Doctor Who_ Transit - Ben Aaronovitch [51]
Francine, pirate of the wide-open silicon sea, blind eyes illuminated by the folded neon structures of the datascape, pillaging the fortresses of the corporations and government agencies. Within three weeks she had captured an estimated 35 per cent of the world's secrets—
The establishment learnt fast. The technology wasn't new and they too had their veterans and bum-out cases. People strange enough to risk the direct interface with the machines. They sailed out from I/O ports in vessels knitted together from operating instructions to hunt down Francine.
But the twisted DNA of human history replicated itself once again. The company privateers took up their own careers, raiding other corporations for fun and profit. Smaller corporations, those on the cutting edge of the new technology, saw an opportunity to wrong-foot the big industrial zaibatsu. They gave spurious licence to the privateers who became the gaudy property of the media gestalt. Life-and-death drama on the primetime infotainment shows.
The corporations screamed all the way up to the Global Congress but political consensus took too long when battles lasted seconds. Privateers dying jacked in at their terminals, brains gently fired by lethal for/next loops.
Under the corporate mantle macro-economics ground relentlessly on. The world government was pushing the transit system all the way to Pluto. The economy went into overdrive, mainlining raw materials from the new worlds. Plate tectonics pushed up new mountain ranges in the economy and laid waste to the old conglomerates. Sony went down as did IBM and Matsui. Consumers got used to new household names from Brazil, China and Africa: Imbani, Mtchali, Tung-Po. Japan suffered social collapse and mass emigration, Australia starved.
The new consensus finally emerged alongside the pictures of emaciated potbellied children. It was unthinkable that humanity could once again allow economics to kill children. The media gestalt demanded a scapegoat: they were given the pirates. Their high profile, their mystery and amorality made them perfect targets. The only problem was how to stop them.
Francine had long since vanished from the silicon sea. Instead she traded information for influence, influence for power, and made herself the undisputed mistress of the underworld.
Then she waited for the powers-that-be to pick up the phone.
The campaign against the pirates lasted seven days. Black neon frigates ran them down on the silicon sea. I/O ports were traced, doors kicked in, heads broken, arrests made. There were even a few trials, but not many. Caught in the glare of the cameras the pirates were too often revealed as sad individuals beset by personality defects. Not glamorous enough, said the media gestalt, and produced fictions instead. Moody stories with corrupted heroes leading double lives and dying in a blaze of static. It became a separate genre in itself: silicon noir.
The government paid her off in favours and turning a blind eye to certain real-estate deals she had going on the moons of Jupiter. More influence, more money, more power. The Ange! Francine lay back and waited to become 'old money'.
Eight years passed.
Francine hardly noticed the empire she had built. After all, she had created it out of a kind of defensive reflex. A soldier's instinct to dig in and fortify her position. It ran on automatic from an anonymous glass tower in Trieste. Sometimes she wondered if they still killed people, but it was an idle thought. She didn't care. She lay beneath the sea with her memories and the silver terrain of Mars behind her eyes.
Her long repose was broken by news of the Flying Dutchman. There were still people operating within the datascape, that was unavoidable. They rode in using the new hardware decks that allowed second-hand contact with the computer network. It made them harder to kill, but their reactions operated in slow biological time not quick enough to hack the real secrets. This new generation of pirates were furtive, devoid of elan or class: anonymous.
The Flying Dutchman was different.