Phil Elmore's Blog, page 19

Episode 19, “Montauk”

 

[image error]Peyton woke on the floor next to the sofa. He had been sitting on the carpet, using the couch as a backrest, watching screen and drinking coffee. He must have fallen asleep. Annika had draped a blanket over him.

He sat up. His mug was gone. He looked over his shoulder and saw it sitting on the counter in the kitchenette. Annika again. He rubbed one huge hand across his face and through his hair.

His head felt thick. It always did when he woke. His metabolism moved very fast when he was awake, but asleep, it was almost dormant. It reminded him of the old days, before the Project, when he spent his nights drinking and his mornings hungover.

The wall screen had reverted to a 24-hour display of the time. He realized that it was much later than it should be. He had slept almost through the day. Where was Annika?

The door to the bedroom was not shut completely. He eased this open. Annika was asleep in her clothes on top of the bedspread. She had at least removed her forearm tab. It was on the floor.  He picked it up, thinking to place it on the night table for her. He stopped.

She slept heavily — so heavily, based on her breathing, that she must be exhausted. He stared at the tab in his hand.  In the last days she had done nothing but use this computer, using it to play her games and occupy the virtual spaces where she interacted with her friends. He had no idea what she really did with those friends; he had no concept of the conversations she might be having.

He was not smart. He should have worried about this before. This was a problem he could not solve on his own.

From the pocket of his shirt he took the contact circuit the Og had given him. This he inserted in the socket next to the wall screen. There was only a moment’s delay.

“It’s you,” said the Og. The lighting on its end of the connection had been adjusted to put its face in shadow. The silhouette was vague. Peyton recognized the voice.

“I need your help,” he said. “You know machines. Computers.”

“You might say that,” said the Og. It had cameras for eyes and a metal face. Its hands were motor claws.

“I need to know what my daughter has been doing with her computer,” said Peyton. “Is this possible?”

“Yes.”

“Do you need the computer to do it?”

“No,” said the Og. “There should be a number on it. A serial etching. Read it to me.”

Peyton did so. The Og nodded and recited an address.  “The ozone warning is elevated of late. Do you require a rebreather?”

“I don’t know that is,” said Peyton.

“Of course you don’t,” said the Og. “My flat is two blocks down and one block over. I’ll have what you want when you get here.”

Peyton nodded. He pulled the circuit.  Checking once more on Annika, he put her computer on the night table before closing the door, gently, behind him.

 

* * *

 

“I’m twelve,” said the little girl who opened the door. “My name is Aimee.”  He hair was a lustrous auburn that reached to the middle of her back. In her outsized, castoff clothing she looked like a waif, but there was a measured intelligence behind those eyes. Aimee looked Peyton up and down as he stood in the doorway. He felt uncomfortably transparent.

The Og appeared behind the girl. Without its slicker, its form was more apparent: It was an alloy skeleton, all gears and pistons and cubes of metal, walking on arched and spring-loaded feet.  A full-body mod, with a human brain somewhere behind the camera-lens eyes and hammered facial mask. Somewhere in the skeleton, clad in metal, would be the Og’s human spine, perhaps some of its other organs. The creature’s cameras whirred and extended as it changed its point of focus.

“Greetings, Peyton,” it said.  “Aimee you’ve met. She is my adopted daughter. Samuel is out procuring groceries for himself and his sister.”

Peyton stepped inside, easing himself through the narrow doorway with some difficulty. The flat the Og and its family occupied was an irregular unit among a cluster of similar dwellings. Peyton knew the type; they were prepaid and unregistered — the kind of place someone not actively wanted by the police could live quietly for an extended stay. Aimee closed the door and skipped out of the living room. The room was cluttered with clothes, toys, and packing cartons. There was no furniture, but there were two wall screens.

“Groceries for himself and his sister,” Peyton repeated.

“I don’t eat,” said the Og. “Not in the conventional sense. My organic systems require very little in the way of nutrients.”  It gestured with a metal pincer toward the center of the living area. “Please make yourself comfortable.”  It made a slight bow.  “My name is Montauk.”

“How did you know mine?” asked Peyton. He sat cross-legged on the floor.

“An educated guess,” said Montauk. “There is very little in the grid unknown to me.”  It waved a pincer at the screen, which illuminated with a scroll of text.  “This is every virt and extended chat your daughter’s tab has processed in the last week.  You will be relieved to know that it is largely innocent.”

“How did you know that’s what I wanted?” Peyton asked.

“It is what any father would want,” said Montauk. “But please note that I said ‘largely.’ Annika has one contact that I believe may be a predator. He uses an identity nominally attached to the name ‘Billy,’ but that is not his name. I’ve tried to trace the identity to its source, but it is too well masked.  This is rare enough to be noteworthy. A predator accustomed to successfully engaging victims through the grid might know how to do this.”

