Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2)

To all you steady researchers and developers of our technology,

for recognizing the optimistic road to the future,

rather than seeing a slippery slope to doom.

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Power to the People!

The rebellion was doomed to failure, even had its ostensible leader General Malden succeeded in his plan to drop the Argus Station on the largest bureaucratic conclave
of the Committee, which was then located in Brussels (originally the centre of the old European Union). Malden, like so many would-be rebels of the time, was under the illusion – which the
Committee promulgated – that the world government actually possessed a heart that could be cut out. In reality the Brussels governmental sprawl was just a larger and more wasteful version of
the old European Parliament – real decisions weren’t made there at all, but during teleconferences between Committee delegates generally residing like old-time kings in their regional
palaces which, along with the Inspectorate HQs, were the real centres of power. Alan Saul’s attack proved more surgical, destroying many of those HQs, and thus killing a large portion of the
Committee Executive and annihilating much of the infrastructure of control. However, the government of Earth was like a hydra and, even though Saul cut off a number of its heads, they soon began to
grow back. It could also be argued that he cut off many diseased heads, and the lesser number that grew back had sharper eyes and all their teeth.

Zero Minus Ten Days – Earth

It seemed somebody had left food on a barbecue for too long; the rich saliva-inducing smell like that of cooking belly pork was overwhelmed by the stench of charred fat
and burning meat. Delegate Serene Galahad’s stomach rumbled inappropriately and, trying to ignore the fact that she had wet herself, she checked various computer channels through her fone and
linked implants. Everything was down; the worst-case scenario had occurred, and the Chestrekon Protocol had been applied. As a result, trillions of specially designed computer chips all across
Earth had dismembered Govnet. WiFi was down, because optics, cable, simple fone-lines and satellite channels had been electrically unplugged. Bluetooth was now black.

Shakily, Serene uncapped her water bottle, took a swill and spat it out to get the dust out of her mouth, then finally took a swallow. She had been right about that – about the necessity
of the Protocol – as she had been right about so many things. Certainly she had been right about the danger inherent in the requirement for every citizen of Earth to have an ID implant. For
those in the higher echelons of government – like Committee delegates such as herself – should not be thus encumbered or so easy to track down. This could be turned against them by
terrorists and subversives, just as it seemed it had now been, though on a scale unforeseen.

Recapping her water bottle, Serene gazed out from under her desk – past where her bodyguard Jimbo lay face down, a gaping hole in his back where the first two readergun bullets had struck;
most of his head missing where the final one had slammed home. At the edge of the spreading pool of his blood lay her watch. This contained her ID implant, which responded to electronic queries as
if it was actually where it should be – inside her forearm. She had pulled it off her wrist and cast it away the moment the readergun, fixed up on the conference-room wall, had flashed into
life to set the Sectoring Consultancy team jerking about in their seats, and spraying chunks of them across the wide teak desk before them.

She expected to feel sick, but just felt numb. Perhaps it was shock, so maybe some stronger reaction would occur later.

But the carnage was over now and it was probably safe for her to come out. Certainly it wasn’t safe for her to stay here – that noxious smell told her there was a fire inside the
Dome’s conference chamber, burning up what was left of all those frightened idiots who had come here to the Straven Conference to debate further their unimaginative solutions to Earth’s
population problem. The anger and the contempt that had driven her here in the first place quickly banished her current numbness, and now impelled her out into the open. She stood up, placed her
water bottle down on the gritty surface of her desk, pulled a wad of perfumed tissues from her personal dispenser to clean her hands, then tried to brush some of the debris from her tight grey
jacket and skirt. Annoyingly, bits of Jimbo smeared to leave streaks of blood and brain. She took another wad of tissues to clean her hands again, and finally surveyed her surroundings.

The blast had taken out one entire side of the Millennium Dome, even while the readerguns were turning the Straven Conference attendees into broken meat. Through the smoke the new opening gave a
view across the Thames, over what looked like the mangled remains of the nose of a scramjet. The same view showed that the Gull developments and sectored areas of Blackwall looked undamaged, yet to
their left, on the other side of the West India Canal that divided Canary Island from the main city, and where Committee tower blocks and cubic Civil Service arcologies clustered, pillars of smoke
rose into the sky amid numerous massive collapses.

Ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous.
Serene should never have been here.

