Chapter 4

This chapter is dedicated to Barnes and Noble, a US national chain ofbookstores. As America's mom-and-pop bookstores were vanishing,Barnes and Noble started to build these gigantic temples to reading allacross the land. Stocking tens of thousands of titles (the mall bookstoresand grocery-store spinner racks had stocked a small fraction of that) andkeeping long hours that were convenient to families, working people andothers potential readers, the B&N stores kept the careers of manywriters afloat, stocking titles that smaller stores couldn't possibly affordto keep on their limited shelves. B&N has always had strong communityoutreach programs, and I've done some of my best-attended, best-organ-ized signings at B&N stores, including the great events at the (sadly de-parted) B&N in union Square, New York, where the mega-signing afterthe Nebula Awards took place, and the B&N in Chicago that hosted theevent after the Nebs a few years later. Best of all is that B&N's "geeky"buyers really Get It when it comes to science fiction, comics and manga,games and similar titles. They're passionate and knowledgeable aboutthe field and it shows in the excellent selection on display at the stores.
Barnes and Noble, nationwideThey re-shackled and re-hooded me and left me there. A long timelater, the truck started to move, rolling downhill, and then I was hauledback to my feet. I immediately fell over. My legs were so asleep they feltlike blocks of ice, all except my knees, which were swollen and tenderfrom all the hours of kneeling.
Hands grabbed my shoulders and feet and I was picked up like a sackof potatoes. There were indistinct voices around me. Someone crying.
Someone cursing.
I was carried a short distance, then set down and re-shackled to anoth-er railing. My knees wouldn't support me anymore and I pitched49forward, ending up twisted on the ground like a pretzel, strainingagainst the chains holding my wrists.
Then we were moving again, and this time, it wasn't like driving in atruck. The floor beneath me rocked gently and vibrated with heavy dies-el engines and I realized I was on a ship! My stomach turned to ice. I wasbeing taken off America's shores to somewhere else, and who the hellknew where that was? I'd been scared before, but this thought terrifiedme, left me paralyzed and wordless with fear. I realized that I might nev-er see my parents again and I actually tasted a little vomit burn up mythroat. The bag over my head closed in on me and I could barely breathe,something that was compounded by the weird position I was twistedinto.
But mercifully we weren't on the water for very long. It felt like anhour, but I know now that it was a mere fifteen minutes, and then I feltus docking, felt footsteps on the decking around me and felt other pris-oners being unshackled and carried or led away. When they came forme, I tried to stand again, but couldn't, and they carried me again, im-personally, roughly.
When they took the hood off again, I was in a cell.
The cell was old and crumbled, and smelled of sea air. There was onewindow high up, and rusted bars guarded it. It was still dark outside.
There was a blanket on the floor and a little metal toilet without a seat,set into the wall. The guard who took off my hood grinned at me andclosed the solid steel door behind him.
I gently massaged my legs, hissing as the blood came back into themand into my hands. Eventually I was able to stand, and then to pace. Iheard other people talking, crying, shouting. I did some shouting too:
"Jolu! Darryl! Vanessa!" Other voices on the cell-block took up the cry,shouting out names, too, shouting out obscenities. The nearest voicessounded like drunks losing their minds on a street-corner. Maybe I soun-ded like that too.
Guards shouted at us to be quiet and that just made everyone yelllouder. Eventually we were all howling, screaming our heads off,screaming our throats raw. Why not? What did we have to lose?
The next time they came to question me, I was filthy and tired, thirstyand hungry. Severe haircut lady was in the new questioning party, aswere three big guys who moved me around like a cut of meat. One was50black, the other two were white, though one might have been hispanic.
They all carried guns. It was like a Benneton's ad crossed with a game ofCounter-Strike.
They'd taken me from my cell and chained my wrists and ankles to-gether. I paid attention to my surroundings as we went. I heard wateroutside and thought that maybe we were on Alcatraz — it was a prison,after all, even if it had been a tourist attraction for generations, the placewhere you went to see where Al Capone and his gangster contemporar-ies did their time. But I'd been to Alcatraz on a school trip. It was old andrusted, medieval. This place felt like it dated back to World War Two,not colonial times.
