Tag: story

Posted on

No Mistakes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

continued in part two

Posted on

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.

Posted on

The Client Calls Again (cont.)

Res’s manager, and Sheepdog, decided this was worthy of celebration. “Drinks are on me, you pick the venue”, the manager announced, and Res blurted out “let’s go to Meatspace! it’s kind of a dive, but it’s local and the bartender knows me. Great service and a chill crowd, as long as we don’t get too wild”. “Great, let’s all meet in a few hours. Bring your thirst, ladies and gentlemen. I plan to see which one of you parties harder on an unlimited credit card. Save room for champagne!”

Sheepdog left early and headed home via the tunnels beneath the city. He could afford the extra cost of terrestrial shuttles or even his own vehicle, but chose to sock his earnings away and live a humble life. He believed it kept him grounded, although some of his peers teased him with the nickname Cheapdog. He was still wrestling with the anomaly in the stitch from the Bowler meeting footage.

To him, it was annoying in the same way as listening to one half of a conversation from some loudmouth on their communication device, talking in public. He only had half the story, and had to imagine the other half based on what he already saw or heard. So many questions were pointing in so many directions, he had to just choose a hunch and go from there.

Thinking back on the sequence of events, the Bowler would get out of the Limo and meet with an invisible…something, shake hands, get back in the Limo, and leave. Drug deal? Drugs were mostly legal now minus some experimental chems that were banned. Secret information exchange? Yes, meeting face to face and giving someone a piece of paper was still fairly safe and private. But what kind of information would require that level of secrecy? And where was the invisible man getting the information? Why did the Bowler Hat man need it? Or was nothing at all exchanged, and the Splicer organization was being tested by the Bowler? Maybe even an internal test done in coordination with the organization and the client. Who knows? Without much more to go on, Sheepdog decided to shelve all these questions and just enjoy Res’s victory. If anything important was going on here, he was sure it would all be revealed over time.

A few hours later, a ride back through the tunnels, and Sheepdog met up with Res and their manager near Meatspace. It wasn’t a particularly fancy or even nice part of town, but somehow felt familiar enough that people felt safe. He could see why Res would live around here, despite the insane rental prices. There was an incomprehensible feeling of life here. It was busy but not too busy. It was gritty and real despite being plastered with ugly advertising. Sheepdog realized how hard he was thinking about it and snapped out of it. “Ok, before we go in, I just gotta say I’m not a big drinker. So, if the plan is to get wasted, I’m crashing on your couch, Res”, he said. “Fine with me”, she replied with a crooked grin, “just don’t snore too loud, you’ll wake up the fish”. The manager stood with them, chuckling, and ushered them inside, bringing up the rear. “You guys are drinking what I’m drinking, no arguments, and we’re starting with shots”, he said generically.

As usual, K greeted Res with her shot and beer chaser, in her usual spot. “Brought some victims with you huh?”, he quipped. “I did. This is my manager, and this is my friend, Cheapdog. Don’t worry, he’s not buying”, she said, twirling her hair with her right hand again. “Well, nice to meet you Mr. Manager, and, uh…Cheapdog? I hope I got that right. What are you drinking?”, K replied. As Sheepdog opened his mouth to utter a syllable, the Manager butted in. “Round of shots, open a tab for me, and after that, another round of shots. Do you have any champagne handy?”

“But of course, sir, what sort of establishment would Meatspace be without a few select bottles of Dom (Perignon) on ice”, K said, grinning ear to ear. “Simply dreadful”, he added. This amused everyone within earshot, because Meatspace was definitely not the sort of place to have champagne handy, and it was almost a preposterous question. The Manager got another chuckle out of that and wandered over to the juke box to pick some celebratory songs for the mood. He knew Res just well enough to guess at a few older selections that probably wouldn’t piss off the crowd.

