Identity Crisis
Dean Kalfeater building was a model of progressive self sustaining arcology. Home to twenty thousand happy productive citizens in a city of fifty million. It generated its own power, grew its own food and recycled its own waste. It was carbon and water neutral. It provided gainful employment and full social security to all of its residents. There was no poverty in Kalfeater. It had one of the lowest crime rates on the upper east side. It was always in the top five most desirable buildings as voted by the readers of Arcology Connoisseur Monthly. In short it was a utopian vision of late 21st century living. The rioting started at 10am.
Soames couldn’t get into his apartment. The door would not open. He reached out for the handle and instead of opening, the light on the door had glowed a baleful red and made a sad bonking noise. Maybe there was something on his hand that was confusing the DNA reader. He wiped it on his pant leg and tried the handle once more. The door redly bonked again. He decided to try with the other hand. The rioting was still far below this level but it was definitely getting louder. Not wanting to fail again, he blew twice into his fist like a compulsive dice player, partly for luck, partly to warm his hand and partly to add fresh DNA to the sample. The door bonked redly again, then a small panel opened.
The panel contained a small glowing screen of primitive design, something from half a century ago. The screen displayed a completely non holographic image of the Kalfeater logo and a message explaining that as he’d failed to complete a DNA identification test, would he like to try a different means of authentication?
Retinal and fingerprint scans were both greyed out. Too easy to fool since gigabyte resolution 3d printing had become standard in phones.
Facial muscle spasm recognition was an option. He selected it. Was that a machine gun? It sounded like one, but that didn’t seem possible on the east side, let alone here in Kalfeater. The concussions of the heavy weapon were silenced by an enormous explosion which made the concrete beneath his feet quiver and dust fall from the sky lights above. He urgently pressed his face up to the tiny primitive scanner. It whirred, blinked and flashed at him. The door bonked red once again. It made no sense. His face hadn’t changed that much five years. Sure he’d lost a few kilos and got his teeth fixed, but then he remembered the goatee and sideburns. The housing agent has told him to update his scan if he significantly changed his look, but in five years the DNA scanner had worked flawlessly and he’d never bothered. The screaming and the sirens were definitely getting closer.
The last option was a manually entered password. The screen politely pointed out that the password was required to have a least 1452 characters or numbers, must have at least six in upper case and must feature 9 cyrillic and 14 Kanji characters. Also the password must not contain any words found in a dictionary or numerical sequences that could be personally identifying such his birthday or that of a relative or famous person, alive or dead, real or fictional.
A man wielding what looked to be the remains of an office chair repurposed into a primitive axe ran past him screaming incoherently. Soames tried not to let the red on the man’s shirt get past his optic nerve and into his imagination but there was quite a lot of it. Password. For the door. Concentrate. Of course. He’d taken a photo of the impossibly long sequence of letters with his phone. He pulled the phone out and unrolled it. It immediately refused to unlock. He tried 3 times. The phone didn’t bonk, it didn’t glow red, it just stubbornly refused to allow him access. It was in the middle of telling him politely that he would be unable to try again for 45 minutes as a security precaution when the blood soaked axe maniac came back.
Soames realized he knew the man. It was Steve, his neighbor from two doors over, who did something important in carbon sequestration. “Steve no. Stop, its me” he yelled at the man. Maniac Steve looked for a second as if he might be about to test his chair axe but then there was recognition. He lowered the axe and made violent eye contact with Soames. Nobody blinked. Soames felt like a gorilla in a nature show. The contest was only ended by the collision of an out of control police quadcopter with the Styloane Ruskins building’s communication antenna a kilometer away. Both men turned to stare at the upended quad hanging in the rigging surrounded by ball lightning. Eventually the antenna’s power source failed. The moment was over.
Maniac Steve looked down over his blood soaked shirt at his bare feet He seemed to sober up for a second. He said “It was a nano virus in the water filtration system. It changed everyone’s DNA overnight. Only a tiny amount, nothing significant, nobody's getting tails or horns or anything cool like that. It was just enough to break the system. Nobody can access anything. Shelter, warmth, food, water, nothing. We are all locked out. It’s the end. The end of time. The end of days. I saw it on the news, on my phone, before it logged me out. Fire and damnation, sodom and gomorrah. Tonight we burn this mother!”. With that he raised his chair axe, and ran down into the stairwell.
