Watchdog: Cypherpunk Stories

By Steve Wire

What if your best friend – brilliant, calculating, intense – was victimized by unspeakable police brutality?

 

What if his scheme of revenge was so untraceable, so diabolical, that he just might get away with it?

 

What if you had to keep his secret?

 

And what if his goal wasn't revenge... but something more revolutionary?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steve Wire
• Release date: Mar 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393639619

Steve Wire

Steve Wire writes science fiction about the battle between government and technology, authority and innovation. Read on for smart rebels and cool hacks.

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Table of Contents

Watchdog | a Cypherpunk Story | by Steve Wire

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Watchdog

a Cypherpunk Story

by Steve Wire

THE POLICE KILLED MY friend's dog. That's how it all started.

Sophie was a six-year-old terrier mix that barked at you if you wouldn't throw her toy, but never tried to bite anyone in her life. She'd belonged to an old lady down the street who couldn't care for Sophie any more, so my friend took the dog in. Clyde's a dog person.

I've known Clyde Sumner since the playground in elementary school, when I beat the shit out of him for looking at me funny. Turns out he looks at everyone funny, but he's a decent guy. Me, on the other hand, I had to learn not to fight other kids. Eventually I got it right. I even apologized to him.

That was no big deal. Clyde knew the teachers strong-armed me to say it. Surprising thing was, he forgave me. We became friends after that. We drifted apart when I went to college but we never lost touch. When I graduated and couldn't find a job, I moved back to that little Indiana town where we grew up, and Clyde and I started getting beers together at a pizza joint we liked on Friday nights.

Sophie was killed at five AM on a Wednesday. Clyde called me to tell me about it. We agreed to move up our Friday meeting. That night, as Clyde came in from the snowy street, pulled his coat off, and threw it over the back of the bar stool beside me, I searched him for tells. Was he heartbroken? Suicidal? I was a dog person too, so I got it.

Clyde sat down and blew a breath onto his clasped hands. No tells.

How are you doing? I asked.

No answer. He eyed the bartender.

What the fuck happened? I asked.

Slowly, Clyde started to talk. Forty thousand no-knock raids per year.

What?

That's how many times a SWAT team kicks in somebody's door in the United States.

Your apartment got raided?

Yeah.

Clyde was weird but not a criminal, as far as I knew. And reclusive as he was, I knew him as well as anybody. So...

Wrong apartment. They wanted the place two doors down.

I imagined my front door