Even the Sidewalk Has Ears

Brady grabbed the wool blanket from the foot of his cot and folded it in half twice before dropping it on the small step that doubled as his front porch. He sat down on it, using it as a cushion.

The thought of his “porch” made him reflect on his youth and the porch’s popularity as a meeting place for families and friends. Now, no one had a real one unless they were a member of the social elite, which he and his wife were not.

He pictured his wife as she visited with her sister. She had received her travel papers the week before, but the ministry declined his permission.

Brady had heard the workers when they were west of his home. He could hear the sound of the heavy sledge hammers cracking the cement and the crew as they moved in his direction.

“This will make shopping and communitcation with family and the state easier,” the ministry had said as they passed by, announcing the planned work.

Now they were nearly in front of where he sat. They were a marvel of teamwork, moving in such a way that they never stopped breaking up the cement, moving it out of the way, laying the thick black piping down, and then encasing it in new concrete.

He recalled how only three years ago, he had watched a team of workers lay the same sidewalk, which doubled as a cart path, in the same manner. It reminded him then, as now, of how the Egyptians must have put the Pyramids up, or how the Transcontinental laid the hundreds of miles of train tracks, or Henry Ford’s assembly line.

“What’s in the pipe?” he asked as the fellow he took for the foreman stood, hands in pocket, watching over the crew.

“Some sort of fiber optic cable,” the man said, never turning around.

“Huh,” Brady returned, knowing the man was not listening.

He saw the bright red ‘A’ on the side of the truck from where the tube came. Somewhere in his mind, he recognized the symbol but could not remember the company it belonged to.

“I’ll probably remember at two in the morning,” he chuckled to himself, “And by then, it won’t matter.”

In minutes the work crew had moved past him and was nearly beyond his neighbor’s house to the east. Brady would sit there for most of the afternoon, knowing the sidewalk, once dry, would be a digital conduit designed to track citizens’ movements.

“They must think we’re all stupid,” he thought as he felt for his state-issued hand-held device.