The SSA was in control. We had cracked the GCAM case and were just a few days away from the "National Unofficial Write an Eight Day." Our proxy war with GCAM was progressing well, especially after turning over the tapes to our allies in jVn. With an anti-spy contract in place, SSA-GCAM relations were warming once again. Meanwhile, the SSA was tabling jVn for a potential Babbling Brook Mall summit, buoyed by our renewed goodwill and the spy contract. The entire situation was going as well as could be expected, and I was set to return to Energizer High’s students on Saturday for a robotics competition. I posted documents about my situation on CSM and Reddit, and responses came flooding in. Reddit was unhelpful, but CSM proved more sympathetic to my cause. CSM truly was the best social site—it allowed me to connect with others on a deeply personal level. It even enabled me to recruit teen agents to work with me and spun off a new SSA group, where GCA...
Designed by Freepik As tensions flared between the prom-positive GCAM and the evangelical-rightish SSA, allies, disagreements, and debates swirled across CSM, with people offering all sorts of conflicting advice. GCAM announced bold plans to hack into a secure SSA computer and launch a line of spy toys to monitor SSA and topple their backed government. SSA intel doubted these claims, but it gave us the leverage we needed. Back at headquarters, I prepped an old phone with espionage tools and dusted off my headset. Weeks earlier, I’d let people talk into the phone and could hear their voices through the headset—though it didn’t work in reverse. So, I rigged my computer with software to bridge the gap. I also convinced my parents to let me buy a "voice-activated recorder" under the guise of needing it for "student council." Over the next few days, I fine-tuned my outing plan and scanned my backpack for bugs. The recorder a...