The Wall

Two streets forward then turn left. Avoid the camera, high on the wall of the opposite corner. Three hundred steps down the street, left turn into the alley.

One minute to catch my breath and steady my nerves. Four seconds inhale, seven seconds hold it, eight seconds exhale. Repeat, concentrate on the breathing and nothing else. And again. There’s no time to waste but controlling my breathing means I control my anxiety. My heart rate’s dropping, the tingling in my extremities dying down. The next step is the most difficult and I need to be fully focused.

Time to go. Turn left out of the alley, head up. Avoid the camera above the convenience store but don’t make it obvious. Look to the other side of the road, keep a decent pace. Don’t run, though.

Now comes the tricky bit. The unpredictable. The main thoroughfare. Two vans, both with full surveillance equipment, and one foot patrol with four guards all on high alert. Their patrols, routes, times, and even personnel are changed every morning.

Nobody has access to guard rotations. I’d asked, discreetly, but to no avail. Routes aren’t shared with anybody other than those in the upper echelons of power: government officials. Even the guards aren’t privy to the routes they take: the vans automated, their occupants merely passengers.

Leaving my phone at home was risky, but it was necessary. Leaving home without your phone is an offence but I am going to approach the wall so I can’t carry it. Sensors would detect the phone, and the tracker inside would alert guards and officials.

I will be spotted on one of the cameras and normally there’s no escaping the tracker in my wrist. It’s supposed to be a health tracker. It is true that it tracks heart rate, exercise rates, cortisol, and adrenaline, but it is never used for the benefit of the individual. Like all active surveillance protocols, the government had passed the tracker off as beneficial to the wearer. Cameras are there to prevent violence: facial recognition to identify criminals. Cashless payments are convenient. Health monitors will improve general wellbeing. And so on. Once a new initiative was introduced, it was only a matter of time before it was put to use monitoring and watching our every movement.

When most people think of surveillance, they think of the cameras, but the cameras are the least of my concerns. They can largely be avoided. But government analysts can determine every movement thanks to the chips in mobile phones and trackers. And by using adrenal levels, heart rate changes, and other physiological signs, they can even predict motives. The science isn’t exact, and some civilians have been unjustly detained because their heart rate spiked, or their breathing quickened at the wrong time. But the loss of workforce is of little consequence to the government compared to the total control it affords them.

Today, though, I have a half hour window. Half an hour to get to my clandestine meeting, get the information I need, and get back to my daily routine. My thirty minute window cost me two weeks of social rations. It should have been four weeks, but I negotiated with a local tech engineer, Gracie.

Gracie is a young and brilliant tech. She helps most of the people in the neighborhood, usually with trivial stuff, but if she trusts you and you have the rations, she can do much more.

Usually, the young and brilliant are taken by the government. They live on the other side of the wall. Somehow, Gracie has managed to keep her skills under wraps and avoided the glare of the government.

I don’t know exactly how she bought me the time. Something about bypassing protocols. But because the protocols were changed every half an hour, it meant that was all the time she could afford me. During those 30 minutes, it will look as though I am at home. My heart rate will be regular. The only movement I will register will be some general shuffling and a trip to the bathroom. Gracie said it’s important to make it look natural, which means there has to be some fluctuations in heart rate and some movement. In 25 minutes, I have to be back in my house, next to my phone, when my digital shroud falls away.  

I’m getting closer to my destination. Things have gone well, so far, but the foot patrol is ahead. Four guards, all armed, all wearing tactical gear. Don’t cross over to avoid them, it looks suspicious. Don’t look directly at them, it looks confrontational. But don’t completely avoid their gaze, either. They expect some amount of nervousness. In fact, they depend on it. If people weren’t nervous about armed guards and surveillance, the system wouldn’t work.

Going for a walk, even this close to the wall, isn’t prohibited. Daily exercise is actively encouraged. But if I give away my intentions, even slightly, it will lead to questioning. And with questioning comes a chip check. A check that will show my chip at my flat. And while it is fine to be on this road, approaching the wall is very much prohibited.

They’re 100 yards ahead of me, now, and the gap is shrinking. Move to the side, look ahead, keep walking, and breathe. I’m just out for a walk on my lunch break. I’d walked the same route several times over the past month. It had helped me determine camera locations and work out how many foot and van patrols there were, although it was impossible to predict where exactly they would be. I had been questioned once, at the side of the road, but it had been uneventful.

I’d seen one of the approaching guards on a previous walk. Typically, all the guards watch me as I pass, but not today. They’re talking to one another about something and haven’t even made eye contact. Unusual, but better than the alternative.

I walk another 100 yards, cross the road, and duck down the alley that leads to the wall. This meeting had been three months in the planning. My contact was a former schoolmate, Terry, who had been taken to the other side of the wall because of his analytical skills.

He had fed me snippets of information, primarily about camera locations. Six times he had given me information, and on all but one occasion, his information had been good. One camera had obviously been removed. I wasn’t sure if it had been removed by the government, protestors, or somebody else, but my contact couldn’t help that. I trust him. As much as I can trust anybody.

Today he is delivering the motherlode. He is going to give me the algorithms used to determine guard movements, as well as a map with all the current camera locations. I have plans for the information. It wouldn’t be enough to overthrow the party, but it would cause disruption, and disruption might be enough to start a movement. There are handful of people with the same intentions as mine, and we will have to coordinate our efforts. Hit them hard. Cause as much disruption as possible, as quickly as possible. Once they realize we have access to their data, they’re sure to change algorithms.

I don’t like the alley. I’d only had chance to briefly glance down the alley on my previous sorties down the road. But it isn’t just the lack of familiarity that puts me off. It only stretches back the distance of half a building so it doesn’t afford me much room to hide. The buildings on both sides are tall. The only thing taller is the wall at the end. The barrier that separates the government from its people. Its workforce. But importantly, there is a small service hatch. I’m not sure what its intended use is, but it is big enough to pass a flash drive through, and that’s all I need.

Approach the hatch, knock, and stand back against the building to obscure me from any passing vans. My contact had chosen the time and place. No cameras in the alley and because I passed the patrols on my way here, it should afford me at least a few minutes of privacy. And I don’t have any longer than that. I have less than 20 minutes to get back to my flat.  

There’s no response at first. What if my contact’s been apprehended? He was taking a big risk. We both are. I’m not sure if the punishment would be worse for a traitor on that side of the wall or for me, on this side of the wall. It would probably be final for both of us.

I can hear movement. Finally. The hatch door opens and I can see Terry’s face. He hasn’t changed much in the five years since we were at school. They eat better on the other side of the wall, or so it was rumoured.

I step forward to hear Terry speak, but as I get closer, I can see his face is pale and he looks terrified: “I’m sorry.”

His head is pulled out of view, replaced by a helmet and a pair of eyes. Instinctively, I turn to run, but the foot patrol guards are blocking the end of the alley. One of the patrolling vans has pulled behind the guards and the side door opened.

Gracie! What is she doing here? She isn’t wearing her usual casual clothing. No jeans. Today, she’s wearing combat trousers. The type with more pockets than necessary. Climbing out of the van, she looks me directly in the eye as she talks over her radio “we have them both.” One of the guards is on me, gun butt raised. Gracie might not have been physically taken over the wall, but she had certainly been recruited. She was as much a part of the surveillance system as the phone or the cameras.