Lock In (Lock In, #1)(45)

“Do I want to know?” I asked.

“Suffered any colon spasms recently?”

“Uh,” I said. “No.”

“Then nothing you need to worry about.”

“Lovely.”

“I’ve worked with them all,” Tony said. “All the networks. The biggest issue isn’t neural interference, actually. It’s basic security.”

“Like people hacking into the neural networks,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“I’ve never heard of that happening.”

“There’s a reason for that,” Tony said. “First, the architecture of the neural networks is designed to be complex to make them hard to program on, and hard to access from outside. The D7 being a pain in the ass to deal with is a feature, not a bug. Every other network since the first iteration is designed that way too.

“Second, they hire people like me to make sure it doesn’t happen. Half my contracts are for white-hat incursions, trying to get into the networks.”

“And what do you do when you get in?” I asked.

“Me? I file a report,” Tony said. “With the first iteration of networks the hackers would run blackmail schemes. Fire up a series of gory pictures or put ‘It’s a Small World’ on a repeating loop until the victim paid to make it stop.”

“That sucks,” I said.

Tony shrugged. “They were dumb,” he said. “Honestly. A computer inside your brain? What the hell did they think was going to happen with that? They got serious about patching when some hacker from Ukraine started giving people arrhythmia just for kicks. That shit’s actual attempted first-degree murder.”

“I’m glad they fixed that,” I said.

“Well, for now,” Tony said. His code had compiled and he waved his hand to execute it. From above, the network pulsed. It wasn’t just a pretty image. It was an actual simulation of the network.

“What do you mean ‘for now’?” I asked.

“Think about it, Chris,” Tony said. He pointed at my head. “You’ve got what’s effectively a legacy system in your head. Its upkeep is currently being paid for out of the budget of the National Institutes of Health. When Abrams-Kettering goes into effect next Monday, the NIH will stop paying for upkeep once its current batch of contracts expires. Santa Ana and Hubbard aren’t updating and patching out of the goodness of their corporate hearts, you know. They get paid to do it. When that stops, either someone else is going to have to pay for it, or the updates stop coming.”

“And then we’re all screwed,” I said.

“Some people will be screwed,” Tony said. “I’ll be fine because this shit is my job and I can hack my own network. You’ll be fine because you can afford to hire someone like me to maintain your network. Our roommates will be fine because I like them and don’t want them to have spam piped into their brains against their will. And the middle-class Hadens will probably be able to pay for a monthly subscription of updates, which is something I know Santa Ana, at least, is already planning for.

“Poor Hadens, on the other hand, are kind of f*cked. They’ll either get no updates, which will leave them vulnerable to software rot or hacking, or they’ll have to deal with some sort of update model that features, I don’t know, ads. So every morning, before they can do anything else with their day, they’ll have to sit through six goddamn advertisements for new threeps or nutritional powder or bags for their crap.”

“So, spam,” I said.

“It’s not spam if you agree to it,” Tony said. “They just won’t have much of a choice.”

“Swell.”

“It’s not just updates,” Tony said. “Think about the Agora. Most of us think of it as a magical free-floating space somewhere out there.” He gestured with his hands. “In fact it’s run out of an NIH server farm outside of Gaithersburg.”

“But it’s not on the chopping block,” I said. “There’d be a panic if it was.”

“It’s not being cut, no,” Tony said. “But I know the NIH is talking to potential buyers.” He pointed up at the neural network. “Santa Ana’s putting in a bid, Accelerant’s making one, GM’s in, and so is just about every Silicon Valley holding company.”

He shrugged. “Whoever eventually buys the farm will probably have to promise to leave the character of the Agora unchanged for a decade or so, but we’ll see how much that’ll be worth. It’s going to be monthly access fees from there for sure. I don’t know how you’d do billboards in the Agora, but I’m pretty sure they’ll figure it out sooner than later.”

“You’ve thought about this a lot,” I said, after a minute.

Tony smiled, looked away, and made a dismissive wave. “Sorry. It’s a hobbyhorse of mine, I know. I’m not this humorless about most things.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “And it’s fine that you’re thinking about it.”

“Well, there’s also the side effect that once all these government contracts go kerplooey, my line of work is going to get tougher,” Tony said. “So this is not me being socially active out of the goodness of my own heart. I like to eat. Well, be fed nutritionally balanced liquids, anyway. The Hadens who are walking out this week are making the point that our world is about to be wildly disrupted, and the rest of America doesn’t really seem to give a shit.”