His name was Marc once. Now he is the Camera Man.
It all started when Marc heard titters as he walked down the street. They were about him. He was sure. He was passing by a burrito shop, and a group of teenagers eating at cafe tables, their backpacks at their feet, they were the ones laughing at him, he could feel it. Around the corner was a senior center, and he could tell that the old people in the picture window were laughing and pointing immediately after his back was turned. He was positive that the driver of the car stopped at the red light burst into guffaws the moment he turned away. These were not guesses. These were facts. But no one believed him. So he would prove it.
So he got the first camera implanted in his large bald head the very next day. The installer usually put cameras inside walls, or affixed to the corners of buildings pointed down at security doors, and so this might have been an unusual ask, but Marc would not relent. The camera was large and rather ugly, but he didn’t have to see it. And now, forward or back, he could see you.
The Camera Man could see what people were doing behind him, when they were laughing at him.
But he still heard the laughing. And he couldn’t always see where it was coming from. He put in a camera on the left side of his head, above his ear. He put in a camera on the right side of his head, towards his temple. He no longer had to move his head when people doubled over in laughter as he turned away. H was guaranteed he could see exactly who those people were. Finally he would know.
But he still couldn’t see absolutely all of it. He installed more lenses. Ultrazoom, infrared, x-ray. Cameras on extendable arms so that his vision could reach around corners.
Now the Camera Man saw everything. But he was sure there was laughing he couldn’t quite hear. So he added parabolic microphones. And he needed more power to process the whispers and the giggles and the titters, so he attached a large antenna that could broadcast and receive from anywhere. And he fed it all fed into his servers. And the more he saw, the more he needed to see.
Where were you driving too, so quickly? He needed to see.
Why was that girl running in the park? He needed to watch.
Did the lady making his coffee use the correct amount of non-dairy creamer? Did the housekeeper fold his socks and put them in the drawer the right way? Did the old man walk too close to his car? Were the teenagers across the street shoplifting? Doing drugs? Were the children behaving in gymnastics class? Were the old ladies putting enough effort into their water aerobics?
He would know. And he would know more.
What were people doing in their houses? The infrared cameras could see through walls. The antennas could pull your wi-fi. What about at the doctor’s office? What about at the therapist’s? What if they told their therapist that they planned to rob his house? Well, he would need to watch and listen, then, just to keep tabs. If something were going to happen, the Camera Man should know about it.
The Camera Man is just a scary story kids tell around the campfire. A creepy joke in the back of a satire magazine. But the real Marc Andreessen is far scarier than you can imagine.