Crisis- 2038

by Gerald Huff

  “Yes, that’s true. I’m just not as sure how to undercut public support for LKC or even how much LKC depends on the public. It could be a very small group with very large reach,” said Zach.

  “So,” said Harry, trying to summarize. “If Scott-Lathrop comes up for a vote as described, with illegal uses of technological surveillance, do we all agree to oppose it? Standing together?”

  “I will,” said Esteban.

  “What’s the point?” asked Dylan. “I mean really, this thing will probably get ninety votes. Everyone’s running scared, they’re not thinking.”

  “Well, maybe we can make them think,” said Emily. “But we have to get out in front of it early. Do a press conference, holoconference, all over omnipresence. Make it fill a news cycle—bipartisan group opposes move towards a police state.”

  “Police state?” asked Rebecca. “Isn’t that a little harsh?”

  “It is a slippery slope,” said Zach. “Once granted, these powers are almost never rescinded. I’m in.”

  Dylan shook his head. “It’s a fool’s errand, but if you all are in favor, I will stand with you.”

  Harry looked at Rebecca. “What do you think? Want to tilt at another windmill with us?”

  “All right, you convinced me,” said Rebecca. She looked at each of them in turn. “You know, it’s nice, treating each other like real people, with respect, trying to do good things, the right thing. Maybe we can influence more Senators to join us. This is so much better than partisan gridlock.”

  “Hear, hear,” they replied, raising their glasses in a hopeful toast.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  LONDON - JANUARY 20

  “I feel so badly for Frances,” said Roger. “What a tragedy.”

  “I know,” said Jill, snuggled up against him on the sofa in his flat. “I wasn’t really able to follow Sara, too busy I guess. Did you meet her or work with her directly?”

  “No, I only worked with Frances. But my synth network helped launch Sara. Like I told you, her ideas changed my life. I don’t know how to describe it. She had a pure soul, I guess? She was so young, but had such a presence. The world has lost something truly irreplaceable.”

  “I can see she had a real impact on you. What was it that changed for you?”

  “For me, it was the moral imperative to do good in the world, to use my talents to improve life for humanity, not just for profit. That’s why I created AntiVenom and RingTrue. After two decades of poisoning the sphere of public discourse, I felt the need to make amends. To do something where I had expertise to make things better instead of worse.”

  “Wow, that’s a heavy burden,” said Jill.

  “I think of it more like an obligation. It’s funny you say heavy burden. I actually feel much lighter now. I always read that giving to others was liberating but never understood it. Looking back, I feel ashamed. I was so selfish.”

  “Roger, you’re being quite hard on yourself. You’re a product of your environment. I’ve experienced that tech entrepreneur world. For goodness sake, even Frances was part of it. What matters is that you’re different now.”

  “I suppose.” He gave her a hug. “What about you? How do you feel about working at RezMat?”

  “Oy, so you’re trying to make me feel guilty now?” She poked him in the ribs. “Don’t think I haven’t been thinking about it after talking with you and Frances. RezMat is about as pure a capitalist entity you can imagine. Largest corporation on the planet. All about growth and profit. I swear that company only does the right thing accidentally, if there happens to be more profit in doing so.”

  “Are you considering leaving?”

  “Yes, sometimes. Just the other day I was having it out with my boss again about that Tribal access and I almost quit right then.”

  “That’s right! I’d forgotten in all this madness. What did you find out?”

  “Nothing! Completely stonewalled.”

  “Hmm. Well maybe we can figure it out.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Well Tribal itself is open source, right? We might be able to understand their infrastructure, any possible vulnerabilities.”

  “I suppose so…I never thought of that! Well, that could be fun.”

  “Oh, wow, we are such a couple of geeks,” said Roger. “Allison, display a schematic of the Tribal open source repository infrastructure.” He aimed the pico-projector in his PNA at a nearby wall and they stood up to study the diagram. “Okay then. Typical application. Stream processors, database, file systems, web and application servers. Clearly if RezMat was able to break through their security, it could have accessed all of the stored information.”

