Kate gazed at her caged hands.
They took a break. Bobby wasn’t allowed to be with her.
Kate’s treatment was one of many experiments being run as the politicians, legal experts, pressure groups and concerned citizens worked feverishly to find a way to accommodate the WormCam’s eerie historical reach — still not widely known to the public — into something resembling the existing due process of the law, and, even more challenging, into natural justice.
In essence it had suddenly become radically easier to establish physical truth.
The conduct of court cases seemed likely to be transformed radically. Trials would surely become much less adversarial, fairer, much less dependent on the demeanor of a suspect in court or the quality of her representatives. When the WormCam was available at federal, state and county levels, some commentators were anticipating savings of billions of dollars annually: there would be shorter trials, more plea bargains, more civil settlements.
And major trials in future would perhaps focus on what remained beyond the bare facts: motive and intent — hence the assignment of a psychologist like Manning to Kate’s case.
Meanwhile, as WormCammed law enforcers went to diligent work over unresolved cases, a huge logjam of new cases was heading for the courts. Some Congressmen had proposed that to maximize the clear-up rate a general amnesty should be declared for crimes of lesser severity committed up to the last full calendar year before the WormCam’s invention — an amnesty, that is, in return for waiving of Fifth Amendment protection in the relevant case. In fact, evidence gathering was made so much more powerful, thanks to the WormCam, that Fifth Amendment rights had become moot anyhow. But this was proving highly contentious. Most Americans did not appear to feel comfortable with losing Fifth protection.
Challenges to privacy were even more contentious — made so by the fact that even now there was no accepted definition of privacy rights, even within America. Privacy was not mentioned in the Constitution. The Fourth Amendment to the Bill of Rights spoke of a right against intrusion by the state — but it left a great deal of room for manoeuvre by those in authority who wished to investigate citizens, and besides offered citizens virtually no protection against other bodies, such as corporations or the press or even other citizens. From a welter of scattershot laws at state and federal levels, as well as a mass of cases in common law to provide precedent, a certain common acceptance of the meaning of privacy had slowly emerged: for instance a right to be “let alone,” to be free from unreasonable interference from outside forces.
But all of this was challenged by the WormCam.
Legal safeguards surrounding WormCam use were being promoted, by law-enforcement and investigation agencies like the FBI and the police, as a compensating balance to the loss of privacy and other rights. For example WormCam records intended for legal purposes would have to be collected in controlled circumstances — probably by trained observers, and notarized formally. That wasn’t likely to prove a problem, as any WormCam observation could always be repeated as many times as required simply by setting up a new wormhole link to the incident in question.
There were even suggestions that people should be prepared to submit to a form of “documented life.” This would effectively grant the authorities legal access to any incident in an individual’s past without the need for formal procedures in advance — and it would also be a strong shield against false accusation and identity theft.
But despite protests from campaigners against the erosion of rights, everybody seemed to accept that as far as its use in criminal investigation and prosecution was concerned, the WormCam was here to stay; it was simply too powerful to ignore.
Some philosophers argued that this was no bad thing. After all, humans had evolved to live in small groups in which everybody knew everybody else, and strangers were rarely encountered; it was only recently, in evolutionary terms, that people had been forced to live in larger communities like cities, crammed together with friends and strangers alike. The WormCam was bringing a return to older ways of living, of thinking about other people and interacting with them.
But that was little comfort for those who feared that their perceived need for curtailage — a defined space within which they could achieve solitude, anonymity, reserve and intimacy with loved ones — might no longer be met.
And now, as the WormCam’s history-view facilities deepened, even the past was no refuge.
Many people had been hurt, in one way or another, by the revelation of the truth. Many of them blamed not the truth, or themselves, but the WormCam, and those who had inflicted it on the world.
Hiram himself remained the most obvious target.
At first, Bobby suspected, he had almost enjoyed his notoriety. Any celebrity was good for business. But the hail of threats and assassination and sabotage attempts had worn him down. There were even libel actions, as people claimed Hiram must somehow be fabricating what the WormCam was showing about themselves, their loved ones, their enemies, or their heroes.
