Itoh, Project - Harmony

The other customers began to scream.

Just as, at that very moment, similar screams rose up across the globe.

Because, at that very same time, by a number of various means, 6,582 other people also tried to take their own lives.

//

01

Cian, whispering in my memory.

Her last words on infinite repeat.

“We’ve confirmed 2,796 deaths,” the communications officer from Interpol explained. On the same day, at the same time, 6,582 people all attempted suicide, and a little less than half of them were successful.

I subtracted the number of successful suicides from the total number of attempts: 6,582 minus 2,796 equaled 3,786.

For 3,786 people, that fateful moment was less than fatal.

The communications officer in my AR projection was still talking. Apparently several of those involved who had survived their initial attempt eight hours ago were in critical condition, meaning the total death toll could still rise.

Those “involved.”

Apparently, it had taken Interpol and all the senior Helix agents participating in this AR gathering quite some time to decide exactly what to call them. Were they victims? Suicides? For so many to attempt to end their own lives at the same time, they had to have been under some kind of influence or had been, indeed, victims of some sort of coercion. Yet look at any one of the people in the resulting pile of corpses and you had to think they did it themselves, all on their own.

Okay, people were allowed to grieve, fine. If one of my friends died, I’d grieve. But to sit back and judge someone else’s choice, someone completely unrelated to you—to talk about “public property” and “resource awareness” when someone just died to justify giving someone’s life a cold look? That was what I called arrogance, and I wanted no part of it.

Miach would have thought the same thing. Rather, Miach did think that.

But not the rest of the world.

The only reason the suicides weren’t punished was because they were dead.

Beyond the admedistration’s reach. Finally.

If someone were to come up with a way to effectively punish the dead, I’m sure the world wouldn’t hesitate. I knew the regimen of drugs and counseling awaiting the failed suicides—it would be an earnest attempt to reclaim the resources the “involved” very nearly squandered, to patch up these damaged goods and put them back on the assembly line. To reinstate them as the basic unit in the medical economy, so that they could fulfill their societal function as consumers. Cian and I knew how that went. Been there, done that.

Except Cian wouldn’t be coming back this time.

Suicide was an offense punishable by disdain. Even if it wasn’t technically a legal offense. I remembered Miach telling us how the Catholics buried their suicides in the middle of a crossroads as punishment for betraying God.

Admedistrative society, lifeist society, hadn’t quite figured out how to treat suicides yet. The gravediggers wanted to know if they were victims or perpetrators. So, uh, ma’am? Should we just go ahead and dig this hole in the crossroads here, just to be safe?

People had no idea what to do. I didn’t blame them. Lately, not even battlefields produced this many corpses. In lifeist society, it took old age, accidents, and the occasional, very rare homicide to result in a body. Otherwise, people just didn’t die. Cancer and other diseases were targeted in real time by WatchMe and removed. The all-important credo that was resource awareness helped us keep ourselves in check. Keep your WatchMe updated and your body fat ratio low.

The people who had killed themselves eight hours before were suspended in space over a chasm that ran between criminality on one side and victimhood on the other.

I participated in the Interpol/Helix session from my hotel room. The Helix Inspection Agency had called the AR meeting after determining that this event was something in which they should be involved. Clearly, a crime had been perpetrated against the highest value of our society—the very sanctity of life! Even though no one was sure exactly what the crime was, there was a general expectation that they would figure that out shortly to everyone’s satisfaction.

“Those involved,” the Interpol communications officer told us, came from twenty-five different countries, and all belonged to the Sukunabikona Medical Conclave, or Sukunabikona Admedistration, as it was more commonly called. The means by which they had killed themselves were varied:

And numerous other ways besides. It all made for a very impressive list of recipes for self-destruction.

The chain saw had been a guy in forest management. He had been in the middle of work and went from sawing through a tree to sawing off his own head. The one with the chopsticks had, in the middle of a meal, driven one chopstick through an eyeball and then twisted it around and around for good measure. It made sense that eating utensils took a prominent role in the list, since in every single confirmed case, the “involved” had simply picked up the nearest potentially lethal item they could find and gone for it.

As far as Cian’s method went, she was strictly by the book.

“This event is clearly an act of terrorism against admedistrative society!” the Helix agent next to me was saying. He was a senior inspector assigned to monitor elections in some war-torn hinterland. Of course, I say “next to me” but that was merely where the AR conferencing system had placed him. In reality, I was sitting all alone on my hotel room bed, talking to people who weren’t even there. If anyone had walked in and seen me they would have thought I had gone mad.

An act of terrorism . How perfect.

It was the kind of statement that sounded meaningful while being utterly pointless. You might even call it a waste of time, but in our lifeist society where harmony was valued above all else, no one smirked or shook their heads at my neighbor’s blatant grab for attention. Instead, they all nodded and muttered their agreement that yes, that had been a most insightful statement. They had to.

That was how you did things as an adult.

Maybe it was because I had seen one of my old friends become “involved” right before my eyes that this whole meeting felt like a charade. I didn’t have time to sit here listening to all these people blow smoke up each other’s asses. I waited the minimum amount of time necessary to not seem rude, then asked what condition those involved were in now.

The Interpol agent turned toward me. “All those who did not immediately die have fallen into a deep comalike state. At present, not one is available for questioning as to motives.”

“What about WatchMe?”

The question came from the Helix agent who had just been spouting off about terrorism. The Interpol agent turned, politely smiling at the man’s ignorance. “Though it is not widely known, WatchMe does not monitor the brain’s condition.”

“Really?” the agent asked, looking at me for some reason.

“Yes,” the Interpol agent said. “WatchMe cannot penetrate the blood-brain barrier. Apologies in advance if you already know this, but the blood-brain barrier is a feature in the body that limits the circulation of materials between tissue fluids—such as blood—and the brain. The barrier is there to protect the brain and spinal column from potentially dangerous substances, and no scientist has been able to develop a medicule able to pass through. Basically, it’s a blind spot in the system.”

“Doesn’t the blood-brain barrier work like a filter? Why can’t they just make a medicule smaller than the holes in the net?”