The pool was no more than 10 lengths really—a token gesture to the health-obsessed planet—in the most basic of hotels. The whirr of the spinning bikes meshed against the soft splash of the front crawl—not that Dylan could hear anything, or even think anything other than his plan. There was only his plan. And he would be with her tonight. Beating off the jet lag was going to be critical if he was going to carry out his plan. The mini assistant in his room at the Holiday Inn on Schermerhorn had recommended 32 minutes of medium intensity swimming followed by a light lunch and exactly 1.2 litres of water in the 30 minutes following his leisure time.
His plan was going well so far. He had picked up his F-150 for cash and had it modded from the contact he’d made—also for cash—and he was ready to move into action. He’d already made a couple of reccies of the Barclays Center and had his outfits from one of the few in-person Targets that existed in the city. And various ID forms had all been procured and printed at the 3-D shop over the road.
Despite the lack of windows in the soulless afterthought of a hotel room, the screens still flickered and tickered away, CNN excitedly having crews in front of the Barclays Center, awaiting the final performance by his one true love. She was retiring to have a family, though what she didn’t know was that that would be with Dylan. She’d come round, he’d make her safe, they’d go… away.
A black look took over Dylan’s face as he thought about all the things he hated in this world: the boredom, the clean sanitisation of the bourgeois, how everything was seemingly predetermined, no risk, no pain, just a long slow trundle towards the mega-age. Though his mother had work—she had jobs—they were no more than barely comfortable in London. And it wasn’t like he had to be out with the nightcrawlers after 02.00 in Soho. He’d never been in trouble, never arrested. He had all the money he could wish for, which turned out to be a valuable commodity when he had paid for The Book when he’d originally simply been looking to test his considerable coding prowess to see what he could do.
The GoogleCab… That had been fun: just a little four-way traffic light malfunction and a small crash. It proved he could get in there, do what he needed to, and get out again. No one came to his door, did they? Of course, they didn’t! Who knew better than Dylan how to cover tracks and become invisible.
The Singapore MRT was another thrill. He wanted to be in that town. He wanted to be with her and his jealous rage saw him hack the trains, making it difficult for everyone to be where he wanted to be. When he heard that night that she was betrothed, retiring, and that worm Kelly was revealed to be The One for her, well, that was it. That wasn’t acceptable. And that was the night his plan came fully to fruition.
Rested, and his body working overdrive to combat the time zones, he had a myriad of thoughts. His teenage hormonal angst and love for Suki was palpable, and this was coupled with his hatred for the inequality of the world, which was also an overarching theme of his malaise. He longed for the distant memories of his Uncle Bradley in Canada, the seaside times when he could eat chips and still be petrified of seagulls but wouldn’t be punished. His plan was conceived so as to give him what he’d always wanted in the world. But he couldn’t work out how to do that properly. He was taking a massive short cut, but he reckoned that the resulting fallout from the global meltdown that was coming would buy him time with Suki, and she would grow to love him and view him as her saviour.
His EMP simulator—a third generation Marx generator—sat on the bed, the soft white linen a cushion for the metal and wires, the box powerful enough to take out an entire block. It would cause a small explosion and deliver some limited localised damage, but fused electrical wires, scrambled servers and a complete and utter malfunction of anything electrical on the entire block, that was the plan to get her out of there. Away from him. She would, in time, see that Dylan was her saviour and fall in love with him over the joys of nature and the real world in his hideout while the rest of the world imploded.
‘One last SIM check,’ he said to himself as he booted a screen to show the timing and sequence: from EMP firing, to grabbing the girl, to the carefully prepped sequence of lights allowing him just through at legal speeds and then shutting behind him, which would make a tail impossible and his getaway so, so easy. He’d run the calcs a thousand times, aggregating the data and coding the outcomes so that his speed and approach time to every single light was predicted to the nearest second, provided he stayed calm. And his vanilla F-150 ensured he wouldn’t stand out on his trip north. It would drive for him in any case, his cargo comfortable in the modded back seat entryway to the tail, so all he had to do was sit calm until they reached the destination 13 hours and 26 minutes later.
Joe had a purpose. Level 2 was all he’d dreamed of and more: all city and action and keeping things calm. The ‘Summer of Strife’ was showing no signs of slowing with more tropical storms in random cities at random times. It was as if the usual hurricane season had just decided to up sticks and cause havoc somewhere else. At the slightly wrong time of year.
Tonight, he had been put on patrol around some huge concert, a nice piece of skirt alright, but the music wasn’t his thing. Retro old school rock was way more satisfying than this over-the-top posturing by a plastic creature who just tried to bait her fans into her entangled world of garish outfits, loud techno-pop, social media and cartoons for all ages. Oh yeah, and the tits and ass for the daddies was a critical part too.
Joe had earned praise from General Adams for his role in calming the riots all along Fifth and down as far as Wall Street, and his work with the experimental bots had drawn him plaudits from everyone in his command. Stokes was also revelling in the applause, and Adams and Robinson were staying on and deploying the bots in more mundane settings. And what a perfect way to demonstrate peaceful law and order control than at a pop concert? Joe and Stokes had also been asked to stay on and assist in the crowd control planning with a few bots who had been dumbed down from the heavy artillery and they cut a fresher step with pistols instead of machine guns and even caps, trying to make them blend and look like human cops—only ones you would never mess with in a million years.
