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Cheapdog (part four)

Sheep quickly searched the room for anything that looked even remotely like a dead-man’s switch. He didn’t have any old-fashioned remote controls anywhere; everything was voice command now. But he did have something his grandfather once owned that should fool them. He dashed to his bedroom closet and yanked out his gambit. An artifact from a simpler time. An Atari 2600 joystick, with a cord and a single red button. This could work. He quickly stuffed the excess wire up his sleeve and zipped his jacket shut before shuffling back to the front door.

“Ok, this is it. Nobody shoots. We’re going to talk,” Sheep announced, before unlocking the door and slowly turning the handle. Res ducked down and made herself as small as possible, clasping her mouth with one hand, in case any sound tried to escape. She was armed, but outnumbered, and scared out of her mind. Staying hidden was her best defense.

The men in the hallway trained their guns on the center of the door as the handle turned and it swung open very slowly. The lights were on inside, and before them stood Sheepdog, with the detonator in his right hand. It was black and compact, with an obvious trigger, which his thumb was covering. “Easy now, nobody has to get hurt, Sheep,” said the gruff man, who sounded like he smoked cigars for a living. “Everyone, drop your weapons, and
step in, single-file. If anyone is left in the hall, come in NOW or get merked with all your buddies here,” Sheep ordered. “Holy shit, he just might pull this off,” Res thought, after hearing the situation change. Exchanging glances, the men sat their guns down just inside the doorway and stepped back slowly before forming a line and marching in, closing the door behind them.

“Is that everyone? Don’t fuck with me!“, Sheep said. He could see their eyes darting around behind the black ballistic masks they were wearing to cover their faces. The tough guy act was working, the men were scared shitless. This was supposed to be a snatch and snitch mission, intel-gathering; nobody was prepared to deal with a suicide bomber. “Yep, just
us three,” said the gruff voice. He was a little taller than the other two. “So what’s say you, I dunno, disarm that thing and we can talk? You seem awful tense.”



The quad was losing speed. No amount of pounding on the dash would fix anything right now, but out of frustration, Dec pounded on the dash anyway. Rotor 4 had stopped smoking, and it was nearly white hot now. The rest of the oil must have cooked out of the bearing. At any moment, it was giving up. He did some quick math in his head. At the best velocity, he was ten seconds out. At this velocity, with rotor 4 ready to seize, he’d be on
foot, running full speed through the mud towards the destination. This would cost him a few minutes, although the beer in his gut was telling him he could do better, and his adrenaline agreed.


Ffffffffiiiiizzzzzt. CLONK. Alarms sounded and lights flashed in the quad. “Warning, rotor 4, offline. Emergency landing sequence commencing. Remain seated for your safety,” the onboard computer blared over the sound system. Well, shit. He was about to land, and at this point, he didn’t care if the rest of the quad burst into flames. It could burn behind him as he ran. He had to keep making forward progress. The lasers beneath the quad measured out a safe landing zone, then all 3 rotors froze, forcing an instant descent arc. About 3 meters from the ground, they fired back up at full speed, creating a cushion of air to break the fall, before spinning to a complete stop. The canopy ejected, and Dec was out, sprinting to the destination. “This might be a one-man job,” Dec thought, “but just in case, I’m calling in support”. He pulled out his communicator, tapped the destination, and dragged an icon of an eye floating above a pyramid to the location, without breaking stride. Lightning branched across the clouds overhead, and a hard rain pelted him in the face ceaselessly. He felt the thunder in his chest.

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Cheapdog (part three)

Dec was a few beers deep at the Vets table in Meatspace, across town. He suddenly got a message on his comms. Given the hour, and his present company, there was only maybe one person it could be. He checked it.

Dec, it’s 15. Res is in big trouble. She needs your help, now. I’ve sent her coordinates. Hurry.


