Silicon Uprising

by Conor McCarthy

  “We’ve been using this far longer than you. But unlike you”—the stranger kicked a paper cup—“we leave no trace.”

  “We’ve had a shitty day,” Jason said. He took his left hand off the grip of the M4 and gestured with his palm. “You know how it is.”

  “Shitty because . . . your train crashed?”

  “We don’t drive no gray SUVs.”

  The tall man bellowed an exaggerated laugh, then said, “Got any friends who do?”

  For a moment Jason studied the four at ground level. Their clothing was hard-wearing, practical but far from new. Most had visible tattoos. One had dreadlocks, one a shaved head; one was a thin woman with long hair and a nose ring. Another young woman looked remarkable in contrast to the rest of the group. She had a stronger build than the thin woman but with attractive proportions and a pretty face. With no tattoos she looked innocent enough to be a hostage, except for the shotgun in her hands.

  It dawned on Jason who they were. Crimson Unity.

  “We’ve never bombed an electricity pylon,” Jason said. “But I gotta say it’s pretty funny. Anything that undermines Half-Bit’s perfect vision is.”

  Tall Guy replied, wide-eyed, with a maniacal grin, “We would never do a thing like thaaat. I want Half-Bit’s subsystems to feast on as many juicy electrons as possible.”

  Jason grinned back. “And we wouldn’t burn down a mansion or derail a train, or anything like that.”

  He imagined Michael’s disapproval. True, Jason was risking everything by revealing dangerous secrets. But while these people spread chaos and disruption to pursue their vision of a post-CMC world, they were allies against Half-Bit. And they had a six-versus-one advantage. Some vulnerability might win their trust.

  “Derail a train that was heading to nuke Half-Bit,” Tall Guy said. “Who does that?”

  “You don’t believe propaganda, do you? They’re making huge mileage out of this attack. You know what they really had planned.”

  Shaved Head said to Tall Guy, “Like I said, nuking empty desert makes no sense. The town, on the other hand . . .”

  “So you couldn’t stop the whole thing,” Tall Guy said to Jason.

  “Extract a nuke from a train wreck,” Jason replied, “transport it across the desert before the goons arrive, and hide it, all while it’s emitting radiation? Give me an electrical pylon any day.”

  “If I could get hold of a nuke I wouldn’t hide it,” he said, laughing.

  Tall Guy’s earlier mention of subsystems gave Jason one place to dig.

  “If you were to deprive subsystems of power,” he asked, “wouldn’t backups take over?”

  Shaved Head glanced for approval at the leader. Tall Guy nodded once.

  “You would find that the backup power systems are disorganized. You can get away with all kinds of things when pylons are down, especially if you directly target surveillance infrastructure too. And subsystems are dependent on each other in complex ways. There’s an art to making an elegant fault-tolerant system. Half-Bit lacks that touch.”

  Jason laughed. “Half-Bit’s a failbot. Ha!”

  The thin woman said, “What we do is symbolic too. Electrical pylons are symbols of the oppressive patriarchal state, phalluses of the industrial machine that rapes our Mother Earth.”

  “Yeah,” the leader said, “what she said. Sometimes you just gotta blow shit up. And since we seem to agree on that, my name is Eddie.” He gestured at Bald Guy. “That’s Jim. The others, to you, are nameless.”

  Jason introduced himself.

  Eddie said, “Where’s the rest of you?”

  “My comrade just got arrested. This place won’t be safe for long.”

  “The secret police have him? Gray-SUV guys?”

  “Yeah. But he won’t talk. Maybe they’ll figure out his movements though.”

  “Count on it. You’d be surprised who’ll talk, too.”

  “I’m gonna try to bust him out. I know where they’re holding him. Call me crazy but I’ll take any chance that turns up.”

  “You know for sure where these assholes are holed up?”

  “I do.”

  Eddie flashed a deranged grin at Jim.

  “Do you want to?” Jim asked.

