Parallel Mind: Parallel Mind, #1

By Jerrik Ardell

In 2,000 years from now, humanity has formed a galactic civilization based on technology it doesn't fully understand. The main culture is the Galactic Union, a giant transhumanist society spread out over hundreds of worlds. At its mercy are the enclaves - societies based on traditionalist or ideological principles. The enclaves are waiting for the time when the Union loses its patience and decides to end them, once and for all.

 

Daniel is an enclave intelligence operative tasked with infiltrating the Galactic Union, playing the role of a despicable criminal. He has sacrificed his humanity and soul for his civilization. After twelve years of living that life, he is recalled home without warning. Upon arrival he realizes he has become a key person in events he doesn't understand, but promise to change the destiny of the human race. He goes on the run, hunted by his former superiors and colleagues, while searching for the truth. As events escalate, Daniel must use all his experience, training and augmentations to survive and to keep what remains of his humanity intact. Friends become enemies and enemies become friends as Daniel goes on the offensive, leading to a sequence of events he could never have imagined.

 

Lenght: 130,000 words

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jerrik Ardell
• Release date: Feb 29, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224139156

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

I stared at my new and unfamiliar face in the mirror and wondered what kind of person would have a face like that. A lot could be read from a person’s face and body, such as clues about personality, intelligence and past experiences. I didn’t seem to be particularly fit and my face was round with a weak chin. My clothes, however, were expensive and I wore a mechanical gold watch in a size too large for my wrist, so perhaps a weak and pampered person born into wealth and accustomed to special treatment.

A person like that would be accustomed to opulence and would travel in style so I turned around and walked out of the small bedroom to take a look around. I wasn’t disappointed. The living space was certainly opulent but also quite tasteful; a round space with wood and leather furniture and a bar. The furniture was designed to fit against the concave inner hull. The ship was made in the Korean ethnic enclave, or New Korea, as it was unimaginatively but aptly named. It was a small luxury yacht in space for the discriminating customer.

I had always thought of myself as a professional and as such I always avoided drinking on the job unless it was absolutely necessary, but I wasn’t feeling very professional at the moment. I was tired and not supposed to be on that ship so I privately expressed my protest by walking to the bar. I’m a bourbon man but I couldn’t resist a bottle of single malt, aged 24 years. I was opening the bottle when a red light started blinking in my left visual field; a call from George requesting access to my visual and auditory input. I accepted immediately and poured three fingers into a crystal tumbler. A square visual feed opened where the red dot had previously been, showing George squinting at his own feed showing me pouring scotch into the glass.

Are you drinking?

Yes, that’s what you do on vacation George. I would never drink on the job, you know that, I replied and took a gulp of the scotch. It was really good. It tasted like defiance.

George took a deep breath to calm down. He was my boss or more accurately my handler. He planned and managed my various activities.

I know you’re not happy to be there Dan, but try to behave like an adult. The brief is in your buffer. Contact me when you’ve read it.

He closed the link and I opened the brief. It expanded into an augmented reality analog-paper folder on the settee next to the bar. I sat down and opened it and started reading. I had no idea what I was doing on this ship. I had literally been grabbed and pressed into service because I was the only member of George’s team in the vicinity. I read the three concisely written pages carefully and stopped several times to reread some sections. I tried to control myself by breathing slowly and steadily but it never worked well for me. When I get tired I get a short fuse and I was pretty tired. I opened the link to George.

Are you fucking shitting me, what the fuck George! George’s head was bald like a bowling ball and it went red, all of it, not just his face.

Dan, calm the fuck down. He held up his hands and pushed them down several times, the age old ‘calm the fuck down’ gesture.

Who the fuck came up with this George? We were using each other’s names which rarely happened unless we were having an issue.

That’s not important. What’s important is that this has to be done. There’s no way around it.

Ok, I said. So I’m supposed to go to an auction and buy something without knowing what that something is. How many things will be auctioned off there? Only what I’m supposed to buy or many things?

I don’t know.

You don’t know?

I don’t know.

There was silence for a while and I took a big gulp of the scotch and made sure the glass was visible to George the whole time. George ignored it.

So how will I recognize it? Should I use divination George? Perhaps consult a medium?

