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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

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!

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The Client Calls Again (cont.)

Res’s manager, and Sheepdog, decided this was worthy of celebration. “Drinks are on me, you pick the venue”, the manager announced, and Res blurted out “let’s go to Meatspace! it’s kind of a dive, but it’s local and the bartender knows me. Great service and a chill crowd, as long as we don’t get too wild”. “Great, let’s all meet in a few hours. Bring your thirst, ladies and gentlemen. I plan to see which one of you parties harder on an unlimited credit card. Save room for champagne!”

Sheepdog left early and headed home via the tunnels beneath the city. He could afford the extra cost of terrestrial shuttles or even his own vehicle, but chose to sock his earnings away and live a humble life. He believed it kept him grounded, although some of his peers teased him with the nickname Cheapdog. He was still wrestling with the anomaly in the stitch from the Bowler meeting footage.

To him, it was annoying in the same way as listening to one half of a conversation from some loudmouth on their communication device, talking in public. He only had half the story, and had to imagine the other half based on what he already saw or heard. So many questions were pointing in so many directions, he had to just choose a hunch and go from there.

Thinking back on the sequence of events, the Bowler would get out of the Limo and meet with an invisible…something, shake hands, get back in the Limo, and leave. Drug deal? Drugs were mostly legal now minus some experimental chems that were banned. Secret information exchange? Yes, meeting face to face and giving someone a piece of paper was still fairly safe and private. But what kind of information would require that level of secrecy? And where was the invisible man getting the information? Why did the Bowler Hat man need it? Or was nothing at all exchanged, and the Splicer organization was being tested by the Bowler? Maybe even an internal test done in coordination with the organization and the client. Who knows? Without much more to go on, Sheepdog decided to shelve all these questions and just enjoy Res’s victory. If anything important was going on here, he was sure it would all be revealed over time.

A few hours later, a ride back through the tunnels, and Sheepdog met up with Res and their manager near Meatspace. It wasn’t a particularly fancy or even nice part of town, but somehow felt familiar enough that people felt safe. He could see why Res would live around here, despite the insane rental prices. There was an incomprehensible feeling of life here. It was busy but not too busy. It was gritty and real despite being plastered with ugly advertising. Sheepdog realized how hard he was thinking about it and snapped out of it. “Ok, before we go in, I just gotta say I’m not a big drinker. So, if the plan is to get wasted, I’m crashing on your couch, Res”, he said. “Fine with me”, she replied with a crooked grin, “just don’t snore too loud, you’ll wake up the fish”. The manager stood with them, chuckling, and ushered them inside, bringing up the rear. “You guys are drinking what I’m drinking, no arguments, and we’re starting with shots”, he said generically.

As usual, K greeted Res with her shot and beer chaser, in her usual spot. “Brought some victims with you huh?”, he quipped. “I did. This is my manager, and this is my friend, Cheapdog. Don’t worry, he’s not buying”, she said, twirling her hair with her right hand again. “Well, nice to meet you Mr. Manager, and, uh…Cheapdog? I hope I got that right. What are you drinking?”, K replied. As Sheepdog opened his mouth to utter a syllable, the Manager butted in. “Round of shots, open a tab for me, and after that, another round of shots. Do you have any champagne handy?”

“But of course, sir, what sort of establishment would Meatspace be without a few select bottles of Dom (Perignon) on ice”, K said, grinning ear to ear. “Simply dreadful”, he added. This amused everyone within earshot, because Meatspace was definitely not the sort of place to have champagne handy, and it was almost a preposterous question. The Manager got another chuckle out of that and wandered over to the juke box to pick some celebratory songs for the mood. He knew Res just well enough to guess at a few older selections that probably wouldn’t piss off the crowd.

