Copy Me: & Other Science Fiction Stories

by Laston Kirkland

  We went from making a joke to planning what started to sound even to me like a real movement overnight. Maybe we were on to something and didn’t know it, I thought back then. Wouldn’t that be the perfect joke?

  Now, just as I thought they would, they sent in the bulldozer. Open cab. Single driver. I watch him accelerate and charge. He’s planning on pushing the stubbornly unburnable bamboo walls down. It smashes through the outer wall without a problem, heading across the Zen garden fast. All of our fused glass, radio dishes, mirrors and solar towers, all rendered useless.

  I had tended that wall, repairing breaks in the wiring, cleaning and polishing, then raking my steps from the sand in a ritual of repair. A ritual full of contemplation and inner peace. One of my favorite stations. I had devoted an hour a day to this, for a long time, repairing motors, blowing dust off the hydrophobic coatings of the mirrors and dishes, testing heliostat alignments of the sixteen small, molten salt power generating towers (useless now, and cooling.) And this bulldozer smashed our functional beauty into broken glass and shattered potential.

  I will rebuild it. Recently there was a ritual created about static alignment and temperature aggregate I’ve been wanting to practice. It will be a relaxing devotion.

  I trigger the pipes buried in the sand, as planned. Normally these tubes release water in order to evaporate, and therefore carry away heat from the monastery, or we pump water from the molten salt reactors to warm the compound. Now we switched the input from water to air. This was a design consideration as well. Dry Liquefaction.

  Over-pressurized with the 800 PSI tanks as they are now, the sand suddenly bubbles in a hard fast boil. When the bulldozer hits the sand it sinks like it drove off a pier. The person driving attempts to keep pushing, so I turn off the vents. He was harmlessly covered in the bubbling sand, and is now stuck up to his waist. I timed it well, making sure his upper torso was above the sand before I turned off the air jets. The bulldozer itself is buried deep, the heavy front end causing the vehicle to sink at an angle. I smile as he tries to free himself.

  It takes him awhile.

  Radio chatter implies they are getting a bridge machine from the army base next. That will probably work. I’m glad they didn’t request detonation cord. Even though we planned for that, there was not much we could do about explosives launched from vehicles except record the obvious blatant attempt to kill us.

  It doesn’t matter. Thought I’d let you know that now I’m the only one left. Everyone else is safe. The hard drives have been melted. The tunnels are filled in. The only thing they’ll find if they ever get in here (which I doubt) is me. All the rest? Never happened. What are you talking about?

  It is taking a long time. I cannot help but reminisce.

  First, we created or supported a lot of websites, each a specialized tool, seemingly unrelated. We wanted to pester the powerful, teasing the beast. At the same time, these websites were all designed to show people how to remain anonymous and yet social, organized and informed.

  “Here’s one on how to watch or download stuff using this anonymizer tool. Uploads too. Don’t do anything illegal, but if you use the tool it’s hard to tell what you are doing. It’s very important you use the tool.”

  “Here’s a chat area where you can speak freely about anything. Don’t use your real name, and use this anonymizer tool.”

  “Here’s one on how to grow herbs, and distill water. Everything legal of course, but the techniques don’t differentiate which herbs, or distilling things that aren’t water. It’s very important that you use the anonymizer tool.”

  “Here’s a website about police corruption, and governmental and corporate abuse. Use the anonymizer tool when you go there, or when you post your own uploads.”

  “Here’s a website where you can convert money into points, or points back into money. Converting money is NOT anonymous, but the points are. Here are a lot of websites that will sell you things for points, use the anonymizer when visiting them, and try to deliver physical things to locations that can’t be tied back to you. Don’t do anything illegal, of course, and keep in mind the website has to report large transactions. Right now it’s anything over ten thousand. Here’s a handy nine thousand nine hundred and fifty point unit. That may change.”

  “Here’s how to get rid of ads you don’t want to see. Just use it along with this anonymizer tool.” Surprisingly for us, this one, the one about blocking advertising was the most resisted and opposed. Most of the others were simply treated with eye rolling from the government, crazy nuts pretending to be religious.

  The very first act of our emerging “movement,” designed to spread and uncover information, was to hide some of it! A necessary evil, a sin to counter an imbalance of power. This was to prevent the movement from becoming a suicide pact. For information to be free, transferring it must remain unblockable. And that means it must be anonymous.

  Do you think we cared at all about copying a movie, about ads? No. The Acolytes were teaching young people how to navigate darknets. We were showing them how to use them intuitively. We made it so that if a place they traveled to wanted information about them, that place had to ask. Even then, the information released was by choice. It was possible to force the information out, but not without being noticed!

  Along with how to be anonymous, we focused on sites showing how to be autonomous. How to make things. How to take something and change it. How what came off a shelf could, and should, become something uniquely your own.

