Then had come the terror groups using location services in hookup apps to rain micro-drone strikes, killing gays in Iran and Barbados, or unmarried sexually active women in Pakistan. The white nationalist hate groups had cracked open genetic social networking sites and had stolen user location data, hoping to wipe the Ashkenazi genome from the planet. This politician had been doxxed, these nudes leaked, this kid had been gunned down in the street because she’d trashed a single leaked off some pop star’s upcoming album. In school, we’d read about revolutions like the Arab Spring that had started online, which had seemed like the exception instead of the rule. If tech companies wouldn’t control themselves—and governments wouldn’t or couldn’t regulate them—people had slowly decided to log off. Sharing pics of their kids to high school friends they hadn’t spoken to in twenty years just wasn’t worth all this shit.

But you can’t un-ring a bell or turn back progress. Global communication, data, and finance still flowed through the AI-policed web. Personal use was now mostly for education and healthcare—encrypted or otherwise anonymized.

Which—look over here while I pull a rabbit out of a hat—maybe was the biggest ruse of all.

Back on the grass of the park, the cotton-ball clouds wafted across a sky so blue that it had to be a FantiSee screen. Nothing that pure could be real. Yusuf wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, smearing away a spot of ice cream. I hypothetically showed him an app on my phone that led to a series of hatch doors and bookcase secret passages through the deep web to a message board where we could very hypothetically post about the Envisioner.

“You’re the one who told me secrets are poison,” I said softly.

Honestly, I thought we were doing the right thing because everything wrong in the world started with people in a room with too much power over others. But I know the big gulf between what I hoped to do and what actually happened means about sweet fuck-all right about now.

SCENE: THE BLACKBOX THEATER OF MY HEAD

FIGUEIREDO

Oh really? How will it test with audiences if you put everyone in danger and leak all this because you think it’s the right thing to do?

(Oh shitballs, the Storyteller Voice must be off on a smoke break. Can someone get his hook? Anyone?)

FIGUEIREDO (cont.)

Does it make you more likeable if you’re not the one hitting send? Less at fault?

I know Yusuf wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t push him. We were playing a game of chicken, and if I really wanted to watch everything burn, I should’ve lit the match myself.

His eyelashes fluttered down to my phone, at his message board post with pictures of the Envisioner he’d snapped on his phone. He hit send.

*   *   *