Cybergeneration: President's Council

         Mildred Carter entered the President's office straight-backed and proud, new director's insignia flashing over her left shirt pocket.  She strove to control her expression; neutral with just a hint of pride until she was addressed.  She took three strides into the room and instantly had the attention of three of its occupants.  She acknowledged them with only a slightly warmer expression.  It wasn't until the man behind the desk deigned to notice her that she permitted her face to show anything more, and that was only after the automated doors swung silently closed behind  her.
         The doors were mostly symbolic.  In this age, in an area this secure, hard wood doors were little more than part of the local computer interface.  The fact that the doors were discreetly reinforced well enough to withstand a major explosion did not make the symbolism less meaningful. In truth, the closing of the doors signified that subtle and potent machines had activated, making the room as impenetrable to intrusion or surveillance as the far side of the moon. 
         Only when the room's primary occupant was certain that all was secure - this only took a few seconds, a single inhaled breath - did he acknowledge Mildred.
         "Director Carter, hello!  Glad you could make it!"  President Wyndham arose, his smile krinkling old laugh-lines around his eyes as his voice woke warm echoes in every listener, including Carter herself.  The silver-tongue cyber enhancement is excellent, she thought.  Have to look into getting one of those.
         "It's an honor, sir."  She permitted her face to warm into a humble smile while restraining the impulse to let her back or neck curve  when shaking the hand of the President of the Incorporated States of America.  She did not comment on the absurdity of suggesting that there was any question of her absence; her unexpected death would have been the only possible excuse.
         "Let me introduce you all around, "  he said.  The others rose, each stepping forward and offering a hand in turn.
         "Ziza Solomon, Director of the CDC, another recent promotion."  The CDC director's handshake was firm and cool.  Although Solomon stood no higher than five foot two, she had an air of authority that made it impossible to imagine you were looking down when you met her eyes.
         "Director," she said, her voice warm though she didn't smile.  Giving the all-business impression that Carter echoed.
         "Director."
         "Senator Frank Alda, Chairman of the Special Committee on Nanotechnological Terrorism Containment."  The Senator was a big bear of a man, skilled at giving the impression that he was simple and friendly.  His handshake and eye contact were warm almost to the point of flirtation.
         "Ma'am," he said.  His voice was open and kindly, just like his smile.  Carter knew better.  Here was another one who was all business, but she widened her smile to mirror his conviviality.
         "Senator."
         "Go ahead and call me Frank," he said.  He didn't let his smile completely drop, but his eyes were mobile, reading the entire room.
         "And this is Doctor Noah Ilsen, Consultant to the Committee and the CDC."
         "Doctor."  Here was an unknown quantity.  At about six feet, he was a hair taller than Carter herself.  Unlike the others, he just barely gave any social signals.  His handshake was almost cold.  He didn't speak until spoken to.
         "Director." he said.  He didn't seem unfriendly, exactly.  He just didn't seem anything.
         "Feel free to call me Mildred when we're not in company,"  Carter said to the room in general; she knew she was chumming the shark tank, but fortunately no one felt the urge to turn the meeting into any kind of power struggle.  They smiled at her invitation, but then turned to the President for their next move.  Carter's feeling of renewed alertness was oddly comfortable.
         "Let's be seated.  Anybody want anything?" the President asked.  All demurred, and sat.
         Frank was the first to speak.  "Well Director - Mildred - it would seem that you and Director Solomon have a common problem.  BuReloc is falling a little behind schedule.  I'm sure you have a plan for dealing with it, but it might be useful for us to all get on the same page."
         "Just to put this into perspective," she said, "Our problem is simply that we have a whole new class of undesirables.  Typical quarantine measures aren't working, and there is difficulty in convincing our operatives to use measures that we know will work."
         "And a big part of our problem," Director Solomon added, "Is that many of our operatives are scientists.  Real researchers who understand enough of the implications of the problem to know that the special measures will not address the problem as publicized."
         "Oh?"  President Wyndham arranged his face into an expression of shock, overtly enough that the humor was not lost.  "Director Solomon, are you suggesting that this administration is lying to its constituents?"
         "Of course not, Mister President,"  Solomon replied, her tone suggesting that she got the joke, but was using it to lead back to serious matters.  "I'm sure each of our member corporations has a well informed board of directors.  I am stating plainly that we are lying to our consumer base, and they are buying it, but our own people are not."
         The President sighed.  "Of course.  Propaganda only works on the subjects, not those who gather the data that gets processed into propaganda."
         Carter suspected what was coming and decided to deliver the straight line.  "Help me out here, maybe I missed a memo.  We aren't talking about preventing disease spread, are we?"
