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  Thus, our streets today are clogged with foreigners embodied in robots, subject to little surveillance or control. It defies common sense to think that these foreign operatives in disguise would not poison our public discourse with unfiltered foreign propaganda. After repeated demands from me and Vice President Gossy, our intelligence services have uncovered vast and sophisticated attempts by foreign states to influence American policy and elections. For example, the PNA sent waves of teletourists to describe alleged conditions in Palestine to the American people in February this year, in advance of the planned peace summit, and Chinese trolls disguised as ordinary tourists flooded the District of Columbia in June to participate in the “Million-Bot March” against our deployment of advanced tactical nuclear weapons in the Pacific. Indeed, the recent waves of demonstrations by anti-war radicals in California and New York appear to have been directed and amplified by Russian intelligence using hired teletourists from around the world.

  Despite this clear and present danger to our democracy, my attempts at regulating the speech of teletourists have consistently been rebuffed by the courts. My order that all teletour robots be equipped with a filter that automatically refused to translate or silenced utterances of ideas and phrases not compatible with American interests has been voided by extremist left-wing judges defying my constitutional authority. They appear to hold the mistaken notion that foreigners, present in the United States only by remotely operating a robot, somehow enjoy the same God-given constitutional rights as real Americans. The very idea is absurd. This is especially so when regimes like China have erected virtual walls that make it extremely difficult for American citizens to take jaunts into China. We cannot remain open when our enemies do not extend us the same courtesy.

  We cannot allow telemigration to undo all the gains we’ve made in regulating immigration. Thus, in order to protect American jobs from unfair foreign competition, to defend our technological secrets from foreign spies, to ensure that our citizens are not subjected to foreign propaganda delivered in the guise of teletourism, I am issuing an executive order that immediately bans all attempts to connect to telepresence robots within the United States from abroad. Secretary Narro will have the details.

  Don’t tread on us.

  God Bless America.

  Factchecking Notes on President Bombeo’s Statement by Teletourists Without Borders, September 3, 203X

  . . . (39) “THUS, OUR STREETS ARE CLOGGED WITH FOREIGNERS EMBODIED IN ROBOTS.”

  According to the Association of Teletourism Providers, the largest US-based trade organization for the industry, foreign-based teletourists were only 3.4 percent of the total number of teletourists in the United States. According to JauntsNow, less than 5 percent of the jaunts booked on US-based teletour robots were from addresses abroad. In any event, it seems clear that the vast majority of jaunts in the United States are taken by other Americans.

  . . . (43) “Our intelligence services have uncovered vast and sophisticated attempts by foreign states to influence American policy and elections.”

  The President’s examples of bot-swarms by foreign nations attempting to influence American politics have been well publicized, but there is considerable skepticism among security experts because the reports were produced by the spy agencies under intense political pressure and thus considered not entirely reliable. The President also failed to note some other instances of foreign-sponsored bot-swarms that may have been more in line with his preferred policies (see below). Thus, the picture he presented is misleading.

  •The bot-swarm in support of Myanmar’s government when Congress contemplated sanctions against officials in Nay Pyi Taw for persecuting ethnic minorities. The officials in question enjoy a close relationship with President Bombeo, and multiple researchers have concluded that the demonstration involved protesters-for-hire purchased in the Philippines.

  •The bot-swarm in support of President Bombeo’s decision to reject the findings of the United Nations Human Rights Council against Saudi Arabia. Multiple researchers have concluded that the demonstrators were using a semi-open relay known to be closely associated with ascendant members of the ruling family.

  . . . (45) “Indeed, the recent waves of demonstrations by anti-war radicals in California and New York appear to have been directed and amplified by Russian intelligence using hired teletourists from around the world.”

  The report from a privately funded Washington, D.C. think tank that a large number of demonstrators were Russian operatives controlling multiple bots has been dismissed by most security researchers as based on flawed metrics and over-aggressive machine-classification algorithms. The lead authors of that report are also known for arguing that the Black Lives Matter protests from the last decade were instigated by Chinese and Russian trolls, a position that has been comprehensively debunked.

  . . . (47) “My order that all teletour robots be equipped with a filter . . .”

  The President failed to make it clear that his order not only applied to foreign teletourists, but also could potentially be applied to American citizens and permanent residents using telepresence robots as well.

  README.txt

  NENE HUDDLE IS A HIGH-PERFORMANCE, PRIVACY-FIRST, ADAPTIVELY STRUCTURED, peer-to-peer network to facilitate anonymous, hard-to-trace connections between telepresence robots and operators.

  Running the Nene Huddle software turns your machine into a node (called a “pylon”) on the Huddle network. The pylons communicate with one another through encrypted channels that are constantly multiplexed and switched to defeat attempts at tracing metadata. The ultimate goal of the network is to enable operators anywhere in the world to connect to telepresence endpoints without leaving a traceable record linking any individual operator with any individual endpoint.

