Burn-In

by P. W. Singer

  Of course, she understood their anger. The toxic combination of an economic collapse and a screwed-up political system had done a job on the benefits they were supposed to get after their service. Everyone was suffering, but it was the inequity of it all that had sparked the movement. Civilian Social Security checks were automatically adjusted higher by law, but not the veterans’ benefits, which had to be voted on each year.7 That one little difference, and the pedestal that veterans were put on in politics, had made their checks the hostages that the two parties used to bargain for what they wanted. Anyone in the military knew that being a pawn for politicians was part of the deal, but not in a way that also harmed their families.

  So the response had been familiar to anyone with military tactics: advance toward the threat. A million-strong march of vets from around the nation had shown up in DC to “occupy” Congress.

  But that was the thing about anger—once you got organized around it, it could never be satisfied. Most of the vets had gone home after Congress had buckled and the checks had been adjusted. But a decent amount had decided to stay on until Congress also met their demands for guaranteed jobs, housing, and, well, pretty much anything else anyone who’d given more than their fair share felt they deserved. This was the part Keegan wasn’t too comfortable with—the idea that they deserved more not just because they were owed it, but because they were better than those who owed them, and whose rules they no longer had to follow.

  It was maybe because she wasn’t really owed anything; she could never really repay what the Corps gave her. She had joined up a few weeks short of college graduation. She had seen one of those recruitment ads about how the Marines chose to run toward trouble. For her, it had been about fleeing it. The University of Washington Tacoma was 2,936 miles from Parris Island, South Carolina, but even after a cross-country bus ride, at times it still felt too close. After boot camp, the Marines had sent her a few thousand miles farther, to yet another place and time she’d rather not remember, but for different reasons. Forgetting was a necessity, just like it was for a nation that had simply come to accept the sight of veterans bathing in the Reflecting Pool as the price of staying a superpower.

  “What’s your story, Marine turned Fed?” asked Richter. “Where’d you serve?”

  “Keegan. Lara. E-5,” Keegan answered, using official shorthand for the enlisted rank that anyone in another service would recognize as a sergeant. “Marine 1st Law Enforcement Battalion, most of it in the Sandbox. You?”

  “MP unit, eh? That answers how you ended up becoming a cop afterward,” Richter replied. “Me? Radar tech on the Zumwalt, most of our time off Hawaii.”

  “No shit,” said Keegan. “I’ve been to the Smithsonian exhibit.”

  “Yeah, that was exactly what it was like.”

  “Smelled better than the ship, I bet.”

  Richter got an annoyed look and brushed a rogue dreadlock off her face. She was evidently still getting used to their length.

  Keegan had done the same thing when she got out. After years of someone else telling you how to live your life, all the way down to the exact length of your hair, you wanted to have control, even just over your looks. Now, she compromised, wearing the straight black hair she’d gotten from her father’s side of the family in an angular bob that hit just past her jawline. It was barely long enough to pull back into a half-ponytail when she needed it out of her eyes—or just needed a change.

  Keegan nodded and edged slightly ahead of her, a less than subtle signal to Richter that they needed to pick up the pace beyond casual walking speed. She didn’t have time for a get-to-know-you talk. The increase in speed, though, caused the sciatic nerve running down her right hip to fire. She suppressed a wince. It felt like a shot of electricity, followed by the muscles involuntarily contracting around the nerve. The old wound always seemed to wake back up at the worst times. Normally, she would ease off and baby it with the yoga stretches she’d learned in recovery, but Locust pose obviously wasn’t an option now.

  “Seems like you have more than a train to catch,” Richter said as they crossed the park toward Columbus Circle. “Something going down at Union Station?”

  “Just something that requires our attention,” Keegan replied tersely, hoping the pain wasn’t registering on her face. That was the only answer Richter would get. Fellow veteran or not, she was still outside the fold.

  “Look, I don’t need to know the specifics, but do I need to move my people away from that side of the park?” Richter pressed. “If the SOA is able to do here what they did in London, we’re within the blast radius.”

