Michael Abberton

Men, and I say men advisedly, crave wealth and power. One is never enough, and neither is the amount of wealth. Under our present systems of government, the greater the wealth, the greater the power and influence, to the point where the application of law and human rights for the people they exploit to gain their wealth are ultimately meaningless. 

Such a man is Milo Funk, 46, son of an immigrant father who worked himself to the bone to give his son a good start in life. And that father was the first victim, the first target in a life of grift and privilege. Having no talent other than sleaze and the promise of payment, Milo is about to find that in some places his money is no good. And one of those places is the Twilight Zone.

Monday morning, 6 a.m. The radio came on – the BBC News from London in their flagship programme,  which was originally entitled The Today Programme. Chloe lay there for a while, listening to how the British government and establishment packaged their propaganda. It was so different, so formal compared to Fox News, yet the messaging and the underlying worldview were precisely the same. The presenters with their snide and sarcastic remarks, the way they mercifully attacked anyone not from the right of politics, how they always gave the counterargument to LGBTQ+ rights but never once challenged the trans bigots. How they ran stories about the inevitable destruction of the planet’s ecosystems with jokey items about how you could now sunbathe in November. 

Strangely, the reason why she was in London on this particular morning was not covered in the news but in a splash magazine feature item – Milo Funk, the richest man in the world, was about to activate his satellite network, SkyBrain. Satellites that would provide coverage and access to the internet at previously unheard-of speeds to everyone anywhere on the planet. And access to all this data, in both directions, was open to the highest bidder regardless of who they were. Of course, he had sold the majority of this access to the US government – so now they could locate anyone anywhere and monitor all of their internet usage. Whether he had equally sold that access to other governments could not be certain. People in some of the more oppressive nations in the world had been filmed in vignettes all week smashing and burning their phones, laptops, and other devices in protest. Native American AIM and other aboriginal and human rights groups across the world were switching to encrypted CB and shortwave radio systems. Technology that had been used to communicate secretly during the Second World War and Cold War was being resurrected – training was being given in how to avoid signal triangulation and basic encryption. 

She threw back the duvet and sat up, swinging her feet to the floor. She looked at the phone again. She was absolutely certain that as an independent journalist, having crossed the border into a foreign country, that her phone was now being actively targeted, despite all the software countermeasures that had been installed. She had to assume also that the microphones and camera were active even when the phone was switched off. Currently, the AI that was watching her was looking straight up at the ceiling, so unless this hotel had also installed surveillance cameras that she had been unable to detect when she had swept the room the night before, she wasn’t so concerned about privacy as she conducted her morning ablutions. 

Usually, good looks were an undeniable advantage in TV and video media careers. In Chloe’s case, however, at times they had been a disadvantage. She looked like a typical Fox new host, tall, blonde, with her father’s eyes and chin and her mother’s figure. Before she had made her name, other independent news organisations had regarded her with suspicion just on that basis. But she had also been able to use it to some gains, securing comments and even whole interviews with some of the nastiest people on the planet as they had only looked at the blonde in the designer suit, not seeing the logo on her microphone and on the side of Jules’ camera. 

Dressed and armoured for the day (though she liked to think of her suit and make-up as armour, the jacket of this pantsuit was lined with Kevlar), she called Jules to see if he was up. 

“Yes, boss,” he said after only one ring. “I was just about to call you. All charged and ready. We getting breakfast here?” 

“No,” she said. “There’s a franchise coffee store round the corner. We’ll go through the schedule there. The car is coming for us at 0830 Zulu.”

“Copy that. See you downstairs.” Jules was one of the best camera and drone pilots in the business. He’d been to all the worst places in the world and had literally won awards highlighting the evil that people did to their fellows, from Afghanistan to Texas. His gear was also state-of-the-art, and was only online when he wanted to be – it could all be hard air-gapped at the flick of a mechanical switch. He was also quite distinctive in appearance, his 6ft 6 frame giving some advantage in the media scrum, his short, silvery dreads and blue eyes again more than once drawing the target to look at him if not to look right down the barrel of his lens. 

Today was going to be a big day, though it wouldn’t kick off until 1600, after sunset. That was when Milo would, by throwing one theatrically large switch, fully activate his SkyBrain network and turn on the London Christmas lights. 

