H-17 [part three: a microlivestock safety net]

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, you might want to check out part one and part two before reading this section.

The day after the ATMs stopped working, Chris was surprised by a knock on her door. Seeing her creepy neighbor through the peep hole, and in no mood for the twerp's banter, she seized the opportunity to tell him to go to hell and never talk to her again. She opened the door a crack, leaving the security chain in place, and sharply asked, "what do you want?"

"I'm sorry," he said. "It's just, well, there's something I have to tell you. With everything that's happening and all, I wanted to tell you not to worry. I've been preparing for this, and, um, when there's no more food in the grocery stores, we'll be okay," he sputtered.

Chris unchained the door. Looking squarely at the man who appeared to be dressed for a part in a play about Victorian chimney-sweeps, she said, emphasizing every word, "what the fuck are you talking about? I don't want anything to do with you."

He smiled disarmingly, then. "I know," he said casually. "That's my fault. I'm sorry. I had to make sure you - well, everyone, really - but you because you're right next door. I had to make sure you stayed away from me and my apartment, to keep my farm a secret. See, I knew the system would collapse, and it was only a matter of time before we'd all be fending for ourselves without modern conveniences here in the city, so I've been getting ready for it. Growing food. I'm happy to share with you, but now I need your help," he explained, not at all to Chris' satisfaction. "Look. I'm not crazy," he went on, "but how long do you think it will be before the bank freeze makes it impossible for us to get groceries?"

"Um. I just got groceries yesterday," she responded. And then, with nothing better to do owing to the internet being inaccessible at present, she went on thoughtfully, "But I see what you mean. Sort of. Only, what do you mean you've been growing food? And what do you want me to do about it?"

"Have you ever heard of microlivestock? Cultures all over the world have been eating very small organisms forever, and there's a growing body of research that suggests that the only way we'll be able to get enough protein by 2050 is if we learn from them."

Here he paused to bend down and remove a stapled packet of papers from a briefcase that Chris had not noticed sitting on the floor next to him. Handing this to her, he went on, "Here's some information about it. There's a United Nations report, my own yield estimates, some other stuff. Now, what I want to do is ramp up my farm's production ahead of the coming food shortages, so I was wondering if I could rent out a closet or cupboard from you. I can pay you one robocoin per cubic meter per month, or trade some of the harvest for the space."

Chris, who had begun politely flipping through the information packet, had stopped on a page neatly illustrating the portions of a grasshopper used for food.

Feeling like she must be misunderstanding something, she asked, "You're raising bugs in your apartment? And eating them?"

The man smiled, happy to see that he was beginning to get his point across. "Some insects, sure, but mostly I'm raising mealworms. They convert waste polystyrene - styrafoam - into healthy and digestible protein better than anything. Plus they're quiet, and very east to manage," he proudly clarified. "Mealworms are my specialty crop."

Chris decided it was time to find a new apartment.

All eyes were on Steve Sharp while he slowly looked over the Total Information Taskforce. The NSA man had just said, "Yes. We are responsible for the new public criminal profiles site. As you're all aware, a state of emergency was quietly declared when we first became aware of the impending digital attacks on October 15. "We need to reorganize and assess the risks of the new operating environment. For that we need new information. 'Criminals exposed' presented us with an opportunity to gather that information, as well as create the law enforcement database that we've always dreamed of."

Harding Shaw, reading from a handwritten note, added, "The action was carried out by executive order. As the site's physical servers are located in international waters, the NSA does not violate its mandate by administering it. Most of the communication intercepts were useless as criminal evidence, and carried little to no strategic intelligence value once the other October 31 breaches had occurred. A blanket declassification of the material was quietly issued prior to its release. "But now that 'Criminals Exposed' is available to the public, we have a discretionary mandate to interview and monitor anyone that visits or is listed on that site. Also, I would like to add that the Bureau hasn't seen the out-sized jump in crime we expected following Halloween Seventeen, and believe that our site has been acting as a deterrent to would be criminals."

