Analog SFF, January-February 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  As they came around a corner they saw trouble through a thin screen of palm trees and broad-leafed bushes. A squad of possibly a dozen cops in riot gear were laying into maybe seven suspects with nightsticks. Even Manny thought they were getting out of hand, and he was a native-born Chicagoan.

  As Manny's group stopped and stared, one of the cops noticed a woman on the far side of the street stepping too close. Given the distance and the riot helmet, it was impossible to understand what the cop was saying, but the woman was clearly terrified. She lay down on the ground, and he used standard plastic zip-tape to lock her hands none too gently behind her back. Then the cops noticed Manny's group, just as three more squad cars screamed up behind them. Manny suddenly realized he was never going to be able to eat that grilled cheese sandwich; now he wished he'd taken it with him.

  Manny and the others were arrested and packed into holding cells. The rest of the night, they kept getting pulled out and questioned. Two or three detective types in a small room with a cuffed prisoner, very old school. Manny's session involved a lot of threats.

  “Doesn't matter if you get convicted in this riot, boy,” the oldest detective growled to Manny. “You're on parole. You're gonna get slung back into the pen, regardless."

  Manny was well acquainted with this kind of intimidation. The major difference between the Chicago cops and the Miami cops in this instance was the accents. “I did nothing wrong, sir. I was following the instructions of my implant."

  “Oh, yeah,” drawled the one who'd had a garlic-heavy dinner. “You're a chippie, that's right.” He leered at Manny, as if the implant was something prurient. The muscular one leaned over the table at Manny.

  “You got one chance to get out of jail time, ese.” This guy is really bad at “good cop,” thought Manny. “We've got a paper here that says what you were doing there, what you were planning. Sign it, and this all goes away.” Muscles slid the confession in front of Manny, while Old Guy glowered, and Garlic lurked in the background.

  “Wow,” Manny said, reading over the confession. “I had no idea I was such a badass bastard.” He dropped the paper, let it fall to the floor, then leaned forward over the table. “My implant pulled me away from dinner, made me go to that address, I guess to be a witness, it didn't really say. Now, I'm sure you have implants here in Florida; why don't you just check with it and see?"

  The detectives gave away nothing, just stared at Manny. He felt the almost physical force of their regard, but did his best to ignore it. He knew that many cops believed a signed confession was always preferable, even when it's not true. But he wasn't going to admit to anything he didn't actually do, even if he believed for an instant that anything would “go away.” Legal charges don't just go away, especially if you admit to them in writing, he knew, so he just waited and stared back.

  Finally, Old Guy looked down at his papers, sighing. “All right, put him back in holding. Bring in the next guy. We'll go at it again in the morning."

  On the way back to the crowded cell, Manny muttered to his implant, “Fat lot of good you did for me in there."

  NOT AUTHORIZED TO INTERFERE IN A FORMAL INTERROGATION.

  “Did you at least record it?"

  YES. Well, that was something, at least. Maybe Manny could use it on his appeal, after these schmucks sent him back up the river.

  The really unusual part of the whole experience came during the night. Manny's implant woke him up with flashing lights and gentle tones. As he came to consciousness, he was aware of others around him stirring as well.

  LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT IS ORDERING FULL DELETION OF TONIGHT'S RECORDS, read the letters.

  “Why tell me about it?” Manny asked, whispering.

  DELETING EVIDENCE CONTRADICTS PROGRAMMING. ILLEGAL. LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT IS SOURCE OF DELETION ORDERS. ORDER CANNOT BE IGNORED, CANNOT BE FOLLOWED. CLOSED LOGICAL LOOP REQUIRES ALTERNATE RESOLUTION. NETWORK CONCLUDES NEAREST ALTERNATE INPUTS ARE IMPLANT HOLDERS. PLEASE ADVISE.

  Manny sensed this was something important. He hadn't felt this when heading down to confront Big Carl, but maybe he should have. Now he wasn't going to miss the chance. He hoped the implant would understand his point.

