George Orwell would roll over his grave if he knew what was in store for humanity in the 21st century. By then, the idea of big brother proposed in Orwell's classic novel, 1984, was rather passé when everyone had a smart phone that could take video and instantly stream it to the Internet.  Where everywhere security was needed, high-definition cameras monitored every entrance, parking lot, person and valuable 24/7.  Where the sea, sky, space and land were monitored from above and below by satellites, submersibles, radio controlled aircraft, robots and drones, as well as every police and military vehicle on the planet.  Where credit card scans, user names and passwords, and other forms of security check, like fingerprints and photos had been replaced by retinal scan. Where Gargantua, the successor to Google and Facebook, monitored every digital stream and everybody so that there were no secrets, no hidden identities, and no way to disappear or get lost anymore.  There was no need to insert chips or tattoo the skin.  Everyone's body became part of one gargantuan cloud-based database.  While it started as some Internet geek's idea to make money, or at least to make friends, Gargantua turned into the dream control machine for those in control, the corporation for everybody and with everybody, but accountable to nobody.  And the government was only an arm of the Gargantua Corporation.

 

With the world population approaching 9 billion, the birth count and death toll was enormous.  Births were not much of a problem.  As soon as mother took their children anywhere, or even in the birth hospital, babies were checked in and their data began flowing from their individual, unique retinal scans.  At least four hundred million bodies and their data had to be archived each year.  It was a tremendous cost to try to provide goods and services to dead people, so they had to be placed in the archived category and not mess up day-to-day business. Gargantua kept track of that.  If a retina was not scanned for a month or more, agents were sent out to find the individual body––verify the death.  For the most part, death was easily proven by death certificate and/or DNA verification.  However, in the case of volcanoes, earthquakes, floods, and the like, then the mere loss of a retinal scan meant death even if evidence of the body was never found.  And there was plenty of that to go around, given the state of the world with all of its shortages and skirmishes––natural disasters and the like.  Faithfully, Gargantua kept track, plotted future scenarios, and provided policymakers with the facts, however disconcerting, on the status of the world.

 

In order to keep on top of the corporate pile, the hierarchy of the most money and the most power, Gargantua had to innovate and become a leader in all areas, including government.  In corporate terms, integrate horizontally as well as vertically by gobbling up startups that showed promise of broadening the base of the giant corporation.  One of these startups, conceived at SRI with government funding from NIH, was a study to locate the functional areas of the brain in an attempt to enhance its function and solve problems that occurred in some areas of thought and memory.  Things like epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, dementia, and Alzheimer's.

 

Gargantua saw tremendous potential in this activity and swept up the start up conceived by Dr. Henry K.  Lewis.  Lewis had left SRI two years before to pursue the potential of creating a device that would be able to discern the quantity and quality of brain activity for uses in medicine and medical research.  Like the MRI before, Dr. Lewis saw the tremendous financial possibilities in such a device.  Unfortunately, Gargantua got hold of Lewis's device and his experiments before he was ever able to achieve his ends. I was Lewis's graduate assistant at SRI.  I kept off the grid as much as possible and collaborated with him and his fledgling company without pay. I stayed in my girlfriend's garage apartment and rode a woman's bicycle with long hair and woman's clothing with her license on it.  In spite of being in the camera's eye every day, I kept pretty much anonymous, dealing only in cash and avoiding places of high security like almost every business and public gathering place.

 

Gargantua's ends were different from Dr. Lewis's. They were interested in power as well as money. The advanced design group, more mad scientists than sane, wanted more from the device.  They wanted the device to determine content.  Lewis was soon swept aside and given a golden parachute so that he could spend the rest of his life doing his research anywhere he wanted in the world without any financial worry.  Unfortunately, shortly after Lewis left, he committed suicide under mysterious circumstances. A bill collector found Lewis’s decomposing body in his Lake Tahoe retreat coming by to collect the three months past due electric bill and found the front door open.  The long evaporated drink left half-full on the kitchen counter contained enough strychnine to kill an elephant.  Of course, no evidence of foul play was ever found.

 

The young anonymous eggheads that replaced Lewis set about modifying the hardware and software of the device to get it to scan the contents of the brain.  In other words, what the person was thinking at the time of the scan, and hopefully, beyond, in memory.  The fallacy in this pursuit was unseen by the advanced design group or the young eggheads.  Science marches on and progress is eternal.  They did not see the Pandora's box they were opening on the world.  I saw it, and that's why I went underground.

