Daemon

Quotes

Daemon

For average working folks, America was becoming a puzzle. Who was buying all these two-hundred-dollar copper saucepans, anyway? And how was everyone paying for these BMWs? Were people shrewd or just stupefyingly irresponsible? Pete Sebeck thought television held some clues. Channel surfing late at night, unable to sleep, Sebeck considered the commercials aimed at him. Was he their demographic? Had they correctly deduced him? And what did that say about him? The History Channel seemed to think he was either a Korean War veteran looking for a truly capable brush mower, or that he was desperately in need of a career change. He had a nasty suspicion they were right about one of them.

Gragg had compromised the workstation days ago, first obtaining a network IP address from the router, and then gaining access to the broker’s machine through the most basic of NetBIOS assaults. The ports on the workstation were wide open, and over the course of several evening visits to the café, Gragg had escalated his privileges. He now owned their local network. Clearing the router’s log would erase any evidence that he had been there. But all that was child’s play compared to how he would use this exploit. In the past year, Gragg had evolved beyond simple credit card scams. He no longer prowled bars passing out portable magstripe readers to waiters and busboys and paying a bounty for each credit card number.

He was a poster child for overdesigned American culture. His square-toed dress shoes had the soles of hiking boots, as though intended to navigate an urban cliff face. His draping dress pants concealed six pockets pleated into its folds, each one with a trademarked name (e.g., E-Pouch), giving him the cargo capacity of a World War I infantryman. Yellow-tint sunglasses wrapped his face, unaccountably designed to withstand the impact of a small-caliber rifle bullet while filtering out UV rays and maximizing visual contrast in a wide range of indoor and outdoor lighting conditions. In all, his outfit required nearly two thousand man-years of research and development, eight barrels of oil, and sixteen patent and trademark infringement lawsuits. All so he could possess casual style. A style that, in logistical requirements, was comparable to fielding a nineteenth-century military brigade.

Watching it, he realized for the first time that the world had really changed—that a line was being drawn in society and which side of the line you stood on would determine your future. He realized more than ever that technological prowess had become a survival skill. "It’s getting bad, isn’t it?"

"They were never going to let us stop the Daemon, Natalie." "You’re talking crazy! The government created the Task Force. We were betrayed by private industry." "Private industry is your government. I thought you knew that." "How can you say that to me?" "Because it’s true. Sobol knew it. The Daemon isn’t attacking us, Nat. This is a struggle between two artificial organisms. The Daemon is just a new species of corporation." They sat for a moment listening to the distant sirens. "The old social order is dissolving, Nat. It happens every few centuries." He looked out across the burning city, then turned back to her. "I won’t let Loki be our future."

"You want to destroy the Daemon—but you offer nothing in its place. How can you expect to handle the future if you can’t even handle the present? I’ll tell you what the Daemon is: the Daemon is a remorseless system for building a distributed civilization. A civilization that perpetually regenerates. One with no central authority. Your only option is what form that civilization takes. And that depends on the actions of people like you."

"There are those who resist necessary change. Even now they think only of protecting their investments. I am at war with them. A war that you’ll never see on the evening news. And to my mind, the outcome of this war will decide whether civilization flourishes—or collapses into a thousand-year dark age. Perhaps even with the eclipse of the human race as the dominant species on this planet."

Sobol’s spectre sat on the edge of the desk near Sebeck. "I suspect that democracy is not viable in a technologically advanced society. Free people wield too much ability to destroy. But I will give you the chance to determine the truth of this. If you fail to prove the viability of democracy in man’s future, then humans will serve society—not the other way around. Either way, a change is coming. I see it. As plainly as I see you sitting there."

Freedom

BCM: “Gentleman, let’s not forget what’s at stake here. Yes, it’s regrettable that people have died—and will die—but we must defend the core of our civilization: which is commerce. And commerce requires capital. That no longer means gold bars in a vault; it means ones and zeros in a database. Purely financial transactions moving through global markets on any given day outweigh transactions for real world goods and services by twenty-to-one, and that money moves automatically and instantaneously across borders. By disrupting the world financial system, the Daemon could destroy fiduciary trust. It could create global economic chaos in minutes. From that point of view the real-world manifestations of the Daemon—like these razorbacks and its human followers—are minor; dangerous only insofar as they threaten the public’s belief system. But if we kill the digital core of the Daemon, then its physical manifestations disappear along with it.

As a cop, he found it difficult to accept that the law was an illusion. If the powers that be identified you as a threat, right or wrong, you were destroyed. Was that the lesson Matthew Sobol had taught him by destroying the person Sebeck once was?

