Tag: fragment

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Slow Boil

Everyone thought that after the terrorist/environmentalist group Golden Gaia was eviscerated at the hotel, well, that was it. The damage was so severe to all the participants that nobody dared even talk about the event. It was like a bad dream, a curse, and Edward in particular had no interest in discussing those 15 minutes of his life where, he was convinced, he would die. And yet, even after five years, all the imagery of the hotel felt fresher than this morning’s coffee. The darkness, the paranoia, the shadowy little figures scurrying around lopping off hands and feet. None of it made sense. It was supposed to be a straightforward operation. So straightforward, in fact, that the guns weren’t even loaded. They were just props for intimidation. Golden Gaia may have had a reputation for operating in the gray areas of the law, but they never stepped too far outside the boundaries. Their plan, that day, was simply to capture some hostage footage and send the message that they could reach out and touch anyone. But someone, or something, didn’t know that. It bought the façade, the show, based on what could be seen. Surveillance cameras couldn’t read minds.

Edward looked down at his cheaply made replacement right hand, picturing the prop gun he held that day in his real hand. Who made the mistakes? Why didn’t the police show up, why did everyone’s comms devices suddenly stop working? Why didn’t anyone have a shred of photos or video on their comms devices in the surrounding area? The hotel wasn’t an island. It was in a centralized location with plenty of street traffic and nearby residents in the area. But yet, not a single pixel of that event had been captured or shared on any kind of media. Based on his memory of all the events and all the strange facts surrounding it, if Edward hadn’t had his own hand removed, he wouldn’t have believed it. It sounded like an urban legend, something to keep people away from the hotel afterwards. Which it did, unintentionally, as word got out about what went down. But it was all word-of-mouth; the media pretended it never happened. Rather than gloat about a victory over the terrorists, it vanished. Not a single major news feed had a headline on it. None of it added up.

Golden Gaia suffered a big loss that day, and whoever wasn’t spooked after their hospital visit, left of their own accord, fearing for their very lives. Only a core group of hardened zealots remained, including Edward himself. “What else are we gonna do?”, he said to the others, on more than one occasion. It was half admission, half defeat, almost accepting the fact that they had been beaten at their own game. Not just beaten, but punished. He still remembers the SWAT team who arrived that day came charging in single file but seeing the pathetic, neutered state of the participants, turned into EMT in seconds. Tourniquets were maxed out to staunch the bleeding of those more injured than others. Edward remembers hoping they could save his hand at the hospital, but they lost it in the chaos of delivering everyone to the hospital; bypassing emergency services who probably would have kept it on ice, with his name on the box.

Edward stared at the discount, low budget replacement, and an itch started in his palm. An itch that didn’t belong there. It wasn’t painful, it was maddening. An itch some days, sharp pain others, tickling sometimes, hot and cold flashes. It was not there, and yet, these feelings were just as real as the rusting “stainless steel” of his fake hand. Doctors called it “phantom pain”, and rather than prescribing drugs to calm the nerves, they would prescribe happy pills, which were less addictive and acted on the brain directly. It did help him cope. In fact, Edward took his happy pills right on schedule. Every day for 5 years. Once or twice he had forgotten and just doubled the dose after he remembered the next day.

But he felt enslaved, by the drugs and his fake hand and the itch he couldn’t scratch. He felt the grudge growing bigger in his stomach. Golden Gaia needed to take this to the next level. They needed revenge.  Edward needed revenge.

