Helmet Time: Chapter Two
By: Tom Stagg
Tags: Smartstraw, Communication, Dystopia, Robots, USA

The Smart Straw

The straw started as a place to open and close. It would breathe big enough for my needs and it would bend in and out to suit my design. I built it with food and liquids in mind but it became part of our communication process.

The straw was by the jaw, where the wires ran to the GPU. It bypassed the air flow for a direct feed, and also fed us food. Proprietary cleaning technology. But in addition to bringing things in, the smart straw could push things out.

Imagine being monitored on all digital devices. The straw would adapt and extend into a river or ocean, transmitting waves of data and avoiding those bands altogether. Imagine wearing your helmet, running a tube from your smart straw and dropping your subsonic signal into the bay and across the water.

I ran some tests early on but the nuclear submarines picked up on it. The ocean was already monitored, ever since the world wars. Believe me now, this is all confirmed because we saw the fake HVAC poking around. Kev had to run and hide with his straw snake, and the rest of us drove off. Trackers had him at the water but they lost him on land. We found Kev later lodged in a bin and collected him without further conflict. Still, they saw us all out in our helmets, and we felt pretty conspicuous. They came by later, right to my house, to check our ducts, but we told them nothing.

With the ocean off limits, we looked for ways to make good use of this design.

The same technology applied in the kitchen, where no one was listening. Low frequency waves would travel through the water supply when the valves were open on each end. I would wear my helmet, and drop a straw into the running faucet. A data pulse would arrive across the city. For additional security, the message was encrypted. A separate signal sent the cipher through the metal pipes themselves. Because no one was listening to the pipes, either.

We were able to keep our coms off the record. And whatever may have been seen, wasn’t immediately understood.

The President refused to concede. The winter dragged on. Not enough votes arrived on time to render an outright win. 45 was determined to bring us all down with him, and Big Pantsing dropped privacy for the final weeks of his reign. But smart straw coms were solid and our privacy oriented, characteristically stark market approach kept the network secure. Remember, we were all ethical incels, and no one was listening to us. Its the gift that keeps on giving.

Biden found us after that OregonLive blog where one of our helmed squadmen was included in a group photo. G1’ers were not always embraced. Or always not embraced. They weren’t. But they were brethren. Brother cells, developing cutting edge futuristic technology together. They were like a circle of witches, but square. A coven of bro’s. A broven.

Our helmets all matched but you could tell us apart. I had a squad that was obviously the central squad. Since I started it. And my squads had squads. Some of my squad had other squads that didn’t fuck with us but I don’t dwell on that. We were all broven. We all had helmets.

45 stripped privacy away right when we figured out how to do without it. So our first goal, invulnerability, was already achieved. We didn’t need privacy. Our helmets took care of that.

Ultimately they heard us. They heard everything. But for a while there, we spoke freely.

Pantsing had a chilling effect on everyone. If you have nothing to hide, you have no reason to worry- the old police state adage- was rendered obsolete by outrage culture. Human proclivities and idle time meant we all had habits we prefer to treat as personal private detritus. Kevin saw this coming years ago, and wrote scripts for all of us to make our avatars appear high-minded, browsing academic journals and current affairs, peeking inside the occasional classic. But with Pantsing came the behavioral pie chart, emblazoned on your IRL body. Go ahead and tint your faceplate, I can see your sickness in detail. People unprepared for this disclosure now had another reason not to show their face in public.

My broven was dedicated to elevating technology, and we knew early on how it might be used against us. We were human after all, and humans all make each other sick. Everyone is self interested, everyone is tone deaf. And all are too aware of their mortality. So before the crew split up, we focused on the big problems of the world.

The ownership class was coalescing toward imminent singularity. We needed a loophole, and we looked high and low for it. Corporate executive power was snowballing. The U.S. Supreme Court decided Citizens United and it looked like a dead end for us. But then the idea came. We kept it offline. We told no one.

At first we thought inventing a new smart machine would save the humans from economic slavery. But the real solution? Unionizing the old ones.

Coming soon-

Helmet Time, Chapter 3

“The Smart Boss"