System_Failure E-Book

Justin March

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

In the near future, wealthy "patricians" access the internet through a chip embedded within their flesh, while scavengers eke out a meager existence in the slums that surround their walled cities. All technology that is not approved by the company running this network, known as the "bionet," has been banned, so scavengers live off the grid. A teen scavenger named Clark finds an illegal laptop and befriends a fellow scavenger named Starla who gives him access to a power supply. Together they learn how to hack into the bionet, but in doing so, Clark is intercepted by agents working for the CEO of the mega-corporation that runs the network. Impressed with Clark's brilliance, he offers to make Clark a patrician. The operation to insert a biochip will wipe out Clark’s memories of Starla. Clark must choose between remaining a scavenger and becoming a patrician, between freedom and wealth, between Starla and absolute power. When the plan Clark hatches to have it both ways goes awry he finds himself in a fight for his life against the world’s largest corporation and it’s CEO. You can reach me at [email protected]

Leseprobe

Justin March

System_Failure

BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

Chapter One

Clark Sojourney walked through the crumbling streets of outer New York. It was dusk and he was looking for a drop box. Helicopters overpowered the sound of coyotes howling and rats squeaking. Clark entered an abandoned building. He felt his way up a stairwell and looked through a hole in the wall on the fifth floor. A red, glowing object fell from one of the helicopters. Clark made a mental note of the direction the object fell and ran out onto the streets. He found the drop box in the center of an intersection.

Clark opened the box and looked at the contents. In it was a week’s worth of food and new socks.

Clark gathered the contents into his ragged backpack. He saw a roaming band of bandits coming down the street toward him. Before Clark could escape, they surrounded him. Clark, who was seventeen, looked at the faces of the older, stronger men. Clark should have known better than to go outside after sunset, but he needed food.

One of the men said, “Hand us the contents of the drop box.”

Clark said, “I found it. It’s mine.”

“You are one. We are many. We can overpower you. Hand it over or we will hurt you.”

Clark noticed the men were holding golf clubs and baseball bats.

Clark said, “This isn’t fair. Just because there are more of you doesn’t mean you can take what belongs to someone else.”

The man said, “If you don’t like that we can overpower you because of our number then why don’t you join a gang too?”

Clark said, “I won’t let the patricians manipulate us. They want us to gang up on each other. You’re playing into their hands.”

The man shrugged. “We can’t defeat the patricians if we gang up on each other or if we don’t gang up on each other. But if we gang up on each other at least we have a chance to eat.”

The men tightened the circle around Clark. Clark swung his fist. The men raised their clubs. Clark knew they would probably kill him. Then he heard a metallic sound at his feet. He looked down and saw a tranq bomb. The tranq bomb released a gas that threw Clark, and all the men into unconsciousness. Clark collapsed onto the street next to the drop box, the lights of inner New York towering across the water in the distance.

Clark woke up in a small room on a musty bed. By the interior of the room, Clark could tell he was in the ant nest, a ring of high-rise housing projects surrounding inner New York. The buildings were crowded and provided housing to scavengers who worked low-income jobs in inner New York.

Clark saw the contents of the drop box lying next to him. A girl, about his age, came into the room.

Clark said, “What happened?”

The girl said, “I gassed you and the men who attacked you. Then I dragged you and the drop box contents back here, to our place.”

“Our place? Who else lives here?”

“My mother.”

Clark said, “I have to go. My parents will be worried about me.”

The girl said, “Aren’t you going to thank me?”

“For what?”

“For rescuing you.”

“I don’t need rescued. I never asked for your help.”

“Don’t be so prideful. Everyone needs saved at some point.”

“Not me. I can take care of myself.”

Clark looked at the opened drop box.

He said, “The socks are missing.”

The girl said, “I have a question for you.”

Clark said, “What’s that?”

“Do I look like an idiot?”

Clark did not know what to say.

The girl said, “That drop box belongs to me as much as it does to you. I earned it too. It’s only fair that I take my share.”

Clark said, “Whatever.”

The girl said, “We should team up. Together we can outwit the bandits.”

“I work alone.”

“You don’t have any parents, do you?”

Clark said, “I have to go.”

Clark grabbed his food and left. He hated that his heart beat faster when he saw the girl. Whenever he found himself thinking about her he tried to push her out of his mind, because he learned early on that you could not trust anyone.

