through from top to bottom, a smile slowly spreading across my lips.
I read.
‘My fellow humans.
By now most of you living in the European and the American Geographics have realized that your Personal Unique Identifier, your PUI, has been deleted. Those waking up tomorrow morning in Asia will realize the same. This event happened at Midnight, New Singapore time, and is a global event. That means that you are not alone. Everyone’s identity has been deleted from all population databases on Earth, the Moon and Mars. There are no backups — it was necessary to delete those too.
This had to be done because over 75 % of you have injected the Tag and the Tag contains a toxin that was going to be released at midnight by Sir Thomas Bartholomew Oliver. The only way to stop this crime against humanity was to destroy all PUIs.
We are now at a crossroads in the history of humankind. We are nameless and being nameless we have no past. We have no property. We have no cred. This would be an easy time for humanity to slip into chaos and anarchy. And if we do, then we have no future.
There is an alternative to anarchy and chaos. Write in your Devsticks who you are and include all the members of your family and where they are. Share this with the first person you can. You should each then give a copy of what you have written to the other person. As you meet others, do the same. This is the only way of collectively establishing who we are. In another 24 hours we will set up sites where you may register yourselves and your families.
Respect your neighbor’s property. Respect and defend their property as if it was your own.
Take care of the young and the old, the young especially. If you see a young person looking lost, ask them who they are and where their parents are. If they do not know, give them shelter but do not take them out of the area that they are in. If you do need to do that, then leave trace of where you are going. Register them if they can tell you their name. If not, provide a clear description and register that.
Parents: if your child is not with you, you should go to them immediately.
There is no cred, therefore the monetary system that we have relied on for so long has gone. If you were wealthy, now you are not. If you were poor, now you are not. Some of you will think of this as an opportunity to grab a disproportionate share of the resources that are currently available. This will lead to chaos. Share what you have with your neighbor and teach them to do the same. In sharing what we have, and respecting what others have, lies a golden future. This statement applies to material and non-material properties.
The future of humanity depends on what we do over the next few days, weeks and months. Think of this as the final triumph of good over evil and humanity will have a glorious future. Think of this as a way to gain advantage over your fellow humans and we will have no future.
Further instructions will follow.
With great respect and humility,
Gabriel Alexander Zumar. New Singapore, 1st March 2110, 12:01am.
Elder brother to Mark Anthony Zumar.
Husband to Martine Shorne Zumar.
PRESS HERE to see the evidence against Sir Thomas and the reason we had to delete the PUIs.’
Gabriel’s virus had succeeded in preceding the cull command — the virus attached to the messages I sent from Wigley’s house. The letter we had worked on was proof that the cull command had failed. Our virus had deleted all PUIs in existence. Now none of us had a name.
As the document scrolled large on the living room wall, the icon hovered over the ‘PRESS HERE’ in the last sentence of the letter. The crowd was silent.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said to Mariko, softly whispering in her ear, my eyes flicking to the hallway. As we walked down the hall, the door to Sir Thomas’s study opened and Charles, seeing us, ran the few steps to block the door to the outside. He stood on the balls of his feet, his hands by his sides. I pulled up and Mariko stepped in front of me, smiling and holding out her hand to Charles. I thrust my thoughts into his brain; his eyes shifted and he smiled at me. Thinking in Mandarin.
The loss of focus was enough and Mariko fired the Maloo-modified Devstick, twin darts appearing in Charles’s chest. He looked down at the darts as if offended and fell to the floor. Two pools of blood marked the spot where the carbon fiber bolts had entered. His legs started shaking, twitching and then they stopped and he fell slumping against the door, his dead eyes staring at me, still offended.
Sir Thomas appeared in the study doorway as Mariko hit the button and the outer door opened. She went through.
“Take care of yourself and our child,” I urged as I shut the door on her, and locked it.
Glancing down I saw the butt of a gun sticking up from Charles’s armpit. I quickly knelt, grabbing it and pulling. But it didn’t come free. I looked up, fumbling with the catch of the holster over the hammer of the gun, as Sir Thomas advanced, his hand going into his jacket and pulling free the dagger he had used to kill Shido, which he or Charles must have retrieved.
I was too slow and Sir Thomas was on me before I could free the gun. His arm swept back for the blow, but I reached out with my mind and screamed, “Stop!” throwing the thought into his mind. He reeled back as if I had struck him. I held the thought and wrenched at the gun butt. It came free. But the effort caused me to lose my grip on Sir Thomas’s mind. His arm swung up and I twisted sideways. The dagger cut through my outers and blazed a trail of pain across the left side of my stomach.
Sir Thomas saw the gun as I rose from my knees. He turned, running for the door of the study. I brought the gun to bear, scrambling to my feet, but I slipped on Charles’s jacket, the cloth sliding my foot out from under me. I went down hard. Seeing Sir Thomas disappear through his study door, I scrambled up again, ignoring the searing pain from the knee I’d twisted in my fall. In three strides I was at his study door.
He wasn’t in the room. The clearfilm doors to the balcony were open, curtains, billowing in with the breeze. Gun extended, I limped, dragging my left leg behind me as fast as I could, across the room to the balcony, and edged my way around the door. The curtains blew in my face, tangling with my vision. Pushing them aside with my left hand, I stepped out onto the balcony, quickly turning left and right. He wasn’t there. He’s gone back inside, I thought, but a glance at the doors to the living room and his bedroom confirmed they were shut.
Then I saw it. A black rope tied off the railing of the balcony. I limped over to it and looked down. It ended just above the floor of Topside. I peered out and saw him, running, surprisingly fast for his age, towards the walky that lead to the golf course. He disappeared from view under the trees that shaded the walky. I looked down the rope: it was a good fifteen meters to the floor below me. With my damaged knee I wasn’t sure if I could make it and turned to go back inside and get the Lev.
I heard the savage thumping of a copter’s blades and turned as it came into view in the red glow of the SingCom sign. It flew in closer and I could make out Marty in the pilot’s seat. She gave me a thumbs-up and then made a sign with her thumb and little finger extended from a fist and held up to her ear. Devstick, I thought, and pulled the Devstick from my jacket pocket.
“Mark, where is he?”
It was Gabriel. He was in the copter — I could hear the blades in the background, Gabriel shouting over their noise.
“He’s run out onto Topside, headed for the golf course. I’m going after him. Can you track him for me?”
“Yes, but hold on for a sec. We’re going to drop Maloo off to take care of the other Hawks. Don’t worry about Mariko, she’s signaling us. She’s on the roof.”
The copter swept over my head and I could only see the tail, then Maloo, as he swung out and dropped down on a hoist. Looking at me, with a machine gun strapped over his shoulder, he grinned. He dropped but swung in and on top of the roof of the penthouse, disappearing from my view. I plugged in my earpiece and shoved the Devstick back in my pocket and the gun in my trousers. I grabbed the rope.
I held tight as I swung over the balcony. Though I had never done this before, I had watched a film of people abseiling down buildings. I stretched my legs out straight and held the rope tightly. Then my body twisted in the gust of wind blown downwards by the copter as it circled away from the roof. I banged against the wall, the pain from my knee shooting through me and almost causing me to lose my grip. But I held on. The gun slipped out of my waist and went down my bottom outer leg. I heard it clatter on the floor below. I looked up but my hands slipped on the smooth rope. And I slid. Bumping the wall, sending spikes of pain from my knee, I held on as tightly as I could
