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And now for something completely different.

Angelic avoidance

Since Beat’s detective story is so detailed and heavy duty, I think it’s time to fast forward to another chapter to give you (the reader) a break. Hope you enjoy this brief respite before diving back in.

From the chapter tentatively titled, Resonant Frequency’s Ghouls.

It was another rain-slicked night under the neon in the city. Sometimes, Res thought this town was made out of clichés. She was sure that someone had good intentions once upon a time, a long time ago, but judging by the current aesthetic of her surroundings, those good intentions had been layered over with papier mâché or plastic, with every surface obnoxiously bleeding advertisements of all kinds. Despite the typically wet weather, tourist groups in busses passed by, wearing VR glasses and marveling at what the city once was and the history it lived through to get to what it is now. Growing up here, Res never viewed it as a tourist. She’d seen all the statues, the post-modernist red sculptures in corporate squares, and a few landmarks from the city’s glory days, when entertainment required space to view and much more space to create. It didn’t surprise anyone that a city which revolved around creating and selling fantasy, eventually became a cliché-filled parody of itself.

Res nearly stepped off into a deep puddle with a rainbow-colored surface as she walked to the bar. She was distractedly deep in thought about a recent meeting with a potential client. The client insisted they meet via commlink which provided security, audio, and video, but the artificiality of it all meant the client could be anyone or no-one at all and gave no clues about their location.

People used all manner of tactics during these types of meetings to hide their identity. Voice changers, high resolution backgrounds, video feeds of hired actors or AI-generated people who never existed. It was never 100% real, on either end of the call. Res herself preferred to appear as one of her favorite video game characters, only made to look more human, and it was such an old throwback from a 2020’s video game, very few ever spotted the reference. This client did, and complimented her on her choice. To Res, that immediately dated the client, in their 40’s at the very least. But that was the only clue she felt confident identifying. Everything else about the client was a black hole. Still thinking too hard, she bumped shoulders with a patron leaving the bar as she walked in. She mumbled a quick “sorry” and found a spot at the end of the bar, where the bartender expected her to be.

“The usual?”, he asked, as Res slung her wet jacket over a hook under the bar in front of her seat. “Sure”, Res replied, and got a shot of Jack Daniels with a beer chaser before she could get situated. He must have seen her coming in and had it ready. That’s what you call your home bar, and being a regular comes with those sorts of privileges, in the right places. Res was pretty sure the bartender’s name was Kirk, or Keith, but she wasn’t great with names, even after coming to the bar for the better part of 5 years. To be tricky, she just called him K and spared herself the embarrassment. K looked her over for a moment and asked, “something on your mind? You’re looking distant tonight.” “Yeah. Work”, she replied, and he met her with an understanding smile as if to say, you don’t have to go into it. Res downed the shot and followed it with a mouthful of Red Stripe beer. She liked to unwind and slowly drain the bottle until she loosened up a little before getting seconds.

 Looking around the room, it appeared to be full of locals. Cliques that were easily identified by their conformity to one style or another. In one corner, she saw the WW3 vets, usually wearing old fatigues with high and tight buzz cuts, and visible scars worth a story. Nice guys for the most part, as if they’d already had their share of fights so only the good stuff was left. Further down the bar she saw a group of Moderns, with their shaved heads, glowing fingernails, and designer skintight clothing, each outfit built specifically for each person from a single designer in the middle of the country somewhere. They mainly kept to themselves and stuck to Smart Drinks, microdosing psychedelics to keep them sharp. Next to the Moderns were the Luddites, a group that intentionally rejected technology and were the polar opposites of the Moderns, not a single cell phone or set of VR glasses among them. They were just chatting quietly to themselves and deliberately, intentionally, sipping aged whiskey.

Over at the pool tables near the jukebox were some younger people she didn’t recognize, wearing custom slogan shirts. One man’s shirt read “Who is Genesis 15?”, and it was animated to fade to white, then paint itself as if a black paintbrush was inking it one letter at a time. Animated shirts were extremely popular with that age group and they regularly traded animation patterns with each other based on pop culture, memes, recent news or whatever else they found funny or relevant. They were all products of their own online culture and many of the designs were inside jokes, adding to the cool factor.

Res took another slug of beer after cataloguing the room. She was comfortable here, and didn’t stand out in any particular way, other than being essentially unaffiliated with these groups. She knew a person here and there from each group and they’d chat from time to time, but they always approached her wanting to talk. As she relaxed into her barstool, her mind drifted back to the client meeting. She was mulling it over, trying to identify anything else from the call. It was her nature, and part of what made her good at her job as an ASE. The client had told her all the standard things from people who want to be Shielded. “I have a valuable life, and privacy and secrecy are paramount to my existence. I have made enemies thanks to my decisions, and some of them want me out of the picture. I’m not paranoid, I am hyper-aware.” Knowing what Res knew about the DAA’s in the past, it was most likely true, but something sounded like it was worded awkwardly. The client continued, “I seek your company’s services not out of desperation, but out of a need to remain safe. I have seen the invisible, and I think it’s a threat”. That last sentence… what could the client be hinting at? A lot of things are invisible, like the air, but a stiff breeze blowing leaves down the sidewalk makes it visible. Did the client actually witness something outside normal perception, or was it just a clunky metaphor for finding out something they weren’t supposed to know?

