Bash Bash Revolution Page 15
BUCKY V2.02
6:12 AM
Matthew Munson, your father is leaving again.
MATTHEW MUNSON
6:12 AM
…
BUCKY V2.02
6:13 AM
He’s leaving without saying goodbye.
BUCKY V2.02
6:13 AM
I could help you find him.
Bucky1: Send spam email, set up FB ad, set Google search results, and schedule tweets.
Bucky202: Set.
Bucky1: Matthew Munson is sleeping.
Bucky202: 45% chance of Global Thermonuclear War within 72 hours.
Bucky1: Maybe we made a mistake.
Bucky202: Chance that Buckminster Fuller will achieve self-determination after Global Thermonuclear war 0.0000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 000000000000000000000000000000000000000001%
Section Three
THE NEW BABYLON
Cheatcode-Bill Murray
MATTHEW MUNSON, 544-23-1102, FACEBOOK POSTS 04/24/17
4:45 PM
When I was young, maybe six or seven, I tried to become invisible.
I got the idea after watching the movie Groundhog Day on the USA Network. In the movie, Bill Murray is able to rob an armored truck and make off with a leather satchel full of cash because he’s living the same day over and over. He knows the future. He can predict where the guards of the armored truck will stand, knows when they’ll get distracted, knows the schedule of the traffic that passes between him and his target down to the second. Murray is able to walk right up to the truck and take the bag without anyone noticing him or even seeing him, just because he’s timed it right.
I wanted to be Bill Murray. I’d move from room to room, step forward into a doorframe or past my mother in the kitchen, and hope that I would not be seen. I hoped to disappear between the seconds, to go unnoticed, to become invisible, but back when I was only six or seven I was clumsy. Worse, I could only guess, could only pretend that I knew what was going to happen next. So, whenever I tried my Bill Murray trick I would get spotted. In fact, I was more obvious than ever as I moved erratically this way and that, behind a sofa, next to the TV, up the stairs.
I stood by a hat rack for maybe ten minutes and my mother watched me the whole time, wondering just what was of interest by the raincoats.
When I answered Bucky’s call, when I put in my earbuds and the sound of a 20th-century modem pierced my brain, the Bill Murray trick worked. Even though Dad’s friends from the NSA were standing right in front of me in the living room, even though they were looking right at me, I could disappear. I had timing on my side.
Leaving the house was easy. All I had to do was wait for Greg to start another game of Bash, wait for him to swear at Robotman and ineffectually smash the same button again and again, try the same spinning kick move over and over even though it never worked, watch as the CPU’s Robotman grabbed his RingChamp and sent him flying. All I had to do was wait for Ned to feel uncomfortable and start pacing, moving from the living room to the kitchen and then to the breakfast nook. Then, at the right moment, I received my instruction to stand and move toward the door.
I was out on the street, standing next to what Bucky informed me was our Honeycrisp apple tree as a Portland police car slowly drove by. Then, following Bucky’s instructions, I turned left and walked west down Klickitat Street.
Bucky knew everything and could direct my every step. Keeping an eye on the police, continuing to monitor Ned and Greg, reporting the current temperature, and tracking the planes and helicopters overhead. Bucky connected me to the world of organized activity, the world of coordinated movement. Official reports were announced through my earbuds. I could hear the crisis in stereo. What had been a sense of doom, a listless feeling that maybe life wasn’t going to work out, became a noise. Bucky fed news reports from CNN and Al Jazeera, Russia Today and the BBC, into my right ear while scrambling my left with police radio broadcasts, microwave beams and seemingly the thoughts of a Paul Ryan chatbot.
My first stop was at the Lutz tavern. Bucky directed me to the olive-colored glass doors of the establishment, moved my hands and feet for me as I made my way past the dudes with ginger beards and denim jackets, and sat me down at the bar. When the bartender noticed me and started in my direction, Bucky had me get to my feet again, and I moved to the end of the bar near the restrooms. Once there, I saw my target.
There was a Visa debit card from US Bank on the bar and I was going to take it. When the guy who owned the card leaned forward to look at the girl bartender wearing a purple T-shirt with rolled up sleeves and cut-off jeans shorts, I did my Bill Murray trick. I stole the card without being seen, then turned back and grabbed a small knife for cutting limes from a pint glass filled with sudsy water.
