Freedom TM

for the attacks. However, the murders highlight growing resentment over outsized executive compensation in the midst of skyrocketing unemployment .
    The surveillance video showed a man screaming as a robotic motorcycle wielding twin swords chopped him to pieces.
    A voice spoke in the darkness. “Who was he?”
    “Anthony Hollis—ran a highly successful hedge fund.”
    “Has his name been in the news?”
    “Yes. Lots of detractors in the business press. Four hundred and six negative mentions in the past year alone.” A pause. “You think the Daemon botnet is behind this?”
    “Play it back. Slowly.”
    The video replayed in slow motion, frame by frame. A blade-covered motorcycle advanced on the cornered man. The imagestopped then zoomed in. Though motion blurred, the screen was frozen in midstroke, a sword leveled at the man’s neck while spiraling lasers in the bike’s headlight assembly illuminated his terrified face.
    “Unmanned vehicle. Like some sort of ground level Predator drone. Daemon operatives call them ‘razorbacks.’ The same type Dr. Philips described in her report on the attack at Building Twenty-Nine.”
    “So the Daemon is conducting class warfare now?”
    “I don’t think so. These people were all engaged in a specific type of financial activity.”
    “Sobol
did
say his Daemon would ‘eliminate parasites in the system.’ Could it have viewed Hollis and the others as parasites?”
    A third voice joined the discussion. “With all due respect, these killings are just a distraction from the real problem.”
    “Perhaps, but they reveal something important about the Daemon’s purpose. Bring up the lights, please.”
    Suddenly the room illuminated, revealing the heads of America’s intelligence services sitting around a circular boardroom table in Building OPS-2B of National Security Agency headquarters. Plaques stood in front of everyone present—NSA, CIA, FBI, DARPA, DIA—as well as several visitors from the private intelligence and security sectors; suited executives from Computer Systems Corporation (CSC), its subsidiaries—EndoCorp and Korr Military Solutions—and a principal from the lobbying firm Byers, Carroll, and Marquist (BCM).
    Their host scanned the room.
    NSA: “The late Matthew Sobol created his Daemon as a news-reading computer virus. It activated two years ago at the appearance of Sobol’s obituary in online news, and has since spread throughout the world, siphoning capital from corporate hosts to sustain a network of human operatives who distribute and protect it. It has already used these operatives to destroy the dataand backup tapes of companies that try to remove it. The question is: how do we kill the Daemon without precipitating a ‘digital doomsday’?”
    DIA: “That’s the dilemma. If we act, the Daemon will
react
and destroy the corporate networks it’s infected.”
    DARPA: “But we can’t just do
nothing
. It continues to launch attacks—like it did against the Daemon Task Force at Building Twenty-Nine and these recent assassinations.”
    NSA: “Thousands of people are already dead worldwide— dozens of federal officers are dead. And I have to ask myself how a software construct with the intelligence of a tapeworm managed to do this to us. The free market quest for efficiency has made our infrastructure vulnerable.”
    BCM: “You can’t expect the market to operate
inefficiently
. Efficiency is what makes modern life possible.”
    NSA: “Yes, but we might need to place a greater emphasis on resiliency.”
    CSC (gesturing to the screen): “Why? Because a few people are dead? These machines are not militarily significant. They’re glorified toys.”
    NSA: “I was speaking more in terms of network security—but these razorbacks are becoming a serious public relations problem as well. Witnesses have seen these machines navigating at night on highways. People are uploading videos to Web sites.”
    BCM: “We’re already aware of these videos, and are taking steps to minimize their public impact.”
    NSA: “My point is that we may soon have no choice but to reveal the existence of the Daemon to the general public.”
    BCM: “That will be difficult, Mr. Director—especially after going through so much effort to convince the public the Daemon was a hoax. How would you explain executing Peter Sebeck for a crime that never occurred?”
    FBI: “That wasn’t our doing.”
    BCM: “Nonetheless. If word got out that the Daemon had taken