I’m sure we will recognize the significance of the object when it appears.

Are you sure it’s an object, not data or something?

No.

I see. I threw the folder on the settee and rubbed my face, momentarily obscuring George’s view through my eyes. Etiquette dictated that one should replace the visual feed with an external feed showing one’s face if possible while having a conversation, but I didn’t care.

Ok, anything else I should know?

Not really. The legend info file is here. A file icon appeared in my visual field containing description of my cover identity. I wouldn’t have much time to get familiar with it.

Look, George said. We only know this is important, we don’t know why or what it is. Sorry but that’s all we have. I knew this wasn’t George’s idea and there was no point in making his day worse. Besides, he was a good guy I had always been able to count on.

Ok, I said. I need to get ready. I’ll be in touch later.

Later, he said and shut down the link.

I picked up the virtual folder and threw it across the room in frustration and closed the file. It vanished into thin air just before it hit the floor. I poured the rest of the scotch into the sink in the bathroom. I was apparently not used to alcohol because I was getting a mild buzz already. I asked the ship’s AI for an update and access to the outside visual feed. The input from my eyes to my visual cortex was cut off and replaced with a 360° outside view. The interior of the ship disappeared and I stood in space looking toward the planet and its three moons, all clearly visible at a distance of 970,000 kilometers thanks to the ship’s sensors. The ship was decelerating hard, preparing for the shift, which it would execute at a distance of one million kilometers – the usual safe distance for an earth-size planet in the habitable zone of a G2 main sequence star. I cancelled the outside view and the living room reappeared around me. I sat down and started reading the legend file.

My identity was unremarkable. A 46 year old male of Arab descent named Ayaan Al-Tawfiq from a rich clan spread out on various Union planets; a minor trust fund kid who fancied himself a businessman. He was a frequent visitor to Dohar and always stayed at the Union Imperial Hotel in downtown Alema. He ordered expensive room service which included meals, alcohol and company. Someone had taken the time to surveil him, procure his DNA and compile a profile in case his identity was needed. The ESS had tens of thousands of such profiles.

There was a list of files containing short recordings of him walking toward the reception desk at the Union Imperial, talking to the receptionist, walking from the desk, talking to someone else in the lobby and leaving for the elevators. These recordings seemed to come from at least three separate visits to the hotel judging from the timestamps. The reception employee who had recorded them was either working for us or had been hacked by us.

I looked closer at one of the recordings where he was approaching the receptionist. He carried himself in a confident manner but with some self-consciousness, which might indicate that he had been coached on how to appear self-confident. He spoke High-English indicating elite education and immersion in High-Union culture. He was polite and friendly but his smile seemed perfunctory. He looked at his watch twice, which looked like the watch I was wearing. I gave my AI access to the files and it started analyzing them, creating a verbal, behavioral and kinetic profile to imitate his characteristics from his voice and speech to how he walked or raised his left arm to pretend to check the time. I had ten more minutes to get to know him better and I started reading.

The ten minutes passed quickly and I hadn’t finished reviewing Ayaan’s background information when the ship’s AI alerted me. I fumbled for the straps built into the settee and buckled up. A shift required a shutdown of the gravity drive, including internal gravity compensation. Nothing with a significant electromagnetic field could be close to an operating shift engine; not a planet, not a star and absolutely not a running gravity drive. As an unpleasant bonus the ship’s magnetic shield would go down leaving it exposed to solar and cosmic radiation while the shift was in progress, but thankfully that was just for a few seconds.

The ship had stopped decelerating and had already executed several maneuvers to get ready for the shift. Vector and velocity were within the parameters specified by the Dohar Commercial Emergence Zone Authority. The ship would have to emerge in tune with the orbital state vectors of Emergence Central and its vector and velocity would have to be correctable within the limits of the defined emergence zone. There was lot of matching to be done; the emergence zone orbits Dohar one million kilometers out, which orbits its sun, which orbits the galactic core, and so on and so forth. A failure in calculations could result in a number of bad things which might include vaporization with a particle weapon upon emergence if parameters weren’t being observed.

