by Drew Magary
CARAWAY: Can I tell you something, Elena? I don’t like these laws. I really don’t. I hate that we had to make visible identification mandatory, but this is what is necessary to protect us from Black Shard and from the thousands, I mean literal thousands, of terrorist syndicates that are taking advantage of this technology, using it to arrange meetings and plot out sudden attacks.
ROTH: But Mr. Caraway, we spoke to multiple eyewitnesses who were in Austin that day and said that all three shooters spoke with American accents. Some people say that Congress names Black Shard in the report strictly for political purposes.
CARAWAY: And I’m supposed to believe “some people” over Congress? Why would I do that?
ROTH: Even if you find the Congressional investigation credible and the resulting laws justified, does that mean you’re allowed to open fire on anyone not wearing a lanyard, or that you can stage raids anywhere you please?
CARAWAY: Who said we’re doing that? “Some people” again?
ROTH: It happens every day.
CARAWAY: That’s a gross exaggeration and I frankly resent it. Do your homework next time. You can grill me all you want, but at least do me the courtesy of using facts to do so.
ROTH: Is it true that you have a weekly security debrief with the Kirsch family?
CARAWAY: That’s none of your business.
ROTH: You were a groomsman in Jason Kirsch’s wedding party. Aren’t you concerned that being close to him is a conflict of interest when it comes to overseeing this agency?
CARAWAY: You’re reaching. The Kirsch family is the greatest success story in the history of this world and their generosity knows no bounds. I’m a free man and I can socialize with whomever I please. If you think that hinders me from acting like a professional, I again wish you had better facts on your side. You’re coming to me with beliefs. Beliefs are a luxury for your kind that I cannot afford. People go into war with beliefs, but they come out with facts. I have facts.
ROTH (narrating): But facts are difficult to come by when you’re investigating PINE. The Department of Defense does not publicly release the numbers of port immigrants killed by PINE agents annually, although the human rights group BlueWatch says it runs in the tens of thousands.
David Suchoff is a Professor of International Studies at Colby College in Maine, and he says PINE is little more than an enforcement arm of PortSys, the multinational conglomerate that controls all global porting bandwidth.
SUCHOFF: PortSys could end this crisis today simply by denying port access to anyone with a gun and anyone, non-citizens included, with a violent background.
ROTH: But they don’t want to.
SUCHOFF: Of course they don’t want to! We could even—gasp!—make laws demanding they do it. We could stop exporting mass shootings to other countries! But no one else in power wants to do that because too many people are making too much money from port tourism and from the expanding terrestrial commerce. Look at what Germany did.
ROTH: You mean when they passed a law banning all non-citizens from porting into the country.
SUCHOFF: Right. What happened? No one came, the economy cratered, and they opened up the port borders again five days later. China can outlaw porting and be fine, because China is China. Germany isn’t. So why would America bother to replicate their failed experiment? You really think that smartwall is ever gonna work? Of course it won’t. PortSys owns nearly half of WallTech. They don’t want it to work. They want virtual construction fees for it to come rolling in forever while they keep the network subscription base maxed out.
Americans don’t want the wall to work either, because they favor port neutrality and stricter regulation of PSP providers, i.e. PortSys. But they certainly don’t want violent offenders or enemy combatants being able to port. God forbid Emilia Kirsch or her son lift a finger to prevent that. In fact, if you want to restrict porting for gun owners or for declared flight risks or for the mentally ill, they’re ready to thwart you. The porting jailbreak two months ago at Stanworth Prison? They don’t care.
This is a classic example of greed warping what ought to be a miracle of technology. Mankind has a tragic inclination to take any miracle and do the wrong thing with it, even when the right thing is plainly evident. That’s what is so crushing about all this. We could have a vibrant, safe porting world. We don’t. We’re not even trying. We destroyed borders and yet we still harbor an irrational, homicidal obsession with protecting them. That’s why PINE is gunning people down, or interning them, or confiscating their phones so that they have no way home.