Res was about to habitually get situated at her seat when she got a call. “Hello?”, she answered without looking to see who it was, and a man with a deep gravelly voice on the other end replied, “I see you!” She knew that voice, it was Dec. She pivoted on her heels expecting him to be behind her again, but it was just Sheepdog nursing a shot, and her manager was headed back to the group. “I don’t see you”, she replied, “are you here at the bar again?” Dec said yes and raised a big ass arm in the air from the vets table in the corner, disconnecting the call. Res leaned over to Sheepdog and said, “watch my back, I don’t really trust this guy yet”, before walking over to the vets table.

“You brought some friends! What’s the special occasion?”, Dec asked. “Work, landed a big fish today”, Res bantered, “and I didn’t even see a ghost.” Dec grinned and replied, “Congratulations, fisherman. But I think you have seen a ghost. Maybe him, too”, motioning with his beer towards Sheepdog and the manager. “Although if it just floated away, I’d probably forget about it too,” he said, with a twinkle in his eye, like a nudge-nudge, know what I mean sort of way. Res sensed a warmth to him that she didn’t notice before, and decided to dig a little. “So Dec,” she began, “why do these fine upstanding vets tolerate you sitting with them? They owe you a favor?” A few of the veterans chuckled.

“Little lady, I am one of them”, Dec growled, holding up his other arm, rolling back his sleeve to expose a deep circular scar around his right forearm. “You see this? Lost half my arm trying to pull a brother out of the path of a railgun. He lived, my arm didn’t”, he explained, as one of the vets quipped, “I still don’t know who got the best part of that deal”, and they all grinned knowingly.

“How many stitches?”, Res asked, expecting another smartass reply. “They didn’t tell me. I lost a lot of blood before the medic arrived, passed out, and woke up a few weeks later back in a city hospital”, Dec replied, before he was interrupted by a chorus of men at the table chanting, “with this goddamn Terminator arm!”, and laughing like they had heard the story a million times. Res enjoyed this kind of ball-breaking comradery, which is why she always liked the vets. “Wanna see a trick? Get a magnet from the Moderns real quick”, Dec said. Res walked over to the Moderns and to nobody’s surprise, returned with a rare earth magnet in hand, about the size of an old quarter. “Watch this”, Dec said as he placed the magnet in the palm of his Terminator hand. As his hand closed around the magnet, he started squeezing, with his hand shaking. Suddenly, the magnet shot out through the crease in his fist and flew across the room. “Mostly titanium, but the microservos will generate a strong opposing magnetic field when I squeeze hard enough. Doesn’t seem very useful, but maybe I’m not very creative and they didn’t give me a manual”, Dec explained. “Wow. Do you realize what you’ve got there is essentially a weapon? That’s pretty ironic, considering your story. Magnets forcing other things to move fast. I’m surprised that’s not a selling point, seems like it could come in handy, yuk yuk”, Res joked. “Well, I gotta get back to my group. Good seeing you again, I guess”, she said, and Dec nodded, watching her for too long as she went back to the bar.

to be continued.

Posted on

The Client Calls Again

Res and Sheepdog took a brief lunch in a neighboring building that served dim sum and Thai food at very reasonable prices. It didn’t hurt that they both loved Asian food, which sometimes made Sheepdog homesick, being so far away from his native Singapore for work. To Res, these dishes might as well have been apple pie, because, growing up in her area, it was as ubiquitous and American as a hotdog or a hamburger. Also, it was fast, nearby, and top quality, flying in ingredients daily as needed, according to rumors. Res glanced at her watch and realized she only had a few minutes before the next client call. She snatched up her purse, left a few credits for a tip, and told Sheepdog she would talk to him later, as he was still working on a plate of Pad See Eew. With a flip of her hair, she headed towards the skybridge that connected the buildings, the low heels of her shoes pounding out a hurried rhythm of clock-clock-clock across the tile floor.

