by Kyle Mills
“My compliments to you. I identified thirty-nine people worldwide whom I believed had a chance at finding that subsystem and you weren’t on the list. I apologize for underestimating your abilities.”
“Uh, that’s okay.”
Dresner let out an incongruously warm laugh. “I see that you haven’t informed anyone of consequence. I’m sure Mr. Zellerbach told you that I’d be watching all aspects of the network for unusual fluctuations.”
“He did mention that,” Smith said. “The message seems to be that if we do anything, an enormous number of people will drop dead.”
“One million, seventeen thousand, six hundred and twelve as of this moment.”
“As of this moment…” Smith said. The seemingly offhand phrase was the last piece of the puzzle he needed. “It’s not enough for you.”
“Once again, I’m impressed,” Dresner said. “No, it’s not enough. This isn’t about vengeance or killing people who will be immediately replaced by others just as malignant. It’s about fundamentally changing society. It’s about making certain we survive long enough for someone to succeed where I’ve failed.”
“In turning the Merge into something that perfects us as a species.”
“Your phrasing is a bit melodramatic but it’s substantially accurate.”
“So if we try to stop you now, you’ll murder just over a million people. But if we don’t, a few years from now, ten times that many will die.”
“Closer to five times based on my projections. But these are people whose lives are about destruction, Jon. Hate. Greed. People who turn—”
“According to you.”
“Not really true. You’re ignoring the fact that one of LayerCake’s main functions is to temper our judgments with facts. Whatever biases I have because of my life experiences are eradicated by the system. I think you’d be surprised at how many people I personally judge negatively that LayerCake doesn’t. I’m not overriding a single one of those decisions. As you know, the system works. Extremely well.”
It was true. The system did work. In Smith’s extensive experience, LayerCake’s judgments of people and things had proved almost preternaturally accurate. And to the degree it erred, it erred to the positive.
“Even your moderated biases, though, are your biases,” Randi said. “Didn’t Hitler believe he was right? Didn’t Stalin? Didn’t they believe that they were creating a Utopia?”
“I’m not trying to protect my own power, Ms. Russell. I’m not a racist or a sexist. I’m not promoting a political ideology. And my accusations are being vetted by the most unbiased judge ever created. If our species is going to survive to take the next logical step, something has to be done. The weak and the innocent have to be protected from men with access to technology that Hitler and Stalin only dreamed of.”
“And so we should just accept that you’ve checkmated us,” Smith said. “We should just stand by and do nothing.”
“You think too small, Jon. That’s not at all what I’m proposing. I believe that we should form an alliance.”
“Excuse me?”
“The adoption of the Merge has been strongest in the United States for a number of reasons, including your undeniable talent at developing systems useful to your soldiers.”
Smith felt the breath drain from him. Dresner was right. His confidence in the Merge’s potential had handed Dresner a weapon that could decimate America’s defenses in precisely eighteen seconds.
“Adoption by foreign militaries is fairly low still, largely due to the exclusivity agreement Whitfield insisted on. Penetration in Muslim countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran is coming along, but is also still low—even with the upper class. In China, there’s poor overall adoption because of the poverty in rural areas but also because of the limited effectiveness of the commercial unit in combat situations. Also, there’s not a great deal of online information in those countries for LayerCake to base its judgments on.”
Smith knew where this was going and wasn’t happy about it. “So you have my country dead to rights. If you activate now, we’re the ones who get hit the hardest.”
“Overwhelmingly so,” Dresner said. “But it doesn’t have to be that way. Whitfield forced me into the exclusivity agreement. I propose a leak of the military operating system that would allow other countries full access. You’d see an immediate spike in adoption by your opponents and I’d stand by while you slow—but not reverse—the usage by the U.S. military. This would also give me more time to market to the Muslims and the ruling classes of Africa and Southeast Asia, whom I think you’d agree the world would be better without.”
“So I’d be responsible for the deaths of millions of people.”
“Terrorists, dictators, people involved in the Iranian and Pakistani nuclear efforts, criminals, military leaders in China, Russia—”
“And the men that I’ve led and fought with.”
“LayerCake has no interest in killing a hundred thousand foot soldiers, Jon. In fact, I think you’d be surprised at how few of your military people have been selected. The system is interested less in people who fight wars than the people who court and promote them. Besides, you can’t save them. For all intents and purposes, they’re already dead.”
Smith didn’t respond.
“In the next fifty years, we’ll be able to use the Merge to become what we’ve always aspired to be, Jon. Can you imagine what humanity could accomplish if we didn’t spend so much of our time and energy looking for ways to destroy ourselves? Will my actions cause the deaths of millions of people? Yes. But how does that compare with the wars of the last century? The genocides? The countless massacres throughout history where the peaceful and defenseless were the first to die? How many innocent lives will my actions save? Humanity has a chance, Jon. A chance to survive. To thrive. Think about what role you want to play in that.”
The connection went dead and there was silence in the car for a few moments.
“Thoughts?” Klein said finally.
“Talk about a Faustian bargain,” Randi said.
