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“Well, the itsy-bitsy meanie Core has tons of useless information on his little ants. The Queen Bee runs her hive like usual... Ah, there was some data about their new regulations on aging... Oh, well, who cares? Come on, talk to Daddy, my pretties... Numbers, numbers, numbers...”
Losing patience, Eden walked to stand by his side and read the columns of data as well. Like Loir had said, a lot of it was just the regular type of data the Core always gathered about its inhabitants. Every single one of their movements was tracked by the Core’s System: when they slept, what they ate, what they bought, wherever they went, who they interacted with, what they did... Eden shivered just thinking about how much it was controlling people’s lives. The Core knew absolutely everything. Data was collected day and night relentlessly from people’s SIN; each SIN was like a little cell, a part of the System, and implanted into each citizen’s nape. It was invisible, yet omnipresent in their lives. Eden was glad she had left the Core; the System didn’t care much about the SINs outside its walls. Although it was a one-way ticket to what most inhabitants of the Suburbs would call a peaceful life, Eden saw those things as a poison that slowly took their sanity away. She felt disgusted just thinking that all of her actions had once been watched and analyzed like some guinea pig in a laboratory.
“...Do you see anything about the Suburbs, Loir? Something in those files might help us understand why that Overcraft was in the neighborhood and wanted to be discreet about it…?”
“Here.”
He zoomed in on some of the files, opening them to display rows and rows of data. It may have looked like numbers and figures to those who couldn’t read code in the programming language, but Eden quickly understood the content as well.
“...What is it?” asked Dante behind them.
Eden showed the columns one by one.
“Those numbers are the codes of SINs from people in the Suburbs. According to the first numbers, these are reused SINs. An original SIN will always start with a 1, but these all have a 2 or a 3 at the start... They ought to be SINs that have been reconfigured for a new use like we do here. The following numbers represent data about their carriers: gender, age, district of birth, employment status, everything... I can’t read the last ones, though, I don’t know what those numbers are about. What the hell did they extract? SIN readings aren’t usually that long. Loir?”
The hacker was already running the numbers to find out their secrets, frowning and making strange movements with his lips. Eden too was frowning and staring at the numbers, trying to make sense of them. What other kind of information was the System looking up about people from the Suburbs? Those numbers shouldn’t even have been there in the first place! Each SIN was produced when a Core member was born and followed them throughout their whole life. It was only deactivated if they were expelled or if there was an issue with it, but it was rare even in those cases. Like they’d witness weekly, people banished from the Core rarely got to keep their SINs... mostly because the Core was afraid the people from the Suburbs would get a hold of them.
Over the years, everyone had understood that having a SIN was the first step into the Core’s System. It was the major difference between them and those people: while on one side of the wall, they were given a brand new one right away, people in the Suburbs struggled their whole lives hoping to get one. They could do without, but there were a lot of issues. SINs were used to record employment, make money transfers, and have access to minimal health care. Otherwise, the old bank bills were still in use in the Suburbs, but their value couldn’t be compared to the real money of the Core. That was the dilemma of the System: either they were fully in or fully out, and each side came with its own issues.
People like Eden, who had a SIN but lived outside of the Core, shouldn’t have been on that list at all. Reconfigured SINs weren’t part of the System; they were simply borrowing its most basic functions. It was as if the machine had been rebooted outside the network. It worked like a single, lone cell, not a part of the System... So how the hell were they looking at lines and lines of data on reconfigured SINs?
“Wait, did those just change?” asked Eden, staring closer.
“What?”
“Those lines, just there,” she pointed out. “About five lines or so just changed their end numbers... Look! The ones below just did the same!”
“Funny funny...” whistled Loir, a grin on his face. “Why are you changing, little numbers... So interesting...”
“...Those are locations.”
They all turned to Rolf, surprised. The bodyguard looked very sure of himself, though. He nodded as if to confirm his words, and pointed at the screen again.
“All of those are location coordinates. The first and fourth pairs of numbers are always so similar because they are in the Chicago area. This one should be somewhere near our position.”
“Oh... You’re so much smarter than you look, Cutie Pie!” Loir jolted.
“...Cutie Pie?” sighed Eden, putting a hand on her hip.
She really couldn’t associate that nickname with the tall, stern man with gray hair standing next to them. Loir ignored her question, though, and Rolf didn’t seem to mind, either. Eden rolled her eyes, but Loir was already entering the coordinates into a precise map of their surroundings, and the most precise one he had was that of the Apple they had acquired earlier...
Slowly, dozens of little red dots appeared all over the Map. Eden frowned and walked to get closer to the Map, staring at the areas where they had appeared. It was soon clear they were, indeed, people of the Suburbs exclusively. The Map’s coordinates didn’t specify an actual height, so all of them were like they were on the ground level, but gathering in large numbers. The more that appeared, the more Eden felt uneasy about this. Loir zoomed in on the closest territories. Because the Map was so precise, Eden could easily recognize which streets and buildings they were. Her eyes naturally went to her own building, where half a dozen dots had appeared... and Jack’s bar. There were two there. She shivered, staring at those two dots.
“...SIN, call Jack.”
She waited a few seconds, feeling very uneasy.
“Eden? Are you alright, honey? I thought you wouldn’t call for...”
“Jack, where are you?”
“Me? At the bar, why? Are you coming?”
“...Who’s with you?”
Jack paused. He probably had felt the tension in Eden’s voice. She heard him breathe a bit louder.
“...With Rose. Just Rose. Why?”
