This chapter is dedicated to Borderlands Books, San Francisco's magnificent independent science fiction bookstore. Borderlands is basically located across the street from the fictional Cesar Chavez High depicted in Little Brother, and it's not just notorious for its brilliant events, signings, book clubs and such, and also for its (late, lamented) amazing hairless Egyptian cat, Ripley, who liked to perch like a buzzing gargoyle on the computer at the front of the store. Borderlands is about the friendliest bookstore you could ask for, filled with comfy places to sit and read (and an adjacent cafe), and staffed by incredibly knowledgeable clerks who know everything there is to know about science fiction. Even better, they've always been willing to take orders for my book (by net or phone) and hold them for me to sign when I drop into the store, then they ship them within the US for free!

Borderlands Books: 866 Valencia Ave, San Francisco CA USA 94110 +1 888 893 4008

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What if you threw a blockbuster news event and no one showed up? We'd just dumped one of the biggest troves of leaked documents in the history of the human race all over the net, and no one really gave a crap. Some critical combination of the sheer size of the dump, our sketchy promotions strategy, the pain in the ass nature of Tor, and the fact that the net was full of people saying that they were hoaxes and stupid and that there was nothing juicy there -- it all added up to a big, fat yawn.

Joe finally came by my desk at 3:30, just as I was falling into the post-lunch slump, wherein my blood sugar troughed out so low that I felt like I could barely keep my eyes open -- probably as a result of all the horchata I'd guzzled at lunch, the sugar sending my blood sugar spiking to infinity so it had nowhere to go but down.

"Hello, Marcus," he said. He was in dressed in his campaigning uniform, a nicely tailored button-up sweater over a crisp white shirt, slacks that showed off the fact that although he was pushing fifty, he still had the waistline he'd had as a college varsity sprinter, a Joe for Senate badge on his lapel. He had like eight of those sweaters, and he kept a spare in a dry-cleaning bag by his desk, just in case a car splattered him or a baby got sick on him between campaign stops.

"Joe," I said, feeling like I was about to be sick. "Look, I'm sorry I wasn't in yesterday, I was really under the weather. And well, today, you know, it's just been crazy. I've just about got the network here sorted out, but the website --" I waved my hands in a way that was meant to convey that it was a total disaster.

He looked grave. "I thought that the Web site was all in order? I remember you saying something to that effect. Or did I misunderstand?"

I was sinking lower with every utterance. "Well, yeah, it looked okay but when I started doing a code-audit I found a bunch of potential code-injection vulnerabilities so I've been doing what I can to reduce the attack-surface of the site, you know, so I can get it all down to a manageable scale, and --"

He held his hands up to stop my torrent of technobabble. "My, it certainly sounds like quite an undertaking. I really thought that Myra was better than that."

And now I really felt like a jerk. Myra, my predecessor, had done an awful lot with very little, and here I was, dumping all over all her hard work to cover my own useless butt. "Well, yeah, I mean, she did, but things move really fast, and the patch levels were super lagged, and you know, the last thing we want is someone hijacking our donors' credit card numbers or passwords, or using our site to install malicious software on visitors' computers, and, well --"

"I get the picture. Well, you sound like you've got important things to do here, Marcus. But I want you to remember that this campaign needs you for more than your ability to patch our software and keep our computers running: we need fresh approaches, ways to reach people, motivate them, bring them out to the polls. I'm counting on you, Marcus. I think you're the right person for this job."

Well, I would be if I wasn't spending all my time trying to leak a mountain of confidential documents that contain the details of thousands of criminal conspiracies -- while being kidnapped by mercenaries and spied on by weirdos who probably buy their Guy Fawkes masks by the crate.

"I won't let you down, Joe."

