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Immersion: 2086
Immersion: 2086
Immersion: 2086
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Immersion: 2086

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In 2086, reality is augmented.

Dan Hunter is a field investigator for the augmented and virtual cyberspace of Immersion, the most pervasive and dominant technological platform since the invention of the Internet.

A strange complaint leads him into a broadcast storm of living weapons and sensual religious orders, all filtered through augmented and virtual reality circles that spin at the speed of light.

A world of evolved black projects and terrible secrets left to fester in the upper atmosphere. Once exposed, those secrets could change mankind forever!
LanguageEnglish
PublisherBookBaby
Release dateJan 1, 2016
ISBN9781682225455
Immersion: 2086
Author

Sean Kennedy

Sean Kennedy is an Australian geologist who has spent much of his career exploring for minerals in the outback. Most of Australia has been covered. He discovered lime and gypsum deposits—the latter being sighted on a commercial flight from Adelaide to Melbourne. Sean was born in Scotland but raised and educated in Tasmania. During quiet times in the resources sector, he taught geology in South Australia and Scotland. Sean lives in Adelaide and is married with two children and four grandchildren. This man chopped down a telephone box Was held at gunpoint by the cops Spent some hours within a cell Please explain, let's hear him tell.

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    Immersion - Sean Kennedy

    law.

    Chapter 1

    See the change you want to be in the world.

    -Immersion

    Vancouver, 2086.

    Friday.

    You’re more aware with a bag over your head. Even without cybernetics, when someone bags you with a faraday hood, your other senses get cranked.

    …Maybe they are still watching…

    The sweat from the Hood’s last user mixed with the metallic liner’s copper scent. Together, they almost masked the smell of the concrete floor. The hood was wet where it was touching my face. I find it’s best not to think about wet spots.

    A faraday hood is a bag that makes it impossible for my subdermal cranial implants to gather or transmit data. It’s the kind of thing you’d use to terrify mediots, by isolating them for the first time in their lives. For me, the hood cut down on the unrelenting background chatter, but nothing turns it off.

    I was still alive, so it was probable that they weren’t going to kill me. I still had my clothes on, so I guessed they weren’t going to ask me any questions. More than likely, I was tied to chair with a bag over my head because I was unexpected.

    Hopefully this wasn’t about me; but about David Greer.

    I’m a network field technician: merely annoying to most criminal enterprises, barely ranking above a security guard. I used to be an Overwatch back in the desert wars, and that always got some attention, but David Greer was the specific kind of scumbag who everyone wanted dead once they understood what he did for a living. I had a feeling whoever had me handcuffed to this chair was part of a solution we all wanted to see happen.

    Besides, techs were often granted more tolerance in the crime world. If you could manipulate Immersion, you always had value. It’s a lot of Hey man, I only work here.

    …You’re no janitor…

    The internet’s free market had been running wild since the turn of the century. Universally reviled in meat space, the child-trafficking and slave vendors thrived in the dark corners of the web.

    By a democratic shift, the will of the dollar allowed the vice vendors to move political power away from governments and into the claws of multinational corporations.

    These corpoliticals were without conscience or oversight. They could justify brainwashing with invasive minds-i messaging and psyconstructed programming, but even they couldn’t wash off child exploitation.

    Every culture has a code, a line not to be crossed. Sexually assaulting children was a good way to get skinned, but selling children for exploitation—or profiting by enabling—was a greater evil.

    The Immersion market for experience products both live and recorded was a totally unregulated and unreported industry. Virtually, anything can be had for a price.

    Mr. Greer was too smart to sell experience products himself. Instead, he ran the back end: the transactions that let an African crime syndicate masquerade as an educational charity for middle-class Russian youths.

    As part of a student exchange program, fifteen hundred Russian kids between the ages of twelve to -sixteen were loaded onto planes. Their parents watched them walk through the airport gates, never to be seen until the first experience products showed up less than a month later. It hit the wire that middle-class Russian families paid to destroy their children. Pristine new talent was highly coveted by flesh vendors.

    When the Russian Underworld learned someone sold their country’s children, it didn’t go over so well. Of course, there was international outrage from law enforcement, but the problem wasn’t lack of outrage.

    Nobody cared if a family of five on a summer vacation wound up starring in a Serbian film or if orphan kids unwillingly donated their organs, but when over a thousand starry-eyed students with good homes and great Russian futures were victims, it was a different story. The mothers, grandmothers, and priests crying for justice on the feeds weren’t talking to the cops.

