Chapter 10 #3
Hujuru grimaced. “If Ridderth has anyone or anything related to the Ayorinn forecast ratshit, we can’t find it.
Our best deep-dive analysts say that ridiculous doggerel pops up in random locations, but no more in Ridderth than any other city on any other planet.
” Her lips twisted in disdain. “That forecast conspiracy may have started here, but that was thirty-whatever years ago. Now it’s just a scam.
I guarantee you that someone, somewhere, is making serious money on it.
The stupid poems appear all over the galaxy, and credulous fools lap them up.
” She hissed a heavy breath and shook her head, making her springy ringlets bounce in agitation.
“My office is spread too thin as it is, and the Kameleon division is six months behind in even acknowledging requests for operatives.” Her mouth twisted.
“I don’t know why HQ is so convinced that Ridderth is the source. ”
Jane did. She’d started her CPS career as an expert statistician, and she’d discovered the pattern. As she’d pointed out to HQ, Ridderth was the only megacity on any member planet where the quatrains had never appeared first.
Officially, the CPS had promoted Jane to the Mabingion post to clean house after the previous administrator’s utter incompetence and brazen self-dealing.
Her top-secret mission, directly from the mouth of the Citizen Protection Service’s High Marshal, was to use any means necessary to exterminate the pernicious, corrupting cancer that was the Ayorinn Legacy.
The CPS knew to its cost that the forecast was real. Whether or not the supposed meaning was real, people believed it. In Jane’s view, the danger far exceeded the combined threats of the lawless pirate clan, thieving interstellar jackers, and the planet-based criminal crew conglomerates.
The poetry spoke to people in ways the CPS had never been able to interpret or predict, but it worked.
Each of the hundreds of quatrains raised the heat and stirred the pot, especially when the entertainment industry boosted the signal with provocative interpretations.
Each resurgence of the meme left increasing death and destruction in its wake.
Ridderth suffered more than most and had the ugly scars to prove it.
Imagining the whole galaxy on fire kept her working long hours on her plans when she should have been sleeping.
Which was why the first order she gave after her appointment had been to assign an entire Minder Corps data section of specialists to gather, evaluate, and sort key information about Ridderth. She now knew more about the city than its oldest residents.
Jane nodded sympathetically to Hujuru about her complaint.
“Yes, HQ does tend to live in a stellar-fairy dimension all its own. That’s why I’m down here in the most corrupt city in the galaxy instead of up at Concordance Prime or at CPS HQ on Karybdis.
” Jane gave Hujuru a wry smile. “I don’t like heights. ”
“Me, either.” Hujuru chuckled. “I wouldn’t take your job if they gave me the gross profits from an entire frontier planet.”
Jane laughed. “It’ll get better once the project is complete.” She pushed her chair back and stood. Hujuru took the hint and stood as well.
After Hujuru left, Jane sealed the room and walked toward her private lift. So many chaotic threads to pull together for her plan to work. Her head throbbed like an untuned flux engine.
As she entered the capsule, a sudden epiphany struck her. Media companies would be the perfect hiding place for the Ayorinn cancer.
On the surface, they competed for scoops and subscribers, but what if Mabingion’s oldest companies were part of a secret conspiracy? CGC foundation law and later regulations gave all media companies permanent protected status. An inordinate number of them claimed Ridderth as home.
Plus, media companies knew better than anyone how to get the public’s attention. They could seed the galactic net with the destructive memes, then pretend to get new releases after everyone else did.
Another piece of the puzzle fell into place. Media company revenue peaked when new quatrains appeared. Even more so when new riots followed. Ridderth was a prime example of that. Galactic-scale riots would mean galactic-scale profits.
Jane’s previously disjointed conjectures finally coalesced into a stunning conclusion. Hujuru was wrong about the Legacy being a scam, but she was right that someone was making money on it.
She paced back and forth in the lift cage, fired up by the ripple effect through her plans. Tomorrow, she’d look for what could go wrong. Tonight, she’d think about success.
As the lift doors irised open to reveal her dark, quiet office, she sent an order to the coordinated raid planners to get her a list of names, locations, and employees of the top media companies on Mabingion that were more than twenty years old, and any media company that was in Ridderth for the original Legacy riots.
She massaged the screaming muscles at the base of her skull.
If it turned out the media companies weren’t the source of the Ayorinn cancer, it would still be a net win.
They were certainly guilty of keeping it alive and profiting from the trouble they stirred up by broadcasting the quatrains far and wide.
Either way, she’d be doing the city a public service. Ridderth had suffered enough from would-be messiahs, charlatans, and self-aggrandizing crusaders.
Just like the CPS High Marshal said, the CPS had no higher calling than ensuring the long-term galactic peace.