Tony Ballantyne - CAPACITY

She shook her head. Was she really awake this time? She needed to think about something. She had almost had it then…Something about the Watcher and its true purpose. Had it really sent Justinian to his death?

Maybe yes.

What was that story she recalled, back from her induction into Social Care? The parable of Jenny Cook and Eva Rye.

Jenny Cook had been a young woman of twenty-two. She worked as a sales assistant in a clothes shop. She had no current partner; she still lived with her parents in a pleasant apartment in the Bridleworth area of the North West conurbation. On the 11th of February 2056 she left her house much later than usual, at 8:20 A.M. Social Care had been noting her increasingly erratic behavior for the previous few weeks and, when it was realized she wasn’t going to work as usual that day, that had been enough to tip her case over the threshold and trigger an intervention. An investigative team arrived at her apartment at 8:30 and, under the concerned eyes of her parents, began a thorough search of the house .

At 8:39 someone found the memory wafers in her bedside-table drawer, hidden among a pile of letters tied together with a blue ribbon. This was suspicious. Virtually nobody used wafers in 2056; everything was transferred directly by the net. Wafers that could be plugged directly into a mobile phone were used by people wanting to hide what they were doing: namely the security services, the military, big companies, and criminals . Criminals? Jenny’s parents had exchanged worried looks, but the IT specialist had provided a more comforting explanation. Sometimes they are used by lovers .

The letters themselves provided confirmation: Jenny had a secret lover. Her parents didn’t know whether to feel pleased or sad. Why hadn’t she told them? Social Care examined the letters while the IT specialist got to work on the wafers. The reason for Jenny’s secrecy quickly became apparent. The letters suggested that Jenny was having an affair with a married man. Hence the secrecy. Hence the memory wafers. Hence the aberrant behavior .

IT, with the aid of the SC uplink, had cracked the simple encryption routines, and a feeling of amusement and relief flooded over the SC team. No wonder Jenny’s lover had been sending her information this way, rather than directly by using the net. The wafers held pictures of Jenny and her partner. In some of them they were making love. The others showed some rather more…adventurous poses than even Social Care, no stranger to this sort of thing, had seen before .

By 8:51 the team was beginning to relax. The parents were being comforted. The mystery was solved .

Or was it ?

The handwriting and linguistic analysis came back, and the first cracks began to appear in the story. The analysis suggested that there was a strong probability the letters hadn’t been written by an older man at all. In all likelihood they had been written by a woman in her early thirties .

The good-humored smiles evaporated immediately. The parents now realized there were worse things that could happen than an adventurous sex life .

The call went out to various field teams to intercept Jenny Cook immediately just as IT noticed something odd about the intimate pictures. In one of them Jenny appeared to be missing a toe. The pictures were reexamined and everyone’s worst fears were confirmed. The pictures were fake. Jenny Cook was not having an affair at all. She only thought she was… .

The team was worried. They had heard about this sort of thing before. But it only happened in Japan, in America-not here, not in northwest England… .

This could be bad. Very bad. The police were then alerted. The checking of the wafers assumed highest priority within the Social Care processing space. All available processing power was diverted to analyzing them in detail .

By that time Jenny Cook had visited the luggage storage lockers at the station and had boarded a Lite train. Social Care interfaced with the appropriate authorities and the police were granted immediate access to the track control system. The train was to be diverted to a siding where SC would be ready waiting, supported by an armed police team .

And then the memory wafer’s steganography was cracked. The message went out, highest priority. Countermand the previous orders. Do not stop that train .

Jenny Cook sat on the Lite train with a smile on her face that not even the dull clouds, drizzling grey rain over the winter city, could dampen .

She was going to see Liam. Liam with his lazy smile and his big powerful body and his clinging wife who didn’t understand. Understanding, sexy Liam, his romantic, gentle side wasted on a frigid wife. Liam with his children that he could never leave. Liam with his active imagination and his naughty ideas .

“ My desk is bigger than your bed, Jenny ,” he had said . “ The window has a view over the whole city. I want to have you on that desk, Jenny .”

“ Oh, Liam, I can’t …” She couldn’t bring herself to look at him .

“ Then why are you smiling ?” he asked . “ Trust me; no one will disturb us. I’ll say you’re an important client. This is what you are going to do. It will be so naughty. Are you listening? I’ll leave a bag in the lockers at the Lite station. You can bring it right into the offices under everyone’s noses. Champagne, and something for you to wear… ”

As the Lite train slowed, some of the other passengers looked up. It wasn’t usual for this train to stop here…but then the driver seemed to change its mind. It picked up the pace, dropping into the tunnel that ran into the heart of the business zone. Jenny was tempted to open the bag and take a peek at what was inside, but she stopped herself. Liam had warned her not to .

“ What’s in there is a surprise. I want you to walk into my room without a word. I want you to stand in front of me and undress in silence. Do you think you can do that? Yes, you can. Take off your coat, and then your shoes. Unfasten your blouse and wriggle out of your skirt. I’ll just be sitting at my desk watching as you remove your bra and then slip off your panties. Just you, standing there naked. And then you unzip the bag, reach inside, and see what is in there for you to put on. I want you to walk up and down before the window, wearing it. There’ll be just you and me, and a whole office behind me and a whole city before you, not knowing what you are about to do… ”

She didn’t notice the police waiting at the back of the platforms, waiting for their instructions. She didn’t notice the cameras in the carriage turning to scan her. It was rush hour and there were fifty-four people on the Lite train with her. There were many more passengers waiting on brightly lit platforms, strung out like pearls on the dark thread of the tunnel .

Social Care was in turmoil. IT had identified the stealth programs on the memory wafers as being similar to those used by Gaia’s Children: a terrorist group that had, until now, operated solely in Japan. Gaia’s Children targeted those companies that they believed were harming the planet in some way. Their most successful attack to date had been on the Tokyo offices of DIANA. Fourteen of the company’s middle managers had been subtly reprogrammed through a combination of drugs and hypnosis. They had all turned up at work, on the same day, carrying bombs in their briefcases .

Something similar appeared to have happened to Jenny Cook. For the past three months she had been conducting an affair, mainly in her own mind . Someone had been meeting her for drinks, but never the same person twice. Her memory had been carefully edited using psychological programs on the memory wafers, their effect augmented by spiked drinks .