by Ted Weber
That’s us. She should probably be afraid. She should probably call off any attempt to air her video.
Fuck them. Fear keeps them in power. Fear keeps us down. She’d just have to make sure no one besides her got caught.
32
January 18
Waylee
Sitting on her narrow cot in the back of the bus, Waylee watched her video. Finished at last.
It began with an annoying emergency tone and a blue screen with the Presidential Seal. The tone gave way to Pel’s voice, modulated to sound official, saying, “This is an emergency message from the President of the United States. We apologize for the interruption. Please stand by. You must take immediate action following the end of this broadcast.”
From there, the president and Luxmore did most of the talking. Her favorite clip: “We help each other out.” She had laid a track of tense, dissonant music beneath, the volume just audible enough to provide continuity over the camera cuts, and set the viewers’ brains on edge.
Waylee copied the video to a data wafer and handed it to Pel, who was working with Charles and Kiyoko on the forward table. “Ready for broadcast.”
Pel plugged the wafer into Big Red and swiped the touch pad. “What’s the run time?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Whole thing? Fifteen minutes. But it’s breaking news format. Five minutes should be enough to get our message across and hook people. The video will reach at least a third of the country, and then everyone will talk about it. After that, if you know social network theory, if only ten percent of Americans speak against the president and MediaCorp, the majority will follow.” She slapped the table. “Luxmore and Rand are doomed.”
He half-turned his head and raised an eyebrow. “Don’t forget they have ample chance for rebuttal.”
“Doesn’t matter. The stain will be permanent. So how are we distributing the rest of our data, all the files and emails?”
“I stored it on a bunch of darknet servers. I’m adding your video to it.” He opened a window with lines of alphanumerics in black and purple fonts. “After the Super Bowl, this script will post most of the links on Collective discussion boards, from which they can be distributed across the Comnet. I’m keeping some copies hidden. Just in case.”
She stared at his screen. The Collective discussion boards weren’t exactly public. “We should publish links in the video.”
On the other side of the table, Charles leaned forward. “Winning strat. And our Collectivistas can keep them solid.”
“What do you mean?”
“Keep the mirrors moving and block spam attacks. I can code that, easy.” He nodded in agreement with himself. “And we should set up bots to boost your trend.”
“So the Collective’s gonna help?” Awesome.
Still staring at the screen, Pel said, “We picked sixty-four inner circle hackers with top notch creds. They have to pass a Neumann-Heinzinger trust test first, and rate a random sample of others. And rate disgruntld1 - I want to see what people think of him.”
What the hell is a Neumann-Heinzinger trust test? “There’s still some honest journalists out there. We should send them the files too.”
Pel turned. “Why don’t we just do that now and be done with it? Then we don’t have to risk life in prison.”
Not this again. “I thought we were going to research the possibilities first.”
He sighed. “I did say that.”
“Nothing we uncovered will see an audience unless we make it impossible to ignore. And we need thirty percent.”
Pel scratched his ear. “If you type up their addresses, I’ll write another notification program.”
“Thank you.” She leaned over to kiss him.
He flinched.
He still hadn’t forgiven her? “Can we talk?” She flipped a thumb toward the door. It was after five and park staff would be gone.
Pel’s shoulders drooped. He got up and threw on a jacket and followed her out of the bus into the forest.
The setting sun cast long shadows from the bare trees. Dry sticks and leaves crunched under her feet as they walked away from the campsite. She hadn’t bothered with a coat and immediately regretted it. Better skip the preliminaries.
She turned to Pel, her heart afraid to beat. “Pel, are you not in love with me anymore?”
He averted his eyes. “Waylee—look, this isn’t the time for talks like that. And I don’t want to fight and send you into a rage or depression.”
She played an upbeat love song in her head, then stepped forward and twined her fingers into his. “You’re not my enemy. MediaCorp and Homeland are all the enemies I can handle.”
He didn’t pull away. “Have you thought about what will happen if you go to prison? About your mind? You’ve already had two major depressive episodes in the past month, which technically means you’ve transitioned to bipolar II.”
“When exactly did you get your medical degree? I must have missed the graduation ceremony.”
He pulled his fingers out of her hands. “Just info on the Comnet, you know that. But I worry about you.”