Eustice Tarbrook, whose expression was unreadable, said, "There have been four hundred eighteen confirmed deaths of outed, US-based agents operating undercover internationally. Most foreign powers seems to be afraid of how we'll respond. BRIC nations are sword rattling, but directing this at each other, trying to expand their own spheres of influence. "Our primary concern is the leak of classified patent application and technology data. I don't need to tell you that this has potentially catastrophic implications. Its only upside is the deterrent factor - now the whole world knows exactly what we're capable of. So publicly, we're going with the narrative that these leaks help us more than hurts us."

Exhibiting unusually measured confidence, Blake spoke up. "For those of you that haven't yet read the latest DHS briefing - and I know you're all busy - we've determined that the ringleaders of this 'synopticon' group included several high-level persons from our own government. A few are still at large. The halloween seventeen sites themselves consist largely of aggregation engines; the bulk of their data seems to have come from putting together hacks and leaks that took place over the last twenty years."

"The person seen reading this group's official statement in the first videos that got sent out is Jarton Landry, a former Goldblaum Max investment trader that was accused of intellectual property theft by his employer," explained Blake. "The FBI's cybercrimes ran with it at the time - put the guy through the ringer - but it later came out that the IP he was accused of stealing had been open-source-licensed before Goldblaum had ever laid claim to its ownership. We think he's got a grudge. Most of their 'information can not be property' mumbo jumbo comes from him, and was used by the group to recruit a mostly white collar rank-and-file. "Landry is currently being held in detention by German authorities, among several German nationals he was apparently organizing to hit the Germans the way they hit us. Other groups in the UK, France, Spain, Russia, and about a dozen other countries are carrying out their own versions of Halloween Seventeen. "Some countries are cutting web service completely, but the majority are following our lead and treating the web as critical infrastructure. Between that and our backstopping of the banks, we've managed to keep the economy from grinding to a screeching halt, and are throwing everything we've got at securing key programs and personnel whose protected data were exposed."

As Blake finished the update, a woman whom none of the of the regulars at this meeting had ever seen before leaned slightly forward in her chair. Though she had been sitting there the whole time and wearing a suit that looked like it had been designed fifty years before any of other suits in the room, Anthony Reviso had not actually noticed her presence in there until that moment and became visibly startled.

"Excuse me," she said. "I know you have your routines, but I need to introduce myself. Assistant Deputy Schill with Defense Intelligency Agency. And inform you of the following: we've confirmed that sensitive DIA information is included with the other leaked materials. One of our former archivists, now missing, released the contents of at least two hundred eighteen files deemed too sensitive for any level of classification. "Some of these present a greater threat to national security than the uncontrolled release of our biological and nuclear weapons testing details."

Assistant Deputy Schill paused to let the revelation sink in. She was ten years younger than any other person in the room and had been unknown to them before now, and so was unsurprised to note that only Steve Sharp and Eustice Tarbrook appeared to consider the import of what she had said.

Blake rolled his eyes. Reviso sighed heavily. Willis and Franks looked at each other and inaudibly laughed at some inside joke.

Harding Shaw made a fart noise with his mouth. "Really," he said condescendingly. "I don't buy that for a second. Now I know the military's got a a hell of a lot on its plate right now. And maybe having you here helps keep everyone looped in. But I read the latest briefings. The nuclear threat might be close to under control, but the bioterror threat is about as bad as it gets. So why don't you tell us why you're really here. What's this about?"

Schill smiled warmly. "I was worried that my arrival might provoke tension. And I am so glad you broke the ice, Mr Shaw," she said as if speaking to a small child. "While I am regrettably not at liberty to provide any contextual details regarding the origin or nature of the DIA program that was compromised, it just so happens that I am at liberty to answer your questions directly."

Blushing with anger, Shaw involuntarily clenched his hands into fists. Before he could let loose with the response he was working up, the DIA official continued, "While most of the materials released pertain to resource-intensive technologies that require advanced technical equipment to produce, and so - like nuclear weaponry - can not be developed undetected, there are several threats that may develop in a manner that is not so constrained. Anticipating your doubt, I brought a demonstration."