  “True,” said Jill, “although Tribal would most likely have detected that and raised the alarm. And you had deleted the repo, correct? How long after deleting did you push your first release?”

  “I think it was two weeks.”

  “Hmm, let’s check out the repo code. Allison, display the current source tree for the Tribal application.” Jill flicked through a few screens and did some searches, digging deep into the code base. “Here we go, deleting a repo. Looks like it’s basically just a folder in their network storage. They just delete it and free it back up to the storage system to use by other files.”

  “If they did that, over the course of two weeks those files would be certainly be randomly overwritten by all kinds of other material. I don’t see how it could be reconstructed.” Roger said.

  “Well it must have existed somewhere for RezMat to find it.”

  “Backups?” Roger speculated.

  “Interesting thought. Allison, is there any documentation on Tribal disaster recovery?”

  “Yes, Jill, there was an article written in 2033.”

  “Display it please.”

  “Whoa,” said Roger. “Check that out! They’re sending encrypted files to RezCloud!”

  “Well that could explain how RezMat could get access. What’s the encryption?”

  “Ugh, dead end,” said Roger, scrolling down the article. Back in ’33 they were using thousand qubit quantum encryption. Probably using 5K qubits now. Even if RezMat had a secret 10K qubit system it would take them ten thousand years to break the code.”

  “What would it take to break it in less than an hour?”

  “Less than an hour? That’s crazy.”

  “Indulge me.”

  “I don’t know, I’d have to do the math. But off the top of my head I’d say a million qubit system. So, impossible,” said Roger.

  “Why impossible?”

  “5K qubit systems are very expensive right now. No one has demonstrated a 10K qubit system publicly though it’s presumed the intel community has them. Evidently stabilizing the superposition of the particles gets exponentially harder the more of them you have. There’s a lot of theoretical physics and quantum engineering to be discovered before we can get to even twenty or fifty thousand.”

  “So, it is physically possible?” asked Jill.

  “Well, yes, there’s nothing in the laws of physics to prevent it. But the last estimates I saw said it would be another twenty years before we got there. Why are you pushing so hard on this? It’s a dead end. RezMat must have broken in and figured out how to reconstruct the files. Or maybe there was an onsite backup?”

  “Hang on, Roger. I’m pushing on this because there’s a mystery at the heart of RezMat recently that no one’s been able to explain. I think this Tribal hack might be a big clue.”

  “Mystery? What are you talking about?”

  “RezMat has been outperforming every other robotics and AI equipment maker for the last few years. Their level of innovation and patent application growth is off the charts. What’s amazed everyone is the diversity of fields RezMat needed to conquer to pull this off. Chemistry, artificial intelligence, bio-tissue generation, nano-motors, you name it. Discoveries coming out of nowhere.”

  “So?” said
Roger. “I assume there are thousands of scientists doing fundamental R&D inside RezMat in all those areas.”

  “Yes, of course, but they’re not any smarter than those at other companies or academic labs. But somehow, they are years ahead. I think they have an edge.”

  “An edge?”

  “Yes. Six years ago, Building 42 was gutted and rebuilt, dedicated to quantum computing. Rumors were that more than ten billion pounds went into it. Even by RezMat standards its security was bonkers. When I joined I heard about it and wanted to visit. Not possible, I was told. The people who work in the building aren’t even in the corporate directory. And yet the facility never seemed to produce much. It lagged other commercial quantum computers by a year or two, never very competitive. But year after year its funding increased. No one would talk about it.”

  “But if RezMat has lagging quantum technology how does that solve our mystery?”

  “That’s just it, Roger. I think RezMat is not lagging. I think it’s leapfrogged! I think it’s figured out how to build a million qubit system, or something nearly there, and it’s using it as a secret weapon in every other line of business.”

  Roger’s jaw dropped open. “You think they have a million qubit system?”