ROTH: Robb Caraway says these measures are necessary to protect the country.
SUCHOFF: What country? There are no countries anymore! Anyone can go anywhere! We have a global currency! Languages are emulsifying together! And yet we want the freedom to move about as we please but we don’t want everyone else to have it. We’ve upended the physical and spiritual notions of community but never bothered to reckon with how to redefine them. What is a community anymore? What’s a neighborhood? Are there any? We’ve never answered those questions in a satisfactory manner, nor have we considered the monumental impact those answers might illuminate. Instead, we’ve opened up all the property of the world to one another, and then guarded our own more violently. It’s folly. If you want porting in and out of your country to be legal, borderism is absolute folly.
And yet people fall for it anyway. So now you know why our government hands out “virtual addresses” to citizens at birth for tax collection—tagging babies like they’re tracking sharks in the ocean—and why we’re dumb enough to entrust a $700 billion public works project to a private company affiliated with the very company we’re trying to corral. It’s all a boondoggle that plays to our worst tendencies. PortSys and PINE want you to feel like a working wall is coming, but really they would rather let people come into the free zones and get shot than keep them out entirely. Never underestimate’s man ability to take miracles for granted.
CARAWAY: The wall will be built, and it will work. But until that time comes, we have brave men and women out there in the field who have to make split decisions regarding people who may be porting into this country with bad intentions. And we haven’t even gotten into port immigrants who mean well but haven’t had their vaccinations.
ROTH: But what even is an immigrant now? We let people port anywhere they like, but if they want their kids to be citizens, they have to either port back here for delivery or pay a large fee to give birth at a designated “American soil” hospital abroad.
CARAWAY: That’s not my problem. If you want your kids to be American citizens, you know the laws and you respect them. Furthermore, we lose 15,000 people to smuggled diseases every year. Prominent leaders are ambushed and assassinated with regularity now. Security is a constant, endless task. Every time you want to ease up, someone is trying to port into a bank vault, or a museum archive, or a law firm’s confidential file room. You try doing this job, Elena. Everyone complains about the work we do, but I don’t see them complaining when they’re porting to the Swiss Alps in the morning to ski and then porting to a sandy beach for a nightcap. This is the price you pay for that kind of freedom of movement.
ROTH (narrating): But a disproportionate amount of that price is being paid by non-citizens who port in not to commit wanton acts of violence. Advocates say PINE has deliberately targeted workers in trendy, “insta-city” free zone porting spots in the Smoky Mountains, Western Montana, and off the Gulf Coast of Northern Florida, where seasonal clusters of both port tourists and the destitute can swell into the hundreds of thousands, causing dangerous overcrowding in an instant. Just last year, a bystander with a camera caught PINE agents gunning down a young laborer from Tuxtla, Mexico named Marco Ramirez. Ramirez was fully vaccinated and had secured a legal porting visa from PINE, and he wore it around his neck every day when he ported outside of Busch Gardens near Tampa, Florida to sell fresh mangoes on a stick to tourists. You can see the visa around Ramirez’s neck in the vi
deo seen here. Please be warned that it is graphic in nature.
When Marco’s mother, Yasmin, ported in to Busch Gardens to retrieve his body and arrange for transport back to the Mexican state of Chiapas, the lanyard was gone.
YASMIN RAMIREZ: They took it off his body.
ROTH: Did you see them do it?
RAMIREZ: No, but people there told me they saw the PINE agents do it.
ROTH: And you believe them.
RAMIREZ: Why wouldn’t I believe them? PINE kills everyone. I had to get a special visa printed out just to go see my son dead on a sidewalk, and even then I was scared because they’d probably shoot me anyway.
CARAWAY: Our agents are incredibly well-trained and methodical. They don’t make mistakes. When they act, it’s because they perceive a real threat. Anyone disputing our methods is just part of the outrage machine, looking for attention.
