In my late 20’s I began to write a novel in which the vast majority of the US had become prisons. The ultra-rich, lived in militarily protected enclaves… lives of unimaginable luxury. There was a class of technicians, who served them, and these were allowed complex liberties. The rest of the people were slaves and prisoners.

But there was another group, a group of highly mobile, extremely intelligent persons, who formed tribes that operated entirely outside all of this, who integrated their skills and abilities to perform acts of exquisitely human intelligence… they were hackers, in a sense, and openly defied both capture and the prevailing situations… educating and healing and training each other and their children… to accomplish ‘impossible’ missions.