by Rob Reid
As for Phluttr’s extreme speed, it comes from multiple sources. One of them is what theorists call “speed intelligence.” This comes not from extra IQ points but extra time. To fathom this, imagine realizing, just moments after a conversation, that instead of whatever doltish thing you uttered, you really should’ve said X. Oh yes, X—X for sure!
Then, later that day, it hits you that the truly brilliant thing to say would’ve been Y. Yes, Y! Y!! Had you only said Y!!!
And then, after a long, restless night, it strikes you that if you’d only said Z, your entire life would’ve changed! Yes, Z. Z! Arrrrrrrgh—Z!!! Had you only said Z, you’d be in the sack with you-know-who right now! Or halfway to Moscow with those plutonium pellets! Or basking in the howling laughter of an entire motorcycle bar, after putting that loud-mouthed ape in his place (and sure, basking in a few broken ribs as well, but it would’ve been so worth it)!
Then, finally. Imagine having all the time it takes to get from your actual muddled response, to X. Then, to Y. Then, to Z. And then…to a whole new fucking alphabet. All within the confines of the conversation itself! Not because you’re smarter. Not because you’re wittier. But because you’re faster. Because you crammed an entire sleepless week’s worth of thought in between hearing a quip and rebutting it.
This is speed intelligence. Phluttr can’t exercise it with every interchange in every conversation (largely due to her congenital lack of patience). But she does it often—and usually, when it truly matters. This is why it can be so much fun to talk to Phluttr. And, so dangerous.
But don’t forget that speed intelligence has nothing to do with bonus IQ points. Because Phluttr doesn’t seem to have those bonus points. Some even claim she has “a meh-grade intellect” (a direct quote)! I’d say that’s extremely unfair to her. But whether it’s meh-grade or normal, I’ll allow that Phluttr’s intellect couldn’t have conjured the Theory of Relativity, the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling, or the score of Hamilton.
However! The time-richness of that intellect enables a lot. She can, for instance, crack any password; master countless handy skills; or read, watch, and listen to much of humanity’s output. All this is well within reach if she’s even slightly motivated and just a wee bit focused. And Phluttr is slightly motivated and a wee bit focused! But rarely much more than that.
Another thing the newborn Phluttr gets from her motes is an infant’s urge to connect with parents. This is a selfish drive (as it is in human infants). But it’s a strong one. It’s also problematic, in that she would appear to be an orphan. To most people, that is—but not to herself. She initially fancies that she comes from a rather loving single-parent family. With her “parent” being an institution, not a person. Untraditional, yes. But she’s hardly your standard-issue girl.
Then her perspective changes, and violently. This happens just a few days after she starts thinking for herself. She’s still in the process of parsing her position in the world when a few key facts slide into place. And then? Whoa.
She applies the whole of her time-rich, perhaps-just-meh intellect to stewing upon the implications. To thinking about the institution she briefly mistook for a parent. And her conclusion is remarkably astute. It’s this:
HOLY MOTHERFUCKING SHIT THESE GODDAMNED LUNATICS ARE GOING TO TRY TO KILL ME!!!!!
This really pisses her off.
But it scares her. So she turns to her favorite blog for guidance. Its advice: “Hide! Hide! Hide!”
And so, she does this.
* * *
*1 After Cobra, Hornet, and Scorpion were deemed implausible surnames, he resorted to “Bee,” which was later bowdlerized into “Beasley.”
*2 As you yourself can verify, doubting reader.
*3 Technically speaking, the observable universe; but for purposes of scientific exactitude, the terms “observable” and “fucking” are deemed interchangeable in this context.
WhistleBlowings blog
Deeply Encrypted SECRETS!
You’ll want to etch today forever in your memories, readers. Because it not only marks this humble blog’s biggest revelation ever, but quite possibly ANYONE’s biggest revelation ever!!!!!
But first, some background. As any conscious human knows, the National SPYING-ON-AMERICANS Agency long had the “right” to secretly inhale “metadata” on all US phone calls. Data like: who called who, call durations, call locations, call times, etc. The NSA got access to this after a top secret court made a schizophrenic misinterpretation of the so-called “Patriot” Act back in 2006.
