Freedom Incorporated

by Peter Tylee

  He didn’t want to think about it.

  Dan knew the so-called ‘unchipped’ carried microchips in their pockets to fool the scanners and lead a somewhat normal life.But maintaining someone else’s identify wasn’t easy. For starters, the DNA didn’t match, nor did the physical description. If the chipping-officers found anything unusual, they’d whisk the suspect away for questioning where it would quickly become evident they were using a borrowed chip.

  “So where do I start?” He whispered now that he had a target in mind.

  The file was sparse; little wonder she was on an exclusive list. Targets with that kind of bounty had already evaded capture on the easier lists. So other hunters had tried – and failed – to apprehend her. It wasn’t going to be easy, but Dan knew his business.

  And knew it well.

  He started with all the typical databases, building a search profile from the skimpy details in her UniForce file. He absently sipped a glass of water. It was getting late, but he didn’t want to go to bed where the nightmares could torment him.

  Two hours later, he’d isolatedthe possible suspects to a handful of people. Even the unchipped had to leave some kind of digital footprint. Dan usually found them in the redundant and fragmented governmental databases that some countries maintained out of spite. The CMP – Central Microchip Repository– was great unless you were tracking someone that didn’t have a valid chip.

  He stood and pursed his lips, weighing the options. Try to get some sleep, or start tracking hernow?Tired though he was, he stared at her photograph for a long time.

  “Okay, Jennifer Cameron…” He rammed his 1911 Colt into his shoulder holster. “Ready or not, here I come.”

  *

  Wednesday, September 15, 2066

  21:55 Tweed Heads, Australia

  Jen watched from the kitchen for a while before bringing the tray of coffee. They’re so well matched.While she was thrilled that her best friend had found someone, it simultaneously amplified her own emptiness. She’d looked, she’d done the dating thing, but she’d never found what Samantha shared with Cookie. Part of her longed for it, but another part, the fiercely independent part, rejected it outright. She permitted herself a sigh of self-pity before remembering that she wasn’t unhappy. Tonight was a night for giddy excitement and perhaps joyous celebration later on. But that depends on how lucky we get.She reminded herself not to become too optimistic.

  She crossed the lounge room and balanced the tray precariously on the edge of the coffee table.

  Samantha was gently rubbing Cookie’s shoulders and it quickly morphed into a massage. He groaned with pleasure, though his unblinking eyes never shifted from the screen, which he’d been staring at for three days straight. He arched his back and winced at the pain that spasmed through his aching muscles. Damn.He had to remember to stretch every fifteen minutes or he’d seize up like cold molasses.

  Cookie was tall and thin, though people rarely noticed his height because he was either hunching over a keyboard or merely a name on someone’s computer. He was the ultimate geek, or so he told himself. He had friends from all over the globe, most of whom he’d never met. Not because he couldn’t afford it, portal technology made it easy to jump from Tweed Heads to Moscow, across to Portland, then over to Seoul. It was almost too easy; the major airlines had filed for bankruptcy less than a year after PortaNet had launched their first product lines. Governments had since turned international airports into international portal stations. Without restricting international travel to those central locations, customs and immigration would have been impossible to police.

  No. Cookie had never met his electronic friends because he didn’t see the need. The fragile network of friendships he’d woven across the globe would quickly collapse if he ever met them in real life. His parents had stories to tell about that, it’d happened frequently in their generation. The connections were platonic, of pure ideas, unhindered by the clumsiness of body language. Even some of Cookie’s real-life friends had drifted to the fringes of his daily life and taken a more prominent role in his online existence.

  He had evolved.

  That’s what the social scientists called it. His mind could carry seven simultaneous conversations without getting confusing. On an exceptional day, Cookie could raise the stakes to ten concurrent conversations, but that was pushing it even for him. And he could hold the conversations while working on a totally unrelated problem, as he was today. Every few seconds he’d flip from one chat session to another and he always knew what was happening where. If his friends were online, they were fair game. And the rules of engagement stipulated that he must respond within two minutes if someone started chatting with him. It had a snowballing effect and Samantha was always chastising him for lavishing too much attention on his online friends and not enough attention on her. It was nearly impossible to get his undivided attention and it was annoying when he wouldn’t take his eyes off the screen.

