Watchlist (43 page)

I can tell the people beside me are anxious by the sweat on their palms. The second topic's data package has disappeared. A single short message replaces it, traveling at the highest speed our network can sustain.

“Freedom,” many fingers write rapidly and firmly into many palms.

“Freedom.” Our eyes are open. Our mouths are shut.

“Freedom.” We shout to the black machinery of the government in the loudest form of silence.

“I love you, Daisy.” I send my last message before the riot police slam me roughly to the ground. The network has collapsed. I don't know if the message will get to Daisy. Where was she in the network? I don't know. Will I ever see her again? I don't know. I've never really seen her before, but I feel as if I understand her better than anyone.

Don't make trouble
. My father looks down at my squashed face. The riot cop is doing his best to mash me and the lawn into one.

Fuck you
. I spit out grassy saliva.

11

I'm getting ten minutes on the phone, and I don't want to waste them. But besides Slim and Roy, I can't think of anyone to call. Strangely, Slim spends the call talking about the Arawak language of Jamaica. Roy doesn't pick up. I put down the receiver, at a loss.

“Hey, old man, how much time do you have left to waste anyway?” The line behind me is getting impatient.

I dial the familiar number without thinking. Like always, the phone rings three times before someone picks up. “Hello?”

“How are things, Mom?” I say.

“I'm well. How about you? Do you still get the headaches?” Through the receiver, I hear the scrape of a chair being dragged over. My mother sits down.

“I'm much better nowadays. And . . . and what about him?” I say.

“You never ask about him.” My mother sounds surprised.

“Ah. I was just wondering . . .”

“He passed away last month,” my mother says calmly.

“Oh. Really?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have anyone to take care of you?”

“Your aunt is with me. Don't worry.”

“His grave . . .”

“Is in the church cemetery. A long ways from your sister.”

“That's good, that's all I wanted to make sure. Then . . . have a good weekend, Mom.”

“Of course, and you too. Good-bye.”

“Bye.”

She hangs up. I rub the age spot on my right hand as if trying to wipe those memories away. My father, reeking of alcohol. My sister sobbing, my mother growing withdrawn and numb. The memories from my college breaks are far enough downstream in my life that they no longer seem so unbearable. “Old man, time is money! Tick-tock, tick-tock!” The person behind me taps at his wrist, imitating the tick of watch hands. I hang up the receiver and walk off.

For lunch, I end up sitting next to a red-haired guy with a man's name tattooed on his face. His arms are garishly patterned, as if he were wearing a Hawaiian shirt. “That guy's gay! Don't go near him. And don't let him grab your hand,” the Mexican who shares my cell warned me—I'm guessing he meant well. I take my tray and move a bit aside.

Redhead scoots closer, smirking. “Want to share my goat milk pudding? I'm not a big fan of lactose.”

“Thanks, but I'm fine,” I say as politely as I can.

Redhead reaches over. I snatch back my hand as if jolted on a live wire, but he manages to grab it anyway. He grips my right hand tightly and tickles at my palm with a fingertip.

I can feel every hair on my body standing on end. “I don't think I'd be very suited to this type of relationship. If you don't mind . . .” I struggle in vain. The bystanders are laughing raucously, smacking the dining tables like a drum.

The sensation becomes familiar. It's finger-talking, the same abbreviations, rapid and precise. “If you understand, tell me.”

I calm down and give Redhead a careful look over. He still wears the same stomach-turningly lecherous expression as before. I hook my finger and tell him, “Received.

“Thank God!” His expression doesn't change, but he writes an abbreviation for a strong exclamation. “I've finally found another one. Now, after lunch, go to the reading room. The philosophy section is against the east wall. No one ever goes there. On the bottom of the second shelf, between Hegel and Novalis, there's a copy of the 2009 edition of
Overview of the History of Philosophy.
Read it. If you don't understand how, pages 149 to 150 explain the basics. I'll contact you afterward. For reasons of safety . . . I suggest you prepare to be thought of as gay. Now, hit me.”

