Eli William - Cash Crash Jubilee

Returning to his own perspective, still in half rear-view, Amon reached for his nerve duster just a split second after the minister. He got the grip in his hand and tugged up as fast as he could, but the minister had the duster in his hand at the same time.

“Stop, or I’ll shoot!” shouted Kitao. Amon kept his finger on the trigger and the nozzle aimed at the greenish sighter on the minister’s chest, staring in terror at the weapon pointed his way. Shaped like a pistol with a black body, the squarish barrel about seven centimeters long and the grip half that length, it resembled a nerve duster, but Arthritis Duster popped up in flashing red letters as it was automatically identified, the nanobot cloud it fired programmed to dissolve the cartilage and tissue between joints. They froze in a tense standoff.

“You must think I’m crazy, right?” said the Minister of Records. Amon didn’t respond. He just kept his duster sighted, piercingly aware of the nozzle sighted on him, waiting. If the minister fired and hit, Amon would be in decrepit agony to the end of his days, and Rick would have to finish the mission alone. If he missed or Amon dodged the shot, the kid behind him might take it, a tragedy that could end their careers.

“Let me explain,” Kitao continued. “These… these… my fair ladies… Everyone has something they treasure, you know, and… I had a greenhouse; a nursery on a patch of land in the suburbs. Then I lost something… not the flowers… you see, I’m no longer whole… You understand?” Amon lied with a nod. “It was horrible and I couldn’t stand the loneliness. But this way… this way I can be with my fair ladies and… have company too.”

“But you!” he shouted suddenly, the tendons of his wrist bulging as he clenched the grip of the arthritis duster. “You! I had to disappear my ladies to take away your disguise!” A strand of drool slopped from Kitao’s mouth as he bared his teeth in rage.

“I know I messed up. But I won’t let you take me away. You can call me a hypocrite… I know it was my job for… yes. Responsibility, but there was no… would you still love anything if you lost your… future? Would you?”

After all his confident posturing, Kitao was sounding more and more like a typical bankrupt, desperate pleading monologue and all. But typical bankrupts didn’t point guns in Amon’s face. He never gave them the chance. Precarious circumstances called for quick-thinking.

“You’re one of our elite executives,” said Amon. “You’ve done a lifetime of service for GATA, so I’m certain we can make some kind of exception. If you drop the gun, I’ll try to negotiate with the ministry to let you keep the overlay.”

“Bullshit! You drop the gun first!”

It was bullshit. Amon and Kitao both knew GATA would agree to no such thing. But keeping hope alive—even a patently false hope—was all he could think of to stall him.

Through his left eye Amon watched the teenager blow his bubble away and walk after it out of frame.

DROP THE DUSTER SO IT LANDS NEAR HIM, texted Rick.

“Okay. I’ll do it,” said Amon to Kitao. “Then we’ll talk.” Amon tossed the duster slightly ahead. It bounced and skittered down the stairs, landing on the toe of the minister’s shoe.

“Ow,” said the minister, and bent over to pick it up, the nozzle of his gun pointing down.

NOW!texted Amon. The moment Rick popped out from behind the wall, Kitao, seeming to detect the ambush somehow, leapt aside to the opposite wall of the stairwell and flicked up his gun to sight Amon again, who was already leaping the way Kitao had come. Kitao swung the barrel across towards Amon, and Rick fired at the minister’s back. A blur of tinkling, half-visible particulate—microscopic robots riding one another in aerodynamic formation—flew up the stairwell and evaporated on impact with his polo shirt, slipping between tiny gaps in his flesh and diverging into attack-clusters that went for each pain receptor, a trillion infinitesimal claws pinching at once.

The Minister of Records let out a horrendous high-pitched shriek, and fell unconscious.

Hearing the sound of dusted bankrupts scream was the part of being a Liquidator Amon hated most, and he winced as he rushed forward to hug the minister around the waist and stop him from toppling backwards down the stairs. His hold was strong, but the tall man’s gangly limbs began to flop about limp and erratic, dragging Amon off balance. Rick dashed up three stairs at a time, putting his duster away in mid stride, and brought up his palms to support the minister’s back. Once they had their footing, Amon and Rick turned Kitao around and slung him over Rick’s shoulder. As Rick descended, Amon held the minister by the waist to steady the load until they reached the bottom. There they laid the inert man face-up on the floor of the corridor.

“He must have had rearview on too… and seen you coming,” panted Amon, his heart pounding with adrenaline.

Rick shot Amon a contemptuous glare and shook his head.

Not wanting to get into a dispute while on the job, Amon ignored his partner’s look and directed his gaze down to the minister.

Kitao was totally passed out, his face clenched and distorted with faint wrinkles, a residue of the excruciating pain. Amon felt guilty every time he saw this nerve dust echo. He couldn’t agree with the cruel doctrine spouted by traditionalists that bankrupts needed to be penalized for their unpaid debts, but accepted nerve dust as the lesser of many evils. Only with nerve dust could bankrupts be incapacitated without permanently harming them or their BodyBank, which contained valuable information. Electric stunners could corrupt its data, biological gases could harm innocent bystanders, and pharmaceuticals had side effects. Nerve dust was agonizing but, in the final analysis, the most practical and humane weapon for liquidation.

The hardest part of the mission was complete, but many tasks still remained. Rick contacted the Ministry of Records to request a Collection Squad. The Collection Agents, men and women who had once been Kitao’s subordinates, would pick him up and take him to the Archives, where all the data in his BodyBank hard drive would be seized, uploaded, and stored, before the original copy was erased. All marketable assets would be auctioned off to help cover the bad debt that GATA partially shouldered.

Next, he would be sent to the Ministry of Access where his BodyBank would be surgically removed using a non-invasive nano-procedure and discarded like snakeskin. Minister Kitao would then be taken to a pecuniary retreat—known in common parlance as a bankdeath camp—in the District of Dreams.

While Rick made these bureaucratic arrangements, Amon undertook his duties as Identity Executioner. He crouched beside Kitao and placed his palm flat on his chest. The specific location didn’t matter, but he had to touch the bankrupt somewhere to access his BodyBank CPU with the interface in his hand. Once inside, he delved into the deepest, most hidden core of the embodied calculating engine. There he entered in the Death Codes.

Selected for their memory, reliability, and loyalty, Identity Executioners like Amon were required to memorize the Death Codes to make hacking them impossible. Only they were privy to this mortal secret. It was Amon’s special responsibility.

Within a few minutes the execution was complete. Minister Kitao’s identity signature had been completely erased without a trace. He could no longer own an account, be a part of the AT marketplace, have access to the ImmaNet, and was no longer a Free Citizen. In short, he was now officially bankdead.