Into the New Millennium: Trailblazing Tales From Analog Science Fiction and Fact, 2000 - 2010 (53 page)

"Hold the fort for me, Tim?"

He'd asked me dozens of times to mind the store. "Of course."

"Sorry about this," Clay said softly as I exited the CCU. "Not my idea, Tim. The Feds want him watched."

Nothing said about watching me. It appeared I was home free. Somehow that troubled me, as though I were sitting out a fight I belonged in. "The Feds interested in Seth? Did they say why?"

"For now, he's a material witness. It turns out Homeland BS really wanted your buddy Marc, only that's not his real name."

"Wanted?" I repeated.

Clay nodded. "They have Marc in custody. Choppered him out already."

I returned the way I had come, down Main Street to Town Square. The crowd, if anything, had grown. Mayor Jackson had ceded his spot at the center of the courthouse porch to a tall woman I didn't know. Her Charlotte 49ers baseball cap suggested an out-of-towner.

Mom caught my eye from across the square, and I made my way over. "What's going on?" I asked.

"Venting," she said, as though that explained everything.

And maybe it did.

". . . Not just people, either. Whatever you had in your vehicle—luggage, parcels, you name it—they scanned that, too!" 49er fan was red in the face. "Refuse and they turned you back."

Apparently she had refused.

"They?" I whispered.

Mom tipped her head in answer, toward where a thoroughly unhappy-looking squad of soldiers stood watching. National Guard, presumably, but not from the local company, or I would have recognized some faces.

A balding guy, another stranger, replaced the 49ers fan. Mrs. Nguyen, the town postmaster, replaced him. A burly man in a tight and faded U2 T-shirt went after her. Half the people in the square had a story to tell, and I lost track. Tourists. Business travelers. Folks wanting only to visit out-of-town relatives. Some people must have submitted to scanning and been allowed to pass, but they weren't here to present another viewpoint.

The watching guardsmen said nothing.

I multitasked, half processing the repetitious narratives, still groping for an explanation. Zach's cause was RFID abuse. The scanning everyone complained about? It surely involved the RFID tags embedded in their cars and possessions. That wasn't only my guess; several angry orators thought as much. But why?

My stomach rumbled, and Mom glanced my way. It occurred to me that I hadn't had anything to eat since an early lunch. "I'm fine," I told her.

You know how people behind the counter at fast food places always ask, "You want fries with that?" Some of my friends worked fast food. No one expects any initiative from counter jockeys; the point-of-sale terminals prompted them.

It wasn't a big leap to imagine tie-in selling taken to the next level. A department store that polled the RFID tags in your clothing, so the most colorblind salesperson can recommend ties to match the shirt you're buying. Walk past the same store a year later wearing that same shirt and get texted with a coupon for a newer style. Get a fill-up and the gas pump displays an offer to replace your old tires, or—mystery solved—offers a coffeepot if there's a can of coffee in your car. Run a string of errands, toting your purchases from store and store, and—

I shivered. Anything became possible. Two days ago I'd thought web ads targeted to my surfing were intrusive and creepy. Of
course
some businesses allowed their RFID readers to scan for more than just what they sold. And once
they
had information . . .

Zach hadn't explained everything to me—he hadn't had time—but it seemed like his virus was meant to infiltrate the NARCC.

My thoughts churned. The NARCC. RFID consolidation. A virus dormant for months. Scanning everyone's RFID-tagged possessions. The NARCC. Hold the fort.

Hold the fort!

"Have you ever been to Fort Sumter?" I asked abruptly.

Barbara looked mildly embarrassed. In her nasal Midwestern twang, she said, "Maybe it balances things that I haven't visited Appomattox, either."

I had to smile. "Fort Sumter is a main tourist destination in Charleston. The old fortification occupies a manmade island smack in the center of the harbor mouth, from which its cannons once controlled all sea access to the port. Take a National Park Service tour boat—that's the only way out to the island. The ranger will explain that the fort was built as a consequence of the War of 1812. She'll tell you construction began in 1829. Then she'll skip to 1861, Confederate bombardment of the fort, and the start of the Civil War. The curious lack of urgency after the War of 1812 will go unmentioned—

"Like the first time South Carolina seriously tried to secede."

