Author: cj

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Haunted (part two)

While he was busy configuring the next tool, the building attendant from inside the corner building came out to ask him what he was working on. “N-nothing sir, just making sure the surveillance hardware is functioning properly”, said Sheep, forcing eye contact. The doorman replied, “it’s all new, state of the art hardware and I would hate for it to be malfunctioning already. Has something prompted this service check? I haven’t gotten any complaints”. Sheepdog lied, saying, “just because it’s new doesn’t mean it’s perfect. These are all customary precautions, to ensure everything has been configured to spec. We pride ourselves on all our deployments to be operational from the minute we power them up”. The doorman was unusually curious, and asked Sheepdog about his uniform. “I noticed you’re wearing the Sendai corporation color scheme of green and blue. The last Sendai installers wore red and blue. Are you really with Sendai?”, he asked. Sheep was a little nervous but he could bullshit his way through this line of questioning. “Look pal, Sendai provides the uniform and I put it on. Green today, red tomorrow. They didn’t consult me on the color scheme. Did anyone ask you if you prefer navy blue for your wool jacket, or was it just hanging in the closet when you got to the residence one day?” The doorman grinned and nodded; point taken. The corporate overlords never did consult with employees when it came to color schemes, and he assumed it was like that everywhere. That was enough to satisfy his curiosity, and he casually went back into the building, occasionally glancing at Sheep while he worked. But suddenly, Sheep had an idea. He may have built enough rapport with this guy to ask him a few questions and maybe get a glance at his visitor logs.

Sheep packed his gear into his bag and headed inside to talk to the doorman. “Do you keep a log of residents and visitors? We seem to have a small gap in the video surveillance data and someone is missing. It’s nothing criminal, we would just like to check alignment with the surveillance system’s telematics and your hard logs. I’m assuming everyone signs in and out?” Sheep was pushing his luck and he noticed the change on the doorman’s face as the power dynamic shifted. “We do keep logs, and our clientele likes to remain very private.” Sheep slipped him a 50 credit note and said, “I don’t need to know everything, just a tiny sliver of time during a specific date”. The doorman rolled the credit around in his palm before agreeing to let Sheep take a peek at the date and time the visual anomaly happened. “Remember, I never showed you anything. You must have hacked the system by accident while performing your testing”, he said quietly. Sheep quickly looked at the logs for that time frame, and found 5 names which could have been pseudonyms or code names for residents and visitors. Still, he was making progress and he could review the list for a deeper dive later. Bowler Man was not on the list, which made sense because he never actually entered the building. One of the residents that briefly stepped out and returned was recorded as Relaxed Man. Strange name.

Sheep suddenly got lucky. As he was in the doorman’s office, he saw the Bowler Man’s limo arrive at the corner just inside. From where he was standing, he could barely see the back of a resident in an elaborate suit step outside to meet him. Not exactly a flashy suit, but a very intentional suit that he doubted you could pick up off the shelf at any retailer. It was custom, head to toe. As the handshake occurred, the people on the sidewalk stepped around the two men like a river splitting around a large, protruding rock, interrupting the flow. This was consistent with the recording. The resident pivoted on his heels, re-entered the building, and entered a waiting elevator to return him to his floor. And that’s when Sheep noticed. He was wearing a full-face mask that matched the pattern of the suit. Every inch of the resident was obscured by this material, including his shoes. The only bare skin Sheep could see was a brief flash as the man checked his watch while the elevator door closed. He was light skinned, which may rule out others in the logs he had obtained. Just as the doors were closing, a gloved hand shot the gap and opened the doors. “Hey Tony, be sure to log me back in”, he shouted across the lobby to the doorman. The doorman waved and nodded as the elevator doors closed again. Sheepdog felt the man stare at him for a moment before the doors finally closed.

Sheep thanked the doorman again and, with another palmed credit, explained that he would appreciate it If the doorman mostly forgot the details of his visit. Again, the doorman nodded, wished Sheep a good day, and said he wouldn’t expect to see him again, because he never saw him before. Low level people were easy to work, with a few credits, and realized staying tight lipped kept them safe from the wrong kind of attention.  Sheep knew that a record of him entering the building would be in the Splicer archive already, but with his manager’s approval, he could tack on a security tag for that date and time to prevent prying eyes from reviewing the footage too closely. Besides, it was much less interesting than what Sheep was already dealing with, and the mystery was getting thicker.