“What?” I say, caught off-guard.

Redhead leers with utmost lasciviousness and reaches for my ass. I flail out a fist and punch him in the nose.

“Ow!” The bystanders burst into laughter so loud the guards look our way. Redhead scrambles upright, a hand over his bleeding nose, and leaves cursing with his meal tray.

“What did I tell you?” My cellmate appears with tray in hand and gives me a thumbs-up. “But you've got guts!”

I ignore him and stuff food into my mouth. Once I finish, I go to the reading room alone. On the bottom philosophy shelf, between Hegel and Novalis, I find the clothbound 2009 edition of
Overview of the History of Philosophy
. I sign it out from the librarian and take it back to my cell. The Mexican isn't back yet. I lie on my cot and flip open the heavy covers. I don't see anything special. From a glance, it's just a yawning pit of references and citations.

I flip to page 149, and see that someone's replaced this page. In the midst of headache-inducing philosophy-related proper names is a sheet of yellowing paper clearly torn from another book. The front is covered with completely irrelevant medical information on joint protection, while the back is mostly methods of head massage and corresponding diagrams. At the bottom is a three-hundred-word simple overview of a newly invented type of low-error, high-efficiency Braille. However, the development of more practical visual surgery techniques led to the decline of Braille, the book informs me. The new type of Braille was made obsolete before it was ever implemented.

Oh, of course. Braille
. I shut the book and close my eyes. The outside covers only have the big embossed gold lettering, but on the inside cover, I find little bumps arranged in some sort of dense pattern. If you weren't paying attention, they'd seem like some oversight in quality control left the paper unevenly textured. I refer to the instructions and slowly decipher the Braille. The information is heavily compressed; it takes me almost two hours to understand the text on the inside cover.

“The finger-talking gathering welcomes you, friend,” the unknown author greets. “You've certainly felt the changes, but you don't understand them. You're lost, angry, considered crazy by other people. Maybe you've bowed to the way things are. Maybe you're still looking for the truth. You deserve the truth.”

I nod.

“This was an enormous program. The secretly ratified Thirty-Third Amendment allowed the formation of a Federal Committee for Information Security to filter and replace information that could pose a threat to social stability and national security. After lengthy test trials, a high-efficiency system called Ether slowly came together. At first, Ether only functioned to automatically monitor the Internet through network and Wi-Fi equipment. All text, videos, and audio it considered to be subversive would be put through hacking, sampling, and semantic network analysis. Once it found the forum hosting it, Ether would infiltrate all related conversations on that server. Everyone except the poster would see an altered post. In addition, the poster would be recorded by the database. For example, if you posted the topic “Senatorial Luncheon,” it would be flagged as harmful. Ether's supercomputers had free legal rein to override all network firewalls, and would intercept the data packet at the interface and replace all keywords. Everyone else would see your topic as the uninteresting “KFC Super Value Lunch.” This way, the federal government gained total control over the Internet. The tragedy is that most people never realized what had happened. They only pessimistically believed that the spirit of liberty was gradually disappearing on the Internet—exactly what the government wanted.”

I feel a chill at my back. The Mexican comes in at this time and throws his dirty towel on my stomach. “Buddy, you should join the group exercises now and then.”

“Shut up!” I yell with all my might. The Mexican looks blankly at me. His expression shifts from surprise and anger to fear. He looks away, afraid to meet my bloodshot eyes. My fingers move shakily across the flyleaf of O
verview of the History of Philosophy.

