The Stream Read online

  'Yes, Hereditary Overnight Mortality Events. I must admit I hate that acronym,' I replied. I’d first seen it mentioned when Geraldine’s predecessor Marcus Nguyen had died suddenly from it. 'I’ve not heard of any specific case other than Marcus, but I assume there were others before him otherwise it wouldn’t have had a name.'

  'Yes, it’s a rare hereditary condition that causes sudden death during sleep due to the body’s immune system catastrophically rejecting the Tap with no warning. I’ve recently been seeing a number of cases at a seemingly increasing frequency. A quick search through the secure records uncovered many such deaths in the last few years. I’ll give you access to these restricted records for your research of course. I’d like you to try to confirm or refute my suspicion that these are happening more frequently now. Is there any link between the people who have died like this, and are the symptoms similar? Is there any similarity between these Tap related deaths and the millions who died rejecting the Tap on Flood day? Other than that, please feel free to go in any direction your thoughts and research takes you,' Geraldine concluded. 'Once your report is ready, send it to my private account, and we’ll meet back here to discuss it. Could you make sure you put the letters FEOS in the header please. It helps me prioritise it in my message queue, to make sure it doesn’t get lost in the noise.'

  We discussed the issues further for a while, but Geraldine didn’t want to tell me what had aroused her suspicions or give any further details for fear of clouding my research. I was feeling disorientated by then, so we called the discussion to halt, and I felt such a relief when I was immersed back in the Stream again. I saw Geraldine blink, and immediately received notification that I had been granted full access to the restricted records that I'd need. As we parted, Geraldine did suggest going back to the dry desk every couple of days for longer periods to get acclimatised, as I’d be likely be spending more time in future in dry areas. That really didn’t help to settle my jarred nerves as I left the office.

  Normally on a Saturday my pool would be all personal information, with only an occasional item musing on work related topics as something crossed my mind. Today though, it’s been all work so far. After leaving Geraldine, I spent the rest of the day reading about HOME, looking into the records of many who had died, their backgrounds, lives and investigations into their deaths. The time just flew by without me realising it as I became immersed in the topic. Initially it seemed a pretty straightforward subject, if a bit tangential to what I guessed was Geraldine’s true agenda. However, I started to feel a glimmer of concern, a pattern which hinted at something a bit deeper seemed to be emerging. That was always one of my strengths as a historian, being able spot links between disparate events which lead to a fresh understanding or theory. Perhaps Geraldine might have had a better understanding of my suitability for this type of work than I did.

  I don't fully understand what I've found yet, but I know there's something there. I need to sleep on it and let my subconscious do its best. I’ll start looking into what happened around the time of the Flood tomorrow, which hopefully will help crystallise my thoughts further. FEOS, I mustn’t forget to label it FEOS. I wonder if that stands for anything? More likely it’s just some random letters used by Geraldine’s weird filing system.

  Right, I really must try to relax first so I don’t need to sedate myself to sleep. I think I’ll immerse myself in a VR drama for a while. It’s easy to take the full sensory impact of a virtual world for granted, but thinking back on what humanity went through, it makes me realise how privileged I am to live at a time where this is possible. To place myself in a world where everything seems real, and the drama takes place around me as I watch, always lifts me out of the frustrations and worries of real life. I can imagine why some people don’t ever want to leave.

  I’m always impressed how the AI behind each drama makes sure the actors never get too close to you or make eye contact, and anything dangerous happens where you wouldn’t be affected by it. It couldn't hurt you, but it would remove the sense of reality if you expected it to hurt, but it didn't. Of course, they’re not real actors these days, just simulations acting in the style of some of the great actors of the past, recreated from recordings of their performances. I’ve always been interested in the history of live theatre, so I often study the metadata of the characters around me in the drama to see what actor they’re based on. I’ve been told it keeps me from fully immersing in doing so, keeping enough detachment to investigate what’s going on. Hey, well I am Shallow.

  OK, I need to start something new, so what shall I pick? The Confluvium drama looks interesting; a series of episodes dramatising our first contact with each alien race that we’ve met, and how they were assimilated into the Stream. It looks like it’s starting at the very beginning though, covering the initial expansion of humanity after the invention of the bulk drive. Seems like a very good place to start. It would appear that it’s all going to be done in incredible depth and detail, so let’s give it a try. I’m sure that even as a historian, I’ll learn something new. I’ll log further after the drama if I’ve anything interesting to say about it.

  Note to self: get my VR Tap infrastructure checked. I’m getting a weird flickering here and there when the playback is paused. I could have sworn one of the characters smiled at me.

  Report: Hereditary Overnight Mortality Events - 25th Quintilis 227PD

  FEOS: Discussion document for Geraldine Mander's eyes only.

  [Geraldine: you asked for an informal report, please let me know if the tone of this first report is correct. I'll adjust next time if you'd like changes]

  Executive Summary

  I started off this investigation thinking you were probably worrying too much. I was wrong. Shit, whatever is happening is real, and is getting rapidly worse. People are dying at an increasing rate for unexplained reasons that haven't even been properly investigated. The deaths look remarkably similar to some of those that happened during the Flood.

