SiSU: - Homeland - Cory Doctorow

Homeland
“That one's unverified,” I said. “What about this one? It's verified and it's closer.”
He shook his head. “Yeah, but someone needs to go verify that one. And if it's shut off,
look, there's another verified route just past it. It'd be doing our part for the cause.”
“I just want to go, Liam,” I said.
He gave me a look of such utter disappointment that I was literally unable to set off, pinned
in place by his gaze and the crush of bodies around me. The Anons had climbed up on
the base and were impossible to read beneath their masks' gigantic grins. Trudy Doo had
moved off into the crowd and I'd lost sight of her. But I felt like she was watching me, along
with the Anons, and Liam, and the whole crowd, all watching “M1k3y” lose his nerve. Like
they were already tweeting it.
“Forget it,” I said. “Let's go check the Sukey route.”
Liam smiled uncertainly and we set off. It was like walking through molasses, and while
there was plenty of happy chanting and discussion, there were also far-off cries that might
have been screams. I began to shiver as I inched through the press of bodies. But Sukey
was right: the little walkway was unguarded, and people were slipping in and out of it. We
followed them, going single file, and when we reached the end, Liam tapped his screen
and verified the route. “Job done,” he said, and we headed down Market Street. I made
Liam take off his bandanna. We passed plenty of cops, both stationary and moving toward
the demonstration. There were also plenty of demonstrators, and the police were stopping
some of them, searching them and their bags. We passed a pair of girls about our age
in plastic handcuffs, one looking furious, the other looking like she might cry any second,
being led into a police cruiser. We hurried past.
We descended into the BART station and rode in uncomfortable silence. The oppressive
feeling of being watched crowded in from all sides.
As we came up onto Mission, Liam said, “I can't believe how many people came out.”
“Yeah.”
“Like, no one wanted to come out until they found out that everyone else was. And once
everyone started to come out, everyone else came out, too.”
Unspoken, hanging in the air between us, was the question, “So why aren't we there
now?”
I finished the day at my desk, flipping back and forth from my work to newsfeeds and
streams and tweets from the monster demonstration. According to Sukey, people were
still escaping the kettle, but from what I could tell from the overhead shots, more people
were joining the demo than were leaving. The UAV shots were like some kind of monster
rock show. Ange texted me after class to say she was heading to one of the satellite
demonstrations that had formed on the other side of the kettle, turning the police line into
a stupid joke. Later, I found out that Jolu, Darryl, and Van had all been there separately. I
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