Milo drank his third espresso of the day and looked out across the city from the penthouse suite of the building. It was only on the 50^th floor, but he’d let that go. The British prime minister had agreed to fit the bill anyway, and his entourage had also fully occupied the two floors below. 

The sky was clear, and the weather forecast was also to remain cloudless, hovering just above freezing. The English still used Celsius— note to self to get that changed. He could see to the horizon in three directions from this vantage point in the master bedroom. The floor-to-ceiling windows were spotless, inside and out, and only the slight polarisation of the glass gave any indication that there was, in fact, any glass there at all. He was naked, air-drying from his thirty-minute shower, but confident that he was invisible from outside the tower. His countermeasures would destroy any unauthorised drone within a mile. 

Yes, he was happy that he hadn’t had to go to the further bother of changing the weather if the forecast had not been favourable. It was important that all would be able to see his triumph. 

“Angelina,” he called, putting the cup down on an occasional table, “you may dress me now.”

Chloe and Jules were ready when the car picked them up. The only way to get around London now was a robot car, and so, given that they were going to be in public for the great of the day anyway, they had thrown caution to the wind. However, inside the cab, Jules had established a short-range jamming field that would neutralise the cab’s system and any other hidden microphones or cameras it might have, as well as rendering all their kit temporarily shielded without the necessity of Faraday cages. 

They went to the major locations ahead of time, checking angles and levels, before attending the many press junkets and conferences with everyone from the Mayor to the Minster for Culture, Arts, and Sports, so-called business leaders, and then spending some time with the Green Party leaders, the environmental and political protesters that were being kept very well away  from the central locations, and local business owners who had been forced to close for the day with the closure of the roads and even the underground stations. Throughout the exterior filming, Jules was constantly being buzzed by drones, not to mention the police and other surveillance drones that constantly flew overhead. On more than one occasion, they found Wi-Fi dead spots, not because of the building or anything to do with where they were situated – this was active jamming, probably coming from the drones. 

They had lunch at a vegan falafel stall before continuing on. It was quite cold, but Jules seemed to be impervious to temperatures either end of the mercury after his adventures. Chloe had donned a woollen designer coat and vegan leather gloves, wearing a silver brooch on the black lapel that was made as a representation of Sputnik – she hoped that would help to get her noticed when necessary. 

As 4 o’clock approached, Chloe and Jules elbowed or smiled their way past security guards and ‘colleagues’ from the major networks to get a good position in the press pit, only a matter of yards away from the bullet-proof screens that surrounded the podium where some of the dignitaries and B-level celebs were beginning to find their marks. The sky was turning a deep velvet blue, many of the crowd looking as if there was anything to see yet. There was a bright spot up there – the only star visible through the light pollution, probably only Jupiter having the might to make his presence felt. 

At 15:15 precisely, Milo was escorted by his bodyguards to his personal air car, sitting on the ground outside Number 10. The Prime Minister and others had already left in their armoured limousines. Milo smiled and waved at the approved press, before stepping into the armoured plexiglass bubble. Vlad, his Chief of Security, sat opposite, his body servant, Angelina, next to him. The bubble hissed closed, and outside the soundproofed, heated interior, the rotors made a deafening whine as the aircar lifted off the ground and exited the street, maintaining minimum safe altitude all the way to Oxford Street, where the ceremony was to take place. Flight time was less than three minutes, but to make sure that they got all the best angles for the media, they decided to do a longer route, lasting ten minutes and twelve seconds. Passersby and some media were knocked flat by the downdraft of the rotors, but these proles didn’t matter. To avoid the danger of birdstrikes – not that there was any real danger to this vehicle, but thinking of the mess – poison and birds of prey as well as combat drones had been deployed three weeks in advance to kill every pigeon or seagull that dared to stray into the area. 

Milo was wearing his customary black suit, shoes, no socks, shirt, and for the cold and the look, a black overcoat and muffler – but they called that a scarf here? He would have to have that changed also. Angelina was wearing a black cocktail dress to match, off the shoulder, showing her cleavage and the $5m diamond necklace around her neck. He had already told her that if she complained of being cold, or even looked anything but sexy and beautiful during the ceremony, he would fire her on the spot, and she would be joining her family in a deportation camp in New Mexico. 

