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The group had gone by various names in the decades since it initially formed. The details of its political orientation and goals had also shifted this way and that over time. What remained constant, however, was the members’ proud consciousness of radicalism and their impressive level of technical expertise. No government department and no corporate entity could count on keeping them at bay.
Some of them had regarded the nascent digital storage technology with deep suspicion, while others reserved judgment. But when the promise of indefinitely extended life was expanded to include the continued exercise of political power, the group approached a consensus of dismay.
What to do, however, remained a contentious topic. Those who still bothered to engage in conventional political activity, and who had to some extent been caught napping as the voting legislation was rammed through, did their best to organize a belated resistance. But even some of these, and many others, considered it both necessary and irresistible to take more immediate and dramatic action.
To be sure, LiveAfter’s officers and directors were most directly responsible for this dangerous societal development. But attacking them would be unlikely to gain a great deal of attention. Who cared about the personal peccadilloes of this or that boring businessperson? Besides, the true danger would come from the growth of the stored population, their increasing usurpation of the political process. Better to discourage the living elite from joining the ranks of the stored in the first place.
Better to make digital existence less desirable.
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“What the hey?” Thea paused in mid-chew, a half-eaten bagel in her hand.
She had been playing poker with a few new acquaintances, and had brought a few snacks from the dining room for them to share. And one of them, a well-known race car driver, had just scrambled out of his chair, running out of the room so fast that he bashed against the door frame. The programmers must not have bothered with great auditory detail for this room: the impact made only a dull thud.
Thea and the woman to her left exchanged baffled looks. The woman waved a hand toward her own plate. “Okay, it’s bad, but it’s not that bad.”
Thea swiveled to look where the man had gone. Should she go check on him? She gulped down her mouthful, took a swig of apple juice, and put the rest of the bagel back on her plate. Yes, she had better go. She could always back off if he didn’t want her company or her concern.
She found him in the far corner of the adjoining room. He sat, if that was the word, curled up in fetal position on the floor, panting and trembling, looking from side to side in apparent panic.
Thea took a small step toward him. His head whipped around, and he stared at her with eyes wide, the whites showing. But he said nothing to warn her away. She took another step. He looked at her face, and then lower. Without intending to, she had reached toward him, palms out in the (universal?) gesture of intending no harm, and he was looking at her hands. Then his body began to relax out of its curl, and he muttered something. Had he said, “No food”?
Another small step.
He spoke again, louder this time. “Please!—Close the door.”
She backed up to obey, then moved forward again to the point she had reached before. The man seemed to be recovering a little: some color had returned to his face, and his breathing sounded less frantic. She took the chance of kneeling down a few feet away from the corner.
The man shrank back, then relaxed again with what looked like deliberate effort. He spoke once more. “They’re still eating, aren’t they?”
Thea nodded, utterly at sea.
The man shut his eyes, and a tear trickled down one lean cheek. “It’s the noise. It started yesterday when I went for a walk in the park. I passed a woman eating pizza. It wasn’t even crispy pizza—I don’t think there is any, here. . . . But the sound of her biting and chewing made me want to—to attack! I wanted to grab the pizza and trample it! And then, today, instead of that rage, I felt as if I had to get away from all that chewing and lip-smacking, or something terrible would happen. . . .”
Thea reached out and gently grasped his hand. She had to pry it loose from his knee; and when she had managed, he squeezed her hand so hard it hurt. “Could you apologize for me, in there? And then . . . could you come tell me when all the food is gone?”
Back in her room, Thea tried to find out if the driver’s problem had any sort of precedent. She soon discovered that it did. It even had a name, misophonia, from “hatred of sound.” Eating noises were a common trigger, but far from the only one. It wasn’t only sound, even, that could trigger the fight-or-flight response. But misophonia usually developed gradually, and in early adolescence.
Two days later, the former marketing director of a Fortune 500 company confided in Thea, his voice shaking and his eyes averted, that he would no longer be able to attend any poetry readings because people kept blinking. . . .
* * * * *
Thea so rarely seemed frightened—and this time he could not reach out and hold her.
He waited for her to finish her story, so he could provide whatever comfort his words and tone could give. But in mid-sentence, moments after she said something about misophonia and before she could tell him what it meant, the call broke off. The screen switched from Thea, biting her lip, to some sort of logo, and then a swirling pattern of color behind the offensively cheery words, “Whoops! Something went wrong! Working on it. . . .”
What the hell? They’d never had a glitch before.