RAMIREZ: Do I not get to be outraged over my son being shot to death? Who gets to be outraged in the world today? Who gets to be angry? Is it only Mr. Caraway? PINE? Emilia and Jason Kirsch? Because I am shaking with anger and I deserve to be. These monsters accuse people like me of being outraged about everything, calling me crazy, because they don’t want anyone to be outraged about anything that they do.
CARAWAY: I’m not here to indulge the hysterics of people who have no grasp of the situation. You can afford to be hysterical when you haven’t been tasked with any leadership or responsibility in addressing what has become a very real national emergency for us Americans.
ROTH: Are you casually dismissing a grieving mother?
CARAWAY: I’m doing my job, is what I’m doing. Maybe she should stick to doing hers, if she even has one. The Americans I’m tasked with protecting cannot afford to have me emotionally compromised when I need to make hard decisions on their behalf.
ROTH: But since Austin, incidents of port terrorism have remained relatively flat, while violent crime among U.S. citizens has increased over four percent every year.
CARAWAY: I can’t speak to that, since that isn’t our purview.
ROTH: But local police departments sometimes work with you in human smuggling roundups. Don’t you find that to be a misallocation of resources when incidents of domestic violence, suicide, and stalking are rapidly increasing?
CARAWAY: Again, that’s not my purview. Even if I believed that incidents of port terrorism are flat, then that would tell me that we’re doing our job effectively and keeping the threat contained. And truthfully, we could save these immigrants a whole lot of heartache if they simply wore their vaccination bands and followed our agents’ instructions when they’re being questioned.
ROTH: But, in the video of Marco Ramirez being shot, agents don’t bother to question him before opening fire.
CARAWAY: I’m not going to speak to a lone video that could have been easily manipulated or filmed out of context.
ROTH (narrating): But that’s not the only video that shows PINE agents using deadly force. In another video taken just three weeks ago, a group of agents is seen gunning down American sixteen-year-old James Hendry, who is walking around without proper identification. In the video, agents shoot Hendry a dozen times in the back before porting back to PINE headquarters in suburban Virginia.
SUCHOFF: They’re accountable to no one, and they’re gunning down legal porters and American citizens who are too poor to afford a passport or a state ID.
CARAWAY: Those are false allegations, and it makes our job infinitely more difficult when that kind of garbage gets circulated around and legitimized by the mainstream media. Here’s what I know, Elena: We’re the most open, welcoming nation on Earth. We have never passed a law that forbids legally porting here, because we believe in freedom. But we also know that PortSys can’t control what you bring with you into a wormhole, and so we have to be fair but strong. It’s not a perfect system we have right now.
ROTH: But you’re counting on a wall to fix it.
CARAWAY: No, that’s a mischaracterization. Everyone wants to be free and everyone wants to be safe, and those two desires aren’t always compatible. So we’re not sitting here on our duffs, praying some computer nerd at WallTech can solve that conundrum for us. We are doggedly looking for alternative solutions that keep our border legitimate while also reducing the need to employ deadly force.
ROTH: Can you tell me some of those possible solutions?
CARAWAY: Not right now, I can’t.
SEWELL HALL
Bamert, aka Chester Bumlee, was now a very prolific businessman. He had a $200,000 stake in a growing fleet of Oxford-based kebab vendors, and he shrewdly decided to use 25% of that seed money for a targeted advertising campaign run by a company called Boola. The Boola rep was extremely enthusiastic about securing Mr. Bumlee’s business, even going so far as to offer him exclusive access to something called Network Z.
“And what is Network Z, pray tell?” Bamert asked over the phone in his best British accent, which sounded very much like a Virginia teenager poorly imitating a British accent.
“It offers preferred vendors special porting capabilities and provides them with access to consumer demographics and porting trends that you cannot get anywhere else. This is a new offer!”
“Oh my! Jolly good! I would quite fancy that, I would! Oh, but I do want to take care that such things are within the bounds of ETHICS, my good lad.”