Though there hadn’t been a specific car or traffic light failure for a few days now, tensions were still running high. However, public sentiment was beginning to turn as President Obama ran another surge of popularity for the way she held the situation, her ability as an orator perhaps only matched by her recently departed husband. The chatter on X-App was incredible with all sorts of conspiracy theories emerging as to who was behind the endless storms in both hemispheres, and who had hacked the stock market, and why were the gazillionaires all profiting from this maelstrom?
The far right crazies in the other camp were hypothesising about why the transport infrastructure seemed to be failing, and suspicion fell towards the Chinese, who were always under suspicion from someone. China had flip-flopped in its foreign policy for decades, being still a highly secretive and controlled police state, but at various times it had cosied up to Putin and rebelled against him when it appeared the whole world thought that was the right thing to do. Their economy was roaring with their well-timed abandonment of the restrictive child policies, which at various times in history had been limited to one, two and then three children. Since the late twenties they had abandoned any limit altogether, almost certainly in response to the falling fertility rates in the West that was decimating countries and economies. They had long courted Taiwan, but despite a few skirmishes that were played down in the early to mid-twenties, they had refrained from taking it. Though the whole world knew it was just a matter of time and opportunity before they would surely strike.
The evening dusk still shot light beams over the brown halo, like some sort of hat with a hole, and Joe called Monica again for a sit rep.
‘You there, hey.’
‘Yes.’ Monica was curt, pleased to be away, but confused. Was Joe playing a game? Josh wasn’t happy in the slightest that she and Benji had just upped and left, so here she was, torn between these two guys, her old love and now her annoying ex in the red corner versus her current friend-who-was-a-bit-more-than-that in the blue. Why was Joe in the red corner?
‘Can you hear me? It doesn’t sound like you are there.’
‘Yes!’ This time with more energy so Joe knew she was present but was still pissed off.
‘I’m at the Barclays Center tonight. Some concert thing. Everything’s still on high alert here, but it seems quieter, you know. Maybe I was a little hasty sending you away. How’s my big guy?’
‘Alright.’
‘Can I speak to him then?’
‘Just missed him. He’s sleeping. And I’m having trouble explaining to him what is going on, Joe. I’m going to make arrangements to get back to NYC tomorrow.’
‘OK, fine. I can’t argue. Maybe I was just a little spooked by the accident and the riots and the storms… Something’s not right, Monica. I can sense it.’
‘Something’s not been right with you for a while, Joe,’ she snapped, exiting the call.
Irritated, Joe continued to scan the street. Everything normal, save for a few bots here and there as an added precaution in the ‘Summer of Strife’. CNN analysts were wailing about the highs and lows of the stock market, general panicked tones as people were losing money hand over fist in seemingly safe stocks, yet old school infrastructure commodities were gaining strongly as the world wanted the safety of the manual solution. If you’d put all your money into gold barely two weeks before, you’d be looking at a handsome return in a short space of time.
‘Jones, sit rep, please. How’s the traffic out the front?’ The familiar voice of Stokes in his rig boomed loudly into the gentle early evening dusk. Joe was having a blast doing real work and he enjoyed the fact that he was like a soccer coach or a controller, with these kick-ass androids who would never argue, never disobey orders, and who—he was sure—could rip a man’s head off in seconds should they be ordered to. He felt young again, like it was 2019 or some long-forgotten day when the sun seemed to shine a lot and people were free. Stokes’ words snapped him out of his wistful enjoyment of the early evening.
‘All clear, sir. Corner of Flatbush and Atlantic all calm, sir. I have bots G7 and G8 checking the east–west flow and the south route down towards Prospect Park. No incidents, sir. All clear.’
‘Good work, Jones. Same situation here on the other side. I’ve got H4 and R23 covering the corner of Atlantic and Sixth. All clear. Check in again, five minutes. Over.’
When on earth did anyone said ‘over’ anymore? Joe could not even remember where that came from, but he had just a vague recollection of old radio tech that was so glitchy and manual that each participant in such a conversation had to be very clear when they’d finished speaking. The always-connected rigs and GGlasses of today never missed a trick, and with the advancement of 6G and wireless-over-the-air recharge, nothing ever went out or lost power either as any peripheral you wanted to have or carry would always ensure it had a source. This was provided that the one weakness in the system—the lithium battery—was of good health and status.
Crossing the street to the large open expanse in front of the venue, Joe’s route towards the entrance doors was disturbed by a recently familiar sound: crashing, more noise, smoke. Feelings of confusion swept over him as he ran instinctively towards the source. High in the sky the plume was coming from behind the venue. It was time to sprint. Real adrenalin and a fight or flight reaction were kicking in making him feel alive!
‘Jones, here. Sit rep, please. Current location front and centre on Atlantic at Barclays. Come in, please.’
Nothing. Silence. Smoke.