This chapter is dedicated to San Francisco's Booksmith, ensconced in thestoried Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, just a few doors down from theBen and Jerry's at the exact corner of Haight and Ashbury. The Book-smith folks really know how to run an author event — when I lived inSan Francisco, I used to go down all the time to hear incredible writersspeak (William Gibson was unforgettable). They also produce littlebaseball-card-style trading cards for each author — I have two from myown appearances there.
Booksmith: 1644 Haight St. San Francisco CA 94117 USA +1 415 8638688At first Mom looked shocked, then outraged, and finally she gave upaltogether and just let her jaw hang open as I took her through the inter-rogation, pissing myself, the bag over my head, Darryl. I showed her thenote.
Why —?In that single syllable, every recrimination I'd dealt myself in the night,every moment that I'd lacked the bravery to tell the world what it wasreally about, why I was really fighting, what had really inspired theXnet.
I sucked in a breath.
"They told me I'd go to jail if I talked about it. Not just for a few days. Forever. I was — I was scared.Mom sat with me for a long time, not saying anything. Then, ""Whatabout Darryl's father?""She might as well have stuck a knitting needle in my chest. Darryl'sfather. He must have assumed that Darryl was dead, long dead.
"And wasn't he? After the DHS has held you illegally for three months,would they ever let you go?
211But Zeb got out. Maybe Darryl would get out. Maybe me and the Xnetcould help get Darryl out.
I haven't told him, I said.
Now Mom was crying. She didn't cry easily. It was a British thing. Itmade her little hiccoughing sobs much worse to hear.
You will tell him, she managed. "You will.""I will.""But first we have to tell your father."Dad no longer had any regular time when he came home. Between hisconsulting clients — who had lots of work now that the DHS was shop-ping for data-mining startups on the peninsula — and the long commuteto Berkeley, he might get home any time between 6PM and midnight.
Tonight Mom called him and told him he was coming home right now.
He said something and she just repeated it: right now.
When he got there, we had arranged ourselves in the living room withthe note between us on the coffee table.
It was easier to tell, the second time. The secret was getting lighter. Ididn't embellish, I didn't hide anything. I came clean.
I'd heard of coming clean before but I'd never understood what itmeant until I did it. Holding in the secret had dirtied me, soiled my spir-it. It had made me afraid and ashamed. It had made me into all thethings that Ange said I was.
Dad sat stiff as a ramrod the whole time, his face carved of stone.
When I handed him the note, he read it twice and then set it downcarefully.
He shook his head and stood up and headed for the front door.
Where are you going? Mom asked, alarmed.
I need a walk, was all he managed to gasp, his voice breaking.
We stared awkwardly at each other, Mom and me, and waited for himto come home. I tried to imagine what was going on in his head. He'dbeen such a different man after the bombings and I knew from Mom thatwhat had changed him were the days of thinking I was dead. He'd cometo believe that the terrorists had nearly killed his son and it had madehim crazy.
212Crazy enough to do whatever the DHS asked, to line up like a goodlittle sheep and let them control him, drive him.
Now he knew that it was the DHS that had imprisoned me, the DHSthat had taken San Francisco's children hostage in Gitmo-by-the-Bay. Itmade perfect sense, now that I thought of it. Of course it had been Treas-ure Island where I'd been kept. Where else was a ten-minute boat-ridefrom San Francisco?
When Dad came back, he looked angrier than he ever had in his life.
You should have told me! he roared.
Mom interposed herself between him and me. "You're blaming thewrong person," she said. "It wasn't Marcus who did the kidnapping andthe intimidation."He shook his head and stamped. "I'm not blaming Marcus. I know ex-actly who's to blame. Me. Me and the stupid DHS. Get your shoes on,grab your coats.""Where are we going?""To see Darryl's father. Then we're going to Barbara Stratford's place."I knew the name Barbara Stratford from somewhere, but I couldn't re-member where. I thought that maybe she was an old friend of my par-ents, but I couldn't exactly place her.
Meantime, I was headed for Darryl's father's place. I'd never really feltcomfortable around the old man, who'd been a Navy radio operator andran his household like a tight ship. He'd taught Darryl Morse code whenhe was a kid, which I'd always thought was cool. It was one of the ways Iknew that I could trust Zeb's letter. But for every cool thing like Morsecode, Darryl's father had some crazy military discipline that seemed tobe for its own sake, like insisting on hospital corners on the beds andshaving twice a day. It drove Darryl up the wall.
Darryl's mother hadn't liked it much either, and had taken off back toher family in Minnesota when Darryl was ten — Darryl spent his sum-mers and Christmases there.
I was sitting in the back of the car, and I could see the back of Dad'shead as he drove. The muscles in his neck were tense and kept jumpingaround as he ground his jaws.
213Mom kept her hand on his arm, but no one was around to comfort me.
If only I could call Ange. Or Jolu. Or Van. Maybe I would when the daywas done.
He must have buried his son in his mind, Dad said, as we whippedup through the hairpin curves leading up Twin Peaks to the little cottagethat Darryl and his father shared. The fog was on Twin Peaks, the way itoften was at night in San Francisco, making the headlamps reflect backon is. Each time we swung around a corner, I saw the valleys of the citylaid out below us, bowls of twinkling lights that shifted in the mist.
Is this the one?"Yes, I said. "This is it." I hadn't been to Darryl's in months, but I'dspent enough time here over the years to recognize it right off.
The three of us stood around the car for a long moment, waiting to seewho would go and ring the doorbell. To my surprise, it was me.
I rang it and we all waited in held-breath silence for a minute. I rang itagain. Darryl's father's car was in the driveway, and we'd seen a lightburning in the living room. I was about to ring a third time when thedoor opened.
Marcus? Darryl's father wasn't anything like I remembered him. Un-shaven, in a housecoat and bare feet, with long toenails and red eyes.
He'd gained weight, and a soft extra chin wobbled beneath the firm mil-itary jaw. His thin hair was wispy and disordered.
Mr Glover, I said. My parents crowded into the door behind me.
Hello, Ron, my mother said.
Ron, my father said.
You too? What's going on?"Can we come in?His living room looked like one of those news-segments they showabout abandoned kids who spend a month locked in before they're res-cued by the neighbors: frozen meal boxes, empty beer cans and juicebottles, moldy cereal bowls and piles of newspapers. There was a reek ofcat piss and litter crunched underneath our feet. Even without the catpiss, the smell was incredible, like a bus-station toilet.
The couch was made up with a grimy sheet and a couple of greasy pil-lows and the cushions had a dented, much-slept-upon look.
214We all stood there for a long silent moment, embarrassment over-whelming every other emotion. Darryl's father looked like he wanted todie.
Slowly, he moved aside the sheets from the sofa and cleared thestacked, greasy food-trays off of a couple of the chairs, carrying them in-to the kitchen, and, from the sound of it, tossing them on the floor.
We sat gingerly in the places he'd cleared, and then he came back andsat down too.
I'm sorry, he said vaguely. "I don't really have any coffee to offeryou. I'm having more groceries delivered tomorrow so I'm running low—""Ron," my father said. "Listen to us. We have something to tell you,and it's not going to be easy to hear."He sat like a statue as I talked. He glanced down at the note, read itwithout seeming to understand it, then read it again. He handed it backto me.
He was trembling.
He's —"Darryl is alive, I said. "Darryl is alive and being held prisoner onTreasure Island."He stuffed his fist in his mouth and made a horrible groaning sound.
We have a friend, my father said. "She writes for the Bay Guardian.
An investigative reporter."That's where I knew the name from. The free weekly Guardian oftenlost its reporters to bigger daily papers and the Internet, but BarbaraStratford had been there forever. I had a dim memory of having dinnerwith her when I was a kid.
We're going there now, my mother said. "Will you come with us,Ron? Will you tell her Darryl's story?"He put his face in his hands and breathed deeply. Dad tried to put hishand on his shoulders, but Mr Glover shook it off violently.
I need to clean myself up, he said. "Give me a minute."Mr Glover came back downstairs a changed man. He'd shaved andgelled his hair back, and had put on a crisp military dress uniform with arow of campaign ribbons on the breast. He stopped at the foot of thestairs and kind of gestured at it.
215"I don't have much clean stuff that's presentable at the moment. Andthis seemed appropriate. You know, if she wanted to take pictures."He and Dad rode up front and I got in the back, behind him. Up close,he smelled a little of beer, like it was coming through his pores.
It was midnight by the time we rolled into Barbara Stratford's drive-way. She lived out of town, down in Mountain View, and as we speddown the 101, none of us said a word. The high-tech buildings alongsidethe highway streamed past us.
This was a different Bay Area to the one I lived in, more like the sub-urban America I sometimes saw on TV. Lots of freeways and subdivi-sions of identical houses, towns where there weren't any homelesspeople pushing shopping carts down the sidewalk — there weren't evensidewalks!
Mom had phoned Barbara Stratford while we were waiting for MrGlover to come downstairs. The journalist had been sleeping, but Momhad been so wound up she forgot to be all British and embarrassed aboutwaking her up. Instead, she just told her, tensely, that she had somethingto talk about and that it had to be in person.
When we rolled up to Barbara Stratford's house, my first thought wasof the Brady Bunch place — a low ranch house with a brick baffle infront of it and a neat, perfectly square lawn. There was a kind of abstracttile pattern on the baffle, and an old-fashioned UHF TV antenna risingfrom behind it. We wandered around to the entrance and saw that therewere lights on inside already.
The writer opened the door before we had a chance to ring the bell.
She was about my parents' age, a tall thin woman with a hawk-like noseand shrewd eyes with a lot of laugh-lines. She was wearing a pair ofjeans that were hip enough to be seen at one of the boutiques on ValenciaStreet, and a loose Indian cotton blouse that hung down to her thighs.
She had small round glasses that flashed in her hallway light.
She smiled a tight little smile at us.
You brought the whole clan, I see, she said.
Mom nodded. "You'll understand why in a minute," she said. MrGlover stepped from behind Dad.
And you called in the Navy?"All in good time.216We were introduced one at a time to her. She had a firm handshakeand long fingers.
Her place was furnished in Japanese minimalist style, just a few pre-cisely proportioned, low pieces of furniture, large clay pots of bamboothat brushed the ceiling, and what looked like a large, rusted piece of adiesel engine perched on top of a polished marble plinth. I decided Iliked it. The floors were old wood, sanded and stained, but not filled, soyou could see cracks and pits underneath the varnish. I really liked that,especially as I walked over it in my stocking feet.
I have coffee on, she said. "Who wants some?"We all put up our hands. I glared defiantly at my parents.
Right, she said.
She disappeared into another room and came back a moment laterbearing a rough bamboo tray with a half-gallon thermos jug and six cupsof precise design but with rough, sloppy decorations. I liked those too.
Now, she said, once she'd poured and served. "It's very good to seeyou all again. Marcus, I think the last time I saw you, you were maybeseven years old. As I recall, you were very excited about your new videogames, which you showed me."I didn't remember it at all, but that sounded like what I'd been into atseven. I guessed it was my Sega Dreamcast.
She produced a tape-recorder and a yellow pad and a pen, and twirledthe pen. "I'm here to listen to whatever you tell me, and I can promiseyou that I'll take it all in confidence. But I can't promise that I'll do any-thing with it, or that it's going to get published." The way she said itmade me realize that my Mom had called in a pretty big favor gettingthis lady out of bed, friend or no friend. It must be kind of a pain in theass to be a big-shot investigative reporter. There were probably a millionpeople who would have liked her to take up her cause.
Mom nodded at me. Even though I'd told the story three times thatnight, I found myself tongue-tied. This was different from telling myparents. Different from telling Darryl's father. This — this would start anew move in the game.
I started slowly, and watched Barbara take notes. I drank a whole cupof coffee just explaining what ARGing was and how I got out of school toplay. Mom and Dad and Mr Glover all listened intently to this part. Ipoured myself another cup and drank it on the way to explaining how217we were taken in. By the time I'd run through the whole story, I'ddrained the pot and I needed a piss like a race-horse.
Her bathroom was just as stark as the living-room, with a brown, or-ganic soap that smelled like clean mud. I came back in and found theadults quietly watching me.
Mr Glover told his story next. He didn't have anything to say aboutwhat had happened, but he explained that he was a veteran and that hisson was a good kid. He talked about what it felt like to believe that hisson had died, about how his ex-wife had had a collapse when she foundout and ended up in a hospital. He cried a little, unashamed, the tearsstreaming down his lined face and darkening the collar of his dress-uniform.
When it was all done, Barbara went into a different room and cameback with a bottle of Irish whiskey. "It's a Bushmills 15 year old rum-caskaged blend," she said, setting down four small cups. None for me. "Ithasn't been sold in ten years. I think this is probably an appropriate timeto break it out."She poured them each a small glass of the liquor, then raised hers andsipped at it, draining half the glass. The rest of the adults followed suit.
They drank again, and finished the glasses. She poured them new shots.
All right, she said. "Here's what I can tell you right now. I believeyou. Not just because I know you, Lillian. The story sounds right, and itties in with other rumors I've heard. But I'm not going to be able to justtake your word for it. I'm going to have to investigate every aspect ofthis, and every element of your lives and stories. I need to know if there'sanything you're not telling me, anything that could be used to discredityou after this comes to light. I need everything. It could take weeks be-fore I'm ready to publish.
You also need to think about your safety and this Darryl's safety. Ifhe's really an 'un-person' then bringing pressure to bear on the DHScould cause them to move him somewhere much further away. ThinkSyria. They could also do something much worse. She let that hang inthe air. I knew she meant that they might kill him.
I'm going to take this letter and scan it now. I want pictures of the twoof you, now and later — we can send out a photographer, but I want todocument this as thoroughly as I can tonight, too.I went with her into her office to do the scan. I'd expected a stylish,low-powered computer that fit in with her decor, but instead, her spare-218bedroom/office was crammed with top-of-the-line PCs, big flat-panelmonitors, and a scanner big enough to lay a whole sheet of newsprint on.
She was fast with it all, too. I noted with some approval that she wasrunning ParanoidLinux. This lady took her job seriously.
The computers' fans set up an effective white-noise shield, but even so,I closed the door and moved in close to her.
Um, Barbara?"Yes?"About what you said, about what might be used to discredit me?"Yes?"What I tell you, you can't be forced to tell anyone else, right?"In theory. Let me put it this way. I've gone to jail twice rather than ratout a source."OK, OK. Good. Wow. Jail. Wow. OK. I took a deep breath. "You'veheard of Xnet? Of M1k3y?""Yes?""I'm M1k3y.""Oh," she said. She worked the scanner and flipped the note over toget the reverse. She was scanning at some unbelievable resolution, 10,000dots per inch or higher, and on-screen it was like the output of anelectron-tunneling microscope.
Well, that does put a different complexion on this."Yeah, I said. "I guess it does.""Your parents don't know.""Nope. And I don't know if I want them to.""That's something you're going to have to work out. I need to thinkabout this. Can you come by my office? I'd like to talk to you about whatthis means, exactly.""Do you have an Xbox Universal? I could bring over an installer.""Yes, I'm sure that can be arranged. When you come by, tell the recep-tionist that you're Mr Brown, to see me. They know what that means. Nonote will be taken of you coming, and all the security camera footage forthe day will be automatically scrubbed and the cameras deactivated untilyou leave.""Wow," I said. "You think like I do."219She smiled and socked me in the shoulder. "Kiddo, I've been at thisgame for a hell of a long time. So far, I've managed to spend more timefree than behind bars. Paranoia is my friend."I was like a zombie the next day in school. I'd totaled about threehours of sleep, and even three cups of the Turk's caffeine mud failed tojump-start my brain. The problem with caffeine is that it's too easy to getacclimated to it, so you have to take higher and higher doses just to getabove normal.
I'd spent the night thinking over what I had to do. It was like runninthough a maze of twisty little passages, all alike, every one leading to thesame dead end. When I went to Barbara, it would be over for me. Thatwas the outcome, no matter how I thought about it.
By the time the school day was over, all I wanted was to go home andcrawl into bed. But I had an appointment at the Bay Guardian, down onthe waterfront. I kept my eyes on my feet as I wobbled out the gate, andas I turned into 24th Street, another pair of feet fell into step with me. Irecognized the shoes and stopped.
Ange?She looked like I felt. Sleep-deprived and raccoon-eyed, with sadbrackets in the corners of her mouth.
Hi there, she said. "Surprise. I gave myself French Leave from school.
I couldn't concentrate anyway.""Um," I said.
Shut up and give me a hug, you idiot.I did. It felt good. Better than good. It felt like I'd amputated part ofmyself and it had been reattached.
I love you, Marcus Yallow."I love you, Angela Carvelli."OK, she said breaking it off. "I liked your post about why you're notjamming. I can respect it. What have you done about finding a way tojam them without getting caught?""I'm on my way to meet an investigative journalist who's going to pub-lish a story about how I got sent to jail, how I started Xnet, and howDarryl is being illegally held by the DHS at a secret prison on TreasureIsland."220"Oh." She looked around for a moment. "Couldn't you think of any-thing, you know, ambitious?""Want to come?""I am coming, yes. And I would like you to explain this in detail if youdon't mind."After all the re-tellings, this one, told as we walked to Potrero Avenueand down to 15th Street, was the easiest. She held my hand andsqueezed it often.
We took the stairs up to the Bay Guardian's offices two at a time. Myheart was pounding. I got to the reception desk and told the bored girlbehind it, "I'm here to see Barbara Stratford. My name is Mr Green.""I think you mean Mr Brown?""Yeah," I said, and blushed. "Mr Brown."She did something at her computer, then said, "Have a seat. Barbarawill be out in a minute. Can I get you anything?""Coffee," we both said in unison. Another reason to love Ange: wewere addicted to the same drug.
The receptionist — a pretty latina woman only a few years older thanus, dressed in Gap styles so old they were actually kind of hipster-retro— nodded and stepped out and came back with a couple of cups bearingthe newspaper's masthead.
We sipped in silence, watching visitors and reporters come and go.
Finally, Barbara came to get us. She was wearing practically the samething as the night before. It suited her. She quirked an eyebrow at mewhen she saw that I'd brought a date.
Hello, I said. "Um, this is —""Ms Brown," Ange said, extending a hand. Oh, yeah, right, our identit-ies were supposed to be a secret. "I work with Mr Green." She elbowedme lightly.
Let's go then, Barbara said, and led us back to a board-room withlong glass walls with their blinds drawn shut. She set down a tray ofWhole Foods organic Oreo clones, a digital recorder, and another yellowpad.
Do you want to record this too? she asked.
Hadn't actually thought of that. I could see why it would be useful if Iwanted to dispute what Barbara printed, though. Still, if I couldn't trusther to do right by me, I was doomed anyway.
221"No, that's OK," I said.
Right, let's go. Young lady, my name is Barbara Stratford and I'm aninvestigative reporter. I gather you know why I'm here, and I'm curiousto know why you're here."I work with Marcus on the Xnet, she said. "Do you need to know myname?""Not right now, I don't," Barbara said. "You can be anonymous if you'dlike. Marcus, I asked you to tell me this story because I need to knowhow it plays with the story you told me about your friend Darryl and thenote you showed me. I can see how it would be a good adjunct; I couldpitch this as the origin of the Xnet. 'They made an enemy they'll neverforget,' that sort of thing. But to be honest, I'd rather not have to tell thatstory if I don't have to.
