H-17 [part five: last stop on the tiny house tour]

mada (63)in #fiction • 8 years ago (edited)

A fictional story about radical transparency, societal complexification, and all of the weird stuff that might happen when total system instability meets everyday life in a high tech world.

(If you're just tuning in, consider checking out part one, part two, part three, and part four of H-17 before reading this section.)

"What is that?" asked Yoshi, pointing to a chainlink fence that framed a box - a few meters across - which stood on the edge of the federal building's manicured courtyard. "I don't know," replied Abigail. "We've got like two hours before our appointment. Let's check it out."

As they approached, they could see that there was a man in the cage. A small plastic sign informed them that the cage was a 'free speech zone'. The man, wearing a heavy coat and stocking cap against the chilly wind, came to attention upon noticing their curiosity. "Welcome to my free speech zone," he said amicably.

"What is this? Yoshi asked the man. "Is this art? Did you do something wrong?"

"Ha!" the man in the cage laughed. "No. I wanted to organize a demonstration, but this is the only place my permit allows me to speak my mind in public. And I guess no one else showed up because of the weather."

"So what are you protesting?" asked Abigail, more to be nice than out of genuine curiosity.

"The lollipop economy," replied the protester, brandishing a stick with a large yellow circle painted on a plexiglass square affixed to its end. "Let me tell you about it," he said, focusing on Yoshi after noting the familiar signs of apathy in Abigail's expression.

"Imagine a company with a monopoly on lollipop manufacturing," he began theatrically. "Let us call them Sucker Maker inc. Now imagine that lollipops are treated by the government as currency. In order to pay taxes or fees associated with living in the country, you must provide the government with suckers or be taken from your home by soldiers and put in a cage. Eventually, every good or service in this lollipop economy must be assigned a sucker-value if it is to be exchanged.

But Sucker Maker inc does not give away the lollipops it manufactures. Instead, it loans these lollipops to preferred distributors, who then distribute the suckers according to which person or business is likely to be the best at obtaining the lollipops exchanged for goods and services throughout the economy by other people or businesses. There are never enough suckers for everyone to transact business and pay taxes and pay interest on the loans that initially put the lollipop-currency into circulation. So do you really think, given these conditions, that the solution to our current problem is to demand the manufacture of more suckers?"

While the man was speaking, several people walked by the free speech zone without pausing.

"You have funny customs here," Yoshi commented.

"Well, what do you think?" asked the protester.

"So that's supposed to be a giant lollipop?" asked Abigail while pointing at the wordless protest sign. "It sort of looks like a condom-on-a-stick."

The man laughed. "Maybe. It was the best lollipop I could come up with. But do you understand the analogy - that we all have to pay the banks for the privilege of using the money they create?"

"Oh, we understand it," Abigail said. "More than you even know. Matter of fact, we're trying to fix it. By the way, you forgot to mention that the sale of treasury bonds also creates new lollipops. As do some insurance and other investment mechanisms. My question for you is: what do you be recommend be done about it?"

The protester blinked. And blinked again. Finally, he responded, "Well, there are lots of people that think we should go back to the gold standard. But gold creates similar problems as lollipops, which is to say private industries effectively taxing all commerce. Others say we should nationalize the big banks, but the financial sector already controls its government regulators so I doubt that'd actually change anything except in name. Honestly? I think we should move to a currency backed by an index of all property, goods and services in circulation. Sort of like the gold standard, but where everything of value is treated like gold."

"Ha! This is just what we are trying to do!" exclaimed Yoshi. "If you come out of your cage of freedom, we will give you information about our synner's exchange."

"Real value exchange ledger," corrected Abigail. "Adapted from one of synopticon's ideas. But we're NOT calling it a synners' exchange."

After the dramatic meeting with his former NSA boss, the first thing that Rupert Connelly did was spend a day converting the list Sharp had given him to an electronic CSV file that was easy to work with. Then he drove to Boston, where Edith Chen was overseeing the sizeable cluster of TAOnet nodes she'd sponsored into existence - and SkyFuing her growing paranoia regarding the spectre of Synner infiltration to the other company executives at regular intervals.

Arriving just past sunset, Rupert stood at the unmarked front door of the renovated fish cannery out of which Chen worked and waved to a plastic bubble that he assumed held a security camera. After a couple of minutes, the door opened and a young man carrying a large box overflowing with geometric bits of plastic came out and nearly bumped into him.

"Excuse me," said Connelly, "I'm Dr Rupert Connelly here to see Dr Chen."

