Zorro left the restaurant in good spirits, but Guillermo wasn’t happy with the encounter. He had never liked Zorro. He tolerated the man when they were in Puerto Plata, but now he felt that having to deal with him again, would be hard work. Well, he won’t have free meals and drinks here, that’s for sure, he thought to himself. The restaurant was doing well, the kids were taken care of financially, and Guillermo had a significant amount of money saved. As far as he was concerned, he had found the success that he’d always dreamed of.
Chapter 12
Project Neon
Where: The Royal Scepter, The United Nations of Europe and Americas, Albany, New York
When: 1345 hours, Thursday, October 3, 2041
Currency: UNEA credits
I was already thinking about the meetings with business partners outside the UNEA. If they were to take place, I would have to take care of the bracelet problem. I hoped Alex’s tech guy would prove his worth.
“Dom, the tech guy is waiting downstairs, shall we have him sent up?”
“Yes, Alex, please do that.”
If the guy manages to sort out the bracelet issue, we would need to get rid of him. I couldn’t allow any loose ends. The last thing I needed was for him to somehow get himself arrested and be placed in a vulnerable position. There’s no guarantee he wouldn’t testify to tampering with the tracking bracelet if the enforcers applied the right amount of pressure. Once he completed the job, I would give the order to take him out and then have Alex make it look drug-related or something of that nature.
“Dom, this is the guy I was telling you about,” said Alex.
“Hey kid, I hear you’ll be able to help me with this fancy piece of jewellery on my wrist,” I said.
“Oh God, you are Eddie Dominguez, head of Edom Group—oh my God!” said the tech guy.
“Yes, I am. Calm down, kid.”
“I am so sorry, sir, oh my God!” He said, in excitement.
“It’s all right, kid. Tell me what you can do about the bracelet,” I said.
“Umm, is it all right if I have a look?” he asked.
“Sure, go ahead,” I replied.
“Hmm, this is a model SP3-C14L series 2.5, equipped with 1.5 Terabyte Haze Hexcryption. For the layman, this is difficult to hack,” he said.
“But for you?” I asked.
“Piece of cake, sir. I will bypass the HexC protocols and carry out a reverse-ping, which will probably result in hitting a hot fence. Getting past the hot fence will be tricky, but I can do it. Once I do, I will have access to the monitoring platform. Once I’m in the platform, I can manipulate location reads to give off false location info,” he replied.
“Okay, what does this mean in English?” I asked.
“We don’t need to remove the bracelet. You see this nano-jack—right here on the side of the bezel? I can hook up to it, connect to the remote monitoring system, and make it think you are at location A, when actually you are in location B,” he explained.
“You can do that?” I asked.
“Indeed, sir. I can also redefine the location index in a way that allows you to choose the locations that you would prefer to display,” he replied.
“That is just perfect. Make it happen,” I said.
The kid did everything he said he would do, he even gave me a demo to prove that it had worked. When I looked up my current location, the system said I was at the office in Milwaukee. This was amazing. The best part was that no alarms had been triggered—we would have known right away if this had been the case. Within minutes enforcers would have stormed the hotel and taken me back into custody.
“Mr. Dominguez, there is something else I think you might be interested in. Do you mind if I show you?” he asked reluctantly.
“Sure, what is it?” I said.
He loaded up a screen on his comms device.
“This is something that my friend and I have been working on, we call it Project Neon. You see this right here? This is the blueprint for a singular nanite, the first of its kind. It is designed to alter a subject’s state of mind. Combine this nanite with thousands like it, and you can do things like repair brain cells and manipulate psycho-neural performance.
This requires a significant amount of input from medical practitioners for us to accurately develop the code. Of course, there is also all the red tape that goes with a project like this. For now, though, we know for a fact that we can execute a program that can alter the state of specific brain cells. With this, we can manipulate the parts of the brain responsible for producing dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, and oxytocin. One of the best things about this is the nanites can be remotely controlled via a comms network, allowing remote shutdown. This means that the nanites can be switched off from anywhere in the world and released through bodily fluids of one’s choosing.” he explained.
“Wait, are you telling me that you have designed a micro-robot that is capable of getting people high?” I asked.
“Umm yeah, pretty much,” he responded.
“And you can switch it off, and it can be released through blood, tears, sweat, or urine?” I asked.
“That’s right, if someone didn’t want the nanites detected in their system for whatever reason, they can be gotten rid of easily,” he said.
“Hmm, this is impressive stuff,” I said.
“Not only that, the nanites can be programmed to instruct the brain, to produce specified amounts of various chemicals. This will make it possible to control the intensity of any given experience,” he explained.
“Okay kid, you now have my attention. What about side effects?” I asked.
“As with anything
