Identity Theft and other stories (collection)

Hauptmann’s weblink was showing something he’d never seen before: the word “unknown” next to the text, “Trustworthiness rating for Joseph Tyler Plato.” But, of course, that was only to be expected.

* * *

Chin was clearly jealous that Hauptmann had scored a spacer, and so he made an excuse to come over to Hauptmann’s house in Takoma Park early the next morning.

Hauptmann and Chin listened spellbound as Plato regaled them with tales of Franklins World and its four moons, its salmon-colored orbiting rings, its outcrops of giant crystals towering to the sky, and its neon-bright cascades. No life had been found, which was why, of course, no quarantine was necessary. That lack of native organisms had been a huge disappointment, Plato said; he and his crew were still arguing over what mechanism had caused the oxygen signatures detected in Earth-based spectroscopic scans of Franklin’s World, but whatever had made them wasn’t biological.

“I really am surprised,” said Plato, when they took a break for late-morning coffee. “I expected debriefings and, well, frankly, for the government to have been prepared for our return.”

Hauptmann nodded sympathetically. “Sorry about that. There are a lot of good things about getting rid of government, but one of the downsides, I guess, is the loss of all those little gnomes in cubicles who used to keep track of everything.”

“We do have a lot of scientific data to share,” said Plato.

Chin smiled. “If I were you, I’d hold out for the highest bidder. There’s got to be some company somewhere that thinks it can make a profit off of what you’ve collected.”

Plato tipped his head. “Well, until then, I, um, I’m going to need some of those corporate points you were talking about.”

Hauptmann and Chin each glanced down at their weblinks; it was habit, really, nothing more, but …

But that nasty “unknown” was showing on the displays again, the devices having divined the implied question. Chin looked at Hauptmann. Hauptmann looked at Chin.

“That is a problem,” Chin said.

* * *

The first evidence of real trouble was on the noon newscast. Plato watched aghast with Chin and Hauptmann as the story was reported. Leo Johnstone, one of the Olduvai’s crew, had attempted to rape a woman over by the New Watergate towers. The security firm she subscribed to had responded to her weblink s call for help, and Johnstone had been stopped.

“That idiot,” Plato said, shaking his head back and forth, as soon as the report had finished. “That bloody idiot.” He looked first at Chin and then at Hauptmann, and spread his arms. “Of course, there was a lot of pairing-off during our mission, but Johnstone had been alone. He kept saying he couldn’t wait to get back on terra firma. ‘We’ll all get heroes’ welcomes when we return,’ he’d say, ‘and I’ll have as many women as I want.’ ”

Hauptmann’s eyes went wide. “He really thought that?”

“Oh, yes,” said Plato. “ ‘We’re astronauts,’ he kept saying. ‘We’ve got the Right Stuff.’ ”

Hauptmann glanced down; his weblink was dutifully displaying an explanation of the arcane reference. “Oh,” he said.

Plato lifted his eyebrows. “What’s going to happen to Johnstone?”

Chin exhaled noisily. “He’s finished,” he said softly.

“What?” said Plato.

“Finished,” agreed Hauptmann. “See, until now he didn’t have a trustworthiness rating.” Plato’s face conveyed his confusion. “Since the day we were born,” continued Hauptmann, “other people have been commenting about us on the web. ‘Freddie is a bully,’ ‘Jimmy stole my lunch,’ ‘Sally cheated on the test.’ ”

“But surely no one cares about what you did as a child,” said Plato.

“It goes on your whole life,” said Chin. “People gossip endlessly about other people on the web, and our weblinks”—he held up his right arm so that Plato could see the device—“search and correlate information about anyone we’re dealing with or come physically close to. That’s why we don’t need governments anymore; governments exist to regulate, and, thanks to the trustworthiness ratings, our society is self-regulating.”

“It was inevitable,” said Hauptmann. “From the day the web was born, from the day the first search engine was created. All we needed were smarter search agents, greater bandwidth, and everyone being online.”

“But you spacers,” said Chin, “predate that sort of thing. Oh, you had a crude web, but most of those postings were lost thanks to electromagnetic pulses from the Colombian War. You guys are clean slates. It’s not that you have a zero trustworthiness rating; rather, you’ve got no trustworthiness ratings at all.”

“Except for your man Johnstone,” said Hauptmann, sadly. “If it was on the news,” and he cocked a thumb at the wall monitor, “then it’s on the web, and everyone knows about it. A leper would be more welcome than someone with that kind of talk associated with him.”

“So what should he do?” asked Plato. “What should all of us from the Olduvai do?”

* * *