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Beat the market (part two)

Continued from the bonus in No Mistakes (continued) plus a bonus

One of them, Terry, eagerly spoke up. “You know what? It just might be possible, but only for this customer. We work on audio visual prediction models, which are trained on the customer starting with the engagement, so the models are kinda already there for other types of predictions. It’s just a different dataset. Can we predict if he’ll win the lottery tomorrow? No. Can we predict how much he’ll make this year based on his stock portfolio? Certainly not. The models are geared towards win/loss scenarios, coin tosses, because the customer is either in danger, or not.” “I see”, replied Beat, catching on to Terry’s train of thought, “so” and before he could finish, another lead cut in. “Sorry for interrupting, Beat, but to add to Terry’s thinking here”, said Beth, “we can’t ignore the nature of the AI for this customer. It’s Genesis, remember? It somehow floats around in time, so it can see a little way into the future, making it perfect for predicting financial transactions. If it knew he was betting half his money on a horse race, it could tell him the outcome, in a way. Think of it like a Ouija board. His hands are on the puck, and Genesis could nudge it towards or away from an outcome, but not very far in the future. Too many variables.”

Beat remained silent, in case anyone else wanted to add to the knowledge base forming here. Then he spoke up. “I’m classifying this call. It’s Secret now. While this is good news, it also sounds dangerous. We don’t want anyone getting the wrong idea with this thing. Genesis has been perfect so far, for as long as Frank has relied on it, and us, and the last thing we want to do is abuse an idea, even for testing.”

“Understood, sir. The answer to the customer, then, should be yes, with a document defining what we consider financial security. Lord, I hope the lawyers don’t get ahold of this. They’d have us for breakfast. I’d go as far as recommending a contractual amendment with the customer, because if we don’t put concrete walls around this, we could get absolutely bombed”, said Terry. “If this goes wrong, we’ll get worse than bombed,” Beat said. “Mark my words. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your thoughtful discussion. I’ll take this back to the director.” With that parting comment, the call ended, and Beat called the director again.

“What’s the consensus then?”, the director asked, as he answered the call. “The leads say it’s possible, to a very limited extent. We may be able to prevent the customer from losing his ass on a short-term game of chance, but we don’t have a crystal ball. They recommended—” and Beat was interrupted again. “Please tell me once they got to this point, you classified the conversation. This sounds a little sketchy.”

Beat spoke up after a short sigh. “Yeah, I know. It raised the hair on my neck, too. Of course I classified it as Secret. They weren’t just making affirmations or suggestions but discussing the possibility of implementation. This can be done, on a very limited scale, for this customer, with his assigned AI. We need a contract amendment also; we have no idea if the customer has or will have intentions to, uh, exercise this function. We sure as hell can’t be liable if he does and it fails.” The director replied somewhat slowly, “it seems like a mixed bag then. Additional liability but also additional protection, and a chance to renew his contract early on top of that amendment. The only problem is that the customer tends to brag about his service, so I’ll ensure that this aspect doesn’t leak out.” “Sounds like a plan, authorized to tell the customer yes, then?”, Beat asked. “Yes. You are authorized. Get a transcript of this call from hard copy services, have it classified as Secret, sign off and I’ll get the ball rolling on the contract tomorrow”, the director replied. Sometimes big problems had quick solutions like this, and Beat attributed that to the strength of their AI team leads.

He activated Frank’s secure comms link. Immediately, Frank answered at an uncomfortable volume.

 “Yes yes, this is Frank. You did? I see. Uh huh. Ok. Well, a bit more clarity in the contract would be useful, I would expect an amendment. So to answer my question, the coverage is there? Of course, I have some questions. It’ll be in the amendment? How soon? Tomorrow. Sounds fantastic.” Frank hit the singular button on the comms unit, turned to Rex, and said “it appears that financial security is possible, with some caveats. Guardrails, limitations, whatever you want to call them. They said something about Ouija boards? I’ll know more tomorrow.” Rex’s eyes lit up under the fiberoptic night sky headliner, and he stared at Frank. “How can they do something like that?”, he asked. “I will know more tomorrow. They must revise my contract, but they answered yes, and Splicer isn’t famous for over-selling their product”, Frank said. Rex vigorously shook hands with Frank and asked if the driver could return him home. Frank raised one eyebrow and asked, “But aren’t you hungry?” Rex replied, “I could eat”, which Frank interpreted as, let’s go back to the restaurant and have a nice meal, with this out of the way. That’s exactly what they did, and not another word of this topic was spoken the entire dinner. Frank and Rex parted ways with one word and a handshake. “Tomorrow.”

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Beat, Cops and Robbers Part 6

The saga of Beat’s DAA continues.

You may want to go back to Beat’s part 5 here.

COPERNICUS ACCEPTED. KNOWLEDGE TARGET LINKING…..LINK ESTABLISHED AND ACTIVE BY DEFAULT. COPERNICUS IS ACTIVELY ENGAGED IN RUNNING PROCESSES AND CANNOT BE INTERRUPTED, ONLY OBSERVED. TO REVIEW RUNNING PROCESSES, ENTER PROC. FOR OTHER COMMANDS, ENTER MENU.

Beat entered PROC and reviewed the processes running on Copernicus. All the usual processes were running, none of them stood out. Most were for system maintenance, logging, and higher thinking correlation engines. He decided to poke around in the menus to see if there was more meat.

