I got out my camera and took as many pictures as I could of the van and its antennas. Then I opened them in a free image-editor called The GIMP and edited out everything from the photo except the van, erasing my street and anything that might identify me.
I posted them to Xnet and wrote down everything I could about the vans. These guys were definitely looking for the Xnet, I could tell.
Now I really couldn't sleep.
Nothing for it but to play wind-up pirates. There'd be lots of players even at this hour. The real name for wind-up pirates was Clockwork Plunder, and it was a hobbyist project that had been created by teenaged death-metal freaks from Finland. It was totally free to play, and offered just as much fun as any of the $15/month services like Ender's Universe and Middle Earth Quest and Discworld Dungeons.
I logged back in and there I was, still on the deck of the Zombie Charger, waiting for someone to wind me up. I hated this part of the game.
> Hey you
I typed to a passing pirate.
> Wind me up?
He paused and looked at me.
> y should i?
> We're on the same team. Plus you get experience points.
What a jerk.
> Where are you located?
> San Francisco
This was starting to feel familiar.
> Where in San Francisco?
I logged out. There was something weird going on in the game. I jumped onto the livejournals and began to crawl from blog to blog. I got through half a dozen before I found something that froze my blood.
Livejournallers love quizzes. What kind of hobbit are you? Are you a great lover? What planet are you most like? Which character from some movie are you? What's your emotional type? They fill them in and their friends fill them in and everyone compares their results. Harmless fun.
But the quiz that had taken over the blogs of the Xnet that night was what scared me, because it was anything but harmless:
What's your sex
What grade are you in?
What school do you go to?
Where in the city do you live?
The quizzes plotted the results on a map with colored pushpins for schools and neighborhoods, and made lame recommendations for places to buy pizza and stuff.
But look at those questions. Think about my answers:
Male
17
Chavez High
Potrero Hill
There were only two people in my whole school who matched that profile. Most schools it would be the same. If you wanted to figure out who the Xnetters were, you could use these quizzes to find them all.
That was bad enough, but what was worse what what it implied: someone from the DHS was using the Xnet to get at us. The Xnet was compromised by the DHS.
We had spies in our midst.
#
I'd given Xnet discs to hundreds of people, and they'd done the same. I knew the people I gave the discs to pretty well. Some of them I knew very well. I've lived in the same house all my life and I've made hundreds and hundreds of friends over the years, from people who went to daycare with me to people I played soccer with, people who LARPed with me, people I met clubbing, people I knew from school. My ARG team were my closest friends, but there were plenty of people I knew and trusted enough to hand an Xnet disc to.
I needed them now.
I woke Jolu up by ringing his cell phone and hanging up after the first ring, three times in a row. A minute later, he was up on Xnet and we were able to have a secure chat. I pointed him to my blog-post on the radio vans and he came back a minute later all freaked out.
> You sure they're looking for us?
In response I sent him to the quiz.
> OMG we're doomed
> No it's not that bad but we need to figure out who we can trust
> How?
> That's what I wanted to ask you -- how many people can you totally vouch for like trust them to the ends of the earth?
> Um 20 or 30 or so
> I want to get a bunch of really trustworthy people together and do a key-exchange web of trust thing