Waylee’s knees threatened to stop holding her up. He’s right, I’m falling apart. Thrown into the world with cast iron shackles. “We won’t get caught.” She turned up the internal volume of her love ditty. “Pel, I’m so sorry I threatened you and called you a coward. Can’t you forgive me?”
He exhaled a cloud her way. “I know you can’t help it.”
“I didn’t mean to ruin your life.” Tears emerged from their hiding places, threatening another descent into hell.
He gripped her hands, transferring heat to them. “Don’t go there. I can’t not love you. It’s impossible.”
“I don’t know how you put up with me.”
“It is hard sometimes.” His eyes softened. “But you’re a part of me. Leave you, I might as well cut my limbs off.”
She threw her arms around him and her song echoed through the trees.
“I know you need me,” he said, “and I’m here for you.”
She kissed him. His lips pressed hard against hers and they held each other tight. The cold disappeared.
They stayed there even as dusk gave way to darkness.
* * *
January 19
Sitting together on the bus, Waylee and Pel examined aerial imagery of the MediaCorp complex. It contained thirteen different buildings, massive parking lots, and a field full of satellite dishes for transmitting and receiving. Concrete vehicle barriers circled the perimeter, along with electric fences topped by coils of razor wire. Manned steel gates blocked the two entrances. The place resembled a fortress.
Waylee looked on as Pel and Charles struggled through disgruntld1’s files describing MediaCorp’s broadcast and computer networks. Between the engineer’s backdoor address and comlinks hacked at the New Year’s gala, Charles entered more sections of the MediaCorp intranet. They learned how the signals were processed and where the guard stations were. And Charles discovered an employee manual and security procedures for their Virginia campus. He kept looking and found technical manuals and training books for their equipment.
Breaking in would be challenging. At the entrance, employees and visitors had to stop at the guard station. Employees could enter with an electronic badge, but cameras scanned them with facial recognition software. Visitors had to show IDs and fill out paperwork. Terahertz scanners examined all vehicles for anomalies.
Once on campus, all building and room access was controlled by electronic badges, retinal scanners, and thumbprint readers. All the badges were personalized and contained beacons, and computers tracked the owners’ location. If more than one person entered a door at once, alarms sounded. Multiband cameras were everywhere, monitored by artificial intelligence analytics that alerted security staff if someone appeared in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“This is hopeless,” Pel said. “Maybe at least the guards are hacks.”
They combed through the corpora
te intranet.
“More bad news,” Pel concluded. “MediaCorp has a professional security division of former cops and special forces. In a pinch, they can summon local police or Homeland Security.”
She refused to give in. “Still, there must be weaknesses. Let’s keep looking.”
Pel sighed. “Okay. But first, we’ve gotta find out who disgruntld1 is.”
“He’s an engineer and member of the Collective,” she said.
He smacked his hands together. “But we don’t know who he is. No way in hell we’re going anywhere near the MediaCorp campus if it’s a trap.”
Pel and Charles searched personnel data for broadcast engineers at the Virginia headquarters that worked in IT, had been there a while, but hadn’t been promoted recently. Over four thousand people worked at the Virginia campus. Eleven—nine men and two women—might be disgruntld1.
The chat messages reeked of male nerd. Charles set up a data mining program to find everything available about all eleven possibilities, though.
33
January 20
Pelopidas
Pel received trust survey responses from 37 Collectivistas. No one gave disgruntld1 a “don’t trust” rating, but no one gave him a “trust with life” either.
He picked the twenty with the highest total scores, and sent them invites to a virtual room in the Collective’s Emporium. Have treasure to share. Request help exploiting it.
Sixteen hackers, including the silver-haired gentleman who’d sold him the microcameras and ghost snares, showed up at William Godwin’s eighteenth century library. Pel wasn’t sure if Godwin even had a library, but doubted anyone would care. He dedicated one of the bookcases to most of the comlinks he’d decrypted, each represented by a leather-bound book with random numbers on the spine. He’d decided the owners’ names should be need-to-know, distributed in tandem with their comlink profile.
Charles had passed along AI programs to make his avatar move realistically with minimal control. Charles, Waylee, and Kiyoko looked over his shoulder at the monitor.
