Freedom

by Daniel Suarez

  Sebeck turned back to face the glowing specter. The avatar was translucent, like all D-Space objects—a ghost.

  Price nudged Sebeck. “Don’t be chicken, man. Go chat it up.” Sebeck took a moment to collect himself, then walked out into the sandy open space of the circular room. It was almost like an arena, but a fire pit occupied the center. As Sebeck approached, the glowing D-Space aura chimed then faded away—along with all trace of the Thread he’d followed.

  Sobol’s apparition nodded in greeting, and its voice came through Sebeck’s headset. “Detective Sebeck, I’m glad you decided to undertake this quest. It will be long and difficult.”

  Sebeck sighed. “Great. . . .”

  Sobol’s apparition gestured to the masonry walls that rose several stories above them—perfectly rectangular doors and windows piercing the stone faces. “Look at the precision. One might mistake it for modern architecture.” He turned back to Sebeck. “And yet this pueblo was built almost a thousand years ago. At the very apex of Anasazi civilization.”

  With a wave of his hand, glowing D-Space lines suddenly began to extend from the ruins, rising to complete the walls all around them—filling in the missing gaps and extending translucent 3-D walls and roofs above and around them. The immense structure was being rebuilt before their eyes. Pottery, possessions, and other objects appeared as though filling in a level map for a video game.

  Avatars of Anasazi Indians walked through the doorway bearing baskets. Others moved through the rooms on their daily business, speaking to one another in their native tongue. Children ran past Sebeck, laughing. He could hear water flowing and song. Anasazi civilization had come back to life around them.

  Price whistled behind him. “O-M-F-G ...”

  Sobol’s avatar appeared to gaze approvingly on the scene.

  “This structure contained six hundred rooms and rose as high as six stories. It was the tallest man-made construct in North America until the steel girder buildings of Chicago in the 1880s. The Anasazi supplied it with a network of eighty-foot-wide irrigation canals. They built four hundred miles of ruler-straight roads linking their capitol to seventy-five outlying communities. They flourished here for centuries.”

  Sobol walked up to Sebeck and leaned on his cane. “Why did they perish, Sergeant? And so suddenly at the height of their achievements?”

  Sebeck turned to observe the spectral avatars of ancient Anasazi priests coming into the great room in a procession, chanting. Like long departed spirits.

  Sobol moved to let them pass. The priests didn’t notice him or Sebeck, but continued chanting as a spectral fire raged in the central fire pit, casting shadows that did not include either Sebeck or Sobol.

  Sobol watched the priests closely. “Their fate holds important lessons for twenty-first-century man—because we are not exempt from nature’s laws. When the survival strategy of a civilization is invalidated, in all of human history none have ever turned back from the brink. When presented with disruptive change, without exception they perish.”

  Sobol raised his arms, and with a wave of his hands the entire D-Space scene vanished—leaving only the real-world ruins again. And silence.

  Sobol walked up to a ruinous window and looked out across the moonlit desert landscape. “But Anasazi civilization encompassed only this small region. By contrast our industrial civilization encompasses the entire earth. And should it falter, the resulting conflicts have the capacity to exterminate all human life.”

  Sobol gestured where the Indian priests had stood just moments before. “They made a simple enough mistake. The same one we’re making. They founded their society on resource extraction, and in doing so, inflated their population beyond the carrying capacity of the land. They cut down all the trees and expanded arable land with irrigation projects. Until finally there were no more trees. And their topsoil washed away. And when drought came, their highly centralized society fell apart in bloodshed in a few short years.”

  Sobol walked to the edge of the now cold fire pit and poked it with his illusory cane. “Instead of adapting, their leaders clung to power and strove instead to be the last ones to starve to death. The Mayan civilization in South America did the same, and I expect our own civilization will do likewise. The people behind the modern global economy will prevent any meaningful change until it’s too late.”

  The avatar looked to Sebeck. “But the question that needs to be answered is whether civilization’s inability to adapt is a failure of leadership—or an unwillingness in humanity itself.