  “It would explain a lot of things about RezMat, including the Tribal hack.”

  “But how could it stay a secret? If it’s been used in all those businesses, there would be hundreds or thousands of people who know.”

  “Not necessarily. Think about it. You’re a scientist trying to give a material some new properties. All your experimental data and hypotheses are in RezMat systems. One day you come in and one of your overnight lab tests has indicated a new direction. You feel like a genius. Behind the scenes, a small team sworn to secrecy is pulling the levers.”

  “Hmm, maybe.” Roger shook his head. “It’s just inconceivable, the power of a system like that. Scientists all over the world have been dreaming of such a thing. You could create drugs personalized for everyone’s individual genome. Develop realistic geoengineering tools to reverse climate change. Genetically engineer crops to be more drought resistant. It can’t be true, Jill. We’d have so many breakthroughs in so many areas.”

  “Roger, you’re forgetting, we’re talking about RezMat. It doesn’t have business in any of those sectors. At least not yet. Maybe that’s part of a long term plan. Right now, it can barely keep up with demand in its existing lines of business.”

  “You’re saying they’re just sitting on this?”

  “If it’s true, I can’t imagine them doing anything else.”

  “Jill, Oh my God.”

  “What?”

  “Do you trust RezMat?”

  “Trust RezMat? Not a whit. Haven’t you been listening?”

  “Jill, if what we think is true, there isn’t a communication, transaction, or block chain on the planet that is safe. Defense codes, diplomatic messages, supply chains. Everything depends on quantum encryption at the 5K qubit level. There always has to be an unbreakable code in every time period, even if it becomes breakable later. If they have secretly leapfrogged—“

  She finished the incredibly frightening thought. “RezMat has the keys to the bloody kingdom.”

  “So what do we do about it?” he asked. Jill paced for a moment. “Let’s talk with Frances. She can probably get directly to the CEO.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  LOS ANGELES - JANUARY 24

  LOS ANGELES UNIVERSITY

  Tenesha was in constant contact with saranet, her PNA buzzing all day and night with ideas and strategies from the global private omnipresence network for leaders trying to advance Sara’s message. Today was especially busy, as it had been designated for the first large scale coordinated real-life activities since Sara’s murder two weeks ago.

  Demonstrations supporting “Message Day”, a celebration of Sara’s message of hope and dignity, had already concluded in India. Europe’s were extending into the evening as Tenesha and Nate and hundreds of volunteers prepared for a noon rally in downtown Los Angeles. Tenesha consulted the how-to guides on saranet endlessly to get things organized.

  They had gathered in an empty classroom to make signs for the thousands of marchers expected at the rally. The students were creating a wide variety of messages, from the simple “I am Sara” and “UBI Now!” to “Tech for the People” and “Invest in Tech to Set Us Free”. Tenesha coordinated getting supplies and materials while negotiating with city officials on the route of the march and security arrangements.

  “No, no, no,” she said through her earpiece. “I already cleared this with Taylor in your office and with LAPD. We are starting on 7th and Flower and turning left on South Main to City Hall. That’s what we agreed to and that’s what we’re going to do. What do you mean there’s a conflict? Conflict with what? With who? A counter demonstration? You’ve got to be kidding me.” She muted her PNA. “Nate! Nate!” she beckoned him over. “The Mayor’s office says there’s some kind of counter demonstration. Can you check for any news?” He nodded and started searching his PNA.

  “Well, when did they apply for a permit? Was it after us? Okay, so that settles it then. We get route priority since we were first. I don’t care Sheena, I’ve got thousands of people set to gather at 7th and Flower and I’m not redirecting them now, it’ll create mass confusion. Now I’ve got to go. Thanks for your help.”

  “Shit,” said Nate, scanning his PNA. “There’s an anti-tech rally happening now too. They probably heard about our march.”

