The New World

Trip to the Moon

Three days after the Sepulveda commando's request, news posted by other rebels provided further confirmation of the contents of the Kennedy implant.

They had been able to deduce that periodically, the Power granted privileged status to new people, either Chosen Ones or particularly deserving believers. The operation took place in each regional headquarters of the Curia. Everything was carefully encrypted and, finally, submitted to a Congregation bailiff for signature. The New World rebels had done a good job, as the procedure was fully described. And the names and addresses of the bailiffs for the 12 regions of the World were sent to all the groups.

On this fine spring morning, Frank Homstad, a bailiff, left his home to go to work. The headlights of his car glinted in the golden dawn that was breaking over Arcangel. John, Cal and Mens, parked in two cars opposite his building, let him pass, then slowly took their turn. At the junction with Mormon Boulevard, Homstad turned right. Just then, the rebels accelerated to catch up. Cal quickly moved to his left and kept up with him, preventing him from disengaging, with Mens following close behind. The van driven by Clara was half mile further along the road, blocking two of the three lanes. When they reached it, Cal and Mens stopped. Locked in, Homstad slammed on the brakes, then stopped too.

John leapt like a devil from the rebel car, rushing into Homstad's, opening and almost tearing open his unlocked door.

The man stretched out his hand, no doubt reaching for a weapon, but John was quicker and, putting his revolver to his head, forced him to put on an insulating cap first, then dragged him out.

Homstad complied, trembling and mumbling "what do you want", muffled by the cap that encased his entire head. John dragged him to the van, pushed him in and returned to his car. Meanwhile, Cal had taken control of Homstad's vehicle and was moving it out of the way.

In the van, Clara administered a sedative to Homstad then drove off. Seconds later, the street had regained its early-morning calm

At 7.15 a.m. the van followed by Mens went down into the parking lot beneath their building. Stunned by the sedative, Homstad let himself be guided without difficulty through the corridors and elevators to the apartment.

Mens performed an introspection on Homstad, who relented. Exploring the man's memory, he formed a precise idea of the task he was carrying out. Homstad's job on the West Coast was to grant privileges to people referred to him by the Curia. On the first Thursday of each month, he went to the Curia's Civic Center office to receive a memory support containing the data to be taken into account. First, he checked the eligibility of the candidates. Then, identified by his implant, he connected to a terminal and transmitted the data to the privileges administration site. In just a few minutes, Mens had extracted all the information he needed to take action.

Half an hour later, Homstad regained consciousness at the controls of his vehicle, not far from Civic Center headquarters. He never mentioned to his wife or colleagues what seemed to him to be a fatigue stroke.

The rebels analyzed the information gathered from Homstad's memory. They discussed it for several days. Cal was leaning towards a coup de force: a small commando would break into the Civic Center and then force Homstad to transmit the prepared data to the terminal. Mens and John felt that such an operation, apart from almost certainly leading to the death of the participants even if successful, was probably doomed to failure, and would also provoke an unpredictable change in procedure by the authorities. But they saw no other solution. They decided to ask the Rebellion for their opinion by sending an encrypted message over the network. The plain-text message was innocuous, but meaningful to those who understood it: "Moon trip tickets, price:  1000 credits each, attractive group rates. Offer valid until..." It meant: "Opportunity to upgrade a large number of people to Chosen status. Connect to the site... on..."

At the day and time coded in the message, John connected to the agreed site from a Net station. Alongside John, whose avatar was Spiderman, were Quetzalcóatl, an eagle knight, a jackal and a woman with a human head.

Quetzalcóatl, the highest-ranking official present, opened the meeting with a quick greeting, then asked why it had been called.

"I've already told you about the opportunity to buy a large-capacity charter for a trip to the Moon", began Spiderman. "We'd need human and material resources for the logistics. Can you send us enough people to lend a hand?"

"These days, that's probably going to be impossible", replied the Eagle Knight. "Can't you, let's say... scale down your ambitions?"

"Um...", added the jackal, "is the staff known? Can't we save money by hiring the crew ourselves?"

"Impossible", replied Spiderman, "the crew must be provided by the chartering company. We'd need someone reliable to pilot it, oh yes! I've got it", he laughed. "That should work. Would you be able to provide us with a list of people interested in this trip? We'll pass them on to the company. All we need are the standard Mentel identifiers."

"We can send them to you in a few days," replied the Eagle Knight. "Is that all?"

"That's all", finished Spiderman, "goodbye".

In just a few hours of collective work across the network, a plan of action emerged. Cracking the passwords was simple enough for the rebel network, which could easily constitute a gigantic computing grid. The difficult part was to counterfeit the identities of the bailiffs concerned to the point of cloning their implant. One group per region was designated to carry out the operation, named

The lists of people to be registered were carefully thought through and coordinated. As numbers were limited, it was necessary to choose wisely who would benefit from the privileged upgrade. In the end, police chiefs, local authorities, network administrators and other influential people were chosen.

Quetzalcóatl called for general coordination: to limit the risks, the operations should be carried out at the same time all over the world.