MENU:

  1. DISCONNECT FROM KT TARGET: COPERNICUS
  2. OBSERVE COPERNICUS
  3. OBSERVE DATA EXTRACTION PROGRESS
  4. OBSERVE CODE INJECTION PROCESS
  5. ABORT AND DISCONNECT

Beat honestly wasn’t much of a hacker but this sure looked like an attack toolkit. He tried item 2.

COPERNICUS OBSERVATION SELECTED….OBSERVATION VR MODE ENGAGED. PLEASE SWITCH TO VR FOR ENHANCED OBSERVATION

Once again Beat was going into VR. He wasn’t the biggest fan and frankly found it tedious when a terminal would suffice, but sometimes unique visual data presentations were best handled in VR. For example, a timeline of events where the user could drill down into event data to learn more. He was hoping this was the case.

As he placed the VR interface on his head, he heard a faint clicking in the background and saw Copernicus’ avatar again, the Greek statue bust wearing the garland. However, the statue seemed to be losing mass somehow. Something was removing parts of the model pixel by pixel, almost as if it were made of sand and being blown away slowly. Beat approached the model from the front; there was no reaction from the model. He truly was an observer and invisible to the AI. With a wave of his hand, he brought up an interaction panel with many choices. He listed the running processes again, hoping he had missed one the first time.

RUNNING PROCESSES IN COPERNICUS

Sqldb_helper
Proc
syslog
con_overlay
backup_dg
framedel
-MORE-

Beat had seen enough and wasn’t familiar with con_overlay. Everything else was old hat and appeared on any AI system. He sorted the list by how much processing power each process was using.

framedel
con_overlay
Sqldb_helper
Proc
syslog
con_overlay
backup_dg

Two little piggies led the pack with con_overlay confirming his suspicion. Now he wanted to learn what was using the most network bandwidth, so he sorted the list by concurrent connections and bandwidth.

backup_dg
con_overlay
Sqldb_helper
Proc
framedel
syslog

Pretty normal for the backup process to use a lot of bandwidth, if it was truly copying data from the AI to a backup. There could be exabytes of data moving across the fiber. However, there was the con_overlay again near the top of the list.

Beat waved his hand to activate the analysis menu. The analysis module helped with analyzing log data and seeing what the system had done in the past. He was presented with a horizontal timeline with dates above and below the timeline. The logs went back a decade, much to his surprise. Government systems were very strict, for legal reasons, about keeping a lot of log data. But a decade seemed excessive. Most data past 7 years was dumped to long term storage and removed from even government systems. But that log depth was only a hindrance because it extended the timeline. Otherwise, Beat didn’t mind that he had too much data to sift through. The forensic process was pretty fast as long as log data was there.

With a twist of one hand after grabbing a random timeline point for a date 3 months prior, the analysis tool displayed a list of options.

ANALYZE LOGS
FILTER LOG DATA
STANDARD REPORTING

He chose to analyze the logs and see what the system would give him next.

LOG ANALYSIS MODULE

PLEASE CHOOSE SYSTEM PROCESSES FOR ANALYSIS

Once again, he was presented with a list of processes. There were hundreds, so he had some filtering work performed, again using the CPU usage and network bandwidth consumption to narrow it down.

It wasn’t what he found, but what he didn’t find that was curious. No con_overlay process anywhere. He even asked Robert, verbally, to verify the existence of con_overlay data in the time frame. Robert confirmed immediately; it simply did not exist in the timeline date he chose. “However,” Robert stated, “the process log data for con_overlay is in the data pool beginning 72 hours ago.” Very helpful. Beat then instructed him to jump to the earliest appearance of con_overlay data, and the timeline advanced to 3 days before today.

Grabbing the timeline point gave him the analysis menu with one additional item.

ANALYZE LOGS
FILTER LOG DATA
STANDARD REPORTING
GAUGE EFFECTIVENESS

Gauge effectiveness? Of what? Seemed like an odd entry to add to this specific date. Naturally Beat chose that option. Suddenly the simulation darkened and a green neon grid stretching to the horizon filled his view, at waist level. 3D bars of different sizes rose vertically up out of the grid and each one could be selected. Two of them were sparking and seemed to be active, but this was supposed to be historical log data. The others varied in brightness, suggesting each entry’s age. Beat pulled the grid towards him so that the sparking bars were directly in front of him. He hovered his hand over the first bar to see the label revealed:

Con_overlay

The process had been alive for at least 3 days now and continued to fill the logs without interruption. Something was very, very busy. Most processes are a one-shot for maintenance that start, do their job, and stop, but this wasn’t one of those. This was live.

A better description was sometimes available by placing both hands cupped around the object, as if shading it from the light on both sides. This was no exception. As he performed this pantomime, the words “Con_overlay” dissolved and were replaced by “Connection Obfuscation Overlay v2.33”. The plot thickened. This process was probably designed to hide communication between the AI and something else. Back into analysis mode, Beat issued another question to Robert. “Robert, is this specific log file encrypted?”. Robert again replied immediately. “No. This appears to be plaintext and machine readable. Would you like me to tail the log and read it to you in real time?” “Of course, please do so”,
Beat said as he contained his enthusiasm.