He had never been one to default to paranoia. But before he could be sure the timing was coincidental, he had better find out what misophonia was.
He looked it up. And it looked bad.
He took the easy way out and called Thea’s mother; but she didn’t answer. So much for that: he would have to call her father instead.
When Bill answered, Max couldn’t resist asking whether Thea’s mother was busy. Bill, who probably shared Max’s preference that Max talk to his wife, showed no surprise. “Linda’s out back, elbow deep in mulch. Do you want her to call you back?”
No, that would be wimping out. “I just wanted you both to know about something.”
Max didn’t get far before his father-in-law started cursing. Max persevered, speaking louder than came naturally to be sure he wasn’t wasting his breath. When he had finally got through a short definition of misophonia, he waited until the older man ground to a halt and an even more awkward silence followed.
Bill broke the silence first. “It’s a devil’s bargain you made.”
Well, he hadn’t exactly made it. But he had, in the end. He’d made the decision. And what did that matter, at least right now?
Bill wasn’t through. “Of course the company’s pulling this shit. Did you, either of you, really think they’d care about what she was entitled to know?” He turned his head and appeared to actually spit.
The last thing Max had had the time or perspective, or much of a reason, to consider that day was what Thea’s parents would think. Now, he wondered. “If she’d left it to you, made you decide, what would you have done?”
The power of rage drained away from the older man and left him diminished, shoulders slumped, his face a decade older in an instant. “I’d have cursed the fate that put me in that place. And I’d have danced with the devil, all the way to hell, to keep anything I could keep of my little girl.”
He pulled together the strength for one more momentary glare. “But that doesn’t make it right.”
* * * * *
The engineers had faced their share of setbacks, even crises, in the company’s short history; but nothing had approached the intensity, the urgency, and the resultant camaraderie of this mobilization. Identifying the hacked code, fixing it, finding the hole through which the hackers had entered, plugging it, fortifying the system against future attack: the endeavor pushed aside all other concerns, for the company and for its staff. By the time every affected client had been restored to proper functioning, and the strengthened defenses had withstood multiple simulated attacks, two engineers had suffered the loss of longterm relationships, and several more were going to special trouble and expense to repair lesser damage. But every engineer received, at his or her option, either a generous bonus or a vacation in which to recuperate; and if not for the prudent scrubbing of the corporate records, the saga, all felt certain, would have gone down in corporate history.
––––––––
In the ancient world, scientific and mathematical epiphanies often faded from public awareness. The Chinese (for example, and one of many) accurately described the structure of snowflakes around 135 B.C.E., a feat not replicated in the West until the twelfth century C.E. By that time, the Chinese were extracting hormones from urine for medical purposes, an achievement at which Western medicine did not arrive until some hundreds of years later. In ancient Greece, Aristarchus of Samos posited the heliocentric solar system (placing the sun, not the Earth, at the center) in the third century B.C.E., a discovery forgotten and then rediscovered—amid life-threatening controversy—many centuries later.
But in our modern world, knowledge rarely lies fallow for so long. Inventions, once they exist, refuse to disappear. They are discovered, despite any efforts to the contrary, or rediscovered; and they are used.
––––––––
The panic brought on by the malicious hacks had barely subsided when new anomalies presented themselves.
The grunts tasked with routine monitoring of digital feeds noticed the phenomenon first. A small number, perhaps no more than five percent, of the stored were sometimes showing an unusually wide range of higher brain system readings, an increase in random associations and interaction between different brain areas, and/or distorted perceptions of time and space.
When interviewed, some of these clients denied any subjective experiences corresponding to the readings, while others claimed to have been meditating. A few, apparently ignorant of the differences between readings for sleep and wakeful states, claimed to have been dreaming.
Before long, LiveAfter’s engineers grew curious enough to research what situations might correspond to such readings. Soon, most of the technical people knew that someone was supplying the stored with the virtual equivalent of “shrooms.” And given the new precautions against outside hacking, the supplier almost certainly worked for the company.
It took another week before an engineer said the wrong thing in the wrong place, and the word percolated up to management levels.
The Board of Directors met to consider the corporation’s response. The chair got straight to the point. “Once we track down and crucify the son of a bitch who’s peddling this stuff, should we offer the same experience ourselves?”
The stuffier members appeared taken aback at the suggestion, while the rest chuckled appreciatively. One of the former, embarrassed to find himself out of step, cleared his throat and said, “Paying engineers to come up with an authorized version costs us money that we would need to recoup somehow.”
