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New story of mine: TV Watches You

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I'm writing a new short story and I thought I'd post it. It's original, entirely taking place in what could be the US in a few years (if some things went wrong.) It's several pages, so I'll be serializing it; however, it's not "chapters" or "episodes", just the story cut into sensible-sized chunks. Don't worry, I'll be continuing with my history and Zelda fanfic (when I have time to log on, since I'm going away for a week+.) This is just another thing on the side.

Comments/constructive criticism welcome.

So, without further ado...

"TV watches you"

In America, you watch television. In Soviet Russia, television watches you!

Nory stuck her phone past the side of the building and snapped a picture in each direction. Pulling it back, she examined the image on the tiny screen. Busy city street, peds, bikes, a couple hycars- no infocops. All clear. Pocketing the cell phone- her old model was illegal because of security issues- Nory rounded the corner, jamming her left hand into a pocket and flipping through songs on her Pod with the other, looking like your average bad-attitude teenager. Maybe more of a bad attitude than usual really-electric-blue dyed hair, multiple earrings, dark clothes, dog tag necklace, scuffed sneakers, leave-me-alone vibe. None of her clothes had logos on them; all the good brands had been outlawed and all the legal brands reflected the government's preference for conformist, brain-washed, tech-illiterate citizens. Nory was none of those.

She slouched down the street, avoiding eye contact, scuffing her shoes. Every few steps the slouch changed slightly to confuse the gait-recognition programs running in the security cameras on the street corners. As she passed one such camera Nory suppressed the urge to flip it the bird. It would be fun for the few seconds before the police picked her up for dissent, and it wouldn't do to be brought into the station and go through a pocket check. The infocops would be involved. At the thought of the infocops Nory's scowl deepened- fracking government and their Information Police Services. Nory enjoyed cheating their rules.

Down the escalator to the subway Nory went. She wasn't carrying a bag- all her stuff was in her many pockets- so she didn't have to go through the x-ray line, just the metal detector. As usual the guard on duty was dumb- didn't notice that Nory's earrings and dog tag should've set off the alarm. It got them every time, a little signal in the dog tag and the machine was oblivious to the keys, phone, and assorted gadgets in Nory's pockets. Which was good, because the three or so USB drives she had on her now were definitely not government-approved. They were about as old as her phone- only a few years, functioned fine, and didn't have any of the government's tracers or watchworms on them.

Next was the arphid scanner. The government had issued RFID chips to every citizen, to be implanted in the skin. The idea was to make sure people only went where they were supposed to. Luckily Nory's mom got her a "doctor's note" (from an aunt, who actually was a doctor… in a different state) which stated that Nory had a health condition which prohibited the implant. So Nory got a bracelet clipped onto her wrist that was supposedly impossible to take off. It was currently serving as a collar for her cat. Nory walked through the scanner and the dog tag took care of everything. Rina Cath, an entirely fictional schoolteacher, went down in the computer records for the subway. Nory suppressed a smirk and kept moving.

Edited by Kiryn
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Here's a picture of the main character, Nory. I don't know how she's sitting on a telephone pole but she is.

nory_on_the_wires.jpg

And more story:

She slipped onto the subway train before the station cameras could properly register her face. She nabbed a seat with plenty of room on either side. Of course it couldn’t stay that way. A little old lady settled herself next to Nory on the left, while a businessman, arguing with a headset, crowded her on the right. As the train left the station the lady launched on a lecture to the passenger on her left side as though Nory could not hear her. “Young people these days have no respect for what’s proper… blue hair! And those clothes! Dropout from school, no doubt, probably in some gang or other and interfering with the IPS when one ought to be helping… in my day, …”

Luckily Nory never heard about what happened in the lady’s day as the train reached her stop. She swept her hood on before exiting the car to further confuse the cameras. Though really with the crowds at the station, the cheap-model cameras were fairly confused anyway.

The escalator took her out into the dazzle and chaos of Chinatown. There were fewer tourists than there used to be- since they had a hard time controlling the area, police discouraged people going there- but there were still a few, and they were still obvious. Nory was not obvious.

She walked down the street, entering a nondescript little grocery. The shopkeeper looked at her, a mask of suspicion hiding his recognition. <Kid, what do you want?> he asked her in Chinese.

<I’d like to buy six apples,> Nory replied, initiating the code.

<Red? Yellow? Green?> he replied.

<Green ones.> It was the sign that Nory had arrived without problems from the IPS or others. The shopkeeper shook his head.

<We don’t have any green apples, unless they’re in the storeroom,> he told her.

She was in. <I’ll go look, okay?> she said, and he nodded, completing the code. She headed for the back of the store. Here there were racks and racks of Chinese clothing, all in total disarray, obscuring the back wall. Nory ducked behind them, shoving between hangers, until she reached the doorway they hid.

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THIS THREAD MUST SURVIVE!

Also, awsum "robot" idea brought to you by xkcd.

Through the door Nory went, cool jets of air hitting her on all sides as she passed through. The idea was that the jets removed excess dust, static, and some government bugs. Nory doubted it.

