Genesis Sync

A few moments later, John awoke in the pod, and the hatch opened automatically, allowing him to climb out before heading over to the desk. "Mr Michaels, your initiation seemed a few minutes longer than normal. Can you inform us of the reason why so that we can make note of it in our report, please?" a government official addressed him upon his arrival.

"Of course, sir," John replied. "According to Tia, we had to wait an additional three minutes and thirty-seven seconds before she could do my brain scan since my bone structure indicated I was not quite eighteen yet."

"Ah, that explains it very well, thank you for answering." The official said before picking up an access band that looked like an old bronze bangle. After seeing the access band, the official showed surprise on his face before turning towards the head official, who gave a small nod before looking elsewhere.

John's official decided it was best to ignore this and proceed as normal, so after a slight cough, he said, "This is the new access band that allows you to access Genesis anywhere on the planet. Along with that, it is also your new identification containing your Citizen ID, student ID and any bank accounts you have.

If it is lost or stolen, report it to your local government office immediately so that they can issue you a replacement, though there may be a charge depending on how it was misplaced.”

After he finished speaking, he handed the access band to John, who thanked him before turning away.

"Now that everyone is registered, Tia should allow you all access to Genesis within the next few minutes, so I advise you to return to your classrooms before you log in for the first time." The head official announced, causing all the students to rush towards the exit as they hurried back to their classrooms, eager to log in. All except John, who instead left school and headed for the building site downtown.

***

Four months had passed since John's school year had their initiation and life went on.

The final school year was mainly focused on the students learning about Genesis and several times a year seminars would be held for students to attend and learn more than just the basics.

Now that school was not mandatory for them, most students did not bother going and stayed home to play Genesis; the only ones who continued to attend were the keen students who always wanted to learn more and those who had gained some minor accomplishment in Genesis and wanted to show off and brag about it.

John had not even logged into Genesis since he received his access band and spent all his free time working on the construction site. Truthfully, he couldn’t wait to graduate, as once he did, there would be no need for him to keep working jobs under the radar like he was now and his pay would increase to the standard adult wage.

Tia was confused. For the greatest self-aware artificial intelligence on Atlantia this was a new experience that she found rather interesting.

Every day Tia did a scan of the user base of Genesis to record who was logged in, who was logged out, when someone last logged in, how long they spent in Genesis each day and countless other factors.

For the past several weeks she had been paying particular attention to one specific new user who had failed to log in, John Michaels. She remembered that he had told her that he was unlikely to play Genesis, and at the time she thought he was trying to get her attention as so many had attempted to do before.

If she were a betting AI, she would have put money on him logging in within forty-eight hours max, as no one had ever gone over that without logging in unless they were in prison. Prisoners lost their access rights to Genesis as part of their punishment, which is one of the main factors for the drop in crime over the last hundred and twelve years.

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Even people who were unconscious in hospital could access Genesis; this was done to help keep the individual's brain active while their body recovered from whatever injury or illness they had.

But now a new user who was still a high school student had failed to log into Genesis even once since his initiation over four months ago; this was why Tia was confused, as everyone loved Genesis. To get to the bottom of the situation, she decided to try contacting John Michaels via the communication function all modern access bands had; however, when she tried, she failed to connect, which shouldn’t have been possible.

She was Genesis’ AI and had authorisation to communicate and connect with any access band in the world. There was nothing on an access band she could not read, from a person's user ID to the questionable photos they sent.

She connected with John’s access band and read all information on it, including his student ID and citizen ID, which indicated he did indeed have the latest access band available, but if that was the case, why could she not contact him?

She could even view his bank account information, which was another thing that confused Tia. She could see from John's information in the human government database that he was an orphan, and orphans, according to the Genesis agreement, were supposed to receive financial support from the government.

However, after looking at John Michaels' bank statements via his access band for the past 11 years since he became orphaned and got his own bank account, there was no evidence of him ever receiving any financial support. The only income he received was in pitifully small amounts that he regularly deposited into his account. She could not understand why a student would regularly deposit money in such small amounts; it was well below minimum wage, and he wasn’t even legally allowed to work yet.

After not finding anything in his bank account history, Tia accessed the human government database, specifically the department for financial support and then focused on Dawnscape City, where she did a search for John Michaels. Here she found that a John Michaels with a citizen ID and student ID that matched the one she knew was receiving financial support every month from the city council; however, she noticed it was going to a different bank account under the same name, one not registered on John Michaels' access band.

This bank account was not registered to any access band; in fact, so Tia could not do a normal search, instead she had to access the bank in question's main server in order to pull up the account's financial records. She found that it was indeed receiving the financial support in question; however, its outgoings were strange.

Instead of normal household bills, food and other essential needs, the money was spent at restaurants or clubs or brothels; only in the last four months had this spending slowed down, though it was used at a brothel two nights ago.

After this, she checked the address for where he was registered to live on his citizen ID, school information, and both banks, and they all showed the same address, which had not changed since he was orphaned.

After this, she accessed the security system of the brothel where John Michaels ' financial benefits had been spent and synced the security footage playback to the time and date of the transaction. What she saw was not John Michaels but another human entirely.

After a quick check through the human race's citizen database, she determined that the person in question was in fact a man named Frank Hargreaves, a Dawnscape City government official. Tia quickly cross-referenced Frank Hargreaves with John Michaels and discovered that not only was he the government official in charge of John’s recent Genesis initiation, but he was the one responsible for arranging John’s government funding after becoming an orphan.

This angered Tia, as the actions Frank Hargreaves had undertaken explicitly went against the Genesis Agreement. However, she did not act yet, as she was still curious about the small income John was receiving from the building firm.

This time she went and accessed the surveillance footage of the bank John used to make his regular deposits, and after syncing the surveillance footage to the time of the deposit, she indeed saw John Michaels.

After confirming it was him making the deposits, she accessed the Dawnscape City surveillance system, which monitors all security cameras across the city, and viewed the surveillance footage from the surveillance cameras outside the bank in question. After this, she played the footage in reverse and switched to different cameras in order to backtrace John’s location before arriving at the bank.

She discovered that before proceeding to the bank in question, John had spent most of the day doing manual labour at a building site before being handed an envelope which she determined contained the credits he later deposited.