The AI put a countdown clock in my visual field and I stiffened my body and swallowed. I hated zero gravity. I never got used to it no matter how often I experienced it. The clock hit zero and my stomach jumped. I clenched my teeth together and realized I had forgotten to grab a puke bag just in case. I had also forgotten to secure the crystal glass I had been drinking from and it floated up from the counter. The ship executed the shift and started the gravity drive immediately to match up with Dohar Emergence Central. My stomach dropped back down violently and the glass hit the hardwood floor and smashed into a thousand pieces.

The ship’s AI offered a link to my personal AI with status updates. I opened it and projected the data to a virtual screen that sprang into existence over the bar. I stood up and looked at it. The identity code and other information sent to Emergence Central had been accepted and we had been assigned a space in the parking grid 1,000 kilometers from the orbital spaceport. The ship finished matching orbits with the spaceport and approached the parking grid carefully. The parking grid was a cube in space where visiting ships parked in layers. The ship’s AI counted 6,438 ships holding position, creating a giant cube-shaped structure in space. We had been assigned a parking space on level 12, grid position 31-17. The ship had already entered the entranceway next to row 31 on level 12 and moved toward position 17. It finally slid into its position behind another luxury yacht, this one of Nipponese construction.

I grabbed my suitcase and headed for the inner hatch which slid out of my way. I stopped facing the outer hatch and waited patiently for several minutes. I used the time to establish communication protocols with the ship’s AI and watch the lines of ships in all directions through the sensors. Most of them were small luxury craft but there were some larger passenger ships in the distance. There were no cargo ships; they had their own emergence zone, spaceport and parking grid elsewhere in Dohar orbit.

Finally a pick-up shuttle arrived and slid up to my ship and mated with the outer hatch. I got the all clear signal and the hatch opened and I was facing a thick, oily wall of promat separating me from the shuttle interior. I closed my eyes and walked slowly through. The programmable material slid back and allowed me through while keeping up the barrier between the shuttle and my ship.

My suitcase and I were now in a small chamber called the ‘scanning room’ where we were scanned before being allowed into the passenger section. The scan mainly focused on explosive devices and contraband and was very lax compared to Union standards. Genetic and biometric scans were not performed, Dohar being only one of two Union planets not requiring them. While Dohar was formally a part of the Union it was run independently by its Governors. With access to Union planets tightly controlled and consequently access of Union citizens to other planets controlled as well, some place was needed where everybody could meet. Dohar was that place as demonstrated by all the ships parked around me. It was much like the mythical Casablanca of World War 2; a neutral setting frequented by spies, arms dealers, human traffickers, diplomats, shady businessmen, psychopathic opportune seekers, sexual predators and all other kinds of assorted criminals and scum. I had just returned home after having spent the last twelve years there undercover and during that time I had often half-expected the capital city of Alema to be destroyed by a pillar of fire. And now I was back.

I finally got the green light and the hatch slid open. I walked into the passenger section and looked around. It was Spartan with no furnishings, all business. There were 50 seats and plenty of space for luggage. Eighteen of the seats were occupied by a diverse looking crowd which was split into singles, pairs and groups. Each unit of the crowd was sitting as far from the others as possible, in a maximized dispersal pattern of sorts. I turned right and headed toward the seats next to the rear wall so I could observe the entire room. Two seats away from my target seat were three men of Asian origin, probably from the Han Empire. They looked at me for a moment when I approached, their expressionless faces revealing nothing. I gave them a perfunctory smile like Ayaan would do and sat down.

The front wall showed the front outside view. The shuttle was now leaving the parking grid and heading for the spaceport. I looked around. There was nothing unusual about the passengers. Most of them were of indeterminate ethnic descent and therefore probably from the Union. There were two women sitting together at the front, probably either Nipponese or Korean, I wasn’t sure which.

The trip to the port went by fast and soon we were ready to dock. The port looked like a busy beehive, a big fat blob surrounded by shuttles coming and going. Everybody was already on their feet waiting, and then stumbling toward the hatch when it opened. I waited until the last of my fellow travelers had passed through and entered the arrival lounge. It was a cavernous space packed with luxury goods shops, bars and restaurants. I hurried past them all toward the departure area. I wanted to get on a planet-bound shuttle as soon as possible.

