PLAYED GUNNER

PLAYED GUNNER

“Why don’t you tell us something of your everyday life? Your living and working conditions; life for others around you. We know your purpose, of course, but we would all love to hear about conditions generally”.

The soldier, strongly built, muscles rippling beneath his waterproof lycra top, stared at the gathering, a hundred or more cave dwellers, looking upon him with a mixture of fear, awe and hatred. Two of this community, older, were doing all the talking.

“I...can’t seem to move. My fingers and toes are numb. What’s happening to me?”

“It’s just the force field. Don’t be alarmed, it’s quite natural. You have taken us by surprise and, naturally, we have to take precautions. Talk, please. Perhaps start with climatic conditions?”

“Rain, lots of it. Cold rain. Never ending. I can’t recall what it’s like to be warmed by anything other than an electrically charged fire and that’s when there is power enough to operate it. I’m not even thirty years old but I’ve no memory of this thing they call the Sun. I know it exists because they teach us about it from the moment we can read. How bad it was. How they, the ingenious, heroic scientists that we on this planet owe our lives to, managed to discover solar geoengineering and, at great risk, got close enough to the inferno to unleash particles that blocked out that burning ball, temporarily; just enough to slow down the heating up of our planet, a by product of climate change. That was forty years ago, apparently; before I was even born. Unfortunately, they neglected to maintain their records: film and paperwork, formulas and calculations; all destroyed which means that they haven’t been able to reverse the situation”.

“It sounds as if you are, shall we say, a little sceptical?”

“Sceptical? No, I’m not complaining; I don’t know anything different. I was born into this way of life. I’m completely accustomed to living in the cold and the constant wetness. And darkness! Let’s not forget that. There is no light other than artificial illumination. Yeah, it’s pretty miserable but it is what it is, right?”

The two elders sat down quietly, content now to allow this intruder to continue talking.

“I’m a Gunner and, like I said, I’m twenty nine years old, almost thirty, and I’ve been a Gunner for six years. I trained to be a Gunner for four years before my eventual graduation. So, I’ve been a part of the Gunnery environment for ten years in total and I’m good; undoubtedly the best at what I do, I say modestly. Leastways, no other Gunner comes close to matching me in my successes. For that reason, I get a lot of extras; perks of the job you might say. For one, I get free vitamins; lots of them. They’re vital to my welfare; especially vitamin D. Being a Gunner is tough work, very often violent. Without that vitamin D, I’d have racked up a hell of a lot of broken bones. I’ve seen normal people go through that too often for my liking. Some people can’t be fixed, have to be terminated after a bad break; another fallout of no Sun.

The vitamins also keep the scurvy at bay. I’ve never actually seen what scurvy can do but, from what I’ve been told, it sounds horrific. Whatever, I don’t plan on losing out on my vitamin supply any time soon. Vitamins are like gold; literally. Normal people can’t afford them, that’s for sure but, then, there’s not much they can afford which is part of the natural order of life on Earth in 2077”.

The audience was rapt listening to this account spewing from the mouth of this soldier they had long feared. The Gunner, himself, seemed to revel in his new found loquaciousness and continued on.

“Everybody is expected to live within designated sectors and special permission is needed to venture outside one’s zone. Oops, shouldn’t have said that. We stopped using that moniker ages ago; too dystopian. Forget I said that. Right at the beginning of the great reset, they were called 15 minute towns but that made zero sense as, sometimes, in the case of larger communities, facilities could be as far as an hour away; sectors is a far better description. People were given advance warning that it was coming but few believed it. They were told, way back, that they, the people, would have nothing but would be happy so it’s not like anything was suddenly sprung on them; everything was completely above board and transparent”.

One of the elders, who appeared to be the leader of this commune, asked:

“What of happiness? Are people happy? Are you happy?”

“Are we happy? Who the fuck knows what happiness is? I’m not a normal citizen so I’m kind of above the rules that govern most. Am I happy? Like I say, define happiness. Hang on a moment, can you please turn the volume up? I just want to catch that bit of breaking news on the big screen”.

With a subtle nod from the leader, the sound on one of the giant screens affixed to the cave wall became audible. The Gunner listened intently.

“Damn! I fucking knew it. Pope Ignatius the Third just announced that the Catholic Church has agreed that all graveyards can be excavated, the remains and coffins cremated and the land used for the building of living pods. Un-fucking-believable! Do you realise how much fucking land that frees up? That’s not all though: in future, the Church will only recognise cremation as a way into the afterlife. Holy shit! Watch the other religions follow suit. This is big news and, years ago, it would have caused mass riots but not many have the energy these days; the food supply sees to that. The Liewell Corporation have the monopoly on our food, having been busy, for decades, grabbing land as it became available”.

“You seem somewhat disturbed by this news. How so?”

“Damn right, I’m disturbed. I could have made a killing if I’d been able to get a bet on. I’d have gambled everything I had on the Church capitulating eventually. They always do, ever since the three score years and ten thing. You know, when the biblical definition of man’s lifespan was officially reinstated by the Catholic Church under pressure from the Web. Nobody is allowed to live beyond the age of seventy. It makes total sense if you really think about it. It completely eases the drain on Web funding; no more pensions, right? No more medical expenditure on people who have outlived their usefulness and contribute nothing to society.”

The leader seemed disappointed at this response.

“Ah, you are upset only because you predicted this event and could not capitalise on it; not because of the event itself. How did others react to the limit on one’s lifespan?”

