Silver Shamrocks, Lantern Flies, and Pity Nobels
We’ve weaponized “reality” and it’s now gone viral. Oh well.
[Congressman J],
My thanks to you and the Selection Committee on Communications for, first, alerting me of its existence and, second, for its forbearance in seeking my participation in its inquiry on technical infrastructure in the republic. In lieu of specific questions, I’ve provided a written statement, to be delivered by an intermediary and not to be distributed beyond the relevant parties, so that the integrity of the inquiry and the demands on my time are equally respected.
[Tiberius]
I’m the first to admit that we could be doing much more to facilitate stronger lines of communication throughout our country. I know firsthand the limitations of our present poor condition that not only makes our regrettable defensive capabilities more exacting on us, the defenders, but further isolates the citizens from each other. Some of the causes of these setbacks are fairly straightforward, reasonably conducive to being at the logistical mercy of a half-born, haltingly legitimate polity. But I admit that these problems have seemed more acute in the last few months than these circumstances would logically indicate.
The events in District 61 earlier in the spring were, on their own, an incomprehensible catastrophe. It was also a very awkward one to explain, especially since the situation, such as it is, is not strictly over and its catalyst has not been made completely public. When we said that it was an act of aggression by rogue elements aligned with the enemy we were being truthful in the broadest possible way. What it was more precisely and how it relates to shitty wifi and our preference for analog communication awaits clarification, which you now have the privilege to receive.
We must go back two years, when I, [Brutus], and the rest of the cabinet suspected (1) that the enemy, despite consistent hammering from the outset, was showing a reluctance to hit us with the full weight of its force; and (2) if we exasperate it enough, the kid gloves, so to speak, will have to come off. This much was in evidence when [Gen. F] unleashed a surprisingly devastating defense of our vulnerable coasts and rivers. But we knew that our conventional means would be limited in short order to meet that force. A long deliberation ensued to arrive at a solution that could anticipate and at least equal a major swipe at our defenses without straining our manpower any further.
All seemed hopeless, until Def. Sec. [Octavia] presented a series of proposals she’d collected from all manner of research-and-development functionaries. She had been reluctant to share these for fear of optics. Fair enough. Most of these were … novel, in the sense that they were better suited to actual novels. Even the one that caught our interest the most, a joint paper by [Rogue Programmer 1] and [Rogue Programmer 2] was curiously titled “Halloween III 2.0.”
Like all the others it had been passed from institution to institution in the more conventional society that seeks our destruction as a kind of unhinged thought experiment. Many “outsiders” come to us knowing full well that we can’t really afford to dismiss even the most eccentric idea in hopes that it might save us. Certainly things like “artificial intelligence” and “augmented reality” with “level-2 authentication” are of mostly abstract value in better-resourced contexts. And for all of its speculative drama, the paper’s framing and rationales were lucid enough for us to pursue it further. This was not a unanimous consensus, of course. In fact Sec. [Octavia] was quite adamantly against it. She was a capable administrator and advisor for the most part, but she failed to read the room adequately. And so we removed her from it, and over to the frontlines to pin medals onto corpses.
With the remainder of the cabinet in favor at various levels, we moved to make the contents of the paper a fact, with the logistical powers given to [Gen. Z] and Interior Sec. [Agrippina] and under the name of Operation Silver Shamrock—though some referred to it as the “Fear dot com Project,” because I guess life during wartime doesn’t engender cultural literacy.
I’m not at liberty to discuss the intricacies—or the budgetary demands—of development. What I will say is that we got to a point where the paper-based meaninglessness of “level-2 authentication” became deceptively benign in practice. And once that capability was confirmed in tight laboratory settings, the debate ensued as to its combat use. Simple demonstration was out of the question as we don’t live in a fantasy world that rewards credulity. It was left to two approaches. Some favored a gradual, screen-to-screen transfer, like all good chain emails. Others were more interested in a sort of mass-scale attack in an area during peak screen-gazing. I’d favored the former as I didn’t think the latter was going to be successful, and if I was right the reprisal would reach an inhuman level of awesomeness. Then, as you now know, I was proven wrong.
There is nothing worse to those who must wield power when one of their own gets ambushed by their conscience. Neither Sec. [Octavia], [Gen. Z], nor [Rogue Programmer 1] would take complete credit for this heinous self-own. Frankly if it meant that much to them they could have picked a more sparsely connected, less essential area, like District 14.2 Now we’re short maybe a quarter of our civil service. It may be just as well, of course. It’s what we get for encouraging people who have a point, whether valid or not, that there are no limitations on the means of proving it.
Whatever. We’ve “pinned medals” on all three.
Two outcomes are clear. First, the program works and the desire to use it has only intensified. Second, the enemy knows something. They’ve let up on attacks lately, thinking perhaps that we have some kind of epidemic. But we can’t yet move on the first because, as it turns out, the second item is somewhat true.
The mass-scale attack lives on in person-to-person transfer. We’ve weaponized “reality” and it’s now gone viral. Rather than improve connectivity we’ve actually had to restrict it further. Our strategy is one of containment but also redirection. Once we can control the spread, we can fan it out west where it was meant to go the whole time. Operation Silver Shamrock has evolved into Operation Lantern Fly. Hopefully it’s a very effective nuisance.
The republic is beset by a unique horror. The outages are a feature, not a bug. The letters, telegrams, and faxes are our mediums. Maybe if it goes long enough, the people will adjust and be the stronger for it. If that’s tepid justice to anyone they can be assured that it’s not lost on us. It’s like [Brutus] said when we were surveying the aftermath of District 6: “Maybe they’ll give us a Nobel Prize for Stupidity.” “A pity Nobel,” I added. I laughed. Then he laughed. We both laughed. Less at any evidence of our cleverness than in our raw, and rarely copacetic, candor.
Anyway, that’s why you can’t send emails.
Weehawken
Delaware