“These people give you comfort, Sergeant? Walking among them like a regular person? Does it bring back the good times?” Sebeck cast a look back at Price. “What if it does? Maybe it’s good to see how normal the world is. That there are still people who just want to go shopping.” “Yeah.” He took another bite of his churro and spoke around it. “Too bad this place will probably be an empty shell ten years from now.” Sebeck cast a frown back at Price. “How do you figure?” “You heard Sobol. Modern society is heading off a cliff, and John Q. Public is out here stomping on the accelerator.” “Have another churro, pal.” “I’m just saying. So you dig all this?” He gestured to the overhead jumbotrons displaying clothing ads of fashion models flying through rainbows. “It doesn’t matter what I think. Everything here exists because people want it. What gives Sobol the right to decide for them?” Price shrugged. “Well, the public doesn’t really decide anything now—they just select from the options they’re given.” He stuffed the last of the churro into his mouth and chewed furiously. “Factions have a slang term for the general public. They call them NPCs—as in ‘non-player-characters’— scripted bots with limited responses.”

“Okay, I think I know what’s going on here.” He balled up the churro wrapper and tossed it into the orifice of a trash can shaped like a robot. “You think these people are free, and that the Daemon is gonna take that freedom away.” Sebeck kept strolling through the crowd. “Enough, Laney. Just let me walk in peace.” Price stayed with him. “You, sir, are walking on a privately owned Main Street—permission to trespass revocable at will. Read the plaque on the ground at the entrance if you don’t believe me. These people aren’t citizens of anything, Sergeant. America is just another brand purchased for its goodwill value. For that excellent fucking logo.” “Yeah, I’m sure it’s all a big conspiracy. . . .” “No conspiracy necessary. It’s a process that’s been happening for thousands of years. Wealth aggregates and becomes political power. Simple as that. ‘Corporation’ is just the most recent name for it. In the Middle Ages it was the Catholic Church. They had a great logo, too. You might have seen it, and they had more branches than Starbucks. Go back before that, and it was Imperial Rome. It’s a natural process as old as humanity.”

“That’s right. I’m crazy. But stand up in here with a protest sign and find out how quickly you get your ass tased by security. You want to see the world the way it really is, Sergeant? Forget your cultural indoctrination for a moment.”

Price turned to the mall again and drew circles on his layer of D-Space—highlighting sensors bolted to the walls at intersections in the mall’s traffic flow. “Storing data is so cheap it’s essentially free, so data brokers record everything in the hopes that it will have value to someone. The data is aggregated by third parties, linked to individual identities, and sold like any other consumer data. It’s not a conspiracy. It’s an economy, but an economy these people know nothing about. They’re tagged like sheep and have about as much say in the matter as sheep.” Sebeck gazed at the data whirling around him. “What do we look like to a computer alogrithm, Sergeant?

Price leaned close. “Imagine how easily you could change the course of someone’s life by changing this data? But that’s control, isn’t it? In fact, you don’t even need to be human to exert power over these people. That’s why the Daemon spread so fast.” Sebeck clutched the balcony railing in silence, watching the march of data. The public walked on, shopping and talking, completely oblivious to the cloud of personal information they gave off. That governed their lives.

Price followed Sebeck’s gaze. “So you stand there and tell me that the Daemon is invasive and unprecedented. That it’s a threat to human freedom. And I tell you that Americans are fucking ignorant about their freedom. They’re about as free as the Chinese. Except the Chinese don’t lie to themselves.”

Price then reached up to his call-out and slid the virtual layer over to Sebeck’s HUD display. A layer named Suckers appeared in Sebeck’s listing. “I want you to have this layer. In case you ever need to remember the world you left behind. The one you keep pining away for.” Sebeck looked back up at the profusion of data above them. Beyond that loomed the Thread, still beckoning. For the first time he thought it might actually lead someplace he’d want to go.

Sebeck tossed the food in the car and took over the refueling. “That was something Sobol knew, wasn’t it?” “What’s that?” “That people will do whatever a computer screen tells them. I swear to god, you could run the next Holocaust from a fucking fast-food register.” He pantomimed aiming a pistol. “It says I should kill you now.”

“I did the finding, but it wasn’t the Daemon I found. It was the darknet. The encrypted wireless network Sobol created. Only later did I discover how much blood Sobol shed establishing this network. And yet, I can’t help but wonder, just as evil sometimes arises from good intentions, if good can’t sometimes grow from evil. It’s a distasteful notion, but human history makes me wonder.”

Sebeck gritted his teeth. “I may be on this quest, but that doesn’t mean I agree with Sobol. I accepted it because I had no choice, and I was concerned that unless I did so, he would enslave humanity. Matthew Sobol killed friends of mine. Police and federal officers—people with families.” She held up a hand. “I’m not defending Sobol, Sergeant. I’m saying that Sobol was willing to be our villain to force necessary change. So that we didn’t have to.”

she said, “Do you feel any guilt for what your ancestors did to the Indians?” Sebeck was taken aback. “You know, for the genocide that was perpetrated against Native American people by the U.S. government and the settlers?” “That’s not the same as what Sobol did.” “Why?” “Because the theft of tribal lands occurred a hundred and fifty years ago. Things were different then.” “Statute of limitations, then?” She concentrated on the road then turned an eye back on him. “I’m just making a point. You probably don’t feel guilt because you’re not the one who did it. You bear native people no ill will, and aren’t prejudiced against them.” “Yes, exactly.” “But then, we’re not getting the land back either, are we?” A slight smile creased her face. Sebeck folded his arms. “It could never be sorted out even if we tried. That was a different time, Riley.” “We’re not all that different from our ancestors, Sergeant. And even though the land Matthew Sobol grabbed was virtual real estate—computer networks—I don’t think anyone’s going to get that back either.”