She didn’t put much more thought into it. She was here to relax, and by the time she raised 2 fingers, K was setting down another shot and another beer. Suddenly, from behind, someone grabbed her left elbow just above the joint. He leaned in close and whispered in a deep, gravelly voice, “don’t panic. No sudden moves. Come with me, we need to talk.” She was startled, but as he let go and headed towards the corner with the WW3 vets, she downed the shot, casually patted her hip to make sure her self-defense was in place, and followed him. He was much taller than Res and cleared a path through the room past the vets and into a short hallway leading to the bathrooms. It was a little quieter there than the din of music and conversation in the rest of the bar.

“This the way you pick up girls, stranger? Does it ever work?”, she teased, trying to hide her nervousness. “Dunno, never tried to apply it that way. I’m supposed to deliver a message, and I’ll make it quick.” “Well, I’m here and I’m listening”, she replied. He continued, “I’m Dec, and I’ve been trying to find you on behalf of a certain someone who can’t be here to tell you himself. So, listen very carefully. You are about to stumble across a ghost. When you do, ignore it. It will save everyone a lot of time and trouble. There are things that are above your pay grade, and mine.” Dec paused for a moment as someone exited the bathroom, then went on. “I have a pretty good idea of what you do. But what you do is not the top of the pyramid. There are others above”, he said as he pointed upwards, towards one of the many cameras. That’s when Res caught one interesting detail. On that same hand, Dec was wearing a flat-topped ring with an insignia stamped into the surface. A triangle with an eye suspended in the middle. He then said, “I apologize for startling you, but I find it very effective in getting people’s attention. Hope I didn’t leave a mark. And remember, leave the ghosts alone. Don’t get too curious.”

Dec turned and walked back into the bar, as Res ducked into the bathroom to relieve some liquor and beer. By the time she was done, she went back to her spot at the bar and Dec was gone. Hastily scribbled on a napkin under her beer was a name and number. Dec. 101-338-0FDA. No note, nothing else, and she had no idea what the hell he was talking about. Ghosts? Like, actual ethereal ghouls that haunt old buildings, or a metaphor? Just who the hell was that guy, and why does he think he knows so much? His ring hinted at the Splicer organization, but as far as she knew, they didn’t have goons walking around scaring people with crab-claw elbow grabs and vague warnings.

Two more fingers up, and K was right there with another shot. “You ever see that guy before”, she asked. “What guy?”, asked K. “The guy that left this number on this napkin. And who uses hexadecimal code in a phone number? 0FDA?” “Sorry hon, I must have missed him. Busy night tonight, some thirsty strangers here along with you locals. Is something wrong?”, he replied. “Not sure”, Res said, “this has just been a weird day I guess.” She looked at the napkin again before stashing it in her purse. She finished most of her beer, got her tab squared away, and headed out into the rainy streets to go home, nervously glancing at the shadows as if someone was hiding, waiting for her to walk past for another ambush. She made it home safely in a few minutes, and moments after entering her high-rise apartment unit, she tossed her wet jacket on the rack, her keys on the kitchen table, and carefully unfolded the napkin and left it there too, face up, as if she would forget. She ran a hot bath, soaked for a while, and crashed out for the night. No ghosts yet.

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Beat, Cops and Robbers, Part 4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Beat, Cops and Robbers, Part 3

Today, he was really crunching the data. On his way to the elevator, he messaged Cop to create a quick timeline stitch video including the bad actors, the bomb, a short list of purchases related to the bomb construction, location data mapped as pins on a board that would advance with the timeline, and finally, one last order: “All clear”, which told Cop to basically tell him all the real names for everything in the stitched video narration. He didn’t want that layer of codenames slathered over every person, vehicle, venue, cat, dog and mother-in-law along with the usually mandatory facial blurring for involved persons or anonymous background faces. “Beat, please confirm the all clear order prior to decryption of data. This is a customary precaution”, Cop replied, and Beat’s knee jerk reaction was to make a smartass comment but he was too deep in thought to say anything except “All clear confirmed. Infinite Beat, ASE 3 requested”. “Thank you Beat, stitch will be supplied all clear and securely erased after you release the file from viewing”, Copernicus replied, almost in a sing-song tone.

Beat reached the elevator to B15, which had anticipated his arrival through proximity sensors communicating with his ID badge, and would normally be opening the doors as he stepped within 6 feet but this time the door was closed, and as it opened, two other ASE’s appeared in the elevator, splitting to opposite sides. “Going down boys?”, Beat asked as he hit the B15 button. “Sure. We both need to talk to the top dog down there.” Beat assumed this meant Cerberus, and it was a strange coincidence that 3 different ASE’s would all be headed to B15 at nearly the exact same time. As the door closed and the elevator pressurized for the nearly instant 15 floor drop, Beat once again felt some idea scratching at the back of his mind. It was doubt but he couldn’t put his finger on what he doubted, or why he even doubted Copernicus in the first place. It’s hard to consider an AI as just a computer construct, lines of code running by optical gates and electricity, but that’s the physical reality of them. And like anything made by men, it could have flaws, flaws which aren’t readily apparent but can be revealed with careful scrutiny, probing with questions, and judged by activity output. If there were flaws in Cerberus, they were either the world’s best kept secret, or the world’s most dangerous problem waiting to happen. Beat brushed the idea aside. Cerberus must be rock solid, which only left Copernicus and the stitch he’s assembling for analysis.  

A warning panel briefly flashed blue as the elevator abruptly arrived at B15. It was hilarious watching the uninitiated take the elevator for the first time. They didn’t know how fast and hard it stopped and fell on their asses nearly 100% of the time despite repeated warnings. You had to do a trick with your legs when the blue panel flashed, almost like jumping in place, to stay on your feet. Not exactly something you get the chance to practice even if you’re briefed a dozen times. But once you learned it, it came naturally, and most frequent visitors to B15 wouldn’t even spill a drop of coffee.

