Kim Stanley Robinson - Sixty Days and Counting

Frank felt this solidarity also on the premises of the National Science Foundation, where he and many of his colleagues were trying to deal with the climate problem. To do so, they had to keep trying to understand the environmental effects of:

1) the so-far encouraging but still ambiguous results of their North Atlantic salting operation;

2) the equally ambiguous proliferation of a genetically modified ‘fast tree lichen’ that had been released by the Russians in the Siberian forest;

3) the ongoing rapid detachment and flotation of the coastal verge of the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet;

4) the ongoing introduction of about nine billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year, ultimate source of many other problems;

5) the ensuing uptake of some three billion tons of carbon into the oceans;

6) the continuing rise of the human population by some hundred million people a year; and, lastly,

7) the cumulative impacts of all these events, gnarled together in feedback loops of all kinds.

It was a formidable list, and Frank worked hard on keeping his focus on it.

But he was beginning to see that his personal problems – especially Caroline’s disappearance, and the election-tampering scheme she had been tangled in – were not going to be things he could ignore. They pressed on his mind.

She had called the Khembali embassy that night, and left a message saying that she was okay. Earlier, in Rock Creek Park, she had told him she would be in touch as soon as she could.

He had therefore been waiting for that contact, he told himself. But it had not come. And Caroline’s ex, who had also been her boss, had been following her that night. He had seen that Caroline knew he was following her, and had seen also that Caroline had received help in escaping from him.

So now this man might very well still be looking for her, and might also be looking for that help she had gotten, as another way of hunting for her.

Or so it seemed. Frank couldn’t be sure. He sat at his desk at NSF, staring at his computer screen, trying to think it through. He could not seem to do it. Whether it was the difficulty of the problem, or the inadequacy of his mentation, he could not be sure; but he could not do it.

So he went to see Edgardo. He entered his colleague’s office and said, ‘Can we talk about the election result? What happened that night, and what might follow?’

‘Ah! Well, that will take some time to discuss. And we were going to run today anyway. Let’s talk about it while en route.’

Frank took the point: no sensitive discussions to take place in their offices. Surveillance an all-too-real possibility. Frank had been on Caroline’s list of surveilled subjects, and so had Edgardo.

In the locker room on the third floor they changed into running clothes. At the end of that process Edgardo took from his locker a security wand that resembled those used in airports; Caroline had used one like it. Frank was startled to see it there inside NSF, but nodded silently and allowed Edgardo to run it over him. Then he did the same for Edgardo.

They appeared to be clean of devices.

Then out on the streets.

As they ran, Frank said, ‘Have you had that thing for long?’

‘Too long, my friend.’ Edgar veered side to side as he ran, warming up his ankles in his usual extravagant manner. ‘But I haven’t had to get it out for a while.’

‘Don’t you worry that having it there looks odd?’

‘No one notices things in the locker room.’

‘Are our offices bugged?’

‘Yes. Yours, anyway. The thing you need to learn is that coverage is very spotty, just by the nature of things. The various agencies that do this have different interests and abilities, and very few even attempt total surveillance. And then only for crucial cases. Most of the rest is what you might call statistical in nature, and covers different parts of the data-sphere. You can slip in and out of such surveillance.’

‘But – these so-called total information awareness systems, what about them?’

‘It depends. Mostly by total information they mean electronic data. And then also you might be chipped in various ways, which would give your GPS location, and perhaps record what you say. Followed, filmed – sure, all that’s possible, but it’s expensive. But now we’re clear. So tell me what’s up?’

‘Well – like I said. About the election results, and that program I gave you. From my friend. What happened?’

Edgardo grinned under his moustache. ‘We foxed that program. We forestalled it. You could say that we un-stole the vote in Oregon, right in the middle of the theft.’

‘We did?’

‘Apparently so. The program was a stochastic tilt engine, that had been installed in some of Oregon and Washington’s voting machines. My friends figured that out and managed to write a disabler, and to get it introduced at the very last minute, so there wasn’t any time for the people who had installed the tilter to react to the change. From the sounds of it, a very neat operation.’

Frank ran along feeling a glow spread through him as he tried to comprehend it. Not only the election, de-rigged and made honest – not only Phil Chase elected by a cleaned-up popular and electoral vote – but his Caroline had proved true. She had risked herself and come through for the country; for the world, really. And so –

Maybe she would come through for him too.

This train of thought led him through the glow to a new little flood of fear for her.

Edgardo saw at least some of this on his face, apparently, for he said, ‘So your friend is the real thing, eh?’

‘Yes.’

‘It could get tricky for her now,’ Edgardo suggested. ‘If the tweakers try to find the leakers. As we used to say at DARPA.’

‘Yeah,’ Frank said, his pulse rate rising at the thought.

‘You’ve sent a warning?’

‘I would if I could.’

‘Ah!’ Edgardo was nodding. ‘Gone away, has she?’

‘Yes,’ Frank said; and then it was all pouring out of him. He found himself telling Edgardo the whole story, of how they had met and what had followed. This was something he had never managed to do with anyone, not even Rudra or Anna, and now it felt as if some kind of hydrostatic pressure had built up inside him, his silence like a dam that had now failed and let forth a flood.

It took a few miles to tell. The meeting in the stuck elevator, the unsuccessful hunt for her, the sighting of her on the Potomac during the flood, the brief phone call with her – her subsequent call – their meetings, their – affair.

And then, her revealing the surveillance program she was part of, in which Frank and so many others, including Edgardo, were being tracked and evaluated in some kind of virtual futures market, in which investors, some of them computer programs, were making speculative investments, as in any other futures markets, but this time dealing in scientists doing certain kinds of biotech research.

And then how she had had to run away on election night, and how on that night he had helped her to evade her husband and his companions, who were now clearly correlated with the attempted election theft.

Edgardo bobbed along next to him as he told the tale, nodding at each new bit of information, lips pursed tightly, head tilted to the side. It was like confessing to a giant praying mantis.

‘So,’ he said at last. ‘Now you’re out of touch with her?’

‘That’s right. She said she’d call me, but she hasn’t.’

‘But she will have to be very careful, now that her husband knows that you exist.’

‘Yes. But – will he be able to identify who I am, do you think?’

‘I think that’s very possible, if he has access to her work files. Do you know if he does?’