"Oh. What are you doing out here? She's inside," replied the young man over his shoulder while hurrying off.

The steel door closed before Rupert could grab its edge. There was no door handle. He was about to try knocking when he got a hunch, and instead placed his hand flat over the plastic bubble. The door opened slowly, and he stepped through and into an expansive work area that he recognized from Edith Chen's SkyFu feeds. The executive herself sat at a computer terminal about thirty feet into the organized chaos of monitors, tables, lab equipment, and projects in varying stages of completion. She was looking at him and smiling. "Dr Connelly," she said as he approached, "I would say it's a surprise to see you, but you stood around outside looking confused for long enough that the surprise is already wearing off."

Connelly chuckled. "Are we live?" he asked. "There's something I need to talk to you about. To bring to the board, actually, but I'd rather you hear it and double-check my information before it gets shared with the whole world. It's about the Synopticon infiltration of TAOnet you've been bringing up recently."

"I'll reconnect shortly. This should be good," Chen said to a computer before terminating her open SkyFu session. Turning to Connelly, she asked, "What is it? You must have dug up something important or you would have at least called before dropping by. Is Kyle Trake a Synopticon agent?"

Commandeering a nearby office chair, Connelly tried to remember the exact words he had rehearsed for the meeting. And came up short.

"Dr Chen, I'm not really cut out for this sort of thing," he improvised. "First off, Mr Trake is no secret enemy agent. That NSA guy Steve Sharp used Trake's node to help Project Causeway along unbeknownst to him or anyone in our company. He also used me - and you - to launch an NSA operation from TAOnet main. The whole 'criminals exposed' leak site is an NSA job, and we helped with this job. But if I or maybe anyone at TAOnet comes right out and says that, we could be arrested and jailed for threatening national security by exposing state secrets."

Chen frowned. "Well, I guess that's not quite as bad as the threat of having our whole company branded a terrorist organization. But it compromises everything we stand for to sit on this," she said slowly.

"I know. And that's just the first part of what I learned. The rest is, well, the rest is more complicated," said Connelly. "It concerns Sharp's reason for involving TAOnet in this thing at all. He believes that their 'criminals exposed' site will be taken down sooner rather than later, perhaps by a hostile force. He told me that TAOnet was the only organization that he could find with computer systems advanced enough to get the leak site launched that hadn't been compromised by either Synopticon or this other unknown hostile force that is apparently even more dangerous than the Synners."

"So what are you saying? Is TAOnet main now a target for some new terrorist group? Has this one asshole spy put at risk all we've done? And what happened to shedding the inefficiency and corruption that comes along with keeping secrets where business and technology are concerned?"

Having never before heard his colleague edge so close to shrill, Connelly rushed to finish the explanation. "Listen, this other hostile force is embedded just like Synopticon was before H-17. But they're not ideologues. They've been around a lot longer, without a clear agenda, covering each other's tracks. The thing is, Sharp used his position to uncover those tracks and scatter them in with the mountain of data in the government-run 'criminals exposed' site without anyone noticing. He says it's only a matter of time before someone in this embedded hostile force figures out what he's done, at which point the site will probably be shut down. As insurance against this eventuality, he's given me what he has on this embedded force. He also told me that he managed to hide a backup in our big system - and our people obviously haven't found this yet."

"Hmm," Chen pronounced, "Sharp had to know you wouldn't keep this quiet once he told you. So what are we talking about here? A media campaign? Leave it to the lawyers?" She began to think aloud, "If we know who not to trust then we can figure out who can be trusted and simply leave it to them. Why didn't Sharp do that already? Is there something you're not telling me?"

There was a great deal he was not telling her. "You had better just take a look at the information I was given. In fact, I was hoping we could go through it together - maybe even get Kyle Trake in on it, since he was duped alongside us - and then present what we find to the rest of the board once we've put together a clear picture. From where I stand, this thing could cause problems for the company as a whole, so we should all get on the same page."

Appearing mollified, Chen relaxed her tone. "Are you proposing to foot the bill for bringing Trake in? Because I don't want to pay for it," she said. "And I'm going to be interviewed by Tiny House Lifestyles in two hours. So we should dig in until then and see where that leaves us. You can plug in at any of these terminals."

"Two humans approaching. They do have an appointment," said an intercom voice that Connelly recognized from a movie as belonging to a spaceship.

"Let them in," said Chen loudly, startled out of a rapt study of the computer screen before her.

Connelly, emerging from a similar state, began laughing. "So that plastic bubble outside the door that I pressed to get in here...?"