“So you can’t give me a name or an address.”

“No,” said Montauk.  “But based on the frequency of her conversations with ‘Billy,’ I think he may try to arrange a meeting with her soon.  He is very adept. Somehow he has spurred Annika to contact him, more often than he contacts her. This plants in his victim’s mind the notion that it is her idea to seek him out, and thus ensures compliance.”

“Annika is smart. She won’t fall for that.”

“Annika is twelve years old,” said Montauk. “Peyton, she could be a genius on the order of Einstein or Hollyfeld, but she lacks your knowledge of the criminal world. She is not ‘street smart,’ as they say. Although I suspect she is much more so now than when you first found each other.”

There was a knock on the door. It came in code — three, a pause, two more, another pause, and then a single knock. Aimee appeared from the bedroom hallway and unlocked the door. Samuel was almost dwarfed by the bag of groceries he carried. He placed this on the table in the kitchenette.

“We’ll make spaghetti,” said Aimee.  “Spaghetti is good when you need a lot of food all at once.”

“I think that’s an invitation,” said Montauk. “Would you like to stay for dinner?”

“I should get back,” said Peyton. “Annika doesn’t know where I’ve gone. If she wakes up she might be frightened.”

“Send her a message, silly,” said Aimee.  “She has a messaging account, doesn’t she?”

Montauk looked to Peyton. His cameras dialed out.  “I could do just that,” he said. “I can also explain the circumstances, should she doubt the provenance of the message.”

“All right,” said Peyton.

“We’ll be ready soon,” said Aimee from the kitchenette.

Peyton watched the children cook for a time. Montauk went back to the wall screen, shunting through feeds so quickly Peyton could not track them.  “If Hongkongtown had the grid capacity for subliminal bursts,” said the Og, “I could do this in a fraction of the time it now takes. But this is not exactly Central City.”

“What are you doing?” asked Peyton.

“I check the ‘nets every day, node to node,” said Montauk. “Looking for any sign, any clue, that my whereabouts have become known.” He paused.  “You’ll be pleased to know that the recent hydrogen platform explosion in Southasia was not the work of terrorists. Or so the terrorists would prefer the authorities believed.”

“Who is searching for you? The police?”

“Not as such,” said Montauk.  He never took his cameras from the screen.  “It is a very long story.  One I will tell you eventually, should you wish to hear it. Listening to my long, boring stories will be your repayment for my assistance.”

Peyton considered that.  “Why are you helping me?” he said.

“The fact that I am a persecuted member of a marginalized demographic is insufficient?” asked Montauk. “Solidarity among the other-than-normal?”  The Og made a kind of ratcheting sound deep within its metal chest. Peyton realized this was laughter. “Very well, Peyton. You are not wrong.”

“What, then?” Peyton said.

“I am not so rich in friends,” said Montauk, “that I can afford to pass up the opportunity to make one. Can you?”

“No,” said Peyton.  He watched the children preparing dinner, which seemed to involve a lot of whispered conferring. “How did you find them?”

“Samuel is actually my son,” said Montauk. “His birth predates my becoming.”

“Is that what an Augment calls it when he is converted?”

“Some do,” said Montauk. “Some don’t.”  The Og waved a pincer.  “I came to Hongkongtown with Samuel to escape certain… consequences.”

“Will he become an Og? Peyton asked.

“We’ve discussed it,” said Montauk. “I refused to make the decision for him. One is either born with the ‘sickness’ they accuse us of carrying, or one is not. The conversion itself is nearly instantaneous, barring a few coding issues, the time required to synchronize wetware with hardware and its governing programming.  When a boy as young as Samuel decides he wishes to follow his father’s path, however, it can be difficult. Northam law does not permit minors to make this choice. Certain government agencies will intervene.”

“Consequences,” Peyton repeated.

“Quite,” said Montauk.  “We have been here for five years. Half of that time we spent alone. Then we encountered Aimee. She was living on the streets, poor thing, eating out of garbage bins.”

“She’s so much like Annika,” said Peyton. “What happened to her family?”

“She says she doesn’t know,” said Montauk. “There are many orphans in Hongkongtown. Some are the victims of trafficking rings. Others are… leftovers. There are so many murders here. The real numbers are suppressed by the reputable media agencies. Some of these killings claim entire families.  From the moment I met Aimee, I knew she was alone. I knew I wanted to help her. And in the time she has lived with us as my own child, I have come to love her as I love Samuel.”

“Aimee’s parents were killed?”

“I’ve had no success tracing her DNA,” said Montauk. “Her vital signs, skin responses, pupil dilation… these do not change when I ask her about her family. She is either the world’s most accomplished liar, or she truly does not know. My theory is that whatever happened to her traumatized her so badly that she blocked out the memories. There are certain therapies that could help her recover them. I see no reason why I should put her through that.”

