Plot Timeline

Setting

Starting May 15th in the not-so-distant future (perhaps 50ish years), the episode spans a couple of days following a police detective and her sidekick in London. The two are searching to solve a string of murders seemingly related to Social Media.

Synopsis. Key characters:

• Karin Parke: Police detective, DCI
• Blue Colson: Shadowing Parke, used to work for “tech crime”
• Shaun Li: NCA officer
• Rasmus Sjolberg: Head of the ADI program at Granular (company).
• Garrett Scholes: Behind #DeathTo, former employee working on ADI

The plot is as follows.

Timeline (With time stamps)

00:00 (Day 1)

• Detective Karin Parke walks home, entering her apartment.
• Turns on the news, where a controversial story about Disability Benefits is being covered. A News Columnist - Jo Powers - is taking backlash for unpopular views on the law/actions of a “wheelchair Martyr.” 20,000 people have signed a petition for her resignation.
• Following Jo on her walk home:
  • The news continues to roll in the background speaking of another extinction that has occured: the Siberian Crane.
  • The news also reveals the Honey Bee Drones (known as ADIs) have been released for their second summer. The supposed solution to a Honey Bee extinction.
  • Pedestrians insult Jo on her walk home, for her writings. As she arrives at her apartment, she recieves a cake delivery.
• Inside, Jo finds the cake has been frosted with “Fucking Bitch.” Her and her husbands frustrations with the matter are evident.

That night:

• Jo is browsing the computer, looking at comments on her article. Most comments and twitter notifications are copious amounts of hate.
  • It is here the “#DeathTo” tweet is first seen, but not made a point of
  • It is also here the window is revealed to be slightly open - an entry point for a bee.
• Karin is watching the news (still?), where performer “Tusk” is introduced in a segment.
  • After being a shown of a young fan mimicing his work, Tusk pokes fun at him (becoming excessively negative)
• Karin is called to the scene of a crime - Jo Powers is dead.
  • Here she meets Blue Colson, Karin’s Shadow/Sidekick and Nick Shelton (Part of detectives).
• After discussing who she is (and the horrible article she wrote), even Nick admits to signing the petition to get her sacked. Called it “Clickbait” article.
• Team explores the murder scene, noting struggle and a wounded husband whose unconscience.
  • Twitter mentions are still rolling in on her computer
  • The CCTV codes are being accessed; All entry points appear secure, however.
• As leaving the apartment, Blue notes not having a Driver’s License and is “waiting for driverless to go mainstream.”
• On the ride home, Blue talks about her previous work in Tech Crimes
  • Left cause of all the horrible things she’s seen online (Karin noting she’s old enough to remember when it was just in their heads).
  • Blue says “these things (phones) absorb us, they know everything about us.”
  • Blue left forensics due to seeing child torturing and murdering photos/videos.

13:30 (Day 2)

• News on reporting on Jo’s Death. The ticker has a headline “ECHR rules ‘cookies’ have human rights”
• Reviewing CCTV; no one came in or out. Rear one is broken though.
• Blue searches aggressive tweats on Twitter using an advance(ish) search engine.
  • Karin: “That internet stuff drifts off like weather, it’s Half-Hate, they don’t mean it. They hate in a marriage, that’s 3D, …, that’s sincere”
• Husband wakes up; they go visit.
  • Describes her thrashing at her head, seizing. Smashing her own head & cutting her own throat.
  • Couldn’t get her to stop.
• Blue believes the cake may have been at fault; or something else. Thinks he’s not the type.
• Karin agrees to go after Blue’s lead: an elementary teacher who sent the cake.
  • Blue looks up her social media along the way and points out she said “#DeathTo JoPowers”
• The teacher:
  • Did not pay for the expensive cake, she crowd sourced the money from a message board.
  • Said it was for her sister, to get the bakery to make it.
  • Justifies her actions for the horrible writings of Jo
  • Claims to be using her “Freedom of Speech” (Karin: “To send a threatening message…)
  • “It was funny…”. Blue claims she wished Jo Dead, showing her the tweet. The Teacher responds saying that’s not real, its a HashTag, a joke thing. Insert the name of someone whose being an asshole…
• Give the teacher a “Caution” on the basis of the “Offensive Communications Act”.
  • Clearly not well enforced. Teacher asks if the others of the cake will be punished. Teacher says she didn’t do anything. Karin tells her to start a thread about it.

