Plasticity

It took one man holding out his hand to disrupt everything. And to Senator Watts, it was an appendage of faith, a pound of flesh arrogated by one Mr. Yittle. Nothing was left to the imagination. Yittle was forthcoming enough. Having served on the Judiciary Committee for several terms, Watts had certainly heard it all. From theories on election fraud and insurrection, to counterfeit semi-conductor chips, commodity price fixing, and the invalidity of blocking patents. Nothing compared to what Yittle peddled.

Yittle had a prosecution background, not in patents but in criminal law, having served the Attorney General for the State of Texas for several years on child trafficking and sex offender cases. Most everyone in the practice in Texas, as well as most everyone in the industry outside of Texas, knew him for the famous case against one unfortunate smartphone user who was also one of the first to be flagged by client-side surveillance software. The man lost his constitutional case, which most were assured of disposition in his favor, but no one was shocked when they learned that it was Yittle who successfully defended the measure against constitutional attack.

The search, he argued to the most Supreme Court, served a compelling enough governmental interest in preventing said crimes. Staring down the barrel of the smoking gun that was the right to privacy, Yittle told the Court he would “find a way” with or without the search and that the software merely expedited things, saved the government so many dollars—say no more Yittle. Watts remembered following the case from Texas’ highest Court which ruled against Yittle and reading the final opinion of SCOTUS. In the age of tetradeca-digit deficits, there was much dicta to that point. No dissent.

God, Watts wished that was the end of it. Before he could even switch phone carriers, news came out that his committee was considering passing a bill that extended the ruling to all providers, so long as they contracted with federal agencies. More to that, Yittle would appear and speak to the Judiciary Committee in the National Statuary Hall about his department's plans on all platforms as to potential future applications and software which had been slated for development for other identifiers, not just child porn. Yittle was prepared for full-scare war against phone users and their photo libraries. Having concluded what Watts expected to be a fine speech, filled with high-handed rhetoric and hyperbole, Yittle found Watts.

Yittle had southern craft, handsome features, and exacting perfection in his attire. Watts could not help but admire the man, but at the same time, he felt this abhorrent wrenching in his gut when he looked Yittle in the eyes. Yittle dared to look Watts in the eye, and for the first time, Watts could not look away. Those embryonic blue eyes locked onto Watts and tugged at his soul.

“George Watts, I hope,” Yittle spoke fluidly, with that southern hint of lounging in his tone, “you are taller than I expected.”

Yittle reached out his hand.

“I enjoyed your presentation,” Watts spoke as factually as he could, “you do know the Committee takes its time when faced with these unique situations.”

Yittle waited with his hand out and said, “This needs movement, as I said, and we have a unanimous decision, if you were going to say next that the Committee is waiting on some sort of ancillary proceeding or some second bite at the issue. I think it is definitive.”

Watts struggled to look away, but Yittle knew exactly what Watts was prepared to say. There was no way around it—the man came prepared. Watts had to retreat into his partisan brain, that reptilian gland that thumped the color of his blood instead of his heart.

“I can’t imagine a scenario outside of the narrow holding that would support anything you have presented today,” Watts said looking down at Yittle’s hand in question.

Yittle’s eyes took a keen interest in Watts in his entirety. His palm closed.

“There is no secret about who I am,” Watts continued. “You are encouraged to submit what you have, but I assure you it will die in my committee.”

Watts left Yittle alone with the statues, but not before taking one last look at the man. Yittle had fixed on a single pillar where it met the base perimeter of the dome which it upheld.

§§§

Watts reached his driveway and pulled up to the guardhouse discernibly lit by the green flood light overhead and, once his face had been scanned, he drove through the opening gates to park his electric car on the charging surface.

He left a trail of his attire heading to his steam room, and once comfortably inclined on the smoothed wood bench, his mind wandered to Yittle, to his presentation, and the dangerous proposition he threatened. Yittle wanted to conduct searches of people’s notes and private messages for targeted keywords, phrases, and rhetoric which his software had declared to be more common in "fringers", or what Yittle termed those who had predispositions to crime. Watts’ thoughts turned to his daughter. Yittle would turn her rancor into evidence of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt.

Ara hated that he divorced her mother, hated what he did to her at the custody hearing, and hated him for shipping Ara off to a foreign country for school. He assured her it was all in her best interest. It was all to protect and preserve her dignity and freedoms. Only on her worst days did Ara reach out to him to remind him of his vices. Watts felt the tug on his soul hardest those days.

The steam made him feel light headed.

“Steam off,” Watts commanded.

