H-17 [part four: gift card exchange rates]

 

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, and part three of H-17 before reading this section.

Kensington eyed his surroundings warily after being placed on the unfamiliar hardwood floor. Trisha frowned at him, hard, and he trotted off down the hallway as if daring her to engage in comical chase. She declined the invitation, opting instead to turn to Chris and ask, "You sure he won't pee on everything?"

"I'll clean it up if he does. And thanks again. For everything," she said.

"Just don't try to make me eat any worms," Trisha jokingly shot back. "And hey, if I have to get roommates - better the devil you know, right?"

Trisha seemed to be taking Peter's unceremonious breakup text in stride - despite its unhappy financial implications. Chris wondered if the nonchalance would hold after the realities of having a live-in partner and sharing the apartment with said partner's geeky co-workers set in.

Harold came in from outside, then, slowly toting a giant rolling suitcase behind him. "This is the last of them," he said.

Kyle, who had been obscured behind the large metal shelf, poked his face out from behind the bird's nest of cables he was carefully fitting to a stack of servers. "Awesome. The node should be live again by the end of the night," he said.

Can we get a curtain for that thing when you're done?" Trisha asked.

"Not a good idea," Kyle replied. "The node needs to be kept cool when it's running, so we should make sure that plenty of air can circulate around it."

"Well, it's ugly," said Trisha, looking crossly at Chris.

"Curtains could work if we did more active cooling," said Harold. "But that can be loud." "Isn't it water cooled already? What's the problem?" asked Trisha.

Not wanting the discussion to proceed, Chris spoke up. "Well, it's already blocking the window. Let's just put an air conditioner behind it and throw a big sheet over the part we have to look at," she said in her boss voice.

They all shrugged.

"Guess I'll go get settled into my new room then," said Harold.

Franklin glanced around after noticing a text arrive:'We're here. Which one are you?' There was a casually dressed couple in the cafe's entryway looking bewildered. He waved them over to his table, standing to do handshakes. "Yoshi and Abigail? Frank Franklin. Find the place okay?"

Taking their seats, Abigail replied, "No problem. We even found a good parking spot for the night."

"Good. And good to meet you in person," Franklin said. "How's that shipping container in this cold?"

Franklin, who had just scrolled through the now-enormous data-cache directory, said, "Not that I could see. Not in Synopticon main, anyway. But I did just read that we've all been officially ruled non-accomplices by the feds. We had no idea what was really going on, so they're not coming after us letterlisters."

Abigail and Yoshi both visibly relaxed.

"Thank god," said Abigail. "I mean, there were - what? - thirty thousand of us on the letterlist, inadvertently streamlining this fiasco for those Synopticon people. If spamazon turned out to be a terrorist plot, they wouldn't start arresting people for rating products and writing reviews, right? But still, it's a relief."

"No kidding," Franklin agreed. Then laughed out loud as a thought occurred to him. "What we're doing now, though - that's sort of like if spamazon's reviewers kept reviewing even after the company folded."

Yoshi and Abigail both smiled politely and did not laugh. "So where is your office from here?" asked Yoshi.

Franklin gestured to indicate the poorly lit, eccentrically populated room in which they sat.

Abigail gave Yoshi a look. "Sorry. It's just - you're not what we were expecting," she said. "Oh?" said Franklin. Sensing there was something there, he proceeded, "so this is about more than meeting up and taking a few old printers off my hands on your way out east. What exactly did you have in mind?"

The couple exchanged another look. "We had an idea. We were hoping you would be willing to help us," admitted Yoshi.

Studying them for a moment, Franklin did not notice any ill intentions alongside their reticence. Just low level anxiety and maybe some desperation. "Okay. Let's hear it," he proposed.

"Well," Abigail began slowly, "I haven't had a job since H one seven, and Yoshi isn't even really allowed to work unless he goes back to Japan and then comes back here. So we've been trying to figure out what to do. I mean, we've taken over the 'tiny house lifestyles' website so its owner can focus exclusively on his microlivestock ranching, but so far that only pays in robocoins, and it's already almost impossible to trade those for dollars right now." "I see the problem," Franklin said, not quite sure where she was going with this.

