narrowed down the choices by process of elimination. First there were the visual clues, height and size. She dismissed more than half of her class. Hair color eliminated half again and then she had heard the name, Sally, and confirmed one of her choices. Knowing who Sally’s friends were narrowed down the remaining teaser to one of two choices. The teasing girls finally left, bored with being mean, when the recipient didn’t respond. As their heels had clacked across the floor of the infirmary, Cochran had opened her eyes. The girls left without ever being aware that she had in fact heard, and been hurt by, everything they had said, although she would have denied both vehemently.
She occupied the rest of her time in the infirmary planning how to exact revenge on the three girls. The fact that one of the three was innocent of doing her wrong didn’t factor in. By the end of the year all three had gone. Two for cheating in knowledge retention tests, despite swearing their innocence, and the third paralyzed from the neck down and destined to spend a year in regen, when the uneven bars that she practiced on for hours in the gym alone strangely collapsed as she performed a Korbut flip.
This morning, Cochran sensed nothing other than the chirping and singing of birds outside, the metronomic tick-tock of the grandfather clock in the room and the steady breathing of Sunita next to her in the sleeper.
She cracked an eye open and saw that Sunita was still asleep. She rose and walked to the en-suite, stripping off the inners she had slept in and dumping them in the sanitization unit. She stepped into the shower and said, “Auto pulse stream”. The hot water cascaded down and she smoothed her hair with her hands, thinking that she must look her best today, for the images that would be broadcast would be of the new Director of UNPOL.
Although the selection committee consisted of five, the outgoing Director, Sir Thomas, had great influence and had assured her, before leaving, that he would support her nomination as his replacement. She would be the youngest person and first female ever to occupy the role in UNPOL and its predecessor Interpol. She jumped at the feel of hands on her back, lost in her thoughts and her hearing impaired by the stream of water splashing on her head.
Sunita’s brown hands slipped from her back to her breasts and the fingers brushed lightly over her nipples. She turned into Sunita’s outstretched arms, and Sunita said, “Big day today.”
Cochran placed her mouth next to her ear, her arms resting on her shoulders, “Yes, and it wouldn’t have arrived but for you.”
“Oh, I don’t know. You’re a very determined and highly intelligent woman. Somehow I have the feeling that you would have risen to the top of whatever contribution you had chosen.”
“Perhaps, but I feel as if I was made not just for this contribution, but this moment. We’re going to win, I can feel it.” She kissed Sunita’s ear and said, “I’ve got to get ready.” Sunita released her and Cochran stepped out of the shower, her nipples grazing Sunita’s shoulder, and into the body sanitizer, turning it on full blast for a quick dry.
She walked back into the sleeping room and sat down on the sleeper, turning on her Dev on the table beside her. She said, “Call Oche, voice only.”
A few seconds later, not yet a minute, a male voice came on with a rush, “Good morning darling, and how are we today? What can I do for you? “
“Oche, thanks for taking my call. I need you to style me — I’ve got a formal day ahead and I need to look good for the feeds.”
“But of course, darling. Now can you tell me a bit about the occasion and how you’d like to present?”
“I need to look sharp, official, styled within the current UNPOL uniform, but a superior cut, and hair should be blonde with a dark base, cut short and shaved at back, military-style. Footwear should be something unisex but classy.”
“OK, darling, I get the image. How about something between police and military, with a dash of Oche thrown in? And for the footwear, we’ll go with jumpers, but I’ll put some Oche touches on, very butch?”
“Sounds good. When can you be ready by?”
“Thirty-five mins, darling. That OK?”
“Perfect, but do the hair design now. OK? I’ll head over to the hair Dev.”
“OK, darling. I’ll be waiting.”
Cochran walked over to the hair Dev and lowered the dome over her face and down below the nape of her neck to just below where her hair stopped. On the Devscreen in front of her eyes she saw Oche standing behind her. She smiled and changed the feed to the global newsfeed — the mix of all the different news brands scrolling with the latest news in real time. She scanned back with her thumb, scrolling through to the news of UNPOL announcements, and picked out Sir Thomas’s resignation.
She felt the micro scissors and razors begin their work, as a light suction of air within the dome sucked up the remnants and sent them into recycling. She watched Sir Thomas deliver his speech again, six and a half hours after the speech had originally been delivered. She thumbed the console of the Dev and brought up the Tag survey numbers. Acceptance of Tag was up a staggering fifty-five percent and was across the board, in all Geographics. Using this Dev she couldn’t bring up the demographics, and switched back to Sir Thomas’s speech, but was interrupted before he finished by the flashing of a red light in the corner of the screen.
Oche appeared at the touch of her thumb, standing back from the chair she was in and with his hands on his hips.
She said, “Zoom and rotate on my head,” and the image zoomed into her head in the Devscreen in front of her. She swung the image left and right, noting the highlights of blonde on top of the base of dark gold and straight, razor look of the two cent of hair sweeping back in an arc to a sharp cut off at the base of her skull, and in a half circle around her ears. It looked sensational.
“That’s great, Oche, thanks,” she said, and checking how much he had deducted from her cred, gave him a tight smile. He smiled sweetly back, and she switched off the hair Dev.
An hour later she walked out of the SingCom residence to her Bulgari T8. Getting in, she said, “Take me to UNPOL headquarters.”
Everything was in motion now. Her promotion to this role had been ordained in the tempering of her youth — the hammer blows to her sensibilities, each a strike on the path to this point when she, by virtue of UN law, would become the de facto head of all armed forces within the world, including the colonies.
Cochran smiled to herself as she settled back in the plush leather seat of the Bulgari. Her thoughts moved ahead to the day when she would hold absolute power. Knowing that this contribution was one of the most transparent, regulated and scrutinized positions in the world, she also knew she could and would control those who were supposed to be scrutinizing. Due to the nature of command, the command cannot function unless there is a singular head. She remembered Sunita’s words, spoken to her when she first left the Foundation, ‘With singularity there is opportunity’. And later when she had inducted her into the Hawks, ‘With the right set of circumstances, it is possible to rule the world. It is also possible that the right set of circumstances could be set in motion through careful planning and a span of time that obscures the origins of the source of the action. Blended, adjusted, tweaked, until the right constituents have formed.’ And that time was now. If their plans worked, within three months those circumstances would bear fruit.
As Cochran crossed the bridge from Sentosa, heading towards the West Coast Travway, the New Singapore skyline stood tall and proud. The sky was blue and dotted with white fluffy clouds, the outside temperature a hot thirty-one cel as the Devscreen on the console told her. Inside the Bulgari it was a cool nineteen cel. She wanted to feel cool, fresh. She turned to look at the traffic, the humanity around her in the auto-piloted family saloons, and thought of the Tag.
By this time next year most of you, perhaps all, by law will be wearing the Tag, and how many of you will be driving around? She thought it ironic that in New Singapore the Tag survival figure was pretty high. More than forty percent of the population would live. Hong Kong too would fare well with an even higher percentage surviving there, but then that was inevitable with the low population bases of these Geographics.
Her mind flashed back to the secret meetings held at the SingComm residence or Sir Thomas’s Env at the Marque. The selection committee, they’d called it. Because of the high concentration of UNPOL officials and corporate telcos and finance, New Singapore had received a lot of attention. The list had more exceptions than other lists and the number to be culled was less than three and a half million. They had debated long on what they called inclusions, people who should be included in the cull despite their passing the criteria for exclusion.
She pictured it in her mind, remembering with absolute clarity that moment at the Singcomm residence when Sunita had gone through the final agreed formula for the cull. Their ‘algorithm’, as it became known. After much