“Dinner’s ready,” called Samuel from the kitchen.

“Someone could be searching for her,” said Peyton.

“They might be. And if they are, keeping her with me and Samuel endangers our freedom. Makes our lives more difficult. One might say she is a liability.”

Peyton felt his chest tighten.  “But you wouldn’t,” he said.

“No,” said Montauk.  “I know that, one day very soon, she will leave us. She has her own path to follow. her own work to do. But while she remains in our company, no matter how much danger comes with having her with us, no matter what we must do to ensure her safety, we will gladly do so. Aimee could never be a liability.”

“Why not?” asked Peyton.

“Because she is my daughter,” said the Og.

Technocracy: Smartphone Zombies

My WND Technocracy column this week is about all those people you see staring down at their phones. All the time. Wherever they are. Whomever they’re with.

We must stop ignoring the world, our children, our friends and reality itself in favor of the pixelated simulacra delivered by our handheld devices.

The “look up” campaign attached to a YouTube video about phones and relationships is worth exploring. We all need to spend a little less time absorbed, rudely, in our mobile devices (myself included).

Read the full column here at WND News.

Episode 18, “Friends”

 

[image error]“You’re pouting again.”

Annika looked up from the touch screen of her forearm computer.  She was sitting upside down on the end sofa, her legs braced against one of the armrests, her head on a pillow on the floor. She spared him an exasperated glance and then went back to the machine.

Peyton looked back to the wall screen. He had been watching a documentary on the Steamway Riots. To say he did not feel a certain kinship with creatures considered less than human, creatures not fit to live within “normal” society, would be a lie.  He jerked his chin at the screen and the wall went blank before switching to a simulation of the weather outside. The sim was always better than the reality. The sky was a deeper blue. The clouds were a more textured and brighter white.

The flophouse in which they sat was a prepaid unit, nicer than many in which they usually stayed.  The kitchen was stocked and the carpets were self-cleaning.  They had enjoyed several peaceful days here. Peyton had spent most of those days sleeping on the couch. His accelerated metabolism ran in long cycles. He had entered one of his brief ebb phases.

Peyton leaned back on the sofa and closed his eyes.  He felt her get up; heard her walk to the kitchen; heard her enter a set of instructions at the printer.  When she returned she had a plate of soy cubes and a sphere of applesauce. She was also holding a mug of coffee, which Peyton had discovered helped blunt his fatigue.

“Thank you, Annika,” he said. He sat up, took the food, and balanced the plate on his leg while sipping coffee.  She had sugared and lightened it with heavy hands.

“There aren’t any Ogs here,” she said.

“Augments?” Peyton asked.  He popped a couple of soy cubes in his mouth and chewed.  “No.  Hongkongtown has always been too far out of the way. Augments like to be in the thick of things. Only the largest population centers, like Central City, have an Augment District. When I was a boy, Hongkongtown also had vigilance committees. They killed Augments and drove them out of the city.”

“Could there be riots here?”

“Like in Steamway, you mean? That was a specific protest about specific things. But riots can happen any time. If enough people stand up and fight for something, there will be a riot.”

“So a riot is when a group of people fight for something they want,” said Annika. “Against people who want to stop them. Like the people in charge.”

“Yes,” said Peyton. “Pretty much.” He gulped coffee.

“Did you learn about the Augments in school?”

“No,” said Peyton. “I didn’t go to school. I had to take “tolerance” classes in prison. They used the Augments as an example because they’re weren’t any there. Less chance of starting problems among the prison gangs.”

“How do you make a gang?” Annika asked him. She climbed up on the arm of the sofa and stole a piece of soy from his plate.

“You need a bunch of friends, I guess,” said Peyton. “Those friends agree to work together toward a goal. If somebody tries to hurt one of your friends, all the others hurt him back.”

“So that it isn’t any fun for the bully,” said Annika.

“Yes.”

He finished his coffee and offered her the last piece of soy. She shook her head.  “Annika, what’s bothering you today? Is there something you want?”

“No,” said Annika.  “It’s just that none of the members of my gang are in the virts, so they can’t play games with me.”

“Your gang?” Peyton asked.

“Like you said.”  She began counting on her fingers.  “My friends. We talk in the virts. Play games. Sometimes we explore in 3D. But none of them can get onto the grid. So I’m by myself.”

“You can’t make new friends?”

“There are always people who want to make friends in the virts,” said Annika. “Some of them are my age.”

“But it’s not the same,” Peyton said. “I think I understand.  Look, Annika, I should get out and move around. Let’s go do something. Something fun.”

“It’s late,” said Annika.

“This is Hongkongtown,” said Peyton. “Nothing closes.”