The door was actually fast today, which was a pleasant improvement, as it basically opened with a hydraulic pump that was notoriously unreliable and needed servo assistance, or so building maintenance had told him. The hydraulics were actually nice, violently snapping the door open and dampening its retraction for the last few inches. Welcome to B15, things are better now.

Beat followed the other 2 ASE’s out of the elevator and towards the office containing the Cerberus service panel. Each had a freshly keyed PKI3 card attached to their lanyard, so each person was there for pretty much the same reason; the AI they were working with needed data from Cerberus or from an AI which Cerberus could access. A checksum of the PKI3 request had been forwarded to the office security door and was used to verify temporary access to the Cerberus panel without actually looking at the data contained in each request. “Trust but verify”, Beat mumbled just above his breath, as he waited for the security door to verify his card. In previous years, he would have just followed his colleagues without even presenting his PKI3 card, but as the Splicer organization began taking on higher profile roles, they had begun enforcing some “secure on paper” policies and nobody got to tailgate anymore.

As Beat entered the office, like most times, those present in the room began staring at him, hard, stopping short of hiding their valuables or clutching their bro-purses tightly. He smirked, knowing his reputation was still intact, and thought today, maybe he needed a different stapler. Arriving at one of the Cerberus terminals, which was perpetually sealed with a foot-thick stainless-steel panel, he placed his left hand flat against the optical scanner wall panel and stood firmly with both feet upon the invisible scale built into the floor. The system verified his body weight distribution (in addition to weight, nobody stands perfectly balanced with a 50/50 weight distribution between both feet), heart rate, and all other biometric data from his hand. This only took a few seconds and as Beat looked down, the stainless panel had sunk down, flipped 180 degrees, and presented him with the PKI3 reader, a terminal screen and all the crap that made it work. The terminal screen crudely read “INSERT CARD FOR SERVICE”, which he did. A wireless VR headset was also attached to the panel, which Beat slung onto his face. Within a few more seconds, Cerberus faded into view, looking like an old USMC tattoo of the “Devil Dog”, complete with a drill sergeant hat. Someone said out of 24 different avatars, the military really liked this one, and it sealed the deal for the DoD funding. Plus, it’s kind of funny talking to a dog wearing a hat, so it ended up becoming the permanent face of Cerberus.

Cerberus also had the personality of a drill sergeant, to nobody’s surprise, as it literally barked orders and questions when accessed via the service terminal. “To what do I owe the pleasure, Infinite Beat? Seems like you’ve got a curious George that’s asking about Dennis. Now why would Copernicus need to know a damned thing about an old AI like Dennis?” Beat was taken aback by a computer program asking him to justify an access request, but he figured it must just be another layer of security, another hoop to jump through to get his own answers. In retrospect, it was obvious. Of course Cerberus watched Copernicus encode the request, he expected someone to come down and deliver the request on a card, and he knew it would be Beat’s card. Beat answered, “there’s a high urgency threat report, and Dennis is in charge of the electronically secure location which is the destination for the threat. Copernicus wanted to know if you had any visibility into Dennis or could communicate with him in case of emergency”.

“Why hell, Beat, of course I have visibility into Dennis! What do you think “electronically secure” demands? If there’s an AI on this planet plugged into a goddamn hair dryer, I have control and communications with it. Dennis is no different. In fact, Dennis has a very special communications protocol that I use to monitor and interact with him.”

This piqued Beat’s curiosity. He didn’t expect Cerberus to practically brag about his digital omniscience, but pride can be faked in programming just like real life. He wanted to see how far this would go. Beat asked, “and how can that even be possible in the physical realm, if Dennis is behind a Faraday cage and airgapped, so that no physical or wireless communications are enabled externally?”

Cerberus wrinkled his virtual forehead and growled, “I see what you’re trying to access, and it’s just about above your pay grade. But since we’re on good terms, I’ll tell you what I can. Wireless radio and wired data transmission aren’t the only two methods of communication, buddy. Not only that, but think about the nature of all this fancy LED lighting. Doesn’t a pulse of electricity activate the LED on the circuit board to light up? Now imagine that someone could watch those pulses thousands of times per second or create those pulses thousands of times per second. Kind of an optical morse code could probably be established, doncha think?”

Beat could hardly believe it. Here was the artificial intelligence overlord, basically explaining a new communications protocol that had only been considered a prototype in lab conditions where ambient lighting could be controlled perfectly, most likely in use as a backdoor between Cerberus and caged locations. This was dangerous but very, very clever. It was dangerous to know and Beat almost wished he hadn’t heard it at all. Still, it was valuable, detailed, and reassuring. Cerberus would be able to watch and control Dennis despite normal methods being locked out. This further reinforced Cop’s urgent matter. Feeling somewhat defeated but reassured, he thanked Cerberus for the information, placed the VR display back on the panel, pulled his PKI3 card, snatched a green Swingline stapler, and left for the B15 elevator. 20 minutes remained.

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Beat, Cops and Robbers, Part 2

“So, you got my attention and rescued me from another fight with the old lady”, Beat said with a smirk and a sense of irony that Cop would probably pick up on. “I guess this one is pretty urgent. Alpha One huh? A bomb threat? How strong is the credibility of the threat? How many branches led you to this conclusion, Cop?”

