by Sean Platt
His paranoia was probably over the top, and Sam was aware enough of himself to admit it. He had his anonymizer; he was mobile and using a different device than he typically used; he had the anonymous protection inherent to Null itself (a Null convention would be confusing. “Hi, I’m Null.” “Nice to meet you, Null. I’m Null, and this is my girlfriend, Null”); he was in the open in a place where many people were constantly hitting the network due to uploading media as part of the inane life-logging fixation. And as a final resort, if someone from NPS somehow located Sam through his many smokescreens, he could pocket his mobile and run. He even had a small slumbergun in his pack to disable pursuers. It was illegal, but no less illegal than everything else that Sam did.
Halfway through typing his message on the Null board, Sam felt his attention distracted by a mental squirrel. He opened a fresh window in his hacked mobile browser and, using the most stripped down, 2-D, antiquated presentation possible, began to scroll through the text version of Beam Headlines. At the very top was the same viral feel-good story about a puppy that had been Beam-top for hours now (it felt so contrived that Sam almost wanted to post on it, but he’d already decided to wait a few days). Farther down was a handful of news stories, many pertaining to Shift. Shift was just a week away, and every news outlet in the NAU seemed to have tossed its impartiality out the window. No one was siding with one party or the other (they paid lip service to impartiality), but all were rah-rah about Shift itself.
The Shift stories weren’t what Sam was looking for (what he’d been distracted by, he mentally amended; the stories were a squirrel on top of a squirrel, but he still opened a few for long enough to scan), but as he read them, Sam saw more of that high-level pattern emerge. Only the parties themselves (and their toadies) were saying “Go Enterprise!” or “Go Directorate!” but the stories all seemed to be saying some version of “Go Shift!” It didn’t matter which side you played for, according to the media and major Beam reporters so long as you were eager about the game itself.
The only viewpoint that wasn’t getting any voice on Beam Headlines was the idea that Shift wasn’t worth the excitement.
Sam thought back to his own history. Not counting his mid-period Choice when he’d turned eighteen, he’d only been part of a single Shift. He’d had Enterprise leanings from birth, it seemed, and remembered being nudged to reaffirm that conviction over and over back during the ’91 Shift. Others around him were shifting from Directorate to Enterprise. Sam and his fellow Enterprise die-hards had welcomed them with open, congratulatory arms. A few had shifted from Enterprise to Directorate, and Sam remembered the good-natured (but convicted) arguments against those deserters. Sam had argued that Directorate was a party of sell-outs, and that true free-thinkers were always in Enterprise. Sam’s opponents had argued that they all worked for the Sentinel as reporters, and that it was stupid to do a poor-man’s everyday job and stay Enterprise — free-thinker or not. Why would you choose to earn what the Sentinel could afford to pay freelancers on a whim over a tenured job with a guaranteed, above-the-line dole?
That had been six years ago. Although Sam couldn’t remember who had shifted where, he did remember every ounce of the emotion surrounding the debates over which was the superior party. It had felt like rooting for a professional game of Ball, and Sam — only twenty-two at the time — had looked upon his Enterprise team with shiny eyes, still optimistic and unbesmirched by life as Shadow.
Sitting on the park bench and scanning news stories on the eve of his second Shift, Sam found that his demeanor was different this time around. The public’s demeanor, however, was exactly the same. Everything was excitement and rah-rah. Neither party could do any wrong according to those who backed each of them.
“It doesn’t matter whether you win or lose, but how you play the game,” he said aloud.
Watching his screen, Sam felt a bitter smirk cross his lips. The expression was supposed to refer to sportsmanship, but these days Sam couldn’t help but see the same words with a different, more cynical meaning. Did it really matter whether Enterprise or Directorate won or lost? Or did it only matter how they played the game — and how vested they made NAU citizens in their respective teams?