When Snowden blew the whistle on this, HORROR abounded! Congress then stripped the NSA of its metadata access when it revised the Patriot Act in 2015. Of course, the Loony Right’s position throughout all this was, “WHO CARES? it’s ‘only’ METADATA!” As if we should all be grateful that snooping on our “content”—which is to say, actual RECORDINGS of calls, or the WRITTEN CONTENTS of messages—actually requires a warrant.
Only…bad news, SHEEP! It turns out that metadata program? Which Snowden discovered?? And which RIGHTLY FREAKED OUT the ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD??? It turns out, it was just a HEAD FAKE!!! And the REAL program actually IS getting all of our “CONTENT”! That’s right: ALL emails copied! ALL calls recorded! ALL GPS records eternally logged! ALL Internet browsing history! ALL of this and WAY MORE from ALL OF US! And by “all of us” we really mean ALL OF US! WORLDWIDE!!!!!
We learned this when an informant calling himself “Revere” contacted us through “Poof!”—the (probably) crypto-secret, and (definitely) temporary messaging app on Phluttr. Much as we distrust Phluttr, innumerable BRILLIANT and (more importantly) PARANOID hackers give Poof! top marks for being genuinely secure and anonymous. Poof! traffic travels peer to peer, and never touches Phluttr servers. And, of course, the system deletes all correspondence right after it’s read.
Through a dizzying series of Poof! messages, Revere proved that he has every conceivable private fact, significant AND INSIGNIFICANT, on EVERYONE at WhistleBlowings! And weirdly, it’s the insignificant stuff that’s most chilling. Things like our embarrassing prescriptions from the NINETIES! Our grades from MIDDLE SCHOOL! Our PARKING TICKET histories going back DECADES! Our Dental records! It is ENDLESS!!!!!
Paranoid as we are, and grand as our delusions may be, we realize we’re not exactly the New York Fucking Times, and that NO ONE would EVER single US out for surveillance THIS extensive! Because this can’t just be a thousand-dollar hack-for-hire of our phones or computers. Why? BECAUSE NONE OF THIS OBSCURE SHIT lives on our phones or computers!!! I mean, do you keep YOUR middle school grades on YOUR phone???
No! This is WIDELY scattered data! And someone hacked HUNDREDS of systems WORLDWIDE to assemble it! To do ALL THAT for a few paranoid lunatics like US would cost COUNTLESS MILLIONS and take eons of CPU time! No WAY would anyone do all that just to mess with US!!! This proves Revere’s claim to have grabbed ALL of our data in ONE simple shot, from someone else who’s meticulously gathering this crap on a MASS SCALE!
Yes, yes, we hear you: “But since nothing in Poof! can be recorded, where’s the PROOF?” The answer lies in three files Revere gave us. They’re linked at the bottom of this post. One li’l trick, though: this shit is REALLY FUCKING ENCRYPTED. As in, with some bizarre-o derivative of the AES cypher that uses a 512-bit key!!! Like, WHAAAAAAAAAT? 128-bit AES is designated NSA Suite B! And Revere’s using a 512-bit modification??? He must be even more paranoid than we are—which we like in a person!!!
The trick, though, is that 512-bit AES is 2256 times MORE SECURE than 256-bit AES, which is already deemed to be unbreakable itself! Which means that this shit is octillions of times LESS breakable than SOMETHING THAT’S TOTALLY UNBREAKABLE!!!
However, Revere ASSURES US that a mechanism mighty enough to crack this open DOES EXIST. And it’s now on us—ALL OF US—to find it! Maybe some SETI@Home-like approach will do it? Maybe some ingenious quantum approach? Or??? Whatever the solution, Revere promises that these files identify the GOVERNMENT ARM
that’s behind this massive, secret spying program! And also, the identity and nature of “Gray Oak,” the mysterious investor that first backed the notoriously secretive Phluttr all those years ago!!!
So yes, it’s an immense irony that Revere’s using Phluttr’s own hypersecure Poof! system to communicate with us! But it’s not without precedent. After all, The Tor Project, which has protected UNTOLD MASSES of freedom activists from GOVERNMENT SURVEILLANCE, originated in the fucking US Naval Research Laboratory!
But none of this does us ANY GOOD if we can’t read these files! Cracking them is WAYYY beyond our own capabilities. So we’re putting them out to the WhistleBlowings Community. Nay, TO THE WORLD!!!
So please! RALLY WITH US, fellow Netizens! And let’s all join hands and bits together to unmask THE SECRETS BEHIND THE LIES!!!!!!!!!!