  It wasn’t a surprise that Richter’s thoughts had first turned to the Sons of Aleppo. Rising out of the refugee camps that held the second generation of Syrian war refugees, the terror group hadn’t even been on the FBI’s threat matrix when Keegan had first joined.8 Now, SOA hits on watch lists were a daily fixture of the FBI Counterterrorism Division’s briefings. The alerts had spiked again after the Paddington Station attack, where the suicide bombers had worn virtual reality cameras to allow fans to “experience” the attack.

  “Just something that requires our attention,” Keegan said, repeating the statement as a signal that was all Richter was going to get.

  “Of anyone, we have a right to know,” Richter replied, playing that card.

  “Then you also understand why I can’t say more,” Keegan said. She gritted her teeth as her sciatic nerve fired again, this time radiating farther down her leg. She’d gone off to war a young woman and returned with her grandfather’s back, courtesy of her spine being torqued one way by an IED explosion as 135 pounds of combat gear twisted the other way.

  “Roger that,” Richter answered, but in a disappointed tone.

  As they approached the border of the camp at the traffic circle in front of Union Station, another sentry was waiting for them, also carrying an assault rifle. Apparently, the Viking had called ahead. This veteran, though, was older, making no attempt at follicle rebellion, just leaning into going bald by shaving it all off. From a guess at his age, Keegan thought he might have even served in Iraq during one of the earlier times around.

  “I’m going to pass you off here,” Richter said. “Whoever it is you’re looking for, good hunting.” She held out her hand, and as the two shook, Richter added with a wry smile, “And thank you for your service.”

  To another vet, it was as big a “Fuck You” as could be said.

  The second that Keegan stepped off the grass onto the curb of Massachusetts Avenue, Richter started bellowing orders to shut down all access to the camp and place the medical team on alert. So much for trust, Keegan thought.

  Massachusetts Avenue was somehow even more snarled up closer to the train station. There was no sign of Griff in the SUV, so Keegan began to pick her way through the cars. The automated ones were programmed to be 18 inches apart, so you could squeeze between those pretty easy. It was the human-driven ones that you had to watch out for; they were more likely to lurch unexpectedly and knock fenders, with you caught in the middle.

  She stopped alongside a yellow-and-blue-striped sharecar, with two women in the back. One was evidently well-off, if the designer suit and pearls were anything to go by, maybe a lobbyist. Immersed in a VR rig, she was spending her rush hour somewhere else, maybe taking a mind-vacation in Aruba or Alaska. The other was sitting beside her, bored, no technology in hand. She made eye contact with Keegan and seemed to contemplate whether to get out and walk. Keegan shook her head, pulling back her jacket to show the badge on her belt and the holstered Sig Sauer 420 pistol. It was simultaneously the least and most she could do to warn the woman that she might want to wait a beat. The second Keegan did it, she regretted her kindness, realizing the woman would likely post something about it the instant she turned.

  Keegan pressed the FBI seal lapel pin in her jacket again. “Control, I’m at the station.”

  “Received,” Noritz replied in her right ear. “We’ve also got the TacNet up,
so you can go AR.” Keegan pulled an eyeglasses case from her jacket and put on the pair of vizglasses. The FBI-issued version married thick-framed ballistic shooting glasses with an augmented-reality projector.9 They were supposed to be rugged enough to carry around loose in your pocket, but Keegan always kept hers in the case until needed; a bit of care was worth avoiding the tiny scratch that could cost you a paycheck or even a gunfight.

  As Keegan switched the lenses on, her field of view began to populate with colored icons and raw data layered over what she saw. While the first versions of augmented reality had projected the data onto the glass, subsequent versions projected it into your eyes, allowing more information to be packed in. You could control some features with double blinks or exaggerated eye swipes to the side, but any typing was done on her wrist-worn Watchlet, the name of which was a bit of marketing misdirection. It was more like a bracelet than a watch in size, really just a flexible organic light-emitting diode screen that wrapped around the wrist.10 Whatever they wanted to call it, it was still a far cry from the clunky ruggedized tablets she’d lugged around for the Corps, or even the old iPhones she’d played with as a kid.