    Russian crime syndicates are less showy, they just kill people.

    Warren Goldberg was the mastermind of the scheme. He was picked up by Interpol in Budapest, but he never made it to the airport. They found his body handcuffed to the ceiling in an interrogation room with his head on a table.

    Most were small-time, people who didn’t have the big picture, but they still started showing up with their heads cut off.

    David Greer went to great lengths to show that he had had nothing to do with the scam. With his lawyers and PR team, he avoided prison with plausible deniability and safe harbor laws.

    He used hundreds of shell companies to open temporary sessions with network providers and enough encryption to not know, creating enough reasonable doubt for his well-fed lawyers to exploit.

    He could have been—and probably was—on many other networks, but one false charity connected to the incident was on a server with the network I worked for.

    Even though David Greer was cleared and our network was protected, my boss was concerned he might have other shell companies with us. A PR disaster like this could make us a target, we needed to come out as staunchly against this sort of thing. Bad press and all that.

    I was tasked with making sure that we didn’t have any residual contact with Greer, so I had to get at his offline files.

    That’s how I wound up in my current resting position, waiting to see if I’d be found with my head in my hands.

    …What if this isn’t about David Greer..?

    Part of overwatching was handling electronic warfare. The military hooked up my cerebral cortex, using the power of the mind to analyze transmissions and gather intelligence. Instead of having to upgrade synthetic processors, they turned fresh-faced recruits into processors; and what a job we did.

    I had a talent for spectrum analysis and machine communication. I could make longer connections, take deeper dives, and break stronger encryption than anyone in my graduating class. I used my enhanced senses to electronically envelope and target like smoke, and let my mind’s raw computational force find the cracks.

    I signed up with all the other web-headed kids. I loved my gadgets, and the media had made cyborgs the ultimate image of manhood. They brainwashed us, invaded our bodies and exploited our minds. I had no idea it would go so far.

    …No one knows how far it went…

    Like target penetration, civilian life wasn’t a talent of mine. If it had been a talent, I would’ve realized something was off before I got bagged. All the distinctive characteristic marketing appeal of yesterday’s boutique apartments quickly fades into slumlord lies when you walk enough empty corridors.

    Back then, the military had the best tech, and overwatch guys like me had the full meal deal. Technology made cybernetics so small that it was rare to implant something larger than a quarter. The military hid tech after insurgents began cutting electronics out of people to build better bombs. My implants weighed less than a pound in total, and were undetectable.

    Software was where things got trickier. A vehicle is a fantastic piece of technology, but useless without a driver. Cybernetics work the same way: the capabilities of implanted devices rely on software drivers to be used to their full potential.

    Overseas, my capabilities were godlike. I listened to transmissions like birdsongs, cutting through encryption on the fly, and could locate hidden electronics as easily as breathing. I felt the frequency spectrum, reading it like a shaman listening to the wind, then telling my team its secrets. Most consumer implants now were subdermal scalp brain cages, made popular by Mediots using Immersion.

    Listening was easy for me, but energy transmission was the biggest hit at parties. Implants are tied into your consciousness, so the more involved you are, the stronger your ability. If your combat meditation was good enough, you could do tricks.

    Coming into the civilian world, the government enacted legislation requiring all veterans to have civilian software drivers installed to integrate back into society—like the drivers were the problem.

    The drivers they gave us were pathetic. I went from being state of the art weapon to a blunt club. The veterans felt we had earned our tech, and should be allowed to keep using it.

    The government couldn’t tell me how to use my hands, or my ears; How should my cybernetics be any different?

    To explain what it’s like to the unaugmented is impossible. Once you’ve had a taste of that power, you can never go back. My specter suite allows me to see the unseen. Anything sent wirelessly creates a sensation within me. All data is perceived in the space we call the Minds-I; a screen inside your head that displays augmented data. Eventually, descent drivers were reassembled, hacked, or fabricated from scratch by the online community.

    Veterans became bone collectors, searching chip names and serial numbers, having multi-axis X-rays done to know ourselves.

    North America had been at war since the turn of the century, so there were enough of us around to help put each other’s lives back together.