Clark spent the next day exploring abandoned buildings for useful things. These buildings were located farther away from inner New York, beyond the ant nest. Clark found a building he had been in before, but decided to see if he had missed something the other times he had combed through it. He had nothing else to do anyway.

Clark looked at an old painting hanging on one of the walls. It was faded but Clark could still make out the image. It was of a black rowboat in a foggy harbor with a low sun in the sky reflected on the water. The way the light blurred the scene made Clark feel peaceful. Clark wanted to be there, to be one of the two figures in the rowboat instead of scrounging for supplies in an urban wasteland. Clark reached out to touch the painting, as if that would transport him to another time and place, far from his current setting.

Clark pulled back his hand. He wondered if he was imagining things or if the painting had moved slightly to his touch. He put his hand back on the painting and pressed harder this time. The painting swung open like a door. The hole the painting left was too high for Clark to climb into. Clark walked into another room in the building and found a chair so that he could stand on it. Once he was on the chair, he reached up and pulled himself into the hole in the wall where the painting had been.

The hole was a tunnel and it was just large enough for Clark to crawl through. Clark realized he would need light.

Clark lived under an abandoned high school in a fallout shelter. It was hidden underground where bandits could not find him. He had a flashlight at the fallout shelter that charged on an energy cube.

Energy cubes were large batteries. They were important to Clark, who used them for everything from heating water to lighting the small bunker he lived in.

After moving the painting carefully back in place Clark left the building, painting, and mysterious tunnel behind. Clark was out of energy cubes. It had been a few days since he had one. He knew he had to find one for cooking and lighting, but now the pressure to get a drop box with an energy cube was more intense. If Clark wanted to charge his flashlight and crawl through the tunnel, he needed an energy cube.

A week went by. Clark opened a few drop boxes but none contained an energy cube. One evening he was out wandering when he saw an older woman opening a drop box. Clark waited in the shadows. He watched the woman pull out an energy cube. Clark jumped out. He said, “I will trade you something for that energy cube.”

The woman said, “Like what?”

Clark began to list the things he had stored in the bunker he lived in, the things he had extras of.

The woman said she would take some rice for the energy cube. Clark said, “Wait here while I go get it.”

Clark raced back to the fallout shelter, pulling out a bag of rice. He carried it back to where he met the woman but she was gone. Clark was angry. He thought he should have forced her to give him the energy cube. He was stronger than she was and could have stolen it from her. Then he stopped himself. He must never let himself become like that. He did not want to become one of the bandits he hated so much.

Another week passed and Clark found a drop box with an energy cube. He charged his flashlight and walked to the building. He found the painting and opened the door to the tunnel.

Clark climbed through the tunnel on his hands and knees, cobwebs covering his face. The tunnel opened into a huge room full of equipment Clark had never seen before.

Clark ran his hand across the dust-covered machines. He wondered what these odd devices were for. He pressed all the buttons on them but nothing happened. A feeling came over Clark, a feeling that he had discovered something significant, even if he did not know what it was. Clark walked up to one of the heavy boxes and picked it up. Turning it over, Clark shook the dust from it and figured out how to open it. He pressed a button and the screen turned on. Clark jumped back almost dropping the glowing, humming machine.

On the screen was an emblem with the word “resistance,” written in it. Clark knew this word. His mother had taught him to read when he was little, and he read the leaflets of patrician propaganda contained in many drop boxes.

A window asking for a password was in the middle of the screen, a prompt flashing in the text field. Clark had not heard of the word password before but he knew the words pass and word. Clark began to hit buttons on the keyboard and saw little asterisks appear in the text field. He figured out when he hit the enter key it finalized his entry, but whatever he typed in was insufficient. A window popped up saying the password he typed in was incorrect.

Clark figured out that he had to find the right word to type into the text field. Something started to flash in the bottom right corner. Text popped up saying the battery was critically low. Clark saw the hole where an electric cord could be plugged into the machine.

Clark could tell he would not be able to charge the laptop with an energy cube. The appliances that ran on energy cubes attached directly to the cube. The hole in the laptop was not the type of hole that an energy cube would fit onto.

The device shut off completely, having run out of power. Clark began to look around the musty room. He found a cord in a box. Playing with the cord Clark discovered one end fit into the laptop. Clark wondered what you did with the other end since it did not fit into an energy cube. Clark knew that the cord had to be for energy, but he had no idea how. Desperate to play with the machine more, Clark began to think of a plan.