Then the road was smooth—and suddenly quiet. “The Daemon financed this.” Sebeck turned to her. “Didn’t it?” “The Daemon’s economy is powered by darknet credits, Sergeant. Imaginary credits are all that money is.” “But there’s a theft at the heart of it.” She thought about it and nodded slightly. “Yes, the darknet economy was seeded by real world wealth. Wealth that was questionable in origin to begin with. Here, it’s being invested in people and projects that have begun to return value—not in dollars, but in things of intrinsic human worth. Energy, information, food, shelter.” “But originally from theft.” “That could be said of a lot of things that are now admired.”

“So it creates its own wind.” She nodded. “Even at night.” She pointed at what looked to be rectangular cisterns arrayed at intervals around the perimeter of the canopy. “Covered saltwater ponds gather heat energy during the day and release it at night—continuing the wind cycle.”

Sebeck didn’t know what to think. There was no dismissing the scale and ambition of this—but what was it for? “Why do you need so much electrical power?” “To transform our environment. To power equipment, micro-manufacturing plants, chemical and material reactions. This tower—and other solar installations—will provide clean, sustainable energy and freshwater from the elemental building blocks of matter.”

“Seriously. How do you know this is not complete bullshit?” “The design has existed for decades. The technology has been proven. My technical familiarity comes from dealing with the darknet engineers and architects handling the construction. I make it a point to understand, so I can convey the information to our people. This is a big deal for us.” “No doubt. But, Riley, if this was economically feasible, don’t you think everyone would be doing it? Besides, I thought the Laguna nation already had water.” “At present, yes, but darknet communities are founded on long-term thinking. In coming decades we anticipate water stress due to climate change and depleted aquifers. Sustainable water independence increases our darknet resilience score.” He gazed upon all the construction. “But doing all this to irrigate fields can’t be anything close to cost-effective.” “Water isn’t the product, Sergeant. Water is the waste.” In D-Space she pointed to highlight a line of small buildings being constructed down a road leading off to their right. “Those will be reverse-hydrolysis fuel cell stations. They’ll consume hydrogen to produce heat and electricity—leaving behind freshwater as the only waste product. We can produce a third of a liter of freshwater with every kilowatt-hour of electricity produced from hydrogen.”

Likewise, it sequesters carbon out of the atmosphere—making it carbon negative. It just requires energy, Sergeant—and solar energy is something my people have plenty of.” Sebeck was speechless. “What did you think we were building out here, a casino?” “But what you’re describing—creating water and pulling liquid fuel out of the air—” “The sun is what made life on Earth possible to begin with. Oil is just ancient solar energy stored in hydrocarbons. The CR5 technology was developed nearby in Sandia National Labs. It stands for ‘Counter Rotating Ring Receiver Reactor Recuperators.’ The details are available to anyone on the darknet, if you’re really interested.” He was still shaking his head. “Then why isn’t this being done everywhere?” She turned off her D-Space layer and the lofty tower and virtual buildings disappeared. “Many things are possible, Sergeant, but not economically feasible. Of course, that all depends on how you calculate costs. Darknet communities factor in loss of economic independence as a cost. They factor in the cost of forcibly defending distant energy resources. They also factor in lack of sustainability and disposal of pollutants. That more than balances the equation. With this facility we’ll use solar energy as the foundation of a long-term, sustainable, energy-positive holon. And that’s the goal.”

Riley considered this. Her expression lost its hard edge. She stood up. “A few years ago, I was riding near El Morro. I saw a coyote on a ridgeline, trying to keep up with his pack. He was missing a leg. He looked thin. But he was keeping up. That always stuck with me. It’s something we can learn from animals. They don’t waste time feeling sorry for themselves.”

Sebeck leaned back in his chair. “Useful to whom?” “Humanity, Sergeant. This is big-picture stuff. Repositories of human knowledge and technology are being designed and built by various curator factions around the world. The spec is simply that these repositories be durable, inspire awe, and be equipped with automated systems that can teach people useful knowledge to empower the more rational among the population so that they can achieve leadership positions. That way, should human civilization be lost in a region, this system could put locals back on a path to regain knowledge in a generation or two. It could also be useful in resisting a downward spiral to begin with.”