“Yeah,” Smith said. “What he’s talking about doesn’t save American lives so much as it takes foreign ones. I’m more patriotic than most, but that’s a lot of blood on my hands.”
“Agreed,” Klein said over the phone. “We’re not bargaining with this man. There has to be a way to stop him. We’re just not coming up with it.”
Smith glanced over at Marty, who was staring blankly out the window tapping his foot in a monotonous rhythm.
“Marty?”
He didn’t answer.
“What about a virus, Marty? You write it and I’ll get it into any network you want. You can crash the whole world.”
Again he didn’t answer.
“It won’t crash,” Zellerbach said. “It’s won’t, it won’t, it won’t.”
Smith had seen him like this before. His mind was going a thousand miles an hour in a hundred different directions. His brilliance was unchained, but also spinning out of control. They were going to have to stop at a pharmacy.
“It’s not about the networks,” Zellerbach continued. “It’s not.”
Randi leaned up through the seats. “Then what is it about? How can we stop him from triggering it?”
“We can’t.”
“That’s not acceptable,” Klein said.
“LayerCake,” Zellerbach said. “It’s not about the networks. Or the grid. Or the Merge. It’s about search. It’s about Javier.”
“Who’s Javier?”
Zellerbach didn’t answer, mumbling to himself and beginning to count something on his fingers.
“He may be talking about Javier de Galdiano,” Klein said. “He’s the main tech person behind LayerCake. He’s why Dresner’s search subsidiary is run out of a campus near Granada, Spain. De Galdiano doesn’t like to leave home.”
“Marty,” Smith said. “Look at me.”
He didn’t seem to hear and Smith reached out to force his head around.
When their gazes met, Zellerbach came back from the brink a bit.
“We…We can’t stop him from triggering it, Jon. He’ll have too many fail-safes. But maybe we could change the way LayerCake judges people.”
“What do you mean?” Randi said.
“What if we could make it think everybody’s great? Then he can trigger it all he wants. It won’t do anything.”
“Can you hack in, Marty? Rewrite the parameters?”
“No. There’s no outside access. We’d have to be inside the building. And we’d have to have Javier’s password.”
“What do we know about him?” Randi said. “Dresner’s security is notorious but we might be able to get to him somewhere else. Can we find the address of his home and a schematic of any security systems he has installed? How does he get to work? Does he drive himself? Does he have family or friends he visits? What about hobbies that would take him outside? Biking and skiing are big in that area.”
“I can get that,” Klein said. “It’ll take some time, though.”
“Jon,” Zellerbach said, tugging on his sleeve.
“Just a second, Marty. We also need to start looking into the security at the campus. Even if we get to—”
“Jon!” Zellerbach repeated, this time grabbing Smith’s shoulder and shaking him.
“What is it, Marty?”
“I know him.”
“You know who?”
“Javier.”
“You’re friends? How close?”
Zellerbach’s words came out in a breathless jumble. “I’ve never actually met him. He’s an old hacker, like me. There are five of us who have a competition and we set up challenges and try to do them and get a trophy we pass around. Javier has it now. He broke into my system to get it. My system! He’s so smart, Jon. So smart.”
“Can you get in touch with him?”
“Yes. We have a private chat room. The five of us.”
“Tell him you’re coming to Spain and you want to meet.”
“Face-to-face? We don’t do that. He won’t want to do that.”
“You said he has the trophy right now,” Klein interjected. “What if you won it and said you wanted to pick it up personally?”
“Yeah. That’s in the rules. I could do that. But I haven’t won it. He knows I haven’t won it.”
“What’s the current challenge?” Randi said.
“To turn all the screensavers at the National Security Agency to gay porn.”
Klein laughed. Probably not at the image but more at the fact that Zellerbach’s contest happened to be very much within his sphere of influence. “That won’t be a problem.”
“No. It’s hard. This challenge has been out there since they repealed don’t ask don’t tell. The security is tough and getting it to hit all the computers at once is nearly impossible. No one’s even close as far as I know.”
“Trust me,” Klein said. “Tell him you’re coming to Granada and you want him to deliver the trophy personally.”
70
North of Mitú
Colombia
THERE SHE IS,” RANDI SAID, dropping her duffel on the dirt airstrip and pointing into the jungle.
The plane was a large turboprop but it was hard to tell the exact make through the modifications, rust, and camouflage paint. Smith approached a little hesitantly, looking at holes where rivets should have been and the cracked glass in at least a third of the windows. Zellerbach just stopped dead, suddenly forgetting the cloud of insects buzzing around him.
“This is it? This is the plane you told us about? What’s wrong with the one we flew here?”
His alarm was understandable but there wasn’t much they could do. Dresner had intelligence capabilities so cutting-edge that there was no way to anticipate them. While every effort had been made to ensure that the planes used by Covert-One were completely anonymous, it was impossible to guarantee in a post-Merge world. This plane, though—while maybe not entirely airworthy—could never be tracked back to Fred Klein or the president.