  There's still plenty of further investigation to do here, but given what I've discovered I thought I'd send you my current findings as soon as possible so we could discuss priorities.

  HOME

  Let's start off with the basics. The Hereditary Overnight Mortality Event (HOME) syndrome was first identified about 10 years after the Flood. It was diagnosed as a rare condition that caused a sudden and catastrophic rejection of the Tap, resulting in severe brain damage and almost immediate death. One peculiarity of the deaths was that they nearly always happened while the victim was asleep. I've not found any research that fully explains why this is, although the leading theory is that it is only triggered when entering REM sleep. However there have been an increasing number of occurrences in recent years when the victim was awake. Whatever the cause, there is a rapid collapse of the neurons forming and surrounding the Tap, which then spreads until brain death occurs.

  One pattern was spotted in the early cases after the syndrome was identified - some clusters of deaths had occurred within families, leading to a theory that there was a genetic element involved in susceptibility to the condition. Later investigations failed to prove this link, it may have just been a statistical anomaly. However, by then the horrible name and acronym had spread through the Stream and into popular culture. I'd hope that now the waters have calmed we wouldn't let anything so crass get into common use, but that's a separate matter.

  Although initially there was a lot of worry and interest in HOME, especially after the death of an apparently world-famous singer Jonno Pourri (no, I've no idea why he was famous from what I've just heard, although his anti-Stream opus had its sadly amusing moments), this died down when the actual level of deaths became clear. There doesn't seem to be a lot of active research or comment on this at present.

  Flood deaths

  You mentioned any similarities with the deaths on Flood day, and whether there was any link. I've not got far with this, and yet the findings are worrying. As we all know, millions died on that tum
ultuous day due to Raj Tamboli's Great Mistake. As humanity was transformed, we lost a horrendous number of the population primarily due to accidents. However, there are a significant number of these that are just marked as 'unexplained deaths' - people who just died as the Flood took place. Given the turmoil of the years immediately after as the world recovered and adapted, it's not surprising that these deaths weren't a major focus of investigation. However what little research was done on this category of death does sound remarkably like HOME, except that instead of rejecting the Tap suddenly after many years of trouble-free use, these happened as the Tap was being established. I've seen it referred to as a plumbing accident, which struck me in extremely poor taste, but those were troubled times. The end result was the same though - brain death caused by catastrophic and sudden neuron degradation around the part of the brain hosting the Tap.

  What is most worrying of all is that I've not found any mention in the Stream of any research or even speculation that there is a link between HOME and the unexplained Flood deaths. It seems such an obvious link to make - we can't be the first ones to realise there might be some common cause.

  Death rate

  This is the scary bit. In the decades after the syndrome was identified, the global death rate was only in the tens, certainly never more than one hundred per year. It only really entered public consciousness when the singer Jonno Pourri died from it, and there was the recent resurgence with the death of your predecessor Marcus Nguyen. However, there's been little or no active research into the condition for the last fifty years or so, and no reports on death rates either.

  I had to use your authorisation to be able to access the global death statistics over this period, and with a bit of clever searching and filtering I managed to get a decent breakdown of deaths that were attributable to HOME. Until about fifteen years ago, the death rate seems to have hovered in the same range - but since then, it's been climbing and at an increasing rate. I'll send you separately the graphs of the death rate per year and other backup collateral, but this is the shocking part - the figure for last year was over 17,000! Whatever the cause is, it's getting significantly worse. I've not got much data to back this up yet, but there do appear to be regional hotspots of deaths. I also feel like there's some sort of pattern in the type of people dying, but I haven't got anything conclusive yet. There's something about Marcus's death that is nagging the back of my mind.

  Note that this report focuses specifically on HOME deaths within the human race. I have carried out a basic search on the four other races of the Confluvium, and they too seem to be suffering from HOME-like deaths, and at an increasing rate. Interestingly they suffered much less with HOME-like deaths on their Flood days.

  Open questions

  Is there any sort of link (regional, demographic, interests etc.) between the people that are dying?

  If there are any links, do these links apply to the people who died during the Flood?

  Why isn't there any research into HOME these days, and why hasn't this scale of death been spotted before?

  Pool: Kofi Albus - 28th Quintilis 227PD

  Right, another interesting day at work looms. It's Geraldine's first day in the office since I sent her my early draft report via her secure channel. She specifically asked me to only discuss it in person with her once we're in the Source Bank, so I've been holding back on telling her about the things I've subsequently found until our meeting at 10am this morning. At first I didn't understand Geraldine's cautious, even paranoid approach; now though I'm not sure what to think. I'm certainly starting to view the world through mustard-tinted glasses.

