for dirt named Talia Tailes. Paul and Sacco had done most of the actual
blogging up to this point, and had written the talking points for the
dozen previous video casts that Sandee had performed with his head
back lit and the image fuzzed to preserve “her” identity as an investiga-
tive reporter who “had worked for the AP” (according to the site any
way). Paul had kept her scripted commentary even-handed in its choice
of political targets left and right, although the content of the critiques
was never less than biting and usually quite unfair.
As she watched, the video from Sandee’s phone started streaming
video live onto the website. Chloe let Paul know it was time to get
started and he readied his link bots and online sock puppets to start
Digging and linking to the event once it got going. C1sman had a cou-
ple hundred computers out in the wide world that he’d taken over using
trojans or malware of some kind, and these zombies would unknow-
ingly serve up the comments and links on the Crew’s behalf. The video
was jumbled and blurry at first as Sandee brought the camera to bear on
the scene, but once the object of its attention was in frame, it steadied
immediately.
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The scene was a row of recently gentrified and restored townhouses
along a street crowded with mid-priced to low-end luxury vehicles,
perfectly manicured micro-lawns, and well-swept stoops. Things were
already starting to get a little washed out in the mid-afternoon sun, and
the lengthening shadows looked cold and in some corners still preserved
week old ice and snow. A knot of people were milling around about
halfway up the block, most of them in their teens or twenties and wear-
ing worn, oft-mended jackets or coats festooned with angry-looking
buttons, pins, and patches. Some of them had knit caps pulled down
close over their brows, others thick scarves or bandannas pulled up tight
above their chins. Almost all of them wore scuffed, heavy boots of one
kind or another. These weren’t flashy, flimsy clothing that wannabe
punks might pick up at Hot Topic. They were real second hand and
refurbished gear, real work and combat boots, real serious cats.
“Well, well, well, what have we here?” Sandee said over the Nokia, not
talking to Chloe but to Talia Tailes’ audience. “These are some unsavory
sorts, gathered in a neighborhood more typically home to Washington’s
lawyers, lobbyists, doctors, and yes, even Congress-critters. Looks like
the kind of display of buttons and black that’s going to lead to some
serious shouting.”
The cluster of disaffected youth began to cohere into action at this
point. Chloe was happy to see that Sacco was nowhere in the picture.
From within their coats came cloth banners wrapped around plastic or
wooden rods. Nothing huge, but there were lots of them. Of the thirty
or so protesters on the sidewalk and spilling into the street a third of
them had signs saying things like “Free The Marianas!” and “End US
Slavery Now!” and “Made by American Slave Labor.” Their attention
was firmly fixed on a townhouse in the center of the block, one with
outward facing security cameras above the door and bars on the first
floor windows.
Sandee focused the camera on the front of the house. So far none of
the protesters had crossed the waist-high fence and entered the ten foot
long front lawn, but they were pressing up against it hard. The video
showed the address and was lucky enough to pick up someone inside
pushing aside a curtain enough to peek out. “Now this is interesting,
interesting, interesting,” said Sandee/Talia. “Whoever in the world
could be drawing the wrath of these very seriously pissed off people.
Lucky for you, Talia Tailes has a database of Washington DC stars
homes in her phone.” The view tilted wildly, showing the ground for
thirty or forty seconds as Sandee pretended to access something, then
swung back to the protesters again who were acquiring new members
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from every direction. They now blocked one whole lane of traffic and
had clogged the sidewalk entirely.
“Welly, welly, well, according to my reckoning, this is the home
of none other than Representative Tom Wolverton, Republican from
Missouri. A modest home for a modest Midwesterner. His wife and son
live back in the home district if memory serves. Now whatever in the
world could this salt of the earth, heart of America guy ever have done
to piss off these scary people. Let’s find out.”
The camera moved forward until it was right behind one of the pro-
testers. “Hey there, you’re being broadcast live to the internet,” he said.
“Care to comment on what’s going on here?”
The protester, a skinny dude with a thick beard and a torn, black
baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes turned to Sandee in mid-
yell, screaming “FREE THE SLAVES!” into the camera.
“Didn’t we do that in 1865?” Sandee asked.
“Not if you’re a textile worker in the Marianas Islands! There you can
be locked into your sweatshop, forced to have sex with Japanese tourists,
and forced to have an abortion if you get pregnant. And every pair of
jeans you sew has a made in the US label on it. That’s slavery, and it’s
in American controlled territory and that rat-fuck congressman in there
supports it 100%! FREE THE SLAVES!” He shouted again, joining in
with the whole crowd this time.
Sandee backed away to take in the whole tableau. “Still slaves in US
territory! Who knew? According to these angry people, Congressman
Wolverton knew. That doesn’t sound good at all.” The video now
showed the angry protesters raising their fists and shaking them for-
ward and back as if they were all hammering some invisible nails above
their heads while chanting for the ending of slavery in the Marianas
Islands. Pressure from those in the back to make way for a truck that
showed no interest in slowing down was transferred forward so that
the people up front had to step or clamber over the fence or be crushed
against it. Once the first few had crossed onto private property, the
ones behind were emboldened, and suddenly everyone was pressing
forward. From somewhere in the crowd people started throwing bottles
and cans.
Chloe, caught up in the video in front of her, didn’t hear Paul the
first two times he said something to her. Finally she looked up to him.
“What did you say?”
“I said the congressman’s in there and he’s calling Danny right now.”
