Liberty, Chapter Three of a New Novel

*Note-a short prologue on chapter one provides details of the world in which this story takes place. Each chapter links to the next to make reading easier.

This is chapter seventeen of a novel I am sharing online, titled Liberty, A Daughter Universe Novel. I chose the word “Liberty” because it relates to this story on multiple levels.

Comments and criticisms are welcome and encouraged.

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Lucas’ Residence

Friday 6:50am

Capitol Hill Lane

Capitol City, ECA

Year 2156

Why’s it so bright? Lucas put up his hand to shield his eyes. I told House to wake me up early, now I’m going to be late! He sat up, ready for a moment to question his AI. No, House wouldn’t do that… He said he’d wake me. Lucas checked his clock. It was early.

He glanced up. Oh…

House had opened the Sunspots, roof mounted fiber optics that collected ambient light and increased its intensity. Now I almost regret designing those things. But he had a big weekend planned with Sarah and House would have done whatever was necessary to awaken him.

And sunlight was the one thing that would definitely wake Lucas.

“Good morning, Lucas,” House said as the Sunspots dimmed and windows de-tinted, showing the dim, gray, light of dawn. The AI, "House" stood near the door in his holographic form of a reserved, yet distinguished man of indeterminate age, with just a touch of gray on each side of his hair.

“Morning, House,” Lucas replied with a yawn as he stretched his arms wide. “I didn’t expect dawn to come so soon.”

“Yes, it does that every day,” House said dryly. “You’re usually sleeping.”

Lucas chuckled. “I don’t put dawn on my schedule.”.

“Which is why I thought if I made you think you’d overslept then you’d get up fast.” If it was possible for an AI to hold a joking grin, House held the equivalent.

“Well, it worked, so thanks, I guess?”

“Just going my job, Boss!”

“No need to be sarcastic. I just woke up.”

“Sorry, won’t happen again, Lucas.”

“I’ve heard that before,” Lucas said and rolled his eyes. “So, anything on the news about the hackers?”

House took a fraction of a second to re-scan all frequencies, including lightly secured networks. “Nothing new as of 0600. They still don’t know who hacked their system,”

Lucas smiled; the men House had ‘hired’ must be as good as he had thought.

A small, but growing, anti-quota group that called themselves “The Resistance” had a computer genius, master at hacking into any network among its members who, at the request of the Council, had hacked into government and financial networks and siphoned funds from the state owned First National Bank, known to boast the latest security tech. Hacked it without leaving a trace. To add insult to injury, he had converted the electronic credits into untraceable paper creds that were then handed out in poor neighborhoods. Three days later, City Security’s repeated “No comment” meant the perpetrators still had not been caught.

And if too many citizens resorted to untraceable paper creds for daily purchases and similar transactions, the carefully designed economic structure, which relied on full employment and a mandatory consumption quota the government needed to track, would collapse like a house of cards.

“Do you think they’ll ever catch the hacker you, uh, hired?”

“No,” House replied with confidence. “Remember, I almost missed him, Lucas. His movement on the net is but a mere flutter.”

The ECA’s economy was consumer-driven and with the land lost to the sea, soaring apartment towers, many that reached above the clouds were built to house its billion residents and the government had to keep people employed, and entertained when not working. People with too much free time might start to ask questions. And the small group of people of extraordinary wealth who controlled society had too much invested to let citizens look closely at the flaws in the system.

“Good,” Lucas said. “The politicians need a little-”

“He is online, Lucas.” House interrupted.

“What is he doing?”

“I can’t tell, I just caught a glimpse and locked on to the server he’s logged in on, and it is active- but it’s difficult to determine exactly what he is doing.”

With a billion people crammed onto less land, work had to be found for the bulk of the population. Being consumers by nature, the quickest way to employ legions of unskilled workers was to hire them to complete the final assembly of the consumer products which they then purchased. A self-sustaining loop that kept most people too busy to ask questions.

Many skilled people worked as tradesmen, in business offices, teaching or medical professionals. Most of those positions could be replaced by robots, but higher education required a lot of time and concentration. Those people had no time or desire to look deeply at societal ills. And graduates earned higher salaries, allowing them to afford the better things Capitol City offered.

But by keeping a vast number of unskilled people working and an endless supply of Numat for constructing anything, far more was produced than the public could ever consume. The ECA imposed a “consumption quota” on each citizen in addition to mandatory employment. Socializing in the workplace was discouraged to prevent close friendships. Friends might socialize outside of work, discuss society, maybe question certain things.

And after the “troubles” of the previous century and the crowding of a billion citizens on half of the land that existed pre-Deluge, the ECA government saw the need for stability.

Even the towering apartment buildings were designed so that people rarely saw each other daily: each tower had hundreds of entrances, the apartments were arranged in small clusters and AI controlled high-speed elevators went directly to any grouping in the complex. Even the balconies were enclosed in nu-glas, preventing interaction between neighbors on the same floor. The only exception being for those who could afford to live on the ground and first floors. Ground floor residents were kept separated by walls on both sides of their entrance, while the first-floor balconies had nu-glass barriers only on the balcony sides rather than the entirely enclosed ones above.

In the oldest neighborhoods in the city, the sections not yet replaced by towers, front porches were replaced with nupoly cement steps to discourage close associations. People who socialize might discuss ideas or even think for themselves.

But over time, people did talk, did think about their lives and many realized the system was unfair. That disparity in wealth, repression of personal rights and the quota requirement had sparked a resistance movement. Lucas knew there was not much that he could do to change the system and did not see it as his responsibility anyway. And politicians who campaigned on a populist agenda didn’t get elected, or simply disappeared.

Due to his position with QCore, Lucas couldn’t publicly support what the activists did, even if it was to help the poorest citizens- House, with the help of a man named ‘Tony’, had made a deal with the Resistance’s Council. And Lucas was happy with it because he’d promised his grandfather to, among other things, share much of his wealth with the less fortunate.

But as the richest man in the ECA, some say in the world, the owner of QCore couldn’t be seen associating with “terrorists”.

Lucas did, through House, help them meet their quotas in small ways, such as the clothing and consumables young women purchased, high-end sports cars young men drove to wear out. And paper creds, of which Lucas kept a hoard of, another promise to his grandfather, were handed out monthly by House. Through the plan House devised, Lucas helped the Resistance and reduced his own substantial quota. Without his name attached to any of it.

The newsertainment programs reported the hacks and everyone knew that when caught, the perpetrators would be paraded before the vid-cams as a lesson to those who considered committing anti-government acts. Since that had not yet happened, it was clear that even the government’s best could not locate the perpetrators. So, the public was reminded daily that being anti-quota was synonymous with being anti-government. The people at the top had too much invested to lose control, so the government labeled the Resistance a domestic terrorist organization. The always sensationalist newsertainment programs dubbed them “modern-day Robin Hoods”, a term that made Lucas smile.

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Chapter 4

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This story was originally posted on Simily.co.

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