  Don't ask me why I visualise paranoia as mustard, my use of the Tap has always had a few idiosyncrasies that I've not heard about in others. When I look up a topic in the Stream it always seems to be floating on a hazy coloured background which appears to related to my emotional outlook on the topic. Paranoia floats on mustard. Geraldine is teal. Cricket is grey. Roman history is yellow and smells like a banana.

  I usually fill my posterity pools with a lot of the inconsequential trivia that make my day; what I had for breakfast, what the weather was like, all the mundane happenings, largely to try to convince myself that my life had some sort of meaning. Well now at last, something interesting is really happening. So I'll try to cut down on some of my usual inane wittering and record the more important moments of my day.

  First though, I fancy another walk to work. I seem to arrive in the office much more focused and relaxed if I take my time and enjoy the fresh air and sunshine. I need to free my mind from distractions for the day ahead. I still keep thinking back to that odd shadow behind Mauro, I'm sure I wasn't imagining it. Hey ho.

  I didn't get quite so much solitude on the way in today though. While I was walking through the park, I crossed paths with Damon Gates, and we ended up walking into the office together. Damon had recently transferred here on secondment from Decemvir Gulzari Desai's office, largely to act as personal liaison between them. He's grease between the wheels of the world's governance, with the interesting job title of a Lictor. He seemed pleasant enough, always wandering around chatting to people to get to know them and find out how things worked around Geraldine. I'd only talked to him a couple of times, but he looked like he was keen to socialise on the remaining stretch left to work.

  'Good morning Kofi,' said Damon. 'Lovely morning for a stroll into the office. I usually take the shuttle, but thought I'd have a walk today. You often walk to work?'

  'Yes,' I replied. 'I think I walk about three days a week on average. I much prefer it, as long as I drag myself out of bed in time.'

  'Yes, that's my problem too,' he laughed. 'I probably average less than one day a week. I'm not great in the mornings. Anything exciting planned for the day?'

  'Oh I've just got a meeting lined up with Geraldine. I usually try to catch up with her in person every couple of weeks, assuming she's in the office. Grabbing the most of the opportunity today,' I said.

  'That's good. I'll be seeing her this afternoon too, Gulzari has been asking me to chase up feedback on a report they've been working on together. Gulzari always prefers face-to-face liaison rather than faceless Stream messages, so I'm acting as his proxy. Ah the heady life of a Lictor,' he said. 'At least it's nice to help things move along and find out how things work at this high level. Not sure it's somewhere I ever expected to be, but I'm really enjoying it.'

  'Yes, I never thought I'd work at this level of government,' I said. 'It's not really on a typical career path for a historian. But you don't say no to a Decemvir, and it's given me a new lease of life.'

  'Ah yes,' he replied. 'I heard you'd just been through a divorce. Quite a big change in your life in such a short time.'

  I slowed my pace a little, and tried not to raise my eyebrows. He could tell I was a little taken aback.

  'Oh sorry, didn't mean to pry and embarrass you. You know what offices are like, lots of gossip and tittle tattle going around. People especially like telling tales to newbies like me. I could probably embarrass half the people in Geraldine's office without trying. My apologies.'

  'No worries,' I said, relaxing a little. We continued our walk to work, chatting to little or no consequence.

  Anyway, I said I'd cut back on all the padding and just focus my work logs on things people might find interesting after I've gone. That's the historian in me coming to the fore I guess. So I'll cut short the conversation with Damon, and please fill in the gaps yourself on how I get to the desk in the Source Bank, having recovered from the nauseous feeling of disorientation.

  'The report was just what I needed,' Geraldine started. 'Short, informal but with your own feelings coming through. I have a hunch I know where this might be going, so it's important we retain our humanity and sense of humour while we're uncovering what's happening. Make no mistake, this is just the first tiny step, I think there's something deeper going on than just these unexplained deaths.'

  'I was hoping I was getting hold of
the wrong end of the stick, and was exaggerating the problem', I said.

  'Unfortunately not, your report largely confirmed my suspicions', she continued. 'However I must admit the actual scale of deaths now was probably an order of magnitude greater than my worst fears. There's something fundamental going on here, which raises some big questions. Is there something endemic that's causing this, some biological cause such as a virus making people susceptible to HOME? There's too much of an increasing trend to make this a statistical anomaly. Is there something about the way these individuals use the Stream that's having an impact? Do they use some new Stream service that's triggering this? You mentioned that you felt there was a pattern in the deaths, did you get anywhere with that?'

  I replied, 'Yes, I think I have. It took me quite a while to put something concrete to my vague suspicions. It was really useful having that access you gave me to the restricted metadata on all the people who had died, thanks. Without that I probably wouldn't have made much headway. Sorry that I didn't get everything into my report, I had a few breakthroughs after I sent it, but I thought it best to summarise them when we met. I focused on deaths that have happened over the last five years, as they'd be covering the recent increase in death rate. I then just made guesses at things to filter on that might be common between the victims. All basic stuff, but the level of detail captured in the metadata on people these days made it possible.'