The Twin Paradox

by Charles Wachter

In the early days, Paul had championed a new approach to secrecy called Alternate Reality Flooding (ARF), huge data dumps onto the internet whenever there was a leak. The logic was that it was easier to bury a secret in plain sight than it was to try to disappear it. Plus, all of the search engine companies were now in Cornerstone’s COA, able to direct queries about “areas of concern” to mundane and misleading results. In the beginning, the search companies would receive a government memo about a tweak to their search algorithms every few months. Now, it was daily. A classified memo would go out, and the internet would present a slightly different version of reality, consistent across all search sites. Everywhere. The basic premise of ARF was that no one experienced anything firsthand anymore, and if the filter between what happened and what is presented can be controlled, nothing would bubble

The truth was lost in a forest of nothing.

It was never Ralls’s fault. A terrible trait for a leader, thought Paul. Especially when everything was going wrong. He was always that way. It was surprising that Ralls had maintained control of the project this long, a measure of how good a salesman he was and how poor of a scientist.

Stereotypes have value when you can weaponize them. They blind people to your true motives.