  Noritz continued to update in her ear, while her viewscreen began to fill. “Griff is at least another minute out,” he reported.

  Keegan looked back toward Patriots Camp. Just through the tree line, a blue orb glowed on her screen, marking Griff’s position at the end of Louisiana Avenue.

  Keegan turned back to the arched entrance to Union Station. Now the dirty white stone of the nearly century-and-a-half-old station pulsed with data, from the estimated number of people currently inside (3,740) to a cluster of light blue marking the location of local police arriving on the scene. Most important, though, was the flashing red warning message that had set them all on this seeming race against time. The red strobed, messaging that the station’s automated bomb sniffer had caught a trace of volatiles, the chemical vapor trail of explosives.

  Keegan made her way over to the police, who were huddled behind the low wall that bordered the marble memorial fountain in front of the train station’s entrance. It wouldn’t be much cover from a drone, but it might block shrapnel from an explosion. Her AR displayed a text box that marked the local cops’ positions and identified the ­15-foot statue looking down—Christopher Columbus. That also helped explain why the white marble had a pink hue from being splashed with red paint so often.

  “FBI!” Keegan announced as she approached. The law enforcement agency networks were supposed to be integrated, but they’d been developed by different sets of contractors. Anytime a crisis like this arose, the area was soon awash with cops from DC’s forty-six different law enforcement agencies, reporting to their own bureaucracies. So the information flow lagged, often taking seconds or even minutes to transfer across systems. No sense in getting shot by an itchy-fingered cop, just because a government contract office went with the low bid.

  The cops were a mix of Washington, DC, city police in blue uniforms and, because Union Station was also a subway stop for trains running out to Virginia and Maryland, black-and-yellow-uniformed Metro Transit Police Department officers. Sitting just behind them, two squatters in faded dot-matrix camouflage uniforms calmly dipped canteens in the fountain, then began to divide up a thumb-sized pink bag of Mexican synth. They’d be locked out of the camp, but she guessed they wouldn’t mind in a few moments.

  “Our guys inside haven’t seen anything suspicious. You getting anything more on your rig?” a DC police lieutenant asked Keegan, pointedly ignoring the two men as they stretched out and lost themselves in a narcotic haze. He was mid-forties, African American, evidently the senior officer on the scene. He was also wearing vizglasses, but the blocky, thick, black-rimmed ones that the local PD used. As he spoke, two of the Metro Transit officers began pulling a four-legged bot out of their trunk. Keegan recognized it as a derivative of the military models that she had used in the Marines. With chemical sniffers and cameras mounted on its head, the bot looked like a shaved Dalmatian whose body had been layered in sleek armor.

  “Nothing more than the alert that went out. A hit on the chem sensors in the HVAC system,” Keegan replied. “Our records are also showing that it has a 43 percent false positive rate.”

  “Yeah, those sensors were put in just after 9-11, so they’re . . .” The police officer paused as their glasses executed a digital handshake, which established an encrypted network. Each shared their officer’s identifying information and then layered their views over one another. Keegan watched a starburst of reflected color dance across the cop’s lenses. “. . . getting old,” said Kerryon Reynolds, lieutenant, Capitol Hill Station. With ID now shared, the FBI database began to populate Keegan’s AR with additional information: sixteen years of service history, no mentions in current FBI investigations, etc.

  “My inclination is to follow your lead until there’s something more definitive,” said Keegan. The quick read from his info showed that Reynolds likely knew his business. Plus, there was no sense in big-footing the local authorities—until there was a need to.

  “Appreciate that, Agent Keegan,” said Lieutenant Reynolds, going through the same quick assessment of her info. “Given the uncertainty, we’re not yet ordering an evacuation. The plan is to do a front-to-back sweep for anything suspicious.”