 

* * *

Peyton was too large to ride any of the rides. He did not mind.  He stayed in the shadows, walking along the perimeter fence, keeping a close eye on Annika as she ran from machine to machine. So far she had ridden the Tiltrotor four times; it seemed to be her favorite. He had given her enough chits to ride it a hundred more if she wished.

The all-night amusement park sat in the center of the Lion Arc, a stretch of commerce and entertainment franchises accessible to multiple Hongkongtown neighborhoods. It was extremely busy, which made for plentiful crowds in which to disappear. It also boasted anything a customer could want. There was no manner of diversion that could not be had here, no exotic foodstuff or contraindicated consumer product that could not be purchased. When travelers from the rest of the world thought of Honkongtown, this was what they pictured — not its slums, not its peninsular prison, not its street life. To travel agents and the ignorant, the Lion Arc was Hongkongtown, in all its fetid wonder.

He watched as his daughter stopped at the spun-sugar vendor and procured another cone of blue fibers. She was going to make herself sick, at the rate she was going. But she looked happier than he had seen her in a while.

Some of them are my age.    The comment concerned him. There were predators enough in Hongkongtown; there was no reason to think they could not occupy virtual space as easily as reality.  He was not conversant in computers. He had made his way in the world with knives, with guns and, after the Project, with his enormous fists.

Annika had made a couple of friends. They were a boy and a girl, roughly her size, wearing clothes that did not seem to quite fit them. Cast-offs. He recognized the symptoms easily enough. They were street children.  Annika invited the pair to join her on the Tiltrotor and paid for their admission.

“Your daughter is very generous,” said a voice. Peyton tensed, ready for a fight. But the slim figure in the hooded rain slicker hardly looked like a threat. The man seemed emaciated. Peyton could not see his face past the hood, but the slicker was draped on his frame like canvas hung out to dry.

“How did you know?” Peyton asked. He could smash this interloper with a finger, should he choose.

“The way you watch her,” said the man.  “Always looking. Always close. There is no place for you in there, beyond this fence. But you watch because you want her to be happy. It is the same for me.”

Peyton understood, then.  The newcomer shifted his hood slightly and Peyton caught a glimpse of his face: A metal mask. Cameras for eyes. A neck made of hydraulic servomotors. An Augment.

“I thought there were none of your kind here,” said Peyton.

“There aren’t,” said the Og. “This is why I hide.”

“Those children,” said Peyton. “Yours?”

“Yes,” said the Og. Certified as human. But having me for a parent… It is not easy for them. I imagine it is no easier for you.”

“I’m not an Augment.”

“You are not human, either,” said the Og.  His neck servos whined as he looked up at Peyton.  “I mean no offense.”

“I know,” said Peyton. He looked back across the fence to watch the children. Now the siblings were offering to buy Annika more sugar.  Fortunately for everyone, she declined.

“Many things hide in the shadows of Hongkongtown,” said the Og. “It does not hurt to have friends. Friends who understand.”  The Og reached into its slicker and produced a circuit card.  Peyton accepted it.

“I don’t have one,” said Peyton.

“You will have to do me the honor of calling on me, then,” said the Og, “the next time your daughter would like playmates.”

“I might do that,” said Peyton.

The Og somehow signaled to its children, or they were on a set timetable. The siblings made their good-byes to Annika, who hugged them. She returned to the Tiltrotor. The boy and girl exited the park, nodded to Peyton politely, and took their parent’s outstretched pincers.  The Og made a bow with its neck servos and turned to go.

“Such a difficult mystery,” said the Og over its shoulder. “Be mindful of the added challenges, my large friend.”

“Challenges?” Peyton asked after it.

“Little girls,” said the Og, receding into the dark.  “The smarter they are, the more interesting they will make your life.”

Technocracy: Why SWAT-ting Prank Will Get Someone Killed

My WND Technocracy column is once more about “SWAT-ting,” a practice that began a couple of years back as a means of silencing conservatives.  It spread to celebrities and has since become a weapon of online gamers.

The Associated Press has tied SWAT-ting specifically to online gamers.

The Associated Press has tied SWAT-ting specifically to online gamers

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/04/why-swat-ting-prank-will-get-someone-killed/#0q1lAkUlRjEpQwol.99

News sources are reporting, in fact, that gamers are using SWAT-ting to facilitate a competition in which one gets different point values for different levels of police response (so many points for a helicopter, so many points for an armored vehicle, etc.).

This is going to get someone killed before it stops.

Read the full column here in WND News.

Episode 17, “A Bad Man”

 

Peyton closed the door of the kiosk, shoulders hunched inside the religion vendor’s plastic cylinder. Rainwater from his overcoat drummed on the tiled floor and left a puddle under his boots. He did not know what to do with his hands. He folded them in his lap.

