earth. We pray that you will let our tongues speak only truth, and that you will guide us to hear the whispers of dissent among us, those false and unholy voices that would corrupt our hearts and blur our vision in this grand crusade. And when we hear them, Lord, let them be a reminder that the serpent remains among us today, and the serpent must be crushed under the heel of righteousness. Let us root out the voices of wicked deception in our community, Lord, and make us a whole people, united behind You. Lord, please protect and embolden our Dear President and our brave men and women in uniform as they wage war on the forces of evil. In the name of our King, Amen.”
“Amen,” Ruppert said, his voice lost among ten thousand others.
FIVE
On Saturday, Madeline hosted some kind of cheese-tasting garden party for the women in her Christian Gardening Society, and twenty of them came in nearly identical spring dresses, their ages from twenty to sixty, their husbands in tow. The women gathered on the rear deck to eat Wisconsin brie and talk. God knew what they could have talked about for so long, but their chattering voices never quieted; to Ruppert, they became like the twittering of birds against the sleepy jazz-lite music flowing from fake rocks in the garden.
As usual, the men eventually drifted inside to gather around Ruppert’s floor-to-ceiling wall screen and watch the Dodgers game. Like all men awkwardly drawn together by a convergence of their women, they spoke a little about sports and cars, drank what they could, and stayed grateful the game was there to fill the time between arrival and departure.
The Dodgers were up three to one against the Pirates at the top of the eighth, and Ruppert gave every appearance of watching the game. His eyes kept drifting towards the upper corner of the screen, where he’d always imagined the cameras were hidden, though he had no reason to believe this. More likely, the cameras were microscopic and scattered across the surface of the screen.
Everyone knew the cameras were there; it was obvious every time you made a video call, and the better screens also responded to hand gestures. The most expensive screens, like those at GlobeNet, actually followed your eyes, highlighting and enlarging anything on which you rested your gaze.
He’d heard rumors about the screens. They said the Department of Terror could track anything you did online, from phone calls to paying your bills to watching a show; Nicholas had no doubt about that, and it had never been kept secret. He’d also heard that Terror could silently activate your screens at any time to watch your activities at home, even if the screen was turned off.
The most chilling thing he’d heard, though, was that the cameras recorded everyone, all the time, and Terror stored every bit of it in giant data archives, somewhere deep underground in the desert, or extreme northern Alaska, or somewhere in the Appalachian mountains (depending on who it was that had too many drinks and dared to talk about it). If you became of interest to them, they could search back through your whole life for signs of insufficient patriotism or sympathy with the enemy, even perform keyword searches through your most intimate conversations.
Nobody knew what Terror could do, because Terror operated behind an absolute black shield of national security. There were only rumors and the occasional news report: “The Department of Terror has arrested a group of leftist terrorists in San Diego.” Leftist usually meant Latino. Jihadi, of course, always meant Middle Eastern, while imperialist always meant Chinese.
As the Dodgers took the mound, Ruppert’s doorbell rang. It sang out an instrumental of “Jesus Loves the Little Children” played on what sounded like wind chimes. Madeline refused to change the doorbell sound, even though she could choose from thousands at the touch of a button. After four years, Ruppert thought, even Jesus would be
“Amen,” Ruppert said, his voice lost among ten thousand others.
FIVE
On Saturday, Madeline hosted some kind of cheese-tasting garden party for the women in her Christian Gardening Society, and twenty of them came in nearly identical spring dresses, their ages from twenty to sixty, their husbands in tow. The women gathered on the rear deck to eat Wisconsin brie and talk. God knew what they could have talked about for so long, but their chattering voices never quieted; to Ruppert, they became like the twittering of birds against the sleepy jazz-lite music flowing from fake rocks in the garden.
As usual, the men eventually drifted inside to gather around Ruppert’s floor-to-ceiling wall screen and watch the Dodgers game. Like all men awkwardly drawn together by a convergence of their women, they spoke a little about sports and cars, drank what they could, and stayed grateful the game was there to fill the time between arrival and departure.
The Dodgers were up three to one against the Pirates at the top of the eighth, and Ruppert gave every appearance of watching the game. His eyes kept drifting towards the upper corner of the screen, where he’d always imagined the cameras were hidden, though he had no reason to believe this. More likely, the cameras were microscopic and scattered across the surface of the screen.
Everyone knew the cameras were there; it was obvious every time you made a video call, and the better screens also responded to hand gestures. The most expensive screens, like those at GlobeNet, actually followed your eyes, highlighting and enlarging anything on which you rested your gaze.
He’d heard rumors about the screens. They said the Department of Terror could track anything you did online, from phone calls to paying your bills to watching a show; Nicholas had no doubt about that, and it had never been kept secret. He’d also heard that Terror could silently activate your screens at any time to watch your activities at home, even if the screen was turned off.
The most chilling thing he’d heard, though, was that the cameras recorded everyone, all the time, and Terror stored every bit of it in giant data archives, somewhere deep underground in the desert, or extreme northern Alaska, or somewhere in the Appalachian mountains (depending on who it was that had too many drinks and dared to talk about it). If you became of interest to them, they could search back through your whole life for signs of insufficient patriotism or sympathy with the enemy, even perform keyword searches through your most intimate conversations.
Nobody knew what Terror could do, because Terror operated behind an absolute black shield of national security. There were only rumors and the occasional news report: “The Department of Terror has arrested a group of leftist terrorists in San Diego.” Leftist usually meant Latino. Jihadi, of course, always meant Middle Eastern, while imperialist always meant Chinese.
As the Dodgers took the mound, Ruppert’s doorbell rang. It sang out an instrumental of “Jesus Loves the Little Children” played on what sounded like wind chimes. Madeline refused to change the doorbell sound, even though she could choose from thousands at the touch of a button. After four years, Ruppert thought, even Jesus would be
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