  But today was different.

  He’d cut the conversations down to three: a guy in Milan was online and they were chatting about the latest developments in superconductor technology, a genderless screen-name from Austin was providing invaluable assistance for hacking a UG7-rated network, and he was maintaining his end of the conversation with Samantha and Jen. But he was dedicating the bulk of his brain’s immense processing power to penetrate the seemingly impregnable fortress UniForce had erected around their network.

  “So what?” Cookie’s voice was hoarse; he’d under-budgeted the amount sleep he needed. “It’s not like it’s hard.”

  Jen raised an eyebrow. She felt the beginning of a headache pulse behind her eyes and hoped the cup of coffee she lovingly stroked would killit before it became bothersome. “You think you can do it?”

  Cookie would’ve shrugged if Samantha’s thumbs weren’t working away at the knots in his flesh. “Yeah, if I had long enough I could.”

  Jen didn’t doubt it. Cookie seemed to have endless access to that sort of information.

  “Oh fuck, fuck!” Perspiration started beading on Cookie’s forehead and his body snapped to attention.

  Samantha stopped kneading his shoulders and watched the flurry of activity on the screen as Cookie’s fingers twitched across his DataHand-Dvorak keyboard. “What is it?”

  “Fuck!” Cookie slammed a hand repeatedly on the enter-key. “Fucking piece of… God damn it!” He threw his hands up in disgust and leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his head.

  “What is it?” Samantha poked him in the ribs, trying to elicit an answer.

  “JP and I had a nineteenth-degree encrypted tunnel between here and Austin and someone’s just fucked it over.” He snorted and ran a hand roughly across the stubble on his chin. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d made the acquaintance of a razor.

  “Weren’t you getting your information from JP?” Jen asked nervously.

  He sighed. “Some of it, yeah.” Cookie replaced his fingers on the keys and they resumed their customary tattoo on the rounded blobs of fire-retardant plastic.

  Jen pushed more, asking, “So now what? Do you have to stop?”

  Cookie shook his head. “No, I’ll be right… might slow me down a bit but it should be okay.”

  Jen marvelled that he could type and speak at the same time. She’d tried it, but usually ended up typing what she wanted to say or the other way around. Samantha placed a reassuring hand on Cookie’s arm and traced her fingers along his skin until she’d sensitised it into goose bumps. She finally stopped when the luring aroma of coffee was too much to bear. She would’ve offered some to her lover but what he was doing looked too intense for mug-holding. It was hard to tell whether he was reconstructing a secure channel to Austin or resuming the hack alone. She figured it was better not to ask, not now anyway.

  Taking another sip, Jen daydreamed about what they could do if the hack worked. It was bigger than anything they would have dreamed of tackling a year ago, even a month ago. Acce
ssing the UniForce network was the ultimate prize for everyone struggling to restore some measure of freedomto the unwittingly oppressed. She closed her eyes and let the caffeine numb the dull throb in her head. How did we ever let it get to this?She demanded the question of nobody in particular, and she received no reply. How did we fuck up so badly?She remembered the stories her grandfather had told. He was right when he said the ‘good old days’. Anything would be better than this.She wished she could burn the whole system to the ground and watch something better raise like a phoenix from the ashes. If only we could.She tensed, not yet ready to trust Cookie’s judgement wholeheartedly. But if anybody finds out…She swallowed hard. Then we’ll be totally fucked.

  “You tired?” Samantha crawled onto the couch and sat looking at her friend, leaving Cookie to work in peace for a change.

  Jen nodded. “Yeah. I’ve been tired for… God I don’t know, years I think.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  Jen smiled. “Yes it was.”