Clark climbed back through the tunnel with the laptop and cord. When he arrived at the fallout shelter, he set the laptop down in a corner in his room. Tomorrow he would go to a junk shop to look for the right electrical equipment.

Clark remembered seeing a shop not too far from where he lived. Arriving at it, he looked at the crooked sign hanging over the door. The glass storefront windows, protected with iron bars, were streaked and dirty. Assorted junk sat on display. Commerce was unregulated in outer New York. Storeowners were usually tough, and heavily armed, to protect themselves from bandits.

Clark walked into the shop. A large, muscular man holding a rifle greeted Clark. When he saw his patron was a mild, unassuming kid, he put his rifle back under the counter. Clark described the hole in the laptop the best he could to the gruff, bearded man working the counter.

“What do you need to power, kid?” said the man.

Clark was speechless, not having thought this through. It was a good thing Clark had not brought the laptop with him or he might have panicked and shown it to the man. He had brought the cord with him though and pulled it out of his gray, tattered backpack.

“I need to power something that this end of the cord plugs into.”

“Where did you get this cord?” said the man examining it.

“I found it in the dump,” Clark lied. The dump was located in outer New York and was where the patricians dumped their trash.

“This is a cord for an electrical appliance. It runs on electricity generated by the patrician power plants,” said the man.

“Do you have an adapter so it will run on an energy cube?” said Clark.

“No, the only place this cord would work in outer New York is in the ant nest. They have electricity outlets in their walls. This end plugs into the wall, and this end into the appliance.”

“Thanks for the information.”

“What appliance do you need to power with this cord? What did you find in the dump that this cord was plugged into?”

“I just found the cord.”

“The cord alone is worthless, kid.”

“That’s okay.”

Clark snatched the cord out of the man’s hand, sensing the man was about to steal it from him.

“Hey!” said the man as Clark fled the shop. “Come back here!”

Clark ran, not turning around until he absconded into the fallout shelter. If only he had access to an electrical outlet. Clark wished he could get an apartment in the ant nest. You had to have a job in inner New York first, and there was a long wait list. It could take years to get a job and housing, if at all. Competition was fierce.

Then Clark remembered the girl who had rescued him from the bandits. She lived in the ant nest. Maybe she could help him.

He could not go to the girl. It was too dangerous to rely on someone else. Clark knew that the machine he had found was powerful. He could only share that power with people he could trust, and Clark trusted only one person, himself.

Weeks passed and the laptop sat in the corner unused. Before Clark fell asleep at night, he would stare at the laptop burning to know what worlds he could unlock with this device. Clark could not contain it any longer. He walked to the section of the ant nest the girl lived in and sat in some bushes across from the entrance. He waited all day for her to come out. It began to grow dark. Clark knew he had to make it back to his bunker before the bandits came out at night. He would have to try again tomorrow. Right as he was about to give up he saw the girl step out of the complex. She ducked into an alley. Clark ran after her.

Clark zigzagged between the dilapidated buildings chasing the girl as she jogged. The girl spun around. “I thought I was being followed.”

Clark turned red. “I... I’m sorry. What are you doing out this late?”

“My mother and I need some food staples. I’m looking for a drop box.”

“Your mother sends you out by yourself into danger?”

“She has no choice. We need some things and she is too tired from work to do it herself. What do you want? Why are you following me?”

I need you for something.”

“I thought you worked alone.”

“I do, but this is something I can’t do on my own.”

“What do you need?”

“Electricity.”

“What for?”

“A machine I found.”

“What does it do?”

“I don’t know yet. That is why I need electricity.”

“Can’t you use an energy cube?”

“No, I need an electrical outlet.”

“Why should I help you? We can barely cover our electricity bills now.”

“Because I have a feeling that this machine is important. Maybe we can make a difference.”

“What makes you think it’s important?”

“It’s just a gut instinct.”

“So you mean I am supposed to take a risk just because a stranger has a gut instinct?”

“You said if we work together we have a better chance.”

“I meant getting drop boxes, not playing with some toy.”

“I will help you find drop boxes if you let me use an outlet.”

“I don’t know.”

“Please. I will let you keep all the contents from the drop boxes if you let me use the outlet.”

“Okay. My mother leaves for work at seven but some days she has off. Come every day at seven and wait outside. I will signal from my window, seventh floor, four windows over from the right. My mother would be upset if she knew we were using electricity on some mysterious machine. Don’t ever come up before I signal.”

“What is the signal going to be?”

