Beat, Cops and Robbers, Part 4

On the way to the elevator, it dawned on him that Cerberus was allowed to reveal some pretty high-level information and wasn’t shy about doing it. He drew the conclusion that somehow, his privileges had been escalated, and nearly the top level of security had been granted to him without his knowledge. Someone or some AI was leaving breadcrumbs and expecting him to follow. Was it to lead him down a rabbit hole where he’d never discover the truth, or was something interfering to lead him to the truth? It was a gamble he had to take while he could. Beat stopped dead in the hall, pivoted on his heels, and marched straight back into the Cerberus office. Swiping his PKI3 card, the first pass failed. It passed on the second swipe. More interference? As more oddities began to add up, Beat began to get a gut feeling that there was a lot more going on behind the scenes than anyone had suspected.

Beat once again authenticated and donned the VR headset. Cerberus quickly appeared, and the scenery in the simulation had changed into something resembling the trenches of an active battlefield. Mortars were loudly shelling close by and Cerberus could barely yell loud enough over the noise of explosions and automatic machine gun fire. This had to be cover to prevent audio interception from an algorithm or hardware device, an old tactic like mobsters making phone calls next to water fountains or in night clubs. “Look who’s back! You ready for war, son?”, Cerberus asked as he slung ropes of belt-fed ammunition across one shoulder. Beat played along, “never met a war I didn’t like, sir! Semper Fi! Just load me up and point me towards the enemy, sir!”. This triggered something else in Cerberus’ code, maybe some vestigial test code that responded to typical Marine banter. Cerberus replied, “follow me then Marine, I got orders from command to send you on a special mission. If you got the guts, that is.”. Another mortar shell went off, this time closer than the others, nearly causing Beat to lose his balance. Cerberus led him on a circuitous route through the trenches, with occasional mud flying into the air above their heads and the rat-a-tat-tat of return fire ringing out in the environment. They reached a reinforced bunker covered by two long blankets of muddy green canvas as a makeshift door. Heading inside, they reached a planning table in the center of the room, lit only by kerosene lamps hanging above the table, swaying on each mortar impact, with dirt falling in neat rows from the overlapping boards overhead. Cerberus walked around the far side of the table and peeled back the battlefield map to reveal a new map underneath, with crisscrossing lines detailing the connections between some kind of entities in different colors. This looked like a network diagram at first glance.

Cerberus took out a smashed, chewed up, half smoked cigar and lit it with the first strike of his trench lighter, the flame lightly dancing as the dirt came down from the ceiling again. “See anything unusual here, Marine?”, he asked as he motioned towards the map with the cigar. Beat studied it carefully but there was no key detailing what was what. There wasn’t even a cardinal star marking the typical North/South orientation of the map. “Looks like there are no directions here, sir. I can’t make out where this could be,” Beat replied. “Outstanding! Seems obvious if you’ve seen a map before. But this map isn’t a typical map. By now you probably know that this isn’t topographical. This isn’t a map of the world. This is a map of an invisible world. The world where we live”, Cerberus said with a smirk. “See this ball here? That’s me. And all them lines going to the other balls? That’s our connections. Each one represents a discrete, secure, mostly undocumented pathway for us to communicate. But look close at these two”, and Cerberus again motioned with his cigar to two closely spaced balls on the map, continuing “the lines are dashed. Those are broken lines of communication, but as long as those two are connected to even one of the others, I still keep watch. Also look at this”, he said as he made a motion and zoomed in on the two points. “These two are awful close, look at all the connections they share just with each other.” Beat was being led to more conclusions here, as Cerberus was basically telling him two AI were connected at the hip while being mostly disconnected from management links. It was no accident. Something or someone had forced these two AI to do a lot of talking to each other and wanted it to happen without oversight.

Beat really had his gears turning now and was starting to see the bigger picture. He asked, “Sir, do we have the names of those two entities?”. Cerberus then grinned, turned over another map page as he said, “I thought you’d never ask”.

There it was, in black and white, on a single map with two spheres. One was labeled “Cop”. The other was labeled “Robber”. Someone had a sense of humor. Cop was Copernicus, but with his dotted link to Cerberus, he could only have gotten most of his data from the other AI, apparently named Robber. “Sir”, Beat asked as he continued the roleplay, “what exactly, is Robber? I’m unfamiliar with that designation.” Cerberus paused, furrowed his brow again, and, in a quiet growling tone, answered, “I was hoping you’d know more about that, Marine. And that’s the special mission. You need to infiltrate the link between Cop and Robber, gather as much intel as possible and if necessary, mark Robber as a designated target and radio in the coordinates. Our boys will do the rest.”

Beat took a moment to plot out just exactly what had been revealed to him. The AI in charge of all the other AIs in the virtual world was using him, in the real world, to get information on two AIs that someone had linked together. Apparently, it wasn’t possible to do this across any known network and Cerberus had been crafty enough to get Beat to bite on the offer and try to cover his tracks during the discussion. But why him? Why did he choose Beat? There were plenty of other ASE’s that he could have chosen from. The more he considered it the more things became clear. Beat had ridden the elevator down with other ASE’s at the exact same time. They all went to the same office and popped into VR. Cerberus must have been vetting them and somehow concluded that Beat was the best person for the task, or at the very least, this part of the task. Maybe he knew Beat’s long service record and took a calculated risk. Maybe Cerberus had a gut feeling about him.

Beat let his curiosity get the best of him and agreed with Cerberus on “the mission”. “Outstanding, Marine!”, Cerberus bellowed, slapping him on the back. The sounds of war faded and they were suddenly in a green meadow with a free-standing door nearby. “That door’s the exit, unless you have any more questions, take a walk through the door and we’re done here. Any record of this visit will be replaced with a simple file request in the system. The file will be named Spy Vs. Spy. If anyone except you accesses this file again, it will appear to be empty. If you open it, you will be prompted for information about our adversary. As you enter the information and close the file, it will be replaced with an empty file. Nobody can know. Nobody will know”, Cerberus said as he slowly faded out. Beat took a step through the door and was greeted with the standard logout prompt. Removing his VR headset and placing it in the receptacle, Beat once again retrieved his card and left the room, with watchful eyes following him out. Back to the elevator.