Daemon

The driver’s door swung open as it came alongside him.
    Gragg concentrated on his Third Eye. He felt his distant AutoM8s following the car of the mysterious man whom Vanowen had met at the municipal airfield. Gragg brought the dashboard video of a trailing AutoM8 up onto his heads-up display – projecting onto one lens of his glasses. The infrared camera miles away showed the man’s car heading south toward the interstate. There were two occupants. Gragg scanned the target car’s license plate and retrieved its DMV records.
    Federal Fleet Vehicle – no data
    Gragg smiled to himself. The Daemon Task Force, eh?
    He was closing in on them. He was mapping the topology of the plutocrats’ elusive network – The Money Power. They were up to something. This man would help Gragg find out what.
    These plutocrats were men of limited vision who needed to be swept aside. Men from a previous age. An age of oil and heavy industry. But the distributed technocracy would soon rise, and Gragg would be there at Sobol’s side for the dawn of a new age. An age of immortals. A second Age of Reason.
    Gragg’s eyes narrowed at the video image of the man’s car.
    There would be no mercy for those who stood in the way.

Chapter 37:// Cogs in the Machine
    The Haas mini mill was a miracle of modern engineering – a computer-controlled metal lathe, drill press, and router all rolled into one. The Haas could download a 3-D computer model into memory and from it produce a custom metal or plastic part cut and shaped to exacting specifications. It was essentially a self-enclosed, water-cooled machine-parts factory packed into a housing the size of a hot dog cart.
    Linked to the Web, it almost became a 3-D fax machine – plans sent in digitally at one end emerged at the other as finished parts. The input could originate from any corner of the world via Internet or phone. All that was required was a human being to serve the Haas. To feed it the raw materials the plans required. To protect and maintain it. Man serving machine.
    But Kurt Voelker and his crew loved their machines. The machines gave them entrée into the Daemon network. The Daemon network gave them a future.
    They had progressed significantly since their first AutoM8. Their Sacramento machine shop now boasted three halfmillion-dollar computer-controlled milling machines, running full-time off dual cable and satellite Internet connections. They were producing parts at an accelerating pace – but the Daemon had forbidden their company from growing larger. Three machines were the maximum they were permitted to possess. True, they’d generated three million in revenue last year and taken home hundreds of thousands of dollars each – but Voelker chafed against the prohibition to stay small.
    Still, he knew better than to protest to Sobol’s Daemon. It had grown phenomenally in power. Better to give thanks for their good fortune.
    Voelker lifted his safety goggles and glanced around the cluttered shop. It was thirty thousand square feet of 1930s factory floor. Brick walls, twenty-foot ceilings, skylights, and concrete floors. The smell of oil, burnt metal, and ozone from arc welding filled the air. Parts littered workbenches, and a dozen brand-new vehicles stood in varying stages of completion. Voelker’s company was officially a fleet vehicle customization business – licensed to operate by the AQMD. A legitimate California corporation. Their close ties to major car leasing companies, on-time tax payments, and contributions to civic causes put them above reproach. They had friends in high places now. High-powered attorneys would slide down the fire pole in their defense if anyone so much as looked at them cross-eyed. God help anyone who tried to shake them down or impede their business. There was a Daemon work request for just such contingencies. Their future was secure.
    Voelker saw Tingit Khan and Rob McCruder struggling with the steering column of a new AutoM8 variant – a 400-horse-power Mustang interceptor. They were bitching at each other like brothers, as always. Voelker smiled to himself. They were like a family. A family with a stern authority figure that would flay the flesh from their bones if they stepped out of line for even an instant.
    Still. The rules were clear, the work always changing, and the rewards enormous. Barely in their mid-twenties, they were all millionaires on paper. They would receive five weeks’ vacation every year. Retirement with benefits