Lawrence Lasker

There's a war out there, old friend. A world war. And it's not about who's got the most bullets. It's about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think... it's all about the information!

The world isn't run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It's run by little ones and zeroes, little bits of data. It's all just electrons.

What's wrong with this country, Marty? Money. You taught me that. Evil defense contractors had it, noble causes did not. Politicians are bought and sold like so much chattel. Our problems multiply. Pollution, crime, drugs, poverty, disease, hunger, despair; we throw gobs of money at them! The problems always get worse. Why is that? Because money's most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don't have it.

There I was in prison. And one day I helped a couple of nice older gentlemen make some free telephone calls. They turned out to be, let us say, good family men.

I might even be able to crash the whole damn system. Destroy all records of ownership. Think of it, Marty: no more rich people, no more poor people, everybody's the same. Isn't that what we said we always wanted?

Martin Brice - my old and good friend who promised me we would not get in trouble and who, I might add, did not.

You will give me the box, right now, or I will kill you, right now.

Anyway, I couldn't have you talking to the Russians. Five years ago, yes, we could trust them not to go running to the F.B.I., or if they did we could trust the F.B.I. not to believe them, but today we can't trust anybody.

Who else is going to change the world, Marty? Greenpeace?