Ghosts

In 2097, ghosts don’t exist in the traditional sense. Frankly, ghosts have never existed until rather recently. Of course when I say ghost, I don’t mean a spirit of a deceased person trapped on the earth. No, nowadays a ghost is someone who isn’t registered in the Universal Database. Of course, this should be impossible since every human is registered in the database at birth, granted this registration tends to occur primarily at hospitals and doctors’ offices, but there are always a few who slip through the cracks. But, these people still aren’t ghosts, not yet at least. In order to do virtually anything in this day and age, you need your identification card with you at all times. The only way to get an ID card is to go request one at a pharmacy or some other registration locations. And since the cards expire after a year, the Universal Database is always up to date.

However, there are a very select few who do slip through the cracks. These people, these ghosts are crucial for organized crime syndicates. Well, sort of. Due to the Universal Database, getting away with crime is virtually impossible. Still, people try, and people fail. That is why ghosts are so important: because it’s so hard to catch them. Ghosts have still been caught, and once they’re caught, they’re registered in the Universal Database.

My name is Father Pierre Rex and I am a Catholic priest. I have seen ghosts, but I am not one myself of course. As a priest, I have seen my fair share of ghosts when they come to me for a confession. I do what I can but no matter what, I can never share their stories with anyone. Only God and I will ever know what I was told. My Church is especially popular since it is the only one located on Pluto. Earth is still the hub of human civilization, but we have expanded outwards as far as Pluto. But even though we keep trying to expand, Pluto is by far the most neglected and poorest territory under human control. That is why I am here—to make it a better place. And since Pluto is the most neglected colony, it is the most crime-ridden. It is not uncommon for ghosts and their crime syndicates to congregate here.

They don’t harm me, for I am but a humble priest. As for everyone else living here, I cannot say the same thing. There are police here on Pluto, but the police presence is about as large as the population of priests here. And the crime syndicates keep them in constant fear due to the threat of large-scale violence. I know that as a man of God I am supposed to love and pity everyone, including those who do wrong, but I don’t. In a society where crime is all but nonexistent, only those that are truly beyond hope still consider themselves criminals. Of course, that would also include the ghosts, but after encountering one ghost in particular, my opinion of them all was changed forever.

John Smith was born on Mars in the year 2079. He was brought into this world by some harlot in one of the many drug pens scattered throughout the slums of Olympus, the largest city on Mars. He was left in the old house by his mother, completely and utterly alone. Some local wannabe crime lord picked him up and began to raise him. Since the pregnancy was never registered and no doctors were ever involved, Smith didn’t exist. The crime lord wanted to keep it that way. He knew that in order to be truly successful, he needed a ghost by his side.

Well, the crime lord was good friends with a doctor, one who wasn’t exactly the most honest of people. In fact, many of the people that would inhabit that hellhole house of drugs and sex were only there because that doctor secretly supplied them with pills. So whenever a doctor was needed for the boy, he was brought there. When the boy was finally a teenager, the crime lord arranged for a flight to Pluto. He figured that Pluto would be the easiest place to start establishing his criminal empire, and it could provide him with new potential allies.

It worked, to say the least. Within three years of arriving on Pluto, the police were living in fear. Of course, this relationship was never directly acknowledged. The police always claimed that they were doing their best to protect the people of Pluto, but they weren’t. After the Charon Crisis, this all became public knowledge. In fact, the only reason that I’m even writing this is because of the Charon Crisis. Now that the Charon Syndicate is no more and all of the police stationed on Pluto have been replaced, I feel comfortable writing this down. And before I delve deeper into discussion about the Charon Crisis, I should probably preface this: I am not recounting John Smith’s confession. Yes he came to me on numerous occasions asking for forgiveness, but everything that I am sharing here, he shared with me over a glass of wine in the comfort of my own home. In fact, he would have wanted me to share his story, in part so that he could live on and so that he could serve as a cautionary tale to other ghosts.

Smith never wanted to be a ghost. In fact, he always secretly hoped that he would get caught during a robbery or some other scheme. He never did. The only reason that he remained a ghost was because his “father” forced him to be. And in order to atone for sins, Smith would always come to me and ask for forgiveness. I could see the good in him and so I pitied him. I baptized him in secret and he lived this life in prayer. He was a frequent visitor in my home and I like to believe that I was one of his few real friends.

But I will never know. Ghosts are duplicitous by nature due to their occupation. As far as I know, everything he did could have just been an act. I hope that it wasn’t, but of the many stories he told me about lies and trickery, one really stands out.

Once the Charon Syndicate was established, Smith was sent out on a mission to sneak into a bank. He got in fine thanks to his Skeleton Key. Every ID that was ever issued was just a solid white card. Nothing was printed on it, not even a small serial number. If someone ever lost their ID, then they just had to go off and request a new one. IDs were scanned by placing it on a small pedestal where a prong of sorts was inserted into a tiny hole. The scanner then checked the Universal Database to make sure that the person existed, all the while an automated sensor was scanning the person so as to make sure that their face matched up with the recorded face. But ghosts weren’t registered. Because of this, they could take advantage of one of the system’s serious shortcomings—if no person existed on the card and no face that existed was scanned, then the invisible person could enter. The system tricked itself into thinking that these people didn’t exist, but it still let them in with no indication that something was wrong. If the card didn’t match up with something in the database but the face did, or vice versa, then an error would occur. This allowed the police to arrest people that stole IDs and tried to pass them off as their own. Therefore Skeleton Keys were necessities for ghosts.