Rather than taking the call at her desk, she reserved a private room and booked it for an hour. She could log in via the terminal there and bring all her personal data and notes up without hassling with a laptop, but she still brought her physical notepad for assistance. A few moments after she settled, she reached out to the client who answered immediately. While his voice was clear, no background noise, she could hear some form of audio manipulation on his end of the line, probably the same anonymizer he used before, which would shift between low and high tones of voice. And on his end, he was seeing her old-school video game avatar again, only this time, Res was using her real voice. Risky, but just a little. He already knew who she worked for and the nature of the business, so it seemed a more personal touch. “Hello, can you hear me ok?”, he asked. “Loud and clear, but can we back off on the voice hilo? Let’s pretend we trust each other a little this time”, Res replied, and the client agreed. The voice now sounded natural from his side. This was a little more intimate in the digital age, like a second date where some of the pretense and peacocking is dropped.

After a few light greetings were exchanged, the client got to the point. “As I’ve said before, I take my privacy and safety very seriously, which brings me to your organization. I’ve heard nothing but good things from a few people I rub shoulders with, who are also shielded. I think I may have a secret that needs to remain guarded at any cost, therefore I must be shielded at any cost. If what I know and what I have done can be connected, it would have devastating global consequences and cause irreparable damage. To me, and to your organization, among many others.”

Res didn’t like the tone here, because even if it was true, it sounded like borderline blackmail. Like if we don’t protect him and bring him on board, things could get unimaginably bad. Inflated sense of self-worth, narcissism, delusions of grandeur, or the real deal? A few indirect questions could fill in the gaps.

Res lightened her tone to be a little more disarming (and corporate neutral), then began questioning the client. “We get approached by a lot of very important people harboring secrets. After all, it’s in our DNA to protect high visibility and elite clientele with total airtight discretion. What separates you from the others that didn’t pass our standards?”

The client replied, “I seriously doubt the secrets the others keep are this potentially dangerous. I’m not some kind of serial killer with a list that needs legal protection. I’m in possession of information that I discovered, decided to act upon, and my reach is absolutely beyond global. My secret transcends this planet, no joke. But I can’t say more without acceptance and ironclad nondisclosure agreements on your organization’s behalf. Think of me as a wizard with the only key to Pandora’s Box.”

Res briefly scribbled in her notepad the last sentence. It seemed to carry a great deal of weight and would make a strong justification for admitting the client to the program, if it was true. There was an urgency to his voice, an almost pleading tone; clearly, time was a factor here. He needed in quick.

Res then asked, “Are these state secrets? Are you in possession of secret knowledge about this organization, the governing bodies, other individuals within this organization, or information that could impact national security?” Without hesitation the client answered “yes” with no further clarification. This would not be a standard client engagement, were she to accept him.

Res opened a new client form marked Top Secret – ASE and direct management only, the highest tier of discretion available, and began asking him for personal details. A wire transfer of 5 million credits was required up front to process the client form, and the last piece of information she needed (as she waved her manager over for secondary approval) was the client’s legal name. The engagement had begun. There were three signatures required with today’s date. Resonant Frequency, the manager, and the client…

Rex Tarkington

The rest of the details would take a few weeks to process, but everything said thus far was entered into the record for legal to fall back on if Mr. Tarkington mislead them during the process. An AI would have to be chosen and assigned to assist with training, surveillance, and stitching. He would be issued a closed-channel secure communication device. Res finished up with “many of our clients choose to get an Angel tattoo which is publicly visible and a warning to others. Would you like to schedule an appointment with one of our in-house artists to choose the design and apply it?” Rex declined and simply stated, “that won’t be necessary at this time, although I may propose an alternative in the future.” Farewells were then exchanged and Res told Rex, “Welcome aboard, and thank you for choosing the Splicer organization. Your secrets, and your self, will be safe with us.”

Rex wryly ended the call with “they damn well better be. I look forward to working with you.” He unceremoniously disconnected the call, and Res’s manager high-fived her on the spot.

