The Light of Other Days

part 2: THE EYES OF GOD Chapter 16 - THE WATER WAR
Heather sat at her home SoftScreen. She entered fresh search parameters. COUNTRY: Uzbekistan. TOWN: Nukus...

She wasn't surprised to see an attractive turquoise blockout appear before her. Nukus was, after all, a war zone.

But that wouldn't stop Heather for long. She had found reason in her time to find ways past censoring software before. And having access to a WormCam of her own was a powerful motivation. Smiling, she went to work.

When-after much public pressure-the first enterprising companies started offering WormCam access to private citizens via the Internet, Heather Mays was quick to subscribe.

She could even work from home. From a straightforward menu she selected a location to view. This could be anywhere in the world, specified by geographical coordinates or postal address as precisely as she could narrow it down. The mediating software would convert her request to latitude-longitude coordinates, and would offer her further options. The idea was to narrow her selection down until she had reached a specification of a room-sized volume, somewhere on or near the surface of the Earth, where a wormhole mouth would be established.

There was also a randomizing feature if she had no preference: for instance, if she wanted to view some remote picture-postcard coral atoll, but didn't care which. She could even-at additional cost-select intermediate views, so for example she could view a street and select a house to "call at."

When she'd made her choice, a wormhole would be opened up between the supplier's central server location and the site of her choice. Images from the WormCam would then be sent direct to her home terminal. She could even guide the viewpoint, within a limited volume.

The WormCam's commercial interface made it feel like a toy, and every image was indelibly marked by intrusive OurWorld logos and ads. But Heather knew that intrinsically the WormCam was much more powerful than it appeared, in this first public incarnation.

When she'd first mastered the system, she was inordinately pleased, and called Mary to come see. "Look," she said, pointing. The "Cam image was of a nondescript house, in evening summer sunlight; the image frame was plastered with annoying ad logos. "That's the house where I was born, in Boise, Idaho. In that very room, in fact."

Mary shrugged. "Are you going to give me a turn?"

"Sure. In fact I got it for you, in part. Your homework assignments."

"Yeah, yeah."

"Listen, this isn't a toy." Abruptly the "Screen filled up with a soothing-color blockout.

Mary frowned. "What's wrong?... Oh. I get it. It comes with a nanny filter. So we're still only seeing what they will allow us to see."

The idea was that the WormCams couldn't be used voyeuristically, to spy on people in their homes or other private places, or to breach corporate confidentiality, or to view government buildings, military establishments, police stations and other sensitive places. The nanny software was also supposed to monitor patterns of usage and, in case of morbid or excessive behavior, to break the service and offer counseling, either by expert system or a human agent.

And, for now, only the remote-viewing facilities of the WormCam had been made available. Past-viewing was considered, by a whole slew of experts, to be much too dangerous to be put in the hands of the public-in fact, it was argued, it would be dangerous even to make the existence of the past-viewer facility widely known.

But, of course, all this cotton-wool wrapping would only be as effective as the ingenuity of the human designers behind it. And already, fueled by Internet rumor and industry leaks and speculation, clamor was rising for much wider public access to the WormCam's full power: to the past-viewers themselves.

Heather sensed that this new technology was by its very nature going to be difficult to contain...

But that wasn't something she was about to share with her fifteen-year-old daughter.

Heather cleared down the wormhole and prepared to start a new search. "I need to work. Go. You can play later. One hour only."

With a look of contempt, Mary walked out, and Heather returned her attention to Uzbekistan.

Anna Petersen, USN-heroine of a 24-by-7 WormCam docu-soap-had been heavily involved in the U.S.-led UN intervention in the water war raging in the Aral Sea area. A precision war was being fought by the Allies against the principal aggressor, Uzbekistan: an aggression which had threatened Western interests in oil and sulphur deposits and various mineral production sites, including a major copper source. Bright and technical, Anna had mostly worked on command, control and communications operations.

WormCam technology was changing the nature of warfare, as it had much else. WormCams had already largely replaced the complex of surveillance technology-satellites, monitoring aircraft and land-based stations-which had governed battlefields for decades. If there had been eyes capable of seeing, every major target in Uzbekistan would have sparkled with evanescent wormhole mouths. Precision-guided bombs, cruise missiles and other weapons, many of them no larger than birds, had rained down on Uzbek air-defense centers, military command and control facilities, on bunkers concealing troops and tanks, on hydroelectric plants and natural gas pipelines, and on targets in the cities, such as Samarkand, Andizhan, Namangan and the capital Tashkent.

The precision was unprecedented-and, for the first time in such operations, success could be verified.

Of course, for now, the Allied troops had the upper hand in WormCam deployment. But future wars would have to be fought under the assumption that both sides had perfect and up-to-date information on the strategy, resources and deployment of the other. Heather supposed it was too much to hope that such a change in the nature of war might lead to its cessation altogether. But at least it was giving the warriors pause for thought, and might lead to less meaningless waste.

