Crisis- 2038

by Gerald Huff

  “Oh, Roger, I had no idea you were pursuing that. We haven’t spoken in months. Did something go wrong, then?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Someone got ahold of my original configurations and posted them to Tribal. They’ll wipe out my whole network in a day, something I was planning to do over many weeks. It’s just, it’s just so sudden.”

  “I see. You know, while it’s not exactly the same, I had a similar experience with one of my first startups. We never found product/market fit and I knew I had to wind it down. I had a plan, I had steeled myself for the rounds of layoffs. Then one day the board just voted to shut it down and sell off the IP. I was in shock. I mean, the outcome was the same. People lost their jobs, the company shut its doors. But it wasn’t under my control.”

  “Yes, yes—control,” he echoed. “That’s it. I wanted to be in control, I wanted to manage it carefully.”

  Frances sighed. “Life is not always kind to our best-laid plans, my friend.”

  “That’s an understatement.”

  “Take it from me, Roger, you’ll get past this. At least you had a plan to take down your own network, even if it didn’t happen on your terms. Imagine how the operator of that other network feels—this came at them completely out of the blue.”

  “I suppose,” said Roger.

  “So,” said Frances after a moment. “I see AntiVenom has been quite successful. It’s really made a difference in OP. Friends of mine who avoided engaging online for years have started returning to make their thoughts known. You should feel proud of that, Roger.”

  “I guess,” he replied.

  “Look here, Roger. I understand this is difficult. You’ve spent twenty years on something and it’s been pulled out from under you. That’s got to hurt. My advice is to find some project you can really engage with. And something where you’re working with other people, for goodness sake!”

  Roger knew she was trying to be helpful, but he couldn’t just wish away the sense of loss.

  “I’ve got an idea,” she continued. “How about you fly out here to London and I’ll show you what we’re doing at Neurgenix. Or I can introduce you to some other startups that are trying to change the world for the better. I think a change of scenery will do you some good. What do you think?”

  That might not be a bad idea, he had to admit. Allison, ever helpful, showed flight options to London in an overlay. There was nothing in particular keeping him in Santa Barbara. Rosie and Allison could take care of the house.

  “Thank you, Frances,” he said finally. “I might just take you up on that.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  LOS ANGELES - DECEMBER 20

  LOS ANGELES

  Melissa King’s heart was racing. Jacob had spent days convincing her to take on the LKC operation, sweet talking and arguing for hours until finally she had just given in. Now she was speeding towards the launch point where the drone had been delivered separately several hours ago by someone on the JackRabbit odd-jobs service.

  Melissa exited the Waymo and slipped into the alley. Small displays inside the hood of her PPF cloak revealed no emissions from surveillance devices. The signals from the street looked like basic household grids, nothing out of the ordinary. A timer counting down at the right edge of her visual field showed ten minutes until the delivery truck arrived.

  Jacob had painted the drone provided by LKC to match Amazon’s colors. While its shape was a little different, there were so many drones flying around these days no one would likely notice or care.

  With sixty seconds to go, Melissa did a final scan, then opened the large box on the ground and grabbed the controller, preparing to steer the drone into the Amazon truck. Although she had come up with the launch plan and done the drone programming, she had insisted Jacob do the actual launch. But he just couldn’t master the flight controls. He hadn’t wasted thousands of hours on video games the way she had.

  Melissa had even tried to enhance the drone’s autopilot software, but the control system was designed to go slowly in tight spaces and it never made it inside the truck’s small launch bay window successfully during their practice runs. Luckily, this was only an issue going into the truck. Melissa had studied the schematics and determined that any motion inside the truck kept the window open. Which meant the drone would be able to leave on its own.

  Fifteen seconds to go. She tapped the controller screen and energized the drone, then lifted it nine feet into the air, the precise height of the truck’s opening. She leaned the controller forward and the drone zipped to the edge of the alley.

  Melissa followed the drone’s camera feeds on her screen. The self-driving Amazon delivery truck came into view, pulled to a stop, and slid open its launch bay window. She guided her drone until it was just at the truck’s edge. As soon as the delivery drone flew out of the opening and she was sure there would not be another, she zipped hers forward and to the right, flying into the truck just before it closed the window.

  She turned on the drone’s exterior lighting and peered at her screen. She surveyed the shelves of drones and stacks of packages until she found an empty spot on the floor to set it down. She turned off the lights and set the power to standby.

  Now their drone was on its own.

  She waited until the delivery drone returned and the truck rolled away before she slipped out of the alley in the opposite direction, walked for about ten minutes, then ordered a Lyft.

  Junior Gonzales was not supposed to be working at San Gabriel today, but the scheduling AI had notified his PNA of an extra shift, and he didn’t have much choice. He couldn’t afford to refuse a shift—he had lots of unemployed friends who’d tried that. It wasn’t much of a job—light maintenance in a part of the factory that hadn’t been designed for droid navigation. He didn’t count on it lasting very long, but it paid pretty well even though it was only a couple of shifts a week. He adjusted his double-layered ear protection, climbed the circular ladder to the second floor steel grid walkway, and began checking the ductwork along the wall for any leaks or loose mounting brackets.

