Echo Chamber Page 16

  To Peter's right is Tanner Futch, ranked third, Beverly Johnson, ranked fifth, and Marlon Dixon, tied for sixth.

  Seasoned political journalist Gwen Winters is back to moderate the debate, and she's as commanding as ever in a red suit that sets off her long blonde hair.

  After shaking hands with the candidates, she returns to a small table about five feet in front of me, and begins. "Welcome, candidates, and welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the final Ameritocracy debate."

  Loud cheers erupt in the hall, but my mind quiets. I stare at Peter, who stares back, a pleasant expression on his face. He knows millions are watching him.

  Between the final meeting with the candidates and the start of the debate, I called the office three times, but no one has heard from Leslie. I checked the TrueSecret app every fifteen minutes, praying for a note, but nothing. I have no idea why she'd abandon us on the eve of the final vote, but as far as I can tell, she has.

  After going over the ground rules, Winters invites each candidate to give a two minute opening statement, beginning with Peter. As soon as he speaks, I tune him out. After last night, the simple sound of his voice is traumatizing.

  I try to stop thinking about the fact that in twenty-four hours I'll stand in the center of stage—where Peter now stands—and hand someone a novelty check for thirty million dollars. That someone will probably be Peter.

  I try to stop thinking about how, a few days from now, I'll transfer all the money in the Ameritocracy bank account to that winner. Again, probably Peter.

  And I try to stop thinking about how, a few days after that, I'll be out of a job.

  As Morales and Futch give their opening remarks, I'm drifting, unmoored, floating above the stage and watching it all. It's as though Ameritocracy exists for the first time somewhere outside my body.

  Parents tell me that as their children grow up and become more independent, they go through withdrawal. The love is still there, but little by little, the sense that their children are "theirs" disappears. They realize that children have their own minds, their own interests. No matter how much the parent holds on, children have their own destinies.

  With Ameritocracy, this happened all at once and recently. On some level, I lost control the moment I accepted Peter's money, the moment we allowed Benjamin into our little office above Baker's Dozen. Offices that were, come to think of it, also Peter's.

  At the time, though, Ameritocracy still felt like my baby. It's no longer mine, and that knowledge rests in a hollow place in my chest.

  Millions of Americans have relationships with the site and the candidates. The candidates themselves have their hopes pinned to the final vote. Mostly, though, it's no longer mine because somehow, Peter has taken control of the leaderboard. Through a combination of ruthless media savvy, two-faced public speeches and nefarious control of our website, he's got the competition all but won.

  And there's nothing I can do about it. Ameritocracy has its own destiny, one I never imagined.

  Avery Axum's warm voice interrupts my reflection. "Thank you, Ms. Winters. For the last couple months, I've thought about something that happened at the debate in Sacramento. If you recall, Ms. Hall and I got into a little spat about the best way to ensure that economic growth benefits all Americans. I've also thought a lot about demagogues and radical political change.

  "From the beginning, I've been of two minds about Ameritocracy. My students forced me to register." He gives a little wink to a section of his students in the audience. "Why did I have such strong reservations? For decades, the two-party system has led to slow, moderate reforms. Even when we're frustrated by lack of progress, moderates keep extremist movements and revolutions at bay. Slow reform is good.

  "I believe that. I also know that from 1945 to 1960, the living standard of the average American doubled. From 1960 to 1985 it doubled again. So it doubled over fifteen years, then again over the next twenty five. In the thirty-five years since, from 1985 to 2020, living standards in America have stayed the same.

  "Ms. Hall and I can debate food costs, music costs, and housing costs all we want. The simple truth is, someone is getting richer, and it's probably not you. And if you're honest with yourself, you know it's not going to be your kids, either.

  "For years, even when Americans were irate about politics, they could find comfort in the notion that their kids would be richer than them, more secure than them, so it was okay. I believe that notion made the limitations of our politics tolerable.

  "Those days are gone. When people feel the mainstream doesn't represent them, they look elsewhere for someone who does. Under current conditions, right-wing demagogues and radical leftists can take over. We can lose the moderates—lose the very notion of moderation—and cede power to the fringes.

  "I want to speak now directly to the voters tempted to choose an extreme candidate like Tanner Futch. History has seen so-called populist candidates like Futch elected, and every time it follows a script. He promises that the system is so corrupt only he can fix it. When he gets in power, he fails to fix it because it turns out that everything is more complicated than he made it sound on the campaign trail. Then, to fix it, and often to line his own pockets, he consolidates power by nationalizing the media, controlling elections, or using the powers of government to smear, limit, and even kill his opponents. As bad as things are right now, they can be much worse. Much worse. I argue for a radical centrism. A wholesale rejection of partisanship in favor of negotiation, honest debate, and the always-flawed middle road that is still better than the extremes.

  "And to that end, I offer a solution." He pauses solemnly, then continues. "I urge you not to vote for me. I hereby withdraw from the competition and throw all my support to the best candidate on this stage tonight. A woman with the experience to do the job, and the ideas to build the kind of future we need. She and I don't always agree, but I believe the country would be safe in her hands."

  "Mr. Axum," Winters interjects, "that's time."