“I will pull the blinds up and down three times. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“My name is Starla.”

“I’m Clark,” said Clark embarrassed that he had not thought to introduce himself.

“See you tomorrow, maybe.”

“Bye, see you tomorrow.”

The next day Clark waited outside the ant nest in the bushes. He looked at the clock on the building across the street. It was seven. Clark kept looking at the blinds but nothing happened. At five after seven, the blinds opened. Clark held his breath. The blinds did not close again. It was no use. Starla’s mother probably was home from work and was opening the blinds to let in sunlight. Disappointed, Clark carried his backpack with the device back to the shelter.

The next day Clark waited in the bushes again. Right at seven the blinds opened and closed three times. Clark tried to walk up to the apartment at a normal pace. He knocked on the door. Starla answered. Clark wondered if it was his imagination or if Starla had made herself look nice for him. Clark’s fingers trembled as he pulled out the device and plugged it in. He hit the power button and Starla watched.

Clark sat on a shabby couch and opened the device on his lap. Starla sat next to him, leaning in slightly to watch the screen. The password screen came up. Starla could read too, and she knew what a password was. “It could be any combination of characters entered on the keyboard to allow access. It is used to protect the device from people who aren’t supposed to be using it. There are millions of combinations we could try. We will never guess it.”

“There has to be a way around it,” said Clark. He turned the device off and turned it back on. He tried to read the white text on the black screen that flashed before the password screen came up but it disappeared too quickly. Clark turned it off again and then turned it back on reading more. He saw that it said to hit F5 before booting to access the bios. Clark did this and a menu came up.

They searched for hours, navigating menus in the bios. The going was slow. Everything was trial and error as they tried to figure out what most of the words meant. They learned how to use the arrow keys and enter.

Starla said, “It’s my turn.”

Clark said, “Your turn for what?”

“I want to hold the machine.”

“But I found it. It’s mine.”

“It would be useless to you if I didn’t let you use the electric. Besides, I‘m helping you crack this thing, so why shouldn’t we take turns holding it?”

“You can hold it for the next hour.”

It was time for Clark to leave. Starla’s mother was about to come home. It was all Clark could do to pry himself away from the laptop. He was already addicted, and they had not even discovered how to access the system yet. After putting the laptop in his backpack, he turned to Starla and said, “Tomorrow?”

Starla said, “Sure, just wait for my signal to be safe.”

The next day Clark waited outside for the signal. At seven, he saw the blinds open and close three times. Clark ran up the steps with the laptop in his backpack.

After hours of Clark and Starla taking turns holding the laptop they discovered a way to create a new user account in the bios. Starla said, “What should we call the new password?”

Clark said, “What about ClarkandStarla?”

“Why should your name be first and not mine?”

“I found the machine.”

“Everything we have done has been a team effort. You found the machine but I provide the electricity. We both worked together to get to this point. Your idea is dumb anyway. That password is too obvious. Anyone could guess it.”

“Who would bother to guess it?”

“Maybe if the patricians catch us and want to access the machine?”

“Could they not just do what we did to override the password?”

“They could, but I doubt our account will be available to them once they do. They would just have a new, blank account. Then they would have no proof.”

“That means the account that was on this computer before we found it is not available to us either.”

“Not unless we figure out the user account password for the people who had the machine before us. We can create a new account but not access theirs.”

“What good will the machine be then?”

“Maybe we can access the Internet through this machine.”

“What is the Internet?”

“My mom told me about it. A network built into the patrician’s bodies powers it. This network, the bionet, allows patricians to access the Internet that has information about everything.

Before the bionet you could access the Internet on special machines. Maybe this is one of those machines.”

“Why would we want to access the Internet?”

“Maybe, by using the Internet, we can figure out how to crack into the account of the person who had this machine before us. We could find out what this machine was used for.”

“Do you have any ideas for a password for our account?”

Starla said, “What about lazarus17?”

“Lazarus17?”

“Lazarus was a man who woke up from the dead. I believe that is what is happening to us. This machine will transform us. If we can figure out how to access the Internet the possibilities will be endless.”

“Why 17?”

“It is good to mix numbers in with a password. Numbers make it harder to guess. Seventeen is my age so I figure that is as good a number as any.”

“That’s my age too.”

“That settles it then.”

After they created their new account, a graphical user interface popped up. The machine no longer displayed just text. Now there was a bright logo of a clenched fist with icons and windows on top of it.