         It was Doctor Ilsen who answered, his voice low but his words well enunciated.  His eyes still seemed distant, focussed on no one.  "Yes, we are, in the immediate term, but there is a long-term implication of this particular disease that we need to be ready to deal with.  Everyone who catches the Carbon Plague is a dangerous disease vector, but the people who die of it are nothing, no threat at all, compared to those who survive.  "
         "So we temporarily quarantine areas where the carbon plague has struck, and move the carriers into permanent quarantine, at least until we the cameras are gone.  That's clear enough," Carter said.  "What I don't understand is why the next part is going so badly.  There have been too many breakouts and escapes from quarantine to be accounted for by the usual mistakes or carelessness.  Cremating these walking pathogens shouldn't be that difficult, considering the stakes."
         Carter wondered if anyone would protest her objectification of the plague victims or statement of the cost-effective quarantine procedure in place, but instead the room fell silent.  Alda breathed deeply, as if preparing for a high dive.  Ilsen remained lost in his own thoughts, hands in his lap, while the President shared a glance with Solomon and nodded to her, once, a tiny gesture that seemed to open the dam.
         "There are two other aspects of the problem, neither of which has made it into any public documents," Solomon said to Carter.  Finally Carter thought.  "What we are about to tell you is top secret.  Eyes only, labelled Datum Zero One and Datum Zero Two, if referred to in written documentation."
         Senator Alda got to his feet, heading for the bar.  "I need a drink.  Anyone else while I'm up?"
         The others declined again.  Carter noticed that the silence lingered, an acknowledgement that needing fortification was perfectly understandable, until the Senator had amost returned to his seat.
         Solomon got right back to it.  "Datum Zero One is simply this - the survivors may be malformed, but that's all.  They are not chronically ill or invalids or otherwise a drain on extant medical resources.  In fact, the symbiotic nanorobots seem to be providing some help to them; making them more disease resistant than typical, protecting them from extremes of environment and other distresses.  Of course there is no way of knowing yet, but it appears they might live full lifespans if permitted.  In two known cases survivors have become pregnant after infection.  They are currently in secure research facilities."  Ilsen had moved slightly as Solomon had talked, but he hadn't opened his mouth.
         Carter toyed with the idea of playing shocked, but kept her tone fairly neutral.  "That implies that if we can just improve the survival rate, we can get a handle on this.  We could actually normalize the carbon plague, which is almost as good as curing it."
         Solomon nodded unhappily.  "Which brings us to Datum Zero Two."
         Frank finished swallowing half his drink, then said, "We can't normalize them, because that would involve making them part of the status quo.  Trouble is, the status quo was built for humans, and the survivors aren't."
         "You lost me,"  Carter said. 
         "People who survive the carbon plague remain infected with nanomachines that cause ongoing effects, especially to their nervous systems," said Solomon.  Ilsen stirred again, but didn't look up.  "Some of these effects are innocuous, but many are quite dangerous.  Any one of these people might become a threat to the social order.  For example, many of them demonstrate the ability to analyze the EM signature of other nervous systems well enough to correlate and interpret the responses.  They can almost read minds."
         Frank was down to sipping his drink, which gave him a chance to elaborate.  "Before his regrettable departure, Doctor Chaing wrote a report on these 'cyberevolved', as he called them, in which he said, 'imagine a society in which lies are meaningless!'  The idea didn't seem to frighten him at all, which shows that we are well rid of that loon."
         Solomon nodded.  "Others have demonstrated some facility for analyzing computer interactivity.  They can actually read the net without an interface of any kind, without a phone or workspace or any kind of net license at all.  Chaing was a piker, Mildred.  Imagine a society in which the body politic is obsolete because the common citizenry has access to just as much information as heads of state.  They don't have to climb the corporate ladder; they can walk through security software the way a ghost walks through walls."
         Doctor Ilsen finally spoke, but although his voice rose and fell it was hard to get a handle on what he was feeling.  It was  awkward, as if he were trying to express an emotion but only had a textual description of which one.  "Then there is the question of prolificity.  Assuming the known disease vectors remain consistent, and assuming their condition is hereditary and congenital, they will outnumber us humans within three generations.  This is a genuine existential crisis.  The corporate government being threatened is just the tip of the iceberg.  These nanotech cuckoos are going to take over the world."
         Carter was genuinely surprised.  This was indeed more than she had been expecting.  She breathed deeply, defaulting to an acquisitional pattern.  "If we can train them properly, use them - "
         Senator Alda waved his hand, as if that was an old thought long dismissed.  "That's what some corps are trying to do," he said.  "Which means you're going to get interference.  I would not put it past Arasaka, for example, to raid a quarantine zone in the hopes of snagging some mutants with natural saboteur powers."
         At this point, Doctor Ilsen actually stood.  He still spoke quietly, but there was some real emotion in his voice this time - irritation.  "All right, I've stayed quiet til now, but I really must object to some of the imprecise terminology being thrown around here.  There is nothing natural about this.  Any of it."
