Free Tag - A Technothriller by Simon Royle

Devstick to prove our identity – it becomes a part of us. What could be more human?”
    “That’s a dangerous thought, June, using technology to define what is human. Suppose the Tagged identities are hacked? What then? Your entire life is on display to someone?”
    “Annika, our entire lives are on display right now. If a hacker wants to get into us and they’re skilled enough they can steal your identity right now – it happens all the time. With the Tag that will become much harder because you are the device. The Tag embedded in your arm is protection against identity theft because any action that doesn’t match your current location will immediately be seen for what is. You have to go beyond emotion here and understand the logic.”
    I took another sip of my orange juice. I can’t say I liked the idea of having anything inserted into my body, but the idea of the Tag appealed to me on a number of levels. Firstly, it would cut down crime which has been rising steadily. Secondly, there really was no difference between an embedded Tag and a PUI on a Devstick. Well, the only difference is that your hands are free – but I guess you could say your hands are free if your Devstick is in a pocket or clipped to a belt. Even so, a one mil tag embedded in your upper arm is still more convenient to carry around.
    I thought it would make shopping easier. Just step up to any Dev in any shop space and speak or key in your password. No more waving of Devstick at the shop Dev. If I understood it correctly – and privacy is not my area of expertise under the law – but location and other personal data belong to you. Ents have to delete any data that is yours within one month of acquiring it, unless you give them permission not to. In which case they can hold your data but not resell it to any other party without your express permission. You have access to any data the government holds about you, except where such access is deemed to be a threat to the Nation, and then you require a court order.
    The security around personal data is massive, but then again I’d also just seen what Gabriel could do to those systems and that worried me about the Tag. What if someone could hack the data? What could they do? Well, nothing more than what they can do now, and that was why I though the Tag Law would be passed. March 15 – I had to remember to vote. I picked up my Devstick and marked it in my calendar. The time on the Devstick showed it was nearly 5:45am. I got up and swallowed the rest of the orange juice, taking the empty glass back to the food prep area. After putting the glass into the sanitizer, I headed for the shower.
    I think up some of my best ideas while showering, but not this time, and I got it over with as quickly as possible. “Fast dry,” I said, and a blast of warm air hit me from above, driving the wet from my body with its force. No sign yet, a ton of questions and I have to maintain a normal life. That summed it up, but it didn’t help. Frustrated with it all, I looked at myself in the mirror. Who are you?
    Standing there, examining my reflection, I realized something else, something I recognized but wasn’t familiar with – fear. I was scared. I ran my hands through my hair and a down my jaw line, feeling the stubble that had grown there. I had to get a grip: these thoughts were leading me nowhere and being scared, while a natural response, was counterproductive. I had to do something, but what? And that’s when it hit me. Take a vac. Get away from all of this. If Gabriel needed to find me he could, I was sure of that, and suddenly the idea of taking a vac grew. Would it look suspicious? No, not if I told Sir Thomas in advance and made it seem like I was rewarding myself with a hard-earned spell of relaxation.
    Feeling a surge of energy I went back out to the living area and said to the Dev, “Find me a list of Vacenvs within one hour’s travel time from here. Search criteria: clean white sand beach,