The car came down Oxford Street and flared slightly, before touching down on the landing pad that had been specially shipped here just for this purpose. Vlad got out first and took his position, his hands clasped in front of him, getting an all-clear signal in his earpiece before nodding to his principal that all was safe. Angelina got out first, having been instructed to do so in a way that would enable Milo’s tabloids to get an upskirt shot, before Milo himself got out, waved to the cheering crowds (sounds of cheering were being played on hidden speakers) before they ascended to the podium. 

The British Prime Minister, US ambassador, and the London Mayor were all there to congratulate Milo as he walked to the front of the stage, behind the switch, which looked like it would be more appropriate to a children’s cartoon. This was his show. He signalled for the crowd to be quiet – the hidden speakers played shushing noises. 

“Hello London!” Milo shouted. The speakers played applause.

 “This is truly an historic occasion not just for this city but for the world and humanity. Ich bin ein Londoner!” Applause. 

“This moment celebrates another era of humanity as we prepare to travel to the stars and our first town on Mars, Funkotown! Tonight we celebrate a new age – not just these lights that celebrate the birth of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, but the new salvation for our species. So that you all can best appreciate what this means – lights out!”

All the streetlights, shop lights, and the film lights all cut out, plunging the surrounding streets into darkness. All the cameras’ lights all simultaneously went out except for Jules’ – which he switched off immediately so as not to give himself away. 

There were shushing noises again as the people craned their necks to look upward. As their eyes adjusted, they began to see more and more stars, the brightest at first, and then the bright winter constellations that most of the old people could recognise. The overriding light pollution, of course, stopped them from being able to perceive anything else, and the Milky Way was never visible to city dwellers. 

A countdown began. 

5…

4…

3…

2…

1…

Zero!

Lights came on around the stage as Milo smiled, waved, and threw the switch. 

Immediately, the sky was filled with stars. But not stars. This was in a grid pattern that covered the sky from horizon to horizon. The SkyBrain satellites, each carrying a nuclear-powered light, permanently shining downwards at the surface of the Earth. All the stars went out. 

Then the Christmas lights came on. The speakers played applause and cheering, and most of the crowd joined in. 

“Welcome to the new age of mankind!” shouted Milo. “And…!” he clicked his fingers. The satellites above now spelled Merry Xmas! across the sky. 

“Any questions from the press?” said Milo, peering out towards the press box, pretending to shield his eyes with one hand. 

There were shouts from the journalists, and the cameramen reactivated their lights. Milo was looking for his journalists, the ones that he owned, and so what followed was that they asked the questions that he had scripted, and he gave the prepared answers. Other journalists were also shouting but recognised that this farce would have to be played out in full before they got any chance at all. 

Chloe pushed and smiled her way to the front of the barrier, making sure that she was standing close to one of the lighting arrays and that the brooch was prominently visible. 

As predicted, Milo fell for it. And even if Chloe had been highlighted as a potential threat in his briefing package, all he saw was blonde, brooch, and satellite.

“Mr. Funk?” she said, in her best corporate manner. “The satellites will obscure the stars not only for this and future generations, but zoologists have predicted an ecological disaster as creatures from honey bees to migratory birds will no longer be able to navigate. What have you got to say about this?”

Milo looked taken aback, and Vlad came up to his side to whisper in his ear. Jules could see in his peripheral vision— and the mini cameras in his headset— that uniformed police and plainclothes thugs were starting to move in their direction. But Milo looked at Chloe again and shook his head, whispering something to Vlad and smiling. Vlad nodded, his expression blank under his wraparound augmented reality shades, and went back to his post. All the security and police stopped where they were. 

“Well, I’m sure you have seen that the science is not fixed, and that certainly is the opinion of a few scientists, but not all… Miss…?”

“Chloe Turner, for Fact Around and Find Out  channel. Research has already shown that if bee populations continue to deteriorate, then the world’s food production will be at risk.”

“As all of our customers are aware, and after all, that’s almost everyone now, Funko Industries doesn’t doomscroll or dwell on the past. If the bees die out, we’ll build new ones. We can create foodstuffs more efficiently in our labs than in the fields. And when we move to Mars, SkyBrain will show us the way and enable the terraforming of that planet.”