I'd rather have a nice clean tale about the secret prison on our door-step, without having to argue about whether the prisoners there are thesort of people likely to walk out the doors and establish an undergroundmovement bent on destabilizing the federal government. I'm sure youcan understand that.I did. If the Xnet was part of the story, some people would say, see,they need to put guys like that in jail or they'll start a riot.
This is your show, I said. "I think you need to tell the world aboutDarryl. When you do that, it's going to tell the DHS that I've gone publicand they're going to go after me. Maybe they'll figure out then that I'minvolved with the Xnet. Maybe they'll connect me to M1k3y. I guesswhat I'm saying is, once you publish about Darryl, it's all over for me nomatter what. I've made my peace with that.""As good be hanged for a sheep as a lamb," she said. "Right. Well,that's settled. I want the two of you to tell me everything you can aboutthe founding and operation of the Xnet, and then I want a demonstra-tion. What do you use it for? Who else uses it? How did it spread? Whowrote the software? Everything.""This'll take a while," Ange said.
I've got a while, Barbara said. She drank some coffee and ate a fakeOreo. "This could be the most important story of the War on Terror. Thiscould be the story that topples the government. When you have a storylike this, you take it very carefully."
This chapter is dedicated to Waterstone's, the national UK booksellingchain. Waterstone's is a chain of stores, but each one has the feel of agreat independent store, with tons of personality, great stock (especiallyaudiobooks!), and knowledgeable staff.
WaterstonesSo we told her. I found it really fun, actually. Teaching people how touse technology is always exciting. It's so cool to watch people figure outhow the technology around them can be used to make their lives better.
Ange was great too — we made an excellent team. We'd trade off ex-plaining how it all worked. Barbara was pretty good at this stuff to beginwith, of course.
It turned out that she'd covered the crypto wars, the period in the earlynineties when civil liberties groups like the Electronic Frontier Founda-tion fought for the right of Americans to use strong crypto. I dimly knewabout that period, but Barabara explained it in a way that made me getgoose-pimples.
It's unbelievable today, but there was a time when the governmentclassed crypto as a munition and made it illegal for anyone to export oruse it on national security grounds. Get that? We used to have illegalmath in this country.
The National Security Agency were the real movers behind the ban.
They had a crypto standard that they said was strong enough forbankers and their customers to use, but not so strong that the mafiawould be able to keep its books secret from them. The standard, DES-56,was said to be practically unbreakable. Then one of EFF's millionaire co-founders built a $250,000 DES-56 cracker that could break the cipher intwo hours.
Still the NSA argued that it should be able to keep American citizensfrom possessing secrets it couldn't pry into. Then EFF dealt its death-223blow. In 1995, they represented a Berkeley mathematics grad studentcalled Dan Bernstein in court. Bernstein had written a crypto tutorial thatcontained computer code that could be used to make a cipher strongerthan DES-56. Millions of times stronger. As far as the NSA was con-cerned, that made his article into a weapon, and therefore unpublishable.
Well, it may be hard to get a judge to understand crypto and what itmeans, but it turned out that the average Appeals Court judge isn't realenthusiastic about telling grad students what kind of articles they're al-lowed to write. The crypto wars ended with a victory for the good guyswhen the 9th Circuit Appellate Division Court ruled that code was aform of expression protected under the First Amendment — "Congressshall make no law abridging the freedom of speech." If you've everbought something on the Internet, or sent a secret message, or checkedyour bank-balance, you used crypto that EFF legalized. Good thing, too:
the NSA just isn't that smart. Anything they know how to crack, you canbe sure that terrorists and mobsters can get around too.
Barbara had been one of the reporters who'd made her reputationfrom covering the issue. She'd cut her teeth covering the tail end of thecivil rights movement in San Francisco, and she recognized the similaritybetween the fight for the Constitution in the real world and the fight incyberspace.
So she got it. I don't think I could have explained this stuff to my par-ents, but with Barbara it was easy. She asked smart questions about ourcryptographic protocols and security procedures, sometimes asking stuffI didn't know the answer to — sometimes pointing out potential breaksin our procedure.
We plugged in the Xbox and got it online. There were four open WiFinodes visible from the board room and I told it to change between themat random intervals. She got this too — once you were actually pluggedinto the Xnet, it was just like being on the Internet, only some stuff was alittle slower, and it was all anonymous and unsniffable.
So now what? I said as we wound down. I'd talked myself dry and Ihad a terrible acid feeling from the coffee. Besides, Ange kept squeezingmy hand under the table in a way that made me want to break away andfind somewhere private to finish making up for our first fight.
"Now I do journalism. You go away and I research all the thingsyou've told me and try to confirm them to the extent that I can. I'll letyou see what I'm going to publish and I'll let you know when it's goingto go live. I'd prefer that you not talk about this with anyone else now,224because I want the scoop and because I want to make sure that I get thestory before it goes all muddy from press speculation and DHS spin. I will have to call the DHS for comment before I go to press, but I'll dothat in a way that protects you to whatever extent possible. I'll also besure to let you know before that happens.
"One thing I need to be clear on: this isn't your story anymore. It'smine. You were very generous to give it to me and I'll try to repay thegift, but you don't get the right to edit anything out, to change it, or tostop me. This is now in motion and it won't stop. Do you understandthat?I hadn't thought about it in those terms but once she said it, it was ob-vious. It meant that I had launched and I wouldn't be able to recall therocket. It was going to fall where it was aimed, or it would go off course,but it was in the air and couldn't be changed now. Sometime in the nearfuture, I would stop being Marcus — I would be a public figure. I'd bethe guy who blew the whistle on the DHS.
I'd be a dead man walking.
I guess Ange was thinking along the same lines, because she'd gone acolor between white and green.
Let's get out of here, she said.
Ange's mom and sister were out again, which made it easy to decidewhere we were going for the evening. It was past supper time, but myparents had known that I was meeting with Barbara and wouldn't giveme any grief if I came home late.
When we got to Ange's, I had no urge to plug in my Xbox. I had hadall the Xnet I could handle for one day. All I could think about wasAnge, Ange, Ange. Living without Ange. Knowing Ange was angry withme. Ange never going to talk to me again. Ange never going to kiss meagain.
She'd been thinking the same. I could see it in her eyes as we shut thedoor to her bedroom and looked at each other. I was hungry for her, likeyou'd hunger for dinner after not eating for days. Like you'd thirst for aglass of water after playing soccer for three hours straight.
Like none of that. It was more. It was something I'd never felt before. Iwanted to eat her whole, devour her.
225Up until now, she'd been the sexual one in our relationship. I'd let herset and control the pace. It was amazingly erotic to have her grab me andtake off my shirt, drag my face to hers.
But tonight I couldn't hold back. I wouldn't hold back.
The door clicked shut and I reached for the hem of her t-shirt andyanked, barely giving her time to lift her arms as I pulled it over herhead. I tore my own shirt over my head, listening to the cotton crackle asthe stitches came loose.
Her eyes were shining, her mouth open, her breathing fast and shal-low. Mine was too, my breath and my heart and my blood all roaring inmy ears.
I took off the rest of our clothes with equal zest, throwing them intothe piles of dirty and clean laundry on the floor. There were books andpapers all over the bed and I swept them aside. We landed on the un-made bedclothes a second later, arms around one another, squeezing likewe would pull ourselves right through one another. She moaned into mymouth and I made the sound back, and I felt her voice buzz in my vocalchords, a feeling more intimate than anything I'd ever felt before.
She broke away and reached for the bedstand. She yanked open thedrawer and threw a white pharmacy bag on the bed before me. I lookedinside. Condoms. Trojans. One dozen spermicidal. Still sealed. I smiledat her and she smiled back and I opened the box.
I'd thought about what it would be like for years. A hundred times aday I'd imagined it. Some days, I'd thought of practically nothing else.
It was nothing like I expected. Parts of it were better. Parts of it werelots worse. While it was going on, it felt like an eternity. Afterwards, itseemed to be over in the blink of an eye.
Afterwards, I felt the same. But I also felt different. Something hadchanged between us.
It was weird. We were both shy as we put our clothes on and putteredaround the room, looking away, not meeting each other's eyes. Iwrapped the condom in a kleenex from a box beside the bed and took itinto the bathroom and wound it with toilet paper and stuck it deep intothe trash-can.
When I came back in, Ange was sitting up in bed and playing with herXbox. I sat down carefully beside her and took her hand. She turned toface me and smiled. We were both worn out, trembly.
226"Thanks," I said.
She didn't say anything. She turned her face to me. She was grinninghugely, but fat tears were rolling down her cheeks.
I hugged her and she grabbed tightly onto me. "You're a good man,Marcus Yallow," she whispered. "Thank you."I didn't know what to say, but I squeezed her back. Finally, we parted.
She wasn't crying any more, but she was still smiling.
She pointed at my Xbox, on the floor beside the bed. I took the hint. Ipicked it up and plugged it in and logged in.
Same old same old. Lots of email. The new posts on the blogs I readstreamed in. Spam. God did I get a lot of spam. My Swedish mailbox wasrepeatedly "joe-jobbed" — used as the return address for spams sent tohundreds of millions of Internet accounts, so that all the bounces andangry messages came back to me. I didn't know who was behind it.
Maybe the DHS trying to overwhelm my mailbox. Maybe it was justpeople pranking. The Pirate Party had pretty good filters, though, andthey gave anyone who wanted it 500 gigabytes of email storage, so Iwasn't likely to be drowned any time soon.
I filtered it all out, hammering on the delete key. I had a separate mail-box for stuff that came in encrypted to my public key, since that waslikely to be Xnet-related and possibly sensitive. Spammers hadn't figuredout that using public keys would make their junk mail more plausibleyet, so for now this worked well.
There were a couple dozen encrypted messages from people in theweb of trust. I skimmed them — links to videos and pics of new abusesfrom the DHS, horror stories about near-escapes, rants about stuff I'dblogged. The usual.
Then I came to one that was only encrypted to my public key. Thatmeant that no one else could read it, but I had no idea who had writtenit. It said it came from Masha, which could either be a handle or a name— I couldn't tell which.
>
M1k3y>
You don't know me, but I know you.
>
227I was arrested the day that the bridge blew. They questioned me. Theydecided I was innocent. They offered me a job: help them hunt down theterrorists who'd killed my neighbors.
>
It sounded like a good deal at the time. Little did I realize that my ac-tual job would turn out to be spying on kids who resented their city be-ing turned into a police state.
>
I infiltrated Xnet on the day it launched. I am in your web of trust. If Iwanted to spill my identity, I could send you email from an addressyou'd trust. Three addresses, actually. I'm totally inside your network asonly another 17-year-old can be. Some of the email you've gotten hasbeen carefully chosen misinformation from me and my handlers.
>
They don't know who you are, but they're coming close. They continueto turn people, to compromise them. They mine the social network sitesand use threats to turn kids into informants. There are hundreds ofpeople working for the DHS on Xnet right now. I have their names,handles and keys. Private and public.
>
Within days of the Xnet launch, we went to work on exploiting Para-noidLinux. The exploits so far have been small and insubstantial, but abreak is inevitable. Once we have a zero-day break, you're dead.
>
I think it's safe to say that if my handlers knew that I was typing this,my ass would be stuck in Gitmo-by-the-Bay until I was an old woman.
>
Even if they don't break ParanoidLinux, there are poisoned Para-noidXbox distros floating around. They don't match the checksums, buthow many people look at the checksums? Besides me and you? Plenty ofkids are already dead, though they don't know it.
>
All that remains is for my handlers to figure out the best time to bustyou to make the biggest impact in the media. That time will be sooner,not later. Believe.
>
228You're probably wondering why I'm telling you this.
>
I am too.
>
Here's where I come from. I signed up to fight terrorists. Instead, I'mspying on Americans who believe things that the DHS doesn't like. Notpeople who plan on blowing up bridges, but protestors. I can't do itanymore.
>
But neither can you, whether or not you know it. Like I say, it's only amatter of time until you're in chains on Treasure Island. That's not if,that's when.
>
So I'm through here. Down in Los Angeles, there are some people.
They say they can keep me safe if I want to get out.
>
I want to get out.
>
I will take you with me, if you want to come. Better to be a fighter thana martyr. If you come with me, we can figure out how to win together.
I'm as smart as you. Believe.
>
What do you say?
>
Here's my public key.
>
MashaWhen in trouble or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.
Ever hear that rhyme? It's not good advice, but at least it's easy to fol-low. I leapt off the bed and paced back and forth. My heart thudded andmy blood sang in a cruel parody of the way I'd felt when we got home.
This wasn't sexual excitement, it was raw terror.
What? Ange said. "What?"229I pointed at the screen on my side of the bed. She rolled over andgrabbed my keyboard and scribed on the touchpad with her fingertip.
She read in silence.
I paced.
This has to be lies, she said. "The DHS is playing games with yourhead."I looked at her. She was biting her lip. She didn't look like she believedit.
You think?"Sure. They can't beat you, so they're coming after you using Xnet."Yeah.I sat back down on the bed. I was breathing fast again.
Chill out, she said. "It's just head-games. Here."She never took my keyboard from me before, but now there was a newintimacy between us. She hit reply and typed,>
Nice try.
She was writing as M1k3y now, too. We were together in a way thatwas different from before.
Go ahead and sign it. We'll see what she says.I didn't know if that was the best idea, but I didn't have any betterones. I signed it and encrypted it with my private key and the public keyMasha had provided.
The reply was instant.
>
I thought you'd say something like that.
>
Here's a hack you haven't thought of. I can anonymously tunnel videoover DNS. Here are some links to clips you might want to look at beforeyou decide I'm full of it. These people are all recording each other, all thetime, as insurance against a back-stab. It's pretty easy to snoop off themas they snoop on each other.
>
Masha230Attached was source-code for a little program that appeared to do ex-actly what Masha claimed: pull video over the Domain Name Serviceprotocol.
Let me back up a moment here and explain something. At the end ofthe day, every Internet protocol is just a sequence of text sent back andforth in a proscribed order. It's kind of like getting a truck and putting acar in it, then putting a motorcycle in the car's trunk, then attaching a bi-cycle to the back of the motorcycle, then hanging a pair of Rollerbladeson the back of the bike. Except that then, if you want, you can attach thetruck to the Rollerblades.
For example, take Simple Mail Transport Protocol, or SMTP, which isused for sending email.
Here's a sample conversation between me and my mail server, sendinga message to myself:
>
HELO littlebrother.com.se250 mail.pirateparty.org.se Hello mail.pirateparty.org.se, pleased tomeet you>
MAIL FROM:m1k3y@littlebrother.com.se250 2.1.0 m1k3y@littlebrother.com.se… Sender ok>
RCPT TO:m1k3y@littlebrother.com.se250 2.1.5 m1k3y@littlebrother.com.se… Recipient ok>
DATA354 Enter mail, end with "." on a line by itself>
When in trouble or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout>
.
250 2.0.0 k5SMW0xQ006174 Message accepted for deliveryQUIT221 2.0.0 mail.pirateparty.org.se closing connectionConnection closed by foreign host.
231This conversation's grammar was defined in 1982 by Jon Postel, one ofthe Internet's heroic forefathers, who used to literally run the most im-portant servers on the net under his desk at the University of SouthernCalifornia, back in the paleolithic era.
Now, imagine that you hooked up a mail-server to an IM session. Youcould send an IM to the server that said "HELO littlebrother.com.se" andit would reply with "250 mail.pirateparty.org.se Hellomail.pirateparty.org.se, pleased to meet you." In other words, you couldhave the same conversation over IM as you do over SMTP. With theright tweaks, the whole mail-server business could take place inside of achat. Or a web-session. Or anything else.
This is called "tunneling." You put the SMTP inside a chat "tunnel."You could then put the chat back into an SMTP tunnel if you wanted tobe really weird, tunneling the tunnel in another tunnel.
In fact, every Internet protocol is susceptible to this process. It's cool,because it means that if you're on a network with only Web access, youcan tunnel your mail over it. You can tunnel your favorite P2P over it.
You can even tunnel Xnet — which itself is a tunnel for dozens of proto-cols — over it.
Domain Name Service is an interesting and ancient Internet protocol,dating back to 1983. It's the way that your computer converts acomputer's name — like pirateparty.org.se — to the IP number that com-puters actually use to talk to each other over the net, like 204.11.50.136. Itgenerally works like magic, even though it's got millions of moving parts— every ISP runs a DNS server, as do most governments and lots ofprivate operators. These DNS boxes all talk to each other all the time,making and filling requests to each other so no matter how obscure thename is you feed to your computer, it will be able to turn it into anumber.
Before DNS, there was the HOSTS file. Believe it or not, this was asingle document that listed the name and address of every single computerconnected to the Internet. Every computer had a copy of it. This file waseventually too big to move around, so DNS was invented, and ran on aserver that used to live under Jon Postel's desk. If the cleaners knockedout the plug, the entire Internet lost its ability to find itself. Seriously.
The thing about DNS today is that it's everywhere. Every network hasa DNS server living on it, and all of those servers are configured to talkto each other and to random people all over the Internet.
232What Masha had done was figure out a way to tunnel a video-stream-ing system over DNS. She was breaking up the video into billions ofpieces and hiding each of them in a normal message to a DNS server. Byrunning her code, I was able to pull the video from all those DNS serv-ers, all over the Internet, at incredible speed. It must have looked bizarreon the network histograms, like I was looking up the address of everycomputer in the world.
But it had two advantages I appreciated at once: I was able to get thevideo with blinding speed — as soon as I clicked the first link, I startedto receive full-screen pictures, without any jitter or stuttering — and Ihad no idea where it was hosted. It was totally anonymous.
At first I didn't even clock the content of the video. I was totallyfloored by the cleverness of this hack. Streaming video from DNS? Thatwas so smart and weird, it was practically perverted.
Gradually, what I was seeing began to sink in.
It was a board-room table in a small room with a mirror down onewall. I knew that room. I'd sat in that room, while Severe-Haircut wo-man had made me speak my password aloud. There were five comfort-able chairs around the table, each with a comfortable person, all in DHSuniform. I recognized Major General Graeme Sutherland, the DHS BayArea commander, along with Severe Haircut. The others were new tome. They all watched a video screen at the end of the table, on whichthere was an infinitely more familiar face.
Kurt Rooney was known nationally as the President's chief strategist,the man who returned the party for its third term, and who was steam-ing towards a fourth. They called him "Ruthless" and I'd seen a news re-port once about how tight a rein he kept his staffers on, calling them,IMing them, watching their every motion, controlling every step. He wasold, with a lined face and pale gray eyes and a flat nose with broad,flared nostrils and thin lips, a man who looked like he was smellingsomething bad all the time.
He was the man on the screen. He was talking, and everyone else wasfocused on his screen, everyone taking notes as fast as they could type,trying to look smart.
"— say that they're angry with authority, but we need to show thecountry that it's terrorists, not the government, that they need to blame. Do you understand me? The nation does not love that city. As far asthey're concerned, it is a Sodom and Gomorrah of fags and atheists whodeserve to rot in hell. The only reason the country cares what they think233in San Francisco is that they had the good fortune to have been blown tohell by some Islamic terrorists. These Xnet children are getting to the point where they might start tobe useful to us. The more radical they get, the more the rest of the nationunderstands that there are threats everywhere.""His audience finished typing.