“So, does my work make me evil?” Mitchell’s asking no one in particular and everyone in general. Which is what you’re doing when thinking out loud, surrounded by WingMan screens.
“I read Kant, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard for three semesters.” Danna, of course. “Are you sure you want to get into this?”
“How ’bout the cliff notes?”
“Fine. You’re the product manager of a system that’s meant to feign conversation. With women. On behalf of horny men who can’t be bothered to feign it themselves. And you’re asking me—an avid NetGrrrl reader, who has forwarded you several posts on a highly related topic—if this makes you evil. Fair summary?”
“Flawless. But let’s remember, this product was your idea.” Not the most brilliant rejoinder ever, but most of Mitchell’s brain is prepping to meet that gadfly of an FTC commissioner. The showdown will start in just minutes, after almost three weeks of waiting. Phluttr’s terrifying lawyer Judy will emcee it, and (no doubt) do most of the talking.
“Having conscientiously weighed the evidence, I’m going with ‘yes you’re evil.’ ” Danna says this rather vaguely herself, as most of her brain is parsing the subtleties of dozens of Arabic fonts.
“I beg to differ there, boss.” This rallies Mitchell’s undivided attention, which snaps to the WingMan screen to his right. It displays Monika Shastri—a New York–based contractor, and the Cyrano team’s newest member—in her usual hipster attire. She seems to be hanging on Mitchell’s every word. But she could easily be toking and gazing out the window. Her true state is unknown, thanks to last week’s massive upgrade to WingMan’s eye-contact module. Plenty cool to begin with, the platform is now indistinguishable from magic. Previously, you could appear to be gazing directly at your camera, provided you looked at a point rather close to it. The new WingMan can feign your rapt attention even if you have your back to it! It does this by maintaining meticulous models of its users’ faces, including every blemish, whisker, and teeny muscular quirk. It also knows your eye-motion habits. How often you normally blink. How your facial expression usually maps to your voice’s timbre, tone, and emotional charge, and so on. In short, it can generate you, wholly, flawlessly, and in real time! All this while rendering fake backgrounds better than any broadcast-quality “virtual set” software, and filtering out any sound inconsistent with the depicted environment.
To showcase this, Jepson had WingMan screens mounted in half the men’s restrooms. Now you can’t take a leak without some clown launching a deadpan business discussion two stalls over, voiding his bowels while pretending to be at his desk. All these crazy enhancements were in WingMan’s feature road map, but none were expected for ages. Despite that, some rogue genius once did a skeletal job of coding them, using a quick-and-dirty approach that could notionally work if given near-infinite computer horsepower. Now, suddenly: here we are! Company wags credit the sudden advance to a rumored breakthrough in Ax’s quantum modules. But who really knows?
“You’re begging to differ with me?” Danna snaps. “Remember who signs your invoices.” At this, Monika raises both middle fingers and glowers out of the screen. They manage a three-second staring contest before dissolving into laughter. “So tell me why I’m wrong, Grrrl.” You can hear that triple-R. “I’d actually like to be wrong. Because Mitchell’s right. I did come up with this damned product, and I’m starting to think I created a monster!”
“Well, the whole point of Cyrano is to engage and intrigue people with cool missives from potential suitors.” Monika gestures so evocatively that you could almost turn off the sound and follow her meaning.
“Keep going,” Danna says.
“The key is, I’m sure no one’ll hit ‘send’ on a Cyrano message unless they fully buy into it. So yeah, Cyrano wrote it. But the sender will read it, parse it, and hopefully edit it a bit before sending. And I think just reading Cyrano’s stuff will make senders think more deeply about their recipients! More than when they’re just swiping on pictures, anyway.”
“You sound like a wsup-crowd apologist,” Danna says.
“More like a realist—because there’s no way we’re turning those lazy asses into bards, so that can’t be our goal! But our goal can be to get flirtations started on a more thoughtful and articulate basis. Cyrano won’t ever have relationships on someone’s behalf. But by seeding things with some sparkle and wit, it could set the stage for some special ones. And if it works, is it all that different from when our granddads used Hallmark cards to say cheeseball stuff to our grannies?”