There were bar-codes laser-printed on stickers and placed on each ofthe cell-doors, and numbers, but other than that, there was no way to tellwho or what might be behind them.
The interrogation room was modern, with fluorescent lights, ergonom-ic chairs — not for me, though, I got a folding plastic garden-chair — anda big wooden board-room table. A mirror lined one wall, just like in thecop shows, and I figured someone or other must be watching from be-hind it. Severe haircut lady and her friends helped themselves to coffeesfrom an urn on a side-table (I could have torn her throat out with myteeth and taken her coffee just then), and then set a styrofoam cup of wa-ter down next to me — without unlocking my wrists from behind myback, so I couldn't reach it. Hardy har har.
"Hello, Marcus," Severe Haircut woman said. "How's your 'tude doingtoday?"I didn't say anything.
"This isn't as bad as it gets you know," she said. "This is as good as itgets from now on. Even once you tell us what we want to know, even ifthat convinces us that you were just in the wrong place at the wrongtime, you're a marked man now. We'll be watching you everywhere yougo and everything you do. You've acted like you've got something tohide, and we don't like that."It's pathetic, but all my brain could think about was that phrase,"convince us that you were in the wrong place at the wrong time." Thiswas the worst thing that had ever happened to me. I had never, ever feltthis bad or this scared before. Those words, "wrong place at the wrongtime," those six words, they were like a lifeline dangling before me as Ithrashed to stay on the surface.
51"Hello, Marcus?" she snapped her fingers in front of my face. "Overhere, Marcus." There was a little smile on her face and I hated myself forletting her see my fear. "Marcus, it can be a lot worse than this. This isn'tthe worst place we can put you, not by a damned sight." She reacheddown below the table and came out with a briefcase, which she snappedopen. From it, she withdrew my phone, my arphid sniper/cloner, mywifinder, and my memory keys. She set them down on the table oneafter the other.
"Here's what we want from you. You unlock the phone for us today. Ifyou do that, you'll get outdoor and bathing privileges. You'll get ashower and you'll be allowed to walk around in the exercise yard. To-morrow, we'll bring you back and ask you to decrypt the data on thesememory sticks. Do that, and you'll get to eat in the mess hall. The dayafter, we're going to want your email passwords, and that will get youlibrary privileges."The word "no" was on my lips, like a burp trying to come up, but itwouldn't come. "Why?" is what came out instead.
"We want to be sure that you're what you seem to be. This is aboutyour security, Marcus. Say you're innocent. You might be, though whyan innocent man would act like he's got so much to hide is beyond me.
But say you are: you could have been on that bridge when it blew. Yourparents could have been. Your friends. Don't you want us to catch thepeople who attacked your home?"It's funny, but when she was talking about my getting "privileges" itscared me into submission. I felt like I'd done something to end up whereI was, like maybe it was partially my fault, like I could do something tochange it.
But as soon as she switched to this BS about "safety" and "security," myspine came back. "Lady," I said, "you're talking about attacking myhome, but as far as I can tell, you're the only one who's attacked melately. I thought I lived in a country with a constitution. I thought I livedin a country where I had rights. You're talking about defending my free-dom by tearing up the Bill of Rights."A flicker of annoyance passed over her face, then went away. "So me-lodramatic, Marcus. No one's attacked you. You've been detained byyour country's government while we seek details on the worst terroristattack ever perpetrated on our nation's soil. You have it within yourpower to help us fight this war on our nation's enemies. You want to pre-serve the Bill of Rights? Help us stop bad people from blowing up your52city. Now, you have exactly thirty seconds to unlock that phone before Isend you back to your cell. We have lots of other people to interviewtoday."She looked at her watch. I rattled my wrists, rattled the chains thatkept me from reaching around and unlocking the phone. Yes, I was go-ing to do it. She'd told me what my path was to freedom — to the world,to my parents — and that had given me hope. Now she'd threatened tosend me away, to take me off that path, and my hope had crashed and allI could think of was how to get back on it.
So I rattled my wrists, wanting to get to my phone and unlock it forher, and she just looked at me coldly, checking her watch.
"The password," I said, finally understanding what she wanted of me.