Posted on

Selfish Generosity

Rex Tarkington was a genius. A certified, bona fide, Mensa-verified egghead. He was also extremely paranoid, and very indignant about that character trait. He believed, strongly, that anyone living in a surveillance state has an absolute right to privacy, and if there was anything he could do to advance the right to privacy, he would do it without a second thought. He spent decades in IT Security, where his mindset and perseverance made him very successful. Enough success that he could retire at age 27 and pursue his real goals. He sunk countless hours into studying, then breaking, security protocols and very high-level encryption. But at this point, he wasn’t doing it for any particular company or vendor, he was doing it to try and reset his own comfort level. Being behind the scenes, watching and fighting off digital attacks, it was old hat by now, especially since his crowning achievement was a defensive AI he programmed himself over a few years. He proudly named it T-Rex, which was also the laziest name anyone could have imagined, based on his own name. 

The funny thing about defense is that it’s just offense in reverse. You have to know certain things about the attackers, attack patterns, weaknesses, etc. in order to shore them up. You must know all your soft spots to harden them. By that same token, it’s not difficult to turn a defense into an offense. Attack others where you are weak, assuming a certain amount of commonality across organizations is in place.

For example, regardless of how big or wealthy a corporation becomes, they are often stuck with very outdated servers and hardware somewhere in the network that are easily exploited. Legacy systems, custom programming, vestigial limbs that nobody ever spent money to rebuild and replace. Every company has these “legacy assets” that they can’t do without, and someone in the organization is aware of it. As time goes by and these legacy assets accumulate and remain unpatched, they represent a challenge for the attacker, because no matter how old an attack vector becomes, it has to stay in the toolkit just in case it’s found. This swells the toolkit over time, to the point where nothing can be discarded and you have an enormous, unwieldy bag of tricks. It just comes with the territory.

Years after T-Rex was released, security researchers had turned it inside out and made it an attacker. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a major blow to Rex’s organization in particular. Despite how paranoid and careful he had been, he had left the door to the toolkit open for expansion for licensed owners, which malicious actors used to add their own bag of tricks to what they called Xer-T, the inverted version of T-Rex. Security organizations would sometimes stage virtual battles between T-Rex and Xer-T to essentially watch the AI battle itself, to look for flaws or improvements. That was actually beneficial in testing, and some would sell improvements back to Rex himself. But honestly, none of this interested Rex at this point. He had gone off on another tangent entirely. Let the product managers and coders worry about all this.

In the information technology field, and security, there’s a term known as RCA, or root cause analysis. The concept is simple. When there’s a problem, keep digging even after it has been solved to determine the root cause and apply your permanent fix at that level. Rex had been doing RCA’s his entire life in one way or another, and was particularly skilled at it. Which, inevitably, led to him creating a root cause of his own, solving a lot of problems he had with the state of the world.

He got an idea after watching a documentary about zebras in the wild. Their stripes were a natural camouflage, although appearing fairly uniform and almost copied and pasted to the casual observer. It was discovered that the stripes short circuited the visual processing part of predator’s brains, namely, big cats. Something about the way cheetahs, lions, etc. see the world and process that world was truly confused by the stripes, essentially making the zebras invisible to them. Rex wondered if there wasn’t something similar in technology; after all, technology is based on human perception, so cameras and microphones are generally designed to only capture what people can see or hear.

Rex built up a very secretive research team, hand-picked and fully vetted, to dive into camera technology of all kinds. Cell phone cameras, CCTV cameras, traffic cameras, the hardware and software that drove them. What he initially discovered was not that interesting: they were almost all built upon the same core libraries, which meant at the lowest hardware level, they all behaved nearly identically. At some point during the early development of these devices, there must have been a competition between different technologies, and a single standard emerged. Or, as Rex saw it, a single point of failure…a single point of weakness. He poured millions into the team, moving the project goalposts regularly over the span of three years. He kept getting results, and eventually his company became the dominant player in the imaging device technology sector. How? By giving away upgrades for free.

Nations, states, and cities all took the bait, making TIDE, or Tarkington Imaging Design Engineering, the single largest supplier of hardware and software imaging solutions worldwide. His solutions were truly ingenious and easy to operate, simple to keep updated, and had the best price of them all. His tech was so good, it was being applied to satellites and space-based hardware platforms as well, because, again, the cost was too good to be true.