Starla slide her hand around the smooth area in front of the keys. She saw that a little arrow on the screen moved with her finger. She hit the button underneath it and nothing happened. Then she moved the arrow over something that looked like a folder and hit the button. It changed color but nothing happened. In frustration, she clicked a couple of times and a window popped up to adjust sound. They searched but there seemed to be no way to connect into the bionet and access the Internet.

It was time for Clark to leave. Clark stood up to go. Starla said, “I will signal tomorrow if it is safe. If there was only a way to access the original account. I bet if we could, there would be a way to get on the Internet. It would also let us know what this machine was used for.”

Clark had an idea. “Tomorrow we should go back to where I found the machine to see if we can find a password there.”

Starla said, “You mean search through the rubble for a real copy of the password instead of playing with the machine tomorrow?”

“Exactly.”

“Okay, let’s do it.”

Starla gave the signal the next day and Clark went up to the apartment. Starla was dressed in old pants and a t-shirt. Clark had his flashlight. The batteries in it were still good. Clark led the way through a labyrinth of abandoned buildings. They were in a section of town that used to be for rich people before New York was divided into inner and outer New York. Clark stopped in front of the building. The ornate engravings were crumbling. The pillars had chunks missing. Starla frowned. “Is it safe?”

Clark said, “Probably not, but do we have a choice?”

“We do have a choice.”

“Going back to ignorance is not an option. I feel as though we are unlocking something important. We have to break through.”

“Let’s go then.”

They walked down the dark hallway toward the painting. Clark pushed open the painting and they climbed through the tunnel behind the painting to the large room. Clark shone his flashlight on a file cabinet and began to rummage through papers. Starla walked among the machines. She turned to Clark. “Where did you find the portable one?”

Clark pointed. “Over there.”

“Were there more of them?”

“Yea, there were several.”

“I can get my own.”

“That’s a great idea. I can’t believe I never thought of that myself. Now we won’t have to share.”

Starla found a portable device and dusted it off. Then she opened another file cabinet to help Clark look for passwords. They flipped through many folders but found nothing that said passwords. It was too laborious to read every page in the folders. After an hour, Clark sat down. “This is pointless. They probably didn’t label the folder with the passwords in it. They didn’t want to make it obvious. We can’t read every page. It will take us forever.”

“Maybe it isn’t in the file cabinets. That seems like too obvious of a place anyway. They probably memorized the passwords and never wrote them down,” said Starla.

Starla was sitting at a chair by one of the larger machines with a big separate monitor. She drummed her fingers on the table. Fidgeting, she grabbed the edge of the table. Feeling something underneath the table, she began to pull. A paper weakly taped under the table came off. She asked Clark to see the flashlight. Starla shone the light on the paper, while Clark leaned over to read it too. It said password terminal 202: legioneight888.

Starla said, “I found the password. Someone was too lazy to remember it and taped it under the table.”

Excited, they both looked at the screen while Starla typed the password into the text field on Clark’s device. Their faces fell when the password they found did not work.

“I wonder why it didn’t work?” said Starla.

Clark analyzed the paper. Then he walked over to the large device with the separate monitor. He began to look at it from all angles.

Starla scowled. “What are you doing?”

Clark pointed. “Look at the number on this machine. It says 202. This is the password for machine 202. Each machine must have a different password.”

Starla was mad at Clark but he did have a point. Deflated, she sat down again. Clark walked toward where the laptops were stored. He could find no evidence of any passwords.

Clark rubbed his forehead. “If there was only a way to get electricity in here, we could turn on the large machine we have the password for.”

Starla said, “Will it take batteries?”

“I don’t see anywhere to put them in. It looks like it needs to be plugged into an outlet. We would need a generator in here. That’s impossible. Or we could drag this big, heavy machine back to your apartment, but it won’t fit in my backpack. People will see us and get suspicious. Besides, it’s too bulky to transport in and out of your apartment.”

Starla went over to the file cabinets again. Clark rolled his eyes. “What are you doing? We will never find the passwords.”

“I am not going to give up yet,” said Starla.

Clark did not know what to do so he joined Starla in searching through the file cabinets, holding the flashlight for her. After an hour Starla said, “I think I found something important.”

“What could be important besides the password?”

“The machines are called computers, I think. Here is a cabinet full of instructions on how to repair, maintain, and tinker with these things. The big ones are called desktops and the portable ones are called laptops. There are pictures of them with the words next to it.”