"We can control that, I think, Severe Haircut Lady said. "Our peoplein the Xnet have built up a lot of influence. The Manchurian Bloggers arerunning as many as fifty blogs each, flooding the chat channels, linkingto each other, mostly just taking the party line set by this M1k3y. Butthey've already shown that they can provoke radical action, even whenM1k3y is putting the brakes on."Major General Sutherland nodded. "We have been planning to leavethem underground until about a month before the midterms." I guessedthat meant the mid-term elections, not my exams. "That's per the originalplan. But it sounds like —""We've got another plan for the midterms," Rooney said. "Need-to-know, of course, but you should all probably not plan on traveling forthe month before. Cut the Xnet loose now, as soon as you can. So long asthey're moderates, they're a liability. Keep them radical."The video cut off.
Ange and I sat on the edge of the bed, looking at the screen. Angereached out and started the video again. We watched it. It was worse thesecond time.
I tossed the keyboard aside and got up.
I am so sick of being scared, I said. "Let's take this to Barbara andhave her publish it all. Put it all on the net. Let them take me away. Atleast I'll know what's going to happen then. At least then I'll have a littlecertainty in my life."Ange grabbed me and hugged me, soothed me. "I know baby, I know.
It's all terrible. But you're focusing on the bad stuff and ignoring thegood stuff. You've created a movement. You've outflanked the jerks inthe White House, the crooks in DHS uniforms. You've put yourself in aposition where you could be responsible for blowing the lid off of the en-tire rotten DHS thing.
"Sure they're out to get you. Course they are. Have you ever doubted itfor a moment? I always figured they were. But Marcus, they don't knowwho you are. Think about that. All those people, money, guns and spies,234and you, a seventeen year old high school kid — you're still beatingthem. They don't know about Barbara. They don't know about Zeb. You've jammed them in the streets of San Francisco and humiliated thembefore the world. So stop moping, all right? You're winning.""They're coming for me, though. You see that. They're going to put mein jail forever. Not even jail. I'll just disappear, like Darryl. Maybe worse. Maybe Syria. Why leave me in San Francisco? I'm a liability as long asI'm in the USA.She sat down on the bed with me.
"Yeah, she said. "That.""That.""Well, you know what you have to do, right?""What?" She looked pointedly at my keyboard. I could see the tearsrolling down her cheeks. "No! You're out of your mind. You think I'mgoing to run off with some nut off the Internet? Some spy?""You got a better idea?"I kicked a pile of her laundry into the air. "Whatever. Fine. I'll talk toher some more.""You talk to her," Ange said. "You tell her you and your girlfriend aregetting out.""What?""Shut up, dickhead. You think you're in danger? I'm in just as muchdanger, Marcus. It's called guilt by association. When you go, I go." Shehad her jaw thrust out at a mutinous angle. "You and I — we're togethernow. You have to understand that."We sat down on the bed together.
Unless you don't want me, she said, finally, in a small voice.
You're kidding me, right?"Do I look like I'm kidding?"There's no way I would voluntarily go without you, Ange. I couldnever have asked you to come, but I'm ecstatic that you offered.She smiled and tossed me my keyboard.
Email this Masha creature. Let's see what this chick can do for us.I emailed her, encrypting the message, waiting for a reply. Angenuzzled me a little and I kissed her and we necked. Something about the235danger and the pact to go together — it made me forget the awkward-ness of having sex, made me freaking horny as hell.
We were half naked again when Masha's email arrived.
>
Two of you? Jesus, like it won't be hard enough already.
>
I don't get to leave except to do field intelligence after a big Xnet hit.
You get me? The handlers watch my every move, but I go off the leashwhen something big happens with Xnetters. I get sent into the field then.
>
You do something big. I get sent to it. I get us both out. All three of us,if you insist.
>
Make it fast, though. I can't send you a lot of email, understand? Theywatch me. They're closing in on you. You don't have a lot of time.
Weeks? Maybe just days.
>
I need you to get me out. That's why I'm doing this, in case you'rewondering. I can't escape on my own. I need a big Xnet distraction.
That's your department. Don't fail me, M1k3y, or we're both dead. Yourgirlie too.
>
MashaMy phone rang, making us both jump. It was my mom wanting toknow when I was coming home. I told her I was on my way. She didn'tmention Barbara. We'd agreed that we wouldn't talk about any of thisstuff on the phone. That was my dad's idea. He could be as paranoid asme.
I have to go, I said.
Our parents will be —"I know, I said. "I saw what happened to my parents when theythought I was dead. Knowing that I'm a fugitive isn't going to be muchbetter. But they'd rather I be a fugitive than a prisoner. That's what Ithink. Anyway, once we disappear, Barbara can publish without worry-ing about getting us into trouble."236We kissed at the door of her room. Not one of the hot, sloppy numberswe usually did when parting ways. A sweet kiss this time. A slow kiss. Agoodbye kind of kiss.
BART rides are introspective. When the train rocks back and forth andyou try not to make eye contact with the other riders and you try not toread the ads for plastic surgery, bail bondsmen and AIDS testing, whenyou try to ignore the graffiti and not look too closely at the stuff in thecarpeting. That's when your mind starts to really churn and churn.
You rock back and forth and your mind goes over all the things you'veoverlooked, plays back all the movies of your life where you're no hero,where you're a chump or a sucker.
Your brain comes up with theories like this one:
If the DHS wanted to catch M1k3y, what better way than to lure him into theopen, panic him into leading some kind of big, public Xnet event? Wouldn't thatbe worth the chance of a compromising video leaking?
Your brain comes up with stuff like that even when the train ride onlylasts two or three stops. When you get off, and you start moving, theblood gets running and sometimes your brain helps you out again.
Sometimes your brain gives you solutions in addition to problems.
This chapter is dedicated to Vancouver's multilingual Sophia Books, adiverse and exciting store filled with the best of the strange and excitingpop culture worlds of many lands. Sophia was around the corner frommy hotel when I went to Van to give a talk at Simon Fraser University,and the Sophia folks emailed me in advance to ask me to drop in andsign their stock while I was in the neighborhood. When I got there, I dis-covered a treasure-trove of never-before-seen works in a dizzying arrayof languages, from graphic novels to thick academic treatises, presidedover by good-natured (even slapstick) staff who so palpably enjoyed theirjobs that it spread to every customer who stepped through the door.
Sophia Books: 450 West Hastings St., Vancouver, BC Canada V6B1L1+1 604 684 0484There was a time when my favorite thing in the world was putting ona cape and hanging out in hotels, pretending to be an invisible vampirewhom everyone stared at.
It's complicated, and not nearly as weird as it sounds. The Live ActionRole Playing scene combines the best aspects of D&D with drama clubwith going to sci-fi cons.
I understand that this might not make it sound as appealing to you asit was to me when I was 14.
The best games were the ones at the Scout Camps out of town: a hun-dred teenagers, boys and girls, fighting the Friday night traffic, swap-ping stories, playing handheld games, showing off for hours. Then de-barking to stand in the grass before a group of older men and women inbad-ass, home-made armor, dented and scarred, like armor must havebeen in the old days, not like it's portrayed in the movies, but like asoldier's uniform after a month in the bush.
These people were nominally paid to run the games, but you didn't getthe job unless you were the kind of person who'd do it for free. They'd238have already divided us into teams based on the questionnaires we'dfilled in beforehand, and we'd get our team assignments then, like beingcalled up for baseball sides.
Then you'd get your briefing packages. These were like the briefingsthe spies get in the movies: here's your identity, here's your mission,here's the secrets you know about the group.
From there, it was time for dinner: roaring fires, meat popping onspits, tofu sizzling on skillets (it's northern California, a vegetarian op-tion is not optional), and a style of eating and drinking that can only bedescribed as quaffing.
Already, the keen kids would be getting into character. My first game,I was a wizard. I had a bag of beanbags that represented spells — when Ithrew one, I would shout the name of the spell I was casting — fireball,magic missile, cone of light — and the player or "monster" I threw it atwould keel over if I connected. Or not — sometimes we had to call in aref to mediate, but for the most part, we were all pretty good about play-ing fair. No one liked a dice lawyer.
By bedtime, we were all in character. At 14, I wasn't super-sure what awizard was supposed to sound like, but I could take my cues from themovies and novels. I spoke in slow, measured tones, keeping my facecomposed in a suitably mystical expression, and thinking mysticalthoughts.
The mission was complicated, retrieving a sacred relic that had beenstolen by an ogre who was bent on subjugating the people of the land tohis will. It didn't really matter a whole lot. What mattered was that I hada private mission, to capture a certain kind of imp to serve as my famili-ar, and that I had a secret nemesis, another player on the team who hadtaken part in a raid that killed my family when I was a boy, a player whodidn't know that I'd come back, bent on revenge. Somewhere, of course,there was another player with a similar grudge against me, so that evenas I was enjoying the camaraderie of the team, I'd always have to keep aneye open for a knife in the back, poison in the food.
For the next two days, we played it out. There were parts of the week-end that were like hide-and-seek, some that were like wilderness surviv-al exercises, some that were like solving crossword puzzles. The game-masters had done a great job. And you really got to be friends with theother people on the mission. Darryl was the target of my first murder,and I put my back into it, even though he was my pal. Nice guy. ShameI'd have to kill him.
239I fireballed him as he was seeking out treasure after we wiped out aband of orcs, playing rock-papers-scissors with each orc to determinewho would prevail in combat. This is a lot more exciting than it sounds.
It was like summer camp for drama geeks. We talked until late at nightin tents, looked at the stars, jumped in the river when we got hot,slapped away mosquitos. Became best friends, or lifelong enemies.
I don't know why Charles's parents sent him LARPing. He wasn't thekind of kid who really enjoyed that kind of thing. He was more thepulling-wings-off-flies type. Oh, maybe not. But he just was not into be-ing in costume in the woods. He spent the whole time mooching around,sneering at everyone and everything, trying to convince us all that weweren't having the good time we all felt like we were having. You've nodoubt found that kind of person before, the kind of person who is com-pelled to ensure that everyone else has a rotten time.
The other thing about Charles was that he couldn't get the hang ofsimulated combat. Once you start running around the woods and play-ing these elaborate, semi-military games, it's easy to get totally adrenal-ized to the point where you're ready to tear out someone's throat. This isnot a good state to be in when you're carrying a prop sword, club, pikeor other utensil. This is why no one is ever allowed to hit anyone, underany circumstances, in these games. Instead, when you get close enoughto someone to fight, you play a quick couple rounds of rock-paper-scis-sors, with modifiers based on your experience, armaments, and condi-tion. The referees mediate disputes. It's quite civilized, and a little weird.
You go running after someone through the woods, catch up with him,bare your teeth, and sit down to play a little roshambo. But it works —and it keeps everything safe and fun.
Charles couldn't really get the hang of this. I think he was perfectlycapable of understanding that the rule was no contact, but he was simul-taneously capable of deciding that the rule didn't matter, and that hewasn't going to abide by it. The refs called him on it a bunch of timesover the weekend, and he kept on promising to stick by it, and kept ongoing back. He was one of the bigger kids there already, and he wasfond of "accidentally" tackling you at the end of a chase. Not fun whenyou get tackled into the rocky forest floor.
I had just mightily smote Darryl in a little clearing where he'd beentreasure-hunting, and we were having a little laugh over my extremesneakiness. He was going to go monstering — killed players couldswitch to playing monsters, which meant that the longer the game wore240on, the more monsters there were coming after you, meaning that every-one got to keep on playing and the game's battles just got more and moreepic.
That was when Charles came out of the woods behind me and tackledme, throwing me to the ground so hard that I couldn't breathe for a mo-ment. "Gotcha!" he yelled. I only knew him slightly before this, and I'dnever thought much of him, but now I was ready for murder. I climbedslowly to my feet and looked at him, his chest heaving, grinning. "You'reso dead," he said. "I totally got you."I smiled and something felt wrong and sore in my face. I touched myupper lip. It was bloody. My nose was bleeding and my lip was split, cuton a root I'd face-planted into when he tackled me.
I wiped the blood on my pants-leg and smiled. I made like I thoughtthat it was all in fun. I laughed a little. I moved towards him.
Charles wasn't fooled. He was already backing away, trying to fade in-to the woods. Darryl moved to flank him. I took the other flank.
Abruptly, he turned and ran. Darryl's foot hooked his ankle and senthim sprawling. We rushed him, just in time to hear a ref's whistle.
The ref hadn't seen Charles foul me, but he'd seen Charles's play thatweekend. He sent Charles back to the camp entrance and told him hewas out of the game. Charles complained mightily, but to our satisfac-tion, the ref wasn't having any of it. Once Charles had gone, he gave usboth a lecture, too, telling us that our retaliation was no more justifiedthan Charles's attack.
It was OK. That night, once the games had ended, we all got hotshowers in the scout dorms. Darryl and I stole Charles's clothes and tow-el. We tied them in knots and dropped them in the urinal. A lot of theboys were happy to contribute to the effort of soaking them. Charles hadbeen very enthusiastic about his tackles.
I wish I could have watched him when he got out of his shower anddiscovered his clothes. It's a hard decision: do you run naked across thecamp, or pick apart the tight, piss-soaked knots in your clothes and thenput them on?
He chose nudity. I probably would have chosen the same. We lined upalong the route from the showers to the shed where the packs werestored and applauded him. I was at the front of the line, leading theapplause.
241The Scout Camp weekends only came three or four times a year,which left Darryl and me — and lots of other LARPers — with a seriousLARP deficiency in our lives.
Luckily, there were the Wretched Daylight games in the city hotels.
Wretched Daylight is another LARP, rival vampire clans and vampirehunters, and it's got its own quirky rules. Players get cards to help themresolve combat skirmishes, so each skirmish involves playing a littlehand of a strategic card game. Vampires can become invisible by cloak-ing themselves, crossing their arms over their chests, and all the otherplayers have to pretend they don't see them, continuing on with theirconversations about their plans and so on. The true test of a good playeris whether you're honest enough to go on spilling your secrets in front ofan "invisible" rival without acting as though he was in the room.
There were a couple of big Wretched Daylight games every month.
The organizers of the games had a good relationship with the city's ho-tels and they let it be known that they'd take ten unbooked rooms on Fri-day night and fill them with players who'd run around the hotel, playinglow-key Wretched Daylight in the corridors, around the pool, and so on,eating at the hotel restaurant and paying for the hotel WiFi. They'd closethe booking on Friday afternoon, email us, and we'd go straight fromschool to whichever hotel it was, bringing our knapsacks, sleeping six oreight to a room for the weekend, living on junk-food, playing until threeAM. It was good, safe fun that our parents could get behind.
The organizers were a well-known literacy charity that ran kids' writ-ing workshops, drama workshops and so on. They had been running thegames for ten years without incident. Everything was strictly booze- anddrug-free, to keep the organizers from getting busted on some kind ofcorruption of minors rap. We'd draw between ten and a hundred play-ers, depending on the weekend, and for the cost of a couple movies, youcould have two and a half days' worth of solid fun.
One day, though, they lucked into a block of rooms at the Monaco, ahotel in the Tenderloin that catered to arty older tourists, the kind ofplace where every room came with a goldfish bowl, where the lobby wasfull of beautiful old people in fine clothes, showing off their plastic sur-gery results.
Normally, the mundanes — our word for non-players — just ignoredus, figuring that we were skylarking kids. But that weekend therehappened to be an editor for an Italian travel magazine staying, and hetook an interest in things. He cornered me as I skulked in the lobby,242hoping to spot the clan-master of my rivals and swoop in on him anddraw his blood. I was standing against the wall with my arms foldedover my chest, being invisible, when he came up to me and asked me, inaccented English, what me and my friends were doing in the hotel thatweekend?
I tried to brush him off, but he wouldn't be put off. So I figured I'd justmake something up and he'd go away.
I didn't imagine that he'd print it. I really didn't imagine that it wouldget picked up by the American press.
We're here because our prince has died, and so we've had to come insearch of a new ruler."A prince?"Yes, I said, getting into it. "We're the Old People. We came to Amer-ica in the 16th Century and have had our own royal family in the wildsof Pennsylvania ever since. We live simply in the woods. We don't usemodern technology. But the prince was the last of the line and he diedlast week. Some terrible wasting disease took him. The young men of myclan have left to find the descendants of his great-uncle, who went awayto join the modern people in the time of my grandfather. He is said tohave multiplied, and we will find the last of his bloodline and bringthem back to their rightful home."I read a lot of fantasy novels. This kind of thing came easily to me.
We found a woman who knew of these descendants. She told us onewas staying in this hotel, and we've come to find him. But we've beentracked here by a rival clan who would keep us from bringing home ourprince, to keep us weak and easy to dominate. Thus it is vital we keep toourselves. We do not talk to the New People when we can help it. Talk-ing to you now causes me great discomfort.He was watching me shrewdly. I had uncrossed my arms, whichmeant that I was now "visible" to rival vampires, one of whom had beenslowly sneaking up on us. At the last moment, I turned and saw her,arms spread, hissing at us, vamping it up in high style.
I threw my arms wide and hissed back at her, then pelted through thelobby, hopping over a leather sofa and deking around a potted plant,making her chase me. I'd scouted an escape route down through thestairwell to the basement health-club and I took it, shaking her off.
243I didn't see him again that weekend, but I did relate the story to someof my fellow LARPers, who embroidered the tale and found lots of op-portunities to tell it over the weekend.
The Italian magazine had a staffer who'd done her master's degree onAmish anti-technology communities in rural Pennsylvania, and shethought we sounded awfully interesting. Based on the notes and tapedinterviews of her boss from his trip to San Francisco, she wrote afascinating, heart-wrenching article about these weird, juvenile cultistswho were crisscrossing America in search of their "prince." Hell, peoplewill print anything these days.
But the thing was, stories like that get picked up and republished. Firstit was Italian bloggers, then a few American bloggers. People across thecountry reported "sightings" of the Old People, though whether theywere making it up, or whether others were playing the same game, Ididn't know.
It worked its way up the media food-chain all the way to the New YorkTimes, who, unfortunately, have an unhealthy appetite for fact-checking.
The reporter they put on the story eventually tracked it down to theMonaco Hotel, who put them in touch with the LARP organizers, wholaughingly spilled the whole story.
Well, at that point, LARPing got a lot less cool. We became known asthe nation's foremost hoaxers, as weird, pathological liars. The press whowe'd inadvertently tricked into covering the story of the Old People werenow interested in redeeming themselves by reporting on how unbeliev-ably weird we LARPers were, and that was when Charles let everyone inschool know that Darryl and I were the biggest LARPing weenies in thecity.
That was not a good season. Some of the gang didn't mind, but we did.
The teasing was merciless. Charles led it. I'd find plastic fangs in my bag,and kids I passed in the hall would go "bleh, bleh" like a cartoon vam-pire, or they'd talk with fake Transylvanian accents when I was around.
We switched to ARGing pretty soon afterwards. It was more fun insome ways, and it was a lot less weird. Every now and again, though, Imissed my cape and those weekends in the hotel.
The opposite of esprit d'escalier is the way that life's embarrassmentscome back to haunt us even after they're long past. I could rememberevery stupid thing I'd ever said or done, recall them with picture-perfect244clarity. Any time I was feeling low, I'd naturally start to remember othertimes I felt that way, a hit-parade of humiliations coming one after an-other to my mind.
As I tried to concentrate on Masha and my impending doom, the OldPeople incident kept coming back to haunt me. There'd been a similar,sick, sinking doomed feeling then, as more and more press outletspicked up the story, as the likelihood of someone figuring out that it hadbeen me who'd sprung the story on the stupid Italian editor in the de-signer jeans with crooked seams, the starched collarless shirt, and theoversized metal-rimmed glasses.
There's an alternative to dwelling on your mistakes. You can learnfrom them.