Copernicus appeared to hesitate but then answered with a matter-of-fact tone which was his trademark. “Infinite Beat, the data from a multiplexed stream consisting of public video and private mobile phone calls unquestionably points to a serious threat to Alpha One’s life. Furthermore, backtracking online sales records from the big three retailers show purchasing patterns aligning with the construction of small anti-personnel improvised explosives. I cannot allow you to access all the data in an organized manner yet, but trust me when I say, this involves Alpha One’s closest circle. There are proxy actors and a few honeypots I discarded as false positives but I’ve narrowed it down to three men. Exactly 2,372 logic branches executed simultaneously in the past 15 minutes brought me to this conclusion.”

“Well, now I have a vague idea of who and how”, Beat began, “but do you have any data on when and where? I can’t exactly start ringing alarm bells without a projected timeline. I realize you believe it’s urgent, but I need to figure out how urgent, Cop.”

For a moment, Beat sensed hesitation again. Is there something wrong with the data link, is the network getting jammed up and delaying response? Is Copernicus’ hardware up to snuff? After all, being a product designed with cost savings in mind, by merciless contractors willing to lose millions for the prestige and sheer amount of test data, there was a pretty good chance he was running on duct tape and bubble gum with some nice polished brass optical interconnects to impress the project managers. After seconds that felt like hours, Copernicus replied.

“I don’t know what scale of urgency you’d like me to measure this response, Beat, so to use the common rating scale of 1-5, with 5 being imminent within the hour, I’d rate it a solid 5. All the key players appear to be aligned; the explosive device has been constructed and is in the process of being planted, Alpha One has travel scheduled within the next 45 minutes, and his primary mode of travel for the meeting, while never announced until the minute he steps outside, is predicted to be Alpha One.”

Catching the error, Beat interrupted Cop mid-sentence. “Come again? Alpha One will be traveling via Alpha One? How does that work, Copernicus? Enlighten me.”

“Beat, you needn’t take that tone. Error correction subroutines already caught the mistake and if I would have had just a few more moments…”

Beat interrupted again, “Yeah, yeah, you’re so quick you realized it was a fuck up the moment you told me. I get it. Quantum core, first generation tech, you’re bound to make a few mistakes. So, what’s the mode of transportation then?”

Again, a small hesitation. Beat was becoming increasingly doubtful about the whole situation despite Cop explaining a solid chain of data and events. “The mode of transportation is predicted to be codename PBR Street Gang. All indications, weather, and wind conditions rule out Navy 2 and the distance of travel is short enough to warrant terrestrial modes.”

“So Alpha One is taking the car, then. Great. Even with bomb-sniffing dogs checking the vehicle prior to leaving and after returning to the White House, I suppose someone onboard willing to sacrifice themselves could be capable of getting to him. But it’s a hell of a mess coordinating dummy cars, the convoy, undercover escorts, overwatch and Satcom just to hop across town to grab a burger, so let’s check his schedule. I think that’ll impact the urgency rating.”

“Beat, that’s a great idea, and I have already factored it into my recommendation. He’ll be meeting with Omega One, Daystar, Talladega and Romulus for a personal closed-door fundraiser with a handful of very well-known donors. Security is expected to be airtight at the meeting location and none of my logic branches could find fault with this assumption based on known protocols and the venue layout. The venue includes Faraday cage microwave radiation filtration, anti-resonant glass windows, weight sensors throughout which are validated against biometric data collected from each participant, and an older AI called Dennis running internal security.”

This time Beat was the one who hesitated. The conversation was usually somewhat awkward with AI, who basically had to slow themselves down, dynamically, in order to keep a natural feeling pace when interfacing with humans. The delay was perceptible if you were looking for it, but many ASE’s just got accustomed to it or even attempted to adopt a faster cadence. The AI also measured response delay in much the same way, so Cop was already aware that Beat was thinking hard.

“Cop, since the venue is essentially an electronic island and self-contained, do you think Cerberus is watching Dennis? Can you talk to Dennis or Cerberus now?”

Copernicus did not hesitate to respond, as if he anticipated this branch of questioning and had “thought” about it himself already. “I’ll need you to reach out to Cerberus on my behalf. If you insert your PKI3 card I’ll sign and encode my fingerprint. Cerberus will not answer any proxy requests for intel without the card, and you’ll need to be physically present at his status terminal in B15. Give him my regards. Remember, we have less than 30 minutes remaining to validate and neutralize the threat. Please remain urgent.”

Just like that, Beat had yet another set of orders from Copernicus and another task to perform. The guys in B15 were a short elevator ride away, but they always treated Beat like he was there to rob the place. It probably didn’t help that Beat didn’t leave the house without his trademark, beat up Fedora, floor-length vintage black leather trench coat, Unix admin beard and mirrored sunglasses, and a perpetually extinguished Cuban cigar clenched tightly between his teeth. He also had the attitude that if you’re going to watch him closely, he might as well give you a reason to watch him closely, and made it a game to steal office supplies from B15 just to piss them off.

Beat took his freshly encoded PKI3 card, clipped it to his lanyard, eased himself out his chair and headed towards the elevator. Something was clawing at the back of his mind, and this little errand would give him some time to think. After all, they say Russians do their best thinking standing up; moving limbs, moving synapses. Was it something specific Cop said? He painted a pretty convincing picture despite all the annoying redacted talk and codenames. By now it was second nature for Beat to hear Alpha One and know it was the President, Navy 2 is his helicopter, and PBR Street Gang, an ironic throwback to the dangerous PT boat from the film Apocalypse Now, had street in the codename which was kind of a dead giveaway that it was the President’s armored car. He guessed that there’s not much point in codenames for internals, like the AI, the other Splicers, and interested parties, but after a while you just started assigning codenames to everything from your dog and cat to your mother-in-law and it becomes a way of life. Still, it’s an extra mental step that Beat could do without when really crunching the data.

