John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

Smoke went on, “The third level of the Grid are the receivers, the public. The electronically enhanced collective unconscious. The important thing to remember is that while the Grid is made up of three levels, it’s all one system. And the third level dovetails back to feed into the first… It is a baseline, common-denominator system, in service of someone’s zero-sum game—except when it is used for something greater. It has the potential—as we have seen in the Internet—for a horrible abuse or a transcendent usage. It can be a sketch of our potential greatness. Let me just drop in this quote…” He shuffled through some papers, found the quote. “From Teilhard de Chardin: ‘In the perspective of a noogenesis, time and space become truly humanized—or rather super-humanized. Far from being mutually exclusive, the Universal and Personal… grow in the same directions and culminate simultaneously in each other.’”

Charlie blinked. “Noogenesis”?

There was only the downside of the Grid, so far as Charlie could see, on the big screen…

As if bemusedly sharing Charlie’s thought, Smoke paused and looked at the screen, shaking his head, smiling sadly. On the screen, a sex-com sniggered by, then a commercial for a new securicomp that monitored the entry of strangers into a subscribing neighborhood—delivery men, workmen of all kinds, would-be renters, shoppers: all were observed, digitized, analyzed. The camera/computer system looked for type-anomalies, such as racial variations, economic class variations, clothing style variations; a scaling up of type anomalies might mean the neighborhood was in danger, would send a signal for hyperalertness.

The neighborhood security team that used a TADS—Type Anomalies Discrimination System—protects its neighborhood in advance, the commercial suggested soothingly. The slogan: “TADS weeds out weirdos!”

“There you go,” Smoke said, tapping the words appearing at the bottom of the screen under the TADS ad: A Second Alliance International Security Corporation product…

“Jaysiz,” Charlie murmured.

“Yes,” Smoke said. “They are becoming ubiquitous.”

The screen flicked to a newsblip of the successful retaking of Vienna, and President Bester saying, “We’re making great strides! With your support we’ll win the war—and without recourse to nuclear weapons!”

Then: a ten-minute “Science Special” suggesting “new studies by experts would seem to indicate that interracial marriages create offspring who seem to be unusually vulnerable to disease or birth defect.” The study, of course, was a lie. And then came a five-minute evangelical program… and then a sitcom—which Smoke fast-forwarded through, using delay-programming, to show a white couple, Dan and Joanie Clifton, are annoyed by Mr. and Mrs. Wog, the Pakistani couple who’d moved in next door; whose overwhelming curry cooking smells and practice of defecating in the hallway give rise to a number of hilarious remarks on the part of Mr. Clifton… and then a public-service commercial informing the public that New-Soviet spies are rife in the tech centers, best not to speak to anyone you haven’t known for years…

“That sitcom is only available in Fundie regions,” Smoke remarked, “—parts of the South, Idaho, southern Washington State. It’s not syndicated in California, and other places where American minorities and progressives still have some power. But for how long? It’s available over the Internet, of course—as so much racist propaganda is…”

Smoke thoughtfully scratched the crow under the beak. “In the hands of the Second Alliance the Grid saturates the public with wave after wave of pseudo-information, each wave hitting all the local receiving centers, the cities, more or less simultaneously. There’s more, and coming faster, than ever before. Doesn’t matter if it’s a lie or not, it’s all information.

“People receive the information simultaneously, and they soak it up passively. If for example the government claims there’s a new strain of AIDS that you get only from talking to antiwar-activists, then fifty-seven percent of the people hooked into the Grid will believe the antiwar-activist-AIDS story implicitly, instantly. Everyone they run into has heard the same thing. They all got it at once. So it seems to confirm itself by its very instantaneous prevalence. Since no real substance exists in this hypothetical broadcast, there’s nothing much to stimulate questioning. There’s simply the basic bullshit story line, and ‘testimony’ from a few ‘experts’ the government keeps on tap for when it needs their tailor-made quotes to give the appearance of credibility. Maybe a visual flash of a chart to give us an impression that some serious study’s been done. And bang! everyone believes it. And it becomes ‘true’ for the public, as a kind of Consensus Reality develops from the instantaneousness and ubiquity of the story. That sort of thing makes the Grid a powerful tool for shaping society.

“And none of this was lost on Crandall and the other planners for the SA. The SA had the foresight to buy the world’s biggest PR outfit, Worldtalk.

“They’re still reasonably subtle in their use of the Grid, but they’re getting bolder. They’re blaming the depression on immigrants, non-Christians, the so-called ‘Zionist conspiracy’; and they can blame the war on the New-Soviet, of course. Although our intelligence indicates that the New-Soviet has been trying to broker a peace deal, an effort Mrs. Bester has ignored.” He looked at the crow—and smiled. The bird seemed to be listening to him raptly. “The public’s being programmed to be knee-jerk supportive of the government and, by extension, the SA, which, as a ‘private-sector’ security and peacekeeping force, is now operating under a government contract. All classes of the Caucasian public are being programmed to blame its ills on outsiders, immigrants, non-Caucasians. It’s being set up to give its backing to a race war.”

On the screen was a “public-service ad” warning that “visitors from other countries” have “inadvertently introduced” a series of new flu viruses recently, particularly one strain that may be fatal to children. Until the crisis is past, it might be best if your children played only with native-born Americans.

US Weather Service acid-rain alert, keep windows closed, don’t go out without goggles tonight.

Fallout shelter drills for all public schools announced tomorrow. Public service announcement: “Remember, harboring draft resisters or deserters is giving aid to the New-Soviets.” The announcement concludes with a slogan from the US Department of Public Information: “The only way to win the war is to win together! Warning: Illegal TV or radio transmissions will be traced! Perpetrators will be prosecuted! The underGrid is the underworld—don’t let criminals whisper in your ears!” Premiere of a new night-time drama, Ghetto Cop. Slogan: “He does what he has to.”

Smoke continued. “And there’s only one way to sensibly fight it. We break into the Grid, we reprogram it where we can, we use Jim Kessler’s antipropaganda software to force the Grid to reveal itself for what it is. We step up our input into the underGrid. We try to reach concerned journalists in the overGrid—sure, there are some. The Grid is really too vast for the SA or the government to control effectively. It’s more porous than they know. We can get into it. Jim Kessler’s going to be here…” He glanced at the wall clock. “…in just a few minutes, to train you in doing just that.”

A weary hour later, after Charlie’s fingers had begun to ache from tapping notes into his console, training was over for the night. Charlie rose to follow the others out of the room.