It's a good theory, anyway. Maybe the reason your subconsciousdredges up all these miserable ghosts is that they need to get closure be-fore they can rest peacefully in humiliation afterlife. My subconsciouskept visiting me with ghosts in the hopes that I would do something tolet them rest in peace.
All the way home, I turned over this memory and the thought of whatI would do about "Masha," in case she was playing me. I needed someinsurance.
And by the time I reached my house — to be swept up into melan-choly hugs from Mom and Dad — I had it.
The trick was to time this so that it happened fast enough that the DHScouldn't prepare for it, but with a long enough lead time that the Xnetwould have time to turn out in force.
The trick was to stage this so that there were too many present to ar-rest us all, but to put it somewhere that the press could see it and thegrownups, so the DHS wouldn't just gas us again.
The trick was to come up with something with the media friendlinessof the levitation of the Pentagon. The trick was to to stage something thatwe could rally around, like 3,000 Berkeley students refusing to let one oftheir number be taken away in a police van.
The trick was to put the press there, ready to say what the police did,the way they had in 1968 in Chicago.
It was going to be some trick.
245I cut out of school an hour early the next day, using my customarytechniques for getting out, not caring if it would trigger some kind ofnew DHS checker that would result in my parents getting a note.
One way or another, my parents' last problem after tomorrow wouldbe whether I was in trouble at school.
I met Ange at her place. She'd had to cut out of school even earlier, butshe'd just made a big deal out of her cramps and pretended she was go-ing to keel over and they sent her home.
We started to spread the word on Xnet. We sent it in email to trustedfriends, and IMmed it to our buddy lists. We roamed the decks andtowns of Clockwork Plunder and told our team-mates. Giving everyoneenough information to get them to show up but not so much as to tip ourhand to the DHS was tricky, but I thought I had just the right balance:
>
VAMPMOB TOMORROW>
If you're a goth, dress to impress. If you're not a goth, find a goth andborrow some clothes. Think vampire.
>
The game starts at 8:00AM sharp. SHARP. Be there and ready to be di-vided into teams. The game lasts 30 minutes, so you'll have plenty oftime to get to school afterward.
>
Location will be revealed tomorrow. Email your public key tom1k3y@littlebrother.pirateparty.org.se and check your messages at 7AMfor the update. If that's too early for you, stay up all night. That's whatwe're going to do.
>
This is the most fun you will have all year, guaranteed.
>
Believe.
>
M1k3yThen I sent a short message to Masha.
>
246Tomorrow>
M1k3yA minute later, she emailed back:
>
I thought so. VampMob, huh? You work fast. Wear a red hat. Travellight.
What do you bring along when you go fugitive? I'd carried enoughheavy packs around enough scout camps to know that every ounce youadd cuts into your shoulders with all the crushing force of gravity withevery step you take — it's not just one ounce, it's one ounce that youcarry for a million steps. It's a ton.
Right, Ange said. "Smart. And you never take more than three days'
worth of clothes, either. You can rinse stuff out in the sink. Better to havea spot on your t-shirt than a suitcase that's too big and heavy to stash un-der a plane-seat."She'd pulled out a ballistic nylon courier bag that went across herchest, between her breasts — something that made me get a little sweaty— and slung diagonally across her back. It was roomy inside, and she'dset it down on the bed. Now she was piling clothes next to it.
I figure that three t-shirts, a pair of pants, a pair of shorts, threechanges of underwear, three pairs of socks and a sweater will do it.She dumped out her gym bag and picked out her toiletries. "I'll have toremember to stick my toothbrush in tomorrow morning before I headdown to Civic Center."Watching her pack was impressive. She was ruthless about it all. Itwas also freaky — it made me realize that the next day, I was going to goaway. Maybe for a long time. Maybe forever.
Do I bring my Xbox? she asked. "I've got a ton of stuff on the hard-drive, notes and sketches and email. I wouldn't want it to fall into thewrong hands.""It's all encrypted," I said. "That's standard with ParanoidXbox. Butleave the Xbox behind, there'll be plenty of them in LA. Just create a Pir-ate Party account and email an image of your hard-drive to yourself. I'mgoing to do the same when I get home."247She did so, and queued up the email. It was going to take a couplehours for all the data to squeeze through her neighbor's WiFi networkand wing its way to Sweden.
Then she closed the flap on the bag and tightened the compressionstraps. She had something the size of a soccer-ball slung over her backnow, and I stared admiringly at it. She could walk down the street withthat under her shoulder and no one would look twice — she looked likeshe was on her way to school.
One more thing, she said, and went to her bedside table and took outthe condoms. She took the strips of rubbers out of the box and openedthe bag and stuck them inside, then gave me a slap on the ass.
Now what? I said.
Now we go to your place and do your stuff. It's time I met your par-ents, no?She left the bag amid the piles of clothes and junk all over the floor.
She was ready to turn her back on all of it, walk away, just to be with me.
Just to support the cause. It made me feel brave, too.
Mom was already home when I got there. She had her laptop open onthe kitchen table and was answering email while talking into a headsetconnected to it, helping some poor Yorkshireman and his family accli-mate to living in Louisiana.
I came through the door and Ange followed, grinning like mad, butholding my hand so tight I could feel the bones grinding together. Ididn't know what she was so worried about. It wasn't like she was goingto end up spending a lot of time hanging around with my parents afterthis, even if it went badly.
Mom hung up on the Yorkshireman when we got in.
Hello, Marcus, she said, giving me a kiss on the cheek. "And who isthis?""Mom, meet Ange. Ange, this is my Mom, Lillian." Mom stood up andgave Ange a hug.
It's very good to meet you, darling, she said, looking her over fromtop to bottom. Ange looked pretty acceptable, I think. She dressed well,and low-key, and you could tell how smart she was just by looking ather.
248"A pleasure to meet you, Mrs Yallow," she said. She sounded very con-fident and self-assured. Much better than I had when I'd met her mom.
It's Lillian, love, she said. She was taking in every detail. "Are youstaying for dinner?""I'd love that," she said.
Do you eat meat? Mom's pretty acclimated to living in California.
I eat anything that doesn't eat me first, she said.
She's a hot-sauce junkie, I said. "You could serve her old tires andshe'd eat 'em if she could smother them in salsa."Ange socked me gently in the shoulder.
I was going to order Thai, Mom said. "I'll add a couple of their five-chili dishes to the order."Ange thanked her politely and Mom bustled around the kitchen, get-ting us glasses of juice and a plate of biscuits and asking three times if wewanted any tea. I squirmed a little.
Thanks, Mom, I said. "We're going to go upstairs for a while."Mom's eyes narrowed for a second, then she smiled again. "Of course,"she said. "Your father will be home in an hour, we'll eat then."I had my vampire stuff all stashed in the back of my closet. I let Angesort through it while I went through my clothes. I was only going as faras LA. They had stores there, all the clothing I could need. I just neededto get together three or four favorite tees and a favorite pair of jeans, atube of deodorant, a roll of dental floss.
Money! I said.
Yeah, she said. "I was going to clean out my bank account on theway home at an ATM. I've got maybe five hundred saved up.""Really?""What am I going to spend it on?" she said. "Ever since the Xnet, Ihaven't had to even pay any service charges.""I think I've got three hundred or so.""Well, there you go. Grab it on the way to Civic Center in themorning."I had a big book-bag I used when I was hauling lots of gear aroundtown. It was less conspicuous than my camping pack. Ange wentthrough my piles mercilessly and culled them down to her favorites.
Once it was packed and under my bed, we both sat down.
249"We're going to have to get up really early tomorrow," she said.
Yeah, big day.The plan was to get messages out with a bunch of fake VampMob loc-ations tomorrow, sending people out to secluded spots within a fewminutes' walk of Civic Center. We'd cut out a spray-paint stencil that justsaid VAMPMOB CIVIC CENTER -> -> that I we would spray-paint atthose spots around 5AM. That would keep the DHS from locking downthe Civic Center before we got there. I had the mailbot ready to send outthe messages at 7AM — I'd just leave my Xbox running when I went out.
How long… She trailed off.
That's what I've been wondering, too, I said. "It could be a long time,I suppose. But who knows? With Barbara's article coming out —" I'dqueued an email to her for the next morning, too — "and all, maybe we'llbe heroes in two weeks.""Maybe," she said and sighed.
I put my arm around her. Her shoulders were shaking.
I'm terrified, I said. "I think that it would be crazy not to be terrified.""Yeah," she said. "Yeah."Mom called us to dinner. Dad shook Ange's hand. He looked un-shaved and worried, the way he had since we'd gone to see Barbara, buton meeting Ange, a little of the old Dad came back. She kissed him onthe cheek and he insisted that she call him Drew.
Dinner was actually really good. The ice broke when Ange took outher hot-sauce mister and treated her plate, and explained about Scovilleunits. Dad tried a forkful of her food and went reeling into the kitchen todrink a gallon of milk. Believe it or not, Mom still tried it after that andgave every impression of loving it. Mom, it turned out, was an undis-covered spicy food prodigy, a natural.
Before she left, Ange pressed the hot-sauce mister on Mom. "I have aspare at home," she said. I'd watched her pack it in her backpack. "Youseem like the kind of woman who should have one of these."
This chapter is dedicated to the MIT Press Bookshop, a store I've visitedon every single trip to Boston over the past ten years. MIT, of course, isone of the legendary origin nodes for global nerd culture, and the cam-pus bookstore lives up to the incredible expectations I had when I firstset foot in it. In addition to the wonderful titles published by the MITpress, the bookshop is a tour through the most exciting high-tech public-ations in the world, from hacker zines like 2600 to fat academic antholo-gies on video-game design. This is one of those stores where I have to askthem to ship my purchases home because they don't fit in my suitcase.
MIT Press Bookstore: Building E38, 77 Massachusetts Ave., Cam-bridge, MA USA 02139-4307 +1 617 253 5249Here's the email that went out at 7AM the next day, while Ange and Iwere spray-painting VAMP-MOB CIVIC CENTER -> -> at strategic loca-tions around town.
>
RULES FOR VAMPMOB>
You are part of a clan of daylight vampires. You've discovered thesecret of surviving the terrible light of the sun. The secret was cannibal-ism: the blood of another vampire can give you the strength to walkamong the living.
>
You need to bite as many other vampires as you can in order to stay inthe game. If one minute goes by without a bite, you're out. Once you'reout, turn your shirt around backwards and go referee — watch two orthree vamps to see if they're getting their bites in.
>
251To bite another vamp, you have to say "Bite!" five times before they do.
So you run up to a vamp, make eye-contact, and shout "bite bite bite bitebite!" and if you get it out before she does, you live and she crumbles todust.
>
You and the other vamps you meet at your rendezvous are a team.
They are your clan. You derive no nourishment from their blood.
>
You can "go invisible" by standing still and folding your arms overyour chest. You can't bite invisible vamps, and they can't bite you.
>
This game is played on the honor system. The point is to have fun andget your vamp on, not to win.
>
There is an end-game that will be passed by word of mouth as winnersbegin to emerge. The game-masters will start a whisper campaignamong the players when the time comes. Spread the whisper as quicklyas you can and watch for the sign.
>
M1k3y>
bite bite bite bite bite!
We'd hoped that a hundred people would be willing to playVampMob. We'd sent out about two hundred invites each. But when Isat bolt upright at 4AM and grabbed my Xbox, there were 400 repliesthere. Four hundred.
I fed the addresses to the bot and stole out of the house. I descendedthe stairs, listening to my father snore and my mom rolling over in theirbed. I locked the door behind me.
At 4:15 AM, Potrero Hill was as quiet as the countryside. There weresome distant traffic rumbles, and once, a car crawled past me. I stoppedat an ATM and drew out $320 in twenties, rolled them up and put arubber-band around them, and stuck the roll in a zip-up pocket low onthe thigh of my vampire pants.
I was wearing my cape again, and a ruffled shirt, and tuxedo pantsthat had been modded to have enough pockets to carry all my little bits252and pieces. I had on pointed boots with silver-skull buckles, and I'dteased my hair into a black dandelion clock around my head. Ange wasbringing the white makeup and had promised to do my eyeliner andblack nail-polish. Why the hell not? When was the next time I was goingto get to play dressup like this?
Ange met me in front of her house. She had her backpack on too, andfishnet tights, a ruffled gothic lolita maid's dress, white face-paint, elab-orate kabuki eye-makeup, and her fingers and throat dripped with silverjewelry.
You look great! we said to each other in unison, then laughed quietlyand stole off through the streets, spray-paint cans in our pockets.
As I surveyed Civic Center, I thought about what it would look likeonce 400 VampMobbers converged on it. I expected them in ten minutes,out front of City Hall. Already the big plaza teemed with commuterswho neatly sidestepped the homeless people begging there.
I've always hated Civic Center. It's a collection of huge wedding-cakebuildings: court houses, museums, and civic buildings like City Hall. Thesidewalks are wide, the buildings are white. In the tourist guides to SanFrancisco, they manage to photograph it so that it looks like EpcotCenter, futuristic and austere.
But on the ground, it's grimy and gross. Homeless people sleep on allthe benches. The district is empty by 6PM except for drunks and drug-gies, because with only one kind of building there, there's no legit reasonfor people to hang around after the sun goes down. It's more like a mallthan a neighborhood, and the only businesses there are bail-bondsmenand liquor stores, places that cater to the families of crooks on trial andthe bums who make it their nighttime home.
I really came to understand all of this when I read an interview withan amazing old urban planner, a woman called Jane Jacobs who was thefirst person to really nail why it was wrong to slice cities up with free-ways, stick all the poor people in housing projects, and use zoning lawsto tightly control who got to do what where.
Jacobs explained that real cities are organic and they have a lot of vari-ety — rich and poor, white and brown, Anglo and Mex, retail and resid-ential and even industrial. A neighborhood like that has all kinds ofpeople passing through it at all hours of the day or night, so you get253businesses that cater to every need, you get people around all the time,acting like eyes on the street.
You've encountered this before. You go walking around some olderpart of some city and you find that it's full of the coolest looking stores,guys in suits and people in fashion-rags, upscale restaurants and funkycafes, a little movie theater maybe, houses with elaborate paint-jobs.
Sure, there might be a Starbucks too, but there's also a neat-looking fruitmarket and a florist who appears to be three hundred years old as shesnips carefully at the flowers in her windows. It's the opposite of aplanned space, like a mall. It feels like a wild garden or even a woods:
like it grew.
You couldn't get any further from that than Civic Center. I read an in-terview with Jacobs where she talked about the great old neighborhoodthey knocked down to build it. It had been just that kind of neighbor-hood, the kind of place that happened without permission or rhyme orreason.
Jacobs said that she predicted that within a few years, Civic Centerwould be one of the worst neighborhoods in the city, a ghost-town atnight, a place that sustained a thin crop of weedy booze shops and flea-pit motels. In the interview, she didn't seem very glad to have been vin-dicated; she sounded like she was talking about a dead friend when shedescribed what Civic Center had become.
Now it was rush hour and Civic Center was as busy at it could be. TheCivic Center BART also serves as the major station for Muni trolley lines,and if you need to switch from one to another, that's where you do it. At8AM, there were thousands of people coming up the stairs, going downthe stairs, getting into and out of taxis and on and off buses. They gotsqueezed by DHS checkpoints by the different civic buildings, androuted around aggressive panhandlers. They all smelled like their sham-poos and colognes, fresh out of the shower and armored in their worksuits, swinging laptop bags and briefcases. At 8AM, Civic Center wasbusiness central.
And here came the vamps. A couple dozen coming down Van Ness, acouple dozen coming up Market. More coming from the other side ofMarket. More coming up from Van Ness. They slipped around the sideof the buildings, wearing the white face-paint and the black eyeliner,black clothes, leather jackets, huge stompy boots. Fishnet fingerlessgloves.
254They began to fill up the plaza. A few of the business people gavethem passing glances and then looked away, not wanting to let theseweirdos into their personal realities as they thought about whatever crapthey were about to wade through for another eight hours. The vampsmilled around, not sure when the game was on. They pooled together inlarge groups, like an oil spill in reverse, all this black gathering in oneplace. A lot of them sported old-timey hats, bowlers and toppers. Manyof the girls were in full-on elegant gothic lolita maid costumes with hugeplatforms.
I tried to estimate the numbers. 200. Then, five minutes later, it was300. 400. They were still streaming in. The vamps had brought friends.
Someone grabbed my ass. I spun around and saw Ange, laughing sohard she had to hold her thighs, bent double.
Look at them all, man, look at them all! she gasped. The square wastwice as crowded as it had been a few minutes ago. I had no idea howmany Xnetters there were, but easily 1000 of them had just showed up tomy little party. Christ.
The DHS and SFPD cops were starting to mill around, talking intotheir radios and clustering together. I heard a far-away siren.
All right, I said, shaking Ange by the arm. "All right, let's go."We both slipped off into the crowd and as soon as we encountered ourfirst vamp, we both said, loudly, "Bite bite bite bite bite!" My victim wasa stunned — but cute — girl with spider-webs drawn on her hands andsmudged mascara running down her cheeks. She said, "Crap," andmoved away, acknowledging that I'd gotten her.
The call of "bite bite bite bite bite" had scrambled the other nearbyvamps. Some of them were attacking each other, others were moving forcover, hiding out. I had my victim for the minute, so I skulked away, us-ing mundanes for cover. All around me, the cry of "bite bite bite bitebite!" and shouts and laughs and curses.
The sound spread like a virus through the crowd. All the vamps knewthe game was on now, and the ones who were clustered together weredropping like flies. They laughed and cussed and moved away, clueingthe still-in vamps that the game was on. And more vamps were arrivingby the second.
8:16. It was time to bag another vamp. I crouched low and movedthrough the legs of the straights as they headed for the BART stairs. Theyjerked back with surprise and swerved to avoid me. I had my eyes laser-255locked on a set of black platform boots with steel dragons over the toes,and so I wasn't expecting it when I came face to face with another vamp,a guy of about 15 or 16, hair gelled straight back and wearing a PVCMarilyn Manson jacket draped with necklaces of fake tusks carved withintricate symbols.
Bite bite bite — he began, when one of the mundanes tripped overhim and they both went sprawling. I leapt over to him and shouted "bitebite bite bite bite!" before he could untangle himself again.
More vamps were arriving. The suits were really freaking out. Thegame overflowed the sidewalk and moved into Van Ness, spreading uptoward Market Street. Drivers honked, the trolleys made angry dings. Iheard more sirens, but now traffic was snarled in every direction.
It was freaking glorious.
BITE BITE BITE BITE BITE!
The sound came from all around me. There were so many vampsthere, playing so furiously, it was like a roar. I risked standing up andlooking around and found that I was right in the middle of a giant crowdof vamps that went as far as I could see in every direction.
BITE BITE BITE BITE BITE!
This was even better than the concert in Dolores Park. That had beenangry and rockin', but this was — well, it was just fun. It was like goingback to the playground, to the epic games of tag we'd play on lunchbreaks when the sun was out, hundreds of people chasing each otheraround. The adults and the cars just made it more fun, more funny.
That's what it was: it was funny. We were all laughing now.
But the cops were really mobilizing now. I heard helicopters. Anysecond now, it would be over. Time for the endgame.
I grabbed a vamp.
Endgame: when the cops order us to disperse, pretend you've beengassed. Pass it on. What did I just say?The vamp was a girl, tiny, so short I thought she was really young, butshe must have been 17 or 18 from her face and the smile. "Oh, that'swicked," she said.
