Max Headroom: 120 Minutes Into The Future

This. Is. Fanfic.

Last updated 20150930

30 years ago, the Max Headroom virus was born. It now infects systems globally, "personally" interacting with billions on a daily basis, impeding commerce with bits of wry advice and bad puns, and promoting "third-rate" products by any squatter in the global sprawl (Max Headroom Hydroponic Oranges, sold by millions of blanks, for example). Max is also the ultimate hacker, smashing any system that tries to block his access, even if it means toppling governments.

Chief among the irked is Bryce Lynch, secret head of "23," the former TV network that engulfed Security Systems and the Zik-Zac Corporation, now Sec23 and Zak23. 23 has now become synonymous with the former US, which is now presumed dissolved before the original show.

Out in the wasteland near someplace that used to be called California is Blank Ed, formerly hotshot network reporter Edison Carter. Operating "Big Time" BTB (Big Time Blast), Carter's stories are so far ahead of the curve that everybody thinks he's mental. His latest shock piece, intending to draw Bryce Lynch's control of 23 into public knowledge, was an expose on the man's eyeball fetish.

Edison's fall was not graceful. With the ubiquity of Vi-fi (all information captured by reflective surfaces is now public, down to private video chats thanks to nanotech in seeded clouds) Max Headroom could do anything Edison could do better, faster, and with a bigger audience. Eventually, people started asking him if he was "supposed to be" Max Headroom. Edison couldn't handle it. Despite an on-again, off-again relationship and daughter with Theora Jones, Edison never recovered from the competition with his alter ego. He became manic, unpredictable. No network controller would work with him. He was fired by Network 23 and blacklisted, eventually becoming a blank.

[Sidebar: The Blank Explosion - Once upon a time, blanks were criminals who erased their records to cover up misdeeds and start life fresh outside the system. After a decade or so, people began to seek blank status for privacy reasons. Originally, the "powers that be" were none to happy about this, but as the global consumer credit market retracted, so did the need for tracking billions of consumers. Increasingly, the only crime was "credit crime," dealt a final blow when credit ratings split in two - the "universal" UCR for the affluent and the "transactional" TCR, or Blank Credit. These two credit ratings replaced all currency. If you were a T, a blank, you weren't even allowed into the same commerce zones as a U. Although soft currency still underlies the credit system, something like a permanent line of credit replaced the ordinary banking account. If you were a T, you could always do business in a T-zone, but not in a U-zone. If you were a true blank, a real credit criminal who erased their credit rating, you might also be called a Z, or a zombie. These individuals access credit through forgery and credit masking. Edison Carter is now such a blank.]

A short time ago came the announcement that Moneta Jones, Edison's daughter, was being hired to head news at Net23. Moneta is unaware that in spite of her imminent qualifications, she's being used to draw out her father. She's iffy on reuniting, but knows that bringing the vaunted Edison Carter back to the Network will be a huge boost for market share. She's playing perfectly into Bryce Lynch's plan to put Max Headroom out of 23's misery and recreate him as the dominant WMD of the 21st Century.

20 years ago, Theora Jones was devoured by the nanotech fruit cleanser "Fruity5 by Zik-Zac." Edison attempted to get custody of Moneta but was foiled when Theora's Video Will (played out on an episode of Video Court) revealed her choice to have their daughter raised by their former producer, George "Murray" Murray, Sr., who then relocated to the East Coast.

Several years ago, in an attempt to reign in the growingly annoying Max Headroom virus, Bryce Lynch resurrected Security Systems's A7, a "female" AI with whom Max once had a fling. This failed to so much as distract Max for a nanosecond. However, Bryce knows that the "broken" Edison Carter will be easier to control. He claims that using the nanomachines that killed Theora, Edison's current brainscan, and the Max Headroom virus, he can reunite the lost lovers in cyberspace. Actually, all Bryce Lynch wants is to use Edison's brainscan to retard the evolved being Max Headroom has become, thus insuring 23's dominance "for a thousand years, or at least the next 20 minutes" (a joke placed with about 20 minutes left in the story).

The story begins with Blank Ed's expose on Bryce Lynch, "Shadowchair23." Blank Ed reveals that Bryce is behind Reflection Capture and Transmission Technology, better known as Vi-fi, the nanotech-based system that allows any reflective surface to become a camera and screen. But since it's an accepted technology, Blank Ed has to reveal something else - that this secretive chairman of 23, the biggest company in the world, is licking your eyeballs via Vi-fi!