The room she stepped into was cluttered. No lamps were lit, but on one end of the room several large computer monitors, all running Mac or Linux, bathed the room in light. The glow from the monitors bounced off the shiny metal innards of several computer boxen laying dismantled on the floor. All were made at least partially of illtech- illegal technology from outside the country, which didn’t contain the trackers, keyloggers, or firewalls that all the government-sponsored Microsoft computers had. There were a couple of worktables, the surfaces of which were buried in circuitry, multitools, duct tape, cardboard, and old empty coffee mugs. There was even something that resembled an old game system. Nory headed for the light of the computers, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dim light so she could watch where she stepped. As she moved into the room, something ran into her foot. She looked down and laughed.

There was a large hamster ball- more like a guinea pig ball in size, really- running repeatedly into Nory’s feet. Inside it was no guinea pig or hamster but a tiny laptop computer wired to a set of wheels. It was one of the most heavily modded computers in existence, Nory knew: a webcam grafted inextricably to the top, four multidirectional wheels on the bottom, airbags in the back, padding around the edges, and cameras in the front of the casing. Onscreen was displayed a smiling emoticon, :D.

Nory grinned. The image on the laptop’s screen changed to a little electronic dog, wagging its tail. Nory knew what that meant. She reached down and picked the ball up. The laptop chirped in a manner that seemed almost happy.

“Hiya, St33v,” Nory said to the computer. In response a sensor in the top of its casing cast a light over Nory’s face, scanning, then winked out again. “Authenticated: Nory,” it said in Nory’s voice.

“When’d you learn to do that?” Nory asked the computer. Words scrolled across the screen: “Upgraded by user?admin Micah at 0142 on 07 06// Upgrades added Facial Recognition Sensor// St33v is now an integral part of the Freeground’s security system// How are you gentlemen” This last made Nory laugh. “Micah still hasn’t programmed gender-differentiation into you, I see,” she observed, patting the hamster ball. “Of course, I’d be amazed if he could teach you the concept, since you’re a computer.”

“//Would user Nory like to play a game//” flashed onscreen.

“Sorry St33v, I’ve got things to do today,” Nory told it as a young man, a few years older than Nory, edged into the room, looking around the side of the computer monitor he was carrying.

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I have this urge to draw St33v, but I'm no good at drawing computers... maybe later. Here's the comic from whence his idea came at any rate. http://xkcd.com/413/

Oh, and more story.

“That’s it, isn’t it? Pay attention to the AI, not to the real living being in the room,” he teased. Putting down the monitor, his face was visible: pale as ice, golden-brown eyes that were almost metallic, hair bleached and dyed silver. His black T-shirt, saved from before the dress code laws, bore the power symbol, glowing in the dark. The pockets of his pants contained seemingly infinite multitools, USB jump drives, and little bits of computer like the ones that covered the tables.

“It’s cause St33v’s so much cuter than you are, Micah,” Nory retorted, grinning. She did not put the hamster ball down until it began to rattle. Checking the screen, she read aloud, “ ‘St33v is happy to be of cuter than user?admin Micah// Now would user Nory please to deposit St33v on floor//’ When are you gonna get him to speak English, man?” She set the ball down on the floor and the little laptop zoomed away, its wheels spinning the ball.

“ ‘It’ not ‘him’. And you know it’s so much funnier when its language is fractured. Anyway, Ming said you were buying?”

“Buying and selling, actually. I got some samples of the new school government firewall for you. Oh, and a new government/Microsoft-issue Pod for you to dissect.” She held out the aforementioned Pod and a flash drive containing the firewall. “As for buying, I’m here to pick up my iPod, and I want to trade in my phone. The sheep from school saw me using it in the park and were pestering me about how it’s such an old phone, they ought to report me.”

“Government school firewall? Ooh, nice. It’s probably similar to the Nukewall- put us a step or three closer to getting through that. And a new Pod? Thankies. What about the arphids in it?”

“Cooked ‘em,” Nory said. “I put it in the microwave out back with a fork. Thus some of the circuits will need reviving, but it wasn’t tracked here.”

“Reminds me, we ought to replace that microwave soon… you can only put a fork through so many times before the thing quits working... anyway, your iPod’s done. Genuine illegal Apple technology, can scan a room for bugs, disrupt a few kinds, contains a few firewall-breakers, and it even plays music. All in a govSoft shell. Hard work, that was- d’you know how delicate Apple’s old stuff is?”

“Aw, shut up, you just like to emphasize how good you are with illtech. Phone?” Nory asked.

“You’re in luck,” Micah told her. “I just finished patching together a new-looking one with old circuits. St33v!” The little computer rolled its way back to where the two stood. “Get me the new-model phone that I finished yesterday,” he ordered the computer. “Watch what it can do now,” Micah told Nory.

The little laptop rolled over to one of the tables. A little grappling hook shot out the top of the ball and latched onto the side of the table, retracting and pulling the ball up. The hook and line retracted and a claw shot out of the side of the ball, grabbing a cell phone lying on the bench. The claw shot out further and Micah took the phone from it. Instantaneously the claw retracted.

“Very nice,” Nory said dutifully, taking the phone from Micah and hiding how impressed she was. “But can it dance?” she asked regarding the computer that was now lowering itself down from the table using its grappling hook.

P.S. Yes. The superlative of firewall is indeed nukewall. So says the me.

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