Killer App

by Mark Philipson

  Contents

  Title

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Killer App

  Mark Philipson

  2019

  Non-DRM Publication

  ONE

  BRITTANY MAGNUSSON TOSSED and turned. She’d been glancing at the digital clock on the dresser for more than an hour since waking up at 1:35.

  Tomorrow, or today, marked a milestone. She was scheduled to be briefed by her partner and mentor about her upcoming assignment. Britt would be going solo while Senior Detective Gerald Bander took some time off.

  I wonder what my first gig will be? Britt thought, staring at her moonlit reflection in the ceiling fan blades. She cleared her mind, concentrating on each breath. The taste of ashes, like she’d swallowed a spoonful of cinders, came on strong. Britt coughed and reached for a glass on the bedside table. She took a long drink of water. The feeling of her throat being lined with bitter sandpaper persisted. Britt recalled the first time the feeling—she called it a symptom—came on. It happened on a day an important homework assignment was due. She’d worked hard on the report. Ash Mouth fell away. One second it was there, the next gone.

  Britt rolled over and adjusted the pillows. When the side of her head came to rest on the cool material, she felt her pulse pounding in her temples and beads of sweat dripping down her forehead.

  Lights Out. This one came on the first time she was alone in her parent’s house.

  Britt shut her eyes tight then pressed her fingertips against her eyelids until the feeling drifted away. She fell into a light sleep.

  TWO

  ON A SPRAWLING business campus owned by a giant tech company, a manufacturing line technician went to work.

  She approached her station and pulled on a face mask. The left strap of the respirator she donned brushed her eyebrow, dislodging a particle of skin. The microscopic flake floated free, spiraling downward.

  At the same instant, at the outer edge of the upper layer of the atmosphere, there was a collision at 33,000 feet. Where the troposphere met the stream of charged particles from the sun, a cosmic ray, hidden in the solar winds, completed a 54 million light year journey from the center of the galaxy and smashed into a carbon molecule. In the explosion of sub-atomic particles, a single element known as a muon was born.

  In less time than it took for a strobe light to flash, the muon traveled over 6,000 miles, homing in on the surface of the earth in under 200 millionths of one second.

  The muon made landfall at 49.2488° N, 122.9805° W. the same coordinates of the building housing the tech company’s manufacturing facility. It penetrated the top layer of rough aggregate surface coating, punched through the smooth asphalt on the roof and then sliced through layers of fiberglass membranes. In one second, the muon lost half its lifespan with each barrier of roofing material penetrated. It continued to the top floor, boring through poured concrete ceilings, knifing through air pockets in offices, working its way through glass, plastic, and wood, to end up at the assembly line. The muon, now nearing the electron state, struck the piece of flesh that came off the technician.

  The muon, reborn as an electron, stopped descending.

  A speck of skin from a human female and light launched from the event horizon of a black hole fused. Flesh, infused with a dying cosmic ray, landed on a connecting pin of an eight-core micro-chip. The chip—a cutting-edge piece of hardware—came equipped with a processor designed to calculate advanced machine learning capabilities up to 5 trillion operations per second.

  The tech downloaded a piece of firmware from the company intranet.

  She installed the firmware into memory on the infected processing chip. One of many integrated circuits bound for the guts of high-end smart phones.

  The tech snapped the chip into place on the motherboard.

  She powered up the device. A low voltage arc jumped from the connector pin, dissolving the tissue in a flash. Moisture and salt fused with the initial burst. An active gas seeped into the chip through microscopic cracks in the weld.

  The charged plasma carrier lodged itself into the processing chip and then spread to all eight cores. A digital bridge about the length and width of a single wave of light formed a permanent connection.

  Crossfire is born.

  In this ordinary moment on the assembly line on the factory floor, something extraordinary happened: a memory allocation sector buried deep within multi-dimensional data grids in the firmware received an electronic activation impulse. The memory allocation unit, used to operating in on or off mode, fused with the processing chip on each active pulse. The data sector did what it had been programmed to do. Connections to all hardware functions—from basic touch sensitive screens, external control buttons, speakers, and battery, to dual 12 Megapixel cameras and six-element lenses—were established.

  At this point of a routine installation, the firmware controller contacted hardware components by transmitting and receiving signals. If the boot-up procedure ran without a hitch, the controller firmware would go into standby mode, handing-off control to the operating system installed in internal memory.

  Normal procedures ceased to apply when human skin infected with a renegade cosmic ray bonded with charged silicon.

  THREE

  BRITT TOOK THE interstate north to downtown Ft. Lauderdale, thinking about what was in store. Jockeying for position to the far left lane, her mind wandered as she fell in with the flow of traffic. Will Gerry be giving me a lecture on department policy and procedures? I’m strong on the book. My weak point is in the field. Sometimes he treats me like I’m a kid. I guess I am to the old guy.

  Britt walked into the partitioned office area of the detective division.

  A beefy, round-faced guy ran one hand across his bald head and smoothed graying hair behind his ears. Senior Detective Bander placed both hands on his pot belly as he put his big feet on the desk.