She wanted me to say it out loud, here, where she could record it, whereher pals could hear it. She didn't want me to just unlock the phone. Shewanted me to submit to her. To put her in charge of me. To give upevery secret, all my privacy. "The password," I said again, and then I toldher the password. God help me, I submitted to her will.
She smiled a little prim smile, which had to be her ice-queen equival-ent of a touchdown dance, and the guards led me away. As the doorclosed, I saw her bend down over the phone and key the password in.
I wish I could say that I'd anticipated this possibility in advance andcreated a fake password that unlocked a completely innocuous partitionon my phone, but I wasn't nearly that paranoid/clever.
You might be wondering at this point what dark secrets I had lockedaway on my phone and memory sticks and email. I'm just a kid, after all.
The truth is that I had everything to hide, and nothing. Between myphone and my memory sticks, you could get a pretty good idea of whomy friends were, what I thought of them, all the goofy things we'd done.
You could read the transcripts of the electronic arguments we'd carriedout and the electronic reconciliations we'd arrived at.
You see, I don't delete stuff. Why would I? Storage is cheap, and younever know when you're going to want to go back to that stuff. Espe-cially the stupid stuff. You know that feeling you get sometimes whereyou're sitting on the subway and there's no one to talk to and you sud-denly remember some bitter fight you had, some terrible thing you said?
Well, it's usually never as bad as you remember. Being able to go backand see it again is a great way to remind yourself that you're not as53horrible a person as you think you are. Darryl and I have gotten overmore fights that way than I can count.
And even that's not it. I know my phone is private. I know mymemory sticks are private. That's because of cryptography — messagescrambling. The math behind crypto is good and solid, and you and meget access to the same crypto that banks and the National SecurityAgency use. There's only one kind of crypto that anyone uses: cryptothat's public, open and can be deployed by anyone. That's how youknow it works.
There's something really liberating about having some corner of yourlife that's yours, that no one gets to see except you. It's a little like nudityor taking a dump. Everyone gets naked every once in a while. Everyonehas to squat on the toilet. There's nothing shameful, deviant or weirdabout either of them. But what if I decreed that from now on, every timeyou went to evacuate some solid waste, you'd have to do it in a glassroom perched in the middle of Times Square, and you'd be buck naked?
Even if you've got nothing wrong or weird with your body — andhow many of us can say that? — you'd have to be pretty strange to likethat idea. Most of us would run screaming. Most of us would hold it inuntil we exploded.
It's not about doing something shameful. It's about doing somethingprivate. It's about your life belonging to you.
They were taking that from me, piece by piece. As I walked back to mycell, that feeling of deserving it came back to me. I'd broken a lot of rulesall my life and I'd gotten away with it, by and large. Maybe this wasjustice. Maybe this was my past coming back to me. After all, I had beenwhere I was because I'd snuck out of school.
I got my shower. I got to walk around the yard. There was a patch ofsky overhead, and it smelled like the Bay Area, but beyond that, I had noclue where I was being held. No other prisoners were visible during myexercise period, and I got pretty bored with walking in circles. I strainedmy ears for any sound that might help me understand what this placewas, but all I heard was the occasional vehicle, some distant conversa-tions, a plane landing somewhere nearby.
They brought me back to my cell and fed me, a half a pepperoni piefrom Goat Hill Pizza, which I knew well, up on Potrero Hill. The cartonwith its familiar graphic and 415 phone number was a reminder thatonly a day before, I'd been a free man in a free country and that now Iwas a prisoner. I worried constantly about Darryl and fretted about my54other friends. Maybe they'd been more cooperative and had been re-leased. Maybe they'd told my parents and they were frantically callingaround.
Maybe not.
The cell was fantastically spare, empty as my soul. I fantasized that thewall opposite my bunk was a screen, that I could be hacking right now,opening the cell-door. I fantasized about my workbench and the projectsthere — the old cans I was turning into a ghetto surround-sound rig, theaerial photography kite-cam I was building, my homebrew laptop.
I wanted to get out of there. I wanted to go home and have my friendsand my school and my parents and my life back. I wanted to be able togo where I wanted to go, not be stuck pacing and pacing and pacing.
