Gabriel put the bottle down and continued, “Well that was the Hawks and it is the start of the endgame in Sir Thomas and the other Hawks’ plan to make sure that every new special Tag contains a toxic wafer. On a command relayed through the downlink to the Tag, the wafer will melt, releasing the toxin into all tagged humans with an Intelligence Score of less than a hundred. Within a week of the command, the first victims will start to die. Before the end of the second week we estimate that about six point three billion people will be dead.”
Again, I had to pause as the scale of what Gabriel had said sunk in before signaling at him to go on.
“At this point, the Hawks will move globally to declare a national disaster and proclaim that the deaths are probably an attack from an alien power that we have been unable to detect. Despite there being no evidence to support this theory, the Military Security Council will then issue a global state of emergency and, acting on behalf of the United Nation of Earth Security Council, declare martial law. Under martial law, many of our basic freedoms will be suspended.”
The enormity of this struck me full on. My body reacted. I vomited. A hot flash had spiked through my guts as the realization of the importance of where I was hit me. It was simply too much, because in my gut, my ‘gut feel’, I knew that everything Gabriel had told me and shown me, was the truth.
Luckily there was a recycler next to the Dev and after I had vented my stomach of the ProCarboVite bar in it, I spat, and looked up at Gabriel, wiping my mouth with the sleeve of my outers. He looked back. There was no expression on his face, it was just him. It said there is no artifice here, no hidden agenda. This is real.
Seeing the panic in my face, Gabriel said, “It’s OK, Jonah. We can stop it — you and I and our friends — we can. This thing cannot happen but we know when they want it to happen. We know which Ents are building the wafers, which scientists perfected the formula for the toxin, and whether they were murdered after completing their work. And we know that the Intelligence Score limit has been set to one hundred. But what we don’t know is which people are connected with the planned moves directly after the extermination. If we can find out who those people are, then when we blow the whistle we have a chance to block them. But if we blow the whistle now, they’ll either fade away to fight another day, or move to implement immediately, and through perhaps messier means.
“The Tag Law is due to be put up for global PopVote on 15 March 2110. We probably have a week after that, maybe two, in which the Tags will be distributed. We understand that the tag can be self-administered, and has a fool-proof delivery mechanism. So they’ll probably be delivered to each person’s home. If you haven’t injected it, you’ll be noticed by your absence online and requested to report to a nearby hospital to have it administered to you. That’s what we know about the delivery.
“Shortly after it is confirmed to have been delivered to all households and individuals, the implementation suggestions will start. Globally the deadline to inject the Tag will be two weeks so that by 1st April everyone should have injected it. After that Sir Thomas will take the serial numbers of the Tags sent to people, and using lists that the Hawks have drawn up, will match people with serial numbers and issue the command to the Tags. In essence, it is the largest eugenics experiment ever conducted.”
I held my hand up to interrupt Gabriel’s monologue.
“Hang on, why don’t you just expose all of this? You know where the Tags are, you know about the wafer and the toxin, so why not just lay it all out there and wait for the response? I mean the whole thing, the Tag Law, the toxic tag, the lists, the Hawks — everything…” I trailed off as, while I was talking, I realized that what I was saying would be fruitless.
Gabriel smiled. “I don’t need to probe your mind to know what you are thinking, and yes you’re right, it wouldn’t work. All of our evidence to date is circumstantial. Everything is covered by extremely plausible denial, and we, or rather the information we supply, would simply be regarded as another crazy urban legend. The Tags would be swapped for genuine Tags, they’d be offered for inspection. The toxic Tags would vanish, probably get destroyed — it is easy enough to replace them in the future. We’d be discredited, arrested, and brain-wiped off the planet. And some time, one or two decades from now, the Hawks would suggest an upgrade and then they’d kill another five hundred million just for good measure.”
I nodded. It was true — the evidence without a toxic Tag was purely circumstantial, the claim so outrageous it would be aligned with the wildest conspiracy theories of the wildest crazies. It would be deemed as laughable to bring an action against Sir Thomas. There was no hard evidence, only conjecture, and worse there was no one to bring any action against. That I believed it and understood it only made the task ahead of me the more impossible.
“So what is it you specifically need me to do?” I asked.
“We need you to go inside. You need to gain Sir Thomas’s trust. You’re an arbitrator. We want you to use being his ‘nephew’ to get inside the Hawks and find out what you can. In parallel, work out a case against the Tag Law, and at the same time build a stronger case for individual privacy laws. Just before the vote we’ll go online, lay out the case, expose what we know and call for a full public investigation. If we’re successful, we’ll be heroes. If we’re not, we’ll probably be dead within the week.
“Of course, those arguments can be worked on under the pretext of building a strong case against any amendment to the Tag Law for the Hawks. The deeper you get, the more your uncle will trust you. He has to see you as a Hawk and therefore you have to become a Hawk. That’s not going to be easily achieved because your uncle views you as a smart liberal softie. We’re going to have to change that, which means you have to quickly scale up into a ruthless person. We’ll help with minor background alterations, but within a month you’re going to have to do some pretty awful things to people to convince Sir Thomas you’ve got the makings of a Hawk. You won’t be able to do this immediately but the clock is ticking. We’ve got to be able to expose everything before the vote on 15th March next year. Your change in character must be seen as a reaction to an event. It must be explainable, for the deeper you get the more your motive and desire will be tested.”
I nodded. I understood exactly where Gabriel was coming from. My so-called uncle had at times tested my viewpoint on various subjects, from education to crime and related punisments. I realized that my arguments and position was that of ‘a liberal softie’, as Gabriel had put it.
Gabriel continued in same soft, even tone.
“At some point you will be asked to open your mind so that a telepath can examine you and report what they see. You must pass that inspection. You must appear to open your mind but you must shield what you really know. It will be nearly impossible to do so, and discovery of, for example this discussion, would mean either instant death or brain wipe. I have had over twenty years of practice with using my mind to probe others, and I find it difficult to resist, but there is a chance that we can train you well enough that you will survive. We will need to work on that next, but first I want to tell you about what we know.”
Gabriel talked about the circumstantial evidence that they did have, and it was substantial. There was a lot of material that I was going to have to study at length later, as in my state and with the volume of the information, I was only able to grasp the highlights of what I was being told and shown.
“You look exhausted,” Gabriel said, smiling. “Perhaps we should rest for a little while and recharge our batteries?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head and looking at the time in the bottom corner of the Devscreen. “There isn’t time. We must continue — you still have to teach me how to protect myself against a mind probe.”