"The
first
time?" Barbara echoed.

The repressed history teacher in me never required much encouragement. "The true legacy of the War of 1812 was war debt and higher tariffs. The tariffs kept climbing, kept playing regional favorites, until things came to a boil with the Tariff Act of 1828. That act quickly became known in South Carolina as the Tariff of Abominations.

"In 1829, the federal government suddenly began shipping what was ultimately seventy thousand tons of New England rock to build up a sandbar at the mouth of Charleston harbor.

"The South Carolina legislature eventually empowered a convention that declared the Tariff of Abominations null within the state. Both sides prepared for conflict. The national constitutional crisis stretched on, the hated tariff forcefully defended by that
other
Jackson, Andrew. Finally, in 1833, tariffs were substantially reduced but the state's right of nullification was effectively repudiated.

"And construction of Fort Sumter continued. . . ."

Hold the fort.

I took the broad, flat courthouse steps three at a time. Mayor Jackson blinked—I had never been one to make waves—but ceded the bullhorn when I reached for it.

Why had Zach come
here?
For Seth's help, I'd thought at first. Perhaps, but not just that. Even the cursory look I'd taken at Zach's blog—so much had happened since, it seemed impossible that had been only a few hours earlier!—revealed hundreds of supporters. They must be scattered across the country.

Because of the NARCC down the road in Charleston? Zach had said it was a regional center. Why target it and not another of the regional centers?

Simply because if Zach hadn't come here, I wouldn't be asking these questions? Too pat.

Hold the fort. Seth always said that before leaving me in charge at the bookstore. He meant nothing special by it—but the phrase had evoked something in me.

I gazed out over the crowd, my mouth gone dry. "Friends." The word came out a croak. A few in the square chuckled—not the reaction I was going for. Mom looked confused, and I couldn't blame her. At parties, I usually gravitated to a quiet corner.

I didn't know what to say, only that things needed to be said.

I lowered the bullhorn, cleared my throat, and tried again. "Friends." This time my voice boomed across the square. Again, still louder, "Friends!" The crowd quieted. "I'd like to explain what's going on."

The words tumbled out of me, surmises become certainty. To this day, I can't fully reconstruct the speech that propelled me into public life. But I understand why Zach chose a small town in South Carolina. The virus he planted would have fared equally well against any of the regional NARCC centers. What made
here
special was history. Was who we are.

"Why quarantine us? It starts with the RFID tags in much of what we own. The tags are put there for mundane purposes like taking inventory. The
same
tags let Homeland BS monitor where you go as easily as you surf to find what's playing at the Cineplex.

"But the Feds aren't watching
me
. That's what you're telling yourself. You're probably right—till you happen to pass, or be a friend of a friend of someone in whom they have curiosity. Until you check out a library book that doesn't pass official muster. Until someone just gets curious, or mistakes you for a ‘person of interest.'

"Think you can buck the system by shopping with cash instead of credit cards? Withdraw cash from your bank, and the tags embedded in the currency are associated with you. What you buy with cash at most stores"—but not Seth's Secondhand Books, where the cash register was a cigar box—"gets associated with you. After that, the tires on your car and the shirt on your back announce you to every RFID reader you pass."

People had been angry and confused. Now comprehension replaced confusion. Their expressions grew ever grimmer.

I kept going. "How does one more computer virus enter into this? Here's what I think.

"This virus must have scrambled RFID tracking databases in"—I
almost
said Charleston and Charlotte, which would have revealed knowledge best kept to myself—"that is, that cover the Carolinas. How can the Feds spy on us now? Sure, RFID readers will still see tagged items go past—only that data is useless unless they know who owns that shirt or those truck tires.