At this, Schill produced what appeared to be an old-fashioned, oversized garage door opener from a coat pocket. Casually waving the device in his general direction, Shaw quickly laid his head on the conference table and appeared to lose consciousness. When he awoke a few minutes later, intuitively unaware of how much time had passed, he heard Blake's voice ask, "So this class of devices, that anyone with half a brain can build, is now out there on the loose? People can remotely trigger sleep, or paralysing fear, or unaccountable rage, or religious ecstasy? What about mass hallucinations? States of psychopathic calm in would-be terrorists? Are you fucking shitting me? How do we even begin to defend against this stuff?"

Tarbrook, who started looking like he was going to throw up around the time he caught sight of the device Schill had used to put the FBI man to sleep, spoke up in response to the increasingly desperate line of questioning, "there are countermeasures that the Agency has developed, but some of 'em aren't pretty. A very small percentage of the population is immune to most of the effects of this class of devices, and a slightly larger percentage of people can be trained to achieve some measure of the same immunity. But for most people, a drug cocktail or active electronic countermeasures are the only thing that'll help. And both can have problematic side effects."

"And just how do you know so much about it?" asked Shaw, now fully awake.

Steve Sharp, who had watched the demonstration and its aftermath with what appeared to be detached fascination, spoke then, "he knows because we were both briefed on this right after coming into our present positions. The technology is not new. Until now, however, anyone that got too close to it was either brought into the fold or persuasively deterred from its applied development. Our international partners have pursued a similar containment strategy. "But now the cat is out of the bag. We have signals intelligence implicating this technology in yesterday's Omaha Courthouse riot, as well as in several other incidents internationally. But as always, our job here is to coordinate our respective agencies' responses. And from here on out, the President's national security advisor says we follow the DIA's lead."

"And with that," Schill picked up, "I'd like to raise a subject that will not be on any of our written agendas or find its way outside of this room without my express authorization. It is possible that some of our communications protocols for signalling or avoiding contact with a certain unknown foreign power are in the wind along with the rest of the leaked documents. And it is critical that this power not be signalled or contacted by anyone. Ever. Period. "Here is an eyes-only briefing for each of you to pass around. Memorize it and pass it along. Take all of the time you need, but no one leaves this room until you all know the procedure for detecting and stopping any attempt by anyone to signal this power using the leaked data. Any questions?"

There was a pause while the implications of her words worked upon all of their minds.

"I guess I'll start off with that document, since this sounds like a customs matter," lamely joked Franks, the ICE man.

Harding Shaw, eager to reclaim some sense of order, asked, "While that's going around, can we proceed with some more of these agenda items?" Without waiting for an answer, Shaw then turned to Steven Blake and asked, "Where is Homeland on cognitive infiltration of groups sympathetic to Synopticon? Who is taking the lead on that?" Blake looked to Schill for an approving nod before answering, "technically we've got lead, but the White House is calling most of the shots. So far, we've broken up the targets into three groups: ideological sympathizers, unwitting accomplices, and crisis entrepreneurs. The sympathizers are our primary focus, and there are a surprising number of them. "Their main message is hard to pin down, but it seems to be that all information has to be free for an information economy to work; that secrecy is wasteful and stifles innovation. "I know - it's hard to argue with something that doesn't make any damn sense. But we're countering the message with official statements that focus on the stories of the workers and small business owners that are getting hurt by the exposure of trade secrets. Nearly all the big companies are running PR campaigns to that effect, and filing lawsuits against any media that publishes a contrary view."

"More directly," Blake continued, "we're putting together a taskforce to infiltrate the sympathisers' ideological hubs. Mostly blogs and message boards online, along with a handful of companies, several college campus groups, and all the big hacker-culture groups. There are a wide variety of opinions about Synopticon in all of these hubs, so our main focus here is to marginalize and undermine Synopticon supporters while seeding the idea that everyone wants a return to business as usual."

Dan and Candace Wilson owned a house in an Ohio college town near the campus where each of them taught. They had befriended Fiona at the Appalachian gathering, and offered her rent-free use of a spare room so long as she kept track of Tommy, their young ninja-in-training, on weekday evenings while they were both away. Halloween Seventeen had not created much of a stir at the Wilson household, though they all agreed that Candace's theatrical reading of her own FBI profile on Thanksgiving - containing the details of her activities as a book store volunteer and attendance of various 'peaceable assemblies' and 'free speech events' - had been funny.

