August 9 2127

  I awoke at noon, groggy from the flight over the night before. The plane arrived at Ted Stevens international at 1 am. It took a minute to get out of bed, and I ached from the quality of it. I was here to interview a former Omni-Corp Pharmaceuticals employee. I'd been scraping every source I could to get my hands on for any information on what destroyed Chicago. It had been decades ago, but no official cause for what happened was ever released. A “massive seismic event” was the only thing ever put out.

  There were a lot of strange things with that mountain, and I only started to put things together when researching the ecology around area. I'd been working on my doctorate on ecology and conservation, and had been researching the flora and fauna around the volcano that makes up the former city of Chicago. I needed to know why there are so many new species being found from around the area.

  I had sent several emails and letters to anyone who used to work at the Omni-Corp Pharmaceuticals' Chicago Branch. I knew going into this project that finding anyone who used to work there, especially so much later than the erruption, was slim, but I needed to try. That said, I found one woman, and she was why I had flown on the rinky dinkiest aircraft up to the last frontier.

  We had agreed to meet up in a diner in Anchorage. The meeting time was coming up, so I hopped in the shower, brushed my teeth, and got dressed in some jeans and a short sleeved button up. I left my motel room, and ordered a taxi. I stared in awe of the mountains for a moment, leaning on the rail. A few minutes later, the taxi arrived, I hopped in, said the address of the diner, and let the computer do the rest.

  It was a few minutes before 1300 when I arrived at the diner. I exited the taxi, crossed the parking lot, and entered the restaurant, not entirely sure who I would be looking for. I was simply told to look for the old woman with a cybernetic arm. The smell of greasy food was intoxicating. I had to search for a minute, until I saw a woman waving me down.

  I started my recording software, and sat down at the booth, across from the woman. She was in her 70s, with long, white hair, and was in a black sweater and khakis. Her cybernetic arm was well worn, and had several scratches and gouges on the surface. All the same, the back of the hand had the old OCP logo on it.

  “Oh you must be the.. Journalist? Researcher? My heavens, you're so young! Why would you take any interest in Chicago? That hasn't been a place since the honorable Richard J. Daley Volcano took it's place”, she said, laughing.

  “Good afternoon, my name is Johnathan Taylor. I'm trying to figure out why the ecology is messed up around where Chicago stood. I want to write a report on it, let the news get out there. ”, I answered. “It's the topic of my PHD.”

  “Oh, trying to learn about that?”, she asked, her former mirth now gone.

  “Look, something has caused a rapid evolution of flora and fauna there. I decided to research it, and it brought me here. I want to know, and I think the world should hear about it too.”

  That seemed to be a good enough answer for her.

  “Well”, she paused, contemplating for a moment. “Alright, I did make you come here from the lower 48. Make sure to grab some food. We'll be here for a minute.”

  The waiter came by, and took our orders. The woman sitting across from me introduced herself as Dr. Valencia Peters-Sanford. She told me to just call her Valencia. She told me a little about her background, then began to tell her story.

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  She had spoke for a couple of hours, answering clarifying questions as they came up. She spoke of how she came to work there, her training, and about her first day. The food had came and went, and I was on my third cup of synth-coffee. Valencia just kept talking through it all, my eyes recording everything. I realized this was just the first part of a much, much longer story.

  “I have a question”, I asked, getting the question in as Valencia was taking a drink.

  “Oh, yes? What do you have for me?”

  “Why are you starting here, instead of closer to the actual incident?”

  “Context. You need the greater context of how it happened. Don't you want the truth?”

  I was beginning to feel that my time was being wasted, but I needed that information.

  “Yes, I do. Another point I want to bring up is on those memory chips. It sounds like you had a shift in personality after your initial training, if you can call it that. “

  “Of course it affected my personality. The whole system was designed to. They stuck unknown quantities of data directly into my head, and filled my mind with training files taken from thousands of makers. And you know why it was so effective? Why they were banned in '91? It wasn't just that you got the muscle memory of the situation. You also got the emotions, the feelings.”

  Valencia was now leaning forward, her eyes staring into my soul.

  “The feelings?”, I asked.

  “Yes, the feelings. They play a role in forming memories. As you download hundereds of thousands of training scenarios from the thousands of people used for training data, you download the emotions of those scenarios. Not all of those scenarios were training either, a lot were real world. More than you could ever believe were real world situations that happened, were scanned, uploaded, and sold to OCP for pennies on the dollar. This affects people.

  “I would say I never used to feel rage. Anger, sure, but rage? Never. After that initial training, I can't believe I was ever calm again. I understand it was my choice to join that, but I could never have understood what it would mean in the end. It was the steady pay and getting my arm back that really got me to join, because cybernetics were horrifically expensive back then. These training files gave me every persons hatred, fears, wants, wishes, joys, and sorrows in those moments. Do you know what it's like to experience death in so many ways?”

  “The worst part is I was trapped, and it was my choice to choose the gilded cage. I could have quit that first day, but what choice did I have? The reclamation teams surely would have swept me up the second I did anything frisky. Those investments they put into me cost a few people a lot of money. Worse yet is they would have found another Bob to put in my place had I tried, so it wouldn't have stopped had I quit.”

  Valencia was sullen after all of this, and I frankly didn't blame her. That was a lot to take in.

  She called for the check , and said we should head back to the motel to continue the interview. She said nobody wants to eat their food while overhearing how many people would die. I ordered a taxi for us, and took out my pack of cigarettes. I lit one up and offered one to Valencia.

  “No thank you, it's bad for my health. It's not like the nicotine would affect me anyway”, she replied.

  “Oh, the lung filters. Yeah that makes sense.”

  The cab had arrived, and we rode back to the motel.

  “You know, I still can't believe OCP is gone. Every day I fear a corporate security squad will come knocking on my door”, Valencia told me, staring out the window.

  I didn't have anything to respond with.

  We got back to the motel. We took the stairs to my room, and I had to maneuver the furniture, and set up the chairs and table into a good orientation. I brought the coffee pot over and began to brew up another pot, as Valencia got situated at the table. I sat down with two cups for when the synth-coffee was ready.

  “So”, she started to speak again, “The intel team took the phones and computer from Tycho's place, and cloned the data to analyze. It seems Tycho was preparing forms for an organization, but there was no company registered under the name given, O.A. Labs. There were a couple of months before the pickup, so we had time to get more information. Whether we did or not was above my head.

  “Luckily for us, there was a workplace accident for one of the members of the Longshoreman 's Union. The union called for a strike until they got better workplace conditions. Honestly, now it reminds me of an old story. Have you ever heard of the homestead strike?”