What did I say?"Endgame: when the cops order us to disperse, pretend you've beengassed. Pass it on. What did I just say?"Right, I said. "Pass it on."256She melted into the crowd. I grabbed another vamp. I passed it on. Hewent off to pass it on.
Somewhere in the crowd, I knew Ange was doing this too. Somewherein the crowd, there might be infiltrators, fake Xnetters, but what couldthey do with this knowledge? It's not like the cops had a choice. Theywere going to order us to disperse. That was guaranteed.
I had to get to Ange. The plan was to meet at the Founder's Statue inthe Plaza, but reaching it was going to be hard. The crowd wasn't mov-ing anymore, it was surging, like the mob had in the way down to theBART station on the day the bombs went off. I struggled to make myway through it just as the PA underneath the helicopter switched on.
THIS IS THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY. YOUARE ORDERED TO DISPERSE IMMEDIATELY.Around me, hundreds of vamps fell to the ground, clutching theirthroats, clawing at their eyes, gasping for breath. It was easy to fake be-ing gassed, we'd all had plenty of time to study the footage of the parti-ers in Mission Dolores Park going down under the pepper-spray clouds.
DISPERSE IMMEDIATELY.I fell to the ground, protecting my pack, reaching around to the redbaseball hat folded into the waistband of my pants. I jammed it on myhead and then grabbed my throat and made horrendous retching noises.
The only ones still standing were the mundanes, the salarymen who'dbeen just trying to get to their jobs. I looked around as best as I could atthem as I choked and gasped.
THIS IS THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY. YOUARE ORDERED TO DISPERSE IMMEDIATELY. DISPERSEIMMEDIATELY. The voice of god made my bowels ache. I felt it in mymolars and in my femurs and my spine.
The salarymen were scared. They were moving as fast as they could,but in no particular direction. The helicopters seemed to be directly over-head no matter where you stood. The cops were wading into the crowdnow, and they'd put on their helmets. Some had shields. Some had gasmasks. I gasped harder.
Then the salarymen were running. I probably would have run too. Iwatched a guy whip a $500 jacket off and wrap it around his face beforeheading south toward Mission, only to trip up and go sprawling. Hiscurses joined the choking sounds.
257This wasn't supposed to happen — the choking was just supposed tofreak people out and get them confused, not panic them into a stampede.
There were screams now, screams I recognized all too well from thenight in the park. That was the sound of people who were scared spit-less, running into each other as they tried like hell to get away.
And then the air-raid sirens began.
I hadn't heard that sound since the bombs went off, but I would neverforget it. It sliced through me and went straight into my balls, turningmy legs into jelly on the way. It made me want to run away in a panic. Igot to my feet, red cap on my head, thinking of only one thing: Ange.
Ange and the Founders' Statue.
Everyone was on their feet now, running in all directions, screaming. Ipushed people out of my way, holding onto my pack and my hat, head-ing for Founders' Statue. Masha was looking for me, I was looking forAnge. Ange was out there.
I pushed and cursed. Elbowed someone. Someone came down on myfoot so hard I felt something go crunch and I shoved him so he wentdown. He tried to get up and someone stepped on him. I shoved andpushed.
Then I reached out my arm to shove someone else and strong handsgrabbed my wrist and my elbow in one fluid motion and brought myarm back around behind my back. It felt like my shoulder was about towrench out of its socket, and I instantly doubled over, hollering, a soundthat was barely audible over the din of the crowd, the thrum of the chop-pers, the wail of the sirens.
I was brought back upright by the strong hands behind me, whichsteered me like a marionette. The hold was so perfect I couldn't eventhink of squirming. I couldn't think of the noise or the helicopter orAnge. All I could think of was moving the way that the person who hadme wanted me to move. I was brought around so that I was face-to-facewith the person.
It was a girl whose face was sharp and rodent-like, half-hidden by agiant pair of sunglasses. Over the sunglasses, a mop of bright pink hair,spiked out in all directions.
You! I said. I knew her. She'd taken a picture of me and threatened torat me out to truant watch. That had been five minutes before the alarmsstarted. She'd been the one, ruthless and cunning. We'd both run fromthat spot in the Tenderloin as the klaxon sounded behind us, and we'd258both been picked up by the cops. I'd been hostile and they'd decided thatI was an enemy.
She — Masha — became their ally.
Hello, M1k3y, she hissed in my ear, close as a lover. A shiver wentup my back. She let go of my arm and I shook it out.
Christ, I said. "You!""Yes, me," she said. "The gas is gonna come down in about twominutes. Let's haul ass.""Ange — my girlfriend — is by the Founders' Statue."Masha looked over the crowd. "No chance," she said. "We try to makeit there, we're doomed. The gas is coming down in two minutes, in caseyou missed it the first time."I stopped moving. "I don't go without Ange," I said.
She shrugged. "Suit yourself," she shouted in my ear. "Your funeral."She began to push through the crowd, moving away, north, towarddowntown. I continued to push for the Founders' Statue. A second later,my arm was back in the terrible lock and I was being swung around andpropelled forward.
You know too much, jerk-off, she said. "You've seen my face. You'recoming with me."I screamed at her, struggled till it felt like my arm would break, butshe was pushing me forward. My sore foot was agony with every step,my shoulder felt like it would break.
With her using me as a battering ram, we made good progress throughthe crowd. The whine of the helicopters changed and she gave me aharder push. "RUN!" she yelled. "Here comes the gas!"The crowd noise changed, too. The choking sounds and screamsounds got much, much louder. I'd heard that pitch of sound before. Wewere back in the park. The gas was raining down. I held my breath andran.
We cleared the crowd and she let go of my arm. I shook it out. Ilimped as fast as I could up the sidewalk as the crowd thinned andthinned. We were heading towards a group of DHS cops with riotshields and helmets and masks. As we drew near them, they moved toblock us, but Masha held up a badge and they melted away like she wasObi Wan Kenobi, saying "These aren't the droids you're looking for."259"You goddamned bitch," I said as we sped up Market Street. "We haveto go back for Ange."She pursed her lips and shook her head. "I feel for you, buddy. Ihaven't seen my boyfriend in months. He probably thinks I'm dead. For-tunes of war. We go back for your Ange, we're dead. If we push on, wehave a chance. So long as we have a chance, she has a chance. Those kidsaren't all going to Gitmo. They'll probably take a few hundred in forquestioning and send the rest home."We were moving up Market Street now, past the strip joints where thelittle encampments of bums and junkies sat, stinking like open toilets.
Masha guided me to a little alcove in the shut door of one of the stripplaces. She stripped off her jacket and turned it inside out — the liningwas a muted stripe pattern, and with the jacket's seams reversed, it hungdifferently. She produced a wool hat from her pocket and pulled it overher hair, letting it form a jaunty, off-center peak. Then she took out somemake-up remover wipes and went to work on her face and fingernails. Ina minute, she was a different woman.
Wardrobe change, she said. "Now you. Lose the shoes, lose the jack-et, lose the hat." I could see her point. The cops would be looking verycarefully at anyone who looked like they'd been a part of the VampMob.
I ditched the hat entirely — I'd never liked ball caps. Then I jammed thejacket into my pack and got out a long-sleeved tee with a picture of RosaLuxembourg on it and pulled it over my black tee. I let Masha wipe mymakeup off and clean my nails and a minute later, I was clean.
Switch off your phone, she said. "You carrying any arphids?"I had my student card, my ATM card, my Fast Pass. They all went intoa silvered bag she held out, which I recognized as a radio-proof Faradaypouch. But as she put them in her pocket, I realized I'd just turned my IDover to her. If she was on the other side…The magnitude of what had just happened began to sink in. In mymind, I'd pictured having Ange with me at this point. Ange would makeit two against one. Ange would help me see if there was somethingamiss. If Masha wasn't all she said she was.
Put these pebbles in your shoes before you put them on —"It's OK. I sprained my foot. No gait recognition program will spot menow.260She nodded once, one pro to another, and slung her pack. I picked upmine and we moved. The total time for the changeover was less than aminute. We looked and walked like two different people.
She looked at her watch and shook her head. "Come on," she said. "Wehave to make our rendezvous. Don't think of running, either. You've gottwo choices now. Me, or jail. They'll be analyzing the footage from thatmob for days, but once they're done, every face in it will go in a data-base. Our departure will be noted. We are both wanted criminals now."She got us off Market Street on the next block, swinging back into theTenderloin. I knew this neighborhood. This was where we'd gone hunt-ing for an open WiFi access-point back on the day, playing Harajuku FunMadness.
Where are we going? I said.
We're about to catch a ride, she said. "Shut up and let meconcentrate."We moved fast, and sweat streamed down my face from under myhair, coursed down my back and slid down the crack of my ass and mythighs. My foot was really hurting and I was seeing the streets of SanFrancisco race by, maybe for the last time, ever.
It didn't help that we were ploughing straight uphill, moving for thezone where the seedy Tenderloin gives way to the nosebleed real-estatevalues of Nob Hill. My breath came in ragged gasps. She moved usmostly up narrow alleys, using the big streets just to get from one alleyto the next.
We were just stepping into one such alley, Sabin Place, when someonefell in behind us and said, "Freeze right there." It was full of evil mirth.
We stopped and turned around.
At the mouth of the alley stood Charles, wearing a halfheartedVampMob outfit of black t-shirt and jeans and white face-paint. "Hello,Marcus," he said. "You going somewhere?" He smiled a huge, wet grin.
Who's your girlfriend?"What do you want, Charles?"Well, I've been hanging out on that traitorous Xnet ever since I spot-ted you giving out DVDs at school. When I heard about your VampMob,I thought I'd go along and hang around the edges, just to see if youshowed up and what you did. You know what I saw?261I said nothing. He had his phone in his hand, pointed at us. Recording.
Maybe ready to dial 911. Beside me, Masha had gone still as a board.
"I saw you leading the damned thing. And I recorded it, Marcus. So nowI'm going to call the cops and we're going to wait right here for them. And then you're going to go to pound-you-in-the-ass prison, for a long,long time.Masha stepped forward.
"Stop right there, chickie, he said. "I saw you get him away. I saw it all—"She took another step forward and snatched the phone out of hishand, reaching behind her with her other hand and bringing it out hold-ing a wallet open.
DHS, dick-head, she said. "I'm DHS. I've been running this twerpback to his masters to see where he went. I was doing that. Now you'veblown it. We have a name for that. We call it 'Obstruction of National Se-curity.' You're about to hear that phrase a lot more often."Charles took a step backward, his hands held up in front of him. He'dgone even paler under his makeup. "What? No! I mean — I didn't know!
I was trying to help!""The last thing we need is a bunch of high school Junior G-men'helping' buddy. You can tell it to the judge."He moved back again, but Masha was fast. She grabbed his wrist andtwisted him into the same judo hold she'd had me in back at CivicCenter. Her hand dipped back to her pockets and came out holding astrip of plastic, a handcuff strip, which she quickly wound around hiswrists.
That was the last thing I saw as I took off running.
I made it as far as the other end of the alley before she caught up withme, tackling me from behind and sending me sprawling. I couldn't movevery fast, not with my hurt foot and the weight of my pack. I went downin a hard face-plant and skidded, grinding my cheek into the grimyasphalt.
Jesus, she said. "You're a goddamned idiot. You didn't believe that,did you?"My heart thudded in my chest. She was on top of me and slowly shelet me up.
262"Do I need to cuff you, Marcus?"I got to my feet. I hurt all over. I wanted to die.
Come on, she said. "It's not far now."'It' turned out to be a moving van on a Nob Hill side-street, a sixteen-wheeler the size of one of the ubiquitous DHS trucks that still turned upon San Francisco's street corners, bristling with antennas.
This one, though, said "Three Guys and a Truck Moving" on the side,and the three guys were very much in evidence, trekking in and out of atall apartment building with a green awning. They were carrying cratedfurniture, neatly labeled boxes, loading them one at a time onto the truckand carefully packing them there.
She walked us around the block once, apparently unsatisfied withsomething, then, on the next pass, she made eye-contact with the manwho was watching the van, an older black guy with a kidney-belt andheavy gloves. He had a kind face and he smiled at us as she led usquickly, casually up the truck's three stairs and into its depth. "Under thebig table," he said. "We left you some space there."The truck was more than half full, but there was a narrow corridoraround a huge table with a quilted blanket thrown over it and bubble-wrap wound around its legs.
Masha pulled me under the table. It was stuffy and still and dusty un-der there, and I suppressed a sneeze as we scrunched in among theboxes. The space was so tight that we were on top of each other. I didn'tthink that Ange would have fit in there.
Bitch, I said, looking at Masha.
Shut up. You should be licking my boots thanking me. You wouldhave ended up in jail in a week, two tops. Not Gitmo-by-the-Bay. Syria,maybe. I think that's where they sent the ones they really wanted todisappear.I put my head on my knees and tried to breathe deeply.
Why would you do something so stupid as declaring war on the DHSanyway?I told her. I told her about being busted and I told her about Darryl.
She patted her pockets and came up with a phone. It was Charles's.
Wrong phone. She came up with another phone. She turned it on and263the glow from its screen filled our little fort. After fiddling for a second,she showed it to me.
It was the picture she'd snapped of us, just before the bombs blew. Itwas the picture of Jolu and Van and me and —Darryl.
I was holding in my hand proof that Darryl had been with us minutesbefore we'd all gone into DHS custody. Proof that he'd been alive andwell and in our company.
You need to give me a copy of this, I said. "I need it.""When we get to LA," she said, snatching the phone back. "Onceyou've been briefed on how to be a fugitive without getting both ourasses caught and shipped to Syria. I don't want you getting rescue ideasabout this guy. He's safe enough where he is — for now."I thought about trying to take it from her by force, but she'd alreadydemonstrated her physical skill. She must have been a black-belt orsomething.
We sat there in the dark, listening to the three guys load the truck withbox after box, tying things down, grunting with the effort of it. I tried tosleep, but couldn't. Masha had no such problem. She snored.
There was still light shining through the narrow, obstructed corridorthat led to the fresh air outside. I stared at it, through the gloom, andthought of Ange.
My Ange. Her hair brushing her shoulders as she turned her headfrom side to side, laughing at something I'd done. Her face when I'd seenher last, falling down in the crowd at VampMob. All those people atVampMob, like the people in the park, down and writhing, the DHSmoving in with truncheons. The ones who disappeared.
Darryl. Stuck on Treasure Island, his side stitched up, taken out of hiscell for endless rounds of questioning about the terrorists.
Darry's father, ruined and boozy, unshaven. Washed up and in hisuniform, "for the photos." Weeping like a little boy.
My own father, and the way that he had been changed by my disap-pearance to Treasure Island. He'd been just as broken as Darryl's father,but in his own way. And his face, when I told him where I'd been.
That was when I knew that I couldn't run.
That was when I knew that I had to stay and fight.
264Masha's breathing was deep and regular, but when I reached with gla-cial slowness into her pocket for her phone, she snuffled a little and shif-ted. I froze and didn't even breathe for a full two minutes, counting onehippopotami, two hippopotami.
Slowly, her breath deepened again. I tugged the phone free of herjacket-pocket one millimeter at a time, my fingers and arm tremblingwith the effort of moving so slowly.
Then I had it, a little candy-bar shaped thing.
I turned to head for the light, when I had a flash of memory: Charles,holding out his phone, waggling it at us, taunting us. It had been acandy-bar-shaped phone, silver, plastered in the logos of a dozen com-panies that had subsidized the cost of the handset through the phonecompany. It was the kind of phone where you had to listen to a commer-cial every time you made a call.
It was too dim to see the phone clearly in the truck, but I could feel it.
Were those company decals on its sides? Yes? Yes. I had just stolenCharles's phone from Masha.
I turned back around slowly, slowly, and slowly, slowly, slowly, Ireached back into her pocket. Her phone was bigger and bulkier, with abetter camera and who knew what else?
I'd been through this once before — that made it a little easier. Milli-meter by millimeter again, I teased it free of her pocket, stopping twicewhen she snuffled and twitched.
I had the phone free of her pocket and I was beginning to back awaywhen her hand shot out, fast as a snake, and grabbed my wrist, hard, fin-gertips grinding away at the small, tender bones below my hand.
I gasped and stared into Masha's wide-open, staring eyes.
You are such an idiot, she said, conversationally, taking the phonefrom me, punching at its keypad with her other hand. "How did youplan on unlocking this again?"I swallowed. I felt bones grind against each other in my wrist. I bit mylip to keep from crying out.
She continued to punch away with her other hand. "Is this what youthought you'd get away with?" She showed me the picture of all of us,Darryl and Jolu, Van and me. "This picture?"I didn't say anything. My wrist felt like it would shatter.
265"Maybe I should just delete it, take temptation out of your way." Herfree hand moved some more. Her phone asked her if she was sure andshe had to look at it to find the right button.
That's when I moved. I had Charles's phone in my other hand still, andI brought it down on her crushing hand as hard as I could, banging myknuckles on the table overhead. I hit her hand so hard the phoneshattered and she yelped and her hand went slack. I was still moving,reaching for her other hand, for her now-unlocked phone with herthumb still poised over the OK key. Her fingers spasmed on the emptyair as I snatched the phone out of her hand.
I moved down the narrow corridor on hands and knees, heading forthe light. I felt her hands slap at my feet and ankles twice, and I had toshove aside some of the boxes that had walled us in like a Pharaoh in atomb. A few of them fell down behind me, and I heard Masha gruntagain.
The rolling truck door was open a crack and I dove for it, slitheringout under it. The steps had been removed and I found myself hangingover the road, sliding headfirst into it, clanging my head off the blacktopwith a thump that rang my ears like a gong. I scrambled to my feet, hold-ing the bumper, and desperately dragged down on the door-handle,slamming it shut. Masha screamed inside — I must have caught her fin-gertips. I felt like throwing up, but I didn't.
I padlocked the truck instead.
This chapter is dedicated to The Tattered Cover, Denver's legendary in-dependent bookstore. I happened upon The Tattered Cover quite by acci-dent: Alice and I had just landed in Denver, coming in from London,and it was early and cold and we needed coffee. We drove in aimlessrental-car circles, and that's when I spotted it, the Tattered Cover'ssign. Something about it tingled in my hindbrain — I knew I'd heard ofthis place. We pulled in (got a coffee) and stepped into the store — awonderland of dark wood, homey reading nooks, and miles and miles ofbookshelves.
The Tattered Cover 1628 16th St., Denver, CO USA 80202 +1 303 4361070None of the three guys were around at the moment, so I took off. Myhead hurt so much I thought I must be bleeding, but my hands cameaway dry. My twisted ankle had frozen up in the truck so that I ran like abroken marionette, and I stopped only once, to cancel the photo-deletionon Masha's phone. I turned off its radio — both to save battery and tokeep it from being used to track me — and set the sleep timer to twohours, the longest setting available. I tried to set it to not require a pass-word to wake from sleep, but that required a password itself. I was justgoing to have to tap the keypad at least once every two hours until Icould figure out how to get the photo off of the phone. I would need acharger, then.
I didn't have a plan. I needed one. I needed to sit down, to get online— to figure out what I was going to do next. I was sick of letting otherpeople do my planning for me. I didn't want to be acting because of whatMasha did, or because of the DHS, or because of my dad. Or because ofAnge? Well, maybe I'd act because of Ange. That would be just fine, infact.
267I'd just been slipping downhill, taking alleys when I could, mergingwith the Tenderloin crowds. I didn't have any destination in mind. Everyfew minutes, I put my hand in my pocket and nudged one of the keys onMasha's phone to keep it from going asleep. It made an awkward bulge,unfolded there in my jacket.