  It is primarily useful for getting around the restrictions various states have imposed on inbound and outbound telepresence connections. For instance, if you don’t live in the United States or one of its four “Deep Trust Allies,” then currently the only way to take a jaunt into the US without going through the onerous and Orwellian televisa process is routing yourself through the Nene Huddle network. It is also one of the only avenues left to enter China without giving up all your data at the border.

  Note, however, that the Nene Huddle network doesn’t directly provide any consumer-oriented functionality such as searching for open telepresence endpoints, advertising to jaunt customers, paying to use open endpoints, disguising yourself as a domestic teletourist on JauntsNow, and so on. You’ll have to use other applications built on top of Nene Huddle.

  It is already confirmed or at least very likely that running the Nene Huddle software is considered illegal by authorities in countries such as the United States, Russia, India, China, Saudi Arabia, and the United Kingdom (the list of such states is growing). Before installing and joining the movement, weigh your risks carefully. It is simply a fact of life that freedom requires you to be ready to pay a price, to have skin in the game.

  Frequently Asked Questions

  Who makes Nene Huddle? Volunteers who have made it a point to not know one another’s identities.

  Why do you make it? There is no way to answer this question for everyone who has contributed to the project. By design, we don’t know one another’s real names, real jobs, real nationalities, real motivations, anything at all, really.

  Based on posts in the project forum, the most popular (self-reported) reasons for people to contribute to this project are:

  •Dislike of the actions or policies of the United States / China / Russia / India / Saudi Arabia / the UK / some other country

  •That freedom of movement, including telepresence, is a fundamental human right

  •The world is a better place when people can move around and get to know one another and teach one another—telepresence is the best way to do that without polluting and ruining the planet

  •The world is a better place when people stay where they are and stop cr
ossing borders and trying to change how other people live—telepresence is the best way to do that without turning everyone into a prisoner or forcing them to starve for lack of economic opportunities

  •It’s fun to mess with governments and see politicians’ heads explode

  How can I trust the software? By reading the source code. That’s it.

  As you can see from the answers to the last question, the self-reported reasons for why volunteers contribute code here are often mutually contradictory, as is the case with all leaderless, distributed movements.

  Is it possible that there is code in here from PLA hackers in Beijing? Of course.

  Is it possible that the CIA has contributed? Yep.

  Is it possible that— Let me just stop you there. Yes, yes, and yes.

  Every state thinks there’s a way it can turn Nene Huddle to its own advantage; spies, like everyone else, want to jaunt. Nation-states’ self-interest and mutual suspicion redound to our benefit: no other open-source project has received as much adversarial code review and scrutiny. Out of swords, secure telepresence tunnels.

  Still, you can’t trust people’s motivations, only the result. Read the code, verify for yourself that it’s safe to run. You have the freedom, which means you have the responsibility.

  Doesn’t your software facilitate crime/enable money laundering/hurt democracy/perpetuate imperialism/etc.? You’re asking the wrong question.

  All right, maybe this is worth elaborating a little more.

  Is it true that people can use the network to do terrible things? Without a doubt. But that’s true of any technology. (However, every single instance where the United States claimed that our network facilitated terrorism—so far at least—has turned out to be a lie.)

  What do you want to do with Nene Huddle?

  In a world where borders are increasingly impenetrable, Nene Huddle is often the only way for us to remain together. Those with skills but no markets at home use it to secure for themselves and their loved ones a better life. Students, scholars, and researchers use it to find the collegiality and inspiration that feeds invention and free thought. Journalists use it to tunnel into oppressive countries to get the facts and shoot footage that can’t be obtained any other way. Activists from across the world use it to bot-swarm protests in the United States because American policies have a disproportionate impact on the rest of the world even though most of us don’t get to vote in your elections. Religious leaders who have been forbidden to speak at home can preach abroad through telepresence. Individuals who are not free to date, love, express their own identities at home can live the lives they wish to live remotely through a long-jaunt tether, a literal lifeline.

  Every technology that begins in the hope for freedom eventually risks being co-opted by centralized power. Telepresence was originally a way to allow people to move more freely without the costs associated with transporting physical bodies. It has also, over time, turned out to be a great way for those in power to regulate and control the exchange of ideas and peoples.

  The only way to oppose centralized power is to become its very opposite: distributed, leaderless, inventive, formless. If you want your freedoms back, don’t count on a wise leader to save you. Join us.

  Download. Encrypt. Jaunt.

  6

  Koronapárty

  Rich Larson

  IT’S LOCKDOWN AGAIN, SO I’VE GOT THE TRAM MOSTLY TO MYSELF ON THE WAY HOME, grocery bags penned between my feet. The tram’s nice when it’s empty. No nerve-shredding sounds of snuffling or coughing, nobody talking on their phones. I can relax.

  I look out the window and see Prague sliding past in the dark. Sometimes I see my reflection, which always looks gaunter and wrinklier in the tram window. I listen to the whalesong groan of the tram following its track, curving with the river. In the old days I sometimes put my head up against the glass to feel the vibration, but of course I don’t touch public surfaces anymore.