"So, we've been talking with some of the others on the letterlist, and we're going to try and do the exchange system the Synners talked about. I mean, we don't really seem to have any other choice."

Grasping then what this couple was about, Franklin said carefully, "So, uhh, did you read the list of fundamental problems with that on the site? You know I wrote that. And that the tax issue alone makes what you're talking about impossible."

"We're not so sure," said Yoshi. "Their program said it would work. Their spokesman Landry said it could be done, and he's got an economics degree from Halvaird."

Abigail's voice became charged with her underlying desperation as she added, "We know what you wrote - you said it is 'technically possible'. If it's possible, we don't really have any other choice. WE don't. WE are living in a SHIPPING CONTAINER on a FLATBED TRUCK! So can you at least TRY to help us figure this out?"

Feeling more than a little sympathetic to their plight and not really having anything better to do, Franklin answered, "look. Of course I'll try and help. I even agree - at least in principle - that the Synner's exchange is a good idea. By the way, we have GOT to think of a better name for it! But like everything about their model, the whole thing rests on fundamentally wrong assumptions. For the exchange to become more than a theory, people have to actually buy in to it. And they won't. "Hell, there might be thirty thousand letterlisters, but fewer than eighteen hundred of us ever logged in to one of the data caches, and it's under five hundred that have contributed anything. And we were specifically identified by their program as likely contributors. Have you read what it cost them just to have that marketing company send out those letters like that? Sixty grand. Do the math. Just to send the letters, it cost them a hundred and twenty dollars per data cache contributor they ultimately attracted - and we worked for free!"

Franklin felt himself being pulled off track by his own thoughts. "My point is," he continued in a slightly more measured tone, "that their 'Social Contract for an Information Society' makes some sense to me. The modern world does turn on information - from us, about us, all that. And I can see some logic in the notion that our information is made into transferable value in a modern economy whether or not we receive compensation, so everyone should be paid a living wage because their simple existence contributes to the overall datascape. It's Paine's Agrarian Justice for the 21st century. Fair enough. But there's no path that gets us there."

"What we have now may be inherently unfair and volatile and stupid to the point of insanity. But it sort of works because everyone plays along. Like, everyone. You think the IRS will play along with the exchange? The SEC? Milgrim Chanley - who is currently raking in a fortune administering federal electronic food benefit programs - or any of the big banks, for that matter? Or any state treasury or interstate trucking company or food manufacturer that's used to getting dollars from their people? "Do you think most people with anything to lose will go near something like this exchange? They won't. I'm sorry, but most people are average, and average people will fight tooth and nail to keep the system they're familiar with. The Synopticon people never figured out a work-around for that."

"Plus," continued Franklin's little diatribe, "the subtle, unconscious stuff that everyone does without knowing it has a far more pronounced effect in real life than their model accounts for. The moment this thing went public and started butting heads with the collective unconscious, the world started diverging significantly from their projections. So I'm not saying I won't help you. It's just that I don't think it can be done, and can't quite see what you want me to do."

Yoshi's easy smile was nowhere to be seen. Abigail nodded without speaking, then nodded again. Amongst them were thirty seconds of quiet, more solemn than tense. "Well, I guess that's a relief. I was starting to worry that you weren't going to help us at all," she said. "And maybe maybe their model was wrong about some things, but it seems to have gotten pretty close on most of the big stuff. Jobs ARE disappearing fast, and most of the decent ones were getting rare to begin with. Like, I was in human resources, but most of what I did before H one seven was present a person to other people and tell them what the HR computer program said. Afterwords, they eliminated my position and I'm sure no one will even notice! There have got to be lots of others like me out there; what are we supposed to do - just disappear? I guess I don't get what you mean about the collective unconscious thing, but maybe you can say more about that over dinner at our house? It's parked just around the corner, and I'm starving!"