If false magic or a white lie about the god-monster in the mountain will get people to stop killing one another and learn, then the truth can wait. When the time is right, it can be replaced with a reverence for the scientific method.”

Sebeck considered the Daemon’s virulence. Riley had explained to him that the Daemon grew less virulent the more it spread. And that it became more ruthless as it contracted. It was designed like a natural organism to resist its own eradication with lethal force if necessary. It did explain the bloody origins of the Daemon, but Sebeck still couldn’t accept it. It was basically a parasite on human society, one trying to achieve symbiosis. A balance between what it took and what it gave. Yes, it drove them toward preserving civilization, but it diminished free will. And did they really want a cybernetic organism designed by a madman hanging over their heads?

The entire concept of a daemon stems from the guardian spirits of Greek mythology—spirits who watched over mankind to keep them out of trouble, and that’s become real enough.”

Sebeck shrugged. “Okay. What do these myths say about a Cloud Gate?” “It was the gateway to the heavens and guarded by the Horae—the goddesses of orderly life. The Horae were also known collectively as the Hours and the Seasons. Their mother was Themis—the goddess of justice and order.”

She placed her hand on Sebeck’s shoulder. “Follow your Thread. I believe your heart is in the right place, even if you don’t agree with Sobol’s vision. Question everything. But don’t be surprised if the world you thought you knew never existed.”

His firm would get the contract. It would be for an infrastructure security assessment or a market risk analysis, or something similar. Korr Business Intelligence Services did not advertise, and they did not submit proposals. They were the junior partners of a security consultant to the engineering department of a construction division of a real estate subsidiary of a financial group. They had no signage out front and no listing for their firm in the lobby directory. Most of their employees were economists, researchers, and mathematicians. And very few of them had any idea what they were really doing here: preserving the global economy.

The Major had cut his teeth on a Panama operation like that back in the late eighties, using cocaine and sex workers to generate potentially career-ending imagery that made the business world go round. Photoshop had pretty much ended the still picture side of the business by making photographs meaningless. High-def video was the only way to go now, and sooner or later computer graphics would do that in, too. Someone really had to come up with a solution, or the entire blackmail industry was doomed. Thankfully, The Major had long ago moved on to more serious operations.

He still remembered the musty smell of the La Paz hotel room. The bray of a two-stroke engine whining past outside while he stood with a bloody knife in his hand. The young trade unionist on the floor, her wide eyes staring at him as she clutched her throat, gurgling. Nothing stopped. The universe didn’t care. He might as well have been slicing bread. And that began his awakening—his realization that the Western world was a bedtime story of comforting humanistic bullshit. Slavery existed everywhere—even in the United States. We were all slaves in one way or another. Slavery was just control, and control kept things running in an orderly fashion. It was what made progress possible.

But now the problem he’d been waiting on suddenly appeared on screen. A bar graph labeled “Decline in U.S. Agricultural Subsidy Applications.” He turned away from the window and tuned in to the Pakistani MBA’s presentation. “. . . in certain counties, we’re looking at a ninety percent drop—unprecedented in the history of modern American agriculture. Farmers in these counties have basically decided en masse to stop growing subsidized crops—even though there is no distribution system available for anything else. Something is causing this, and causing it all at once on a local basis in defiance of market conditions.” The Major saw it. Nothing else had the scope to do this—and with such suddenness. It had to be the Daemon.

“No, it’s not a glitch. Agribusiness and biotech firms have a comprehensive network of private investigators, researchers, and surveyors throughout the Midwestern United States to enforce their seed patents. They’ve documented population movements, unexplained capital inflows, and infrastructure investments in alternative energy technologies, high-tech equipment, heirloom seed stock, and—” “I assume this isn’t confined to the United States.” The two MBAs looked at each other with some dismay. The Pakistani nodded. “We were, in fact, going to cover that later in our presentation.” He started clicking through interminable bullet points and diagrams. “We also project reductions in export crops such as cotton in Asia and Russia. Security services in various countries are reporting labor unrest in both the agricultural and industrial sectors. The number of container ships being placed into warm and cold layup from lack of cargo is rising.”

The Major had to hand it to Sobol. The dead bastard was clever. They’d been too focused on the digital threat to see it coming. By physically changing the economy of rural America, the Daemon could render their investment reallocation moot. They could no longer simply wait for a digital countermeasure to the Daemon.

Biotech companies spread patented genetic sequences via the natural ecosystem—much like a computer virus. Then they use the legal system to claim ownership of any organism their patented genetic sequences invade. They are raiding communal seed banks, obtaining patents for naturally occurring apples, sugar beets, corn, and a host of other plants and animals. They have immorally seized control of the food system and stand poised to claim ownership of life itself unless we take action.

“Just look at corn and soybeans, subsidized with taxpayer money—creating a market that wouldn’t otherwise make sense. Why? So agribusiness firms have cheap inputs to make processed food. The taxpayers are basically subsidizing corporations to make crap, when we could have grown real food on our own. But, of course, they’ve made growing food illegal now. . . .”

