3G: the Glowing Green Goo

When SG finished her retelling, Zax and Aran understood why she had been so reluctant.

If Zax had been surprised to learn the Black Market actually existed, he was absolutely flabbergasted to learn what it did far behind the curtain. Exploiting people’s misery and despair was morally bankrupt, but the victims accepted the surgery and outrageous debt as lesser evils. Surgery itself was a gruesome practice, but it actually helped or saved people. But enslavement? Shock collars? Forced to fight? Sometimes to the death? For entertainment!? And that was only the part SG had personally seen! She knew other parts existed, although she didn’t have details.

It felt like the caricatural villains in the stories he had grown up with. No, the Black Market was even worse: those people actually existed. Those events had actually happened.

Maybe they still do.

The thought sent a shiver down his spine.

The winged girl depicted the arena’s daily life. The worst part was not in what she described. It was how. How… casual and natural it sounded to her. She didn’t explicitly mention it, but the dotters had no doubt she had already killed before. Many times. It shed a disturbing, but revealing and somehow reassuring light on her panic attack, back when she had accidentally drawn Zax’s blood.

She never talked about herself, but she had indeed met monsters. Abominations who came to the arena of their own volition, to revel in the pain and suffering they could openly inflict. As wrong as it was, a tiny part of Zax couldn’t help but be relieved at the existence of worse people than him in the world.

Their fun usually ended when they inevitably faced the arena’s favourite, another sadist called Harpy. Despite the way SG spoke of her, with the most vitriol of all, but Zax couldn’t help but consider she wasn’t as twisted as the others. That one’s actions seemed more geared toward making the others react than dealing physical or emotional damage. Aran would later confirm a similar impression. Playing with her prey like that, Zax would bet his shop against dirty shoes she had feline mutations. Probably a puma, with all that jumping around. SG must have been toyed with and taken it personally.

Their narrator only started to express fear – actual terror – when came the part of the Enforcer raid in the arena. She had been incredibly lucky. Zax didn’t dare to connect the younger ‘doom harbinger’ to the plot he had partly unveiled in the Core, but Aran didn’t share such qualms. They found hard to believe Enforcers would shoot fleeing people in the back, but they had no information on how they would handle an intervention of such scale where most involved people didn’t have a bracelet.

As SG was proof, it would have been close to easy for them to disappear.

It explained their friend’s paranoia about people knowing where she was too. It was a wonder she had accepted their help like she had.

Her general background justified the strange gaps and non-gaps in her general knowledge, and a few quirks the dotters had noted but not thought much of.

When she was done, everyone’s emotions were so raw there was only one thing to do: a long and tight group hug, full of ugly crying, snot and wordless stammers.

The trio ended up emotionally exhausted, but closer than ever. They bathed in the afterglow, slumped on the couch, starring at nothing and thinking about nothing. They didn’t even try to get up before falling in a dreamless slumber, one after the other.

Aran’s alarm was accompanied by two more groans than usual; a folded sofa for three wasn’t conductive to a remedial rest. The friends untangled, stretched, and awkwardly went about their day, religiously avoiding mentions of the previous night. The talks, emotional rollercoasters and tear sessions had made them closer than ever. Falling asleep in the same couch still felt like a boundary too far to cross.

Aran rushed to get ready and left for her job; Miss Pen, the most autonomous elder of the dot, was asking for her more and more often. SG opened an online lesson where she had left it, and Zax went to his workshop for a new swarm injection and to continue his work. The atmosphere wasn’t tense, but between the three of them, a total of four words had been spoken, with a profusion of half-hidden glances.

It would pass, but it was still unpleasant.

Zax was finally set on his desktop when he realised SG’s nanites were still running. He had fallen asleep without turning it off.

Oops.

Well, having that much direct readings would make for a better final result, so it was no big deal; he would simply work with the part before she fell asleep. Recording a dream was within his nanites’ purview, but understanding or translating this kind of cerebral activity was a different beast altogether. None of his programs could do it.

Holding on to his promise of not watching without explicit authorisation, he compiled the final testimony and had an old program check it for integrity. It would tell him if parts were too lacking to be of use, such as a section with too much haziness to make a picture, or a time frame too monotone or jumbled to determine how long it had actually lasted. Those had been serious problems in the earliest versions of the recording software; it would show what needed to be fixed or recorded again without him looking at it.

Great news: it was perfect. Well, good enough, at least. SG wouldn’t have to go through it again. Zax had been worried the events had been too long ago and the memories too repressed to be directly usable, part of why he had aimed for such thorough calibration before starting, but thinking back it had been silly. Breaking out was a pivotal point in her life, of course she wouldn’t forget it so easily. And repression was the apex of not thinking about it.

When he delivered the news, it was accompanied by a second one: since they had a better idea of what had triggered her panic attack, they could more or less be sure it wouldn’t happen if she was alone in his home.

It freed him to go deliver her testimony right away. He’d rather not; it was clear she didn’t want to be alone so soon after opening her heart, and he felt the same. Aran’s lunch break wasn’t enough for him to make the trip and back, so they waited until she was done with her day, mid-afternoon. With a few reassuring words about her future and hopefully not raising any flags, he was on his way.

The handyman went to the Enforcer station Officer Bor had his office in, but he had to stay in the waiting room a moment before he was let in. The building and its insides were surprisingly typical of an administrative workplace; an open space with retractable partitions between desks for those wishing for isolation. Everything was made of mass-produced, decent quality but easily replaceable material. The rooms for detention or interrogation were probably elsewhere. Everything was bustling with activity; the whole force was still quite busy with the recent series of investigations related to the attack on the Core. Or maybe it was a normal state? Zax pondered as he abided.

