Dan lay on the table,
wriggling until his face was in the centre of the breathing hole.
“Just get it over with.”
The doctor
injected Dan with local anaesthetic, careful to ensure he
penetrated to the correct depth for the drug to work. It was too
dangerous to administer general anaesthetic without an
anaesthesiologist to monitor his bodily functions and regulate the
cocktail of drugs
trickling
into his system. Besides, it wasn’t strictly
necessary. A local did the trick. The operation was simple really;
Doctor Ingles had performed it nearly a hundred times – usually for
wanted criminals but sometimes for chipping protestors or people
seeking to evade bankruptcy by starting a new life. Either way, he
never asked questions. His clientele demanded secrecy and he
delivered nothing else. He offered his services to the
Australian
community,
and indeed the world community
,
with the intention of maintaining patient
anonymity. Strictly speaking, that was impossible; he always knew
who his patients were for they paid for his services with their
microchips. But he did his best to strike all record of the
transactions from the myriad of databases just waiting to absorb
financial details. And he treated his patients’ confidentiality
with the same sanctity as a priest in a confessional. He was just
thankful the law enforcement community, and specifically the
chipping squads, hadn’t discovered him yet. Doubtless they’d see
things a different way.
He plunged his
scalpel into Dan’s back with surgical precision. Dan felt a pulling
sensation and then a little discomfort when Doctor Ingles pulled
flaps of his skin aside and used clamps to hold them in place. Then
he heard scraping and the vibrations traversed his spine and grated
his back teeth. He fought the impulse to flinch; the last thing he
wanted was
for Ingles to
sever nerves or slice muscles that he really shouldn’t sever
or slice.
Implanting
microchips was easier. ‘Surgeons’ simply used an instrument that
looked like a nail-gun with a mounted television. It used sensors
to align perfectly with the correct spinal segment and fired a chip
like a dart into the misfortunate person’s back. A quick pinch and
it was all over. Dan vividly remembered his chipping. They had
offered him candy on his way out, as if he’d been a good
boy.
But when you have sixteen billion
people to chip, you wouldn’t want to waste time.
Actually,
he corrected himself,
they only chipped twelve
billion.
The poorest African nations
couldn’t afford the massive capital outlay required to microchip
their citizens. It effectively severed them from the rest of the
world, isolating them in their own squalor. None of the
giga-corporations voted to assist them; after all, you can’t profit
from people who have nothing.
Dan heard Doctor Ingles
sigh triumphantly. “That’s it.” He undid the clamps and carefully
stitched the wound. “All done.”
“
Really?” Dan
had imagined it would take longer.
Ingles offered Dan a peek
at the tiny black capsule he’d dug from his back. “Here it
is.”
He studied
it.
It’s so small.
He’d expected something larger, something more sinister. It
was the size of a grain of sand, covered with a reddish tinge of
blood.
“
Come with
me.” Ingles switched off the overhead light and flung his
gore-smattered gloves in the medical waste bin stationed beside the
door.
Dan dressed
and all three followed Ingles into his private office, a messy
consulting room filled with volumes of useless medical texts. Dan
didn’t understand why he held onto the dusty tomes, all the
information he needed was more readily accessible online. Doctor
Ingles ran a scanner over Dan’s chip and deducted the fee from his
account. Next, he opened a bar fridge recessed in one wall and
reached pas
t
a row
of urine samples to grab a small purse. He extracted a dozen
microchips
.
T
hey looked like black rice, rolling
across his palm.
“
Give me your
chip selectors.”
Cookie and Samantha
surrendered their link to electronic life and he plugged them into
a special reader that fed the data into his computer. He inspected
both profiles and asked, “You want the usual?”
Cookie nodded. “Yes,
please.”
Ingles pushed his
thin-framed spectacles back onto the bridge of his nose and pecked
at his keyboard, frustrating Cookie with his typing
ineptitude.
“
Come on then,
take a seat.” He waved them to the chairs scattered haphazardly
about the room. Only Dan declined, preferring not to place pressure
on his fresh sutures.
The
enterprising doctor selected several profiles that appropriately
matched Cookie’s physical description, impregnated the data onto
chips, and lined them up neatly on his desk. Then he performed a
similar service for Samantha, careful to ensure the ethnicity field
read Korean – though he slipped one Japanese profile in, doubting
anybody would notice the difference. Hers were more expensive
because
it was harder
to get legitimate Asian profiles.
Finally, his
eyes rested on Dan. He estimated his height and weight and typed
the variables into a search window. Dan was midrange so billions of
people fit his physical description worldwide and since Ingles had
hundreds of cached profiles, dozens matched Dan. But permission to
carry weapons internationally was another matter entirely and it
slashed the viable records to three. Unfortunately, one potential
profile stipulated
brown
eyes and Dan’s were clearly
greenish-blue
. “I only have two chips
that meet your requirements.”
Dan’s gaze narrowed. “If
that’s all you have then that will have to do.”
“
I’ll knock a
thousand from the price.” When impregnating the chips he added the
refund to Dan’s linked account.
That left him with three
neat rows of microchips and he spent the next ten minutes
painstakingly prising the covers from the chip selectors and
swapping the chips. Then he checked the validity of every profile
by switching between them and running the device past his scanner.
They all scanned correctly.
“
Okay, we’re
done.” He tossed the selectors to their appropriate owners. “Here
are your new lives, less a few thousand from your
accounts.”
Dan checked his watch,
pleasantly surprised. “Good. We might just be in time… if he’s
working today.”
