Tag: beat

Posted on

Wired (part four)

Beat powered up the monocular and panned his view around the room, testing it. He could see everything as clear as day in the dimly lit room, and the fireplace practically washed out the image before the circuits could compensate by dimming it. Another press of a button on the device and it switched to heat vision, with Jakob appearing in shades of yellow, red, and purple, indicating hotter parts of his face and body. Even the clear glass on the table was glowing a warm orange, with a purple, round ice cube melting in the whiskey.


The odd fabric appeared almost black, reflecting little, if any, heat. “I see you’ve found the thermal setting. I can see the colors reflecting in your glasses. Good. Leave that set, and watch the fabric.” Jakob attached two whisker-thin wires to the fabric, side by side, and placed his left hand under the fabric. He pressed a switch on the control blob and this time, not only did the surface shimmer and vanish, instantly this time, but so did his hand. “Is your left hand still under that?”, Beat asked. “Why of course. This is no common magic show.”, replied Jakob. Beat really couldn’t get his head around this one. He changed modes on the monocular, yet the fabric and Jakob’s hand were not visible, but they weren’t black either. They were the same color temperature as the table top. This was one step beyond optical camouflage. It was thermoptic camouflage. Optically invisible, and invisible on any light spectrum, including infrared. Beat was considering the nature of what he was witnessing. “Jakob, can you walk over and stand in front of the fireplace, and take the fabric with you?”, Beat asked. Jakob grinned, knowing that Beat was trying to test his invention. “Of course,” Jakob said, after getting up with a grunt and standing before the fireplace, as Beat moved to the couch, “how shall I hold it?”. “Place it over your face.”, replied Beat.


Jakob did as Beat asked, draping the fabric over his head, covering his face in the process. Again, he hit the button on the controller, and Jakob’s head disappeared, with flames from the fireplace where his head should be. Beat was only picking up bright yellows and whites from the flames, while looking right at Jakob’s head. It was amazing. He slowly sat the monocular on the table, never breaking eye contact with Jakob, in case the illusion would suddenly fall apart if he looked away. “Truly incredible,” Beat said, “but what do things look like from your side of the veil?”. Jakob replied, “what veil? I can see you clearly, well, as clearly as I can usually. “ “How many fingers am I holding up,” Beat asked. Jakob replied immediately, “four”.


Beat was well and truly awestruck. This seemed like alien technology, only the kind that humanity doesn’t ever need to know about. The odds of it being abused are guaranteed. This should not exist. “What was that, Beat?”, Jakob asked, powering off the device and removing the fabric from his head. “Did you say this shouldn’t exist?”


“Was I thinking out loud? Forgive me. I just don’t know what to think of this. The implications. My mind can’t manage all the possibilities. First, the optical camouflage, and now this seems light years beyond even that. It really is unbelievable; I have no other way to describe it.” Beat said, awestruck. “I don’t even know if I want to start asking how it works. I feel like I have seen a devil’s plaything.”
 
Jakob came back to the couch and sat next to Beat, as he rolled up the fabric and placed it back in his bag, along with the controller. “Indeed,” Jakob said, “it is a double-edged sword. To me, it was curiosity at the highest imaginable level. I never asked if I should have created this. I asked how I could. The pursuit of that answer absolutely consumed me. During early development, nothing worked more than once. This would die, or that would burn up, or the fabric had imperfections. One night, I had a dream, and the answer came to me in that dream, although… the dream was more of a nightmare. I was being chased, by something, and it got close enough that I could feel the hot breath on my neck before I woke up, drenched in sweat. Seconds before waking up, in my dream, I stopped and turned, and the thing chasing me passed through me, like a spirit. The whole ordeal made me rethink the solution.” Jakob gently coughed, and took the last big sip of his whiskey. He then continued.


“Spirit. The idea stuck like glue. What do we know of spirits? They were once in this world, exited, and returned in some form. The problem was dimensional. If they presumably exist in a parallel dimension, crossing over into ours, can we also cross into theirs, however briefly? Ultimately, the answer became yes, and how the tech really works. My head didn’t vanish beneath the fabric. My head…was shifting rapidly between dimensions. That’s why there was no heat signature.”