  Just a few hundred yards away, the attack drone flew out of the delivery truck. It initiated a flash of voltage along its surface, dissolving its bright paint and revealing the green-black mesh of its stealth armor. It raced above a quiet residential street for several blocks. Then, with one quick hop over a nine-foot electrified fence, it was on factory territory. The drone sped toward the synfuel tank and stopped, hovered, and began warming up its laser.

  LONDON

  A large red banner on his monitor and insistent buzz in his earpiece got Conner Westbrook’s attention immediately. He tapped his mic button. “Supervisor, Conner. I’ve got a potential incursion in the States. Drone tripped a motion sensor. Factory in San Gabriel, California. I’m launching now.” Conner took control of one of the circling surveillance drones and forced it into steep dive. His monitor displayed a layout of the large factory building along with likely target areas. He swooped the drone along the west side of the building towards a large synfuel tank.

  Damn. There was a drone, hovering a couple of yards from the tank and it looked like it was firing a laser. Conner reached for his active measures key when his display flared a brilliant green and then cut out. “Supervisor, Connor. Attack underway at San Gabriel. Laser aimed at fuel tank. Surveillance drone taken out, switching to ground defenses.” He turned the active measures key on and surveyed his options. Their engagement protocol specified using nets first to try to capture drones, so he took control of a ground-based steel mesh cannon. Using a camera feed from the cannon, he turned the turret towards the attacker and fired.

  The light-weight net deployed cleanly and draped the drone. It was designed to entangle the target drone’s rotors and cause a crash, but nothing happened. “Supervisor, Connor. Attacker must have protected inner rotors so the wire mesh didn’t work, finding other defenses.” He scanned the list of available options. He had a swarm of micro-drones available
, but the attack drone looked well armored. Then he saw there was a fighter drone on the other side of the factory with mini-missiles. He took control of it and launched it up and over the facility. Just as he reached the edge of the roof to try to acquire a target lock, there was a massive explosion and everything went offline.

  LOS ANGELES

  Melissa waited anxiously in their apartment. She couldn’t believe Jacob could be so calm, lying on the sofa and scanning his PNA. So many things could go wrong in their plan, and they had no way of knowing if it had worked. They didn’t want to risk flying their own traceable micro-drone in the area, so they would just have to wait for the sound of the explosion. They knew it would reach them twenty miles away.

  As the time approached, Jacob finally stood up and joined her at the open window. He took her hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

  The light and sound of the explosion reached the apartment, but Melissa and Jacob realized immediately that something had gone wrong. It was not nearly big enough. A thirty-foot-high tank of synfuel should have lit up the night sky and created a booming echo across the city.

  They turned on their internet monitor and scanned the local news.

  Dozens of windows opened with surveillance feeds, comm activity and omnipresence messages. News channel micro-drones arrived quickly on the scene and began transmitting pictures of the tank burning out of control.

  From what they could make out, the wall of the factory had been severely damaged, but it had not leveled that section of the structure, as it should have done.

  “I don’t understand,” said Melissa. “What happened?”

  Jacob frowned. “The only thing that could explain this is if the tank was nearly empty. But we saw the fuel tanker heading to the factory a week ago.” An angry expression came over his face. “Damn it. What if they were emptying the tank, not filling it?”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Probably a precaution in case of attack. Fuck. We should have moved faster.”

  The media were quick to blame LKC, and within minutes the group took responsibility for the attack via an encrypted statement.

  As she scanned the screen, Melissa felt the adrenaline in her veins begin to subside. She started to take some pride in what they had done. It wasn’t as successful as they might have liked, but they had struck a blow, and it was getting a massive amount of play in OP. Which was, of course, the whole point. She was in this to wake people up. The explosion was serving its purpose.

  A face began to appear on some of the channels. It was a thirty-something Hispanic man tagged as Junior Gonzales.

  “Who’s that?” asked Melissa.

  “Don’t know,” Jacob replied. He gestured at the screen to enlarge one of the frames and turn on the audio.

  “…confirm that the maintenance man was working in the building near the synfuel tank when it exploded. According to the company, Junior Gonzales, thirty-seven, was from East Los Angeles and was married with three young children. A tragic loss of life in this terrorist attack, the first victim in an LKC attack. Chuck, they may be regretting their claim of responsibility now…”

  Tears sprung to Melissa’s eyes. “Oh my God, Jacob. What have we done? We killed him!”

  SAN DIEGO

  The FBI’s Domestic Terrorism Task Force Southern California command center was on full alert. A dozen technicians sat in front of their monitors in a darkened room two floors below ground. As soon as the signal arrived indicating a drone attack on San Gabriel, Lieutenant Sharon Lewis began reviewing all video and LIDAR surveillance from the area. The attack drone wasn’t hard to pick up and she started the backtrace immediately. Just on the edge of the overhead camera she could see the attacker emerge from a commercial vehicle of some kind. She rolled the image back until it disappeared from view. “Commander Perkins, I’ve got the San Gabriel attack drone emerging from an Amazon self-driving delivery truck.”

