Chapter 30


"I saw you on DarkNet, carrying a small box out of Anonymous's basement," Damon Toruls told Rick while checking his notes. "Were the contents Scale Seven or above?" Capable of killing everyone on Earth.
  "I can't comment," Rick said. The box had contained her deactivated basement Monitor.
  The mansion was a deconstruction site, full of ashes and dust. Agents worked in tight quarters against a background of noise and forced airflow. Portable lights couldn't dispel all the gloom. One room had been a featureless white space, until a hole appeared and someone looked through. It was smaller than it seemed, with an imposing stillness. Some homes felt like morgues.
  Rick's hearing was improving. He had left town in a taxi, racing over a speedbump. Tina was editing his integrated report, a long list of thoughts and observations. Her personal problems from two days ago had apparently been resolved. When they had talked earlier, he could hear a baby in the background, meaning she had visitors.
  "If you help me, I will release every Anonymous file I can access," he told Damon.
  The video improved as they talked. Damon leaned toward the camera, dominating the screen. He was a large man in his mid forties, who liked to appear dumber than he was - though only fools were fooled by surface appearances. Today, he resembled a flamboyant bouncer. Behind him, his house was hidden by fences and elevated trenches. Berkeley had changed a lot over the years. "You want to perform an illegal inspection?" he asked. His shirt said: Trust me, I'm paranoid.
  Damon "Crater" Toruls was an underground journalist and adventurer, who faced criminal charges in dozens of countries. More popular than any of his enemies, he could only be convicted in an AI court.
  Damon hated unnecessary injustice. Years ago, an Asian warlord had enslaved an impoverished province, indirectly killing thousands of refugees. One day, he had found himself in the middle of an unexpected mob. Damon had been filmed in the crowd, carrying a noose. Lost in the ensuing scuffle, it was later found around the warlord's neck.
  Despite his deniable involvement in hundreds of revenge attacks, he always reported the truth. For him, the future was already lost. He sometimes suffered from debilitating depression, and worried he might commit an atrocity. No one knew his darkest rants. Above all, he feared being wrong. He was one of the last remaining fascists.
  Damon didn't believe in laws, but he tried to make them work for him. He cooperated with the existing authorities while hoping to change them. In many ways he was the opposite of Roger Xyrghyz (they would certainly never meet). Tina didn't trust either of them.
  Damon had once met Xiao at a top-secret conference for elite criminals, and those who hunted them. In Damon's view, yesterday's battle had been inevitable. "Why haven't you attacked her cave?" he wondered.
  "I suspect Anonymous and my bosses have made a secret deal to trade information." Rick looked out the airplane window. The peaks of the Tibetan plateau rose stark white and dark under the sun, monuments to the world's highest gravitational potential. A small cloud floated almost invisible in the brown foothills. His life seemed like a long afternoon. An extreme wind blew ten centimeters from his face. The plane didn't have normal wings, but curving protuberances at the sides. The engines were great bells. Two hours till touchdown.
  Damon said something about emperor Shihuangdi's buried palace. "I'm sick of their lies. She put herself in a coma, they need months to study her defenses, or she never existed at all. Like that time when they found aliens in 2019, but then denied it."
  Damon probably didn't believe that story, but the non-repeating emissions from quasar 5567 remained a mystery. Nature was rarely straightforward.
  It had taken an immense amount of effort to put Anonymous in the ground, and Rick didn't want to waste it. "The general avoided me, and the colonel/major claimed to know nothing. I need your help to infiltrate Millipol."
  Officially, the Resistance did not exist. Its membership was entirely virtual, with only one thing in common: someone opposed someone else in power. Members represented every age, race, creed, and culture, in a constant state of rebellion. The Resistance absorbed all forms of non-violent opposition, often against itself, and forced people to cooperate and trade grievances. There were ongoing battles against all authority figures, corrupt corporations, monopolies, cartels, and other legal criminals, and anyone else who was unpopular for any reason. A few areas had 100% tax rates, and many of the rest restricted how people could live, work, or trade, often punishing the most successful people. Some areas would be better off if they simply burned their tax revenues.
