Technocrats and the security state - Part 6
The doorways and openings Diez and Boyer slipped through
It always drained him. Made him shiver.
The showrunner made sure someone was waiting with a robe to cover him and give him a cup of coffee when he stepped out of the room.
“We haven’t had a screamer in awhile,” the production manager said, the one he didn’t recognize. Diez took the coffee from her and thanked her.
“That will land on the highlight reels for sure. You ready to go after your coffee?”
Diez nodded. It was an unusually busy day. The courts, the click-driven body that postured as a justice system in the new order of Corridor West, was clearing a backlog of cases.
“Just give the guy five,” she said into her headset then smiled and frowned at him all at once. “She was a talker and a screamer. The boys are getting antsy. We’re about 20 minutes behind. What’d she say back there?”
“You know I can’t tell you that,” Diez said after a sip.
“Well, she ate into our buffer. But the chat is getting hot. Lots of speculation.”
Diez took another pull of coffee. Unable to savour the warmth, but it jolted him. “Maybe I was wrong to push so hard with the Gov to remove the cameras when I started. Do people already forget what goes on back there?” Diez asked between sips. "These are people who are about to face their Maker.”
“I hear you.” The woman shook her head at Diez, she wasn’t talking to him. “Yes, we’re moving.” She reached out and ushered him toward the door, holding out her other hand to take his coffee. “I’ll have another one waiting for you. Try to ask less questions, or whatever it is you do back there. We got that guy who got double gamed.”
“Who?” he asked.
She looked at him surprised. “The famous husband and wife episode—the ones who killed their son?”
Diez stopped walking. Even he’d heard about that case.
“We’re expecting it to be the biggest takeover since episode one,” the woman was still walking. When she realized he wasn’t moving, she turned to him, looked at her watch.
“My clothes,” he said, realizing he hadn’t dressed yet.
“They’re waiting for you on the next soundstage. You can put them on there so you can take them off.”
***
Slipping between borders seemed to be her birthright. No matter how large the wall, there was always a way to slip through. Boyer’s mother had found a way, during 46. Before Paris, before the Phos. What seemed like another lifetime ago.
She didn’t know, then, how everything was about to change, not just for her. Was too young to know or to care, barely able to see outside the caravan of human misery that brought her north.
There was a narrow window of time to slip through the crack in the wall before the borders shut.
They all knew that. And so they took the risk. Her mother trusted the wrong coyote.
But they got in.
***
Ever since the suitcase nuke in Paris, when Europe was brought to its knees, the world knew turmoil.
When the secret organization of terrorists promised to inflict similar violence on major cities around the world, one each year, turmoil became chaos. Governments reeled. Not only to recover from the environmental fallout from Paris, but from the economic destruction and social fragmentation created by the new state of fear.
The peace of the previous century was gone, as if over night, and the semblance and order, known throughout the 21st century, started to fade like sand through the calloused hands of time.
When Beijing was hit, all hell broke loose. The suitcase nuke that went off in the Forbidden City blew apart the narrative that China was a secret hand behind the European attack.
Diez was busy investigating predator priests when the nuke went off at Sacre Coeur. Lucky for him he was in North America.
Governments reacted the way governments do. Every response brought the hammer. Every problem looked like a nail. The surveillance State became even more entrenched. Invasive oversight the accepted norm. It was a tech oligarch’s dream scenario. It accelerated the integration of new technology into all aspects of life. Automation, drones and robotics, AI.
But if it was a dream era for technocrats, it was the security states’ glory day. And a journalist’s dream. Diez was there to cover it all.
The US scrambled to maintain its dominance and protect global assets, especially oil and water reserves which they feared would be the next target after the symbolic destruction of the City of Lights.
Canada, with its close proximity to the United States, was the major threat for the next nuclear strike. Rich in natural resources—especially oil, lumber and water—and, due to the tech boom of the late 21st century in the green belt near Toronto which was becoming a key centre of global data storage and digital infrastructure, the northern nation was a key political player.
Since 47, Canada had become a proverbial satellite of the US government. Now it was the crown jewel.
It was inevitable that tech giants and the military complex would become an efficient hybrid. Against this backdrop of global upheaval and local lawlessness, as every man and family and city had to fight for its own survival, the games emerged to reintroduce social control.
Diez was dropped like a single drop of blood on the sharp horn of this terrible altar. A cruel twist of fate? God’s unveiling, mysterious plan?
When the corridor walls started to be built, it was stunning how quickly that plan worked.