Virtual Bank Line: The Data Thieves

I was at a work offsite, and my co-workers and I were leaving the conference site and walking toward a shuttle that would take us to the airport. As I walked down the hall, my phone rang and I stopped walking and ducked into a doorway to take the call. As I spoke, more people walked by making it hard to hear.

I looked into the room behind the door and, finding it empty, I ducked inside. Just before my conversation was over, I realized that I wasn't alone. In a corner, in a chair behind a large table, was a man in a dark suit. I hadn't seen him because the room lights were off and the dark suit matched the shadows.

"Good, you're here," he said after I hung up. "It's time to go. We have to get started."

He went on to tell me that I would be partnering with another agent, and the two of us had many important meetings to keep with other agents. I got into a sleek, black car with another man in a dark suit and we drove from place to place where the other man talked furtively with other people in dark suits. I never took part in these conversations, and I felt superfluous to the proceedings entirely.

Finally, while my "partner" was busy talking to someone, I took off. I ran through streets that looked like Disneyland - clean and not meant for cars. The buildings were too close together for car traffic and there were lots of tiny alleyways with little shops. I was trying to get my bearings so I could figure out how to get home when I realized that I had to hide. The "partner" would be looking for me, and it would be bad if he found me.

I joined what looked like a large team of women who were walking to practice for some sport. As they walked, they talked about and demonstrated various warm-up exercises for the upcoming event, so to fit in, I went along with their stretching and twisting. We got to the top of the hill, and I looked down to see that the entire hill was made of snow. There was a man at the top of the hill, half buried in the snow. I could only see his dreadlocks peeking out, so I separated from the group and went to talk to him.

This man told me about the data thieves. We all knew that the government had undertaken to control speech on a vast scale. It was the aim of the government to control not just all communication coming from regulated channels (print, broadcast and electronic media, etc.) but all communication everywhere. Conversations between human beings were regulated as well. It was impossible for husbands and wives to have private conversations between themselves without government intervention. The vehicle for the intervention were tiny transmitters hidden in things like both paper money and coins, any plastic card (including indentification cards, credit cards and discount cards given out by stores). They worked in areas about the size of a good-sized room, which meant that even if you put your wallet on the dresser and huddled in the closet to talk to someone, you were still in the grips of the transmitters.

Whenever anyone tried to have a conversation that was "contrary to the interests of government," their very THOUGHTS would be replaced by something entirely different, such that they wouldn't even be aware that the words coming out of their own mouths didn't conform to their original intent. You might have it in mind to tell someone that you saw a policeman beating an innocent bystander, but the words out of your mouth would say that you saw that lambchops were on sale at the market, and you yourself would not know of the substitution.

The data thieves were working to bring down this particularly heinous form of control. Because they had to function in society, they took interesting precautions like keeping their wallets in lead-lined boxes. They were working on ways of both foiling the government AND raising awareness of what was going on. But it was much more difficult than most people realized. Thus far, the only thing that the data thieves had been able to do was to take certain patterns of data out of the stream. For instance, it would be impossible to transmit the letter "T," so hings would come ou jus slighly off, and no make sense. Enough of these tiny gaps in the data and people would become aware that they were not creating their own communications - it was all being created for them, and the system was breaking down.

"So, why are you here?" I asked the dreadlocked man at the top of the snow hill.

"I'm trapped here. I can't get off the hill."

I looked and realized that it wasn't snow. It was more like silicon so fine that it looked like and acted like snow, and it was leaching the strength out of both of us. But it looked inviting and shiny and sparkly, and I turned and ran full-tilt down the hill to the bottom. I got to within a yard of the street, and turned and looked at the dreadlocked man at the top. He was looking down at me with longing, knowing that he had important things to do but couldn't do them. I ran back up the hill, glorying in the work of moving up a steep hill through thick snow. The work itself gave me more energy, so once I got to the top, I grabbed the dreadlocked man's hand and turned, pulling him down the hill after me. As we ran down the hill, the dreadlocked man picked up speed and by the time we got to the bottom, he was in the lead pulling me behind him and shouting about how we were going to help the data thieves.