What followed were GPS coordinates that were extremely specific. Dec hesitated for a second. Genesis 15 was wild, but he wasn’t a liar. “Gotta go play the hero, boys,” Dec said as he stood up and patted his hip. Nothing was there. Either he went to Res’ place unarmed or he left his weapon at her place. He didn’t like those odds; he didn’t know anything about the situation. “Sharp, you armed?”, he asked one of the other vets. “No sir, at least not in here. You know my temper,” Sharp replied, turning back to his beer. “Guess I’m going to have to improvise, if I’m not too late,” Dec thought, as he made a quick visit to some friends before he sprinted to his quadcopter in the rain, which was blowing slightly sideways as it fell.

He jumped in, got strapped in, and tapped his communicator against the dash to transfer the coordinates to the quad’s navigation. Multiple routes were available, and with a few more taps, an emergency beeline route was chosen and he lifted off. He enabled race/crisis mode. “This is stupid,” Dec muttered as the copter flew about 10% beyond its design parameters, heavy raindrops battering the windshield canopy.

The banging at the door continued. “Sheepdog! Open up! You’re only making this worse for everyone. You open the door now, we can talk!”, said the outsider. Res, still peeking from behind the couch, slowly shook her head no. Sheepdog looked like the kind of guy that would fold under this kind of pressure. He was a no-friction kind of guy, and this was textbook friction. Sheep turned his head and stared at the door with his mouth beginning to open. “No Sheep, don’t!”, Res hissed, just as Sheepdog uttered a single, loud word at the door. “Stop!”. “Stop? Is he fucking crazy? When has that ever worked?”, she thought. The banging stopped, and the doorknob quit moving. From the hall, the voice said, “What did you say?”.

Dec was pushing the quad hard. He could feel a rolling vibration traveling through the quad from the front to the rear, suggesting the airframe was getting fatigued. One of the drawbacks of choosing the hot rod version instead of the luxury model, but right then, he needed more speed. The problem with batteries was always weight. You could run a gasoline engine low and the vehicle got lighter as you approached empty. A near-empty battery weighed the exact same as a fully-charged one; heavy. Looking around the interior, the heaviest thing he could jettison was the passenger seat. “Oh well,” Dec sighed, “guess I never used it anyway.” He jammed his hand under the seat and pulled up until the seat started tearing away from the carbon fiber floorpan. He wrenched it loose, and after pulling the emergency canopy open lever, chucked it out and overboard. He was gaining on the location, 2 minutes out.

Res was panicked. Whoever was outside, they were definitely coming in now. Sheepdog just sealed their fate. He stood up and tiptoed to the door. “I said stop. There are lots of bombs in here, and I’m holding a dead-man’s switch. If I drop it, this whole block goes up in flames.” Sheep sounded dead serious; it was one hell of a bluff.

There was some muffled discussion outside. The strangers were discussing their options. “They didn’t say anything about bombs,” one said. “They don’t pay me enough for this kind of shit”, another said. A gruffer voice added, “ahh he’s bluffing. There’s no intel on this guy that suggests he’s anything more than a garden-variety nerd.” Finally, the leader spoke up. “Bull-fuckin-shit, Sheepdog. We’re calling your bluff. Open this door and show us the device. We don’t want to hurt you, so don’t make us hurt you.” They were dressed head to toe in level 3 soft body armor, so anything out of a handgun would thump, but none of them would die. They could afford to play this out.

Back in the quad, Dec was still en route. Less than a minute to target, and he still didn’t know what he was rushing into. It could just as easily have been a prank by 15. He knew 15 talked to Res though, and that was the only proof he needed to justify this high effort rescue. The quad’s vibration had turned into a violent cowl shake and it wasn’t going away. As Dec surveyed the interior, a glowing red chunk of metal caught his attention. Blade number 4, on the right rear, was overheating. He had been meaning to fix that. Too late now. The quad was doomed. “At least it isn’t smoking,” he thought, before it started smoking. Bearing seizure was imminent, and though the quad was safe enough on 3 engines to land, it sure as hell wouldn’t do anything fast. 30 seconds to target…at the current, unsustainable velocity.

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Project Fulcrum

He had done it. Rex leaned back in his Eames recliner, smugly reading over his “test plan” for the future with Frank’s access to the Stitcher organization. It was so clever he couldn’t stop smiling while flipping through the pages and charts. There was just one problem. He had to ensure that it didn’t fall into anyone else’s hands, and if it did, that it wouldn’t make any sense to them.