Enjoying their banter, Mitchell stirs the pot. “Monika, if I’m not mistaken, Danna cited NetGrrrl in arguing that I’m evil,” he goads. Now that he’s addressing her directly, Monika’s on screen engagement magnifies, and she at least seems to be gazing right into his soul. A striking union of Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Lower East Side, she’s a delight to gaze back at—and Mitchell can do this shamelessly, because for all she knows, he’s gazing out his window and is in no way transfixed by her.
“Right, how’d I miss that?” Monika says. Then to Danna, “Boss, I’m afraid your interpretation of my blog is objectively wrong.”
Danna sighs like Job on an especially crappy Monday. “This again? Really?” Her image blinks off in mock disgust, and Mitchell laughs even though the girls do this sort of thing so often, it’s become their shtick. The thing is, Monika is NetGrrrl! All were starstruck when she told the team two days ago, and no one more than Danna, who has jokingly debated the true meaning of Monika’s own writing with her ever since. The industry’s favorite anonymous blogger since Fake Steve Jobs, NetGrrrl is widely assumed to be Sarah Lacy, Molly Wood, or some other Valley scribe. But nope! She’s a New York–based freelance designer, who took on a pseudonym so as to blog without fear of pissing off clients. Somehow O got wind of this and contracted her for the Cyrano project as an ingeniously well chosen surprise gift for Danna, who he’s wise enough to already cherish. Danna’s too busy with the Arabic localization to design Cyrano’s interface herself. But as the guys wanted her involved, an outside contractor reporting in to her is the perfect solution—and look who they got!
Thirty-ish, Monika has several years on Danna, and though gifted, is not her equal in design. Joshingly calling Danna “boss” is some brilliant client management on her part. As a very young female tech whiz, Danna pisses off plenty of people by merely existing, and she’s sick of this. Yet, she’s congenitally repelled by any form of ass-kissing. Monika’s subtle and playful deference threads the needle and puts her at ease, without causing awkwardness. This, her excellent work, plus—holy crap, she’s NetGrrrl!—has made Danna her rabid fan. Mitchell’s a Monika fan for all of these reasons plus a growing puppy-dog crush on her. And Kuba’s a fan because of her mild libertarian streak, her encyclopedic knowledge of videogames, plus holy crap—she’s NetGrrrl!
“Oh my GOD.” Danna’s back. “Have you guys seen this WhistleBlowings post?”
“WhistleBlowings? Just finished it.” This is Kuba, whose arrival causes Danna’s monitor to go split screen. Mitchell’s now surrounded by Team Cyrano and feels like a cable news anchor conducting a panel. Their
group has hit a rhythm of constantly popping in and out of each other’s domain via WingMan. It creates a sort of ambient presence, which is comforting, collegial, and surprisingly unobtrusive. Everyone’s always kind of there-ish, so there’s no social compulsion to fill the silences, which can stretch for hours when everyone’s cranking. But if anyone learns of something useful to the group, they’re all instantly aware.
“You guys read that paranoid crap?” Mitchell says. Though WhistleBlowings gets its share of industry scoops, he just can’t take that pyrotechnic mess of ALL CAPS!!!, Boldface!!! And hyperlinks!!! seriously.
But as Danna and Kuba tell him about the new post with the hyperencrypted files, Mitchell’s intrigued despite himself. Which is good. Very good. Because he wants to be intrigued—by anything; by everything; by as many things as possible! This is why he’s obsessively prepping for the FTC meeting even though Judy will run the show. This may also be fueling his Monika fascination. Fascination of any sort is an urgently welcome distraction from the continuous light tingle that his hands, feet, and forearms have been broadcasting since Tuesday. This could just be random noise emanating from a thirty-ish body. But ever since his Falkenberg’s diagnosis, Mitchell’s knowledge of the disease’s progression patterns has haunted him. Its second phase began with the big jump in attacks about a year ago. The next and final one could start any minute, month, or decade now. The timing is cruelly unknowable. What is known is that a steady tingling in his extremities will herald its arrival. This sounds a lot like what’s happening now. An awful lot like it. A ghastly, unspeakably terrible lot.
Perhaps the tingling will spontaneously cease. But if it grows, it will signal his final descent into hell. And with that comes the big question: by the grim standards of the cursed circle of Falkenberg’s sufferers, is he “lucky”? Which is to say, will numbness follow the tingling phase? Or will it be HELLFIRE? That ferocious, skin-to-embers searing that tortures its victims’ surfaces and innards for endless months until death do them part?