Freedom (7 page)

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 you 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.”

Sebeck glanced at Price, who just shrugged. Sebeck turned back to the guy. “Trust me, you don’t want them.” With that he headed off in the direction of the Thread.

Price followed, but then glanced back at the man, gesturing at the guy’s invisible data. “Go easy with that Viagra prescription, Joe. It’s potent stuff.”

The man stopped cold as his girlfriend cast a puzzled look toward him. “Joe, do you know those guys?”

“
T
hat’ll be fourteen thirty-nine.” Pete Sebeck frowned. “That’s not right.”

He faced a lanky teenager in an ill-fitting franchise smock—one of the innumerable conscripts of the retail world. The kid glanced down at his computer screen and shrugged. “That’s what it is, sir. Fourteen thirty-nine.”

Sebeck leaned in against the counter. “Kid, I got a number two combo, and a number nine combo. What does that add up to?”

The cashier looked down at his computer screen. “Fourteen thirty-nine.”

“Stop looking at the screen and just
think
for a second.” He pointed at the wall-mounted menu. “How could a number two combo, at three ninety-nine, and a number nine combo, at five ninety-nine, add up to fourteen thirty-nine?”

“Sir, I’m just telling you what it is. If you don’t want them both—”

“Of course I want them both, but you’re not getting rid of me until you do the math.”

“I’m not trying to get rid of you, I’m just telling you that it’s fourteen thirty-nine.” He swiveled the screen so Sebeck could see it.

“It doesn’t matter what—Look, you’ve hit the wrong key or something.”

“You’re forgetting sales tax, sir.”

“No, I’m not forgetting sales tax. It shows sales tax
there
.” He pointed. “Listen, I want you to use your own mind for a second and think about this. Forget the machine.”

“But—”

“Three ninety-nine plus five ninety-nine is what?”

The kid started looking at the screen again.

“Listen to me! Don’t look at the screen. This is easy. Just round it up to four bucks plus six bucks—that’s ten bucks—then take away two pennies—that’s nine ninety-eight. Right?”

“You’re forgetting sales tax.”

“Kid, what’s five percent sales tax on ten bucks?”

“Sir—”

“Do it for me.”

“I don’t—”

“Do it! Just do it, goddamnit!” His shout echoed in the tiled restaurant.

People in the restaurant suddenly stopped talking and started watching what seemed to be an altercation.

“What is five percent sales tax on ten bucks?”

The kid started tapping at the machine. “I’ll need a manager to clear this.”

“Kid, do you really want machines doing all your thinking for you? Do you really want that?”

A balding assistant manager with a muscular frame emerged from the kitchen door. His name tag read “Howard.” “Is there a problem here?”

“Yeah, Howard, the kid has the price wrong, and I’m trying to get him to do the math.”

“And what did you order?”

“I ordered a number two and a number nine.”

The manager looked at the screen. “Okay, that’s fourteen thirty-nine.”

Howard was lucky Sebeck no longer carried a Taser.