"I know you won't, Marcus. Remember: you're not here to be a grunt in the information troop, you're my delta force ninja. Get ninj-ing. In two months, we're going to have an election, and win or lose, that will be the end of the road for the Noss for Senate campaign, our sites, servers, and all the associated whatnot and fooforaw. We need technology that will last us until then and no further. Keep that in mind while you're managing your time, and I'm sure you'll find room in your schedule to get past the station-keeping work and on to the important stuff. The fun stuff, right?"

"I'm sorry," I said. He was right. As important as the stuff I had been obsessed with was, I had taken a job, and I wasn't doing it. I could tell he was disappointed with me, and that was just a brutal feeling. I had a moment's premonition of what it would be like to get fired from this job, to go home and admit that to my parents. The world seemed to spin away from beneath me. "Tomorrow, okay? I promise."

He squeezed my shoulder. "You don't need to look so gutted, son. Remember, this is an independent campaign. We're supposed to be scrappy, exhausted, and overextended."

I smiled a little at that, and noticed that Joe had some pretty serious bags under his eyes. On impulse, I said, "Have you been getting enough sleep?"

He laughed again, that amazing, deep laugh that was his trademark. "You sound like Flor. And you look like you might be burning the candle at both ends, too. How much sleep did you get last night?"

"I decline to answer that question on the grounds that it might tend to incriminate me," I said.

"Spoken like a good civil libertarian. A good, tired civil libertarian. I tell you what, I'm damned busy tomorrow anyway. Take an extra day to get your thoughts in order. And get a good night's sleep. All right, Marcus?"

"It's a deal."

Have I mentioned that Joe was a really good guy and that he'd make a hell of a California senator?

When he left my desk, I found my spirits lifted. Knowing someone like Joe had confidence in me made me want to be a better person. And soon, ideas began to flow -- not always good ones, but ideas. Stuff I'd seen done before, new things, too. A way to use free voice-over-IP to let kids call their offline parents and grandparents to ask them to vote -- "Have you called your mom today?" A browser plugin that would do a popup with the names of the large corporate donors to Joe's opponents, every time you loaded a page that mentioned their names, a reminder that the other guys were all bought-and-paid-for.

And I had a killer idea. Or maybe a really stupid idea. I kept putting it out of my head, but it kept coming back and insisting that I put it down in the long file I was brainstorming into (ditching the powerpoint was really helping, too). So I wrote it down and added THIS IS A KILLER STUPID IDEA right next to it, so I wouldn't forget.

At the end of the day, I caught Liam slinking out of the door, not making eye contact with me. God, I was such a dick sometimes.

I called out to him and dragged him back over by my desk and apologized, and before I knew it, I'd invited him out for a cup of coffee after work and I was shutting down my computer and throwing it in my bag and heading out the door with him.

On the way home, I passed a Guatemalan grocery with a bunch of mouth watering fresh California produce out front. I had a few dollars in my pockets and I was suddenly seized with a desire to cook my family an amazing, fresh dinner, sit my mom and dad down at the table and have a rollicking discussion, the way we once had. I blew some money on the makings of a big salad and a fruit salad for desert, then stopped in at a Vietnamese grocer for fresh noodles and some tofu and chicken for Pho, the Vietnamese noodle soup. I'd only cooked it once before, but it wasn't that hard, and it was filling and cheap.

When I got home, I tied on an apron and googled some recipes and started washing the dishes and putting them away. Mom heard the rattle and clatter and came into the kitchen, carrying a mug of cold tea.

"Goodness, Marcus, have you contracted a brain fever?"

"Har. Har. You're not invited to dinner now. And it's going to be a good one. Pho."

"Fa?"

"Yes. Pho. It's pronounced 'fa.' Not 'foh.' Fun fact. And now you know."

"Indeed I do. What has precipitated this uncharacteristic burst of activity, dare I ask? I'm certain you haven't wrecked the car, as we no longer own one. Is there some sort of terrible news you plan on breaking to us? Are we to be grandparents?"

"Mom!"

"Inquiring minds want to know, Marcus."