Franklin heard the couple out while eating his fill of pasta in their tiny house/shipping container. Their plan seemed well-reasoned but unreasonable on the whole. "There's something in your plan that I'm not seeing," he said. The synopticon people took a math problem and dressed it up like an ideology. It actually looks to me like they mostly just copied TAOnet's corporate philosophy. Now, maybe this has worked out okay so far for TAOnet, but societal infrastructure is a totally different animal. Really this is a problem of governance that no modern government is willing or even able to address. But deeper than that, it is a problem of unconscious beliefs and intentions that rarely respond sensibly to change. You seem to be suggesting that the synners' exchange can grow to the point where it controls enough resources that it will hit some kind of critical mass and overwhelm or outpace the current system. That it can 'out-compete the lesser entity' is how Synopticon's exchange description put it, yes?"

"So let's assume that this exchange could work, and that it actually began to. What then? I mean, Abigail, you said you couldn't just fade away once your job disappeared. The thing is: no one can. Millions of people will not just disappear overnight because a new system tells them their jobs are obsolete or unnecessary. Most of them will fight to keep the obsolete companies alive. And if people can no longer do what they're used to doing, they'll follow instructions from whoever has the most legitimate-appearing authority. I sort of doubt anything that came from Synopticon will ever carry that degree of legitimacy."

Franklin was about to continue when Yoshi interrupted. "We don't think Synopticon launched the new 'criminals exposed' site. We think it was made by a legitimate government entity, and continues to be maintained by one. Based on this, there is a chance the exchange could gain institutional support once it is up and running."

Franklin considered the prospect. The 'criminals exposed' site was set up differently than the others. For example, its user instructions were dry power point presentations rather than cute gifs. But the notion still seemed far-fetched. "So, if that's true, then Synopticon's projections were wrong about something major from the beginning. And if it's not true, then you'd be undertaking a monumental task based on a wrong assumption. Like I said before, of course I'll help. It's an interesting idea and I like that you're pursuing it. But I'm going to be honest, unless some big things change, I sorta don't think it can work."

"You know," Abigail said happily, "You're kind of intense. But that's pretty much what everyone else we've talked to has said, and now they're all on board. I still don't get the part about the unconscious beliefs or actions and why you think they're so important, though. What's the deal?"

"There isn't really an easy way to explain it," Franklin began, "but I'll try. You know how people have mirror neurons to sort of synch us up? Like, Yoshi smiles so you and I smile without necessarily even noticing it? Well, that's part of it."

Abigail, now smiling along with Yoshi, said, "okay."

"And you know how we all create models in our thinking to explain how the world works based on our memories and experiences of how the world works? And how an imaginary experience can activate the same neural pathways as a physical experience - so if you're just looking at brain activity there's not necessarily much difference between imagining that you've lost a five dollar bill and noticing that you've actually lost a physical five dollar bill?"

The pair looked at him blankly. "Well, look it up," he said in response to their unspoken no. "I warned you that there wasn't an easy way to explain it, and I'm not even half started. Do you want me to keep going?"

Yoshi and Abigail both shrugged.

"Maybe try thinking of it like this," Franklin continued, "everything that people know about has a sort-of shadow in the minds of the people that know about it. For example, this table we're at is present here, as well as in the individualized models of the world that each of us has in our own minds. But if you were to put a new table here without my knowledge tomorrow, the models in each of your minds would change to reflect this, while the model in my mind would not. Are you with me so far?"

Yoshi nodded. Abigail said, "I'm sorry. I just don't see where you're going with this."

Franklin struggled to further simplify the idea he was trying to convey. After a moment, he said, "Alright. Think of it this way. There are all kinds of ways that people communicate with each other without realizing that this is what they are doing. Sometimes this takes the form of body language or occurs along other such direct pathways. Sometimes it happens by encoding signals into and reading signals from the environment - like if you see a pile of trash you might add to it, whereas if you see a clean sidewalk you probably won't litter. Think of the total volume of these communication methods and the content that passes through them like an internet that we all use, but are not usually aware of."

