One student raised her hand. “Miss Woods, how do we know what job we should do?”
“Well, as you go through middle school, you will have assignments in each of your classes. The teachers will assess your work, but so will the computers when you work online. You’ll have lots of VR assignments where AI systems will analyze your work patterns. At the end of each year, your teachers’ comments and the analysis from the AI will be compiled together, and your homeroom teacher will meet with you and your mother to discuss what we found. Nobody will be forced into picking a career path. Everybody gets to pick for themselves. However, our assessment and analysis should help you and your mothers decide which internships to go after. Your first internship is the summer after sixth grade. It is fine to change your mind and do something different in seventh grade, but it is easier for you to pick the right thing the first time, so you don’t have to spend time catching up with other students in seventh or eighth grade. Does that answer your question?”
“Yes. Thanks.”
“Girls - a long time ago, people used to make these decisions when they were twenty or older. They would often graduate high school and still have no idea what career to go into. Our leaders wisely realized that the entire country was wasting valuable time and money. Back then, parents paid high prices to send their children to college and the kids often graduated without finding jobs. So the system was changed dramatically at the same time as the Automated Society Act of 2030.”
Miss Woods stopped talking and looked around the room. She wanted to make sure that the girls were understanding her. She looked at each face individually, making sure that everyone was paying full attention.
She seemed content and continued, “High schools began to take the role that had been done by liberal arts colleges. Students began to go to high schools based on their curriculum instead of how close they were to their homes. Since automated cars could drive students long distances and the kids could study while riding, and also because you could study from home several days per week, high school changed dramatically.”
“Like VR schools,” one of the girls asked.
“Exactly. Using VR, you can login from your house and be with a class anywhere in the world. Now, you all understand how important high school is, right?”
Miss Woods looked at Sofia, who knew the role she had to play. Sofia nodded her understanding.
Be the perfect student.
Miss Woods continued, “It’s important to choose the right high school for your career path. Therefore, it is critical to make the correct assessment in middle school. Between sixth grade and eighth grade, you will likely determine how you spend most of your waking hours. I can’t stress this enough, and it may not seem fair, but what you do this year has a bigger impact on your life than almost any other year you live.”
Just like her mom had told her. Sixth grade was a whole new world. It wasn’t elementary school any more. Middle school was where the rest of your life was determined.
Sofia tried to contort her face in an expression of understanding and respect. She looked into Miss Woods eyes.
I understand. I will be a great student.
Having looked at everyone for a few seconds, Miss Woods seemed satisfied with the response. “I can see that we have a great class this year. Everyone here has tremendous potential, so I will make this promise to you all. If you put in the effort for me and work hard and use your brains, I will work hard to help you find the best internship. It probably isn’t fair that 11 and 12-year-olds have to make these kinds of decisions, but nobody ever said that life was fair. Work hard for me and I’ll work hard for you.”
Please help me get a great internship, Miss Woods.
40
IT WAS THURSDAY, around noon, and Susan was eating a salad in her office. She had been in her new job a little over a week.
Last week, Secretary Lane had her focus on grid camps. This week, she was learning about Interstate highway security. As she ate lunch, she pulled up the news on one wall screen and had a tropical jungle surrounding her on the others.
Should I ask Mary to join me for lunch?
The news showed a clip of the President giving a speech to a security-focused high school about our continued need for innovation in the world of cybersecurity. She was welcoming the students into the work force, where many would join local police squads, private security firms and some might even come to the NSA. Susan waved her hand to bring up other news. There was a clip about the country music awards show in Nashville from last night. It wasn’t Susan’s style of music, so she waved her hand again. Stock market news. Another hand wave. Violence in Peru, with images of men and guns. She made a hand gesture to turn it off. Now, the whole room was a tropical jungle with sounds of animals.
No, I think I’ll just eat by myself.
Susan stabbed at a cucumber and carrot and brought it to her mouth. As she swallowed, she remembered the grid camp in Nashville and Margaret’s weird behavior about security there.
It really seemed like she cared about that camp. Why?
Susan’s investigative instincts kicked in. She had thirty minutes left before her next meeting. Instead of relaxing in the jungle, she would do some follow-up research.
“Wall,” she said.
“Yes, Susan,” her wall screen responded.
“Pull up the security dashboard for the grid camp outside of Nashville that I worked on last week. See if there are any anomalies with the campers.”
“Working on it.”
Susan continued to eat and watched her primary wall screen change from a jungle setting to a series of pictures and graphs. In the top right, she saw a picture of the grid camp from the outside and a global GPS coordinate and map of its location in the US. On the top left, she saw a listing of all of the operational workings of the camp. The number of inhabitants, the number of spare rooms, the number of men who had died during the year, the electrical, water and nutrition consumption levels for the month. On the bottom left was a list of any activities out of the ordinary. Some campers had not been on the grid as much as normal, others had seen a significant change in their nutrition fluids, multiple had not completed their quota levels of exercise.