They took my passwords for my USB keys next. Those held some in-teresting messages I'd downloaded from one online discussion group oranother, some chat transcripts, things where people had helped me outwith some of the knowledge I needed to do the things I did. There wasnothing on there you couldn't find with Google, of course, but I didn'tthink that would count in my favor.
I got exercise again that afternoon, and this time there were others inthe yard when I got there, four other guys and two women, of all agesand racial backgrounds. I guess lots of people were doing things to earntheir "privileges."They gave me half an hour, and I tried to make conversation with themost normal-seeming of the other prisoners, a black guy about my agewith a short afro. But when I introduced myself and stuck my hand out,he cut his eyes toward the cameras mounted ominously in the corners ofthe yard and kept walking without ever changing his facial expression.
But then, just before they called my name and brought me back intothe building, the door opened and out came — Vanessa! I'd never beenmore glad to see a friendly face. She looked tired and grumpy, but nothurt, and when she saw me, she shouted my name and ran to me. Wehugged each other hard and I realized I was shaking. Then I realized shewas shaking, too.
"Are you OK?" she said, holding me at arms' length.
"I'm OK," I said. "They told me they'd let me go if I gave them mypasswords.""They keep asking me questions about you and Darryl."55There was a voice blaring over the loudspeaker, shouting at us to stoptalking, to walk, but we ignored it.
"Answer them," I said, instantly. "Anything they ask, answer them. Ifit'll get you out.""How are Darryl and Jolu?""I haven't seen them."The door banged open and four big guards boiled out. Two took meand two took Vanessa. They forced me to the ground and turned myhead away from Vanessa, though I heard her getting the same treatment.
Plastic cuffs went around my wrists and then I was yanked to my feetand brought back to my cell.
No dinner came that night. No breakfast came the next morning. Noone came and brought me to the interrogation room to extract more ofmy secrets. The plastic cuffs didn't come off, and my shoulders burned,then ached, then went numb, then burned again. I lost all feeling in myhands.
I had to pee. I couldn't undo my pants. I really, really had to pee.
I pissed myself.
They came for me after that, once the hot piss had cooled and goneclammy, making my already filthy jeans stick to my legs. They came forme and walked me down the long hall lined with doors, each door withits own bar code, each bar code a prisoner like me. They walked medown the corridor and brought me to the interrogation room and it waslike a different planet when I entered there, a world where things werenormal, where everything didn't reek of urine. I felt so dirty andashamed, and all those feelings of deserving what I got came back to me.
Severe haircut lady was already sitting. She was perfect: coifed andwith just a little makeup. I smelled her hair stuff. She wrinkled her noseat me. I felt the shame rise in me.
"Well, you've been a very naughty boy, haven't you? Aren't you afilthy thing?"Shame. I looked down at the table. I couldn't bear to look up. I wantedto tell her my email password and get gone.
"What did you and your friend talk about in the yard?"I barked a laugh at the table. "I told her to answer your questions. Itold her to cooperate.""So do you give the orders?"56I felt the blood sing in my ears. "Oh come on," I said. "We play a gametogether, it's called Harajuku Fun Madness. I'm the team captain. We'renot terrorists, we're high school students. I don't give her orders. I toldher that we needed to be honest with you so that we could clear up anysuspicion and get out of here."She didn't say anything for a moment.
"How is Darryl?" I said.
"Who?""Darryl. You picked us up together. My friend. Someone had stabbedhim in the Powell Street BART. That's why we were up on the surface.
To get him help.""I'm sure he's fine, then," she said.
My stomach knotted and I almost threw up. "You don't know? Youhaven't got him here?""Who we have here and who we don't have here is not somethingwe're going to discuss with you, ever. That's not something you're goingto know. Marcus, you've seen what happens when you don't cooperatewith us. You've seen what happens when you disobey our orders.
You've been a little cooperative, and it's gotten you almost to the pointwhere you might go free again. If you want to make that possibility intoa reality, you'll stick to answering my questions."I didn't say anything.
"You're learning, that's good. Now, your email passwords, please."I was ready for this. I gave them everything: server address, login,password. This didn't matter. I didn't keep any email on my server. Idownloaded it all and kept it on my laptop at home, which downloadedand deleted my mail from the server every sixty seconds. They wouldn'tget anything out of my mail — it got cleared off the server and stored onmy laptop at home.