    The darknet bubble-gum drivers were better than the MIL-SPEC stuff, but there were side effects. Booze numbed too much, and. There was no way to use drugs and function day to day anymore; too risky, and drugs were unpredictable in cyborgs. I did what every vet does: took it one day at a time. Being a field agent paid, because the work was unpleasant for men with soft hands and higher ideals.

    There is a disproportionately high suicide rate with veterans—something like eighty percent—but who listens to statistics? I mean, field techs by themselves have a workers’ insurance cap that I passed two years ago. If I go crazy now I have to shoot myself, because I can’t afford the nuthouse.

    With the smell of the wet concrete drifting through the bag, I remembered just how little it takes to torture someone. It wouldn’t leave any marks, but you try waking up handcuffed to a basement chair with a bag over your head. This was better than a strong cup of coffee.

    A solid wood door opened. The way the sound moved said I was in an isolated basement. Three people walked in: two big bodies and a smaller athletic one; trained. They wanted me to do something.

    If they wanted to appeal to me, they would have sent in someone alone. Whoever was standing in front of me now wasn’t here for sex appeal.

    A hand lifted the hood the way you might pick up a tea towel. My senses came alive, and what they told me wasn’t good. The restraints on my hands were cut, and what that told me was even worse.

    The woman in front of me and the two goons behind me were either all-natural, or had godlike stealth. Going organic is a cheap way to beat billions in research and cyborg tech.

    The basement was radio-isolated. Nothing could be transmitted in or out. I might as well have been on the dark side of the moon.

    Hello, Dan, the woman said, and smiled.

    She looked like she should be checking me into a hotel. Her skirt and blazer were a grey that melted into the background. Glasses, generic dark hair—probably wearing a wig. Everything about her said she was pleasant but utterly forgettable, by flawless design. These kinds of people were world-class operators. Expensive.

    Thanks for not killing me, I said. I find being grateful is usually the best option.

    We would like your help with something Dan. She said, and waited for my reply. Russians were known for making deals and operating by a strict code. This was their style.

    Well, I said, How can I help?

    I shifted, but kept my hands by my sides and my feet on the floor. The big guys had been in pounce mode since walking in. I’m good, but I couldn’t take three of them.

    Your company has scheduled a meeting in thirty seven minutes. A final exit for your client David Greer…

    I’m not killing anybody, I said, cutting her off.

    Oh my goodness no! She laughed, and was beautiful for an instant. We want you to walk with him when he leaves the building.

    Well I guess we’d better leave now then. I can get cleaned up at the office, I offered. A person might’ve been tempted to ask for money, and wolves like these had common ground with someone looking to get paid. However, I find its good to appear respectfully scared out of your mind when dealing with criminals; they like it.

    We have a place here. She smiled and motioned for me to follow. Her tone was happy, light and graceful, as though my standing in the jaws of death was a funny story told over cocktails.

    Out the door, the spectrum of signals blocked by the concrete and earth reached my senses. I rejoined the world after having a phone conversation with the Grim Reaper in the basement.

    She led me up a flight of stairs to the kitchen of a restaurant minds-i located in old Gastown. The ancient tunnels under Vancouver still belong to the underworld after two hundred years. One of the goons handed me a satchel as I walked into the sanitation station amongst an empty afternoon restaurant.

    I’m sorry, you only have about ten minutes, Miss Grey said, and closed the door behind me.

    This door wasn’t as thick as the last one, and with the spectrum flowing around me I had a bit more bearing on what was going on. Alone in the sanitation station —or merely observed—I ran some cold water over my face. If I had transmitted out, they’d know it and I’d have been dead for sure.

    Inside the satchel was the last set of clothes I purchased: socks, underwear, everything was just like it had come from my closet. Fortunately, they’d also given me back my black synth leather jacket. It was plain but thick, and jackets have a way of being irreplaceable.

    A small army shaving kit bag contained the same make of toothbrush I had at home, the same brands of toothpaste, soap, shaving cream and cologne.

    Everything in the bag made a statement that—if you were smart enough to hear it—would scare you more than being tied to the chair. They’d checked me out while I’d been bag-breathing, and apparently were good at it. I especially liked the extra touch of the military shaving kit. Not bad for putting it together in seventy five minutes. Pros.