Anyway, Smith used his Skeleton Key to get into the bank to access one of his father’s shady transactions, the kind where money is discreetly deposited into an anonymous account before getting picked up by someone else. Of course, this was only possible with ghosts since saying “I want to access my account”, then handing a fake ID that could be checked against the real one in the database was completely out of the question. Unfortunately, when Smith went up to empty the account, he couldn’t remember the name, so he just gave the bank teller his card to scan. But without a name having been given, the bank teller couldn’t open up an account for Smith to trick. Instead, the ID was declined, saying “Account does not exist.” Smith and the teller both laughed it off because the system wasn’t perfect. For example, there was a five percent error margin with the facial recognition scans, because people’s faces change sometimes. If someone didn’t shave for their ID, then shortly after they did shave, then it would be impossible for them to do anything due to the discrepancies in the system. So Smith and the teller tried again, and again they got the same error message. This time Smith was starting to panic. He knew that the teller would ask for his name, but he couldn’t remember it because he didn’t exist. However, he couldn’t say that he didn’t remember his name, because who would ever say that they had forgotten their own name?

Smith needed a way out before he was caught. He told the teller that he just realized that this might not be the right ID. He claimed that he had just gotten a new one and he may have gotten the two mixed up and left the real one at home. The teller was surprised, but seemed to buy the story. This allowed Smith to run back to the syndicate hideout and confront his father, who was quite angry that Smith had forgotten the ever-important name. Now that he had the name, Smith was able to go back to the bank and empty the account. Lucky for him, he was with a new teller who had no knowledge of what happened before.

While walking out, Smith bumped into the teller, the one who he had been working with earlier, who was having a quick lunch break. She saw that he had accessed the account and tried to make small talk about the matter. Smith was starting to get flustered and he just wanted to go home. When she asked him if he had found the correct ID at home, he responded with “Yeah, that’s what happened.” The teller then asked why he hadn’t disposed of the old ID since whenever you got a new one, you were basically required to get rid of the old one. Again, Smith responded with something along the lines of “Yeah, that’s what happened.”

The teller now knew that something was off. Awkwardly, she ended the conversation and went back inside. Only then did Smith realize what happened. In order to prevent things from getting even worse, he went back into the bank and was able to approach the teller before she had disappeared into the back. He told her that he was sorry for being rude, but he was just so tired that he had zoned out during their conversation and was on auto-pilot. She apologized as well and said that it really wasn’t her place to pry into someone else’s life, but she was curious and bank tellers were specially trained to try and weed out ghosts because they could be devastating if they tried to steal someone’s money. Now even more worried, Smith said one final thank you and good-bye and left.

That was one of the most terrifying moments for Smith, and he always said that events like those were why he hated being a ghost. He never wanted to get caught for crimes that he was forced to commit. And then there was the Charon Crisis.

Charon was the largest city on Pluto, and the home to the planet’s main police force. One day about three months ago, the police system was overhauled. The police staff was tripled, going from about ten officers to close to thirty, and the new officers were intent on cleaning up crime. The original officers resisted at first, but they quickly came around. The Charon Syndicate still had its informants, so they knew what was going on. In order to counter the police, the leader ordered Smith to go pick up a few materials. Smith complied and brought back the materials, not realizing what they were. The Syndicate had some powerful members, so it was easy for them to craft a new, experimental weapon. The bomb was aptly named Hell’s Inferno, because it had a blast radius of about ten miles. Those caught up in the first five miles would be incinerated immediately while everyone in the last five miles would just get set on fire. Of course, there would still be some lingering damage over the next fifteen miles. When Smith found out about this weapon, it was the final straw for him. He argued against its use constantly and did what he could to convince his father not to use it. Smith was beaten terribly for that.

After the creation of this weapon, the Syndicate became more belligerent. They made threats to the police and began to act out more. The whole situation was a powder keg waiting to burst. The police knew that they couldn’t move on the Syndicate, because they had the bomb, and the bomb would wipe out half of Charon. It was a standstill, until the negotiations began. Smith was being watched carefully by the Syndicate, so it was almost impossible for him to get out. He told me this after Mass one day, the last Mass where I ever saw him. Smith told me what I needed to do.

I went to the police and told them what to do. It was decided that negotiations with the Syndicate would take place far outside the city. The entire police force was supposed to attend, as was the Syndicate. In reality, what happened was six police officers, all driving separately so as to make it look like they were all there, went. The Syndicate sent seven members, Smith not included. Smith was kept at the base with his father and the bomb, as well as a handful of other Syndicate members. Smith knew what was going to happen. Once the negotiations failed, the six police officers were overpowered and executed by use of laser wire. Laser wire was the logical evolution of razor wire. Laser wire was just normal metal wire, but it emitted a highly dangerous laser all around it. The police officers were bound with laser wire and it slowly cut them apart. All of this was then shown to the police, further emphasizing the Syndicate’s power.

Smith’s idea backfired, but he wouldn’t let any more innocents die. After their victory over the police, the Syndicate had a little celebration. They became a lot laxer for a single night, and that was all that Smith needed. He took the bomb and loaded it into one of the Syndicate’s trucks. Then he forged an order from his father. He made the order look like his father took him and the bomb off to a new hideout. In the morning, the other criminals discovered the order. They were all too hungover to think properly, so they went to the specified location. What they found there was a small shack. Smith greeted them all and led them into the shed. Inside, they found their leader bound and gagged, his eyes wide with terror. Then Smith blew them all to hell with the bomb.

When the police raided the Syndicate’s old hideout, they found Smith’s journal. That account was inside of it, as well as a note telling the police to give it to me. Towards, the end of the journal, Smith left me a letter telling me to share his story, and that is what I am doing.

John Smith was not his true name. I never knew his true name, nor do I think that he knew. Honestly, I don’t think that he ever had one. In that case I pity him all the more. Only God knew his true name, and I have little doubt that that is exactly who he is with now.