2040: A Silicon Valley Satire, page 12
“Mila back there got sentenced offline for attempting to cross into the Black sector without proper paperwork,” said Leon.
“I did have it, but there was a typo,” said Mila.
“And Alice got sentenced for . . . what was it? Posting disinformation on Happinet?” said Gibbon.
Alice shrugged. “Who cares?
“Me, I still don’t know what I got exiled for,” said José.
“Probably something you should have said, but didn’t,” said Alice.
“Or just someone who didn’t like you,” said Gibbon.
“So this is where all the offline exiles go when they disappear,” said Ethan in wonderment.
“We’re not all exiles,” said Leon. “Some of us just lost our postage stamps.”
“Beg pardon?”
“You don’t know the joke?”
“What joke?”
“What do you call a ten million-dollar postage stamp?”
Ethan shook his head.
“An apartment in San Francisco,” said Leon, and a few of the squatters chuckled.
“Ah.”
“I used to rent a basement down in Ingleside, but then I lost my job and the landlord kicked me out.”
“So you’re not from the Brown sector?”
“We’re from every sector. There’re no walls down here.”
“Wow. How many of you are there?”
“Thousands, probably. Not sure. We don’t go in other people’s territory.”
“But our territory keeps shrinking,” complained Mila. “I used to go rollerblading everywhere. Now . . . yuck.”
“Happinet better expand their data center again soon, or we’re in trouble,” said Gibbon.
“It’s all those people ratting on each other just to get ahead,” said Leon.
“Pretty soon there won’t be anyone left above ground,” said Alice.
“Except Dave Newald and his pals,” said Leon.
“His turn will come,” said Mila.
“Ha,” said Leon.
“Personally, I have nothing against Newald,” said Alice. “Happinet provides us with free housing, and with Internet service included.”
The others chuckled.
“Lightning fast, too,” said José. “Just plug directly into a snitch, I mean, switch.”
“We’re just lucky Newald got into a pissing contest with Jack Ungall about who had the fastest response times,” said Gibbon, “or this data center wouldn’t even be here.”
“I’ve heard some of the server farms up in Oregon are pretty swank,” said Mikey.
“Well, move your ass up there, then,” said Leon. “What are you waiting for?”
“I like the people here,” protested Mikey. “Except you.”
Leon tried to swat him, but he’d already jumped away. The others laughed.
“You’re just jealous I have a job,” said Mikey from a safe distance.
“You call your gig entering captchas for a Russian gang a job?” said Mila.
“It pays for tortillas.”
“But how do the rest of you make money?” Ethan asked.
“I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you,” Leon said, running his finger along the blade of his machete.
After a while the squatters started falling asleep one by one.
Ethan tried very carefully to pry his hands loose from the rack, but no luck. He tried again—nope. Dammit! He clenched his fists, and the right one brushed against the edge of the rail. He felt it with his fingers—surprisingly sharp. He pushed the Ethernet cable against the edge and patiently started to drag it up and down. Getting through the plastic sheath was the easy part. There—he could feel the copper mesh of the shielding rubbing against the steel of the rail’s edge. One by one the thin copper wires snapped. Yes! On to the insulation—harder plastic, but still plastic. But the core—this wasn’t going to work against the thick core wire. In desperation, he kept rubbing. The rail’s edge was hot against his wrists. He pulled—nope. He continued dragging the wire up and down against the rail. Pull again—still nope. His wrists hurt. He pulled again, harder—yes! The wire snapped, and he was free from the rack. But his hands were still tied behind his back.
A squatter stirred, disturbed by the noise, and Ethan froze.
All was silent again, save for the squatters’ snoring.
Now to get up. Leaning against the servers, he edged his back up little by little until he was squatting and then stood up. He stood still for a moment, listening for any signs of life from the squatters. Nothing. He started tiptoeing away down the server corridor, very slowly and with legs apart to keep the tin foil from creaking, then a little faster. He turned the corner and—squeak, went his sneaker on the linoleum, echoing across the data center like the cry of a night bird in the jungle.
“Who’s there?” It was Leon’s voice. “Guys! Wake up! The prowler’s gone!”
Ethan bolted down the corridor, looking desperately for the vent. There! Swiveling left, he charged up the steep slope, feet sliding on the concrete, hands still tied behind his back. Lowering his head, he slammed into the grating with his back and shoulders. The grating lifted a fraction of an inch—and came down again, Ethan’s soles slipping off the ground, his face coming down on it. He could hear the squatters approaching rapidly, Leon’s voice yelling “Quick! He’s in the vent!” Turning onto his back, he pushed up against the grating with his feet—it lifted!—then up and forward—yes!—the grating slid forward a foot, and Ethan pushed his torso up through the crack, then—someone grabbed his foot and pulled, dragging him back down. Noo! Ethan clutched the grating for his life. His sneaker came off, a bang, a curse down below. He dragged himself back up through the crack, torso, legs, then rolled onto the sidewalk and clambered uncertainly onto his feet.