The chair dropped his smile and nodded. “We’ll keep a lid on this while we find the culprit. That’ll give us time to do some preliminary studies, possibly with the—cooperation of whoever created this, ah, product.”
* * * * *
LiveAfter’s CEO had known the caller since college. They had protested together; they had spent late nights earnestly examining society’s failings and sharing their hopes for turning things around; the caller had once given the CEO a ride to the emergency room after an ambitious prank gone wrong. The CEO took the call with a warm feeling of anticipation.
The feeling faded quickly.
The caller’s uncle, it appeared, had been one of LiveAfter’s earliest clients. The uncle had not been directly affected by the misophonia and other maliciously induced symptoms; but he had apparently mentioned the matter to his nephew before appropriate information screening had been put into place. At least the uncle had not mentioned the more recent breaches in their security, ‘shrooms apparently not being among his indulgences . . . . The CEO yanked his attention back to what the caller was saying.
“Of course I don’t want to make trouble for you. I know how damaging this news could be if those of us in the know proved indiscreet.”
Which was as much as to say that his old friend had some alternative to suggest, something the CEO might have otherwise been less willing to entertain.
“But this news did get me thinking. Would I be correct that you’re still somewhat short of the profit projections your investors want to see?”
Whatever the CEO had been expecting the caller to say, that wasn’t it. Nor did he want to confirm the caller’s information. “Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the figures added up that way. What then?”
“Well, I have an idea that could beef up your revenues, at least in the short term and possibly longer. Which would let you improve on your cybersecurity, wouldn’t it?”
The CEO nodded warily.
“And at the same time, you could serve some other goals. Remember all the things we used to talk about and hope for? You haven’t left all that idealism behind, I’m sure. You’re in a unique position to make a difference, in a way that only your scientific breakthroughs have made possible.”
The caller kept talking; and the CEO kept listening.
The CEO managed to extract himself from the call without making promises, except the promise to call back in the morning. Then he instructed his secretary to cancel his meetings and appointments for the rest of the afternoon, and double-checked that one of his former favorite hangouts remained in business.
When he reached the bar in which he and his comrades had spent so many hours, he wondered why the owners had bothered to keep the name while changing so much else. Instead of comfortably shabby decor and low lighting, pale yellow walls and larger windows; instead of the long list of foreign and domestic beers, a few local brews and a host of drinks with cutely unenlightening names. He almost turned on his heel and left, but where would he go instead? He ordered a brown ale, hoping it would bear some resemblance to his old British standby, and found an uninhabited corner in which to brood.
Of course the place had changed. How much, after all, had he himself changed? He had immersed himself in the fascination of technical challenges, and then in the demands of the business to which those challenges had led. When was the last time he had made time for politics, let alone for its revolutionary extremes? Had he even voted in the last election?
It struck him as ironic, now, that their clients could vote, even if he did not. He had accomplished that. But how many would bother, whatever persuasion Marketing came up with? And when they did, had he, by making those votes possible, injured the progressive causes once dear to him, causes in which he still believed? Many of their clients, to be sure, held views similar to his own; but enclaves of the privileged still clung to the old American myths of self-reliance and market forces, private charity and limited government. And LiveAfter could hardly afford to neglect that customer base, nor to be caught excluding it.
Was his friend’s proposal so extreme, or was it, rather, the logical next step? Having given the stored political clout, was it in fact his responsibility to ensure that such power was exercised for the public good?
The proposal had its risks; but the promised payments would greatly increase the company’s chance to survive and prosper. And the project would also serve to expiate, even to justify, the financial priorities that so preoccupied him, and which he would once so gleefully have scorned.
That night, the CEO arranged to meet the COO for breakfast at a restaurant whose private dining rooms were well suited to confidential discussion.
He had not expected outright opposition. But neither had he expected such a prompt and enthusiastic endorsement of his plans. Apparently, he had provided the COO with a welcome opportunity to take the general counsel down a peg.
He could live with that. The COO’s eager cooperation would more than make up for any dissatisfaction the lawyer might nurse. She was too professional, and too practical, to get in his way, now that the die was cast.
* * * * *
First, the COO met with the general counsel in her soundproofed and electronically protected office. The lawyer sat in grim silence as her earlier advice was recalled, recited, and dismissed, and the CEO’s complicity in the new scheme established. Then the COO summoned the senior project engineer, treating the office as if it was his own, and gave the engineer a brief synopsis: how the CEO and the founder of a prominent nonprofit had come to be having a highly confidential and potentially explosive conversation, and where that conversation had led.