"I just felt like a good supper, and thought you might enjoy one, too. And it's the least I could do, right? After you carried me about in your womb for nine months, endured the pain of childbirth, the long years of childrearing --"

"So you were listening all those times we explained the ways of the world to you."

"-- I figure I'll make you some soup and salad and we can call it even, right?"

She picked up a soapy dishcloth from the counter and threw it at me, but it was a slow, easy toss and I caught it out of the air and wound up like a baseball pitcher, making her squeal and run out of the kitchen. "Dinner's in an hour!" I called after her. "Wear something nice, would you?"

She made a disgusted shriek and I heard her telling my dad about the weird thing their kid was doing now.

Yeah, I was in trouble, and it was only going to get worse. But in the previous week, I'd been blown up, had my nose broken, gotten a job, been kidnapped and freaked out, nearly broken up with the love of my life, and screwed up at the job I could hardly believe I'd landed.

I needed a night off. And I was going to enjoy it. I got one of my dad's beers out of the fridge and cracked it. Technically, I was still two years too young to be doing that, but screw it, it was time to unlax like a boss.

Mom treated me to a raised eyebrow as I set out the food and clicked my second beer in place in front of my plate. "Oh really?" she said.

"What, you want me to use a glass?"

Dad snorted. "Forget it, Lillian, it's not going to kill him. And if it does, we can collect on his life insurance policy."

And then there was no talking, only the sound of soup being blown upon, the sound of noodles being slurped, the sound of Dad trying not to slurp his soup, Mom teasing him about eating like a barbarian. I couldn't remember the last time we'd eaten like this: normal and funny and not freaking out about, well, everything. It felt insanely great.

My phone rang while we were working our way through the fruit salad I'd made for dessert, garnished it with chopped mint and drizzled it with spiced rum. I looked at the faceplate: 202-456-1414.

I knew that number, but I couldn't place it at first. 202 was Washington, D.C., right? Why was that number so familiar. The ringer went off again. Hum. Oh, yeah, right. It was the White House's main switchboard.

(Don't ask me how I knew that -- just let it be said that I had friends who had weird ideas about what constituted a funny crank call in the eighth grade, which is how my junior high got a visit from the Secret Service) (It had been scrawled on half the bathroom walls in school, with FOR A GOOD TIME CALL above it.)

"Excuse me," I said, getting up from the table so fast I nearly knocked over my chair, hustling up the stairs with my thumb over the green button. I pressed it as I passed into my room and closed the door.

"Hello?" I said.

There was a long, weird, flat silence, with a couple loud clicks.

"Hello?" I said again.

"Marcus?" It was a computer-generated voice, and not a very good one. Needless to say, it wasn't the president, or the White House. Spoofing caller ID was a pretty basic trick, a one-google query job.

"Yeah."

A little pause. Someone was typing. "You haven't been checking your email."

"What, in the last two hours? No. I haven't."

"And you're not on IM."

"No. I had dinner. Is there something you needed to say?"

"In the darknet docs, there's a procurement order and brochure for a product called 'Hearts and Minds.'" The text-to-speech engine was stupid enough that "hearts" came out "heerts" and I had to try to recalibrate my brain to understand what it meant.

"Okay, I'll take your word for it. What about it?"

"You should be checking your email." Somehow, the robot voice managed to sound peeved. "It's all in the email."

"I'll check my email," I said. "But I've had a lot of IT crap to wade through lately. Some total jackasses have been using my computer to violate my privacy and creep me right the hell out. I don't suppose you'd know anything about that, right?"

A pause. "Stop changing the subject."

"Look, I've got plenty of stuff I could be doing here. In case you didn't notice, I released all the docs, just like you were whining at me to do. For all the good it's done. No one gives a damn. In case you didn't notice."

"Hearts and Minds --" heerts and minds "-- just you have a look. And check your email more often."

The line went dead. So much for my night off.