“Dad, there was a reason you didn’t want me or Dennis to go into farming. You wanted us to go to college and get away from here. Do you remember why? Do you remember what you said to me?” He stopped. He didn’t face her, but nodded. “I said that there’s no future in farming.” “Food is the very heart of freedom. Don’t you realize that? If people don’t grow the food, we both know who will: biotech companies like Halperin Organix. How can people be free if they can’t feed themselves without getting sued for patent violations?” He looked around the warehouse as workers passed by. “Look, your mother and I did the best we could for—” She came up and put a hand on his shoulder. “I know you did. You’re honest. So was granddad. And so am I. But they’ve rigged the game. It was like this during the Gilded Age of the 1890s. And then again in the late 1920s. It’s nothing new. We’re just trying to break the cycle.”

He shrugged. “You know, I worry about you. You and your brother. I know it hasn’t been easy. I . . . there’s no real jobs anymore. I feel like we’ve let you down.” Fossen started to tear up. She hugged him tightly. “Dad, you didn’t let me down.” She looked back up at him. “You taught me everything I need to know: self-reliance, self-respect, community. Just don’t be surprised if I actually put it to use.”

“It was the Daemon.” “What is the Daemon?” “It’s a digital monster that eats corporate networks. They’re scared to death of it—because it has no fear.” He turned to face the dark television screen again. They sat in silence for several moments. “What happens now?” “That depends on whether you want to continue running this place as part of their system.” Fossen looked up at the framed photograph of his eldest son in dress uniform on a nearby bookshelf. He nodded. “I didn’t realize we had two warriors in the family.” He turned around to face her. “What do we do?” She smiled. “The first thing we do is stop planting corn.” “And plant what?” “What people need.”

Ross knew that the same migration was occurring all around the world. In a land of borderless markets, individual farmers could no longer compete with industrial farms on price. The land was being depopulated, landholdings aggregated for efficient management by farm machinery, leaving the surplus labor little choice but to depart to the cities and seek work in industry. The same was true in India, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Even America. It was the largest migration in human history. All in the pursuit of high-efficiency, low-cost production.

And it was that very efficiency that made the system vulnerable to the Daemon. The same uniform networks that moved money and information between markets in fractions of a second also allowed the simple bots of the Daemon to masquerade as high-level management strategy, ordering the manufacture and delivery of goods—and deleting the evidence. State-of-the-art, just-in-time management systems had enabled a silent revolution in more ways than one. Such was the post-Sobol world.

“What happens if someone takes your money away?” Shen cast a wary look at Ross. Ross continued, “Because that’s what we’re talking about here, isn’t it? Someone has threatened to confiscate your company if you don’t perform. Is that how a free person lives, Liang? In fear of the powerful?” “Freedom is overrated. You can be completely free and starving in an igloo in Antarctica. Business is what makes people’s lives better, not democracy. The world is filled with dysfunctional democracies, paralyzed by idiots with votes.”

“Jon, do you know that the World Bank said that over half the Chinese people lived in poverty in 1980? You know what it is now? Care to take a guess? It’s four percent, Jon. Four. Economic development did that, not democracy.” Ross nodded. “But that’s the deal they offer, isn’t it? They’ll bring economic development in exchange for you not participating in politics—but that economic development is hollow and has no longevity. Have you seen the markets? It’s already fraying at the edges. Believe me, by the time it ends, you’ll realize they have all the power and you don’t matter. Prosperity is not prosperity if they can just take it from you.” “So you prefer America then? Like they’re prosperous? They owe us more money than there is on the planet. America is finished. Why are you helping them?”

“So he arrived, but he didn’t leave?” “That’s what we’ve been wondering about.” They all just sat there without talking for several moments. That was when Shen remembered Ross’s words as he held up the ring. This is a magic ring. A hot flash of fear came over him. It couldn’t be. . . . The control board operator was clicking from camera to camera now. Inside and outside the building. He brought up a 3-D model of the city block. It was wrapped with security camera images. “This is running backward from the moment of your departure from the table, Captain Shen.” Half a dozen video insets showed as many scenes in front of the building, the lobby, the rear exit, and the surrounding streets—people and cars were everywhere. The video played, and people moved about, but Ross was absolutely nowhere to be seen. Haverford shook his head. “See, it certainly doesn’t seem like he left the table, now, does it, Captain?” Then it occurred to Shen that everyone was looking at him. And then it started to dawn on him that Zhang might seriously be suspecting him of some collusion with Ross—which would be crazy considering he was the one who brought Ross to the table to begin with.