The transit shuttle was similar to the pick-up shuttle except ten times bigger, and it was almost full. I sat down between a tall and thin woman, probably from the Union, and a tall and thin man, most likely of Indian descent, so either from the Union or the Vedic enclave. I settled down and watched the image of the approaching planet on the front wall. Dohar had a Pangaea style supercontinent centered on the equator and reaching all the way up and down to 45° or so. The rest was just ocean and ice caps on the poles. The continent was heavily populated in coastal areas with hundreds of cities but the interior was sparsely populated. The capital, Alema, was situated on the north-western coast next to a giant estuary of a river flowing all the way from the west-central rainforest.

The shuttle had entered the troposphere, approaching city from the sea, which slowly grew larger on the screen. Alema was a giant city with more than 800 million inhabitants. It was organized in a modular fashion into sub-cities. Each sub-city was roughly circular and about 20 kilometers in diameter, typically with 10 million inhabitants or so; a conveniently sized administrative unit. Each was organized according to a strict interpretation of neo-galactic architecture. A giant central spire in the middle surrounded by a forest of skyscrapers that progressively got lower the further they were from the spire. At the edges the houses were just one or two floors. Thus, each sub-city looked like a pyramid from a distance. Alema covered nearly 400,000 square kilometers including the open spaces and industrial areas. It was impossible to see more than a small part of it, even from 30,000 feet.

The shuttle sat down at the Old Town airport and the hatches opened immediately. People started moving out carrying their luggage or dragging it behind them. The arrival hall was insanely busy with thousands of people moving from their shuttles, most of them to the subway entrance. I moved with them feeling like a sheep being driven into a corral along with thousands of other sheep. The only possible place to go was where all the other sheep were going. In the subway station I picked a train going downtown, which was where all the other sheep seemed to be going because it was packed.

I exited the subway in the center of old downtown. This part of town was the original Alema before it started to grow and the only sub-section of the city that had grown organically without the heavy hand of central planning architects. The heat and humidity hit me when I walked out the door and I felt like a turkey in an oven. Local time was 17:34 and I headed straight for the hotel which was only a block away.

The Union Imperial was a large hotel with 2,000 rooms, all of them opulent. The lobby was no less fancy with colorful marble and gold everywhere. I had given my AI access to my motor and sensory cortex and specified the intervention protocol. It had adapted my behavior and movements to Ayaan’s to the extent it could from the recordings. When I entered the lobby it was controlling my walk, posture, voice, and certain specific behaviors. I had full control over my body but the AI modified what I did and added the occasional flourish. I walked to the reception desk and felt myself smile to the attractive woman there who smiled back. I put my finger on the sensory pad on the desk and transferred my ID information and payment.

Mr. Al-Tawfiq, welcome back! the woman said with exaggerated joy at receiving a loyal customer. I smiled again and wondered if she was the one who had provided the recordings.

Thank you.

She busied herself for a while and I realized I was checking my watch.

Room 4382, she said and gestured at the sensory pad. I touched it again and downloaded the authentication code for the room. I thanked her and turned around and almost bumped into a bellhop who had been standing behind me ready to assist. I handed him my suitcase and followed him into the elevator.

The room was nice and cool and I removed my suit and watch, threw myself on the bed and sent a message to George telling him I had arrived. The auction was at 8 PM and I had to hit the shower soon and get dressed to make it on time. I also needed to eat something so I contacted room service and asked for a club sandwich. It arrived five minutes later and I ate it and drank two bottles of water from the cooler. Then I took a shower and put on the suit stored in my suitcase.

I left the hotel at 7:20 PM and walked slowly toward Club Sahara, the site of the auction. The club was a couple of blocks away, a fifteen minute walk. The temperature had dropped but I walked slowly to avoid sweating. I opened a link to George and gave him access to my visual and auditory input. It would stay open until the auction was over and the mission complete. George appeared in my visual field flanked by two people.

Hey, he said, I’m with Elaine and Alan from research. They’re in the Dohar group. Elaine was a slim blond woman with a friendly face, maybe 35 years old. Alan was probably around 50 years old and had dark hair and a pale, impassive face. I had never seen them before but these were the people who collected and interpreted information to assist with missions and they were sometimes allowed to observe directly in case they could help - or learn something.

Hey, I said.