Res was about to habitually get situated at her seat when she got a call. “Hello?”, she answered without looking to see who it was, and a man with a deep gravelly voice on the other end replied, “I see you!” She knew that voice, it was Dec. She pivoted on her heels expecting him to be behind her again, but it was just Sheepdog nursing a shot, and her manager was headed back to the group. “I don’t see you”, she replied, “are you here at the bar again?” Dec said yes and raised a big ass arm in the air from the vets table in the corner, disconnecting the call. Res leaned over to Sheepdog and said, “watch my back, I don’t really trust this guy yet”, before walking over to the vets table.

“You brought some friends! What’s the special occasion?”, Dec asked. “Work, landed a big fish today”, Res bantered, “and I didn’t even see a ghost.” Dec grinned and replied, “Congratulations, fisherman. But I think you have seen a ghost. Maybe him, too”, motioning with his beer towards Sheepdog and the manager. “Although if it just floated away, I’d probably forget about it too,” he said, with a twinkle in his eye, like a nudge-nudge, know what I mean sort of way. Res sensed a warmth to him that she didn’t notice before, and decided to dig a little. “So Dec,” she began, “why do these fine upstanding vets tolerate you sitting with them? They owe you a favor?” A few of the veterans chuckled.

“Little lady, I am one of them”, Dec growled, holding up his other arm, rolling back his sleeve to expose a deep circular scar around his right forearm. “You see this? Lost half my arm trying to pull a brother out of the path of a railgun. He lived, my arm didn’t”, he explained, as one of the vets quipped, “I still don’t know who got the best part of that deal”, and they all grinned knowingly.

“How many stitches?”, Res asked, expecting another smartass reply. “They didn’t tell me. I lost a lot of blood before the medic arrived, passed out, and woke up a few weeks later back in a city hospital”, Dec replied, before he was interrupted by a chorus of men at the table chanting, “with this goddamn Terminator arm!”, and laughing like they had heard the story a million times. Res enjoyed this kind of ball-breaking comradery, which is why she always liked the vets. “Wanna see a trick? Get a magnet from the Moderns real quick”, Dec said. Res walked over to the Moderns and to nobody’s surprise, returned with a rare earth magnet in hand, about the size of an old quarter. “Watch this”, Dec said as he placed the magnet in the palm of his Terminator hand. As his hand closed around the magnet, he started squeezing, with his hand shaking. Suddenly, the magnet shot out through the crease in his fist and flew across the room. “Mostly titanium, but the microservos will generate a strong opposing magnetic field when I squeeze hard enough. Doesn’t seem very useful, but maybe I’m not very creative and they didn’t give me a manual”, Dec explained. “Wow. Do you realize what you’ve got there is essentially a weapon? That’s pretty ironic, considering your story. Magnets forcing other things to move fast. I’m surprised that’s not a selling point, seems like it could come in handy, yuk yuk”, Res joked. “Well, I gotta get back to my group. Good seeing you again, I guess”, she said, and Dec nodded, watching her for too long as she went back to the bar.

to be continued.

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The Client Calls Again

Res and Sheepdog took a brief lunch in a neighboring building that served dim sum and Thai food at very reasonable prices. It didn’t hurt that they both loved Asian food, which sometimes made Sheepdog homesick, being so far away from his native Singapore for work. To Res, these dishes might as well have been apple pie, because, growing up in her area, it was as ubiquitous and American as a hotdog or a hamburger. Also, it was fast, nearby, and top quality, flying in ingredients daily as needed, according to rumors. Res glanced at her watch and realized she only had a few minutes before the next client call. She snatched up her purse, left a few credits for a tip, and told Sheepdog she would talk to him later, as he was still working on a plate of Pad See Eew. With a flip of her hair, she headed towards the skybridge that connected the buildings, the low heels of her shoes pounding out a hurried rhythm of clock-clock-clock across the tile floor.