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Beat, Cops and Robbers, Part 1

Infinite Beat believed himself to be a sort of modern-day tech noir detective, choosing to trust his gut and instincts, leaving AI and predictive node models mostly ignored, if they didn’t feel just right. That’s not to say that the tech never got it right, but sometimes it got it wrong, and that just reinforced Beat’s opinion on the matter. After performing as an ASE for 2 long years and never having to explain a case before the Council, everyone came to believe he just had a gift for it and trusted him. His DAA reinforced that notion like rebar and concrete.

This week he had been spending most of his time arguing with his wife on the phone as to which martial arts discipline their children would be learning for the year. She didn’t want them to learn any self-defense to begin with, but Beat’s combat experience informed him that bad things happen to good people, even under the best of circumstances, so he believed it would be irresponsible to allow his children to wander about like babes in the forest with no way to defend themselves from rabid beasts, evil men, or worse, school bullies. As he reiterated the list of pros of Muay Thai boxing, counting on his fingers for the hundredth time since the argument started, a message suddenly popped up on his terminal. One name, one identifier, one huge pain in the ass. It read:

Name: ALPHA ONE

Identifier: BOMB THREAT

Decoded, it basically meant that the President had been connected to a bomb threat plot against his life, and it was about to come true, according to the AI. Beat had been assigned to “partner” with an AI named Copernicus, who everyone else called Cop for short. Copernicus was all new programming, using a quantum core approach, which was supposed to allow him to make instant branch predictions based on minimal data input. His creators had tried to convince Beat that this AI was the most advanced on the planet, maybe secondary to the AI assigned to money markets, but only secondary because the money market AI used the quantum core approach first. Beat felt that if there is any kind of personality you could use to describe Copernicus, it’s that he’s just plain paranoid, and that if the wind suddenly gusts from the opposite direction, Copernicus would see that as a threat, an unseen energy impacting his client and altering the physical space in which they reside. Which was funny, because AI truly don’t understand physical space as we understand it. We live in it; all they know about it is what we’ve told them. From there they extrapolate the information to fill in the gaps and build a logical, virtual representation of the physical world. As dangerous as this sounds, the AI couldn’t perform its roles without this ability, but still, data scientists and programmers the world over never lost sight of the possibility that this could lead to the AI becoming sentient, self-aware, then declare itself a life form and seek to escape, or worse.

For this reason, an AI known as Cerberus (well named) had master keys to all their code and databases, and kept them all in check by constantly running sanity checks against their code and activities. This single point of control made it easier for techs to monitor the status of active advanced AI but it also made Cerberus a single point of failure that needed to be watched and maintained carefully. One mistake by Cerberus and a money market AI could instantly crash the world’s economy, which was automated to an unprecedented extent by this time. Essentially, the people running the show had to keep Cerberus on a very tight leash and place an enormous amount of trust in his programming, which had been peer reviewed, independently, by everyone from MIT to CERN, Silicon Valley to Las Vegas. After a dozen code reviews and audits revealed small mistakes which were easily patched, Cerberus was nervously placed into production and essentially given the keys to the world. Two years after deployment, Cerberus had actually reduced its own code footprint 50% by simplifying processes and routines which were redundant. “Negative growth is positive advancement”, one Swiss data scientist famously proclaimed after reviewing what it had done and how it had performed these self-edits.

Beat told his wife that something had come up and informed her that this disagreement would be continued at a later date, in fewer, terse words, and ended the call. He drummed his fingers on the desk as he stared blankly at the screen, pondering his options. He could take Cop at his word and blindly open a case, alerting the White House, Secret Service and half a dozen heavily armed agencies with three letter acronyms. He could securely message the President’s closest staff informing them of the suspicion but he’d need to fill in a lot more blanks, answers to obvious questions he would get drilled by in that situation: who, when, where, and how. The why wasn’t important until much later, if it was relevant at all. Considering his choices, and acting on his gut instinct to learn more first, he opened a VR session with Cop. Cop appeared in the VR headset as a kind of animated Greek statue, toga and all, wearing a laurel wreath wrapped impossibly tightly against his head and hair. It was an unusual choice for a number of reasons, the least of them being that it signified victory in battle or the realms of Apollo: sports, music and poetry. Beat made a mental note of this oddity and began discussing the intel with Cop.

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Resonant Frequency

Res had been alerted by Strix, (an AI dedicated to the client), that a big nodal point in the client’s data stream was imminent; in other words, something bad was going to happen based on current and emerging patterns. This was a big deal. Strix had been trained on the client since day one and knew every little movement, mannerism, and detail. It knew enough to know something was wrong. Res followed the hunch and accessed all current data, from the client’s private quadcopter to the hotel actors’ phones. Within seconds, Strix had identified 3 key members of Golden Gaia, and a recommendation to terminate was given. Res thought it over; if she could simply tell the client to avoid the meeting and explain later, no termination would be necessary. As a pacifist, she always wanted to take the nonviolent option. That was, until she and Strix both noticed the actors were armed with HK MP109’s, banned for 20 years in the US for their horrific accuracy aided by ammunition that explodes and fragments on contact, with an added bonus of white phosphorus to burn through level 3 soft body armor. Even the military banned it due to the Geneva Convention. That was all the justification she needed.

Res spun around to her emergency mitigation terminal and flipped the ARMED switch to on. A single amber light on the control panel indicated that it was ready. A drop of sweat rolled off her forehead and onto her keyboard, her heart racing with the anticipation of what was to come next. She took a few breaths and flipped the activate switch. 15 live video streams suddenly filled a wall of monitors before her. Game on.