The conference had just been getting under way when a nuke took out Inspectorate HQ London. Yet, while it had been mooted that they should suspend the conference for the interim, Messina had
issued orders for them to continue – business as usual. When Serene subsequently learned that one space plane had been crashed in Minsk spaceport even while another was being stolen, and that
a hundred and fifty Committee delegates had been slaughtered in a terrorist outrage in Leuven, she had realized that the expected rebellion had begun. But still Messina would not shut down the
conference. Meanwhile he and many of his pet delegates had disappeared – all further orders received from him coming by sat-link. Even as terrorists continued their concerted attack on the
state all across Earth, Serene had to stay here discussing decidedly un-radical plans for population control.

She turned back to scan the rest of the conference chamber. Those here would no longer be discussing the continued sectoring-out and controlled starvation of the Earth’s zero-asset
population. The only sign of movement left here was the flames still rising from where some lump of hot wreckage had smashed into the lower-tier horseshoe table. The five Committee delegates who
had been sitting there, and their PAs, bodyguards and other support staff, were strewn on the floor, bloody meat. Delegate Schubert lay across the same table. The readergun shot that finished him
must have hit him in the back of his neck, for his head was nowhere in evidence. The upper-tier tables had been similarly depopulated. It was, very literally, a bloody mess.

Time, Serene felt, for her to leave and put into motion her own plans, whether Messina agreed or not. She should see today’s chaos as an opportunity for her to demonstrate the
effectiveness of her own population-control plan, to take leadership away from the present incompetents in government, including Chairman Messina himself. She just needed to get back to the
Aldeburgh Complex, and there get ready for when the Chestrekon Protocol ran its timed course and Govnet would begin its secure start-up.

Clutching her briefcase, slim laptop inside, water bottle tucked into its special waterproof compartment beside it, tissue-wrapped watch in the other and a disabler clutched in her right hand,
Serene made her way past burning wreckage and shattered human beings towards the conference-hall exit. As she walked out into the outer halls of the Dome, she felt a surge of euphoria. She had been
right and, because of that, had survived, and would not now succumb to shock because she was too much of a realist. After stepping into an executive toilet, she removed her knickers and tights, and
upon finding the water and power were off, wiped herself clean with tissues. Wetting herself had been a purely physical reaction to danger; just one situation for her to deal with in a whole series
of them.

The outer halls of this part of the Dome were structurally undamaged, but the readerguns had been at work. This area hadn’t been as crowded as the conference hall itself, but still she
sometimes had to walk through pools of blood. Finally she reached the elevator doors, waited for a moment, then swore at her own stupidity. The power was off – she would have to use the
stairs.

The main exit from the Dome was surprisingly clear of corpses; just a bullet-riddled guard booth evidenced that the readerguns had been in action here. As she walked out into the stink of
burning plastic and began heading towards the executive car park, it seemed she was the only living human in the vicinity. Then she saw that she wasn’t.

There was no way she could mistake these people for anyone she might demand assistance from. Even from this distance she recognized their generic attire, their slouching fearful attitude, their
poverty, for zero assets were here. Of course sector-fence readerguns were offline and, from the devastation she had seen, probably many of the sector fences had even been destroyed. She picked up
her pace along pathways through the Millennium-Plus-One Garden – a sad attempt, she felt, to bring some green to this place – and finally reached the open gate into the executive car
park. Here she paused, noting by the spatter patterns from some of the corpses that they had been shot not by the fence readerguns but by those mounted on some of the aeros parked here, perhaps
even the one she had arrived in. There was a chance that whatever had penetrated Govnet – and these aeros – was still in operation. Then she dismissed the idea. The range of the aero
guns was well beyond the compass of the car-park fence, so if they were still operating she would have been dead by now.

A hundred more slightly unsteady paces brought her to her own aero, whose doors refused to open automatically in response to the ID implant in her watch. She uncapped the manual handle, opened
the door and hauled herself up inside, closing and then locking the door behind her.

She had come to the conference aboard this vehicle with four Inspectorate executives along with their complement of bodyguards and PAs. A couple of them she had known vaguely, but she felt no
regret at their loss. Seating herself in the pilot’s seat, she first strapped herself in, then began checking the controls. Other executives did not familiarize themselves with such systems,
feeling it beneath them to do so. Again she felt a sense of satisfaction because again she had been proved right. All the aero’s components were functional, it was fuelled and powered, but
the main computer was down – its hard drive wiped and all exterior communications shut down by the Chestrekon chip.