Back to the cell, but they cut loose my hands and they gave me ashower and a pair of orange prison pants to wear. They were too big forme and hung down low on my hips, like a Mexican gang-kid in the Mis-sion. That's where the baggy-pants-down-your-ass look comes from youknow that? From prison. I tell you what, it's less fun when it's not a fash-ion statement.
They took away my jeans, and I spent another day in the cell. Thewalls were scratched cement over a steel grid. You could tell, because the57steel was rusting in the salt air, and the grid shone through the greenpaint in red-orange. My parents were out that window, somewhere.
They came for me again the next day.
"We've been reading your mail for a day now. We changed the pass-word so that your home computer couldn't fetch it."Well, of course they had. I would have done the same, now that Ithought of it.
"We have enough on you now to put you away for a very long time,Marcus. Your possession of these articles —" she gestured at all my littlegizmos — "and the data we recovered from your phone and memorysticks, as well as the subversive material we'd no doubt find if we raidedyour house and took your computer. It's enough to put you away untilyou're an old man. Do you understand that?"I didn't believe it for a second. There's no way a judge would say thatall this stuff constituted any kind of real crime. It was free speech, it wastechnological tinkering. It wasn't a crime.
But who said that these people would ever put me in front of a judge.
"We know where you live, we know who your friends are. We knowhow you operate and how you think."It dawned on me then. They were about to let me go. The roomseemed to brighten. I heard myself breathing, short little breaths.
"We just want to know one thing: what was the delivery mechanismfor the bombs on the bridge?"I stopped breathing. The room darkened again.
"What?""There were ten charges on the bridge, all along its length. Theyweren't in car-trunks. They'd been placed there. Who placed them there,and how did they get there?""What?" I said it again.
"This is your last chance, Marcus," she said. She looked sad. "You weredoing so well until now. Tell us this and you can go home. You can get alawyer and defend yourself in a court of law. There are doubtless exten-uating circumstances that you can use to explain your actions. Just tell usthis thing, and you're gone.""I don't know what you're talking about!" I was crying and I didn'teven care. Sobbing, blubbering. "I have no idea what you're talking about!"58She shook her head. "Marcus, please. Let us help you. By now youknow that we always get what we're after."There was a gibbering sound in the back of my mind. They were in-sane. I pulled myself together, working hard to stop the tears. "Listen,lady, this is nuts. You've been into my stuff, you've seen it all. I'm a sev-enteen year old high school student, not a terrorist! You can't seriouslythink —""Marcus, haven't you figured out that we're serious yet?" She shookher head. "You get pretty good grades. I thought you'd be smarter thanthat." She made a flicking gesture and the guards picked me up by thearmpits.
Back in my cell, a hundred little speeches occurred to me. The Frenchcall this "esprit d'escalier" — the spirit of the staircase, the snappy rebut-tals that come to you after you leave the room and slink down the stairs.
In my mind, I stood and delivered, telling her that I was a citizen wholoved my freedom, which made me the patriot and made her the traitor.
In my mind, I shamed her for turning my country into an armed camp.
In my mind, I was eloquent and brilliant and reduced her to tears.
But you know what? None of those fine words came back to me whenthey pulled me out the next day. All I could think of was freedom. Myparents.
"Hello, Marcus," she said. "How are you feeling?"I looked down at the table. She had a neat pile of documents in front ofher, and her ubiquitous go-cup of Starbucks beside her. I found it com-forting somehow, a reminder that there was a real world out there some-where, beyond the walls.
"We're through investigating you, for now." She let that hang there.
Maybe it meant that she was letting me go. Maybe it meant that she wasgoing to throw me in a pit and forget that I existed.
"And?" I said finally.
"And I want you to impress on you again that we are very seriousabout this. Our country has experienced the worst attack ever committedon its soil. How many 9/11s do you want us to suffer before you're will-ing to cooperate? The details of our investigation are secret. We won'tstop at anything in our efforts to bring the perpetrators of these heinouscrimes to justice. Do you understand that?""Yes," I mumbled.