Robert began rattling off time stamps and activities that the process had been performing, pausing each time a new entry hit the log. There were a ton of very long IPv6 addresses being read aloud along with connections established, new routes being added and old routes being removed, and frequent mentions of some system named DG. Beat asked Robert to rewind to the beginning of the log to get an idea of who or what started it. Robert went back to the initial timestamp of the log: 5/5/xx 13:01pm GMT and read aloud the first few lines.

LOGLINE DELETED
LOGROTATE DENIED
LOGLINE DELETED
BEGINNING PROCESS LOG

Someone had tried to cover their tracks when they initialized the process, but slipped up. The backup_dg process had been nearly as tall as the bar on the grid for con_overlay, meaning it was just as large and possibly the same age. Still, he had no idea how the data bars on the grid were gauging any kind of effectiveness or what that meant. Figuring Robert might know, he simply asked. Robert replied, “This seems to be a correlation engine that compares log streams with set expectations. Effectiveness has a criteria threshold set from 1-5 with 5 being absolutely successful and 1 being complete failure. If you’d like I can draw a trendline across aligned log sets to help”. And with that, more clarity was realized. The grid rearranged the data bars and there was a clear trendline going from zero to 5, over time. The level 5 data bars were positioned at the far right and two were still sparking. “con_overlay” and “backup_dg”. Robert asked Beat if the view was helpful or if he would like to request additional analysis. He seemed to be running code embedded specifically for this purpose. Beat requested additional analysis. The grid rotated up and the data bars became circles of differing sizes based on their size and age, laid out in a spider web. As expected, near the center were two logfiles. “con_overlay” and “backup_dg”.

Beat had almost found the smoking gun, he just had to push a little further to confirm all his suspicions at once. “Robert, are con_overlay and backup_dg the same age?” he queried. Robert replied in the affirmative. “Robert, who accessed this system 72 hours ago?”. Robert paused, then replied, “you did”.

The hair on the back of Beat’s neck stood up. This really rattled him because he believed his credentials were bulletproof and had never seen this happen to any ASE, ever. Someone was trying to make him a fall guy in case anyone took these same steps, which in the event of a disaster, forensics would definitely take these same steps to solve the puzzle. Well, most of them anyway.

“Holy fuck”, Beat said under his breath. He felt the floor drop out from under him as his stomach sank into a pit and his fight or flight reflexes started kicking in. He was truly panicked. Who would do this, why would they do it, and why did another AI lead him down this path? Did Cerberus know before he assisted Beat with gaining access? Would his current level of access throw a flag somewhere and send armed security to his location? But then he had an idea.

“Robert, identify me”. Robert answered, “you are Cerberus, AI CRB3, login ID *unknown*, last logon today at 16:22 GMT”.

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Haunted (part one)

Sheepdog arrived at the office, pretty hungover, and he must have slept hard because one of his eyes seemed to be permanently out of focus for the day. He decided to work through it. After grabbing his first coffee, he dove into his terminal and immediately opened the clip of the Bowler Hat man and the ghost he was meeting with. It didn’t matter which angle he chose, which AI assisted with the reconstruction or image processing, the data for the ghost simply didn’t exist. Res wasn’t in the office today so he had to tackle it alone. It wasn’t that big of a problem because she had already asked the questions he first asked when he stumbled across and essentially became obsessed with solving this mystery. The camera hardware checked out, software was up to date, and he was at an impasse. How do you create data where there is none, or find out what was removed and how?

He checked the time stamp for the footage and made a note of the date and time of day. He searched the Splicer archives for any other instances of the Bowler Hat man in that area and ran into the retention wall, but not before finding a similar clip 2 months prior to what he was looking at. The footage might as well have been identical, because as he loaded the older clips, he had the exact same problem. Limo arrives, Bowler Hat man gets out, shakes hands with nothing, gets back into his car and drives away. Obviously, it was some kind of scheduled transaction, and since he had already identified the man and his car, he knew it was one of their own clients. Frank, a very early adopter. This made Sheepdog even more suspicious. If he was such an old client, and there were at least 2 instances of him meeting a ghost, why didn’t his AI, Genesis, pick up on this and sound the alarm? As far as he knew, AI weren’t breaking rules or forming their own ideas about morality nor bending the rules for their monitoring. How could Genesis not recognize this gap in coverage as a threat? Something was wrong at a fundamental level, he felt. And that sense of dread could easily infect his concepts of how the organization at large was providing the protection these clients were paying for. This sense of dread and unease led him to an unusual request. He needed to conduct field research in that area.