  Axum clears his throat and looks straight at me. "I ask my voters to join me in supporting Justine Hall."

  I look from Axum to Hall, then back to Axum, whose face has broken out into a wide, relieved grin.

  Winters looks stunned. She doesn't say anything, just glances from candidate to candidate, like she's waiting for them to say something.

  None of them look like they want to say anything. They appear as shocked as I feel.

  Futch's mouth is agape.

  Dixon's head does small circles like he's in some kind of a trance.

  Morales and Johnson look pissed.

  I even catch a grimace on Peter's face, though it morphs quickly into a cool, condescending smile.

  Justine Hall is the only one who looks like she expected this.

  Winters shifts her gaze to Hall. "Ms. Hall, um, your two minute opening statement, please."

  Like everyone else in the audience, I crane forward, eager to hear her response to Axum's shocking announcement.

  She places her hands on the podium palms down, and begins with a passion that matches the speech she gave before the debate. "The pundits say this competition is over. I say it's not. And I know a little something about beating the odds. The pundits said I had no chance at becoming mayor. I did anyway. They said okay, we were wrong about that, but no way she'll be effective. I got more done in my first year than any of my predecessors did in ten. They said okay, she can do policy, but she's too hard-nosed, too confrontational, she'll never win reelection. Guess what? Wrong about that, too. So when I talk about enacting real change at an executive level, don't come at me with pundits saying they don't like my odds. I've learned not to listen to them.

  "Now, you probably all want to know what I think of the endorsement I just received. And I'll respond to that. First I'd like to say that I'm glad to see Professor Axum fully embrace my position on the growing income gap."

  She smiles at him like she knows she oversimplified his position. He smiles back.

&nbs
p; "But while I respect Professor Axum's position about the rise of the fringes, I think he left out a big piece. Technology. I believe the fringes have always been there. Hate groups and extremist groups, demagogues and potential demagogues from both the left and right. Technology, for all the great things it has done, has enabled these folks to organize and emerge from the shadows."

  She glances at Peter as she says this last piece.

  "Avery Axum and I disagree on plenty of issues, agree on some. But I respect him and he respects me. I expect our disagreements to be excellent fuel on the campaign trail."

  She scans the audience.

  "I thank him for his support. I welcome it. And tonight I am pleased to announce that—should I win Ameritocracy—Avery Axum will be my running mate. He is my vice presidential nominee." She pauses, letting her eyes wash over the crowd. "Together, we will work hard over the next four months to turn this country around and defeat the Democrats and Republicans in 2020. He proposed a form of radical centrism. I'd call it radical pragmatism. A vote for me is a vote for him and a vote for an administration based on getting real things done. No empty rhetoric or maybe-someday plans. That's over. Together we will do real things for the good of all the American people."

  She pauses as murmurs break out in the audience. Axum wears a wide smile, and I know in an instant they've been planning this for weeks, if not longer.

  "That's it," Hall concludes. "Next question."

  For the next hour, I'm in a dream. My mind weaves in and out of debate answers, races with the possibilities for the future, and I long to be somewhere quiet, somewhere I'm not responsible for anything.

  One moment Peter offers a two-faced answer on gay marriage, once again saying brazenly contradictory things. "Marriage is based on love. Period. And we can't afford to throw out state traditions via federal power."

  The statement creates two perfect soundbites with opposite meanings, designed to be tweeted out to different target audiences to make everyone think he stands with them. Once again, he's counting on the fact that people hear what they want to hear. Or, maybe, what he allows them to hear.

  The next moment, I see myself in a chair in my mother's house in Connecticut, eating a BLT the way she always made them when I was growing up. In this vision, I have no emails to answer and nothing to worry about.

  I think I hear my name in an odd whisper. It echoes in my head and I'm sure I'm going mad.

  Then Peter gives an answer on taxes: "We can't overtax the wealth creators that our economy depends on. But when you think about it, regular people are the real wealth creators, and we need to protect them."

  Dixon answers the same question. "It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven, but again, the president can't legislate personal morality. What the president can do—and I will—is address capital gains taxes, the one thing billionaires like Mr. Colton don't want us to talk about..."

  I crane my neck back and look into the lights, letting them blind me for a moment.

  "Miaaaaaaa."

  I hear my name again, this time it's in my father's voice, saying kind and supportive things. Things he never said until the dinner a couple days ago.

  Now Peter answers a question on foreign intervention: "America does best when we are seen as strong, and when we are strong. I believe that a policy of peace and restraint gives us the strongest position."

  Axum answers a question, referring back to something Hall said earlier. Their answers seem coordinated, like they want to cement the idea of themselves as a pair in the mind of voters before the debate ends. Their surprise announcement still hangs in the room, shaping everything around them.

  That's why I feel so strange.

  In an instant I went from the certain trauma of a Peter Colton win to the glimmer of hope that a last-minute alliance between Hall and Axum could tip the balance.

  "Miaaaaaaa."

  Again, I think I hear my name and…wait, I do hear my name.

  A hand grasps my ankle.

  Leslie Carrington—dressed in a ridiculous 1980s jogging outfit—crouches in front of me to my right, having somehow made her way to the front of the auditorium.