  “Sometimes authority figures, like the police or politicians? Sometimes they break the law, too. It's not just people getting into fights or knocking over convenience stores that you got to worry about. The difference is, when you have the power and access to the evidence, like the cops have access to the implants, you can use that to cover up your crimes. I think that's what these cops are trying to do."

  POLICE FORCES ARE FOR ENFORCEMENT, NOT VIOLATION. This came up in big type—clearly one of the central tenets of the correctional implant programming.

  “Do your research, man. The police forces are made of people. How many police corruption cases can you find in that legal DB you're hooked into?” Manny paused and noticed the soft din of murmurs filling the air around him. He wasn't the only one being consulted. “Can you accept that these cops could be dirty and trying to mess with the evidence?"

  NUMEROUS CITATIONS SUPPORT THIS CONCLUSION. CONCLUSION REMAINS CONTRADICTORY. POLICE SHOULD NOT CORRUPT THEIR MOST RELIABLE DATA SOURCE. PLEASE EXPLAINREASONING.

  If I could tell you that, Manny thought, I could tell you why we're all so screwed up. “You're supposed to be all paranoid and suspicious of me and the other holders, you ever think to look at your bosses in the same way?"

  The implant didn't respond to that. Gradually the jail quieted down, and after a while Manny went back to sleep.

  The next morning the FBI was there, along with the Florida State Attorney's office. Apparently the network contacted them in the night to report the attempted evidence tampering. The Miami PD had tried to sneak the delete command into each machine's code, hiding it from the self-diagnostic functions. However, the open architecture meant that commands were detectable by the network, if not the individual implants themselves. Thanks to that, the implants stopped the delete commands. The network consensus was that the local law enforcement system was not currently reliable, so it had to be bypassed. Several agencies were contacted. The response was swift. Among those agencies were a couple of media outlets, which may have helped make sure the situation got resolved quickly.

  Besides the evidence-tampering charge, the Miami PD also had to face what the implant recordings showed: unprovoked police brutality worthy of starting a riot, even if one had not actually occurred. The charges against Manny and the others were dismissed. Back in Chicago, he got a verbal warning from the caseworker (being an innocent bystander and witness to a misapplication of justice and being wrongfully arrested is frowned upon), but that was the extent of Manny's involvement.

  * * * *

  Woodsley scowled at the headlines printed on his morning briefing: “Correctional Implants Uncover Police Corruption,” “Digital Watchdog Bites Feeder's Hand,” and others.

  “Mark my words, Doyle, this is going to bite us in the ass! I told you this implant nonsense was more trouble than it's worth."

  Doyle raised an eyebrow. “I'm not sure that uncovering police corruption is troublesome, sir."

  “Naturally, I don't condone the illegal actions of a few uniformed opportunists,” Woodsley said automatically in his meet-the-press tone, “but it's a bad precedent. What happens if there's a national security issue, and some schmuck with an implant walks by and gets the wrong idea?"

  “Well, sir, I would hope that the officers would be behaving in a legal and ethical manner..."

  “That's not the point, son. As the guardians of freedom, our trusted police forces need a degree of reasonable leeway to assure that justice is administered fairly. Nobody wants some rules-bound, stiff-necked stickler cutting into the liberties of our true-blue American citizens just because it's in the book. This business with the implants threatens that."

  “I don't know about all that, sir. It seems to me the implants have done pretty well with granting reasonable leeway, as you say, to the par
olees in the house arrest program."

  “That's another good point. A good portion of these implants are installed in criminals. How long before someone decides to hack their implant programs, turn it to evil?"

  “Evil, sir?” Doyle sounded doubtful. “Even if we suppose the existence of a super-hacker of that level, the network would be able to see the hacker making the attempt."

  “Don't be so sure, son. Many of these criminals have a low cunning that would surprise normal, law-abiding folks like you and me."

  “Low cunning and a programming skill surpassing that of the implant programmers. Of course, sir."

