Black Market Books
Disinformation for all!!!
Time is a line. The line started sometime in the past, travels through the present, and proceeds into the future. The present is a small dot on that line. Connect the dots….
Black Market Books ca. 2033
“That can’t work,” said Tim. “If I scan ‘Progressivism Today’, that’s what I have to sell. I can’t just substitute in some other book, and no one notices.”
Rachel was frustrated. She’d spent considerable time devising ways to work around the disinformation regulations. Yes, there was risk, but risk comes with the territory when you are trying to promote freedom of thought and learning. “Yes, you just substitute in the other book. No one need notice. Just do it when no one is looking.”
Tim shook his head. Rachel always had a new angle, but it all pretty much distilled down to the same thing, making an illegal sale look legal. Tim had suggested simply finding a way to distribute the banned books completely off the grid, but Rachel felt that the only way to get nationwide distribution was to work the System. Find ways to make illegal sales look legal, then all the books could move right on through the System, to anywhere they wanted to send them. He loved Rachel, in his own way, but she could be a lot to take. “I can’t keep scanning the same books. The System keeps track of inventory. It won’t let me sell the same book over and over again. The FBI would be here in no time. And that would be that for us.”
Rachel knew he had a point. The National Archives book review algorithm constantly scanned sales for unusual sales data. If their sales went outside of normal parameters, the FBI would be there in no time. But she would not give in. “We just gradually move the numbers up. Steadily increase sales of permitted books, and we can slide past the algorithms.”
“Just one, tiny little problem,” responded Tim. "We don’t know how the algorithms work.”
“We can reasonably assume. We know that Brigit went in way too quick, and way too deep. But her idea was good. We just need to make adjustments.”
“We don’t know what adjustments to make. If doing this was as easy as you suggest, everyone would be doing it. The fact is, there are fewer and fewer of us. Where do you suppose everyone went? They’ve been cancelled, or otherwise removed from view. I dare to say, they all thought they had a fool-proof plan.”
Rachel turned her look away from Tim, concentrating her view on nothing in particular. “Yes, we are taking a risk. But you know as well as I do, it’s a risk we must take. The world we’re living in is the result of people giving in. I would rather try and fail at this than live as a coward.” She turned her gaze back directly at Tim. “Wouldn't you?”
She had him there. He was enough of a pragmatist to carefully examine the realities, but he could never capitulate to the System. He returned her gaze, silently conceding her point. “Still, off the grid should mean off the grid, not just fooling the grid. The grid catches on, sooner or later. I’ve been thinking of something, and it seems like a better idea, the more I think about it.” Now Rachel returned Tim’s gaze, eyebrows arched a bit in anticipation. Tim continued, “I know where there’s an old Xerox machine. And it works! Nobody keeps track of those things anymore. Its counter isn’t linked to anything. We can print what we want, and it’s as offline as you can get. No need for encryption, which just raises the FBI’s suspicions anyway. We can print what we want, and nobody knows it’s been printed. It’s so old, nobody even thinks about it. Nobody has put up safeguards against it.” Rachel was processing the information, uncertain what to make of it, and Tim concluded, “We would just have to get the paper, but we can get some here, some there, I don’t think the algorithms would notice.”
Rachel chuckled. “Now who is making assumptions about algorithms?”
“Well, even if the algorithms catch us, they only catch us using unauthorized paper. We’d still have a reasonable chance of getting by. In fact, we could create some good diversion for what the paper is used for.”
Rachel found this intriguing. What she liked best about it was that it was so disconnected from the current reality. There was NO link to the System. None. Except for the paper. And Tim was probably right; neither the algorithms nor the FBI was likely to track the paper closely enough to see a red flag. “But how do we get these distributed? How much distribution can we get, offline, with real paper?”
“Good point, and I’ve had a thought continually playing at me. Back in the day, only fifty years ago, there was no internet. Yet there was worldwide communication. True, it was slow and fairly haphazard, but it worked. In a way, it was better than now. The System had a hard time controlling the people because it couldn’t continually disseminate its propaganda non-stop. Sometimes I think about the American revolution. The revolution was largely spurred by anonymous tracts. They were illegal to write, print or distribute. Yet, that all happened anyway. And the System of the time could not just tweak the algorithms to stop it. Those tracts were everywhere, and untraceable. The System could do nothing!”
That got Rachel’s attention. She was quiet as she thought about it. Tim let her think. After a while, Rachel asked, “so we get this old Xerox and print tracts. We use paper that we hope nobody will see a need to account for. Then what? Hand them out on street corners, in front of everyone?”
“We can get them out there. You know we can. The great part is, the System only knows how to interrupt online communications. They are entirely about that; there has been no need to monitor actual hard copies, except for banning hard copy libraries. But tracts simply appearing out of nowhere? They aren’t prepared to deal with that. We might even have thousands, tens of thousands, of copies out there before they even notice.”
Rachel knew that Tim was trying to talk himself into this as much as he was trying to convince her. But it seemed so realistic. So doable. It was still hard to say what could be accomplished by any of it, but the very idea that they could express their thoughts, communicate in their own way with others, was exhilarating, all the same. She thought about the many typewriters she had seen on people’s shelves. Collectors' items, to be sure. Useless, in today’s world of communications. Useless to the point of not being monitored. No FBI. No algorithms. And they’re all over the place. How many Xeroxes are out there? In how many back rooms of printing companies that now did all their business online, monitored by the System; in how many of those old printing companies were there old, unused Xeroxes, covered in tarps and forgotten? Imagine. Writing what you want to write. Saying what you want to say. Being heard by and hearing from people expressing their genuine opinions, not the System’s approved versions of things. And there was nothing the System would be able to do about it.
They smiled knowing smiles at each other. Then, there was a knock at the door.