Chapter 3

I awoke to the memory of that nights dreams and with a brain that could not possibly be still inside my head. I vaguely remember two more shots of Kracas then the oh so sweet oblivion I had not felt for many a year. Stumbling to the dispenser, I dialled up a tomato juice, Tabasco and Soya sauce, added a teaspoon of salt and broke a Wake-u-Up capsule into it. After waiting for the dubious chemical froth to disappear, I held my nose and swallowed it all in one go, gagging as I did so. Sitting down and sweating profusely, I waited for the homemade sober solution to take effect. And it did with a vengeance. Still aching from the funny sleeping position and having spoons trying to pop my eyes out, I suddenly regained a clarity of thinking that hurt even more. It had been a long time since I had felt that. In fact not since the days of the team.

Remembering the memories of last night, I went back to the time when we had returned from the surveillance operation and we had activated the final part of the gem. This was the ultimate bit of the connection. It allowed us to see what the others saw. It made us all fall over when we did it. It was so disconcerting. But after weeks of practice we were able to see via each other’s eyes, giving us a field of view that is just indescribable. The biggest hurdle was the fact that you could see yourself. That was the part we had to be able to control the best. Disconcerting? Very. But the advantage it gave us. Unbelievable. And the next year of field trials persuaded the powers that be that the gems where what were needed.

And that’s when the troubles started.

The technology was not that advanced but the application of it was unbounded. Apart from the military, the other early trials were to the medical arena, between surgeon and patient. What an advantage for the surgeon to ‘feel’ how the patient felt. To be able to regulate the patients response almost instantly. It was a stunning breakthrough. The military run with it, equipping thirty teams with the military version.

But then, as with everything, there were those that did not agree. And that was not a problem, since society at the time encouraged people to have their own views. The demonstrations were peaceful enough at first but then as people grew bolder, so did the mindset change and hence violence increase from the extremists.

Big Brother IS watching. Big brother CAN and WILL take control of your implants, became the slogan of a whole new generation.

Then it got bad.

Since there was only one company that could manufacture the gems and thus could charge what they wished, it created a class above all other. An elite that could do no wrong, since it was possible to modify, for a price, the implants to interface with a wide range of devices. It allowed the elite to virtually control society and hence the mega corporations, since most of these elite were these corporations. And since one corporation owned the implants, it was only a matter of time until they wanted the technology.

What started as a conflict eventually became known as the Decker Wars, since at that time the corporations were still reined in by the governments and as such the corps could not be seen to be participating in any armed conflict. There wars were traditionally fought by lawyers and pens, not by soldiers and guns. So they used the Deckers as their proxies, publicly condemning the atrocities but supporting their factions to the hilt. My team and I were some of those proxies. And because of the gems, we were the best

We all know how long and bloody it became.

As with all war’s it started small. A little raid on a corps headquarters’, a little hacking there. A testing for all sides. It did not take long for that to escalate in to open conflict, first in the open spaces of un-urbanised areas. A few casualties, but not that many really, since the physical war was just a diversion for the real war, fought silently and by semi-sentient artificial intelligences, the one where the computers probed, looked and probed again to get around corporate firewalls and other electronic defences, where the biggest and the fastest were just not enough.

All this while the governments turned a blind eye since the single reason that they were in power in the first place was corporate money and any opposition to them had a habit of, well, losing themselves.

The governments left it too long. By the time they woke up to the fact that the common people were now the ones that wanted their blood, and seeing that the corps were not going to back down, they acted as swiftly and as decisively as a piece of lemon in a cocktail. The corps just brushed them under the carpet, said that they were now in control and thus the world broke up into the confederations that we are used to today.

Then the conflict became the war.

Since all the electronic defences were similar in nature, it was virtually impossible to get anywhere. Once this was realised, brut force attacks became the norm. Since the Deckers were driven by greed, the corps knew that they had an army, but the problem with wars is that t becomes very difficult to pay with money, so what other forms of payments were available, beyond the normal extortion paths? People liked to feel safe, like to be in control and liked to eat. So the corps started to fund the conflicts with what were fast becoming luxury items, since most corps would now only make for their own, exports stopped and almost overnight, the world was plunged into a dark ages that would become the precursor to the Corporate Wars. Remember, the Deckers were the prime ammunition for this one, with the corps as the driving force.

For the next year, the Deckers and their families were treated well as long as they performed. Heroes and villains were made and died as the battles became more and more bloody. The only thing that shone out form this was that no one at all had used a nuclear device in any shape or form. The people of the world marvelled at this but if they only knew the truth. The truth that all the corps, for all of their difference, for all of their hatred, had only one god. And that god was profit. They knew that if you destroyed beyond repair the planet, killed all the people, the power base that is fundamental to all the corps would disappear. Use nuclear weapons, you destroy the resources. Without resources, there would be no products. Without products, there would be no consumers. Without consumers, there would be no money. And with no money came no profits and hence no corporations.

The smart ones among you have now realised that once the war started, the corps were making enormous profits, be it by gains in territory or stolen technology, they were making profits. The heads of these corporations decided individually, that it was in the best interests of all the corps to keep the war going but people were getting tired of the day to day worry of will I live or will I die, that they got together and decided to let the Decker War die a natural death. For a short time at least.

A few years passed, during which time the Earth started to settle back into a routine without death and destruction. This was the age in which the gems were fully utilized, with massive integration into the infrastructure. More and more did they become connected to the computers and utilities, allowing a few people to control what once took tens of people. After all, many had died in the War and many key skills were few and far between. The gem integration was a savior for many an enclave and nation.

But as in the past, greed begets jealousy and the corporate enclaves, after a few mergers, became the path for the future. And with it, war again. But this became known as the Corporate Wars, and as such were larger and more vicious than before. This time, though, they differed in one respect. It has long been said that the present should always learn from past mistakes. That they did. The greatest mistake was not starting the war but not throwing the resources in to win. The corps did that now, with machines of war that could carry the battle anywhere on the planet and even into space. These terrifying machines started as remote drones, grew to automated systems controlled by artificial intelligence but soon they became massive and fearsome in body and form. It was not long before the gems of the operators were modified to almost meld the man to the machine artificial intelligence.

Across space and land did these robots run amoke with there operators back at base, but as each bot became bigger and faster, so did the distance that they fought from the base and therefore the response times increase. There was only one step left.

Starting with the criminal elements and ending with volunteers the mind and gem of an operator were removed from their body and grafted into a bot. There was no greater honor than to become one with a machine. Your family would be looked after for ever for the sacrifice.

This worked well at first, these bots being so good at their jobs that an elite was born, born to be obsessed with winning at all costs and protecting the corp. But as with everything, they got out of control and started to wreck havoc on the very people that had given them life in the first place. Not all the corps were that stupid though. They had genetically modified the brains just enough so that the immune system (or what was left of it) of the brain would rebel against the gem. Once that happened, past a certain point, the gem exploded as it was designed to do. Within months, all that was left of the machines were spare parts. And what was left of the Earth outlawed the gem technology.

That is until I received a new one.

You will be asking yourself, where do I fit into all this? Well, it is a long story, and one which needs to be told. A story that only a few people knew since they died two centuries ago.

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