Category: Future News

April 11, 2088
Tallahassee FL–A divided Florida Supreme Court today upheld the capital murder conviction of two-year old Jake Fritter, permitting the state to proceed with its plans to execute him at 12:01 am on May 1st.

A jury convicted Fritter last January of the murder of two Dade County police officers during a foiled convenience store robbery, a robbery that was not to have taken place for nearly 30 years. Under controversial new evidence rules, the prosecution introduced detailed evidence of Fritter’s future crimes obtained through use of “temporal networking” equipment supplied by research and financial services giant Futurefeedforward. “This is a big ruling for the good guys,” notes Assistant District Attorney Gerry Freon. “With the admissibility of evidence like this, we’ll be able to prosecute perpetrators before they’ve committed their crimes, increasing the effectiveness of the System in deterring crime and saving the victims from unneeded suffering.”

The evidence that convicted Fritter, including high-resolution surveillance videos of the crime, was obtained using special computer networking equipment that permits communication between present-day and “future-side” computers. “The evidence was of the best quality imaginable, very detailed, very concrete, very graphic,” explains Freon. “It wasn’t really as difficult as we anticipated to persuade the jury of the reality of a crime which hadn’t yet happened. The real trick was to establish identity, to convince the jury that the cute little toddler they saw at the defense table was the same person they saw, thirty years older, in the video evidence.”

Speaking at a press conference after the ruling, Fritter defense attorney Lillian Cree descried the Court’s validation of the use of evidence of future crimes and vowed to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. “This is a travesty, yet another case of the accused being persecuted because the legal system doesn’t yet know how to deal with a new technology. We haven’t yet had a chance for deliberate, democratic dialog on the weight that should be afforded evidence of this sort. My client has been convicted on the basis of evidence of a crime that, if the sentence is carried out, we know will never happen. Is that justice?”

“It’s not as confusing as the defense wants us to think,” retorts ADA Freon. “We can’t very well ignore a crime we know is going to happen. To do so would make us accessories of a sort. The fact that a proactive prosecution prevents the underlying crime justifies the sentence that much more. The challenge presented by a case like this is more subtle. Because establishing identity was so essential to the case, we were able to justify delving into a number of Fritter’s ‘prior bad acts.’ We had to construct his entire future criminal career, create a sort of ‘chain of custody,’ in order to prove that the perp in the tapes is the Fritter we have in custody today. That let the jury hear lots of things about him that they probably wouldn’t have normally heard. In this case it was justified, but would it be so in all cases? I don’t know.”

Fritter’s case has spawned a storm of litigation involving Futurefeedforward, the supplier of the temporal network used to gather evidence against Fritter. “Our contract with the State of Florida specifically prohibits use of our system for purposes of this sort,” notes a company spokesman. “The State is in breach of the licensing agreement, and we have initiated suit to compel Florida to live up to its commitments.” In addition to commercial suits against Dade County and the State of Florida, the company is also contesting a host of subpoenas from prosecutors around the country seeking evidence of future crimes.

Fritter’s mother, Abigail Fritter, returning from a court-authorized visit to her son’s death row cell, broke down. “He seems to be holding up pretty well. He’s got his ‘blankie.’ I asked him did he want anything. He just looked at me and said ‘Happy Meal.’ […] Is this right? Is this America? Jake’s going to die for killing somebody who hasn’t even been born yet. I heard they asked for a warrant before Jakey was even born. This is wrong. This is evil. I’m not going to let this happen!”

Inside Florida State Prison, death row officials have begun construction of a miniature electric chair to accommodate Fritter.

June 7, 2059
WASHINGTON DC–Federal District Judge Lydia Peezer today handed down her much-anticipated Final Judgment in the landmark U.S. v. U.S. anti-trust case. As widely expected, Judge Peezer endorsed the Department of Justice’s complex divestiture plan, calling for the country to be divided into three independent geographic regions, each consisting of four autonomous “operational units.”

