Seventeen, 17 February
The Prosesor Building
Dronikus, a novel set on a burning planet called Earth.
This is Ballie
The bike sped down the street. A bunch of dronikus flew after them, seemingly more keen on a race across the city than doing their surveillance jobs. Chesa didn’t seem able to drive slowly but it was no contest. However, the dronikus soon got bored and flew off. Traffic slowed the bike down as they came into the wider streets, approaching the New Capital, and they were forced to negotiate streams of slow-moving vehicles – most of them self-drivers, many of them electropeds and electrotuks, some trams and converted old-style motorised vehicles.
As they entered the boulevards the traffic eased. The presence of dronikus, rators, and police equipment was more noticeable here, with no sign of squatters and their shelters. On what was known as the Grand Boulevard, Chesa indicated a group of modern buildings: ‘Pandoke. New headquarters,’ she said.
Zola had an odd reaction as they moved past. In some senses he was part of it – at very least, as a family member his identity was bound into this massive structure. It sickened him, this self-confident display of power and complacency. The Pandoke company logo discretely displayed somehow underlined the immorality and the corruption which he knew to be at its heart.
Past the Pandoke Building – before another large, equally tasteless architectural misadventure: the seat of government, the ironically named Peoples’ Palace – they turned off the main boulevard and arrived at a campus of squat, densely-gathered bunker-like concrete buildings located behind high walls lined with electric fencing and security paraphernalia.
They moved through the lobby towards the security gates. Zola stopped and drew Chesa’s attention to a bank of television monitors on the wall. These showed Meriti shaking the hand of the country’s president, onstage in a crowded auditorium. Meriti stood tall and handsome, gracious and smiling, next to the somewhat unprepossessing president. Strap lines ran across the screen announcing the elevation of Meriti Pandoke to the post of vice-president.
‘He’s looking good,’ said Zola.
‘Nah, it’s the TV makeup.’ Chesa took his arm, guiding him toward the security gate. When Zola hesitated, she said, ‘don’t worry, we’ve put those beautiful new irises of yours onto the system.’
After Chesa, Zola stood in front of the machine and after a few whirs and clicks the glass door slid open and he passed through. They moved up a large staircase to an upper level.
‘This is the Prosesor Building,’ said Chesa.
Zola was shocked. ‘The Prosesor Building? But it’s the central government network.’
‘Yep.’
‘So what are we doing here?’
‘We work here.’
‘What!’
‘Shhh…’ Chesa said. They walked up more flights of stairs and along endless corridors, among people coming and going, up and down.
Chesa spoke quietly, stopping as others came close, ‘it’s because we work here that they cannot see us. Being the most powerful network centre in the region makes it vulnerable. There is so much encrypted data flying around, so many controllers, so many entries and exits, so many pathways that they cannot see us. Once you’re inside you can be invisible.’
They moved past dozens of large, open warehouse-like workspaces where hundreds of people worked in fully enclosed terminal-booths.
‘Everything is controlled from here – agriculture, industry, transport, water, you name it, foreign affairs, media, and, of course, police and surveillance. And with untold numbers of access points, blockchain sequences, admin rules and convoluted admission regulations, it’s ideal for us.’
They entered one of the large workspaces. Zola noticed a shabby grey-haired man leave his booth and follow them at a short distance. They approached a door on which was posted a sign: ‘Civil Aviation: Data and Archives. DO NOT ENTER! Address all enquiries to Room 14E, level 7.’ Chesa punched in a code and the door opened. Four people sat at terminals, deeply engrossed in their work, hardly acknowledging the newcomers. At the farthest workbench sat Chun, surrounded by monitors, so many that they made a small alcove around herm.
As they entered the room, the man slipped in with them. Zola stood back, looking at him, concerned, until Chesa turned and gave him a hug. As she did so, Zola noticed that he hung his head and almost shrivelled at her touch.
‘This is Ballie,’ she said. He was medium height but skinny, almost lost in his baggy shirt and trousers. He had unruly bushy hair, lined skin, a straggly beard and wore small round spectacles. His bumbling unease and self-deprecating manner hid what Zola saw to be intelligence and, even, a certain ferocity. And when Chesa introduced Zola, he snapped his head up and for the briefest of moments, locked eyes with Zola, before casting them down again and mumbling a greeting.