  At the same time, we taught how to grow things, how to connect things, how to make furniture, appliances, and tools. How to start with basics and add layers of complexity. How to make do with less stuff, and how to do far more with the stuff you had. Each of these sites quietly sat on the tightly controlled mainstream grid that was once a world wide open web, showing people how to step off of it, and gain their freedom back in the spaces between the straight lines.

  We focused on making clear the difference between owning something and renting it. If you can modify it, if you can change it, if you can break it, fix it, and repurpose it? Well, then, it’s yours. If you can’t do that, you do not own it.

  The Copymist website collection now had several million daily visits, and people were telling each other how much the movement made sense. The Acolytes began to organize. They quietly picked the most vocal proponents, and began to groom them for roles. They put a lot of deliberation into this organization. Checks and balances, divisions of power.

  No one would be in charge of this movement so it would be difficult to hijack. No one would be essential, no one would be powerless, and, as always, very few secrets, everything visible. There remained one secret. An important secret. We were anonymous to the world. We did not use our own names, but our online names were how we came to be known. Our lives as Copyists were separate from our secular lives.

  We created our own version of Baptism. When doing the work of a Copymist, we used a Copymist name. We left our old identity behind. Outsiders found this maddening. We did not exist before our joining. And we treated our Copymist name as the only one that mattered. The Tabula Rasa ceremony. To be done as often as desired, even multiple identities coexisting. I go by many names. Each an aspect of who I am. My name and my role were always together, and each name had its own, separate, reputation.

  That was the first phase. The second phase, we went physical.

  The Acolytes bought land in a lot of places, established buildings on them and called them techno-monasteries. They designed places that were signed off on by recognized architects who also happened to be Copymists. We were as well-thought-out and engineered as dedicated zealots with access to the world’s information and a love for clever creations could manage.

  We put our buildings out of the way, deliberately avoiding zoning areas wherever we could. Sometimes, a few miles out of city limits, yet with internet access being a priority at
first, until we built our own net backbones. We made sure to follow the building codes. We made certain!

  We performed hackerspaces with rote and ritual. Weekly meetings with a man or woman leading a congregation. Everybody stand. Everybody sing. Everybody sit. A parable and a lecture. Everybody stand. Everybody sing. Mix and mingle. Meet and greet. Pick who does next week’s sermon. Retire to the basement and build a server, or work on better solar panels. Our worship was in repairing things, and making new things. We discussed the spirituality of CAD design, engine maintenance, website development, perennial gardening, and encryption.

  I don’t know exactly when I went from a whimsical “Let’s make a religion up!” to a true believer in what we were doing. It didn’t take long. We started seeing practical results from this lifestyle almost instantly. The more involved I became, the more it became the only thing that mattered.

  Our parables were of scientists, engineers, architects, and mathematicians. Our lectures taught Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Engineering. Always, we combined ritual with practical knowledge. Rituals designed to teach, to act as memetics, and to put everyone on the same page. All rituals to be changed when they become obsolete. Information wants to be correct.

  We had two groups. Those who chose to live full-time as Copymists who joined the monasteries. And those who divided themselves up by living a life using their original name, and a life under multiple Copymist identities. Much like any religion: those who dedicate themselves, and those who also lived secular lives.

  We built our monasteries to be as self sufficient as we could. Vast tool shops and huge food forest gardens, microwave relay towers, satellite uplinks, and fiber optic lines tied into ISP backbones that we owned ourselves. The station of the heliostat. The station of the server rack. The rituals of cellular topography. The Zen of DNA sequencing. The rite of CAD design. The circuit mandala. The sacred frequencies. The holiest code is the most elegant and useful.

  I’m not sure when we started wearing hooded robes. Someone started to, and we thought it was ironic. It proved practical. So, soon enough, we started making them in our shops. Made mostly from bamboo paper and linen felt fabrics coated with superhydrophobic layers, embedded sensors and microfibrillated nanocrystalline cellulose electronics. Everyone began to wear them, a handy and a clear mark of belonging. I love my robe. I’m using it to write this.

  The Guy Fawkes masks were a bit much. I don’t wear one, but many do. Quite a few electronics went into the masks, but they particularly unnerved outsiders. Many monasteries discouraged them, including this one where I am the last Copymist standing.

  All of us belonged, and all of us together were a family. I had found a purpose, and found an inner peace in what I had originally hoped to use just to meet girls.

  Yet Copymism served that purpose too. I met my wife while tending the sacred layers of the garden. There is no entry barrier to women. No vows of chastity. There are rituals for biological processes, intimacy, and physical release.

  Not just rote and rite for machines, but for everything, very much including sexual intercourse. Rituals designed to be both functional, educational, enlightening, and enjoyable. A Copymist developed a reputation with the outside world as an impressive lover. It became a strong driver for new membership. All things with thought. With skill. With knowledge.

  We worship the iterative process of improvement itself. Physical, Mental, Social, Technological, Environmental. The five pillars. Body, Mind, Others, Devices and World. Deliberate, carefully designed ascension from the current state to a higher one, based upon science and incorporating our desire for knowledge and technique, to interweave with our desire for inner peace and spiritual enlightenment.