On more than one occasion, the press asked the main question. “Why is something this good, free?” And every time, Rex insisted that something that good must remain free, and he would be doing humanity a disservice by charging money for those products. That wasn’t a good enough answer for some people and rightfully so. It reeked of corporate diversion, but nobody could really find a problem with what he was giving away, and over time, people asked less and less to the point where TIDE solutions were the global standard. It’s just what you used, anywhere you needed surveillance solutions or cheap imaging for portable devices. He included premium features others charged millions for, like chip sensors that could detect light across the visible and invisible spectrum. The full spectrum sensor was a huge hit in the scientific community, and some labs were using it to explore black holes via space-based telescopes which had been upgraded with TIDE sensors. Spy satellites weren’t late to the party either, incorporating his upgrades as fast as they could launch space missions to retrofit the hardware.

One man, in one company, had essentially taken over the world of digital imaging in a few short years. Rex intended it. Because once Rex had ensured that his TIDE sensors were everywhere, in everything, he could finally relax.

Posted on

Beat, Cops and Robbers Part 5

I suggest you refresh your memory with the middle of Beat’s saga here first to maintain the flow.

Beat had a head full of new facts and a major puzzle to solve. He sat down at his terminal and opened some security tools, hoping to get lucky. He started encoding and decoding the name “robber” every which way. To start, he tried text to hexadecimal code.

726f62626572

He saved that for later.

Next, he tried converting that hex string to binary.

011100100110111101100010011000100110010101110010

Still nothing popped out.

He tried a childishly simple ROT-13 replacement algorithm on robber.

eboore

Nothing was clicking. Nothing made sense. He intuitively just tried looking up the website domain for robber.com. Registration was private. He bypassed the privacy setting and found the website was registered to the following:

Bulletproof Manufacturing and Aerospace Corporation (BMAC)
6572 Mockingbird Blvd Suite F
Omaha, AR 72662

Now some numbers started lining up; he couldn’t believe his luck. Not only that but the abuse contact was even better:

For abuse complaints, contact: Edward Boore – eboore@robber.bmac.com

In a few easy keystrokes, almost too easy, as if someone left breadcrumbs intended to be collected, Beat was one step closer to solving the puzzle. He did another few lookups from some other security tools to gather information on the company and the domain. The corporate website was nothing out of the ordinary, but they weren’t a publicly traded company so no deep digging there. The bottom of the page contained the typical array of quick links. Contact Us, History, Help, FAQ, Demo and Return to Top.

He took a peek under the hood with the HTML inspector built into his browser and started reading through the code. Yet another fingerprint became apparent; a snippet of Javascript was attached to the Demo link. The URL didn’t make the typical call to an internal function of the site and it wasn’t some early HTML 1.0 link either. In fact, it was a total anomaly. It was an encrypted link function which triggered a decryption after the button was clicked to provide the accurate URL to the user’s web browser without revealing the actual site URL. It was split into three parts to further obscure what it would take as input and pass on to the server. Beat grabbed the code snippet and transferred it to his sandbox server. As he watched the server logs, he saw the Demo URL transformed to this string:

60rk2c9g60rk0c1h64r32c9h64r32c9g60r32c1g64rk0c1g64r30c9h60r32c1h60rk2c9g60rk0

More simple encryption. The repeating characters “rk” signified paired numbers or letters. Feeding that string into a Base32 decoder, there was the detonation:

011100100110111101100010011000100110010101110010

Converting that binary back into text: robber. Beat slammed his hand down on the desk and started gaining steam. Either he was misled into a honeypot, or he was right over the target. Going back to the original page, he clicked on Demo to see what would happen. Immediately, he got a connection refused error. Reloading more times, more connections refused. The easy part was starting to fade a tiny bit, but being an ASE, he was nowhere near running out of options. He launched PRISM, the global website penetration tool that had federally mandated backdoors built into all US-based websites. He entered the full URL for the Demo link into PRISM, and something curious happened next.

