through various conversations conducted by interrogators built a psychological profile of the boy, then sought to match it with one of the SEEDS. Omid was still reading, but it seemed pure accident or pure providence that Rosie was the first choice.
Kidnapping Rosie must have been the most difficult part of this plan, but the document didn’t elaborate on how this was done, only that it had happened and she had been placed with Blake. The document noted that while Rosie’s personality was completely known to them and although her compatibility with Blake was orchestrated, it was still far from certain at the beginning. However, as the days went by, Bellick’s company became more and more certain they were just what was needed. The document finally noted that they had been released, and an agent assigned to follow them away.
Ms. Omid still had no idea what to say. She looked over to Dev.
We have to get this on air,” he said. “Then we can talk with the families.”
She nodded in agreement. Government and business collusion, kidnapping, personal manipulation—she knew these things happened and had for a very long time. But to see them staring you in the face, was like staring down a dark-eyed wolf. They had to broadcast this, for transparency, and for Blake and Rosie. This could save them. She wondered where they were and how she could find them. She checked her watch again. It was 8:45. Things at the Villas would be rising toward the night sky. She prayed for the lost souls still out there in the city.