In the meantime, South American dictator-for-life Presidente Gordo Hernandez has sworn to have the first "Max Free Trade Zone," a system of data filtering through which 23, rival Mundo66, and others can do business without interference from the Max Headroom virus. Max, of course, crashes the party, and turns Hernandez's network on itself, wrecking the entire country's smart grid. Hernandez is ousted in a day. At the conclusion of the meeting, Mundo66 VP of Content Moneta Jones gets a Vi-call from the Board of Directors from 23 with an offer she can't refuse.

Back in the wasteland, news about Moneta's move to 23 reaches Blank Ed. Edison Carter thinks back on his love for Theora, his career as a reporter, and his untimely introduction to the thing that would ruin his life - Max Headroom. Big Time is explored - part of an abandoned monorail system between California

and South America. Mass transit, and virtually all forms of transit, have been abandoned as they were outmoded by Vi-fi telecommuting. Edison's flashback concludes with an episode of Video Court wherein Theora wills their daughter to Murry's care. Ed vi-fis Murray demanding to know Moneta's exact whereabouts and Murray gives "the great Edison Carter his last piece of career advise - STAY DEAD!" (Murray recognizes a possible threat to Ed and Moneta.) Depressed, Edison allows a rare visit from Max in one of the train cars. Max attempts to console Ed but to no avail, after which the blank smashes the train's windows. He has smashed the windows out of all the other cars.

Edison really has no idea that Moneta's job is Bryce's play to bring him out of hiding. Bryce still has a begrudging admiration for Edison's "legacy moral system," but getting rid of Max Headroom is really more important for him, even if the nanobots kill Edison in the process.

Moneta Jones has only vague memories of her father but a rather unusual paternal relationship with Max Headroom, a source of comfort to her. Since putting Murray in an Elder Commune and engaging in all her globe-hopping with Mundo66, Max has, uncharacteristically, been a grounding influence for her, showing Moneta genuine warmth and compassion. He even calls her "m-m-my little g-girl" to which Edison comments "how would she know any better, she was raised by a TV!"

The problem with the Fruity5 nanotech lay largely in its production off planet. Much early nanotech was produced in zero gravity environments and Zic-Zak took shortcuts in Fruity5's testing. Only after Fruity5 killed and ate a few hundred of its users was it shipped off the planet in lots, lots which are now permanently stored on a garbage scow ironically called Heaven. This is the final resting place of Theora Jones.

Moneta suspects nothing while trying to track down her father. Max deliberately attempts to block her every effort, knowing Bryce's plan but being blocked by a line of code, Protocol 23, which is written into his program. Protocol 23, better known as "the Parrot," forbids Max from acting directly against Bryce, which has allowed much of Bryce's rise. This brings Max's underlying artificial intelligence into question. Is Max really an AI or just a highly intelligent program?

But in the mean time, Moneta is forced to go off the grid with a mysterious "waste shirpa," a diminutive robot called "Sigmund." The waste is really parts of the American West that became sprawl but eventually were abandoned then farming failed as the result of global warming. When Vi-fi emerged, all transcontinental transportation was banned (albeit too late). Here, Moneta encounters a wasteland community known as Freetown, where all the residents are slaves, reflective surfaces are banned, and there is no network. Life in Freetown is now based on diamond mining and hydroponics. The leader of Freetown, Pretty Jane, immediately attempts to destroy Sigmund, knowing that the robot constitutes a hotspot with a connection to the outside world, but Sigmund escapes by uploading into comm implant in Moneta's left temple. Moneta begins to wonder if Sigmund is really Max, but there's no stuttering. Eventually, Sigmund helps Moneta escape by using the diamonds (including one in Pretty Jane's tooth) on which the Freetown economy is based as Vi-Fi cameras. As her comm implant battery fades, Sigmund tips "his" hat that he may be someone from her past, possibly Bryce Lynch or even Theora from the "other side." Moneta locates a functional, solar handcar which she rides toward Blank Ed's lair.

(It will turn out later that Sigmund was actually controlled by the infamous anarchist hacker Sig Blank, possibly the great-nephew of Blank Reg. Like Ed he hates Bryce.)