"Is just a basic camera. I gave the command to let you in when I saw you treat it like a hand scanner," answered Chen, smiling. "The footage is probably trending on reality taolavision as we speak. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got an interview. You're welcome to keep working through it."

Standing up, she moved towards the door, calling out, "over here," to the pair that had just entered the building.

Edith Chen's 'tiny house' was an elevator apartment that hung against the high warehouse ceiling far overhead most of the time. It took several minutes to lower the novel apartment to ground level for the occasion, during which time Yoshi filmed it in the background of Abigail's interview with the popular businesswoman. They finished the segment with a brief look around the elegant, sparsely furnished efficiency home. It was by far the most interesting scene the couple had captured for what had become their online magazine.

Afterwords, while Chen patiently held the button that returned her apartment to its usual out-of-the-way position at a snail's pace, their featured subject asked, "how has your tiny house tour been going? It seems like quite an adventure."

"You could say that," said Abigail. "I mean, it's been great and all, but do you know how hard it is to park a semi truck? Or try to get a meal with robocoins anywhere these days?"

"I can only imagine," the older woman replied sympathetically. "But I do know of an ATM nearby that will still let you pull cash from robos. The exchange rate is wretched, but it's something. How long are you in Boston?"

Glancing at Yoshi - who shrugged mildly in response - Abigail said, "Honestly, we have been considering ending the tour here. It costs us about a dollar a mile to keep it going, and we've sort of been looking for a good place to park for a while."

"Dr Chen," Yoshi broke in, "I know this is not the correct time to discuss it, but we would like to know if you would consider sponsoring our formation of a new TAOnet node."

The TAOnet executive frowned, studying the pair carefully.

"We have a plan that we think any TAOnet executive would be interested in, but came to you first because you're so involved with the nodes you sponsor. I mean - just look at this place. You've got a whole cluster of nodes working out of here, and that's the kind of thing we want to be a part of," Abigail elaborated.

Chen saw Connelly walking up behind the couple while Abigail spoke.

"Sorry to interrupt your, uh, interview Dr Chen," said Connelly with forced neutrality, "but I think you had better come have a look at this."

"Abigail. Yoshi. This is Dr Rupert Connelly. Send me your proposal along with the interview when you're done editing it. But for now, please show yourselves out. There are matters I must attend to."

They walked over to the station where Connelly had continued to work during Chen's interview. Once there, he pointed to his computer and asked, "Can we get this up on a big screen? That would make it easier to show you what I've found."

"Here," she answered, moving to connect a retractable cable whose end was hanging loose above his workstation. "What am I looking at?"

"I plugged the little database we just made into an analytics engine that maps out the seventy one hundred profiles in relation to each other, and fit the resultant network to our larger social, business and governance network maps - highlighting the portions of these that were only recently made visible by the H-17 leaks. Then I pulled up every person connected by two or fewer edges to our target group, and rendered a new map," he explained while waiting for the image on his monitor to appear. "Here - that's what your looking at," he said as the picture came into focus on the half-wall nearest them.

"So what's got you so worked up," Chen asked. "It looks like any other network."

"It is like any other network," Conelly agreed. "But now check out what happens when I hide the organizational data that wasn't public before H-17. See? The people on that list stop looking like an identifiable group."

"Interesting, Chen commented. "What else?"

"So watch what happens when I plug in a map of the relationships amongst this group using linkages mined from the 'criminals exposed' site. See? It becomes a cohesive network again," Connelly demonstrated.

"I see," Chen replied. "And you said Sharp told you that NSA data on these people was being scrubbed; that he covertly collected it, then personally made sure it got in with everything else in the 'criminals exposed' database?"

"That's right," affirmed Connelly. "So now check out what happens when I reintroduce the organizational data from the rest of the H-17 leaks, and then rearrange things to put the scrubbed NSA stuff on one side of our group and the rest of the leak data on the other. Notice anything odd?"

"It looks like a standard bow tie," Chen said. "With our group at the core. I guess that makes sense. It supports what Sharp told you, in any case."

"Right. But that's not why I interrupted you," he clarified. "Here - watch what happens when I return to the previous view, and then reintroduce the usual social, business and governance maps that have been public all along. We're back to it looking like a loosely connected group spread across the much larger scheme of things. There's something weird about this, though. Watch what happens when I highlight all the parts of this overall network that Synopticon targeted. This part will take a bit to load."

Edith Chen started to understand where he was going with this as the little lines and dots around the other dots representing the group they were looking at began changing color. "Can you zoom in on a segment?" she asked. "Any one will do."