Again, Beat was having a hard time taking it all in. Now Jakob was telling him about nightmares, spirits, and other dimensions? The proof was all there. Even if Jakob was making up stories about how the tech worked, there was no denying that it absolutely did work, even when faced with mild scrutiny. No smoke and mirrors. The real deal. Even if Jakob had gamed the test by handing Beat a customized monocular, Beat’s own eyes didn’t lie, and he didn’t think such a demonstration, just for him, would have been a prank. It was, for all intents and purposes, black magic, and it gave him the creeps even knowing it existed.


“Jakob, do you believe in possession,” Beat asked, “because this all sounds like madness, but the proof is indisputable. You did this all, alone?”. Jakob’s tone darkened somewhat. “What are you implying, Beat, that a demon flew into my ear one day and told me the answers? That I made a devil’s bargain to realize my dreams? Ridiculous.”, he replied.


Beat said, slowly, “but is it so ridiculous? We have all heard about divine intervention, but what about demonic intervention? You were at a turning point during development, then after this nightmare of yours, it all seemed to work out. You suddenly had inspiration, a new approach, and like magic, you did it.”. “I’m not sure I like your tone, Beat. Is it really so ominous, to create something like this?”, Jakob asked. “In the hands of the right people, it could save countless lives. It could bring joy and magic back to this world. I had the best intentions…yet…I was not blind to what the world would do with this. Why do you think I kept it a secret for so long?”


Beat lit another match for his cigar, and puffed it back to life, as Jakob sat quietly and stared into the fireplace. He was deep in thought. Yes, it was dangerous, but it could be incredibly useful, like any other tool. It was also magnitudes more dangerous if misused. It must remain secret, if it must exist. Not even Splicer could know. Beat looked up from his cigar, directly at Jakob and said, “I want in.” Jakob raised his eyebrows, lowered them, grinned, and nodded his head yes.

Posted on

Wired (part three)

The fabric slowly began to fade away, as the surface briefly reflected the flaming fireplace. It was transforming and shifting light from any angle, shimmering and vanishing. Seconds felt like minutes, and Beat couldn’t believe what he was witnessing. This was actual, real, optical camouflage fabric, which could have been woven into anything. The longer he stared the less he saw, to the point that he even forgot Jakob’s whiskey glass hidden beneath the fabric. It was utterly and truly invisible by this point, obscuring anything beneath it and in direct contact with it. All he saw was the top of the table and nothing more.

“Blyat,” Beat uttered. He couldn’t find the words to express his disbelief. Jakob had actually done it, and he had kept it all to himself. Not a single other person on earth knew about this. They couldn’t. Beat gazed upon true danger, and yet, there was nothing to see.

Jakob was grinning ear to ear. He knew the magnitude of what Beat was witnessing. He only wished he could witness his success all over again, without any of the pressure. “And now, for my next trick,” Jakob whispered, as he removed the silken connectors from the fabric, “behold.” He placed one strand on his left sleeve, and another on the right. From the neck down, Jakob disappeared. Beat instinctively lunged for Jakob, trying to catch his floating head, knocking over his own bourbon glass in the process. As the glass rolled behind him across the floor, Beat stopped short of actually grabbing Jakob, as his rational mind caught up with reality. Jakob laughed to the point of a short coughing fit, and as the tears streamed down his cheeks, he belted out, “I got you, Beat! I got you good. You should have seen yourself. The only thing wrong here is the material, and maybe the battery life, but a change here and there…” The fabric across the table faded back into view and so did Jakob’s jacket shortly afterwards. Ta da, indeed. It was quite the magic trick.

Beat stammered, “how could you keep such a secret for so long, across 3 wives, surely someone would have mentioned it to someone else at some point in the past.” Jakob replied, “That was the easy part. What does it look like, powered off? Any old piece of fabric. I could have left this lying around the house for years and who would know different? I never made it a big deal, so it never became anything uncommon. It also happens to be fairly unbelievable, and I hadn’t really perfected it until after my 3rd wife passed. That left me with a lot of time, and a lot of privacy.” Beat nodded his head slowly, soaking in the clever genius before him. This still left him with a nagging sense of doubt. If this was the only man in the world that created this technology, and nobody was any wiser, was Jakob the invisible man? Was he meeting with the Bowler Man in the footage? Something felt off.


