Tag: draft

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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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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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No Mistakes (continued) plus a bonus

Rex was a master at this craft, of drawing someone in and having them willingly spill the beans and go along with his plans. He never thought of himself as charismatic, but he could be very persuasive, pulling strings someone didn’t know they had. Frank was absolutely willing, there was no doubt. He was just as enthralled with these ideas as Rex himself. “What do you propose then, for this testing? Did you bring a revolver? How about a very sharp knife?”, Frank asked, grinning deviously. “Nothing of the sort”, said Rex, as he approached the prestige of this magic act. “I don’t want to test the physical security. I want to test the financial security.” Frank suddenly looked puzzled, and replied, “My financial security? I hadn’t considered it. One moment, if you’ll excuse me.”

Frank presented his secure comms device linked to Splicer, and pressed the only button on the surface, before bringing it up to his ear. “Hello. Yes, this is Frank. Good evening. No, nothing is wrong. I don’t mean to trip any alarms; I simply have a question. Under the terms of my contract, am I protected financially as well as physically? Yes. It is a tricky question. You’re not… I see. Well, if you could have someone contact me with more clarity and a definitive answer, I would very much appreciate it. Goodbye.” Frank turned to Rex and said, “this is becoming very interesting. They don’t know, or at least the All-Seeing Eye didn’t know. He said he didn’t know what that would look like or how it would be implemented, but he will pass it upstairs. I suspect they will have an answer for me soon.”

Bonus: Beat The Market snippet

Moments after Frank’s call, Beat made a call of his own, because he sure as hell didn’t know how this was supposed to go and couldn’t be saddled with disappointing a very early adopter. In some people’s estimations, Frank was almost single-handedly responsible for at least 5 people signing contracts in the early years. He’s the kind of customer everyone needs, an evangelist with a big mouth.

Beat’s director picked up right away, expecting some degree of urgency, especially since it was after hours. “Ted, this is Beat”, came the voice on the line, “not an emergency, but kind of a big concern. I just got off a secure comms call with Frank. Do you wanna wait til tomorrow or do you have time?” “We should make time, Beat. You know how long Frank has been with us. He’s the closest thing we have to a VIP. What’s going on?”, the director replied. “Well Frank had a question I couldn’t answer, so I wanted to defer to someone who may know more or be willing to say no, if the answer is no. I’ll get to the point. Frank asked if the Splicer program provided him financial security as well, and mentioned his contract”, said Beat. The director was quiet for a moment, and Beat could hear the faint sound of him rubbing the light scruff he’d have on his chin by this time. Probably mulling it over. “I suppose”, the director began, “we could always say yes and figure it out later, unless he wants details. You know what, he will want details. Run it by the AI teams and see if it adds up. I want to be able to explain it. Call me back in ten minutes and we’ll come up with a plan.”

Great, Beat the errand boy, running around gathering answers for the director. Could be worse, Beat thought, as he started messaging the heads of the AI teams to scratch a quick call together. In five minutes, he had 3 of the leads available and joining a call together. He ran the question across the leads and pretty much stumped all of them instantly. One of them, Terry, eagerly spoke up. “You know what? It just might be possible, but only for this customer…”

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No Mistakes

Rex Tarkington rarely made mistakes and was always on the lookout for new angles to exploit in any given situation. However, his genius didn’t extend far into the business side of things. During the development of TIDE, he paid a higher-than-expected price for the developers. Despite his nest egg that granted his early retirement, a lot of it was tied up in things that paid dividends. He needed more liquidity, and liquidizing his assets would have a pretty negative impact on his retirement plan. So, he needed to take out a very quiet multimillion-dollar loan, from a less-than-reputable group of individuals. A risky prospect, and he wasn’t protected enough to avoid consequences associated with late or missing payments. He drummed his fingers on the surface of his minimalist, mid-century modern Danish desk, wondering who he could get in touch with to work out a mitigation plan. There could be no mistakes, it had to be airtight. He took out his comms device and scrolled through his contacts, pondering who might be trustworthy enough to talk to about his problem, discreet enough to keep it between them. Charles, nope. Diana, absolutely not. Mike, he probably wouldn’t know.

