I swung up to the Cloudberry Tower in a hot morning drizzle. You could see the place was on the blink from halfway down Dagenham Dock Avenue, the ninth floor flashing green and opal in a lengthy, repeating rhythm. Nothing out of the ordinary.
The lobby lay silent and deserted, as they all do these days. Up on ninth, I swiped in and entered the office. Employees shimmered in their nooks like hummingbird wings, faces flipping back to front with every surge peak. Some were translucent — always a bad sign. I checked the manifest. Cubicle 18 was the locus point. First, I’d calibrate the wavefronts. Next, wrap a firewall around the entire grid, and —
The inhabitant of cubicle 18 stared up at me, mouth drawn tight with worry. Hair, skin, face — she was as human as me. Neither of us said a word. I don’t know who was more surprised.
“You’re auditing?” I finally managed. “Or did they keep someone on?”
She looked like my aunt. Her lanyard said Pam Dewsbury. “Did … did they send you to remove me?”
I indicated my badge. “Travis Ovis, maintenance. Where’s number 18?”
“I’m number 18.”
I’d heard enough. I said, “That attitude’s hardly going to help you. Don’t you know about the Time bomb?”
Pat gave out a sad little laugh. “Right. The Time bomb.”
Just to make sure she understood, I explained the Time bomb.
*****
Opinion is divided as to whether the population-time-bomb theory has any real validity. It’s simple enough. Over generations, the fertility rate drops below replacement levels and economic meltdown follows. Supposedly. Growth is all.
Read more science fiction from Nature Futures
Hence the government initiative. Multiplying the citizenry without any of the complications; expanding the horde; getting in on the ground floor. Call it what you like. Invent people to the nth degree — social security, tax codes, even birth certificates — and send your children out into the world. In this case, to the Cloudberry Tower, ninth floor.
So it came to be. And the irksome regulations stating that these citizens-without-sin must at least have a physical presence? The vested interests that pushed them through Parliament administrate the holographic technology themselves. Of course they do. Rental of their services equates to roughly the newbies’ wage. Thus, everyone’s happy.
Everyone except Pam. “Oh, I know all that,” she said. “I may as well tell you, then. My son Ned helped me out. They used to call people like him hackers, I think. Now they call them data assistants. When we all got the word here about the new directives I asked him to look into alternatives.”
“Did he suggest UBI?”
“You think I want to spend the rest of my life on universal basic income?” Her worry was turning to righteous anger. “Playing online games all day every day so some analysis centre can extract my neural response data, no thank you.”
I couldn’t waste time arguing about it. The inhabitants of the adjacent cubicles had turned a not-unpleasant crimson hue. “Look, if they don’t get you for trespassing, they’ll haul you up for inhibiting growth forecasts. What do you do here anyway? Push files around, probably. Wouldn’t you prefer putting your feet up somewhere?”
She tried too hard to look innocent. “Someone has to water the plants. And what about you? Maintenance will be shifting to automation soon enough.”
I doubted she was wrong. I’d seen holograms in the backs of cabs, through the windows of ice-bars, occupying park benches, their accompanying projector drones hovering silently overhead. It seemed the Time bomb issue was well on its way to being solved. The tech companies would just have to keep an eye on runaway inflation. You don’t want wages over-matching output.
I changed tack. “This is fraud, you know.” The crimson shade surrounding us deepened. “I’ll have to report your presence. Besides, you’re upsetting the transmissions.”
She turned back to her desk and swept her fingers over the touch-screen. “Let me show you what Ned turned up. It’s Travis Ovis, right?”
A face swam into being. A cold lump formed in my stomach. There was no denying it — the visage was mine. I never knew I looked so good in blue.
“There’s one of these for everyone,” Pam said. “Here they sit, biding their time until our overlords decide all of us are fully expendable. Ned believes they’ll even have a voting-rights override.”