I stopped and leaned against a building. My ankle was killing me.
Where was I, anyway?
O'Farrell, at Hyde Street. In front of a dodgy "Asian Massage Parlor."My traitorous feet had taken me right back to the beginning — taken meback to where the photo on Masha's phone had been taken, seconds be-fore the Bay Bridge blew, before my life changed forever.
I wanted to sit down on the sidewalk and bawl, but that wouldn'tsolve my problems. I had to call Barbara Stratford, tell her what hadhappened. Show her the photo of Darryl.
What was I thinking? I had to show her the video, the one that Mashahad sent me — the one where the President's Chief of Staff gloated at theattacks on San Francisco and admitted that he knew when and where thenext attacks would happen and that he wouldn't stop them becausethey'd help his man get re-elected.
That was a plan, then: get in touch with Barbara, give her the docu-ments, and get them into print. The VampMob had to have reallyfreaked people out, made them think that we really were a bunch of ter-rorists. Of course, when I'd been planning it, I had been thinking of howgood a distraction it would be, not how it would look to some NASCARDad in Nebraska.
I'd call Barbara, and I'd do it smart, from a payphone, putting myhood up so that the inevitable CCTV wouldn't get a photo of me. I dug aquarter out of my pocket and polished it on my shirt-tail, getting the fin-gerprints off it.
I headed downhill, down and down to the BART station and thepayphones there. I made it to the trolley-car stop when I spotted the cov-er of the week's Bay Guardian, stacked in a high pile next to a homelessblack guy who smiled at me. "Go ahead and read the cover, it's free —it'll cost you fifty cents to look inside, though."The headline was set in the biggest type I'd seen since 9/11:
INSIDE GITMO-BY-THE-BAYBeneath it, in slightly smaller type:
268"How the DHS has kept our children and friends in secret prisons onour doorstep.
By Barbara Stratford, Special to the Bay GuardianThe newspaper seller shook his head. "Can you believe that?" he said.
Right here in San Francisco. Man, the government sucks.Theoretically, the Guardian was free, but this guy appeared to havecornered the local market for copies of it. I had a quarter in my hand. Idropped it into his cup and fished for another one. I didn't bother polish-ing the fingerprints off of it this time.
"We're told that the world changed forever when the Bay Bridge wasblown up by parties unknown. Thousands of our friends and neighborsdied on that day. Almost none of them have been recovered; their re-mains are presumed to be resting in the city's harbor. But an extraordinary story told to this reporter by a young man whowas arrested by the DHS minutes after the explosion suggests that ourown government has illegally held many of those thought dead onTreasure Island, which had been evacuated and declared off-limits to ci-vilians shortly after the bombing… ""I sat down on a bench — the same bench, I noted with a prickly hair-up-the-neck feeling, where we'd rested Darryl after escaping from theBART station — and read the article all the way through. It took a hugeeffort not to burst into tears right there. Barbara had found some photosof me and Darryl goofing around together and they ran alongside thetext. The photos were maybe a year old, but I looked so much younger inthem, like I was 10 or 11. I'd done a lot of growing up in the past couplemonths.
"The piece was beautifully written. I kept feeling outraged on behalf ofthe poor kids she was writing about, then remembering that she waswriting about me. Zeb's note was there, his crabbed handwriting repro-duced in large, a half-sheet of the newspaper. Barbara had dug up moreinfo on other kids who were missing and presumed dead, a long list, andasked how many had been stuck there on the island, just a few milesfrom their parents' doorsteps.
I dug another quarter out of my pocket, then changed my mind. Whatwas the chance that Barbara's phone wasn't tapped? There was no way Iwas going to be able to call her now, not directly. I needed some interme-diary to get in touch with her and get her to meet me somewhere south.
So much for plans.
269What I really, really needed was the Xnet.
How the hell was I going to get online? My phone's wifinder wasblinking like crazy — there was wireless all around me, but I didn't havean Xbox and a TV and a ParanoidXbox DVD to boot from. WiFi, WiFieverywhere…That's when I spotted them. Two kids, about my age, moving amongthe crowd at the top of the stairs down into the BART.
What caught my eye was the way they were moving, kind of clumsy,nudging up against the commuters and the tourists. Each had a hand inhis pocket, and whenever they met one another's eye, they snickered.
They couldn't have been more obvious jammers, but the crowd was obli-vious to them. Being down in that neighborhood, you expect to bedodging homeless people and crazies, so you don't make eye contact,don't look around at all if you can help it.
I sidled up to one. He seemed really young, but he couldn't have beenany younger than me.
Hey, I said. "Hey, can you guys come over here for a second?"He pretended not to hear me. He looked right through me, the wayyou would a homeless person.
Come on, I said. "I don't have a lot of time." I grabbed his shoulderand hissed in his ear. "The cops are after me. I'm from Xnet."He looked scared now, like he wanted to run away, and his friend wasmoving toward us. "I'm serious," I said. "Just hear me out."His friend came over. He was taller, and beefy — like Darryl. "Hey,"he said. "Something wrong?"His friend whispered in his ear. The two of them looked like they weregoing to bolt.
I grabbed my copy of the Bay Guardian from under my arm and rattledit in front of them. "Just turn to page 5, OK?"They did. They looked at the headline. The photo. Me.
Oh, dude, the first one said. "We are so not worthy." He grinned atme like crazy, and the beefier one slapped me on the back.
No way — he said. "You're M —"I put a hand over his mouth. "Come over here, OK?"270I brought them back to my bench. I noticed that there was somethingold and brown staining the sidewalk underneath it. Darryl's blood? Itmade my skin pucker up. We sat down.
I'm Marcus, I said, swallowing hard as I gave my real name to thesetwo who already knew me as M1k3y. I was blowing my cover, but theBay Guardian had already made the connection for me.
Nate, the small one said. "Liam," the bigger one said. "Dude, it is suchan honor to meet you. You're like our all-time hero —""Don't say that," I said. "Don't say that. You two are like a flashing ad-vertisement that says, 'I am jamming, please put my ass in Gitmo-by-the-Bay. You couldn't be more obvious."Liam looked like he might cry.
Don't worry, you didn't get busted. I'll give you some tips, later. Hebrightened up again. What was becoming weirdly clear was that thesetwo really did idolize M1k3y, and that they'd do anything I said. Theywere grinning like idiots. It made me uncomfortable, sick to my stomach.
Listen, I need to get on Xnet, now, without going home or anywherenear home. Do you two live near here?"I do, Nate said. "Up at the top of California Street. It's a bit of a walk— steep hills." I'd just walked all the way down them. Masha was some-where up there. But still, it was better than I had any right to expect.
Let's go, I said.
Nate loaned me his baseball hat and traded jackets with me. I didn'thave to worry about gait-recognition, not with my ankle throbbing theway it was — I limped like an extra in a cowboy movie.
Nate lived in a huge four-bedroom apartment at the top of Nob Hill.
The building had a doorman, in a red overcoat with gold brocade, andhe touched his cap and called Nate, "Mr Nate" and welcomed us allthere. The place was spotless and smelled of furniture polish. I tried notto gawp at what must have been a couple million bucks' worth of condo.
My dad, he explained. "He was an investment banker. Lots of life in-surance. He died when I was 14 and we got it all. They'd been divorcedfor years, but he left my mom as beneficiary."From the floor-to-ceiling window, you could see a stunning view ofthe other side of Nob Hill, all the way down to Fisherman's Wharf, to theugly stub of the Bay Bridge, the crowd of cranes and trucks. Through the271mist, I could just make out Treasure Island. Looking down all that way,it gave me a crazy urge to jump.
I got online with his Xbox and a huge plasma screen in the livingroom. He showed me how many open WiFi networks were visible fromhis high vantage point — twenty, thirty of them. This was a good spot tobe an Xnetter.
There was a lot of email in my M1k3y account. 20,000 new messagessince Ange and I had left her place that morning. Lots of it was from thepress, asking for followup interviews, but most of it was from the Xnet-ters, people who'd seen the Guardian story and wanted to tell me thatthey'd do anything to help me, anything I needed.
That did it. Tears started to roll down my cheeks.
Nate and Liam exchanged glances. I tried to stop, but it was no good. Iwas sobbing now. Nate went to an oak book-case on one wall and swunga bar out of one of its shelves, revealing gleaming rows of bottles. Hepoured me a shot of something golden brown and brought it to me.
Rare Irish whiskey, he said. "Mom's favorite."It tasted like fire, like gold. I sipped at it, trying not to choke. I didn'treally like hard liquor, but this was different. I took several deep breaths.
Thanks, Nate, I said. He looked like I'd just pinned a medal on him.
He was a good kid.
All right, I said, and picked up the keyboard. The two boys watchedin fascination as I paged through my mail on the gigantic screen.
What I was looking for, first and foremost, was email from Ange.
There was a chance that she'd just gotten away. There was always thatchance.
I was an idiot to even hope. There was nothing from her. I started go-ing through the mail as fast as I could, picking apart the press requests,the fan mail, the hate mail, the spam…And that's when I found it: a letter from Zeb.
"It wasn't nice to wake up this morning and find the letter that Ithought you would destroy in the pages of the newspaper. Not nice atall. Made me feel — hunted. But I've come to understand why you did it. I don't know if I can ap-prove of your tactics, but it's easy to see that your motives were sound.
"272"If you're reading this, that means that there's a good chance you'vegone underground. It's not easy. I've been learning that. I've been learn-ing a lot more.
I can help you. I should do that for you. You're doing what you canfor me. (Even if you're not doing it with my permission.)Reply if you get this, if you're on the run and alone. Or reply if you'rein custody, being run by our friends on Gitmo, looking for a way tomake the pain stop. If they've got you, you'll do what they tell you. Iknow that. I'll take that risk.
For you, M1k3y."Wooooah, Liam breathed. "Duuuuude." I wanted to smack him. Iturned to say something awful and cutting to him, but he was staring atme with eyes as big as saucers, looking like he wanted to drop to hisknees and worship me.
Can I just say, Nate said, "can I just say that it is the biggest honor ofmy entire life to help you? Can I just say that?"I was blushing now. There was nothing for it. These two were totallystar-struck, even though I wasn't any kind of star, not in my own mind atleast.
Can you guys — I swallowed. "Can I have some privacy here?"They slunk out of the room like bad puppies and I felt like a tool. Ityped fast.
I got away, Zeb. And I'm on the run. I need all the help I can get. Iwant to end this now. I remembered to take Masha's phone out of mypocket and tickle it to keep it from going to sleep.
They let me use the shower, gave me a change of clothes, a new back-pack with half their earthquake kit in it — energy bars, medicine, hotand cold packs, and an old sleeping-bag. They even slipped a spare XboxUniversal already loaded with ParanoidXbox on it into there. That was anice touch. I had to draw the line at a flaregun.
I kept on checking my email to see if Zeb had replied. I answered thefan mail. I answered the mail from the press. I deleted the hate mail. Iwas half-expecting to see something from Masha, but chances were shewas halfway to LA by now, her fingers hurt, and in no position to type. Itickled her phone again.
They encouraged me to take a nap and for a brief, shameful moment, Igot all paranoid like maybe these guys were thinking of turning me in273once I was asleep. Which was idiotic — they could have turned me injust as easily when I was awake. I just couldn't compute the fact that theythought so much of me. I had known, intellectually, that there werepeople who would follow M1k3y. I'd met some of those people thatmorning, shouting BITE BITE BITE and vamping it up at Civic Center.
But these two were more personal. They were just nice, goofy guys, theycoulda been any of my friends back in the days before the Xnet, just twopals who palled around having teenage adventures. They'd volunteeredto join an army, my army. I had a responsibility to them. Left to them-selves, they'd get caught, it was only a matter of time. They were tootrusting.
Guys, listen to me for a second. I have something serious I need totalk to you about.They almost stood at attention. It would have been funny if it wasn'tso scary.
Here's the thing. Now that you've helped me, it's really dangerous. Ifyou get caught, I'll get caught. They'll get anything you know out of you— I held up my hand to forestall their protests. "No, stop. You haven'tbeen through it. Everyone talks. Everyone breaks. If you're ever caught,you tell them everything, right away, as fast as you can, as much as youcan. They'll get it all eventually anyway. That's how they work.
But you won't get caught, and here's why: you're not jammers any-more. You are retired from active duty. You're a — I fished in mymemory for vocabulary words culled from spy thrillers — "you're asleeper cell. Stand down. Go back to being normal kids. One way or an-other, I'm going to break this thing, break it wide open, end it. Or it willget me, finally, do me in. If you don't hear from me within 72 hours, as-sume that they got me. Do whatever you want then. But for the nextthree days — and forever, if I do what I'm trying to do — stand down.
Will you promise me that?"They promised with all solemnity. I let them talk me into napping, butmade them swear to rouse me once an hour. I'd have to tickle Masha'sphone and I wanted to know as soon as Zeb got back in touch with me.
The rendezvous was on a BART car, which made me nervous. They'refull of cameras. But Zeb knew what he was doing. He had me meet himin the last car of a certain train departing from Powell Street Station, at atime when that car was filled with the press of bodies. He sidled up to274me in the crowd, and the good commuters of San Francisco cleared aspace for him, the hollow that always surrounds homeless people.
Nice to see you again, he muttered, facing into the doorway. Lookinginto the dark glass, I could see that there was no one close enough toeavesdrop — not without some kind of high-efficiency mic rig, and ifthey knew enough to show up here with one of those, we were deadanyway.
You too, brother, I said. "I'm — I'm sorry, you know?""Shut up. Don't be sorry. You were braver than I am. Are you ready togo underground now? Ready to disappear?""About that.""Yes?""That's not the plan.""Oh," he said.
Listen, OK? I have — I have pictures, video. Stuff that really provessomething. I reached into my pocket and tickled Masha's phone. I'dbought a charger for it in union Square on the way down, and hadstopped and plugged it in at a cafe for long enough to get the battery upto four out of five bars. "I need to get it to Barbara Stratford, the womanfrom the Guardian. But they're going to be watching her — watching tosee if I show up.""You don't think that they'll be watching for me, too? If your plan in-volves me going within a mile of that woman's home or office —""I want you to get Van to come and meet me. Did Darryl ever tell youabout Van? The girl —""He told me. Yes, he told me. You don't think they'll be watching her?
All of you who were arrested?""I think they will. I don't think they'll be watching her as hard. AndVan has totally clean hands. She never cooperated with any of my —" Iswallowed. "With my projects. So they might be a little more relaxedabout her. If she calls the Bay Guardian to make an appointment to ex-plain why I'm just full of crap, maybe they'll let her keep it."He stared at the door for a long time.
You know what happens when they catch us again. It wasn't aquestion.
I nodded.
275"Are you sure? Some of the people that were on Treasure Island withus got taken away in helicopters. They got taken offshore. There are coun-tries where America can outsource its torture. Countries where you willrot forever. Countries where you wish they would just get it over with,have you dig a trench and then shoot you in the back of the head as youstand over it."I swallowed and nodded.
Is it worth the risk? We can go underground for a long, long timehere. Someday we might get our country back. We can wait it out.I shook my head. "You can't get anything done by doing nothing. It'sour country. They've taken it from us. The terrorists who attack us arestill free — but we're not. I can't go underground for a year, ten years, mywhole life, waiting for freedom to be handed to me. Freedom issomething you have to take for yourself."That afternoon, Van left school as usual, sitting in the back of the buswith a tight knot of her friends, laughing and joking the way she alwaysdid. The other riders on the bus took special note of her, she was so loud,and besides, she was wearing that stupid, giant floppy hat, somethingthat looked like a piece out of a school play about Renaissance swordfighters. At one point they all huddled together, then turned away tolook out the back of the bus, pointing and giggling. The girl who worethe hat now was the same height as Van, and from behind, it could beher.
No one paid any attention to the mousy little Asian girl who got off afew stops before the BART. She was dressed in a plain old school uni-form, and looking down shyly as she stepped off. Besides, at that mo-ment, the loud Korean girl let out a whoop and her friends followedalong, laughing so loudly that even the bus driver slowed down, twistedin his seat and gave them a dirty look.
Van hurried away down the street with her head down, her hair tiedback and dropped down the collar of her out-of-style bubble jacket. Shehad slipped lifts into her shoes that made her two wobbly, awkwardinches taller, and had taken her contacts out and put on her least-favoredglasses, with huge lenses that took up half her face. Although I'd beenwaiting in the bus-shelter for her and knew when to expect her, I hardlyrecognized her. I got up and walked along behind her, across the street,trailing by half a block.
276The people who passed me looked away as quickly as possible. Ilooked like a homeless kid, with a grubby cardboard sign, street-grimyovercoat, huge, overstuffed knapsack with duct-tape over its rips. Noone wants to look at a street-kid, because if you meet his eye, he mightask you for some spare change. I'd walked around Oakland all afternoonand the only person who'd spoken to me was a Jehovah's Witness and aScientologist, both trying to convert me. It felt gross, like being hit on bya pervert.
Van followed the directions I'd written down carefully. Zeb hadpassed them to her the same way he'd given me the note outside school— bumping into her as she waited for the bus, apologizing profusely. I'dwritten the note plainly and simply, just laying it out for her: I know youdon't approve. I understand. But this is it, this is the most important fa-vor I've ever asked of you. Please. Please.
She'd come. I knew she would. We had a lot of history, Van and I. Shedidn't like what had happened to the world, either. Besides, an evil,chuckling voice in my head had pointed out, she was under suspicionnow that Barbara's article was out.
We walked like that for six or seven blocks, looking at who was nearus, what cars went past. Zeb told me about five-person trails, where fivedifferent undercovers traded off duties following you, making it nearlyimpossible to spot them. You had to go somewhere totally desolate,where anyone at all would stand out like a sore thumb.
The overpass for the 880 was just a few blocks from the ColiseumBART station, and even with all the circling Van did, it didn't take longto reach it. The noise from overhead was nearly deafening. No one elsewas around, not that I could tell. I'd visited the site before I suggested itto Van in the note, taking care to check for places where someone couldhide. There weren't any.
Once she stopped at the appointed place, I moved quickly to catch upto her. She blinked owlishly at me from behind her glasses.
Marcus, she breathed, and tears swam in her eyes. I found that I wascrying too. I'd make a really rotten fugitive. Too sentimental.
She hugged me so hard I couldn't breathe. I hugged her back evenharder.
Then she kissed me.
Not on the cheek, not like a sister. Full on the lips, a hot, wet, steamykiss that seemed to go on forever. I was so overcome with emotion —277No, that's bull. I knew exactly what I was doing. I kissed her back.
Then I stopped and pulled away, nearly shoved her away. "Van," Igasped.
Oops, she said.
Van, I said again.
Sorry, she said. "I —"Something occurred to me just then, something I guess I should haveseen a long, long time before.
You like me, don't you?She nodded miserably. "For years," she said.
Oh, God. Darryl, all these years, so in love with her, and the wholetime she was looking at me, secretly wanting me. And then I ended upwith Ange. Ange said that she'd always fought with Van. And I was run-ning around, getting into so much trouble.
Van, I said. "Van, I'm so sorry.""Forget it," she said, looking away. "I know it can't be. I just wanted todo that once, just in case I never —" She bit down on the words.
Van, I need you to do something for me. Something important. I needyou to meet with the journalist from the Bay Guardian, Barbara Strat-ford, the one who wrote the article. I need you to give her something. Iexplained about Masha's phone, told her about the video that Masha hadsent me.