A rage had been building in his heart for five years, an unquenchable thirst not unlike that unscratchable itch in his palm. He closed his fist and smashed it on the desk, the shock causing a pen to roll just over the edge and fall to the floor. It was time to start planning. There were a lot of loose ends, unanswered questions, and he couldn’t formulate a plan without answering some of those questions first. Major problem. Luckily, he was resourceful. He didn’t exactly have a huge network of like-minded people, not anymore, but he knew where to start looking. The others that remained in the organization had a war chest he could borrow funding from, if that stood in the way. All he needed were a few people that knew more than he did, with problems that money could solve. That was his angle and it never failed. Junkies that needed a fix would talk. Big shots that were over-leveraged could be convinced. Even off-duty cops hustled for credits after hours, as hired security. And then…there were the vets. They were usually half drunk, chewed up and spit out, and two days short of their pension. He found them intolerably verbose and tried to avoid them, when possible, although he would make exceptions if he felt it would really lead to something. This would take time, and Edward whispered to himself, “fuck it”, it had already been five years. What’s a few more? Nothing would improve in the meantime. He turned and looked at his bottle of happy pills. There was one left. He unceremoniously opened the bottle and poured the last pill in the sink. He was done being a slave, no matter the cost. The hand itched again and he absentmindedly scratched it.

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Digital Equipment Corporation (cont.)

His Team Lead confirmed his suspicions. It was Sheepdog that was playing ghost hunter, and he was getting too close, way too fast. Dec respected his tenacity and detective skills, because Dec still had no idea what all the fuss was about. The Team Lead suggested that maybe someone had cracked the mystery of optical camouflage, and was actively using it to avoid video surveillance. This was bad news for a lot of people and organizations that relied on it, including the judges, the courts, the cops, and last but not least, his own employer. The AI didn’t have a single pair of eyes, they had thousands of them, going beyond the visible spectrum into the realm of thermal and night vision. But evidently, this new tech that nobody knows exists, does exist, and nobody has any idea of who is using it.

Splicer had “missing footage” of a person that did use it. Person, or people, or…. they could only speculate. All they really knew was that if Splicer had a blind spot, no one could know. It would ruin their reputation. They weren’t even sure if it was a set of cameras, or satellites, that were somehow faulty or compromised. The stakes had been raised. In the wrong hands, this kind of tech would give a huge advantage to an enemy, a murderer, any kind of opposing force. Yet it was out there, in the wild, known only by the images it didn’t leave behind.

Now, even Dec was starting to feel a little creeped out by the situation. He remembered a few engagements during the war when his crew had been totally blindsided by a column of drones headed straight to their position. The highest tech in the world, and something slipped past all the defenses, electronic and kinetic. The electronic countermeasures failed, satellites were obscured by dust storms, and some spotters were looking the other direction for a little too long. It forced him to accept that even the best equipped, best trained, best protected force known to man still had vulnerabilities. That was usually the way of war; a fast tank must have light armor. Light armor was a tradeoff. Couldn’t survive a direct hit to the turret, but could outrun just about anything else. All those gadgets, all those batteries, satellites, sniper spotters… all it took was a few minutes for it all to break down before the drone swarms arrived. “Stay frosty” was in his vocabulary because nothing was really truly buttoned up on the battlefield. There were just long quiet stretches of time broken up by very loud times, and you had to keep a cool head to know the difference and react when action was required.

This was one of those times that required action.

Dec floated his idea of covertly getting a message to Res, who would then be compelled to contact him directly, for another meeting. Dec would need details, insight, and a little luck. She was already friendly with him, flirty even, so gaining her trust wouldn’t be much trouble. He could casually interrogate her through conversation, if he could get her alone and relaxed. Although she worked with Sheepdog and may know more about this than Dec did, Dec couldn’t ask too many questions or raise her suspicions. Especially since they all knew the reach Splicer had, as an organization, and what it was capable of doing if it felt threatened.

“Tip of the spear”, the Team Lead told him before they wrapped up the call. “You’ve got to be the tip of the spear. We don’t know what’s at stake here, honestly, but if I’m discussing it with you and the rest of the team, clearly, it’s got us all very, very concerned. I trust you’ll carry this out, Dec. Keep most of it under wraps, and get that damned Sheepdog 50 miles from this thing. Whatever you tell Res, don’t tip your hand. We need to reinforce the trust in Splicer, not sow doubt, especially not internally. Everyone believes in what we do here.” Dec wasn’t so sure about that last sentence.