Rather than taking the call at her desk, she reserved a private room and booked it for an hour. She could log in via the terminal there and bring all her personal data and notes up without hassling with a laptop, but she still brought her physical notepad for assistance. A few moments after she settled, she reached out to the client who answered immediately. While his voice was clear, no background noise, she could hear some form of audio manipulation on his end of the line, probably the same anonymizer he used before, which would shift between low and high tones of voice. And on his end, he was seeing her old-school video game avatar again, only this time, Res was using her real voice. Risky, but just a little. He already knew who she worked for and the nature of the business, so it seemed a more personal touch. “Hello, can you hear me ok?”, he asked. “Loud and clear, but can we back off on the voice hilo? Let’s pretend we trust each other a little this time”, Res replied, and the client agreed. The voice now sounded natural from his side. This was a little more intimate in the digital age, like a second date where some of the pretense and peacocking is dropped.

After a few light greetings were exchanged, the client got to the point. “As I’ve said before, I take my privacy and safety very seriously, which brings me to your organization. I’ve heard nothing but good things from a few people I rub shoulders with, who are also shielded. I think I may have a secret that needs to remain guarded at any cost, therefore I must be shielded at any cost. If what I know and what I have done can be connected, it would have devastating global consequences and cause irreparable damage. To me, and to your organization, among many others.”

Res didn’t like the tone here, because even if it was true, it sounded like borderline blackmail. Like if we don’t protect him and bring him on board, things could get unimaginably bad. Inflated sense of self-worth, narcissism, delusions of grandeur, or the real deal? A few indirect questions could fill in the gaps.

Res lightened her tone to be a little more disarming (and corporate neutral), then began questioning the client. “We get approached by a lot of very important people harboring secrets. After all, it’s in our DNA to protect high visibility and elite clientele with total airtight discretion. What separates you from the others that didn’t pass our standards?”

The client replied, “I seriously doubt the secrets the others keep are this potentially dangerous. I’m not some kind of serial killer with a list that needs legal protection. I’m in possession of information that I discovered, decided to act upon, and my reach is absolutely beyond global. My secret transcends this planet, no joke. But I can’t say more without acceptance and ironclad nondisclosure agreements on your organization’s behalf. Think of me as a wizard with the only key to Pandora’s Box.”

Res briefly scribbled in her notepad the last sentence. It seemed to carry a great deal of weight and would make a strong justification for admitting the client to the program, if it was true. There was an urgency to his voice, an almost pleading tone; clearly, time was a factor here. He needed in quick.

Res then asked, “Are these state secrets? Are you in possession of secret knowledge about this organization, the governing bodies, other individuals within this organization, or information that could impact national security?” Without hesitation the client answered “yes” with no further clarification. This would not be a standard client engagement, were she to accept him.

Res opened a new client form marked Top Secret – ASE and direct management only, the highest tier of discretion available, and began asking him for personal details. A wire transfer of 5 million credits was required up front to process the client form, and the last piece of information she needed (as she waved her manager over for secondary approval) was the client’s legal name. The engagement had begun. There were three signatures required with today’s date. Resonant Frequency, the manager, and the client…

Rex Tarkington

The rest of the details would take a few weeks to process, but everything said thus far was entered into the record for legal to fall back on if Mr. Tarkington mislead them during the process. An AI would have to be chosen and assigned to assist with training, surveillance, and stitching. He would be issued a closed-channel secure communication device. Res finished up with “many of our clients choose to get an Angel tattoo which is publicly visible and a warning to others. Would you like to schedule an appointment with one of our in-house artists to choose the design and apply it?” Rex declined and simply stated, “that won’t be necessary at this time, although I may propose an alternative in the future.” Farewells were then exchanged and Res told Rex, “Welcome aboard, and thank you for choosing the Splicer organization. Your secrets, and your self, will be safe with us.”

Rex wryly ended the call with “they damn well better be. I look forward to working with you.” He unceremoniously disconnected the call, and Res’s manager high-fived her on the spot.

