GLAZE (35 page)

The voice speaks again. ‘Interesting.’
 

Another click of keys and the woman changes once more. She’s calm. Happy again. She steps back from the window and smiles, her eyes glinting. She reaches up a pale hand and begins to undo the buttons of her white gown, revealing a deep cleavage.
 

‘OK, that’s quite enough,’ a voice I recognise only too well says. ‘Move on to the next test subject.’
 

And the video ends.
 

‘My god,’ Zizi says. ‘What was Max doing?’
 

I think I know only too well what he was doing. T-Raz all over again. Only this time, he’s gone even further.
 

The expression on the girl’s face as she tried to claw her way through the glass is exactly the look I saw on the faces of the people outside. The question is, how?
 

There are more videos. More files. Zizi flicks through them as I instruct her. I can’t bear to look at any more of the videos, so I stick to the data, the reports.
 

Words jump out at me.
Susceptible to suggestion
.
Primitive responses
.
Shows no resistance to exterior control
.
 

The last file is a simple image of the chip. One I’ve seen a hundred times before on the WhiteInc site and in all the materials about Glaze. A small white triangle with two micro-thin strands. One that plugs into the visual cortex, pumping images straight into the head. A second that connects to the aural cortex, for sound. Only I look closer this time.
 

‘There’s a third strand,’ I say.
 

‘But there can’t be. The nanotech is programmed to produce only two.’
 

‘Seems like Max had other plans,’ I say.
 

‘Trinity,’ Zizi says in a whisper. ‘The bastard. That was what he called Glaze at the start. Trinity. I told him the religious connotations would make it unpopular. But it was there all along.’
 

‘But what does the third strand do?’

‘It goes straight into the amygdala by the looks of it,’ she says.
 

‘The what?’
 

‘It’s the part of the brain that controls our emotions. Pleasure, fear. If Max managed to send messages that deep into the brain—’

‘He can control anyone with a chip.’
 

Zizi turns away from the screen, her hands covering her face. ‘How could he? How could he?’ she keeps saying over and over.
 

‘Is there any way you can download this somewhere? Somewhere I can get it?’
 

‘I could slide it to someone on Glaze?’
 

‘No. It has to be outside Glaze.’

‘I have a private folder, hidden away on old server. It’s where I store files I want to keep secret. You’ll be able to access it via any terminal.’ She gives me the location and password to access it. I repeat it over and over in my head, hoping my way with numbers won’t abandon me now.
 

‘OK. Do it.’
 

I watch as the file flies across the screen to another destination.
 

‘I have to go now,’ I say.
 

‘You’ll come back, soon, won’t you?’

I stop. I’ve spent my life lying to my mother and it seems she’s been pretty good at hiding things from me too. ‘If I can.’
 

‘I love you, Petri. I know I haven’t said it enough, and God knows I’ve not shown it. I was always so busy with the job I lost sight of what really mattered. Having you was the best decision I ever made.’

‘I love you too, Mum.’ I want to run to her. To hug her at last. But she’s not here. This is only a projection of her. An avatar. The real Zizi is lying on a couch not even able to move.
 

I force myself to lift up the glasses, taking my mother away with it. I’m blinded by the light in the flat.
 

‘Did you get it?’ Corina asks. ‘Did you get Logan’s message.’
 

‘I got it.’

‘And?’ Ethan says.
 

‘And it could destroy Max.’

32

I FILL THEM IN ON WHAT LOGAN
found and I give Corina the instructions on how to access Zizi’s server.
 

She digs through crates piled up in the corner and plugs Logan’s equipment back in. After a few minutes, she has a jury-rigged terminal set up and she’s found the files.
 

They all gather around the screen and watch what I’ve already seen. But I can’t bear to look at it again. I stare out the window as the darkness comes in.
 

Max said that the change in people had been a natural side effect of being on Glaze, but there was nothing natural about it.