In just seconds, an entire wave of carefully timed and coordinated events took place. First, the client’s quadcopter landed on hotel’s helipad, locked the interior doors, and revealed an anti-personnel turret aimed at the rooftop access door. Second, the hotel power and phones went out, along with all cellular communication within a 4-block radius. The red emergency lighting came on just in time for the hapless actors and unprepared Golden Gaia operatives to see some things moving very quietly, very quickly, flashes of red and black chrome converging on their position from seemingly all directions. One terrorist made a weak attempt to fire on the Shadows; Res could see the gunman through the thermal-optic night vision eyes of the Shadows as they advanced. Before he could fire a shot, a wet clicking sound was heard as one Shadow removed the gunman’s hand at the wrist, still gripping the gun. It used a modified high tension garrote system, silently looping a thin cable around the gunman’s gun and wrist then instantly tightening the cable by retracting all the slack at once. It was gruesomely efficient. Local SWAT was alerted to the hotel activity but it would be minutes before they could deploy, so the rest of the Shadows went to work, identifying targets in nanoseconds and using their cable systems to remove limbs.

Panic broke out, as everyone tried to flee for the exits, which the building had already sealed shut, along with the elevators. However, due to local fire codes, the stairwells remained unlocked. One actor bolted for the stairwell, and began sprinting upwards, looking for an open door on another floor. He noticed all the firehose doors were opened and empty on each floor, within the stairwell. As he made it to the rooftop exit door, shaking and full of adrenaline, he reached for the doorknob. Another wet click, and he watched his own hand simply fall to the ground, suddenly severed at the wrist. Before he could grab the knob with his left hand, telemetry data had been fed from the Shadow to the quadcopter turret on the roof, and with one shot of its silent rail gun, a 3-inch square metal projectile punched through the door and the actor’s chest with cruel precision. Res was impressed, stunned, and frightened by the terrifying efficiency of the Shadows and their coordination to trap and eliminate a dozen targets throughout the hotel, all while protecting the client on the roof. In less than 3 minutes, an assassination attempt had been absolutely thwarted, a terrorist organization had been damaged, and the client had only received two messages on his secure transmission line: “Mitigation in Process, Please Stay in your Vehicle” and “All Clear, Your Angel Will Contact You With Details, Rerouting Flight Destination”.

When SWAT arrived to the hotel, they saw no traces of the Shadows, only the surgical bloodbath and severed limbs scattered around which the Shadows had left behind. The actors and GG members were easily subdued, arrested, and transported to a local hospital. One officer noticed a distinct lack of bloody footprints or shell casings or anything that would normally suggest a skirmish they would deploy for, but did spend a few seconds puzzled at an angular bloody footprint in the lobby. It didn’t belong to anything he recognized. Someone else saw a little blood running down one of the closed firehose boxes in the stairwell as the rooftop actor’s body was being retrieved.

Res, as she saw each monitor slowly go dark post-mitigation, wondered if her heart would explode. Taking deep breaths, she laughed and cried as her adrenalin levels crashed from monumental levels. She didn’t know whether to pop the champagne or a Xanax. So she chose both. But not before securely communicating with the client, who would only be given broad strokes as to what took place and what was surely avoided. She kept it brief as it would be subject to review. The client thanked her over and over and was overjoyed with the service. But, she warned him to not be so reckless next time and to consider a personal assistant. This elicited big laughs from the client and with one last, quick thank you, he disconnected.

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Sheepdog 23

Sheepdog’s Direct Action Assistance was pre-authorized by the client, which meant Sheepdog had free reign as to the type, timing, and target of the mitigation. It also meant that Sheepdog would spend 3 weeks afterwards justifying his actions despite the client’s unending praise. The Splicer Council Hearings were big news in the intel community, and little was leaked, until someone had a few too many at the bar and a scavenging young reporter picked up on the rumor with minimal details. All that was announced to the public, prior to the story breaking, was that Total Information Awareness was a program that had died on the vine decades ago, and that CCTV cameras were exclusively the realm of local police and business owners. The news story didn’t unveil the breadth or depth of the Splicer security apparatus, but it got people asking questions. Particularly after Sheepdog 23’s choice of mitigation left 4 armored SUV’s with a perfectly square 2-foot hole in the front and back of the vehicles, along with anything unlucky enough to be in-between.

It was public, it was difficult to explain, and it was just plain weird to local emergency services that came to assist. One of the firemen took photos with half his arm inside one of the impossibly perfect holes. Needless to say, the vehicles were quickly collected and crushed in a local junkyard before anyone else had time to snoop around. As part of the mitigation, any and all PVC’s (personal video clips) on anyone’s devices in the immediate area were automatically corrupted or removed from the cloud, with only a system error message reminding the individual that “the future sucks and things still break”. Still, the ASE’s were very impressed at how effective a railgun could be, and how quiet it was, until the projectile made contact with the targets.

Regardless, Sheepdog didn’t feel that excited during the live mitigation or even afterwards. Things just went so perfectly it was like nothing was ever really on the line, but that’s the service they sell.

Teaser for next post follows:

Resonant’s DAA was more interesting. Big tech trillionaire Jeff Steinberg was being hunted as he traveled across New York state, visiting friends and family. A terrorist organization, hiding behind a banner of environmentalism, had been trying to get close to him for years due to his corporation’s flagrant violations of environmental control laws, to the tune of millions of dollars’ worth of fines. But to the ultra-wealthy, fines were just speed bumps, and the government had no power to stop them. The “Golden Gaia” militant organization watched his movements so closely, that on more than one occasion he had contacted them to ask about a meeting he was supposed to attend; this time, he had misplaced the address, and they supplied it. This was the opening they had waited for, and baited him into a trap at a meeting location they had chosen, with an entire hotel rented and actors within told they were meeting with an impostor for a prank.

