Venom Read online

  Title

  License

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: Waiting Move

  Chapter 2: Scholarship Kid

  Chapter 3: Coercive Interrogation

  Chapter 4: Democracy Device

  Chapter 5: Initiative

  Chapter 6: New Guangdong

  Chapter 7: Gene Therapy

  Chapter 8: Consequentialism

  Chapter 9: Endgame

  VENOM

  by Christian Cantrell

  This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license.

  Prologue

  The glow of a handset would make life very easy for a sniper out here in all this darkness, so Foster keeps the screen dimmed. He holds it out in front of him and tilts it slightly down like he's taking a picture of something on the ground. The interferometer in the device emits multiple electromagnetic pulses, then collects and analyzes the properties of their echoes in order to construct a three-dimensional map of the terrain ahead. The model gets enhanced, false-colored, then fed to his glasses which fit tightly enough to his face that virtually no light escapes.

  Foster can see in the dark.

  Under the cover of the city, it was safe to use an infrared torch to navigate the alleys and the blacked-out neighborhoods, but out here, you don't want to do anything that expands your heat signature. His clothing is lined with flexible nanocombs which capture and store enough thermal energy to make Foster appear no bigger than a raccoon to the autonomous patrol drones overhead.

  His handset detects the mouth of the abandoned train tunnel he's looking for. It's entirely obscured by strips of something that look like long flat teeth which the false-color algorithm decides to paint a pond scum green. He suspects that the material is designed to keep various types of potentially detectable radiation in, and all forms of law enforcement out.

  The inhabitants are somehow wise to him, and two figures slip out from between the thick hanging strips. The radar system in Foster's handset has no trouble painting the dramatic curves of one of them in her tight synthetic clothing, and the other is a short bald male approximately as wide as he is tall. The girl is carrying what looks to Foster like a modified shotgun or rifle, but when the object springs opens, he is surprised to see that she is in fact wielding a vast umbrella on this perfectly clear evening. After raising it over her head, she holds it a good distance out in front of her, and then there is a quick pneumatic hiss and a thump as the handle fires a spike into the ground. It remains firmly planted as she releases the tube and motions urgently for Foster to join them.

  He shuts down his navigation system, pockets the handset, and deactivates his glasses. Once the lenses have cleared, he sees that the umbrella is emitting a very soft cyan glow. The figures beneath look to Foster like they are being consumed by a giant electroluminescent jellyfish. He trots blindly toward the blue-green beast, then ducks into the electric hum.

  The girl is tall and very black with long thin braids. Her outfit is surprisingly provocative for such a lawless region, and Foster gets the feeling that she will stomp on any man's balls who does not approach her with appropriate submissiveness. He tries not to take too much of her in, and therefore turns his attention to her partner. The man's face glistens with piercings, and his wiry goatee falls all the way down to his chest. His thick folded arms are entirely covered by intricate tribal tattoos, and Foster senses that he is playing the role of a bouncer. The only communication is from him indicating that their guest should raise his hands and submit to being searched. Foster widens his stance and extends his arms, prompting instant rebuke from the girl.

  "Hands on your head, white boy," she says. As Foster complies, he realizes that his arms were extending out past the shelter of the umbrella which he now understands to be a heat shield. The working assumption here seems to be that the combined thermal signature of three humans in such close proximity to each other would almost certainly end badly.

  "I'm not armed," Foster says. Although it is the bouncer who is feeling him up with unwarranted force, Foster senses that this information should be addressed to the girl.

  "I don't give a shit if you're armed," the girl says. "That don't bother me. I just want to make sure you're not wired."

  Right on cue, the bouncer removes Foster's handset from the inside pocket of his coat and presents it with a sarcastic flair that says something along the lines of: didn't I tell you this guy was a fucking idiot? There is a moment of shocked silence before the girl takes a step forward and gets in Foster's face.

  "You dumb motherfucker. What are you doing out here with a handset?"

  "It's ok," Foster quickly reassures. "It's turned off."

  "They don't turn off, you ignorant bitch. Are you fresh off the fucking boat? Even when you turn them off, they ain't off."

  "Not mine," Foster tells her. "Mine turns off."

  The girl squints into Foster's eyes, clearly trying to get a read on the queer man in front of her. He considers trying to explain further — trying to provide some context around his improbable claim — but something tells him it won't do any good. It's obvious that these people have come to rely heavily on their intuition, and he will either pass muster, or he won't.

  Another moment, then the girl backs down.

  "You from the HLP?"

  Despite his precarious position, Foster is amused. "No, I'm definitely not from the HLP. I'm actually surprised you don't recognize me."

  His words evoke intense curiosity in his hosts. The girl and the bouncer contemplate him uneasily for a moment in the otherworldly glow, and then the girl shakes her head.

  "I fucking knew it," she growls. "You're Harrison fucking Foster."

  "My middle name is Edward."

  The girl reaches behind her with a motion that clearly suggests a weapon. "What the fuck is this? Is this a fucking raid?"

  "Relax," Foster says. "This isn't a raid."

  "How do we know?"