  “Your quest comes at a critical time in human history, Sergeant. It’s time we knew whether a durable democracy is possible—one whose laws are not just guidelines. One where individual rights cannot be ignored by the powerful. I leave this for you to prove. The Daemon will continue to expand, regardless. Whether it encompasses a distributed democracy or a ruthless hierarchy is up to people like you. Prove that the collective human will can prevent its own destruction, and you will have justified humanity’s freedom. Fail, and humanity will serve the Daemon.

  “So that all may know you . . .” Sobol aimed his cane at Sebeck’s call-out. A bright D-Space light flashed on his call-out, and an icon appeared next to his network name. It depicted a towering cloud with an opening at its base, like a gateway. “This quest icon will be your mark. Your high quest is to find the Cloud Gate. You will have succeeded when you pass through its arch.”

  Sobol raised his other hand and a new, glowing Thread extended from it, racing south over the horizon in moments. “Your path leads not through the land, but through human events. It will lead you always into the heart of the changes now under way. And yet unless others lead the way, you will never reach your journey’s end.”

  Sobol lowered his hand and stared into Sebeck’s eyes. “Good luck, Sergeant. For the sake of future generations, I hope we meet again.”

  With that Sobol vanished, leaving only the new Thread behind. Sebeck nearly collapsed with the overwhelming burden now upon him. He turned to face Price.

  Price stared up at the high quest icon now adorning Sebeck’s call-out. “You lucky bastard. . . .”

  Chapter 5: // Getting with the Program

  Sebeck moved through the crowd in a regional shopping mall. The place was packed with couples hand in hand talking on cell phones. Teens texting. The plaza looked new, with familiar anchor stores and all the usual retail fronts strung between them.

  Sebeck had ditched Price back at the hotel. He needed time away from his troubles. Time to think. Getting lost in the crowd felt good—even though he could still see the new Thread just above him in D-Space. It always appeared ten feet in front, beckoning.

  He tried to forget the Thread and his quest and instead watched faces passing in the crowd. Just a parade of mundane concerns. As though the Daemon didn’t exist.

  Before long Sebeck spotted a familiar call-out approaching him, and Laney Price soon emerged from the stream of people. He and Sebeck stood face-to-face while shoppers surged around them. Price was munching on a churro. Snippets of conversation floated past them and faded away. They were anonymous in a sea of humanity.

  “Needed a little ‘me’ time?”

  Sebeck pushed past and kept walking through the crowd.

  “Where did the Daemon dig you up, Laney?”

  Price stayed on his heels. “Similar to your situation. Life delivers us to certain crossroads, and before you know it—bam—you’re serving a globe-spanning cybernetic organism. Same old familiar tale.”

  Price noticed that Sebeck was ignoring him. “These people give you comfort, Sergeant? Walking among them like a regular person? Does it bring back the good times?”

  Sebeck cast a look back at Price. “What if it does? Maybe it’s good to see how normal the world is. That there are still people who just want to go shopping.”

  “Yeah.” He took another bite of his churro and spoke around it. “Too bad this place will probably be an empty shell ten years from now.”

&n
bsp; Sebeck cast a frown back at Price. “How do you figure?”

  “You heard Sobol. Modern society is heading off a cliff, and John Q. Public is out here stomping on the accelerator.”

  “Have another churro, pal.”

  “I’m just saying. So you dig all this?” He gestured to the overhead jumbotrons displaying clothing ads of fashion models flying through rainbows.

  “It doesn’t matter what I think. Everything here exists because people want it. What gives Sobol the right to decide for them?”

  Price shrugged. “Well, the public doesn’t really decide anything now—they just select from the options they’re given.” He stuffed the last of the churro into his mouth and chewed furiously. “Factions have a slang term for the general public. They call them NPCs—as in ‘non-player-characters’—scripted bots with limited responses.”

  “That’s just obnoxious.”

  “Is it? These people have only limited decision-making ability.”