He stepped into the manager’s office and briefly discussed the issue with him. The manager asked Sheepdog what he planned to do, and how he would do it. Sheep outlined a quick plan using on-the-ground testing hardware fitted neatly in a backpack. Your usual radio scanners, frequency detectors, jammers, and other penetration testing tools. He wanted to bring everything he could to the site to test everything, visible and invisible, ruling nothing out. The manager agreed to let him check it out on two conditions.

One, he didn’t raise any suspicions, and two, he wouldn’t interrupt the standard monitoring deployed at the site. Sheepdog agreed and changed into a generic technician’s outfit before cramming his backpack full of specialized hardware. He would leave no stone unturned, and he would do it without the cover of a service vehicle.

Sheep rode the monorail to the intersection, got off and got to work. First, he scanned for any unusual localized radio spectrum frequencies. He was looking for a bubble, something focused and small aimed at the site. Running through radio wave frequency blocks, his device turned up nothing unusual. Going on the offensive, he ran a Sendai 9 attack platform to attempt to interfere with anything wireless in that location. The devices easily routed around the localized attack by performing channel hopping and other defensive measures designed to overcome noise. Nothing was working in Sheep’s toolkit. He thought for sure the brand-new Sendai 9 would have a noticeable impact to all the radio signals floating around in the air within a 30-foot radius, but there seemed to be no service disruptions at all.

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Tone Deaf

Rex laid awake to the sound of a dripping faucet in the master bathroom. The rhythm of the droplets was regular, predictable, nearly identical. He tried to focus on it as someone would count sheep. His restless mind was having none of it.

More work had to be done on his optics project; the burn rate was starting to overrun royalties for older work he had performed and patented. Basically, he was starting to lose money and he had come too far to put a stop to the project (in order to shore up more cash) or turn back. It had to work. The solution was facing him but it was also something of a moral dilemma.

Wall Street has been cheating for over a century, why should I have any moral quandaries, he thought. This was justification. He was talking himself into taking a big risk, as if the risk he was already taking was not big enough. Rex had that gambler’s gene. There was no way he could have stopped playing at this point regardless of the stakes; wild stallions would not drag him away. A dozen scenarios played out in his mind, ranging from becoming a trillionaire to federal prison for life. Suddenly, his comms device announced INCOMING CALL – FRANK. This was good timing.

“Hello Frank, can’t sleep either huh?”, Rex said quietly, pretending to be sleepy. Frank very excitedly and loudly replied, “after…after what I witnessed today? How could anyone sleep? Like watching the atom being split for the first time, surviving a bullet passing close enough to your head to burn your hair, I feel too alive for sleep. I have been up all night, pondering these wonders.” Rex basically felt the same, without the elaborate dialogue, and said, “Frank, Frank, calm down man. Miraculous, yes. Yet to borrow an analogy, our sword has two edges, and they are razor sharp. One false move and we’re bleeding. It’s best to let the sword rest in a velvet blanket for now.”

Frank had to be nodding in agreement as he replied, “Of course. You’re totally correct. Although, you must admit ideas are filling your head as well! You weren’t sleeping. You were, I assume, considering the possibilities of the sword. Planning, plotting, pondering. Devising new tests or, God forbid, new applications. Tell me I’m wrong.” Rex didn’t disagree. He actually confirmed all of Frank’s statements as he added, “…but we must temper our response. You remember that old mob movie Goodfellas? Doesn’t matter. There’s a scenario where a bunch of mob guys make a big score and get away clean. One of the guys tells everyone, don’t buy anything. Sit on it until I give the go ahead. And yet, on Christmas Eve, every mobster shows up at the club with furs, new cars, you name it. Can you guess what happened next?” Frank knew the answer immediately, “they didn’t get busted, but one by one, they got whacked, for bringing too much heat. I get the message here, but I don’t expect to get whacked, Rex.” Frank paused and tapped on his Splicer comms device in a knock-on-wood motion. “Nobody ever does, Frank”, Rex shot back, before hanging up the comms and going back to listening to the dripping sink.

That really needs to get fixed, Rex said to himself, before finally drifting off to a few short hours of sleep…

As Rex’s alarm clock woke him at a brisk 10am, he slowly brushed the blankets aside and sat on the edge of the bed. He imagined he looked as tired as he felt. It required a brief ice bath in the sink to bring some of the puffiness down, although Rex still looked much younger than his actual years, he was getting to the age where sleepless nights landed squarely under his eyes.

Call Frank. Wait. Eat breakfast first, some coffee, freshen up, then call Frank. Nope. Breakfast, shower, check messages, check project progress, check account balances, then call Frank. Rex thought about his little parable from Goodfellas and the importance of waiting. He decided to give Frank a break for a little while as he kept an eye on his balances and project progress. Waiting had to be part of the whole equation to make this thing work to Rex’s advantage. Time had a magical way of impacting certain activities. Too close together and it’s a story, too far apart and nobody is any wiser. He wondered if Frank’s success was even a blip on anyone’s radar. Sure, it was beating the casino, but the casino was busy and if they didn’t go back for a while, odds are nobody would notice. Rex decided a slow burn strategy like this would be best, if Frank would even agree to it. But Rex knew, deep down, that Frank couldn’t wait to play with his new Ouija puck again, with or without Rex present, so he couldn’t wait too long until testing again.