There was a progress bar on the bottom indicating how much longer the computer would be analyzing the data. It was about 70% complete.
Susan went through the list. Three men had reduced their online presence, but they were still going online. Not much to check there. One man had changed his nutrient water intake, but he was also still feeding himself. Nothing worth investigating. Twelve of the men hadn’t exercised at all this week. Also not too weird, since some of the guys there were older.
Susan asked, “Wall, what are the requirements for the men to exercise per week?”
“No mandates. It depends on how much other work they do and how much they owe per month.”
“What’s typical?” she asked.
“Most of the men have plans where they pay for their electricity using exercise. The typical plan requires seven hours of exercise per week.”
“I see twelve guys here who didn’t exercise this week. Show me on the screen a graph for each of their weekly usage before. Let’s go back twelve months.”
Within a few seconds, the screen filled up with twelve graphs, each having a name above the chart. For eleven of the men, it was a virtual horizontal line close to zero hours per week. But one person, named Thomas, had maintained an average of seven hours per week for the entire year and then it dropped to zero for the last six days.
What is going on here?
“Wall, pull up a profile on the camper named Thomas and move the infrared sensor above his studio.”
As she waited, the screen filled with the details. 45 years old. He had been in the camp for twenty years. Positive work record at the IRS and Departments of Energy and Agriculture. His bank account was sufficient for the six months of expenses. He had older equipment and very few expensive tastes, although he did receiv
e shipments of fresh fruit every week. There was a weird package received last week from someone in Wisconsin who had never sent anything to Thomas before.
“Wall, who is the person in Wisconsin that sent this package?”
“The return address doesn’t match any of our records, Susan. The package was flagged as likely being from somewhere else.”
Now Susan was interested. “Is the IR sensor in place?”
“Not yet, it will be in a few minutes. I had to get authority to override the system, and it has to move from one side of the building to the other. But his IR profile has been consistent for the last several weeks.”
Susan thought about it.
The IR is fine. The login usage is fine. Maybe he is just sick or decided to stop exercising. But who is sending him an unmarked package?
“What about his work? When did he last check in?”
“He hasn’t done any projects for the Department of Agriculture for the last six days.”
Susan’s mind was racing. He hasn’t exercised or worked since the night that the video surveillance went down.
“Wall, does the camp have a robotic butler that I can control?”
“Yes, Susan.”
“OK, please get me authorization and get the butler in front of Thomas’ room. I want to open the door and make sure he is in there.”
“Working on it. The IR sensor is in place now. Thomas is lying on the bed.”
“Is he logged in right now?”
“Yes. He must be logged in from the bed.”
That’s weird. Aren’t they usually standing and hanging from wires?
“How often did he log in from his bed in the last twelve months?”
“We don’t have that information. The IR sensor checks only happen once per day with the campers.”
“OK, but for the IR scans that we have, how many times in the last 365 days was he online and on the bed?”
“Zero times. When he was online, the IR scan got him in the middle of the room. When he was in bed, he wasn’t online.”
This is the guy.
Somehow this guy knew that the maintenance was out, and he used it to escape. But how?
Because Margaret set it up for him.
“Wall - please use an anonymous channel and research any links between Margaret Lane and Thomas.”
“Susan, I’m not authorized to perform this request.”
“OK, fine. Do the search using the normal channels.”
“Done. There is no connection found.”
“That was too fast. Do a deeper search. Go to three levels of separation.”
“Yes, Susan.”
While the Wall computer searched, Susan was thinking frenetically about this situation. Was she going too far? Her searches could be discovered. Would Margaret be monitoring her? Is Margaret involved?
How could she not be?
“Susan, the robot butler is in front of Thomas’ room. I’m patching over his camera views. I have full control of him.”
Susan looked at her screen and saw the hallway of the grid camp, including the door to Thomas’ studio.
“Open the door,” she said.
She watched the robot send an RF signal and saw a light come on Thomas’ door. The robot opened the door and looked around. Susan’s suspicions were justified. There was some kind of machine on the bed and a mini robot on the VR area. The toilet had some kind of gadget on top of it.
“Take an IR scan,” she requested.
The robot did it, and a thermal pattern was shown clearly coming from the machine on the bed. Thomas wasn’t here. It wasn’t that he was gone for a moment. He had set up all of this equipment to fake out the systems.
The jig is up, Thomas!
“Send the robot back, Wall. Close his door. I have what I need.”
“Yes, Susan. Also, I have finished the search for connections between Secretary Lane and Thomas, going three levels of separation for each of them. There is no connection. Not a single one. It is statistically improbable to not find a link, but this man Thomas has mainly stayed to himself for his entire life.”
Plus Margaret is quite capable of making her past disappear.
If there were any connections, Margaret could have wiped them from the system.
“Thank you, Wall. Please go back to the jungle and I’ll finish my lunch.”
Susan took the last few bites of lettuce and tomatoes. This was trouble.