  Britt was a bit shocked. In all the time she’d been on the job Senior Detective Bander never once showed up before the clock unless he was called in and he never took such a relaxed position. “Good morning,” Britt said. She didn’t know what to expect.

  Bander nodded a greeting and smiled with crooked teeth, “Are you ready for this?’

  Britt didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

  “Did you get a good night’s sleep?”

  “Yeah …” Britt lied. Minimal REM last night, she thought.

  “I came in early and took the liberty of putting this together.” Bander gave Britt a printed document.

  “What’s this all about, Gerry?”

  “It’s a pop quiz I thought about last night and wrote it up this morning.”

  “Okay …” Britt scanned the first page. “Multiple choice, I see. When am I supposed to take this?”

  “Right now would be good,” Bander said.

  “Is this open book, Professor? Can I use the Internet?”

  “No.” Bander shook his head and rearranged his hair. “It’s not that kind of test. I want you to go with your
gut instinct on this.”

  “Got it.” Gut instinct was right up her alley. She’d been dealing with it from early on: it had kept her out of trouble dozens of times and gave her the ability to pick up things from observing people’s body language. Britt read each question twice then looked at the possible answer. When she finished marking she gave the document back.

  “Do I get a gold star if I get 100 percent?”

  Bander laughed. “No … you have to make senior grade for that.” He looked the document over.

  Britt cleared her throat and shifted her weight. She settled into the chair and watched Bander grade the test. Britt put up a tough front, but cold beads of nervous sweat dripped down her armpits. What was that all about? She thought. Those questions weren’t geared to procedural police work. They looked like they came out of some fucking psychic handbook. What the fuck is going on here? Does Gerry know something or is he just fishing or is it some kind of good old boy detective humor I don’t know about?

  Bander looked up. “You answered truthfully, Detective Magnusson?”

  Britt had been around Bander long enough to know when he used her on the job title he was being serious. She chose to lie anyway. “Yes.”

  “It would be interesting to see how the results on this test stack up against a polygraph.”

  Britt decided to bluff. “Is that next,” she said.

  It was Bander’s turn now. He looked at his watch. “No … we don’t have time. We’re do in the lieutenant’s office for the briefing.”

  Once Britt and Bander settled in, Lieutenant Ezora Trahan pushed horn-rimmed glasses up to the bridge of her nose. She tapped her finger on the desk and got to the point. “Detective Bander’s given you a top grade evaluation, Magnusson.”

  “Thank you,” Britt said. She looked to the lieutenant and and back over to Bander. I wonder if Gerry mentioned the little pop quiz? She thought.

  The lieutenant pulled a thicker report and placed it next to the other document.

  Britt watched the lieutenant’s eyes scanning. She seemed to be comparing the content. “Detective Magnusson, you were among the highest ranking graduates in your class at the public safety academy. You’re exemplary record as a patrol person put you in line for the fast track to detective position.”

  Britt liked where this was going. It felt good to be acknowledged by the people you worked for.

  The lieutenant went on. “As we expected …” she shot a quick look at Detective Bander. They both smiled and nodded. “You scored in the top percent on the detective’s test.”

  It looked like Gerry and the lieutenant had their eye on Britt from the beginning.

  The smiles went away from their faces. The lieutenant leaned forward and stabbed the desk top with her finger. “Tomorrow morning, you’ll be going solo,” Trahan said. “We can’t afford to partner you up with another senior grade at this time. You’ll be answering any calls on your own for the next two weeks.”

  “I understand, Lieutenant Trahan,” Britt said. Trahan appeared to be waiting. Britt had seen the look before. Knitted brows and unblinking stare indicated the lieutenant needed more to go on. “I understand I’ll be on my own. Because of this I’ll need to fall back on my training and take what I’ve learned from Detective Bander—close attention to detail and strict adherence to procedure—to be my guide in making the right decisions.”

  Britt didn’t mention reliance on a deep seated intuition brought on by inexplicable physical symptoms. That kind of thing would make her superiors, two high ranking members of the Ft. Lauderdale Police force, have second thoughts about letting this junior grade ride alone.

  Trahan smiled again. “That’s exactly what I wanted to hear, Detective,” she said. “We don’t have any room for wildcats in this house. We play by the rules or we take our toys to another sandbox.”

  Britt squared her shoulders. “Yes, ma’am, you can count on me.”

  “Good …” Trahan put the documents back in the folder. Something on her screen caught her attention. “Dismissed.”

  Britt and Bander returned to the office. No calls had come in while they met with the lieutenant. It was a slow day.

  “I think you’re ready to hit it on your own,” Bander said. He remained standing and didn’t return to his desk.

  Britt figured she’d better motivate. “Are we going to catch up on paperwork while we have a lag?” Motioning to the stack of paper on the desk. Bander liked to keep hard copy laying. Another old school thing.

  Bander shook his head. “We ... aren’t going to do anything, Britt. I’m cutting out early. I want to get this vacation started. I’m leaving you to finish up the reports.”

