“Creating alter trons in iotic space.”

“Wow! I’d probably say that sounds like a lot of fun if I understood a single word you said. Altertrons? In what space?”

“Iotic Space.”

Grows impatient. “Which is?”

“Well, you know what robotic is, right.”

Nods ascent.

“Iotic is just the internet of things, IOT, with ic added. Anything to do with IOT, iotic. Like robotic is anything to do with robots. Iotic space is the integration of data that comes from iotic devices. Your house might be an iotic space with all its devices. You can share with your neighbors to make an iotic community. A space of spaces. You can make a space by combining anything that provides data.”

“I sorta get it. I must be getting old. I need an online class just to know what your job description means. So what was the other thing? Alter, altertrons?”

“A Tron is the representation of a person in cyber space.”

“Oh. Tron. Wasn’t that a movie back in the 80’s?”

“Yeah. Jeff Bridges and the Caddyshack girl, Lacey Underwear.”

“Lacy Underall. Ha, I do know something you don’t!” Gloats a little. “Sorry. Please continue. A tron?”

“So a Tron is the integration of all your data. The GPS from your phone. Where your used your credit card. All your searches and clicks on the internet. The profile from the thermostat in your house. Your cyber footprint if you will.”

“And alter is like alter ego, but alter Tron?” Pauses. “So you make alter egos in cyber space?”

“Like I said, I create alter Trons in iotic space. I focus only on the footprint you leave on IOT devices.”

“I have to ask the obvious question: Why?”

“Did you ever see a movie where three different convoys of cars all drive off in different directions? Only one has the gold or the president or whatever in it? Same idea. Just in cyber space.”

“Iotic space.”

“Yeah. You catch on quick.”

“Isn’t a fake id illegal?”

“It’s a grey area. You know the NSA captures every byte of data in the public domain and quite a few in the private domain. All unconstitutional. Stored somewhere in Utah. Think about it. Your phone tracks you where you go. Your TV knows what you watch. Your refrigerator knows what your eat. How do you know the NSA isn’t monitoring that smart thermostat to know when you’re home or storing all those security clips of your front yard you think only you can see? On demand decryption of all your AES256 data is just around the corner with quantum computing. When the NSA cracks that, if they haven’t already, what little privacy you have left is gone.”

“And you sell these alter Trons? Who would buy such a thing?”

“A lot of people. And the more the merrier. If you can’t leave no trail, the next best thing is to leave so many trails that no one can pick yours out. The bigger the network gets, the more effective it gets. One tweeter is useless, two is better, a million is an economy onto itself. Every person’s alter Trons can interact with other people’s alter Trons creating more and more false trails. I can invent all sorts of plausible fictions. I can have your phone visit someone else’s house so it looks like you were there. I can generate fake heating data to make it look like you were home. Half your alter Trons can be at home, the other half out on the town visiting their alter Tron friends.”

“But you can only have so many alter Trons, right? A couple of alter egos isn’t going to stop the NSA.”

“Here is the genius of it. It’s a scaleless network.”

“Shoot. I should of quit while I was ahead. What the F is a scaleless network, if you can tell me in less than a minute?”

“Nodes on the network do not just join randomly. They tend to center around hubs. The bigger the network gets, the more resilient it gets. In a random network, attacks on random nodes can break the network. In a scaleless network, you need a directed attack to knock out a couple of key hubs. Easier to defend.”

“Seems completely whack to me. It’s like… it’s like, your building the opposite of the matrix. An inverted matrix. Everyone’s dying to get in because its fake, not to hide from the machines but to hide with them and from each other.”

“I suppose that’s one way of thinking about it. The agents certainly hate it, the ones in the real world. I certainly don’t want the NSA breathing down my back. I think the corporations hate it too. It skews their algorithms. So, if you call their algorithms the machines, I suppose you could say the machines hate, the ones in the real world, hate it too.” Reflects for a moment. Nod his head. “Yes! I like it! Good analogy. An inside out matrix.

“Whack”

“I think just the natural evolution of things. You steal people’s privacy and attention and intimacy and they will fight back!”

“Hardly seems natural. What’s the name of the company?”

“Negative space dot com.”

Types it into his phone. “Hey, that URL takes me to some photography site.”

“Don’t spell out space, just put in a space with the space bar.” (negative .com)

“I get it. Cool. Using negative space in the name sort of. Hey, it still doesn’t take me to your company. It takes me to a search result with a list of a whole bunch of Negative something or another companies.”

Smiles. “That’s who I work for. Alter coms in iotic space. And you’ll never know which one.”