WARNING: PRISM ENHANCED MODE REQUIRED. ENTER PKI3 AUTHENTICATION TO CONTINUE.

Beat plugged his PKI3 card into the terminal and the dialog box on screen filled up with X’s in the blanks reserved for the password.

PRISM ENHANCED PKI3 BYPASS DETECTED. ELEVATING RIGHTS TO PRISM SILENT CIRCLE.

Beat paused. PRISM asked to elevate a single authorization level and somehow skipped to a mode that he didn’t even know existed. He then remembered having the same card in the Cerberus terminal. Did Cerberus modify the card? It was the only explanation, and he was hot on the trail of what Cerberus was after. PRISM then prompted him:

PRISM SILENT CIRCLE – WEBSITE DEMO ACCESS (Y/n)?

Again, Beat paused, feeling like he was at a point of no return. He hesitated to hit enter. This was about to take a hard left turn and he wanted to be prepared. He closed his eyes, leaned back in his chair and jammed his knuckles into his eyelids and twisted until he saw stars that quickly faded away. Cracking his knuckles, he took a deep breath and hit enter.

THANK YOU FOR USING PRISM SILENT CIRCLE. DEMO LOADING, PLEASE WAIT.

His terminal faded to a totally white screen, then to a black screen, then back to a gray screen somewhere in between. One by one, the letters from the PRISM prompt flew off the screen, in every direction, accompanied by old cartoon sound effects. Next, a black mask came into view with artificial glass eyes staring blankly towards Beat. No face, no body, just a bandit mask with 3d eyes.

He heard a voice coming from his speakers. “Welcome, PRISM SC user. I am Robert. I have stolen your letters as payment. What I steal next is up to you. Choose your desire:”

Another prompt came up on screen:

DO YOU DESIRE FAME, FORTUNE, OR POWER (Fa, Fo, Po)?

This was a game, and Beat wanted to bend the rules. He typed in MORE and hit enter.

YOU DESIRE MORE THAN FAME, FORTUNE AND POWER. IF THIS IS CORRECT, STANDBY FOR 5 SECONDS. TO ABORT, PRESS ANY KEY.

Beat simply waited.

MORE DATA IS REQUESTED. DO YOU HUNGER FOR KNOWLEDGE? (Y/n)

He hit enter again.

KNOWLEDGE TARGET NUMBER REQUIRED TO CONTINUE. TO LIST KT’S, ENTER L. OTHERWISE ENTER THE KT NUMBER.

More puzzles to solve. He hit L and started grinning ear to ear at the results.

KT TARGETS AVAILABLE:

  1. DENNIS – 6581
  2. CHARLES – 8580
  3. FRANKFORD – 68001
  4. NEWTON – A01
  5. CERBERUS – CRB3
  6. AGNES – ARM1
  7. BLACKWATER – DEEP-C
  8. COPERNICUS – COPER
  9. ROBBER – EBOORE8F

Beat’s mind went into fast forward mode wondering what he’d discover. These were all named AI and he was dying to know what this system knew about them. But he had to stay on track. 15 minutes remained. Beat hit 8, for Copernicus, and watched the output.

Posted on

Thee Unseen

Continued from the last Res snippet

The next morning, Res awoke with the gentle morning sunlight streaming in through her window for once. She stretched like a cat, yawned, got out of bed, got ready and headed to the office. As she arrived at her desk and logged into her terminal, she had a message waiting. It wasn’t any special priority but she opened it immediately. It was her manager, wanting to talk in his office “at her earliest convenience”. That was his way of saying now.

