by Gerald Huff
“Well, that’s the question isn’t it,” said Goodson. “Can something be done about it? Sara seemed to think the people would be able to make change happen. We’ve certainly seen it before; we’ve been studying it all term. Do you think it can happen?”
“I don’t think so,” said Laney. “I mean, I don’t want to rain on the parade or anything, but I think people are too focused on themselves and just trying to get by. And even if they did try something, the government is so gridlocked that nothing would happen anyway.”
Tenesha shook her head. “That’s what people have always said before all big changes. ‘It’s just the way it is. It can’t be changed.’ It just takes enough people to say ‘Enough is enough. This is unacceptable.’ We still do live in a democracy. It should respond to the will of the people.”
“I think you’re being naïve,” said Laney. “Eighty percent majorities have been in favor of regulating guns, limiting campaign funding, and improving infrastructure. But those things haven’t happened.”
“But those are just poll results,” said Anthony. “Tenesha’s talking about a movement where people actually do something. Like mass marches.”
Laney sighed. “Yeah, right, but look at the last few times we had those. Before the Iraq War? Occupy? Trump? The Iran War? A lot of good it did.”
Goodson said, “Okay, let me break in here. Your discussion is the epitome of what happens at the start of any social movement. There is an idea, in this case Sara’s message, which sparks interest. There are those who feel change is impossible. There are those who are impassioned to make change happen. But talking about it is not enough. Action is required.”
He surveyed the class. “Who here is going to do more than play this VR program and talk about it?” He looked right at Todd and Tenesha, who had been Sara’s most vocal supporters. “Who is going to mobilize and organize people?”
The class sat still and silent.
“Well, then,” he said, turning back to his podium and lecture notes. “Thank you for a fascinating conversation. Let’s see if we can still squeeze in a little more on civil rights.”
Tenesha felt like Professor Goodson, her favorite teacher, had called her out in front of the whole class. She had wanted to raise her hand and say, “I will!” But the truth was that she was scared. She had no idea how she was going to pay off her student loans. But she was damned sure that being a troublemaking student activist wasn’t going to help her get a job in this economy, not with AI recruiting bots having direct access to police databases. Being arrested at a protest was pretty much a permanent blacklisting.
Someone else was going to have to steer the ship away from the gathering storm.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
SANTA BARBARA - OCTOBER 3
“Allison, what’s the status on the Sara launch?” Roger asked.
“Everything is operating within normal parameters. More than eighteen million synths are actively promoting the brand worldwide. Engagement response rates are positive and the VR program has been run more than one hundred million times.”
“Good. Speaking of which, can you load that program for me? I want to run it now.”
Twenty minutes later, Roger removed his VR headset and blinked at the sunshine that was starting to break through the morning fog. He knew now why Frances had suggested he go through the experience. And why she had been so hesitant to recommend it. Sara’s personal story and history lesson on technology and capitalism had been very familiar from the briefings and policy positions he’d been working with for the last two weeks. But the metaphor of the cave and the shadowy figures manipulating public opinion and dividing people, paralyzing them and polarizing them, that he hadn’t picked up on. Or maybe he’d chosen to ignore it.
The images from the cave made him uneasy. He recalled the stats Allison had displayed during his conversation with Frances, the ones she had asked about. Seventy percent of his synth interactions were negative. “Allison, give me a grid on the display, ten wide and five deep, and run a scroll of randomly sampled English synth interactions with five second updates.” It had been years since he’d watched what the synths said. The statistics he usually tracked were more abstract and focused on client results.
It was not a pretty picture. While about twenty percent of their comments were positively promoting commercial products and services, the vast majority of his clients were pushing controversial ideas or policies. The synth algorithms had figured out years ago it was far more effective to trash their opponents than rationally make a case. The scrolling interactions before him were largely ugly—rude and mean spirited.
Roger turned away from the display and contemplated the beautiful landscape before him, the deep blue Pacific ocean stretching away to the horizon. What had Sara called the dark figures in the cave? Shadow-makers? Is that what he was? Sowing discord and confusion? Pitting people against each other, distracting them from the larger issues at hand? “Allison, do you have stats on how often synths are arguing with each other on behalf of different clients?”
“No, Roger. I can perform that analysis. For what time frame?”
“For the last month.” His synth data was highly indexed so the answer came back in two seconds. “Approximately twenty percent of all synth interactions in omnipresence are in threads with synths for other clients in opposition.” That wasn’t as bad as he thought it might be. But the fact remained that his network was injecting a lot of negativity into the world.
“Allison, please analyze a sample of omnipresence and calculate the percent of all negative sentiment expressed by synths in their engagements and the overall percentage of negative sentiment, again for the last month.” This request took a little longer, as the universe of the query was far beyond only his synth’s interactions. “Synths were responsible for fifteen percent of negative sentiment where they engaged. The overall average of negative sentiment in the sample was close to thirty percent.”
Well, that was a little more reassuring. At least they weren’t overwhelming all the human generated negative sentiment. But he also knew the synths were strategic, engaging in the threads with the biggest impact. His clients wouldn’t pay him unless that were true, unless the network was able to move the needle on overall public opinion. “Allison, could you have Rosie bring me some herbal tea?”