"So, my point here is two-fold. First, the Synopticon people were a cohesive group with unconscious biases that got built into everything that they did. Their model and the ways that they tested this were scientific, relying only on what could be quantified with their instruments. They could not see the stuff that reductive materialism is inherently blind to, and that stuff constitutes a huge part of the real world. As soon as their model became observable to people with different biases than were present in their cohesive group, its projections began significantly diverging from reality."

"Second, as far as now, with what you're trying to do in setting up the exchange, if you want it to work, people will have to unconsciously want it to work. Let's say - for the sake of argument - that it might eliminate poverty and give most people far more control over how they spend their time. It might free up the brain power currently held hostage by the stock market and get our best and brightest competing to solve ecological or social problems rather than competing to steal more and more of the value that human lives produce. Hell, it might make for a more free, fair, healthier, meritocratic society. But as things stand, most people in this country are strongly and unconsciously biased against anything that could possibly result in such an outcome."

"They unconsciously need to have poor people to look down on, aristocratic wealth to aspire to, and bad people to punish just so the models of the world in their minds do not break. And they unconsciously need to feel good about their own decisions and the work that they've done in their lives, no matter how damaging to people this may have been, or whose interests it ultimately served, so as to keep their memories lined up with the stories that they tell themselves about themselves. In other words, the society produced by the exchange would directly conflict with evident unconscious desires of our population. Now, I'm convinced that there are ways around this. But I sort of doubt that most people involved are going to want to make these a priority. I could go on, but that's the gist of what I'm talking about."

After he'd finished, there was a long pause where Franklin could see the effect of his words playing on the couple's expressions. They looked tired. People usually did after he described his perspective on such things, no matter how much he tried to simplify it. He probably looked tired also, as a consequence of having worked hard to make his perspective intelligible to others and maybe because of mirror neurons too. He yawned and stretched a bit to relax his brain. "I think that delicious pasta may have made me a bit tired," he said. Yoshi and Abigail both yawned and fidgeted somewhat. "Looks like the pasta made us all tired," commented Abigail. "But thanks for explaining that. We at least have a little better idea of what you were talking about," she said.

"Anyway," Franklin added, "what I don't understand is this - why don't you just form a TAOnet node? I mean, you'd probably need that company on board for the synners' exchange to go anywhere, right? And they pay you in actual money. So why not just start there?"

As Steve Sharp approached his car, he noticed Rupert Connelly waiting for him. "Just what the hell did you get me into, Steve? How did you even manage it?" asked Connelly.

"Nice to see you too, Rupert," Sharp replied casually. "But we could have had this conversation on the phone."

"No. We couldn't. TAOnet's board is freaking out - a third of our business was transacted by robocoin, and we can't change those for dollars reliably anymore. Edith Chen thinks that Trake kid we had with us underground was part of Synopticon's plan. She actually thinks his work node and many others are filled with active synopticon operatives. Only a couple other board members believe her though. And you and I both know that's bullshit. So why'd you do it? Are you part of Synopticon? How high up does this thing go?"

Regarding his former subordinate carefully, Sharp said, "I understand that you want answers. So let's do this right. You follow me home when I drive out of here. I'll phone ahead to Mary and tell her to set a third place for dinner. We can talk in my office afterwards."

After the meal, Sharp removed a heavy, plain manilla folder from a desk drawer and handed this to Connelly as the two settled into Sharp's home office. "Take a look at that. It's a list of approximately seventy one hundred names and their reference numbers in the 'criminals exposed' leak site I launched by hijacking TAOnet's systems with your unwitting help."

"I don't understand," said Connelly, glancing through the pages of names and numbers. "Wait, these aren't? What is this? These are all important people, aren't they?"

Sharp nodded. "Some are very important indeed. But that's not the only thing they have in common. These are people that control both the mechanisms of organized crime and the instruments of justice. They are not just above the law - they control how laws are made, broken, and enforced. They pull strings everywhere. I want them stopped, but until our discovery of Synopticon's imminent attack, there was nothing I could do to stop them."