  “I can’t be worried about that right now,” Tenesha said. “LAPD will just need to do their jobs for once and keep them the hell away from our people. Barry! Hey Barry! Can you connect with LAPD, Commander Tompkins over there, find out what’s going on with this other rally and what they plan to do about it? Thanks, hon.”

  Tenesha spotted an idle volunteer and walked over to read her name badge. “Hey, hi, sorry, Lauren, you looking for something to do? We need more signs made, there are materials over there by the door and a list of messages. Hop to it, girl, we’ve got less than an hour.”

  “My word,” said Nate, shaking his head. “You are some powerhouse woman, Tenesha Martin.”

  “Don’t you forget it,” she fired back, poking him in the chest. He held up his arms. “Not me,” he said. “What’s next, boss?”

  “We’ve got to get the buses lined up for this crew to get them over to the starting point. Can you handle that?”

  “For sure, I got that.” As he hustled off to the transit area, Tenesha felt so grateful for his love and support. During all the craziness of the last few weeks, he’d been her anchor. In her darkest moments, when she’d been curled up sobbing from the loss and the stress, he’d been there for her, a shoulder to cry on, offering a warm healing embrace. There’s no way she could have done it without him.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by a surprising arrival. “Professor Goodson? What are you doing here?”

  “I heard about the rally and I wanted to see if there was anything I could do to help.”

  “Really? I mean, that’s great, we haven’t had much faculty support. At this point I think just joining the march. Maybe we can hustle you up a sign from a faculty perspective.”

  “Whatever I can do. Tenesha, I also wanted to say how impressed I am with your leadership in all this. Four months ago, when we discussed Sara’s VR in class your passion was clear but you were hesitant to act. What changed?”

  “I don’t know, Professor. I watched Sara speak at Boston College and I just had this feeling swell up inside me.”

  “She had that impact on a lot of people. Remarkable. Really remarkable.”

  “Professor Goodson, you look like a man thinking about writing a book!”

  He laughed. “I wasn’t, but you know you’re right. Here I am with a front seat to history. I should be taking better notes!”

  LOS ANGELES CITY HALL

  More t
han sixty thousand people came to the march and peacefully made their way to City Hall, flooding the streets and providing great visuals for the news channels. Tenesha was thrilled. Speaker after speaker spoke eloquently about what Sara’s message meant to them.

  There were technologists explaining what would be possible if only there was more focus on core research in energy, environment, food, health, education, and housing. Activists explained how a universal basic income could stabilize the socioeconomic system. Senator Emily McCutcheon spoke at length about the ALPHA legislation and how the group of six senators was going to continue pushing on Sara’s ideas. Hollywood celebrities lent their voices. Quartz gave a powerful performance, a mesmerizing love song to Sara that brought tears to everyone’s eyes.

  And then, to her great surprise, there was a commotion right next to her at the side of the stage and the Democratic Governor of California, Anush Rajashankar, emerged from the crowd just a few feet away. She had tried in vain to get through to his office to see if he would make an appearance. Tenesha hadn’t been surprised at the stonewalling. Despite being at the epicenter of the tech revolution shaking the economy, California’s first Indian-American governor had spent his first term focused on international issues like trade, immigration, and climate change. But now he was here. He politely asked the Program Chairwoman if he could speak and of course she assented.

  “My fellow citizens,” he began. “It is with a heavy heart that I appear here before you. The unspeakable tragedy we all witnessed, the heartbreaking loss of Sara Dhawan, it is almost too much to bear. As you know, the government has been consumed with defending the people against these terrible attacks. I was planning to be in the capitol today. But I have a daughter. Pari is fifteen years old. Sara was her hero.” He had to pause and wipe his eyes.

  “She asked me this morning, she said, ‘Dad, what are you going to do today, it’s Message Day.’ I didn’t know what she was talking about. She explained what was happening around the world, the first mass memorial for Sara and promotion of her message. ‘What are you going to do?’ she kept asking me. I didn’t know what to tell her.