On December 1st, while Tommy built imaginary castles in one of his computer games, Fiona watched President Rubbo deliver an important-seeming speech:

"My fellow Americans," she began, "on October thirty first, this country was attacked by terrorists. This attack wasn't carried out with guns or bombs, but with the communications technology developed here and given freely to the world to make it a better place. This digital 9/11 wasn't directed at monuments or other physical infrastructure. Instead, Halloween Seventeen struck at the core of what makes America great - its people. "Millions of dedicated public servants have been victimized by this vicious attack, and many of you have been inconvenienced by the new identity security measures now being implemented. But our economy will recover, aided by your ingenuity and bolstered by an unprecedented emergency jobs program. I stand before you today to say that this country will bring the criminals responsible for this to justice, and to announce a national state of emergency - effective immediately - to get us safely through this trying time. But most of all, I stand here now to remind each and every one of you that this great nation will not falter in the face of our adversity, but will become stronger from it. 9/11 did not bring us down. It made us stronger. And Halloween Seventeen will be no different."

After watching this presidential address on her laptop, Fiona began reconsidering the inflammatory headlines that had increasingly bombarded her customized tracebook feed in recent weeks. If the Rubbo was comparing some computer thing to the toppling of skyscrapers, she decided, it might be wise to try and figure out what was happening.

Fiona gleaned the basics from Worldspan News. H-17 had been orchestrated by one hundred and eight people in three countries, most of whom had already been captured or killed in a quick succession of US military raids. The German government had captured eleven of these digital troublemakers - all but one a German citizen - and had so far not allowed them to to be extradited to the US. Venezuela had been accused in an international court of partially funding the operation. New national identity protection insurance legislation was being debated.

Though it did not seem to her like that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, Fiona was worried that the event made the book she'd spent so much time on seem less relevant. She'd already pared down her work's emphasis on 9/11 and changed its format to a photobook documenting the many visually interesting things that she had seen people doing in her year of travel-research. Even if this latest event was, as the president claimed, comparable to 9/11, she did not want to completely rework the volume again. As these considerations played upon her thinking, the doorbell rang.

Tommy did not look up from his screen. Fiona, somewhat concerned by this interruption of a newly-formed evening routine, opened the door just as the bell rang again. Two familiar faces greeted her: Tommy's friend, Derrick, and Derrick's father Ryan. "Hi Fi. Can we come in?" asked Ryan, still sporting the cap that said 'Bob'.

"Sure, I guess. Tommy's in the living room. Dan and Candace should be back in a little while. What's up?"

As they made their way to the living room, Ryan said, "I talked to Dan a little while ago. He's expecting us. You see, a week ago everyone in my apartment building got a letter saying that we had a week to vacate the building. Under something called the 'emergency safe harbor act', the property management company is using the building as a place to put government and businesspeople whose addresses were exposed on H-one-seven. "They offered to move us to another of their properties, so that was the plan until a few hours ago, when we found out that the new place is way outside Derrick's school district, and it's the middle of the year. I told Dan about it when we ran into each other, and he said that he and Candace would put us up until we figure things out. So here we are. We just got done putting most of our stuff in storage. The rest's in the car."

"That's crazy," Fiona said.

"Should make the boys happy, at least," Ryan responded with obviously feigned enthusiasm.

Upon leaving the campus building where her small office was located for the night, Candace Wilson heard angry shouting nearby. Instinctively jogged towards this, she heard a man's voice demand, "what the fuck, Tony?" Then another male voice, "Yeah. Like what the fuck?" Then a female voice, "Look at me - how could you do this to us? You asshole! You were helping them build a case against us for terrorism! They weren't even paying you, and you were trying to send us to prison! What the fuck?"

Candace found the source of these voices around the large building's corner. She recognized them as the Meals Not Missiles antiwar group that hung around campus. Some had tears in their eyes. Seven or eight of them had surrounded one and pinned him against the building's brick exterior. As they mostly looked like scared and angry undergrads, she put on her best professor face and interrupted the proceedings. "Hey! Hey you're that peace group, right? Are you doing street theater or something?"