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Selfish Generosity

Rex Tarkington was a genius. A certified, bona fide, Mensa-verified egghead. He was also extremely paranoid, and very indignant about that character trait. He believed, strongly, that anyone living in a surveillance state has an absolute right to privacy, and if there was anything he could do to advance the right to privacy, he would do it without a second thought. He spent decades in IT Security, where his mindset and perseverance made him very successful. Enough success that he could retire at age 27 and pursue his real goals. He sunk countless hours into studying, then breaking, security protocols and very high-level encryption. But at this point, he wasn’t doing it for any particular company or vendor, he was doing it to try and reset his own comfort level. Being behind the scenes, watching and fighting off digital attacks, it was old hat by now, especially since his crowning achievement was a defensive AI he programmed himself over a few years. He proudly named it T-Rex, which was also the laziest name anyone could have imagined, based on his own name. 

The funny thing about defense is that it’s just offense in reverse. You have to know certain things about the attackers, attack patterns, weaknesses, etc. in order to shore them up. You must know all your soft spots to harden them. By that same token, it’s not difficult to turn a defense into an offense. Attack others where you are weak, assuming a certain amount of commonality across organizations is in place.

For example, regardless of how big or wealthy a corporation becomes, they are often stuck with very outdated servers and hardware somewhere in the network that are easily exploited. Legacy systems, custom programming, vestigial limbs that nobody ever spent money to rebuild and replace. Every company has these “legacy assets” that they can’t do without, and someone in the organization is aware of it. As time goes by and these legacy assets accumulate and remain unpatched, they represent a challenge for the attacker, because no matter how old an attack vector becomes, it has to stay in the toolkit just in case it’s found. This swells the toolkit over time, to the point where nothing can be discarded and you have an enormous, unwieldy bag of tricks. It just comes with the territory.

Years after T-Rex was released, security researchers had turned it inside out and made it an attacker. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a major blow to Rex’s organization in particular. Despite how paranoid and careful he had been, he had left the door to the toolkit open for expansion for licensed owners, which malicious actors used to add their own bag of tricks to what they called Xer-T, the inverted version of T-Rex. Security organizations would sometimes stage virtual battles between T-Rex and Xer-T to essentially watch the AI battle itself, to look for flaws or improvements. That was actually beneficial in testing, and some would sell improvements back to Rex himself. But honestly, none of this interested Rex at this point. He had gone off on another tangent entirely. Let the product managers and coders worry about all this.

In the information technology field, and security, there’s a term known as RCA, or root cause analysis. The concept is simple. When there’s a problem, keep digging even after it has been solved to determine the root cause and apply your permanent fix at that level. Rex had been doing RCA’s his entire life in one way or another, and was particularly skilled at it. Which, inevitably, led to him creating a root cause of his own, solving a lot of problems he had with the state of the world.

He got an idea after watching a documentary about zebras in the wild. Their stripes were a natural camouflage, although appearing fairly uniform and almost copied and pasted to the casual observer. It was discovered that the stripes short circuited the visual processing part of predator’s brains, namely, big cats. Something about the way cheetahs, lions, etc. see the world and process that world was truly confused by the stripes, essentially making the zebras invisible to them. Rex wondered if there wasn’t something similar in technology; after all, technology is based on human perception, so cameras and microphones are generally designed to only capture what people can see or hear.

Rex built up a very secretive research team, hand-picked and fully vetted, to dive into camera technology of all kinds. Cell phone cameras, CCTV cameras, traffic cameras, the hardware and software that drove them. What he initially discovered was not that interesting: they were almost all built upon the same core libraries, which meant at the lowest hardware level, they all behaved nearly identically. At some point during the early development of these devices, there must have been a competition between different technologies, and a single standard emerged. Or, as Rex saw it, a single point of failure…a single point of weakness. He poured millions into the team, moving the project goalposts regularly over the span of three years. He kept getting results, and eventually his company became the dominant player in the imaging device technology sector. How? By giving away upgrades for free.

Nations, states, and cities all took the bait, making TIDE, or Tarkington Imaging Design Engineering, the single largest supplier of hardware and software imaging solutions worldwide. His solutions were truly ingenious and easy to operate, simple to keep updated, and had the best price of them all. His tech was so good, it was being applied to satellites and space-based hardware platforms as well, because, again, the cost was too good to be true.