  “I want,” Eddie replied. He said to Jason, “We’ve never had the chance to catch them by surprise. We have old scores to settle. But we want something in return.”

  “Like what?”

  “We saw that trail bike in your SUV when you drove in. It’ll be handy for the attack, but leave it with us after. Got anything else?”

  “No spare M4s but we have two MP5s.”

  “Not good against their body armor, but the more weapons the merrier. We’ll take them.”

  “Done. The secret cops are using an isolated house as a base. Approaching unseen may be hard.”

  “Bring it. These people can’t handle chaos. Drives them nuts. We’ll engineer some random confusion.”

  “Awesome,” Jason said, trying not to sound too relieved. “I’ve got camouflaged insulating covers for hiding from satellites. Good for recon.”

  “So do we,” Jim replied. “Satellite resources are stretched thin, but we’ll use the covers. Our biggest problem is AI-monitored security cameras.”

  Eddie laughed. “So we’ll set off alarms.” He twirled his finger above his head. “Whoop whoop whoop! Too late.”

  Seventeen

  AFTER DARK, ONE of Eddie’s men planted a remote-detonated bomb on a high-voltage line supplying the area’s electrical substation with power. When he returned, Eddie and some of his people left to survey the house. Jason brought Jim and the innocent-looking woman in the SUV.

  The woman turned out to be a talented disguise artist. Jim now sported a full-face fake beard, tanned skin, and some special makeup work around his eyes to fool facial recognition cameras. With his tattoos covered by long sleeves, he blended in well.

  Jason turned to the woman in the rear seat. “Hey, Ms. Nameless, you don’t really . . . look like one of these guys.”

  “Why do you think that is?” she replied.

  “Your camping vacation raged out of control?”

  She and Jim laughed. “You’re the one who’s on vacation,” she said. “You haven’t been doing this long.”

  “A package tour,” Jason said. He studied her for a second. She read people well, had no anxiety, and could probably get almost anybody to like her, especially men. “You’re an infiltrator,” he said. “Nobody would ever think you’re Crimson Unity. You win the trust of key individuals and worm your way into organizations.”

  She smiled briefly, then looked serious. “Couldn’t possibly comment on that.” She frowned. “And I’m not a worm.”

  Jim laughed. Jason left it at that.

  On the drive through town, they passed the gray surveillance car parked outside a bar.

  “Snooping around in the bar,” Jason said. He jerked his thumb at the car. “That belongs to a CMC goon.”

  “I’ll remember the license plate,” Jim said. “This’ll be our first diversion. Nothing like a nice car bombing to get them running.”

  “Hoping to draw some men from the house?”

  “That’s the plan. If we can avoid damaging the front of the house while taking care of whoever’s left behind, we’ll wait inside for the rest to return. We have a cell phone jammer. The others won’t know a thing.”

  “Do you think they’ll hurt Michael when we attack?”

  “He’ll probably be locked in a room with some others. They take a scattershot approach to arrests. People who are different. Odd. Or who set off their gestapo sensibilities.”

  “Or their NKVD sensibilities,” Jason said.

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  If goons decided to shoot prisoners during the attack, the only hope was to get the goons before they got to Michael.

  After they’d wound their way to a narrow, isolated road, Jason shut off the headlights and used night vision to steer the SUV in
manual mode across country. The two cars full of Jim’s friends followed. They stopped at the base of a hill and hiked to the top, which afforded a view of the rear and one side of the house.

  Flat on his stomach, Eddie studied the house through a night-vision sniper scope.

  “They have a lot of landscaping around the pool area on one side. Cacti and other stuff. That provides cover to get close.”

  “You gonna blow up a cactus?” Jason said.

  Eddie laughed. “Judging by the vent on the roof and the frosted glass, there’s a bathroom on that side. We can safely blow the wall there without risking your friend or the others. Unless he’s actually on the shitter at the time. Tough luck in that case.”

  “I’ll blow up the shitter,” Dreadlock Guy said. “Always wanted to blow up a shitter.”

  “A fascination of yours?” Eddie asked.