59"We are going to send you home today, but you are a marked man.
You have not been found to be above suspicion — we're only releasingyou because we're done questioning you for now. But from now on, youbelong to us. We will be watching you. We'll be waiting for you to make amisstep. Do you understand that we can watch you closely, all the time?""Yes," I mumbled.
"Good. You will never speak of what happened here to anyone, ever.
This is a matter of national security. Do you know that the death penaltystill holds for treason in time of war?""Yes," I mumbled.
"Good boy," she purred. "We have some papers here for you to sign."She pushed the stack of papers across the table to me. Little post-its withSIGN HERE printed on them had been stuck throughout them. A guardundid my cuffs.
I paged through the papers and my eyes watered and my head swam.
I couldn't make sense of them. I tried to decipher the legalese. It seemedthat I was signing a declaration that I had been voluntarily held and sub-mitted to voluntary questioning, of my own free will.
"What happens if I don't sign this?" I said.
She snatched the papers back and made that flicking gesture again.
The guards jerked me to my feet.
"Wait!" I cried. "Please! I'll sign them!" They dragged me to the door.
All I could see was that door, all I could think of was it closing behindme.
I lost it. I wept. I begged to be allowed to sign the papers. To be soclose to freedom and have it snatched away, it made me ready to do any-thing. I can't count the number of times I've heard someone say, "Oh, I'drather die than do something-or-other" — I've said it myself now andagain. But that was the first time I understood what it really meant. Iwould have rather died than go back to my cell.
I begged as they took me out into the corridor. I told them I'd signanything.
She called out to the guards and they stopped. They brought me back.
They sat me down. One of them put the pen in my hand.
Of course, I signed, and signed and signed.
60My jeans and t-shirt were back in my cell, laundered and folded. Theysmelled of detergent. I put them on and washed my face and sat on mycot and stared at the wall. They'd taken everything from me. First myprivacy, then my dignity. I'd been ready to sign anything. I would havesigned a confession that said I'd assassinated Abraham Lincoln.
I tried to cry, but it was like my eyes were dry, out of tears.
They got me again. A guard approached me with a hood, like the hoodI'd been put in when they picked us up, whenever that was, days ago,weeks ago.
The hood went over my head and cinched tight at my neck. I was intotal darkness and the air was stifling and stale. I was raised to my feetand walked down corridors, up stairs, on gravel. Up a gangplank. On aship's steel deck. My hands were chained behind me, to a railing. I knelton the deck and listened to the thrum of the diesel engines.
The ship moved. A hint of salt air made its way into the hood. It wasdrizzling and my clothes were heavy with water. I was outside, even ifmy head was in a bag. I was outside, in the world, moments from myfreedom.
They came for me and led me off the boat and over uneven ground.
Up three metal stairs. My wrists were unshackled. My hood wasremoved.
I was back in the truck. Severe haircut woman was there, at the littledesk she'd sat at before. She had a ziploc bag with her, and inside it weremy phone and other little devices, my wallet and the change from mypockets. She handed them to me wordlessly.
I filled my pockets. It felt so weird to have everything back in its famil-iar place, to be wearing my familiar clothes. Outside the truck's backdoor, I heard the familiar sounds of my familiar city.
A guard passed me my backpack. The woman extended her hand tome. I just looked at it. She put it down and gave me a wry smile. Thenshe mimed zipping up her lips and pointed to me, and opened the door.
It was daylight outside, gray and drizzling. I was looking down an al-ley toward cars and trucks and bikes zipping down the road. I stoodtransfixed on the truck's top step, staring at freedom.
My knees shook. I knew now that they were playing with me again. Ina moment, the guards would grab me and drag me back inside, the bagwould go over my head again, and I would be back on the boat and sent61off to the prison again, to the endless, unanswerable questions. I barelyheld myself back from stuffing my fist in my mouth.
Then I forced myself to go down one stair. Another stair. The last stair.
My sneakers crunched down on the crap on the alley's floor, brokenglass, a needle, gravel. I took a step. Another. I reached the mouth of thealley and stepped onto the sidewalk.
No one grabbed me.
I was free.
Then strong arms threw themselves around me. I nearly cried.