Shen pointed to the cameras. “Mr. Ross is invisible here to a dozen cameras. Show me a camera where he reappears. Blocks away? Hours later? I’ll bet you cannot find him. Because your system has been defeated.” General Zhang studied the screen. “How, Shen? How did he do it?” “There are two million digital cameras. They are all unified with layers of digital image-processing software. With camera firmware. Someone has created a system where points on the screen are replaced with the background image.” “The background?” “Yes. Somewhere along the chain of custody between where the image is recorded and where it’s seen on our monitors, the empty background imagery of each camera’s sweep is substituted for the image of a person who is wearing some sort of electronic tag—to identify their movements through space.” “But how could the camera know the location of that person in three-dimensional space relative to the camera?” Shen was nodding as he said it. “The camera’s position is probably already known, but it could also be derived from a geometric analysis of surrounding landmarks. Software, General. It could all be done with software.” Haverford was still shaking his head. “But that would . . . it’s just not possible.”

“Excellent work.” He replied in Mandarin. “It was my pleasure, General.” Shen continued toward the buttonless elevator, and all he could think of was the great game that was now under way out there in the world. A game an old friend told him about. One that he had just now resolved to join.

Local faction leadership had no doubt pooled their resources to call down a construction kit from the network. They’d have to return it to the network pool when they were done, but there were a hundred operatives out there in the fields building homes, businesses, and setting up farms to serve as the center of a new holon. Trying to recolonize America with something that didn’t have a 30 percent interest rate and a forty-five-minute commute attached to it.

Sobol understood it, and yet he chose to become a devil, and here as if part of the natural order, a mythic hero arose in the network—dead but more alive than ever. While Loki, possibly the most powerful Daemon operative in the world, with each passing day felt smaller and more isolated as the darknet population grew around him. He suddenly felt truly alone.

She recalled scoffing at Morris’s three golden rules of computer security: do not own a computer; do not power it on; and do not use one The subtlety of it had escaped her at the time. It wasn’t meant as a surrender. It was a meditation on risk versus benefit. Did these systems give us more than they took from us? It was an admission that we will never be fully secure. We must instead strive for survivability. Then perhaps Sobol was right. . . .

And yet, the American economy didn’t seem to have much forward momentum on anything. The dot-coms had melted down just as she got out of school, and later the real estate markets had tanked. Now the main industry of America seemed to be moving paperwork around in circles. Basically, she’d just been breaking even over the last eight years, despite the fact that she’d put a lot of money away. She’d invested it, and those supposedly safe investments had gone sour. She’d purchased this three-bedroom, two-bath condo near Washington, and now four years and forty-eight payments later it was worth slightly less than what she bought it for. Factoring in tax deductions for interest, but then also plumbing and improvements, she figured she was just about even. That is, if the market held.

Daemon operatives had said it provided medical care. Retirement. Debt relief. No wonder. It was essentially a tax on corporations—one the corporate attorneys couldn’t dodge by moving their headquarters to Bermuda.

It was in Sobol’s online game world, and he’d designed his avatar to look like her: facial geometry is a code the human mind is uniquely suited to decipher. He’d used the trick to sneak past her group’s automated filter system. To find her before she found him.

“This is just a big green desert. You’d starve to death out here. This corn is inedible—it’s just starch; it needs to be processed in an industrial stomach, with acids and chemicals, to break it down into processed food additives. We’re up to our eyeballs in corn here in Iowa and we can’t even feed ourselves.” “I gather that’s the plan.”

Fossen nodded. “Damned right. Big business was screwing over farmers in the 1890s, too, and my grandfather’s father didn’t put up with it back then, either. There was an uprising. You might not think it, but it was always the farmers who raised hell in this country. They worked for themselves, were self-reliant, and weren’t about to take shit from anybody. But then some clever bastard figured out how to make crops inedible. My family’s been doing industrial farming for forty years and all it produces is debt, pollution, and water shortages. It ruins the land and the people on it.” Ross nodded to the uniform fields out the window. “You think these other farmers will change?” “They’ll have no choice. Gas is, what—eighteen bucks a gallon now? Industrial farming and the global supply chain gobble up fossil fuel.” He peeled off each item with his fingers. “Natural gas in the fertilizers, petroleum-based pesticides, fuel for the tractors, more fuel for transport to food processors, fuel to process the raw crops into food additives, then to manufacture them into products, and then to transport the products across the country or world to be consumed—thirteen hundred miles on average.”

“When I started educating myself on why farming no longer made sense. We basically used oil and aquifer water to temporarily boost the carrying capacity of the land, all for economic growth demanded by Wall Street investors. It’s a crazy system that only makes sense when you foist all the costs onto taxpayers in the form of crop subsidies that benefit agribusiness, and defense spending to secure fossil fuels. We’re basically paying for corporations to seize control of the food supply and dictate to us the terms under which we live.”

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Lots of folks on the darknet resent the random fMRI brain scans. Even though they’re administered by remote operator in a double-blind format, I frequently hear complaints about invasion of privacy. The issue is whether citizens of a democracy claim the right to lie on matters of material significance. Individual privacy must be weighed against the corrosive effect of lies in the public discourse.