  "Because if this were a raid, this entire area would be surrounded by People's Police. You two would already be zipped up and face down in the dirt, and I'd be watching the whole thing from the comfort and safety of my office."

  The bouncer speaks for the first time since Foster has made his acquaintance. "Then you'd be watching a slaughter," he says in an incongruously high-pitched voice. "You have no idea who you're fucking with out here."

  Although the man is obviously trying to intimidate, he suddenly seems at least an order of magnitude less threatening than he was before he opened his mouth. Foster wonders briefly how much of his obviously very carefully crafted look is an attempt to compensate for that voice, and how much of his life has been defined by simple insecurity. Images of him being bullied as a kid by newly pubescent teenagers flash through Foster's mind, and he suddenly feels sorry for the 275 pound ball of muscle before him.

  "You do realize that the government lets the place operate, right?"

  "Bullshit," the girl says venomously. "The government don't like nothing they can't control."

  "What makes you think we don't control you?"

  No response. This is clearly not the conversation they were expecting to have. The bouncer looks to the girl beside him for some counsel, but she only stares at Foster with palpable contempt.

  "Where do you think half the substances you sell come from?" Foster says. "Why do you think you and at least two dozen shitholes just like this continue to operate despite the most advanced and extensive surveillance and intelligence networks the world has ever seen?"

  "Because we're smarter than you," the girl says. "We're invisible. Nobody knows we're here."

  "I knew you were here."

  "Maybe you got lucky."

  "Trust me, I don't stroll around places like this at night hoping to get lucky."

  "Ok," the girl concedes. "If you know we're here, why don't you shut us down?"

  "Because you're beneficial to us," Foster explains. "Because not all forms of control need to look like control."

  "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

  "It means that the best way to control someone is to do it in such a way that they don't know they're being controlled. It means that whether you realize it or not, you work for us."

  "Fuck that shit," the girl says. "I don't work for nobody. We're free out here."

  "I'm not saying you don't enjoy some measure of freedom. I'm just saying that your freedom works to the government's advantage. It's freedom we let you have."

  "How the fuck does all this work to the government's advantage? Do you even know what this place is?"

  "It's a lab," Foster says. "You manufacture and sell illegal substances. But do you know what your drugs do?"

  "They fuck you up. What the fuck you think they do?"

  "Yes, but how do they fuck you up?"

  "I don't know. They fuck with your brain or some shit."

  "Exactly. Most of what you sell — most of what the government allows you to sell, I should say — are psychostimulants. They work by tricking your brain into releasing very high levels of neurotransmitters which are normally controlled by your brain's reward system."

  "So?"

  "So the things we generally think of as rewards — things like money and power — they aren't the real rewards in life. Not from a physiological perspective. The real rewards in life are the tiny amounts of dopamine and serotonin that our brains release in response to things like money and power. You following me?"

  "What's your fucking point?"

  "My point is that y
ou guys provide a substitute for the real thing. It's as simple as that. If you can get a thousand times the reward just by taking a pill or inhaling a vapor, where's the incentive to actually do anything real with your life?"

  "You're saying the government lets people come out here and get high just to keep them from getting rich and powerful?"

  "That's exactly what I'm saying," Foster says. "Not too many people, of course. That's why psychostimulants are still illegal. Just the ones who need the chemical rewards the most. In other words, just the most ambitious."

  The bouncer shifts his weight. "I say we slice this motherfucker up right now," he proposes with disconcerting relish. He moves his hand and shows Foster what's in it. Foster is expecting some sort of a blade, but in the muted green glow, he makes out what looks like an old wide-beam flashlight instead. A dream machine, most likely — standard issue for the People's Police. Dream machines produce rapid patterns of light which, in most people, induce muscle atonia — the state we enter during REM sleep which keeps us from physically acting out our dreams. In other words, nearly instant paralysis. As a perfectly natural biological process experienced by all animals who dream, muscle atonia, in an of itself, poses no serious threat; it's what happens to you while you're both fully conscious and completely helpless that you need to be concerned about.

  "Hold on," the girl says, clearly perplexed. "This don't make no motherfucking sense. If the government knows we're out here and lets us operate, why the hell are you sneaking around?"

  "Just because the government knows you're here, and just because I work for the government, doesn't mean I want the government to know I'm here."

  "So why are you here?"

  "To make a buy, of course."

  "If you give us half the shit we sell, why don't you just get it yourself?"

  "Because what I want, nobody will give me."

  "What the fuck could a guy like you not be able to get?"

  "Methylenedioxy methamphetamine, sodium thiopental, and potassium chloride."

  "Motherfucker, speak English. Do I look like a motherfucking pharmacist to you?"

  "I want a traffic light."

  The dealer and the bouncer give each other a look. Traffic lights are cocktails usually served up in MEUs, or Mobile Execution Units. MEUs were invented by an overseas consulting company hired by the federal government to figure out how to bring the total cost of executions down to no more than $45 per prisoner. It turned out that the key was to make execution chambers mobile, and to make the gassing process simple enough that it could be administered by minimum wage technicians after only a few hours of training. Loading traffic lights into a vaporizer was as easy as changing toner cartridges in a printer: green stops the scream, yellow makes them mellow, and red until they're dead. Vials come in only two sizes — small and large — and in the interests of conservation and sustainability, they're fully recyclable.

