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Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve

April 9th 2157

            The news café was nearly empty.  This news café was almost always empty.  Holo screens covered an entire wall.  Each holo showed news feeds from different sources.  Half of the feeds were covering a new development within the United Army.

            A perfectly groomed man in his mid thirties with the perfect blend of salt and pepper hair was currently discussing the new allegations and misuse of power, with a balding slightly overweight politician who was a delegate of the United Nations.

            “Are you saying that the United Nations sanctioned the strike on Rio de Janeiro, which resulted in the deaths of over three thousand innocent civilians?”  The self sure reporter asked the delegate already knowing what answer he would receive.

            The delegate had a sheen of sweat on his brow, and was visibly uncomfortable with the position he was in.  “The United Nations sanctioned the dispatch of the United Army into Rio de Janeiro to quiet the civil unrest that has been growing in the past few weeks.  We expected for there to be some casualties, however we did not foresee the outbreaks of riots that…”

            The reporter cut the delegate off before he could finish his sentence.  “Is it not true that the riots were instigated by excessive force used by the United Army?”

            “That is not true,” the delegate was quick to respond.  “There were ongoing riots previous to the arrival of the United Army.”

            The man and his companion sat in the farthest booth from the entrance.  He changed the feed.  He was not interested in the politics that ran this world, yet his job was easier if he had a basic understanding of it.  Besides his companion tracked most of the political followings.

            He brought up a new feed; a young woman in a power blue business suit and pearl earrings was talking to the camera concerning the shipment of water from New Congo into Sudan.  The man sitting in the booth was in his mid seventies, was average height but built very lean.  Not the skinniness of someone who was suffered from malnutrition or atrophy, but of someone who carefully took care of his body.

            The man took note of the story simply because he believed that he would probably be able to find a contract in Sudan.  The man changed the feed once again, that wasn’t the story that he was looking for.

            The new feed was a fluff story covering one of the many youth volunteer groups that were returning from Grease after helping set up community centers in a few of the smaller cities.  The centers included classrooms for children and adults, kitchens, and a community garden.

            The main focus of the volunteer group was to set up self sustaining centers where youth and adults could learn skills that would improve not only there lives but the improve the community as well.

            The man in the booth had pulled out an old-fashioned note pad and pencil.   Jean liked the way the pencil felt as it scratched over the paper.  He wrote numbers and letters almost by random, all the while focused intently on the feed.

            As the story ended Jean counted each letter and number to make sure that he had each one.  “E 7 3 T D 1 M V 9 C 0 H B H 3 9 A R 6 9,” Jean said with a light French accent.

            “Agreed, I got the same,” said the slightly hollow and metallic voice of Jean’s companion.

            Jean entered the code into a special program that he and maybe only two hundred other people on the planet had.  His DNAC checked the code against the rotating key that changed every ten minutes.  Code verified, a three times encrypted secure website opened.