The usual snide twist was absent from Sharp's words. This, more than anything, led Connelly to consider them at face value. "So your talking about some kind of conspiracy then? To what end? And how did Synopticon's attack -. What do you mean there was nothing you could -. Shit! "You're telling me that everybody's been scrubbing these people from their files, but you've been keeping all the data; saving this stuff up for a rainy day. You used H seventeen as a pretense to secure an executive order and the NSA authority to build, launch, and maintain the 'criminals exposed' site, but you made sure all the scrubbed data got added back in? To restate a previous question: what the hell have you gotten me into?"

"You always were quick on your feet. But honestly," Sharp answered with uncharacteristic sincerity, "after a meeting I had a few days ago, I'm no longer entirely sure what I've gotten you into. It shouldn't be a problem for me to have a national security letter issued to the TAOnet board to smooth things over for you there. But that list you're holding may bring far more trouble for everyone than I had anticipated. The people on it are involved in some of the worst sorts of activities. They work together in small groups that are typically hostile to one another, but the individuals involved seem to change sides frequently. So it's not any grand conspiracy, except in the sense that they maintain the world as a theater for their continuous petty hostilities, which seem to be directed primarily at one another. But the minute one of these groups is threatened by forces outside of the larger group's control, they all band together to eliminate that threat - usually by taking control of said forces."

The admission of confusion in his former superior was more disturbing to Connelly than the vague description of this shadowy cabal. "What do you mean you're 'no longer sure' about what you've gotten me into?"

The older man appeared to weigh his words before clarifying, "Okay. This conversation was way off the record before it had even begun. And the only reason I've said this much already is that I need your help. It's true that I manipulated you and TAOnet to exploit the Synopticon situation. It's true that I didn't tell you about Synopticon's plan or how TAOnet may have been used as a part of that plan. But I'm not with them. One of their main objectives is to force a gutting of national security and defense budgets for god's sake. Another one of their goals is to put actual robots in charge of the economy - run the country almost the way you run your company - and make us into a massive welfare state. Even if they weren't completely insane, their model didn't account for the influence of the people on that list I've just shown you, or what those people may do now that the system's been upended."

As the enormity of these statements began to sink in, Connelly wondered aloud, "If what you say is true - and I've known you too long to not suspect you've got some ulterior motive - what could you possibly expect me to do about it?"

"First, have a drink with me," Sharp said. "Then, Rupert, I'll tell you more about what the people on that list are likely to do given what I know about them, and how you might be able to use TAOnet to keep them from bringing the world down around us."

It was only the second time Sharp had suggested that they have a drink together. The first time, now years in the past, had been a prelude to Connelly's forced resignation from NSA.

Their weekly Saturday lunch meeting had changed venues to a Carrol Gardens hole-in-the-wall that couldn't decide whether to be a bookstore, deli, or internet cafe. Chris, Harold and Kyle perched on mildly crooked stools around a high-set flaking chrome table. After an update about their current job - a collaboration with a TAOnet prototyping node run out of a Lower East Side basement - Harold briefly studied the remnant of his Christmas Eve bagel sandwich before quietly blurting, "Guys, there's something I need to tell you. I'm not a regular letterlister. I wasn't on the Synopticon list they got from that marketing company hired to do those weird invitational mailings."

"So - you don't want to talk anymore about the multiplexing issue with the new devices?" asked Kyle in a naked attempt to change the subject.

"Harold, what exactly does that mean?" asked Chris.

"I don't know," Harold admitted. Maybe I was added at the last minute and it didn't get into the record. Maybe it's a TAOnet thing. But I can't figure it out," he said.

Kyle thought for a moment, then said, "Umm. It might be something else. My last night at TAOnet before H-17, there was this government guy there. He had us help him use the system we made for project Causeway. The thing is, some of what you sent from that letterlist data-cache sort of helped Causeway along. Maybe that government guy made you a letterlister to make that happen."