A small dome light switched on. It was set in the divider that bordered his half of the cylinder. Beneath the light, a plastic door slid sideways. The mesh screen beneath that bore the symbol of the Univariance Church: a star on a cross within a sphere beneath a crescent.

“Child of all gods,” said the man behind the mesh, “know that you are in a safe place, among friends who are here to help you.”

He had no answer. The man behind the mesh wore the LED collar of a priest.  The priest cleared his throat.

“I don’t know how this works,” said Peyton.

“You paid for the confessional,” said the priest. “You may unburden yourself to me.” The priest was middle aged. His head was shaved. His features were very soft. One of his eyes drooped. His face was dark with beard stubble.

“I need to talk to someone,” said Peyton.

“I am listening,” said the priest.  “You may input more funds if time expires before you’re finished.”

Peyton rubbed his hands together.  “I worked for the Triads,” he said.  “It was twenty years ago, here in Hongkongtown.”

“Many have fallen into the trap of easy earnings from organized criminal enterprise,” said the priest.  “I want you to say the Mantra of Forgiveness twenty times and make a donation to the Church of–”

“I’m not finished,” said Peyton.

“My apologies, my son,” said the priest. “Please continue.”  The LED of his collar turned from white to blue.

“There was something wrong with me,” said Peyton. “An imbalance in my brain. I was born with it.”

“There is no wrong in being what the gods made you,” said the priest.

“I killed for the first time when I was nine years old,” said Peyton. “A boy at school. He wouldn’t stop hitting me. I stabbed him in the eye with a stylus.”

The priest’s LED changed from blue to green.

“I killed again when I was fourteen,” said Peyton.  “A Hongkongtown prostitute who tried to rob me. By the time I was nineteen I was performing executions for the Triads. And at twenty-six I killed a man named Wo Jao.”

“These are great evils,” said the priest, “but a donation of suitable size may–”

“Jao was running Sleep for the Triads,” said Peyton, “He was a distributor, whose job it was to supply street dealers. A mid-level member of a very powerful organized crime family. But Jao was greedy. He was skimming profits, shorting the Triads their share of the money. So they told me to kill him.”

The priest’s collar turned red.  “I’m afraid that means time is expired,” he said. “But if you insert more chits–”

“I was small back then,” said Peyton. “Normal. Not like now. I took a gun to Jao’s house. Shot his dog. Shot his guards.”

“Uh,” said the priest.

“Jao was hiding in his bedroom. It was hardened. Safe from attack. I stuffed the ventilators with strips of fabric from his upholstered furniture. I set them on fire.”

“I really think–”

“When he came out, I put my gun under his chin. I told him the Triads had ordered his death. I told him it wasn’t personal. It wasn’t. I didn’t care about him. I didn’t care if he lived or died.”

The priest’s red collar started blinking.  “My son, you’ll need to insert more chits to continue,” he said.

“He begged me. He told me he had a daughter. ‘I’ll never see her again if you kill me,’ he said to me. ‘She’ll grow up alone. You’ll take me from her forever.’”  He stopped and pressed his fingers together. His knuckles turned white.  “I remember it exactly. ‘You’ll take me away from her forever.’ That’s what I did. I put my gun under his chin and I put his brains on the wall.”

“My son,” the priest began.

“And I didn’t care,” said Peyton. “I felt nothing. Killing never made me feel. But then came the Project.”

“My son, the gods love you, but I must call security,” said the priest.

“Something about my endocrine system,” said Peyton. “It had to be rebalanced. Before they could implant the hormone sacs. ‘Building on a level foundation,’ they called it.”

The priest was furiously pressing a button on his side of the wall.  Peyton reached out and poked one huge finger through the mesh screen. He pulled the screen free and dropped it on the floor.

“My son, you can’t do that,” said the priest.  “The Church will have to charge your account for any damages.”

Peyton rubbed the back of one huge hand across his eyes. His hand came away wet. He looked at the priest. “Your panic button won’t work,” he said. “I pulled the cable before I got in.”

“Young man, if you refuse to work with the Church, the Church cannot help you.” The priest frowned at him through the opening in the barrier.

“I just had to tell someone,” said Peyton. “There’s no one I can talk to. I can’t tell Annika. She can’t know that I murdered a father. That I took him from his daughter forever. She told me I should be proud. That I’m doing a good job. But I’m not. I’m not doing enough. I don’t know what enough would be.”

“It is time for you to go,” said the priest.

“My little girl,” said Peyton. “For twelve years I thought she was dead. What is her life now? What will it be? She lives on the streets of Hongkongtown. In flophouses. In the homes of sex offenders. She sleeps in the beds of people who are so horrible they deserve what I do to them. But I’m no better.”

