365 story - part 5

*note: change in plans - an entry a day did not work. I'm far too unorganized and afraid of commitment for that. But, I've decided not to give up on the story. I will post randomly, when I feel like it.

I had noticed that the birds were gone. There used to be birds around here - pigeons, crows, those cute little sparrows. I haven't seen or heard one for a while. I'm not sure where they went, or what caused them to leave. Maybe it's got something to do with all the building going on. Since the government started erecting all the defense systems, the environment has definitely taken a back seat.

I remember when computers were just something to surf the web on. I know - I'm old as fuck. Nostalgia, oh god! Yeah - computers were for email, meeting chicks on social networks, playing video games, and most of all - porn. Those were the days. Everything was free and clear. You could actually get onto the internet anonymously. I think it was all that shit with downloading music that started it. The big record companies didn't like the idea of people getting something and not paying for it. They weren't losing money - they just couldn't stand the idea. So they started hassling everyone, got all the host companies involved, and of course the government.

Eventually, every single thing you did online got recorded. It happened pretty quick. The internet went from a hacker's wild west to communist Russia, all in a matter of a few years. Of course a few people knew how to get around it. Most notably was Bill Gates. The guy had been famous for starting a big software company, but his real claim to fame was fighting the powers that be - he became the most powerful hacker in the world, the leader of a hidden group whose numbers were unknown and who moved about 'outside the matrix' (I wonder where that saying came from. It is such an old expression, but I've never really thought about it's meaning).

Anyway, Gates and company led the revolution until it died. I guess they did, too. You never know what happens to people when they get caught now - they just disappear. But, they're gone now, and the only freedom fighters left are us - if that is how you want to see us. But we are just slackers. We don't really fight the system as much as we just don't play along. I do what I have to do to keep out of trouble, but I have enough analogue activity to be considered an outlaw. The only way to get away with anything these days is to disconnect. Most people can't do it, but since I've been there since the beginning, and was involved in the roll out of the new system, I know some secrets.

But we just use it to explore, man. I have no hopes of defeating the system. The government has finally done it. They have gained control of our thoughts, our innermost secrets. They have won. The only freedom we have comes from the fact that there are just too damn many of us with too damn many stupid and meaningless thoughts. I don't know how they planned to keep up with it all, but each person thinks something like 20 random thoughts a minute - most of them utterly unimportant. How does a world government keep up with that many thoughts in 22.5 billion heads every minute?

They don't. They just filter for certain brain wave patterns, and certain key images and words. I have a list of them somewhere - that is how I stay unnoticed most of the time. I have deleted those key search patterns from my subconscious. How? Well that's funny. I was a student of Zen Buddhism and I knew a lot about meditation and controlling my mind. I just permanently put a big X over all those thoughts in my subconscious. I self censor, man. But, I also devised myself a code for thinking about those banned subjects. I linked neutral emotions, images, and words to the Watchlist topics. For me, "laughing in the spring rain" means something completely different from what it sounds like. Here, I can't say it of course, but I can write it on this scrap of paper.

Now DON'T you DARE read this out in your mind, ok? Just look at the words and accept it without thinking about it - that is how we communicate, see? If you go and think about it, it is going to set off that Watchlist filter. Think you can do that? Ok. Here's what "laughing in the spring rain" means in code:

decompressing 132-bit encryption file

Neat, huh?