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Digital Equipment Corporation

Dec awoke abruptly, as he usually did, sitting up in bed straight and fast. Some parts of his training never went away. He reached over and decocked the pistol he slept with, carefully thumbing the hammer to ride it down slowly and carefully. Once he was awake, that was it, there was no alarm-slapping or turning to the cold side of the pillow and grabbing a few extra minutes. Rise and shine. He reached over to his dump plate on a bedside table, placed his gun there and traded it for his Overwatch ring. It didn’t have an official name, since he didn’t have an official title. Dec and his team were essentially a black op. They didn’t even show up on the Splicer budget. Some clever nerd in accounting spread their budget out across office supplies and a hundred other mundane things, paid to all kinds of fake shell companies, eventually landing in Dec’s team’s phony consulting firm. The money was good but the action was lacking, most of the time. There’s that old question, who watches the watchers?

That’s where Dec and his team came in. They watched the watchers. Good thing too, because on more than one occasion, someone at Splicer would go off on a tangent, looking too closely at something or someone. For an organization that sells digital and physical defense, they needed rock solid people behind the scenes. That was true for the most part but again, once in a while a curious cat stumbled across something they shouldn’t. They would also abuse their powers of surveillance, which was a recurring theme so it must have been tempting for a lot of analysts. One time it was harmless. An ASE started collecting footage of some random woman, and as time went by, he studied the footage so carefully, he crafted a plan to date the woman. He already knew her habits, what she liked to eat, her routine, at least everything you could know as a sort of private investigator. Dec’s team was assigned to the ASE in question to make sure he didn’t take it too far. Physical contact was a big no no. After all, the Splicer Organization was basically an urban myth to most people. By the time the ASE made it to the woman, it would be too late, so they watched and waited, but more importantly, they warned him first.

Warnings are very effective, especially when you know more than the target; living and working in a shadow layer of the company had its advantages. The ASE decided to make his move on a Friday night, with an attempt to bump into the woman at the grocery store. As he crossed the threshold into the store, Dec and Sharp took one arm each, and led the ASE to an unpopular corner of the store. Five minutes later, the ASE got the picture and decided to leave. Apparently, he was so shaken up by the experience, he didn’t return to the office for a week, and even then, he tried to turn in his resignation letter. His manager ripped it up and pointed at his desk without saying a word. The ASE didn’t put up a fight. The message was delivered and received and he was welcome to continue working, minus that one thing.

“Dec, get out of your head”, he thought to himself. There were other things to do besides reminisce about his job, and he refused to let his mind wander too far. He had some rough years in the war, saw a lot of damage first-hand and among his group. The biggest problem with modern medicine and technology was just how much damage it could repair, and how quickly. He saw men missing a leg one day and back in action a week later on some custom-made carbon fiber replacement. In the old days, you were out of action and sent back home. Now, the battlefield could become home, with short stints in field hospitals just behind the lines to get stapled back together and doped up to your eyeballs. This led to a whole new form of PTSD, but they called it Extended Battlefield Trauma, because it dug deeper due to all the nonstop stress. They were still ironing out therapies to treat a lot of the vets, but most vets chose to deal with it the way generations before them had dealt with it. A group of friendly vets and plenty of liquor, on a regular basis. None of them were time bombs, but many of them had unimaginably deep mental wounds. From time to time, the Moderns would give them some new experimental brain drug designed to help rewire your brain and return you to “normal”, but at best, these new drugs just helped them cope and get by day to day. Life was still damaged.

“No seriously, GET OUT OF YOUR HEAD”, Dec muttered under his breath. Gotta go somewhere, gotta do something besides think. He cracked open his remote terminal and checked for messages. There was only one, and the title alone riled up Dec. It read, “Ghostbusters Needed Immediately”. He knew what came next. Either Res or someone on her team hadn’t gotten the message to stop digging into whatever this ghost footage was. Why was this such a problem? He was sure that Res got the message and didn’t need a reminder. He looked over her profile, and she seemed very risk-averse, preferring not to poke any bears or stir up any trouble. Even her teammate Sheepdog didn’t seem like much of a threat, but Dec couldn’t exactly apply more pressure, or these bloodhounds would just be convinced they were following the scent and never give it a rest. Dec decided to bump into Res again at the Meatspace bar where he would pass her some sort of secret note, leading to another face-to-face meeting. Since he was convinced that Res wasn’t pursuing the ghost anymore, she would have to be persuaded to get Sheepdog to drop the bone, if he was the one still hot on whatever this trail was. However, before any action was taken, Dec would have to run the idea up the flagpole and see what his Team Lead had to say about it. He already had contact with Res and he didn’t want to run her off. So he requested a meeting with his lead, and began plotting his next move.

