The Last Iota

by Robert Kroese

  “As you wish,” said Canaan. “But understand that our deal is contingent on you not interfering with my plans in the DZ. If I get word of any meddling on your part, you forfeit your payment. All of it.”

  “Just make sure Gwen stays safe,” I said. “We’ll stay out of your way.”

  Canaan nodded. “I’ll be in touch.”

  TWENTY

  The Green River guys brought us back to the motel room. Olivia had paid through the week, and evidently the cops were still looking for us, so we couldn’t go back to our office. Presumably now that Olivia had outed herself as an agent of Gerard Canaan, she wouldn’t need her room anymore, and since the lock of our room was now broken, we moved into hers.

  It was clever of Canaan to keep the threat of arrest hanging over our heads. I had no doubt, if he had the power to sic the cops on us in the first place, that he also had the power to call them off, but he wasn’t going to do that until the DZ was secure and he was certain Keane was no longer a threat. Same thing with getting Gwen back. No doubt he’d do his best to abide by his promise to return her to us unharmed, but there was no way we were going to see Gwen until Canaan was satisfied his plans had been completed. So Keane and I sat in the motel room, hiding from the cops and wondering where we had gone wrong. Trusting Olivia was definitely at the top of the list.

  “You think Olivia was working for Canaan all along?” I asked.

  “So it would seem,” Keane replied.

  “What is Canaan offering her?”

  “Hard to say. Selah was very concerned with her legacy. Assuming Olivia shares that concern, perhaps she and Canaan worked out a deal.”

  “What kind of deal? Selah was a multibillionaire. I can’t see him being of much use to Olivia. He lost most of his money when Elysium folded.”

  “Did he?” Keane asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “You know this. It was all over the news. The Wahhabis seized the oil fields and took over the government, establishing the Arabian Caliphate.”

  “Sure,” said Keane. “But what do we really know about the aftermath of that coup?”

  “We know that Canaan lost fifty billion dollars. It’s a matter of public record. He owned just over half of Elysium’s stock, and the stock lost ninety-nine percent of its value. This is basic math, Keane.”

  “How much do you think he’s paying Green River take over the DZ? And I’d wager the invasion itself accounts for only a fraction of the total cost. He’s probably bribed half of the government employees in the state to get away with an operation like this. Plus there’s the cost of holding the territory after the invasion. We’re talking about billions of dollars. Or iotas, as the case may be.”

  “Maybe he’s got one of those no-limit credit cards,” I said. “Canaan’s fortune was almost entirely in Elysium stock, and that stock is now worthless.”

  “Hmm,” said Keane. “And what did that stock represent, exactly?”

  “Ownership in Elysium Oil,” I said, getting a little irritated at Keane’s deliberate obtuseness.

  “Right, but where did the value come from?”

  “Oil fields.”

  “Wrong. The value came from contracts with the Saudis. But legal contracts are just another form of collective delusion. A piece of paper that dictates reality, dependent on the understanding that a legal authority exists to enforce the contract. A legal authority that evaporated after the coup. The oil fields are still there; they’re just under new management.”

  I had to stop and think about what Keane seemed to be saying. “You’re not seriously suggesting Gerard Canaan made a deal with the Wahhabis.”

  “Why not?” Keane asked. “Think about it. Gerard Canaan, wunderkind of the fossil fuel industry. Develops new technology for pulling oil out of wells previously thought to be tapped out. Over the span of two decades, Elysium goes from a tiny Texas oil company to the third biggest oil producer in the world. They own half the oil wells in the Middle East. But then production peaks. Gerard Canaan is looking for the next big thing. He’s ridden the oil wave as far as it can go. So what does he do next?”

  “Apparently he makes a deal with a bunch of fundamentalist psychopaths.”

  Keane shrugged. “The rank-and-file Islamists are fundamentalist psychopaths. The guys at the top are politicians.”

  “Terrorists, you mean.”

  “War is the continuation of politics by other means. Terrorism is an asymmetrical form of warfare. And politics is simply a struggle over limited resources. The Wahhabis wanted the oil. Canaan gave it to them.”