Anyhow this war-Anna's war, the cold battle of information and technology-was the war which the American public had witnessed, partly thanks to the WormCam viewpoint Heather herself had operated, flying alongside Petersen's shapely shoulder as she moved from one clinical, bloodless scenario to another.

But there had been rumors-mostly circulating in the corners of the Internet that still remained uncontrolled- of another, more primitive war proceeding on the ground, as troops went in to secure the gains made by the air strikes.

Then a report had been released by an English news channel of a prison camp in the field, where UN captives, including Americans, were being held by the Uzbeks. There were also rumors that female prisoners, including Allied troops, had been taken to rape camps and forced brothels, deeper in the countryside.

Revealing all of this clearly served the purposes of the governments behind the anti-Uzbek alliance. The Juarez Administration's spin doctors weren't above highlighting the distressing idea of wholesome Anna from Iowa in the hands of swarthy Uzbek molesters.

To Heather this was evidence of a dirty, ground-level conflict far removed from the clean video game in which Anna Petersen had colluded. Heather's hackles had risen at the idea that she might be playing a part in some vast propaganda machine. But when she sought permission from her employer, Earth News Online, to seek out the truth of the war, she was refused; access to the corporate WormCam facility would be withdrawn if she attempted it.

While she was in the Hiram's-ex-wife spotlight she had to keep her head down.

But then the glaring focus public attention moved on from the Mayses-and she was able to afford her own WormCam access. She quit from ENO, took a new billpaying job on a WormCam biography of Abraham Lincoln, and went to work.

It took her a couple of days to find what she was looking for.

She followed Uzbek prisoners being loaded onto an open UN truck and driven away through the rain. They passed through the town of Nukus, controlled by Allied troops, and on into the country beyond.

Here, she found, the Allied troops had established a prison camp of their own.

It was an abandoned iron-mining complex. The prisoners were held in metal cages, stacked up in an ore loader, just a meter high. The prisoners were unable to straighten their legs or backs. They were held without sanitation, adequate food, exercise or access to the Red Cross or its Muslim equivalent Merhamet. Filth dripped from cages above through the grates to those below.

She estimated there must be at least a thousand men here. They were given only a cup of weak soup a day, Hepatitis was epidemic, and other diseases were spreading.

Every other day, prisoners were selected, apparently at random, and taken out for heatings. Three or four soldiers would surround each prisoner, and would beat him with iron bars, wooden two-by-fours, truncheons, After a time the beating would stop. Any prisoner who could walk would be thrown back for further treatment, and the beating continued. They would be carried back to their cages by other prisoners.

That was the general pattern. There were some particular incidents, inflicted on the prisoners almost in a spirit of experimentation by the guards; a prisoner was not allowed to defecate; a prisoner was forced to eat sand; another was forced to swallow his own feces.

Six people died while Heather monitored the camp. The deaths were as a result of the bearings, exposure or disease. Occasionally a prisoner would be shot, for example when attempting to escape or fight back. One prisoner was actually released, apparently to take the news of the determination of these blue-helmeted troops to his comrades.

Heather noticed that the guards were careful to use only captured weaponry, as if they were determined to leave no unambiguous trace of their activities. Evidently, she thought, the power of the WormCam had not yet impinged on the imaginations of these soldiers; they weren't yet used to the idea that they could be watched, any place, any time, even retrospectively from the future.

It was almost impossible to watch these bloody deeds, which would have been invisible, to the public anyhow, only a few months before.

This would be dynamite up the ass of President Juarez, who in Heather's opinion had already proven herself to be the worst sleazebag to pollute the White House since the turn of the century (which was saying something)-and not to mention, as the first female President, a major embarrassment to half the population.

And maybe-Heather allowed herself to hope-the mass consciousness would stir once more when people saw war as it truly was, in all its bloody glory, as they had briefly glimpsed it when Vietnam had become the first television war, and before the commanders had reestablished control over media coverage.

She even cradled hopes that the approach of the Wormwood would change the way people felt about each other. If everything was to end just a handful of generations away, what did ancient enmities matter? And was the purpose of the remaining time, the remaining days of human existence, to inflict pain and suffering on others? ..

There would still be just wars, surely. But it would no longer be possible to dehumanize and demonize an opponent-not when anybody could tap a SoftScreen and see for themselves the citizens of whichever nation was considered the enemy-and there could be no more warmongering lies, about the capability, intent and resolve of an opponent. If the culture of secrecy was finally broken, no government would get away with acts like this, ever again.

Or maybe she was just being an idealist.

She pressed on, determined, motivated. But no matter how hard she tried to be objective she found these scenes unbearably harrowing: the sight of naked, wretched men, writhing in agony at the feet of blue-helmet soldiers with clean, hard American faces.

She took a break. She slept a while, bathed, then prepared herself a meal (breakfast, at three in the afternoon).

She knew she wasn't the only citizen putting the new facilities to use like this.