Connelly wordlessly obliged. As a new graph containing just a few hundred nodes began to render, Chen's hunch was confirmed. "Hmm," she said. "So what we have is a short-list of the people whose business Synopticon has in its crosshairs. But if Sharp was telling the truth, and he isn't working with Synopticon -? Hold on. From everything we know, Synopticon had no idea who they were targeting. They focused exclusively on where resources were being used in ways that their model showed would cause a future crisis, right? "I've been reading up on it, and their propaganda is all just window dressing. Their real goals appear to have nothing to do with politics or ideology - but instead with forcing a shift in how the total system directs human energy. So what we're looking at now is the - what? - the group most directly opposed to such a shift? The people driving the system towards crisis? I don't get it. Synopticon are the bad guys. But this group is more than ten times the size of Synopticon's original membership, and - according to the files you brought - they're definitely the bad guys too. So where does that leave us?"

"Somewhere in the middle of a conflict we want no part of, I suppose," said Connelly. "And with some uncomfortable choices to make. We've definitely got to bring the rest of the board in on this; the sooner the better."

"I agree," said Chen. "And the lawyers. But before we do anything, I want to compare this - I don't know. Shadow puppeteer network? - to our people, and make sure that our company is as independent from them as it from the Synopticon group."

"Umm, uh, excuse me, Dr Chen?" said Abigail from behind them.

Startled, Chen and Connelly turned to face Abigail and Yoshi, who had apparently not shown themselves out.

"I know you said we were done and it's not really any of our business, but, well, when we heard what you were talking about, we stayed. Because it sort of is our business. Do I understand right - that the 'criminals exposed' leak site is run by our own government?" Abigail pressed.

"And how is that your business?" asked Chen, unsure how to interpret this strange couple's actions.

"We want to create the resource exchange system described by the Synopticon group. She - indicating Abigail with a gesture - unintentionally helped them with their research, and in the process realized that their exchange is a good idea," explained Yoshi. "If what you said is true, and the NSA is behind one of the leak sites, it validates one of our assumptions. We interpret this as a signal of the possibly that the exchange could eventually work."

"I thought you wanted to form a TAOnet node," said Chen.

"We do," answered Abigail quickly. "But that's just the beginning of what we want to do. Synopticon screwed up the economy - well, more than it was already - but some of their ideas for fixing it make sense. Most of these are pretty close to the way that TAOnet already operates, so forming a node and working with you seems like the best place to start."

"One human approaching. Identified as Austin Finch," said an intercom voice, interrupting the awkward conversation.

"Let him in," Edith Chen said, loudly and by force of habit. Then, returning her focus to Yoshi and Abigail, she said to the couple, "Okay. You've proven your tenacity. If and when you send me a proposal, I promise to take it seriously. But now you've really got to go."

"Regrettably, Mr Sharp will not be joining us. The offshore NSA facility administering the 'criminals exposed' operation was attacked. Critical equipment was destroyed and an undersea cable was cut. We lost our honeypot, but the NSA keeps good records and does not believe any critical data to be unrecoverable. We've identified a submarine used in the attack as the product of an engineer well known to the DEA's South American contacts, and believe an organized crime network is responsible. They are not going to get away with this. Agent Sharp is on site, assessing the damage. Someone will be appointed to take his place on the taskforce before our next meeting," said Eustice Tarbrook to the assembled group.

Steven Blake picked up the topic. "The official story," he said, "is that we successfully took down a Synopticon terrorist stronghold. It has been leaked to the press that seal team six pulled it off."

Harding Shaw spoke up. "NSA is helping us set up a new, more secure total information database to replace what was lost with the takedown of 'criminals exposed'. The new site will not be open to the public, so we will no longer be able to capture data from public interaction with it, but the information is all still there for law enforcement to look at and add to. Should be up and running by our next meeting."

There were eight of them in on this month's informal SkyFu conference. Three academics, a couple of business professionals, a couple of psychics, and Franklin Franklin. The scheduled discussion topic - 'How is synchronicity related to remote viewing?' - had been tabled in favor of talking about the implications of recent events. Namely, the controversy surrounding the 'criminals exposed' website and the revelation of a huge cover up of major banking problems.

"... I guess it wouldn't surprise me if that leak site turned out to have been run by the government and not Synopticon. There were sixty million profiles there - who but the government would even think that there are that many criminals running around? And if there are, maybe too many things are considered crimes? Did you know my wife was profiled there for volunteering at a subversive bookstore?" said Dan Wilson.