Sam’s handheld pinged, indicating new mail. It was an inconsequential message for Sam, not Shadow (his handheld was programmed to erase if sensors detected the wrong Beam ID in the wrong places, thus eliminating the Sam/Shadow connection), but the interruption was enough to jar him back into his first distraction, now one loop removed from the reason he’d come to the park in the first place.
He closed the Shift stories he’d opened and ran a search on Beam Headlines for “Beau Monde.”
As anticipated, around two dozen stories surfaced. All but three had been started by Sam himself, using a Beam-hopper’s worth of aliased identities. Some were honest articles, backed by research he’d uncovered. Some were deliberately over the top: tinfoil hat conspiracy theories unworthy of the most paranoid Null forum threads. The rest were a mishmash he’d posted under the spoofed names of his old colleagues at the Sentinel, under made-up names, or under the name “Null.”
He’d sent traffic to all of those stories, asking his followers to vote them up the feed so they could all see what happened when their visibility increased. Null was well-known for organizing Beam bombs and disrupting discussion network-wide, but they’d been unable to dent Beam Headlines when it came to the Beau Monde stories. None of the stories had more than ten votes, and they were all clustered at the low end of the feed like the final few flakes at the bottom of an empty cereal box.
It was okay that Headlines seemed to be so effortlessly slapping back Null’s voting assault, though, because the stories themselves were trial balloons. Sam had used them to eliminate variables — to see if Headlines had flagged his network ID, his sector, the names he used, the source of vote-ups, or anything else. Now that he saw that the only thing that the suspiciously downvoted stories had in common was the suggestion that a Beau Monde existed, it was time to crank the heat.
Null had only been clicking upvotes until now. Those were Shadow’s instructions: no untoward disruptions; I’m testing; use only means that anyone has at their disposal to express your interest in the stories. The group had far, far more powerful arrows left in its collective quiver.
He closed Beam Headlines, returning to his original task. The private message he’d begun was partially typed. Already, Sam had forgotten his train of thought, so he deleted everything to start again and wrote:
need your army. get the fawkes masks out b/c it’s time to disrupt. Need a bomb on beam headlines, maybe a bomb on shift. got my people but need yours. this may go wide. We need to meet. maybe in person i don’t know. Could organize a sim if you can guarantee secure and send me the seal ahead of time to verify. lmk. Shadow.
Sam hesitated before clicking send, his finger hovering above his handheld’s screen. He’d been contemplating this move since getting his first scant realization about Costa and Shift’s possible nature. He’d contemplated it on the walk to the park, including his circuitous route to get here.
His finger shook above the green send button.
Sam watched the screen, waiting.
Do I even know who he is?
Or if even he’s even a ‘he’ at all?
He could be a girl.
He could be Micah Ryan or one of the presidents.
He could be Noah West, still alive and hiding somewhere in the world.
He could be a fifteen-year-old kid hiding in his mother’s basement, somewhere below the line.
It was true. Sam had absolutely no idea who Integer7 was. That was the nature of Null; they were meant to be faceless. Faces and names and reputations built structures of power. Power corrupted. Null stood for organized anarchy, where no one was really in charge. Because eventually, the new boss always became just like the old boss.
Was Sam — as Shadow — trying to be a boss? Was his message to Integer7 tantamount
to asking him (or her) to be co-boss?
It was amazing how, even among malcontents who distrusted power, deep down everyone wanted more power for themselves. On the Null boards, Shadow posted under the screen name “Null” just like almost everyone else. Integer7 did the same. Yet people knew who both of them were — on their separate pages if not on the forum itself due to the voice and tone of their supposedly anonymous posts.
It was hypocritical in a way, Sam sometimes thought, but what wasn’t at least a bit hypocritical? People believed what was safest and most congruent for them to believe at any given time. The poor believed in the collective power of the organized poor. The rich believed they had what they did because they’d rightfully earned it. Shadow proselytized like a member of the Directorate — which wanted everyone to be interchangeable and equal, with nobody above anyone else — but Sam actually abhorred the idea of everyone being equal. Was it really such a huge leap from his own Enterprise beliefs to believing that the Micah and Isaac Ryans of the world had points worth considering? And what would it mean if Sam, who was Enterprise to the marrow, succeeded in life as he wanted to? Would he grow uninterested in wearing Shadow’s underdog cloak and dismiss all he’d once stood for? Would Null come to hate him, and seek to bring him down?