  The Resistance was a safety valve. It included the Depot network, and the mercenaries Chen had hired in Russia. Fortunately, not even the UN could control them.
  The video became unnaturally clear, and Damon seemed to stare through him. Yesterday, he had used a remote manipulator to handle a small box, evidence from a bizarre Depot accident, and ascertained from the vibrations that it contained a skull. Rick had been indirectly responsible for putting it there. Perhaps he had learned about his interest in this case.
  Damon knew the power of coincidence from logging software: he kept meeting the same people. Sometimes, an announcement would pop up that he had passed this person years ago on the other side of the world. The surveillance cameras knew someone was at home when they couldn't see them.
  "What have you started?" he asked.
  "Someone who was also at the Battle of Qiyuan has agreed to help me. Are a thousand of your closest friends listening to our conversation?"
  "Yes," Damon said somberly, or he might be joking. The Resistance knew how to keep secrets. "You passed our first test. We've already asked Demillia to testify against Millipol, but she's too loyal. Integrity is overrated. She doesn't know she's on our side yet."
  "I'm not surprised. I reached her first."
  The urban sprawl began while the plane was still over the clouds. A sea of lights glowed under his window. In ten minutes he would be carrying his bag in another city, his mind reset.

  Their Net meeting could not have started worse if he'd tried to bribe her. Demillia was tall and gaunt, with short hair in alternating rows. She had an austere avant-garde style. On her official photo, she wore a combination sarong/Nehru-jacket and carried a ceremonial staff. He suspected she had a lot of repressed anger. A senior liaison and special investigator who didn't have to explain herself to anyone, she audited Millipol member agencies. When not providing useful feedback, she could seem vaguely sinister to the bureaucrats and middle managers under investigation, especially those who had something to hide. They all did of course.
  "You're working for a traitor," Rick had said. "You're supposed to check for hidden biases. The coal-mine stand-off is an obvious charade." Before leaving Qiyuan, he had visited the diagonal shaft, leaning down into the darkness. The Army engineers and assorted agents had acted as if he was in charge, but he'd sensed a higher authority.
  "You sensed that? Why should I listen to the man responsible for the second worst data release in history?" Demillia asked.
  "The Back Room lost thirty IQ points this morning. At least six of our profilers are missing. I believe Millipol is trying to negotiate a settlement with Anonymous."
  "We would never deal with the killer of eighty thousand people." Demillia spoke like a prepared statement, carefully controlling her anger. He would be sorry indeed if she unleashed it.
  "Millipol doesn't care about the past. They need her knowledge."
  In China, anti-government strikes were spreading like a virus. Protesters lay in orderly rows across highways, while city streets became empty canyons. Some people wanted to be controlled, but no one wanted to feel irrelevant. Burma and Cambodia were also affected.
  Rick was partially responsible, but for some reason he wasn't bothered. Minor errors in his past had made him suffer for days. This problem was too big to relate to.
  "China has entered a transition phase," he guessed. "They update their consensus every generation. No one can control the outcome."
  "Don't blame others for your mistakes."
  "I can fix them with your help. If your boss has a good explanation, I'll even switch sides."
  "What's your bias?" she asked.
  "I'm under investigation for possible misconduct," he admitted. "Not for the first time. It's just a formality."
  "You've been an inspector for fifteen years. Experienced workers are often the most dangerous. They get overconfident, and lose touch with those they're supposed to protect."
  Rick had to beware of "inspector syndrome", the tendency to see the world as one immense village. To think of mankind as an extended family, a social club, or even a single species was dangerous. It was too big to be one thing. There was no need for most people to spend any time together, or even to like each other.
  "You're right. That's why you should go in my place," he said. Anyone could become a temporary UN agent. "If I'm correct, you'll be promoted. If I'm wrong, no one needs to know."
  With her management experience, Demillia knew the Anonymous scandal would drag on for years to come. An entire staff layer might be sacrificed. She had to protect the evidence, but couldn't appear disloyal. Millipol always settled its debts. She remembered video of a traitor who had suddenly caught fire in a high street in Sweden, the pedestrians scattering like birds. He had deserved his fate, but had sincerely believed in his innocence.
  "I'll do it," she sighed, "but please keep the Resistance out of it."