Limping, shoeless in one foot, hands tied behind his back, he ran back toward Van Ness and across it, a car honking, someone yelling “Look! Another robot’s gone haywire! Call the Guards!” He looked back—the squatters were hot on his heels, at least half a dozen of them, Leon to the front, pointing. He kept running, but now the tin foil was unspooling around his legs, dragging on the pavement, tripping him up. He looked down, and that moment his foot caught in the foil and he slammed onto the ground. Dazed and in pain, he rolled around—and howled as Leon’s kick ripped into his side.
“Fucker,” said Leon. The others caught up and surrounded Ethan. “OK, guys, let’s carry him back,” said Leon. “José, take the feet. Mikey—”
But now a pickup truck screeched to a halt next to them, and one, two, three, four Guards jumped down from the back.
“Guards! Run!” yelled Gibbon.
Leon punched the nearest Guard, sending him reeling. Another Guard struck him on the side with a baseball bat, hard, and he momentarily lost balance, but he steadied himself and lunged at the Guard, who dodged.
“Leon!” yelled Alice, running. “Don’t be an idiot!”
Leon hesitated for a moment, then, with a growl, rammed into the Guard blocking his way and started running, catching up with the others. As the squatters ran back toward Van Ness, chased by the Guards, Ethan looked around and—
“Oh no, buddy, you’re not going anywhere,” said another Guard, looming over him, his boot coming down on Ethan’s chest and staying there.
THE LAST POLICE OFFICER IN SAN FRANCISCO
A mob had gathered around Ethan, armed with sticks, baseball bats and metal bars.
“Is that the berserk robot?” asked a tall man in a black T-shirt, bat in hand.
“Nope,” said the Guard, tapping Ethan’s chest with his boot. “Flesh and blood. Don’t know why he has the ‘R’, though.”
The man leaned down to look at Ethan’s face. “Isn’t this the guy we were chasing earlier tonight?”
“Oh yeah,” said the Guard. “Look, people, we caught the Braunschweiger guy,” he announced.
“It’s our lucky day,” said a voice in the crowd.
“Now for the fun part,” said the man in the black T-shirt.
The Guard lifted his foot off Ethan’s chest. “Get up, coward,” he said.
“I can’t,” said Ethan weakly. “My hands are tied.”
The Guard crouched down and rolled Ethan around. Pulling a knife from a sheath at his side, he cut the loops of Ethernet cable around Ethan’s wrists. “Now get up.”
Ethan tried to sit up, but the piercing pain in his side from Leon’s kick was too great. He closed his eyes, waited a moment, then tried again. This time he managed to prop himself up on his elbows.
Without warning, the man swung the bat, but Ethan rolled away and the bat hit the ground. Ethan slid back, and his head bumped against a wall. He propped himself against it and managed to drag himself up. The man swung again, and this time it hit him squarely in the ribs, knocking the wind out of him and sending him stumbling back to the ground.
“Take that, bigot,” said the man.
“Oppressor! Colonist pig!” yelled the mob, closing in on him.
Ethan stumbled back onto his feet, and quickly scanned the crowd, looking for an opening, anything. No luck.
But behind them—coming over the hill, like the cavalry riding to the rescue—
A police car.
The car stopped halfway down the hill, lights flashing.
“Disperse!” came a voice from the police car’s loudspeaker.
The crowd turned around, but didn’t move.
“What the—?” said the Guard.
“Disperse! Now!”
Still the crowd didn’t move.
A police officer got out of the car and fired two shots into the air.
“I’m outta here,” said the Guard, jumping in the pickup and speeding away.
The crowd started to edge back, and some of them ran off to the left and right.
The cop fired another shot, and lowered the gun to point at the remaining toughs.
“Shit,” said the man with the bat, backing off.
“Keep going,” said the cop. He swung the gun slowly from left to right and back as the last of the mob dispersed. But they hung around on the sidewalks, watching.
“You!” said the cop, pointing the gun at Ethan. “Come over here!”
Ethan walked unsteadily toward him. The cop moved aside and motioned him with the gun toward the car. Ethan stepped forward, and felt the gun against his back.
“Am I under arrest?” he said.
“No.”
“Oh.”
“I’m not arresting you, I’m rescuing you. Keep walking.”
The mob edged closer.
“When I say ‘now’, run to the car and jump in,” said the cop.
Ethan nodded.
“Now!”
They dashed to the car, got in and slammed the doors as the crowd surged. The cop gunned the engine and the car accelerated uphill in reverse with an ear-piercing whine. At the top of the hill the cop turned the car around and sped off toward the lights of downtown, the Flower’s petals hovering above them like a mothership minding its children.
They drove in silence for a while.
“Thanks for getting me out of that jam,” said Ethan.
“No worries. I’m Officer Lee, by the way.”
Ethan nodded. “I’m—”
“I know who you are. Your little stunt is all over Happineighbor. How do you think that flash mob chasing you gathered?”
“Right. Should have thought of that.”
“Every last sonofabitch looking for some virtuous fun on a Friday night.”
“No kidding.”
“But I thought you’d gotten away.”
“So did I.”
“What was that about a robot on the lam? And what’s all that tin foil, and the ‘R’ on your forehead?”