The priest had turned pale. “Please go,” he said quietly.

“They call you ‘father,’ said Peyton. “But a father is a protector. A father does absolutely anything he has to do. To protect his child. To give her what she wants and needs. To make her safe.”

“Please,” said the priest.

“You’re on the offender registry,” said Peyton. “You like little boys. That’s why I came here. I needed to talk. But I can’t talk to anyone.”

“It isn’t my fault,” said the priest. He was crying now. “I’m sick. The doctors said so.”

“Maybe I’m no better,” Peyton said quietly. “Maybe I deserve to die. But I can’t. Not while I have a job to do.”

Peyton reached through the opening. The priest tried to run, tried to open the door on his side of the vendor, but he was not fast enough. Peyton’s grip crushed his throat and snapped his spine.

“I’m a bad man,” said Peyton to the dead priest. “But I’m also Annika’s father.”

Technocracy: The Internet irks busybodies once again

My WND Technocracy column this week is about Airbnb, a room-sharing and sublet listing site that connects consumers with short-term and very specific housing and lodging scenarios.

Airbnb has a competitor, LoveRoom, that allows randy strangers to find both accommodations and partners with whom to have sex in those rentals.

While the service has its problems and has been exploited for illicit activity, this is pretty much the model for free market exchange.  It’s a pity that New York liberals are already fighting to destroy it.

Read the full column here in WND News.

Episode 16, “Does It Hurt?”

 

[image error]The squat man with the oiled hair resembled a toad. He smelled of Hongkongtown garbage. When he entered the interrogation chamber, thick fingers nervously plucking at his own shirt, VanClef did not look up. The Intelligence operative instead peered deeper into the scrolling data from the reader-chair. Strapped tightly into the chair was a twelve-year-old girl. Cables ran from a sensor collar around her neck. Her hair was so fair it was almost white.

“Mister VanClef, sir. Begging your pardon, sir, but–”

“Do you you honestly think, Temken,” said VanClef, “that your use of such pleasantries in any way mitigates your failure?”

“Uh, no, sir.”

“Good,” said VanClef. “I would hate to build our relationship on a lie.”  He made an adjustment to the terminal connected to the girl’s collar. An almost subliminal hum filled the room. Secured in the reader-chair, the blonde girl squirmed and frowned. She looked at VanClef, then at the ceiling, then to Temken. Temken looked away.

“I’m feeding you a series of weather data,” said VanClef to the girl.  “I want you to interpolate.  Give me forecasts for six months from now and a year from now. Use only the numbers in the grid supplied.”

The little girl nodded.  VanClef took a step closer.  “Is it…” he started. “I mean… Should you be torturing them?”

VanClef turned to Temken, his hands still on the dials of his terminal.  “Yes, of course,” he said. “That’s precisely what I’m doing.  I’m endangering close to thirty trillion in development funding because I enjoy inflicting pain on children.  Shall I bind her and leave her for the monorail when I’m finished?” He waved black-gloved fingers.  “Honestly, Temken. Leave the thinking to people who possess the necessary equipment for it.”

“Sorry, sir,” said Temken.

“We’re still calibrating the equipment,” VanClef said. Whether he was speaking to Temken or to himself was not obvious.  “It’s maddening. Sometimes we’re able to map their brainwaves. Sometimes we get nothing. Sometimes the machine tells us they’re plotting to take over the world. Sometimes it says they like ice cream.  Maddening.”

“What does it say now?” Temken said.

“It’s another hallucinatory episode,” said VanClef, waving his hand. The sort of meaningless imagery that makes no earthly sense.  According to the machine, she’s picturing a robot spider with cameras for eyes, sitting at the center of a spiderweb, using the strands like telegraph wires to communicate with other robots throughout its spider city. Clearly this has nothing to do with weather interpolation.”

“Telegraph?”

“Shut up, Temken.”

“Does it… hurt?” Temken asked.  The blonde girl had her eyes closed now. Her lips moved, but she made no sound.

“I’m told it requires a great deal of concentration,” said VanClef. “And that it is tiring. But no, she is not being ‘tortured,’ as you put it. Now either keep silent or make your report, damn you.”

“Sir! Yes, sir,” said Temken.  “I’ve been shadowing the Peytons for two weeks now, sir. “I’ve also been trailing the girl through the virts that she frequents.  Games, chathouses, that kind of thing. We were able to establish location and pattern.  The raid went off as planned. We successfully separated them. Our drones were able to drive the father off.”

“And yet you brought me nothing,” said VanClef. “No Annika. No Peyton. Nothing.”

“She disappeared somehow,” said Temken. “Completely off the grid. We’re still not sure how she did it. When she resurfaced she found a way to hack the local nodes. She inserted an animated signal in local displays.”