We’ll try to stay out of your hair unless we see something significant, George said.

Ok, I said.

I kept walking and they kept quiet. The sidewalk was fairly crowded with pedestrians and the street next to me was full of cars, mostly taxis and limos. All the people I saw seemed to be going somewhere special and were dressed accordingly. The area had an enormous number of clubs and restaurants of every conceivable variety. The place I was going, Club Sahara, was probably not on their list. It was an exclusive club, by membership or invitation only – at least officially. My auction number was my invitation tonight and should get me in without a problem. What worried me was if Ayaan had ever been to the club and someone recognized him. I doubted he was a member or had received an invitation. Most Sahara club members were of a different breed than Ayaan. They were connected, rich or both. They were old money families with real clout, rich businessmen, or successful criminals and usually local. It was however theoretically possible to buy one time entry but it was expensive. Someone like Ayaan might have done that to be able to say to his friends that he had rubbed shoulders with the criminal elite of Alema. There was nothing I could do about that and I put it out of my mind.

The club entrance was in a side street hidden away from the main-street traffic. I turned the corner and walked up to the three security guys standing outside. I held up my hand: My invitation.

One of the guys held out a sensory pad and I put my finger on it and uploaded my auction number. His eyes grew distant while he made sure things checked out and then he nodded. Another guy opened the door and I walked into the foyer where I knew I would be unobtrusively scanned for weapons and recording devices. Yet another guy handed me a small black disk with a centimeter long metallic spike protruding from the middle. I took it and put it up to my right temple searching for the neuromechanical plugin. The spike on the disk found the socket and I pushed it in until the disk was tight against my temple. The spike engaged with the nexus coupling, the physical bundle of nano-scale artificial nerves where my AI interacted with my brain. The disk would have lit up bright red upon contact, signifying that my AI was in contact with my brain and could be recording everything I saw and heard. That would not do in a place like Club Sahara.

I turned the disk counterclockwise 90° until I heard a small click. The metallic spike physically uncoupled the nexus and severed the connection between Ayaan’s brain and his AI, and the disk turned green. The guy nodded and welcomed me to the club. Walking around without a puck, as they were called, or having a red puck inside an exclusive place where privacy was paramount could get you into a lot of trouble.

The interior was familiar since I had been a member of the club for the last 10 years. I had seen the security guys many times before and I recognized the staff at the lounge bar I was heading for. I sat down at the bar and one of the bartenders walked over. Her name was Ayia and I had talked to her many times but she didn’t recognize me now of course.

What can I get you sir?

Just a small glass of beer, please. Is Mr. Ansari here? I need to talk to him.

I will contact him, she said and started pouring the beer.

Wahid Ansari was the owner of the club. I knew him quite well and I was slightly nervous having to talk to him as a total stranger. I checked the time; 20 minutes to auction. I took a sip of the beer and looked around and saw Wahid walking toward me.

Sir, what can I do for you? he said.

I’m here for the auction, I said.

Buying or selling?

Buying.

He held out his hand and I touched it with my finger, uploading the auction number directly through his dermal interface. He had a puck on his temple glowing green like everybody else but he could view the information in his visual field using his standard passive neural interface. He hesitated for a while like he was checking something and then looked at me for a second or two. Then he finally nodded and gestured to a guy who had seemingly appeared out of thin air behind him.

Mr. Kashif will show you to your booth.

Thank you.

I followed Mr. Kashif through the lounge and into the club proper and toward the back. We went through a door marked ‘employees only’ and down a hallway. I had not seen Mr. Kashif before and I doubted he worked for Wahid. He was probably just here to manage the auction. Wahid, as far as I knew, only provided the location. Mr. Kashif opened another door and we entered another hallway. This one was narrow and had ten doors on each side. The doors were so close they almost touched. Behind each door was a small booth. I had been here before - this was not my first time at an auction in Wahid’s club.

I entered a booth and sat down in a comfortable chair. In front of me was a screen which would switch on when the auction started and a control board to place bids. This was a physical auction requiring sellers and bidders to be on site. The things being auctioned would actually be at the club and the winner would have to take physical delivery after payment. The things being sold here were not something you could get in the mail. This was the safest place I knew to buy stuff; nobody in his right mind would try to sell a fake in this place.

