[...] Choosing to be an activist wasn’t choosing surveillance: choosing to make surveillance was choosing surveillance. I knew what she meant because we’d had this argument before, which is one of the advantages to talking with old friends, all that shared history, all those old conversations in the data-bank. It was also the crisis of talking to old friends, because it liberated the fragments that had been compartmentalized years ago, let them stretch and breathe and remind you of all the ways you had disappointed yourself and everyone whose opinion you ever cared about.

The reality is, there was a kind of blip when a minority of working stiffs—white dudes, mostly—held a little more political power, that lasted for less than a century. Now, humanity was returning to its baseline: all or nothing, with a tiny super-rich minority able to control everyone and everything else. The smarter your device, the harder it would be for you to outsmart it. Technology didn’t create the brief democratic blip, and it didn’t kill it, but now that it’s dead, technology will sure as shit make sure it never comes back. Those days are done.

He whistled as he scrolled through the logfile on the back screen. “This is the best one I’ve ever seen. Slick. All the ones I’ve seen were 3-D printed and kind of plasticky.”

I couldn’t help myself. “There’s a co-op, ex-Palantir kids who vested out and started a maker space. They mill the aluminum and print their own circuit boards. Friends of friends. There used to be a waiting list but now that they’ve ramped up production there’s no problems.”

He nearly dropped the phone when I said the P-word. I didn’t let myself smile.

“You trust it?”

As in, Do you trust that people who made their fortunes spying on people wouldn’t screw you over? I rolled my eyes. Oh, baby, if you only knew.

“She’s not running with a good crowd, your friend Tanisha. Black identity extremists. Kind of organization where you scratch the surface and it’s all Russian infowar stuff, targeted ads getting people riled up and in the streets.” She shook her head slowly. “It’s a pity. I can tell her heart’s in the right place. It’s right there in her file. But you can’t deny that there’s a legitimate interest in keeping an eye on that sort of thing.”

I didn’t roll my eyes. “The Black-Brown Alliance is a Russian front?”

“I didn’t say that. Just that it’s some muddy waters. The rank and file believe in the cause, but they don’t have good information. They’ve been nudged and shoved around, pushed into a very ugly, confrontational politics that is designed to create civil unrest. Pushed to think of the police as enemy soldiers. Manipulated with weaponized, half-true stories about criminals being shot by law enforcement that make them look like victims instead of perps.”

Now I did roll my eyes. I couldn’t help it.

“Masha, I know you think that the ‘struggle for justice’ is a corny fantasy, but you live in a world where people have weekends, don’t get maimed on the job, and have constitutional rights, at least some of the time. You live in a world where I’m not someone’s property, where I can vote, where I can marry a woman or a man. That’s because sometimes, the struggle for justice gets somewhere. Do you know how that happens? Do you have a theory of change?”

I shrugged. “The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice?”

She made a fart noise. “You know what makes it bend, Masha? People hauling on that mother, with all their strength, with all their lives. We pull and pull and pull, and then, bit by bit, it bends. People hear Dr. King’s quote and they think, oh, well, if the arc of history is going to bend toward justice then all we have to do is sit back and wait for it. But the truth is, it bends because we make it bend, and the instant we let up, even a little, it snaps back.”

“What do I do if he stops breathing?”

“You know mouth-to-mouth?”

Her eyes got wide. “No.”

“Then you shout, ‘Who the fuck here knows CPR?’ until someone comes over.”

I could see that she was about to back off, so I said, “Come on, this guy needs you.”

“What about you?”

“I’m going to see who else needs help, because I do know CPR. Good enough for you?”

She wasn’t happy about it, but she knelt by the guy.

“What’s your name?”

“Lisette.”

“Lisette, you’re doing something important and good here, okay? Shouting at cops is fun and all, but ultimately, if you don’t stop to help some poor asshole who’s been mowed down by a car, can you really claim to be committed to any kind of social justice?” I wanted to be sure she stayed put.

San Francisco had moved on during my years away: my friends, my family, and my city—all transformed into something new and only vaguely familiar. Who would I have been if I’d stayed in the city? Would I have helped gentrify Oakland with a tiny apartment or a run-down house that I laboriously repainted on my evenings and weekends, when I wasn’t grinding out code to increase ad-clicks? A decade ago, I’d been drunk on the power of technology to make a dent in the universe; I had sobered up in the intervening years, had turned my love into just a job, which is to say, I’d become an adult. Maybe if I’d stayed here, I could have remained a child in a city that just wanted everyone to play and have a good time (while increasing clicks on ads).

“Look, Tanisha, if I don’t help Xoth by attributing the attack to Zyz, then Zyz will probably keep their contract with Oakland and may even get that contract with San Francisco. You may think I’m selling out, but I’m making things better.” I cringed at the whine in my voice. “You think things are bad now? How much worse will it be if the only people willing to work on these projects are the people with no morals at all?”

Without a moment’s hesitation: “How much better will it be when everyone with any morals walks away from these evil fuckers and anyone who chooses to stay pays the price of being unwelcome in civilized society?”

You know, fair enough.

“You know what? I have. I rehearsed it every single time I thought about what you were so busy doing. You ever think that the things you’re building are going to be used on you someday? Not just brown people or poor people or strangers, but you and your mother and the people you love? That you might end up convincing yourself that you don’t love anyone rather than admitting that you’re doing the wrong thing? You want to end up living by yourself, a miserable old dragon sat on top of your hoard of blood money, trying to find something, anything, to distract you from the things you did and the people you did them to?”

“Tanisha—”

“Shut. Up. You’re goddamned right I rehearsed this, Masha, because you appointed me your conscience and I have not done much of a job of it, girl. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from hanging around with you all these years, it’s that you’re special. Not many people can do what you do. Maybe in twenty years, we’ll have a whole generation of baby geniuses with your skills, but right now, when you don’t do something, there’s a good chance they won’t be able to hire anyone else to do it. That means that your choices mean something.

“Now, I look at you and see your back stiffening and I know what you’re thinking, you’re all, ‘Why the fuck is this my burden to carry? Let someone else save the world, I just wanna pay my bills.’

“But you need to flip your script. This is not a burden, it’s a winning lottery ticket. Most of us are passengers of history, but every once in a while, if you’re very lucky, lightning strikes and you get to drive. You got the wheel right now. Sure, it’s an awesome responsibility, but awesome is awesome.”

Working for Xoth would make me rich. Rich as hell, in fact. Of course, I’d be getting rich because I’d be helping people much richer than me hang on to their money and figure out who to arrest before the guillotines could be erected outside their walled estates.

I hadn’t created this situation. Even with all I had done, I was still just a bit player on this huge board, and the game had been in motion long before I was born. Vast historic forces had brought this world into being, and I had to live in it with everyone else. If I took vows of poverty or swore myself to revolution, it wouldn’t overturn the order. In a world of winners and losers, choosing the losing side wasn’t going to help anyone, least of all myself. At least my comfortable couch in the outer halls of power afforded me enough slack to reach out and help a little, retail-style, one person at a time. And after all, that’s the only way people came, one at a time, even in a big crowd. We were born as individuals, and we died on our own, and even the tightest, best-coordinated group was just a bunch of singular individuals choosing to work together for a while.

All of this was self-serving, sure—it wasn’t just ethical cover for an expedient way of keeping my skin intact, but also oiled with the most expensive lotions the world’s luxury duty-free stores had to offer. But self-serving wasn’t the same as wrong.