Radar commissioned me to write them a science fiction story about “the day Google became evil.” I wrote them a little short-short called “Scroogled,” about the perfect axis of evil: the DHS and Google, working hand in hand. As part of the contract negotiation, I got Radar to agree to release the story under a remix-friendly Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, so you’re free to make movies, slideshows, songs, art, or new texts from this one.
Greg landed at San Francisco International Airport at 8 p.m., but by the time he’d made it to the front of the customs line, it was after midnight. He’d emerged from first class, brown as a nut, unshaven, and loose-limbed after a month on the beach in Cabo (scuba diving three days a week, seducing French college girls the rest of the time). When he’d left the city a month before, he’d been a stoop-shouldered, potbellied wreck. Now he was a bronze god, drawing admiring glances from the stews at the front of the cabin.Four hours later in the customs line, he’d slid from god back to man. His slight buzz had worn off, sweat ran down the crack of his ass, and his shoulders and neck were so tense his upper back felt like a tennis racket. The batteries on his iPod had long since died, leaving him with nothing to do except eavesdrop on the middle-age couple ahead of him.
“The marvels of modern technology,” said the woman, shrugging at a nearby sign: Immigration—Powered by Google.