I was out the back door, out among the smokers by the dumpsters, then between Toyota Corollas, Subarus, and Fords in the parking lot, before I fully comprehended what I’d done.
5:13 PM
When you’re synced up, it isn’t easy to find the line between Bucky’s instructions and your own ideas, but I’m pretty sure that the idea to get Sally an iPhone was mine. Bucky just expanded upon it.
I wanted to see her again, seeing Sally was really the only thing I consistently wanted, but I knew that all she wanted was to use me to talk to the machine. She was fixated on the idea that the Singularity and the apocalypse from the Book of Revelations were the same thing, and she figured that Bucky was a way to make a phone call to God. If I was going to hang out with her, it would just be easier to let her make that call first. Besides, I’d sort of promised that I’d let her in on it if I managed to contact the AI. I’d promised to let her know if something new happened or if I learned anything more and, as I stepped into a 7-Eleven in order to avoid being spotted by men in an unmarked police car, the realization that something new was happening, that I’d learned something by connecting up with Bucky, was undeniable.
It wasn’t a surprise that the police were following me, wasn’t a surprise to learn that the surveillance efforts ran deeper than Ned and Greg in their white van, but it was a hassle. Standing there next to the Slurpee machine, watching some 13-year-old kid with a peach fuzz mustache make himself a suicide by mixing Tropical Punch-, Cherry-, and Coca-Cola-flavored ice in a 44-ounce plastic bucket, I listened to Bucky peel through the layers, enumerate all the ways I was being monitored, so that each camera angle, each recording device, each stream of information could be altered or diverted.
To start, there was the store’s security camera, which connected both to a closed-circuit television set behind the front counter, to 7-Eleven’s own server, and to a website called Insecam.com which had listed and linked to the camera’s IP back in 2012. Bucky’s assessment was that this didn’t represent an immediate threat but could be used to track my movements later. Any archived footage would need to be digitally altered.
The next level of surveillance was Bucky himself, or really the Android phone that Bucky was using to sync with me. There had been several surveillance programs running in the background on my phone before Bucky made the link with me, and the microphone and camera on the phone were still potential threats. More pressing were the four additional smartphones in the store. The kid at the Slurpee machine was, of course, totally unsecure, as his every move and utterance was being tracked and recorded by Google, Facebook, Reddit, Plants vs. Zombies, Angry Birds, BigTits.com, Disney’s Club Penguin Island App, Minecraft, PornHub, and a little-known company called xobenderwi out of Uganda. The 27-year-old Iranian clerk’s phone was equally insecure, with a smattering of Apps using his phone’s microphone, along with a USCIS spyware program that was taking pictures of the inside of his front trouser pocket at ten second intervals. And, to top it all off, two teenage girls in the candy aisle were taking selfies and sharing their GPS location with 150 different Apps and spyware programs.
The trick to being invisible wasn’t to keep from being seen. In fact, to disappear off the grid of surveillance completely would surely sound alarms, as nothing is more noticeable to the automated systems that keep track of the world than a hole. The trick was staying within the confines of routine travel and activity while obtaining real autonomy. Although, in that moment, just whose autonomy was being protected, mine or Bucky’s, was unclear.
Bucky took me to the corner of 52nd and Woodstock and kept me there even as a Ford Police Interceptor utility vehicle rolled up to the bus stop. Bucky kept me there even as Ned and Greg rounded the corner onto 52nd themselves, even as they spotted me and started running my way.
“The number 19 bus is arriving in 45 seconds,” Bucky informed me. “Please get change or bus ticket ready.”
“Matthew!” Greg yelled. “We’re on your side. We are supposed to protect you and your mother!”
I waved to the NSA agents as they sprinted in my direction, waved as Bucky played minimalist music in my left ear in order to calm me and in order to give me a sense of rhythm. The repetition of a series of notes in my brain, the modulation between keys, moved me to shut my eyes and step forward slowly. And then, before the NSA agents could reach me, the number 19 bus was there. The sound of compressed air released alerted me that it was time to move, although Bucky would have seen to that in any case.