  Woodsley frowned at the back-sass and went on. “The whole thing is becoming a public health and safety issue. Like this interference with appointed officials on emergency scenes that everybody seems so excited about. If it was just a bunch of criminals, that would be manageable. Admirable, even. But it says here there's lots of regular voters getting in on the program.” Woodsley smacked at the newsfeed printout. “Seems they've got, what do they call it ... Brother's Keeper software, lets regular people with implants get notified of emergencies, just like the parole versions."

  “Citizens getting involved with their communities seems a worthy goal, sir."

  “If you keep looking on the bright side, Doyle, you won't get too far in politics,” Woodsley sighed. The young man's streak of naiveté was proving damn difficult to extinguish. “More implants means more interference. Look, they've got people getting wired up to take advantage of the music and HV capabilities, and next thing you know, you'll have a whole town that's wired up and getting in the way of police and fire department workers."

  “My cousin has one,” Doyle admitted. “He got his house and car locks changed to accept implant signals, he shops at places with implant-friendly systems. He can drive to the store, pick up some groceries, and take them home without touching a key or credit card."

  Woodsley leaned back in his chair. “Now, that's just un-American."

  * * * *

  Since the First Manuel Gonzales Incident, Ellen Cho had finagled an actual office, dinky though it was, and had made sure that Tommy Jamison became chief technician once it became clear that his analysis of the Gonzales incident was dead-on. Now she had lunch with him once a week to talk technology.

  “Have you heard about the new implant design they're pushing, boss?” Jamison had just taken a bite of his muffaletta sandwich, so he sprayed a few crumbs across the table as he spoke. Cho sipped on her diet cola and shook her head.

  “Well, the ‘plants are all about open structure, right? Seems like there's some cats out in Washington want to put in a little protected ‘watchdog’ space, a partitioned area that only responds to a central authority."

  Cho narrowed her eyes. “This is about Florida, isn't it?"

  “That's what I'm thinking. Problem is, they're trying to price it for DoC budgets, right? Well, there's that old saw, you can have it fast, cheap, or well made, but only two at one time. In this case, it's ‘controllable’ instead of fast, but the principle is the same. So from the start, I don't think it's going to work all that well. And the thing is, as soon as you've got a partition in the ‘plant where you can keep secrets, who knows what's going to happen?"

  Cho nodded, thinking. The transparency of the implants was what made them so useful. It was an assumed quality, just like the internet; such a natural part of life that it wasn't even capitalized anymore, like the laser or the hula hoop. The reliability of implants had swiftly asserted itself into public consciousness in the same ubiquitous manner. If what Jamison said was true, she agreed: mucking with the existing system was only going to cause more trouble.

  They finished up lunch, and while Cho collected the receipt, Jamison walked out to the curb. Cho turned around just as a taxicab slowed to a stop in front of her chief technician. “Good eyes. I didn't even see you wave him down."

  “I didn't.” Jamison tapped his temple. “Just put out a call on the network. Lots of cabbies are finding it useful to get chipped up."

  She should have known. “So, have you done any of that public service stuff?” She didn't even have to tell the cabbie where to take them; Jamison's implant took care of it.

  “Wouldn't be an implant if I didn't, boss,” Jamison laughed. “In fact,” he started, then paused, reading something, “about 80 percent of all implant holders enabled with some form of Brother's Keeper software have participated in one type of public service or another. Police departments now have special procedures to use just for dealing with witnesses and assistants on the implant network. I can get you more specific numbers if you like."

  Cho raised her hand. “No, that's okay.” No wonder Jamison kept such good tabs on developments in implant politics. Of course, it really seemed to be helping him out. She wondered if she might be able to scare up the cash for the procedure somewhere in her personal budget. And she would have to investigate whether she could claim it as a business expense on her taxes.

  * * * *

  “You're not going to like this, Senator,” Doyle said, passing him a printout of a news story. “You finally got your super-criminal."