“Which you followed,” said VanClef.

“Yes, sir,” said Temken. “The signal also drew a third party, a street-level predator. Peyton killed him.”

“The father.”

“Yes,” said Temken. “The father killed him.”

“You were within meters of Annika Peyton,” said VanClef, “and you simply… left.”

“Her father would have killed me, too, sir,” said Temken. “There was nothing I could do.”

VanClef sighed. “Which means now we’ll have to reacquire them. The ability of Ian Peyton to remain hidden in Hongkongtown defies all logic.  The man must be 270 kilos. He stands half a meter taller than any human being. Hell, he’s wider than some people are tall. How do they do it? How do they remain undetected for so long each time?”

“We’re not sure,” said Temken. “My electronics team are working on it. They think maybe one of Peyton’s implants produces an electromagnetic field that interferes with surveillance.”

“He’s biological,” said VanClef. There’s nothing in his specifications that would account for that.”

“I don’t know, sir,” said Temken. “That’s just a theory. I can have a new team on them as soon as we place them. We could stage another raid.”

“No,” said VanClef.  The girl in the reader-chair was sweating profusely. VanClef took a black silk handkerchief from inside his suit jacket and gently dabbed at her forehead. “Focus on the virts. Perhaps you can draw her out voluntarily. Technologically propositioning a minor should be nothing new to you.”

Temken stared at the floor.  “Sir,” he said, “I hardly think–”

“That,” said venClef, “is an understatement.”  He wiped the girl’s forehead again, pressed the handkerchief to his lips, and tucked it away.  “Did you speak to maintenance?”

“They’re working on the problem, sir,” said Temken.

“Good. I need our internal network restored. I can’t have this facility isolated from the rest of the grid.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What about Level G? Is that door still sealed?”

“The hydraulics are frozen,” said Temken. “I’m told it’s going to take at least two more days to drill through the hardened pistons manually.  But Level G houses the auxiliary kitchen. The children should have enough food and water for much longer than that.”

“Tell the work crews I want them putting in mandatory overtime until the problem is solved,” said VanClef.  “The Project cost the taxpayers a small fortune.  It’s ridiculous that I should have my progress hindered by mechanical issues.”

“Yes, sir,” said Temken.  He turned to leave.  As he did, he saw VanClef lean over and kiss the blonde girl’s forehead.

“Temken,” said VanClef. “One more thing.”

“Yes, sir?”

“If you fail again, I’ll kill you.”

“Yes, sir.”

Technocracy: Is the IRS Reading Your Facebook Page?

My WND Technocracy column this week is about data mining.

“The taxman is reportedly using data from social media on people who file fishy-seeming taxes or don’t file at all…”

Through analyzing the things you volunteer online, it is possible for entities both benevolent and malevolent to form very real conclusions about you.

One such agency that might be analyzing your social media is the IRS… and therein lies the problem.

Read the full column here in WND News.

Episode 15, “Apartment 81B”

 

[image error]Annika yawned. “He’s never going to come home,” she said.

“They always do,” said Peyton.

Annika tugged the chain of her gold pocket watch, which was fastened to one of the buttons of her sweater. The watch she kept in the pocket of her tapered leggings. She snapped open the timepiece, read it, stared at it for a moment, and put it away. Then she want back to tapping at the screen of her forearm tab, causing inscrutable glowing blocks to roll around and touch or stick to other, equally inscrutable glowing blocks.

“What is that?” Peyton asked.  He sat with his back to the wall of the corridor.  Facing them was the sealed door of Apartment 81B.

“A game,” she told him.  She moved closer to him, sitting next to him on the floor, using his massive arm as a pillow.  She continued to tap the screen. Some of the glowing blocks moved to connect with others.

“How is it played?”

“You have to recombine the amino acids to make stronger peptide chains,” she said. “The longest polypeptide wins. Some of the carboxyl groups have hard-coded weaknesses in them, though, so you have to learn to work around those.”

Peyton considered that.  “Is it… fun?”

“Yes,” she said. She never took her eyes from the screen.

“What do you want for dinner?” he asked.

“We could get Mister Mustard.”

“I didn’t like Mister Mustard,” said Peyton. “Everything tastes like curry.”

“You don’t like anything the first time,” said Annika. “You always change your mind.”

“Hmm,” Peyton said.

A man in an overcoat walked toward them. Peyton tensed, wondering if this was the owner of Apartment 81B. It wasn’t. The man continued past them and turned the corner, never once looking their way. They were deep in Gunpowder Heights here.  People saw nothing they didn’t did not have to see.

“Daddy?” Annika asked.  “What was your favorite game when you were a boy?”

Peyton looked at her, surprised.  “I didn’t have one,” he said.  “Hide and seek, maybe. I don’t know.”