  “And what did he get in return?”

  “As you say, the Wahhabi sects have been involved with terrorist organizations for some time. Groups that use virtual currencies for most transactions, because they’re untraceable. It’s not inconceivable they could have hoarded a fortune in iotas. Canaan hands the oil fields over to the Wahhabis and they transfer a shitload of iotas into a secret account.”

  I frowned, not liking where this was going. “A lot of people died defending those oil fields, Keane. You need to understand what you’re saying.”

  “Did they?” Keane asked. “I’m not being facetious. Sure, we saw the coup unfold on TV. But it was all secondhand reports, remember? The embedded reporters were all stuck in Beirut because of a sandstorm.”

  “You think Gerard Canaan orchestrated a sandstorm?”

  “Of course not. But if there hadn’t been a sandstorm, there would have been some other excuse. Mechanical problems with the plane, maybe. The point is, all the firsthand reports of the fighting we got were from Green River. We have to take their word for it that there was this highly coordinated attack on several dozen locations, taking Elysium completely by surprise. Pretty hard to swallow, except at the time there was no other explanation for Elysium losing control of all their assets in Saudi Arabia. Elysium’s investors are pissed, but what can they do? Obviously Gerard Canaan did all he could; after all, he lost fifty billion dollars of his own money!”

  “So you really think he sold them out. All of Elysium’s investors.”

  “It’s just a working hypothesis at this point,” said Keane, “but it would certainly explain some things. And it dovetails nicely with your story about the Ninety-niners. These guys had every reason to want to give a big middle finger to the U.S. government and Elysium’s investors, who were a key reason the U.S. was involved in the peninsula in the first place. Think about it. The political situation in Saudi Arabia at this point is bad and getting worse. There are rumors the Saudi royal family is in talks to receive asylum in London. Meanwhile, Gerard Canaan is bringing over as many mercenaries as Green River can supply in an attempt to hold on to his oilfields. The expert consensus seems to be that the Wahhabis don’t have the firepower to take the oil fields, that they’re going to have to make some kind of deal with Elysium. But someone in Gerard Canaan’s position could easily alter that equation. So our source contacts him, anonymously at first, and lets him know what he’s found. One way or another, the situation progresses. Canaan and the source come to an arrangement. Canaan lets the Wahhabis have the oil fields in exchange for an untraceable fortune in iotas, then returns to L.A., disgraced. He’s reduced to shilling for a vanity project, some kind of virtual currency. At least that’s how it appears. In reality he’s further shoring up the value of a currency he’s very heavily invested in. Selah Fiore was filthy rich, but she had nothing on Gerard Canaan.”

  “But we still don’t know why Canaan wanted the physical iotas,” I said.

  “No,” Keane replied with a frown.

  “So the code didn’t mean anything to you?”

  Keane shook his head. “Just a string of numbers. I’ve got it memorized, but I’ve been going over it in my head and I haven’t found anything like a pattern. It’s just one piece of a puzzle. I’d have to see the other coins to make sense of it, but I suspect it’s just an arbitrary code anyway.”

  “A code? For what?”

  “Hard to say. You know, I
’ve been thinking about those reeds.”

  “Reeds?”

  “The ridges on the iota coin. Reeded edges were originally introduced to make the coins harder to counterfeit, and to prevent people from filing down the edges to get the metal. Those problems aren’t really a concern with these coins. But what if using the reeds to communicate information was a way of hinting at a similar problem?”

  “A problem with the virtual iotas, you mean. Counterfeiting, or a way to degrade their value?”

  “Something along those lines,” said Keane. “Ultimately iotas are an algorithm, a set of mathematical rules that determine how they can be created and transferred. Iotas were pretty thoroughly vetted by game companies before they went mainstream, and there have been plenty of attempts to hack the algorithm since then, but no one has ever been able to find a flaw. It appears to be a perfect system.”

  “The algorithm is public, isn’t it? If there’s a flaw, it would be in the open, for everyone to see.”

  “Yes,” said Keane. “In the sense that the solution to the Erdos discrepancy problem was in the open for everyone to see.”