  The tram is peaceful until Vltavská, when two teenagers get on, chattering in Czech as they scan their phones on the ticket reader. Both of them are wearing those stupid holomasks, and when the big cartoony mouths aren’t fluttering open and shut to match their speech, they project eerie grins. Always make me feel like they know something I don’t.

  I glare at them as they surf handbars down the rattling tram and pick a seat two in front of me. Socially distanced, so I can’t even resent them for that. People are good at following bug policy here.

  Not like in Paris. In Paris, every time there’s a wave they have to 3D-print these knobbly pads to glue onto every other metro seat, and then have to chase away the people hawking 3D-printed cushions that fit right over them. That was the last trip me and Jan took together, Paris and then Nantes. Lots of laughs.

  Anyways. Here, people play by the rules. I remember visiting Prague once before the Big One, and even back then everybody was painfully polite on the tram. Hardly ever talking, always ready to spring up out of their seats when anybody old got on. Happened to me a couple times, and that was when my hair was only halfway gray.

  But these two in their glow-up masks are excited, and it makes them loud, and that makes them annoying. The stream of Czech is punctuated by whoops and laughter. I’ve been here a decade, but I catch hardly anything. It’s rare I speak Czech now that Jan’s passed, and I was shit even before the rust set in—I took lessons for his sake, but I’ve got no aptitude for language.

  Especially not ones with seven cases, free-for-all word order, and the ř sound, which basically requires turning one’s mouth into an electric drill. If I ever have to differentiate between třicet, which is thirty, and čtyřicet, which is forty, I go straight to showing fingers. Better than scaring people who might think I’m having a stroke.

  But then, from behind the taller teen’s grinning mask, I hear a word I can suss out: koronapárty. We all know that prefix, and “party” has invaded an awful lot of lexicons, Czech included. But we’re on lockdown again, which means curfew’s in effect and partying with over ten people is prohibited.

  Maybe they’re discussing a nine-person party, or maybe they’re using the term ironically. Kids do love their irony. Or maybe they’re planning a massive, illegal, underground infection vector fest. It’s not really my business.

  Until I hear another intelligible word: Dělnická. Which is the name of my fucking street.

  I link my hearing imp to my phone, one of the few things I know how to do with it, and crank the volume up. Then, feeling like a bit of a sneak, I thumb my translator app, the one that helps get me through Czech ministry visits. Inside my left ear, the teens’ conversation turns into electronic English.

  “Mate, it’s all set up. It’ll be great.”

  “So many people, though. It makes me nervous.”

  And I think, yeah, no shit, as it should. We’re on lockdown for a reason. The latest coronavirus isn’t as deadly as the Big One, but it spreads fast and parties are like petri dishes. These little twerps are endangering themselves and their neighbors and the grandmothers who probably make knedlíky for them.

  The taller of the two teens just shrugs. “Wait until you see the place, mate. It’s perfect.”

  “Next stop: working class.”

  That last bit comes from the tram itself, which is pulling away from the Pražská tržnice stop where nobody ever gets on, seeing as it’s an open-air market and those are all closed during a spike. The translator app got overzealous. It meant to say next stop: Dělnická, a street that hasn’t been industrial or working class for a very long time but still bears the name.

  The teens are still chattering about their party, but I’ve got my own concerns now. Getting out of a seat is a lot slower than it used to be.

  THE TRAM BANKS ONTO KOMUNARDŮ, PAST THE NEW DRONE-PAINTED GRAFFITI installation. That means I’ve got about ninety seconds to prepare myself. I scoot all the way to the edge of the molded plastic, hinge myself over to grab the straps of the grocery bags, then brace the
better of my two shoulders against the seat in front of me.

  When the tram slides to a halt just outside the Vietnamese restaurant, I use the rock-back momentum to heave up onto my feet. It’s smooth, which makes me feel proud, and then feeling proud of getting smoothly out of a seat makes me feel vaguely ashamed—that old cycle. The tram doors whisk open and I stump down the steps.

  The teens spill off too, which means I heard them right about Dělnická, and start ambling toward the zebra crossing. Even the way they walk is obnoxious. All free and flappy and gangly. Their vertebral columns are still stretching skyward, talking back to gravity. Every bit of them’s still on the way up instead of on the way down—which makes it even more infuriating that they’re planning a corona party. They have no idea what it’s like to be on the way down. To be fragile.

  One of them elbows the button for the zebra crossing. They’re heading the same way as me, down my very street, so I speed up a little and follow them across the tram track. I used to have a bad knee and a good knee; now I’ve got a bad knee and a worse knee. Both of them click. One’s just a bit more sore.

  Fortunately, the kids are in no rush. They’re both buried in their phones again, meandering along, and they don’t notice me tailing them. Tailing them. Ha. Like I’m some sort of spy. Some sort of arthritic James Bond. It’s stupid, but I sort of like imagining it. I keep my chin tucked to my chest, breathing my own hot breath inside my mask, as we move down Dělnická.

  My hearing imp picks up bits and pieces of the conversation, but the translator app doesn’t have much to go on. They might be talking about farts. Actual farts, not boring old farts who go around spying on illicit party planners.