  “And we’re not Sobol’s puppets?”

  “Okay, I think I know what’s going on here.” He balled up the churro wrapper and tossed it into the orifice of a trash can shaped like a robot. “You think these people are free, and that the Daemon is gonna take that freedom away.”

  Sebeck kept strolling through the crowd. “Enough, Laney. Just let me walk in peace.”

  Price stayed with him. “You, sir, are walking on a privately owned Main Street—permission to trespass revocable at will. Read the plaque on the ground at the entrance if you don’t believe me. These people aren’t citizens of anything, Sergeant. America is just another brand purchased for its goodwill value. For that excellent fucking logo.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure it’s all a big conspiracy. . . .”

  “No conspiracy necessary. It’s a process that’s been happening for thousands of years. Wealth aggregates and becomes political power. Simple as that. ‘Corporation’ is just the most recent name for it. In the Middle Ages it was the Catholic Church. They had a great logo, too. You might have seen it, and they had more branches than Starbucks. Go back before that, and it was Imperial Rome. It’s a natural process as old as humanity.”

  Sebeck just stared back at him.

  “Look, there’s nothing wrong with people admitting that they’re owned. That’s the first step in becoming free. They just need to admit it.”

  “You’re a lunatic.”

  “That’s right. I’m crazy. But stand up in here with a protest sign and find out how quickly you get your ass tased by security. You want to see the world the way it really is, Sergeant? Forget your cultural indoctrination for a moment.”

  Price started moving his arms as if conjuring a spell. Sebeck knew what it meant: Price was working with objects on a layer of D-Space. A layer that wasn’t yet visible in Sebeck’s HUD glasses. Price was pulling at invisible objects in the air around him. Then he turned to Sebeck. “This is the real world, Sergeant. The one you so dearly miss being a part of.”

  Suddenly a new layer of D-Space appeared overlaid on the real world, manifested as thousands of call-outs, glowing numbers hovering above the heads of all the shoppers moving past them. Dollar amounts, green for positive, red for negative. Most of the numbers floating over people’s heads were negative: “-$23,393” hovering over a twentysomething woman on a cell phone, “-$839,991” over a dignified-looking man in his forties, “-$17,189” over his teenage daughter, and on it went. Number after number.

  Price raised his arms theatrically. “The net worth of everyone. Real-time financial data.” He frowned. “A lot of red out there, but then again, this is America.”

  Sebeck stared at the hundreds of numbers moving past him. Not every person had a number above them, but the vast majority did. A young professional couple with a baby, both of them with negative numbers in the forty thousand range. A poorly dressed woman in her sixties sat on a bench near the fountain with a bright green “$893,393” over her head. Sebeck kept staring at the numbers passing by. There was no anticipating who had money and who didn’t. Some of the most successful-looking people seemed to be worst off.

  “Okay, Price. This is all very interesting, but I don’t see what it proves. The Daemon gives you the power to peek into their bank accounts. So what?”

  “It’s not the Daemon that gives me this ability, Sergeant.” Sebeck narrowed his eyes. “These numbers are appearing in D-Space. This must be the darknet.”

  Price was already shaking his head. “I get the data from commercial networks, and I project it onto D-Space. Ask yourself, how can I know their bank balances unless I know who these people are? Remember: none of them are Daemon operatives.”

  Sebeck thought for a moment. He moved to a balcony railing and scanned the hundreds of numbers moving through the mall.

  “Their data follows them as they walk.”

  “Yeah. How about that?”

  “How are you doing this, Price? Cut the bullshit. You’re faking this, or are you trying to convince me that someone implanted tracking chips in everyone?”