Chris squinted grumpily towards Kyle. "What do you mean there was a government guy involved with that project? Why didn't you tell us?"

"Umm. It was supposed to be a secret? I don't know, I thought - well, two executives were in on it, and I figured they knew what they were doing and it wasn't a big deal," Kyle defensively explained.

"Which two executives?" asked Chris.

"It was Doctors Chen and Connelly," recalled Kyle. "Dr Connelly apparently worked for the government guy - his name was Sharp - when he was with the NSA."

"Great," said Chris sarcastically.

Harold shrugged. "Well, at least now I know whose pawn I was. And unless TAOnet and the government are in on the whole thing with Synopticon, I probably didn't do anything big to facilitate H-17, so it's sort of a relief."

"How about you both let me know right away when something weird happens," Chris suggested. "Okay?"

"Okay," they agreed. Kyle followed up with, "weird like that?" Harold and Chris looked out the window at where he pointed.

One of the new 'moneycard merchants' that had been wandering around trading prepaid credit cards for robocoins, foreign currency, and the occasional bit of gold was being forcibly held by two men. One of these shoved him into the building's wall right next to the window the trio looked out of. The moneycard merchant gestured wildly and held out a rubber-banded stack of packaged cards for his assailants to take.

By this time, the deli clerk had made it out the door. "Hey! These guys bothering you? Want me to call the cops? Come on. Give this gentleman a break and get out of here!" insisted the deli clerk.

Wasting no time, the moneycard vendor snatched his stack of cards back from an inattentive would-be robber and darted past his rescuer and into the deli. The thwarted assailants each gave the clerk a look that perfectly blended stupidity and menace before turning to walk across the street. The street vendor, well-wrinkled and sporting a bright blue messenger bag that said 'Best Exchange Rates!!!' in white stencilled bold, appeared unperturbed as he moved to stand against the deli's counter. The clerk, returning indoors, was somewhat more agitated. "You alright there, buddy? Jesus, at noon on a holiday. You believe those guys?" said the clerk.

"It said in the paper that we'll have to move to a cashless society soon because of what the banks are doing," the grizzled vendor chuckled lightly. "It said cards and e-banking are safer than cash. Man oh man, do I feel safe. Hey, thanks for that by the way."

Watching the scene, it occurred to Chris that this might be an opportune time to bring up the increasingly complicated issue of pay. "Hey moneycard man," she raised her voice to ask, "what's the rate for robocoins-to-dollars today?"

"I can give you forty e-bucks or twenty cash per robo," the vendor shot back.

"Talk to us on your way out," she answered, before turning back to Harold and Kyle. "Well, shit guys. The only reason we're still getting full schedules from TAOnet is that we agreed to take half our pay in robos. But the company rate was a hundred bucks per when they paid us yesterday: we got two grand and twenty robos each, for the last job. What do you want to do?"

Harold, who had been worrying more and more about this very problem, said, "his rate's actually better than today's Chinatown rate. I just checked. But I've been thinking - most of these guys are doing store gift cards at better rates, right? I'm going to see how much grocery store credit I can get with my robos, and then put this in stuff like wine that keeps well and trades easy."

"You sound a little too much like my worm-tending former neighbor," joked Chris. "But I do sort of see your point."

"If the rate's dropping that fast? Well fuck," said Kyle. "We may as well see what his gift card rates are, and get what we can. But what about the prototyping job we're on now? TAOnet'll adjust the rates again on the next payday - but that's a big job. I mean, did we all just take a giant pay cut?"

Chris waved the moneycard guy over from his casual banter with the deli clerk. "Hey, do you have any gift cards with better rates?" she asked as he approached.

The vendor smiled broadly. "Too damned many!" he exclaimed. "I thought I'd get rid of more with the Christmas shoppers this year, so I over-stocked. Got some department stores and Trader Jim's and Ukea and Home Center. I can do eighty bucks a robo on these."

"How many do you have for Trader Jim's? Can you do two grand's worth for twenty robos on those?"