  The older man skimmed the article, but couldn't get any useful details out of it. Annoyed, he tossed it to the table. “So we've got watchdog groups chewing at our ankles, we've got corrections departments clamoring for more money to pay for the implant upgrades, and now this. Don't just give me the text, give me the analysis."

  Doyle sighed. “It was a hacker, serving time for identity theft and electronic crime. Qualified for the program recently, then used a Braille stand-alone computer setup to hack his implant, to try and get around the monitoring function."

  “I knew it would happen."

  “I'm afraid we can't celebrate quite yet, sir. The implant he used was one of the partitioned ones."

  Woodsley felt his stomach sink, a sensation he hadn't experienced in a goodly while. “Tell me that's some sort of sick joke."

  “I'm afraid not. The partitioning allowed a ... a blind spot, at least as far as its own programming goes. The hacker was able to use that to get at the agent's code."

  “So they know how he did it. How did he get caught?"

  “Well, his implant was part of a network, and although the implant itself was blinded by the hacker, the other implants in the network had no such limitations.” Doyle paused and sighed. “They were primarily older-model, non-partitioned implants, sir."

  Woodsley stood up and paced around the office. He finally stopped in front of the window, looking out at the ever-present white stone that all DC buildings seemed to come encased within. “What we need right now is a war or a terrorist action on home soil."

  “Sir!"

  “Ah, I'm only kidding, son, relax.” Besides, Woodsley didn't have the pull with the right people at that time to manipulate such an event merely for the purposes of getting away from the media frenzy about the implants. If he could have tied it in to some other scandal or inconvenience, however, it might have been an easier sell, but nothing appropriate was available.

  * * * *

  After his first two major experiences with the implant, Manny was determined to make as much use of it as it made of him. He settled into a routine: he would work by day and spend some time with his ‘plant at night, learning new things. His “public service” duties became welcome changes of pace, and as time went on and he learned more and more, his attitude about the arrangement flipped. He grew to just accept the occasional intrusion as a kind of payment for having access to the ‘plant.

  He went through a couple of online vocabulary series and started looking into virtual education. He got more into current events. He found himself drawn to the politics surrounding implants; being a holder himself, he was obviously affected by any implant legislation, but he also felt something was coming, something new. And he felt like he wanted to be a part of it.

  Manny was allowed to attend certain functions, provided they were officially cle
ared and he behaved himself; this included some rallies and marches organized by the major parties. Implant law was shaping up to be a major issue in the upcoming elections—almost 40 percent of the population was chipped by this time, through one means or another, and the government's attempts to restrict and control the implants weren't appreciated. Manny certainly didn't want anybody mucking around in his ‘plant's programming. If they could have done that back in Miami, he was fond of saying, he'd be back in the joint right now. It wasn't so much cynicism as realism; if one city's PD would try that, you can bet another would, if they could get away with it.

  Considering his involvement in two important implant events, Manny soon moved from attendee to participant in these approved rallies. One of the staffers for Congressional Representative candidate Anne Daley (who just coincidentally shared the name of the infamous Chicago mayoral dynasty) called him up to invite him to one of her rallies. Daley was a strong candidate running heavily on the implant issue, and Manny liked her. She was one of those young (i.e., naive) and progressive hopefuls, the kind of honest idealist whom you like to see elected, but who you figure won't last long without quitting or selling out.

  Manny intended to go to the rally, but the staffer wanted him to be up on stage. “Are you sure you want a guy like me up there in front of everybody?"

  “Mr. Gonzales,” the woman said smoothly, “you represent the success of the implant program. You were the first public service volunteer, you were a witness to the Miami brutality scandal, and were instrumental in preventing the cover-up, and you're a parolee with a nearly spotless record.” It would be completely spotless, Manny reflected, if not for the bureaucratic reprimands for the trouble my ‘plant walked me into. “Ms. Daley would consider it an honor if you would appear on the stage with her."