He'd hacked into Sparrow Falls Center, the great facility in South Dakota that handled all the Temporal Viewing, Historical Research, Biographies, Criminal Apprehensions and much, much more. Including the dreaded Time Patrol. Everything that man did that had any way of being investigated or aided by the ever watchful Eye AI was there.
This was no idle achievement, 'hacking', like all other crime is impossible to get away with. But Jimmy was genius enough to have pulled off a hack that would make any other hack in history look tame, at least in what it could have been used for, but horny boy enough to be using it for a purpose so frivolous he was sure he would not be caught at it.
Said frivolous purpose being to find Mrs. Waverly Walkerton from last week's church service and follow her through time till he could see her nude. Why church? Because even the Time Patrollers have to have a start point, a time and place where they know you were, before they could then scan forward or backward to see what you were up to. Unless they had a face warrant, which was beyond even this precocious boy's abilities to fake.
Jimmy knew she'd been at church last Sunday. In her two inch above the knees skirt that she always pulled at to keep it from riding up too high when she sat down. As if she were modest. As if she didn't know that the very act of having to do so meant she probably shouldn't have worn it. Not that Jimmy or any of his friends minded!
There she was! Jimmy leaned in. First, the low hanging fruit, he thought. He entered in parameters that would have the Eye AI track her from church to her home, where naturally the first thing she'd do would be to change.
It went straight to the time when she pulled her Benz Triangle into her driveway four days ago, Sunday at 1:38pm. Not like in the movies where it would show a montage of pics from webcams, bodycams, nannycams, traffic light cams, satellites, dashcams, button cams, drone cams, security cams, business cams and such. As if Eye AI had to laboriously click from one perspective to the other in human time to keep up with the person! No, the system scanned all such shots, in a smooth and incomprehensibly fast fashion and arrived at the first point that fulfilled the parameters.
Only then did it show motion, motion from the start of the fulfilled request, motion that would continue till it was told to stop. Jimmy, having leaned in even closer in anticipation when she got out of her Triangle and headed to her front door, was then was increasingly frustrated as she wandered around the kitchen, got a drink, looked at yesterday's mail, idly flipped through some TV channels, before - finally! - going to her bedroom.
Jimmy started to do what boys his age do. He watched her change into a robe. While he had wanted to pause when she was just in her panties and bra, he did not make that rookie mistake, but just let it keep playing. He only stopped it when she was covered up in her robe.
Smiling in satisfaction, he paused to carefully type in parameters that would have the Eye AI scan about for the last time she had had a visitor at her house past 10pm. It only had to go back two days, to Friday evening, to find that. Jimmy's hunch paid off, he had correctly assumed that any visitor after 10pm would be there for purposes other than the study of the RJS (Rebooted James Standard) Bible.
He didn't manually fast forward from the point of finding her sitting on the couch at 10pm, waiting expectantly for her guest to come back from the kitchen with some drinks. He was patient - or tried to be - as he didn't want there to be any revealing stop point. He knew the Eye AI could detect "prurient interest" in how the humans interfacing with it used it. That was why he had not been foolish enough to set the parameters to find "bathtub usage".
10:30pm, they were still watching TV, some oldie from early last century when America was getting it's butt kicked by the Sino-Persian Alliance.
11:00pm, still watching the movie, but Jimmy could at least admire her long legs stretched out over her guest's knees, her now bare feet being rubbed by him now and then.
Midnight - how long was this movie, Jimmy wondered - before it then ended. They each stretched, chatted a bit, kissed and made out a bit, then went to the bedroom! Like the scene where she had changed, Jimmy was cleverly recording with his SquareG, knowing that recording from the computer itself would be a flag.
It wasn't everything he thought it would be, not like porn movies, the guest was in the way far too much, the sheets covered too much and too often, but still. Still it was great, and he was smart enough to realize that at least half the greatness was in it being illicit. Viewed objectively, it was far less well done then porn. But still, he had seen her in all her glory, and it wasn't as if he had not been able to "finish", so to speak.
He hadn't planned on "finishing" during this first viewing, but he was a 12 year old boy, after all. Impulse control was not high on his list of personal traits.
He was tempted to now use an idea he had had about a set of search parameters that might also seemingly inadvertently include the use of her bathtub, but he reminded himself that patterns form from threes, so two was the max he could reasonably get away with. And he did have the recordings on his SquareG for later review.
Jimmy carefully disengaged from the program, got under his covers, "finished" again from the memory of it all, and went to sleep, well satisfied with his evening's work.