Chesa showed Zola to a chair next to Chun who acknowledged him with a nod and a smile. ‘Welcome to the Civil Aviation: Data and Archives Room,’ heesh said in an officious voice.
‘I’m honoured and flattered,’ said Zola, in an equally fake voice. He looked around and asked, in a less frivolous tone: ‘And are the people in Room 14E also happy about you?’
‘Good question, but there is no Room 14E.’
Zola laughed.
‘And so far nobody has found a need of our services,’ said Chun.
‘But for everything I need to know about civil aviation…?’
‘You’ve come to the right place, comrade.’
Zola glanced about him. ‘But don’t they know that you are in here? Surely if their system goes down like it did at the RePO, they must suspect some rats in the ranks.’
‘There will always be rats in a system made for rodents and they always survive,’ was the reply.
Chesa and Ballie had begun work at another terminal. Quiet settled on the room. Chun gave Zola an Eyeto headset and they began to review images of the events at the RePO demonstration in Unidad Square, where Zola had met Chesa. The footage could only have come from the military side.
‘And where did you get that?’ asked Zola.
‘There is little that we can’t access in here,’ said Chun. Heris mood changed and heesh became businesslike, absorbed in the images on the screens. Heesh spooled forward and back, showing the various stages of the conflict.
Zola watched heris hands as heesh manipulated the machine; they were soft and fine. He studied heris face; heesh had a straight nose, delicate slanted eyes, and full lips.
‘Watch this,’ Chun chuckled. Zola refocussed his attention on the monitor that showed the moment in the square when Zola was bound in by the electronic belt, next to Chesa, and the rator was about to remove Zola’s mask. Its arm goes to grab it and freezes as the system goes down. As the belt drops away, Chesa raises her arms and shouts with joy, pointing her thumbs to the sky. Zola raises his fists in the air, apparently in sympathy with her. Chesa is looking straight at the camera. Zola smiled at Chun sitting next to him now, realising that at that moment Chesa was in fact giving a thumbs up to herm, who would have been watching her on the video feed.
‘Brilliant,’ said Zola.
A small smile trickled across heris lips, ‘isn’t it amazing? The moment you met I was watching you both.’
‘And you had just changed the course of the battle.’
‘We were lucky. I don’t know if we’ll be that lucky next time.’ Heesh ran the images fast forward to moments after the system meltdown, when the dronikus went on the attack. ‘I want us to focus on this.’ Heesh paused on footage of the counter-attacking drones. ‘Those are our drones. They’re called duccs.’
‘Ducks?’
‘Defense Unit Co-ordinated Connectivity Systems or duccs for short. Early on they were so very slow and were easy targets. People called them “sitting ducks”, but they’re much faster now.’
‘They even look a bit like ducks.’
‘They’re made by us here, and by groups like ours all over the world. They’re basic, not as sophisticated as the dronikus. But where the dronikus have got speed and manoeuvrability, the duccs have got stability and accuracy. They both use swarm algos but have totally different functionalities. Put simply, the dronikus is built around target-focussed behaviours.’
‘Attack?’ Zola asked.
‘Yeah.’ Chun showed the scene of the people clambering down the ropes being picked off by the dronikus. ‘You can see here in Unidad Square how they are able to hone in on the people trying to escape off the bridge. Identify a soft spot – and go!’
‘And their weakness?’
‘They are weak in adaptability and quick-response adjustments when under attack.’
‘And the duccs?’
‘Built to be much more defensive. When the system went down the dronikus just moved in and filled the vacuum. The duccs tried to match them and got sucked into a fight they couldn’t win. We can’t let that happen again. On RePO Day we have to be able to respond – respond better and respond decisively on our terms.’
‘A bit like snipers? Strategic and deadly?’
‘You got it.’ Heesh was intense, lucid. Heesh analysed the images of the aerial combat like a field commander in an ancient battle in foreign fields. Zola looked at heris young face with admiration.
Chun continued: ‘While we beat them on the seven-minute lockdown, they took us to the cleaners with their dronikus. They had the edge and it ended in a draw. And a draw is a big victory for them, a defeat for us. We have to win to win.’
‘Who programs the duccs?’
‘Mainly me. Now it’s us, you and me,’ heesh smiled, pointing to them both.
