“Like 1984.”

“Exactly like that. The camera in the front room.”

THEY were testing programs that would intercept phone messages-the implication was all phone messages-and would analyze conversations for words and phrases that might indicate illegal activity.

“Like how would they do that?”

“You’d say, ‘Why don’t we get the rest of the Al Qaeda sleeper cell together and spend some time building dirty bombs and talking in Arabic about chemical, biological, and nuclear warfare with which to blow up these infidel dogs.’ The computer would then automatically record the message, figure out from the vocabulary that something was going on, and alert a live monitor.”

“Wouldn’t a terrorist talk in code?”

“I don’t know, a lot of them are kinda stupid. Even if it didn’t work on terrorists, if they got this set up, it sure would let them fuck with everybody else.”

THE group was also looking at real-time language translation with a heavy emphasis on Chinese and Central Asian languages, and was talking about a new generation of databases that could handle amounts of data several orders of magnitude greater than anything we yet had.

The giant databases would also be tied to the money-card program, because the databases would be used to analyze virtually everybody’s purchases-all of them-looking for “suspicious” activity.

The group was also talking about a highly developed computer model that would, in some sense, predict likely futures, so that the government could begin taking early action to avoid whatever outcome it wanted to avoid.

The idea was to intercept futures that led, say, to revolution in Saudi Arabia. The problem was, if it worked, there was no way that it would not be used to prevent the opposition party, the party out of power, from winning an election. That would happen almost at once-probably as soon as the program was running. I mean, it was just too good not to use.

THE final directory was called Background and showed what could be done by operational units, spies, working with good database search programs. Rent a porno movie? They’d know it. Move a chunk of your portfolio from Intel to Boeing because you’re a government worker with an inside source on new military contracts? They’d know that and link the pieces within seconds of the transaction. Kid gets C’s in school? Case of the clap in the Army? Prescription for Xanax or Viagra? Go on vacation three times in a row with the same woman, not your wife, in the next seat on the airplane?

They were already running the program on fifty-odd subjects. Some of the names rang bells, but only vaguely, until LuEllen said, “This guy’s a senator. From Wisconsin.”

“Holy shit,” I said. I scanned down the list. “I think they’re all senators. Or congressmen. Look, here’s Bob. Congressman Bob. Jesus-look at the stuff. This looks like the stuff that Carp’s putting out there. The Bobby file. What the hell are they doing with this stuff?”

We’d been slumped over the screen and LuEllen suddenly sat up and looked around. “Kidd, unplug the goddamn thing. Let’s get out of here. C’mon, let’s get going.”

Her nervousness affected me, too. I pulled the plug on the wi-fi and we drove away, slowly, as always. LuEllen said, after a while, “You know what’s so weird about all of this? One thing, anyway?”

“What?”

“That you could get into their files. They’re this bunch of rocket scientists down in the basement talking about databases the size of the moon-they’re talking about building the Death Star-and some broken-ass hacker gets into their system and it all pops out.”

“Thanks. I wasn’t completely sure my ass was broken,” I said.

“You know what I mean. They can’t even secure themselves.”

“We might be coming to a time when nobody is secure. When nothing is secret. You sit up in your chair and behave yourself, or your little secret is on CNN.”

“I’m moving to fuckin’ Argentina,” she said, disgusted.

“They’d have it in Burundi,” I said. “Once the technology is demonstrated, it’ll get used. Pakistan and North Korea have the bomb and they can’t even feed their people.”

We drove around for a while, thinking our own thoughts, occasionally looking out the back window, and then LuEllen said, “I’m glad people don’t live forever. I don’t think I want to be here when all this gets worked through the system and gets established. It’s like…”

“A nightmare,” I said.

BACK at the hotel, I started opening files that I’d simply snatched, without reading, from the DDC database. Usually when I was doing laptop stuff, LuEllen was restless and moving around, watching TV, shopping, playing golf, whatever; now she was glued to my elbow.

The working group was a secret inside the intelligence community. The Senate committee, as the intelligence oversight group, knew about it, without apparently knowing all of the details. The senators apparently got everything about the biometric research, about the money card proposals and the telephone intercept analysis, and the future map, but may not have known about the Background files.

Not that an experiment was taking place, at any rate. And some of the items in the Background section made me think.

“You know what? Bobby was inside this project. He was in their system. Look, they’re talking about the senator’s daughter’s DWI case, and about the Bole-blackface tape.”

“Maybe that’s why they were so worried about him.”

“No, no-but that’s why Carp went after him so hard. He suspected Bobby was in there, or maybe the operation hinted what a guy like Bobby might have. But I bet that’s what got the ball rolling.”

WE FOUND more about Carp, too. Carp had sent a memo around repeating a rumor that Bobby had sent computers to poor black kids and suggesting that the name of a poor black kid be dragged through sites Bobby was known to inhabit. He even had a name, a young computer freak he’d known in New Orleans.

The idea was summarily rejected-a notation on a separate file called Carp a “technician” who seemed “obsessed” by Bobby, even though it was possible that Bobby didn’t actually exist, but was some kind of elaborate hacker construct. The memo suggested that Carp’s “access to group personnel” be limited, which might have been a reference to the sexual harassment problem.

Then there had been a recent exchange of memos, begun after the Bobby attacks started, suggesting that they “keep all bases covered” by contacting Carp to see if he had had any contact with Bobby. Heffron and Small, the two guys we’d seen at the trailer, and who had gone into Carp’s apartment building the night before, had been delegated the job. There was a note from Small suggesting that somebody else be sent, because neither he nor Heffron knew Carp by sight, but an answer from the department head said that nobody else could be spared at the moment and that “ID photographs should be sufficient… this is a completely unofficial contact.”

We looked through the available stuff that would indicate that the group was investigating or was even aware that Heffron and Small had been killed, but there wasn’t anything in the system yet. Not on the files we’d copied, in any case.

I also found myself in the system: a report on my face-to-face talk with Rosalind Welsh. “Subject is approximately six feet tall and athletic,” LuEllen read. “… in a pursuit, deliberately burned a car to destroy any biometric evidence. He is considered exceptionally dangerous, and may be traveling in the company of a young female accomplice.”

“Must have seen you from the helicopter,” I said.

“That athletic-and-dangerous shit makes me hot,” LuEllen said.