  “Love the sound of shattering porcelain.”

  “Like the last time Eddie ate curry,” the thin woman said.

  “What else am I gonna do when we’re out of explosives?”

  Jason inspected the house without magnification through his own night vision. If they succeeded in luring some goons away, these people might pull the attack off through sheer madness. But there was no denying how much cunning it took to survive this long doing what they did.

  “Meanwhile,” Eddie said, “more of us will use camouflage sheets to sneak up at the rear. We’ll look like funny-shaped walking rocks but it’s better than nothing. One will try to get close enough to blow the back windows with a grenade and make it sound like we’re coming in. From under our covers we shoot any jackboots who show up to defend the breach. If it looks like the prisoners aren’t in that room, our point man lobs a grenade inside.”

  “We should probably cut the power right before the fun starts,” Jason said.

  “My best sniper can press the button for us. He’ll stay up here and watch us go in.”

  “And the bike?” Jason asked.

  “You go with Jim to the front. Maybe their security system has a battery backup. But when it sees you coming, we’ll be causing so much noise and distraction that they won’t notice the alarm. It will already be sounding for the rear and side.”

  “Then I pick the lock,” Jim said. “We creep up behind them.”

  “The rest we can’t plan for,” Eddie said. “The fog of war and all that. We’ll take our first chance to enter at the back or the side. If they spot us too soon, make like lunatics and throw everything at ’em.”

  “All right,” Jason said, “better get your car bomber into town before the spook leaves the bar. Then let’s get them. Assholes have it coming.”

  Silence fell for a few moments, then Eddie said, “They’ve done more to you than just capture this guy, haven’t they?”

  “Yes they have,” Jason said.

  Eighteen

  WITH THE BIKE hidden on its side in a depression, Jason and Jim lay behind some rocks a quarter mile down the road from the goons’ driveway. They needed to see some of the goons leave after Eddie’s man bombed the gray car in town.

  Jim said, “Eddie’s really got the taste of blood over this attack. They killed his sister, you know.”

  “Oh. That explains his enthusiasm.”

  “Yeah. She was active in another cell run by an old friend of Eddie’s. If these gestapo cunts catch us, they pump us for information to the point of death. We know that because they dropped one of our dead guys in an easily discovered place and made it look like a gang thing. A subtle message to us. Only this guy wasn’t dead. They screwed up and we got the whole story from him.”

  “Torture is a demonstrably poor interrogation technique. Yields false information. I thought Half-Bit was supposed to be smart.”

  “The jackboots are in charge of interrogation. I guess they’re afraid they’d be contaminated if they actually had a conversation with one of us. Even our words are putrid. We disgust them—like, to an extreme.”

  Jason studied the green image of Jim’s face in the night vision. These people lived for this conflict, and some part of them relished the thought of having enemies.

  “Why did you join up?” Jason asked. “I get the impression you started as a bit of an outsider.”

  “Yeah, my family raised me as a Christian but I stopped believing at fourteen. Later I worked in logistics, basically just organizing to move the correct amount of shit to the right place at the right time, to be transformed into different shit that needed to be somewhere else. Then I woke up one morning faced with another day spent moving shit around, and then spending the money to buy shit—maybe some of the shit I just moved around. I couldn’t face it. I knew a guy who knew a guy, and here I am.”

  “Somebody needs to move stuff around. You can be proud of that and do other things to make life more meaningful.”

  Jim’s hand clenched into a fist. “But we need something to believe in, you know? Life’s meaningless if we don’t have something.”

  “I know what you mean. Anyone would be insane to choose the path I’ve followed lately, but I regret none of it.”

  “Society is corrupt at all levels. People are trying to take what you’ve got or maneuver you into a position of exploitation. And that damned machine sits at the top of it.”

  “I dunno,” Jason replied. “I’ve met many good people at work and elsewhere. I say just kill the machine. What if you end up sending everything all to hell with your plan? I don’t mean it as a criticism, just . . . what if.”