  “Nobody implanted anything. These people pay for their own tracking devices.” Price pointed to a nearby cell phone kiosk slathered with graphic images of beautiful people chatting on handsets. “A cell phone’s location is constantly tracked and stored in a database. Don’t have a cell phone? Bluetooth devices have a unique identifier, too. Phone headsets, PDAs, music players. Just about any wireless toy you might own. And now there are radio-frequency-identity tags in driver’s licenses, passports, and in credit cards. They respond to radio energy by emitting a unique identifier, which can be linked to a person’s identity. Privately owned sensors at public choke points are harvesting this data throughout the world. It doesn’t have anything to do with the Daemon.”

  Price turned to the mall again and drew circles on his layer of D-Space—highlighting sensors bolted to the walls at intersections in the mall’s traffic flow. “Storing data is so cheap it’s essentially free, so data brokers record everything in the hopes that it will have value to someone. The data is aggregated by third parties, linked to individual identities, and sold like any other consumer data. It’s not a conspiracy. It’s an economy, but an economy these people know nothing about. They’re tagged like sheep and have about as much say in the matter as sheep.”

  Sebeck gazed at the data whirling around him.

  “What do we look like to a computer alogrithm, Sergeant? Because it will be computer algorithms that make life-changing decisions about these people based on this data. How about credit worthiness—as decided by some arbitrary algorithm no one has a right to question?”

  Suddenly credit scores appeared above everyone’s heads, color-coded from green to red for severity.

  “What about medical records?”

  Lists of drug prescriptions and preexisting conditions appeared above people’s heads.

  “Or how about something really powerful: human relationships. Let’s use phone records to compile the social network of these folks—to identify the people who matter most to them. . . .”

  Suddenly everyone’s names appeared over their heads, along with a hyperlinked diagram of their most frequent contacts—along with names and phone numbers.

  “What about purchasing habits . . . ?”

  Lists of recent credit card purchases blinked into existence below people’s names.

  “This data never goes away, Sergeant. Ever. And it might be sold years down the road to god knows who—or what.”

  Price leaned close. “Imagine how easily you could change the course of someone’s life by changing this data? But that’s control, isn’t it? In fact, you don’t even need to be human to exert power over these people. That’s why the Daemon spread so fast.”

  Sebeck clutched the balcony railing in silence, watching the march of data. The public walked on, shopping and talking, completely oblivious to the cloud of personal information they gave off. That governed their lives.

  Price followed Sebeck’s gaze. “So y
ou stand there and tell me that the Daemon is invasive and unprecedented. That it’s a threat to human freedom. And I tell you that Americans are fucking ignorant about their freedom. They’re about as free as the Chinese. Except the Chinese don’t lie to themselves.”

  Sebeck said nothing for several moments. Then he slowly turned back to Price. “Laney, how is the Daemon any better?” He pointed up at his own call-out, hovering above him in D-Space. “We wear information over our heads, too.”

  “Yes, but we can see ours, and we know instantly whenever anyone touches our data—and who touched it. That’s the best one can hope for in a technologically advanced society. Plus, we can readily spot nonhumans on the darknet, because Daemon bots don’t have a human body. So you know when an AI—like Sobol—is pushing your buttons, and you can choose whether or not to listen. Can these people say the same?” Price gestured to the mall shoppers.

  Price then reached up to his call-out and slid the virtual layer over to Sebeck’s HUD display. A layer named Suckers appeared in Sebeck’s listing. “I want you to have this layer. In case you ever need to remember the world you left behind. The one you keep pining away for.”

  Sebeck looked back up at the profusion of data above them. Beyond that loomed the Thread, still beckoning. For the first time he thought it might actually lead someplace he’d want to go.

  A tanned couple walked up to Sebeck and Price. The man nodded in greeting. “Excuse me, guys.”

  They turned to face him. The man was well-dressed with an oversized watch strapped to his wrist and a yin-yang tattoo on his forearm. He had his arm around a younger, attractive woman.

  “Where did you guys get those sunglasses? I’ve been seeing them around, and I was wondering where I can pick up a pair.”

  Sebeck just stared at him through the yellow-tinted HUD glasses. Floating above the guy’s head was a call-out indicating a net worth of -$103,039.

  The man smiled. “They look kick-ass.”