UNIVERSAL TURBULENT

LI - PLANET EARTH

Peaches saw the executive's discomfort and felt a strange sense of superiority. She participated in the horror because she was too afraid to say no. Quinn did it for personal gain. That made her the better person. Didn't it?

Quinn turned his back to the video. "So? I asked for a report, but a tour of some god damned gravel pit! Where the hell is she?"

A muscle twitched in Baba's cheek. Voice presidents come and vice presidents go. God help this son of a b***h if he ever fell out of favor. "Yes, sir. Take a look at the woman. Notice how they wear scraps of red and blue?"

Quinn hadn't noticed but was not going to admit it. "Of course. What's your point?"

"The point", Peaches said patiently, "is that gangs have formed. The reds and the blues".

"Representing those why support us and those who don't", Quinn said brightly.

"No", Baba replied. "I'm afraid not". The words "dumb s**t" went unsaid but were clear nonetheless.

"Then what are they?" Quinn demanded, his annoyance clear to see.

"They are equivalent to street gangs", Peaches put in, "created by us, and led by our agents. The whole idea is to divide the prisoners into groups and turn them against each other".

"Brilliant!" Quinn responded enthusiastically. "I love it!"

"We are glad you approve", Baba said dryly. "Now watch what happens".

Quinn wasn't sure he liked the other man's tone, but was forced to accept it. As the camera panned left and right, the executive noticed that all sorts of garbage littered the ground. There were scraps of paper, items of cast-off clothing, and lots of empty meal paks.

A crowd appeared up ahead. It parted slowly, as if reluctant to admit someone new. The camera equipped cyborg pushed her way through. Quinn noticed that the women who passed to either side had red and blue clothes braided into their hair.

An open space appeared, and there, at its very center, stood the woman he had been waiting to see. Sophie Doug Douglas still managed to look both pretty and fashionable in spite of the circumstances. She wore a waist length black leather jacket, tank top, and matching pants.

Quinn noticed that every eye was on the businesswoman. Predictable, if the audience consisted of males, but none were present. So what was the ineffable quality that people like Sophie Doug Douglas had? It didn't seem fair. The audio claimed his attention.

"So", Sophie continued, "where did the gangs come from? They were here when you arrived, right? Just waiting to recruit you. And what do they stand for? Truth? Liberty? Justice? Does anyone know?"

The camera looked left, then right. No one raised a hand. "Exactly", Sophie said soberly. "They don't stand for anything. But they want things, don't they?"

The former executive pointed toward a woman in the front row. "How about you, Citizen? You're wearing blue. What do the blues expect of you?"

The woman was silent at first, so much so that Quinn wondered if she would speak. But she did speak, and in a voice loud enough for most to hear. "They told us to hate the reds".

"Precisely", Sophie agreed, her eyes scanning the crowd. "And to the benefit of whom? Beyond the leaders, that is?"

"It's to their benefit", a woman shouted, pointing toward the clouds. "In order to weaken us!"

The crowd roared its approval, little pieces of red and blue clothes fluttered toward the ground, and a klaxon sounded. Flares exploded overhead, a bullet struck the woman who was pointing upward, and the crowd came apart. Baba touched a button, and the holo faded to black.

Quinn reflected on what he had seen. The security agents had answered his question. Rather than making her more compliant, the pit had strengthened her Sophie Doug Douglas' resolve. He looked from Baba to Peaches. "So? What would you suggest?"

"Jerk her out of there", the female officer responded, "before she leads an uprising".

Quinn nodded. "And you, Officer Baba? Do you concur?"

"No", the other man replied darkly. "I don't. I suggest that you terminate Citizen Doug Douglas while you can. She's too dangerous to live".

Though ruthless, and indirectly responsible for thousands of nameless deaths, the businessman had never ordered a murder before. Symbolic killings, yes, such as when he fired people to cut costs, but not the real thing. The fact that he could do so sent a shiver down his spine.

He looked at Baba, a big man who looked as though he could administer a death sentence with his bare hands. Directly, personally, while he looked into the victim's face.

Baba, his eyes steady, stared back. The challenge was obvious. I'll kill you. Could you do the same?

Quinn knew that he probably couldn't, not in anything that resembled a fair fight, but he knew something else as well. He had the power to say no, which Baba did not.

"Thank you, Officer Baba, but no. Not because I doubt your judgement. But because she has information that we need. Pull the b***h out of there and put her in solitary confinement".

The security officers nodded, waited for Quinn to clear the room, and followed behind.

The microbot was the size of a period at the end of a sentence. Its storage banks were full. That being the case, it crossed the ceiling, slipped through a c***k, and mated with its "tender", an extremely small device that served a total of sixteen "bugs".

The tender charged the microbot's power oak, accepted the dara it had collected, and sent a quarter-second of code. It had no way to know who would receive the information or how it would be used. It didn't even know that it didn't know. Ignorance was bliss.

* * *

It was dark, very dark, and there were no navigational lights to mark the transport's progress, just the momentary sound of its engine as the aircraft approached the coast and sped inland.