threatening to United Corporations. There were electronic screens to weed the junk out, and employees suspected of inserting a truth cookie or reading too many of them sometimes wound up being given an "opportunities transfer" to a lower level. Dangerous as hell, really, to play with this stuff. And fun to sneak looks at it.
"We need your help, Daniel. The world needs a truth cookie in your product. The world needs to wake up. We can make it safe, very safe. All of this is encrypted. Your electronic tracks erased. It's risk-free, if you trust us."
Trust who? Daniel felt a flush of tension. "I don't have the expertise." How could he slip a cookie into something like the Meeting Minder? It had to be impossible.
"We'll teach you."
"I don't have the truth."
"We'll show you the truth. Look at this. It needs to be known."
Some code flashed on his screen. It was a series of encryption keys, a path into some company's database. An address within it. They wanted him to look at some file.
"I don't know you," he protested, typing. I don't trust you, he thought. A faceless cowl, a challenge out of nowhere. Who was this guy?
But Spartacus was already gone.
The code hung on his screen like the grin of the Cheshire cat, taunting him. You chicken, Dyson?
He got up from his chair a moment and moved restlessly around his dim apartment, a cat prowling its cage. This was real, wasn't it? Not a vid fantasy but real people, doing real resistance, provoking the establishment. Questioning, challenging, free-thinking. But for what? What difference would it make? There were power struggles on the United Corporations board, yes, but the world was too comfortable to tolerate real change. People rose and fell, but the consortium of corporations that ran the world prevailed. No one wanted truth cookies. Not really. Except that everyone read them. Repeated them in whispers. Added them to the nagging doubts and list of jokes. And now he was being asked to be a part of it.
How had they found him?
But then he'd found them, hadn't he?
Daniel sat back down and began going through the gift of code. As he'd suspected, it was for a company. Something called GeneChem. Another bioengineering firm, it seemed, one of thousands. The numbers took him past its electronic doors, into its vaults, and then into its cabinet drawers. Stealthily, slyly, like a thief in the night. It was slick, easy, unbelievable. A true insider had delivered this code. Like grease through a goose. He snatched, downloaded, and as fast as he was able, he was out and off the net. Damn!
He let out a breath. He'd been sweating.
The file was a memo, he saw. Scientific gobbledygook, most of it. He skimmed it once and then went back to read carefully. Once, twice, three times before he really understood it. More gene-splicing, playing with DNA. Nothing new there. This time it was for cereal grains, he gathered, and the variation…
Would spread disease. To insects. Wiping out some pest species entirely.
So?
But after Australia, wasn't that illegal?
Truth cookie. Could he do it? Did he want to do it? And if he did do it, would it make him some kind of outlaw in the Sherwood Forest of the cyber underground?
Cultivate conformity, Harriet Lundeen had advised.
But she didn't have a secret, did she?
He'd sleep on it.
CHAPTER THREE
In the mornings he ran to run free. His favorite time was the stillness of predawn, when the city lights were fading and the sky was luminescent pearl before being bleached by full morning. The air was still stale from urban inversion but had always cooled by night's end, and the rhythmic pounding of his feet down the urban canyons put him in a trancelike state that lifted him out of his surroundings and into a different, imagined world: empty, clean, uncomplicated. It was the same fantasy world he chased in his hasty vacations and urgent weekends. He ran because he was calmed by the thump of his own pulse. He ran because exhaustion replenished him. He ran
"We need your help, Daniel. The world needs a truth cookie in your product. The world needs to wake up. We can make it safe, very safe. All of this is encrypted. Your electronic tracks erased. It's risk-free, if you trust us."
Trust who? Daniel felt a flush of tension. "I don't have the expertise." How could he slip a cookie into something like the Meeting Minder? It had to be impossible.
"We'll teach you."
"I don't have the truth."
"We'll show you the truth. Look at this. It needs to be known."
Some code flashed on his screen. It was a series of encryption keys, a path into some company's database. An address within it. They wanted him to look at some file.
"I don't know you," he protested, typing. I don't trust you, he thought. A faceless cowl, a challenge out of nowhere. Who was this guy?
But Spartacus was already gone.
The code hung on his screen like the grin of the Cheshire cat, taunting him. You chicken, Dyson?
He got up from his chair a moment and moved restlessly around his dim apartment, a cat prowling its cage. This was real, wasn't it? Not a vid fantasy but real people, doing real resistance, provoking the establishment. Questioning, challenging, free-thinking. But for what? What difference would it make? There were power struggles on the United Corporations board, yes, but the world was too comfortable to tolerate real change. People rose and fell, but the consortium of corporations that ran the world prevailed. No one wanted truth cookies. Not really. Except that everyone read them. Repeated them in whispers. Added them to the nagging doubts and list of jokes. And now he was being asked to be a part of it.
How had they found him?
But then he'd found them, hadn't he?
Daniel sat back down and began going through the gift of code. As he'd suspected, it was for a company. Something called GeneChem. Another bioengineering firm, it seemed, one of thousands. The numbers took him past its electronic doors, into its vaults, and then into its cabinet drawers. Stealthily, slyly, like a thief in the night. It was slick, easy, unbelievable. A true insider had delivered this code. Like grease through a goose. He snatched, downloaded, and as fast as he was able, he was out and off the net. Damn!
He let out a breath. He'd been sweating.
The file was a memo, he saw. Scientific gobbledygook, most of it. He skimmed it once and then went back to read carefully. Once, twice, three times before he really understood it. More gene-splicing, playing with DNA. Nothing new there. This time it was for cereal grains, he gathered, and the variation…
Would spread disease. To insects. Wiping out some pest species entirely.
So?
But after Australia, wasn't that illegal?
Truth cookie. Could he do it? Did he want to do it? And if he did do it, would it make him some kind of outlaw in the Sherwood Forest of the cyber underground?
Cultivate conformity, Harriet Lundeen had advised.
But she didn't have a secret, did she?
He'd sleep on it.
CHAPTER THREE
In the mornings he ran to run free. His favorite time was the stillness of predawn, when the city lights were fading and the sky was luminescent pearl before being bleached by full morning. The air was still stale from urban inversion but had always cooled by night's end, and the rhythmic pounding of his feet down the urban canyons put him in a trancelike state that lifted him out of his surroundings and into a different, imagined world: empty, clean, uncomplicated. It was the same fantasy world he chased in his hasty vacations and urgent weekends. He ran because he was calmed by the thump of his own pulse. He ran because exhaustion replenished him. He ran
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