Suddenly, he had an epiphany. Why not a big buyer he had dealt with in the past? Filtering his contacts for business people, he tried the first person that fit the description. Tony Almeda, of Firestone Systems. The line rang a few times, before a woman answered on the other end. “Firestone Systems, this is Andrea.” “Hi Andrea,” he began, “this is Rex, I’m an old acquaintance of Tony’s. Is he available?” “Sorry Rex, Tony is on a flight to Belgium for the Security Forum presentation. Did you want to call him directly or leave a message?” “Ahhh…neither. I’ll try him again another time. Thanks Andrea.” Strike one, but Rex wasn’t easily discouraged. He tried the next person, nearly the same result. He started to feel like he was the least busy guy he knew, which wasn’t unusual by this point. Not everyone retires at 27 and gets to do anything they want at 2 o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon. The situation was one of his few regrets of this life he chose.

Third time is the charm, as they say, and sure enough, Rex made contact with the next individual. The call rang maybe twice before he was greeted with a loud, jolly man on the other end. “Rex! To what do I owe the honor? We haven’t spoken in years!”, the voice bellowed. “Well Frank, I’d love to say I just wanted to catch up and reminisce about good times, but unfortunately, my call is a little more pointed than that. I have a problem and I figured you could help me solve it, if you have the time and patience available.” “Oh, you need my help? I remember you being the one with all the solutions. This must be a very special problem, indeed. I must know more, if I’m able to be of any assistance”, Frank replied. Rex twirled a pencil with his right hand and he knew, intuitively, Frank would be useful. “We should meet somewhere, preferably private, and quiet, so I can fill you in on the details. I doubt we can solve it in one sitting, so I would really appreciate it if you would entertain the idea of meeting regularly until we have it all figured out”, Rex said. Frank, already hooked like an earthworm, excitedly replied, “Now I am very intrigued. We must meet at once. Let’s do dinner, tonight, at Lamont’s. We can get privacy there. After all, I own the place!” Frank laughed at his own joke as Rex chuckled lightly and replied, “I know where that is. I’ll see you there at 7pm. Bring your thinking cap, and I’ll bring an appetite.” Just like that, Rex was working another angle, hoping that his luck would hold out. So far, so good.

Rex arrived at Lamont’s early to get a feel for the place first. It turned out to be a waste of time, because as Frank arrived in his limousine, he rolled the window down halfway and motioned for Rex to get in. Rex obliged and climbed into the well-appointed cabin, surrounded by pillowed leather from every angle, and a fiberoptic night sky embedded in the headliner. Fancy. Frank instructed the driver to pull away and take them for a ride. Frank greeted Rex with a toothy grin and immediately apologized. “I’m sorry, Rex, if you were looking forward to a meal, but upon further consideration of our call, I didn’t think the restaurant would be private enough. Some sort of convention is in town and the place is full of strangers. I think I recall you being very particular with your surroundings.” “I appreciate the consideration Frank,” Rex said, “and yes, it was a good call. A crowded, bustling environment is not what I had in mind.” “Perfect. It’s good to see you again! Looks like early retirement is treating you quite well; I swear I age 2 years each quarter, but you haven’t changed a bit. What have you been doing to stay busy?”, Frank asked. “Well,” Rex hesitated a bit, “I have been busy, maybe too busy. You could say I’ve gotten out over my skis, but only financially. Before you ask, no, I’m not asking you for a dime. I wanted to discuss what sort of options someone running short on funding for a special project might have, outside the normal methods.” Frank nodded as he pressed the switch for the interior divider window to raise up, isolating them from the driver. “It doesn’t seem like an unusual situation. Many projects go over budget. But it sounds like your funding source is your main concern. You mentioned going outside the normal methods, which we have all done on rare occasions during the course of business. Don’t tell me you’ve borrowed from some individuals who may call their organization ‘Our Thing’. Are you in trouble?”, Frank asked.

“No, not yet. I’m covering bases so far, carefully plotting the route for this thing. Part of covering bases is my own personal security. These, ah, ‘venture capitalists’ are known for their complete lack of tolerance when it comes to repayment. It won’t be fought in a courtroom if I slip up. Not that I will slip up, but I wanted to talk to someone that may have the extra layer of physical security I’m lacking. Before I go diving with these sharks, I may need some armor,” Rex replied. Frank squinted his eyes and peered at Rex over the top of his glasses. He then said, “I see, I see. Armor, like this?” Frank rolled his right hand over so that the palm was facing upward, and there it was. A Splicer ‘Angel’ tattoo. Everyone knew what this meant, whether he was in the boardroom or in public. Frank had as much protection as anyone could buy, and not just anyone. “That is exactly what I wanted to discuss, Frank. We’ve been pitched. We know the promises. But who actually knows how it works, the nuts and bolts of it, the people and tech behind the scenes? That’s the part they didn’t sell me on. Proprietary, top secret, blah blah blah.”