"My daughter and all her friends were too - for going to music festivals, mostly. So was I for unexplained travel," commented Adele Fisk. But I think that whoever made the site is less important than what effect it had. Most of my clients have been having unusually lucid dreams. And so have I. Some have started to talk about having very clear dreams or experiences of holding hands with other members of their soul group or cosmic family while heavy winds blow all around them."

"What do you think it means?" asked Robert Trenton. "I may have dreamed something similar a couple of nights ago. From what I've seen in the markets, things are so uncertain that the institutional investors are frozen like deer in headlights. But trading volume is way up because everyone else is reacting to new big news every day. I guess I took the dream as a message to hold tight and see where the chips have fallen once the storm has blown over."

"Maybe we're at the sort of breakdown threshold that preconquest civilizations have been shown to reach when things change too fast for psychosocial norms to catch up," said Franklin. "The best documented example of how that looks came from an anthropologist that didn't have any idea what he was looking at while living with a tribe that holistically broke down over the course of a few weeks. At the time, and although it was happening all around him, he couldn't see it. "It was only later that he came to recognize that a major change had taken place, when he reviewed the pictures and video he took as part of his field work. The problem is, the indicators of that change - widespread insomnia, general disorganization, increased tension within romantic relationships and families, public displays of despondency, and so on - are already extremely common in our culture; to the point where I don't know if they could increase, or if we'd even notice the increase if it happened."

"Has anyone had any aha! moments around these latest events?" asked Thomas Waterhouse. "I know we've talked before about the idea that new communications technologies might be a necessary stepping stone on the path to our species becoming increasingly telepathic. And, of course, if esp became much more common than it already is, it would become pointless or impossible to keep secrets. So maybe these latest events are nature's way of getting us used to the idea? Would it be helpful to try and tap into Source together while we're on this call? I don't know about the rest of you, but I would sure be interested in hearing what comes through."

When no one dissented, Adele spoke up, "do you want to lead it this time, Thomas?"

A few hours later, after a meal and a short nap to settle the conference call in his thinking, Franklin bundled up against the winter and set out for his daily walk while an hour of tepid sunlight yet remained in the day. Last week's heavy snows had almost completely melted by the time this latest cold front blew in. Patches of black ice and clumps of frozen muddy gravel unevenly decorated his neighborhood's roads and sidewalks. Puttering through this urban landscape, he nodded hello to the few other pedestrians he met, and greeted some of his favorite trees by running bare fingers across their frigid bark as he passed.

Some of the people he knew had been significantly impacted by the recent political dramas and market turmoil, but Franklin had found only minor inconveniences in these things so far. His life ran on little enough money that the cash crunch just meant having to walk a mile and stand in line for a couple of hours every week. As long as the web held up well enough that he could continue servicing the contracts he worked, and his bank kept giving him access to a portion of the earnings deposited into his account by automated payroll service when he showed them his passport and allowed his hand to be scanned by one of their new biometric machines, Franklin could at least continue to eat and pay his rent. At some point, he'd noticed that nearly every store he entered now displayed a handmade 'cash only' sign on its door, and he wondered how long it would take for card payment systems to become reliable again.

But these inconveniences, though small to him on the whole, did appear to be piling up rather quickly. And the ecology of his everyday interactions was shifting precipitously. There were far more street beggars in his neighborhood than he ever remembered seeing, and most of these seemed to carry the volatile combination of denial-borne-hope and undifferentiated outrage that marked their poverty as freshly wrought. One of these - a twentysomething man in a short leather jacket, bluejeans, sneakers and a baseball cap despite the frigid temperature - ran across the street to approach Franklin. "Hey! Excuse me. Can I use your phone?" the pauper-in-denial asked when he got to about five feet away.

"I don't have it on me," Franklin said truthfully.

"Then can I get five bucks?" the man asked, agitated, closing the distance between them.

"What do you need?" countered Franklin in a disarmingly familiar tone. "I got no money for you, but maybe I can help anyway."

Abject distress showed in the man's eyes. "How about four bucks?" he pleaded, attempting to avoid eye contact.

Franklin responded without words by stepping around the man. A thought occurred to him after he'd gone a few steps past the beggar. Over his shoulder, Franklin offered the man some unsolicited advise. "Get somewhere warm or you'll probably freeze to death tonight," he said.