The angry minimob turned in her direction. The man from whom the group's attention wavered - presumably Tony - attempted to run away but was forcibly prevented from doing so by the three youths closest to him.

"Professor Wilson? Its Nate," said one young man as he pulled a hood down to more clearly expose his face. "I had you for polisci. Listen, you're cool, but this isn't really any of your business," he said.

"Oh whatever Nate," argued the young woman whose voice Candace had just heard yelling at Tony. "She can know that Tony's an asshole traitor."

To continue de-escalating the conflict, Candace then asked in an exaggerated, joking manner, "Tony trades assholes? Like on the stock market?"

After this was met with a little muffled giggling and a general relaxation of the group's body language, Candace said more seriously, "If you can tell me what happened, maybe I can help you figure out what to do about it. How exactly do you feel Tony betrayed your group?"

"It wasn't just us, it was the whole movement!" said Nate.

"The whole time we've known him," began the outspoken young woman, who was starting to cry anew, "he's been an informant for the FBI. He's been doing it since Blockyuppie! They've been trying to set us up on terrorism charges since the big march in Columbus last year - to send us to prison just for being against their stupid banks and war machine - and Tony's been helping them do it! They weren't paying him and they didn't have anything on him. He fucking volunteered to be their manipulative asshole spy! We read all about it in those leaked FBI files!"

Candace considered this for a moment, recalling her own initial horror at discovering the extent to which her life had been scrutinized by the authorities for no good reason. Though it had helped to make light of this by treating it as a humorous absurdity with her family, the whole thing left her feeling icky. Those creepy feds had even typed up a note saying that an abortion she'd had at age nineteen might be used as 'emotional leverage to increase compliance if interviewed'.

Looking around at the faces in this posse, and more than a little apprehensive about what she might be getting herself into, she said in a tone that was rarely met with argument, "unless you plan to punch Tony until he understands how bad his betrayal of your nonviolent movement was, I suggest we move this into the student lounge in Sanders Hall next door. Tony, if we all agree to sit down and calmly sort this out, will you agree to tell us exactly what the fuck you were thinking?"

Tony, who had not spoken since her arrival on the scene, sullenly replied, "Um. Okay. I guess so." He started to cry as they walked.

On Sunday, December 3, with the boys out playing in the snow and after a lazy extended breakfast, Candace told her husband, Fiona and Ryan about her unplanned involvement with the affairs of the Meals Not Missiles' group.

She described the group's seemingly natural inclination to turn her insistence on 'talking it out' into a kangaroo court, and how difficult it was to get underneath this inclination, even in herself, and into the people involved. The revelation that one of them had put their futures in jeopardy, and for reasons that ultimately made little sense - "I guess I just felt like I had to do it; to be part of something that seemed big and exciting and important," was Tony's clearest articulation of his reasoning - had impacted the group of close-knit friends and adamant ideologues in ways that they were largely unequipped to process. "In the end," Candace finished, "cooler heads seem to have prevailed. They didn't even kick Mr T (which is how she referenced Tony in her recounting) out of the group after he broke down and admitted that he didn't have any other friends. "Instead, they decided that Mr T could still be a part of things if he became their designated cop liason and accepted that they'd treat him like a cop when it came to trust. The whole thing was very sad, but I suppose it could have turned out much worse."

"Wow," said Ryan. "I know some of those guys. That's crazy."

Dan, Candace's husband, had heard the story right after it happened, and had thoroughly considered all of the other, worse ways the situation could have played out. "I know you can take care of yourself just fine, but please just be careful out there. Especially now, okay?"

Something about the protective admonishment got caught on Candace's thinking. "Of course," she responded. And then asked, "but what do you mean 'especially now' - has something else happened?"

Dan frowned. "I think it might have, or be about to," he said. "That hacker group that did all those leaks sent out a new video today. I watched it early this morning, before anyone else was up. I've been reading up on this event. It kind of set me on edge."

"How come?" asked Candace, who was not as oblivious as her husband to the playful glance exchanged between Ryan and Fiona at the mention of 'early this morning'.

"Why don't I just show you," he said, already rising to fetch a large tablet from another room. Upon returning to his seat, he poked at the screen and then set it on the table so they could all see the video that began playing.