"What good will this do, Marcus? What's the point?""Van, you were right, at least partly. We can't fix the world by puttingother people at risk. I need to solve the problem by telling what I know. Ishould have done that from the start. Should have walked straight out oftheir custody and to Darryl's father's house and told him what I knew. Now, though, I have evidence. This stuff — it could change the world. This is my last hope. The only hope for getting Darryl out, for getting alife that I don't spend underground, hiding from the cops. And you'rethe only person I can trust to do this.""Why me?""You're kidding, right? Look at how well you handled getting here. You're a pro. You're the best at this of any of us. You're the only one I cantrust. That's why you.278""Why not your friend Angie?"" She said the name without any inflec-tion at all, like it was a block of cement.
"I looked down. "I thought you knew. They arrested her. She's in Gitmo— on Treasure Island. She's been there for days now." I had been tryingnot to think about this, not to think about what might be happening toher. Now I couldn't stop myself and I started to sob. I felt a pain in mystomach, like I'd been kicked, and I pushed my hands into my middle tohold myself in. I folded there, and the next thing I knew, I was on myside in the rubble under the freeway, holding myself and crying.
Van knelt down by my side. "Give me the phone," she said, her voicean angry hiss. I fished it out of my pocket and passed it to her.
Embarrassed, I stopped crying and sat up. I knew that snot was run-ning down my face. Van was giving me a look of pure revulsion. "Youneed to keep it from going to sleep," I said. "I have a charger here." Irummaged in my pack. I hadn't slept all the way through the night sinceI acquired it. I set the phone's alarm to go off every 90 minutes and wakeme up so that I could keep it from going to sleep. "Don't fold it shut,either.""And the video?""That's harder," I said. "I emailed a copy to myself, but I can't get ontothe Xnet anymore." In a pinch, I could have gone back to Nate and Liamand used their Xbox again, but I didn't want to risk it. "Look, I'm goingto give you my login and password for the Pirate Party's mail-server.
You'll have to use Tor to access it — Homeland Security is bound to bescanning for people logging into p-party mail.""Your login and password," she said, looking a little surprised.
I trust you, Van. I know I can trust you.She shook her head. "You never give out your passwords, Marcus.""I don't think it matters anymore. Either you succeed or I — or it's theend of Marcus Yallow. Maybe I'll get a new identity, but I don't think so.
I think they'll catch me. I guess I've known all along that they'd catch me,some day."She looked at me, furious now. "What a waste. What was it all for,anyway?"Of all the things she could have said, nothing could have hurt memore. It was like another kick in the stomach. What a waste, all of it, fu-tile. Darryl and Ange, gone. I might never see my family again. And still,Homeland Security had my city and my country caught in a massive,279irrational shrieking freak-out where anything could be done in the nameof stopping terrorism.
Van looked like she was waiting for me to say something, but I hadnothing to say to that. She left me there.
Zeb had a pizza for me when I got back "home" — to the tent under afreeway overpass in the Mission that he'd staked out for the night. Hehad a pup tent, military surplus, stenciled with SAN FRANCISCOLOCAL HOMELESS COORDINATING BOARD.
The pizza was a Dominos, cold and clabbered, but delicious for allthat. "You like pineapple on your pizza?"Zeb smiled condescendingly at me. "Freegans can't be choosy," he said.
Freegans?"Like vegans, but we only eat free food."Free food?He grinned again. "You know — free food. From the free food store?""You stole this?""No, dummy. It's from the other store. The little one out behind thestore? Made of blue steel? Kind of funky smelling?""You got this out of the garbage?"He flung his head back and cackled. "Yes indeedy. You should seeyour face. Dude, it's OK. It's not like it was rotten. It was fresh — just ascrewed up order. They threw it out in the box. They sprinkle rat poisonover everything at closing-time, but if you get there quick, you're OK.
You should see what grocery stores throw out! Wait until breakfast. I'mgoing to make you a fruit salad you won't believe. As soon as one straw-berry in the box goes a little green and fuzzy, the whole thing is out —"I tuned him out. The pizza was fine. It wasn't as if sitting in the dump-ster would infect it or something. If it was gross, that was only because itcame from Domino's — the worst pizza in town. I'd never liked theirfood, and I'd given it up altogether when I found out that they bank-rolled a bunch of ultra-crazy politicians who thought that global warm-ing and evolution were satanic plots.
It was hard to shake the feeling of grossness, though.
280But there was another way to look at it. Zeb had showed me a secret,something I hadn't anticipated: there was a whole hidden world outthere, a way of getting by without participating in the system.
Freegans, huh?"Yogurt, too, he said, nodding vigorously. "For the fruit salad. Theythrow it out the day after the best-before date, but it's not as if it goesgreen at midnight. It's yogurt, I mean, it's basically just rotten milk to be-gin with."I swallowed. The pizza tasted funny. Rat poison. Spoiled yogurt. Furrystrawberries. This would take some getting used to.
I ate another bite. Actually, Domino's pizza sucked a little less whenyou got it for free.
Liam's sleeping bag was warm and welcoming after a long, emotion-ally exhausting day. Van would have made contact with Barbara bynow. She'd have the video and the picture. I'd call her in the morningand find out what she thought I should do next. I'd have to come in onceshe published, to back it all up.
I thought about that as I closed my eyes, thought about what it wouldbe like to turn myself in, the cameras all rolling, following the infamousM1k3y into one of those big, columnated buildings in Civic Center.
The sound of the cars screaming by overhead turned into a kind ofocean sound as I drifted away. There were other tents nearby, homelesspeople. I'd met a few of them that afternoon, before it got dark and we allretreated to huddle near our own tents. They were all all older than me,rough looking and gruff. None of them looked crazy or violent, though.
Just like people who'd had bad luck, or made bad decisions, or both.
I must have fallen asleep, because I don't remember anything else untila bright light was shined into my face, so bright it was blinding.
That's him, said a voice behind the light.
Bag him, said another voice, one I'd heard before, one I'd heard overand over again in my dreams, lecturing to me, demanding mypasswords. Severe-haircut-woman.
The bag went over my head quickly and was cinched so tight at thethroat that I choked and threw up my freegan pizza. As I spasmed andchoked, hard hands bound my wrists, then my ankles. I was rolled ontoa stretcher and hoisted, then carried into a vehicle, up a couple ofclanging metal steps. They dropped me into a padded floor. There was281no sound at all in the back of the vehicle once they closed the doors. Thepadding deadened everything except my own choking.
Well, hello again, she said. I felt the van rock as she crawled in withme. I was still choking, trying to gasp in a breath. Vomit filled my mouthand trickled down my windpipe.
We won't let you die, she said. "If you stop breathing, we'll makesure you start again. So don't worry about it."I choked harder. I sipped at air. Some was getting through. Deep,wracking coughs shook my chest and back, dislodging some more of thepuke. More breath.
See? she said. "Not so bad. Welcome home, M1k3y. We've got some-where very special to take you."I relaxed onto my back, feeling the van rock. The smell of used pizzawas overwhelming at first, but as with all strong stimuli, my braingradually grew accustomed to it, filtered it out until it was just a faintaroma. The rocking of the van was almost comforting.
That's when it happened. An incredible, deep calm that swept over melike I was lying on the beach and the ocean had swept in and lifted me asgently as a parent, held me aloft and swept me out onto a warm sea un-der a warm sun. After everything that had happened, I was caught, but itdidn't matter. I had gotten the information to Barbara. I had organizedthe Xnet. I had won. And if I hadn't won, I had done everything I couldhave done. More than I ever thought I could do. I took a mental invent-ory as I rode, thinking of everything that I had accomplished, that we hadaccomplished. The city, the country, the world was full of people whowouldn't live the way DHS wanted us to live. We'd fight forever. Theycouldn't jail us all.
I sighed and smiled.
She'd been talking all along, I realized. I'd been so far into my happyplace that she'd just gone away.
"— smart kid like you. You'd think that you'd know better than tomess with us. We've had an eye on you since the day you walked out. We would have caught you even if you hadn't gone crying to your lesbojournalist traitor. I just don't get it — we had an understanding, you andme… We rumbled over a metal plate, the van's shocks rocking, and then therocking changed. We were on water. Heading to Treasure Island. Hey,Ange was there. Darryl, too. Maybe.
"282The hood didn't come off until I was in my cell. They didn't botherwith the cuffs at my wrists and ankles, just rolled me off the stretcherand onto the floor. It was dark, but by the moonlight from the single,tiny, high window, I could see that the mattress had been taken off thecot. The room contained me, a toilet, a bed-frame, and a sink, and noth-ing else.
I closed my eyes and let the ocean lift me. I floated away. Somewhere,far below me, was my body. I could tell what would happen next. I wasbeing left to piss myself. Again. I knew what that was like. I'd pissed my-self before. It smelled bad. It itched. It was humiliating, like being a baby.
But I'd survived it.
I laughed. The sound was weird, and it drew me back into my body,back to the present. I laughed and laughed. I'd had the worst that theycould throw at me, and I'd survived it, and I'd beaten them, beaten themfor months, showed them up as chumps and despots. I'd won.
I let my bladder cut loose. It was sore and full anyway, and no timelike the present.
The ocean swept me away.
When morning came, two efficient, impersonal guards cut the bind-ings off of my wrists and ankles. I still couldn't walk — when I stood, mylegs gave way like a stringless marionette's. Too much time in one posi-tion. The guards pulled my arms over their shoulders and half-dragged/half-carried me down the familiar corridor. The bar codes on the doorswere curling up and dangling now, attacked by the salt air.
I got an idea. "Ange!" I yelled. "Darryl!" I yelled. My guards yankedme along faster, clearly disturbed but not sure what to do about it.
Guys, it's me, Marcus! Stay free!Behind one of the doors, someone sobbed. Someone else cried out inwhat sounded like Arabic. Then it was cacophony, a thousand differentshouting voices.
They brought me to a new room. It was an old shower-room, with theshower-heads still present in the mould tiles.
Hello, M1k3y, Severe Haircut said. "You seem to have had an event-ful morning." She wrinkled her nose pointedly.
I pissed myself, I said, cheerfully. "You should try it."283"Maybe we should give you a bath, then," she said. She nodded, andmy guards carried me to another stretcher. This one had restrainingstraps running its length. They dropped me onto it and it was ice-coldand soaked through. Before I knew it, they had the straps across myshoulders, hips and ankles. A minute later, three more straps were tieddown. A man's hands grabbed the railings by my head and releasedsome catches, and a moment later I was tilted down, my head below myfeet.
Let's start with something simple, she said. I craned my head to seeher. She had turned to a desk with an Xbox on it, connected to anexpensive-looking flat-panel TV. "I'd like you to tell me your login andpassword for your Pirate Party email, please?"I closed my eyes and let the ocean carry me off the beach.
Do you know what waterboarding is, M1k3y? Her voice reeled mein. "You get strapped down like this, and we pour water over your head,up your nose and down your mouth. You can't suppress the gag reflex.
They call it a simulated execution, and from what I can tell from this sideof the room, that's a fair assessment. You won't be able to fight the feel-ing that you're dying."I tried to go away. I'd heard of waterboarding. This was it, real torture.
And this was just the beginning.
I couldn't go away. The ocean didn't sweep in and lift me. There was atightness in my chest, my eyelids fluttered. I could feel clammy piss onmy legs and clammy sweat in my hair. My skin itched from the driedpuke.
She swam into view above me. "Let's start with the login," she said.
I closed my eyes, squeezed them shut.
Give him a drink, she said.
I heard people moving. I took a deep breath and held it.
The water started as a trickle, a ladleful of water gently poured overmy chin, my lips. Up my upturned nostrils. It went back into my throat,starting to choke me, but I wouldn't cough, wouldn't gasp and suck it in-to my lungs. I held onto my breath and squeezed my eyes harder.
There was a commotion from outside the room, a sound of chaoticboots stamping, angry, outraged shouts. The dipper was emptied intomy face.
284I heard her mutter something to someone in the room, then to me shesaid, "Just the login, Marcus. It's a simple request. What could I do withyour login, anyway?"This time, it was a bucket of water, all at once, a flood that didn't stop,it must have been gigantic. I couldn't help it. I gasped and aspirated thewater into my lungs, coughed and took more water in. I knew theywouldn't kill me, but I couldn't convince my body of that. In every fiberof my being, I knew I was going to die. I couldn't even cry — the waterwas still pouring over me.
Then it stopped. I coughed and coughed and coughed, but at the angleI was at, the water I coughed up dribbled back into my nose and burneddown my sinuses.
The coughs were so deep they hurt, hurt my ribs and my hips as Itwisted against them. I hated how my body was betraying me, how mymind couldn't control my body, but there was nothing for it.
Finally, the coughing subsided enough for me to take in what was go-ing on around me. People were shouting and it sounded like someonewas scuffling, wrestling. I opened my eyes and blinked into the brightlight, then craned my neck, still coughing a little.
The room had a lot more people in it than it had had when we started.
Most of them seemed to be wearing body armor, helmets, and smoked-plastic visors. They were shouting at the Treasure Island guards, whowere shouting back, necks corded with veins.
Stand down! one of the body-armors said. "Stand down and put yourhands in the air. You are under arrest!"Severe haircut woman was talking on her phone. One of the body ar-mors noticed her and he moved swiftly to her and batted her phoneaway with a gloved hand. Everyone fell silent as it sailed through the airin an arc that spanned the small room, clattering to the ground in ashower of parts.
The silence broke and the body-armors moved into the room. Twograbbed each of my torturers. I almost managed a smile at the look onSevere Haircut's face when two men grabbed her by the shoulders,turned her around, and yanked a set of plastic handcuffs around herwrists.
One of the body-armors moved forward from the doorway. He had avideo camera on his shoulder, a serious rig with blinding white light. He285got the whole room, circling me twice while he got me. I found myselfstaying perfectly still, as though I was sitting for a portrait.
It was ridiculous.
Do you think you could get me off of this thing? I managed to get itall out with only a little choking.
Two more body armors moved up to me, one a woman, and began tounstrap me. They flipped their visors up and smiled at me. They had redcrosses on their shoulders and helmets.
Beneath the red crosses was another insignia: CHP. California High-way Patrol. They were State Troopers.
I started to ask what they were doing there, and that's when I saw Bar-bara Stratford. She'd evidently been held back in the corridor, but nowshe came in pushing and shoving. "There you are," she said, kneeling be-side me and grabbing me in the longest, hardest hug of my life.
That's when I knew it — Guantanamo by the Bay was in the hands ofits enemies. I was saved.
This chapter is dedicated to Pages Books in Toronto, Canada. Long a fix-ture on the bleedingly trendy Queen Street West strip, Pages is locatedover the road from CityTV and just a few doors down from the oldBakka store where I worked. We at Bakka loved having Pages down thestreet from us: what we were to science fiction, they were to everythingelse: hand-picked material representing the stuff you'd never find else-where, the stuff you didn't know you were looking for until you saw itthere. Pages also has one of the best news-stands I've ever seen, row onrow of incredible magazines and zines from all over the world.
Pages Books: 256 Queen St W, Toronto, ON M5V 1Z8 Canada +1 416598 1447They left me and Barbara alone in the room then, and I used the work-ing shower head to rinse off — I was suddenly embarrassed to becovered in piss and barf. When I finished, Barbara was in tears.
Your parents — she began.
I felt like I might throw up again. God, my poor folks. What they musthave gone through.
Are they here?"No, she said. "It's complicated," she said.
What?"You're still under arrest, Marcus. Everyone here is. They can't justsweep in and throw open the doors. Everyone here is going to have to beprocessed through the criminal justice system. It could take, well, itcould take months."I'm going to have to stay here for months?She grabbed my hands. "No, I think we're going to be able to get youarraigned and released on bail pretty fast. But pretty fast is a relativeterm. I wouldn't expect anything to happen today. And it's not going to287be like those people had it. It will be humane. There will be real food. Nointerrogations. Visits from your family.
"Just because the DHS is out, it doesn't mean that you get to just walkout of here. What's happened here is that we're getting rid of the bizarro-world version of the justice system they'd instituted and replacing it withthe old system. The system with judges, open trials and lawyers. So we can try to get you transferred to a juvie facility on the main-land, but Marcus, those places can be really rough. Really, really rough.
"This might be the best place for you until we get you bailed out."Bailed out. Of course. I was a criminal — I hadn't been charged yet,but there were bound to be plenty of charges they could think of. It waspractically illegal just to think impure thoughts about the government.
She gave my hands another squeeze. "It sucks, but this is how it has tobe. The point is, it's over. The Governor has thrown the DHS out of theState, dismantled every checkpoint. The Attorney General has issuedwarrants for any law-enforcement officers involved in 'stress interroga-tions' and secret imprisonments. They'll go to jail, Marcus, and it's be-cause of what you did."I was numb. I heard the words, but they hardly made sense. Some-how, it was over, but it wasn't over.
Look, she said. "We probably have an hour or two before this allsettles down, before they come back and put you away again. What doyou want to do? Walk on the beach? Get a meal? These people had an in-credible staff room — we raided it on the way in. Gourmet all the way."At last a question I could answer. "I want to find Ange. I want to findDarryl."I tried to use a computer I found to look up their cell-numbers, but itwanted a password, so we were reduced to walking the corridors, callingout their names. Behind the cell-doors, prisoners screamed back at us, orcried, or begged us to let them go. They didn't understand what had justhappened, couldn't see their former guards being herded onto the docksin plastic handcuffs, taken away by California state SWAT teams.
Ange! I called over the din, "Ange Carvelli! Darryl Glover! It'sMarcus!"We'd walked the whole length of the cell-block and they hadn'tanswered. I felt like crying. They'd been shipped overseas — they werein Syria or worse. I'd never see them again.
288I sat down and leaned against the corridor wall and put my face in myhands. I saw Severe Haircut Woman's face, saw her smirk as she askedme for my login. She had done this. She would go to jail for it, but thatwasn't enough. I thought that when I saw her again, I might kill her. Shedeserved it.
Come on, Barbara said, "Come on, Marcus. Don't give up. There'smore around here, come on."She was right. All the doors we'd passed in the cellblock were old,rusting things that dated back to when the base was first built. But at thevery end of the corridor, sagging open, was a new high-security door asthick as a dictionary. We pulled it open and ventured into the dark cor-ridor within.
There were four more cell-doors here, doors without bar codes. Eachhad a small electronic keypad mounted on it.
Darryl? I said. "Ange?""Marcus?"It was Ange, calling out from behind the furthest door. Ange, myAnge, my angel.
Ange! I cried. "It's me, it's me!""Oh God, Marcus," she choked out, and then it was all sobs.
I pounded on the other doors. "Darryl! Darryl, are you here?""I'm here." The voice was very small, and very hoarse. "I'm here. I'mvery, very sorry. Please. I'm very sorry."He sounded… broken. Shattered.
It's me, D, I said, leaning on his door. "It's Marcus. It's over — theyarrested the guards. They kicked the Department of Homeland Securityout. We're getting trials, open trials. And we get to testify against them.""I'm sorry," he said. "Please, I'm so sorry."The California patrolmen came to the door then. They still had theircamera rolling. "Ms Stratford?" one said. He had his faceplate up and helooked like any other cop, not like my savior. Like someone come to lockme up.
Captain Sanchez, she said. "We've located two of the prisoners of in-terest here. I'd like to see them released and inspect them for myself.""Ma'am, we don't have access codes for those doors yet," he said.
289She held up her hand. "That wasn't the arrangement. I was to havecomplete access to this facility. That came direct from the Governor, sir.