“It’s better than it looks,” Randi said, recruiting Smith to help pull the camo netting from the fuselage. “And my friend left a laptop with a satellite link inside. He says it’s a super-fast connection.”
“I’m not a child you can ply with candy.”
“Suit yourself. Did you bring a magazine? Maybe you could just hang out in the sun and read.”
Zellerbach looked around him at the jungle, at the old truck they’d driven there, at the mosquitoes.
“Come on, Marty,” Smith said, yanking off the last of the netting and opening the door. “It’s got air-conditioning.”
Of course that was a lie—the heat billowing out of the plane felt like a kiln—but it did prompt the sweating hacker to inch closer.
Zellerbach peeked inside and crinkled his nose as Randi made her way to the cockpit. The seats had all been ripped out but, true to her word, there was a card table with a laptop on it near the back.
“There is not air-conditioning.”
“Gotta start the engines first,” Smith promised, lacing his fingers and offering Zellerbach a boost up.
He followed and closed the door, looking back to see Zellerbach on his knees examining something on the floor.
“Is this cocaine?” the hacker said, bringing his nose within a few inches before Smith grabbed him by the collar and dragged him to the table containing the laptop.
“Just dust from the insulation, Marty. Why don’t you fire that thing up and see if you can get online.”
It was another lie. The plane belonged to a Colombian acquaintance of Randi’s who had helped her do away with a couple of Hamas guys looking to get into the drug trade. It had been a mutually beneficial operation—she got rid of two terrorists and he got rid of two potential competitors—that had gone smoothly enough to prompt them to stay loosely in touch.
Once Zellerbach was settled and had forgotten the coke in favor of the even more addictive glow of the computer screen, Smith went forward and took the copilot’s seat.
“Nice rig,” he shouted, putting on a headset as the props came up to speed. “You think it’ll actually make it over the Atlantic?”
“Diego swears it’s a cream puff.”
She eased the throttles forward and the plane bumped its way to the makeshift runway.
“And you trust him?”
“Truth be told, he has a thing for me. And he’s dying for me to go to work for him. Apparently, he has some other competitors he’d like retired.”
“Good work if you can get it.”
She grinned and twisted around to look through the tattered cockpit curtains. “Hang on, Marty!”
Despite its appearance, the plane felt solid as they lofted into the air and began to bank out over the jungle. Randi had an intense expression of concentration on her face and Smith remained silent. With her questionable skills and the unfamiliar aircraft, her focus was best left unmolested.
After a few minutes, they leveled out and she relaxed a little. The brief calm before it got dark and instrument-flying was required.
“What did Fred say?” she asked.
Smith had spoken with him on the way to South America, keeping his end of the conversation necessarily opaque due to Zellerbach.
“He talked to the president.”
Randi winced. “Shit. I knew it. It’s a bad call, Jon.”
There was no denying that it was a risk. Klein wasn’t willing to go completely off the books with this many lives at stake, though, and he’d been fairly certain he could convince the president that the risk to his family was limited.
“Yeah, but for now at least, Castilla’s solid. And with the White House behind him, Fred has free rein to look into ways to mitigate the effect of Dresner pulling the trigger. They’re using an anti-terrorism study on the vulnerabilities of the power grid to see how fast they could take it down. There’s a chance that we could put most of the major cities on the East Coast in the dark over the course of a few
seconds. And at the same time, we could pull the plug on the military networks.”
“How much would that cut casualties?”
“Maybe thirty percent in the U.S.”
“But everyone else in the world gets hammered.”
“Yeah.”
“And when they figure out that we knew and didn’t warn them, how’s that going to go over?”
Of course, she was right. But there was just no way to get the word out with Dresner watching. All it would take was one insignificant slip.
“That’s not all they’re looking at, Randi. Nothing’s off the table.”
“Including taking Dresner up on his offer to make a deal?”
It was an interesting question. Klein was strongly against it, but Castilla wasn’t a spy, he was a politician.
“Probably, but there’s no point in worrying about it. If they cut a backroom deal and we get called off this, then at least the pressure’s off.”
She nodded knowingly. If their plan went south—and it probably would—more than a million people could die.
They hit a thick layer of clouds and Randi turned her attention to climbing above them. When they were back out into the sunshine, she glanced over at him. “What if Castilla does make a deal? What if five years go by and suddenly twenty million just drop dead. Would you rebuild?”
“What do you mean?”
“The military. Fire back up the carrier groups and the tanks and the infantry. Sometimes, I think it all feels like a throwback to a different time. Now it’s all about nukes and people who are willing to fight guerrilla wars for the next ten generations. But we’ve got all that stuff and we’re used to it, so we perpetuate it.”
“I don’t know what I’d do,” he said honestly. “What about you? The CIA completely missed the fall of the Soviet Union, the Arab Spring, and just about everything else that’s happened in the world. Are you sure you’re worth the money we spend on you?”
“Maybe not,” she admitted. “What if the agency had never existed? Would the Soviets have invaded? Would al-Qaeda have destroyed us? I mean, I think we do a lot of good but if we had a clean slate, I’m not sure I’d set up the world the same way.”