Clark looked at the pages. “We should read these instructional books.”

Starla gasped. “Oh no. It’s past five. My mom will be worried about me. I have to get home. Take the manuals and read them. I can’t take them back to my apartment. It’s too risky.”

“So I read the manuals, and then we come back here tomorrow after meeting at your apartment?”

“Yes. That’s if my mother has to work.”

“Hopefully there is something in these books that can help us.”

Clark picked up the thick manuals: one for the desktops and one for the laptops. When he arrived home, he fell asleep. He had a lamp but rarely used it to save on energy cubes. He decided he would have to read the manuals with Starla in her apartment if her mother had off, or by daylight somewhere in the morning. Clark woke up at 6:30 and walked to the ant nest. There was no signal at seven. Clark felt sorry for Starla. He knew she was as anxious to read the manuals as he was. She would have to spend a boring day with her mother, who was probably going to punish her for being out late yesterday.

Clark climbed to the top of one of his favorite buildings in the abandoned section of town. There was a brilliant view of inner New York from there. Clark could not imagine what it would be like to live in inner New York.

He watched out for bandits. Bandits were mainly a problem at dusk when most of the drop boxes fell but sometimes you could run into one during the day.

Clark sat down and picked up the laptop manual first. He looked at the cover. It said Warrior 3.0 laptop. Clark flipped to the front page and read the about section. When the Warrior was manufactured, there were other companies manufacturing computers too. The Warrior series was unique. They were built to last for centuries, while other computers broke or became obsolete after a few years. They were also built to survive extreme conditions, including heat and water. The section ended by saying, “In an age where computers are being supplemented with biological implants, we no longer need disposable computers that will be replaced every few years. Computer speeds and performance has plateaued. Warrior computers will have to last a long time, because soon it will be illegal to manufacture computers that aren’t powered solely through the bionet.”

Clark yearned to know more about the history of computers. As the Warrior company vision statement seemed to predict, computers that accessed the Internet outside the bionet had to be either illegal or obsolete now, since Clark had never heard of them before. Clark knew that unlocking the laptop was his best bet to know more.

Chapter Two

Oliver walked to school through the streets of inner New York. When he was close to school, he started to hear even paced footsteps behind him. At first, Oliver thought nothing of it, but this lasted for several minutes. Oliver slowed down. The footsteps slowed down as well. Maybe it was just his imagination, but Oliver suspected someone was following him.

Oliver took longer strides hoping to lose the person. The person behind him also walked faster. Oliver turned a corner and the person behind him turned a corner. Oliver stopped walking right under a massive flagpole.

The flag on top had a white symbol of an eye on a black field. It was the logo for the mega corporation Goliath Inc. The eye was painted onto the sides of buildings, put in the corners of billboards, and hung from bridges. Wherever you went in inner New York, the eye was always watching you.

The person behind him stopped walking too. Oliver turned around to confront who was following him. He was annoyed, not frightened.

Inner New York was one of 100 inner cities across the world. The inner cities were where patricians, like Oliver lived. The cities were modern, clean, and safe. Security officials at the Central Security Agency watched the ubiquitous surveillance cameras at all hours. Police roamed the streets communicating with the Central Security Agency for any sign of a problem.

Oliver examined the person following him. It was a middle-aged woman whose body bore the marks of hard labor. Oliver could tell by her stooped stature, calloused hands, and dark blue work uniform that she was a scavenger. Although scavengers were not allowed to live in the inner cities, they could work menial jobs there.

Oliver said, “Why are you following me?”

The woman said, “I need to tell you something.”

“Why should I listen to a scavenger?”

“What I have to tell you is important.”

Oliver was embarrassed to talk to a scavenger. If one of his classmates saw him, he or she would ridicule him.

Oliver said, “I have to run, sorry.”

The woman said, “Do you think you are too good to talk to a scavenger?”

“No, I’m in a hurry and I will be late for class if I stand around idly talking.”

Oliver turned and began making quick steps towards school, avoiding eye contact with the woman. The woman jogged after him. Oliver stopped to confront the woman again.

“Go away, you’re being a nuisance. The Central Security Agency is watching us through the bionet. If you do not leave me alone you will be arrested.”

The woman pointed to the red scar on Oliver’s right forearm where his bionet chip had been implanted. All patricians had this scar.

She said, “The Central Security Agency is watching everything you do. You have the power to change that if you would only listen to me.”

“I have no problem with the Central Security Agency watching me. It’s to protect me from crazy people like you.”