Zyz had its fingers in a lot of pies, and liked to spin off new divisions for each of its special projects. RedCoat was the name of the "security software" contractor that did a lot of gross lawful intercept work for various branches of the U.S. government, and governments overseas.

Hearts and Minds was one of its flagship products, though it didn't exactly show up on the company's website. But there it was in the darknet docs, and the more I read about it, the more angry I became.

It looked like Hearts and Minds started with a procurement order from the United States Air Force Air Mobility Command, which was looking for "persona management" software. What's persona management? I didn't know either. It's the kind of weirdness you couldn't make up.

You've heard of "grassroots" political movements, right? That's when ordinary people start to care about a political cause, and start to demand justice and action.

The bizarro-world version of "grassroots" movements are "astroturf" movements. These are fake grassroots movements started by political groups, governments, ad agencies, marketing companies, crooks, intelligence outfits. I wasn't sure at this point whether, practically speaking, there was any difference between these sorts of organizations. In astroturf movements, you get hundreds or even thousands of "ordinary" people writing letters to the editor, showing up for demonstrations, writing to their congresscritters or town assembly or school board, all the stuff that people do when they care about a cause. But in an astroturf movement, the "ordinary people" are, in fact, paid operatives -- the cast of a giant theatrical production in which people are paid to pretend to be ordinary citizens who just happen to want to see a park turned into an oil field, for example.

Now, getting all those phonies to pretend to be real people with real passion costs a lot of money. A handy-dandy way to save on this unfortunate expense is to use "sock puppets" -- that's when one person operates several online identities, each pretending to be a different person, each one vigorously agreeing with the rest. Sock puppetry can get seriously twisted -- you can even create a sock puppet to disagree with your cause, but in such a disagreeable, stupid, oafish fashion that they make the other side look like dolts.

But being a sock puppeteer isn't easy. You've got to keep all your identities separate, remember what each one has said about its life and beliefs. The last thing you want is for your fake suburban housewife to start talking about the stuff that only your fake long-haul trucker should know.

If you want to run more than a couple fake people at a time, you need good tools to help you keep track of who's who in your imaginary world.

That tool is called "persona management."

Hearts and Minds was developed for the USAF, but RedCoat sold lots of copies elsewhere. The product brochure boasted that it was used by "reputation management" companies, "marketing and communications" and "strategic communications" outfits. It was clear from the testimonial quotes that these were all fancy names for companies that helped other companies discredit people who complained about their products and services online. If you were selling crappy food, or had rude staff, or if your strollers had a tendency to collapse and squish the babies inside them, it was cheaper to hire someone with a Hearts and Minds license to help "manage your reputation" by making your dissatisfied customers seem like lone whiners than it was to actually fix your shit.

The product literature boasted about how Hearts and Minds was more efficient than the Fifty Cent Army, the name for the legion of fake commenters employed by the Chinese government to discredit anyone who complained about official corruption or crimes. They made fun of the crudeness of paying badly educated thugs fifty cents per post to smear their targets.

Hearts and Minds could let a single operator pretend to be dozens of people. All of a sudden, I had a pretty good idea where all those messages about how the darknet docs were just BS and hoaxes and irrelevant had come from. All of a sudden, I wondered how much of the stuff I thought to be "true" had been made true by some creep with a sock-puppet army and a copy of Hearts and Minds. It was an ugly feeling.

I did a lot of work on the darknet spreadsheet, unpicking the threads that documented Hearts and Minds (which I kept thinking of as "Heerts and Minds"), adding tags and cross-references. Now that we'd told the world about the darknet docs, the spreadsheet was more important than ever, as it was the only index to the massive trove. We'd dropped signing our edits with individual IDs, and now we all shared a single admin account that let us all edit the sheet without letting the public vandalize it or add weird conspiracy theories to it (we had enough of those among ourselves). We'd indexed over 3,000 documents between us now, which only left, uh, well, basically 800,000 more to go. It was going to take a while.