Little Brother

nd PaloAlto, but coolest of all is that they run a killer bookstore in the middle ofDisneyland's Downtown Disney in Anaheim. I'm a stone Disney parkfreak (see my first novel, Down and Out in the Ma

t the stepped up police surveillance,but they weren't going to take it lying down. Someone called a phone-inshow on KQED and told them that the police were wasting their time,that we could monkeywrench the system faster than they could untangleit. The recording was a top Xnet download that night.118"This is California Live and we're talking to an anonymous caller at apayphone in San Francisco. He has his own information about the slow-downs we've been facing around town this week. Caller, you're on theair.""Yeah, yo, this is just the beginning, you know? I mean, like, we're justgetting started. Let them hire a billion pigs and put a checkpoint onevery corner. We'll jam them all! And like, all this crap about terrorists?We're not terrorists! Give me a break, I mean, really! We're jamming upthe system because we hate the Homeland Security, and because we loveour city. Terrorists? I can't even spell jihad. Peace out."He sounded like an idiot. Not just the incoherent words, but also hisgloating tone. He sounded like a kid who was indecently proud of him-self. He was a kid who was indecently proud of himself.The Xnet flamed out over this. Lots of people thought he was an idiotfor calling in, while others thought he was a hero. I worried that therewas probably a camera aimed at the payphone he'd used. Or an arphidreader that might have sniffed his Fast Pass. I hoped he'd had the smartsto wipe his fingerprints off the quarter, keep his hood up, and leave allhis arphids at home. But I doubted it. I wondered if he'd get a knock onthe door sometime soon.The way I knew when something big had happened on Xnet was thatI'd suddenly get a million emails from people who wanted M1k3y toknow about the latest haps. It was just as I was reading about Mr Can't-Spell-Jihad that my mailbox went crazy. Everyone had a message for me— a link to a livejournal on the Xnet — one of the many anonymousblogs that were based on the Freenet document publishing system thatwas also used by Chinese democracy advocates.>Close call>We were jamming at the Embarcadero tonite and goofing around giv-ing everyone a new car key or door key or Fast Pass or FasTrak, tossingaround a little fake gunpowder. There were cops everywhere but wewere smarter then them; we're there pretty much every night and wenever get caught.>So we got caught tonight. It was a stupid mistake we got sloppy wegot busted. It was an undercover who caught my pal and then got the119rest of us. They'd been watching the crowd for a long time and they hadone of those trucks nearby and they took four of us in but missed therest.>The truck was JAMMED like a can of sardines with every kind of per-son, old young black white rich poor all suspects, and there were twocops trying to ask us questions and the undercovers kept bringing inmore of us. Most people were trying to get to the front of the line to getthrough questioning so we kept on moving back and it was like hours inthere and really hot and it was getting more crowded not less.>At like 8PM they changed shifts and two new cops came in andbawled out the two cops who were there all like wtf? aren't you doinganything here. They had a real fight and then the two old cops left andthe new cops sat down at their desks and whispered to each other for awhile.>Then one cop stood up and started shouting EVERYONE JUST GOHOME JESUS CHRIST WE'VE GOT BETTER THINGS TO DO THANBOTHER YOU WITH MORE QUESTIONS IF YOU'VE DONESOMETHING WRONG JUST DON'T DO IT AGAIN AND LET THIS BEA WARNING TO YOU ALL.>A bunch of the suits got really pissed which was HILARIOUS becauseI mean ten minutes before they were buggin about being held there andnow they were wicked pissed about being let go, like make up yourminds!>We split fast though and got out and came home to write this. Thereare undercovers everywhere, believe. If you're jamming, be open-eyedand get ready to run when problems happen. If you get caught try towait it out they're so busy they'll maybe just let you go.>We made them that busy! All those people in that truck were there be-cause we'd jammed them. So jam on!I felt like I was going to throw up. Those four people — kids I'd nevermet — they nearly went away forever because of something I'd started.120Because of something I'd told them to do. I was no better than aterrorist.The DHS got their budget requisition approved. The President wenton TV with the Governor to tell us that no price was too high for secur-ity. We had to watch it the next day in school at assembly. My Dadcheered. He'd hated the President since the day he was elected, saying hewasn't any better than the last guy and the last guy had been a completedisaster, but now all he could do was talk about how decisive and dy-namic the new guy was."You have to take it easy on your father," Mom said to me one nightafter I got home from school. She'd been working from home as much aspossible. Mom's a freelance relocation specialist who helps British peopleget settled in in San Francisco. The UK High Commission pays her to an-swer emails from mystified British people across the country who aretotally confused by how freaky we Americans are. She explains Americ-ans for a living, and she said that these days it was better to do that fromhome, where she didn't have to actually see any Americans or talk tothem.I don't have any illusions about Britain. America may be willing totrash its Constitution every time some Jihadist looks cross-eyed at us, butas I learned in my ninth-grade Social Studies independent project, theBrits don't even have a Constitution. They've got laws there that wouldcurl the hair on your toes: they can put you in jail for an entire year ifthey're really sure that you're a terrorist but don't have enough evidenceto prove it. Now, how sure can they be if they don't have enough evid-ence to prove it? How'd they get that sure? Did they see you committingterrorist acts in a really vivid dream?And the surveillance in Britain makes America look like amateur hour.The average Londoner is photographed 500 times a day, just walkingaround the streets. Every license plate is photographed at every corner inthe country. Everyone from the banks to the public transit company isenthusiastic about tracking you and snitching on you if they think you'reremotely suspicious.But Mom didn't see it that way. She'd left Britain halfway throughhigh school and she'd never felt at home here, no matter that she'd mar-ried a boy from Petaluma and raised a son here. To her, this was alwaysthe land of barbarians, and Britain would always be home.121"Mom, he's just wrong. You of all people should know that.Everything that makes this country great is being flushed down the toiletand he's going along with it. Have you noticed that they haven't caughtany terrorists? Dad's all like, 'We need to be safe,' but he needs to knowthat most of us don't feel safe. We feel endangered all the time.""I know this all, Marcus. Believe me, I'm not fan of what's been hap-pening to this country. But your father is —" She broke off. "When youdidn't come home after the attacks, he thought —"She got up and made herself a cup of tea, something she did whenevershe was uncomfortable or disconcerted."Marcus," she said. "Marcus, we thought you were dead. Do you un-derstand that? We were mourning you for days. We were imagining youblown to bits, at the bottom of the ocean. Dead because some bastard de-cided to kill hundreds of strangers to make some point."That sank in slowly. I mean, I understood that they'd been worried.Lots of people died in the bombings — four thousand was the present es-timate — and practically everyone knew someone who didn't comehome that day. There were two people from my school who haddisappeared."Your father was ready to kill someone. Anyone. He was out of hismind. You've never seen him like this. I've never seen him like it either.He was out of his mind. He'd just sit at this table and curse and curseand curse. Vile words, words I'd never heard him say. One day — thethird day — someone called and he was sure it was you, but it was awrong number and he threw the phone so hard it disintegrated intothousands of pieces." I'd wondered about the new kitchen phone."Something broke in your father. He loves you. We both love you. Youare the most important thing in our lives. I don't think you realize that.Do you remember when you were ten, when I went home to London forall that time? Do you remember?"I