The note i received was quite detailed. It explained that the Americans had been brutally efficient in looting their older population when the hurricanes started to occur every year. Other populations had been less efficient. The Asians revered their older population and so the stuff films they used older people to star were not filmed in China. In fact, most of the Asian older population had been sent gently to sleep and cremated.

Which left Russia, Europe, and South America. Russia had long ago looted the dead of everything they had. South American power was on the rise so that left Europe. Several mass graves were still intact.

The rich had bought youth super serum leaving the middle class and poor old to be thrown out in the street. In the end, the families of the old had them declared dead and had them carted off. The middle class had at least paid for lethal injections in most cases. This meant the mass graves would only have been for the poor and unlucky. While all of the obvious wealth would have been taken there were still antiques to be looted.

Gold was worthless as many superpowers could create it directly. Turning lead into gold was also a power. Not that the bodies would have any gold left on them. More than likely the wedding rings would have been stripped off the dead. There were stories of garden sheers being used on still-living old people if they were slow to remove their wedding bands. The guards wanted to collect the gold before the grave diggers got to them. Which in this case was a shame the antique rings might be worth something.

But items that were worthless then would be commonplace. Plastic watches glasses hearing aids. Even after a hundred years, there would be traces. Traces that several types of super power could be used to re-create the old item.

Along with the massive list of reasons the graves had not been disturbed was a list of prices. It looked like old watches sold for massive amounts. The new watches were too easy to bug. Even my wrist holo-projector was a security risk.

But the old model watches when recreated were almost impossible to use as a spying device. Apparently, superpowers did not work well on old equipment that had been fixed by super powers. The issue was the old watches were the cheap knockoff type. They were all different makes and superpowers tended to not work on them all. Of course, given enough effort there was no way to stop someone spying on you. But the older watches were a way of making it more expensive.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

I sighed the commander was not sending me this information out of the goodness of his heart. He wanted something and I was betting it had to do with the most recent famine.

With the price of grey goo increasing tenfold other food prices also increased. Europe needed credits desperately. Desperately enough for the poorer countries would open up their old cemeteries. The commander was offering me a small percentage of the take if I would create a few programs for him.

It was an easy choice to make, but there was a risk that the commander was trying something that would get me killed. But in the end, it did not matter he could have me killed with the touch of a button.

I began to set programs to block anyone else trying to directly contact me. Although I had received some decent information from the last call. The major issue I faced was once I had any kind of money the vultures would start up.

The requests to save the sick animals and the requests to sponsor a child so they were not sold to cannibals. The Middle east countries were particularly brutal in their approach. They sent images of actual children that would be horribly killed if you did not give a donation.

My mind buzzed as I created 2 programs to block spamware. They were pieces of art. Self-adapting with the capacity to learn from their mistakes. One would block the connection of any spam the other would monitor any communications for any kind of mind control transmission.

I finished up and spent five minutes putting a basic computer system together for the commander. When I sent it off my monitor lit up.

A cheerful man dressed in a bright white suit appeared on my screen "Howdy folks and god bless the new state of New Liberty. I have here an old granny I am about to torture to death unless you pay me 5 credits" I looked at the image on my screen and began to furiously code.

Spam I had spam I began to get to work as the slimy salesman offered to sell me the granny for half the price of freeing her from the torture device. I got to work and quickly 2 programs were let loose.

One was designed to stop any programs other than my own from affecting my system. The other was simpler it merely cut the power to the communication systems until switched off.

The lights began to flicker but nothing happened to the slimy salesman. I blinked and began to examine everything. It looked like my programs were being overpowered by the malware quite easily. However, looking at the situation my software was evolving to adapt to the threat.

The salesman's voice called out "Now sir I know what you are thinking she is just a deep fake image." I grinned "No she is a real person. I am betting you have to do what you say you will. Your problem is that I worked for people like her and you. You have not started to torture her yet which means she is someone to you."

The salesman paled "Now sir how you do a simple survey and I let this nice old granny live." I pulled out a memory patch and put it on my neck before beginning to examine the malware. The Salesman paled more realizing I had put on a device designed to shred my short-term memory.

Tomorrow i would wake up with a hangover. He would have to follow up his threats and live with what he was about to do.