**********
Jimmy was sitting at the kitchen bar, eating breakfast, while his father was grabbing a cup of stim to take with him on his way to work, and SymMom was cleaning the kitchen and putting the food away. His real mom had been killed when she reacted poorly to a rare case of attempted rape, and then got hit by an autobus when she darted into traffic in panic.
Had she but waited, Jimmy thought. The policedrone had flown in thirty seconds later, and would have had the mentally imbalanced man incapacitated before any real harm could have been done. As kids, everyone was taught that in the event of a crime to "stop, drop and roll", because the Eye AI could detect any act of violence, 99.99% of incipient violence, and was especially keyed to humans stopping, dropping and rolling.
The would be rapist had tried to claim that he hadn't technically done anything, but the Time Patrol had footage of two instances of the man having followed her for no discernible purpose. That and the clear view of his menacing of her at that moment and his own elevated bioscan readings was enough to get him sentenced to the Dead Zone, a preserve with no - official - Eye AI monitoring, and where the life expectancy among the criminal element sent there was said to be measured in weeks.
Or so the movies Jimmy enjoyed showed.
His SymMom was adequate, and really, they were not even programmed to be more than adequate. She was really more of a maid, though Jimmy knew that his father did have her up to the bedroom every month or so. Not that such was mentioned. And he was old enough understand that men have needs, in fact, he was feeling quite mature for being able to understand that, as it meant - so he thought - that he was a man now, too.
SymMom looked at his father. "There is a visitor approaching our home", she said in the warm and inviting voice she always used with him. When she was talking to Jimmy, it was warm enough, but by no means inviting. His father looked surprised, but only said, "Thank you, Heather", and went to the door.
Jimmy continued eating, but soon enough was interrupted when his father came back into the kitchen with a small and inoffensive looking man. The man was dressed in a gray button down shirt, gray slacks and had a gray tie on. The small gray tie clip was of a gray pyramid with a gray eye in it. Jimmy went cold. Only those of the Time Patrol dressed like that. He put down his spoon and gave a brief shudder. His father looked distressed, but seemed to be grabbing a hold of his emotions by sheer force of will.
"Jimmy", his father said gravely, "Agent Evans is from the Time Patrol, and he needs to speak with us." Jimmy nodded. "Heather, please excuse us.", his father said, and the Time Patrol agent sat down at the bar as Heather left. Looking out the window, Jimmy could see a policedrone hovering in the backyard, and knew there'd be one out front, too.
Not that he thought seriously of running, no one escaped the Time Patrol, no one even tried any more. In the early days, over a century ago, some had tried all manner of tricks, hiding in forests, trying to get lost in crowds, quick changes, other silly things that never worked. The Eye AI could scan trillions of images per femtosecond, and no disguise could throw it off track. Night, day, crowds, tunnels, sewers or woods, it never lost sight of you.
"You have no rights.", the Agent recited to Jimmy calmly. "We do not need you to say anything, nor will any third party be permitted to speak for you. We are not here to take you and hold you while determining what, if anything, you did, but only to let you know that we now know what you did and we're here to exercise correction appropriately. Do you understand this Statement of Apprehension as I have related it to you?"
Jimmy's father sat down heavily, looking pale. In the silence Jimmy could hear Heather opening and shutting doors upstairs, making sure the spotlessly clean rooms were spotlessly clean. Jimmy didn't answer the Agent's question, but asked instead, "Are you taking me to the Dead Zone now?"
A brief hint of a smile seemed to flit over the Agent's face, but he only said, "Young man, you've been watching too many movies. The Rehabilitation Zone is wooded, but that is the only thing it has in common with how the movies portray it. Were it needful to send you there, you'd be perfectly safe and able to re-enter society after a given amount of time. Under a new identity, of course, we can't have the public getting antsy about such types ever being released. They mostly know that happens, but if we don't rub it in their faces, they don't have to think about it."
Jimmy's father nodded, he had known that, but still was relieved to hear that his son would not be going there. He mustered up the courage to ask, "Sir, what has my son been found to have done?"
"Your son", said Agent Evans, "is guilty of one act of cyberstalking, three acts of voyeurism and one act of hacking. We are mostly concerned with the hacking, not that the other acts are not serious. He broke into our system, acting as if he was an employee, and used the Temporal Viewer to observe a woman of this community first in a state of undress and next in the act of sex."
"What was the third act, then?", Jimmy spoke up, perhaps getting some confidence back at hearing he'd not be going to the Dead Zone. "The guest of the woman, young man. You may not have cared about him specifically, but he was violated as surely as the woman was."
Jimmy nodded glumly. His father looked outraged, then got over that so as to ask, "What's going to happen to my son?"
