Take the Fourth (16 page)
Authors: Jeffrey Walton
G
reg was still freaked out and to be honest, so was Jorja but they ran their tests. They picked a few entries from earlier on Saturday and mapped out a route that was taken every five minutes. The maps were dead on. It showed Jorja out and about running errands and even in the grocery store where she picked up some Mountain Dew. Greg’s map was dead on too for his daily roundabout through town and to work. Jorja found one of her colleague’s tax ID that she knew was on vacation. Sure enough she was located in Virginia Beach, just where she said she was going.
“How is this happening?”
“Fuck if I know… . maybe through cell phone triangulation.”
“That’s got to be it, probably would only take a few super computers, hack into the phone systems, and…”
“That’s still a lot of processing power and manpower to set something like this up, not to mention… . ”
“Mention what?”
“I just realized something.”
“What?”
“Well, my battery died about one this morning, I have a charger in the car but didn’t bother to get it… and there are entries in the files for every five minutes since then.”
“Maybe it just keeps defaulting the same location until it comes back on line.”
“Yeah probably, so it’s cell phone triangulation… on everybody… . pretty fucking scary… think about it, anybody with a cell phone, and that’s just about everybody, can be tracked to a location at almost any point in time… it’s no wonder this thing is locked away in the hills… . I wonder how many people know about this?”
“Well the President and Scott cannot be the only ones, they would need a few more key players that’s for sure.”
“Something like this has to go pretty deep. Fuck! I still can’t believe it. I can’t believe this fucking thing exists. The sheer big brother aspect is just so goddamn overwhelming”
“Being able to search for anyone anytime…”
“There goes the anonymity of the fourth amendment, this goes beyond any reasonable search… because of this they have seized our right to declare our innocence, because of this we are now proven guilty through association of location and time, someone somewhere can pinpoint your exact location anytime, anyplace, be it probable cause or on a whim all without a warrant.”
“But this sort of happens all the time though does it not? I mean we search for people using some sort of data mining techniques and we search people’s records without a warrant in order to eliminate them from the original search parameters. It’s the people or data fitting those search parameters that need to worry.”
“But Jorja, that’s my point… every time you search for someone now they are in the Venn diagram, they are in that circle enclosed by facts, the facts being the exact place and time… I search for you, I found you, you’re guilty as charged.”
“What did I do?”
“Rob a bank, there you are, murder someone there you are, speeding, there you are, sleeping around, there you are, you can’t hide, you can’t lie, you can’t get away.”
“See I don’t think this would hold up in court.”
‘Court? Court? Are you kidding me… if this system was put in place on a nationwide scale, there would be no court, no freedom.”
“Greg, if this gets out in the public… .”
“Public? No way, no fucking way, the government would implode, crumble, people would just go ballistic… . that would be the end of America as we know it.”
“I know, I know… but… but what are we going to do… this information is definitely worth more than our lives… it makes hacking the President’s password seem like just getting a demerit in school for not doing your homework.”
“Fuck, I don’t know, only God should have this much knowledge.”
“Think about it, this is God or God’s brain.”
“Pretty fucking close I’ll give you that.”
“No think about it, it is God, g… o… d… government overseeing device.”
“God, yeah well fuck this government… ummm.”
“Overseeing device.”
“No, no, oracle, oracle device.”
“You mean oracle like in Oracle databases?”
“No, like fucking Oracle of Delphi, the government’s Oracle of Delphi, fucking… g… o… d. Fuck we’re dead! Jorja, we’re in deep fucking shit if they find out we know about their fucking god, if they don’t know already.”
“This makes the Real ID Act look like it was put together by a bunch of pre-schoolers.”
‘Huh?”
‘The Real ID Act.”
“Yeah I know, the national identification number the government wants everybody to have, yet another false sense of security in the name of fucking terrorism.”
“Yeah people were up in arms about this one saying the government could track your movements about the country since you need it for a driver’s license, plane, bus, and train travel… this system trumps that.”
“Trumps? More like annihilates it using every goddamn nuclear bomb this world has to offer… this is some scary fucking shit Jorja… scary fucking shit,” shaking his head.
“Just settle down, we need to think things through, we need to, we need to… . just think”
“You’re right, you’re fucking right… . but… . okay… I need to clear my head, I can’t think straight at the moment, I need to get out of here, I need, I need… . I’m going to walk down to M Street,. I need some air, I need some goddamn fucking air.”
“Just be careful Greg,” and with that he headed to the door but first checked through the window before he exited the town home.
. . .
I
t was a rather crisp morning for June but the sun creeping over the horizon would soon change that. Greg knew exactly where he was going and walked with a quick step, checking over his shoulder almost every minute knowing full well his precautionary measure was futile. If the CIA wanted to watch someone—they would never know. They could watch from above via some hunk of space junk, they could tell what size a shirt was if the tag was showing, and there was not a damn thing anyone could do about it, except stay indoors and thus becoming an easier piece of prey. They could also extinguish the life without so much of an effort, just like the movies, yes exactly just like the movies, and sometimes they were dead on but he knew how his company worked; he didn’t need the silver screen for that . . He knew because he saw the internal communications between people in the field, he knew the dangers, he knew the risk, he knew he was in a world of shit for penetrating a system almost as all-knowing as god. The more he pondered about it, the more pebbles of sweat clung to his brows. He was becoming increasingly nervous and paranoid mainly from his body’s continued state of caffeine intoxication. He made his way to his destination, grabbed a few twenty ounce plastic bottles, and started to return back. He stopped and remembered. He then walked across the street to a local coffee shop, not the one from Seattle, and bought a twenty ounce cup of straight black Joe for Jorja. He remembered Jorja, he remembered they were both involved in this and he needed to return to her, to protect her anyway he could.