  Jim pounded his fist on the ground. “No. That kind of talk isn’t useful. It’s the sort of thing you get from the counterrevolution. But you’re not educated in this, so you get a pass. We are one. All of us, do you understand? We are one. It’s the only way.”

  Silence fell, then Jim said once more under his breath, as if to a higher power, “It’s the only way.”

  One pair of headlights appeared outside the house. It swung around and headed out along the driveway.

  “Our boy’s done it,” Jim said. “On the outskirts of town he’ll try to blow that car too. His specialty is an innocent-looking piece of discarded trash.”

  “If it works, then that spy is the only one who might come later to our little party. I’d love to have seen his face when he ran out of the bar.”

  The gray SUV passed by on the road with two men in the front seats. The taillights faded in the distance. Time to go.

  With Jim on the back the trail bike rode low on its suspension. He had disconnected power to the headlight, so night vision guided Jason along the road.

  The house stood in the distance. Enough light seeped through the blinds for them to glow green in the goggles. One window looked strange; he realized it was striped with dark vertical lines.

  Bars. Michael was in there, on the side opposite the attack through the garden. At least he wasn’t right beside the bathroom. It was a good start.

  Ahead loomed a boulder; the sniper up on the hill would squeeze the trigger when he saw Jason pass it. Then the lights should go dark, sending Eddie and his crew into action. By the time Jason and Jim hit the front driveway, the goons should have their hands full.

  Jason tensed up as the boulder approached. Adrenaline gripped him in the gut. His old life was already screwed. Why not get shot tonight? It was a good way to go. When the bombs exploded and the bullets flew he would fight until he could fight no more.

  If nothing happened when he neared the house, should he turn back or ride on past? The bike wasn’t road legal. And what excuse could they have to be riding a trail bike using night vision right after a terrorist attack? They’d be arrested.

  He vowed that even if no one else attacked, he’d ride up to the house anyway and kill goons. As many as possible before they shot him.

  The boulder exited his field of vision. Any second now.

  Suddenly the house went dark, except for the glow of a laptop computer monitor leaking through cracks in the blinds.

  The goggles caught a f
lash reflecting off the cactus trees. The bathroom. As the bang reached him, another flash radiated from the back of the house. Eddie’s grenade. Then all hell broke loose.

  A light show of muzzle flashes went off behind the house. Jason lost sight of them as he neared the driveway. The shots hammered his ears despite his earplugs. More flaming muzzles came into view at the side of the house.

  He twisted the hand grip to full power and the bike scooted down the driveway toward the entrance. Close to the gunfire, he felt like his brain was being pounded into jelly.

  Near the house they slowed for a quiet approach. Jason rode right into the recessed entrance. The sound of the electric motor was undetectable against the din of the gunfight.

  Jim picked the lock in twenty seconds. Jason held his gun ready for what might greet them. The nitrate odor of the explosive wafted around from the side of the house.

  Still on his knees, Jim opened the door. Both men activated the infrared lights on their goggles.

  Beyond the living room on the left and dining area on the right, they could see down the central passage all the way to a back room. No one was visible. The smell of cleaning products drifted out past Jason’s nose.

  A man shuffled sideways into view below the rear window, dropped to his knees, and fired out the back.

  Jim shot him. The man fell.

  Both of them scrambled inside. Another goon came out shooting from a side room. Jim jumped left behind a couch. Jason headed into the dining area, but there was no cover there. He paused for an instant beside the dining table, felt like a buffoon, and dashed behind the kitchen island. It provided good cover but taking a shot at the goon from there was impossible.

  The shooter activated a flashlight on his weapon and directed it at the couch. Jason’s night-vision goggles adjusted to the sudden brightness. The goons seemed to have no night-vision equipment.

  Jim’s couch took hits. Rips appeared in the covering and splinters of wood flew off. He looked over at Jason.

  “Fuck it,” Jason said. He ran over beside the passage entrance, held out his M4, and blind-fired around the corner. The recoil sent his shots wild and he slid a foot out to keep his balance.