THE
BLUE BOX (Recycled Ideas)
by Don Cox
Back to the index
I expect almost everyone has heard of web cams. For those
who haven't, web cams are another part of the technical
revolution we could do without. They are nasty little intrusive
devices that get hidden in strange places. They take pictures
at regular intervals and paste them on the Internet for
the world to see. There's one at a Russia-Finland border
crossing for instance, you can see the trucks lining up
at the customs shed. Last summer there was one peeking into
the nest of a peregrine falcon on the top of a building
in Ottawa. There's one at a watering hole in the African
jungle and you can watch the wild critters come and go.
There's one that watches a cat litter box, and another that
looks at an office coffee percolator. It's great fun but
there's a price to pay. When web cams are everywhere, privacy
is just an old fashioned word.
I know what you're thinking, "All very well", you're saying,
"but it has nothing to do with me." Don't be too sure, that's
what I thought until these past few months. It started with
a series of strange coincidences. The phone always rings
when I'm in the basement. Or when I've just swallowed that
first bite of breakfast. Or just when I'm on the way out
the door. A few items like this might be coincidence, but
dozens every single day? There's only one explanation. It's
web cams! There has to be a twisted individual somewhere
who's doing this.
I looked everywhere in the house but I couldn't find them.
That's when I tumbled to what's really going on. Remember
a few months ago when I wrote about the strange noise sources
in the galaxy? Remember I said that these were almost assuredly
encrypted data signals? I suggested a number of possibilities,
they might be interstellar fax messages, or maybe part of
a trans-galactic pyramid scheme for bilking new comers like
us out of our interstellar monetary units.
Now I realize how wrong I was, these data streams are
actually controlling tiny web cams, much smaller and more
sensitive than ours. It's all being run by an adolescent
on Alpha Centuri who goes by the name of Alpha Mafiaboy.
I'll bet he's responsible for the ILOVEYOU virus too. Right
now all they can do is spy on us, but soon enough they'll
find a way to move things around.
They've already hidden my pills.
Bluebox ©2001 Don Cox
Website ©2001 OttawaWEB