Soames tried not to think about how dark that stairwell seemed. Surely it has been brightly lit before, now it seemed darker, smokier maybe. There was movement in the shadows too. He was getting off track. He was still Soames, virus or no virus, there must be some old DNA around. He tried licking the door handle. Nothing happened. He tried spitting on it. The red bonking seemed more baleful than ever. Bodily waste might contain unmodified DNA. He dug for a booger, a fat juicy one. No joy. His surprisingly brown ear wax didn’t work either. Screaming now from the stairwell. Very close and definitely not Steve. He didn’t need to pee, god he wished he did. Time was running out, a head appeared in the stairwell, its expression a rictus of hate directed at him, then it was pulled back by arms from below. It bellowed with rage as it was dragged from view. In a last act of desperation he dropped his pants and rubbed his ass against the cold steel of the door handle. There it was, a happy little jingle and a green light. The door opened softly on well oiled hinges.
Inside his apartment finally, he pulled his pants up and fastened his belt. A howling, sobbing crazed mob of humanity collided with the door just seconds later but it didn’t budge. Kalfeater building was built to last. That door was made of Danish steel. Remembering old cop movies, he grabbed a chair and wedged it under the door handle, just to be safe. It was he noticed, the same model as favored by Maniac Steve. Shaken, he walked over to the sink and tried to get some water. The kitchen sink refused and the fridge gave him a small warning electric shock, so he slid to the floor and cried. It seemed like the most rational response.
For the first time in 25 years, Kalfeater building’s emergency address system was activated. A chunkily reassuring robotic voice announced “Attention all Citizens. Due to a building wide failure of the DNA authentication system resulting in a state of widespread public distress, we will now be dosing all public sectors with Calm 91. Please stand by”. Gradually the screaming and pounding outside Soames’ door became quieter, less intense and then slowed to a muffled murmur and finally to silence as the powerful sedative in Calm 91 riot control gas spread. A small amount of the thoughtfully pink coloured gas had leaked under his door and his body sucked it in greedily.
A week later everything was back to normal. The building security team had reset everyone’s DNA records to take small changes such as those caused by the seemingly innocuous and inevitable virus into account. Most of the damage had been repaired and people were noticeably less nervous around security systems. Soames felt that everything was right with the world again. Apart from his front door. Surely the machine couldn’t harbor a grudge. It had been a matter of life and death. Waste DNA had saved him from a crazed mob. His door should be happy he was unhurt. Would it like to feel like Maniac Steve’s door? Still the thing still seemed put out. He decided to pick up some of that really good cleaning fluid, the stuff that came from Germany. He’d spend an hour cleaning that door handle by hand. Show the door how much he cherished it.
In the darkness of the carbon sequestration duct Maniac Steve chuckled to himself. There would be plenty of door handles to lick that night. He could wait.
Soames couldn’t get into his apartment. The door would not open. He reached out for the handle and instead of opening, the light on the door had glowed a baleful red and made a sad bonking noise. Maybe there was something on his hand that was confusing the DNA reader. He wiped it on his pant leg and tried the handle once more. The door redly bonked again. He decided to try with the other hand. The rioting was still far below this level but it was definitely getting louder. Not wanting to fail again, he blew twice into his fist like a compulsive dice player, partly for luck, partly to warm his hand and partly to add fresh DNA to the sample. The door bonked redly again, then a small panel opened.
The panel contained a small glowing screen of primitive design, something from half a century ago. The screen displayed a completely non holographic image of the Kalfeater logo and a message explaining that as he’d failed to complete a DNA identification test, would he like to try a different means of authentication?
Retinal and fingerprint scans were both greyed out. Too easy to fool since gigabyte resolution 3d printing had become standard in phones.
Facial muscle spasm recognition was an option. He selected it. Was that a machine gun? It sounded like one, but that didn’t seem possible on the east side, let alone here in Kalfeater. The concussions of the heavy weapon were silenced by an enormous explosion which made the concrete beneath his feet quiver and dust fall from the sky lights above. He urgently pressed his face up to the tiny primitive scanner. It whirred, blinked and flashed at him. The door bonked red once again. It made no sense. His face hadn’t changed that much five years. Sure he’d lost a few kilos and got his teeth fixed, but then he remembered the goatee and sideburns. The housing agent has told him to update his scan if he significantly changed his look, but in five years the DNA scanner had worked flawlessly and he’d never bothered. The screaming and the sirens were definitely getting closer.
The last option was a manually entered password. The screen politely pointed out that the password was required to have a least 1452 characters or numbers, must have at least six in upper case and must feature 9 cyrillic and 14 Kanji characters. Also the password must not contain any words found in a dictionary or numerical sequences that could be personally identifying such his birthday or that of a relative or famous person, alive or dead, real or fictional.