The Agent took out a small can about the size of a cinny-flavored breath freshener from his shirt pocket and sprayed it at Jimmy's face. He put the can back, took out a pill case from his front right trouser pocket, and withdrew one pill. He handed it to Jimmy's father and said, "Take this, please."
Jimmy was clutching his face with his hands, though the spray hadn't hurt. He heard his father saying, "Now see, here, I've a right to know - " the Agent cut in with, "You have the right to suffer the same correction your son is about to. Unless you take this pill, like I did previously, and thus become immune to the effects of the spray. You were not sprayed, but some of it is in the air."
Jimmy's father accepted the pill, but did not take it. "Heather!", he yelled.
**********
It had started, mused the Agent, not last century, but the century before. The middle of that 20th century had seen a book wrote that was very popular, about an old-fashioned Police State where everyone was watched all the time by a Big Brother. The poor backward people of those oppressed times had been frightened by it.
Yet by the end of the century, with cameras in more places than any could have conceived, a funny thing happened. The people loved having proof of innocence or guilt of all manner of crimes, and how handy it was at catching violent predators. Then the early part of the 21st century had people enjoying being able to prove police brutality and frame ups, things now as obsolete as a Medieval Lord getting to have sex with your wife on your wedding night.
So a massively unexpected shift took place, where a lot of the government hated the idea of cameras everywhere, but the people loved it. And given that at least half the government loved the cameras for their own purposes in catching threats to their own power, that was enough for the universal surveillance side to win out.
That and an AI that, while not truly an artificial intelligence, had enough algorithms to act as if it was aware. It could track faces, and know which camera from which source was closest to whatever camera the face had been leaving the view of. It could track you from a traffic cam to an ATM cam to a phone cam of a person walking down the street, and to the ever more ubiquitous public cams and personal body cams.
Those last had started out very popular among the poor of that time, when they eventually could be powered by just the movements of your body and uploaded all that was happening to you to a secured site that the police who might otherwise have framed you could not access. Soon rich and poor alike wore those, and to not wear one was to indicate that maybe you were wanting to do something naughty.
Smaller and smaller cameras, needing less and less power, eventually made even body cams superfluous, as now every square meter had surveillance, inside and outside. Laws prohibiting tampering with any camera for any reason were passed. No buildings could be built without more cameras. Old buildings were required to install them. Free access to any cameras was made the law.
Finally, the "No Sparrow Shall Fall" bill passed by acclamation in 2038, and from then, social scientists dubbed it "Temporal Viewing", as for the first time in history, all could be recorded and viewed. The historical truth of anything could be established simply by watching the key players. Yet a new privacy did arise. Anyone could monitor anyone and take "trips in time", but full access was only for events of 75 years ago or more. For less than 75 years, and especially for "real time" viewing, you could only see things outside of buildings, or inside if the building was "public access".
And the viewing of certain government and business officials dealing with that oldest of excuses, "State Security", could get a seal put on some of their activities - by increasingly unnecessary courts who had their every decision watched by any who cared to watch. Most voters started voting according to what was called "transparency", and any with less than a 99% transparency rating would find trouble at the polls.
Blast it, thought the Agent, why was this man acting like the lone person who was going to quibble over a system that had got rid of rape, theft, murder and everything else bad? For even government was finally honest, now that those who held official oversight could witness any bribe or kickback - and thus there were no more bribes or kickbacks!
Take the pill already!
While the Agent thought these thoughts, Heather came downstairs with the inevitable "Coming, dear!" trill of hers. "Get me a glass of water, please", the father told her. Oh, that's what he's waiting for, the Agent thought. Me, I'd have took the pill at once, but no harm would come to the father for the delay of but a minute.
The Agent turned to Jimmy and said, "Young man, you will be blind for one month. During that month you will be in discussion with an online Therapist who will help you learn more appropriate responses to your budding sexual urges. Your medical file already shows that it is not too late for you, nor are you so far out of the norm as to warrant greater concern."
"That's all?", blurted Jimmy, as Heather brought his Father some water. His father swallowed the pill quickly. He growled, "Shut up and listen to the man." Oh, good, the father is on board, the Agent thought with relief. That makes it much easier.
The Agent said, "In another minute, the spray you've inhaled will take effect. It will last a month, it would last longer, but after one month we'll give you the antidote. Assuming the Therapist confirms our suspicions that you are treatable. Because if you don't stop, you'll stay blind. Do you understand me?"
Jimmy was losing his vision now, and it was more frightening than he had already kind of thought it would be. He realized from the Agent's words that he could be left this way as long as they liked. He said, "Yes, sir, I understand. I'll do my best, and I'm sorry."
"Good boy", the Agent said. "Now I'll let you get back to your cornflakes."
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