Rex came up with an idea as he sipped some espresso from a tiny cup, freshly brewed from a very expensive Italian machine. It was borderline insane, just crazy enough to work and convoluted enough to avoid detection if anyone was to get curious. Moments like this defined why Rex had come this far; he was known for unlikely ideas having a desirable outcome. He decided to let it simmer and called Frank very briefly. “Frank”, he began, “I’ve come up with another test. Let’s meet next week, you pick the day. I’ll make sure I’m free.” Frank replied, “I’m eager to hear more. We can meet Wednesday. I’ll send the driver by if you’d like”. Rex said, “Sounds good Frank, stay green”. Frank’s comms unit briefly flashed amber then went back to green.

Rex went upstairs, back to his Danish desk, and started sketching out some ideas for the next test. The ideas were coming fast and hard, and his hand couldn’t keep up with his brain. He ended up paring down the list and doing a quick comparative analysis. Risk vs. Reward. That was the balance he was having trouble striking. Too much reward, red flags, someone notices. Too much risk, same outcome only he stood to lose money he couldn’t really afford to lose. He finally drew up a matrix of ideas, sorting by risk and reward, and found the middle of the grid where he could perform testing. A good starting point would be the way forward, he figured.

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The Ouija Board (part two)

Frank pondered the chart for a moment and thought perhaps a step was missing. This wasn’t all the value he could extract from the stock. He immediately purchased shorts against the stock at 15 cents per share. No reason for attempting to guess the floor, just a hunch. A few tense moments later, and the comms went green. Not long after, that familiar waterfall pattern appeared on the chart. After the peak, other players were collecting their profits and running out of buyers. The final chart valued the stock at 15 cents. Frank had made an additional 85 cents per share, shorting it to the penny. 

Rex sat there awestruck. He was familiar with the voodoo of the market, and bandwagoning day traders who followed trades up and cashed out at a set peak, but this was something else. Frank was equally stunned, mouth agape at what he had witnessed. “Should we prepare another test?”, Frank asked very quietly. “I’m not sure. What we’re dealing with seems just as supernatural as that Ouija board puck. It also seems extremely dangerous. If we can replicate this again and again over time, we’ll smoke the market. Someone is gonna notice, someone or something. I… I don’t even know if we should try this again. I need some time to think it over. Enjoy your profits, you had a fantastic day”, Rex said, not even noticing his adrenalin pumping as he unsteadily rose from his seat. Frank replied, “of course we must be extremely cautious. I don’t even feel comfortable doing this directly. But I don’t know if our little magician will perform his magic if I try to do this through the normal layers of shell companies and holding firms. I suppose we need to perform some low-risk testing on that type of indirect trading.”

Rex was about to leave, then suddenly turned to Frank who was standing politely to see him out. “Strictest confidence, Frank. What we witnessed here was nothing short of a miracle,” Rex said, without a hint of sarcasm in his voice. He was dead serious. “That goes without saying, Rex. You are almost dealing with the same amount of danger I am. Even knowing that these tests pass is more than we should know. But I must thank you for helping design the tests. If there’s a way to repay you, tell me,” Frank said earnestly. “I may call on you for some kind of reward, soon, so keep your comms on,” Rex replied. With that final sentence, he began ordering a vehicle to take him away from Frank’s and back home, as he walked down the stone steps and back onto the pea gravel walkway. He was terrified.

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The Ouija Board (part one)

The next day, Rex couldn’t wait to meet up with Frank to discuss the ramifications. He knew Frank would be at the Splicer offices signing contract amendments bright and early, which meant Rex woke up early to sketch out some plans to test the system. The best test Rex could come up with was some volatile stock trading in the penny markets. Or, even more fickle and short term, crypto markets. He thought all it would take was a few big bull moves on a very short time frame to complete the test, but they had to be sure it was functioning before they placed any bets. Rex, of course, would match Frank’s bets with his own money, but Frank would be the one doing the betting.

10am rolled around, and Frank reached out to Rex, confirming the paperwork is done. “This, of course, is a gentlemen’s agreement between you and I,” Frank said, “so long as it goes no further, I don’t see the harm in the testing.” Rex agreed and arranged transportation to Frank’s home.

When Rex arrived, he tipped the driver handsomely and advised him to forget his last customer and route. The driver marked the ride as a failure and the details were erased. Rex strolled up to Frank’s idea of an ancient Germanic castle, pea gravel crunching underfoot as he approached the massive door. Naturally, Frank was expecting his arrival and one of the house staff opened the door in such a manner that Rex didn’t have to break stride to enter the home. He was greeted with a bow and kept walking towards Frank’s office. Pulling up a brass-tacked emerald green leather chair, he found Frank already at his terminal ready to get to work. “So,” Frank began, “what mischief did you have in mind for testing? Or would you prefer discussing the details of my revised contract first?” Rex replied, “I’m sure the contract language is very interesting, but lacking the legal chops to properly dissect it, I’d rather get to the testing.” Rex paused for a moment as Frank grinned. “I propose we test either crypto markets or penny stock trading off the sheets. We don’t want to show up as a big hammer, but we want to push the Ouija puck and see what happens. How is it supposed to work, warning you for your own protection?”

