Echo Chamber Read online

  I type a reply. "Okay, how long?"

  The reply appears, then disappears as I read it. "Gimme three hours."

  25

  Malcolm and I walk the northern perimeter of the Mall. Not far away, small crowds hang around the Washington Memorial. Though fireworks ended hours ago, the drunken revelry continues.

  It took me a minute to recognize the name Quinn Rivers. A few years ago my ex-boss Alex got into some trouble with her, so there was a period when I had to delete a lot of emails about her. Lawyer scams and agent scams and various other scams that came at Alex after Quinn got famous for a car chase through the Nevada desert.

  Evidently, she's now in touch with someone even deeper and weirder than herself, someone now sending me anonymous messages via an app I didn't install.

  Despite my pestering, Quinn wouldn't tell me who it was, only that it was one of the most gifted hackers on earth, one that owed Alex a favor. Quinn had contacted Alex, who'd called in the favor and gotten the cell phone number for her to dial. "Alex's single-use bat-signal," she called it.

  Quinn kicked us out soon after we received the note from the mystery person on the other end of the Collude app. With nothing left to do, Steph decided to grab a couple hours sleep and Malcolm and I wandered out into the warm D.C. night.

  The pop pop pop of a string of firecrackers cuts through our awkward silence. "What was it Peter said in the debate that made you think of that email?" I ask.

  "It was weird. He said something kind of generic about how Facebook and Twitter and the other social apps have brought the world closer together, allowing political movements to rise more quickly than ever before. It got me thinking about you and Ameritocracy."

  "But what connected to that particular email?"

  He goes quiet and I gesture at a bench. "My feet hurt. Mind if we sit?"

  When we sit, I ask again. "Seems like a leap from that line in the debate to the email."

  "I wanted to find a reason to see you tonight," he says. "Tomorrow's the finale, and I assume you'll be crazy-busy all day preparing for that. Then the next day I'm back on tour with Dolly." He turns to me. "In high school when I'd have a crush on someone, I'd make up an excuse to see them because I didn't have the guts to say, 'Hey, I want to see you.' So it'd be like homework or whatever."

  "You made up an excuse to see me?"

  "Not exactly. I was looking for an excuse to see you. Figured I'd find some good reason to hang out tonight, then I saw the thing in the debate and realized I actually did have a good reason to see you. I'd suspected Peter was up to something—he's always up to something—but I had no idea he…"

  Malcolm trails off. I think I can guess what he's thinking.

  "It's not your fault," I say.

  "How'd you know?"

  "You have a conscience."

  "I told you I trusted him. When you asked me the day after he offered you the money. I told you you could trust him. Then he—"

  "I wanted to trust him. Thinking back now, you could have told me he was a terrorist con man and I still would have taken that money. Five million dollars is five million dollars. Like you could have turned that down?"

  Malcolm chuckles.

  "So," I say, "let's talk more about the thing where you made up an excuse to see me. I figured you were living the dream. You know, on tour and everything?"

  He studies the ground shyly. "I'm not gonna say I wasn't, but…"

  "But what?"

  A small group of women approaches us, one of them weaving from side to side, clearly hammered.

  "Happy Fourth of July!" Her voice is slurred.

  "Happy Fourth of July!" the others shout, one of them reaching out to keep her friend from swerving into the street.

  "Hey!" the drunk lady shouts. "Aren't you that lady from that thingy...what's it called?...Amerithing?"

  The others eye me suspiciously.

  The drunk one leans in close to my face to get a better look, recognition dawning on her face. "I loooooove Tanner Futch. Love him. You better make him win, you bitch!"

  Malcolm puts his arm around me protectively. "Have a good night," he says. "Please move along now."

  Another lady pulls her friend away. "Sorry, she had a couple too many."

  With that, they continue down the street, starting a chant of "U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A."

  Malcolm faces me as they disappear into the night. "They were friendly. Ever think about taking time off? Not working so hard, so you can enjoy life a little?"

  For some reason I don't want to tell him that's exactly what I've been thinking, so I gesture toward the retreating drunks. "Enjoy life like that?"

  "Not like that, but—"

  I lean in and kiss him, softly and just once.

  Pulling away, I say, "I don't know what I'm going to do after this, but I want it to be something where people don't recognize me so much. Something where I can have more moments like right now but without those drunk ladies. Fewer moments of me standing on a stage in front of millions of people."

  Malcolm tightens his grip around my shoulder, then leans in and kisses me long and slow.

  "You don't know how long I've wanted to do that," he whispers.

  My skin tingles all over. "How long?" I ask quietly.

  "Since an hour after I met you. After we went dress shopping in Santa Clarissa. Sitting in the car. I almost did, too, but I didn't know if you were feeling it, too."

  "I was."

  My phone chirps. "We've been out for a long time. I better check it. It could be—"

  "Check it." He removes his arm from my shoulder as I reach for my phone.

  Steph: Get back here. Leslie/Quinn woke me up. Something's happening.

  26

  Quinn doesn't hear us when we come in. She's glued to her screens, typing furiously.

  "She's been like that since I texted you," Steph says, meeting Malcolm and me at the door. "She's got that Collude app open and is going at it."