*
Saturday, September 18,
2066
N.S.W. Police Department,
Parramatta Office
16:35 Sydney,
Australia
Simon hated the Saturday
shift.
It always
dragged on forever. He consoled himself by remembering he’d have
Monday off. A smile crept onto his lips and a set of pearly teeth
shone amidst his dark-skinned face. He
did
enjoy that about a weekend shift:
being free on Monday when everybody else had to go to work. He
leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, dreaming about
watching midday television in his pyjamas with a cold beer in one
hand and the remote in the other. It wasn’t exactly a productive
way to spend the day, but it was relaxing, and that was precisely
what he needed. It wasn’t that the job was too much for him. If
anything, it wasn’t enough. He needed more to do. He was tired of
paper-shuffling cases and cleaning up other officers’ shit. Worse
still were the UniForce cases, dead ends despite obvious
culpability. It vexed him. They could get away with
anything.
Nanotoxin for Christ’s
sake!
The smile gave way to a frown as
thoughts of work again plagued his mind.
He returned
his attention to the news, which he’d been browsing for most of the
afternoon.
Not long
now.
Simon was itching for five o’clock when
he’d bolt for the door in anticipation of his private weekend.
Browsing the news was the easiest way to pass time. Nothing
interesting had happened.
Same old
shit.
The only online paper he subscribed to
was blabbering about a lucrative trade agreement that had arisen
from the latest European Economic Forum, a politician found guilty
of stalking little boys, and how the entertainment industry was
going wild with a band that had pioneered a ‘brave and original’
sound.
The only smidgeon of news stirring
his interest was a snippet about UniForce’s CEO. It speculated that
he was either too sick to attend their recent shareholder meeting
or that he was dead. Simon shrugged.
Good
riddance to bad rubbish.
A commanding knock at his
door roused him from his reverie. “Come in.”
He looked up to see Dan
Sutherland waltz into his office and confidently shut the door
behind him. “Dan!”
“
Hey Slime.”
Dan had always called him that. It was a joke that went back a long
way, back to when they were both rookies in the precinct, around
2056. They’d been on one of their customary drinking binges, which
in hindsight had always been somewhat stupid, and it had resulted
in a now unmentionable dare.
“
My God, what
brings you to this pitiful part of the world?” Simon extended a
friendly hand, pleased when Dan gripped it with as much gusto as he
had in times past.
“
Just wanted
to make sure you were still alive.” Dan smiled stiffly. “I see
they’re still suckering you into accepting Saturday
shifts.”
“
Yeah,” he
said nostalgically while waving at the seat opposite his desk. “Sit
mate, sit.”
Dan hesitated a moment
before squatting awkwardly on the edge of the seat. The anaesthetic
was wearing off and he felt stiff. It hampered arm movement and he
wondered how long he’d take to recover adequately. With what he’d
planned, he’d need to move unhindered. Doctor Ingles had slapped a
thin dressing over the wound but it was weeping so heavily it had
already soaked through.
“
Jesus!” Simon
couldn’t wipe the grin off his face. “How’ve you been?”
Dan fought the
impulse to shrug. “Oh, you know, getting by. Things could be
better.”
Now there’s an
understatement.
“But they could also be
worse.”
Oh yeah? How?
“And you?”
Simon nodded
emphatically. “Yeah, good. Work’s still the same old shit, but
things are going well.”
“
I’m glad to
hear it.” He eyed Simon’s belly and his face lit with a genuine
smile. “Putting on a bit of weight, aren’t you?”
Simon sucked his gut in
and looked offended. “I have it covered.”
“
I can
recommend a great dietician if you’re-”
“
It’s
covered.”
“
Are you sure?
Because-”
“
Dan!” Simon
tried to look as thin as he could.
Dan loved teasing his
friend. At some point in the past their friendship took a sadistic
twist and they began derived pleasure from insulting each other.
But neither of them took it seriously. “Okay mate, just thought I’d
offer. How’s Maureen?”
Simon clucked his tongue
and his eyebrows shot up. “Now there’s a fiery one. I caught her in
bed with another man.”
“
Ouch.” Dan
winced for his friend.
“
In our
bed.”
“
That’s
disgusting.” Dan’s wince turned into a look of revulsion. “What’d
you do?”
“
I didn’t have
to do anything,” Simon replied. “We never said a word to each
other. She just packed her bags and left in silence – with him.
That was the last I saw of her. Good riddance if you ask me, she
had some bloody annoying habits. It’s him that made me want to
puke; he invited me to make it a threesome.”
Dan burst into a fit of
laughter, tears of genuine mirth tinting his eyes.
“
I thanked him
for the offer, it
was
sweet. Then I said I was going to make myself a cup of coffee,
watch my favourite television show, and if he was still there when
it finished I said I’d put a nine-millimetre round in his head. I
heard them leave before the first set of commercials.” His mammoth
smile resurfaced. “I have a new girlfriend now, Tanya.”
“
Oh, man, you
have them lining up, don’t you?”
“
Hell, I have
a queue a mile long. But Tanya’s really something. You should meet
her. She has it all. She’s so hot she melts my cheese sandwiches
without a griller
and
she’s worth talking to. Who would’ve thought you could
ha
ve
both?”
Katherine had
both.
It was the first thought to enter
Dan’s mind.
And Jen has
both.
That was his second thought, chasing
the first. Both thoughts were unwelcome, but thinking about Jen
brought a sting of urgency.
Simon was
sensitive enough to notice the change in Dan’s demeanour. “So what
brings you here mate? I mean, what
really
brings you here?”