By the time Franklin had managed the six blocks between his house and the small cafe where he habitually took refreshment, there had been five such conversations with as many unfamiliar people. In weather like this, more than two such interactions in a week was very unusual. He gave it little thought today beyond recalling the book with the complicated title that Dan Wilson had shared with their discussion group. This work illustrated a contrast between skyrocketing affluence for a few and grim fragmentary destitution for the masses that bore uncanny resemblance to what he now saw taking shape in his own neighborhood.

"Hey Frank. You're not gonna believe what I saw yesterday!" said a familiar voice as Franklin was about to enter the cafe. He turned to see Leland, a street performing pan handler that he'd long been friends with, walking a bicycle towards him on the sidewalk.

"How you doing, Leland? So what happened? What did you see?" he asked.

"A flying saucer. A real one! I was riding my bike out west of the city - where all those big warehouses are - and I saw this little ufo come out of one of the warehouses and take off! I couldn't get a real close look, but I know what I saw. You think it was -?" asked Leland, pointing to the sky. "What do you think they're doing?"

Franklin could tell when the man was pulling his leg, and this did not appear to be one of those times. "Was anyone else around? And how did the thing take off - like a regular plane or more like a helicopter?" he asked.

"It was just me there, and there wasn't anyone around the ufo from what I could see," Leland explained in characteristic, roundabout fashion. "It was dark where I was - by the road - but the area around the warehouse was all lit up with those big street lights. The thing just came out of the side of the building, like it flew right out of one of those big doors that those buildings have for semi-trucks. It sounded like a lawnmower from far away, and I couldn't even see where it went after it zoomed away!"

As he listened, a thought occurred to Franklin. "Do you know exactly where you were? Can you show me on a map?" he asked.

In the end, it was Rupert Connelly that agreed to sponsor the formation of Abigail and Yoshi's new TAOnet node. Along with executive sponsorship, forming a TAOnet node required a minimum of three people and demonstration of productive capabilities - typically accomplished by adding something useful to the company's headquarters. Connelly put up the money for what equipment was necessary to bring their manufacturing node's capabilities up to the minimum standard and cover their expenses for six months. Tate Redmond, a freshly-minted engineer that had been hanging around Chen's warehouse as an unpaid intern, became their node's requisite third person. This arrangement allowed Connelly to return to Taonet headquarters with a fresh team of people and got everybody out of Dr Chen's hair.

For a demonstration project, they decided to make an animated sundial for one of the odd-shaped spaces scattered throughout TAOnet's desert oasis. They could mostly use materials already on-hand for this, and needed only to buy a moderate quantity of nitinol wire and some other odds and ends to make it work. The project would be inexpensive, technically challenging, and novel enough to perhaps become popular with those that habitually watched the company's deliberately entertaining surveillance feeds. To add to the novelty, the sculpture that reshaped itself with the passage of time during daylight hours would only be referred to as an 'environmentally regulated solar thermal actuator matrix' or 'erstam' until it was ready to go, and would be assembled out-of-sight to maximize the theatrical impact of its public unveiling.

Connelly supervised the new node's use of the underground special projects area's prototyping workshop while they pulled together the demonstration. In practice, this meant that Yoshi, Abigail and Tate were largely unsupervised. Connelly had been visibly shaken by the news that the 'criminals exposed' website had been taken down, particularly after learning that this event was reported in the news as a successful anti-terror operation against Synopticon. He had of course saved every part of the now-defunct site that pertained to the list Sharp had given him, and split his time between examining this material in the special projects area and conferring with other TAOnet executives regarding the implications of his findings.

Since Sharp had indeed followed through with protecting the company from any legal liability associated with its role in launching 'criminals exposed', the Board was primarily concerned with how to make the best use of the new market data produced by Connelly's analysis. Whatever else the list may have been, it was valuable because it exposed what was essentially a previously unknown and influential trading bloc across several industries that TAOnet had node clusters operating in. When combined with new corporate and government data made available by the Synopticon leaks, the picture of the business climate that emerged was somewhat different from the environment they had planned for.

It took a few weeks for the Board to hammer out how TAOnet would integrate the new information - mostly via SkyFu, with many nodes watching and occasionally messaging in their two cents. During this time, business carried on more or less as usual. The company's software nodes pieced together and released an extremely popular application called StalkerStalker in response to crowdfunded demand, which sifted through social media and communications companies' records to generate lists of who, exactly, was watching who and how often. Several manufacturing nodes had organized into a virtual assembly line cluster to begin turning out hyper-efficient engines of varying types, while most other manufacturing nodes were busy mining the leaked tech data for comparably useful new devices to make.

As 2017's spring equinox approached ...