I soaked up the sun’s rays while laying back on my chaise longue. I was on an Indonesian beach I hadn’t bothered to learn the name of. I’d changed my features, voice, and identity with the practiced ease of a Letter. I had no doubt there were parties in the U.S. government and various megacorps who wanted to track me down, but my guess was they’d have a hell of a time doing it. The only people on Earth who knew my location were the AI known as Delphi, Lucita Biondi, Marissa Sanchez, and S.
I wasn’t worried about any of them. Delphi was enjoying manipulating the stock market, S was off the grid, Marissa was in Washington trying to deal with the collapse of the global economy, and Lucita was three feet away in a chair like my own. I questioned the necessity of tanning when she was a Shell, but she said the synth-skin that made up her body was photo-receptive. A year ago, I’d been a Letter, a man with no identity other than the letter G, who worked as an assassin for a private mercenary company called the International Refugee Society under then-President Douglas. Both had used me with no care for my humanity, which turned out to be nonexistent since I’d been created in a lab with false memories.
Crazy huh?
I’d managed to turn the tables on them and pull a Snowden, uploading millions of terabytes of “Black Technology” information, along with secret files, onto the web. It had brought down the Douglas administration and destroyed my ex-employers, but had changed the world as well as technology. I’d been smart enough not to attach my name to the data and was planning to spend the rest of my life enjoying the local hospitality. Lucita, a fellow cyborg assassin but not a Letter, had decided to join me.
I sipped my margarita. “You know, you should probably wear a swimsuit when tanning.”
“Eh,” Lucita said, wearing only a pair of sunglasses. “Not my problem. It’s our beach, after all.”
“Technically, it’s my beach,” I corrected her. I wore a pair of mirror shades and red swim trunks. I was tempted to remove them and enjoy the environment like Lucita. We weren’t a couple, but we enjoyed each other’s company. Assassins with benefits, if you will. It was probably the most serious relationship I was going to have since I’d never be able to share who I was with anyone else. Those people I’d trusted most had turned out to be the people most likely to betray me. In the end, it was just me, an AI named Delphi and cyborg hiding with me from the governments we’d pissed off.
“Then what am I?” Lucita asked, lowering her sunglasses to the bridge of her nose as she gazed at me.
“You’re a guest who doesn’t pay rent.”
“I’m fun,” Lucita said, shrugging. “Besides, you’d grow bored with just the local women to keep you entertained. What’s the latest one’s name?”
“You know her name,” I said, frowning. “Besides, it’s interesting having a lover who isn’t either paid or trying to kill me.”
My need for human companionship transcended my need for honesty and I’d made dozens of friends under my fake ID. As far as the locals were concerned, I was Mr. Case and I’d made my fortune in the tech industry. I’d made up friends, family, and a tragic backstory which was all verifiable on the internet save for the fact I had no decent pictures on Facebook. Sometimes, I even believed my fake backstory myself. Was it an adequate substitute for genuine human intimacy? How would I know? I wasn’t human.
“If you say so,” Lucita said. “Do you think it’s serious?”
“No,” I said, sighing. “In addition to bartending and spearfishing, Toni likes to tell fortunes. Per Indonesian astrology, I’m going to eventually get married again. Two more times, in fact.”
I’d been married once before to a fellow Letter named S. S had never loved me, was sometimes not even my friend, but we’d shared years together as man and wife in a cover identity. I’d never been as good at compartmentalizing as other Letters. It was possibly why I was the first one to rebel and the only one who’d actively turned against his employers. Personally, I put as much stock in tea leaves and divination as I did in the honesty of politicians. Still, it was a nice thought even if I suspected it was also a way of Toni telling me we weren’t going to get serious no matter how often I paid her rent.
“Marriage is just a tool to enslave the economically dependent partner,” Lucita said, stretching. It was distracting. “Is your future wife a cyborg? Do you see it happening soon? If so, I want a heads up so I can kill someone for their mansion before you force me to move out.”
“The zodiac did not say,” I said, putting down my margarita and looking down at my Karmapad handheld computer. I was currently reading last week’s news since I didn’t keep an internet connection near my home. Instead, I downloaded my books from the public library’s server and bought local papers in town to enjoy.
