Tales

I The Surfing Specter

It was a strange game. They almost always won. I suspected that was because They made the rules. For this is the way it is in this game, the ones who make the rules win, and the ones who win, make the rules. At least the only rules that count. The rules that produce winners. These rules operate by allowing money to flow to money, strength to strength, power to power and information toward information. They all have this in common, the Trickle Up Effect. The wealth in each case is transmitted through a hierarchical system of one way diodes. They, to whom the flow is directed, are like spiders at the center of webs.

The information tyrants, those who benefit from information flowing toward information, have the most sophisticated web of all. A Web which reaches right across society, and even into our human minds. Information of the sort that gives power flows one way, toward the already powerful, while flowing the other way is information woven with sticky myths.

They are the few, the many, are their information consumers, dumb terminals, end receivers, information peasants at the wrong end of one way information flows. Because of expert systems with a high degree of artificial intelligence, some of these web spiders are not even human, yet they control industrial processes and weapon systems which affect the fate of every living creature on Earth.

Yet who are They who make the rules? It took me a long time to find out. They are the ones who do not follow rules. They bend or break them as necessary. They make the rules and adjust them when needed. Always with the one single minded aim of winning. Winning to gain the prize, whether it be a woman, a man, the consent of the people, or money and power.

Sometimes it seems They aim to win just for the sake of winning. They are real people, (most), yet They are more than that. They are roles within a panopticon power structure which contains people, (mostly). A hierarchical pyramid of role boxes, people come, people go, and are replaced by others who win. The role boxes fit them, shape them, and dump them when necessary. It is the rules that are in control, out of control. Software technology gone mad, language technology becoming sub-aware. An informational Frankenstein monster with a brain modelled upon all that is bad in our own. Valuing everything by financial worth, potential and power. A software beast, a pseudo life, whose components though scattered far and wide, behave as a living organism. It grows, is self protective, and resists reform while feeding upon the bread of individuality and the life blood of freedom. Poetic terms maybe, but none the less true for that. The system is in control of the human.

Realizing that this was not some conspiracy theory was one thing. Doing something about the reality was another. The weight of my apathy was down to an oscillation between two choices. Both unpleasant. To obey or to fight back. As a free spirit, I certainly did not want to obey, yet what was the point in resisting. They and the system they represent always win. Well almost always, as I have found out, because now I resist, but not in a way that shows. I am always alone, have to be. I always fight as an individual. Hit and run. Run and hide. To do otherwise would be fatal. Long gone are the days of organized resistance. It's all too late for that. I do what I have to do and do it in secret. In popular language I am a hacker, yet I am more than that, but in some ways less. I resist by constantly throwing spanners into the smooth efficient cogs of their power. And why not? Somebody has to be a gremlin. If They are allowed to succeed it will be too late, it will all be too late. Resistance from then on will be impossible, impossible no matter who one was. It will be impossible to resist for evermore, for ever, ever more.

Even now, resisting is not easy. It often brings pain and always brings loneliness. What is the use in having friends, in building up a network of comrades?  Privacy of communications can no longer be guaranteed, nor privacy of behavior.  Only in one's thoughts, is their aloneness, at least for now. It is best I stay alone , invisible. I know I am not the only one. There are others out there. Others who also see the darkness lurking behind the pleasantly veiled curtains of power. Others who see as I do that Big Brother is trying to shut the door behind himself, preventing his removal for ever. An eternal directorship of dictatorship were it not for the inertial damping created by myself and others.

Yes there are others. Sometimes when out there, traveling as a ghost through the back corridors of the matrix, I sense their presence. Not that they can be detected with any certainty, not the ones who are successful.  And success is no longer measured in terms of obvious effect, They and their all encompassing grip on humanity are too strong for that. Resistance now only takes place through subtle tweaking of culture’s informational processes. A nuisance virus here - delimiting the drive toward maximum efficiency, or a delicate meme there - well buried within the sub-text and weaving the merest whispers of doubt. Yes, no longer can the resistance be obvious, the eye is everywhere, on every traffic light, security cam and activated mobile phone, to name but a few. From now on, resistance must be secretive, or must fail. And to fail once is often fatal. Intruders when detected and pinpointed, can be erased in minutes, sometimes seconds. If not by the local branch of hired killers, then by a robotic drone and even a pulsed laser from a satellite.

