It was just a token, of liberties defended. But Bobby supposed it was healthy.
He reached the main street. Animated images on tabloid vending machines urged him to download their latest news, for just ten dollars a shot. He eyed the seductive headlines. There was some serious news, local, national and international – it seemed that the town was getting over an outbreak of cholera, related to stress on the water supply, and was having some trouble assimilating its quota of sea-level-rise relocates from Galveston Island – but the serious stuff was mostly swamped by tabloid trivia.
A local member of Congress had been forced out of office by a WormCam exposure of sexual peccadilloes. She had been caught pressuring a high-school football hero, sent to Washington as a reward for his sporting achievements, into another form of athletics … But the boy had been over the age of consent; as far as Bobby was concerned the Representative’s main crime, in this dawning age of the WormCam, was stupidity.
Well, she wasn’t the only one. It was said that twenty percent of members of Congress, and almost a third of the Senate, had announced they would not be seeking reelection, or would retire early, or had just resigned outright. Some commentators estimated that fully half of all America’s elected officials might be forced out of office before the WormCam became embedded in the national, and individual, consciousness.
Some said this was a good thing. that people were being frightened into decency. Others pointed out that most humans had moments they would prefer not to share with the rest of mankind. Perhaps in a couple of electoral cycles the only survivors among those in office, or prepared to run for office, would be the pathologically dull with no personal lives to speak of at all.
No doubt the truth, as usual, would be somewhere between the extremes.
There was still some coverage of last week’s big story: the attempt by unscrupulous White House aides to discredit a potential opponent of President Juarez at the next election campaign. They had WormCammed him sitting on the John with his trousers down his ankles, picking his nose and extracting fluff from his navel.
But this had rebounded on the voyeurs, and had done no damage to Governor Beauchamp at all. After all, everybody had to use the John; and probably nobody, no matter how obscure, did so now without wondering if there was a WormCam viewpoint looking down (or, worse, up) at her.
Even Bobby had taken to using the lavatory in the dark. It wasn’t easy, even with the new easy-use touch-textured plumbing that was rapidly becoming commonplace. And he sometimes wondered if there was anybody in the developed world who still had sex with the lights on …
He doubted that even the supermarket-tabloid vendors would persist with such paparazzi exposure as the shock value wore off. It was telling that these images, which would have been shockingly revealing just a few months ago, now blared multicolored in the middle of the afternoon from stands in the main street of this Mormon community, unregarded by almost everyone, young and old, children and churchgoers alike.
It seemed to Bobby that the WormCam was forcing the human race to shed a few taboos, to grow up a little.
He walked on.
The Mayses’ home was easy to find. Before this otherwise nondescript house, in a nondescript residential street, here in the middle of classic small-town America, he found the decades-old symbol of fame or notoriety: a dozen or so news crews, gathered before the white painted picket fence that bordered the garden. Instant access WormCam technology or not, it was going to take a long time before the news-watching public was weaned off the interpretative presence of a reporter interposing herself before some breaking news story.
Bobby’s arrival, of course, was a news event in itself. Now the journalists came running toward him, drone cameras bobbing above them like angular, metallic balloons, snapping questions. Bobby, this way please … Bobby … Bobby, is it true this is the first time you’ve seen your mother since you were three years old? … Is it true your father doesn’t want you here, or was that scene in the OurWorld boardroom just a setup for the WormCams? … Bobby … Bobby …
Bobby smiled, as evenly as he could manage. The reporters didn’t try to follow him as he opened the small gate and walked through the fence. After all, there was no need; no doubt a thousand WormCam viewpoints were trailing him even now.
He knew there was no point asking for respect for his privacy. There was no choice, it seemed, but to endure. But he felt that unseen gaze, like a tangible pressure on the back of his neck.
And the eeriest thought of all was that among this clustering invisible crowd there might be watchers from the unimaginable future, peering back along the tunnels of time to this moment. What if he himself, a future Bobby, was among them? …
But he must live the rest of his life, despite this assumed scrutiny.
He rapped on the door and waited, with gathering nervousness. No WormCam, he supposed, could watch the way his heart was pumping; but surety the watching millions could see the set of his jaw, the drops of perspiration he could feel on his brow despite the cold.
The door opened.
I
t had taken some persuading for Bobby to get Hiram to give his blessing to this meeting.
Hiram had been seated alone at his big mahogany effect desk, before a mound of papers and SoftScreens. He sat hunched over, defensively. He had developed a habit of glancing around, nicking his gaze through the air, searching for WormCam viewpoints like a mouse in fear of a predator.
‘I want to see her,’ Bobby had said. ‘Heather Mays. My mother. I want to go meet her.’
Hiram looked as exhausted and uncertain as at any time Bobby could remember. ‘It would be a mistake. What good would it do you?’
Bobby hesitated. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know how it feels to have a mother.’
‘She isn’t your mother. Not in any real sense. She doesn’t know you, and you don’t know her.’
‘I feel as if I do. I see her on every tabloid show … ‘
‘Then you know she has a new family. A new life that has nothing to do with you.’ Hiram eyed him. ‘And you know about the suicide.’
Bobby frowned. ‘Her husband.’
‘He committed suicide, because of the media intrusion. All because your girlfriend gave away the WormCam to the sleaziest journalistic reptiles on the planet. She’s responsible.’
‘Dad.’
‘Yes, yes, I know. We had this argument already.’
Hiram got out of his chair, walked to the window, and massaged the back of his neck. ‘Christ, I’m tired. Look, Bobby, any time you feel like coming back to work, I could bloody well use some help.’
‘I don’t think I’m ready right now.’
‘Everything’s gone to hell since the WormCam was released. All the extra security is a pain in the arse … ‘
Bobby knew that was true. Reaction to the existence of the WormCam, almost all of it hostile, had come from a whole spectrum of protest groups-from venerable campaigners like the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, all the way to attempted attacks on this corporate HQ, the Wormworks, and even Hiram’s home. An awful lot of people, on both sides of the law, felt they had been hurt by the WormCam’s relentless exposure of the truth. Many of them seemed to need somebody to blame for their travails-and who better than Hiram?
‘We’re losing a lot of good people, Bobby. Many of them haven’t the guts to stick with me now I’ve become public enemy number one, the man who destroyed privacy. I can’t say I blame them. It’s not their fight.
‘And even those who’ve stayed around can’t keep their hands off the WormCams. The illicit use has been incredible. And you can guess what for: spying on their neighbors, on their wives, their workmates. We’ve had endless rows, fistfights and one attempted shooting, as people find out what their friends really think of them, what they do to them behind their backs … And now you can see into the past, it’s impossible to hide. It’s addictive. And I suppose it’s a taster of what we have to expect when the past-view WormCam gets out to the general public. We’re going to ship millions of units, that’s for sure. But for now it’s a pain in the arse; I’ve had to ban illicit use and lock down the terminals … ‘ He eyed his son. ‘Look, there’s a lot to do. And the world isn’t going to wait until your precious soul is healed.’
‘I thought business is going well, even though we lost the monopoly on the WormCam.’
‘We’re still ahead of the game.’ Hiram’s voice was getting stronger, his phrasing more fluent, Bobby noticed; he was speaking to the invisible audience he assumed was watching him, even now. ‘Now we can disclose the existence of the WormCam, there is a whole host of new applications we can roll out. Videophones, for instance: a direct-line wormhole pair between sender and receiver; we can see a top-end market opening up immediately, with mass-market models to follow. Of course that will have an impact on the DataPipe business, but there will still be a need for tracking and identification technology … but that’s not where my problems lie. Bobby, we have an AGM next week. I have to face my shareholders.’