Silicon Facades



  Silicon Facades

  Copyright 2013 Cory Richardson

  Cover design by Tatiana Vila, Vila Design

  Chapter 1 Facade

  Mind Your Place

  Loan officer Matole Lavy gazed across the table at the attractive young couple, Sinead and Miranda. They were both athletic looking, slightly taller than most women, and had medium length dark hair. Sinead had hers up in a tight ponytail. Miranda, with her striking blue eyes, wore her hair straight. “Look,” he started, “from your application we just don’t see sufficient income, high enough credit scores, or low enough drug abuse potential.”

  Carefully eyeing the girls up and down, imagining them kissing each other, he continued. “Besides, the data indicates that you probably don’t have staying power with each other. So it would be impossible for you to secure a loan of this type.”

  Sinead was dumbfounded. “What do you mean? We never filled out any application. We just wanted to find out what our mortgage options are,” she said.

  “Ah, I see. I can tell that you haven’t done this before. The days of filling out applications died with your great-grandparents,” replied Lavy, now looking superior. He was right, yet he just loved to play the power game with people.

  “All I had to do was pull up a standard ApComp, like I do for everyone. There is really nothing more to discuss. You girls aren’t ready to buy a house and I can guarantee you that no other lender in the State will want to give you a loan either.”

  ApComp was the standard “quicky” application automatically compiled from online data simply by entering someone’s Social Identity Number (SIN).

  A SIN was required for every transaction, every activity, every day, by everyone. People could not purchase anything, work anywhere, enter a public building or private business or even walk down a street without their SIN profile being detected on their SIN Chip and read by the nearest scanner station.

  Scanner stations were small nuclear powered units the size of a grapefruit that would receive SIN signals from the SIN Chips and transmit them to the mainframe data system. The scanner stations were concealed in all public buildings, at parks, along sidewalks, in businesses, public transportation areas, everywhere. Everybody’s movements, purchases, and activities throughout every day were recorded on their SIN Chip, embedded in the right hand or neck, then transmitted via the scanner stations to the mainframe government database.

  It wasn’t like people were being watched, though. They weren’t. But should there be any trouble associated with anyone in any way at any time, their “record” could be immediately brought up anywhere by anybody with authorized access to help settle the dispute.

  In the year 2133, the SIN Record became the new legal system, court, judge and jury, financial authorization for purchases, work authorization, and access authorization for anywhere people wanted to go. It was the ultimate method of social control for citizens in most countries, including those countries that had once been democratic or still had a democratic facade.

  “That is,” Lavy continued, “unless you’re interested in the Hardship Program.” The Hardship Program consisted primarily of a twenty-eight percent annual interest rate mortgage loan, guaranteeing a lifelong renter status to the bank. The loan had an eighty-six percent chance of default before it was paid off in forty years. The Hardship Program was one of the banks’ biggest money makers. The majority of all people had to take it, or be subject to the much detested private land lording arrangements.

  A person’s SIN Record meant the difference between a life of hardship and slavery, or relatively lessor hardship and slavery. There was no freedom. There used to be. But that was squandered over a century earlier by everyone’s ignorant ancestors who, not understanding the consequences of the then new electronic age, voluntarily gave away all their information and, in doing so, their rights too. Fools! That was largely to blame for allowing a seamless transition to the social class system by the 2130’s.

  To understand what happened to peoples’ freedoms soon after the onset of the electronic age, it is necessary to review the uncensored story of their electronic demise, a story that the government has tried to stamp out and erase. But like the Dead Sea scrolls that once saved religious writings for millennia, this story was also saved in secure physical locations in physical form only, lest it be detected by the scanners and infected by virus.

  The story had been passed around the “underground” for nearly a century so that people would never forget how they came to the point of so little freedom. They never wanted to forget, in case a way was ever devised to undo the damage caused by the stupidity of their great, great, great grandparents.

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