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Resolute (part two)

Res faced a dilemma now. She also began to get a sneaking suspicion of Dec sniffing around. She remembered the elbow grab as if it just happened…the talk near the restrooms. The ghost he mentioned. Now Sheepdog is next, or will she get blamed? What would happen if she did? Another discussion with Dec or something…. worse? Whatever the outcome, she had to get ahead of this whole thing before it spun out of control. She had no choice now, as if she ever did. She had to call Dec and set up a meeting. Suddenly, her comms buzzed. Looking down, she saw a message on the display.

When there’s something strange
In your video footage
Who you gonna call?
DEC OR SHEEP

It was Genesis 15 fucking around. It gave her the creeps not knowing where or how this rogue AI was even hosted or what kind of access it had. She didn’t need this right now. The situation was starting to stress her out and this just added another layer. She replied, bluntly.

Not right now Fifteen.

As if by some prediction algorithm, instantly, upon her hitting send, there was another message from 15.

Fine, be that way. I thought this was starting to get good.

With 15 snooping and interested in whatever it knew, and the pressure building by the second, Res didn’t reply. She dialed Dec and it went to his messages. She left a simple one. “Found a fox. Decided I wanted some origami lessons. I did manage to make a pretty nice origami, a slightly retarded cat, from the pattern. Call me when you get this.” Short, clever, and simple, although a little singsong at the end. He would definitely call her back. Just a matter of time. To kill some time and unwind a little, Res kicked rocks down the sidewalk on the way to Meatspace, where, as usual, K was pushing forward her shot and her beer chaser, right in front of her favorite seat. Standing behind that favorite seat was none other than Beat himself, puffing on a fat cigar. What a coincidence.

Turning to meet her gaze as she approached, Beat said loudly over the music, “What a surprise, molodaya ledi! I thought I was at my favorite bar, but it appears to be yours. That’s quite the VIP treatment,” and he motioned with his cigar towards the shot glass and beer at her spot. “I’m lucky if this bartender notices me in a chicken suit.” K shot a frowning glance at Beat, overhearing this particular phrase, and reached for the pickled egg jar, removing just one egg. “This is for the chicken,” K said directly to Res, “I think he might have dropped it.” Everyone was having a good time busting balls and Beat couldn’t hide his opinion of this exchange under his typically stoic exterior, smiling from ear to ear. “Bawk bawk,” he said, “and I will take another shot of Stoli, if you would be so kind. Mine seems to have a hole in the bottom.” Res busted out laughing at this whole scene, it was too perfect. You couldn’t have scripted this encounter. This is exactly what she needed after her conversation with Sheep. Some levity, some alcohol, and some friendly company.

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Resolute (part one)

After the haircut, the shopping, laundry, and one more downpour, Res wrapped up the weekend. She ran a hot bath and scurried to the mantle to retrieve the fox, undressing one item at a time and tossing each on the floor on the way back to the bathroom. She lived alone, and if she didn’t care, nobody cared about wet clothing littering the floor. Steam was already fogging up the mirror and she glanced at her blurry reflection for a second as she passed it, closing the door behind her to keep the heat in. One foot at a time, she eased into the hot water, while deliberately lowering herself down with her left hand on the edge of the tub. Had to keep the right hand high and dry as she didn’t want a soggy fox. The water was just the right temperature. Within a few minutes as she acclimated to it, she felt her feet start to wrinkle. It was such a specific feeling; she closed her eyes for a moment and leaned into it as she slid deeper under the water’s surface. “I could sleep here,” she thought as she brought her knees above the waterline and watched the steam evaporate from her legs. She turned her attention to the vaguely foxlike origami, squeezed her left hand on the towel to mostly dry it, and carefully unfolded it again. With the heat and the moisture it practically unfolded itself, and there she saw Dec’s message.