“Yes, Roger, but I notice that you have an appointment to play squash and lunch with Will soon.”
“Oh, damn, you’re right. When do I need to leave?”
“Given traffic, you should leave in ten minutes.”
“Okay, cancel the tea then, I’ve got to get ready.”
Roger packed up his squash gear and made his way to the garage. He decided to take the vintage 2014 Tesla Model S, though he knew Will would laugh at him. The S, with its original hardware package, could only manage level 2 autonomy. All his friends were driven around in their level 5 vehicles with plush, living-room-like seating. While he had a couple of level 5’s himself, including the latest Tesla Z, sometimes he just preferred to drive himself. And after his unsettling Sara VR experience, he could use the distraction.
After an intense match on the court, Will and Roger left the club and true to form, his friend gave him a look as Roger walked towards the parking lot. “Oh, no. Not again? You didn’t bring that old clunker? You know they’re about to build on top of the parking lot because everyone can send their cars to park outside the city? Land’s too valuable to waste on asphalt.”
“Yeah, I heard,” sighed Roger. “I’ll park on the street I guess, or use the Z.”
“Oh, the Z is a sweet ride. I mean you wouldn’t be using twenty-year-old AI or robots at home right, why do it with the S?”
“I don’t know, nostalgia maybe. Anyway, where do you want to go to lunch?”
“Something quick, I’ve got an appointment at one.”
“How about the Eatza on Anacapa?” Roger asked as they climbed into the S.
“T
hat’s the robot one, quinoa bowls and salads, right?” Will asked.
“Yeah, it’s quick and super fresh.” Roger used the backup camera to inch out of the parking space while Will rolled his eyes. “I always wondered why the fully automated restaurant took so long to go mainstream,” Roger continued.
“More ‘nostalgia’, I guess. Well, my sources tell me Supernova is going to go big with Haro Burger. I think that’ll really get the ball rolling.”
“Hmm, there’s a lot of people who work in that industry.”
“Did I ever tell you I started out my first job was in fast food? Lousy job. Better to leave it to the robots, I say.”
“Yeah, but what are those people going to do?”
“Oh man, Roger, you sound like my son. All hyped up this morning about some VR chick spouting socialist claptrap about the end of capitalism.”
“Really? James watched that?”
“Oh yeah, it’s today’s viral content. Here today, gone tomorrow.”
“You don’t buy the argument?”
“Look, there are plenty of high-skill jobs that go begging for candidates. These people need to hit the e-books, get some skills, and get a good job. Simple as that.”
“But what if they’re not able to, or there aren’t enough of those jobs?”
“Oh Christ, Roger. You turning into a socialist now too? You going to give up that fancy house and your Z and Ferrari so some poor sucker can sit at home all day in VR? Gimme a break.”
“Nah, just wondering is all.”
“Well I’m wondering what kind of Eatza salad to get,” said Will pulling out his PNA. “Let’s order ahead so it’s ready when we get there.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SYRACUSE/NORTH CAROLINA/LONDON - OCTOBER 8
SYRACUSE
At 11 p.m. Peter Cook drove for an hour from his home in the Syracuse New York suburbs to his remote ops center in the rolling hills near Lacona. Cook, known as Othello to his fellow group members, was the Ludd Kaczynski Collective’s drone expert. He had piloted more than a hundred covert drone missions in the Middle East and Central America for the Delta Force. None of them, he thought, from the comfort of a beat-up brown leather couch in a woodland log cabin.
Three days earlier he’d flown down to Norfolk Virginia and liberated a ’24 Chevy pickup truck from a junk yard. He had picked up his cargo from a warehouse near the Portsmouth Marine Terminal, where it had been smuggled by another LKC member. Cook had driven to the tiny town of Denton in North Carolina and pulled off the road into a small stand of trees to unload. The high-resolution satellite photos available from Planet Labs had been very accurate—the green and brown camouflage he’d selected for the five drones matched the underbrush in the area perfectly.
At about 1 a.m. Peter sat down on the leather couch in his cabin, opened the drone piloting terminal, and established an anonymous encrypted Torpedo session to the 6G radios in the drones nestled in the trees in North Carolina. He ran through all the self-checks and powered up the rotors. Once the five drones were off the ground he confirmed the payloads were in place and all the sensors were working. Then he steered the group out from the trees, took them up to two hundred feet, and pointed them north towards Thomasville.
LKC had sourced the very latest tech with full autonomous capability so he gave them the destination and set them loose. He still watched the night-vision display carefully, on the lookout for tall trees and electrical transmission lines. After twenty minutes his weapons reached the I-85 freeway. If the RezMat operations database Zurich had stolen was correct, his target would be approaching from the south in just a few minutes.
NORTH CAROLINA
The autonomous 18-wheeler was on schedule, traveling 65 miles per hour on I-85 with its load of fifty advanced Mark V droids destined for Philadelphia. RezMat engineers had specially fitted the robots with the latest 3D neuromorphic processors and fiber optic communication channels, giving them nearly ten times the processing power of a normal Mark V.
