Night Talk (4 page)

Like most young people today, he probably was more comfortable communicating with people through an LCD screen on a computer or cell phone than face-to-face. But from the calls into the program it was obvious Ethan was also bright, inquisitive—an idealist who opposed Big Brother spying down on everyone from the electronic cloud.

Greg said, “There had been a noticeable difference in Ethan's calls during the past few weeks, as he became more angry and paranoid about what he claimed was not just the government's efforts to invade our privacy by tracking everything we do, from social media to shopping at the supermarket and what we order at the drive-through window, but to use that information against us.”

As he parted with Soledad and headed for his apartment it occurred to Greg that the turning point for Ethan had been about a week ago when he'd started ranting about dark forces out to get him. He cussed during a call and that was when Soledad had done a profanity block and barred him from the show.

How it got from there to a nosedive from the twelfth floor was a puzzle.

Deep in thought, he didn't notice the white van behind him.

 

6

“
I'm going to kill you.”

The man in the white van behind Greg was alone, but he spoke the words aloud—a whispered thought. He had been pacing the man on the street, keeping the van far enough back so as not to appear obvious, the rage in him building. God had told him to follow Greg.

His name was Leon and he killed people. He used to kill because he was criminally insane. He was still crazy but brain surgery, cutting-edge “biohacking” in which his brain's programming was altered, had harnessed his killer rages so the lethal impulses could be controlled. Like a rabid pit bull on a choke chain, now he only killed on command.

Leon believed that a “Voice” in his head was giving him commands from God.

Voices, those of his father's, teachers and strangers, had always been significant in his life. The voices would send him into rages that got him convicted of murders and institutionalized in a high-security mental facility as criminally insane. But those voices no longer spoke to him.

He first heard the Voice of God's messenger when he awoke in a hospital after having brain surgery. He was told that the surgery was necessary because he had a brain tumor and had been transferred from the institute for the criminally insane to a surgical facility for the operation.

The Voice was louder and clearer in his head than the voices he had heard before the operation.

The Voice told him he was to obey its commands. When he asked if it was God speaking, the Voice said it was God's messenger.

He couldn't tell whether the Voice was male or female. It was just there, neutral, though it was soothing when Leon obeyed and abusive when he didn't. It was generous both about the privileges and rewards Leon got when he did well and with the pain that was inflicted on him when he disobeyed or failed.

After the operation he had not returned to the high-security psychiatric hospital where he had been imprisoned and subjected to around-the-clock lockup in a prison cell. Instead when he recovered from the surgery, he obeyed the Voice's instructions to walk out of the surgery facility. Walk, not escape.

He seemed to be the only person surprised when he put on street clothes that had been provided, walked down hospital corridors and out a side door to a parking area where a van similar to the one he was driving tonight was waiting for him with the motor running and the key in the ignition.

He wasn't aware of it, but all records of his existence had been erased. Birth, school, orphanage, prison, police, court, hospitalization, driving, DNA, fingerprints and all other documentation that he ever existed were destroyed.

He was a nonperson. But he hadn't had much of a footprint on the world anyway, except in the criminal justice system for the trail of violence and rage he had paved. He had never owned a home or even a car that was properly registered; never married or even had a relationship with a woman. He had no friends, no family, no acquaintances and no permanent home since he left the orphanage.

In between jail time he had lived out of a van that had a camp burner, a small mattress, blankets, a few supplies and a lot of used fast food containers—all the comforts of home for a person who kept continuously on the move.

His personal routine had not changed too radically since in his own mind he had become a warrior angel. Most of his meals came from fast food drive-throughs and were eaten in his van or motel room, but that suited him. He was not comfortable going into restaurants because he believed people stared at him and could hear the Voice talking to him. He spent nights in cheap motel rooms that had been rented for him and left unlocked so he didn't have to go into an office and register. When it was time, the Voice directed him to a motel and gave him the room number.

Even laundry was simple for him—every few days he found fresh clothes in the van after he returned from doing errands he'd been instructed to do. The clothes were always the same type, saving him from having to make a decision about what to wear—underwear and a uniform shirt and pants similar to what a deliveryman would wear.

The company name on the uniform was the same as on the van and changed each time he was told to leave a van and get into another.

He had no credit cards. He used cash to buy food and gas. Money was left in the van when clothes were delivered. He never had contact with anyone working for the Voice. Before deliveries were made to the van, he was instructed to leave the van and take a walk. He found the clothes and money when he returned.

The name on his driver's license, the name the van was registered under and the company name on the side of the van were periodically changed. He didn't bother remembering the name on anything, not even the driver's license. The van and names were always changed after he completed an assignment the Voice gave him.

He never questioned why one day he woke up with a clear, authoritative voice in his head that gave him commands and provided for his needs. It was there, it took care of what he required to live day by day, it had the power to gratify his need and inflict pain when he disobeyed.

The Voice hadn't told him the name of the man on the street and he had no curiosity to ask the name or why he was following the man. He had been told to hang back and get a good look at the man. He had his look and now waited for the Voice to tell him if he was to run the man down. His foot on the gas felt antsy. He wanted to run him down, feel the thump as the wheels went over the man. The anticipation fueled the rage building in him.

Even though he hadn't heard the man's voice, he was sure it would remind him of that bastard father who had abused him.