  "Who's it for?" the girl wants to know.

  "That's none of your business."

  "How much you offering?"

  "I'm offering something much more valuable than money."

  "I'm listening."

  "My handset."

  The bouncer removes Foster's handset from his back pocket and passes it to the girl. She accepts it without taking her eyes off Foster.

  "This thing really turns off?"

  "It does much more than that. You can turn it off, you can access government darknets, you can spoof your location. You can even spoof other people's locations. I promise you that you'll never have another opportunity like this again."

  The girl takes a moment to consider Foster's offer, then gestures to the bouncer with her head. The bouncer stays where he is, shifting all that weight of his nervously back and forth.

  "You sure about this?" he asks her. "This sounds like a trap."

  "This ain't no trap," the girl says. Foster sees that she has come to terms with her intuition. "If he wanted us dead, we'd be dead. This motherfucker's desperate."

  The bouncer still seems unsure, but he disappears into the darkness and leaves Foster and the girl alone. The girl's expression has lost its edge. She watches her new customer while turning his handset over absently with her long, powerful fingers.

  "What are you gonna do without a handset?"

  "I can get another."

  "But you won't, will you?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "The traffic light's for you, isn't it?"

  Foster's expression doesn't change, but his hesitation betrays his surprise. "What makes you say that?"

  "I'm guessing there are only two people in the entire country you can't have killed: the President, and yourself. And since I don't think even you can get at the President, that leaves you."

  Foster studies the girl in front of him for a moment, then is surprised by sudden and overwhelming emotion. No matter how many lies the government tells, there are people who never entirely lose their ability to see the truth — people who aren't supposed to do anything more with their lives than consume, or have babies, or sell drugs, or swing a hammer, or blindly pull a trigger when they're told to. Terrorism and rebellion and hostile foreign governments are not the real enemies of the state. It is simple and pure truth that those in power can never fully eradicate from the populations they rule.

  Foster feels his eyes begin to sting, and he looks away. "Let's just say my life's work is done."

  "Then retire."

  "My job didn't come with a retirement plan."

  "Then run away. Grab some money and disappear. What's the worst that can happen? Maybe you end up dead, but at least you put up a fight."

  The bouncer steps back into the fluorescent glow and hands Foster a plain white box sealed in cellophane. He seems confused by the new mood he is sensing, and he searches both Foster's face and the girl's for clues.

  "You ain't getting your handset back now," the girl says, "but you can still change your mind."

  "And do what?"

  "I don't know. Whatever rich white people do when they realize they fucked up their lives. Start a charity. Cure some disease. You know what I'm saying. Do something for the future."

  "This isn't about the future," Foster says. He puts the box in the outside pocket of his coat, then zips it up. "The future is full of possibilities. It's the past that I can't change."

  He turns and steps out from under the electric glow of the heat shield, and then he is lost in the night.

  Chapter 1: Waiting Move

  A passive but harmless chess move which is played while waiting for initiative from the opponent.

  Gabriel Kane is the President of most of the United States — all of the parts that matter, anyway. He is in his office which is in a bunker located somewhere in the mountains of Ogden, Utah. The facility used to belong to Powder Valley Resort Holdings, LLC — an entity which, at one time, represented the commercial interests of the Human Legacy Project.

  The HLP was one of the most ambitious cultural, humanitarian, and scientific initiatives the world had ever seen. Its mission was simple: give every human being on the planet who wanted it the chance to live forever — not through literal immortality, but by preserving life stories. The father of the project was an Ethiopian academic named Omo Denegal, and he believed that by giving the world a freely available, objective, first-hand account of human history, we might finally begin to learn from our mistakes rather than repeat them, ultimately breaking the seemingly never-ending cycle of domination and destruction.

  The theory was simple, but the logistics were extreme. Tens of thousands of archivists had to be assembled throughout the world to help gather, input, and organize data; the infrastructure to provide free and instant access to the archives everywhere on the planet had to be built out, made redundant, and hardened against both physical and cyber attack; and, perhaps most critically, the data in the HLP archives had to be recorded in such a way that it could be preserved forever. Unless our collective human histories could withstand the inevitable dark ages that were to come, the project could not succeed.

  HLP technologists explored hundreds of proposals for storage systems designed to last an initial period of one thousand years: laser-etched synthetic sapphire plates; titanium alloy platters; terrestrial, lunar, and solar satellites; even a form of quantum entanglement storage which could theoretically turn every particle in the universe into a bit of data. Ultimately, the founders of the HLP concluded that every proposal had weaknesses. Digital storage mediums which were robust and redundant enough to last for millennia were in danger of becoming useless and forgotten if the technology to read them no longer existed, and analog technologies which were simple enough to be deciphered without advanced technology could not be compressed enough to make the storage and retrieval of exabytes of data even remotely practical.