         The Senator immediately switched to an apologetic tone which the President seconded.  "Doctor, I didn't mean - "
         "I'm sure the Senator didn't mean to imply that -"
         Doctor Ilsen walked to the long side of the oval room, opposite the President's desk.  Getting some distance, permitting himself to be mollified but continuing to speak.  "I know, I'm sorry, but this is more than just one slip of the tongue.  It has to do with our way of thinking.  We keep calling these creatures infectees and survivors and people.  We must bear in mind their true nature.  Has it really escaped anyone's attention that the beings who emerge from this illness alive all started out as young people?  That no one who lives through the carbon plague is older than twenty?  That's our upper limit, and it has troubling implications about the so-called survivors."
         "In my professional opinion, calling these beings survivors is a mistake.  They are different, the addition of symbiotic machinery - self inserting cybernetics, if you will - altering them irrevocably into more efficient disease vectors.  They are androids, if we must label them properly.  Imitation hominids, using the corpses of our children as chassis'.  If they display personlike characteristics, it is only to confuse us about their nature, to aid in their survival and continued infection of the at-risk population."
         Silence followed.  Doctor Ilsen sat back down while Alda regarded the last of his drink reflectively.  Solomon was the first to respond, addressing Carter.
         "And that is the solution to BuReloc's problem, Mildred.  Now that Chaing is gone, our people at the CDC are falling into line.  Your people can't ever know about the threat to humanity.  But they must understand that these beings are a threat to humans.  And our response to the overt threat must deal with the secret one, as well."
         "How are other countries handling this?" Carter asked.  The others knew she didn't need to know about specific policies.  She knew what to do, but international support or resistance might be a factor.
         "The Asiatic Combine, Europa and the New Turkish Empire are all in line with us," said President Wyndham.  "The World Corporate Union is, well, under control.  But we've lost a big chunk of Africa, Northern Europe and New Zealand.  In fact, we are going to have problems with many of the island nations - they've never been big enough markets for the major corps to add them to their holdings, which means they've never had strong forces in places like that.  We're going to have to deal with them house to house, as it were.  All the headaches we saved ourselves by eliminating small towns in America, we're going to have them in spades when it comes time to clear out the islands."
         Senator Alda finished his drink and grimaced.  "Europa in general is in line, but England deserves a special mention.  They've always been ambivalent about market standardization, at least since they days when they were exporting it."
         Wyndham nodded.  "We'll deal with them when the time comes.  Their population is fairly concentrated.  If the carbon plague doesn't kill them, we can pacify them through other means."
         "So essentially we're fighting a war for our species under cover of disease control."
         The Senator set his drink down with a satisfied smile.  "Now you got it."
         "BuReloc forces aren't going to be enough," said Carter.  "My primary agents are social workers and engineers.  I can command local police and national guard units, but ever since the Enhancement Limitation Act of year two they've only been licensed for civilian level implants.  For something like this I'm going to need a genuine army."
         She took a deep breath and shot for the moon.  "I want DomeSec."
         Wyndham paused before speaking.  Domestic Security was the ISA's standing army.  They handled terrorism and counterterrorism on a day-to-day basis with most of their work being out of the spotlight.  They had the best training and the best equipment, including permits to implant so much cybernetic enhancement they were in constant danger of derangement. 
         But when the President answered, it was with a firm tone.  "Done.  I'll see that the appropriate clearances are added to your profile.  Do you want your own implants restored to wartime levels?"
         Carter took a deep breath.  Neural connections from cybernetic implants had a cumulative traumatic effect that could eventually cause paranoia and violent tendencies, but she had already learned her limits in the corporate revolution.  And if what they were saying about the cyberevolved having superhuman traits was true, she might wind up needing every edge she could get.  "Yes.  If I'm going to maintain the necessary information control, I'll need to lead from the front."
         "Fine.  We'll keep it off the books," Wyndham picked up the empty drink glass and rose to return it to the bar.  The automated refreshment cart could have done that, but it was programmed to permit social control gestures like this one.  "You may report to the White House surgical staff as soon as we're done here."
         "Thank you, sir."  Carter made sure to sound grateful.  Inwardly she was a bit anxious - major surgery was never a trivial matter - but it wouldn't take more than half an hour, and she would be fully recovered by the time her flight got her back to the Nevada compound headquarters of the Bureau of Relocation.
         After some organizational details were taken care of, there was an obligatory social few minutes before the doors opened, and everyone returned to their work.  When there were only two people left in the room, the doors closed again, as inviolable as ever.
         Wyndham:  "What do you think? "
         Noah:  "When Chaing's name came up I wondered if anyone would remember his initial report, but the Senator is just as pliant as we hoped, and the others are too recent to their posts to have gotten a look."
         Wyndham:  "It seems we supressed it in time."
         Noah:  "Yes .  Data Zero Three and Zero Four are still safe.  The operation can continue."