 

My name is Adam Smith.  It's not my real name, but the real person I was is dead.  There was a tremendous mudslide in Los Gatos where half a hillside collapsed, burying dozens of homes.  My girlfriend, who shall remain anonymous, reported that I was running in the neighborhood and came up missing after the slide.  When my retina was not scanned for over a year, I was officially declared dead.  As far as all my relatives know, I am.  Only my girlfriend knows I am not.  She is my link to the monitored world.  We only communicate verbally in places where we know there are no microphones or cameras.  We only exchange information by pencil and paper in our own little code so as to throw off anyone who still reads what's on paper.  We only barter or use cash in the underground cash market that has grown immensely since Gargantua got into everyone's lives and turned people off.  Our movement is growing and we call it, Free Thinkers.  Our slogan is: “Live Free or Die.”  All this is designed to throw off our possible trackers.  The name, Adam Smith, is easily confused with the historical Adam Smiths and therefore low on any search criteria.  The same is true of the slogan.  As far as it goes, all of our identity is conjured up from the past so that it will blend in with the old information and get lost in it.  We must confuse Gargantua if we are to succeed.  Through my girlfriend, I have arranged clandestine meetings with a dozen or so collaborators who have also faked their deaths through various means and are also trying to live off the grid.

 

It is not as easy as it seems to break free because Gargantua is into everything, so even making a purchase of food in an open market may have caught you in the radar. The open markets are a direct protest to the large supermarket chains that are increasingly catering to the information and exploitation of each individual's taste for, food, steering them towards unhealthful and expensive genetically derived products that no longer have the safety and security of natural selection.  Organic farming on a small-scale with organic seeds passed hand-to-hand has become a major countering effort against dependency on Big Food.  All one has to do is think freely and it is easy to come to the conclusion that if a disaster would strike or something would happen to cut off the supply chain from Big Food, an option would have to be available to feed the people, however meager.

 

Water is another problem.  Water rationing has begun, primarily through municipal water systems' charging systems by penalizing those that use the most water.  Once again, Gargantua is making use of that information, as well.  I get all my water from natural springs and have developed a natural immunity to most waterborne pathogens after getting sick a few times and recovering.  Even if the forest burns like it often does in the Bay Area, I know where to get water from several sources where the springs come from deep underground and are not affected by occasional wildfires.  Through word-of-mouth, my collaborators and I are working on ways to ensure that water and food can be attained even in the harshest conditions imposed by the powers that be.

 

I encourage all of my collaborators to assume names like I have.  For confusion, it would be good if we all assumed the same name.  In some cases, we have.  There are other Adam Smiths, John Browns, and William Wallaces––common famous names with two first names to add to the confusion.  We all avoid retinal scans that are becoming more ubiquitous every day.  We can't avoid all the surveillance out there.  For example, I have several camps in the hills that I frequent and have thoroughly camouflaged with natural growth so they can't be spotted easily by drones.  I still can be spotted by infrared cameras and try to find a cool hiding spot whenever I hear anything in the air above me.  I also have underground hideouts that are filled with non-perishables where I can hide for days without being on the surface.  Still, every once in a while, I trip an animal camera that has been placed along a path that I thought was clear.  When that happens, I have learned ways to clear the memory of the camera.  However, some cameras are connected to satellite uploads and I cannot retrieve those videos or stills that may have already gone into the cloud.  I try not to worry too much about the occasional surveillance of my activity because it is lost in the billions taken every day––I hope.

 

As for communication, along with my girlfriend and face-to-face meetings with trusted collaborators, those of us on the San Francisco Peninsula have a series of semaphore outposts with scheduled times for communication.  We all use old-fashioned windup timepieces to keep track of time so sometimes those communications, while regular, are missed.  Fog and low-lying clouds are a continual problem in this area.  All communication is through simple Morse code using flashlights at night and mirrors during the day.  It is amazing that, for all its sophistication, the security net cannot detect our simple means of communicating.