All around the country, she'd heard, truth squads were forming up, using WormCam and Internet. Some of the squads were no more than neighborhood watch schemes. But one organization, called Copwatch, was disseminating instructions on how to shadow police at work in order to provide a "fair witness" to a cop's every activity. Already, it was said, this new accountability was having a marked effect on the quality of policing; thuggish and corrupt officers-thankfully rare anyhow- were being exposed almost immediately.

Consumer groups had suddenly gained power, and were daily exposing scams and con artists. In most states, detailed breakdowns of campaign finance information were being posted, in some cases for the first time. There was a lot of focus on the Pentagon's more obscure activities and its dark budget. And so on.

Heather relished the idea of concerned private citizens, armed with WormCam and suspicion, clustering around the corrupt and criminal like white blood cells. In her mind there was a simple causal chain lying behind fundamental liberties: increased openness ensured accountability, which in turn maintained freedom. And now a technological miracle-or accident-seemed to be delivering the most profound tool for open disclosure imaginable into the hands of private citizens.

Jefferson and Franklin would probably have loved it- even if it would have meant the sacrifice of their own privacy...

There was noise in her study. A muffled giggling.

Heather, barefoot, crept to the half-open door. Mary and a friend were sitting at Heather's desk. "Look at that jerk," Mary was saying. "His hand keeps supping off the end."

Heather recognized the friend. Sasha, from the class above Mary's at high school, was known among the local parents" mafia as a Bad Influence. The air was thick with the smoke from a joint-presumably one of Heather's own store.

The WormCam image was of a teenage boy. Heather recognized him, too, as one of the boys from school- Jack? Jacques? He was in his bedroom. His pants were around his ankles, and before a SoftScreen, with more enthusiasm than competence, he was masturbating.

She said quietly, "Congratulations. So you hacked your way through the nanny."

Both Mary and Sasha jumped, startled. Sasha waved futilely at the cloud of marijuana smoke.

Mary turned back to the "Screen. "Why not? You did."

"I did it for a valid reason."

"So it's all right for you but not for me. You're such a hypocrite, Mom."

Sasha stood up. "I'm out of here."

"Yes, you are," Heather snapped after her retreating back. "Mary, is this you? Spying on your neighbors like some sleazy voyeur?"

"What else is there to do? Admit it. Mom. You're getting a little moist yourself."

"Get out of here."

Mary's laugh turned to a theatric sneer, and she walked out.

Heather, shaken, sat before the "Screen and studied the boy. The SoftScreen he was staring at showed another WormCam view. There was a girl in the image, naked, also masturbating, but smiling, mouthing words at the boy.

Heather wondered how many more watchers this couple had. Maybe they hadn't thought of that. A WormCam couldn't be tapped, but it was difficult to remember that the WormCam meant global access for everybody-anybody could be watching these kids at play.

She was prepared to bet that in these first months, ninety-nine percent of WormCam use would be for this kind of crude voyeurism. Maybe it was like the sudden accessibility of porn made possible by the Internet at home, without the need to enter some sleazy store. Everybody always wanted to be a voyeur anyhow-so the argument went-and now we can do it without risk of being caught.

At least that was how it felt; the truth was that anybody could be watching the watchers too. Just as anybody could have watched Mary and Sasha, two cute teenage girls getting pleasurably horny. And maybe there was even a community who might derive some pleasure from watching her, a dry-as-a stick middle-aged woman gazing analytically at this foolish stuff.

Maybe, some of the commentators said, it was the chance of voyeurism that was driving the early sales of this home WormCam access, and even its technological development-just as porn providers had pushed the early development of Internet facilities. Heather would have liked to believe her fellow humans were a little deeper than that. But maybe, once again, she was just being an idealist.

And after all, not all the voyeurism was for titillation. Every day there were news lines about people who had, for one reason or another, spied on those close to them, and discovered secrets and betrayals and creeping foulness, causing a rush of divorces, domestic violence, suicides, minor wars between friends, spouses, siblings, children and their parents: a lot of crap to be worked out of a lot of relationships, she supposed, before everybody grew up a little and got used to the idea of glass-wall openness.

She noticed that the boy had a spectacular Cassini spaceprobe image of Saturn's rings on his bedroom wall. Of course he was ignoring it; he was much more interested in his dick. Heather remembered how her own mother-God, nearly fifty years back-would tell her of the kind of future she had grown up with, in more expansive, optimistic years. By the year 2025, her mother used to say, nuclear-powered spacecraft would be plying between the colonized planets, bearing water and precious minerals mined from asteroids. Perhaps the first interstellar probe would already have been launched. And so on.

Perhaps teenagers in that world might have been distracted from each others" body parts-at least some of the time!-by the spectacle of the explorers in Mars's Valles Marineris, or Mercury's great Caloris basin, or the shifting ice fields of Europa.

But, she thought, in our world we're still stuck here on Earth, and even the future seems to end in a black hurtling wall of rock, and all we want to do is spy on each other.

She shut down the wormhole link and added new security protocols to her terminal. It wouldn't keep Mary out forever, but it would slow her down a little.

That done-exhausted, depressed-she returned to work.