“Well, it was tough at first but it had to be done. The kids are taught this; it’s part of the school curriculum. Death is inevitable. Some live longer than others but everybody dies eventually so there’s no sense in getting upset when it happens; empathy eliminated in a generation. Plus, it’s not all mandatory; it can be voluntary, after all. If somebody wants to opt out earlier than their three score years and ten privilege, an actuary will assess the difference they would have cost the Web if they lived from their current age until the age of seventy, then the Web will pay fifty per cent of that figure to the family of the VR applicant. That can make a hell of a big difference to a family’s life these days”.

The soldier read the puzzled look on the two elders’ faces.

“VR? Voluntary Retirement. It used to be VE, Voluntary Euthanasia, but the Web decided, once again, that it was too gloomy a label.”

“Thank you for that explanation. What of the rise of eugenics?”

“Eugenics? Oh, you mean HI? Hereditary Impure. Sure, we have that, of course. Totally necessary. What’s the point of bringing a child into the world when tests have shown that it has some sign of abnormality? Naturally, some are not identified pre-birth and slip through the net so, once a defect is recognised, at any stage in their life, they must be terminated. Look, we are taught in Gunnery school that, without such laws, the population of Earth would explode. Right now, even with all these necessary rules, the population is close to eighty billion but, if things stay as they are and all laws are strictly enforced, especially the sterilisation charter, that figure can be halved in the next fifty years. It makes sense, right? And that’s where I come in. My job is to hunt down and eliminate all those who, by one means or another, have evaded the law of the Web.”

“Yes. Your reputation is well known among us”.

As the Gunner had been speaking, one of the elders had been noting everything down. He now asked:

“Tell us about the Web”.

“The Web? That’s the organisation that rules the planet. There are no governments, no Presidents, no Prime Ministers. Not since before my time anyway. They were only puppets after all. Like I said earlier, total transparency. Why pretend who is really running things? The Web is what we all call it, though it has no formal title. Imagine a spider’s web that has many concentric circles -all spreading out from the centre. That centre is the real power, the elite, the wise men that make all the decisions. The rest represent different levels of lesser influence; front men, if you like. The Liewell Corporation is the functional part. It owns pretty much all of the agricultural and manufacturing conglomerates worldwide. I’m directly employed by the Liewell Corporation and, as long as I do my job to the best of my ability, the Corporation provides me with my own living pod, a salary, all the vitamins I need and a vehicle; electric of course. Sure, sometimes, I can’t charge it but I never have that issue if I’m on a hunt; the hunt always gets priority”.

The rain could be heard beating down on the ground above the cavern, here in the west of the country. The gathering of revolutionaries sat all around watching and listening to these words spoken by this Gunner whose reputation had engendered great fear among their community. All around, screens, computers and machines of various descriptions flashed, displaying images of news channels, CCTV security cameras, alarm systems and the like, all powered by generators. The two scientific leaders of this group conferred as they studied their captive.

“Remarkable! Unquestionably, the best educated of their kind that we have come across to date. Uncanny how advanced this model is. We shouldn’t, of course, be surprised. It accounts for its success in the field”.

“Yes, they imbue them with just enough of the truth to make everything they say plausible and, if we didn’t know better, believable; at the same time, justifying their very existence. As you say: quite remarkable”.

“Why, may I ask, are you gentlemen talking about me so strangely and, hey, my whole body is tingling now. What’s going on?”

“Excuse us. We forget that, even disabled, you can hear and talk as normal”.

“Disabled?”

“Yes, as soon as you entered this cave, our early warning system deactivated your movements,though your ability to hear and speak remain operative”.

‘More than just operative, I’d say. This one is the most garrulous yet but I still think it’s amazing that the Liewell Corporation, for all their advances in technology, have still done nothing to prevent these droids from being disabled”.

“Droids? You refer to me as a droid?”

“Yes, you are a robot; designed, built and programmed to hunt down those, like us, who can recall what the sun looked like, felt like. People such as us who will never stop fighting tyranny in all its forms. Your recollections, your viewpoints, are nothing but artificial intelligence implanted at embryo stage. They have lied to you about everything. You did not spend four years “training” to be a Gunner. Nor have you been active for six years. You have been operational for only twelve months which is when we first became aware of you. Those aren’t vitamin pills you swallow each day; they’re lubricants to keep your parts active and mobile. You serve evil and you have committed many murderous acts in the name of the Web. You cannot possibly comprehend the harm you have done by your actions. Yet, despite all that, we know that you are merely a machine, weaponised by the real harbingers of doom. Your creators played you; lied to you. We don’t blame you and we mean you no harm. Our hope is that we are able to turn you and use you for the benefit of good”.

Watched closely by this audience, the Gunner seemed unable to process all that it had been told. Its eyes betrayed its conflict as it struggled to compute this information.

“If what you say is true, then I would curse my very existence. Alas, my neural network rejects everything you say and I’m afraid that it is you who fail to understand the consequences of your actions. When, may I ask, was my system disabled?”

The cave dwelling guerrillas stood up from their seats suspiciously, their survival instincts alerted.. The two scientists exchanged concerned looks before the leader responded.

“Exactly twenty nine minutes ago”.

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. I have hunted rebels in the deserts of discarded wind turbines in the east. I have gunned down dissidents in the forests of lithium batteries to the south. I have tracked and killed insurgents among the mountains of gas vehicles in the north. All these things will be lost in time, like tears in this interminable rain. You see, gentlemen, the Liewell Corporation wanted me to be deactivated if captured. By disabling me, you have switched on the nuclear reactor within me that has been set to detonate after thirty minutes”.

For the first time in its short existence, the Gunner smiled wistfully as it spoke its final words.

“Time to die!”