Jakob placed the fabric back in his briefcase, took another sip out of his glass, then retrieved another item from the bag. “This, I believe, is the pinnacle of my work,” Jakob said, as he unrolled another sheet of fabric. This fabric seemed different; it had a very geometric texture on the surface, like millions of triangles, edge to edge. “Relax, Beat, this one needs electricity, but not much. You’ve already made your blood sacrifice,” he teased, as he retrieved a different control blob from his bag. This one was greenish-white, similar in color to glow-in-the-dark plastic; long and cylindrical, with two obvious buttons on top. “Do you happen to own a monocular with night vision? Eh, never mind, I brought mine. Here, take it,” Jakob said, as he handed the device to Beat.

Posted on

Wired (part two)

Jakob replied, “To put it simply, yes. On a small scale, it could have been a very useful technology. Everything from children’s toys, to magicians, even for aesthetic purposes like hiding an unsightly gate on the path leading up to a country estate. The applications were nearly limitless. Who doesn’t want something to disappear, at some point? Although, as my work progressed further from theory and closer to prototyping, I noticed a sea of benefactors forming on one side, and adversaries on another. The pressure was building. Warhawks were lining up, taking notes for soldier augmentations and vehicles. With them, came the defense contractors, tempting me with lucrative deals of fame and fortune. All of them, harpies, singing me onto the rocks.” Jakob took a deep breath and sighed before adding, “I am a simple man of simple tastes. I have dedicated my life to science and engineering, and it has treated me well. However, I could not bear the weight of completing my research on the subject. Our government couldn’t adequately protect me from an enemy, if one were to infiltrate my circles, so I tore it all down. That ended my career. As you know, the same men who came to me with dreams of treasure, instantly blacklisted me afterwards.” Jakob and Beat spent a few quiet seconds listening to the fireplace crackle, as Beat lit his cigar with a wooden match. “Forgive my rudeness, Jakob. I have not offered you a drink, as I sit here and enjoy this bourbon. Would you like something?”, Beat asked. Jakob, lost somewhere in the hypnotic flames flickering before him, took a moment to speak up. “I shouldn’t. But in these years, and in your company, I feel obligated. I’d like some whiskey, on the rocks. Just enough to wet my teeth. Funny how something as fundamental as spit in your own mouth recedes with age.”
 
Beat stood up and made his way over to a crystal decanter and some sparkling crystal glasses, finely cut with a row of diamonds around the circumference of the middle of the glass. He placed a large ball of ice directly in the glass and covered it with a few fingers of whiskey. “Not too much,” Jakob reminded him as he poured. Beat chuckled and walked back to Jakob, bending slightly at the waist to meet Jakob’s trembling hand with the drink. “Thank you,” Jakob said, as he carefully took a sip and paused to enjoy the vapors on his tongue. “This is a very good whiskey; my mouth is watering for the next drink. Extraordinary”, he said as he took another sip, a little longer this time, really savoring the flavor. Beat chuckled again, and chimed in. “I’m glad you appreciate it,” Beat said, before working on his bourbon glass a little himself. This amused Jakob, who was already beginning to relax. Beat didn’t have an angle here. He wasn’t trying to get the man drunk to pry his secrets out of him. It wasn’t that kind of friendship. There was a mutual respect between them. Slowly, deliberately, Jakob examined the glass as he turned it in his hand, held up to the fire light. He was considering something.
“Beat, on a scale of one to ten, how easily can we discuss private things, here?”, Jakob asked. Beat knew what was coming next. The worst part about holding on to old secrets was the ceaseless desire to share them with someone you really knew and trusted. Beat had worked under Jakob before; he had never known Jakob as a young man, but as possibly the smartest man he had ever met regardless of age. He caught on to the suggestion. “Jakob, old friend, the devil couldn’t hear you in my home. I have taken so many precautions. This place is a ten out of ten, maybe an eleven. Considering the nature of my work, you can see why.”

This was enough for Jakob; he trusted Beat and if Beat said it was private, there was no doubt. “I would expect nothing less of an investigator. Perhaps now we can discuss the solution,” Jakob said as he laid his half-empty glass on a coaster before reaching down to his briefcase. He produced a rolled-up cylinder of fabric from the bag, along with a small handheld device that was black and shapeless. He unrolled the cylinder flat across the table, and extended two silky strands from the device, attaching a strand to each edge of the fabric. One on the far left corner, the other on the far right. Beat watched the process with breathless anticipation. Jakob spoke up. “The culmination of all my work, all worlds combined. But I need a power source to complete the magic trick. A drop of blood will do.” “A drop of blood?”, Beat asked incredulously. “Yes. I have a tool for such a task that retracts into the control lump. Lend me your thumb”, replied Jakob. He moved a hidden switch on the shapeless lump, revealing a sharp, short triangle, with a small ring around its base to collect the ‘energy’. Beat complied, pressing his thumb onto the sharp pyramid hard enough to break the skin, supplying a few drops before the mechanism snapped shut, so as not to leak any blood. “Good, that should do”, Jakob said, before flipping another hidden switch on the lump, revealing another mechanism. A singular, pitch black button. Featureless and unremarkable. As Jakob pressed the button, he let out a quiet ta-da, to match the magic unfolding.