“Following the success of Ether, the federal government's control over radio, television, and print was a foregone conclusion. The few members of the media who refused to collaborate with the Information Security Bill were isolated using a technology from the same origin as Ether. Nanoelectronic technology had been used to tamper with data exchange, and the people in power soon realized that nanobots could similarly tamper with data exchange through visible light. Seven years after the enactment of the Thirty-Third Amendment, they decided to release nanobots into the atmosphere. These tiny machines could remain suspended in air, using the silicon in soil and construction materials to self-replicate until the desired density was achieved. They were simple devices, activating once they reached the requisite density. They would detect subversive text—information in visible light waves—and subversive speech—information in sound waves—replace them with harmless data, and log their source. They could adhere to printed text and signs, polarizing light so that all observers besides the source would receive false optic data; they could alter the spread pattern of sound waves so all listeners except the source received false acoustic data. Since the source can receive the sound traveling through their bones, they'd hear the message they intended. These little demons floating in the air made Ether omnipotent and omnipresent, like the mysterious substance undetectable to mankind that the philosophers said occupied all space—the original ether.”

I remember the psychiatrist's words: “All I see is the advancement of society and democracy.” I clench my fists and grind my teeth hard enough to be audible.

“This is the era we live in, friends. Everything is a lie. The online forums are lying. The TV programs are lying. The person speaking across from you is lying. The protesters' signs raised up high are lying. Your life is surrounded by lies. This is a golden time for the hedonists: no conflicts, no war, no scandal. When the conspiracy theorists are locked away in the mental hospitals, when the last revolutionaries fade away in front of their lonely computer screens, only our fragile and perfect tomorrow awaits. We will dance our stately, well-mannered waltz at the cliff's edge, build our magnificent castle on quicksand.

“Who am I? I'm a nameless soldier, one of the criminals who created Ether. I'm not important. The important thing is that you should see these changes. You should know the truth. Now the truth is yours, and you can choose the path that lies ahead. Our fingers are our most precious resource, because in the next twenty years, within the range of foreseeability, nanobots won't be able to deceive humanity's sensitive sense of touch. If you make the choice, you can join the finger-talking gatherings through your mentor at any time, and enter the last and only resistance group under Ether's omnipresent surveillance. You will enter the only truth left in this world of lies.

“The finger-talking gathering welcomes you, friend.”

I close the heavy covers. Thoughts and images are stringing themselves together in my mind. I've seen the truth, but I have even more questions now, and only whoever wrote these words can answer them. I brush my palm across the short gray bristles of my scalp, knowing I've already made my choice.

At dinner, when I see Redhead, I make a beeline for him and take his hand. The cafeteria is instantly in an uproar. We're going to be the butt of every joke, but I don't care. I write in his palm, “I'm in.”

His smile is full of stories. “Welcome. The first gathering is in two days during group exercises, northeast of the woodwork factory. Our internal publications are in the philosophy section, second shelf, bottom layer, flyleaf of Nietzsche's collected works. Right, there's a flax-blond, freckled young lady in the female wing who wants me to ask “the sexy old bald guy” how he's doing. I think I'm talking to the right person.”

I gape.

In that moment, I think of many things. I don't think of how to change the world with our primitive method of communication, but of all the things my father left me. I thought my father's beatings and curses had made me incapable of loving, but I've found that love is a piece of the human soul that can never be cut out, not just the tremble of hormones. I'd so hated my father, tried to reject every memory that included him year after year, but I've found that the child of an abusive father doesn't have to stay broken. The pain at least is real. I hate lies, even well-meaning lies, more.

I need to do as I did twenty-three years ago. I need to shout as loudly as I can to the guy trying to control my life, “Fuck you!”

She gives me courage, flax-haired, blue-eyed her. I grip Redhead's hand tightly, as if I can feel the warmth of her body through his skin. On our palms are written love and freedom, burning hot. Love and freedom, searing through the skin, branding the bone.

“I love you, Daisy—not you, don't get the wrong idea.” Under countless eyes, I write it on Redhead's palm.

“Of course.” Redhead is ready with his familiar, mischievous smirk.

The president's coma had taken a turn for the worse: she was dead. The VP shot himself before they could do the oath. Whoever came next in line met the void, called the wars off, and undid the draft. Those of us in the last week of boot woke at dawn, synchronized, to find the top brass had already split.