“Anything good?” Lucita asked, clearly bored with paradise. She needed to take up a hobby, hopefully not involving murder. Unlike her, I was perfectly content to read and soak up rays until my cyber-brain shut down in however long its warranty remained working. Given it was originally only supposed to last ten years before I’d jury-rigged it, that was something I didn’t count on being long.
I read her the news. “President Karl Trust has done a bunch of embarrassing and unconstitutional things. The economy is up. The Democrats are fighting. He’s not going to press charges against President Douglas, though. She’s decided to stick with public speaking and writing a book about her experiences being the first woman President.”
“A small punishment for being an autocratic technocrat,” Lucita said. “How many people did she have you kill?”
Too many. “Eh, it’s probably the worst thing that could have befallen her. Besides, the Invisible Hand really was every bit as dangerous as she foretold. I may have misjudged her.”
The Invisible Hand were the Military Industrial Complex, which wasn’t a conspiracy so much as a sociological phenomenon. A dozen of the world’s biggest military suppliers and technology companies had gotten together to make the International Refugee Society. I’d been their puppet for years before switching sides to President Douglas. In the end, I’d fought for my own side as I wanted to work for the one person who didn’t want me to continue being a hired killer. I’d ended up exposing their secrets, Snowden style, and sharing all the top-secret Black Technology that had allowed both to thrive. It had helped thrust Trust into power—but I considered that a small price to pay for wrecking the gameboard—even if I didn’t like the guy or his policies.
“Any news on the Hand?” Lucita asked.
“I don’t think there’s a spot to download information about the Illuminati,” I joked. “A credible one, at least.”
“I meant the companies we know they’re involved with,” Lucita said. “I owe them some payback too, you know.”
Lucita was referring to her deceased father and friends, whom I’d played no small role in killing. Honestly, her feelings were more than a bit complicated on that matter, since the late Papa Biondi had been what we in the assassin business liked to call “a rapist child-abusing shithead.” I was glad he was dead, and so was Lucita. Still, she was Italian and they had very specific ideas of what to do when someone killed your relatives. Thankfully, she blamed the Hand for it rather than me. You know, the guy who pulled the trigger.
“Ah. The lawsuits against Karma Corp and the other Big Twenty will drag on for years,” I said, shrugging. “There’s been a lot of suicides, resignations, and firings, but I suspect the real power players will escape with a slap on the wrist. They always do. Black Technology is claimed to have been stuff they were just heavily testing, and its release was a breach of national security. Six Fortune 500 companies have gone bankrupt, though, while thousands more startups making their own variants have risen to power. It’s no longer a Big 20, but a Big 100. Their power is diluted if nothing else.”
“Sounds like you’re just trying to convince yourself that you didn’t change the world.”
“A little girl is running with new legs in Hong Kong, North Korea has surrendered to South Korea after their failed attack, and after Delphi revealed herself, the United Nations began drafting a universal human rights bill that will cover AI rights. I’m okay with how things have turned out.”
“All you had to do was lose yourself billions of dollars in Black Technology secrets by giving them away.”
I shrugged. “Giving away billions is easier if you already have billions. Just ask Bill Gates.”
Truth be told, change was happening at a more rapid pace than I could have imagined. Venezuela’s economy had returned to stable levels within two months of the release. They had created the world’s largest solar farm and were in negotiations to build a space elevator. Knock-off cybernetics were everywhere, and plastic surgeons proclaimed they’d be able to supply new bodies within two years. Plenty of people weren’t willing to wait that long, and a few grisly stories of homemade Shells had already emerged. Slicers—the Black Technology equivalent of Hackers—had also successfully crashed the Ukrainian stock market on behalf of Russian backers. Then, two days later, Russia suffered a reprisal that had almost triggered World War III. It was a new world. Or maybe just the old one revealed.
“Any word from Marissa?” Lucita said. “I know you still want to bang her. That’s why you’re stalking her.”
“No,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I’m not stalking her.”