It started with the information: he was honest about that at least. Glaze fed you the information you cared about, and nothing else. To give you a better, more personalised experience of the world.
 

‘Why bother giving people information they aren’t interested in,’ he used to say. ‘We filter it for them, so they only get what’s relevant to them.’
 

Relevance was everything. The only thing that mattered.
 

In the early days, I remember Zizi and him arguing about the level of filtering. Zizi used to worry about the effect that would have on people’s empathy—if people were never exposed to the same information as their neighbour, how could they ever hope to really understand each other? But Max wasn’t worried. Now I know now why.
 

It would have been subtle at first. Maybe a boost in ‘happy chemicals’ when people did the right thing. Like standing up for an old man on the bus. Or spending time with the people some algorithm he designed decided they should spend time with. Pretty soon, they’d only bother spending time with those people who made them feel good. I remember how Kiara and Pippa drifted apart. How everyone changed towards Ryan after his ban: Dave Carlton turning on him; Amy dumping him. That all went away when he was back on.
 

 
What better way to stop conflict than by ensuring no one with opposing views ever met? As for the people who didn’t fit into his idea of what made a perfect family member, he was happy to exclude them. A whole class of people living on the fringes of society, never able to take part. Social engineering at the highest level.

Maybe that’s how it started out. I have to believe—I want to believe—that he began with the intentions of making people happy. That he hadn’t been lying when he’d said that. He was giving people what they wanted. Building a family. And anyone who wasn’t good enough to belong, he’d leave them outside, living in the shadows.
 

But that wasn’t enough for him. He wanted total control. And now, he has it.
 

After twenty, maybe 30 minutes, the last video stops playing.

‘I can’t believe it,’ Leon says, stepping away from the screen, his hand over his mouth.
 

Ethan turns away too. ‘After what they did to us at T-Raz?’
 

‘Why did no one notice the third strand?’ Corina says, turning off the screen.
 

‘Because the only people responsible for fitting them are WhiteInc company staff,’ I say. ‘And once company, always company.’
 

‘Why didn’t Dr Hwang realise?’ Ethan asks.

‘Maybe he knew but didn’t care.’
 

‘Another doctor then? Any doctor? They can’t all be owned by Max?’ Corina shouts, throwing something at the wall. It leaves a hole in the white plaster.
 

I sit on the sofa next to Zizi. ‘It wouldn’t show up on an X-ray. The chip is ceramic and the tendrils can only be seen under a microscope. Do you remember that Middle Eastern country that made all that fuss about people not being allowed in if they were chipped?’

‘Because they’d banned all social networks?’ Leon says.
 

‘Yeah. Max laughed and said they were undetectable so unless the government was going to go around prising people’s brains open good luck to them.’

‘Isn’t that exactly what the government did?’ Corina says. ‘Went around cutting people’s brains open?’
 

‘Until the UN stepped in,’ I say, remembering the news reports.
 

‘They should step in here,’ Shank says. ‘This is a violation of our fricking human rights.’

I laugh. ‘Yeah, like that’s going to happen. The Secretary General is chipped too. Max had dinner with him last month.’

‘So what do we do?’ Ethan says, coming to sit on the armrest next to me.

‘I guess people need to know,’ I say.
 

‘You guess? Billions of people have been turned into gimps and you guess they need to know?’ Corina says, sneering.
 

‘You’re not helping, ‘Rina,’ Leon says.
 

‘Can we send this info out network-wide? Like Logan did with his video nasty?’ I ask.

Corina huffs and unfolds her arms. ‘The only reason that spread so far is Logan piggybacked the test signal White was sending out. To get our message that deep, actually buried in the brain, we’d have to send the message from WhiteInc HQ itself. Or get White to send it.’
 

‘And even if you do, Max will deny it. Or push a few buttons and no one would care about it anymore. He controls them, remember?’ Leon says.
 

‘But it’s the truth!’ I say.
 

