CHAPTER 5 – CONTACT
Anne Dupont finished her work. Covering herself tightly with her coat, she left the office building of the Paris branch of the Internet 3 Corp. – a company that had the worldwide monopoly on everything that had to do with internet access. She usually finished her work at 8:00 PM and it took an additional hour before she reached her flat.
Anne wasn't entirely satisfied – but she also didn't complain. A profession of a secretary didn't belong to her dreams, but at least she was employed by a company that had something to do with her main interest - computers – and it happened quite recently, when a decent job was hard to get. So she hid her ambitions and, while on duty, she was answering phones and keeping in mind her boss' appointments. Time for another use of the computer came after work.
A term "another use" meant mainly attempts of digging out the news and hacking – despite of their abundance picking up those reliable was a hard task, especially that Anne noticed a peculiar phenomenon: the unofficial news services were carefully observed, some of them were even shut down. Moreover, the news were tampered with – she learned about it when she accidentally witnessed the process. She remembered the news site loaded only partially and she had to refresh the page. Then she noticed the differences in a news item - they were subtle, but existent and altering the entire sense of it.
The cold wind started to blow stronger which, coupled with heavy rain, made Anne shiver. She started to run in order to reach the underground as soon as possible. Fortunately, it wasn't far.
The station wasn't that crowded, which wasn't anything usual at the weekdays. But there were two unusual things that Anne noticed. First, there were no homeless people, who previously occupied heavily this place. The woman concluded that the police had to move them somewhere. But where? The homeless shelters and hospitals were already heavily overcrowded.
But, on the other hand, the rotation was huge. The Grey Death reaped its harvest with implacable ruthlessness. Anne considered herself extremely lucky, since she hasn't contracted this disease – yet. As many other people she wasn't protected by Ambrosia – it was the luxury of the richest.
The other difference Anne noticed was the increased number of surveillance cameras. She had the impression that they mushroomed since yesterday, although her common sense suggested her that their number was gradually increased in the whole city, still under the MJ12 rule. Still, she looked around anxiously, noticing that one of the cameras was following her.
On impulse, she approached it and looked at it warily. The camera stopped moving and remained for a moment in one position, directed straight at her.
"Anne Dupont?" a voice came from behind. The woman, surprised, turned around and saw two tall, casually dressed men.
"Who's asking?" she retorted.
"Anne Dupont" the man continued. "You live on Rue de Pouy 3/5, you're 25 years old, employed as a secretary in Internet 3 Corp. On the Crypto message boards you're known under an alias Valkyria."
"Holy shit!" The woman thought, now seriously scared. Everything was true.
"You're coming with us" the man said.
"You're not from the police, are you?" she asked.
"We'll explain everything on the way" one of the men answered.
Both men grabbed her by her arms and they went to the train which just arrived.
At the same time Robert Ferrand was checking his e-mail and browsing the message boards. Concealed under the alias Stealth, he participated in discussions and provoked ones – especially those on political message boards. Many of them sank very quickly to the level of a gutter, but some of them were interesting.
"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government" Robert smiled as he saw this thread. It was opened one week ago and belonged to one of his favorites. He answered as a first member and his answer read: "…except all the others that have been tried." And then the discussion began. One of the members noticed soberly that democracy died long time ago and the outward procedures are everything that remained. Someone else claimed that the world is controlled by Jews and freemasonry. Robert's sarcastic reply that apparently the member didn't follow the news was placed just below.
One of the new members, nicknamed Observer stated that democracy is a flawed system, because human beings involved are essentially flawed as well. Some members agreed with this opinion, while Robert stated that, even if this is true, he prefers a flawed democracy over a dictatorship, because the latter is far more destructive. The rest of the discussion went on almost only between those two.
"It's more effective" Observer's answer was short.
"There's nothing less effective than a human being acting against its will. Ineffective society equals ineffective system" Robert disagreed.
"This will should be directed. Leaving it completely free means anarchy."
"Agreed. But leaving no margin of freedom will lead, on a long run, to catastrophic results. Democracy is a compromise."
"And that's its weakness. Compromises are imperfect."
"Nothing is perfect. Imperfections are part of human lives, get used to it."
This time Observer replied via a private message. The real discussion was about to begin.