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  Randomers

  Prologue

  The sound of an endless drizzle - that is what hundreds of thousands of fingers rapidly punching at the keys of computer keyboards sounded like. The people in this highly sophisticated underground facility have gotten so used to it that it has simply become a comforting background music for their robotic daily lives, like how babies sleep better to the swish of a fan.

  There are no windows, no sunlight or rainfall, only concrete walls and a ceiling wrapping this electronic city of five million square feet, penetrating a hundred and thirty five feet into the ground as five different levels. Approximately ten thousand and eight hundred people live and work in this facility called Hive 03. Having derived its name from the emergency call center for 911, this underground Hive is a mega version of 911 with technology decades ahead.

  Technically speaking, the Hive is a combination of a call center and an operations center and the operators here are called Ghosts. Each ghost is assigned a workspace equipped with a ten feet by four feet rectangular touch screen display that is semi concave like the inside of a contact lens.

  This is not the future. This is now and what this facility operates on is beyond one's imagination. This is just one of the many Hives scattered and hidden around the world, operating in silence unknown to most of us and even governments.

  Every Hive operates by a government of its own, operating on its own rules and if a member is to default this government, death is imminent. Each member of the facility is a willing member, lucratively paid to become a bound citizen of this underground world and will only leave to the surface once a year. This particular Hive called Hive 03 is located deep under the ground of an uncharted forest in India and three huge satellite dishes sit above this facility, camouflaged as part of the canopy. No one hardly traverses this far into the forest, not to mention that the perimeters surrounding the satellites are heavily guarded by armed military of Hive 03. The entrance to Hive 03 is located thirty miles south of the Hive inside an abandoned coal mine, fenced and guarded by an army of hungry and ferocious mongrels raised for the Hive's military use.

  A mile into the coal mine, about thirty feet underground is the fastest, most advance train in the world and the first subway in India.

  The sub as they call it ferries newcomers into the Hive and once in, there is no turning back. Upon arrival at Level 01, the administrative floor of the hive, each new member is born into a new identity - a new name. They are no longer the individual they used to be above ground. Down in the Hive, you become someone else, someone whose life will be tattooed with the dark secret of a criminal society operated by masterminds to the world's biggest crimes. The Hives are but minor execution sectors of an even larger criminal framework. The beauty of how this framework operates is that none of the members in this secret underground society actually commits a crime. Like professional chess players, every tiny well planned step is an execution by someone they called randomers under the scrutinized manipulation of ghosts.

  Not every newcomer becomes a ghost. Being an independent, self sufficient society, the Hive comprises of everything a city has and so requires professions from all areas and recruits from all around the world. Recruits are selected only from the cream of the crop and they include doctors, cooks, janitors, mechanics, engineers, masseurs, hairstylists, cobblers, tailors and everything else, but their most prized profession of all are the software programmers who work around the clock to fabricate, improve and perfect the criminal software they use to hack and remotely control everything including one targeted device - the smartphone.

  Why not just focus on bank servers or government servers? The reason is they are not after stealing just any amount of money. This whole framework operates on one principle - creating untraceable events that ripple to cause unpredictable shifts in the world's economy - a bullish stock, rising oil prices or dipping of the Yen. By ripping what they have meticulously sown, they create exorbitant wealth through legal channels, leaving no illicit traces whatsoever. And the basis to this system are the randomers - victimized normal everyday people, mostly from the low and middle income group and sometimes people with dark secrets to hide. Emotionally battered, threatened and forced, they will have no choice but to comply with one simple unwilling task.

  Chapter 1

  Malaysia: Monday, 10th November 9:45 p.m.

  It's been two hours and the heavy rain still shows no signs of weathering off. Strong winds howl like the sad squeal of tortured ghosts as they blow through the gaps between the four blocks of nine stories high condominium buildings. There are a total of two hundred and eighty eight households within the four condominium buildings with each building facing one side of the rectangular open air swimming pool at the bottom. With the large droplets of rain rapping against the windows, it is only normal that no one sees a young Chinese woman dressed in a white dress perching on the edge of building B's roof.

  With her slender body drenched with rain, Mei stares down shakily from the roof of building B at the swimming pool contemplating where she is going to land. Rain water streams down the tresses of long black hair stuck to the front of her face but her mind is too occupied to notice them.

  She marvels at the courage she has to be sitting on the edge of the roof despite being an acrophobia. Usually, staring down the window from two stories above will have made her knees wobbly and weak. Mei stands up clumsily from the slippery edge, balancing herself from being blown over by the strong, cold wind. She intends to jump, not fall unprepared. Mei takes a deep breath to build up courage.

  "I'm so sorry Jie, but I cannot let anybody harm John. I will watch over the both of you from Heaven," Mei murmurs and she takes one giant leap off the edge.

  Like a bowling ball rolling over the edge of a table, she plunges at high speed through the air, her scream silenced by the rain and thunder.