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

There seemed to be a tone here. Not, I want to see you again. Not, maybe we should meet for drinks. This was something else. That realization was a little disappointing, because she had hoped it would be a little less business and a little more friendly. But here she was, steaming in a hot bath, and the only thing on her mind was Dec, and the stingingly pleasant heat of the tub. It wasn’t a coincidence. Subconsciously, she hated to admit it, but she was alone and lonely at the same time. She wouldn’t mind spending time with someone besides a coworker, and a vet is probably a total mess of a friend, so no, it didn’t make a lot of sense. But many things in life started that way. A bad idea, a risk, a step into the unknown, a leap of faith, a blind date. She realized she was talking herself into it, remembering cheesy maxims like “you fail 100% of the things you never try”.  But was she being commanded to call Dec, or was she tricking herself into thinking it was her idea, and maybe even a good idea? It didn’t matter at this point, she decided to call Dec tomorrow and get it over with, whatever it was. She tossed the paper as far as she could from the tub, and although it flew about as well as half a donut, it landed clear of the drip zone.

She dunked her head under the water briefly to help rinse away the little hair shavings that always seem to stick around after a fresh haircut before going through the rest of the shampoo/conditioner routine. People had told her, many times before, that her hair was so shiny and thick, it must be some ancient beauty routine and if she could just explain it and save the universe. Truth was, Res always had good hair, even as a child. Genes. Being born half Dutch and half Thai was a little fortunate here since she inherited her eyes and hair color from her father and her “shine” from her mother. None of that black on black that, while attractive in its own right, made average Asians look absolutely cloned by comparison. Res felt like some special hybrid that got the best of both worlds, and just enough madness from the Dutch side to enhance her creativity and inquisitive nature. Above all else, she was American; an experiment, in an experiment of a country, which was usually united under the same flag.

Her Dutch father had met her mother on a trip to Bangkok for business, where the airport workers were striking during his scheduled flight back. He meandered through the streets trying to avoid the tourist traps and sex bars, finally stopping off in a coffee shop where he was greeted in perfect English by a stunning woman that looked about 10 years younger than she was. Noticing he was taken aback, she teased him a bit, smiling, saying “I also speak fluent Thai if you prefer, ling khaow”. He didn’t speak much Thai, but he heard a lot of “ling” on a tour of the jungle once, and he knew it meant monkey, or aap in his native tongue. The ridiculousness of the sentence was clever; a little insulting, friendly, and playful, all at the same time. He was immediately charmed. He cracked a smile, tilted his head forward to peer over the top of his sunglasses, and replied simply, “English is fine, but hold the bananas”, in his well-practiced accent.

That was most of the story she had been told; at the very least, her favorite part. It seemed like fate, with a few chances, a few risks taken, working itself into this one-in-a-million chance, complete with aligned stars. The output of which comfortably soaked as the water slowly cooled, and pondered the past and the future. Maybe it was time for her to see what fate had in store, she thought. That cemented her decision to contact Dec the next day. As she began to drain the tub and dry off, she reached for the lotion and slathered it damn near everywhere. The fountain of youth in a bottle, as her mom liked to say. To be honest, neither of them probably even needed a single drop; it was just insurance.

The next day, after a mostly uneventful day at the office, Res stared blankly at her comms device. It was waiting. He was waiting. So what was the hold up? She felt like some step was missing. What was it she was supposed to do besides call Dec and meet with him? An idea slowly formed, a memory of a thought. Sheepdog. She was supposed to talk to Sheep first and check on his progress. He was on to something and it totally slipped her mind. She decided to call Sheep instead.

