by Utley, Todd
“All right, go to the larger file from work and then scroll down to the bottom of the page, are there any blank pages?” Dodge began scrolling down but it was a very large file.
“Hold on this is gonna take a second.” He scrolled for a good long while and suddenly hit blank screen just like with the other file. “It must have been tampered with in the same way.”
“Looks like the same thing all over again it’s just like the other one I gave you. It’s got tons of blank pages after the last viewable command and the smaller file doesn’t.”
“Okay, compress it and upload it to your phone. Go into that message I sent you earlier at work with the birthday email in it. There is a cloaking program built into that message so we might as well reuse it. Just select reply, attach the compressed file and send. I’ll start working on it right away but don’t expect a call until tomorrow. I’ll have to come up with an entirely new way to decode it because the assembly software is totally different from the first one.”
“Okay will do,” he said, as they ended the call.
Dodge lay awake that night for several hours. He was wondering if that break in years ago had anything to do with this security breach in his design. What could those behind this possibly intend to accomplish?
If they wanted the technology why didn’t they just steal it and sell it to their competitor? If it was fast money they were after, that would have certainly been the way to get it.
Could it be that the thieves simply wanted a really fast computer and nothing else in the house? Maybe they got spooked and grabbed the computer and ran before they had time to get more stuff?
He lay there and thought about the team and the files and the secrecy and the huge payoff that he had coming in just four years. He couldn’t help but worry that it might all be lost. Tech Companies that have security breaches don’t survive. On top of that whoever did this was good, really good, and that scared him to death.
If the people behind this whole mess actually did something with it, something bad, then chances are he would be going down in flames. All his hard work lost, his multimillion dollar bonus gone, and maybe even a prison term to face if he was implicated as a conspirator.
Cyber crimes were getting cracked down on hard in recent years. Some cyber criminals had even received life sentences. He wanted to sleep but thought he couldn’t. Sometime between two and three, he finally drifted off.
Chapter 8 Dodges phone began vibrating across the night stand at 6:45 a.m. He was not surprised that it was John but was surprised that the call came so soon. He was so hyper aware of the potential call and he answered it so quickly that it didn’t wake Linsey who was generally a light sleeper.
He set it to vibrate just in case John called but he really didn’t expect a call until later in the morning or maybe even afternoon. He slipped out of the bedroom as quietly as possible and into the bathroom where he answered the call.
“Hey John, what’s up?”
“Well buddy, I have good news and bad so I’ll give you the good first. I was able to crack it faster than I thought because it seems that the perpetrator used techniques similar to that of his first job which made mine a lot easier. I would guess it was the same person or group involved with the code files. The commands used to execute the cloaking function were very different because it uses two entirely different software packages for viewing and editing. But the basic idea of how they accomplished the cloaking was nearly the exact same approach.
I took a copy of your circuit board layout software that you were using at that time and sort of worked it backwards based on the text and font and color codes that it uses to display things on screen. Then I used the same idea of it being super fast and loaded it into a little bit newer machine that I had here with a customizable front side bus speed controller. I also tripled the actual clock speed of the PC so that the clock on the PC would move from 1p.m. to 4p.m. in only one actual hour. It’s a time trick. The program thinks it’s running too slow so it speeds itself up to match the clock.”
Dodge went down to the kitchen during this long explanation to get some coffee going.
“John, Dude, you’re a genius, but ya gotta dumb it down.”
“Right, sorry! Anyway it should be done in the next hour can you come over and take a look at the files? I have an exact copy of your layout and design software from that period loaded on one of my faster stations. I could look at it but wouldn’t have a clue what I was looking at and you’re the hardware guy that does. Be about like you looking at my code from one of these crackers.”
“Yeah, ya know what, I’m gonna call off work. I’ll be over in about forty-five minutes.”
“Hey, if you haven’t eaten anything yet don’t, I’ll have Jeeves whip up some gourmet coffee and Eggs Benedict.”
Dodge knew that the timing was just about right and Linsey would think he had gone to work. He finished making the coffee just to look legit. “Eggs Benedict and gourmet coffee, John really knew how to live.” Knowing John his new gal was probably a super model too.
He jumped in and out of the shower with a quick shave and dressed in record time. Linsey and the kids were downstairs fixing breakfast when he came down. He filled his travel mug with a cup of coffee to go. He talked briefly with them but really had a one track mind to get over to John’s. He got up from the table where he had perused the daily digital for only five minutes.
He was just about to say goodbye when Linsey noticed he was getting up.
“Hey you, where ya think you’re going? We’ve got breakfast goin here!” He smiled at her and stuck his gut out as far as possible and pointed to it with his free hand.
“No thanks Babe, your cookin’s great but its startin ta show!” Bobby couldn’t resist.
“Wow Dad, you expecting? When you gonna pop that kid out?” Linsey got a quick kiss as Dodge grabbed his phone and headed out. He couldn’t resist messing up Sarah’s hair as he passed by.
“Daaad!”
