Then a report had been released by an English news channel of a prison camp in the field, where UN captives, including Americans, were being held by the Uzbeks. There were also rumors that female prisoners, including Allied troops, had been taken to rape camps and forced brothels, deeper in the countryside.
Revealing all of this clearly served the purposes of the governments behind the anti-Uzbek alliance. The Juarez Administration’s spin doctors weren’t above highlighting the distressing idea of wholesome Anna from Iowa in the hands of swarthy Uzbek molesters.
To Heather this was evidence of a dirty, ground-level conflict far removed from the clean video game in which Anna Petersen had colluded. Heather’s hackles had risen at the idea that she might be playing a part in some vast propaganda machine. But when she sought permission from her employer, Earth News Online, to seek out the truth of the war, she was refused; access to the corporate WormCam facility would be withdrawn if she attempted it.
While she was in the Hiram’s-ex-wife spotlight she had to keep her head down.
But then the glaring focus public attention moved on from the Mayses-and she was able to afford her own WormCam access. She quit from ENO, took a new billpaying job on a WormCam biography of Abraham Lincoln, and went to work.
It took her a couple of days to find what she was looking for.
She followed Uzbek prisoners being loaded onto an open UN truck and driven away through the rain. They passed through the town of Nukus, controlled by Allied troops, and on into the country beyond.
Here, she found, the Allied troops had established a prison camp of their own.
It was an abandoned iron-mining complex. The prisoners were held in metal cages, stacked up in an ore loader, just a meter high. The prisoners were unable to straighten their legs or backs. They were held without sanitation, adequate food, exercise or access to the Red Cross or its Muslim equivalent Merhamet. Filth dripped from cages above through the grates to those below.
She estimated there must be at least a thousand men here. They were given only a cup of weak soup a day, Hepatitis was epidemic, and other diseases were spreading.
Every other day, prisoners were selected, apparently at random, and taken out for heatings. Three or four soldiers would surround each prisoner, and would beat him with iron bars, wooden two-by-fours, truncheons, After a time the beating would stop. Any prisoner who could walk would be thrown back for further treatment, and the beating continued. They would be carried back to their cages by other prisoners.
That was the general pattern. There were some particular incidents, inflicted on the prisoners almost in a spirit of experimentation by the guards; a prisoner was not allowed to defecate; a prisoner was forced to eat sand; another was forced to swallow his own feces.
Six people died while Heather monitored the camp. The deaths were as a result of the bearings, exposure or disease. Occasionally a prisoner would be shot, for example when attempting to escape or fight back. One prisoner was actually released, apparently to take the news of the determination of these blue-helmeted troops to his comrades.
Heather noticed that the guards were careful to use only captured weaponry, as if they were determined to leave no unambiguous trace of their activities. Evidently, she thought, the power of the WormCam had not yet impinged on the imaginations of these soldiers; they weren’t yet used to the idea that they could be watched, any place, any time, even retrospectively from the future.
It was almost impossible to watch these bloody deeds, which would have been invisible, to the public anyhow, only a few months before.
This would be dynamite up the ass of President Juarez, who in Heather’s opinion had already proven herself to be the worst sleazebag to pollute the White House since the turn of the century (which was saying something)-and not to mention, as the first female President, a major embarrassment to half the population.
And maybe-Heather allowed herself to hope-the mass consciousness would stir once more when people saw war as it truly was, in all its bloody glory, as they had briefly glimpsed it when Vietnam had become the first television war, and before the commanders had reestablished control over media coverage.
She even cradled hopes that the approach of the Wormwood would change the way people felt about each other. If everything was to end just a handful of generations away, what did ancient enmities matter? And was the purpose of the remaining time, the remaining days of human existence, to inflict pain and suffering on others? ..
