Robert Ludlum's The Utopia Experiment - By Kyle Mills Page 0,74
the technology was being adopted by its politicians, soldiers, and industrialists—the most important people to him. The Muslim world was one of their weakest markets due to poverty and Islamic prohibitions. His people continued to create Koran apps, court imams, and refine their Arabic-language offerings, though, and the effort appeared to be showing some reward.
He switched views again, reconfiguring the charts in a way that could only be done from his personal Merge. A block of red began rising from the bottom of the bar graphs, representing the people LayerCake’s core processors deemed destructive to society: corrupt politicians, the swelling ranks of financial industry robber barons, criminals, warmongers, and twisted religious leaders, to name only a few of the categories.
It was an ugly view of humanity, with the red portion of the charts rising to almost twenty-four percent—just shy of one and a half million people. Of course, it was also a skewed view. The method of his product’s rollout, which confused so many, had been designed to target those who victimized society.
With every passing year, technology magnified the destructive forces available to the ruling class and brought humanity closer to causing its own end. It was only a matter of time before greed combined with waning resources and ideological fanaticism to wipe out billions of innocents while those responsible profited.
He couldn’t let that happen. Not now. Not when humanity was so close to perfecting itself.
Dresner switched to another view, projecting the growth of deleterious individuals using his system. When it reached six million—the tipping point he’d calculated would bring the world back from the brink—he would activate the subsystem that killed Craig Bailer. In an instant, the world’s militaries would be decimated. Politics and the financial industry would be cleansed of corruption and all-consuming greed. Religious leaders whipping their followers into violent frenzies would finally get an opportunity to discover that their gods existed only in their own minds. For the first time in millennia, the human race would be free.
It would be devastating, of course. All power vacuums—particularly ones of unprecedented size and suddenness—were. But society would quickly knit itself back together and recognize the opportunity offered by the eradication of its parasites and sociopaths.
Not that he was entirely naive. The destructive role vacated by the dead would be soon filled—it was the nature of the smart apes they were so closely related to. But those malignant players wouldn’t be capable of re-imposing their stranglehold on the planet. No, the advanced technologies that had proved so dangerous would finally fulfill their promise of transforming the human race. The destroyers would return, but they would be too late.
36
Near Washington Circle, District of Columbia
USA
JON SMITH TWISTED AROUND and scooped a handful of CDs from the filthy backseat. “How long are you keeping the car?” he said flipping through them and recognizing precisely none. The dull whistle of wind coming through the gaps in the windows was probably preferable to whoever Psycho Charger was.
“The owner gets back on Thursday,” Randi said.
She didn’t much care for technology, but there was no questioning her grudging mastery of it. She’d undoubtedly strolled through the Dulles long-term parking lot running plates against TSA and airline databases to determine the travel plans of each vehicle’s owner.
“Marty’s house is probably only another fifteen minutes unless we hit traffic,” she added. “Don’t you think you should call him?”
Smith sighed quietly. He had been a friend with Martin Zellerbach since high school, but it was an incredibly exhausting relationship. While Marty was a stunning genius when it came to all things digital, he was the victim of a long list of mental illnesses that combined to make him about as easy to deal with as a bored toddler on a sugar high.
Eighty percent of the fistfights Smith had been in as a kid—and one hundred percent of the high school suspensions—were the result of either protecting Marty from someone he’d insulted or trying to cover up some bizarre prank he’d pulled. His old friend never intended to harm anyone, but it was impossible not to sympathize with the anger he could inspire in others.
Smith grudgingly retrieved his phone and dialed, taking a deep breath and trying to reach the necessary Zen-like state of patience.
“What do you want?”
Marty’s greeting wasn’t intended to be impolite—it was simply the obvious question in light of the fact that Smith didn’t make a lot of purely social calls to him.