"So
that's
why the quarantine. If you were allowed"—I made air quotes—"allowed to go to Atlanta or New Orleans or Chicago, the Feds couldn't later retrieve and second-guess your every step.
That's
what Homeland BS wants to prevent.

"Soon enough, attention will turn from the people caught on the road, from scanning whatever few things the travelers in the crowd happened to buy on their trips. My friends, the Feds will want to recreate a full database for each of us. Every RFID tag, in everything we own."

"They have no
right!
" shouted someone in the square.

"Where I go, what I buy—that's
my
business," another yelled.

So were most things any of us did. That didn't stop the government from taking an interest. I said, "Maybe they'll bring up the Patriot Act. Maybe they'll talk about ‘regulating interstate commerce.' Mark my words, though: They
will
demand entry to every house and business, to scan everything we own, before letting us travel again."

"The
hell
they will!" This from tiny Mrs. Nguyen, who never uttered a cross word.

Those databases are abominations, I thought. And: Hold the fort. I raised my arms above my head until the crowd quieted. "Then we all refuse to be rescanned."

Mayor Jackson, still at my side, coughed. "Then what? Hadley becomes a commune, cut off from the rest of the country?"

"Not we, Hadley," I answered. "We, South Carolina. North Carolina, too, if they'll join us."

And so began the Third Secession.

"Mr. President?" The hand clasping the leather folder had returned to Barbara's side. She had the aura of one hoping for a reprieve.

"I was reminiscing," I said, "not having second thoughts. I'll take the letter now."

Reluctantly, she set the folder on my desk.

I wasn't quite done reminiscing. "It was a long road from the steps of the Hadley courthouse, to addressing the legislature in Columbia, to the state convention empanelled in Charleston. I was surprised to be named a delegate to that convention."

She managed a grin. "Then
only
you were surprised."

"I remember long walks along the Battery, the promenade on the harbor's edge by the grand old mansions." The Battery was where Charleston's citizens gathered on April 12, 1861 to cheer on the bombardment of Fort Sumter. "I remember the long weeks of debate whether to surrender our principles for the benefits of travel and trade."

And while we talked, the factory in Spartanburg that had until recently produced RFIDs found a better market. Soon they were running 24/7.
Everyone
wanted personal RFID locators and battery-powered jammers.

Untraceable, South Carolinians were quarantined—blockaded—in the name of national security. For our part, we welcomed anyone, from any state, who wanted freedom. Even Yanks.

Print, broadcast, web . . . every kind of reporter wanted to cover our deliberations. Countless people observed by webcam. "It was an amazing time, Barbara. The longer we debated, the more people across the
other
states began to ask why
they
should live beneath the federal microscope."

The ACLU and half a dozen privacy groups jumped on the bandwagon. Websites popped up listing products with embedded RFIDs—and more and more consumers boycotted anything that did. The Electronic Freedom Foundation championed a ban on RFID tags in all goods to be sold at retail.

Flinty old Senator Peterson of Vermont was the first to call on Congress to defund the NARCC, even before we in Charleston quite got around to our vote.

So it never quite came to secession, because everyone began flocking to us.

I unclipped the pen from my shirt pocket. I needed no one's permission, but I did want understanding. Barbara and I had worked together since my first congressional campaign.

"I respect your arguments, Barbara. I have considered them. Yes, Zach disclosed classified information. Yes, malicious data destruction was and remains a felony. Yes, disabling the Charleston NARCC doubtless hampered ongoing investigations. And yes, yes, yes—ends cannot justify means, or we'll be reduced to anarchy. But whatever crimes Zachary Boyer committed, he long ago repaid his debt to society.

"It's time society begins repaying its debt to Zach."

In my first official act as President of the United States, I signed Zach's full pardon.

Ekaterina Sedia and David Bartell

If Annabelle the fat-tailed gecko wasn't so fond of crickets, I would've never received a marriage proposal from a tank full of fish, and a new form of intelligence would have ended up pickled in a specimen jar.