  Samantha gathered her long black hair, secured it with a plasmaband at the back of her head, and then smoothed a few wispy strays behind her ears. Her grandparents were Korean and they’d given her a legacy of health and probable longevity,though she nearly puked whenever she visited them. She’d never acquired a taste for their prized gimchi. Fermented cabbage had about the same appeal as a bowl full of shit as far as Samantha was concerned.

  Jen watched her. She knew everything about Samantha; she was in her earliest memories.She knew her well enough to complete her sentences. They’d grown up together, gone to school and university together, and now they lived in the same apartment together. And they certainly shared the dedication to change the world.

  “Do you think we can win?” Samantha asked. For once, her eternal spring of energy had run dry. It’d been a busy few days.

  Jen frowned. “Win? It’s not a game.”

  “You know what I mean. Do you think we can pull this off?”

  “I think we have a good shot at getting inside their network.” Jen stifled a sigh that badly needed to come out. “And if the world owes us a miracle we might even disrupt Echelon, even if it’s only for a minute. Hell…seconds would make me happy.” The sigh escaped. “But it’s going to take more than that to effect any real change.”

  Samantha sensed a little of what Jen was feeling and said, “Stranger things have happened. It’s not impossible.”

  Jen nodded. “I know, that’s what scares me. What if we bring Echelon down? What then?”

  “Then we’ve won.”

  “Is that winning?”

  Samantha paused briefly before answering. “Yes, I suppose it is. You’re thinking too large. You shouldn’t think of everything you need to win the war, just what you need to win the battle.”

  “Yeah but if we’renot prepared you can bet theywill be.” Jen had never felt more motivated in her life. She could almost smell the sweet dew of a significant win – something to prove to the world that the resistance wasn’t dead. Not yet anyway.And she silently vowed that while she was alive the resistance would never die.

  She remembered reading a textbook account of how Echelon had evolved. It had started innocentlyenough; most people had barely known of its existence. It began with the birth of the original Internet – back when it was slow and people still connected with modems. She smiled at the thought. Imagine that, modems!She’d seen one on a trip to a science museum with her grandfather when shewas a little girl.There was an exhibit on display with real, functioning modems connecting two computers. It was mind boggling to think how patient everybody must’vebeen, waiting for downloads from constipated servers through technology that made her toaster look sophisticated. She’d read accounts of what they’d used back then: twisted pair wires, coaxial cable, fibre optic glass tubes and microwave dishes. All primitive. Nothing that came close to the nano-technology she’d grown up with.

  It pained her to think aboutEchelon.How easy it would’ve been to stop back then! But that’s the way things work, isn’t it?People are too busy running their lives to worry about things like that.The society thathadcrawled out of the twentieth century was woefully unprepared for the technology it could invent. Ha!Her mind sneered. We’re no more prepared for it today.When she thought about it, Homo sapiens were a slow-witted species, especially in groups – the more there were, the stupider they got. In the year 2000, Echelon merely scanned e-mail transmissionsand international communications fora preset list of words and phrases that flagged potentially suspicious activity. But the fledgling technology gathered more data than it could thoroughly scan. The system was more useful for statistical analysis of communication channels than anything else.

  It sent a shiver down Jen’s spine. But it evolved quickly and turned sinister.Project Echelon doubled in power and sophistication every six months, keeping abreast of the technological horsepower of the times. Primitive but deadly. She furrowed her brow and thought,Couldn’t people see it was a weapon?Deadlier than bullets in the wrong hands?It infuriated her.I guess what they say is true – evil will flourish if good people do nothing.

  And so Echelon, a Frankenstein’s monster, had been born.

  Jen gritted her teeth. Well I’m not going to stand by. Not anymore. She was determined to rebel against the regime that hadrisen during the chaotic corporate dive for power during the ‘30s and ‘40s.