The plan, at its core, was playing the stock market, systematically, with some variance built in to throw off anyone or anything casually tracking the market. Knowing what they knew, about the AI warning Frank of “bad moves”, it was just a matter of placing the bets and raking in the profits, with an intentional loss from time to time of a few million credits. That would help throw off tracking, as well as serve as a tax shelter from a great deal of profit. Frank and Rex had already performed second-stage testing, to see if the AI could predict short-term losses through a tangle of shell corporations that Frank operated. The results didn’t surprise either of them: 100% success.

Rex dubbed his plan Project Fulcrum, because it gave him the leverage he needed, financially, to complete his own bigger project, without involving shadowy figures that deliver physical violence in the event of a late or missed payment. As far as he was concerned, there were no downsides. Frank and Rex would beat the casino on a regular basis, and eventually Rex’s project would be flush with cash and run to completion. He was reviewing and re-reviewing the plan to ensure that there were no dangling threads. It seemed airtight.

Back to the problem at hand. How to essentially encrypt the plan documents so that they only made sense to he and Frank. Distributing the plan piece by piece was a good start. Embedding those chunks into some other kind of data was another good idea. But reassembling the chunks in the right order was the absolute key to it all, and deserved the most consideration. For this, Rex turned to a DNA lab he had done business with, many years ago. They could create and assemble specific DNA strands to any specification, from nothing; you supplied the code. They could also embed that DNA into other, common strands, and you had to know the specific marker in the sequence to even begin to decode the DNA they had inserted. They would hide their strands specifically in DNA strands where variation was expected to be present; for example, the DNA sequence that determines the pattern of a leopard’s spots. No two were alike, and their location varied, as other sequences in the DNA would essentially point to wherever that gene sequence was located, which was also variable. There were also inactive genes one could hide new sequences, that functionally, did nothing in an organism. Fun fact, most human DNA is inactive, or copies of active sequences, which is why, once the human genome was 100% mapped out, they only found a 2% difference between humans and chimpanzees. In the programming world, this is known as cruft. Layer after layer of band aid coding that accumulated over the evolution of a species, or computer program. Eventually it led to bloat with genomes that were much longer than they actually needed to be, which again was beneficial for anyone trying to hide information in DNA.

Rex would eventually end up visiting the DNA lab, Blue Genes, and coding his creation. It would be an organism. It would grow and change over time. At regular steps of the organism’s growth cycle, it would shed and provide a new piece of the DNA puzzle to the recipient. The initial phase of life, the adjusted sperm and egg, would contain two keys to the DNA sequence lock. They were complimentary and mostly matching.

Rex was creating a snake. From birth, it would continually be fed and nurtured to reach the next growth phase. Once it was fully grown, sampling each of the shed skins would yield the entire plan for Project Fulcrum, so this would take some time. However, they could always accelerate the growth cycle from the beginning by tweaking some growth genes. It just meant that the snake wouldn’t live a long life, but the tradeoff was acceptable. This wasn’t a pet; it was a delivery system. Once the credits were transferred, Blue Genes would create the snake and hand it off to Rex in a plain cardboard box, which he would then hand-deliver to Frank. The instructions were nice and vague. “Here’s your pet snake. Keep him warm and fed, and clean his cage regularly”. Of course, cleaning his cage included carefully collecting pieces of the shed skin, and sending samples back to Blue Genes for analysis, decrypting the next piece of Project Fulcrum. But what about the sequencing numbers that tied it all together? Rex decided he’d deliver those to Frank, as needed, rather than handing them off up front. That would also add an element of randomness to the process to further prevent any kind of casual analysis in case anyone got curious. So that settled it, the plan for delivering the plan was another stroke of Rex genius. Frank just had to keep the snake alive, and with a small army of house staff at his disposal, assigning someone to take great care of his new pet was no more difficult than throwing darts at a target.

