Chapter 3
“I thought I was going to jail,” Jason said, looking around the social rehabilitation center.
The only other time he’d been in a social rehab, he’d been surprised to find it not seedy and dirty but almost clinically clean.
But any place with federal funding would be spotless.
The whine and thump of janitorial dronebots was as omnipresent as the clicks of keys and low mutters from the couple of people using the kiosk terminals.
“All in good time,” Bruno said. He escorted Jason to an open kiosk far from anyone else and released his cop grip on Jason’s arm. “Sit.”
Jason did, heavily. He’d only sat at one of these kiosks once before, despite having been homeless several times in his life.
Free food and shelter were available at social rehabs across the nation, and you didn’t need to interact directly with a human being, since research showed that the homeless and others down on their luck were less likely to use welfare services if they felt they might have to explain themselves to and/or be judged by their fellow humans.
Everything was done via these kiosks, which dispensed information, food, bedding, and room keys.
You didn’t even have to fill out a form.
The problem wasn’t what the kiosks gave, but what they took: Pictures of your face.
Lots of pictures of your face. You were then automatically assigned a pseudonym and logged in the PsychNet database.
First visitors were typically left alone, but the system watched for patterns.
Multiple visits in a short time? Signs of drug use?
Signs of violence? Face identified as probably a minor?
You’d be asked to divulge your MeNetID and download a counseling chatbot, which would cheerfully walk you through setting a goal for a lifestyle change, and then monitor everywhere you went, everything you did, everyone you talked to, everything you purchased, and nag you to make choices that were good for you—good for you according to the people at PsychNet, anyway.
Reject the program or refuse to give up your MeNetID and you’d shortly be located by a concerned human counselor, flanked by an armed cop, anxious to help you make the life adjustments that would enable you to become a contributing member of society again.
Mia had kicked the counselor in the shins and the cop in the balls.
But the stolen ghost MeNetID, the one Jason had social-engineered in a monthslong process that had been the triumph of his young life, had been blown.
He hadn’t been experienced at evading street-level surveillance at sixteen, and they’d lasted less than forty-eight hours in their grand escape.
After that, they’d been sent to a new foster home, one that somehow managed to be the worst yet.
The incident taught Jason that having a new identity wasn’t enough; you needed to fit in, fly under the radar, accept no help.
For that, you needed a marketable skill, one you could translate into money.
He’d realized hacking could be that skill, if you knew the right market.
It would have worked, too, but before he was ready, Andrew Norman’s algorithm made its “choice,” and Mia was gone.
The kiosk screen came alive with a video of a smiling cartoon dog in spectacles and a medical jacket. Jason narrowed his eyes at it. “Can’t I just go straight to jail?”
“This is mandatory processing,” Bruno said, leaning down over his shoulder so the kiosk cameras could see his face and doubtless identify him as an NNA agent. “You may access this citizen’s MeNetID,” he told the kiosk, then stood back again.
The cartoon dog’s expression changed to one of grave thoughtfulness, and it said in an entirely normal voice that clashed with it cartoon visage, “Hello, Jason. It looks like you’ve had a misadventure.
Don’t worry—I’m here to help. Let’s see: Based on your lifetime’s MeNet interactions, third-party consumer trust-rating programs would assign you an average score of forty-eight.
That’s not the worst rating I’ve seen, but it’s not great either.
In a free and democratic society such as ours, people are at liberty to choose whom they associate with, and it’s human nature to prefer to associate with trustworthy people.
A low trust rating may make others feel that interacting with you is unsafe.
Ninety-seven percent of your fellow citizens use these programs, and they are free to choose not to employ or otherwise associate with you beyond the few limits specified by law.
But I can help you improve your score. Would you like that? ”
“No,” Jason said. He subvocalized, Text Sprite an eyegrab and the caption, “Getting therapized by an emotional support GIF. Send help.” But the usual confirming chime in his ear and flicker of the messaging window in his smartspace didn’t occur.
His phone was powered off in the back of the NNA van, but a lifetime of habits died hard.
Not to mention half a decade of being able to talk to Sprite whenever he needed.
He’d tried to avoid thinking too much about what his Collective handler might be like in real life.
Partly that was because anything he imagined would be speculation—“she” could be a forty-year-old man, for all he knew.
Partly it was because he was aware of his own naivete in the area of girls.
A life focused on vengeance left no time for them, so Sprite was the only “girl” in his life—again with “girl” in scare quotes.
If his imagination got involved, it would be easy to build a dangerous and unwarranted attachment.
But he’d grown reliant on her virtual presence.
Once, late at night, he’d texted her on some pretext, and they’d ended up texting back and forth for hours, musing about Life, the Universe, and Everything, until she’d said, Don’t you have a panyon to ask existential questions at 2:00 the morning?
No, he’d replied. Panyons aren’t people.
Good, she’d said, and he’d felt a tiny thrill, but she hadn’t said anything else, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to volunteer anything that might jeopardize their working relationship, so the conversation had ended there.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” the dog was saying.
“It looks like much of your rating is based on interactions you had when you were a minor in the foster care system. That’s understandable.
The foster system is a challenging environment to grow up in.
Many former foster children reach adulthood with low trust scores.
Since your score is not assigned to you but is calculated by third parties based on your permanent history of interactions with citizens and organizations, no government network, agency, or personnel has the power to directly change them.
However, there are several federal programs available by which you may have past records and interactions hidden, making them invisible for factoring into an average.
Minors with low ratings are automatically offered enrollment in such a program upon reaching adulthood, but you rejected the program when it was offered to you.
Would you like to explore the program now? ”
“No,” Jason said again.
“I’m sorry to hear that. Many people with lower ratings find that they can receive a substantial quality-of-life improvement by participating in this intervention. Are you sure you’re not interested?”
Jason snorted. Once upon a time, people could just disappear.
Once upon a time, you didn’t need a MeNetID, didn’t need your digital suitcase of social capital—sorry, transparency—to function in society.
You could reinvent yourself simply by moving away from your past, figuratively and literally.
But today, why would you want to disappear?
There was help. There was always help, for every problem.
The thing was to bring it into the light, let it be seen, let the caring folks at the nearest social rehab get you fixed up, get you reintegrated.
Trust the system, Jason. “Phreak you,” he told the dog.
“I’m sorry to hear that. Please verbally confirm your rejection of this intervention by speaking the following phrase aloud: ‘I reject intervention from Social Rehabilitation Services at this time. I understand that I may change my mind at any point and request an intervention.’”
“I reject intervention from Social Rehabilitation Services at this time and at all times,” Jason said. “I understand that I may change my mind at any point and request an intervention, but I won’t.”
The dog disappeared, and the screen displayed a green check mark and the words, You’re done! Follow the directions of your case worker, Agent Bruno Tavion.
“Now you go to jail,” Bruno said.
But as they stepped out into the evening sunlight, Bruno stopped so suddenly that Jason almost stumbled over him. Bruno said to someone in his smartspace, “Say again? Really? Really.” He turned to Jason and said in a carefully level voice, “What did you do?”
“What do you mean?” Jason asked, but his tensely hunched shoulders loosened a smidge.
Bruno didn’t say more but led Jason back to the NNA van, where it waited at the curb.
Once inside, he didn’t tell the van to take them anywhere.
Instead, he settled across from Jason, reached into Jason’s bag of belongings and thumbed on his phone, then handed Jason an NNA-branded case. “Put on your kit.”
The case held his smartbuds and, floating in solution, his smartlenses. Jason screwed the buds in and blinked the lenses into place, then nodded at Bruno.