Marissa had been the only woman I’d ever loved. Truly loved. She was also a woman who had turned me over my insane brother (clone base? father via genetic donation?) Daniel Gordon. It had been to save her sister’s family, but you didn’t come back from something like that. Still, the wound in my soul from her betrayal was as fresh that day on the beach as it was a year prior. Some things you never got over.
“Come on.”
I sighed. “She’s working with a cybernetic commando named Stephen Wilcox. He’s a member of Task Force-22.”
“Ah,” Lucita said, her voice dripping with condescension. “Replaced so soon. Any word on the others?”
“I wish Marissa the best,” I said, half suspecting we’d end up back in each other’s lives again. It was just how the system worked. “As for the others—no idea.”
That wasn’t entirely true. James Madison had gone public with his story of being held prisoner by an American-based paramilitary organization. No one had believed him, but his story got a large amount of publicity, enough for him to launch his own technology firm. As one of the world’s leading experts on Black Technology, James had already attracted something like ten billion dollars in investment capital. Last I heard, he was already chilling in a Silicon Valley mansion with a paid harem. Good for him.
“No word from E or S?” Lucita asked.
I’d distributed a nanotechnology-based cure for the ten-year lifespan built into each Letter. It was something I’d nicknamed “The Blade Runner Curse.” It wasn’t much of a gift since only a few of us were left. We’d ended up killing most of each other off. Still, it meant freedom, and if we were a race doomed to extinction, then it was better we have a chance to live our lives to the fullest. It wasn’t like a bunch of incredibly strong, super-intelligent machines were going to starve in a world hungry for killers.
“Nope,” I said, shaking my head. “Whatever they’ve decided to do with their share of the Society’s money, they haven’t seen fit to include me in on it.”
“That’s insulting.”
“I’m okay with sitting here and reading Cthulhu Armageddon,” I said, tapping the paperback novel beside me. “I am done with killing people.”
Lucita snorted.
“I’m serious,” I said.
“Old soldiers don’t retire. They just get blown away.”
“That’s literally the opposite of how that saying is supposed to go.”
“Then the old saying is wrong.”
That was when I heard a helicopter approaching. Flipping over the side of my chair, I grabbed the REM-7 pistol hidden underneath and aimed it at them. Lucita flipped over herself and grabbed a composite assault rifle hidden in the sand. Hovering above us was an AR-27 Whisper helicopter whose sides opened before rappelling ropes shot out. It could have wiped us out if its members had planned to do so. Apparently, someone just wanted to make an entrance.
Six individuals wearing tactical body armor with familiar faces descended to the beach. I recognized E, S, W, I, J, and K. They were all the fellow Letters I’d recruited into Task Force-22 and very possibly the last of us since no one had heard from the others in over a year. They also had white berets on, which were just adorable. They looked like the Cub Scouts of the apocalypse.
“Are they here to kill us?” Lucita asked.
“No,” I said, standing up. “We’d already be dead.”
That was when the sunlight started to disappear. I looked up. Something dark raced across the sky, and it didn’t look like clouds. Instead, it was a pure blackness spreading from beyond to devour the light.
“What’s up?” I said, lowering my pistol.
“I take it you haven’t seen the news,” S said.
“No,” I said, looking around. “Although just about everyone was absent from the estate today. I thought it was a holiday.”
S shook her head. “Wyoming is gone.”
I blinked. “What?”
“The Yellowstone volcano Delphi predicted has gone off. The President declared a state of martial law, as have half the other countries on Earth. Civil wars and riots have broken out over the implications. It’s going to be a very long winter for the next few years, and society is going to be defined by who has the most wealth as well as technology.”
I stared at her, cursing God and my luck in equal measure. “What do you want me to do?”
“We want your help in fixing the world. To make amends for the hundreds of people we’ve murdered.”
“And make a lot of money in the process,” E added, as if the two weren’t mutually exclusive.
“I’m in,” Lucita said.
S glared. “You weren’t invited.”
“I’m in,” Lucita said, laughing as if we hadn’t just heard twenty million people had died.
“Fine. I was getting bored of retirement anyway,” I said, lying.
It was a flippant response to the beginning of the Dark Age of Technology. We had all the machines we could want, but no machine could keep the barbarism and ruthlessness at the heart of the human spirit from rising up.
God help us all.