“It’s 100% ethical. We only collect data from porters who agree to share it. Would you like me to send you the materials?”
“With all due haste! Crumpets and brandy for all!”
The rep sent Bamert a PDF that included a nondisclosure agreement that ran over 30,000 words. Anna scanned the document and quickly noticed FAILURE TO COMPLY COULD RESULT IN JAIL AND A FINE OF $20 MILLION in bold. That was the nut of it. The rest of the fine print was window dressing. They signed Chester Bumlee’s life away to this shady Boola outfit and received a confirmation email granting him one year of access to Network Z. Bamert hit DOWNLOAD on the DIY PortPhone and an ominous app icon loaded on screen: a sheet black tile with no name under it. When he opened the app, it looked just like PortMaps, only now the map of the world was black and had billions of small blue pins on it.
“Bamert,” Anna asked, “what is this?”
She touched one of the pins and Network Z spat out the life story of a woman named Frances Gallery: her age, her date of birth, her current location (Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas), her top 10 favorite porting locations, her last 100 ports, everything. The screen blinked for a second and now the woman’s dot was on another continent. This wasn’t like the Friends section of the PortSys app, where only your circle of friends could see your location. This was the whole world’s movement, a pulsing blanket of humanity bopping around in real time and in recognizable swells and patterns, swarming toward all the warm and bright places, leaving the nightlands lonely and barren.
“Well shit on a shingle,” Bamert said, “We can see everyone!”
“This seems bad,” Anna said.
“It is bad,” said Burton. “Atlantis is a 50,000-room resort with no portwall. Why would anyone ever subject themselves to that kind of tourist trap?”
“Burton, please don’t Burton all over this. Visitation time is almost over. This is a crisis. This is not something people should be able to have.”
“But they already do,” he said. “Brands and celebrities and anyone else with a million port friends, they can see this kind of movement and monetize it. This is the logical extreme of that.”
Bamert leaned toward the screen. “What’s that search bar do?”
Anna put her finger on the little bar at the top of the screen and a keyboard prompt popped up. She looked at Bamert, who gave her a nod.
“Come on,” he told her, “You know you wanna.”
Her fingers trembled as she typed in the name SARAH HUFF.
“Wait,” asked Burton, “I thought you were gonna search for—”
When she hit the ENTER arrow, her sis
ter’s face and profile appeared. There was no pin to indicate her location.
“You’re looking for your sister, Anna?” Bamert asked her.
“Not exactly.” She brought up Sarah’s porting data and it listed Rockville with a timestamp of August 9, 2029 as her final pin.
“Oh Anna,” said Bamert. “I’m really sorry.”
“What happened to her?” asked Burton.
“I’m trying to sort that out.” She brought up Sarah’s entire porting history. Before Sarah died, she had turned off location sharing and cleared all her porting data. But thanks to Network Z, all of that data had been resurrected for data miners and anyone else looking to scavenge her sister’s digital remains. There, right below Sarah’s home pin in Rockville and her work pin in San Francisco, was another pin: Houghton, Michigan. Underneath the pin was a tiny bit of text that read, “Shared with one other person.” She pressed on the text with her finger and brought up the profile of a dirty looking guy named Bryce Holton.
“Who is that?” Burton asked.
“I don’t know,” said Anna. “But I’d like to talk to him.”
“This was the person you were looking for?”
“Maybe.” She opened up Bryce’s porting data. He was currently milling around his grimy sales corner near the railroad crossing in Rockville. “I wanna go where he goes.”
“Anna,” Bamert warned her, “these are dangerous affairs.”
Anna swiped over to her mom’s old address in Rockville. No one had bought the old house from Sandy and no one ever would. No one wanted old houses out in the free zones anymore, much less one that had played host to a suicide. She queued up the porting history of that address and was greeted by a list of random names: likely squatters and bored real estate hoarders. She scrolled all the way back to August 9, 2029 and saw only three entries listed: Sandy Huff, Anna Huff, and Sarah Huff. No one else.