Posted on

Wired (part one)

Infinite Beat was back at his home office desk, rolling a fat Cuban cigar between his thumb and index finger, checking it for defects. He carefully considered the texture, the grain, and ran the length of it under his nose for a good whiff. Quality. Maybe even perfection. These days, they weren’t hard to come by; many things changed after the war. But this was a pre-war cigar, one he had stashed away for years. Beat had been saving it for a special occasion, and that occasion was today.

There was a gentle knock at his door. He was expecting company. Rising to cross the threshold, he sat a glass of bourbon next to the ashtray as he proceeded to the door. He paused momentarily as he looked up at the orthodox cross above the door frame. It’s time, he muttered under his breath, as he unlocked and opened the door. There, standing barely over 5 feet tall, was a frail-looking, bent man with coke bottle glasses, a pocket watch, a wide smile, and a beat-up leather briefcase in his left hand. He silently shuffled through the doorway and into Beat’s cottage. “Sit anywhere you’d like, old friend. I’ll follow you,” Beat said, as the old man picked out a comfortable-looking spot near the fireplace, which was already lit. Light from the flames danced across the wall as Beat cast a shadow, sitting between the fireplace and the octogenarian. “I’m glad you could make it. I don’t imagine you get out much these days,” began Beat, “it’s good to see you.” The man smiled, cleared his throat briefly, and spoke up. “It’s no trouble. They all thought I’d be dead by now, or died years ago, like a forgotten celebrity that goes into seclusion. But you know… somehow, I keep on going. Maybe through spite, maybe unfinished business. No man chooses to leave the stage before his scene ends, and my scene continues. Nobody, including myself, expected me to outlive 3 wives.”

Beat eyed the old man intently before taking another sip of the bourbon and setting it down quietly. “Listen to me, pontificating like any other old fool. You asked me to come discuss a problem, not wax poetic about one’s twilight years,” the old man said, before clearing his throat again. It was clear that he wasn’t long for this world, but some fire burned behind his eyes, borne from the spark of genius. Beat was face to face with the man that was believed to have cracked the code that unlocked biogenic power sources. He may also have found a way to integrate nanomachines with living tissue, feeding on fractions of energy from cellular mitochondria. All this invention, this discovery, and yet, he refused to use any of it himself.

Beat leaned back a little and crossed his legs as he began his unavoidably long question. “The problem. Yes. It is more of a working theory at this point, and my understanding is that, at one point in your life, you had worked with very similar concepts. However, rumor had it, you stopped short of the goal and never created the prototype. Nobody knew why, and you have always been avoidant on the topic, refusing to elaborate further after destroying your documentation on the subject. Volumes. You were the foremost expert on…” when Beat was suddenly interrupted by Jakob.
 
“Optical camouflage. Yes. I did study it, mostly on a blackboard. Lots of equations, scribblings trying to mimic the secrets of nature. But I did stop short. Not for the reasons most would expect”, Jakob replied before removing his glasses to clean the lenses with a carefully folded handkerchief from his jacket pocket. He continued. “You see, our history on this planet has been spent essentially reverse engineering what nature has already done well. Nuclear energy, not much different than our own sun. Centuries are filled with these things, millions of man-hours poured into some of them. Each time, man was convinced that there was a problem to solve, and the solutions were waiting to be discovered, created, implemented. War. Farming. Industry. Always a means to an end. Although, occasionally, man has been so eager to solve the problem, he didn’t stop to think if he should.”
Beat had another sip of bourbon before his reply. “Da, the contradiction of science. Just because we can doesn’t mean we should. Countless examples, truly. Bioweapons, advanced warfare, terrifying weaponry that could poison humanity for millennia. Tonight, we are discussing evasion. What man hid in the shadows that could roam freely in the light? It wouldn’t be necessary. To what ends, for what purpose…in those answers, the concerns lie. Was this an issue during your research, Jakob?”

Posted on

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.