  Mei's body hit the side of the swimming pool like an egg hitting ground, breaking and splattering into a mess of blood and flesh. Blood drained from her broken body onto the tiny blue squares of mosaic only to be rapidly washed away into the draining system surrounding the pool.

  India: Monday, 10th November 9:49 p.m. in Hive 03:

  The ghost at workstation 359 is a woman in her late twenties called Ada and she is responsible for Mei, her randomer. Ada is Japanese, with a medium framed body and black hair twirled neatly back into a bun, bold cheeks and fierce almond eyes peering from below angled brows, she frowns at the lost of her randomer. Wearing a sleeveless, gray, fitted, knee length dress and black ankle boots as uniform, she hits a red button on her screen.

  "Declare Randomer T120 as default," she says into the tiny microphone attached inside the silver, crest shaped earphone which extends from her right ear to the side of her earth colored lips.

  Almost immediately there is an incoming response, a call from the chief supervisor.

  "Did randomer complete task?" a man's rough voice asks. His accent is definitely one that belongs to a Russian.

  "Negative. Scheduled plan of action is tomorrow, 1300 hours," Ada answers in her Japanese accent.

  "Possibility of redirecting randomer into action?" the man continues to ask.

  "Nil. Randomer T120 is disengaged. Dead," Ada reports.

  "Initiate redirection of action plan and re-selection of randomer from pool," the man instructs.

  "Yes sir," Ada replies and immediately sets off to work on her workstation. Mei's suicide is going to cause Ada a lot of unnecessary work to set things back on track. Because of a sudden loss of an active randomer in the action plan, sequenced events are now suspended and rerouted. Not only does it affect Ada, it affects the whole action plan, the whole system. Loosing a randomer also will hurt Ada's quarterly review of performance. Under protocol, once rerout
ing is initiated, Ada is given a two days time frame to produce an effectively functional randomer to replace the default and have the new randomer complete the default's task as soon as possible. Failure to do so will result in suspension of her career. The strict adherence to protocol is to ensure that the course of events will smoothly roll back in line causing no disruption to their original plan.

  Ada starts off by manually resetting the action plan route. Next she logs into the 'Pool' selecting a suitable target to be the next randomer. She decides she will get a man to do it this time. Women can get too emotional and Ada cannot risk another default right now.

  The pool is a global database of millions of individuals from all walks of life. These individuals share one criteria - they have a registered phone number and an active smartphone. Ada ticks through a long list of scrutinized specifications she needs of the randomer and the database narrows the selection down to the top ten matches.

  A photograph and detailed background information are displayed below the names of each individual, the data being retrieved from government and private servers by a virus called Silvermaf. It is a non detectable virus that can run in the background of any server to retrieve or overwrite data and IF detected, it auto deletes itself from the servers to leave no trace behind. A signal is sent back to the Silvermaf team and the server will be re-infected in seconds by a mutated version of the Silvermaf. Ada stares into the massive display before her and studies the backgrounds of the ten individuals. She picks her choice without any difficulty. Number four, Zach Burrow is the unlucky guy.

  Ada taps her right index finger lightly on his name and the rest of the potential randomers' profiles disappear. Zach's profile enlarges to occupy almost a square foot of the screen space before Ada.

  Name: Zach Burrow

  Born: 26th June 1980

  Age: 35

  Citizenship: Canadian

  Current residence: HillsideGardens, 7434 Kingsway, Burnaby, BC V3N 3B7, Canada

  Race: Caucasian

  Education level: High school graduate

  Marital status: Married six months ago

  Occupation: Taekwondo instructor

  Current income: CAD$20 per hour

  Spouse: Nikki Portman

  Children: Nil

  At the bottom of Zach's profile are two buttons - a green Confirm button and a red Cancel button.

  Ada taps her finger onto the confirm button and immediately the computer starts to synchronize Zach's complete profile from the pool's server onto her super computer. Everything about Zach or related to him will be downloaded in a matter of mere minutes. Data so extensive is needed by Ada to set up what they call a lifegrid for her new randomer that the information she is downloading includes everything that is directly or indirectly related to Zach - CCTV footages from the hallways of his apartment and workplace, bank account numbers, social security number, his latest blood test, his utility bills, his wife's pap smear report, his driving license and vehicle registration number, his bank savings, hobbies, online purchases, credit card transactions, his best friend's name, the route he travels to work, his work schedule, his social media account contents, his shoe size, clothes size, his favorite food, movie, place, language proficiency and every other information that is available about him.

  While her computer is downloading the information, Ada needs to figure out the first step of baiting Zach into the lifegrid she is about to set up for him. This is going to be a long, sleepless night.

  Ada blinks her eyes in exhaustion thinking of all the work she will have to do in lesser than half the time she usually has. The thought of that itself makes her scalp itch and she scratches her temple a little with her index finger, causing a little bump of hair to stray and rise from her perfectly smoothed out hair.