Paul had an earphone in his left ear and could listen in on any con-
versations made on either of the phones they’d hacked. “He’s already
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called the cops. Or his wife has, on the house phone.”
“I thought his wife was back in Missouri?” Chloe said.
“Not this weekend. I think she’s here to go to the fundraiser with
him tonight.”
Chloe nodded and went back to the video. Sandee was too busy cap-
turing all the action to answer a warning call about the cops coming
and besides, that was pretty clearly going to happen no matter what.
A bottle shattered against the bars on one of the windows by the front
door. The shouting had gone from organized to calamitous at this point,
and Sandee swept the video around the street to show both how large
the group had gotten and how scared the few remaining bystanders on
the street looked. When she went back and looked at the logs of the
video and the phone calls, she would see just how impressive the DC
police response time really was. The first car arrived within a couple
of minutes, with the second and third cars not more than a minute
behind those.
The cops leaped out of their vehicles as Sandee recorded them, their
nightsticks drawn. At least they had the good sense not to pull firearms,
which had been a real worry. Sacco was supposed to have briefed the
protesters to scatter when police arrived, and most of them started to
do just that as soon as the patrol cars screeched to a halt. The five cops
(one was in his car alone) didn’t bother too much with the first to flee,
concentrating instead on those still menacing the front of the congress-
man’s home.
“The cops have arrived now,” Sandee was saying over the yelling.
“And they do not look happy. I wonder if there are enough of them, but
I’m betting there are many more on the way. This flash protest seems
to be breaking up as soon as it… oh! Damn!” She got a close-up of a
cop banging away on the back of a protester’s head as he in turn was
banging on the front door of the house. The poor kid went down in a
flash, bleeding. “Things are ugly here. Real ugly.”
The five cops had fought their way to the front and rallied on the
steps before turning and facing the protesters in a unified phalanx of
blue-clad menace. Only a dozen or so foolhardy stalwarts remained,
one of whom was ripping a decorative cabbage from the front lawn
and preparing to throw it at the cops. At that point one of the fleeing
protesters knocked into Sandee hard, sending the phone/camera reeling
to the ground. “Hey!” she heard Sandee shout.
A second later he picked the phone up and two other protesters
slammed into him as well. The video was a blur of swinging, Blair
Witch style motion. “Gimme that!” someone shouted at Sandee.
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Geek Mafia: Black Hat Blues
“Fuck off!” Sandee shouted back, and Chloe and the rest of the view-
ers got a camera eye view of a knuckle punch to the throat. The grabby
protester went down and Sandee started to backpedal, bringing the
camera back up and watching as more cops arrived and those who
hadn’t run in the beginning ended up in handcuffs or pinned to the
ground by angry law enforcement. The guy Sandee had punched lay on
the ground, holding his balls and neck, curled up in a fetal position.
“I think that’s my cue to cut out of here,” Sandee said, sweeping
the camera back and forth across the whole street scene one last time.
“This is Talia Tailes reporting live from Congressman Wolverton’s own
private protest party. Out.” The video went dark.
Chloe sat back in her seat and blew out some air through her lips in a
low whistle. She turned over to Paul, who was still listening intently to
his tap on the Congressman or Danny’s phone. “Are they still talking
about it?”
“Now he’s calling someone in the Secret Service apparently. He’s
still too pissed off about them trampling his front lawn to have even
noticed what the signs said.” Paul paused to listen to something. “He’s
maybe calming down some now. But I’m gonna start hitting Danny
with some tips and questions from media sources in the next couple
hours, and that should get them thinking about the right shit by the
fundraiser tonight.”
Chloe was happy with how things had gone, although a little surprised
at how fast it had all happened. It was the kind of quick crackdown
that pre-internet no one would have ever seen because TV wouldn’t
have gotten there in time. Now one lone drag queen with a camera
could broadcast it live to the world. Sandee called in ten minutes later
to report that he’d made it clear of the rigmarole and was on his way
back to home base. Chloe had been slightly worried that the cops would
try and hold him as a witness if they’d noticed him videotaping the
event, but they’d obviously had bigger issues occupying their attention.
Once the video was online, they’d have no way of tracing them back to
Sandee, since the fictitious Talia Tailes was entirely anonymous, as was
her site (no easy feat that, in this modern day).
An hour later he was back, and Sacco had called in to report that a
dozen of his one-time recruits had been arrested, but there wasn’t any-
one who could lead the authorities back to him. His liaisons with the
protesters had all been smart enough to split when they heard sirens,
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per the plan, and were preparing for the night’s more peaceful but
still important follow up. Paul reported from across the room that his
campaign to drum up views for the protest video was bearing fruit and
that the media outreach plan was reaching its first critical mass where
they could get some real traction on Digg, Reddit, and the other social
networking news sites. Then came the emergency text message from
Bee, asking Chloe to come downstairs RIGHT NOW.
“What the fuck?” Chloe said. “Shit.” She texted back, ignoring for a
moment Paul’s questions. Bee just reiterated her need to see Chloe in
the lobby, and texted their pre-arranged code word for “it’s not safe for
me to come home.”
Sandee walked in at that moment, a smile on his face. “Well, that
was nothing but shocking and awesome,” he said, and then saw Chloe’s
worried face.
“Is something going on downstairs?” Chloe asked.
“Bunch of nerds having a convention,” he said. “Nothing out of the
ordinary or even remotely exciting that I saw.”
“What’s going on?” Paul called across the room.