A man wielding what looked to be the remains of an office chair repurposed into a primitive axe ran past him screaming incoherently. Soames tried not to let the red on the man’s shirt get past his optic nerve and into his imagination but there was quite a lot of it. Password. For the door. Concentrate. Of course. He’d taken a photo of the impossibly long sequence of letters with his phone. He pulled the phone out and unrolled it. It immediately refused to unlock. He tried 3 times. The phone didn’t bonk, it didn’t glow red, it just stubbornly refused to allow him access. It was in the middle of telling him politely that he would be unable to try again for 45 minutes as a security precaution when the blood soaked axe maniac came back.
Soames realized he knew the man. It was Steve, his neighbor from two doors over, who did something important in carbon sequestration. “Steve no. Stop, its me” he yelled at the man. Maniac Steve looked for a second as if he might be about to test his chair axe but then there was recognition. He lowered the axe and made violent eye contact with Soames. Nobody blinked. Soames felt like a gorilla in a nature show. The contest was only ended by the collision of an out of control police quadcopter with the Styloane Ruskins building’s communication antenna a kilometer away. Both men turned to stare at the upended quad hanging in the rigging surrounded by ball lightning. Eventually the antenna’s power source failed. The moment was over.
Maniac Steve looked down over his blood soaked shirt at his bare feet He seemed to sober up for a second. He said “It was a nano virus in the water filtration system. It changed everyone’s DNA overnight. Only a tiny amount, nothing significant, nobody's getting tails or horns or anything cool like that. It was just enough to break the system. Nobody can access anything. Shelter, warmth, food, water, nothing. We are all locked out. It’s the end. The end of time. The end of days. I saw it on the news, on my phone, before it logged me out. Fire and damnation, sodom and gomorrah. Tonight we burn this mother!”. With that he raised his chair axe, and ran down into the stairwell.
Soames tried not to think about how dark that stairwell seemed. Surely it has been brightly lit before, now it seemed darker, smokier maybe. There was movement in the shadows too. He was getting off track. He was still Soames, virus or no virus, there must be some old DNA around. He tried licking the door handle. Nothing happened. He tried spitting on it. The red bonking seemed more baleful than ever. Bodily waste might contain unmodified DNA. He dug for a booger, a fat juicy one. No joy. His surprisingly brown ear wax didn’t work either. Screaming now from the stairwell. Very close and definitely not Steve. He didn’t need to pee, god he wished he did. Time was running out, a head appeared in the stairwell, its expression a rictus of hate directed at him, then it was pulled back by arms from below. It bellowed with rage as it was dragged from view. In a last act of desperation he dropped his pants and rubbed his ass against the cold steel of the door handle. There it was, a happy little jingle and a green light. The door opened softly on well oiled hinges.
Inside his apartment finally, he pulled his pants up and fastened his belt. A howling, sobbing crazed mob of humanity collided with the door just seconds later but it didn’t budge. Kalfeater building was built to last. That door was made of Danish steel. Remembering old cop movies, he grabbed a chair and wedged it under the door handle, just to be safe. It was he noticed, the same model as favored by Maniac Steve. Shaken, he walked over to the sink and tried to get some water. The kitchen sink refused and the fridge gave him a small warning electric shock, so he slid to the floor and cried. It seemed like the most rational response.
For the first time in 25 years, Kalfeater building’s emergency address system was activated. A chunkily reassuring robotic voice announced “Attention all Citizens. Due to a building wide failure of the DNA authentication system resulting in a state of widespread public distress, we will now be dosing all public sectors with Calm 91. Please stand by”. Gradually the screaming and pounding outside Soames’ door became quieter, less intense and then slowed to a muffled murmur and finally to silence as the powerful sedative in Calm 91 riot control gas spread. A small amount of the thoughtfully pink coloured gas had leaked under his door and his body sucked it in greedily.
A week later everything was back to normal. The building security team had reset everyone’s DNA records to take small changes such as those caused by the seemingly innocuous and inevitable virus into account. Most of the damage had been repaired and people were noticeably less nervous around security systems. Soames felt that everything was right with the world again. Apart from his front door. Surely the machine couldn’t harbor a grudge. It had been a matter of life and death. Waste DNA had saved him from a crazed mob. His door should be happy he was unhurt. Would it like to feel like Maniac Steve’s door? Still the thing still seemed put out. He decided to pick up some of that really good cleaning fluid, the stuff that came from Germany. He’d spend an hour cleaning that door handle by hand. Show the door how much he cherished it.
In the darkness of the carbon sequestration duct Maniac Steve chuckled to himself. There would be plenty of door handles to lick that night. He could wait.