Chapter Six

East Bank Plaza

The Lens technology, although mandated, has proved difficult to implement for the government. The rollout of the Lens program was marred with resistance and refusal. If you watched the news or listened to the radio you would be led to believe that everyone was taking part, doing their bit to advance society. The reusable newspapers tell you everything you want to hear, everything they want you to hear. The augmented advertisements on billboards and the sides of buildings subjectively convince you that ninety seven percent of the population is lensed and that we are all better for it, but these lies are the very glue that holds the illusion in place. Communities like East Bank, with a high refusal rate, have become colonies of inconvenient truths. The area and its community leaders are stigmatised in the eyes of the public, causing a sharp societal divide between the working class of East Bank and the rest of the city. This pattern is repeated globally, with many such impoverished areas throwing up dust in the face of technocracy. The tentacles of the surveillance state are smashed, burned and disposed of as soon a they appear in their area. Cameras, Wi-Fi towers and of course, the implantables, receive an antibody like response from the residents. Smart technology is seen as taboo and anyone who possesses an internet enabled device is seen as a tout. This extreme measure was deemed necessary following a string of ground breaking cases where passively obtained audio was used against the owners of devices and even against persons who were simply within proximity of these devices. The “Internet of Things” era slowly transitioned into the “Internet of People” era, and as it did there were defining moments of total rejection of citizen surveillance in areas like East Bank. In one case, a man was sentenced to 5 years in prison for hate speech, having committed the horrible crime of telling a racially insensitive joke within earshot of his microwave. This sentencing sparked off a mass protest movement that led to huge bonfires out in the green areas of estates with the smart devices being defiantly destroyed. Images of the bonfire in East Bank were beamed around the world making the area synonymous with the fight back against the global surveillance state. Years later, East Bank has gathered again, this time to call for justice for their murdered compatriot, Thomas “Murph” Murphy, who they claim was murdered by the deep state and made a scapegoat to further the states case against the dissidents. The Oculus Operators have been dispatched to insert themselves into the crowd to gather intel on Murph and to find out who was working with him, what his objective was and also to see if any of these dissidents know about Oculus.