Speaking from the bench and citing the Findings of Fact she issued in the case last November, Judge Peezer declared that the “[United States] Federal Government has consistently abused its monopoly control of U.S. currency to the detriment of consumers, both foreign and domestic.” The 132-page Memorandum of Final Judgment cited in particular an earlier finding that U.S. control of worldwide wealth amounted to “monopoly power through market dominance,” and that the U.S. had abused that power by eliminating capital flows to competitive countries and industries.

“The U.S. has a long history of politically motivated spending internationally,” explains Edgard Tree, Director of FRONT, an international coalition of governments and non-governmental organizations. “There are better, more efficient governments and ideologies out there that get stifled because of U. S. control of international capital. New ideas can’t get any backing unless the U.S. approves, and nobody dares to break ranks for fear of retaliation.”

Analysts identify two key turning points in the three-year-old case: the emergence last year of a “smoking gun” report, and the evasive testimony of Senate Majority Leader Freddie Prinze Jr. The report in question, issued by the U. S. NSA, identified “transnational ‘gypsy,’ nomadic, and ‘open source’ social organizations” as the “most tangible present threat to U.S. political hegemony” and called for associated U. S. agencies to “cut off their air supply” by isolating the “vagrants” from world financial markets.

The complex divestiture plan calls for division of the U. S. into three new sponsored jurisdictions, the Microsoft Northwest, the GE Seaboard, and Enron MiddleAmerica. Governmental power in each region is further to be segregated into four units, each with independent representational structures and taxing powers. The four “operational units” include a Division of Labor and Correctional Services, an Inter-Non-Governmental Regularization and Exchange Bureau, a Ministry of Consumers, and an Intellectual Property Preservation Trust. At the time of the decree, Judge Peezer issued a stay halting divestiture pending appeals review of the decision.

Mainstream critics of the decision point to its impact on the “separation of powers” written into the U. S. Constitution. “What this decision seems to say is that the courts have the power to rewrite the Constitution,” exclaims DNC Chair Arthur Pile. “This is judicial activism of the worst sort.”

Others identify U. S. corporate interests behind the decision. “The ‘judicial activism’ thing is a red herring,” explains Julie Priest, director of the U.N. Project on Corporate Sovereignty. “It’s really more a question of executive pacifism. Why is it that the President is permitting the Justice Department to pursue a case like this? Well, Microsoft has been pushing this thing from the beginning, including unprecedented spending during the last election cycle. The break-up plan gives those guys what they’ve always wanted: their own country.”

U. S. citizens with questions concerning the divestiture should direct them to the Transition Office at the Federal Trade Commission in Washington DC.

Sept. 21, 2084
WASHINGTON DC–A special research committee convened by the U. S. Treasury Department, and including officials and economists from the General Accounting Office and Federal Reserve Board, released on Thursday its “Final Report on the Role of Money in the Economy,” concluding that “money is currently the single greatest source of inefficiency in the exchange of services and goods,” and recommending that Congress “take steps to phase out the public use of the U. S. Dollar.” U. S. Treasury Secretary Frieda Bootle welcomed the report, and simultaneously announced a proposed 23 step phase-out schedule for the beloved currency: “We’re pleased that the Committee has come to the same conclusion that a number of us have reached privately in recent years, and we’re prepared to take concrete steps to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the U. S. economy.”

Pointing to recent developments in valuation, bargaining, and proxy technologies, the Committee concluded that “alternatives of considerably greater efficiency and lesser transaction costs” could save a dollar-less economy up to 14.7 trillion dollars annually, including the costs of maintaining dollar-oriented accounting and financial systems. Discussing the potential savings, Secretary Bootle noted that “it is not entirely specious to say that, by eliminating the dollar, we will be saving, on an annual basis, the total number of dollars exchanged in a given year.”

The majority of the currency alternatives cited by the Committee are based on a computational technology known as an “eigenutil.” Eigenutils are dynamic, compressed descriptions of individual “utility functions” the function which translates an individual’s needs and desires into comparative valuations of the goods and services offered in the marketplace. Because eigenutils are computationally describable, they can be easily exchanged and compared over computer networks, enabling frictionless barter transactions of unprecedented complexity and efficiency.