Auctions here usually had themes and bidders always had some kind of idea what was being auctioned. The most common themes were illegally obtained antiques, stolen art, stolen technology, illegal technology, drugs, illegal immersion recordings, business relationships and so on ad infinitum. I had even heard of one where asteroid mining rights had been auctioned. I had no idea what the theme would be tonight. I also had no idea how many were attending. This room had twenty booths and there was another one in the building, so forty in total, but they weren’t necessarily all occupied. There was great care taken to make sure none of the bidders could see the others enter or exit the area.

I looked around and spotted a minibar next to the chair. I grabbed a bottle of mineral water, opened it and took a sip. There were all kinds of security measures built into the booth, including a system monitoring my puck. If I engaged my AI, the screen would automatically turn off and a couple of guys would remove me from the booth and from there on things would go bad. I wouldn’t have to worry about that. The puck had disengaged Ayaan’s AI but my own AI was still connected. It saw and heard everything I did and was still sending it through the entanglement link to George who was sitting in his cozy control room 83 lightyears away.

Three minutes to auction and I decided to check my finances. I had been given a number to an anonymous account in Dohar’s Bank of Commerce that the ESS had set up. I accessed the private link into the account and took a look. The balance was 100 million Union dollars! What the hell was going on? Either someone knew more than they were letting on or they really, really wanted to be on the safe side.

The screen came on at exactly 20:00 and I stopped thinking about my newfound riches. I was looking at an empty room but Mr. Kashif soon stepped inside and positioned himself in the middle of it. He bowed respectfully and started talking. Ladies and gentlemen! Welcome to this auction! Tonight we will be offering only the best products from vendors all over human space. He was smooth and animated, like a real auctioneer, like he had done this before. Note that this is a reserve auction. The seller can accept or reject any bid and set a minimum price. Now let’s get started! He moved out of view. Let me introduce the first item!

A young woman walked into the room, stopped and turned to face the sensors feeding the screens. She was perhaps 20 years old and stunningly beautiful, obviously of Indian descent. She had a regal face and long obsidian hair. This is Lakshmi, Mr. Kashif continued. She is 18 years old and of excellent breeding as you can clearly see, in perfect health and of course untouched. She has been fully trained to assume every role, in public as well as in private. Minimum bid is six million Union dollars. Start your bidding!

A slave auction.

Did you know about this, I asked George subvocally. No clue, he responded. I watched the bids roll in for Lakshmi and wondered what kind of people would be sold after her. Most human auctions were for end users, not brokers. The people being sold had either been kidnapped or cloned or naturally born and farmed large-scale in safe locations. Farming was expensive because of all the time and effort put in but there were a lot of rich buyers with discreet needs.

Lakshmi finally became someone’s possession for 14.5 million. The next item walked into the room. He was a small man, maybe 60 years old, and obviously Han. He stopped in the middle of the room like Lakshmi and stared down with absolutely no expression on his face.

The next item is none other than Dr. Yung-Fu Chang, one of the world’s leading authorities on photon manipulation. He is a hard and cooperative worker with many productive years ahead of him. The minimum bid is one million dollars.

I leaned forward. This was strange. As far as I knew these auctions were mostly about procuring boys and girls for concubine services, sex, torture and murder. But they were sometimes used as a sort of dead drop for previously agreed upon trades. The buyer would then be the only one making bids, or possibly have someone else making counter-bids to mask what was going on. That was probably what was going on here. Another possibility was that this was a pure fishing expedition. Intelligence services were known to frequent human auctions to obtain suitable genotypes to infiltrate other worlds. Maybe the seller figured the Union or someone else had a representative who would decide to pick this guy up. Or maybe this was who I was supposed to buy since he clearly didn’t fit in.

Is this him?

I don’t think so, George said.

Yes or no, I need to act now.

It’s not him, George said.

A few bids came in and finally Mr. Fu got sold for 2.2 million. I couldn’t help reflecting on the fact that one of the greatest scientists in his field only had a fraction of the worth of a pretty concubine.