That afternoon

• Karin: “We’re arresting the husband, don’t wallow in that. The internet will be pissed at someone else today.”
  • Tusk is the new target on twitter. More hate and #DeathTo.

That night

• Tusk backstage of performance
• Camera watching as he’s about to smoke marijuana; was about to freak but it’s legal.
  • “Kinda takes the joy out of it”
• Tusk attacked. Symptoms of Jo.
• At hospital an ADI is pulled from his head while in the MRI, killing him.
• Shaun Li of the National Crime Agency is introduced, inspecting Tusk’s dead body and the ADI.

27:00 (Day 3)

• Karin and Blue visit autopsy to find an ADI that had bored into Jo.
  • Attacked the Brain’s Pain center causing dire agony; enough to do anything to stop it.
• Visit the Company making ADIs, bankrolled by Gov’t. Blue says people online are weary of it, thinking the bees are spying on them. Karin denies it “There’s a scizophraic world view”.
• Tour the facility, showcasing the Bee’s in a large warehouse pollinating plants.
  • Introduced to Rasmus (CEO), explaining colony collapse disorder. They don’t know the cause so the bees are designed to fill in the gaps.
  • Reveal ADI may have caused a Death.
• Rasmus examines the ADI from Jo - “These are not designed to kill.” When the malfunction they just break and hit the ground.
  • Blue “what if someone hacks”, Rasmus: “Militray grade encryption” “Need a diagnostic tool.”
• Rasmus shows them the bee traffic control center:
  • 4,000 Bee’s per hive, can see where any of the Hives and Bees are. Can search anywhere in the world. Have all the logs of where, when, and what.
  • Bees need to swap between hive jurisdictions; someone spoofed a hive perhaps.
  • Must be within 10-20 meters to do this.
• Can’t shutdown the ADIs without Gov’t Approval and risk of ecological disaster.

That afternoon (35:00)

• Karin says should go to NCA at this point, but doesn’t want to give them the case. That is where Shaun Li appears - revealing the second death (Tusk).
• Both victims of “online shitstorms” (Fire storms)
• Karin: “There’s not fingerprints, no DNA, it’s like wishing them dead.”
• Blue finds out HashTag came from a bot to seed the HashTag.
  • Introduction to the “Game of Consequences”: Bot account links a video saying tweet #DeathTo and an image & name of someone you don’t like. If that person is picked enough, then that’s the target to be eliminated at 5pm.
  • Determines the next victim by looking at top mentions for the Tag. Discover “Clara Meades” who had posted a disrepectiful image in front of a war memorial. Since Tusk isn’t public yet, people don’t realize the tweet is real; they are scaring her.
• Blue pulls up Clara’s Citizen Details (Li says she shouldn’t have access). Gov’t Employee Abuse?
  • Its a citizen database, with same information as was onthe phone but also a map with her current location. Like in a pretty tight area…
  • Karin calls Clara’s roommate, somehow getting her number to warn Clara they are on the way.
• Head to Clara, Blue has Rasmus track ADI’s in the area. Rasmus has set a trap to try and ID the perp.
• Rasmus detects a breach attempted, trying to trace it. The rest evacuate Clara to a safehouse, realizing the ADI is nearby. The ADI follows them on the car.
• Trace fails, the thousands of ADIs have gone off the grid nearby, now under someone’s control.
  • Phones become jammed, can’t warn Blue and Karin fully.
  • Rasumus realizes the entire thing has been taken over, he has no control.
  • Swarm of thousands stream towards the house; they take shelter in Bath. Bees working together, eventually killing Clara.
• Bee’s dispurse, body taken away.