When he was finally called, the towering officer was courteous but not less busy than the rest, so Zax went straight to the point. When he put the custom thumb drive in the desk, Officer Bor instantly recognised it. This one wasn’t made of nanites, but it was the model Zax based the last one on. He explained what the recording was, how he had made it, what it should show, and that he hadn’t seen the content himself. He gave the barest explanation of who it came from and asked not to press the issue. On his witness’ behalf. What was recorded casted some doubts on Enforcers in general.

“I came to you because meeting you personally led me to trust and respect your integrity and ability as an Enforcer. Even if I still don’t understand what made you put me in a leading position. That trust does not extend to your colleagues. You know why.”

He hadn’t pressed the issue, but Zax hadn’t forgotten the two agents who had tried to stop him when he had responded to the emergency call. Even if they were possibly working under a Circle’s Family at the time, it did make him wary of random Enforcers too. Especially when people outside the dot were involved.

“I thought you were the least bad option of all three. Simple as that. I wasn’t happy with it either, but your delayed message gave me more faith. Now thank you for the recording, but what do you expect from me?”

“To watch it, or at least skim it, give it to the relevant services or people, and tell me what kind of fallout to expect for the witness. They live in fear and hiding since we first met.”

“Acceptable.” He nodded. “You already set a precedent, so it should be all that will be asked of her, like for you.” An eyebrow was raised but he answered his immediate thoughts nonetheless. “Maybe a reward will be granted if she revealed necessary information we were missing, but without a way to contact her and with a clear desire for anonymity, she’ll have to come and claim it herself. Do you think she would need to be placed under a witness protection program?”

“If you can earn her trust, it would probably feel safer, but I don’t think they are targeted yet. No one who knows they exist should know if she is alive, and definitely not where they are now. I came to you so this recording wouldn’t make her a target. Can I trust you with that? Also, the precedent I set was with a live recording, not reconstructed. It could have an effect on the legal value, I don’t know. The drive has all the raw data as well, but I don’t know who else could read that for cross-reference.”

While Zax was talking, the officer readied his material and started to skim the recording as a private projection. Only he would see and hear anything.

“I won’t say where this recording comes from, but it wouldn’t be hard to infer it comes from my only outside visitor in weeks, and from there to watch your activity of the last weeks. The price of being so transparent with public information. I have an idea to blur that trace, but I’ll tell you more when I’m done here. I won’t be long.”

Zax nodded and obeyed. He was still reading the awards on the wall when Bor put his gear down.

“I see.”

Not long, indeed.

The officer was… something. Zax couldn’t tell. The recording had had some impact, but the programmer didn’t reckon he could read such tightly a controlled face even if the swarm was fully set in his brain.

“I advise you don’t watch it. There would be nothing to gain for a civilian.” The veteran stated before Zax could dwell on it. “The raids are well known and would be impossible to hide anyway, but the details of what they did and found are still veiled. I still know my involved colleagues were more tightly watched than usual, so this should be a great help. I will send it to the internal affairs and the raid leaders. They will decide if such use of… force was warranted. I can at least assure you there was no culling order, though.”

Zax’s eyebrows had lowered at the “lethal” so naturally fitting in the pause, but they rose to the ceiling at the last part.

“No need to be so surprised. That’s what your witness is afraid of, isn’t it? She did nothing wrong, but it would be a reasonable thought to have in her circumstances. You can reassure her. Even with the veil, there are hints about what’s happening.”

The mere existence of such an opaque veil uneased the dotter at a fundamental level. Annoying as it could be, transparency was a cornerstone of their culture, and for good reason.

“Many people were sent to the Circles since the actual raids started, but there were very few promotions in the updated Enforcer rooster. It raised questions, but now it makes more sense: they were not Enforcers who activated on the line of duty, but victims in need of more help than the dot could provide. Our healing centres are full too, but they are left alone, unlike after your last visit.”

Officer Bor kept explaining his reasoning and proving his position had been earned, but Zax couldn’t help but wonder what kind of mutation would come from a field activation. All devices broken, so they had to carry spares. The stress and physical exertion would make the 3G in their body more likely to activate, being severely wounded would make it a certitude, but would it affect the result? Did they keep packs of 3G with them just in case? Would it let them activate several times quickly? Would it affect the direction their mutations progressed?

Zax didn’t fancy where his inner thoughts were leading him, so he forced himself to stop. The previous night was still fresh in his mind, but he didn’t want to dive back in his hobby so fast.

Bor’s reasoning was clear and his hints easy to check, so the programmer was looking forward to announcing his winged friend she would soon be safe stepping outside his home.

Next came the officer’s plan to conceal his evidence’s origin. Apparently, there was a reward for his actions in the Core which Zax hadn’t claimed, as it required coming in person for ceremonial purposes. He vaguely remembered reading something about that, but it was just a medal and an honorary title. Basically, a line on his personal file and his resume, that would only be relevant or useful in niche occasions. Something he didn’t care enough to bother with, but not something he would reject if it was delivered to him.

It was supposed to be given in an official ceremony with all enforcers available present, but there happened to be a shortage of hands in the force at the moment. Instead, it was quickly done in the office, Zax was free to cringe as much as he wanted to at the idea of perhaps hundreds of people seeing it, and an irrefutable reason for coming in the station at such a moment was established. It wouldn’t help against a determined snoop, especially considering the nature of the recording, but it would delay them.

The human left the station with a spring in his step and a smile on his face. On a whim, he opted to enjoy the feeling by walking home instead of using the light road. He was barely halfway through the entertainment area when an unfortunately familiar voice called him:

“Hey you! The nanite expert!”

A woman with a single horn on the side of her head was trotting towards him, ruffling the least expressive standard clothes in the dot and sporting the shallowest business smile in the Shelter.