“Long story,” said Ethan, wondering if he should tell him about the squatters.
“You’re not with the Happinet squatters, are you?”
“You know about them?”
“As you can see.”
“So why don’t you do something about it?”
“They have nowhere else to live.”
They were silent again for a while.
“You’re a cop?” said Ethan. “I thought the SFPD had been abolished.”
“It was, but the police union contract didn’t allow them to fire us, so they had to keep paying us.”
“So how many of you are left?”
“Just me, at this point.”
“Why don’t you retire?”
“This pays more, and it’s no more work.”
“But here you are, driving around in your patrol car and rescuing people.”
“That’s just a hobby.”
They were at the intersection of Sutter and Grant, near the Dragon Gate checkpoint into the Yellow Sector.
“I grew up there,” said the cop, pointing toward the gate and the Great Wall of Chinatown.
“You’re Chinese?”
“On my father’s side. Mother was half Cuban and half Irish.”
“Wow. I don’t think that could happen today.”
“Probably not.”
“It’s so sad that American cities are now broken up into sectors like this.”
Officer Lee nodded. “I remember when the Guards walled off Bayview-Hunters Point to protect the black community from white intruders. What were they thinking? But before you knew it, everyone was busy walling off their territory. Only made things worse.”
“Worked out well for the Guards.”
“And nobody else.”
They stopped at a red light, engine purring. Two late-night revelers crossed the street, laughing and stumbling.
“So where would you like me to drop you off?” said the cop.
“Er . . . home, I guess,” said Ethan. “It’s on Harrison, between Beale and Fremont.”
The cop nodded. The light turned green, and he resumed driving.
“By the way,” he said after a while, “you should be aware that you don’t have to hand over your electronics when a Guard asks you to. You’re entitled to a hearing.”
“On Happinet? Yeah right.”
“In a court of law.”
“Imagine that.”
“Now that truck you just overturned, that’s going to be a suspended license, at least.”
Ethan hung his head.
“And if the owner of the truck presses charges . . . but I don’t think they will.”
“Pray to God.”
“What I don’t understand is why you didn’t just let them have your phone. Then you buy a new one, they make a few bucks selling the old one, and life goes on.”
“It wasn’t about the phone.”
The cop glanced over at him. “What then?”
Ethan hesitated for a moment, then took the panic button out of his jeans pocket and showed it to the cop. “This.”
“What’s that?”
“PresiBot’s panic button.”
The cop looked nonplussed.
“It allows me to take control of PresiBot in case of emergency.”
“What kind of emergency?”
“You know, PresiBot is a very complex AI. It can go haywire in all sorts of ways we can’t predict.”
“Our next president—potentially—can go haywire?”
“No more than a human,” said Ethan defensively. “Just in different ways.”
“Still.”
“It’s done OK so far. It’ll probably be fine. Just a precaution.”
“Or it could decide to end humanity.”
Ethan sighed. “That’s not going to happen.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s incompatible with its objective function. Trust me. What we’re really worried about is it screwing up, not hatching some plan to blow up the world.”
“That doesn’t sound very reassuring.”
“Well, with the panic button, if push comes to shove I can take over. I can become PresiBot, for all intents and purposes.”
The cop was silent. He seemed to be processing this information.
“I still don’t understand, though,” he said finally. “Can’t you just disable it, this . . . panic button?”
“Not really.”
“Why?”
“It needs to be completely hack-proof. We did a pretty thorough job.”
“Like, it recognizes your thumb?”
“Soon,” said Ethan exasperatedly. “We haven’t implemented that feature yet.”
“Wait—that thing can be operated by anyone who gets a hold of it?”
“At this point, yes. But PresiBot is not president yet, and—”
“What were you thinking?”
“We haven’t had a whole lot of time to think in the last few months, to be honest.”
The cop looked horrified.
“Now you see why I didn’t want it falling into the hands of the Guards,” said Ethan.
“No kidding.”
They were silent again for a while.
“I think I’m going to have nightmares about this,” said Ethan. “I keep seeing this image of me dead on the street and the Guards and the squatters fighting over the panic button.”
Officer Lee chuckled.
“You think that’s funny?”
“No, I think it’s democracy.”
“Huh?”
“Everyone fighting over PresiBot.”
“Ha ha.”
“Too bad they can’t each have their own panic button. Hey, I’d like one too. Make myself heard.”
Ethan looked at him.
“You know, that’s actually an interesting idea,” he said.
“To let chaos rule?”
“No, no. Let me think.”
And then it came to him.
“That’s it! That’s it! I know what we need to do! Yesss!”
“Huh?”
“On second thoughts, don’t take me home.”
“We’re out of beer,” said Emma, refrigerator door open. “And Diet Coke.”
“Odd,” said Arvind from the sofa bed a few inches away. “That shouldn’t happen.”
The TV was showing an old movie from the 2020s. Arvind flipped to the news.
Emma continued to rummage through the refrigerator.
“Come to bed,” said Arvind.
“There, I found one.” She lay down next to him and took a swig of the beer. “I’ll share it with you.”
