The First Stone

No one recalled downloading the app because it was nameless and invisible.  Once activated, it penetrated a phone owner’s every electronic device, recording keystrokes, cataloging search histories, monitoring calls, and turning on microphones and cameras without detection. Security cameras were redirected. Landline phones were tapped. The app, powered by supercomputers and the latest AI, scanned public and private records, unlocking every encryption, bypassing passwords and paywalls, illuminating the darkest corners of the dark web.

On October 30th everyone got the text. Tomorrow is the big reveal! The same message flashed on digital freeway signs and crawled across every computer, laptop, and TV screen. Audio versions were broadcast on radio and boomed from PA systems. Shoppers in Chinatown heard it in Cantonese. Walmart clerks in El Paso caught it in Spanish. The girls in the nail salon across the street got the message in Vietnamese. Networks and newsrooms exploded with stories of Russian or Chinese cyberattacks—until matching reports came in from Moscow and Shanghai. Israelis watching a sitcom saw the crawl in Hebrew; Iranians following a football match read it in Farsi. No IT technicians could explain the phenomenon or trace its origin.  Presidents, prime ministers, and the Pope urged calm. Survivalists scurried to bunkers. Bars gave out free drinks. Gun sales soared. The vigilant, as in every crisis, stocked up on bottled water and tampons. Ambitious geeks searched the web for clues. The elderly locked their doors.

Then, on Halloween at noon Greenwich Mean Time, everyone got the text: The Truth Shall Set You Free! Enjoy the show, folks! along with profiles on every contact, classmate, friend, relative, neighbor, pal, and co-worker. The AI had been meticulous in collecting, collating, and vetting documents, recordings, videos, and texts of those closest and dearest. Medical records and sealed court documents were open books. Bedrooms and boardrooms had been bugged for months. Cars tracked. People watched. The app provided a search engine. Entering a name, an address, a Social Security number, even a rough description (fat guy who bowls at Lucky Lanes in Sheboygan on Tuesdays and drives a red Toyota) revealed a profile.

And the profiles only contained the juicy parts. A list of everyone’s sins and secrets. A resume of abortions, affairs, arrests, and audits. Arson and animal cruelty. Assaults and auto theft. Antisemitism and alcoholism. Addictions and abuses. And that was just the A’s! Who had herpes and who had HIV. Who made porn and who watched it. Who sold sex and who bought it. Golddiggers and gloryholes exposed. Who was screwing who, and who was not getting laid at all. Road rage and rehab. Dirty deals and dirtier thoughts. Scams and scandals. Embezzlers and tax cheats. Fakes and frauds. Card counters and counterfeiters. Fixed fights and doped horses.  Discrepancies and deceptions. Plagiarists and porch pirates. Peccadillos and pederasts. Lies to bosses and spouses. Bribery and burglary. Malfeasance and malpractice. Simony and sodomy. Sex tapes galore! (all captioned for the hearing impaired). Every closet kink and bedroom fetish on display for all to see. The worst things said and done in private, the most shameful and regrettable moments in life, recorded in high definition. PMS rants and bitch slaps. Tantrums and domestic torture. Husbands choking wives. Mothers throttling toddlers. There were major reveals. Supreme Court justices settled cases with bar dice. Nobel Prize winners were deep into Q-Anon. The Pentagon was faking UFO sightings to forestall budget cuts. NASA scientists consulted astrologers. A prominent televangelist deflowered virgins in a Satan costume.

In the first hour of the Big Reveal, HR departments fired off warnings and terminations, then gave up. The cascade of profiles became a flood. There was no escape. Those offline got hard copies. The blind received their profiles in braille. Airdrops reached hikers in the Outback and explorers in the Arctic until everyone was served.

Those who could, fled to cottages and cabin cruisers. Alone or adrift, they quietly gazed at the stars and took stock of their lives. Others sought refuge among strangers, but the app was relentless. The salesman settling into 12A on a flight to Detroit  got the tea on the retired math teacher in 12B, his phone texting him details of her escort work in the Eighties. Before he could click his seatbelt, she, in turn, was alerted of his DUI and domestic violence arrest. By takeoff, everyone on Flight 277 knew the pilot was a degenerate gambler behind on his child support. The flight attendants, both on meth, served drinks with blushes and bowed heads.

People went into pandemic mode, working remotely and shopping online. They hit their Keurigs instead of Starbucks, called in sick, and canceled appointments. They read their profiles and all the ones in their mailboxes. With sad resignation they Googled relatives and role models, living and dead, and learned the truth. A preacher, outed from his closet, called for prayer. A comic joked that blackmailers should file for unemployment. Everyone sat up Halloween night trolling and tracking every person they ever loved, hated, or ran into. The tsunami of sin touched everyone. From Toledo to Tokyo. Millions committed suicide. It was an evening of apologies and sad goodbyes.

After a few days, the survivors began to emerge, stunned and shaken, humbled and humiliated. They greeted each other with tentative smiles, and, for a while, people were nice to each other.

Mark Connelly’s fiction has appeared in Cerasus Magazine, Indiana Review, Cream City Review, The Ledge, Smoky Blue Arts and Literary Magazine, Change Seven, Light and Dark, 34th Parallel, The Chamber Magazine, Mobius Blvd., and Digital Papercut. In 2005 Texas Review Press published his novella Fifteen Minutes, which received the Clay Reynolds Prize.