Frank took a deep breath before replying. “They said it was going to be simple. An extension of existing protocols. You see, my secure comms device for them, it has two lights. One amber, one green. Green means everything is secure and safe. Amber means danger. A simple binary. My AI controls it somewhat independently. So the trick must be to stay in the green, whatever that takes.” Rex nodded as he understood the limitations of the system, but he would figure out what the timing and threshold looked like. “Alright Frank, ready to do this thing?”, Rex asked. Frank gave him a thumbs up. “Let’s start somewhat small. How much holding do you have in crypto?” Frank quickly replied, “my financial advisor told me it should be zero, but it’s actually 100 million, spread across a few popular coins that track closely with other market indexes.” Rex thought for a moment and said, “ok, our first move will be… only one million. Let’s find a volatile coin that has a lot of attention focused on it.” The secure comms device remained green. Frank searched the coin base, and purchased Lucky Coin, something apparently new which had seen a 1500% rise since the debut 48 hours ago. It was starting to fall in value, according to the real-time charts, but it wasn’t anywhere near the bottom. “Tell me when you’re ready,” Frank said. Rex had his eyes fixated on the comms device. Seconds passed, and it suddenly turned amber, and it stayed amber. Rex and Frank watched the second-by-second charting live, and the coin was in freefall. In less than 15 seconds it lost 200% of the pumped value, and was still bleeding in the charts. The Ouija puck had indeed moved. “Best 2 out of 3?”, Frank asked, already knowing that Rex would need more proof than this. “Of course. Let’s flip over to the penny stocks. Again, look for anything unusually hot or busy. Cash out and record your loss, I owe you a few bucks.”

Frank found a stock that had been essentially dead on the ground for the past month, but it was starting to break out. From one cent to 2 cents in the past hour. It was some rinky dink startup company that had plummeted after a major CEO failure sent it into a tailspin and it got delisted from the NASDAQ. However, a brief glance at today’s financial news promised a turnaround as the new CEO took the reins and landed a military contract with huge initial funding. Someone saw promise in it. “Bet another million, it’ll hide in the volume that is already happening,” Rex said. Frank queued up an order for a million credits’ worth. He glanced at the comms device, which just changed from green to amber. Puzzled, Rex lifted it off the table and shook it, in case anything was loose. It felt like a monobloc design with no moving connectors or parts. “This has to be a winner, how can it chart lower?”, Rex asked, before Frank changed his order, and split the order in half, two orders of 500,000 each. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense that it would impact the transaction in any way, but suddenly the amber light changed back to green. Frank executed the trade. They watched the charting pump the stock. 2 cents. 5 cents. 10 cents. Comms still green. 15 cents. Every few seconds it nearly doubled in value as they glanced from the chart to the comms. Somewhere around a dollar per share, the comms went amber again. Frank immediately sold both orders back to the exchange. Comms stayed amber. What was it trying to say? He had already made a ton of easy money in a few minutes.

to be continued

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Resonance (cont.)

This was definitely a message meant for someone, and whoever did it was pretty slick. It could have been done at the bar with a few simple things every bar has. A toothpick to write the message. Receipt paper for the object. And the kicker, lemon juice for the invisible ink. She remembered doing this as a kid, writing silly messages, letting it dry, then heating it from behind to heat the lemon juice into brown ink. All she needed to do, to expose the missing letters, was to flatten the paper and heat it just a little more in a few spots. 2 minutes later in the kitchen, she had her answer. It was all there, mostly legible and with surprisingly good handwriting, considering how it was done. She unconsciously bit her bottom lip a little as she read the simple message.

I need to see you again. Call me. – DEC

She remembered how this all started; the silent, sudden crab claw grab at her elbow. Dec pointing towards the cameras near the bathroom during their talk. The All-Seeing Eye ring on his hand. The cryptic phone number on the napkin, which was still on the table. Her banter with him and the vets at Meatspace a few days ago, when the fox just happened to fall at her feet as everyone left. At the very least, Dec wasn’t boring or stupid. He was clever, but subtle. He had brute force thanks to his size and his Terminator arm, yet here he was folding delicate origami and casually dropping it off right where she would find it. Nobody noticed, she thought, not even the cameras. He must have been taught all kinds of quiet methods to communicate, during the war, and he’s using them to reel her in. The worst part? It was working. Res was intrigued. She wanted to know more, a lot more, about what made Dec, Dec. What other surprises does he have in store? What made him think she would even manage to heat the fox enough to see the message? What does he know about her already? More than he let on, she imagined. If he’s working for Splicer, on some level she’s not aware of, he could have read a thick dossier about her before ever approaching her that first night. How long had he been watching her, waiting for the right moment? The strange thing about being comfortable around strangers is that you don’t ever really notice them until you’re introduced. He could have been coming there for hours, or days. But all the ghost talk coincided too closely with what she and Sheepdog were working on. There’s no doubt, someone at Splicer had sent him to warn her off the footage she was reviewing, which made her believe that she would have cracked the secret given more time.