With a feeling like ripping a bandage from his skin, Sam stabbed the green button to send his message.
It was done. There was no point in thinking twice. Even Null members couldn’t track and erase Null private messages once they’d been sent. The messages didn’t go to a mailbox. They were sent into cloudspace on The Beam then encrypted and hidden in a random innocuous system like redundant code protocols. Messages stayed where they were until the user with the correct decryption key sent out a feeler and found them. There was no chance of anyone other than the person with the corresponding key locating a message. Once something was sent, it was sent, and there were no take-backs.
It was the right choice, Sam told himself.
He leaned back against the Plasteel park bench and tipped his head toward the sky. It was blue enough that the lattice was completely invisible. The air was filtered-fresh, and Sam could hear children playing close by. It was hard to imagine there could ever be any menace out in the world.
Unless, of course, you sent a private forum message to menace, asking it to come over and play.
But he was being paranoid. Contacting Integer7 was the right move. Sam, as Shadow, needed help. He couldn’t do what needed to be done on his own. Besides, Integer7 was well known and trusted in the Null community — and Null, above all other bodies in the NAU, did its homework before trusting anyone. Individual members of Null (young, native to the Beam world, steeped in technology and tech lore) would have whole, crystal-clear clues to Integer7’s identity. No individual would have more than a tiny sliver of that information, but many individuals would have slivers. If they all got together, they could bring down Integer7, the same as they could bring down Shadow.
Sam sighed. Checks and balances were good. No one should have too much power.
Sitting on the bench and pocketing his handheld, Sam tried to ignore the fact that Null, in its protest of power, had a lot of it. The network of individuals sometimes felt like a disassembled weapon of mass destruction. That weapon was harmless as long as it remained in pieces, and no one talked about how the only thing keeping it benign was its own decision not to assemble.
“We need to crack things open and see what we find,” Sam said to himself.
It was true. This was a first step. He wasn’t committing to anything. It would be a mistake to not at least ask a few of the right questions.
But as Sam looked up at the sky, he wondered if he was telling himself the truth.
Maybe he was.
Or maybe a large ball had already begun to roll, quickly reaching a threshold beyond which it could no longer be controlled.
Chapter 7
Isaac felt like a man who had played every card, because he had.
He’d pulled a chair up to the ceiling-to-floor window looking out across District Zero, beside the (he now thought) rather unsightly distraction of the apartment’s glass-walled hoverport. When they’d bought the penthouse, it had seemed like an elegant idea to have a hoverport along the window, but now, as he looked at it, Isaac decided it was an eyesore. He’d seen other apartments, nicer than this one, owned by people of lower station. The latest trend, in newer spires, was to place the ports beyond a structural piece of the building, typically wrapped around a corner from the windows. Done correctly by a competent architect, the arrangement gave all the convenience of placing a vehicle within easy range of one’s living room while keeping the view clear of interruptions. Sometimes, seeing the car outside of Isaac’s port felt less like a privilege of the rich and more like he was living in a garage.
He looked at the port, hating it, loathing his lush apartment, feeling each small imperfection in his environment as a personal insult. Of course he didn’t have one of the newest designs. He should, but didn’t. Because Isaac was second banana, and that’s how everyone treated him.
He’d begged Natasha to put off her concert, to scale it down, and generally let go of his balls so he could keep them while trying to salvage his dignity.
He’d begged Micah to do what he could to stop her. Not only did his brother have the ability to sway her as the face of her new party (she’d listen; Natasha cared about “face” much more than actual doings, effectiveness, or even profit), but he had the ear of people who could force her to stop. But Micah had demonstrated that he wouldn’t help. He’d just make vague suggestions then laugh.