The vendor fell into universal bargaining mode. "No way! The best I can do on those is -," he said, sifting through a brick of plastic cards he'd produced from the blue messenger bag, "eighteen fifty on Trader Jim's cards for twenty robos."

Harold, who had counted the values and number of the Jim's cards along with the vendor, countered, "Nineteen fifty. And my friends here will get a bunch off you, too."

"Well merry fucking Christmas," the vendor jovially exclaimed while producing a phone with which to seal the deal.

All six of them had piled into the Wilson's van on the cold January evening to go to Fiona's hastily assembled book release party. Dan had reserved a meeting room on campus for the event. On their way, they listened to well-known reporter Lucy Gladman's voice on public news radio:

"We've just learned of a massive computer-based attack that took place against major financial institutions, insurance companies, and real estate firms on Halloween Seventeen. Months ago, Synopticon claimed responsibility for the banking sector hacks, but until today there had not been any official admission from the government or the affected companies that these attacks even took place. Now we learn that these not only happened, but caused widespread damage that officials have been scrambling in secret to clean up. With me now is Yole economist Dr Arnold Rothford to explain the situation. Dr Rothford? What happened and why all the secrecy?"

"Thank you Lucy. As for what happened - all we know for sure is that what they're calling a 'robin hood virus' had infected the networks of at least sixteen hundred major companies. When this virus came out on Halloween Seventeen, it began executing millions of unauthorized financial transactions on behalf of these companies, attempting to transfer all of their liquid capitol to the personal savings and checking accounts of millions of bank customers. I should say that this is one of the most sophisticated computer viruses that cyber crimes experts have ever seen - I'm told it was not written by people, but by a specially designed computer program - and we don't yet know the extent of what it did or how far it spread."

"That's incredible." said Lucy Gladman's voice. "But why all the secrecy, Dr Rothford? Didn't the public have a right to know what was going on? There must have been thousands of people working on managing a crisis like this - how did they keep it so quiet for so long? And why do it?" she inquired.

"Those are all good questions. In fact, as the crisis unfolded; with a state of emergency declared by our president, an emergency crisis taskforce was set up. Federal and state authorities worked closely with business community leaders and experts like myself to fix the problem and avoid an economic panic. Overall, more than twenty three thousand people working to manage this crisis were operating under a court-issued gag order that was in effect until the end of 2017. I'm told several other countries were similarly impacted by this or related viruses, and that there was an unprecedented degree of global cooperation in coordinating the response."

As they piled out of the van, no one talked about the news story. Fiona was trying and failing to envision the impending party that would place her work at the center of attention. Ryan and the Wilsons had more or less talked her into having a physical event to go along with the blog and social media announcement that her newly-published work was now available on Spamazon. Paper signs taped at eye level to a series of campus doors directed them to the room that Dan had reserved. There were several people milling about when they got there.

Candace had convinced the meals-not-missiles group, on whom she had recently been keeping tabs, to cater the event. A few from this group were standing around near a steaming crock-pot and various trays of vegan food that had been set up on a long table placed along the room's back wall. A few of Ryan's friends showed up, as did a handful of strangers that had perhaps seen Fiona's handmade flyers scattered across town or heard that there was to be free food.

Fiddling with her laptop - getting it connected to the borrowed projector and ready to make a SkyFu call to her mother in Phoenix - Fiona considered the twenty-or-so people chatting with each other in small groups throughout the room around her. How did these people relate to her 4000 blog followers? It was strange to think of one group alongside the other. She finished messing with the computer and got the projector making the right-sized rectangle of image on a blank wall. Not quite knowing how to begin, Fiona simply started the slide show and then shut off the classroom's overhead lights.

The cover of her book 'Organic Responses to the Theft of Place by Big System in Post 9/11 United States' stood four feet tall, dimly illuminating the room. As scattered conversations quieted down, Fiona began by announcing, "Hi everyone. Thank you all for coming. I'm Fiona Canter, and you're about to see how I've spent the last year of my life."