Steam continued to pour in from the overhead vents and walls.

“Steam off,” Watts stood up. “System command, steam off.”

Watts turned the door handle, but it was jammed shut. He panicked.

“System command, reboot system,” Watts said pressing his weight against the door. It resisted him.

Watts rammed his door once. Twice. Thrice.

“System comman—” he choked the words out, “command, system power off.”

The room went dark. The subtle purring of steam ended. Watts slammed into the door and broke out into his bathroom. He coughed himself to life and looked around for the perpetrator. The room was as he left it. Even the door to the sauna lacked signs of tampering, and there was nothing propped up to impede his exit. It was as if Watts had imagined everything. His lungs signaled pain otherwise.

The soft white overhead lights followed him in automata down the hall as he took to his lounge room and flipped the drinking coil out of its overhead compartment. Ice cold water ran down the coil and into his glass. He chugged the first and poured another, recovering from what just happened. It was certainly novel for his home-ware to bug out like that.

Watts took his glass and sat down in front of his hologram computer. His interface rose before him as particulate points of light collating together. He entered his password and typed in John Yittle’s name into his private search. As soon as the machine had processed his input, the result page exited out, and a new page was brought up without Watts’ direction. Watts rustled his navigation device, but he had lost control. Without typing anything, a new search was being entered at that very moment—a search that tugged at Watts' soul.

Now entered into his search bar with the webpage processing the results page was the same search conducted by the one smartphone user that Yittle had prosecuted! Watts was on the page, and the pointer was moving to download the file.

“System command, processor off!” Watts screamed, and just as the pointer neared the button to begin the download, Watts tore the plug out of the wall.

There came a heavy knock on his door and another. Watts ran to answer it, whipping it open, but there was only the darkness of his garden before him. And then, a bright light blinded him. He heard a woman say:

“Police! Place your hands on the wall and wait for apprehension. No sudden movement!”

§§§

“The private man must face the machine,” Yittle said. There was an unusual number of people in the courtroom that morning. Clearly, the implications of Yittle’s experiment intrigued both Watts' colleagues and incited the curiosity of the men and women with time to spare. Watts' lawyer told him that the whole exchange on his computer had been logged, even Watts pulling the plug. It seemed he had been set up, and the biggest crime now conducted itself accordingly.

“His mind unraveled,” Yittle continued, “his action notated, his nerve found and pliability tested.”

“You may begin bailiff,” Judge Jhobsian said with stature but wore a statuesque impatience, as if maddened by the very notion of powering on and operating Yittle’s new machine.

The device wound down from overhead onto a bound Watts, who seemed like some wild animal caught in a trap, deterred by what he could see of the mass of wire and machine above him. The curvature of the cap radiated with a sickly green light.

Yittle snapped his finger at the engineer, who in turn tapped a remote device and waited with tension. The machine idled as it began to process and rearrange itself above Watts.

“Court is in session,” the bailiff rattled off with growing anxiety. “It is the twelfth day of March, in the year two-thousand and seventy. The honorable Jhobsian presiding.”

“Evidence will be entered as it is collected,” Jhobsian said to the clerk, who nodded his head feverishly in response.

“We are here today because there is a premise posed to these United States, a premise of minority-owned immunity,” Yittle said with a cold reservation. “You were brought up to believe that if you worked hard, wound down your chit, and followed our laws, you too could endear yourself to this Great American lifestyle. If you have worked in this industry as long as I have, you know that our laws are not followed, that a minority escape our most exacting scrutiny, which instead befalls those without any hope of forbearance. It is indisputable from his record that Watts wears a corporate suit. What follows then are several notions. While outside of the system of checks and balances, corporations have and do exercise a power granted only to the national sovereign. They push civil bills and establish social rules through corporate policy. These entities run rampant and unchecked through the system, setting precedents without leave of court, without any authority but for the authority understood by what passes under the table. It is time to check these players. It is time to peel them open and endear ourselves to peek inside. To play sovereign, they must submit to the machine.”

Yittle leaned in the defiant face of Watts. After a moment, he said, “You are wholly theoretical and intentional at the same time. In your box is an animal. We do not know what has become of it. We just know it is there.”

The engine of the machine roared to life, and only now was Watts afraid. His eyes rolled over wildly between Jhobsian and the bailiff as though seeking refuge from Yittle. The tendril fibers leading up to the machine’s belly above them tensed in calibration, preparing to study yet another mind. Watts’ head pulsed green as the machine above plied his secrets, and now, only now did Watts understand.

It was never about the children.

©2021 Adam K. Freeland