The third item came into the room, or more precisely was led into the room by a woman with a privacy mask. She was a four or maybe five year old girl with braided blond hair, dragging a big teddy bear behind her. The woman held the girl’s hand and whispered something to her, probably telling her to stand still. The girl looked apprehensively around the room and her mouth puckered like she was about to start crying. Mr. Kashif droned on about her positive attributes but I didn’t hear what he said. The world shrank and all I saw was the girl through a red filter of aggression. I visualized myself breaking out of the locked booth and then going from booth to booth killing everybody. Then I would find the other booth room and kill everybody there and then find the basement room and holding area and kill this woman, Mr. Kashif and everybody else in my way. But I couldn’t even break out of the booth. Ayaan was not augmented and had no tactical implants. He was useless. The bidding started and I saw my hand reaching for the control board to place a bid. George saw it too.

Dan! It’s not her, George said. I opened the visual feed from home and looked at George and his research people so I wouldn’t have to look at the girl. George knew exactly what was going on. He had a panicked look on his face. He knew he might lose control of his employee. Elaine’s mouth was open and she stared in horror at the feed. Alan’s face was frozen.

Dan!

I didn’t answer. I closed my eyes and tried to calm down. I had seen horrible things in my life and I wasn’t sure why this had set me off. It had to happen at some point I guessed.

The auction continued at a brisk pace for an hour. Young men and women, girls and boys were sold individually and in batches, 58 of them. Only one scientist, the odd one out, and he wasn’t what I was here for. This had been a failure.

I waited for a few minutes in the booth after the auction ended. The participants left one at a time and it was finally my turn to go. The door clicked open and I stood up and walked out the way I came in. Mr. Kashif was there to make sure I didn’t linger. I walked straight out of the club and left the puck with the security guy at the door. I kept the link open in case I saw something interesting on the way out but I wasn’t in the mood to look around. I just wanted to get back to the hotel, get my stuff and take the first shuttle out.

I walked briskly to the hotel, not caring if I got sweaty. It was still warm and the sidewalks were even more crowded than before and I had to zigzag through the flow of people to keep up speed. I soon entered the hotel lobby and went straight to the elevator. There was a mirror in the elevator and I studied Ayaan’s face for a while. It was sweaty and tired, just like I was feeling. I entered my room and sat down on the bed. I thought about the girl and wondered what would happen to her. Would she be alive tomorrow? Next week? How would she die?

I looked up. There was something wrong. I didn’t know what, maybe a movement of air or smell detected on a subconscious level but there was something wrong. There were three of them and they had been standing still like statues next to the wall opposite the bed, wearing cloaks. They came at me fast and slapped promat restraints on me before I could react. The restraints pinned my arms against my body and my feet together and enveloped my head and stopped me from breathing. They grabbed me and slammed me into a chair. I could feel the restraints tie me to the chair the moment I touched it. Then they slammed a puck into my temple plugin and disengaged Ayaan’s AI.

The promat flowed back from my eyes and nose and I could see them. They had disengaged their cloaks, but their faces were still obscured. They needed to see their hands because they were busy. They had opened a toolbox and were taking out equipment I recognized instantly. It was a cortical sensor. They were going to interrogate me on the spot which explained why I was still conscious. They didn’t think it was safe to get me out of the hotel which meant they were probably not Union Intelligence. They were probably local mercenaries. One of them leaned over me and whispered:

Do you know what this is? He pointed at the scanner. I shook my head.

This is a device for reading your mind. I ask questions and it sees what you’re thinking. I’ll put it on your head and it drills holes into your skull and inserts the scanning elements. Your privacy cage won’t protect you because the scanner will be inside your skull. Do you understand? He talked slowly and softly like he was talking to a young child or a mildly dense adult. I shook my head again.

I’m going to give you a chance to answer my questions because I don’t want to use it. I prefer you cooperate. Would you like to cooperate? I nodded eagerly.

If I don’t believe you I will use it and if that doesn’t work we will remove your skull and monitor your brain directly. Are you going to tell the truth? I nodded. I had no doubt they would use the sensor no matter what I said.

I am going to remove the gag. If you try to scream it will sense it before you can get out a peep and automatically close. And then I will torture you. Do you understand? I nodded again.

The promat slid away from my mouth and I took a closer look at them. They were working with efficiency and fluidity setting up their equipment, like they were