  "Has she said anything?" Malcolm asks.

  "Only thing she said since you left was ten minutes ago. 'Get Mia!' I texted you right away."

  I approach Quinn and, as I'm about to place a hand on her shoulder, she turns. "Open the Collude app on your computer."

  "I didn't know you knew we were back. You seemed…uh, engrossed."

  "Saw your reflection in my screen. Open the app. Now."

  Back at the desk where I left my computer, I open the app. After a few seconds, a note appears.

  Get a pen or pencil, and something to write on.

  As the text disappears, I grab the hotel stationery and pen from the drawer of the desk, then type my reply.

  Done.

  The next message appears right away.

  I'm about to paste a few hundred lines of code into the app. Write down the first and last line of code.

  As the note disappears, a big block of text appears.

  The app seems to leave messages only long enough for them to be read once, so I scribble like mad to get the first line of text jotted down before it disappears.

  I skip the middle of the code, so I have longer to copy the last line.

  When I'm done, I glance at what I've written. It's meaningless to me, but I assume it will mean something to Quinn. The only word I recognize in the opening line is "define."

  I watch as the code fades to nothing and another note appears.

  Did you copy it?

  Yes.

  Now, tell Quinn to find those two lines, and select everything between them. It should be the same length as the code I sent you.

  I call to her. "Quinn."

  She appears over my shoulder and I hand her the piece of paper.

  "Ask," Quinn says, "whether it's this and everything in between."

  "It is," I say. "Can you find it?"

  Quinn returns to her bed of laptops without answering.

  "Found it," she says after a long minute.

  I reply in the app.

  Done.

  Im
mediately, the response appears.

  I'm about to paste an address into the app. Write it down.

  The note disappears, and a string of numbers appears.

  198.021.299.111

  I copy it down.

  Now what? I type.

  Have Quinn go to that location. There will be a text document there for the next ten minutes, and only for those ten minutes. Replace everything between those two lines of code with what's in the document.

  I hand the string of numbers to Quinn. "What is that?"

  "IP address. Direct to a website without a domain name."

  Quinn taps calmly at her keyboard for about thirty seconds, then looks up. "Done."

  I tap a note into the app.

  Done. Now what?

  It takes a moment, but a reply appears.

  Now nothing. That's it.

  I can't believe it.

  That's it?

  Well, Quinn needs to hit 'save,' but I think she probably figured that out on her own.

  27

  July 5, 2020

  Soft light streams into the darkened room through a crack in the curtains. I blink twice, realizing I'm in a chair next to the bed.

  Quinn is there, hunched over her laptop and ringed by the half-circle of computers.

  "Steph?" I look around the room, but don't see her.

  "She's in the bathroom," Quinn says, sounding tired for the first time.

  My brain swirls, trying to recall how things ended last night. After Quinn inserted the new code, I sort of expected some bells and whistles. Maybe the computer would start beeping, or the screen would blink red, like in a lame hacker movie.

  When nothing happened, Quinn told me it would take a couple hours to see changes, and that I should get some sleep.

  "What's happening?" I try to stand and have to catch myself on the armchair. One of my legs has fallen asleep.

  I rub out the pins and needles, then pull myself up on the end of the bed and sit on the tiny corner not covered by laptops or Quinn.

  "What's happening?" I ask again.

  "Wait until Steph gets back. You should see this at the same time."

  I look around the room, my eyes landing on the empty coffee pot. I limp over and begin brewing as much as it will hold. "Where's Malcolm?"

  "Went home about half an hour after you fell asleep. As you probably guessed, I'm not the kind of person who talks about guys with her friends, but he seems cool. Like a genuine person. Got a nice butt, which is sometimes a marker for an undercover CIA agent, but I was wrong about that. He's definitely not undercover CIA, and that's often the best you can hope for in a relationship."

  I chuckle as I turn on the coffee, but she doesn't. She wasn't joking.

  "Mia!" Steph emerges from the bathroom. "You're alive."

  "Barely."

  "Do you want to see what happened?" Quinn asks.

  "Will I be able to understand it before coffee?"

  Quinn just gives me the side-eye. I pour the quarter-cup of coffee that's already brewed into a paper cup, and follow Steph to the bed.

  Quinn points at the laptop on the far left of her half circle. "This is the Facebook account from last night. The Michigan one."

  She scrolls down the feed. Many news stories mention the Justine Hall and Avery Axum alliance. One article announces that Peter framed DB with the leaked video, citing the suicide note. Another mentions positions Peter took in the debate, but not the positions I'd expect, given his manipulation of Facebook. Instead of headlines that highlight his plans for Michigan, the headlines all mention his view that California drives the American economy. And instead of highlighting his pro-life stance, the headlines make him seem pro-choice.

  "Now look here," Quinn says, pointing at another screen. It's open to Peter's Ameritocracy page. "See what it says about his stance on gay marriage?"

  I scan the paper, which is the same one I'd already seen, the one that appeared on Bird's account. "So?"

  "This is your Uncle Hippon's account. I owe him an apology. I hacked it."