Res walked across the office floor to his office, peeked in and saw he wasn’t talking to anyone. She did the two knocks at the door frame, saw him nod, and entered his office, closing the door behind her. “So, how did the client call go yesterday? Everything lined up?”, he queried. “I’m not sure. The client seems pretty serious but I’d like to feel him out a little more before we commit to anything. I know, I know, growth is important, but you know how careful I am”, Res said. “Well, the client called this morning, the second I sat down at my desk, and wanted to speak to you again. When you’re ready for round two, say the word”, he said. Res thought for a moment. Why shouldn’t another ASE or even her manager do this round two interview stuff? But she was still curious from the previous day, and didn’t want to slide it across the table to someone else just yet. “I have some busy work to do this morning. If he can meet with me after lunch, I’ll be prepared”, Res said, buying time to line up some questions for the client. “Fair enough. I’ll let the client know you’ll contact him after lunch”, replied the manager. With that, Res cracked a smile and went back to her desk.

She opened a physical notepad she kept in the top drawer for client leads and thumbed through it, getting ideas for what sorts of things to ask the client on the next call. She absent-mindedly twirled the long side of her hair with her right hand, then a piece of crumpled up paper came flying over her workstation wall and skittered across her desk. She stood up and looked over at Sheepdog, who was already grinning ear to ear, not even trying to hide his guilt. “Do you need something”, Res said sarcastically, and Sheepdog replied, “Well, actually, I could use another pair of eyes on this weird stitch I’ve been reviewing. Got a few minutes?”

Res sauntered over to his desk and pulled up an extra chair, dropping his paper wad onto his desk as she rolled forward and looked at his main screen. “What are we looking at here?”, asked Res. Sheepdog began another one of his long-winded explanations, which was his trademark, but then got to the point. “Well, ok, so see this timestamp here? This is about 5 minutes before the…uhh…anomaly. I keep having different AI check it for missing frames or missing data but they all say it’s normal and complete. But see what happens when a few minutes go by, watch the car.” Sheepdog advanced the video a few minutes at a time, skipping dead spots. The scene was taken from a busy street corner, mainly high-resolution traffic cameras. Buses, cars, and people were going every which way, nothing unusual, but the car Sheepdog wanted to focus on was a Limousine. It pulled up to the corner, the driver got out, walked around to the passenger side, opened the door facing the sidewalk, and a man with a Bowler hat stepped out. He reached forward as if shaking hands with a familiar acquaintance, but nobody was there. Something was, because others on the sidewalk were splitting to walk around the Bowler man and “the nobody”. After a few moments, the Bowler man got back into the car, the driver walked back around to the driver’s side, and the car pulled away.

Res was starting to get the heebie-jeebies. “Is this all of the footage?”, she asked. “Yep. One of the linears passed this on to me and like I said, the stitch is confirmed complete. There’s no data missing”, Sheepdog said, “and I even asked the linear for more angles of this event. It was all redundant, the other cameras are showing the same thing from different vantage points.” Res replied, “Well, clearly, we’ve got faulty hardware”, and Sheepdog parried her reply with, “Nope, the linear ran a full hardware diagnostic on all those TIDE cameras. They’re practically brand new and checked out. Something else is happening here.”

“What’s the relevance of this guy in the limo to start with, are the linears getting bored?”, Res asked. Sheep said, “Well, I’ve seen it before, when the project was early. It was probably the same guy. Maybe this is testing footage for the linears, something obviously weird to get their attention, to make sure they are scrutinizing the feed. At the time I just assumed it was a glitch, but I always remembered it. This time the linear thought it was weird enough to open a case on it, at the risk of triggering a false positive, and I agreed it should have a case. To that end, we have already identified the man in the Bowler, and confirmed it with the license plate of that car. It’s a personal limo, belonging to Frank Schultz, of FS GMBh, a huge industrial manufacturer out of Germany. He’s shielded, we’ve worked for him for a long time.”

“Who is his dedicated AI? Don’t tell me it’s Strix, it would have sounded the alarm a long time ago when you first saw it. Beat told me how thorough Strix can be…”, mused Res. “It’s not Strix. It looks like—”, Sheepdog typed in a quick query, and they both read it aloud as the result came back. “Genesis?”

Posted on

And now for something completely different.

Angelic avoidance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on

Beat, Cops and Robbers, Part 4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on

Beat, Cops and Robbers, Part 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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