Chapter 5 — Rowhammer Lashes

The mat in the airlock was very tidy. It felt always like brand new. People needed to spend half a dozen seconds in the slightly underpressured capsule, before being allowed into the reception area.

The mat collected an analysis of particles found in the mass of air. It could give an early warning of any possible incoming contaminants, during the next 5 minutes. Mass spectrometry was an at everyday consumer-grade availability, and used extensively to improve health, contain and outright prevent epidemics.

Epidemics — well at least in all the Common Good Zones.

CGZ was an euphemism for belonging to the upper-middle class.

Maya was one of the included. She worked for the government, basically, though technically her employment was between Loyal Sentinels.

Loyal sentinel’s badge was sewn into the uniform.

The Reception was unmanned.

She took a look at the news displays. Nothing out of ordinary; except a code whose meaning was already obvious; the second reminder of Gumfit being… somewhere. At large.

Maya was busy. She rammed through to her office, closed the door, locked it — and sat at the desk.

“Think!” she thought.

There were two schools of thought nowadays about chasing a criminal.

Manhunts were done very silently.

The People were not to be involved. Never.

Public Appeals and Rewards, asking the general public for information & tips, was out of the question.

Sentinels worked in teams, but they tried to blend in to the urban landscape as much as possible. Sentinels had jeans, the badge in em, and very casual outfit. They were unarmed.

Since The Last Riot, the government had completely revamped all procedures of using force and the investigation process. The riot cost lives of over 20000 people on a single day.

A day, that basically no one remembered. The People were optimized for untraumatized lives. They simply had no worries to think about.

Unlike Maya. Her mind was blank.

She opened a desk drawer, placed her finger on a pad, and heard the mechanical buzz of a cylinder ejecting a “pillow”. She took the pillow, and placed it in her right ear canal.

This small capsule contained solid, waxy substance that would melt within a few minutes, and flow deeper into her ear. Maya was soon tranquill, approaching a state of very creative problem-solving.