On more than one occasion, the press asked the main question. “Why is something this good, free?” And every time, Rex insisted that something that good must remain free, and he would be doing humanity a disservice by charging money for those products. That wasn’t a good enough answer for some people and rightfully so. It reeked of corporate diversion, but nobody could really find a problem with what he was giving away, and over time, people asked less and less to the point where TIDE solutions were the global standard. It’s just what you used, anywhere you needed surveillance solutions or cheap imaging for portable devices. He included premium features others charged millions for, like chip sensors that could detect light across the visible and invisible spectrum. The full spectrum sensor was a huge hit in the scientific community, and some labs were using it to explore black holes via space-based telescopes which had been upgraded with TIDE sensors. Spy satellites weren’t late to the party either, incorporating his upgrades as fast as they could launch space missions to retrofit the hardware.

One man, in one company, had essentially taken over the world of digital imaging in a few short years. Rex intended it. Because once Rex had ensured that his TIDE sensors were everywhere, in everything, he could finally relax.

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Beat, Cops and Robbers Part 5

I suggest you refresh your memory with the middle of Beat’s saga here first to maintain the flow.

Beat had a head full of new facts and a major puzzle to solve. He sat down at his terminal and opened some security tools, hoping to get lucky. He started encoding and decoding the name “robber” every which way. To start, he tried text to hexadecimal code.

726f62626572

He saved that for later.

Next, he tried converting that hex string to binary.

011100100110111101100010011000100110010101110010

Still nothing popped out.

He tried a childishly simple ROT-13 replacement algorithm on robber.

eboore

Nothing was clicking. Nothing made sense. He intuitively just tried looking up the website domain for robber.com. Registration was private. He bypassed the privacy setting and found the website was registered to the following:

Bulletproof Manufacturing and Aerospace Corporation (BMAC)
6572 Mockingbird Blvd Suite F
Omaha, AR 72662

Now some numbers started lining up; he couldn’t believe his luck. Not only that but the abuse contact was even better:

For abuse complaints, contact: Edward Boore – eboore@robber.bmac.com

In a few easy keystrokes, almost too easy, as if someone left breadcrumbs intended to be collected, Beat was one step closer to solving the puzzle. He did another few lookups from some other security tools to gather information on the company and the domain. The corporate website was nothing out of the ordinary, but they weren’t a publicly traded company so no deep digging there. The bottom of the page contained the typical array of quick links. Contact Us, History, Help, FAQ, Demo and Return to Top.

He took a peek under the hood with the HTML inspector built into his browser and started reading through the code. Yet another fingerprint became apparent; a snippet of Javascript was attached to the Demo link. The URL didn’t make the typical call to an internal function of the site and it wasn’t some early HTML 1.0 link either. In fact, it was a total anomaly. It was an encrypted link function which triggered a decryption after the button was clicked to provide the accurate URL to the user’s web browser without revealing the actual site URL. It was split into three parts to further obscure what it would take as input and pass on to the server. Beat grabbed the code snippet and transferred it to his sandbox server. As he watched the server logs, he saw the Demo URL transformed to this string:

60rk2c9g60rk0c1h64r32c9h64r32c9g60r32c1g64rk0c1g64r30c9h60r32c1h60rk2c9g60rk0

More simple encryption. The repeating characters “rk” signified paired numbers or letters. Feeding that string into a Base32 decoder, there was the detonation:

011100100110111101100010011000100110010101110010

Converting that binary back into text: robber. Beat slammed his hand down on the desk and started gaining steam. Either he was misled into a honeypot, or he was right over the target. Going back to the original page, he clicked on Demo to see what would happen. Immediately, he got a connection refused error. Reloading more times, more connections refused. The easy part was starting to fade a tiny bit, but being an ASE, he was nowhere near running out of options. He launched PRISM, the global website penetration tool that had federally mandated backdoors built into all US-based websites. He entered the full URL for the Demo link into PRISM, and something curious happened next.