“Money was always a dumb technology,” exclaims MIT economist Professor Jessup Hare. “A useful technology, but a dumb one nevertheless. An eigenutil economy is orders of magnitude more subtle in its ability to capture and fulfill the needs of actors in a market. Translating my needs into a dollar figure was always reductive. Sure, it was easier than bartering at every step, but that increased efficiency came at the cost. With eigenutils, we no longer have to make that trade-off.”

Using eigenutils, bartering bots and software proxies can automatically and efficiently negotiate the direct exchange of goods, including value exchanges between employers and employees. Instead of receiving money in exchange for labor, employees will, likely, receive a negotiated bundle of goods and services, which she can in turn barter for others in the open market.[p]
“At last, all goods in the market will be accurately valued,” notes Professor Hare, “and value will flow freely throughout the economy. The real difficulty with money was that it created an inefficient meta-need: the need for money itself. Resources were often expended solely for the purpose of accumulating money, which, in itself, is largely worthless.”

Among concerns about the move to a dollar-less economy are objections to the Treasury Department’s proposal to privatize the dollar as part of the phase-out process. “First, let me say that, during this transition period, it makes sense for us to get some value out of the dollar by spinning it off,” explained Secretary Bootle. “And we won’t spin it off until it clearly no longer has monopoly power over the valuation market.”

Additional concerns about the impact of the plan on the consumer savings rate will be addressed by “the development of futures bartering and related transactions,” notes Bootle. “This will be a brave, new economy, fueled by incredible technical solutions. The Fed, for instance, will be able to influence the economy directly by tweaking the eigenutil infrastructure. Once valuation technologies get smarter, so will our policies.”

Feb. 14, 2012
SANTA MONICA–A recently released RAND Corporation study identifies Sperm Warfare tactics as the most “realistic threat to the morale of American Troops deployed in forward and danger areas.” The report, commissioned by the U. S. Department of Defense, calls for U. S. officials to seek emendations to the International Biological Weapons Convention clarifying the weapons status of reproductive gene therapies.

Sperm Warfare tactics involve the strategic deployment of aerosol-borne, non-pathological, asymptomatic “Cuckoo” viruses affecting the genetic content of human spermatozoa. The “Cuckoos” lurk in the vas deferens, attacking newly formed sperm cells and replacing their genetic material with DNA designated by the virus programmer. In the eyes of proponents, these “Cuckoos” do no “damage” and are not “weapons” covered by the Convention because they merely replace the victim’s DNA with the complete, healthy DNA of another man.

“Sperm Warfare really is more a form of propaganda than of physical attack,” explains RAND research associate Tigre Fielding. “It targets morale. You let the enemy know that you are using these tactics–announce that all of their children will, genetically, be related to somebody from the other side, even to some enemy leader–then deploy the cuckoos secretly. Soldiers might hesitate before killing the fathers of their own children. Either that or they’ll be afraid of having to raise a brood of little Hitlers later on.”

Originally developed as a “peace keeping” technology to be deployed in regions threatened with ethnic and racial violence, customized “Cuckoo” viruses with “offensive functionality” are reportedly either in production or under development in military labs worldwide. Refined versions of the viruses more effectively evade detection both during deployment and once inside the body. The RAND report warns additionally of a new class of “Stealth Cuckoos” that piggyback on reproductive cells, camouflaging their genetic contents with a “ghost” copy of the original DNA accurate enough to fool most widely available genetic tests.

Defense Department officials responded to the RAND report by issuing a new set of standing orders and practices to be followed in the event a Sperm Warfare attack is indicated. Soldiers in affected zones immediately don protective masks and manually induce ejaculation until given the all clear. Ejaculation in the minutes after exposure has been reported to dramatically decrease infection rates.

Asked about the new orders, most soldiers declared themselves resolved to do their duty. “You get over the awkwardness of the situation pretty quickly,” explains Pvt. Jake Reede. “We have to do what we have to do to respond to the threat. My only real problem is the constant drilling. I’m worn out.”