‘Don’t think truth has much currency these days.’ Corina looks down at her nails.
 

‘Yeah, White gets to say what is and isn’t true. And after Wednesday, no one’s going to be able to stop him,’ Shank says, punching his fist into his open hand.
 

‘Why? What happens Wednesday?’ Leon says.
 

‘Boy, you really have been in isolation. It’s the election.’
 

‘What? It’s not till May,’ I say. It’s not only Leon who’s been isolated from the world.
 

‘They brought it forward. And White is backing one of the runners,’ Ethan says.
 

‘And if you have White on your side—’

I look at Corina. ‘Everyone with a chip will vote the way he wants.’
 

The magnitude of it lands in the room like an anvil.
 

He’s turned everyone into his puppets and they’ve thanked him for it. And I’d been top of the queue begging to have his hand shoved up my backside.
 

‘How do we stop it?’ Ethan says.
 

‘We know we can fry the chips,’ Corina says, pulling out her taser. ‘Like I fried yours.’

‘One person at a time? It will take too long. To stand a chance against the hundreds of people who’ve already had the upgrade … ’

‘We’ll need an army,’ I say.
 

‘An army that is willing to fight against White.’
 

The silence weighs so heavy I can hear my heart beat. ‘I know where we can find one.’

33

‘YOU WANT TO BREAK IN
to a young offender’s institute?’ Corina says, staring at me. ‘White’s pet project? Are you insane?’

‘Max isn’t involved anymore, is he?’ I say, turning to Ethan.

‘After he extracted the data he needed from us,’ Ethan says, the bitterness etched in his voice, ‘he wasn’t interested any more’.
 

‘But there are still kids there?’

‘Kids without chips,’ Corina says, catching on.
 

‘About five, maybe six hundred,’ Leon says.

‘Six hundred kids, not a single one chipped. Many of them who have a very personal reason to see Maxwell White go down. All of them who have very little respect for the authorities.’
 

‘It’s something,’ Ethan says. He turns to Leon. ‘Is Charlie still booked?’

‘Yeah. And he’s moving up to the big league next month.’

‘And Flick?’

‘Still there. Still crazy.’
 

‘What about Little George?’
 

Leon’s smile slides. ‘He ended it last year.’
 

Ethan closes his eyes, blocking out whatever new pain Leon has laid on him. ‘That might be enough, organised strikes across the capital. Spreading to the other cities.’

 
‘It will take more than some kids,’ Corina says.
 

‘Haven’t you sensed the tension? The pressure between them and us, as WhiteInc push us to the edges?’ I say, wondering when I became ‘us’ and the rest of my life became them. ‘Locking us behind fences and pretending we don’t exist.’
 

‘It’s like a powder keg,’ Leon says.
 

‘Exactly. And all we need is a spark.’

‘So how are we going to get them out?’ Ethan says.
 

‘I might be able to help,’ Leon says.
 

‘No way, Leon. You only just got out,’ Corina says.
 

‘Oh, I won’t be doing any of the actual breaking. I’m not leaving my tower for no one.’ He holds up his hands, indicating the flat and, by extension, the buildings all around it. ‘But I can tell you the wherefores and hows so you can get in.’

I nod. ‘That will have to do.’
 

A day later, we’re standing at the gates to Tabula Rasa. The bright yellow brick wall stretches 30 feet up, topped in razor wire and cameras. For a modern approach to rehabilitation, as the articles said, they certainly have a very old-fashioned approach to security.
 

A drone buzzes overhead and I tug at the niqab covering my face. The scarf was Corina’s suggestion.
 

‘My
Jaddah
was always trying to get me to wear one of these,’ she had said, tucking my hair under the scarf. ‘I doubt she’d approve much of this though.’
 

It was such a simple solution, as I could hardly walk into a prison with a stealthscarf on. No wonder one of the policies of Max’s pet politician was to have the hijab banned outside the house and mosque.