“No, silly,” she said.  “Your favorite tab game.”

“I didn’t have a tab,” he said.  “I didn’t have a computer, either.”

“Your parents were too poor?” She was still making peptide chains.

“I didn’t know my parents,” said Peyton.  “I grew up right here, in Hongkongtown. I lived in the city orphanage until I was fourteen. Then I got a job at the fish market.  When I was big enough I started working for the Triads.”

“Triads?”

“Bad people,” said Peyton.  “The Triads ran street crime in Hongkongtown back then. I guess maybe they still do, but not as much. I haven’t seen as many gang tags as I used to.  A lot has changed.”

“Changed since what?”

“I was in prison for fifteen years,” said Peyton. He found himself staring at his hands.  “Since before you were born.”

Annika switched off her tab and looked up at him.  “Why did they put you in prison?” she asked.

“I was very bad.”

“What did you do?”

Peyton rubbed one palm across his face. It took him a moment before he could make eye contact with her.  “I was a very bad man, Annika,” he said.  “I hurt people. A lot of people. And back then I didn’t care about the bad things I did.”

“But you care now.”

“Yes,” said Peyton. “I care now.”

“And it makes you sad.”

“Yes.”

Annika leaned against him. She put one hand on his forearm.  “It makes you said,” she said, “because you worry that you’re still a bad man. You’re worried that you are the things you did.”

Peyton looked up. The night sky was not visible beyond the pall of illuminated haze that hung over Hongkongtown.  “Yes,” he said again.  “You’re very smart, Annika.”

“I know.”

“When we were separated,” he said, “back at the playground. How did you know where to hide? How did you get away?”

“Daddy, we were at a playground,” she said, as if that explained it all.  When he continued to look questioningly at her, she said, “Playgrounds are full of children. I just went home with one of the big families. Their robot minders don’t check for extra kids. They’re programmed to know that their charges have playmates. They just make sure they aren’t missing their primaries.”

“What then?”

“We had a sleepover,” said Annika. “I came back in the morning and used my tab to enter the area networks. Then I just programmed the watches. It’s a simple algorithm that jumps around all the available screens in the local node. I knew you would be looking for me. I knew you would have to see it eventually.”

“You had a sleepover,” he said.

“They were nice,” said Annika. “I had pancakes for breakfast.”

“You can use that to enter any network you want?” he asked, jerking his chin at the tablet device.

“Most of them,” said Annika. “It depends on their security. There are some hardwall systems I can’t get past. Those are physical barriers. Hardware appliances.”

“But how–”

“School,” she said.

He would have asked her more, but another figure approached.  The man glanced at them curiously, fumbled his key, and kept staring at them as he unlocked the door marked 81B. Peyton stood. Annika trailed him as he crossed the corridor.

“Who are you?” asked the man. “I checked in with my caser yesterday.”

Peyton slapped the man in the side of the head.  His skull struck the door and cracked.  The owner of Apartment 81B was dead before he struck his front step.

“I’ll put him in the basement,” said Peyton. “The brochure said these units have basements for storage.”  He bent and picked up the dead man by the corpse’s feet. His hand was more than large enough to surround both ankles at once.  “What’s a ‘caser?’”

“A case worker, Daddy,” said Annika. “Because he’s on the sex offender registry.”

“Oh,” said Peyton. “When I was young called those ‘sollies.’ They were social workers back then.”

“All languages evolve, Daddy,” she said.

Once the dead man was safety stowed, Peyton and Annika opted to skip dinner.  She brought him an extra blanket from the hall closet and tucked him in on the couch, which was large enough to hold most of him.

“Good night, Annika,” he told her.

“Good night, Daddy,” she said.  Before she had left the room, however, she stopped.

“What is it, Annika?”

“Daddy,” she said, “I don’t think you should be sad. I think you should be proud. You’re doing a good job.”

He had no words for that. He did not offer any.

“I hope his bed is made,” Annika said, opening the bedroom door.  “I hate it when their beds aren’t made.”

Technocracy: An Army of Liberal Trolls

My WND Technocracy column this week is a follow-up to last week’s piece about the marginalization (and eventual criminalization) of conservative thought.

“I think it would be pretty funny watching that maniac Fred Phelps blame San Francisco college students for a lightning strike,” Ross intones, holding a microphone and staring dead-eyed into the camera.

Enter one Michael Ross, a thirty-something “furry” who trolls conservatives’ opinion columns through an unpaid blog slot at “Examiner,” itself a third-party site that disclaims any liability for the content of its contributors’ posts. Mr. Ross is fond of calling people “psychopaths” and is desperate to coin the lame phrase “American Taliban” — but, really, how do you take someone seriously when they’re wearing fox ears and making terrible stand-up comedy audition tapes?

Read the full column here in WND News.