Their phthalonitrile resin bodies could withstand temperatures up to 2250º, which made them ideally suited for their initial deployment as firefighting droids. Philadelphia had recently experienced the tragic loss of eleven firefighters in a huge blaze, and the public was clamoring for “disposable” droids. The firefighters themselves were protesting the deployment.
At 1:32 a.m. five drones hovering thirty feet above the roadway began broadcasting laser signals designed to confuse the truck’s LIDAR sensors into thinking there was a wall across the middle of the road. Even though radar showed nothing, the safety protocols instructed the drive control system to begin decelerating, and the truck had no trouble coming to a stop twenty feet from the non-existent barrier that it perceived across the highway. Exterior lights and additional cameras activated, standard procedure when the vehicle stopped unexpectedly. Back in upstate New York, Peter Cook visually confirmed the identity of the RezMat truck, verified there was no other traffic in the area, and keyed in the attack order.
The truck’s cameras captured the flight of the five drones as they dropped from the sky and circled the vehicle. They clamped onto the trailer in a precise pattern to maximize the impact from their one-kilo Semtex charges. Ten seconds later, the five charges exploded simultaneously, obliterating the drones, the truck, and its cargo, and leaving a fifty-foot crater in the middle of I-85.
LONDON
The early-morning shift transport supervisor at RezMat headquarters saw the yellow light flash on her screen. This indicated a major malfunction with one of their transport vehicles.
She leaned forward in her chair and said, “Transport 319 data.” She looked up at her wall screen—all feeds from the truck were dead.
She pulled up the truck’s recent sensor and signal history, ran the video, and nearly spilled her tea when she saw the drones. Bloody hell.
She called Bradley Childress.
“This is Killian at Central Dispatch, sir. We’ve had an attack on one of our transport trucks in North Carolina in the States.”
“What happened?” Childress asked.
“Looks like it was right blown up, it was. Was forced to stop somehow, then drones with explosives.”
“When was this?”
“Ten minutes ago,” she replied.
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Prepare a package with all feeds for the twenty minutes prior to the explosion. Send it to the FBI office in Raleigh, North Carolina with a flash alert for domestic terrorist activity.”
“Yes, sir.”
Five minutes later, another video call flashed urgent on his display. It was David Livingstone.
“Yes, David?”
“Bradley! I was just informed that one of our transports blew up in the States. Is this true? Was it an accident?”
“That is correct, sir. Unfortunately, it was not an accident. It appears to have been attacked by drones carrying explosives.”
“Damn it! Do you think this is connected to that data leak?”
“There’s no question that having that data would have enabled this attack, David. But we can’t say for sure.”
“What should we do now?”
“I’m already connecting with the FBI in the States. I suggest we start to work with the Ops team to shift our production and logistics schedules.”
“That’s going to be a bloody nightmare, Bradley.”
“I know, but we need to alter what we can.”
“Very well, I’ll speak to Ops. You focus on chasing down these bastards.”
“We’re on it, sir.”
NORTH CAROLINA
Special Agent Matt Chandler of the FBI’s Domestic Terrorism Task Force (DTTF) arrived in an automated helicopter to supervise the evidence gathering on I-85. A half dozen robots were scouring the area for fragments. As he climbed out of the copter, his PNA let him know there was a sensor package from the truck available. He put on his VR goggles and said, “Play video.”
He watched a view synthesized from all the truck’s camera feeds. The truck came to a stop and drones flew past the cameras. Each one had a cube of material attached, obviously explosive charges. Just the kind of attack his agency had been warning about for years. The delivery system was readily available on the commercial market and completely incinerated during use, leaving no evidence behind.
His PNA buzzed, a notification indicating there was a published claim of responsibility. He switched over to it. Against a backdrop of dark electronic music and a video montage of violent protests from the past, a computer-generated woman’s voice began speaking in a monotone strikingly at odds with the content of the message.
“Today the LKC has struck a blow against the industrial and governmental elites who are systematically relegating humans to a life devoid of meaning and freedom, through the continued development and deployment of technological substitutes. It is our intent to disrupt and destroy their means of production, their means of surveillance, and their means of power.
“Technology has enabled the creation of organizations whose ultimate purpose is to restrict, regulate, and eliminate individual free will and dignity. We need to tear down these organizations and their instruments of enslavement, and open the eyes of the people to their true state of being.
“The people have been blinded by marketing, propaganda and frivolous entertainments, to the point that they do not understand the depth of their servitude. They have become so enmeshed with technology that the simple act of human contact has been disintermediated into digital bits and haptic suit stimulations.
“We will wake the people up to their true state, living empty and desperate lives behind the enticing bars of virtual reality, thought control implants, and soma-like nano-pharmaceuticals.
“What is our plan? As one of our heroes Ted Kaczynski wrote in his manifesto: ‘Two tasks confront those who hate the servitude to which the industrial system is reducing the human race. First, we must work to heighten the social stresses within the system so as to increase the likelihood that it will break down or be weakened sufficiently so that a revolution against it becomes possible.’
