by D. B. Goodin
Where’s that girl? She’s overdue—supposed to be here an hour ago!
One of Nigel’s pet peeves was tardiness. But he liked the way the woman—what’s-her-name—had taken charge on the phone earlier when she’d made an appointment; it reminded him of an old friend.
I will give her a few more minutes before giving up on her.
Nigel ran the visor’s operating system through a customized wireless spyware scanner of his own design. He didn’t need any wires to examine it; as long as the scanner was within a few feet and had line of sight, he could download a report to another visor or computer.
He squinted at the results. That can’t be right. The file signatures are off. I need to check those numbers.
A loud sound reverberated through his basement.
Someone’s at the door!
Nigel reluctantly put on his visor so he could see his front door’s camera. A young woman was waiting. Nigel noticed that she kept looking around. His house and office faced the Hudson and was visible from the street.
Get up there, Nige, he told himself. She needs your help!
Nigel answered the door. “Can I help you, young woman—?”
Alice interrupted as she barged through the door. “We spoke over the wire, I’m the one with the visor.”
Nigel smiled. “You’re not the only one with visor trouble, young lady.”
Alice frowned.
“It’s none of my business, but I will ask anyway,” Nigel continued. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”
“I think someone hacked my visor.”
“Let me see it.”
Alice pulled the visor out of her backpack and handed it to Nigel. He examined it. “It’s an older model, and its changed from factory settings,” he said.
“I did an upgrade.”
“Over the air?”
Alice looked confused.
“Did you plug it in to do the upgrade?”
“Yeah, into my computer.” She pulled her visor out to show Nigel.
Nigel started walking in the direction of his lab, and Alice followed him down an old staircase.
“Watch your step, this building is more than 150 years old. What’s your name again?” Nigel said.
“Alice, but I thought I told you that.”
“You may have, but my memory is not what it used to be.”
Nigel pointed at a chair behind his workstation. Then, a few minutes later, Nigel was examining the internal workings of Alice’s visor.
“Hmmm, interesting.”
“What is?” Alice said.
“The kernel module for the visor contains about sixty-four kilobytes of additional memory than it should.”
“What? I don’t speak in tech. Can you explain?”
“Oh, sorry. It means that the software that makes it possible for the visor to function has been changed with some extra software that the manufacturer didn’t put in there.”
“So, it’s hacked?” Alice asked, moving closer to Nigel’s workspace.
“Yes, it is—”
“Well you could have led with that!” Alice cut him off.
She reminds me of Jet. I miss her. It’s been a long time since I was a teenager.
“What’s wrong?” Alice asked in a tempestuous tone, noticing his pause.
“Nothing, I was just thinking.”
Nigel hooked the visor up to a machine, and curvy waves formed on the small screen built into the machine’s chassis. He noticed that Alice was watching his every move.
She would make a good hacker—great attention to detail.
“I’m running a full diagnostic scan. It will take a while. Do you want go to the break room while we wait?”
Alice licked her lips. “Do you have any water?”
“I have several refreshments available,” Nigel replied.
“Lead the way.”
Alice followed Nigel out of his lab and into a darkened hallway. She noticed light emanating from a room at the end of the hall. Darkened rooms with blinking lights could be seen through the open doors along the hall as she followed Nigel to the lit room, which revealed a full kitchen.
Alice plopped onto an old couch in the break room. She looked around as Nigel fetched her a cold New Bolt Cola from his small refrigerator.
“How big is this place?” Alice asked. “It’s huge!”
“I bought this townhouse about fifteen years ago. The previous owner had financial trouble, so he sold it quickly, and I got a good deal. I think it’s about six thousand square feet, give or take.”
“You must be rich!”
Nigel laughed. “Far from it—as I said, I just got a good deal. I do make some spending money from my old fart neighbors with all of their technology troubles. I used to have some corporate customers, but their increasing demands to support the latest visor technology had me at a disadvantage. I couldn’t afford the specialized equipment required to service the newer technology.”
Alice said nothing. Her eyes were beginning to close.
I wonder how long it’s been since she’s had a good night’s sleep?
“Do you want to tell me why you suspect your visor is hacked?”
“It’s a long story . . .” Alice trailed off, and then everything came out in a rush. She told him about her recent encounter with a man named Hawk at a diner, and how he’d used a bizarre device, and how Doris had been acting differently since then. Eventually Alice stopped, then put her hands over her face and rubbed her eyes.
“Sounds like that strange Hawk man scanned you with a radio frequency modifier,” Nigel said. “In layman’s terms, he interrupted your visor’s processor long enough to implant something, thus allowing it to be hacked.”
“Do you know what he implanted?”
“I’m working on it. Can you leave the visor with me?”
Alice hesitated just a moment before nodding.
“Don’t worry,” Nigel assured her. “I will back up all your settings before putting the code back to its rightful state.”
“Wait . . . After the visor upgrade, I received a message about a backup to a remote server. Is there any way you can trace that?”
