TTWC - Racked
Today's post is an excerpt from my writing notebook - a simple vignette that lives in a world I'm working on...
I hated being goggled in for any length of time, but that was the deal. Even with the fancy new Akihiko's, there were plenty of attack surfaces available that made most employers freak out and go down the goggle route.
They were oversized, so the dangling charges of 'nanos could be easily replenished without having to take them off. A quick connector terminated into a stubby canister no larger than your thumb. But it held millions of small machines, all intent on scouring the centimeters in front of your eyes for rogue surveillance.
After the Dust Wars, it was standard procedure. You didn't have much in the way of lethal micromachines trying to turn your blood cells inside out, those were taken care of way back when, and the city itself had its own immune system of cultured 'nanos that could identify and reprogram themselves. It learned from old threats and could assess new ones.
With all that swirling around, you'd think you would be in the clear, but the clever engineers at competitive orgs figured that seeing and hearing were just as good as outright killing. Thus began the active threat of watchers. Small salt-grain size machines that could relay a video stream to any random node for collection and storage.
My employer, будущее вид, was one of the more paranoid in the space, so they sprung for full vertical racks, with processed air rushing through bioactive filters, at a rate that replenished the surrounding air every few seconds. The seats were designed to support full standing or semi-sitting stance, depending on your shift and mental state. No dozing off after lunch, not here.
I never trusted Akihiko, and had a personal policy about a firewall - either physical or virtual - that allowed me to interrupt inputs from a device. It turned out to be a good move. Had a friend who went insane after his memory pack went beserk, it kept playing the same ad jingle, over and over, asking for ransom to be paid in cryptocurrency. Problem was, it was an old malware from way back, so there was no way to satisfy its demands.
He just kept hearing the same thing over and over, until he jammed a spike into his ear and impaled his implant. Can't say I blame him, but I wouldn't have gone out that way.
So, firewalls.
I had my tech install these screens with a small surface connector at each corner of my eye. It was nearly invisible, but I could by feel work my finger in there and pop the connection if needed. I didn't want to have someone take over my sight and start blasting snuff clips at me.