Little Brother

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    Jolu stood up.
    "This is where it starts, guys. This is how we know which side you're on. You might not be willing to take to the streets and get busted for your beliefs, but if you have beliefs, this will let us know it. This will create the web of trust that tells us who's in and who's out. If we're ever going to get our country back, we need to do this. We need to do something like this."
    Someone in the audience — it was Ange — had a hand up, holding a beer bottle.
    "So call me stupid but I don't understand this at all. Why do you want us to do this?"
    Jolu looked at me, and I looked back at him. It had all seemed so obvious when we were organizing it. "The Xnet isn't just a way to play free games. It's the last open communications network in America. It's the last way to communicate without being snooped on by the DHS. For it to work we need to know that the person we're talking to isn't a snoop. That means that we need to know that the people we're sending messages to are the people we think they are.
    "That's where you come in. You're all here because we trust you. I mean, really trust you. Trust you with our lives."
    Some of the people groaned. It sounded melodramatic and stupid.
    I got back to my feet.
    "When the bombs went off," I said, then something welled up in my chest, something painful. "When the bombs went off, there were four of us caught up by Market Street. For whatever reason, the DHS decided that made us suspicious. They put bags over our heads, put us on a ship and interrogated us for days. They humiliated us. Played games with our minds. Then they let us go.
    "All except one person. My best friend. He was with us when they picked us up. He'd been hurt and he needed medical care. He never came out again. They say they never saw him. They say that if we ever tell anyone about this, they'll arrest us and make us disappear.
    "Forever."
    I was shaking. The shame. The goddamned shame. Jolu had the light on me.
    "Oh Christ," I said. "You people are the first ones I've told. If this story gets around, you can bet they'll know who leaked it. You can bet they'll come knocking on my door." I took some more deep breaths. "That's why I volunteered on the Xnet. That's why my life, from now on, is about fighting the DHS. With every breath. Every day. Until we're free again. Any one of you could put me in jail now, if you wanted to."
    Ange put her hand up again. "We're not going to rat on you," she said. "No way. I know pretty much everyone here and I can promise you that. I don't know how to know who to trust, but I know who not to trust: old people. Our parents. Grownups. When they think of someone being spied on, they think of someone else , a bad guy. When they think of someone being caught and sent to a secret prison, it's someone else — someone brown, someone young, someone foreign.
    "They forget what it's like to be our age. To be the object of suspicion all the time ! How many times have you gotten on the bus and had every person on it give you a look like you'd been gargling turds and skinning puppies?
    "What's worse, they're turning into adults younger and younger out there. Back in the day, they used to say 'Never trust anyone over 30.' I say, 'Don't trust any bastard over 25!'"
    That got a laugh, and she laughed too. She was pretty, in a weird, horsey way, with a long face and a long jaw. "I'm not really kidding, you know? I mean, think about it. Who elected these ass-clowns? Who let them invade our city? Who voted to put the cameras in our classrooms and follow us around with creepy spyware chips in our transit passes and cars? It wasn't a 16-year-old. We may be dumb, we may be young, but we're not scum."
    "I want that on a t-shirt," I said.
    "It would be a good one," she said. We smiled at each other.
    "Where do I go to get my keys?" she said, and pulled out her phone.
    "We'll do it over there, in the secluded spot by the caves. I'll take you in there and set you up, then you do your thing and take the machine around to your friends to get photos of your public key so they can sign it when they get home."
    I raised my voice. "Oh! One more thing! Jesus, I can't believe I forgot this. Delete those photos once you've typed in the keys ! The last thing we want is a Flickr stream full of pictures of all of us conspiring together."
    There was