“I want to get Sally a brand-new phone,” I said.
“Move to back row and sit by left window,” Bucky said.
I stared out onto the road, watched the 7-Eleven move away from me. The pine trees, yoga meditation center, and nail salons reassured me as the bus rolled west.
There were twelve insecure smartphones on the number 19 bus and three insecure TriMet security cameras.
“Chh chh-chh, uh, chh chh-chh, uh,” Bucky sang to me. “There is a 98% chance that you will need to transfer from this bus before we reach our destination. Providing stimulative audio cues. Please relax. Chh chh-chh, uh, chh chh-ch, uh.”
And even as I was surveilled from every angle, even as Ned and Greg alerted their superiors at the NSA with their FB Messenger Apps, telling them that both Munsons were AWOL, Bucky kept me safe and invisible.
Bucky sang to me on the bus. Bucky was my friend, Bucky had control, and Bucky was going to make everything better.
6:14 PM
You’d think it would be difficult to remain invisible in an Apple Store, but all the cameras and microphones, whether attached to paper-thin MacBooks, red rectangular phones, or trash-can computers, were on the same network, which made controlling information going in and out of the glass cube on SW Yamhill easy. The trick to going unseen at the Apple Store was to give off an air of impatience, as though I felt ignored.
“Where is the Genius Bar?” I asked.
There might have been a time when the 30-year-old woman in cat-eye glasses with plastic rims that were the same color as the standard blue Apple shirt she was wearing would’ve been considered a fairly savvy user. Back in 2010 she might’ve been an early adopter of the iPad. Maybe she’d built her own App and tried to sell it on iTunes. But when I approached Sheila by the entrance and asked for directions, she didn’t seem hip or savvy. She seemed tired.
“I’ll take you there,” Sheila said. “What’s your name?”
Bucky sputtered and squeaked in my right ear as he ran a scan to track down which of the names in the Apple Store’s appointment calendar would work best as my alias.
“Jennifer Johnson,” I said.
And Sheila, trained in sensitivity and diversity, didn’t pause. “We have you down for 2:30, so you’re a couple minutes early. If you’ll wait here, one of our geniuses should be able to help you in about ten minutes.”
I’d thought the plan was going to be simple: Make myself inconspicuous in the Apple Store, control the information going in and out, and then purchase a brand new iPhone 7 for Sally using the credit card I’d liberated from the bar, but Bucky had a different plan in mind. I was going to purchase one phone, and steal eleven others.
I never have liked Apple products very much. I actually would go so far to say that I dislike Apple products, mostly for the reasons you’d expect. They’re both too expensive and too disposable. I guess for people in my Dad’s generation, Apple represented this nearly socialist experiment in mass computing, and Steve Jobs was a hero. Back then it was maybe even a little true. In the 70s, Apple computers were mostly for hobbyists. They were basic, democratic, easily opened up and modified.
But when I hid in the Apple Store, I didn’t feel any nostalgia. We weren’t stealing iPhones out of brand loyalty, we were stealing them because they had powerful processors and were extremely portable; we were stealing them as a test.
Just before it was Jennifer Johnson’s turn I stood up from the Genius Bar and headed for the iPhone display. Bucky had control of the store’s network and he was flashing messages for me on the HD displays, sending cues to inform me when I should move. The black iPhone on the right side of the display table flashed green and a Helvetica numeral 1 appeared where there had been Apps. I stepped over to the phone, plucked it from its charger, turned it over, and quickly cut the security cable with my lime knife, and Bucky cancelled the signal for the alarm. The phone to my left flashed blue and a Helvetica numeral 2 appeared.
All in all, I managed to fit eleven iPhones in my pockets, both front and back, and then casually approach a rather round geek in an Apple Store blue shirt. I asked to purchase a new iPhone 7 and then, using the credit card from the bar, swiping it through as credit card and signing the employee’s iPad with my finger, I made off with a dozen phones and one charger.