  Echelon had quickly set freedom of speech in its sights. The arguments were all the same. We’ll only use it against terrorists, so what did you have to fear? Why are you so opposed to it? Do you have something to hide? But then they broadened the definition of terrorism, adding more crimes to the list. Soon carjacking and assault were also crimes of terror. The system didn’t care; it happily chewed on and spat out carjackers with as much zeal as it went after potential suicide bombers. Then the ‘50s saw the rise of Internet Mark 4, the nano-net, which used the first generation of stable quantum products. But project Echelon had infiltrated the nano-net before they’d even switched it on, strangling the communication channels with its ever-present ear.

  And Echelon’s sphere of influence expanded. After targeting the major felonies, the authorities used it to clamp down on minor crime. They used video surveillance systems and visual recognition algorithms to track paedophiles 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. But the paedophiles weren’t enough, were they?They were just a pilot group; Echelon’s creators had always had much grander things in mind. Within two months they’d ascertained the new Echelon could cope with the increased influx of data and they expanded the project to include paroled prisoners, then to suspects, then to every member of society. Echelon catalogued and kept track of everyone that had ever shown his or her face in public. Everyone who had said something within range of Echelon’smicrophones, picked up a telephone handset, or spoken to their loved ones on a videophone had had their 5,326 characteristic voice-points permanently logged in the belly of the beast. But the microchips were the icing on the cake. They branded people like cattle and kept them under control with an electronic web of needles. Purse-snatchers, jaywalkers and teenagers who spat chewing gum on the pavement – Echelon flagged them all, raised an alarm, and stamped the crimes on their permanently record. Society no longer tolerated… anything. Society demanded perfection, pure harmony.

  Jen shivered despite the mid-September heat.

  It was only a matter of time before Echelon made the transition to the private sector. The governments couldn’t keep something that valuable awayfrom the greedy corporate giants forever. There wasn’t a giga-corporation on the planet that didn’t drool and rub its hands together in glee at the thought of controlling it. They were like vultures circling a dying beast, their nervous eyes darting from each other to the carcass-to-be. A co-operative of governments had jointly owned and operated the project, but they were all weakening at the knees. Unified Enforcement had simply petitioned the hardest. Already being in the law enforcement business, UniForce could claim they had a legit
imate use for the system. The fact that they’d always intended to sublet time to other corporations for marketing purposes was irrelevant. Echelon was a law enforcement organism so the governments responsible for it sold it to a law-enforcement multinational.

  They’d lapsed into an uncomfortable silence, unusual for the pair of chatterboxes. Samantha was tuggingat the fraying sleeve of her pyjamas and Jen was nursing her empty mug.

  Cookie gasped.

  “What?” Samantha was glad for the distraction.

  His jaw hung slack and, for once, he was incapable of speech; the present task totally engaged his brain. His fingers were a blur of activity. No matter how archaic it felt to stick stubbornly to a keyboard, Cookie refused to get implants; they just felt too unnatural. Samantha approved.

  “What is it?” Jen echoed Samantha’s question.

  “I’m in.”

  “What?” Jen and Samantha leapt to his side, fixing their gaze on his screen.

  “No, wait…” He held his breath, inwardly swearing at the false alarm. “Sorry, I just got jittery. I’m through another layer. This thing’s like an onion, they sure as hell don’t want anybody in there.”

  Jen visibly sagged. “Want a cookie, Cookie?”

  “Yeah, baby.” He stopped what he was doing, blinked, and removed his glasses to rub feeling back into his eyelids. A thin crust had formed over his corneas andit hurt to moisten them again. “Hey, Samantha, you think you could get me some eyedrops?”

  “Sure.” Samantha knew better than to argue with him. She’d tried dozens of times to stop him from abusing his body, but he pigheadedly refused to change his habits. Eventually she’d given up trying.

  Jen brought the tray of chocolate biscuits and offered them around while Samantha administered the saline drops to David’s swollen eyes. “Oh, and your coffee’s gone cold.”