After cycling through thirteen minutes of images from her book - one minute for each of the places she had spent a month interviewing people and taking pictures - while adding commentary and answering the occasional question, the presentation was over and everybody clapped. When the lights came back on, she noticed that Dan had attached his phone to a little table-top tripod to record the presentation.

With the slide show over, Fiona's laptop was free to bring her mother into the room via SkyFu. The pleasant conversation became briefly awkward about two minutes in, when Ryan stepped unknowingly into it to give Fiona a congratulatory hug and the sort of kiss that says a bit more than 'way to go on that slide show'. That her mother seemed thrilled only deepened Fiona's embarrassment. "It just kind of happened," she explained.

"And here I thought that it was hot down here in Phoenix!" her mother teased.

"I mean we've been spending a lot of time together and we just sort of fell into being a couple," elaborated Ryan.

"I guess it gets so cold in Ohio that you need to have someone to cuddle up with," her mother speculatively chided so as to get more mileage out of the joke.

Once the call had ended, Ryan tugged Fiona's sleeve and said, "Hey Fi, look who it is."

"Is that Goodyear?" she asked, catching notice of a face that looked familiar. "What's he doing here?"

It was Goodyear, though he appeared disguised as an accountant or something. "Goodyear!" Fiona exclaimed as they approached the man eating a nest of zucchini noodles. "You actually came?"

They hugged and Goodyear replied, "Why not? I had a conference to drive to when I got the tracebook invite, and this wasn't too far out of my way. Plus I wanted to see how your book turned out. The pictures are great - the one with the limo passing that giant homeless encampment made of brightly-colored tarps is something!"

Fiona blushed with pride. "Thank you," she said. "So what exactly do you do?" Even as she said this, Fiona recalled that Goodyear was a lawyer.

"Me? Oh, I'm an attorney when I'm not in the woods," he answered. "These days, I work for a nonprofit electronic privacy advocate. As you can imagine, it's been a complicated few months for us with all of the information that has come out. There's a conference in Boston in a few days."

"How has it been complicated for you?" asked Dan, coming upon the conversation.

"Hey. Dan, right? Good to see you," said Goodyear.

The men hugged.

"Well, how has it been complicated?" began Goodyear in answer to the question. "The H-17 leaks prove what we've been saying all along once and for all. The way that companies and government agencies collect and use data about us goes way beyond what is or should be legal. It's intrusive and it's harmful. "But its impossible to do a class action suit against any of the companies because the judicial system shuffles all of the cases into individual arbitrations, which prevents a class from even forming and puts corporate lawyers in charge of everything. And its impossible to win a suit against the federal government where surveillance is concerned, period."

"And now, with all that personal data out there for anybody to see, the very people that illegally searched for and seized all of that data from us and then failed to protect it are being propped up with taxpayer money and treated as victims. Meanwhile, all of us - the real victims here - are being told that we have to subject ourselves to even more intrusive surveillance if we want to work or vote or drive a car or -. Anyway, there's no need for me to get preachy with you lot. We're trying to come up with a real legal response to all of this, but where do you even start?"

"Did you hear about the big bank shutdown in November that they kept secret until now?" asked Fiona. "What do you think that means?"

"I wish I knew," said Goodyear. "All I know is that these noodles are delicious and I'm impressed with your project," he clarified.

A crashing noise interrupted their conversation. "Wow!" said Tommy, holding a slingshot and turning red as he became aware that all eyes in the room were now on him. "Um, sorry," he said upon meeting his mother's eyes, already moving to gather the plastic cups that had scattered across the floor when struck by his compacted-wet-paper-towel projectile.

"Did one of your friends give Tommy a slingshot?" Fiona asked Ryan, who did not know how to respond to the insinuation that he was somehow responsible for the disruptive event.

"Nope," said Dan, smiling. "One of Candace's meals-not-missiles kids gave Tommy the slingshot earlier with my permission. Now we'll see if he can get Candace's permission to keep it."

They all laughed.

I hope you've enjoyed this playful look into an imaginary future so far. Let me know with your votes and comments if you want to see the story continue!