“It’s Russian. Look, one advantage of the darknet is that no one needs to know who you were. Because they know who you are.”

It reminded Sebeck of something Riley said to him months ago in New Mexico about social interactions where race and gender didn’t matter. They were all members of the network here, and Sebeck had found himself increasingly looking at people’s call-outs to really know who they were. Reputation mattered more than physical appearance, and he was shocked at how quickly his brain had made that transition. Everyone had the same color call-out in the darknet.

Sebeck dialed down the number of layers he was looking at and reduced the range of his D-Space vision to prevent call-out overload. He wondered how long it had been going on like this. Judging by the scaffolding and ongoing construction, it hadn’t been long. Most of these folks were probably new arrivals from suburbs and cities. Or perhaps returning from suburbs and cities.

“And that convinced you to join the darknet? I’d expect the opposite reaction.” “If this new network is going to have a future, it can’t be ruled by bloodthirsty sociopaths like Loki. And there was another person on that task force—a man they call The Major—who made me realize the existing order is even worse.” Sebeck nodded. “I’ve heard of The Major. Hell, people are looking all over for that guy. He’s the one who shot Roy Merritt—the Burning Man.”

“Here’s what I’m worried about, Pete: the darknet is an encrypted wireless mesh network—constantly changing—but it’s got to have some elements that tie it together, and I’m worried that some very advanced minds are working on a means to hack into the Daemon and take control of it.” “You think that’s possible?” He nodded. “This new spring of freedom might be short-lived if that’s the case. And I’ve lived through false springs before.”

“So this Major guy is . . .” “Part of a financial system that rules behind the scenes. They seem to know the global economy is faltering, and they view the Daemon as a way to retain control. Darknet news feeds are recording a rise in violent repression around the world—focused on resilient darknet communities. They don’t want people to be like this. . . .” He gestured to the town. “You mean self-reliant.” “Exactly. Democracy is a rare thing, Pete. You hear how democracies are all over the place, but it isn’t really true. They call it democracy. They use the vocabulary, the props, but it’s theater. What your Founding Fathers did was the real thing. But the problem with democracies is they’re hard to maintain. Especially in the face of high technology. How do you preserve your freedom when the powerful can use software bots to detect dissent and deploy drone aircraft to take out troublemakers? Human beings are increasingly unnecessary to wield power in the modern world.”

“See, in medieval Europe a mounted knight in armor could defeat almost any number of peasants.” He jabbed a fork in Ross’s direction. “The modern elite warrior is much the same—they can mow down mass conscripted armies with superior technology. So what happens when small elite forces can overwhelm citizen forces of almost any size? We return to feudalism—landless serfs and a permanent ruling class. Just look at the fortified upscale neighborhoods now being built with their own private security forces. It’s neofeudalism, man.”

“Democracy requires active participation, and sooner or later someone ‘offers’ to take all the difficult decision-making away from you and your hectic life. But the darknet throws those decisions back onto you. It hard-codes democracy into the DNA of civilization. You upvote and downvote many times a day on things that directly affect your life and the lives of people around you—not just once every few years on things you haven’t got a chance in hell of affecting.”

“Can you name anything else that’s as battle tested? It’s been attacked nine ways to Sunday by every leet hacker on the planet. Sobol basically used an army of teen gamers to beta test the operating system for a new civilization. I guess all those hours gaming weren’t a waste of time, after all.” Price laughed. “Right on, man.”

“I’ve been noticing this. Dial it back to look at the global distribution of darknet power.” Ross did so, and Sebeck already knew what he was seeing; the Scale of Themis had moved dramatically to the right—nearly three-quarters of the way. It meant that darknet power in much of the world was concentrated in relatively few hands. “Is this really an improvement over what we have now? You’ll find the reputation ranking per level is below average also—two stars out of five. So there’s a concentration of power among people of questionable character.”

Ross pondered the question. “This Thread has been leading you to events—not places? Correct?” “Yeah. For the last seven months Price and I have found ourselves at the center of just about every major change now under way. I’ve seen the rise of the new power infrastructure, the new economy, the new fMRI legal system—you name it. That’s how my reputation grew so fast. We just always seemed to be in the right place at the right time.” “Well, then we do know one thing.” “What’s that?” “Something big is about to happen in Greeley.”

To the uninitiated it no doubt seemed odd to hear a colonel giving deference to a major—but The Major’s nom de guerre was just that. He had long ago outstripped his last formal rank. “Your undergarments are showing, sir.” He pointed. The Major glanced back into the cargo hold at the closest of ten identical pallets covered in green canvas tarps. A corner clasp had broken during landing, revealing the bricks of twenty-dollar bills beneath, wrapped in cellophane. One hundred and eighty million dollars a pallet—one point eight billion dollars in all. The Major nodded. “Get some forklifts out here.”