“Oh you’re still beautiful!” He said as he went out toward the garage. She really was too, with her light brown hair and blue eyes, not to mention an athletic build thanks to strict gymnastics training. He could see some Linsey in her but even more of his own mother. He remembered pictures of her when she was a young and there was a good resemblance.
As Dodge entered the garage, he spied his own private piece of nostalgia under the car cover in the far bay. She hadn’t been out on the road in several weeks. He couldn’t resist, he had to drive the GTO. He whisked off the cover and tossed it up on the workbench in front of the car. He grabbed the keys out of his hiding place in the toolbox and hopped in. He fired it up, backed it out, and took off, it felt great!
He loved old hot rods, nothing like the crisp throttle response of a fast retro head turner with a sweet exhaust note. He had the paint redone on the old 69 Pontiac in Baltic Silver with three coats of dark blue pearl on top. He had them add some very light ghost flames down the hood and sides. They were barely visible because they were only two shades darker than the base coat. The boys at Mitch Smith Performance in Anderson wrenched new life into the old 400 cubic inch block and drive train a few years back. It set him back over twenty grand, but boy would she run!
He arrived at John’s in record time and wondered how he avoided a speeding ticket. The gate was closed so he had to push the little button and talk to Jeeves. He was pretty damn sure that Jeeves wasn’t his real name and John was just being entertaining as usual.
“Good morning Sir,” said Jeeves, as his face appeared on the monitor.
“Morning Jeeves, JC expecting me?”
“Yes Sir, I’ll open the gate for you, oh and by the way Sir, nice piece of iron!” Wow, Jeeves, while butlerish and rather old, did know the proper terms for classic muscle cars. He sped up the curvy driveway that made a fairly tight left right left turn through some trees and then opened up into the magnificent meadow that contained John’s ridiculous house. Instead of stopping at the front he wen
t on through the breeze way and around back to the garage area. He goosed the throttle just as he shut it off to show off for John. He had already come out of the garage when he spotted the GTO coming.
“Whoa! Man! That’s nice!”
“You like her?”
“What’s not to like, she’s beautiful.”
He was glad to see that John appreciated his classic hot rod.
“Okay, why didn’t you tell me about the Goat? Classic GTO, smoking hot wife, and perfect kids, you know Dodge you’re truly a rich man!”
Dodge was flattered by John’s comments. On the way in he realized that John was right. While John had lots of nice things and loads of cash, he didn’t have the wonderful family that Dodge did. That truly was something.
John’s Mother had passed away very young, and his Father was estranged for years. John was an only child so he was an island really, but he did have his friends.
“Hey John, seriously, Jeeves isn’t really his name, is it?”
John laughed so hard that he nearly choked on the drink of coffee he had just taken.
“No, no, I’ll never tell, you’ll just have to figure it out,” he said, as he continued to laugh and shake his head.
They went around the garage and worked their way through the complex and into the downstairs kitchen. A middle aged Spanish woman was working over the massive stove. “Dodge this is Miranda, Miranda Dodge Kerrington.”
“Hello,” said Dodge. She only nodded and smiled in a nice gesture.
“Miranda, we’ll be on the Patio by the pool, please bring the food out when ready. Thank you.” She nodded and smiled again.
“Oh, you do like Eggs Benedict right?” asked John.
“Oh yes, eggs over medium please,” Dodge said as they were leaving to go sit on the patio with their coffee.
Miranda smiled and nodded again then continued her work without ever saying a word. They walked through a few more huge rooms and out a huge patio door onto a large pool deck, it was absolutely awesome. Within minutes the food arrived and it was delicious. The coffee was gourmet, that was no lie, but Jeeves hadn’t prepared it as Dodge implied, what a nut. Who would have guessed that he had a talented Spanish chef as well as a refined older gentleman as a butler? What other surprises did John have up his sleeve? He thought he knew the man but was beginning to wonder.
“Ya know John, you could allow your kitchen help to talk to the guest.” John laughed.
“Dude, she’s allowed to talk to you, she’s just extremely shy, especially around new people.”
“Okay, if you say so.”
They finished their food while talking about what they might find added to the circuit design file. They were both anxious as they made their way back to John’s man cave over the garage.
Of course this wasn’t an average garage just as nothing else on the estate was average. It was large enough to house John’s entire fleet of vehicles that numbered upwards of twenty and ranged from “oddly cheap and ordinary” all the way to “look at me, I’m so stinking rich!”
They both ran up the stairs taking them two at a time just like they used to do back at ESS for fun. When they walked into the room, they were both a little winded and John stooped over for a moment with his hands on his knees.
“Wow that’s harder than it used to be,” he said. They plopped down in a couple of nice leather chairs adjacent to the machine running the crack. A few key strokes later and John announced it had completed and was ready to be loaded into the viewer.
“Sir would you like the honor?” John said as he rolled out of the way of the keyboard, “after all it’s your design.”
“No you mean it WAS my design before some hacker got hold of it.” Dodge wheeled up to the keyboard, cracked his knuckles and began typing.