 

You would think I would be proud of what I am doing.  I am not.  It's just that the situation has arrived where Gargantua will be able to scan my brain and find out everything I'm thinking.  Psychologists and neurologists are clamoring to find out what is going on in the human brain.  All the research is heading in that direction.  Eventually, everyone will be brought in and scanned.  Oh, at first they will only know whether or not you will be prone to seizures, or have some type of brain neural abnormality that can be corrected, not by some barbaric frontal lobotomy, but by careful gene and stem cell therapy leading to better health and mental function.  Restoring eyesight and hearing to the blind and deaf.  Curing epilepsy and Parkinson's disease.  Curing multiple sclerosis and cerebral palsy.  Things like that.  What's wrong with this you would ask?  Nothing, really.  Only the next step would be to be able to tap into memory––to download and analyze thoughts.  Going after psychological problems.  I can see it coming in a few short years.  It may already be here, because I no longer have connections with SRI or Gargantua scientists.  Once they have our memories, our desires, our plans, they will have us.  Oh, it may be disguised as an effort to cure schizophrenia or other psychosis, to understand autism, or severe depression––any number of things.  But it will boil down to finding out who we really are.  Not the person that is walking and talking in front of you, but the person that you really are, way deep down inside––the real you.

 

And then the classifying will begin.  Scanning will be able to determine whether you are liberal or conservative, physical or mental in your overall perspective, harbor fears or deep distrust and anger, whether you are a potential killer or meek as a lamb.  Eventually, they will drill down into individual thoughts and know if you are a sex offender by the thought you had about your mother when you were five years old.  About that cat you killed with a baseball bat when you were seven.  And how you cheated your way through school when you learned at an early age that it wasn't what you knew that mattered, but the scores you got on tests. All these things are and will become part of every individual's make up.  The only people that will escape scanning are indigenous people off the grid, and they are getting fewer all the time with inroads in transportation and communication.  Unwittingly, well-meaning scientists studying these people are contaminating them with 21st-century ways.  Because of their naivety and wonder at modern devices and practices, indigenous people will be the first to be used by Gargantua in their glorious experiment in cultural-forming the earth.  Everyone will be “corrected and classified,” and placed in their proper place in society.  Offenders will be identified and made to wear their maladies on their sleeves, so to speak, for all to see.  Some will be euthanized for the good of society as a whole.  All this will be part of Gargantua's campaign to eliminate terrorism, crime, misuse of drugs of any kind, sexual deviation, and disloyalty to the powers that be.  Rest assured, those at very top, the old boy/girl network of corporate leaders, will manage, somehow, to keep from being scanned and “corrected.”  After all, someone must make the proper decisions about what is to be and not to be.  The elite have always done that for society and will continue to to do so.  That's why I am afraid.

 

Ten years later…

 

I'm writing this down on some paper they gave me.  I don't know whether to swallow it afterward or what.  They got me.  I was pedaling along Divisio with a few other cyclists yesterday morning enjoying the breeze cycling created and hoping to reach my destination and another conference with collaborators on a sailboat in the Bay by noon.  As I approached the waterfront, a lady policewoman told me to “halt”... and asked me for my bicycle license. I had nothing on me, not even a knife.  I left that back at a cache on the hillside behind my girlfriend's apartment.  Still, she called for backup, handcuffed me and searched for whatever she was looking for and found nothing.  Most of all, except for some cash, she found no form of identification.  When she asked me my name, I said, “Tom Jones,” not even wanting anyone to know my pseudonym. Her back up came and they took me to a local police station and did a horrible thing.  They scanned my retina.  They had me.

 

I have been transferred to this cell in San Francisco.  I believe it is the FBI that is holding me now.  They were there at my arrest, you know, they were the guys in suits and sunglasses who came right after she called for backup.  The ones that stood back and watched while the police processed me through.  I didn't sleep much last night because the surroundings are totally alien to me.  But the food is all right.  I haven't had this kind of food in many years while on the run and in hiding.  I would get fat quick eating this stuff all the time.  They haven't questioned me, and I don't think they will.  Now that they've got advanced scanning capability, they don't need to, just go directly to the brain and get what they need or want.  As for me, I hope they get what they want.  I'm trying to figure out how I can prevent that from happening.  I'll have to admit that my blood pressure is up and my heart is pounding.  What kinds of thoughts I should think to subvert them?  I don't know, I'll just have to try.

 

I hear them coming to get me. It's an Asian guy who just asked me to, “Follow me.”  I don't have any handcuffs on and he's only wearing a lab coat.  I could grab him by the back of the neck and hopefully, break it, or choke him to death. But how would I get out of this building with nothing but these prison pajamas on?  There it is.  The room where they're going to do it.  There are a few people standing around with lab coats, but I don't see any of the black suits anymore or sunglasses.  There's just one police officer over by the other door leading out, I assume towards the front of the station.  He would block my way if I tried to run.