No one else spoke, at first, when the COO had finished, nor made any sound, even to cough or clear a throat. The COO shook his head in irritation and pointed to the project engineer. “So tell me: is this kind of attitude alteration possible?”
The project engineer held up his hand, palm outward. “Just give me a minute to think.” He sat back without awaiting a response and gazed out the window. The COO suppressed his irritation at the disrespect: he needed the fellow’s expertise, just now. After three or four minutes, however, he was nearing the end of his patience. Fortunately, the engineer emerged from his near-trance and looked back toward the COO, assuming a somewhat pedantic tone and posture. “I think it is. What you want ties in with evolutionary psychology. We evolved to be hunter-gatherers living in small tribes, sharing very limited resources. If someone somehow ended up with more, that meant everyone else ended up with less. We lived like that for millions of years, probably. And even though humans eventually settled down and started creating new resources, with farming and then craftsmanship and then industry, most humans haven’t really evolved beyond the hunter-gatherer mindset. They still tend to equate ‘equal’ and ‘fair.’ So all we have to do is strengthen that tendency, for those clients where it needs strengthening, and connect it to more detailed outlooks.” He paused. “As for boosting their desire to vote in the first place, that may actually be a bit trickier. But if you set the ball rolling, get some of the already political people to start organizing, then we can amplify the tendency to follow the crowd.”
The COO took a deep breath for what felt like the first time in hours. “Is there anything about the proposed interventions that would undermine the stability of the digital persona? Obviously there would be changes made in a number of files, but what’s the likelihood of unwanted additional changes occurring as well?”
The engineer sat back again with interlaced fingers, tapping his thumbs together. “It’s too soon to answer that question. Our tests will have to be very carefully monitored.” He had begun to look excited. “But even if the project proves impractical, we’re likely to learn a good deal in the attempt.”
The COO turned toward the general counsel. “Are all the necessary patents in-house?”
The general counsel tapped her wristband to display a screen, oriented in the COO’s direction. “We own the patents jointly with the employees who actually wrote the code. But the employees’ employment contracts preclude them from exercising any sort of veto on how we use the patents.”
The COO nodded, then frowned, a familiar expression using lines already etched deep. “I’ll be talking to Personnel Management about those employees; and I’d like you —” He jerked his chin toward the general counsel. “— to be part of that meeting. For now, please give me your thoughts on the extent of our legal exposure.”
The general counsel sniffed and tapped her wristband again to make the screen disappear. “You already know that I consider this an unnecessary risk. But there may be a window of opportunity here. We’re quite early in the roll-out of storage technology and the regulatory response. It’ll probably be years before any restrictive statutes or regulations make their way through the bureaucratic process and go into effect. As for lawsuits based on the stored folks’ constitutional rights: where the statutes involved impose criminal penalties, those statutes have been interpreted to require that the defendant knew their actions were illegal or violated established constitutional rights. At this point, it isn’t even clear the stored have constitutional rights—although that’s where the law is heading.”
The COO’s eyes had started to glaze over by the time she finished; he turned his attention back to the project engineer. “Get started mapping things out. Give me an update by this time next week.” He stood up to signal the end of the meeting. The engineer hurried to stand as well; the general counsel moved more slowly, and dropped back into her chair as soon as the COO had left the room.
Three days later, the COO’s office received the security upgrade he had long considered his due. As soon as the technicians had checked and signed off on the system, the COO summoned the Human Resources manager.
“You received the memo?”
The manager glanced up at the new equipment, tucked into a corner of the ceiling. “Yes. And I’m glad you flagged it as highly confidential. I’ve treated it as such.”
The COO narrowed his eyes at the suggestion that the man might have done otherwise. “What difficulties do you expect when the technical people are apprised of this project?”
The manager stuck out his lower lip a trifle. “At least a few of them will be somewhat conflicted. They love pushing the envelope and solving new problems, but they also tend to be on the libertarian and contrary side. So they may object to what they would view as a reduction in the independence of the stored individuals. We’re going to have to treat them very well during this phase, and defer to them on everything feasible short of actual project goals.”
“Emphasizing the carrot, I see. What’s the stick?”
The manager brought his holo to life and peered at the floating text. “They’ve all got airtight noncompete and confidentiality clauses in their contracts. And the orientation sessions when they were hired made clear that we enforce those clauses consistently and vigorously. If they want to use their skills and expertise, they have nowhere else to do it. And anyone who starts blowing whistles is going to spend the rest of their potentially productive years in litigation hell.”