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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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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, 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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The Ouija Board (part two)

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

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

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

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The Ouija Board (part one)

The next day, Rex couldn’t wait to meet up with Frank to discuss the ramifications. He knew Frank would be at the Splicer offices signing contract amendments bright and early, which meant Rex woke up early to sketch out some plans to test the system. The best test Rex could come up with was some volatile stock trading in the penny markets. Or, even more fickle and short term, crypto markets. He thought all it would take was a few big bull moves on a very short time frame to complete the test, but they had to be sure it was functioning before they placed any bets. Rex, of course, would match Frank’s bets with his own money, but Frank would be the one doing the betting.

10am rolled around, and Frank reached out to Rex, confirming the paperwork is done. “This, of course, is a gentlemen’s agreement between you and I,” Frank said, “so long as it goes no further, I don’t see the harm in the testing.” Rex agreed and arranged transportation to Frank’s home.

When Rex arrived, he tipped the driver handsomely and advised him to forget his last customer and route. The driver marked the ride as a failure and the details were erased. Rex strolled up to Frank’s idea of an ancient Germanic castle, pea gravel crunching underfoot as he approached the massive door. Naturally, Frank was expecting his arrival and one of the house staff opened the door in such a manner that Rex didn’t have to break stride to enter the home. He was greeted with a bow and kept walking towards Frank’s office. Pulling up a brass-tacked emerald green leather chair, he found Frank already at his terminal ready to get to work. “So,” Frank began, “what mischief did you have in mind for testing? Or would you prefer discussing the details of my revised contract first?” Rex replied, “I’m sure the contract language is very interesting, but lacking the legal chops to properly dissect it, I’d rather get to the testing.” Rex paused for a moment as Frank grinned. “I propose we test either crypto markets or penny stock trading off the sheets. We don’t want to show up as a big hammer, but we want to push the Ouija puck and see what happens. How is it supposed to work, warning you for your own protection?”

Frank took a deep breath before replying. “They said it was going to be simple. An extension of existing protocols. You see, my secure comms device for them, it has two lights. One amber, one green. Green means everything is secure and safe. Amber means danger. A simple binary. My AI controls it somewhat independently. So the trick must be to stay in the green, whatever that takes.” Rex nodded as he understood the limitations of the system, but he would figure out what the timing and threshold looked like. “Alright Frank, ready to do this thing?”, Rex asked. Frank gave him a thumbs up. “Let’s start somewhat small. How much holding do you have in crypto?” Frank quickly replied, “my financial advisor told me it should be zero, but it’s actually 100 million, spread across a few popular coins that track closely with other market indexes.” Rex thought for a moment and said, “ok, our first move will be… only one million. Let’s find a volatile coin that has a lot of attention focused on it.” The secure comms device remained green. Frank searched the coin base, and purchased Lucky Coin, something apparently new which had seen a 1500% rise since the debut 48 hours ago. It was starting to fall in value, according to the real-time charts, but it wasn’t anywhere near the bottom. “Tell me when you’re ready,” Frank said. Rex had his eyes fixated on the comms device. Seconds passed, and it suddenly turned amber, and it stayed amber. Rex and Frank watched the second-by-second charting live, and the coin was in freefall. In less than 15 seconds it lost 200% of the pumped value, and was still bleeding in the charts. The Ouija puck had indeed moved. “Best 2 out of 3?”, Frank asked, already knowing that Rex would need more proof than this. “Of course. Let’s flip over to the penny stocks. Again, look for anything unusually hot or busy. Cash out and record your loss, I owe you a few bucks.”