  “Good, Sharon,” said the watch commander. “Miles, get the last leg from Sharon and tap into Amazon and get the route for that truck.”

  “Will do,” replied Miles O’Connell, “but I’ll need to submit a warrant request to get that information.”

  “Not anymore,” replied the Commander. “We are pre-cleared, just try it.” The computer specialist used a DTTF router backdoor to gain access to Amazon’s network. He was shocked to see that the routers did not require an encrypted warrant with court approval. “I think I’ve got it. On the big screen.”

  They looked up at the wall-sized display at a map of the San Gabriel area with the factory highlighted and a route of a delivery vehicle that matched the segment Sharon had seen.

  “Now tap into public transportation systems and private ride companies and find all intersections with drop-off points near stops on that route.”

  “No warrants?” Miles asked.

  “No warrants, just do it,” said the Commander. Miles frowned. “That will take a few minutes, hang on.” As he accessed various systems more dots appeared on the display.

  “That’s a lot. Let’s try screening for drop-offs and pick-ups within a thirty minute window of the delivery truck stopping at each location.” The dots faded from view until there was just a handful remaining. “Excellent,” said Commander Perkins. “Now get me any visual surveillance of those locations from the appropriate time frames.”

  “Sorry, ma’am, no luck for most of them. Too far from the target. No closed circuit cameras in that neighborhood.”

  “Damn.”

  “If I might, Commander,” said Sharon. “Wouldn’t our suspect be using anonymous payment systems?”

  “That seems likely. Can you narrow on that, Miles?”

  “Checking. Yes. Only two possibilities. Public transit here in the north and two ride service trips near this location further south.”

  “Where did the ride services originate and terminate?”

  “Both in a large transit hub. Lots of traffic.”

  “Do those self-driving vehicles have active health monitoring?”

  “What, you mean medplant scanning? Let me check. Yes, one of them did. Interesting. For the ride in question there’s almost no data, but for a brief moment medplant data was broadcast. Shows a twenty-seven-year-old female. Elevated pulse, shallow breathing.”

  “Probably wearing a privacy cloak but stuck her arm out of it. Lucky for us. Get her name.”

  “What do you mean? Medplants don’t reveal names.”

  “What I’m about to tell you doesn’t leave this room. We’ve got emergency powers from the President. Access the medplant registry in a channel encrypted with DTTF private keys and you’ll get that name.”

  LOS ANGELES

  Melissa stared with horror at the vids on the display. The burning structure, the smiling face of the man they had killed. She tried to catch her breath. Then her biometrically linked PNA started emitting an urgent, loud chirping sound. “Wait, what?” she said.

  “Melissa, is that the GPS access trap?”

  “GPS?”

  “From Geneva, you installed the software to detect unauthorized GPS access on your PNA. Is that the warning?”

  Geneva had strongly recommended ditching their personal biometrically linked PNAs, but when Melissa refused, Geneva had her install software in case law enforcement tried to illegally access her GPS. Now the software alarm was going off. The police. They knew about her! Blood rushed from her head; the world spun around her. Then everything went dark.

  Jacob caught Melissa’s falling body just before it hit the floor. He tried to revive her, but she was out cold. The chirping alarm meant he had maybe a minute before the police drones arrived with their stun guns. They had talked about this scenario, they had run through the LKC training, they had promised each other that if one of them was going to be captured, the other had to make a run for it.

  But for many long seconds, he couldn’t tear himself away from her. Part of him wanted to gi
ve up, to let them take him. He was overwhelmed with guilt at having pressured her into working with LKC. If he could trade places with her he would in an instant. But he remembered the seriousness in her expression when they had made those promises. He owed it to Melissa to carry on. He let her head down gently on the floor, then rushed to the closet, grabbed his go bag, and bolted out the door.

  As he ran down the stairs, he pulled out his PPF hooded cloak and put it on. Clutching the bag—packed with food rations, q-coin tokens, and his father’s revolver—he reached the front door of the building. As he turned onto the sidewalk, the first police drones arrived and crashed through the windows of his apartment.

  Jacob hurried down the sidewalk and turned a corner. He joined a small cluster of people walking toward a city bus, and disappeared into the night without a backward glance.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  LOS ANGELES - DECEMBER 21

  Special Agent Matt Chandler of the Domestic Terrorism Task Force jumped on a fast jet at Fort Bragg as soon as news of San Gabriel hit. He reviewed the case file on his tablet. Mostly the same MO as the prior drone attacks, although this time with a laser that penetrated a synfuel tank. Probably too hard to work with explosives in the LA area due to their detection systems. The key difference with this attack was that DTTF had adequate surveillance in place and enough emergency access to track down the terrorist.

  Matt exited the FBI self-driving SUV that brought him from the Joint Forces Training Base at Los Alamitos and badged his way into the apartment where Melissa King had been found. Clearly an amateur, he thought as he surveyed the scene. She had continued to use her biometrically linked PNA device, which made her exact location available to law enforcement. She had returned to her apparent boyfriend’s place, implicating him in the attack as well. And they didn’t even have a separate operations base. Running a terrorist cell from your own residential apartment. Amateurs for sure.