His fingers moved with great agility as he hammered in the launch codes and password sequences necessary to start the viewer. It was a very complex piece of design software that few people could operate and doubtful any at the level of Dodge Kerrington.
He loaded the files, ran all the assemblers and rendered the layers with incredible speed. He hit the regen matrix icon which loaded a fresh set of rendered layers. It appeared on the holographic viewer that was directly in front of them to the left of the traditional 2D display.
There it was, right in front of them, in all of its magnificence. A master piece of technology, the key to immortality, almost 10 years of their lives had been poured into this project and several more decades of other pioneers prior to them that started the first work.
John worked the code during that time under the direction of Dodge, but really either one of them could have been the department head. Dodge was chosen primarily because he had been there longer. John was so talented with the software that they made an amazing team. There were certainly many other contributors but the two of them were really the core of the project, without them it would have failed.
They sat looking at it in awe of what they created; they had forgotten the beauty of their accomplishment. The thousands of tiny complex circuit lines were a thing of beauty to them. Its many layers of traces that were each displayed in a different color looked like a carefully woven tapestry of yarns. They were laid together with geometric precision, never touching each other, except where designed to do so. The layers were populated with Ultra Microscopic components that could only be placed by nanobots in an extreme clean and controlled environment. They sat there admiring it for almost five minutes.
“Okay let’s have a look at the layers that shouldn’t have anything in them,” said Dodge. He began turning off the various layers that he was familiar with. One by one the design became less and less complex to view. He turned off 28 layers, all those that he remembered being part of the core design. Still, six layers remained. “What was in them?”
He zoomed in, way in. He turned on the layer detail and clicked on the trace nearest the crosshairs of the pointer. There it was just as plain as day. No more wondering, no more cracking, no more doubt. Right in front of them in letters that jumped right out of the viewer and reached right into their chest and caused their hearts to skip a beat . . . , “lc_Implant_WirelessReceiver_Section1_Layer1.”
They both sat back for a moment with their mouths hanging open. They both knew exactly what had been done to their design but why? John got up and paced around a bit. Dodge spun around in his chair, watching him nervously.
“Please tell me this is just a bad dream and I’m going to wake up and all this crap will be gone.”
“I wish I could!” said John, in a sarcastic tone.
“Where do we begin?”
“I guess with Ron Simpson. He was the last one that opened the file almost ten years ago.”
“I guess so. We need to find out if he viewed it as we are now or if he was only able to view it like we did before.”
“Good point, he might be innocent in all of this, just as we are.”
“I remember Ron, nice guy, always on time, kind of quiet, just did his work and kept his head down.” Said Dodge.
“Have you seen him around there lately?
“No, as a matter of fact I haven’t seen him. I know he transferred out of development into sales about four years ago. I saw him a few times after that but then not so much. I’ll check on it tomorrow.”
They both leaned back in their chairs and looked at it again.
“This is definitely not good,” said Dodge. It means someone went to an awful lot of trouble to turn our little one way transmitter into a bidirectional transceiver. Someone at Biotech or LifeTech didn’t want us to know that they were making these additions.”
John agreed. “We were trusted with all this technology, yet they went to a lot of trouble to hide this additional capability from us. It seems that they are doing it without the need for the needle probe, or maybe even the entire Restoration console.”
“Do you think the government is developing a way to spy on people?” asked Dodge.
�
��I don’t know but I would think if they were able to read our thoughts we would already be in their custody being questioned or even dead.”
“Maybe it’s a mind control thing, you know, someone wants to control the masses or subtly influence people in a subliminal way.”
“Yeah maybe, let’s keep our minds open and our eyes open even wider. I believe this could get a little dangerous. I think for now we had better keep it just between the two of us.”
Dodge agreed as they continued to look at the additional layers in wonder of their origins. John believed that whoever performed the work possessed skills at least equal to that of Dodge’s and that was a rare individual.
Dodge looked at his watch, it was only 9:00 a.m. They had plenty of time to research the list of people that worked on the project.
The obvious first choice was Ron Simpson. He was the last person to access the file and so it made sense to start there. Dodge had interviewed every single person that worked on the project with the exception of John because John was already there at the company and was pretty much his equal.
He kept a copy of all the personnel files at home in his stash of micro drives and it was now coming in quite handy in this research. There were twelve people including John and Dodge that were involved so that left ten people to be researched including Mr. Simpson.
They decided to divide the list but to work on Mr. Simpson simultaneously first. The World Wide Web was naturally their best resource after they quickly exhausted the personnel file on Ron. The company personnel files available to Dodge at the time of the interviews were very limited to only what he needed to know to determine good candidates for the positions. Basic resume information about past jobs and performance and a few personal references were about it.
The most valuable information turned out to be the social security numbers and dates of birth. This basic information in the hands of John was gold. John’s hacking skills were unsurpassed, giving him the ability to circumvent the best of security systems to retrieve pretty much whatever he wanted.