Frank found a stock that had been essentially dead on the ground for the past month, but it was starting to break out. From one cent to 2 cents in the past hour. It was some rinky dink startup company that had plummeted after a major CEO failure sent it into a tailspin and it got delisted from the NASDAQ. However, a brief glance at today’s financial news promised a turnaround as the new CEO took the reins and landed a military contract with huge initial funding. Someone saw promise in it. “Bet another million, it’ll hide in the volume that is already happening,” Rex said. Frank queued up an order for a million credits’ worth. He glanced at the comms device, which just changed from green to amber. Puzzled, Rex lifted it off the table and shook it, in case anything was loose. It felt like a monobloc design with no moving connectors or parts. “This has to be a winner, how can it chart lower?”, Rex asked, before Frank changed his order, and split the order in half, two orders of 500,000 each. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense that it would impact the transaction in any way, but suddenly the amber light changed back to green. Frank executed the trade. They watched the charting pump the stock. 2 cents. 5 cents. 10 cents. Comms still green. 15 cents. Every few seconds it nearly doubled in value as they glanced from the chart to the comms. Somewhere around a dollar per share, the comms went amber again. Frank immediately sold both orders back to the exchange. Comms stayed amber. What was it trying to say? He had already made a ton of easy money in a few minutes.

to be continued

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Resonance (cont.)

This was definitely a message meant for someone, and whoever did it was pretty slick. It could have been done at the bar with a few simple things every bar has. A toothpick to write the message. Receipt paper for the object. And the kicker, lemon juice for the invisible ink. She remembered doing this as a kid, writing silly messages, letting it dry, then heating it from behind to heat the lemon juice into brown ink. All she needed to do, to expose the missing letters, was to flatten the paper and heat it just a little more in a few spots. 2 minutes later in the kitchen, she had her answer. It was all there, mostly legible and with surprisingly good handwriting, considering how it was done. She unconsciously bit her bottom lip a little as she read the simple message.

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

She remembered how this all started; the silent, sudden crab claw grab at her elbow. Dec pointing towards the cameras near the bathroom during their talk. The All-Seeing Eye ring on his hand. The cryptic phone number on the napkin, which was still on the table. Her banter with him and the vets at Meatspace a few days ago, when the fox just happened to fall at her feet as everyone left. At the very least, Dec wasn’t boring or stupid. He was clever, but subtle. He had brute force thanks to his size and his Terminator arm, yet here he was folding delicate origami and casually dropping it off right where she would find it. Nobody noticed, she thought, not even the cameras. He must have been taught all kinds of quiet methods to communicate, during the war, and he’s using them to reel her in. The worst part? It was working. Res was intrigued. She wanted to know more, a lot more, about what made Dec, Dec. What other surprises does he have in store? What made him think she would even manage to heat the fox enough to see the message? What does he know about her already? More than he let on, she imagined. If he’s working for Splicer, on some level she’s not aware of, he could have read a thick dossier about her before ever approaching her that first night. How long had he been watching her, waiting for the right moment? The strange thing about being comfortable around strangers is that you don’t ever really notice them until you’re introduced. He could have been coming there for hours, or days. But all the ghost talk coincided too closely with what she and Sheepdog were working on. There’s no doubt, someone at Splicer had sent him to warn her off the footage she was reviewing, which made her believe that she would have cracked the secret given more time.

She decided to sideline this whole “call Dec” thing, and talk to Sheepdog first. But it was the first day of the weekend, and she didn’t feel like doing it right away. There were more mundane things to do first; a pile of dirty laundry, grocery shopping, and Res thought it had been a while since her last good haircut. Weekend chores. She checked her comms device and there were no notifications from anyone; nice and quiet. Res decided to keep the origami and feebly tried to coax it back into its original shape. She failed. It looked more like a retarded cat, which made her laugh quietly to herself as she moved it to the mantle above the fireplace. Might as well hang onto it, but the napkin wasn’t necessary anymore. She paused for a moment and considered another depth to these messages. They were both on paper. Not a coincidence, so she turned on the stove one more time and burnt the napkin to ashes before tossing it into the trash. His contact was already in her comms device so nothing was lost besides physical evidence. She jumped in the shower, got dressed, then peeked out the window to see heavy clouds rolling in from the east. “Another rainy day in rainy town,” she said sarcastically, as she grabbed a beanie, her favorite jacket and a dry umbrella, heading out into the coming storm with still-drying wet hair tucked mostly under the beanie. The last few notes of Through The Lonely Nights echoed from the speakers as she closed the door. She grinned.

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The Client Calls Again (finale)

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

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

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

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

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

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