Traffic Control

Fiction.

Traffic control. That meant something different in the 20s. I liked watching documentaries about it. Air traffic controllers were important, back before autonomous passenger drones. 2001: that was the greatest air traffic disaster of all time. Machines were so dependent on humans that you could physically board a plane, threaten the passengers, and steer it off course. With a steering wheel! Almost like a toy.

Traffic control was also something to do with cars, but that was less interesting. People used to go wherever, whenever, and the result was miles of parked vehicles down the highway. Honking, beeping like barking dogs behind gated fences. Swearing in the heat of the sun.

Traffic control now meant human trafficking, the only kind of traffic that was left. People swept off the streets in black vans, loaded onto private planes and flown around the world. Israelis, Russians, Chinese and other various drug cartels all got a piece of the pie. Supply was high, demand was high, and there wasn’t much that could be done.

At first, there were protests. Then, mysteriously, they disappeared — not out of fear or intimidation, but out of quiet relief. Life became normal again. The junkies, homeless, partial lobotomies, the desperate, hopeless, with open wounds, overflowing in crowds of shambling zombies, clogging up alleyways and sidewalks, their tents half-standing, stinking with piss, swimming in sewage and needles, a public health hazard. A threat to property values. But despite what the city thought, they weren’t worthless. Everyone has a price.

The bottom of the barrel were the untouchables. No one wanted their organs. Organ buyers tended to be white, Asian, Jewish, Indian. The risk of interracial transplants was slightly higher, so why take the chance? Among the untouchables, the most valuable were the young women, who could be used as surrogates. The bottom of the stack were the elderly men. They could be used by medical labs, by sadists, as party trick for frats.

The best chance you had on the market was to be in a harem of a soft and gentle nerd. Those who were sold into harems generally had the longest life expectancy. People heard of cases of girls surviving 10 years before being sold off again for other purposes. Maybe some of the buyers even fell in love — it wasn’t impossible. But if it happened, it was never reported. They just disappeared.

The job of the Bureau was to identify the merchandise and try to match them to living relatives. If John or Stacy was related to a millionaire, and ransom could be made to bring them back to the states. AI did all the matching, although facial recognition was imperfect. More reliable was genetic matching, since buyers typically wanted to know exactly what they were getting.

Everyone took a cut. Border patrol, our government, their government, organized crime, and the traffickers. Each organization did its part, and everyone respected each other’s turf. Legal treaties were signed between rival gangs. If you wanted someone else’s street, you had to pay for it. The best streets, of course, were exempted. They could afford the private police, and there were no junkies to pick up anyway.

But some people slipped through the cracks, and accidents were made. You could have a good kid from a good neighborhood make a little mistake. The ransom price was higher, but this was risky. Nab the wrong kid and everyone got in trouble. Our government, their government, even the crime bosses got licked. They only have to get burned so many times before you learn the limits. Why go through all that mess? Better to stick to the designated streets.

For that reasons, regulars had little to fear. If you minded your business and stayed where you were designated, the chances of you ending up strapped into a bunkbed in the sky were pretty slim. You had a greater chance of dying from the flu. So there wasn’t much pressure on the government to do any more than what it was already doing, which is what I was doing.

At one point, they had detectives working cases, trying to ID people, figure out who was who, keep track of everything, launch complaints with the foreign embassies, and file extradition requests. Then everything got cut back to the bare essentials, and they had to figure out how to keep the program profitable. The computer flashed a picture. This one was interesting.

A young girl, pretty, clearly an outlier. Every aspect about her, from her phenotype, genetics, life history, and her whole extended family was a match. She had hetero parents, which was a good sign. Out of the millions in the database, she was my best bet.

I made an appointment to meet them. Mr. and Mrs. Obama. The assisted living facility they were in didn’t have anything scheduled for them today. I rang up the facility as I walked down to the car.

“Hello, Sunny Valley Assisted Living, how can I help you?”

“Yeah, this is David Cortez, with Traffic Control. You’ve got a Mrs. and Mr. Obama that we have a match on their daughter. Was wondering if they’ve got any time?”

Whatever the response said, I didn’t pay attention. I got paid to show up either way. Just one more box to tick. On the way, I decided to watch the documentary. It was a masterful presentation, accessing all public footage of this girl to recreate her life story, complete with a simulation of what her kidnapping might have looked like, and a worst case scenario of what could happen to her. Technically it was my job to review these things and suggest tweaks, but that wasn’t necessary. It was perfect. Satisfied, I watched some porn for the rest of the ride.

Recovering and composing myself, it was time to go inside. The front desk display scanned me in and directed me where I needed go. Room 492. The facility was a vast series of underground tunnels, completely invulnerable to nuclear blasts and shielded from radiation. It was apocalypse proof, a new model. Nothing ever happened, but it might. I couldn’t imagine who would nuke Sunny Valley, but why not? If you’ve got the money to spend, why not spend it?

The elevator was maglev, and dropped around 440 feet in a single second. As it slowed to a halt, I could feel my feet fully return to the floor. The door opened to a long, sparkling white corridor. The artificial light poured through plasma panels on the ceiling, warming my skin. The great thing about moving from private sales to the Bureau is there was no pressure. As long as the reports were filed on time, it didn’t matter.

Room 492. The door panel lit up, announcing my arrival. I imagined this was the most excitement Mr. and Mrs. Obama had in a few years. They would probably want me to stay longer than it took to watch the documentary. Maybe they would take some time to think about it and schedule a second appointment.

My identity was confirmed, and the door opened. “Come in!” an old voice croaked. I walked into a beautiful mansion. Perfectly calibrated light poured in through every window, and displayed on each window were different scenes for all different climates. Some windows showed snow, while others had beachfront property, deserts, a city skyline, and much more. If this was a private sale, he would have hit the jackpot. The commission would be huge.

“Mrs. Obama?”

“Hi, yes, I’m in here.”

A small woman, probably 80 years old, was lying down on a bed, which slowly began to incline so that she could see me face-to-face.

“Mrs. Obama, I’m agent Cortez, with Traffic Control. I appreciate you taking the time to speak with me today. Is your partner here?” Terms like “partner” were old fashioned, but he couldn’t help it. He was a people-person.

“Yes, Thomas is getting out of his bath now.”

From the next room, I could hear a splash of water, and then what sounded like a rush of wind. Within seconds, a man emerged in a white robe, with a spitting resemblance to his wife.

“Hi Mr. Obama, I’m agent Cortez with—”

“I know who you are. What do you want?”

This was unexpected. No pleasantries? No hand wringing? “Well, my job is to collect information, and inform you on the situation. Is Jessica your daughter?”

“How much do you want?” The man looked serious. He was standing just few feet outside the entrance to the bathroom, 10 feet across the room, dry and fluffy in brown sandals.

“Mr. Obama, I understand that this is difficult for you, but I don’t determine that. The Bureau—”

“Tell me how much, or get out.” I looked in his file. He had something to do with drone repair, engineer. I guess there’s a stereotype for everything.

“5 trillion.” Ok, that’s not the script, but who’s keeping track?

He looked at me, then looked at his wife. 5 trillion was an estimate — the cartel wasn’t even contacted yet. They could always counter-offer if they felt they could get more, or if a higher bidder came along. Nothing was guaranteed.

“Do it.” He walked back into the bathroom. Degraded bowels, I assumed.

Mrs. Obama started signing everything. It was out of my hands now. I just dealt with the relatives. The rest was for the collections department.