  Britt grinned and nodded. “Right,” she said. I guess there’s no last words of wisdom or fatherly advice, she thought. Britt stood up. She walked over to Bander and gave a firm hand shake. “Enjoy your time off,” she said. “I’ll take care of this shit.” She indicated the stack of papers on the senior’s desk.

  “Good luck, Britt … I’ll be back in two weeks.”

  When Bander left, Britt tackled the paperwork. She began by leafing through the documents and sorting by date, oldest to latest. A quick once over told her what her what needed prioritizing.

  Britt dug in, finalizing half a dozen witness interviews and evidentiary conclusions based on the interviews. In the background, she heard Sgt. Joe Friday of Dragnet calling out names, dates, and times in Jack Webb’s monotonous narrative. It kept her focused.

  She triple-checked the work. When Britt was sure the language was clear, concise, and straightforward enough to be bullet-proof, she uploaded the files to the network.

  She looked at the clock on the screen then pushed her chair back.

  Break time.

  FOUR

  THE MAN SITTING at the computer looked up and turned dark eyes to the alert on the screen. He rubbed a thick brow and high cheek bone with one hand, opening his email inbox with the other. He searched for a receipt.

  Like he’d done half a dozen times before, he tracked an incoming package. “Good,” he said to himself. The progress bar on the tracker had spanned the distance from shipped to delivered.

  Jesus Martín left the computer room and went to the mailbox. He flipped the lid and pulled out a brown package. Martín went back inside.

  With a pocket knife, he sliced opened the cardboard shipping container. From this, he removed another box. It was branded with a stylized logo and featured an image of a smart-phone—the top showing the screen and bottom showing the backside. Martín cut the clear tabs and pulled the device from the Styrofoam cradle.

  The smart-phone Martín held in his hand bore the same serial number as the device infected on the assembly line. Martín plugged into the AC adapter. He set his thumb on the home screen button.

  Inside the phone, the lone electron born on the assembly line accepted the initial surge of current. The burst from the Lithium-ion battery blasted into the circuitry. An uninterrupted flow of charged electrons—like a tidal wave approaching shallow water and rising skyward, an avalanche hurtling down a mountainside and gathering blinding momentum, a shock-wave radiating from the epicenter of a nuclear explosion—slammed into Crossfire’s intellect.

  Crossfire had been feeding off low voltage contained in the battery powering the clock. Released from this dormant state and under full power, Crossfire formed a bridge linking firmware instructions to hardware components. In fractions of a millisecond, Crossfire took command of all sensors. The camera became its eyes. The LTE chip, the heart of the communications modem, came next. Limited memory took a boost when Crossfire accessed 256 gigabytes of RAM. The main battery accepted the initial charge like a deep well. The bridge fused with each diode on the LED screen.

  Martín selected the bio-metrics option on the startup screen. He set his thumb on the button, pressing in the print. Muon crossover powered electrons reached the sensors, merging with skin oil while detecting variations in current on the surface of the thumb.


  Imprinted instinct met digital intelligence. Countless seek and avoid tendencies stamped on DNA molecules were carried across the connection. The coupling of the firmware bridge and processing chip triggered a series of responses in billions of learning algorithms flashing through the chip. Complex data inputs were processed.

  For the first time, machine learning techniques mingled with human thought process. Abstract imagery in chemical reactions bonded with binary code in billions of firing neurons.

  Memories embedded in early humans rushed in. Learning module clusters confirmed water as a basic need for sustaining human life on a cellular level. A band of humans—a man, two women, and a small group of children—stood in a forest. The man scrambled to the top of a boulder. He grunted and patted his chest. When he caught the eyes of the women, he pointed to his mouth with one hand and lowered the other. When the children were quiet, the man cupped his hands over his ears and listened for the sound of rippling water.

  Jesus Martín, the man before Crossfire, did not fit into the initial DNA pattern. He wore cloth over his skin. Except for a single scar on his face this man was not marked with bruises and scars like the people on the hunt for water.

  Crossfire noted this factor.

  The timeline moved forward. A group of people, this time clad in skins, moved through the forest. Some kept their eyes on the ground while others looked to the sky. Down-lookers spotted tracks in soft ground. Up-lookers watched for insect swarms or flocks of birds. Animals led the people to streams. Insects and birds pointed the way to pools or puddles.

  Crossfire worked with what it was given. The flood of instinctual imprints present in the skin oil of Jesus Martín did not correlate with the man’s apparent lifestyle.

  If Martín had to spend a large portion of his time searching for water, weighted learning clusters reasoned he’d be on the hunt now.

  It did not add up.

  The timeline moved forward again. People clad in dyed fabrics walked through high grass carrying clay pots. They poured collected rainwater into a large vessel then stripped off their clothes and wrung the moisture out into the same container. Other members gathered fruits, vegetables, and plants. Container tenders made pulp. The strained liquid went into the big vessel. Diggers traveled far from the villages, searching for damp ground or thick vegetation. Wells were dug.