I get the promotion of a lifetime and then go on a witch hunt of my boss? Smart thinking, Susan.
Let’s think about our options here.
First, we have a new boss that is perhaps the most powerful person on the planet. If I continue to follow this lead, the likely result will be the end of my career.
Option one is to drop the whole thing. No more looking into the camp records. Leave it be.
But what if Margaret is monitoring me? What if she knows that I just found out about Thomas? That I searched for connections between them?
Option two is to approach Margaret now, as a loyal and worried assistant. Tell her everything discovered about Thomas. Offer to help.
Option three is to go after her. Further investigation will probably bring Margaret down. Be a whistle-blower that helps eliminate corruption.
Perhaps I could still get a promotion?
Who am I fooling?
Option three was impossible. There was corruption in multiple places, and Margaret was powerful enough to crush her. The maintenance changes had been made on Susan’s account and not Margaret’s. No one would know or believe that Margaret was standing over her directing her moves. It was Susan’s first week on the job. It would be easy to claim incompetence due incomplete training.
Plus, there were no connections between Margaret and Thomas. There would be no motive.
Option three was the right thing to do in a perfect world. But in this world, there was only one logical response. Option two. She had to call Margaret, sooner rather than later, and let her know what she had found.
No time like the present.
“Wall, video call Margaret Lane for me.”
“Yes, Susan.”
Within thirty seconds, Secretary Lane was on the screen. “How can I help you, Susan?”
“Madame Secretary, I have found a complication at the grid camp where we updated the video surveillance and would like to discuss it with you on a secure line.”
Margaret looked visibly stunned. Or maybe scared. Susan couldn’t tell how to interpret the reaction.
“Let me switch over to the secure line. Please do the same.”
In a matter of seconds, they were back. Secretary Lane was now in an office by herself, as was Susan. “Please give me all the details,” she said.
How should I start?
Susan collected her thoughts. Every word and every sentence had to be impeccably constructed. Her whole career could be on the line.
“Madame Secretary, I was having lunch and was thinking about the Interstate security.”
“As you should, grid camp security is less important. I only gave it first so you could start with something easy.”
“Yes, ma’am. Well, I was thinking about what we did at the Nashville camp, and I did some follow-up during my lunch break. I pulled up the camp security dashboard and looked for anomalies. Long story short, I found a guy who seems to have escaped the camp at the exact same time the video surveillance went down.”
“How did you find this person?” Margaret asked. Her face showed no emotion.
Great poker face. I need a great poker face too.
The next few minutes could determine the rest of Susan’s life in the government.
“Well, there were several anomolies but this man, named Thomas, hadn’t used his exercise equipment for a week even though he had a history of using it every few days.”
“Thomas, you say?” Margaret asked.
She sounds almost giddy about this. Weird.
“Yes, ma’am. Thomas. I sent a robot
butler to open his door and saw improvised machinery in the room. There was a machine on his bed that gave off his thermal profile to trick the IR sensors. There was a robot that logged online for him, and a gadget on his toilet to flush it and pull down nutrients. The guy had clearly been helped in the escape.”
“Well, we have to find this man,” Margaret said. “Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Susan. We will have to find this man and bring him to justice. I’m afraid that if this gets out then it might ruin your career. Since you were the one that changed the video surveillance maintenance schedule, it would be difficult to argue that you weren’t somehow to blame.”
Except that I wasn’t. You were, you manipulative...
“Yes, ma’am,” Susan replied.
“But don’t worry about that at all. I will help you in this and I won’t let you lose your job. You are too valuable to the NSA. I’m just really thankful that you brought this to my attention and didn’t try to sweep it under the rug.”
Susan gulped but her throat was dry. Every word said by Margaret was true. Her career was on the line and only Margaret could save her. She had read about government corruption her entire life but had never experienced anything like this.
A perfect setup.
Margaret committed the crime but everyone on the outside would believe it was Susan. If Margaret helped her, they were covering up a crime. No matter what Susan does now, she loses. There was no choice to be made, unless she wanted to give up everything. She thought of Sofia.
If I go to jail for this, she’ll go to some orphanage. Or worse, Alcatraz. God, help me!
“Madame Secretary, I so appreciate your help on this matter. Please let me know what I should do.”
Margaret smiled. It was a smile that made Susan’s stomach turn sour. “Well, for starters, let’s find a list of every known underground railroad within 200 miles of Nashville. Use the Interstate security system to look for any anomolies discovered last Friday night between the hours of midnight and 8 am on Saturday. Look for anything out of the ordinary. If this Thomas escaped, he either went on foot or he went by vehicle. If by vehicle, the Interstate security might have picked something up. If on foot, then local police may be helpful. Contact the police chief in Nashville. Give her some information about the situation but keep it vague and let her know it’s Top Secret. See if you can get access to her armed drones to take on missions around the area. Use the drones to fly over the UR sites.”
Escape The Grid: Volume 1 Page 18