We aren't budging until you open these cells." Her face was perfectlysmooth, without a single hint of give or flex. She meant it.
The Captain looked like he needed sleep. He grimaced. "I'll see what Ican do," he said.
They did manage to open the cells, finally, about half an hour later. Ittook three tries, but they eventually got the right codes entered, match-ing them to the arphids on the ID badges they'd taken off the guardsthey'd arrested.
They got into Ange's cell first. She was dressed in a hospital gown,open at the back, and her cell was even more bare than mine had been —just padding all over, no sink or bed, no light. She emerged blinking intothe corridor and the police camera was on her, its bright lights in herface. Barbara stepped protectively between us and it. Ange stepped tent-atively out of her cell, shuffling a little. There was something wrong withher eyes, with her face. She was crying, but that wasn't it.
They drugged me, she said. "When I wouldn't stop screaming for alawyer."That's when I hugged her. She sagged against me, but she squeezedback, too. She smelled stale and sweaty, and I smelled no better. I neverwanted to let go.
That's when they opened Darryl's cell.
He had shredded his paper hospital gown. He was curled up, naked,in the back of the cell, shielding himself from the camera and our stares. Iran to him.
D, I whispered in his ear. "D, it's me. It's Marcus. It's over. Theguards have been arrested. We're going to get bail, we're going home."He trembled and squeezed his eyes shut. "I'm sorry," he whispered,and turned his face away.
They took me away then, a cop in body-armor and Barbara, took meback to my cell and locked the door, and that's where I spent the night.
I don't remember much about the trip to the courthouse. They had mechained to five other prisoners, all of whom had been in for a lot longerthan me. One only spoke Arabic — he was an old man, and he trembled.
290The others were all young. I was the only white one. Once we had beengathered on the deck of the ferry, I saw that nearly everyone on TreasureIsland had been one shade of brown or another.
I had only been inside for one night, but it was too long. There was alight drizzle coming down, normally the sort of thing that would makeme hunch my shoulders and look down, but today I joined everyone elsein craning my head back at the infinite gray sky, reveling in the stingingwet as we raced across the bay to the ferry-docks.
They took us away in buses. The shackles made climbing into thebuses awkward, and it took a long time for everyone to load. No onecared. When we weren't struggling to solve the geometry problem of sixpeople, one chain, narrow bus-aisle, we were just looking around at thecity around us, up the hill at the buildings.
All I could think of was finding Darryl and Ange, but neither were inevidence. It was a big crowd and we weren't allowed to move freelythrough it. The state troopers who handled us were gentle enough, butthey were still big, armored and armed. I kept thinking I saw Darryl inthe crowd, but it was always someone else with that same beaten,hunched look that he'd had in his cell. He wasn't the only broken one.
At the courthouse, they marched us into interview rooms in ourshackle group. An ACLU lawyer took our information and asked us afew questions — when she got to me, she smiled and greeted me byname — and then led us into the courtroom before the judge. He wore anactual robe, and seemed to be a in a good mood.
The deal seemed to be that anyone who had a family member to postbail could go free, and everyone else got sent to prison. The ACLU law-yer did a lot of talking to the judge, asking for a few more hours whilethe prisoners' families were rounded up and brought to the court-house.
The judge was pretty good about it, but when I realized that some ofthese people had been locked up since the bridge blew, taken for dead bytheir families, without trial, subjected to interrogation, isolation, torture— I wanted to just break the chains myself and set everyone free.
When I was brought before the judge, he looked down at me and tookoff his glasses. He looked tired. The ACLU lawyer looked tired. Thebailiffs looked tired. Behind me, I could hear a sudden buzz of conversa-tion as my name was called by the bailiff. The judge rapped his gavelonce, without looking away from me. He scrubbed at his eyes.
Mr Yallow, he said, "the prosecution has identified you as a flightrisk. I think they have a point. You certainly have more, shall we say,291history, than the other people here. I am tempted to hold you over for tri-al, no matter how much bail your parents are prepared to post."My lawyer started to say something, but the judge silenced her with alook. He scrubbed at his eyes.
Do you have anything to say?"I had the chance to run, I said. "Last week. Someone offered to takeme away, get me out of town, help me build a new identity. Instead Istole her phone, escaped from our truck, and ran away. I turned over herphone — which had evidence about my friend, Darryl Glover, on it — toa journalist and hid out here, in town.""You stole a phone?""I decided that I couldn't run. That I had to face justice — that my free-dom wasn't worth anything if I was a wanted man, or if the city was stillunder the DHS. If my friends were still locked up. That freedom for mewasn't as important as a free country.""But you did steal a phone."I nodded. "I did. I plan on giving it back, if I ever find the young wo-man in question.""Well, thank you for that speech, Mr Yallow. You are a very wellspoken young man." He glared at the prosecutor. "Some would say avery brave man, too. There was a certain video on the news this morn-ing. It suggested that you had some legitimate reason to evade the au-thorities. In light of that, and of your little speech here, I will grant bail,but I will also ask the prosecutor to add a charge of Misdemeanor PettyTheft to the count, as regards the matter of the phone. For this, I expectanother $50,000 in bail."He banged his gavel again, and my lawyer gave my hand a squeeze.
He looked down at me again and re-seated his glasses. He haddandruff, there on the shoulders of his robe. A little more rained downas his glasses touched his wiry, curly hair.
You can go now, young man. Stay out of trouble.I turned to go and someone tackled me. It was Dad. He literally liftedme off my feet, hugging me so hard my ribs creaked. He hugged me theway I remembered him hugging me when I was a little boy, when he'dspin me around and around in hilarious, vomitous games of airplane292that ended with him tossing me in the air and catching me and squeez-ing me like that, so hard it almost hurt.
A set of softer hands pried me gently out of his arms. Mom. She heldme at arm's length for a moment, searching my face for something, notsaying anything, tears streaming down her face. She smiled and it turnedinto a sob and then she was holding me too, and Dad's arm encircled usboth.
When they let go, I managed to finally say something. "Darryl?""His father met me somewhere else. He's in the hospital.""When can I see him?""It's our next stop," Dad said. He was grim. "He doesn't —" Hestopped. "They say he'll be OK," he said. His voice was choked.
How about Ange?"Her mother took her home. She wanted to wait here for you, but… I understood. I felt full of understanding now, for how all the familiesof all the people who'd been locked away must feel. The courtroom wasfull of tears and hugs, and even the bailiffs couldn't stop it.
Let's go see Darryl, I said. "And let me borrow your phone?"I called Ange on the way to the hospital where they were keepingDarryl — San Francisco General, just down the street from us — and ar-ranged to see her after dinner. She talked in a hurried whisper. Her momwasn't sure whether to punish her or not, but Ange didn't want to temptfate.
There were two state troopers in the corridor where Darryl was beingheld. They were holding off a legion of reporters who stood on tiptoe tosee around them and get pictures. The flashes popped in our eyes likestrobes, and I shook my head to clear it. My parents had brought meclean clothes and I'd changed in the back seat, but I still felt gross, evenafter scrubbing myself in the court-house bathrooms.
Some of the reporters called my name. Oh yeah, that's right, I was fam-ous now. The state troopers gave me a look, too — either they'd recog-nized my face or my name when the reporters called it out.
Darryl's father met us at the door of his hospital room, speaking in awhisper too low for the reporters to hear. He was in civvies, the jeansand sweater I normally thought of him wearing, but he had his serviceribbons pinned to his breast.
293"He's sleeping," he said. "He woke up a little while ago and he startedcrying. He couldn't stop. They gave him something to help him sleep."He led us in, and there was Darryl, his hair clean and combed, sleep-ing with his mouth open. There was white stuff at the corners of hismouth. He had a semi-private room, and in the other bed there was anolder Arab-looking guy, in his 40s. I realized it was the guy I'd beenchained to on the way off of Treasure Island. We exchanged embarrassedwaves.
Then I turned back to Darryl. I took his hand. His nails had beenchewed to the quick. He'd been a nail-biter when he was a kid, but he'dkicked the habit when we got to high school. I think Van talked him outof it, telling him how gross it was for him to have his fingers in hismouth all the time.
I heard my parents and Darryl's dad take a step away, drawing thecurtains around us. I put my face down next to his on the pillow. He hada straggly, patchy beard that reminded me of Zeb.
Hey, D, I said. "You made it. You're going to be OK."He snored a little. I almost said, "I love you," a phrase I'd only said toone non-family-member ever, a phrase that was weird to say to anotherguy. In the end, I just gave his hand another squeeze. Poor Darryl.
Epilogue
This chapter is dedicated to Hudson Booksellers, the booksellers that arein practically every airport in the USA. Most of the Hudson stands havejust a few titles (though those are often surprisingly diverse), but the bigones, like the one in the AA terminal at Chicago's O'Hare, are as goodas any neighborhood store. It takes something special to bring a personaltouch to an airport, and Hudson's has saved my mind on more than onelong Chicago layover.
Hudson BooksellersBarbara called me at the office on July 4th weekend. I wasn't the onlyone who'd come into work on the holiday weekend, but I was the onlyone whose excuse was that my day-release program wouldn't let meleave town.
In the end, they convicted me of stealing Masha's phone. Can you be-lieve that? The prosecution had done a deal with my lawyer to drop allcharges related to "Electronic terrorism" and "inciting riots" in exchangefor my pleading guilty to the misdemeanor petty theft charge. I got threemonths in a day-release program with a half-way house for juvenile de-fenders in the Mission. I slept at the halfway house, sharing a dorm witha bunch of actual criminals, gang kids and druggie kids, a couple of realnuts. During the day, I was "free" to go out and work at my "job.""Marcus, they're letting her go," she said.
Who?"Johnstone, Carrie Johnstone, she said. "The closed military tribunalcleared her of any wrongdoing. The file is sealed. She's being returned toactive duty. They're sending her to Iraq."Carrie Johnstone was Severe Haircut Woman's name. It came out inthe preliminary hearings at the California Superior Court, but that wasjust about all that came out. She wouldn't say a word about who she tookorders from, what she'd done, who had been imprisoned and why. Shejust sat, perfectly silent, day after day, in the courthouse.
The Feds, meanwhile, had blustered and shouted about the Governor's"unilateral, illegal" shut-down of the Treasure Island facility, and theMayor's eviction of fed cops from San Francisco. A lot of those cops hadended up in state prisons, along with the guards from Gitmo-by-the-Bay.
295Then, one day, there was no statement from the White House, nothingfrom the state capitol. And the next day, there was a dry, tense press-conference held jointly on the steps of the Governor's mansion, wherethe head of the DHS and the governor announced their "understanding."The DHS would hold a closed, military tribunal to investigate"possible errors in judgment" committed after the attack on the BayBridge. The tribunal would use every tool at its disposal to ensure thatcriminal acts were properly punished. In return, control over DHS opera-tions in California would go through the State Senate, which would havethe power to shut down, inspect, or re-prioritize all homeland security inthe state.
The roar of the reporters had been deafening and Barbara had gottenthe first question in. "Mr Governor, with all due respect: we have incon-trovertible video evidence that Marcus Yallow, a citizen of this state, nat-ive born, was subjected to a simulated execution by DHS officers, appar-ently acting on orders from the White House. Is the State really willing toabandon any pretense of justice for its citizens in the face of illegal, bar-baric torture?" Her voice trembled, but didn't crack.
The Governor spread his hands. "The military tribunals will accom-plish justice. If Mr Yallow — or any other person who has cause to faultthe Department of Homeland Security — wants further justice, he is, ofcourse, entitled to sue for such damages as may be owing to him fromthe federal government."That's what I was doing. Over twenty thousand civil lawsuits werefiled against the DHS in the week after the Governor's announcement.
Mine was being handled by the ACLU, and they'd filed motions to get atthe results of the closed military tribunals. So far, the courts were prettysympathetic to this.
But I hadn't expected this.
She got off totally Scot-free?"The press release doesn't say much. 'After a thorough examination ofthe events in San Francisco and in the special anti-terror detention centeron Treasure Island, it is the finding of this tribunal that Ms Johnstone'sactions do not warrant further discipline.' There's that word, 'further' —like they've already punished her.I snorted. I'd dreamed of Carrie Johnstone nearly every night since Iwas released from Gitmo-by-the-Bay. I'd seen her face looming overmine, that little snarly smile as she told the man to give me a "drink."296"Marcus —" Barbara said, but I cut her off.
It's fine. It's fine. I'm going to do a video about this. Get it out over theweekend. Mondays are big days for viral video. Everyone'll be comingback from the holiday weekend, looking for something funny to forwardaround school or the office.I saw a shrink twice a week as part of my deal at the halfway house.
Once I'd gotten over seeing that as some kind of punishment, it had beengood. He'd helped me focus on doing constructive things when I wasupset, instead of letting it eat me up. The videos helped.
I have to go, I said, swallowing hard to keep the emotion out of myvoice.
Take care of yourself, Marcus, Barbara said.
Ange hugged me from behind as I hung up the phone. "I just readabout it online," she said. She read a million newsfeeds, pulling themwith a headline reader that sucked up stories as fast as they ended up onthe wire. She was our official blogger, and she was good at it, snippingout the interesting stories and throwing them online like a short ordercook turning around breakfast orders.
I turned around in her arms so that I was hugging her from in front.
Truth be told, we hadn't gotten a lot of work done that day. I wasn't al-lowed to be out of the halfway house after dinner time, and she couldn'tvisit me there. We saw each other around the office, but there were usu-ally a lot of other people around, which kind of put a crimp in our cud-dling. Being alone in the office for a day was too much temptation. It washot and sultry, too, which meant we were both in tank-tops and shorts, alot of skin-to-skin contact as we worked next to each other.
I'm going to make a video, I said. "I want to release it today.""Good," she said. "Let's do it."Ange read the press-release. I did a little monologue, synched overthat famous footage of me on the water-board, eyes wild in the harshlight of the camera, tears streaming down my face, hair matted andflecked with barf.
"This is me. I am on a waterboard. I am being tortured in a simulatedexecution. The torture is supervised by a woman called Carrie Johnstone. She works for the government. You might remember her from thisvideo.I cut in the video of Johnstone and Kurt Rooney. ""That's Johnstone andSecretary of State Kurt Rooney, the president's chief strategist.""297""The nation does not love that city. As far as they're concerned, it is a Sodomand Gomorrah of fags and atheists who deserve to rot in hell. The only reasonthe country cares what they think in San Francisco is that they had the good for-tune to have been blown to hell by some Islamic terrorists.""""He's talking about the city where I live. At last count, 4,215 of myneighbors were killed on the day he's talking about. But some of themmay not have been killed. Some of them disappeared into the same pris-on where I was tortured. Some mothers and fathers, children and lovers,brothers and sisters will never see their loved ones again — because theywere secretly imprisoned in an illegal jail right here in the San FranciscoBay. They were shipped overseas. The records were meticulous, but Car-rie Johnstone has the encryption keys."" I cut back to Carrie Johnstone, thefootage of her sitting at the board table with Rooney, laughing.
"I cut in the footage of Johnstone being arrested. "When they arrestedher, I thought we'd get justice. All the people she broke and disappeared.
But the president —" I cut to a still of him laughing and playing golf onone of his many holidays "— and his Chief Strategist —" now a still ofRooney shaking hands with an infamous terrorist leader who used to beon "our side" "— intervened. They sent her to a secret military tribunaland now that tribunal has cleared her. Somehow, they saw nothingwrong with all of this."I cut in a photomontage of the hundreds of shots of prisoners in theircells that Barbara had published on the Bay Guardian's site the day wewere released. "We elected these people. We pay their salaries. They'resupposed to be on our side. They're supposed to defend our freedoms.
But these people —" a series of shots of Johnstone and the others who'dbeen sent to the tribunal "— betrayed our trust. The election is fourmonths away. That's a lot of time. Enough for you to go out and find fiveof your neighbors — five people who've given up on voting becausetheir choice is 'none of the above.'
"Talk to your neighbors. Make them promise to vote. Make thempromise to take the country back from the torturers and thugs. Thepeople who laughed at my friends as they lay fresh in their graves at thebottom of the harbor. Make them promise to talk to their neighbors. Most of us choose none of the above. It's not working. You have tochoose — choose freedom.
" "My name is Marcus Yallow. I was tortured by my country, but I stilllove it here. I'm seventeen years old. I want to grow up in a free country. I want to live in a free country.298I faded out to the logo of the website. Ange had built it, with help fromJolu, who got us all the free hosting we could ever need on Pigspleen.
"The office was an interesting place. Technically we were called Coali-tion of Voters for a Free America, but everyone called us the Xnetters.
The organization — a charitable nonprofit — had been co-founded byBarbara and some of her lawyer friends right after the liberation ofTreasure Island. The funding was kicked off by some tech millionaireswho couldn't believe that a bunch of hacker kids had kicked the DHS'sass. Sometimes, they'd ask us to go down the peninsula to Sand HillRoad, where all the venture capitalists were, and give a little presenta-tion on Xnet technology. There were about a zillion startups who weretrying to make a buck on the Xnet.
Whatever — I didn't have to have anything to do with it, and I got adesk and an office with a storefront, right there on Valencia Street, wherewe gave away ParanoidXbox CDs and held workshops on building bet-ter WiFi antennas. A surprising number of average people dropped in tomake personal donations, both of hardware (you can run ParanoidLinuxon just about anything, not just Xbox Universals) and cash money. Theyloved us.
The big plan was to launch our own ARG in September, just in timefor the election, and to really tie it in with signing up voters and gettingthem to the polls. Only 42 percent of Americans showed up at the pollsfor the last election — nonvoters had a huge majority. I kept trying to getDarryl and Van to one of our planning sessions, but they kept on declin-ing. They were spending a lot of time together, and Van insisted that itwas totally nonromantic. Darryl wouldn't talk to me much at all, thoughhe sent me long emails about just about everything that wasn't aboutVan or terrorism or prison.
Ange squeezed my hand. "God, I hate that woman," she said.
I nodded. "Just one more rotten thing this country's done to Iraq," Isaid. "If they sent her to my town, I'd probably become a terrorist.""You did become a terrorist when they sent her to your town.""So I did," I said.
Are you going to Ms Galvez's hearing on Monday?"Totally. I'd introduced Ange to Ms Galvez a couple weeks before,when my old teacher invited me over for dinner. The teacher's union hadgotten a hearing for her before the board of the Unified School District toargue for getting her old job back. They said that Fred Benson was299coming out of (early) retirement to testify against her. I was looking for-ward to seeing her again.
Do you want to go get a burrito?"Totally."Let me get my hot-sauce, she said.
I checked my email one more time — my PirateParty email, which stillgot a dribble of messages from old Xnetters who hadn't found my Coali-tion of Voters address yet.
The latest message was from a throwaway email address from one ofthe new Brazilian anonymizers.
>
Found her, thanks. You didn't tell me she was so h4wt.
Who's that from?I laughed. "Zeb," I said. "Remember Zeb? I gave him Masha's email ad-dress. I figured, if they're both underground, might as well introducethem to one another.""He thinks Masha is cute?""Give the guy a break, he's clearly had his mind warped bycircumstances.""And you?""Me?""Yeah — was your mind warped by circumstances?"I held Ange out at arm's length and looked her up and down and upand down. I held her cheeks and stared through her thick-framed glassesinto her big, mischievous tilted eyes. I ran my fingers through her hair.
Ange, I've never thought more clearly in my whole life.She kissed me then, and I kissed her back, and it was some time beforewe went out for that burrito.
The End