Meanwhile Jorja continued to punch in social security numbers and using the web, she continued to do more searching. She was very much in denial; she didn’t want to believe but the more she entered the more real it became and the more addicting it became. She was able to locate individuals in her department on a moment’s notice. She even inputted two individuals who she had suspected were seeing each other and sure enough, over the weekend they were in the same location for most of the time. The power Jorja started to feel was enough to dissipate the sense of anxiousness of waiting for Greg to return. This was taking spying to a whole new level and she was starting to enjoy it. She wanted to know more about her colleague so she brought Greg’s file back up on the screen. She looked at the last entry and was a little perplexed. It now had a different set of numbers from hers and she distinctly remembered his cell phone battery had died. She pinpointed the exact location and it was within a few blocks of the Seven Eleven, an earlier entry had him within another store across the street—a coffee shop. Her trepidation started to return. She didn’t touch the keyboard again and waited for Greg. When he did arrive she noticed the paper bag in his hand, in his other a bottle that was three-quarters empty, and he appeared much calmer.
“You got me coffee didn’t you?”
“Yes and…”
“And you went down to Thomas Jefferson Street.”
“How…”
“Do you have your cell phone with you?”
“No, it’s on the desk right… . right… . here it is,” then Greg looked at the monitor and it showed his previous location on the screen. “How the fuck?”
“It must be some kind of bug elsewhere.”
“Where the fuck could that be, I have nothing else, no watch, just the clothes on my back and shoes on my feet… that can’t be… no fucking way.”
“Embedded?”
“Where?”
“Money?”
“Impossible… even though people do believe that little plastic strip woven between the linen has something to do with just this… no way, too hard to tie a social to all that cash.”
“Clothes?”
“No, same reason as money.”
“They could be radio frequency ID’s.”
“In the clothes? Highly doubtful, we could easily find them, and then if you washed them, they’d be history.”
“The only other choice really is within the body.”
“No way… no how… . how would they do that… . how would you embed something in over a hundred and ten million people?”
“Think!”
Greg pulled up a chair and a keyboard and went straight back into the system. He pulled up the very first records in his file and did the same to Jorja’s file. The starting dates were the same.
“Here is your first entry and here is mine… they are the same date but different times, mine is like three hours later in the day.”
“So what is that date?”
“Over two years ago, back in October, October fifteenth to be exact, ring any bells?”
“Not one, maybe that’s when they archived records.”
“Maybe, but looking across the board at other records, there are dates in the system of over five years old, the oldest appears close to seven, it wouldn’t make sense if they archived records on different dates, then again, nothing makes any fucking sense now.”
“Agreed. Let me take a look at my calendar and email box and see if anything jumps out… . let’s see, it was a Wednesday, I had two morning meetings and my afternoon was in the clear. I must have deleted most of the unimportant emails, nothing of consequent that I see.”
“Nothing is ever deleted in this place Jorja, you know that, just in case I’ll bring up our deleted folders from that date… here we go.”
“Is all that just from one date, geez there’s a bunch of emails in here.”
“I’d say about seventy. Did you know the average person spends about four minutes per email, looking at your folder that’s a lot of time?”
“Four minutes, I could see that, most of my day is spent on emails.” She briefly read through most of them, skipping certain ones in the process and Greg did the same, “nope, nothing here… hey, what’s that reminder? We both have one,” Greg then clicked it open, read it, and the beads of sweat started their return.
This
is
a
reminder
for
those
of
you
who
have
signed
up
for
your
annual
flu
shots
to
report
to
the
meeting
hall
“A”
at
the
proposed
times:
Last
names
A
—
L
9:00
to
12:00
M
—
Z
1:00
to
4:00
This
season’s
flu
is
expected
to
be
problematic
for
the
healthcare
system;
any
precautions
taken
will
be
of
benefit
.
Sincerely,
the
Human
Resource
Department
Without a doubt in each of their minds, they knew the horror was real. The horror was worse than any leather-faced chainsaw wielding demonic could conjure up. It was worse than all the world wars together, worse than any plague, disease, or sickness known to man, and worse than any catastrophes unleashed by the throes of heavens upon this earth. The horror was real, the total loss of freedom was real. The Orwellian society coming of age has happened and it was real; the truth written in data before their very eyes. Big brother was actually inside their bodies knowing every move, the exact location and time of almost every step and just about every breath, maybe listening, maybe even watching. Deep inside the body somewhere, somehow, something was communicating with the outside world plotting the locations of over one hundred and ten million people, every five minutes and Greg and Jorja were two of those people… almost one half of America was as well. No where to run, nowhere to hide. The horror was real, the fear was real. With this information and the information already stored on the vast systems of the CIA, the knowledge on any one of these given individuals was almost unfathomable. The person or persons obtaining this knowledge, this power, would be deemed gods to any mere mortal of a man and bestowing true fear into the soul itself. All knowing, all powerful, god-esque, supreme supremacy, yes, these were now all adjectives of the President and the people around him, for god is knowledge and today the hands of God lay in the power of a computer and the hands of Satan lay in those who use it. Greg and Jorja saw the writing on the wall. The President was in his first term of office and already held a firm hand on the American people and their plights. The American people loved him; he did his job and did it well. Another term was predicted and with this type of power behind him, who knows what lies ahead, maybe a possible third term with the help of congress and a new amendment, then a fourth, then dictatorship, then the end of America. With this much power it wasn’t inconceivable, nothing seemed too farfetched anymore. What a change of views since the evening of yesterday. Greg and Jorja started out on an adventure and ended up in the pits of hell within a few hours. The only way to climb out of the depths of Dante’s Inferno was to play the same game, to obtain knowledge, as much as possible, before the clock ran out via some accidental death, before their last bated breath at the hands of the devil himself, and hopefully before the end of a nation.
. . .