She decided to sideline this whole “call Dec” thing, and talk to Sheepdog first. But it was the first day of the weekend, and she didn’t feel like doing it right away. There were more mundane things to do first; a pile of dirty laundry, grocery shopping, and Res thought it had been a while since her last good haircut. Weekend chores. She checked her comms device and there were no notifications from anyone; nice and quiet. Res decided to keep the origami and feebly tried to coax it back into its original shape. She failed. It looked more like a retarded cat, which made her laugh quietly to herself as she moved it to the mantle above the fireplace. Might as well hang onto it, but the napkin wasn’t necessary anymore. She paused for a moment and considered another depth to these messages. They were both on paper. Not a coincidence, so she turned on the stove one more time and burnt the napkin to ashes before tossing it into the trash. His contact was already in her comms device so nothing was lost besides physical evidence. She jumped in the shower, got dressed, then peeked out the window to see heavy clouds rolling in from the east. “Another rainy day in rainy town,” she said sarcastically, as she grabbed a beanie, her favorite jacket and a dry umbrella, heading out into the coming storm with still-drying wet hair tucked mostly under the beanie. The last few notes of Through The Lonely Nights echoed from the speakers as she closed the door. She grinned.

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Resonance

Res awoke slowly, a faint headache still whispering from the back of her skull, imagining that the vertebrae connecting to her head were rusting. She briefly pondered a yoga routine to stretch out and loosen up but decided against it and made coffee instead. While the percolator started to boil up, she had a seat at the kitchen table and looked at the papers carefully left there days before. The napkin with Dec’s number and the origami fox, pulled at the bottom edges a little so it was standing. She had a habit of sniffing things for no apparent reason, sense memory she guessed, and smelled the napkin. Nothing special, a faint smell of some kind of liquor and recycled paper. She set it back down and pondered the fox. It had been on the floor, and anyone that’s ever been to a dive bar knows the floor there is always worse than anywhere else. Still, it looked clean enough, but the percolator was whistling steam, indicating coffee was ready.

Grabbing an FBI mug cleverly designed to read FIB but match otherwise, she filled the cup and added just a splash of creamer. Something was missing. She felt like she needed a little background noise; it was too quiet, even at this early hour, so she spoke up. “Iris, play songs from the Rolling Stones, B sides and rarities”. Her home assistant perked up and some of the less famous tunes of the Stones streamed from invisible, built-in speakers around the house. Now that she had a soundtrack, back to the fox. It was carefully crafted by someone with great dexterity, standing no more than 2 inches tall yet still detailed enough to include all the legs, flat feet so it would stand up, the tail, the face and of course, fox ears. She placed it in her left hand and tried to estimate how many folds it had, examining it closely for seams, because it had to be multiple pieces of paper attached. No seams were visible. Holding it up to the light, she looked through the paper to see any kind of message inside. It looked like blank paper. She was hoping it would contain something, anything interesting, although it was interesting enough in its own right. As she was appreciating the skill and the form, she suddenly heard the percolator boiling over. “Didn’t I turn it off?”, she thought as she closed her hand around the fox and dashed to the stove.

The gas was still on, and the percolator was too hot to handle. She shut off the gas and grabbed a kitchen mitt to handle the percolator and move it to another burner. While the gas flames retreated, as if in slow motion, the fox drifted gently out of her hand and onto the burner. “NoooooOOO!”, she yelled instinctively, in one of those moments where she was surprised at what came out of her mouth. She grabbed it off the still-hot burner with the mitt and took it back to the table.

Somehow, it had changed.

Res seemed to smell a faint odor of lemon, but with the steaming coffee nearby, she couldn’t get a strong read on it. Once again, she stood the fox on her palm and lifted it to the morning light streaming through the window. There were brown streaks here and there which seemed to be on the inside. Lots of thermal receipt paper would do this when exposed to heat. She spent another 5 seconds thinking about unfolding it and finally gave in. Carefully tugging at the ears first, she saw the muzzle begin to split and expand to the left and right. Flipping it over, she followed the seams around and managed to keep it mostly intact while dissecting it. As she flattened out the intricate folds, she could clearly see small handwriting in a brownish ink, but it was incomplete. Big white stripes prevented her from reading whatever was there, then it dawned on her.

to be continued

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View from the peanut gallery

I have some questions for the audience (yes, both of you). So, I figured I’d throw some polls together to get some feedback. Vote away!