Researchers at the penal psychiatric hospital had investigated his childhood as part of a study to see whether serial killers typically had been abused as children. They discovered many serial killers had been abused, but Leon, who attributed his abuse to his father, had been raised until the age of eight by a single mother with a heavy drug problem and a short life that didn't include a male in the household.

He didn't lie when he told police and doctors that he couldn't control his impulse to kill when he heard the sound of his “father'”s voice, although he admitted he heard other voices in his head besides that of his father. The fact the abuse from his father never happened revealed to the researchers why his rage could be triggered by both men and women. They concluded that when he focused on a person he wanted to kill, he interpreted the person's voice as that of his father, regardless of the sex or age of the victim.

He spent most of his childhood and early adolescence in an orphanage because attempts to get him into foster care all ended with terrified foster parents returning him. By the time he was sixteen he was spending more time in a juvenile detention facility than anywhere else.

His killing state was a great surge of pent-up rage against his target and the world in general, which he released on his victim. Afterward he felt no remorse, empathy or sympathy. Peace and relief, a feeling of well-being, came immediately after he released the fury but lasted only a short time.

He hung back with the van, not approaching the man, because he had not been told to make the kill yet.

He had little patience. Few things captured his attention for long and he was growing impatient waiting for the Voice in his head to give the kill command. As he waited in the van behind the man walking, the rage kept building. There would come a time when he would not be able to control the fury.

 

WE KNOW YOUR FACE

The U.S. government is in the process of building the world's largest cache of face recognition data, with the goal of identifying every person in the country. The creation of such a database would mean that anyone could be tracked wherever his or her face appears, whether it's on a city street or in a mall. Today's laws don't protect Americans from having their webcams scanned for facial data.

Kyle Chayka, “Biometric Surveillance Means Someone Is Always Watching”

Newsweek
, April 17, 2014

 

7

Greg's apartment was on Bunker Hill overlooking Broadway. His walk home took him from the broadcasting studio on Broadway in the Theater District to a strange little railroad that lifted him up to Bunker Hill. It was only a few city blocks from the studio to the railhead. He got out of the show after three in the morning and he usually enjoyed the walk's solitude of closed stores and little traffic after being on his toes for hours but tonight the streets felt gloomy and abandoned.

He had turned off onto a side street that was even more deserted than Broadway when he noticed headlights behind him.

A white van had stopped about a hundred feet behind him. It was the only vehicle in sight. A plumber on an emergency call looking for an address?

The van's brights came on and he turned back to walking as the headlights dimmed.

He usually walked with a lighter step. He stopped and stared at his reflection in the display window of a closed clothing store. He saw a man in his forties who looked grim and severe, scowling and worn at the edges after a rough night. But not as rough as Ethan's had been.

He was tired. No, beyond that. Weary. And ill at ease, as if he expected the next shoe to drop. He scoffed at his own sense of dread, but couldn't shake off the fact that someone in his life, peripheral for sure, had killed himself.

His own beliefs were shaped by what he considered to be fundamental laws of the universe: People have free will. Stupid people act stupidly. Evil people act evilly. Good people try to survive without harming others. Do unto others as they do unto you. Never start a fight, but don't back down from bad people doing bad things. An eye for an eye is a good yardstick by which to measure the administration of justice.

He did not believe that all things could be seen with the eye of science, that science was infallible or that you could find God in a test tube.

He believed that humankind was not alone in the universe, that not all the intelligent life on the planet was human, that visitors from the beyond had come to Earth in ancient and modern times and that the visible world was not the only world that existed.

Most of all he believed in the truth, demanding it and inquiring until the real facts were on the table.

Staring at a mannequin in the window display, he wondered if he was being filmed by a camera in the eye of the dummy. If someone had told him when he was a kid that someday store mannequins would have camera eyes equipped with a facial identification program that told the store salespeople whether he was a returning customer and what his previous purchases were, he'd have thought it was science fiction.

He considered facial recognition as one of the most serious electronic dangers to society and was certain what Ethan's reaction would have been to its uses. The young hacker would have supported his aversion to it and would have sided with him during a heated discussion about the program last week when Greg was a panelist at a Harvard conference in Boston on computers and the future of technology.

On the panel with him were a computer scientist, a programmer and a social network executive. Greg was invited as the sole voice of dissent about the incredible attack on personal privacy the computer age had created.

“It bothers me that I have a Big Brother that's always looking over my shoulder,” Greg told the audience. “As a matter of fact, he's a brother to all of us. One of his nasty little gadgets he's come up with is computer software that identifies a person by viewing their features. Once the person's identity is known, another app gives access to everything available on the Internet about the person in the blink of an eye.

“Facial identification cameras will soon be common wherever I go. Even if it is my first visit to a store, the salespeople will be able to access my history of purchases not only for that store but anywhere I slide a bank card. It irks the hell out of me that a person in a back room at a store watching a computer screen will know what I eat and drink, read and watch, my preference for clothes and cars. It won't be hard to find out how much I earn and who I make love with.

“If I go into a restaurant, I don't want the waiter to know how I like my steak or what kind of tipper I am or who I was dining with last night.”

He went on to tell the audience that the NSA was aiding and abetting the process by capturing millions of facial images from e-mails and other social media posting of pictures. Throw in passport, school and military records, and driver's license pictures and it was pretty much a wrap.

“The agency is not bound by constitutional rules because privacy laws have no express protections for facial recognition data. But it isn't just faces that are being cataloged. Keep in mind that identifying our faces links to an incredible amount of information about each of us—
information that is exposed to strangers.