A respectable-looking woman appeared. "My name is Carla Jenkins. Until recently, I worked as a senior policy analyst for Rhind Corporation. For twenty eight years, I led a team that conducted research for global leaders in business and government. Our job was to look at an issue, uncover all of the facts around this and then make policy recommendations based on what we found. Our largest client was the US Government - primarily the Department of Defense. In the course of our last project at Rhind Corporation, my team uncovered a grave and imminent threat to life as we know it. This was the threat of total economic collapse followed by a world war, predicted by our model to begin between February and July of the year 2023.

Despite the catastrophic nature of this threat, and the proven accuracy of our model, neither my superiors at Rhind nor our clients at the Department of Defense were able to respond to this impending event in a way that could plausibly avert the crisis. Through no fault of their own, they were legally and perhaps morally obligated to act against the best interest of our nation and our world. But we - those on my team and many others - came to the conclusion that our actions would not be so constrained in the face of such necessity."

"To explain further, I will turn the camera over to a man named Jarton Landry. His presence here verifies for you that this message was recorded prior to November first, as our model shows that Mr Landry will have been held by German authorities since that date by the time this video is released on December third. In fact, we are filming this on October twenty fifth to prove to you, by the contents of this message, that the program we developed does not lie about the future. Now, I give you Jarton Landry."

The camera panned across an office and came to rest on a face familiar from recent news coverage, who was generally known to have been incarcerated for over a month.

"By now you have heard Halloween Seventeen presented as a terrorist attack. As, to quote our esteemed President, a 'digital 9/11'. Do not forget that 9/11 was, in 2001, labelled a 'new pearl harbor'. Do not forget that these words birthed a domestic security state which stripped us of our freedoms at home, and led us into a series of military conflicts that killed vast numbers of people abroad. Do not forget that the cooperation cemented by these words between the public and private sectors was misused to grow inequality and crush the ambitions of a dwindling middle class."

"Before Halloween Seventeen, over ninety million working age people in the United States did not have regular paying jobs, and nearly fifty million people relied on electronically delivered federal food assistance monies to pay for their groceries. Before Halloween Seventeen, jails and prisons held one percent of all American adults at any given time, while twice that number was on monitored parole or probation.

Before Halloween Seventeen, there were roughly one million suicide attempts per year in the United States, of which more than forty thousand resulted in death. Obscene disparities in wealth distribution. A barbaric system of industrial medicine. A global mass extinction event underway. Escalating manufacture and sale of armaments. Technological unemployment."

"Our model shows that these things and more are so intertwined that they can no longer be dealt with separately. They are all the same problem. Halloween Seventeen will not solve this problem, but it will give you the opportunity to solve it in ways that would otherwise be impossible - by freeing up all of the information that has been kept under lock and key so a few may benefit at the expense of everyone else, and by freeing the mechanisms of economic activity from clutches of a predatory oligarchy. Despite the disruptions this will cause, and though some of us will undoubtedly loose our lives in Halloween Seventeen's aftermath, we believe it is the only way to avoid the far greater losses that would otherwise come to pass. We are the Synopticon."

"Can you play it again - I want to make sure I heard that right?" asked Fiona. They watched it again.

"It's just - oh my god. That woman. She's one of the ringleaders that was killed in that first big raid in Venezuela. At least, that's what Worldspan news said. What's going on?" Fiona asked no one in particular. "Are they some kind of weird cult? They look so normal."

Ryan, who had started poking at his phone when the video began playing the second time, looked up, "Here. It looks like they posted a long list of the companies that they're saying will go down in the next six months because of what they did. They're saying more than fifty million people will lose their jobs and no one will be able to get enough money because the banks will freeze credit. That's insane. Why would anyone want to do that? Is it even possible?"

"It is insane," Dan agreed. "But it might be possible. They're also claiming that more jobs than that would have been lost over the next five years due to human workers being replaced with computer programs or robots. And saying that a financial crisis happening like this will force us to come up with a new monetary system overnight just to keep the modern world moving. There's some kind of logic to it, but their whole plan seems to be based on what this computer program said. So it is like a cult, but without the usual charismatic leader. Instead, they apparently follow a really fancy calculator."

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!