If the hacker backed up all of Alice’s data remotely, then it will be easier to trace. Like that time when I was tracking down—
“Mr. Watson?”
Nigel snapped out of his thoughts.
“Yeah, I believe we can, but I still need more time with it.”
“How long? I kind of need this visor now, more than ever.”
“I should have it ready by late this evening. Do you have a number?”
Alice took a notepad out of her backpack, wrote down the number to her handset, then handed the page to Nigel and said, “Call me as soon as it’s ready.” She waved while backing up toward the hallway, then turned around to leave. She bumped into a man a few years older than her.
“Oh, sorry,” Alice said, flustered. “I nearly ran you over, I’m late for work and—”
“Not a problem, miss,” the man said.
“Alice, this is my young protégé, Simon. He helps me when I have a backlog,” Nigel said.
“Hi, Uncle Nigel,” Simon said.
“He’s your nephew?” Alice said.
“No, not by blood. His father and I go way back. Which reminds me,” Nigel turned to Simon, “how is that old sleuth doing, anyway?”
“He moved back to the Hoʻololi ʻia Territory—he’s retiring.”
“I always wanted to go to Hawaii,” Nigel said.
“Maybe you can now that mainland travel restrictions are starting to lift. My dad can vouch for you,” Simon said.
“Yeah, I read somewhere that the Hoʻololi ʻia Territory is reopening for non-residents. They must need the tourist revenue. Any chance that it will rejoin the union?” Nigel asked.
“I don’t know, but yes, they can use the money.”
“It was nice meeting you, Simon,” Alice said as she headed toward the door.
Simon watched
her go.
“If you’re interested in helping out with her hacked visor, I’m sure she would be grateful,” Nigel said as he gave Simon a wink and a smile.
“She seems nice. I like helping nice people,” Simon said.
Nigel laughed. “Let’s get to it then.”
2
The hacker known as Mister K sat in the middle of his dark basement office. Several monitors were arranged around his chair. Boxes of older technology littered shelves that were pushed against the walls. Even with the basement’s large size the room seemed cluttered.
No sooner had he put his coffee down than he heard one of his alerts chime. Mister K smoothed his unkempt white beard as he examined the alerts on a large central screen that served as his main workspace.
“There you are, my dear,” Mister K said.
He put on his AR visor, which allowed the use of hand gestures. With a flick of his wrist, he could bring complex data models into view: something that would have taken him several minutes with his old computers. A few swipes later, a giant screen rolled down from the ceiling; it was about the size that a small movie theater would have. He gestured until it displayed a dozen visor images with various names underneath. His AR display enhanced his view; the visors appeared before him, three-dimensional and floating in space. He tapped on a visor named “Doris,” grabbed it as he would a physical object, then moved it into focus. He turned it around in the virtual space. A red button labeled “show meta” appeared; he tried interacting with it, but the visor control didn’t seem to work.
“Aargh!” Mister K said in a raspy voice.
His dog Winkles, who lay near his feet most of the day, eyed him. A few seconds later, several alerts came in all at once. Winkles, excited by the noise, stood up and started chasing his tail as if his meal were running away. Then he started barking.
“Aargh, it’s pandemonium time!” Mister K yelled as he tugged on his long white beard.
After a few shouts for silence, the dog stopped barking and lay back down.
Mister K pulled up his error log, which read:
* * *
Visor Doris has gone offline.
* * *
Let’s see what our gal Doris is up to.
Mister K could see a crowd of people outside a large venue.
Is that Penn Station?
Then running, and jumping. “Ahh, Alice is getting an afternoon workout,” Mister K said aloud.
Let’s summon some friends.
Mister K pulled a list of agents in the area. A car was on seventh and 37th Street. He sent the following message to the car:
* * *
Suspected Purist spotted in alley parallel to 7th Avenue moving south, apprehend before reaching 30th Street.
* * *
Mister K laughed and applauded himself as he watched a car spin around on one of his feeds. Winkles lifted his head and whimpered.
Let’s pull up the feeds from 30th Street.
Mister K’s stomach rumbled as he saw a hot dog cart. He could see several bums eyeing it from their position on the sidewalk.
“Dammit, I can’t see the entire street. Let me try something else, Mr. Winkles.”
The dog cocked his head at the sound of his name. Mister K waved his arms around like a madman. A three-dimensional map of 30th Street showed several red and blue dots. Mister K filtered the map to just show the red dots, one of which was in the vicinity of his prey. He brought up a program called Datasploit. Seconds later, he was looking through a higher-resolution camera that provided a better view of the street.
Perfect!
Mister K saw a partial view of 30th Street through the exploited webcam. He could see a wrought-iron gate with a door inset, which he assumed was locked. Seconds later, the agents blocked the gate entrance with a large dark-colored sedan and sprung out of the car. The view was obscured, but he could make sense of an altercation in progress. Another man ran up and assaulted an agent. Then the camera blurred.
“Hmmm, come on! What the hell is going on?” Mister K yelled.