  Ada decides to take a breather and gingerly pulls the earphone off her ear, letting it carelessly fall from her hands onto the table. It was a tiny gesture of letting steam out, the only way to vent her frustration though pathetically far from hitting her fists onto the table or shouting out loud. How nice if she could do that but no. Ada had a show of her own to put on. People are observing - supervisors, co-workers and protégés, the backup group so hoping to be promoted and assigned as a proper ghost. They will readily report her as incompetent if she so as shows any signs of loosing her cool and composure. It is a pretty lonely and cruel place down at the Hive; not many Ada can count on as friends. She isn't there to make friends, she reminds herself. No one came here to make friends. Everyone's here for the money and that makes everyone sick to the core, including herself. Doing what they do, manipulating others’ lives to do the dirty jobs for them.

  "Why the fuck does she wanna kill herself for??" Ada grits her teeth in frustration, trying to suppress the guilt building up inside her. She isn't heartless after all, but her only family, the little brother she so very much adore has his life depending on it - her job.

  "If only she had followed through my instructions, everything would have worked out perfect for the both of us. She would have been relieved by the end of tomorrow night. Why'd she go kill herself on some stupid thing like this? It was just a threat. Why'd she go all irrational? Most people would just comply so that no one gets hurt. But this crazy bitch had to go the other way and now my conscience is killing me," Ada mutters and tries closing her eyes, calming herself from everything. Picking the wrong choice as a randomer can do much damage to the wall Ada's built around her conscience.

  Ada gets up from her workstation and walks off to the pantry. She presses herself a cup of hot coffee from the automatic coffee dispenser and sits at the long, cold glass table with another five empty seats. The first thing she notices at the table is her reflection from the glass. Her hair! How horrible to see the strands of stray hair sticking out from her temple like crooked fingers.

  She immediately reaches her hand back and pulls the pin out of her bun, letting her hair fall into long, wavy locks hanging below her shoulders. With her hair framing her face, it almost magically softens her features to reveal the feminine side of her. Ada cups her hands onto the side of her cheeks as she contemplates how baiting should proceed with Zach. But somehow, her brain seems to have hardened.

  Ada takes a sip from the brew of civet coffee, the rarest and most expensive coffee in the world, to help give her brain the kick of caffeine it needed so much. She inhales the beautifully refreshing aroma from her steaming cup - the best coffee as always. Like everything else, only the best are provided in the Hive including first class treatment, fine food and wine, expensive clothing, world class lodging but in return the Hive expects nothing the less from you. However, it is still an unequal system of barter. They demand better than just the best of your performance. In the hive, they own your life and it is a breeder's top priority to groom and feed his brood the best crop.

  Chapter 2

  India: Tuesday, 11th November 3:12 a.m.

  Lifegrid is a term ghosts use to describe the intricate virtual world they delicately fabricate around the randomer's actual world. Every little detail or aspect is important in defining the lifegrid - from inserting the random people randomers meet, creating the little incidents that they will think are coincidences or accidents, calculating and projecting all possibilities of action by the randomers, narrowing their options to decide and funneling those decisions to channel out the Hive's desired outcome. In other words, ghosts like Ada are real life screen writers and the randomers will become the micro screen players to their skillfully knitted web of screen plays.

  Professionally trained in psychology after joining the Hive, Ada has just finished analyzing all off Zach's details, becoming so familiar she seems to have known him when they were kids. She understands him so well that she can roughly guess what his decision pattern is going to be like. Now she only has to complete planning on the lifegrid and she will be able to request for Initiation. Ada can't wait for everything to go back on track.

  Chapter 3

  Malaysia: Wed
nesday, 12th November 10:32 a.m.

  The sad singing of prayers by Taoist monks accompanied by the monotonous ringing of cymbals echo out from the mortuary towards the open parking space where a blue airport taxi stops on the gravel road. The back passenger seat door opens and a tall, slender Chinese woman with long, black hair steps out from the sedan with her RayBan aviator sunglasses covering her blood shot eyes. Black eye rings circles her large almond eyes from a lack of sleep. She still has not shed a tear since the news of her sister's death, not yet. Her face, smooth and fair even without makeup looks paler than usual from a lack of sleep. Her slightly pouty lips, drained of their usual healthy pinkish glow are shaking slightly, trying to hold back the sorrow.

  She walks into the mortuary, without any luggage but a black leather handbag slung across her white tank top and figure hugging blue jeans. She treads her way over the gravel in her gray sneakers, slowing down as she nears the entrance to the mortuary. She stares at the two white lanterns hanging on either side of the entrance. Written in dark blue Chinese characters is Mei's age - twenty three years old. Mei's actual age is just twenty but in Taoism, a year is added for the Heavens, another year added for the earth and one final year added for the deceased; totaling an addition of three years to her actual age. Too young, twenty is just too young to die. The woman feels her heart being squeezed. Her throat starts to suffocate with emotions, deep down hoping so much that this isn't true at all.