  “The what?”

  “Famous math problem first posited in the 1930s, finally solved in 2015. The point is, making a math problem public is no guarantee it will be solved. There could very well be a flaw in the iota algorithm that no one has found yet.”

  “A deliberate flaw, you mean. And the code in the coins is the key to finding it. But why? Why would somebody build a flaw into the system and then dare everyone to find it?”

  “Well,” said Keane. “I know why I would do it.”

  I realized I did as well. “For fun,” I said.

  He nodded. “Whoever is behind this is just playing with us. With all of us—Selah, Olivia, Gerard Canaan … the whole world, really.”

  “So this mysterious person, this trickster … he’s the same person as Canaan’s source?”

  “I suspect so,” Keane replied.

  “Then the source was never in it for the money. He’s just been toying with Canaan all along.”

  “Yes,” said Keane. “He probably deliberately gave Canaan the idea he was looking to make a fortune, but once Canaan had been suckered in to betting his fortune on iotas, he dropped the pretense. For the past three years or so, the trickster’s just been playing with him.”

  And the rest of us, I thought. I wondered if the trickster was the same person who had been messaging me as “Lila.” I was tempted to tell Keane about her, but then I’d have to explain why I’d kept her messages a secret thus far. And I honestly wasn’t sure I knew the answer to that question. Maybe I resented Keane always being a step ahead of me, and I savored the idea of having a source of information to which he wasn’t privy. And yet, what had Lila actually told me? Not much. In fact, the context of her messages had communicated more than the words themselves: All I really knew was that she considered my involvement in this case part of a “game,” and that she was watching my progress very closely. I couldn’t see how that information would be helpful to Keane.

  On some level, I knew I was being manipulated: Lila was counting on me to rationalize keeping her messages a secret from Keane. But somehow that knowledge didn’t make me want to tell him, either. Whether we liked it or not, Keane and I were players in Lila’s game, and I wasn’t entirely convinced he and I were on the same side.

  “Whatever game the trickster is playing,” Keane said, “it goes far beyond a squabble over control of the DZ.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Exposing a flaw in the iota algorithm would have serious consequences for the global economy,” Keane said. “Nothing on the scale of the Collapse, obviously. Iotas don’t have that kind of reach. But let’s say this code hidden in the coins—the key, as you called it—allows one to instantaneously create an unlimited number of iotas. Suddenly, the holder of the key is an iota trillionaire. He floods the world economy with iotas, buying Fortune 500 companies, cruise ships, skyscrapers, gold mines, whatever. It takes a little while, but eventually the market catches on. There are way too many iotas in circulation. The value tanks, people start to dump iotas. Eventually it becomes clear that the algorithm has been compromised, and the value of iotas bottoms out at zero. Civilization would recover, but that sort of disruption is not good for the economy. At the very least, we’re looking at a pretty major recession.”

  “And the key holder becomes a trillionaire in hard assets,” I said. “So you think that’s Gerard Canaan’s endgame. What he was after all along.”

  “Well, no. I think he assumed, along with everyone else, that the iota algorithm was solid. Then something happened to change his mind. Probably our trickster got bored because nobody had figured out his little puzzle, and decided to give Canaan something to worry about.”

  “The trickster told Canaan about the coins.”

  “Probably didn’t tell him outright, but hinted at a flaw in the algorithm. It took until a few days ago for Canaan to find the connection to the coins. The trickster has been playing with Canaan for a while now, though. I suspect he gave Canaan his first hint a little over three years ago.”

  “When the Project Maelstrom people started to disappear,” I said. “You think Canaan is the reason Gwen went into hiding.”

  “Correct. I think Canaan suspected someone in Maelstrom came across the flaw, and was taunting him with it. He didn’t appreciate the joke.”

  “But now the game is over,” I said. “Canaan won. He’s got all the coins.”

  “So it would seem,” Keane replied. “But I wouldn’t underestimate our trickster. He may still have a card or two to play.”

  “Any idea who it might be?”