Hiram had taken to living in the light. His West Coast mansion was drenched in light from floods powered by multiple generators. He even slept in brilliant illumination. No security system was foolproof, but at least Hiram could ensure that anybody who got through would be visible to the WormCams of the future.
So Hiram lived, skewered by pitiless light, alone, scrutinized, loathed.
The gruesome procedure resumed.
Manning consulted his notebook. “Let me set out some of the facts: incontrovertible historical truths, all properly observed and notarized. First, Kingsley’s affair with Ms. Morris wasn’t his first in his time with you. He had a short, apparently unsatisfactory fling with another woman beginning a month after he met you. And another six months later.”
“No.”
“In all, he seems to have had six consummated relationships with other women
“This is ridiculous. I’d have known.”
“But you’re also human. I can show you incidents where evidence of Kingsley’s unfaithfulness was clearly available to you, yet you turned aside, rationalizing it away without even being aware of what you were doing. Confabulation.”
She said coldly, “I’ve told you how it was. Kingsley started to cheat on me because the miscarriage screwed up our relationship.”
“Ah, the miscarriage: the great causal event in your life. But I’m afraid it wasn’t like that at all. Kingsley’s behaviour patterns were well established long before he met you, and were barely altered by the miscarriage incident. You’ve also said that you believe the miscarriage gave you a spur to working harder at developing your own career.”
“Yes. That’s obvious.”
“This is a little more difficult to establish, but again I can demonstrate to you that the upward trajectory of your career began some months
She said nothing.
Manning steepled his fingers and put them to his chin. “I think you’ve been both right and wrong about yourself. I think that the miscarriage you suffered did change your life. But not in the rather superficial way you think it did. It didn’t make you work harder, or cause cracks in your relationship with Kingsley. But the loss of your child did wound you deeply. And I think you’re now driven by a fear that it might happen again.”
“A fear?”
“Please believe I’m not judging you. I’m merely trying to explain. Your compensatory activity is your work. Perhaps this deeper fear has driven you to greater achievement, greater success. But you’ve also become obsessive. It has only been your work that has distracted you from what you see as a terrible darkness at the centre of your being. And so you’re driven to ever greater lengths.”
“Right. And
Manning paced slowly before his SoftScreen. “Kate, you’re one of the first human beings to endure this — umm, this
“I’m capable of forming relationships: even long lasting, stable ones. How does that square with your portrait of me as a shock trauma victim?”
Manning frowned, as if puzzled by the question. “You mean Mr. Patterson? But there’s no contradiction there.” He walked over to Bobby and, with a murmured apology, studied him. “In many ways, Bobby Patterson is one of the most child-like adults I have ever encountered. He is therefore an exact fit for the, umm, the child-shaped hole at the centre of your personality.” He turned to Kate. “You see?”
She stared at him, her colour high.
Chapter 16
The water war
Heather sat at her home SoftScreen. She entered fresh search parameters. COUNTRY: Uzbekistan. TOWN: Nukus…
She wasn’t surprised to see an attractive turquoise blockout appear before her. Nukus was, after all, a war zone.
But that wouldn’t stop Heather for long. She had found reason in her time to find ways past censoring software before. And having access to a WormCam of her own was a powerful motivation. Smiling, she went to work.
When — after much public pressure — the first enterprising companies started offering WormCam access to private citizens via the Internet, Heather Mays was quick to subscribe.
She could even work from home. From a straightforward menu she selected a location to view. This could be anywhere in the world, specified by geographical coordinates or postal address as precisely as she could narrow it down. The mediating software would convert her request to latitude-longitude coordinates, and would offer her further options. The idea was to narrow her selection down until she had reached a specification of a room-sized volume, somewhere on or near the surface of the Earth, where a wormhole mouth would be established.
There was also a randomizing feature if she had no preference: for instance, if she wanted to view some remote picture-postcard coral atoll, but didn’t care which. She could even — at additional cost — select intermediate views, so for example she could view a street and select a house to call at.”
When she’d made her choice, a wormhole would be opened up between the supplier’s central server location and the site of her choice. Images from the WormCam would then be sent direct to her home terminal. She could even guide the viewpoint, within a limited volume.
