SURVEILLANCE

When Johnson arose from bed he was careful to not scratch himself, and when he went to the bathroom to do his business, he sat on the toilet with his pajama pants down and a towel across his lap. Finally, however, modesty had to be discarded. He finished up on the toilet and undressed quickly and jumped in the shower and pulled the curtain, knowing full well that he could be seen by the overhead camera, but at least the one over the door was not directed at him, and sometimes, he felt that if he could minimize the number of cameras on him, he could count it as some sort of victory.

He toweled off quickly, wrapped the towel around his waist, and then he dressed even more quickly, and went down and had his breakfast. He wanted to have two eggs instead of the one allotted, but the cameras were there, and if he had two, there would be the ticket from headquarters, and the fine. He had the one, and the one cup of coffee allotted, went out to this car and pushed the button that turned it on. It went along the route it was supposed to go, and he could hear the almost silent twisting of the little cameras on their cables as they turned in the ceiling and dash and armrests of the car to get a full view of his face, which he tried to keep neutral.

When the car parked him in the company parking lot, he got out and looked at the cameras in the parking garage, sighed, went to the elevator that took him down to the street. In the elevator he looked at the red eye of the camera there. He didn't even feel comfortable picking his nose, and he needed to.

He could remember before everything was so secure and so safe, when you could do that and not end up as an electrical charge on billions of little chips funneled through billions of little wires, or for that matter, thrown wireless across the voids, to have the impulses collected like puzzle pieces and thrown together in your image, showing all that you did from morning to night.

The only place he had found any privacy was under the covers. He could pick his nose there. He could masturbate there, but he knew the cameras would pick up his moves beneath the covers, and certainly plenty of people had no problem picking their nose or showing their dicks or grunting at stool, knowing full well that eventually some human eye would look at it all and smack its lips over certain things, or laugh at this or that, but he was not amongst them.

He arrived at the street level and stepped off the elevator. All along the street the cameras on the wire snakes moved and twisted every which way. He walked along until he was a block from his office, and he noticed an old building off to the side. He passed it every day, but today he looked at it, and saw there was a doorway set back deep. When he came to it he looked in and saw that it had a little squeeze space inside, a place that had been made to get out of the rain or to place your umbrella.

He looked at the cameras on the street, and they looked at him. He stepped into the alcove and turned so that he was in the little nook and cranny. He stood there for a while, and then he sat down in the space, and knew for the first time in a long time, no camera could see him. The camera knew he had gone there, but it couldn't see him, and that gave him a great moment of peace, and soon he found he didn't want to leave, and he watched as the sunlight changed and moved and people walked by, not noticing. He couldn't see them, but he could hear them and he could see their shadows. He picked his nose and flicked the boogers, and took deep breaths and enjoyed the coolness of the stone on his back.

Come nightfall he was still there, and he felt content. He was hungry, but still he didn't leave. He sat there and enjoyed it. When the lights of the city came on, he still sat there, and wouldn't move, and finally two police officers came. They had seen the cameras, the film, and they had seen where he had gone and that he had not come out. They arrested him and took him downtown and put him in the jail where the cameras worked night and day from every angle in the cell, and when they put him there, he began to scream, and he screamed all night, and into the morning, when they finally came for him and gave him a sedative and put him in a ward with others who had tried to hide from the cameras. The shots they gave him made him sleep, and in his sleep the cameras whirled and twisted on cables throughout the place and took his image and shot it across wireless space and tucked it away on little cells smaller than atoms.

In the next week, the old building was torn down and a new one was put up and the cameras were installed.

Everything worked nicely. No one could hide from the cameras. Everyone's mail was read before they read it, and their phone calls were monitored, and to be safe they made sure no one had the chance to use lawyers or complain, and the world was nice and easy and oh so safe, now that there was nothing left to fear.