And oh, there were so many laughs to be had at Isaac Ryan’s expense.
He’d watched Nicolai leave him, but not without a total loss of dignity. He’d practically worn holes in the knees of his pants trying to get Nicolai to stick around. He’d begged him to stay on as his speechwriter, and when that had failed, he’d begged him to at least keep his position until after Shift. Isaac needed Nicolai right here and now, to pull him out of his tailspin. But that had just been another joke, and Nicolai had left the door swinging behind him, the same as Natasha.
Isaac had tried to reach his brother’s contacts in order to beg them, but Micah had shut him down. It didn’t matter that they were supposed to be family contacts, inherited (or soon to be inherited) from their mother. Micah had taken over as always, shoving his way in front despite being the younger sibling. Micah, with his perfect hair and perfect teeth and perfect smile and the way he had of always staying so perfectly in control. Everyone always wanted to kowtow to Micah, but nobody was ever interested in listening to Isaac.
Swallowing his pride, Isaac had called his mother and begged for her help. She’d told him that there was nothing she could do (and wasn’t that a load of shit) and had somehow talked him into bringing her a load of groceries that she for some reason couldn’t order up herself.
As a final resort, Isaac had called Dominic Long to see if DZPD could refuse the permits needed for Natasha’s concert. It was a long shot; the concert was just over a week away, and Natasha had almost certainly finalized her plans. His plans had fallen flat when Dominic hadn’t answered his mobile and tracking had indicated him to be somewhere off-grid. He seemed to have turned off his mobile (or at least its location awareness and ability to be pinged), leaving Isaac only with the vaguest idea where he was. That was probably for the best because Dominic was the last person he knew who might, in some small way, be able to help. He was probably also the last person that Isaac hadn’t totally disrespected himself to.
Isaac stood violently, shoving back at the chair with his legs, wanting to throw something but having nothing at the ready. The chair was heavy and didn’t skid. It tipped back for a second, teetered at the edge of balance on its rear legs, then fell forward again to quite literally spank him in the ass. Isaac stepped away, refusing to give the chair the satisfaction of rebuke.
He laced his hands together behind hi
s back and looked across the city below, the same way his brother always did. If Micah could be Micah, then Isaac could be Micah too. There were all sorts of self-help slogans about believing something into truth and faking it until you make it. What made a proud, powerful, respected man? Why, it was that man’s ability to act proud, powerful, and deserving of respect. Maybe Isaac’s misfortune was his own fault. Maybe if he could gather the pieces of his emasculated image and cobble them into something less pathetic, he could fake it for a while, and make it in time.
He straightened his back and felt the fit of the fine suit on his shoulders. He reminded himself how much it had cost as he looked through the window. His apartment was at the top of the building. His looking down from above was symbolic. I am a king. Others are ants beneath me. The Ryan brothers were in charge. The presidencies didn’t matter, and everyone knew it. No matter whether Vale or Reese ended up heading the majority party, the Ryans were important cogs in the true power that ruled this union. They would be respected. Both of them.
“This is entirely unacceptable,” Isaac said aloud.
He was alone in the apartment. He and Natasha spent almost no time together. It wasn’t that she was shunning him; it was that she was out greasing palms (probably with her stinking crotch, that slutty fucking whore) and calling in favors. He’d been hearing updates on the progress of what was becoming the concert of the decade, but he’d been hearing them from the press rather than from his wife. Everyone knew about Natasha Ryan and her sweeping comeback, despite Shift supposedly being a private affair. And while the jury was still out on whether her shift would herald a return to the original Natasha or whether it was just another sellout move, the public’s attention was unblinking upon her. They were enraptured by the prominent Directorate celebrity (so recently targeted in those inequity riots, which Isaac now knew were his brother’s doing) and her decision to leave her prominent Directorate husband's party. They were also fascinated by the way her prominent husband was lying down and taking it like a loser, because he was such a joke. Political cartoons, of late, hadn’t been kind to Isaac.