  Keegan paused and looked up in the sky as a formation of dark gray Air Force drones flew over. She and Reynolds stood in silence, weighing whether the aircraft were part of the usual White House ­counter-drone air patrol or tasked to the threat at Union Station.

  “Concur. I’ll follow in your wake. Give you another set of eyes. Plus the resources of the FBI IT department,” Keegan said, tapping the bridge of the vizglasses.

  She also liked that the cop’s plan meant she’d be going in second. Anyone who’d served knew that going in first was for heroes, the kind more often celebrated at a funeral. At that, she spun her Watchlet’s screen absentmindedly, passing through message notifications, a weather forecast, and a photo of a young girl.

  Pressing the send button on the lapel pin again, Keegan gave a quick update to Noritz. As she spoke, an automated delivery bot trundled by on the sidewalk, looking like a six-wheeled ice chest.11 In a different place, under different rules of engagement, she would have advised Reynolds to disable and blast it, just to be safe. But here, they assumed that the vacuum seal meant to keep any food inside fresh would have also likely kept any volatile fumes from leaking out, making it less likely to contain whatever had set off the sensors.

  “Received, and agreed,” Noritz replied in her ear. “I’ll coordinate with their chain of command. I’m also going to relocate Griff, to link with their units going through the east entrance.” Taking away her backup wasn’t the call Keegan would have made. But it was all part of being quarterbacked from afar.

  “Fan out, and try not to start a riot,” said Lieutenant Reynolds to the group of police, now up to fourteen with the addition of a couple of US Capitol motorcycle police.

  The bright blue helmets and high leather boots worn by the latest two arrivals worried Keegan. Their pomp may have seemed fitting for a police department tasked with protecting the grounds of Congress, but with the Patriots Camp squatting on most of the green space, they had little left to patrol—only the Capitol building itself and the senators’ and representatives’ office buildings. They still had jurisdictional rights in a two-hundred-block radius, but Keegan thought their officers sometimes seemed to be trying too hard, too eager to make up for the loss of their home turf.

  “Entry through each doorway, then fan out to cover the station. Keep off the net unless you see something. Identify but do not engage unless you have to. Call it in and then wait for backup, especially if it looks like something for EOD,” Reynolds commanded, referencing the Explosives Ordnance Disposal team, popularly known as a “bomb squad.” “And remember, everyone, move nice and calm-like. Day in the park.”

  Stepping into Union Stati
on was like colliding with a wall of smells. Urine, century-old HVAC systems, and unwashed floors all mixed. More disorienting, though, was the spray of digitized color that washed over information that already overlaid Keegan’s view of the lobby due to her AR. The station had been built in the Beaux-Arts style of the turn of the twentieth century, mixing Classical architecture with dripping ornamentation. Now, the soaring ceilings, decorated arches, and granite pillars were covered with riotous wraparound 3-D projections. Lightning-brand gummy stims (“Power Up!” the gum sticks said in a glowing neon rainbow) dueled with pop-up ads for MonsterMash, the latest vizglasses game, where you hunted classic Hollywood monsters across the landscape of your own city.12 Indifferent to it all, a pigeon took off from its perch in the honeycomb-like ceiling of the station, flew lazily down through a projected werewolf, and began to eat the leftovers of a crumpled farro chip bag on the floor. And through it all walked hundreds of people, equally numb to it all. About the only thing you could immediately tell was someone’s income and age. The oldest and poorest had their heads down, staring into their screens, while the virtual territory was dominated by the young and wealthy, staring vaguely into space as they experienced a personalized reality through their vizglasses.

  Keegan considered the problem anew. An elderly woman in blue jeans was being followed by one of those “puppy” robotic suitcases, tiny motorized wheels extending out from pivoting legs. It could easily hold 40 pounds of nanoplex, enough to paint all the walls red. The high school group of twenty-two kids wearing matching backpacks . . . enough to take down the entire building.

  Noritz’s voice chirped in her ear again. “We’ve been able to connect to the station’s sensor cams. We’ve gotten no hits of interest so far, but facial rec should start populating for you soon.”13