Vox Mentis

No, just make a crack about how you'd be happy to go into Broken Hill as long as it's warmer than here.

You would, but there's a reason the kid's the one going in and not you. "Why are you the one they're sending in?"

"I'm the best there is, defensively," says the kid. "I mean, not to boast. But that's why I'm here. I was selected because I can't be compromised. There's not going to be a problem."

"You realize you're betting your life on that."

"I realize it."

You glance at him. Twenty-one, you think. "Who chose you? Thoreau?"

"I have had the honor of speaking with Thoreau, yes."

"You don't have to do this."

The kid looks at you. Give me a sign, you think, and we'll blow right by Broken Hill, Campbell, keep going until we reach an airport. By sundown we'll be a country away. You ever think about quitting, Campbell? Just walking away? And let me ask you something else: have you noticed there's something wrong with Thoreau? Like something dead? Notice that?

The kid turns away. "You've been in the desert too long, Eliot."

You watch the endless road. "You're right about that," you say.

~

You drive up to the chain-link fence and kill the engine. You sit in silence, looking at the signs. CONTAMINATION. TOXIC. TRESPASS. DEATH. Skulls and thick red lines. The heat presses in like a hand. "They're words, aren't they?" says the kid. "Fear words." He unbuckles. "I need to get out of this car."

Outside is no cooler but at least the air is moving, stirring dust and sand. The road is blocked with a snarl of razor wire. To the left and right, the chain-link fence stretches away, signs flapping every few hundred feet. A few scrubby bushes protrude from the red soil. This continues as far as you can see.

You have wire cutters in the trunk, just in case, but nothing has changed since last time: the wire loops across the road but isn't secured. It doesn't need to be. The kid is right: it's the words that keep people out. You drag the wire from the road.

The kid is trying to wrap his linen jacket around his head. "I have a hat in the back," you say. "Take that."

"I'm okay."

"Take the hat." You open the back door and retrieve the cap and a bottle of water.

"Fine. Thanks." The kid hams the cap on his head. The peak says THE THUNDER FROM DOWN UNDER. You'd picked it up from a street vendor in Adelaide. "How do I look?"

Review safety procedures!

"You have a satellite phone?"

"Yep."

"Call me."

"It works. I checked at the airport. I'll call you when I get into town."

"Call me now."

The kid produces his phone and pokes at it. Your phone trills.

"Okay?" says the kid.

"You have a backup battery."

"I do."

"And your main is full?"

"It's fine."

"Is it full?"

"Look." The kid shows you the screen. "See the little battery? I know how to use a phone."

"Call me as soon as you can no longer see me clearly. Then keep the line open. If the call drops, keep trying me until you get through."

"Will do."

"What's your set?"

"What?"

"Is it ninety-three?"

The kid's face blanks. It's how they train them. The kid's thinking about something else: something happy, something sad, something traumatic; only he knows. It's supposed to make him unreadable, by adding noise to his facial expression.

"You're a ninety-three."

"Shit," says the kid. "You're not supposed to do that. Why'd you do that?"

"For your protection."

"It doesn't matter. I can't be compromised. You want to try me? Go ahead."

You consider it. You don't doubt that the kid is good. But he's probably done most of his work in a controlled environment. If you jump him, put a gun in his mouth, scream words, well, that's not the same.

"Don't worry about me," says the kid. "I'm good to go."

Make sure your gun's operational. Last argument of kings and all that.

You palm your gun, checking the clip, testing the chamber. All is good."Don't take any risks. Anything looks wrong, don't investigate. Just walk away. We don't have to do everything today."

The kid adjusts his DOWN UNDER cap. He thinks you're crazy, of course. "Well, I'm going to do this."

You nod. "Good luck."

"Heh," says the kid. "Thanks." He steps around the razor wire and begins to walk up the road.

~

With distance, the kid's body shimmers in the heat haze rising out of the blacktop. Soon he's hard to make out at all, just another twisting current of air. You stand with a hand shielding your face from the sun, watching.

Your cell phone rings.

"Thanks for the cap," says the kid. "Glad I've got it now."

"You're welcome."

"I have seriously never been this hot."

"Can you see the town's outskirts?"

"Not yet."

"Should be close."

"Yeah, I know. I have the maps by heart."

You fall silent. The sun beats down on your head. You should retreat to the car. In a few minutes. You'll wait until the kid reaches the town.

Tell us (each other) more about Woolf

"You used to teach her at the Academy. Virginia Woolf. That's what I heard. Is that true?" The kid is panting a little. "We have to spend an hour on the phone, Eliot; we may as well talk. Jesus." He blows air. "This is so ridiculously hot." You hear him take a swig from the water bottle.

"Yes, I taught Woolf."

"Did you see it coming? At all, I mean? Did you ever get the sense she might..."

"Might what?"

"Go ballistic," says the kid. "Kill a whole town. I don't mean to insult your observation skills, which are, clearly, very good. I just wonder how you can miss something like that. You know? It wasn't just you. It was everyone. We're supposed to know people."

"There's a risk in training anyone. In Woolf's case, her potential seemed to justify it." You shrug, although there's no one to see you. "We were wrong."

"I never met her. She'd left by the time I started." He coughs. "She'd been kicked out, I mean. Banished. Whatever. It's really dusty. The wind... I think I can see the refinery."

"Keep your eyes open."

The kid laughs, which turns into another cough. "Seriously, you're making me nervous for no reason. There's nobody in here."

You say nothing.