Once I was out there, wandering like a ghost through the twisted dirt tracks of the electronic labyrinth. I was out there, frustrating an attack upon unarmed civilians when I stepped upon the warm trail of another. The signs were hard to read, let alone follow. I lost the trail many times. Instinct guided me rather than logic, the moves were the same I would have made. Except that last one, I would never have made that, and "Sexy Blue Eyes" would never make it again either. She, or he, I like to think it was a she, was meandering to and fro so, delicately as she accessed files and wiggled behind complex passwords, that she was invisible to all but another such as me. I guessed she was seeking entry to that branch of the super information highway along which money flows like a river. I hid within a building services workstation of Global Banking, and watched her shadow creep through their circuits. She slipped into their operating system for an overview of their directories. But I knew she could not get in that way. I also knew how she could get in. There was a window. One of their programs could be unlocked and opened. It was in a games application. It usually is. Most companies have games on their networks. They are meant to help staff maximize mental ability and keyboard skills while in their lunch break.

The problem was that to unlock the window, not only had I to win the game, but had to better the highest score ever achieved. I can reload that day well. It was the first time I slipped up, and the last. I shall never work with another again. The risks are too great. But that day I was in a charitable mood, and a reckless one. I traveled into the game hoping I could win before she left. I was no brilliant player but I knew a user who was. He was one of the few left who can still beat computers at chess. I entered his home system and relayed the game there. I imagined him getting out of bed in the early hours of the morning, wrapping his dressing gown tightly against the cold and walking over to his machine. He is a skilled player, I had used him before. He always won. He was a fantastic bluffer and always seemed to know when the computer was trying it on: probably one of those who can process data on the psychic level. I don't know much more about him than that, not even his sex. I have never bothered to find out. He may be a scientist, though she could be an Inuit for all I really know. He operates from a base in the Arctic, frozen from civilization for months, except through the Internet. I knew he would play. He won in twenty minutes - would have done it in ten had I let him alone. But I wanted his score to be high, and it was, after a little harassment. This guy was not going back to his warm bed till I had teased the best out of him. He won with a new high score, but did not enter his name in the credits. He left that to me. I took over as he signed off and went back bed. It would be warm, his electric blanket had been switched on remotely. Some people like those nice little touches.

The game bleeped for the name of the new top scorer. But it got more than a name. I let fly with Agamemnon. Sliding out of my Trojan Horse I entered a top secret passageway to have a closed gateway shove itself into my face. No matter which way I turned, it aggressively blocked my progression. The security guard demanded the correct password. It would trigger an alarm if I didn't give it one within ten seconds. But I never bothered. Why should I? I didn't know one. Instead I injected it with Frazzle, one of the latest virus's someone had left hidden about the Internet. Frazzle is a suicidal software warrior that induces a positive feedback loop whose oscillations become so rapid they can burn out part of the hardware chip. Frazzle is probably of military origin. It can be targeted so finely that the microscopic damage may not be detected for years. The electronic guard, positive feed-backed toward infinity. Within micro seconds its data exploded into a mass of free photons which burnt away no more that a few square microns of circuit. Having not exactly unlocked a window, but blasted a discrete tunnel into the restricted zone, I placed a sniff of it in the intruders path. 

She was inside within seconds, but not before she thanked me. That caught me by surprise. But it was also her mistake. “Thanks, love, Sexy Blue Eyes”, then she was gone, leaping from one gateway to another, plunging through Global Banking's open data safe, and on to the international currency highway, seeding it with nuisance. She moved so fast it was hard to keep up, I gave myself two seconds to warn her, but time ran out. Why didn't she remain in anonymity? Why let me know her handle. Was it boastful pride at her ability to detect me? I couldn't download the idea that she was so grateful, she signed her death warrant. Perhaps she felt what I feel in these situations, lonely and in desperate need to communicate with a kindred spirit. Perhaps she was making it easier for me to follow. 

After she had been erased, I backed along her trail,- found myself hopping onto a terminal in an airport. She was on a plane using a linked laptop mini computer. Or that is she had been on a plane. It fell from the sky 120 seconds after she was detected. A surface to air missile or a satellite laser maybe. I read about it the next day on the electronic news, except that they reported it as engine failure, or was it pilot error? All crew and passengers had been killed, all 230 of them. That was the price the Frankenstein monster would pay to keep it's secrets secret. And that is why I am compelled to resist. Oh it detected me as well. The role boxes followed my trail to an embassy in the Third World - one of my main safe houses. They would never attack an embassy - cut the connection yes - sever the link physically as well as electronically, if need be. It was a shock to me when They blew it up. 

They used a Cutlass missile. Probably launched from a sub before it rushed through the streets of the capital, turning corners, ducking under bridges and over telephone cables. The whole embassy went up in an explosion of flames. Lucky for me I had just left. It was a stepping stone, the last one before my true location here. But I am safe here. They would never find me here. Yet that incident was too close. Never again would I make such a mistake. From now on my resistance will always be alone. That way I make a smaller target. If They ever find my true location they will still never find me, though I be dead. I don't live in their reality. Because I, the surfing specter, sailing on the wave crest of now, am here, am there and I am nowhe…..

Transmission ends.

© thePoetGeo 1994