WARNING: PRISM ENHANCED MODE REQUIRED. ENTER PKI3 AUTHENTICATION TO CONTINUE.

Beat plugged his PKI3 card into the terminal and the dialog box on screen filled up with X’s in the blanks reserved for the password.

PRISM ENHANCED PKI3 BYPASS DETECTED. ELEVATING RIGHTS TO PRISM SILENT CIRCLE.

Beat paused. PRISM asked to elevate a single authorization level and somehow skipped to a mode that he didn’t even know existed. He then remembered having the same card in the Cerberus terminal. Did Cerberus modify the card? It was the only explanation, and he was hot on the trail of what Cerberus was after. PRISM then prompted him:

PRISM SILENT CIRCLE – WEBSITE DEMO ACCESS (Y/n)?

Again, Beat paused, feeling like he was at a point of no return. He hesitated to hit enter. This was about to take a hard left turn and he wanted to be prepared. He closed his eyes, leaned back in his chair and jammed his knuckles into his eyelids and twisted until he saw stars that quickly faded away. Cracking his knuckles, he took a deep breath and hit enter.

THANK YOU FOR USING PRISM SILENT CIRCLE. DEMO LOADING, PLEASE WAIT.

His terminal faded to a totally white screen, then to a black screen, then back to a gray screen somewhere in between. One by one, the letters from the PRISM prompt flew off the screen, in every direction, accompanied by old cartoon sound effects. Next, a black mask came into view with artificial glass eyes staring blankly towards Beat. No face, no body, just a bandit mask with 3d eyes.

He heard a voice coming from his speakers. “Welcome, PRISM SC user. I am Robert. I have stolen your letters as payment. What I steal next is up to you. Choose your desire:”

Another prompt came up on screen:

DO YOU DESIRE FAME, FORTUNE, OR POWER (Fa, Fo, Po)?

This was a game, and Beat wanted to bend the rules. He typed in MORE and hit enter.

YOU DESIRE MORE THAN FAME, FORTUNE AND POWER. IF THIS IS CORRECT, STANDBY FOR 5 SECONDS. TO ABORT, PRESS ANY KEY.

Beat simply waited.

MORE DATA IS REQUESTED. DO YOU HUNGER FOR KNOWLEDGE? (Y/n)

He hit enter again.

KNOWLEDGE TARGET NUMBER REQUIRED TO CONTINUE. TO LIST KT’S, ENTER L. OTHERWISE ENTER THE KT NUMBER.

More puzzles to solve. He hit L and started grinning ear to ear at the results.

KT TARGETS AVAILABLE:

  1. DENNIS – 6581
  2. CHARLES – 8580
  3. FRANKFORD – 68001
  4. NEWTON – A01
  5. CERBERUS – CRB3
  6. AGNES – ARM1
  7. BLACKWATER – DEEP-C
  8. COPERNICUS – COPER
  9. ROBBER – EBOORE8F

Beat’s mind went into fast forward mode wondering what he’d discover. These were all named AI and he was dying to know what this system knew about them. But he had to stay on track. 15 minutes remained. Beat hit 8, for Copernicus, and watched the output.

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Thee Unseen

Continued from the last Res snippet

The next morning, Res awoke with the gentle morning sunlight streaming in through her window for once. She stretched like a cat, yawned, got out of bed, got ready and headed to the office. As she arrived at her desk and logged into her terminal, she had a message waiting. It wasn’t any special priority but she opened it immediately. It was her manager, wanting to talk in his office “at her earliest convenience”. That was his way of saying now.