That night (55:00)

• Debrief at HQ, Ramsus is there with Karin, Blue, and Li.
  • Bees aren’t being steered, too many at once. They are controlling the system
  • Blue: Database determines the basic area isn’t enough , which means the visual sensors are being used to distinguish who in the area.
  • Rasmus: The feed is secure from Hive to ADI, but the Gov’t requirement for backing the project needed a backdoor to get into the feeds for “times of increase national security”.
  • Li knew of this. Classified. They are spying. They do CCTVs and Traffic.
  • Gov’t would only fund it if they could get more
  • Prevented bombings and mass shootings by spying, but keeping safe. Except Clara.
• Ramsus is locked out. Blue determined to look inside an ADI.
• Nick comes in with some leads on who would have had access to the ADI systems. Government employee list.

60:00 (Day 4)

• Public learns #DeathTo link to murders.
  • News sensationalizing; tracking top 5 up for bat…
  • People blogging on YouTube, expressing either wrongnes of this or egging others to “Make your #DeathTO choice count!!!”
  • “Someone’s going to be top of list, why not make it someone who deservces it - like a ‘racist’”
  • “People can get away with it since no one knows who did it”
  • How culpable are people?

All at once the following happens

• Blue inspects the ADI’s software contents
  • Finds a manifesto “the teeth of consequences” written by Garrett with a selfie attached
• Karen working on Employee interviews
  • Tess: worked in HR for Granular (ADI company) until she had interviewed someone who she had to threaten arrest over. Turns out the man had a learning disability that caught her huge flack on social media.
  • Tess: “It was like having a whole weather system turn against me, hate after hate.” A million invisible people talking about how they dispise you.
  • Admits she made a mistake, but people enjoyed “kicking her”; “casual fun”. Attempted suicide. Her flatmate “Garrett” found her bleeding out in the bathtub and kept her alive. Garrett worked at Granular on the ADI team.
• Li meets with the Chancellor who is currently on the top of the list. People are discussing what to do.
  • Chancellor wants to shut down the whole internet, social media, etc - pull a North Korea on it.
  • Li advises against it, he’d still be number one by 5pm.
  • Chancellor wants to leak something to skew the public away from himself.
  • Li wants to move chancellor to safe location, shows live video of army at the Hive. Plan to knock out nearby hives in the safe area.
  • After attempting to blow up the hive, the bees don’t die and they kill the soldiers.
  • Can either knock out all hives and kill environment, or take victim a day.

Inspecting the Manifesto

• Garrett - “Thanks to the technologal revolution we have the power to rage and accuse, but bile without consequence. Only if we recognize the power…” … theme is he wants people to face the consequences of what they say and do.
• Nick tweets #DeathTo with the picture of Garrett.
• Inspecting the selfie taken, Blue realizes there’s a geolocation tag leading them to where Garrett took the photo.
• Garrett sees the tweet from Nick, and flees the scene. Rash, oversharing of information.
  • Inconsistency: Said Garrett left the country 6 months ago, yet they nearly missed him inside the country? Or was this just another ploy to mislead them?
• At Garrett’s compound (hidden just outside Granular), Blue finds a burned harddrive in the forge that lets Ramsus regain control.

At Rasmus’s Lab

• 3 minutes left to 5pm. Rasmus has the source to take back control. Noticed a new file.
• It’s a list of IMEI numbers. 387,000 numbers. List of all people who used the HashTag. The backdoor allowed Garrett to get this info from the Government DB.
  • That’s ~75% of the number of deaths in the UK for all of 2015; in 1 day.
• Nick owns up to posting - he’s on it.
• Ramsus is ready to turn off the drones, Li wants to take action now given the Chancellor’s life and Karin doesn’t: “He left them a trail” Shutting it down could “trigger an endgame, something with the list - the people on the list are his targets” Consequences. The players are the targets.
• Li presses the button against their urge.
  • They regain control of system
  • And then it goes right offline again. End game has been triggered.

The Fallout

• Garrett is changing his identity, dumps all his stuff in a lake - in a foreign country?
• Warehouse of dead bodies
• Karin in court hearing, recounting the events.
• Describes Blue’s death several months after, for possibly causing the whole sequence of events by springing his trap. Explains her stuff was found on a beach.
• As Karin leaves court, she recieves message from Blue.
• Blue faked death, ends with her trailing Garret from a Spanish Coffee shop after listening to the hearings.