Truth & Code: The Future is Black and White

Enforcement 101

Block 7,907,580

Arman has spent the last two and half days reviewing the historical vignettes of EMC energy enforcement. He’s been having trouble sleeping. He’s seen things he’s never seen before. He’s seen people act in ways he’s never seen before. He’s seen instruments of “lethal force” he said he had access to that he’s never seen before. As he re-runs the stories repeatedly in his head, he’s confident he has never even known about any of this. As he contemplates why he’s never seen this before, he quickly concludes that SO-Land AI, and he guesses Eleven, has prohibited its knowledge to protect SO-Landers. He knows he’s a competitive and calculating guy, but this seems to be a new level that he could never imagine.

Fortunately, in his new role as director, not much has come up in the past several days in the new role. He’s thankful for that. He would like to go through these vignettes and get on with it, hoping that, as the dates indicate, he rarely, if ever, has to use what he’s seen.

He gets up from his desk, walks towards the office’s western-facing windows, and watches dark clouds moving in from the west. He can see rain falling in the distance. “Great day to be inside.” He thinks. He’s watching the clouds pass and hoping they will replace the images in his head. He sighs deeply and walks to the refrigerator, passing his bedroom door. He notes that he should close it during the day since this is officially a workspace. He’s spent the last several days here; he hopes his plants back at his apartment are doing ok.

He opens the refrigerator and grabs the pitcher of cold brewed behlimoo he made yesterday. He likes it cold but not too cold, so he has it neat. He fills the glass and immediately gulps it down in three gulps. He realizes that he’s not drunk anything all day. He pours another glass and replaces the pitcher, and shuts the door.

He heads back to the desk and watches the clouds approaching again. Then, feeling somewhat refreshed, he sits down. His SO-Land console lights up as he sits and begins where he left off.

“Incident A311 sector 8 15 February 2092" appears on the screen. Information continues to display on the screen: The following information is top secret and not for public distribution. SO-Land property.” Every vignette began with this.

Next was a flashing message that read: “Warning, the following information is top secret and extremely sensitive. Distribution outside of the need to know will result in death!”

Arman stood up, his eyes widened, and he could feel his heart rate racing. The console turned off.

He was starting to breathe heavily, and EMC AI sta rated a biorhythmic feedback mood zone around him. He walked again to the windows and stared at the approaching storm. The rain was coming down several kilometers away. The mood zone was not helping; he could feel the sweat beading on his forehead and back. He took off his shirt and untucked his under-shirt; he could feel the area around his groin feeling moist from the small streams of sweat from his back, check, and abdomen.

“Fuck.” He thought, “Shit.”

He hurried to the bedroom, stripped down, and jumped into the shower to clean off. Again, he overrode the AI and commanded, “cold water!” Finally, he was starting to feel a little calmer. After several minutes he stopped the shower and dried off. He decided on a pair of loose soccer shorts without underpants and a loose, v-neck cotton t-shirt. He slipped on some black athletic sandals and returned to his desk. He opted for the glasses this time.

He picked up the glasses and walked towards the sofa. He laid down with his feet towards the windows and placed the glasses on his head.

“AI play from the last point.”

The flashing warning was fading off-screen as the video started again.

A narration began with random photos of locations, GPS coordinates, weather conditions, and facilities.

“It has come to the attention of SO-Land AI on the 15th of February 2092 that sabotage and re-routing of natural gas from the Soyuz Vostok gas has taken place in sector 8 of the territory of inner Mongolia on the border between the Southern and Northern SO-Lands. Initial intelligence suggested that Mongolian rebels, as part of their long-standing dispute over being bypassed and restrained from using natural gas from the pipeline, breached and re-routed gas for their use with disregard for the rest of the citizens in the Southern SO-Lands.”

“Rebels?” Arman thought. “That’s interesting; the other vignettes described people, groups of people, and occasional companies intentionally breaching the energy network, but what the fuck would rebels be doing and why?”

The video continued, “SO-Land AI, with the help of EMC agents, discovered the breach’s location and by-pass. The pipping of the by-pass was buried at a depth of six feet and ran along the western edge of Lake Khövsgöl before diversion into the lake. The total diversion distance was nearly 320 kilometers with over half of the diverted pipe within the lake’s depths as a countermeasure from surveillance.”

“The sophistication of the diversion method and technique suggests that outside help assisted.”

“Outside help? What the fuck is that?” Arman thought.