  “Someone who was involved with iotas since the beginning,” said Keane. “To know about the flaw, he must have been on the original development team that created the algorithm. And he apparently was involved with the Free Currency Initiative as well, since he was able to manipulate the coins.”

  “You don’t think the coins were minted that way? With the message embedded in them?”

  “I suspect not. I think the grooves were ground into them later. Titanium is tough, but with the right tools it wouldn’t be difficult to do. Time-consuming, but not difficult.”

  “So we’re looking for a meticulous software developer.”

  “Or mathematician,” said Keane. “Someone very smart, with a twisted sense of humor. Probably abrasive and socially inept.”

  “Oh, thank God,” I said. “I thought I was going to have to leave this room.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  While Keane puzzled over the identity of the trickster, I did a little research of my own. Although Lila’s messages didn’t give me much to work with, it occurred to me that the name Lila itself might be a clue. I found an encyclopedia article that solidified the idea in my mind that Lila and the trickster were one and the same:

  Lila (Sanskrit: , IAST līlā) or Leela, like many Sanskrit words, cannot be precisely translated into English, but can be loosely translated as the noun “play.” The concept of Lila is common to both non-dualist and dualist philosophical schools, but has a markedly different significance in each. Within non-dualism, Lila is a way of describing all reality, including the cosmos, as the outcome of creative play by the divine absolute (Brahman). In the dualistic schools of Vaishnavism, Lila refers to the activities of God and his devotee, as well as the macrocosmic actions of the manifest universe, as seen in the Vaishnava scripture Srimad Bhagavatam, verse 3.26.4.

  The article included a quote from a book called The Tao of Physics, which read in part:

  “This creative activity of the Divine is called Lila, the play of God, and the world is seen as the stage of the divine play.”

  The good news was that Lila was apparently a creative, rather than a destructive, force. Whoever Lila was, she didn’t think of herself as evil. But then evil people rarely do, I suppose.

  I was about to break down and tell Keane what I had found
when suddenly his eyes lit up. He had been staring at his notebook screen, going through the information Sam Chaudry had sent him.

  “What is it?” I asked. “Did you find something?”

  “I think I know who our trickster is.”

  “Really?” I asked. “Who?”

  “Check this out.” He tapped a couple of keys on this notebook and my comm chirped, indicating I’d received a message. I opened it.

  “I found a list of Empathix developers who were assigned to the Maelstrom project. Notice anything funny?” he said.

  I scanned the list. It contained eight names:

  Aaron Clemson

  Raj Kapoor

  Rachel Stuil

  Emma Spotnitz

  Will Van Laar

  Tamara Dhillon

  Gabriel Wu

  Miriam Reinhardt

  Four males, four females. The majority of software developers were still men, but it certainly wouldn’t be unusual to have a team with four women on it. Nor was it unusual to have several members of Asian descent. Wu was probably Chinese; Kapoor and Dhillon were, I believe, Indian or Pakistani. That left five with European-sounding surnames. Clemson was English. Van Laar was Dutch. Reinhardt was German.

  But what was Stuil? How would you pronounce it? Like style? It looked vaguely Scandinavian. I gave up trying to deduce anything from the names.

  “What kind of name is Stuil?” I asked.

  Keane smiled. “The made-up kind,” he said.

  “How do you know?”

  “I didn’t, at first. I had the same reaction you did. All the other names have a clear ethnic origin, but not Stuil. So I looked it up online. There is no surname with that spelling.”

  “Okay, so you knew it was made up. But how does that get you to the trickster’s identity?”

  “Remember the developer I told you about, the one who designed the redwood forest?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Ed Casters. You said he was dead.”

  “I thought he was,” said Keane. “Ed was sort of an amateur mathematician. Absolutely brilliant, but had no patience for formal schooling. Made a living doing contract work as a software developer, mostly cryptography stuff, but also complex modeling with fractals. Ed Casters was a pseudonym. No one knew his real name. He always worked remotely, so no one ever saw him. Most companies won’t hire someone to work on their systems without vetting them thoroughly, but Ed was so good at what he did, sometimes he was the only person to call.”