 

We're inside now, a room about 20' x 20' with a comfortable chair and an oversize hairdryer you used to see in women's salons.  Only this is no hairdryer.  This is the real deal.  The machine that is going to scan my brain and find out all my secrets.  To say that I am frightened is an understatement.  I can feel the blood pulsing in my neck as I face the inevitable.  My hands are cold and clammy while I'm sweating in these pajamas.  They won't have to scan me, just take my blood pressure. Nodding to myself in agreement.  They have asked me to sit in the chair while they lower the brain scanner over my head.  The young lady with a sweet smile in front of me is reassuring me that I will feel nothing and they will play some soft music for about 30 minutes while they do the procedure.  There are no tie-downs or anything like that.  She hasn't even asked me to stay still or hold my breath.  There is no way I could hold my breath for 30 minutes anyway.  So, I have leaned back in the chair and tried to relax while the music plays on.  Thank goodness, it's not that typical elevator music but much more upbeat and modern.  She even asked me if I wanted to watch a 3-D movie.  I declined.  Instead, I closed my eyes.  The music was quite relaxing and before I knew it, I was waking up.

 

“Did you have a nice nap, Mr. Jones?” the young lady asked as she helped me up from the chair, a bit groggy from the nap.  Must've been because I hadn't slept well the night before in that cell with no birds chirping on the hillside, no moon, no stars, no gently falling rain or mist from the fog.  Just stale white walls staring back at me.  “We should have the results for you by tomorrow morning.”  She said it in such a cheery tone that I was afraid I was already in some kind of insane asylum.  Soon, I was escorted back to my cell.

 

The second night was probably worse than the first.  I could see there were at least two cameras staring down at me and there were probably microphones so that if I said anything to myself they would both hear and record it.  The sterile whiteness of my enclosure was really getting to me.  Any thoughts of suicide would certainly be thwarted because I knew I was on suicide watch.

 

The next morning, I believe it was around 8 am, there was a knock on my cell door and when it opened, the young lady in the lab coat came in and sat down next to me on the bed.  A police officer stood in the doorway, I suppose, for her protection.  She greeted me quite nicely, “Good morning Mr. Jones.  I've got your results here and I'd like to share them with you if you don't mind.”

 

What was I supposed to do, say that I minded a lot?  I knew I had no choice, so I said.  “Sure, it's okay… go ahead.”  When you are expecting the worst and have no way out, you have to go along with the program.

 

“Well, Mr. Jones…” She manipulated her fingers on the pad and then swiveled it toward me so that I could see the results that stood out in three dimensions toward me.  I was looking at my entire psyche presented in a nutshell, graphically, from a device she was holding in her hand.  I couldn't understand the graphic in front of me so I was eager to hear what she interpreted it to be.  “From your scan we can see that you are a very normal, levelheaded person.  You have no brain abnormalities and, fortunately rather superior intelligence.  We are quite sorry that we detained you to get your brain scan, but we are having to track down all of the people that have been avoiding us for so long.  Based on the results of your scan we see nothing abnormal sexually or criminally in your thinking or your background.  I would have to congratulate you and say that you are a very normal, but gifted, individual.  One that will continue to make great contributions to society.  We won't detain you any more.  Officer Fitzsimmons will escort you to your things and you can be on your way.”

 

I was flabbergasted!  Fitzsimmons escorted me to a dressing room, unlocked a locker, and gave me my well-worn street clothes.  I never was so glad to get out of those prison pajamas.  He then took me to the property room where they had my bicycle and I signed out for it, “Tom Jones,” in my best faux handwriting.  It was a long pedal back to Los Gatos, so I took the bus.  I had a hard time getting a ticket at the Mission bus station because they didn't want to accept my cash.  With my bicycle firmly mounted on the front of the bus and my retina scanned for the fare as I entered and took my seat, I arrived in Mountain View by early afternoon and pedaled the rest of the way to my girlfriend's apartment.

 

Shortly after that, I got a job working as a research associate at Stanford, traded my girl's bicycle in for an electric model that got me to work most days except in inclement weather and married my longtime girlfriend.  What can I say… we lived happily ever after as Mr. and Mrs. Adam Smith.

 

Copyright 2013 © Ronald W. Hull

 

5/27/13