As the car moved on, Bobby felt a shiver of self consciousness. The WormCam had made Hiram the most famous person on the planet, and in the all-seeing public eye, Bobby stood right at his side.

He knew, in fact, that as he approached his mother’s home a hundred WormCam viewpoints must hover at his shoulder even now, gazing into his face at this difficult moment, invisible emotional vampires.

He tried not to think about it: the only possible defence against the WormCam. He walked on through the heart of the little town.

Out-of-season April snow was falling on the roofs and gardens of clapboard houses that might have been preserved for a hundred years. He passed a small pond where children were skating, round and round in tight circles, laughing loudly. Even under the pale wintry sun, the children wore sunglasses and silvery, reflective smears of sunblock.

Thomas was a settled, peaceful, anonymous place, one of hundreds like it, he supposed, here in the huge empty heart of America. It was a place that, three months ago, he would have regarded as deadly dull; if he’d ever found himself here he probably would have hightailed it for Vegas as soon as possible. And yet now he found himself wondering how it would have been to grow up here.

As he watched the cop car pass slowly along the street, he noticed a strange flurry of petty law-breaking following in its wake. A man emerging from a sushi-burger store crumpled the paper his food had been wrapped in and dropped it to the floor, right under the cops’ noses. At a crossing, an elderly woman jaywalked, glaring challengingly through the cops’ windscreen. And so on. The cops watched tolerantly. And as soon as the car had passed, the people, done with thumbing their noses at the authorities, resumed their apparently lawful lives.

This was a widespread phenomenon. There had been a surprisingly wide-ranging, if muted, rebellion against the new regime of invisible WormCam overseers. The idea of the authorities having such immense powers of oversight did not, it seemed, sit well with the instincts of many Americans, and there had been rises in petty-crime rates all over the country. Otherwise law-abiding people seemed suddenly struck by a desire to perform small illegal acts — littering, jaywalking — as if to prove they were still free, despite the authorities’ assumed scrutiny. And local cops were learning to be tolerant of this.

It was just a token, of liberties defended. But Bobby supposed it was healthy.

He reached the main street. Animated images on tabloid vending machines urged him to download their latest news, for just ten dollars a shot. He eyed the seductive headlines. There was some serious news, local, national and international — it seemed that the town was getting over an outbreak of cholera, related to stress on the water supply, and was having some trouble assimilating its quota of sea-level-rise relocates from Galveston Island — but the serious stuff was mostly swamped by tabloid trivia.

A local member of Congress had been forced out of office by a WormCam exposure of sexual peccadilloes. She had been caught pressuring a high-school football hero, sent to Washington as a reward for his sporting achievements, into another form of athletics… But the boy had been over the age of consent; as far as Bobby was concerned the Representative’s main crime, in this dawning age of the WormCam, was stupidity.

Well, she wasn’t the only one. It was said that twenty percent of members of Congress, and almost a third of the Senate, had announced they would not be seeking re-election, or would retire early, or had just resigned outright. Some commentators estimated that fully half of all America’s elected officials might be forced out of office before the WormCam became embedded in the national, and individual, consciousness.

Some said this was a good thing. that people were being frightened into decency. Others pointed out that most humans had moments they would prefer not to share with the rest of mankind. Perhaps in a couple of electoral cycles the only survivors among those in office, or prepared to run for office, would be the pathologically dull with no personal lives to speak of at all.

No doubt the truth, as usual, would be somewhere between the extremes.

There was still some coverage of last week’s big story: the attempt by unscrupulous White House aides to discredit a potential opponent of President Juarez at the next election campaign. They had WormCammed him sitting on the john with his trousers down his ankles, picking his nose and extracting fluff from his navel.

But this had rebounded on the voyeurs, and had done no damage to Governor Beauchamp at all. After all, everybody had to use the john; and probably nobody, no matter how obscure, did so now without wondering if there was a WormCam viewpoint looking down (or, worse, up) at her.

Even Bobby had taken to using the lavatory in the dark. It wasn’t easy, even with the new easy-use touch-textured plumbing that was rapidly becoming commonplace. And he sometimes wondered if there was anybody in the developed world who still had sex with the lights on…

He doubted that even the supermarket-tabloid vendors would persist with such paparazzi exposure as the shock value wore off. It was telling that these images, which would have been shockingly revealing just a few months ago, now blared multi-coloured in the middle of the afternoon from stands in the main street of this Mormon community, unregarded by almost everyone, young and old, children and churchgoers alike.

It seemed to Bobby that the WormCam was forcing the human race to shed a few taboos, to grow up a little.

He walked on.

The Mayses’ home was easy to find. Before this otherwise nondescript house, in a nondescript residential street, here in the middle of classic small-town America, he found the decades-old symbol of fame or notoriety: a dozen or so news crews, gathered before the white painted picket fence that bordered the garden. Instant access WormCam technology or not, it was going to take a long time before the news-watching public was weaned off the interpretative presence of a reporter interposing herself before some breaking news story.

Bobby’s arrival, of course, was a news event in itself. Now the journalists came running toward him, drone cameras bobbing above them like angular, metallic balloons, snapping questions. Bobby, this way please… Bobby… Bobby, is it true this is the first time you’ve seen your mother since you were three years old?… Is it true your father doesn’t want you here, or was that scene in the OurWorld boardroom just a setup for the WormCams?… Bobby… Bobby…

Bobby smiled, as evenly as he could manage. The reporters didn’t try to follow him as he opened the small gate and walked through the fence. After all, there was no need; no doubt a thousand WormCam viewpoints were trailing him even now.

He knew there was no point asking for respect for his privacy. There was no choice, it seemed, but to endure. But he felt that unseen gaze, like a tangible pressure on the back of his neck.

And the eeriest thought of all was that among this clustering invisible crowd there might be watchers from the unimaginable future, peering back along the tunnels of time to this moment. What if he himself, a future Bobby, was among them?…

But he must live the rest of his life, despite this assumed scrutiny.

He rapped on the door and waited, with gathering nervousness. No WormCam, he supposed, could watch the way his heart was pumping; but surety the watching millions could see the set of his jaw, the drops of perspiration he could feel on his brow despite the cold.

The door opened.

It had taken some persuading for Bobby to get Hiram to give his blessing to this meeting.