There would still be just wars, surely. But it would no longer be possible to dehumanize and demonize an opponent-not when anybody could tap a SoftScreen and see for themselves the citizens of whichever nation was considered the enemy-and there could be no more warmongering lies, about the capability, intent and resolve of an opponent. If the culture of secrecy was finally broken, no government would get away with acts like this, ever again.
Or maybe she was just being an idealist.
She pressed on, determined, motivated. But no matter how hard she tried to be objective she found these scenes unbearably harrowing: the sight of naked, wretched men, writhing in agony at the feet of blue-helmet soldiers with clean, hard American faces.
She took a break. She slept a while, bathed, then prepared herself a meal (breakfast, at three in the afternoon).
She knew she wasn’t the only citizen putting the new facilities to use like this.
All around the country, she’d heard, truth squads were forming up, using WormCam and Internet. Some of the squads were no more than neighborhood watch schemes. But one organization, called Copwatch, was disseminating instructions on how to shadow police at work in order to provide a ‘fair witness’ to a cop’s every activity. Already, it was said, this new accountability was having a marked effect on the quality of policing; thuggish and corrupt officers-thankfully rare anyhow- were being exposed almost immediately.
Consumer groups had suddenly gained power, and were daily exposing scams and con artists. In most states, detailed breakdowns of campaign finance information were being posted, in some cases for the first time. There was a lot of focus on the Pentagon’s more obscure activities and its dark budget. And so on.
Heather relished the idea of concerned private citizens, armed with WormCam and suspicion, clustering around the corrupt and criminal like white blood cells. In her mind there was a simple causal chain lying behind fundamental liberties: increased openness ensured accountability, which in turn maintained freedom. And now a technological miracle-or accident-seemed to be delivering the most profound tool for open disclosure imaginable into the hands of private citizens.
Jefferson and Franklin would probably have loved it- even if it would have meant the sacrifice of their own privacy …
There was noise in her study. A muffled giggling.
Heather, barefoot, crept to the half-open door. Mary and a friend were sitting at Heather’s desk. ‘Look at that jerk,’ Mary was saying. ‘His hand keeps supping off the end.’
Heather recognized the friend. Sasha, from the class above Mary’s at high school, was known among the local parents’ mafia as a Bad Influence. The air was thick with the smoke from a joint-presumably one of Heather’s own store.
The WormCam image was of a teenage boy. Heather recognized him, too, as one of the boys from school- Jack? Jacques? He was in his bedroom. His pants were around his ankles, and before a SoftScreen, with more enthusiasm than competence, he was masturbating.
She said quietly, ‘Congratulations. So you hacked your way through the nanny.’
Both Mary and Sasha jumped, startled. Sasha waved futilely at the cloud of marijuana smoke.
Mary turned back to the ‘Screen. ‘Why not? You did.’
‘I did it for a valid reason.’
‘So it’s all right for you but not for me. You’re such a hypocrite, Mom.’
Sasha stood up. ‘I’m out of here.’
‘Yes, you are,’ Heather snapped after her retreating back. ‘Mary, is this you? Spying on your neighbors like some sleazy voyeur?’
‘What else is there to do? Admit it. Mom. You’re getting a little moist yourself.’
‘Get out of here.’
Mary’s laugh turned to a theatric sneer, and she walked out.
Heather, shaken, sat before the ‘Screen and studied the boy. The SoftScreen he was staring at showed another WormCam view. There was a girl in the image, naked, also masturbating, but smiling, mouthing words at the boy.
Heather wondered how many more watchers this couple had. Maybe they hadn’t thought of that. A WormCam couldn’t be tapped, but it was difficult to remember that the WormCam meant global access for everybody-anybody could be watching these kids at play.
She was prepared to bet that in these first months, ninety-nine percent of WormCam use would be for this kind of crude voyeurism. Maybe it was like the sudden accessibility of porn made possible by the Internet at home, without the need to enter some sleazy store. Everybody always wanted to be a voyeur anyhow-so the argument went-and now we can do it without risk of being caught.