“I know, maybe, a little more than I should. Like you, I am inquisitive; a thinking man. After using the service for a few years, I have noticed some patterns that may be of interest to you”, Frank said. He continued, “I have my own AI, assigned years ago, when the project was young. It knows everything about me. Where I go, what I do, and usually, who I am sharing space with in public. Total surveillance. It sounds like a fantasy sometimes, but I have devised some tests for the system, which it has never failed. I couldn’t get hurt if I tried, it is that good. Show me any dark alley in this city and I will happily walk alone, because I know I am never alone.”

“That’s one of the main things I wanted to learn about,” Rex began, “because I think it could serve you, us, in ways nobody has considered yet. I’m glad you’ve tested it and found that it works as designed. You are essentially untouchable, and therefore quite free, despite your status. I have an idea for my own tests, if you’ll consider them.”

continued in part two

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The Client Calls Again (finale)

His gaze wasn’t lost on the vets around the table, who didn’t hesitate to rib him with howls of “woooOOOoo! Dec got himself a little partner here!” Dec briefly flashed a guilty grin before waving the waitress over for another drink. He wasn’t sure what to make of Res, but so far, he was warming up to whatever she was all about. Didn’t hurt that she was easy on the eyes, with a perfect athletic figure, glimmering hazel eyes, and a natural look that didn’t require a pound of makeup. She seemed honest. He’d have to be extra careful dealing with her.

As Res slid into her spot, she noticed Sheepdog had finished his shot, finally, and their manager had returned from the jukebox. The ambience was just perfect, as the first song he chose to play was Pink Floyd’s “Money”, a song nobody disliked. As the intro started with the cash register loops and coins jingling, Res leaned over to her manager and said, “It’s time for round two! Sheepdog over here managed to nurse his first shot down already. You good Sheep?”

Sheepdog, maybe a little buzzed, raised his right fist in the air and hollered, “yeah baby, let’s go!” K glanced sideways at this outburst and, as if on cue, was there with another tray of shots for the group. This happened a few more times before the group decided to call it quits and head home. The manager closed his tab on the corporate card without even glancing at the receipt, simply signing off and thumbprinting the card reader.

“Hey, you dropped something,” Sheepdog said as a folded scrap of paper fell to the ground at their feet. The manager didn’t hear him as the jukebox swelled, but Res did, and swiped at the neatly folded paper.

It was origami, a fox, carefully folded from slips of receipt paper. A towering presence and a few other people passed by behind them on the way to the front door. It could have been one of them and not necessarily from K, she thought. Res stashed the fox in her jacket and followed her group out the door, her head swimming in liquor and the electric breeze of an incoming storm tussling her hair. She felt absolutely ecstatic, and didn’t want the night to end this early, but felt a tinge of loneliness in her present company. Sheepdog followed Res a short distance before stating, loudly, “Res, I hope you have a decent couch. I am ready to face plant without even taking off my shoes, three sheets baby! Three sheets to the wind, arrr.” Res backed up next to Sheepdog as he wobbled forward unsteadily, reached around and slapped him on the opposite shoulder, saying, “I got you covered, ‘sheep. Mi coucha es su coucha tonight.” Sheepdog grinned ear to ear, his eyes barely open at this point, and leaned into Res as they walked the few short blocks back to her home.

As Res entered her place, she nudged Sheepdog forward, motioned down the hall to the right, and said “bathroom is back there, for guests. If you make a mess, don’t worry, just let me know. I always use the master bath and the cleaning lady doesn’t look in there often.” Sheepdog plopped down on the couch, eyes closed, and tipped over into an uncomfortable position, totally passed out. Res brought him a little pillow and draped a thin blanket over him for good measure, before reaching in her jacket, retrieving the origami fox, and placing it carefully on the kitchen table next to Dec’s napkin. Double checking on Sheepdog, who appeared to be in a coma by now, unmoving, she pivoted on her heels, marched into her bedroom, and unceremoniously flopped down on her side, waiting to fade out. She was still restless.

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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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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?”