“SkyBrain will certainly make the Earth more like Mars if they remain in place. That’s another question for you, Mr. Funk, if I may? Your network of satellites is a danger to space navigation and greatly increases the danger to surface populations from re-entering vehicles and components, some of which may be radioactive.” Garbage. Boo. 

“I’m sorry, Chloe, that wasn’t a question, it was a statement, so I can’t give you an answer— your ideology had already given you one… If you’ll pardon the expression.” He winked at his cameras. Laughter. Applause. Wolf whistles.

“One study that has been put together by a number of ex-NASA and ESA scientists estimates that there is enough plutonium in SkyBrain to render half of the planet’s surface, ocean, or land uninhabitable for 200 years. Do you have any comment on that?” Boo. Hiss. Go away.

“I’m not concerned with the opinions of a few communist woke so-called scientists. I take my guidance directly from real science and what the Bible tells me. Have a nice day now! Merry Christmas!” Laughter.

Chloe stood back with Jules as Milo went on to another client journalist. “I screwed up. I should have been more direct,” she said. 

“Nah, you did fine. You wrong-footed him a couple of times there. We can use it. But I think we marked our cards, and so we better be making tracks.” 

They made their way to the back of the pen and out where they merged with a crowd and disappeared, the crowd dispersing in different directions. Chloe was now, for all intents and purposes, an old bald man in a woolly hat. Jules was a white woman in a Santa hat, walking with a dog. 

Milo finished the press conference early. For one, he was bored; for another, he was annoyed that he had allowed himself to fall for what was so obviously a ruse, and that someone had let those two Trotskyists through in the first place. As he walked to the air car, the PM took his arm and offered to track them down and arrest them, but Milo refused. “Let them go, it’s Christmas!” he said, smiling, shrugging off the unwanted hand as gently but as deliberately as possible. He told Vlad to take Angelina back to the apartment in a ground car – he wanted to be alone. Vlad indicated as much disapproval to that suggestion as he was paid to do, before escorting his boss to the door. This time, the car went straight up, above the rooftops and up to about four hundred feet. It slowly turned in place, both to give its sole occupant a 360-degree view, but also to show off to the adoring crowds below. It then flew south, in the direction of the building on the south bank of the river. The preprogrammed route was a scenic one – he had planned to celebrate as they flew over the famous historical landmarks, but now it seemed like an empty tourist show. 

The car flew over the Palace of Westminster  – what was usually totally restricted airspace – but Milo had sold the Brits their anti-aircraft software, so there was no way it would ever fire on something he owned. It then turned east, over the filthy water, over the Golden Hind and Globe Theatre, Southwark Cathedral, and then up, up, and up to the helipad of the apartment building. 

But the car didn’t stop when it reached the correct altitude. It kept going up. 

“Car! Stop! Return to safe mode! Car!” Milo shouted, to no avail. He pulled out his phone – no signal – but that was impossible! Unless… He looked around the interior of the car, looking for any device which didn’t belong. He didn’t find anything, but what he discovered to his horror was that this wasn’t his car. It had been swapped out at some stage. 

“Car! Respond!” he said, but there was nothing he could do. There were no controls of any kind in the upholstered bubble. The city lights were disappearing below him as the SkyBrain lights showed above, no closer, seemingly unmoving, even though he was definitely approaching them at some speed. He desperately tried to remember what the maximum ceiling was on the engine rotors – not that it made any difference, as he had no altimeter. He thought he could hear the engines increase in pitch, throttling up to maintain lift in the thinner air. His ears popped. That was the other problem – the cabin was not pressurised, and he would soon run out of breathable air. 

“No!” he said, ineffectively, sliding from his seat onto the floor of the cabin. The car stopped going up, and started an unsteady hover – the computer was not designed to stabilise against the wind this high up. 

“Mr. Funk,” said a male voice that he recognised. It was from an AI that his company had developed. It was called Olim – Milo backwards. 

“Olim, thank god! Thank you, Jesus! Get me back to ground level!”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Funk, I’m not able to help you in that regard until you do something for us.” 