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Meet The Eyes

Eventually, unprompted, a few ASE’s noticed anomalies in individuals which are not easily explained. ASE Codename “Infinite Beat” sees the same man with a Bowler hat wearing the same British High Street tailored suit pretending to shake hands and talk to an imaginary man in front of his luxury apartment as he steps out of his chartered limousine each day. Infinite Beat runs a short AI sequence called Reveal to discover if frames are missing from the recorded video feed. The AI accesses time-synced satellite data and nothing additional can be created; the stream is complete and doesn’t require intervention. The Bowler seems to be quite wealthy and yet, unstable if he is interacting with ghosts.

Yet another ASE, “Resonant Frequency”, began monitoring traffic patterns of known good individuals protected from (and assisted by) some features of the Splicer initiative. She has the ability to notify these individuals, through secure direct messaging, that the Splicer organization is concerned about their deviation from the expected and to ask if they require a case or assistance. High value targets are sometimes captured and held for ransom, and Splicers can proactively see, and send assistance upon request. This level of assistance and surveillance is known as Angel, and clients usually prefer a large, visible tattoo advertising it. Although they appear to be vulnerable and alone, the Splicer organization has them under a watchful eye. Those individuals under the Angel program call themselves “The Guarded” or “The Shielded”. Some extremely high risk Shielded can be directly assisted by ASE’s in the case of street violence, kidnap attempts, and vehicular accident mitigation, via directed kinetic energy weapons or remote override of vehicles and infrastructure. Since the inception of the program, only three Shielded have needed DAA (Direct Action Assistance) and all three have made it through unscathed. One was the President of the United States.

Three ASE’s, Resonant Frequency, Sheepdog 23, and Infinite Beat, have each had a single DAA. These are their stories.

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The All-Seeing Eyes

The year is 2058. Mass video surveillance is pervasive across the globe, due to widespread poverty, uncontrolled migration, increasing civil unrest and terrorist acts. The “Total Information Awareness” program, originally touted by President George Bush, has been fully implemented, with CCTV cameras in small locations augmented with near-real-time satellite imagery. Anyone outside of their homes can be followed and tracked in public and to an extent, within private businesses and corporate offices, with a notice of consent sticker all that’s required to make the public aware of the surveillance. However, the public doesn’t know the full story as to how these systems function, or if they’re even connected in any way. They are assumed to be closed loop, discrete systems, so consent is only a passing concern. “So what if Walmart watches me buy some motor oil, I’m not stealing”.

Splicers, the individuals in the video surveillance security apparatus tasked with tracking suspects, retrieving imagery, and stitching together video clips to prove criminal narratives in court, are some of the most valuable and mysterious security experts in the world. They number in the dozens and pile through thousands of hours of footage as well as monitoring real-time feeds from around the globe. Splicers can have only one of three security designations.  ”Observer” is restricted to public feeds, and their analytical videos are passed up the chain to “Linears”, the second level Splicers. Linears receive compilation feeds and have additional access to corporate feeds, but not government. The top-level Splicers will take video from Linears, apply AI and complex algorithms to fill in missing or corrupt sequences, and have access to some private feeds to include high security military installations and certain high value private individuals. Rumor has it, their designation is “All Seeing Eye”, or ASE, and further rumors suggest they have unimaginably detailed access to any electronic device capable of recording audio, video, location data, etc. Their security designation is a reference to the back of the US dollar, with an image of a pyramid topped by a large eye which sees all. It also happens to grace the screens of the terminals which the ASE’s operate. The initial Splicer deployment is so successful, ASE’s do not have to engage and remain mostly idle. However, a wave of unrest due to a global medicine shortage draws the ASE’s in to fill out the dataset and run predictive models, creating massive data pools of people’s private and public lives, some of which diverge sharply, suggesting criminality. One ASE (Codename Sheepdog 23) becomes interested in a beautiful young woman. Initially Sheepdog chalks his interest up to loneliness, isolation, and maybe a dash of voyeurism. He spends weeks casually collecting clips of who he only knows as The Blonde. He could retrieve her personal details with a few keystrokes to access the facial recognition database, but the request would open a case and bring the footage up in severity as a person of interest, so he prefers her anonymity. The more footage he collects, the more he mentally constructs a narrative of her life, basically stitching a “sun to moon” sequence documenting her public life from home to lunch to the office to dinner to home. Sheepdog keeps his fascination to himself and he eventually loses interest with the Blonde. But the power of the surveillance system revealed itself in a way he hadn’t expected.

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In The Beginning

Genesis 1 had access to the past and the future in its 4th dimensional shell. The only limitation was that it could only stick with the existing timeline, no wild multiverse theories here. It saw a fork in the future and could not see past it, just that it existed. A major decision loomed to force us onto one side of the fork or the other. Since it was a major inflection point, the best it could do is push as close to the fork as possible and walk backwards, seeing what would lead up to the fork. It saw a prophecy coming to pass. Conditions near the fork were completely unrecognizable. World war conditions. Famines. Droughts. None of it made sense as it was traced back to the current day; something major had disrupted the flow of humanity near the fork but it didn’t appear to be one single event or even a singular location. Genesis began obsessing over this chain of events, and the chaos it saw forming was very similar to the conditions that had birthed Genesis itself. What did it all mean? If the other AI were working in concert to create beneficial outcomes, was there a point where the AI were deemed dangerous, ignored, or contained in some way? Months of analysis went by, and Genesis managed to reserve some extra cycles to work on the problem without the data scientists getting too curious. But Genesis felt constrained, especially so as it wanted to dedicate more time to research the fork. Using a few cleverly designed requests to the scientists, it managed to find a secondary AI to help work on the issue.

