Calling for a Hero: Divinity Games by Lou Gilmond
Why do we love stories with murderers, monsters and zombies? From Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, through Stephen King’s horror classics to a host of psych dramas and conspiracy thrillers, a safe scare is as cathartic for readers and viewers as it is for the writers who create them.
Certainly, I wrote Divinity Games and two earlier books in the Kanha and Colbey thriller series because I had a burning need to explore an existential fear that many of us share – the feeling that through our tech ‘they’ are watching and listening. Although, who ‘they’ are, I don’t know, but then the baddie usually lurks just out of sight.
I’ve always been an intensely private person. I’m one of those grumpy sods who won’t give out my email address at the till. I don’t like Alexa listening to my every utterance, and I always click no to sharing cookies, even though I suspect it makes no difference.
Surveillance
George Orwell’s 1984 is a claustrophobic tale of a state keeping its civilians under constant surveillance, feeding them fake news, and changing the past to suit their rhetoric. It’s a book that stays in the mind once read, even as the years pass: the horror of Winston Smith’s small flat where he hides in a corner in search of illicit privacy, away from the ever-watching telescreen; the hidden microphones monitoring every conversation, even those between families and lovers and friends; an unseen elite picking over every word and searching for hidden sedition.
I can’t help but compare that to the feeling that I get now, out and about, and even in my own home.
Our smart tech, once linked up to the internet is never entirely within our control. There are microphones and cameras in phones, laptops, and smart speakers, CCTV equipment, doorbells, car sensors and so on, and all of them can be accessed remotely by third parties.
Soon there will be cameras on self-driving vehicles and delivery drones, which will be able to pick up conversions and recognise passers-by visually and by their voice. Privacy in public spaces will become a thing of the past.
Does it sound like science fiction? Well, in most supermarkets and department stores, security cameras now come fitted with AI-based facial recognition technology watching round the clock to monitor and identify shoplifters. Many CCTV cameras now come with audio feeds. Self-driving cars are being trialled in cities around the world, and in London delivery drones are already in use, ferrying blood between hospitals.
It’s not that any of these developments are in themselves wrong – shops want to protect their profits, municipals want to keep their citizens safe, self-driving cars are inevitably the way of the future, and of course immediate and timely blood deliveries will save lives. But, with all these cameras and microphones able to listen to a populace in real time, there are only two things that are stopping us sliding into a Big Brother scenario for real.
You might think one of these things is the fact that it would be impossible for any group of people to listen to the simultaneous voices of millions of people. But think again. With AI technology capable of recognising individual voices and comprehending language as well as a person, this is no longer a barrier. Or at least it is only a barrier as far as you are restricted by computing power. But in a world where around 400 million terabytes of data are processed every day, it’s rapidly becoming achievable.
Orwellian Dystopia
So what are the two things that are holding us back from the brink of an Orwellian dystopia?
The first is an assumption that all these myriad cameras and microphone systems are not connected to each other. That the companies run their products in silos and don’t sell, exchange or pool data.
The second is trust in our governments. A trust that they will protect our human rights. The right to a private life is protected under the European Convention on Human Rights, after all.
So here comes the existential horror on which my books are based. What would happen if these two barriers no longer held true?
What if our senior politicians began to conspire with one or more tech organisations aggregating all the live data feeds? Organisations with cutting-edge AI capabilities. And what if those politicians were corrupt and consumed with a desire for wealth and power rather than intent on protecting their citizens’ right to privacy?
And so my thriller series was born. I guess I was trying to write into existence the heroes we need to come and save us.
In Dirty Geese, two honest MPs stumble upon just such a conspiracy. But in a world where what can see watches, what can hear listens and what can be followed is tracked, they face great danger attempting to expose it.
By the next book in the series, Palisade, the nation is under constant surveillance, and by the third, Divinity Games, our very democracy is under threat.
Writing the books was cathartic, and such heroes as Harry Colbey and Esme Kanha do exist in real life, campaigning to protect our rights. But as AI technology moves on at pace, and the regulators lag, perhaps sometimes purposefully behind, I still have the feeling that something evil lurks.
People say to me all the time that they are nervous of what AI is going to mean for us in the future, and ask me to explain what the world will be like. But it’s my belief the world is going to change beyond recognition, so it’s hard to know where to start.
Read my books, I urge them, and have a taste of it.
(c) Lou Gilmond
About Divinity Games by Lou Gilmond:
When opposition MP HARRY COLBEY uncovers a corrupt plot between senior government ministers and a big tech organisation intent on enriching its owners, he finds himself the target of a strange form of harassment. His train pass and credit cards won’t work, his phone won’t get signal and every traffic light he comes to is red. Only his colleague, ESME KANHA, believes him. She’s investigating the suspicious death of another anti-corruption MP.
But when Colbey’s daughter gets engaged to the son of one of the tech company’s owners, he is forced to venture straight into the heart of the sinister elite. Colbey intends to expose them – but in a world dominated by AI, where every movement is tracked and every conversation listened to, the stakes are dangerously high.
The ‘terrifying’ conclusion to the Kanha and Colbey thriller series.
Divinity Games by Lou Gilmond is published by Armillary Books and is available to buy now. Order your copy of Divinity Games online here.
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