The Disinformation Age

By Alan Baylis

It was a surprisingly pleasant afternoon as they roamed the foothills. The temperature was cool but they were all sweating from the weight of the packs and other equipment they were carrying. Ahead of John, the three other members were a stark contrast to the green grass and trees around them, all dressed in white overalls that were getting increasingly dirty each time they stopped and dug a patch of ground. His mind was wandering as he plodded along, listening to the beeps and tones coming from his detector. The digital display showed the typical layers of strata that you would expect but occasionally he would see the traces of previous digs which meant others had already picked over this area. It was still worth a look as their detectors were top of the line and capable of reaching down over three feet further than any other model, depending on the ground below them. Sometimes an extra foot or two was just enough to find the top of a large mound of material that others had been blind to. It had been months since they had had such luck, but that's the life of a prospector, always living on hope and scraping by until the next big find.

The others were beginning to bunch up as usual, just within earshot of each other so they could pass the time talking about anything and everything. He himself liked the quiet, if you discount the constant noises being emitted from the detector, and preferred to hang back at the rear. Naturally there was a small amount of competition between them, even though the profits were to be split equally, so it would be a plus if he could find something the others had casually walked over and missed while chatting away. The sun was a couple of hours off the horizon and it had been a completely uneventful day. The type of day that made him dream about the life of ordinary workers, with their air-conditioned offices, plush chairs and ice cold water dispensers. He was just about to stop for a drink himself when heard a slightly louder ping in his headphones. He backed up a few steps and waved his detector over the spot where he had been and the ping was there again. The display on the detector showed a slightly disturbed area at the full depth of its scan, clearly unnatural and certainly worth a dig. He marked the spot with a few rocks from nearby and rounded up the others to begin the excavation.

After an hour of digging the sun was just starting to fade so they hung a few lights in the trees around them and switched on their headlamps. As they went deeper into the hole that they had created they started to pull out the usual garbage, mostly plastic and bits of rusted metal but there was a lot more of it than expected. Obviously they had found the remains of an old rubbish tip so they started passing up buckets of trash and making piles of it around the top of the hole. After a few more hours of digging they stumbled across what they were hoping for, a nearly complete old computer. It was heavily corroded and had been crushed by the weight of the dirt above but it was clearly intact. Carefully they hoisted the computer up the narrow shaft on a rope and placed it in a clearing under one of the lights. As the others gathered around, John had the honor of prizing the twisted mess of metal apart. They could see the typical parts, cables, motherboard and other cards as they cut into the box but they only cheered when the hard drive popped into view. Depending on what could be salvaged from the disks this one find could fund their digs for another year and if the computer was from the 20th century it would certainly earn them a small fortune. Dealers would pay top dollar for any files that could be authenticated as having been created before the age of disinformation.