Res walked across the office floor to his office, peeked in and saw he wasn’t talking to anyone. She did the two knocks at the door frame, saw him nod, and entered his office, closing the door behind her. “So, how did the client call go yesterday? Everything lined up?”, he queried. “I’m not sure. The client seems pretty serious but I’d like to feel him out a little more before we commit to anything. I know, I know, growth is important, but you know how careful I am”, Res said. “Well, the client called this morning, the second I sat down at my desk, and wanted to speak to you again. When you’re ready for round two, say the word”, he said. Res thought for a moment. Why shouldn’t another ASE or even her manager do this round two interview stuff? But she was still curious from the previous day, and didn’t want to slide it across the table to someone else just yet. “I have some busy work to do this morning. If he can meet with me after lunch, I’ll be prepared”, Res said, buying time to line up some questions for the client. “Fair enough. I’ll let the client know you’ll contact him after lunch”, replied the manager. With that, Res cracked a smile and went back to her desk.

She opened a physical notepad she kept in the top drawer for client leads and thumbed through it, getting ideas for what sorts of things to ask the client on the next call. She absent-mindedly twirled the long side of her hair with her right hand, then a piece of crumpled up paper came flying over her workstation wall and skittered across her desk. She stood up and looked over at Sheepdog, who was already grinning ear to ear, not even trying to hide his guilt. “Do you need something”, Res said sarcastically, and Sheepdog replied, “Well, actually, I could use another pair of eyes on this weird stitch I’ve been reviewing. Got a few minutes?”

Res sauntered over to his desk and pulled up an extra chair, dropping his paper wad onto his desk as she rolled forward and looked at his main screen. “What are we looking at here?”, asked Res. Sheepdog began another one of his long-winded explanations, which was his trademark, but then got to the point. “Well, ok, so see this timestamp here? This is about 5 minutes before the…uhh…anomaly. I keep having different AI check it for missing frames or missing data but they all say it’s normal and complete. But see what happens when a few minutes go by, watch the car.” Sheepdog advanced the video a few minutes at a time, skipping dead spots. The scene was taken from a busy street corner, mainly high-resolution traffic cameras. Buses, cars, and people were going every which way, nothing unusual, but the car Sheepdog wanted to focus on was a Limousine. It pulled up to the corner, the driver got out, walked around to the passenger side, opened the door facing the sidewalk, and a man with a Bowler hat stepped out. He reached forward as if shaking hands with a familiar acquaintance, but nobody was there. Something was, because others on the sidewalk were splitting to walk around the Bowler man and “the nobody”. After a few moments, the Bowler man got back into the car, the driver walked back around to the driver’s side, and the car pulled away.

Res was starting to get the heebie-jeebies. “Is this all of the footage?”, she asked. “Yep. One of the linears passed this on to me and like I said, the stitch is confirmed complete. There’s no data missing”, Sheepdog said, “and I even asked the linear for more angles of this event. It was all redundant, the other cameras are showing the same thing from different vantage points.” Res replied, “Well, clearly, we’ve got faulty hardware”, and Sheepdog parried her reply with, “Nope, the linear ran a full hardware diagnostic on all those TIDE cameras. They’re practically brand new and checked out. Something else is happening here.”

“What’s the relevance of this guy in the limo to start with, are the linears getting bored?”, Res asked. Sheep said, “Well, I’ve seen it before, when the project was early. It was probably the same guy. Maybe this is testing footage for the linears, something obviously weird to get their attention, to make sure they are scrutinizing the feed. At the time I just assumed it was a glitch, but I always remembered it. This time the linear thought it was weird enough to open a case on it, at the risk of triggering a false positive, and I agreed it should have a case. To that end, we have already identified the man in the Bowler, and confirmed it with the license plate of that car. It’s a personal limo, belonging to Frank Schultz, of FS GMBh, a huge industrial manufacturer out of Germany. He’s shielded, we’ve worked for him for a long time.”

“Who is his dedicated AI? Don’t tell me it’s Strix, it would have sounded the alarm a long time ago when you first saw it. Beat told me how thorough Strix can be…”, mused Res. “It’s not Strix. It looks like—”, Sheepdog typed in a quick query, and they both read it aloud as the result came back. “Genesis?”