After Death(98)
They seem to expect Royce to confess, but of course he has no such intention. He is still tall and handsome, has a firm handshake and always makes eye contact and has white teeth and is still well-mannered, and his family is as prominent as ever. In addition, there is the Constitution of the United States and the rights guaranteed in it. Royce has no interest in history and knows not much more about the Constitution than that it exists, but he’s pretty damn sure no court will allow them to introduce photographic evidence provided by invading space aliens whose advanced technology allows them to fake the image beyond anyone’s ability to detect the fakery, just as they can hack and fiddle with archived navigation-system records. He will surely skate.
OF WHAT IS PAST, OR PASSING, OR TO COME
In the Caribbean Sea, the jewel-tone waters are warm and clear. Of the many islands, the Caymans are among the smallest.
On Grand Cayman is a bank. In the bank is an account held in the name of Only Truth, Inc.
In Idaho lies a hundred-acre ranch of grassy fields and forests that is owned by Only Truth, Inc. It isn’t a working ranch, at least not in the traditional sense.
On the ranch is a modest but beautifully finished house in the Craftsman style.
Residing in the house are Peter and Susan Pevensie, husband and wife, who are financially independent and who say they retired early to write novels. Their only child, Edward, is homeschooled, and they have a dog named Lucy. More than two years have passed since any of them has mistakenly spoken the names Michael or Nina or John even in the privacy of their home.
Also on the property is a stable for eight horses, though only three are currently in residence: Bree, Hwin, and Puzzle—one mare and two stallions.
The family rides together, canoes together, skis together, attends church together, and participates in the life of the small town of Baskin Springs to such an extent that none of the locals ever thinks of them as in any way mysterious.
As peaceful and idyllic as life can be in rural Idaho, this is the worst of times and the best of times in the wider world, an age of great turmoil, though the changes underway are mostly nonviolent. Someone whom the media calls “Superhacker” controls the internet and maintains access to all data in every computer, cell phone, device, and system that’s internet dependent. Telecom, banking, and social media entities; the power grid; private enterprises; all government bureaus and agencies: He enjoys unrestricted access to pretty much everything. Worldwide. Superhacker isn’t really anything as ordinary as a hacker, but something stranger and more powerful for which no one has yet come up with a better name. Many billions of dollars and countless man-hours have been spent trying to locate Superhacker or wrest control from him or her, all to no avail. In some ineffable way, this villain has reconfigured the internet so that those who thrive on anonymity and illegal enterprise can opt out only at the unbearable cost of collapsing their company or agency and being denied all forms of electronic communication ever after.
Much has been said and written about the totalitarian threat posed by Superhacker, but it has not materialized. The first change imposed by this individual was to make it impossible to be anonymous in social media or elsewhere. In one day, every concocted handle was translated into the user’s real name; now every attempt to go online incognito fails. The abrupt collapse of the ability to deceive and harass by such means has been a societal shockwave. But fascism grows in the dark, not in the light, and so it doesn’t grow.
Just a week later, everyone with an email account—everyone—received in his or her mailbox reams of incontrovertible evidence of the massive corruption of fifteen members of Congress, paired with the emails and recorded phone conversations of justice department officials and law-enforcement personnel and media figures who had secretly conspired with those politicians to assist them in escaping prosecution and preserving their power, their reputations. That was only the first fifteen.
During the past three years, politicians at federal, state, and local levels, as well as bureaucrats, journalists, media executives, businesspeople, judges, clergy, teachers, university presidents, and citizens in all walks of life have been outed for testifying falsely before a grand jury, for lining their pockets with millions in graft and bribery and embezzled funds, for bold tax evasion, for selling national defense secrets to the government of China, for rape or murder or, in two cases, treason. Indicted by their own emails and recorded phone calls and bank records, they face such mountains of evidence that only a few escape prison; none has held on to his or her previous office or position.
These developments have resulted in much outrage and threats and limited violence. The most egregious criminals are those who issue the loudest, most bitterly insistent denials of their guilt. Because the wicked often have a charisma that the naive view as godliness, rather than demonic suasion, some miscreants for a time raise mass movements in their defense. In those cases, Superhacker exposes them again—and as before—with their own voices and with video of them engaged in conspiracies to deceive. Of the naive who join those crusades, most fall away when they see they have been duped, and only the most self-blinded cling to their faith in their faithless manipulators.
If, for a while, the social cohesion of the nation seemed sure to break from the strain of these changes, a new and better order asserted itself sooner than Superhacker hoped. Once depressed or cynical judges of an honest bent were heartened by the impeachment and conviction of their colleagues whom they knew to be corrupted by money or ideological passion. They found the courage to take over their state bar associations, state attorneys general offices, and even the justice department of the United States to strive for a fairer system swept clean of spoils and wild unreason. Institution after institution is evolving, not always with enthusiasm, because it has lost the power to define truth. The power of the state to rule by fear and moral exhortation based on lies is fading in a society where raw truth is available for everyone to see and where lies are quickly revealed by the liars’ own indiscretions and a narcissistic certainty of their cleverness.