Distraction - Bruce Sterling [175]
Kevin flipped open the first cigar box. It was full of pinned audio bugs, with neat handwritten labels. “You know how hard it is to fully debug a facility? It’s technically impossible, that’s how hard. There aren’t any working ‘sweeps’ or ‘monitors’ for bugs—that’s all crap! Any decent bug basically can’t be detected, except by a physical search. So that’s what I’ve been doing. I round up big gangs of Moderators with nothing better to do, and we go over every conceivable surface with fine-tooth combs. These bugs are like pubic crabs, they’re a goddamn social disease. I’ve found bugs in here that go back fourteen and fifteen years. I made a special collection! Just look!”
“Very impressive.”
Kevin flipped his cigar box shut and pointed at it solemnly. “You know what that is? It’s evil, that’s what it is. It’s bad, it’s just plain evil of us to do this to ourselves. We have no decency as a people and a nation, Oscar. We went too far with this technology, we lost our self-respect. Because this is media, man. It’s evil, prying, spying media. But we want it and use it anyway, because we think we’ve got to be informed. We’re compelled to pay total attention to everything. Even things we have no goddamn right or business paying any attention to.”
Oscar said nothing. He wasn’t about to stop Kevin while he was in a confessional mood.
“So I got rid of everybody else’s bugs. And I installed my own. Because I’m finally the hacker who became the superuser. I didn’t just crack the computers here. I’ve cracked this whole environment. I can access anything that goes on in here, anytime that I want. I’m a cop. But I’m more than a cop. I mean, being a cop would be traditional—a white Anglo guy imposing his idea of order on the restless natives, hell, every city in America was just like that once. And man, I was thrilled to do it. I loved myself, I thought I was magic. It’s just amazingly interesting, like watching other people having sex. But you know, if you do that sixty or seventy times, it gets old. It just does.”
“Does it really?”
“Oh yeah. And it has a price. I haven’t gotten laid since I met you! I don’t dare! Because I’m the Secret Master Policeman. I scare the crap out of any decent woman. Indecent women have their own agenda when they have sex with the secret police. And besides, I just don’t have any time for my own needs! The Super Master Inquisitor is way too busy with everybody else’s. I’ve got to run word scans on all my verbal tapes. Every time there’s an incident somewhere I’ve got to peel the videos back. I got bugs with their batteries running down, people are findin’ ’em and stepping on them. There’s goblins lurking in the woods. There’s spooks flying overhead. There’s drunks, lost children, petty thieves. There’s fire safety and car accidents. And every last one of those things is my problem. All of it. All of it!”
“Kevin, you’re not planning to leave me, are you?”
“Leave you? Man, I was born for this. I got my every wish. It’s just that it’s turning me into a monster. That’s all.”
“Kevin, you don’t look all that bad to me. Things aren’t that bad here. This isn’t chaos. The situation’s holding.”
“Sure, I’m keeping order for you. But it’s not law and order, Oscar. There’s order, but there is no law. We let things get out of control. We let it get all emergent and unpredictable. We let it fall back to ad hoc. I’m keeping order here because I’m a secret tyrant. I’ve got everything but legitimacy. I’m a spy and a usurper, and I have no rules. I have no brakes. I have no honor.”
“There isn’t anyplace for me to get you any of that.”
“You’re a politician, Oscar. But you gotta be something better than just that. You have got to be a statesman. You’ve got to find some way to make me some honor.”
A phone rang in the office. Kevin groaned, picked up a laptop, and ran a trace with a function key. “Nobody is supposed to have this number,” he complained.
“I thought you had