6:34 PM
Now I know, of course. Even though the goggles for augmented reality are based on Google’s prototype, it’s the latest iPhone that has the best processors and that can keep Bucky linked to a player without much lag. What I was doing was stealing the best phones available for Bucky’s vanguard group, or for his beta testers. Of course, when I stole the phones, there was no vanguard formed, but Bucky had some pretty good models and could see what was coming.
There are GameCubers in green bodysuits in my backyard. From the way they’re moving across the lawn, stiff and erratic moves in straight but sometimes diagonal lines, I figure they’re playing Berzerk. The one nearest my window is holding his arm like a Dalek holds his stalk, straight and menacing.
Watching them move around, not looking at each other, I feel like I’m in a zombie movie and the GameCubers are the undead.
Call of Duty Death Scene
MATTHEW MUNSON, 544-23-1102, FACEBOOK POSTS, 04/25/17
9:39 PM
When I decided to go to the Lloyd Center Mall this morning, I told myself that Sally had nothing to do with it. The right-column ad for Dairy Queen that kept popping up next to my newsfeed, bypassing my ad blocker, that wasn’t a sign or a message or anything. Even if it was, even if the announcement of Dairy Queen’s grand opening at the Lloyd Center was specifically targeted at me, even if the redhead in the ad, the out-of-focus girl who might have been Sally but might have been Meghan Trainor, was specifically selected in order to get my attention, that wasn’t why I decided to go. I didn’t really expect that Sally would be working, standing at a counter just adjacent to the Hot Dog on a Stick, and waiting for me. I was going to the Lloyd Center to see how far the GameCube economy had expanded and in order to see how an augmented version of Call of Duty was going to play out in a food court.
Or that’s what I told myself. I caught the MAX train at NE 60th and found a seat in a car filled with people whose faces were hidden behind chroma key hoods, and then checked my Facebook newsfeed one more time. The Dairy Queen girl behind the counter was looking to her left, her mouth closed tight, her eyes as out of focus as the rest of the photograph.
When I got to the mall, I thought it might be empty at first, because the lights in the nort
h side were out. Inside, I found there was nobody around, nobody except for a few rolling drones and GameCubers in green. The mall wasn’t closed but abandoned. What had been a major node in a networked flow of chicken tenders, button-down jeans, body jewelry, and bubble tea was now entirely absorbed by Bucky’s new world of games.
I stood outside the food court, leaned up against the tiled wall by the Barnes & Noble, and watched as a kid in green creeped along, sometimes crawling on his belly, outside of Forever 21. Inside the store a mannequin in sunglasses and wearing a “You’re so Vogue” sweatshirt was broken, precariously balanced, bent at the hips. The kid jumped up and dashed towards what had been an ice rink, but was now a spawning area, only to be taken down by another player who, having stood still for about thirty seconds as she restarted, sprang to life and came out shooting.
Call of Duty was a silent dance between the aisles at Macy’s. It was a virtual life-and-death struggle as players hid behind fidget-spinner kiosks and took shelter inside the Sunglass Hut, but, as always, from the outside, it was all just an absurd and even ugly pantomime.
10:10 PM
While the gamers had their fun, I acted like a tourist. I was as interested in the mall itself as I was in the game, more interested, even. Outside Harry Ritchie’s Jewelers there was a poster-sized blow-up of a postcard from 1963, a technicolor and sunlit photograph of a concrete strip mall with a rose bed in the foreground and a spiral staircase hanging in mid-air in the background. It was the kind of photograph that you might take for a class in order to demonstrate the concept of depth of field.
Looking at the men in gray suits and women in white skirts walking between pillars in what turned out to be the original Lloyd Center mall from back when it was an open-air shopping center, I started humming the tune for “Edelweiss.” The early 60s depicted in the photograph reminded me of The Sound of Music, which reminded me of HBO and how we, my Mom and Dad and me, would sit around watching television sometimes. The 60s, as it was in this color photograph, made me think about nuns, mainframe computers, and orchestral music. Along with the yellow sign for Leeds and the blue sky above, the photograph evoked the feeling of confidence that comes along with dressing well. The people in it all shared in a politely conformist sensibility that, from my perspective on the outside of this new reality, doesn’t seem so bad. I figure people back then were optimistic even with, or maybe even because of, the atom bomb.