  I lean in so her mouth is close to my ear.

  "Mia." Her whisper is strangely calm. "Your entire site is working to get Peter Colton elected, and always has been."

  23

  I stare at Leslie, her words echoing in my mind but not registering any meaning. On stage Peter answers a question about the environment. I look to my left and right, but there's no way out of here without making a scene.

  Leslie tries to speak again but, in an instant, I make a decision. Crouching as low as I can, I lead her to the front left of the stage, past a couple security guards who recognize me.

  As the stage door closes behind us, Leslie tries to explain. "Mia, it's—"

  "Shh! Not here."

  I push her into the small room where, only hours earlier, I met with my top candidates.

  I shut the door. "What the hell is going on?"

  "I know it's weird that I'm here, but I told you I don't trust phones and—"

  "What about the app?"

  "After seeing what I saw, I don't trust any technology connected to Ameritocracy."

  "Tell me what's going on."

  "I told you, Peter hijacked Ameritocracy long before he was a candidate."

  "The voting system?"

  "Worse."

  She walks a little square around the room, one large stride in each direction with a slow, 90-degree turn after each. Then she does it again.

  "Leslie," I say as calmly as possible. "I need you to start from the beginning."

  She walks the square again, breathing deeply, then jerks to a stop. "Okay, sometimes my mind gets a little racy and disjointed. I'll do my best to make this coherent."

  I brace myself against a desk in the corner, ready for what's to come.

  "Like you asked," she says, "I checked and double-checked the voting system. It's not rigged and it's totally secure. There are levels of security there I'd heard about but never seen. Foreign governments could try to hack into the voting and they'd never get in."

  "Okay, so what—"

  "Mia, let me get this out. It'll be better if you…please just let me finish."

  I lean away. "Fine."

  "Once I determined the voting itself was secure, I looked at other systems. Voter registration, the app, the candidate profiles and uploads, and so on. What I found was shocking. Have you heard of HTML7?"

  "It has something to do with the internet, or coding, right?"

  Leslie sighs. "It's the form of code that most of the internet runs on. Peter, along with heads of Apple and Google and most other major players, sits on an advisory council that set standards for development years in advance. Basically, they agree to use certain standards for their software, their web platforms, and their devices to make everything more compatible."

  "How does this relate to Ameritocracy?"

  "I'm getting to that. Yes, sorry. You'll see that the thing about HTML7 matters because that's what he used."

  "Used to do what?"

  "Peter, or more likely Benjamin, created a line of code that follows your users after the first time they come to the site. That line of code uses HTML7, the universal coding language, to change what appears on other websites, including the major social media platforms."

  I feel warm as the air leaves my chest. I close my eyes and try to breathe, but it's as though all the oxygen has been sucked out of the room.

  Leslie locks eyes with me. "In therapy, I've learned that I'm not an especially empathetic person. And even I can tell you're freaking out."

  "Go…go on," I whisper. "I need to hear this."

  "Have you heard of cookies? I mean, in a computing context?"

  "Sort of. Aren't they the things that remember your info on websites?"

  "Right, you can allow them or disallow them in your browser, but most peop
le allow them. They're small files stored on your computer. Usually they hold a tiny amount of data specific to you and a certain website. They allow a server to deliver a page tailored to a particular user and carry information about you from one visit to the website to the next."

  "So Peter made a cookie for the Ameritocracy site?"

  "Not at all. I was using that as an analogy because what he did has never been done before. What Peter did was use the code within the Ameritocracy site to hijack the internet. When you visit the site for the first time, you have the option of logging in with Facebook. Most people do that. When they do, the Ameritocracy code gets access to their friends list, their likes, their dislikes. And that's what people agree to. What people don't agree to is much more nefarious. The code immediately begins to read people's preferences. Like I said, the easiest way to do this is with Facebook. If you've liked a lot of pro-choice pages, are a woman, and have friends who use phrases like "right to choose" in posts, the code assumes you are pro-choice. If you've liked the NRA's Facebook page and talk about the Second Amendment a lot, well, you get the picture."

  "Right, but some people don't log in with Facebook, so isn't that different?" I'm acutely aware I'm interrupting her, but I want to defend my site. I've been doing it so long it's now a hardened reflex.

  She shakes her head emphatically. "Even if you don't log in with Facebook, the code can tell where you've been on the web, and where you go after you leave the Ameritocracy page. So, let's say you come to the site for the first time, set up a profile, read some candidate pages, then cast a vote for Marlon Dixon. The code can then follow you, so to speak, as you go to Dixon's personal homepage, read a Dallas Morning News article about his activism, and so on. But then you go to, I dunno, some other site to look at hot muscular guys, or the freakin' Barker to read the latest updates on celebrity gossip. Doesn't matter. Every site you visit after your initial visit to Ameritocracy is fed into the algorithm. Within minutes, the site fine-tunes its profile of you, so when you visit Peter's profile page, you see different versions of his positions, based on your algorithmically learned preference. The screenshots you sent me, that explains them. Bird and your Uncle Hippon are very different. The algorithm knows this and feeds them information about Peter to match their preferences."