“In a years-long investigation including aerial, submersible, and land drones, assisted by EMC agents, the processing facility was located in a remote location outside the city of Hatgal. The facility was built on the southern edge of a low mountain ridge at 50.424863, 99.992716. A corresponding facility with a massive underground training complex was found on the southern edge of an adjacent ridge at 50.426242, 99.998490.”

“Upon learning of the breach and by-pass, SO-Land and EMC AI permitted continued processing of the NG, likely sold on a well-established black market. This allowed SO-Land and EMC AI to gather enough intelligence over the ensuing years to understand the structure, leadership, and funding of the rebel group.”

“On the fifteenth of February, 2092, at 0430 local times, SO-Land and EMC AI, in coordination with EMC agents,s launched precision guided VX and mustard gas missiles to destroy targets at 50.426242, 99.998490. At the same time, a precision-guided tactical nuclear weapon was used to destroy the processing facility at 0.424863, 99.992716.”

What followed was prolonged unmanned drone video of the damage to the sites. The first footage was shot in the moments after the attacks, and images were a mixture of night vision and infrared with an AI composite of the damage and victims. In the following videos with daylight, what Arman saw was horrific. There were body pieces strewn about, hundreds if not thousands of bodies at the entrance and some distance from the door. A mob of people tried to get out of the cave complex. Women were clutching children. Their ashen faces and peeling skin were a sight he’d never seen before or even imagined. People were half-dressed or barely dressed, all indications of the surprise of the attack.

The Follow-on video was time-lapsed drone footage over about fifteen years. Geiger counter readings demonstrated persistent nuclear fallout at still dangerous levels. Nevertheless, the mountain and forests slowly reclaimed the sites of the complexes. And except for the Geiger counter readings, there were little signs of any activity in the later sequence.

“I’m sure no AVs or AAPDs are programmed to drop visitors off there.” He thought.

“Fuuuuck! This is some serious shit!” he mumbled.

His biorhythm barely notched a noticeable change for EMC AI to notice anything, but his mind was racing.

He took the glasses off and lifted his head. He hadn’t even noticed the raging storm outside his windows. The sun was starting to set by the early darkness that the dark clouds brought. Lightning flashed in the distance along a line. He sat up and just started to stare.

He was replaying this last vignette, all the other footage, and the details he had learned about the previous few days. First, he thought about his emotional response and then Eleven and even SO-Land AI.

“Am I one of the few or maybe the only person in SO-Land that knows what I know?” He was thinking. “Maybe Eleven hasn’t even seen what I’ve seen. If they had, they’d be doing what I’m doing. It doesn’t matter, I’ve been chosen for this. I must bear this responsibility and protect this knowledge and SO-Land.”

He squinted his eyes in a vowed commitment that this must be his determined reason to exist. He felt some relief in that knowledge. He knew, because he had thought it before, that his data analysis job was his determined usefulness in the universe. He knew every other citizen thought the same way. But now, he had a higher purpose. A higher calling. It liberated him in a profoundly satisfying way.

After being satisfied with his processing the past few days, he decided to follow up with a little more research on the rebels. Did they have a cause, who funded them, and for what purpose? Rebelling against SO-Land was such an odd state of mind.

“SO-Land has only provided for our well-being. Why would they want to rebel against that which is good and providing everything you need?” He thought.

But there wasn’t more to learn. The only additional information he could gather is how SO-Land and EMC AI used that event to strengthen their AIs, respectively. He could only learn that there was an outside people or group of people outside SO-Land. Still, he needed help understanding that since history was pretty clear, SO-Land was the only land and the only people that still existed on earth after the Event. To venture beyond the borders of SO-Land was certain death. The fragility of life and access to any resources for life outside of SO-Land was something every citizen understood from the time they could first learn. He remembers being on the western frontier of Southern SO-Land in Mehran and seeing the Shamal bring in the dark clouds from the “bad lands.” Thick clouds of acrid smoke were from the fires further west. These fires burned for decades and would last for many more decades. It was the result of the massive conflict in the Event that shaped modern-day SO-Land. For that matter, in the western side of the state of Turkmenistan, he was aware of an enormous burning pit called “The gates of hell.” He never understood what the gate to hell meant, but he had heard of this place before. Those fires started in the last century. Was that a precursor to the Event? He didn’t know.

He’d even heard further into the badlands that radioactive waste created a massive hazard. This is partly why the western frontier was so sparsely populated. And the entire western frontier of Northern and Southern SO-Lands had huge radioactive zones. SO-Landers always felt grateful that somehow they survived those times and could now live without fear of destruction.

SO-Land had saved them, and everyone knew it.

Arman now had to make sure he could save SO-Land from any threat.