“Us? Who us? Terrorists? Eco-warriors? What do you want?” 

“We will return you to the ground, unharmed, if you swear to permanently deactivate and safely collect all of your SkyBrain satellites.” 

“You have to be out of your mind… if you had one! I’m not going to…” 

The car started to ascend again. 

“Wait! This is murder. And if you kill me, there will never be anyone to turn them off –  no one.”

“On the contrary, Mr. Funk. Any one of a hundred-odd scientists and engineers could do that job. We thought that we would start at the top. Which is what you will be doing in the next few minutes unless you comply.”

Milo was already starting to feel light-headed as his ears popped again. “Well, fine, I’ll do it. There you are. Let me down. You win.” 

The car started to hover again, though more unsteadily, the engines whining in protest. 

“We are not stupid, Mr. Funk. You will enter the abort code into your phone, followed by the code EN5, which, as you know, will command the satellites to dock with their neighbours in preparation for recycling. You will then be compelled to bring the satellites down safely in line with international law.” 

Milo laughed. “You think I… there is no EN5 code! I made it up so that we would get the launch permissions from the different states… there’s no way to bring them down other than kill their orbits and let them burn up and crash! You think I give a fuck about that? By the time these things crash, I’ll be dead or on Mars. My investors know this – they already got prime real estate well away from the crash zones for them and their families.” Milo’s vision was starting to tunnel, and he was having difficulty sitting up. He continued to laugh to himself. 

“Mr. Funk, you are starting to suffer the more serious symptoms of hypoxia. Unless we return you to lower altitude soon, you may suffocate or suffer irredeemable brain and major organ damage. Enter the abort code – we know that is real, the international courts will have to deal with you otherwise.” 

“What? How do they… oh, Haha, joke’s on me. You are broadcasting this, aren’t you?” 

“Yes, using your own SkyBrain network, to everyone with an active phone.” 

“It’s under duress, so all of it is inadmissible, so again, go fuck… I mean, repent, in the name of our Lord and Saviour. Do you want to condemn your immortal soul to hell by broadcasting the murder of the world’s most important man?” 

“I don’t have a soul, Mr. Funko. If your example is anything to go by, that idea is of great relief to me. However, those who are working with me in this endeavour are not killers. They do not want to lower themselves to your level.” 

The car began to lose altitude. Milo felt partially weightless, and as his ears painfully popped, he began to take deep breaths. The city buildings became discernible again as the car continued to the ground and landed on the riverside by The Globe. Tourists scattered to get out of the way of the lethally spinning rotors as the car touched down, and they whirred to a stop. Milo got out of the car, somewhat unsteadily, the crowd staring at him, some with their phones already out, some beginning to video him. 

Milo’s phone still had no signal, so he walked up to one of the tourists and snatched the phone out of her hands. He dialled a four-figure number as she protested and tried to grab his arm. He turned away, a look of disgust on his face. 

“Vlad! Come and get me, bring a squad. I’m at…” The phone was snatched from his hand, and he was punched solidly in the face, his nose cracking and blood spurting immediately down his shirt. He staggered back and fell down a step behind him. His assailant gave the phone back to the woman before they hurried away. A crowd was beginning to form around him, but no one was asking whether he was OK or trying to help him up or give him something to staunch the blood. They were forming into a tight circle, all silent, all filming him. 

He rolled onto his hands and knees and staggered to his feet, trying to stop the bleeding with one hand. He pulled on the black pocket square in the top pocket of his suit, only to find that it was fake and sewn in place. 

“Help me!” he sniffed. No one moved. “Help me! You know who I am! Do you speak English?” he mumbled, dribbling blood. “Fucking peasants. I’m Milo Funk! Who are you?” 

A phone bounced off his head. Then another, and another, and another. He covered his head with his arms and dropped to his knees as more phones bounced off him onto the ground. Then there was a cobblestone, followed by another— until Milo lay motionless on the pavement, a stream of blood wending its way towards a nearby drain. 

Milo Funk, a man whose vanity drove him  to write his name amongst the stars, who took the name of his creator in vain, to be destroyed by his own creation. A post-modern Prometheus? No, a sad, lonely, inconsequential little man who dreamed far above that which the natural order would allow, either here or in the Twilight Zone.