The Major sat down on the edge of the desk. “Rules of Engagement for darknet communities are as follows: kill everyone you find, burn every structure, and destroy every vehicle. Without exception. The knowledge and equipment that makes these communities work must be eradicated. The cultural memory that they ever existed must be erased. Is that understood?” The Colonel nodded, poker-faced. “Yes, sir.” “Don’t forget storm cellars and culverts. Any hiding place.” The Colonel nodded solemnly.

The Australian talked with passionate intensity. “When the Daemon infected our networks, I saw it for what it was, yes? A bloody opportunity.” Sebeck raised his eyebrows. “Even though it was stealing from you?” “Stealing? Yes, but it was a wake-up call, too. It changed the game for everyone, didn’t it? Not just me. I realized I couldn’t have long supply chains. It would punish me—and my competitors—for doing that. That’s a level playing field. The Destroy function it installed in our network is like a hand grenade pin that anyone can pull—a ticking clock forcing us to migrate to a more sustainable, less complex system. And besides . . .” He gestured to the machines around them. “This is the future. It makes no bloody sense to transport parts thousands of miles. Creating them to-order like this from raw materials—metal powders or Arboform granules—that’s the market, mate. There are other machines that can produce circuitry from printed, flexible material. It’s a bloody third Industrial Revolution, isn’t it?”

Philips looked back up at the cable news playing on the television. Now in addition to the fighting in the Midwest, a series of major Internet outages had begun to “grip the nation”—or so the media claimed. It was being blamed on sabotage. On domestic “terrorists” blowing up critical fiber-optic lines at vulnerable junctions. The very things they were doing to stifle dissent were being used as the justification for making draconian measures permanent. And everywhere was video of smartly attired private security forces rushing to rescue besieged towns, to restore service. How was it possible that they could do all this? How could they possibly get away with it?

Connelly kept his eyes on the screen. The world lay before him. “On my mark.” “Standing by.” “Commence Operation Exorcist.” “Commencing Operation Exorcist.” It was a facet of the modern world that the most important events now occurred unseen by human eyes. They were electronic bits being flipped from one value to another. Connelly knew that somewhere in this command center one of the network analysts was now, with a single keystroke, destroying the data of almost 80 percent of the world’s most powerful corporations. It was a command script that sequentially invoked the Daemon’s Destroy function using as a parameter the local tax ID of thousands of Daemon-infected corporations throughout the world. The net effect was that they were using the Daemon’s own followers to destroy that data along with the backups. Sobol had warned his Daemon would do this if they tried to retake control. But why wait for the Daemon?

Why not be the first? That’s what finally convinced Connelly to join this effort. Nuclear war was unthinkable—but all-out cyber war was not. They could finally unify the world under a single all-encompassing economic power. One that could achieve miraculous things. Countries didn’t matter anymore. The world was just a big market. It needed to be unified.

At the same moment Weyburn Labs was invoking the destruction of vast amounts of corporate data, they were also running a second script—one that invoked the Destroy function with a malformed parameter. It was all Latin to Connelly, but the big brains in Weyburn Labs had come up with a way to overstuff the Destroy function somehow, putting it into an infinite loop that would prevent it from destroying data, even if Daemon operatives somewhere in the data center tried to invoke it later manually. This malformed command would make these companies—and these companies alone—immune to the Daemon’s wrath. And it was these companies in which they had invested their wealth. It was a mix of corporations that would give them control of nearly every productive commercial activity and the right to rule since they alone had been smart enough to survive “Cybergeddon.” There would be a period of civil chaos in most countries, but they’d already taken steps to physically secure their facilities.

“The blackout isn’t meant to cripple the Daemon, General. We already eliminated it as a threat with the Destroy function calls. No, the blackout is a psyops action. It’s a demarcation between the old order and the new one for the general public. People need to be shocked into accepting their new situation. Revealing just how vulnerable they all are accomplishes that. They will seek protection.” “But three days without power?” “Our social psychologists told us the panic should make people eager for strong leadership.”

The cavorting corporate Muzak returned, along with manic studio audience applause. Sobol waved. “Thanks for invoking this event, and remember, if you’re not playing the game, it’s playing you. Bye-bye now!”

Sobol gazed directly at Sebeck’s eyes. “When I realized what our world had become, how humanity had become cogs in its own machine, I resolved to do something terrible . . . perhaps one of the worse things ever done. To exploit the automation of our world in order to plant the seed of a new system is reckless and irresponsible. But I didn’t see any other way we would change. Or could change. “But now that humans have accomplished this quest, and you have arrived to tell me of their success, the question I need to ask you is this: was I right or wrong, Sergeant? Should I destroy the Daemon? Should I undo everything I’ve done? Yes, or no?” Sebeck felt the shock work through him. He was speechless. “You of all people would know, Sergeant. Should the Daemon be ended? Yes, or no? I will wait for your answer.”