Freedom Club (2 page)

Chapter 1—Lebensstörung

“Desire is the very essence of man.”

—Baruch Spinoza

Tempe Arizona: 2085

H
ugo spat hard on the Cactus Quad’s slick entrance ramp and cursed. “Here we go again!”

Scanning the pig-penned crowd, Hugo Kosterlitsky’s filter mask immediately came online and color-coded his field of vision. Broad stretches of yellow bodies were a comforting sight. No convicted felons. Good! That was a relief. But there were a few tangerine-hued misdemeanors sprinkled into the crowd. Were they worth his time? Not really. The robotic teams would certainly pick out and process enforceable warrants. It wouldn’t take that long. The legal system excelled at processing large retail riots. Most would be administered a mild sedative, unfastened, and sent home with a statutory reprimand.

But what a fine riot it was, one for the history books. Its cause? Lebensstörung, or LS for short. A nasty social dynamic churned up by payment system outages and catatonic masses of unsuspecting consumers. In this case, the Cactus Quad’s stalled point-of-sales system was hit. That single event mutated an ovine gathering of irritable Christmas Eve shoppers into an unruly mob, capable of almost any crime.

Lebensstörung across the unionized sectors had dramatically increased over the past few weeks. At that pace, society would become unhinged. It wasn’t simple anarchistic vandalism, but the total destruction of commerce, transportation, and communication. Once out of control, then what? Arrest every man, woman, and child? No, that would be unacceptable. As a detective specializing in system terrorism, Hugo was tasked to find out who was behind LS and bring it to a halt. The system needed to be protected because freedom had been redefined. See, you could be enslaved to fashion, shopping, sports, or any damn thing consumers were routinely addicted to. You couldn’t lock people up the old-fashioned way because they were already slaves, better off that way from Hugo’s point of view.

Looking about, Hugo sneered at long rows of detainees. Calling them Christmas shoppers was being too nice. Pre-programmed shopping zealots, compulsive buying drones, mindless consumer automata, frenzied Santa slaves – the euphemisms went on and on. But whatever you called them, the final product was a marketing jerk’s wet dream. Yes, it was a problem – someone else’s, luckily. Hugo only cared about LS.

But finding the terrorists was no easy task. Making matters worse, he had to solve a bigger question: motives. It all seemed to occur without any driving reason. No one was taking responsibility. But that couldn’t be true, he thought to himself. There always was a motive in the end. He just had to figure out what it was. Time was running out and so was his quarterly budget.

Looking on apathetically, Hugo proceeded into the Quad’s retail area, then through a maze of escalators and shopping halls all in a state of disarray. In the background, huge flexi panels displayed seasonal advertising. An animated bikini-clad Santa danced in lockstep with a full Bollywood entourage, a scene which under different circumstances might have been entertaining.

Hundreds sat exhausted along the tiled walkway as he passed by, all of them surrounded by police flatheads with their weapons unlocked. A few made derogatory hand signs. But intimidated by the flatheads’ non-lethal ordnance, most knew better. And for those demonstrating any lingering aggression, a calculated blast of sticky foam was used. It tempered the overly rampageous.

Hugo mulled over the situation as the filter led him to a heavily armed DPS officer, accompanied by no less than two chili ball flatheads and three security floaters strobing blue and white emergency lights. Close up, he saw the officer was standing over a single rioter who had been sticky-foamed to a wall.

“Will you be providing the briefing on this incident?” Hugo asked.

Despite being covered head to toe in black stealth armor, the officer’s youthful face and background stats were displayed clearly on Hugo’s augmented reality. Hugo, on the other hand, was wearing plain clothes, in his mid 40s, tall, and lean. With black hair and riveting blue eyes, he was a superb physical example of the Pan American Union’s training program. The officer knew to be careful.

“Detective,” the officer said politely, nodding toward the detainee. “We have a man who resisted, then attacked a Quad security flathead. DPS stuck him down hard and shot him with a few standard rounds. I’m just waiting for the de-foamer and extraction units.”

Hugo blinked his dry eyes and knelt down. As he pulled on bright orange copolymer gloves, filtered information overlaid the suspect, and Hugo saw that the man’s name was Satyavan Choeng, a mining equipment technician with no prior convictions. Choeng sported dark facial stubble under a mess of greasy black hair and was hard to recognize even though the filter confirmed his identification. His limp body was web foamed to the wall halfway down to the floorboards, with legs protruding out like a marionette doll hanging by strings.

Hugo twisted his head a bit to get a better look. Christ! Another mindless automaton, he reckoned. Choeng was unflatteringly slack-jawed, no doubt due to the drugs they had shot him with. Examining the streamer tags protruding from his abdomen, Hugo received more data. Ralaxidol was common, but the other two, Usotskipine and Yasashiazine, were new to him. Referring to his filter, he received more details. They were approved truth drugs, nothing to be concerned about. Looking up at the suspect’s sweaty face and drooling lips, Hugo tapped Choeng’s right cheek several times.

“Hello there, Mr. Choeng,” he said with faux politeness. “How are you doing this evening?”

Choeng blurted with great difficulty, “Whya...wha? What didya say?”

Hugo smiled. “Seems you had a tough day, so please stay calm. Everything will be better soon. I need you to answer a few questions, a few simple questions. You think you can do that for me?”

Choeng nodded vigorously, his expression like a small child eager to please.

“They tell me you attacked a security flathead. Do you remember that?” Hugo asked politely. “Why did you do that, Mr. Choeng?”