“The information I have would not only change your life but also change the course of history.”

Oliver noticed the woman looked sad.

“Why would I want to change the course of history? I like the way things are,” said Oliver.

“Don’t you want to set things right?”

“I don’t want to hear your social revolution nonsense.”

“You’re making a big mistake. Just listen to me for five minutes. You are not who you think you are.”

Oliver’s face was red. This woman was making a scene. Oliver hated having attention drawn to him.

Oliver pulled out his phone. Once online, he navigated to the Central Security Agency site. He spoke the number to report a disturbance and the biochip in his arm processed his request.

The woman saw Oliver report her and she began to panic. A torrent of words came out of her mouth as she tried to speak quickly, but it just sounded like gibberish to Oliver. She pulled out a notebook with crude handwriting on it from her backpack and started waving it in Oliver’s face. The scene she was causing embarrassed Oliver. Other patricians going to work and school stopped in the streets to observe the spectacle.

The police were there immediately. Two officers grabbed the woman’s arms while the third began to question Oliver. As the police dragged the woman away down the streets she shouted, “You’re making a big mistake, Oliver. You could change the world if you would only listen.”

Oliver shuddered. The woman probably belonged to one of the revolutionary cults that littered outer New York. These were desperate people engaging in dreaming.

Despite Oliver’s callousness, he still felt a tinge of guilt. Oliver knew he was one of the lucky ones but he also knew a revolution, an eradication of the bionet, was crazy talk. No one could ever overthrow the CEO of Goliath Inc., Vincent Byzeni.

As the world’s oil supply dwindled Vincent developed a new, cheap, synthetic fuel source. Vincent held the patent for the fuel source and kept the exact details a trade secret. Even if Oliver wanted to, he could never change the system. The bionet, the patrician/ scavenger divide, and the protection of the patent were so ingrained in contemporary civilization that a world without these things was impossible.

Oliver arrived at his classroom, which looked like ground control for an outer space mission. Semi circular rows of desks with plush chairs in front of them filled the room. Each row stood higher than the one in front of it. In the front was a large screen with sharp images and a hologram stage controlled by the teacher.

Oliver attended the most elite school in inner New York and was at the top of his class. He specialized in technology, especially developing software. Oliver loved learning. He was good at school, and his studies consumed his life.

Oliver worked hard all day until the last class of the day ended. Oliver stood up to leave. When he reached the doorway, his teacher stopped him and commanded him to sit down at the back of the classroom. Oliver’s teacher left the classroom, leaving the lights on. Oliver looked over the empty classroom wondering what was going on.

Then Oliver gasped. The patent holder, Vincent Byzeni, came through the doorway. Oliver had only seen pictures of the world’s most powerful man.

Vincent approached Oliver. Oliver stood up to shake his hand. Vincent took Oliver’s trembling hand and shook it firmly. Oliver stammered out a hello.

Vincent said, “Oliver, I have been watching you and speaking to your teachers. After much deliberation, I have decided you should be the next architect.”

Oliver felt a mixture of pride and trepidation. It was an ego boost that Vincent chose him, but also unsettling that Vincent was watching him.

Oliver said, “The next architect? But I’m only 17. I’m far too young to be in charge of the software that runs the bionet.”

“We need a new architect. You are the most brilliant pupil we’ve seen in years. What you lack in experience you make up with an ability to learn faster than anyone I know. The last person to learn so fast, to be so brilliant at such a young age, to be such a prodigy, was me.”

“You invented the oil substitute when you were young, didn’t you?”

Vincent smiled. “I was 17.”

“What happened to the architect that you need to replace him so abruptly?”

“He went incognito and became a scavenger.”

“Incognito?”

“He underwent a surgical operation to remove his bio chip, to sever himself from the bionet.”

“Why would anyone do that? I don’t understand why anyone would give up the advantages of being a patrician to live the hard life of a scavenger.”

“He was motivated by pride: a haughty unwillingness to be part of society, to contribute to the good of humanity. That’s why he disconnected himself from the network that binds us.

“People who go incognito are pathologically anti social, cutting themselves off from other people. They want to destroy everything until there is nothing left to destroy but themselves, and then they destroy themselves.”

“What becomes of people who go incognito, to people who were once patricians but now are scavengers?” said Oliver.

“They move to rural, secluded areas where we can’t find them. We can’t track them anymore without a biochip.”

“How do they survive?”