Zola hesitated. While he wanted to engage, he was nervous at taking these first steps into the unknown. He looked at heesh, seeing heris deep commitment to the fight, and heris fine intelligence at the service of a vision. He said, ‘I was away for so long, I don’t know enough, haven’t kept up.’
Heesh put heris hand on Zola’s arm. ‘I’ll show you. You’ll be fine.’
‘So who is he?’ Zola asked.
They sat on the couch drinking wine and talking, the mood easy. Chun still hadn’t returned.
‘Ballie? He’s our main guy in there. He knows it all, the entire system, he even invented some of it for them. He is extremely good: I don’t think there is a system that he can’t hack, a back door he can’t find, or a pathway he can’t disguise. Chun is good but heesh is still learning from Ballie.’
‘And, he’s the guy who brought down the plane?’
‘Yeah, that’s him. I knew he could easily do that, y’know, and much later he admitted it to me. He had no regrets, no remorse, even when I told him what I thought.’
‘He gave me such a look when you said my name,’ said Zola.
‘I saw.’
‘They were filled with something, those eyes, they made me quite uncomfortable.’
She nodded. ‘He thinks that you were the one who betrayed Leilu.’
‘The assassin responsible for the death of Leilu’s parents? The irony of it. It’s kind of understandable, I suppose, if you stretch reality a bit. He is weird.’
‘He sure is. You’ll never see him anywhere except there in that place, at the computer. Never at meetings, never in the street. He’s always been very odd.’
‘You’ve known him for a long time?’
‘He was close to my parents, although he was younger than them. And he was always at our house until he left to join Leilu’s team in the mountains, around the time you came looking for her. Then, some years later he was back here, helping us, doing this work.’
‘He’s fully in love with you, isn’t he?’
‘Poor bugger.’
She refilled their wine glasses and as they clinked their eyes met. They held each other’s gaze, the growing intensity of each passing moment matched only by Zola’s rising panic. He stood abruptly and walked to the window. ‘I… er…’ he said.
‘It’s okay, Zola.’
‘I… er…’ he repeated, his eyes now looking down across the city.
‘Hello Mr Tertius!’
Zola jumped, shouting in alarm. A small scarlet and black dronikus buzzed near his ear.
Chun stood at the door, laughing. Heesh had an Eyeto in heris hand, using it as a remote to control the dronikus. ‘Say hello to Arturo.’
‘Chun!’ Chesa shouted, sounding very annoyed but actually laughing.
‘It’s got an entirely new build. Isn’t it brilliant?’ Heesh pressed the remote. The dronikus flew and perched on the back of a chair. ‘Arturo. Arturo,’ called Chun. It remained stationary. ‘Zola, say your name a few times and then say a few random sentences.’
‘Zola… Zola…’ said Zola.
‘Zola… Zola…’ repeated Arturo.
‘Um…’
‘Um…’
‘You’ll sleep well tonight, Mr Tertius.’
‘You’ll sleep well tonight, Mr Tertius.’
Zola laughed. He called, ‘Arturo.’ The dronikus immediately flew up and took a position hovering near his shoulder.
‘You won’t need this,’ heesh said, throwing the Eyeto onto the bench. ‘Now call “home”.’
‘Home,’ said Zola. The dronikus flew up to the ceiling, did a fancy pirouette and dived towards Zola’s tunic – which was hanging over a chair – entered its pocket and powered off.
Dronikus is a novel published in 2023, now being serialised here on Substack. You can read a chapter every week for free.
Liking what you’re reading? Don’t want to wait to see what happens next? You can read the full book now by purchasing a digital or print copy of Dronikus from:
AndAlso Books (print edition)
Amazon (epub), Smashwords (epub), Apple Books (epub), Barnes&Noble (epub)
Note from Marko Newman: Hi Dronikus readers. I hope that you are liking what you are reading. There is still a fair way to go in the story with many twists and turns to come.
For those who are joining the story I highly recommend you take the time to peruse earlier chapters to give you a bit of a lead-in to the story.
I suggest:
Chapters 1 to 3, 7, 9 and 12:
I have a favour to ask all readers: please forward the story (any episode) to anyone who you think may like this short weekly hit of fiction reading. Suggest that if they like it they could subscribe to the weekly post. Emphasise that it is free and that one can unsubscribe with one click.
Also, I’m keen to hear any comments or questions or thoughts you may have. My email is: markonewman@icloud.com
Cheers, Marko