“Didn’t attack... It...’tacked me. Just wanted to buy Christmeth toys for...for my little...kid.” Clearly the Ralaxidol was making it hard for him to speak, but the other drugs compelled Choeng to finish. He licked his lips several times before pressing on. “Told me I didn’t pay, fer Pete’s sake! Got plenee ah money to pay for toys, ya stupid bot!”

“Okay, I understand, Mr. Choeng,” Hugo reassured him. “So when they warned you the payments didn’t go through, why did you attack the flathead? Why didn’t you go back inside the toy store and try to re-scan?”

Choeng flushed with anger and swung his head wildly. “Got plenty of monee, for god’s sake! Don’t nee ta prove...! Stupid bot trying to sop me from shopping during the big sale!” Choeng stuttered, desperate to make his point. “Gotta...gotta have toys on Christmas, fer god’s sake! That’s what it’s all ‘bout, ya know!”

Hugo glanced up at the DPS officer disdainfully. What a waste! This guy didn’t fit the profile at all.

Hugo tapped Choeng on the cheek several more times. “Okay, one more question, Mr. Choeng! Have you ever been associated with or have any current affiliation with a terrorist group? Did you plan any Lebensstörung this evening?”

“Wha?”

“Were you planning any LS activity tonight?”

Choeng stared at Hugo with horrifying condemnation. “Terrori...? I ain’t no damn terrorist! Just trying ta buy some toys for my kids!” Choeng swung his head to and fro. “Gotta have toys on Christmas, I said! It’s wha...it’s wha...”

Choeng went to sleep as a large puddle of drool fell to the ground. It was sizable and a small mop-up crawler came by to clean it.

Hugo had all he needed and ripped off the gloves. “Why the hell did you guys call me out tonight? I can look over the recordings, but even without drugs I know he’s not responsible for tonight’s LS.”

“We didn’t call you out, detective,” replied the officer. “I’m just securing him until the de-foaming crew gets here. You can release him if you like.”

“Hell, no!” Hugo snapped. “He didn’t back down after he was warned. He’s obviously a threat. Incarcerate him!” Hugo looked to the side thoughtfully. “Still, if you didn’t call me out, what’s behind that workflow?”

Hugo tossed the gloves on the floor and used his wet hands to bring up the case order again. Drilling down, he saw that the initiator was a technician named Flip Weebles from Vitalli Payment Processing in Tempe, the company that had installed the POS scanners. Hugo grabbed Flip’s embedded phone number and got him online.

“This is Detective Hugo Kosterlitsky, from the SWCISA. You initiated a workflow related to LS tonight?”

Flip looked a bit dumbfounded. “Uhm, me? No, I’m just the maintenance technician. They sent me out to fix the downed payment system. But I reported all this to the office. Maybe the Sentient there changed the workflow status.”

There was that word again, Sentient. It stood for Sentient Being. Not only a perfected form of artificial intelligence, but a human-like artificial consciousness. Biological in nature, Sentients presided over people as administrators, managers, coaches, what have you, making all types of mundane decisions. For the most part, they did a good job. But some people had issues with them. They feared the Sentients’ growing influence over society. Or, seen the other way, they feared man’s diminishing role. It was a philosophical matter for the most part, and as Hugo saw things, an issue of perspective.

Hugo eyeballed Flip and huffed angrily. “So, there’s no LS activity going on here tonight.”

“Well, I don’t know if it’s LS, but it sure is strange,” Flip said, chuckling. “Never saw a system so messed up in my life!”

“What’s strange?” Hugo demanded.

“Uh, well, it’s hard to explain. Maybe I can show you.”

“Bring it here. I’ll send you my location.”

“Might be better if you come down to me,” Flip countered. “The system is too big to move from the machine room, and I still have a lot of work to do if you want this stuff online by morning.”

Hugo brought up his pathfinder and located Flip somewhere in the northwest basement. It wasn’t too far. Containing his frustration, he reluctantly agreed.

“Alright, I’m on my way. Don’t move until I get there!”

“Sure thing,” Flip replied.

Hugo dropped the call and started toward the maintenance elevator without much thought.

“Detective, you want me to keep this guy here until you come back?” the DPS officer asked.

Hugo didn’t look back. “No, he’s all yours!”

Following a hidden maintenance corridor, Hugo soon found a service elevator that unlocked immediately and whisked him to the basement. Crawlers infested the corridor and scurried about the dimly lit walls using low energy lights, their leg chatter buried beneath the din of thrumming air units. Stepping into the alien environment he looked around to get his bearings. The air reeked heavily of polyurethane and pneumatics.

Hugo checked the filtered map again and headed through a labyrinth of concrete corridors jam-packed with pipes, cables, and conduit. Water, air, power, sewage, waste, network, communications. It all came through the basement’s corridors and was maintained by specialized crawlers of every size and description. Humans intermittently did some work, but that was kept to a minimum. This was the realm of the automated.

Avoiding swarms of small multi-eyed inspection crawlers, Hugo located the secondary POS machine room and entered its secure airlock. Ventilation drastically altered as the door closed, and his eardrums adjusted to the controlled pressure.

The inner seal soon opened, exposing him to a dark cavernous hall filled with system racks aligned in perfect symmetry. It was almost pitch black, illuminated only by the glow of ultra-low-power black lights and flexi.

Flip sat cross-legged on the soft floor, accompanied by a pair of small maintenance crawlers providing spot lighting. Jiggling with care, Flip extracted a large circuit board from an unlocked rack. Odd sounds emanated as the board separated from its frame. Flip examined it with professional curiosity, then frowned unhappily before looking up at Hugo through bug-eyed technician grade filters.

“Hi there, officer. How are you this evening?” he said cheerfully.

Hugo corrected him. “It’s detective, Detective Hugo Kosterlitsky of the SWCISA.”