"Do you know what I do? In the organization? I'm in Digital. Web services. You know?"

"Not really."

"You should. This is where everything is going. Let me tell you about it. Bring you up
to speed."

"Fine," you say.

"Well, don’t humor me. I don’t care. I’m just offering you an inside look at what Thoreau himself has called, quote, the greatest attack vector since print, end quote."

"Fine."

"The organization is changing, Eliot. It’s not newspapers and TV anymore. That stuff
is old school. Obsolete. And you older guys, if you don’t watch out, you’ll be obsolete with it. You don’t want to be obsolete, do you?"

"No."

"No. So let me help you out." The kid pants for awhile. "The key to the Web is it’s interactive. That’s the difference. Online, someone visits your site, you can have a little poll there. It says, 'Hey, what do you think about the tax cuts?' And people click and set themselves. First advantage right there. You’re not just proselytizing, speaking into the void. You’re getting data back. But here’s the really clever part. Your site isn’t static. It’s dynamically generated. Do you know what that means?"

"No."

"It means the site looks different to different people. Let’s say you chose the poll option that said you’re in favor of tax cuts. Well there’s a cookie on your machine now, and when you look at the site again, the articles are about how the government is wasting your money. The site is dynamically selecting content based on what you want. I mean, not what you want. What will piss you off. What will engage your attention and reinforce your beliefs, make you trust the site. And if you
said you were against tax cuts, we’ll show you stories of Republicans blocking social
programs or whatever. It works every which way. Your site is made of mirrors, reflecting everyone’s thoughts back at them. That’s pretty great, right?"

"It’s great."

"And we haven’t even started talking about keywords. This is just the beginning. Third major advantage: People who use a site like this tend to ramp up their dependence on it. Suddenly all those other news sources, the ones that aren't framing every story in terms of the user's core beliefs, they start to seem confusing and strange. They start to seem biased, actually, which is kind of funny. So now you’ve got a user who not only trusts you, you’re his major source of information
on what’s happening in the world. Boom, you own that guy. You can tell him
whatever you like and no one’s contradicting you. He’s-" The kid sucks in breath. "Aw, shit."

"What is it?"

"I think I see a body."

"You didn't know there would be bodies?"

"I knew. Of course I knew. But knowing and seeing are two... aw, geez. That's disgusting."

"They've been in the sun for four months."

"Yeah. Clearly."

"Is it just bone or...?"

"It's mostly bone," says the kid. "That's the disgusting part." For a while you hear nothing but his breathing. "Yecch. They're all over."

"You were telling me about Digital."

"How do you think they died?" His voice sounds muffled, as if he's talking through his sleeve. "Did the bareword blow out their fucking brains? Like aneurysms? Because it doesn't look like the died from aneurysms."

"Why not?"

"They're in clumps. Like they dragged themselves into groups. Then died."

You're silent.

"So... yeah, Digital." The kid's voice wavers. "Fourth advantage. We can whisper. A problem with old media has always been that we can't control who's watching. There's self-selection - people don't tune in for shows that rub against their beliefs - but you still get people from the wrong set watching. And they think you're peddling bullshit, of course, because you are, and sometimes the make a big deal out of that, and it feeds back to the target set. Then you have message bleeding. In Digital, that problem goes away. You can say things to a user and no one else can hear, because it's dynamically generated for that user. The next user, the site looks different. End result, you get people from different sets and they agree on nothing, literally nothing, except the site is a great source of unbiased information." He takes a breath. "I'm passing houses. Flat, ugly houses."

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Fine. Just hot."

"Take a rest if you need it."

"Why do you think they're in groups?"

"I don't know."

"You think they could be families? Like... they had time to find their loved ones?"

"Maybe."

"I don't think that's it. Something about the way... I don't know. But I don't think so." Something scrapes against the phone. "I need a drink."

"Rest."

The kid gulps water. "No. I want to get this done." Time passes. "So... that's Digital. Pretty great, huh?"

"It makes me wonder why we're bothering with anything else."

"Heh. Yeah. Well, we have a problem with unidentified users. Someone visits our site for the first time, and we have no idea who they are. We don't know what to show them. We can make guesses, based on where they are geographically, and the software they're using. But that's suboptimal. We're getting better. You know about social networking?"

"No."

"You are... you need to get into this stuff, Eliot. It's the future. Everyone's making pages for themselves. Imagine a hundred million people clicking polls and typing in their favorite TV shows and products and political leanings, day after day. It's the biggest data profile ever. And it's voluntary. That's the funny part. People resist a census, but give them a profile page and they'll spend all day telling you who they are. Which is... good... for us... obviously..."

"What is it?"

"There's a... ah, it's okay."

"What is it?"

"Gas station. Place is burned out. Cars all over. And one is... yeah, one is upside down. That's... uh... not bad, huh, Eliot? A word that can flip cars?" He laughs, the pitch high. "That's some pretty fucking impressive neurolinguistics, wouldn't you say?"

"Are there bodies?"

"Of course there are bodies! I'm fucking knee-deep in bodies! Just assume there are bodies unless I tell you otherwise!"

"Understood."

He pants. "I'm not knee-deep. I'm... sorry, I'm exaggerating. But there are a lot. A real lot." He swallows over and over. "How could there be so many? I mean, what did she do? How could she kill everyone? Fuck!" He pauses, breathing heavy. "I can see the hospital. It's just up the road. The road that's fucking full of bodies."

Any words of wisdom for Campbell here?