  Our rituals were patterned to keep what is wondrous about all religion: the community, the identity, the mix of belonging and purpose. And merge it with our ability to learn, to improve, and to prosper. Question everything. Find out. Why is it done like that? How does it work? How can it work better? Copy. Improve. Share.

  Some monasteries chose to be sequestered, separating themselves from the outside world, so they could work on projects without interruption. Many allowed tours. We gave excess food away to local shelters and other charity organizations, we had a LOT of it. We repaired things free of charge when they were brought to us. This handbook sitting over here is advice about the raising of families.

  We got some news coverage, the mainstream looked and pointed and laughed. But every time we hit the news, thousands more asked to join. The world was not concerned with us. We were quacks.

  Then someone built the Nineteen Eighty-Four Pirate Box. We don’t know who. They chose the date for its cultural significance, and to point out how long ago that was. A wireless router attached to a large drive that did not connect to the internet at large, but contained on it a vast number of movies, books, and musical recordings made before December 31, 1984. The box was cheap to make, designed from open source hardware and software. Plug it in and walk away. It gave off a wifi signal anyone could link to. Anyone could copy the files from the box. Anyone could copy files to the box. It was amazing how many music and movie files a few terabytes can hold!

  Included on the box were the instructions on how to make your own box. The number of boxes grew exponentially. From the first few hundred, within two months there were thousands.

  The second generation was far more polished. It became a prize for people to find a file that wasn’t on the drive, and add it. Entire websites emerged devoted to improving the drive. These pirate boxes became the absolute bane of those trying to stop the act of copying. Today there’s always one within range of over ninety percent of the world’s population.

  Of course the government could track them down. Of course they could find the signals. But the boxes were cheap, easy to duplicate, and you could make ten, and only have one turned on. Cheap enough to drop into public spaces anywhere with an unattended power outlet, unless it had its own source of power. Many did. As soon as the box was confiscated, the Copyists would wait until they left, and plug another one in! Ha!

  We did not make that box, but we admired it, and improved upon it. And we were blamed for it.

  That’s when we got noticed by the government. Which government? Pretty much all of them.

  The bridge-making truck has arrived. Laying expanding planks across the thirty-foot sand field, inches from the still stuck bulldozer. Two more bulldozers are following. They are hammering through our bamboo now, and bringing the reeds down. The trees won’t stop them either. I hope it isn’t wasted, someone should gather all the debris when this is done, and make something useful with it.

  The monastery itself was designed like the Toulou villages in China. A five story round building, open courtyard, with storage, workshops, server racks, and heavy equipment on the first and second floor, cooking, crafting, and leisure facilities on the third, and private quarters on the fourth and fifth. The doors will be no match for the bulldozers, but the walls will stand forever without explosives. I have less than an hour, I think, before they are in the compound and can find me.

  Many attempts were made to destroy the box. We laughed a lot about it. We were told to shut it down. We explained that we could not. It consisted of a hard drive and a wireless router. The information on it was now in the hands of the world. We would say, “We will happily remove any content from a box we ourselves control, if you give us a court order and very specific information on which files you wish us to remove. It is not our fault that people keep putting them back with changes and tweaks. We are sorry but we do not have the means to reveal who is putting the files back, nor do we know how they are getting on the various boxes. We just do not know!” We made it clear we were complying to the letter, if not the spirit. And by now many lawyers were gleeful Copymists with Copymist identities along with their daily legal practice.

  The Acolytes were responsible, I suspect. We saw very lit
tle of them anymore, many had taken the tabula rasa, and lived in monasteries. Many more stayed fully anonymous. Not even an online identity we could point to!

  The movement became established, and The Acolytes seemed to vanish. Watching us, I suppose, to see if we would succeed, and learning how to counter whatever might bring us down.

  They were probably using the drive as a stress test. How to disseminate information to masses of people in a way easy to detect but very hard to stop. I don’t know who was thinking what, but I do know that anyone could find a box wherever he went.

  The third generation also meshed with any other 1985 drive it could see. Hash tags and supplemental write-once drives prevented files from being removed en masse, and these new drives provided an internet connection. Free.

  Every monastery now has a direct backbone connection to the internet, built by devoted monks as a spiritual rite, and connected in multiple ways. We allowed anyone who wished to connect to it full access, without monitoring or restricting them in any way. We gave mesh-capable devices away, things built by followers as a form of meditation and prayer, improving these designs was considered an act of enlightenment. That many became 1984 boxes was not part of the design, but neither was it prevented.

  No control. No restriction. Every box had multiple ways to connect, hand-built and unique. Some boxes had fiber connections, some had wireless ranges measured in miles. CAD-designed circuits attached to hand-carved and laser-cut bamboo. We existed along with the internet, beside it, interweaved with it, connecting to it, but not quite the same as it. And far less controlled.