THE INFILTRATOR (DIGITAL RENEGADES

He'd snuck into Silicon Valley as an advanced software engineer, knowing he could be sniffed out at anytime. Not because he thought any of them were smart, at least not outside of systems progamming. In fact, he thought most of them were just highly weird and unable to read human behaviour anywhere like as well as he could. As far as Jack was concerned he was a godamn Einstein of reading human behaviour compared to those Captain Spock looking mother fuckers.

No.

His inevitable downfall would be himself.

For he strongly suspected his Nebraskan, mid-Western attitude would eventually reveal itself in a moment of hot headedness which he was often prone to. As much as he wanted to be like one of those Le Carre spies he'd read about on his recent beach holiday with his fiancée, he just knew he had the potential of blowing up, like an unexploded land mine.

But while he could keep it together, he would keep his head down and try to learn as much as he could on the inside.

The first thing he noticed whilst walking around the strange Sim City-like buildings was just how sterile everything was. It was almost as if all human activity had been either erased or ignored. He was surprised to even find a toilet in this place, so grotesque must the concept of defecation be for them. Sex was just as bad probably and they must simply hate the idea of ejaculation being so messy. Secretionless orgasms would be their future. He laughed discreetly to himself, making sure no one saw him acting strangely.

Jack's favourite film was Michael Mann's Manhunter and as he continued to wander round the endless white, tent-like structures, he fancied himself a bit like detective Will Graham surrounded by a thousand Hannibal Lecters.

"Silicon psychos," he muttered under his breath as he continued to take a recce of the corporate campuses that all felt like parodies of the Valley's own self-inflated reputation.

How must they cope, knowing all those dirty humans using their technologies were so fatally flawed with their perversions and repeated transgressions? It must really depress them deep down to have these primates playing with their genius technologies designed for a far better, more evolved future. In their minds it was no doubt the humans holding back the progress of their new systems. They surely needed either a greater alignment or a final cataclysmic divergence between man and machine.

This to him was the key focus for these titans of tech. How to create a pure system of human programming without all the dirty bits, without all the aggravation. If it worked for computers, surely humans could follow suit. He often tried to think like they'd think. He wanted to understand how to fully oppose what they had created by understanding them more comprehensively. It was only by being in their environment that he could do this, like hunting crocodiles in their own wetlands.

As he checked the time, he had about five minutes of his lunch break left.

Part of him felt like screaming, just to remind them all what a human voice sounded like.

What would he shout, he wondered to himself.

"Sic semper tyrannis!"

He liked to think of himself more as Billy the Kid than John Wilkes Booth, but walking round, casually observing this hallowed engine room of the new world of tech industries, he felt like a renegade.

A digital renegade.

His long term plan was to create an off-grid alternative to Silicon Valley that would represent the complete ideological opposite to their utopian, transhumanist fantasies. He would make something born out of the instinct to survive, no less. Something that could survive chaos and destruction. Something as robust as the earth.

His working title for it currently was simply: the off-line network.

"Think of it like the reverse image of what they've made, just like shadow boxing with paper giants," he tried to explain as concisely as he could to his small team of backers, but sensed half of them didn't believe in what he was saying.

They would, though. It was only a matter of time.

He would have those tech equivalent of robber barons brought to heel eventually.

Finally back in the office, Jack was locked into a solid few hours of coding.

While he mostly blanked out all his grandiose thoughts about his saving humankind, he focused as best as he could on being a dutiful member of the team although he soon became momentarily distracted and inspired by the O Fortuna from Orff's Carmina Burana playing through his air pods.

Suddenly, he could feel his repressed rage simmering away like boiling water.

In a strange way it comforted him to feel like this.

Alive.

And dangerously human.