True Enough Believers
by Karl Lykken
I read the news. I didn't want to, but they'd see if I didn't. Then they'd find a new way to get to me.
The headline said United World Software's surveillance network had helped the government capture Deacon, the leader of the radical Luddite terrorists. I didn't know if it was true. I didn't even know if Deacon was a real person. If he was, I hoped he hadn't been caught.
I smiled anyway, all the way to my eyes. The cameras would see if I didn't. The algorithms would detect that I didn't believe the propaganda, and they'd learn from me and tweak their delivery until I really did believe. So I pretended.
"They got that backwards murderer Deacon," I announced to my wife. "Spotted him on the Safety Net."
She smiled. "That's great news. Thank God they're watching."
I didn't know if she meant it. I wondered sometimes, but I couldn't ask. There are microphones everywhere. Instead, I just chose to believe that she didn't.
I looked back at the article. It said Deacon had only evaded capture for so long by exploiting a bug in the auditory detection algorithms. He repeated everything he said twice, causing the algorithms to suspect there was a glitch in the feed. Thus, they would delete the feed instead of analyzing the voice and speech content. The article said it would be patched in a few weeks.
In a few weeks. Which would mean not yet. I stared at the article, wondering if this were true. If I really could talk to my wife.
