Wèilái

 

The LIS computer lab was now almost completely silent. One could only hear the discreet footsteps of a few researchers who were ashamed to go home. Here, the emulation of the great international research centers prevailed. 

Marina was finishing her report. She was exhausted, but she stubbornly refused to look at the clock. She felt so privileged to have this job in her city.

Since the Exascale supercomputers had been deployed on campus, researchers in the cluster, like herself, were finally starting to do internationally interesting work, especially in neuroscience. Marina was just finishing a neuronal modeling project for her Chinese laboratory, located in the former Inserm premises on Boulevard Lei Roure, in what had been the ninth arrondissement.

Previously, with IBM's old "Summit" PetaFLOP computers, the computing power was insufficient to simulate the entire human brain in real time.

With the civil war, the research center was closed. The researchers were killed or left the country. 

But, since then, things were starting to improve. The Chinese had taken control of the city. The port was held by the Chinese, who had equipped the various scientific centers that were reopening with several dozen Tianhe-3 exaFLOPs. With a computing capacity of one million billion floating point operations per second, a thousand times more than the old "Summit", the researchers based in Marseille were finally entering the 22nd century. 

The campus had reopened and changed gears. Freed from its criminals, the place was again a temple of knowledge. Technical and scientific. The humanities were no longer taught.

The Chinese army had secured the city and was investing millions to clean up its privileged terminal for shipping goods to Africa. 

Since the city was in Chinese hands, the wall surrounding the "autonomous" port had been torn down. Hundreds of shipowners had come to work on the docks of Marseille, under the protection of the Jiaolong, the marine commandos. The city was of interest to the Chinese because its rail network, which was being rebuilt, linked Duisburg, which led directly to Chongqing.

The major asset of the city was its flexibility. Hundreds of day laborers were available day and night to unload the goods on the platform. 

The "truck drop" no longer applied on the docks; the Chinese had brought order to the docks by publicly executing some mafia gangs.

The port was rigorously managed, offering competitive prices thanks to the dynamism of the market and the status of a "special zone", free from the constraints of the past. Local and international companies worked in competition, fighting commercially to offer the most efficient and cheapest services. 

The dockers' unions had been silenced. Shipowners and import-export professionals were all there. There was endless work to be done, and the workers and small businessmen were benefiting as well. Marseilles had once again become one of the leading ports in the Mediterranean.

As soon as the Chinese computers were delivered, they were distributed to all the university and private research centers that were now owned by Beijing. This equipment and several robots allowed researchers and entrepreneurs to compete with their international counterparts. If the expected results at the port were achieved, Beijing thought to deliver zettaFLOP supercomputers. This would be a real scientific paradise.

Marina had suffered during the civil war. She had been locked up in a brothel run by the mafia gangs that had taken over the city during the civil war. Being young and pretty had allowed her to survive, at the cost of dozens of guys who passed over her every day. All her friends had been killed, often with their throats slit in public places. Marina had no family left, all of them eliminated or run away.

When the Chinese army arrived, Marina was in a bad way. Commandos had come especially for her, they had her name, her picture and a lot of information about her. She was taken to the military hospital and kept in a specialized ward for a long time, under sedation.

She knew that she had received this help because of her scientific background. She had been treated, given medication, and even housed so that she could perform her duties.

Marina no longer had a personal life. She was under constant surveillance and had to report her every move and mood. Marina was an important individual for her Chinese friends.

But the euphoric injections from her implant made her happy. She could not remember anything, her emotions were stabilized. She felt grateful for her Chinese friends who gave her the opportunity to serve China to the best of her ability.

Marina recorded her work, got up from her seat, stretched and walked towards the exit. She was groggy. The blood was rushing to her legs, she was walking like on eggshells. She really needed to rest for a few hours.

Tomorrow morning she would have to come back early to talk to her director, Mr. Yang, before he sent his findings to Beijing. 

It was cold outside. She breathed the fresh air on the platform with pleasure. The Baidu shuttle would be here soon. There was no one there at that time. But Marina didn't feel uncomfortable. The city was secure, the cameras had not let her go since she left the campus. The Genghis Security Advisor drones would follow her home, she was safe.

She looked around at the parks around her. The area was the old Merlan district, which had been completely razed like three-quarters of the city's northern neighborhoods. There were a few small residences in the middle of the parks. The place was nice. 

The blue autonomous shuttle arrived. The door opened. It was an Apolong model, the top one, with digital screens and stereo music. Marina appreciated the fact that she was the only passenger at that time of the night. She sat down and reclined the seat to a horizontal position. 

The shuttle started to move, silently, without jerks. Marina had fallen asleep when the trip ended, ten minutes later. The armchair vibrated to wake up gently the young woman. Her identity had been recognized by the on-board system, which had taken her back to the stop at her home.

Marina had only a few dozen meters to go before she could enter her building, in a closed residence of the district of Kaddouz. She observed for a few moments the lights which betrayed the intense night activity which reigned below, very far, on the Port. Dozens of boats were converging on the port, others were moving away. This was what had brought prosperity to the city. She quickly returned to her apartment to sleep.

Marina had volunteered to have part of her memory erased. She had had the years of war erased, the daily madness under the Islamic State, the clashes, the executions of her parents, her confinement in the brothel.

Her emotional sensitivity had also been altered so that she would be even-tempered, motivated by her work alone, docile. Marina was a scientific employee of category A, in the calculation department. She was completely satisfied.

All she saw around her was a renewed, soft, sanitized environment. It was her choice.

The Chinese had privatized the city, and part of its former occupants, when they had landed. They had completely razed the destroyed neighborhoods, evacuated the last survivors, and finished off the last resistors. Only some elements, like Marina, had been preserved, after modification of a part of their personality. Marina was very happy about this.

Her intellectual qualities and her political neutrality had allowed her to pass the admission tests, to finish her university education, to learn Chinese and to join the international team of researchers who lived in residence in the medical buildings of the BGI company that ran the campus. Marina did not have any outings other than the trip to and from work. 

She had volunteered to be sterilized and her libido neutralized. She would have no sex, no children, but a sweet, hassle-free life. Regularly, the doctors at her residence checked that her treatment was effective and administered the necessary treatments to keep her mood stable. Her "maintenance contract" included some genetic enhancements to last her twenty years. So she was scheduled to work for two more decades, fed, housed and medically monitored by BGI.

 After that, she would stay in residence for a year, debriefing and ensuring that sensitive information was not retained in her memory.  Her brain implants reproduced small areas of the brain with "neural prostheses" to restore lost memories. These devices mimicked the electrochemical signals of the hippocampus, involved in memory consolidation. Then, this data was downloaded into computer substrates. It was wonderful.

After this verification operation, she would have to leave the area and end her days in the inner territories. She didn't know what would happen to her. But she didn't think about it, thanks to the doctors who were following her.

 BGI, Beijing Genomics Institute, offered a long working contract with high quality medical services and full psychological care. It was a great privilege.

After what the Europeans had gone through, this kind of opportunity was to be seized. By the time Marina was released, she had already committed three suicide attempts. Her life was over. When the Chinese from BGI offered her a contract, Marina took the opportunity as her last chance.

Now she was at peace, no longer afraid, no longer anxious. She was even dreaming in Chinese.