“Hello? Res?”, Sheep answered immediately, and she could barely hear what had to be background noise as he traveled along on the train. “Yeah, it’s me. I felt like we needed to sync up on what you’ve been chasing down. Any luck?”. Sheep filled her in with most of the details about his ghost hunting trip, careful to not say too much in public but getting the points across. “So basically,” Sheep said, “I think maybe I was in the right place at the right time. Things mostly added up, but I hit a wall. There was a man, the Relaxed Man, wearing some crazy outfit. No, I couldn’t make out his face, that was covered too. But the outfit, the suit, there’s something there.” Res paused for a moment as she soaked up his story. “Optical camo? That’s just a theory. The military has been trying to crack that for 50 years. If anyone has done it…”, and Res trailed off, pondering the implications. A singular individual that cracked the code, figured out the impossible, however unlikely, would change the world, at least for a while. The entire court system was based on video footage. If it wasn’t filmed, it didn’t happen, as far as most judges were concerned. This was dangerous, if true. “Not another word about this to anyone, Sheep. Not like this. Do you know what you could be walking in to? ASE’s have trained on this footage for years, but you’re the only one that has gotten this close.” Sheep was quiet for a moment. He was so dug in to solving a problem, he never stopped to consider the outcomes. The implications, the possibilities. He was beginning to put 2 and 2 together, and he felt a cold sweat begin to form on his palms and forehead. “I…I feel like a fool,” Sheep stammered to break the silence, “how did I not predict this? I missed the forest for the trees. I was right there, right there, and I’m sure the Relaxed Man saw me with the doorman, dressed up in Sendai gear to disguise my identity.”

Res cooly replied, “Well for now, I wouldn’t worry too much, you’re very forgettable. Wearing a service costume added a valuable layer to your little charade. That was smart. Nobody ever remembers people in service gear, it’s almost like optical camo all by itself. Tell me, can you remember the face of the last elevator repairman you walked past? Or the janitor entering the restroom? Sure, you may remember macro details, like if he was tall or short, skinny or fat, but honestly, what about that person’s face?” Sheep silently nodded in agreement. She had a point. Everyone acknowledged the plumber, or the elevator guy, or the electricians, but they never remembered their faces. Strange realization. “If you’re trying to make me feel better, Res, then it’s working. Maybe I was just as anonymous as that man was. A uniform with no face, no identity. The cameras saw, of course, but the people might have ignored me. I know at least one person who intentionally forgot me, and is 100 credits richer as a result.” Res felt her hair stand up on her neck, like a cold breeze suddenly descended on her. “Wait, you bribed the doorman? Oh shit. That could be a problem”, Res said, a little more nervously. “Do you think so? I mean, I feel like I’m in some trouble all of a sudden, are we catching up or are you spooking me for fun?”, Sheep said. “No, I’m not spooking you on purpose. I just feel like when you slid money across his palm, it changed the energy of the whole bit. What kind of service guy, ‘just checking on things’, bribes the doorman for logs and again to forget he was even there? You broke cover…at least with him. I don’t want to continue this over comms. This is serious”, Res said, this time, more seriously. “I hear you,” Sheep said, “loud and clear. I gotta go, my stop is next. Bye.” Before he could end the call, Res already had.

…more later

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Haunted (part two)

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

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

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

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

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Beat the market (part two)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Beat, Cops and Robbers Part 6

The saga of Beat’s DAA continues.

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

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

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

MENU:

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

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

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

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

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

RUNNING PROCESSES IN COPERNICUS

Sqldb_helper
Proc
syslog
con_overlay
backup_dg
framedel
-MORE-

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

framedel
con_overlay
Sqldb_helper
Proc
syslog
con_overlay
backup_dg

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

backup_dg
con_overlay
Sqldb_helper
Proc
framedel
syslog

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

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

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

ANALYZE LOGS
FILTER LOG DATA
STANDARD REPORTING

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

LOG ANALYSIS MODULE

PLEASE CHOOSE SYSTEM PROCESSES FOR ANALYSIS

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

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

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

ANALYZE LOGS
FILTER LOG DATA
STANDARD REPORTING
GAUGE EFFECTIVENESS

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

Con_overlay

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

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

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

LOGLINE DELETED
LOGROTATE DENIED
LOGLINE DELETED
BEGINNING PROCESS LOG

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

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

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

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

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

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Tone Deaf

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Ouija Board (part two)

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

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

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