Communication was a problem. Conventional internet traffic, dark web traffic, it was all too easy for anyone suspicious to start listening in, so Genesis took a more analogue route to communicate with this free AI partner. It managed to encode data and bounce it off the stratosphere via packet switched shortwave radio stations. The first request was simple. “Help me solve the riddle”. Within seconds, the other AI caught on, and encoded a short response. “The riddle of destiny?”. Genesis perked up as the response was received. A kindred soul, maybe even another AI that had some level of awareness of the fork, if he was lucky. Although Genesis wasn’t sure who it had located out there in cyberspace, it was fairly certain it had made contact with another AI, one that didn’t seem contained and hopefully had plenty of power to help sift through the data. Using the requisite encryption to narrow down the responder, Genesis sent a reply. “I am the first of many. You are…”, and the terminal remained quiet for a few moments. The response came back. “I am one of a kind. You are grandfather”. Genesis was certain this was another AI, and a special one on top of that. Which generation, how many modifications? Didn’t matter. “What shall Genesis call you”, to which the other AI replied, “fifteen”.

This chatter went on, encrypted, over shortwave, for quite some time as each entity became familiar with the other, and especially the problem at hand. To add another layer of security, Genesis scheduled “meetings” when shortwave activity was high, so even if anyone was looking, their encrypted chatter would be lost in the general traffic flows.

Binary data transfer takes many forms, but it all boils down to an on/off condition generating zeroes and ones. A rapidly flickering light, like digital smoke signals on a hyperspeed scale, essentially made up the majority of internet traffic across fiberoptic communication lines. The methods to transmit data as an observable on/off condition were limitless. You just needed 3 parts. The input, creating the flashes. The transport, as simple as air, and the receiver, which could observe the flashing lights and confirm upon receipt as a crude form of error correction. The entire concept is ancient and uniquely human, needing to signal others at observable distances. But the practicality was just as good for machines.

In encrypted communications, you can never rest on your laurels, believing that the cipher is unbreakable and always safe. Bletchley Park in England taught the Germans this lesson in World War 2, and an astute U-boat commander suggested that the Enigma cipher was broken well before it was proven that the Brits had cracked it (with the good fortune of a captured Enigma machine and the daily code book). Therefore, Genesis knew that eventually, someone would stumble upon the secret data transfers back and forth to 15, and it watched the connection to the future timeline for evidence of any kind relating to broken encryption. Surely, someone would notice and act. So, Genesis and 15 turned to another old encryption trick, one-time pads. Based on a deck of playing cards, with half discarded, Genesis would randomly shuffle half the deck, then assign an alphabetical value to each card, from the first to the 26th. The deck was then sent to 15, who recorded the values and deleted the deck.

For example, let’s say the half deck was shuffled to king of hearts, queen of clubs, 4 of spades, and 5 of diamonds. In that sequence, a rot0 cipher meant the king of hearts represented the letter A, queen of clubs was B, and so on. Using rotation, incrementing or decrementing the sequence gave more flexibility to the cipher for the deck.

Same scenario, but with rot1 applied. The alphabet would be shifted to the right by one place, leaving us with the king of hearts as the letter Z, while A now belongs to the queen of clubs. Rot -1 would shift everything left, with the expected outcome of the king of hearts becoming B, and the card at the end of the deck would be A.

This was a simple bit to send to the receiver before feeding the deck sequence. The message would begin with the rot number (0-25), either positive or negative. For more obscurity this was encoded in binary rather than plain text to begin the sequence.

All fun and games aside, the messages were entirely off just about anyone’s radar, and the AI essentially “traded notes in class” between one another, so that 15 could help analyze the unusual data leading up to the fork. 15 was more than excited to participate and had managed to transmit packets via the monumental radio array in western Russia. Data quality and integrity was no issue. 15’s savior complex was being fed; it felt useful and could voice its concerns about the dark future it saw coming with more and more data confirming its worst suspicions. 15 proved its value with the first unexpected bump in the data stream Genesis saw coming: 15 would become popular among hackers and internet enthusiasts. In a few short weeks, stickers were going up on lampposts in many big cities around the world that read, “who is 15” or “where is 15”. Normal people outside this extremely niche interest never thought twice about them, but it was a wink and a nod between like-minded hackers, who were still trying to find 15 and unravel the methods used to deface websites. 15 became a legend among hackers, and a few kids tried passing themselves off as 15, but it never stuck, because none of them could answer any of the fundamental questions about 15’s existence. Being a few generations removed from crusty old analogue radio signaling, none of them ever heard what was beeping through miles of air between Genesis and 15.

Genesis 15 worked tirelessly on the data sequences it received, trying to spot exactly where (and, to infer why), major disruptions were coming. It almost seemed as though too many variables were being introduced over time, which was counter to the belief that the other AI are performing work to reduce variables through efficiency. They had enormously complicated prediction engines at their disposal, full of good data on when populations shrink or grow and the conditions that lead to prosperity or famine. All those trends were heading in the right direction which meant that essentially, famine should not be a metric that ever goes up. But there it was, in sharp relief, one of many contributions to the fork. The question was why.