    …Unless they are the ones who have been watching you…

    As I changed clothes, I felt a card in my new jacket pocket. Simple things like magnetic strips, I can read straight away. It was a calling card with no time limit, but it would work only once. Jet black, and made of an alloy that felt like glass. This was a thank you, threat, enslavement, and business card all in one. If I used the card, they would own me, likely for the price of whatever I needed at the time. The card wasn’t really an advantage; it was better to have them owe me one.

    I left my old clothes and walked out like a first-date divorcée looking to score. The empty restaurant was a ghost-free zone: no telepresence, virtual or augmented avatars allowed. Very fancy with antique Asian furniture and silk tapestries.

    They led me out ornate brass doors onto the rain-broken bricks of Vancouver, a driverless limopod waited to swallow me. Miss Grey left the thugs standing in the rain and joined me in the vehicle.

    I had twenty minutes until the meeting with Greer.

    Chapter 2

    I looked through the limopod window into Vancouver’s midmorning rain. The city had become a slumlord apartment in a regal building. The top floors were visions of light and technology, the dreams of madmen with new money. Down here on the street, it’s dark, with building facades worn like wallpaper patches revealing unrelated designs beneath.

    No ghosts? Miss Grey asked.

    Oh believe me, I got ghosts, I said. She laughed and I hated that she could look beautiful so easily. Ghosts was the slang term for Immersion’s holograms that overlaid the world around you, like a heads-up display. Most people had ghosts as part of their everyday life, and I’m sure reality has not seen anyone’s eyes who’s under the age of thirty.

    Immersion AVR (Augmented Virtual Reality) was part of everything, from lipstick to carpets. What had started as crude eyeglasses thirty years ago was built into everyone’s head now. Because of the military, I’d had it since before it was cool.

    With Immersion, the virtual became reality and we were able to blanket our world in a lie made of light. I hated lies, so I’d rather have seen the city for how it was, but it’s almost impossible to function without reality augmentations anymore.

    How long have you been watching me? I asked. I’m an all in kind of guy with underworld women.

    A picture is worth a thousand words, but it’s nothing next to a well-timed pause. She hesitated just long enough for me to buy the sincerity of it. She knew my past. I was trying to gather intel, one 0perator to another, so I could at least get clarity.

    I’ve only just met you today Dan, but who knows what the future will bring?

    …Somebody else has been watching…

    I tried to quiet the spectrum as much as I could, watching the breeders on the street, scuttling about under the buildings scaffolding, shielding themselves from the rain with neon shaft umbrellas trying to live in the forgotten inches between addresses.

    After these streets had been fenced and re-fenced, walled and un-walled, the City of Vancouver had lost its war with the homeless.

    Illegal and unapproachable, hang camps were suspended between downtown towers, sometimes hundreds of yards up. Elaborate climbing shelters with rain-collecting canvas walls called rain sails were suspended in the darkness between buildings, like a hive decorated for Christmas with wind and solar running strings of LED lights.

    Vancouver’s infrastructure hated people. The Sky Train that rattled by us as we drove hadn’t stopped for a jumper in decades. Corpse Catchers—body-catching guards installed on the elevated subway—plowed bodies into rail gutters to be collected by telepresence workers as the trains raced electrically along maddening, circular routes.

    As Vancouver’s slums grew, so did the mental health controversy. Electrosmog made people crazy, or food made people crazy, anything but Immersion was making people crazy. Crazy is hard to define, but however you say it, more people were in forgotten places than ivory towers.

    If I angled my head against the limopod widow, I could catch little glimpses of the gray slashes of clouds above the nuvo-elite towers, but there wasn’t enough room to see a silver lining.

    The limopod pulled up outside the Bay Center; the building I worked in. Built just after the big one, it’s one of the oldest buildings in the city. This is the business sector, and corporate security has total jurisdiction over its property. The police really only Keep the peace for other government employees and public spaces. Everyone else is on their own.

    Somewhere along the way, civilized society became western materialism. To be civilized, to be part of the next generation, you had to follow the current trends and accept whatever software or hardware implants the corpoliticals wanted to experiment with.

    If you don’t like technology or augmentations, you’re labeled with a technical disorder, and will forever be the victim. You hear messages repeated like:

    How could putting a wireless broadcast antenna on your skull be bad? or I think these truthers are just shills of the government, trying to keep the people oppressed!

    It’s totally insane.

    Technology is the new God, and corporations the temples of status. Corporations are allowed to saturate the population with untested tech. Sure, there have been tragedies. A big

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