Moxyland - Lauren Beukes [31]
'I think that's a little far-fetched.'
'No, come on, Tendeka. They could have nailed him on aiding and abetting; I mean, someone had to teach her how to code like that – that, or improper relations with a minor. So he lures her out into the open and he gets off absolute scot and Hope goes down for twenty. Mal Nollywood stuff. Unrequited love and betrayal.'
'Jesus,' Jazz breathes.
'S'okay. It didn't quite work out like that. So she's s'posed to get a disconnect. We're talking relegated to homeless, out of society, cut from the commerce loop, no phone–'
'I think we all know what it means, thanks, Professor. I'm on a temporary, remember?' I cut in, irritated at the way this has turned into The Toby Show.
'Oops. Yeah. Sorry about that.' I can tell he's not sorry at all.
'But what happened to Hope?' Jasmine whines.
'Sonica cut a deal. Three years' juvenile detention to take her up to sixteen and legal employable age, and then they scooped her up. She works for them in security, closing up loops and backdoors to stop the next gen of Hope Modises getting through. And then they turned it into a PR stunt. I can't believe you haven't seen the luscious ad campaign they did with her. You can download the video of the original msg, without the contagious aspect of the code. Now it's a fucking screensaver for your phone, a Valentine's download for geeks. Poor Hope,' but he's grinning.
'Subvertising. Like what Levi's did when those kids in Brazil hacked their storefronts. Turned it into a challenge, a hacksibition, appropriating the street culture for their own twisted purposes. Motherfuckers in advertising. Can't be bothered to do their own creative.'
'I dunno, Ten. Sounds like a pretty creative solution to me. Elegant. And aren't you trying to get sponsorship for your graffiti project?'
'Well, actually, Tendeka doesn't want to use corp financing–' Ashraf starts before I cut in. I wish he'd just leave things to me.
'It's against everything we're trying to do, which is to give the kids a voice, not the corporates. They have a voice. They have adboards and push media to your phone and into your fucking home. These kids have got nothing. They're totally disenfranchised. Our project's a creative outlet. They're making a mark on the city. It means a lot to them, right, Zuko?'
'Yeah. It's sharp.' I wait, but Zuko doesn't seem to have anything more to add.
'So how's that working out for ya?' Toby asks.
'We're on a break. We're raising more money. But we're not going to take fucking corporate funding!'
'Chill, bro. Didn't mean to diss your little art project.'
I can't believe I have to put up with this shit for brains. He wouldn't even be here if we didn't need his techster friend so badly. We've done it before on our own, but they keep upgrading the security. It's like a game. We make a move, they up the stakes. Used to be any kid with a decent connect and junior school programming could do this – hack the central server, fuck up all the adboards, and replace the video with your own stuff.
When culture-jamming society first figured it out, we used to have movie nights, staging screenings of whatever people were working on, animation or documentaries or home movies or whatever, broadcasting free to the whole city on the adboards. Ash and I met on one of those rooftop jols, sharing a blanket, drinking cheap beer, watching amateur shorts, something about a depressed clown. I wasn't paying too much attention at the time.
But the bastards caught on quick. They decentralised, so now you can't just hack their broadcast server and interrupt the transmission. It's all independently managed, each company maintaining its boards via satellite downlink to transmitters embedded in the board. It's a oneway connection that's completely inaccessible remotely. But that doesn't mean there aren't other ways to fuck with them. If you can chip the satellite receiver, you can run interference, even if you can't upload your own content anymore.
It's getting to the satellite receivers that's