  She gestures toward another screen. "And this is Bird's account."

  "You hacked Bird's account, too?"

  "I got his info," Steph says. "After you fell asleep. He was happy to help."

  Bird's account is also open to Peter's gay marriage stance, but it now reads that he opposes it. It's the exact version Uncle Hippon sent me in the screenshot.

  I look back and forth between the two screens. Uncle Hippon's account and Bird's account. "What the what?"

  Steph puts a hand on my shoulder. "She didn't just put the algorithm back to normal. She reversed some aspects of it."

  "The lines of code we swapped out last night did two things," Quinn adds. "First, they eliminated the manipulation over people's social media feeds. So what people are seeing all around the world right now on Facebook and Twitter and within Google search is what they ought to be seeing based on the way the algorithms that run those sites are supposed to work. No more manipulation. No more filtering out the negative stories about Peter. On the Ameritocracy site itself, and within the app, our anonymous friend’s code did something different."

  "It's awesome," Steph interrupts, unable to contain her excitement. "Since Peter has multiple position papers on every issue, in which he takes every imaginable stance, she didn't simply correct it to show his real positions. Because he has no real positions. Instead, she reversed the algorithm. Since there was no true stance to revert to, it was easier, and more fun, to show people the opposite position. So, people who feel strongly about limited government and low taxes are logging into Ameritocracy right now only to find out that Peter is basically Lenin. People who want more government regulation to protect the environment are logging in and finding out that he wants to sell off public land to whoever's buying. To pro-life voters, he's pro-choice. To hawks, he's a dove. And vice versa."

  "There's something else," Quinn says, grabbing another laptop and holding it up for me to see.

  It's a story about DB's suicide note. One of many that broke yesterday but didn't get any traction online.

  "Look at the retweets," Steph says.

  It's got 109,986 retweets, and nearly half a million likes.

  "It started picking up steam after we reversed the algorithm," Steph says, "then went full-on viral this morning. That's why you saw the story about the suicide note in the Facebook feed. That story is everywhere now."

  Quinn looks triumphant. "Along with a bunch of other negative stories about Peter that his hijacking of our feeds had quietly bypassed."

  My phone erupts with the sound of trumpets and I find it on the floor next to the chair where I'd slept.

  "What is it?" Steph asks.

  I walk over and pick it up. "That's a notification I set months ago." I silence it. "It's six in the morning. The final voting just opened."

  28

  The voting has been set to open automatically for weeks, accompanied by an email, a bunch of press releases, and a series of tweets, Facebook posts, and pre-recorded videos from our top candidates and every celebrity we could get, encouraging people to vote.

  Until now, users voted using a ranked candidate voting system. They chose their top candidates and each candidate got a point value based on whether the user ranked them first, second, third, and so on.

  Not anymore. The final vote is like any presidential election. You vote once, for the candidate you choose. The only difference is that our ballots don't have any party affiliations, and it's all online.

  I promise myself I'll only check the vote totals once per hour. A second later, I admit I'm lying to myself.

  But I have to make it at least fifteen minutes, and there's an important phone call I need to make. I'm only going to do it once, so I need to do it right.

  First, I check Peter's official Twitter account. He, or more likely his team, have issued a statement over a short series of tweets.

  Ameritocracy Voter:

  A strange series of doctor
ed videos and position papers have been released this morning, likely by our competitors in the Ameritocracy competition. As you know, creating fake photos, videos, and documents has never been easier. We urge you to ignore the lies you may be seeing this morning and refer back to what you learned of Peter Colton over the last five months.

  We are doing everything we can to get to the bottom of this. It's possible it's a technical glitch within the Ameritocracy system itself.

  Since the day he entered Ameritocracy, Peter Colton has been clear about his positions, which is why—to his great honor—you voted him into the number one position.

  As the final voting opens, please don't allow these last minute smears, falsehoods, and technical errors to influence your support for Peter Colton and what he stands for.

  I'm not surprised Peter hasn't called me. He's smart enough to know exactly what happened. And he's smart enough to know there's nothing he can do about it.

  I smile as I imagine the frantic phone call between Benjamin and Peter that likely took place while I slept.

  Peter: What happened?

  Benjamin: They reversed the algorithm.

  Peter: Fix it!

  Benjamin: I can't, I'm locked out of the system.

  Peter: What can we do?

  Benjamin: Lose.

  As Steph and Quinn watch the final votes come in, I walk out into the hallway to get some privacy for the call. I dial Peter's cell phone.

  He picks up after three rings. "Mia, I didn't expect to hear from you."

  "I assume by now you've figured out what we did."

  Peter says nothing.

  "The votes are pouring in as we speak. You are going to lose. That's inevitable."

  "Well, I—"

  "Don't interrupt, Peter. There's something important you need to hear, in addition to the fact that you've lost. Steph is amassing all the evidence against you. The Technomonarchist Manifesto. We know about that."

  He tries to interrupt, but I talk over him.

  "The proof that you hacked into the social media feeds of millions of people, that you hijacked Facebook and Twitter and Google using HTML7. That you planned it all when you learned about the vulnerabilities in the various social networks. That you—"