Winkles barked at the outburst. Seconds later, he saw a close-up of the ugliest person he’d ever seen. The face before him was long, wrinkled, and appeared to have clown makeup everywhere, and it was now blocking his view of the street. It looked like the person had had a seizure while putting on the makeup. A moment later he received a message on his visor that read:
* * *
Subject not acquired.
Simon was working on Alice’s visor in Nigel’s windowless basement apartment. He rubbed his eyes, thinking, I’ve been going at this for hours. He connected his specialized laptop to the visor, which allowed him to make an exact duplicate of its contents to prevent the possibility of data corruption. Using another tool on his laptop, he captured the firmware. He found the usual stuff, like older-generation ransomware, which encrypted all the files on a device before extorting the user for a cryptocurrency payment like Digibit.
Nigel should look at this.
Using his own visor, Simon called Nigel.
“I think I found the exploit code. You should get down here, boss,” Simon said.
“Anything unusual about it?” Nigel asked.
“Other than the age of the code base, no. It looks like something that was popular fifty years ago.”
“Any way the malware can communicate with the outside world?” Nigel said.
“The code has a certificate that attempts to hide its movements, but wait—”
Nigel was trying to view Simon’s monitor.
“Here, let me put it up on the big screen,” Simon said.
Simon used a series of hand gestures to project his screen onto a much larger screen on the wall. He positioned the image to reveal an interesting area.
“That blob looks like an IP address,” Nigel said.
“How can you tell?”
“I’ve done a lot of decoding of VisorOS—the visor operating system—and I recognize certain patterns. For example, if we decode the blob’s encoded value, we get an IP address of 12.167.16.254. After I do a geolocation on that IP, I see that it has a destination of Jersey City, just across the Hudson.”
Simon typed in a series of commands and brought up a list. “I found one address at that IP, and satellite imagery confirms that it is a large single-story complex. The city power records confirm that the facility uses more than three thousand kilowatts daily.”
“Looks like we found a cloud storage facility,” Nigel said.
“Yeah, and according to the internal logs on the visor, a full backup was sent to that IP just prior to being wiped.”
Nigel brought up an unofficial-looking website. He entered the facility’s information, and then after some examination said, “According to a public records search, that facility is owned by CloudCo, a wholly owned subsidiary of MuseFam.”
“That’s . . . interesting,” Simon said.
“You wouldn’t know anything about that—would you?”
“Why would I?”
Simon felt his tongue stick to his mouth; it felt like all the moisture had evaporated.
“I know that your other job is at MuseFam, kid,” Nigel said.
“I intended to tell you—”
“Don’t sweat it, kid,” Nigel interrupted.
“Thanks. I know you don’t like MuseFam but it’s an excellent job, and with the economy the way it is . . .” Simon trailed off.
“I’ve had dealings with MuseFam and your boss. Brenton Morris is a ruthless person who's just like his mother Carol, who not only crushed her competition, but ruined many lives as well.”
“How would you know?”
“About twenty years ago, I worked for a company out of Milford that got hacked. Someone stole all of their intellectual property. I traced it back to a facility just outside of Trenton, New Jersey. Can you guess who owned that facility?”
“MuseFam?”
“Yup. MuseFam acquired a company called ServURobotics, and it was the company’s p
rimary research facility. Later that year, several small artificial intelligence development companies started getting breached. In fact, MuseFam approached all those companies with buyout offers. I guess they got sick of negotiating.”
Simon didn’t respond.
“Just be careful,” Nigel warned. “Brenton Morris will stop at nothing to get what he wants.”
“I’ve only had a few interactions with Mr. Morris. I usually deal with Mark Olaf—he’s Mr. Morris’s head of security.
“Are you familiar with the term ‘Purist’?”
Simon said nothing, so Nigel continued to explain.
“The term ‘Purist’ comes from a group of musicians who fought MuseFam in open court over some plagiarized music. I don’t know all the details, but people who were closely involved with the case told me that several melodies matched songs that MuseFam produced.”
“Did an independent third party verify the music?” Simon asked.
“They did, and according to insiders, the music matched.”
“Then why didn’t the Purists win the case?”
“The defense hired their own expert, and the court accepted his findings.”
“The group of Purists seems to be small. Why does MuseFam really care about them?”
“Brenton wants the Purists stopped at any cost because they are a threat to his livelihood. When he can’t buy them off, he goes after them,” Nigel said.
Simon felt his throat constrict. After a moment he said, “What do you mean, ‘go after’?”
“Since most of the Purists are low-income free sprits, he tries to pay them off. Most of the time he attacks them in other ways.”
“In what ways?” Simon asked, intrigued.
“He hires people to track them down, keep track of them. If they are too much trouble, he ruins them by draining their back accounts, or just runs them out of town, or worse.”
“How do you know so much about the Purists?”
“Because I’m one of them—in sprit, anyway. Why do you think I’ve turned down all those affiliate offers? Omega Reality Studios, the company that develops VisorOS, is in bed with MuseFam.”