“Thank you for coming,” Pel/William began. “First things first. This meeting and the op I’m about to describe are as secret as it gets. If you disclose anything to anyone, the rest of us come down hard on you.”
Everyone agreed.
“You’re here because you’ve got rockets in your asses, and because I can trust you.” I think. He gestured toward the bookcase. “Here in my possession, I have access to the comlinks of some of the richest and most powerful people in America.” He explained the ghost snares and how he deciphered the signals, but in general terms, no mention of the Smithsonian.
The gathered avatars stared at the book spines. “And who is 887713?” one asked.
“You’ll find out if that’s one you pick.”
“And you’re selling them?” the silver-haired broker asked.
“Not exactly. I have a lot of targets here and a very limited time window. As soon as the owners realize they’re compromised, they’ll get new comlinks and change all their passwords. So what I propose is a combined strike. We’ll share the spoils.”
An avatar resembling a Na’vi from the Avatar movie and video game spoke. “So do we each get 4.88235 comlinks?”
Wise ass. “No. I propose dividing up the tasks according to your skills.”
The Na’vi pointed at a hip-looking teen. “Then what about Hopper there? He’s got no skills.”
Hopper extended a middle finger.
Pel waved his hands. “I’ve already done the hard stuff.” He pointed at the books. “You’ll be those users as far as the Comnet can tell, and you’ll have access to all their data.” He swung his finger toward a bookcase on the opposite wall. “And I’ve provided all the worms, rootkits, etc. you need for control.” Thanks to Charles. “If you’ve got your own ’ware you prefer, that’s cool.”
Some of the Collectivistas nodded.
“The first thing we need to do is to install the software we need, set up backdoors, and get on their other computers. Then we scour through their contacts, their contacts’ contacts, and so on. Anyone who works for MediaCorp, I want to access their comlinks. Especially if they’re a sys admin. Same goes for MediaCorp computers, especially servers. I want on.”
“Why MediaCorp?” Hopper asked.
“Why do you think? They’re enemy #1 of information freedom. We’re going to change that.”
“How?” a black-clad ninja asked.
“Long-term operation. We’ll penetrate every nook and cranny of that organization, and when all is ready, tear it down.”
A Japanese lolita spun her frilly umbrella. “Awesome.”
“Now the next thing, and don’t wet yourself when I say this, is bank transactions. We’ll empty their bank accounts and split the loot.”
They all knew bank security was nearly impossible to crack, but no one would admit that in front of their peers. A Yosemite Sam avatar jumped up and down, shooting pistols in the air. Another displayed dollar signs in his eyes.
“Some other things. Download everything you find, emails, documents, video, whatever. Here’s the storage link.” An address, only accessible using the Collective Router program, appeared before them in glowing letters. It would copy all incoming data and redirect it to multiple anonymous servers. “You can share your findings here also.”
“Will we publish it?” the lolita asked.
“When we’ve sorted through everything, and the time is right.”
She spun her umbrella again.
“We’re also going to activate their cameras, mics, and GPS’s,” Pel said, “and see if our targets do anything interesting.”
“Like porn?” a bronze-skinned Amazon said.
Pel sighed. “No, we just want to know what they’re up to, and look for opportunities to expand our reach.” He scanned the gathered faces, even though you couldn’t really tell what people were thinking by looking at their avatar. “I want everyone to set up their ops and execute at the same time. As soon as our targets figure out what we’re up to, game’s over. So I’m giving you all 24 hours, starting right now, to secure your comlinks and prep. We’ll hit our ‘go’ buttons all at once.”
The avatars regaled him with nods, bows, and thumbs up.
“Now,” he said, “who’s gonna do what?”
34
January 21
Waylee
The most likely candidate for disgruntld1, they all decided, was Hubert Stebbens, a broadcast engineer for MediaCorp for eight years. According to Charles’s research, he was 34, single, lived in an apartment near the corporate campus, had at least one BetterWorld avatar with god-like powers, and liked to kill newbies in war games and take their stuff.
Hubert’s personnel file acknowledged impressive technical skills. His performance reviews never exceeded standards, though, giving low scores for dependability, teamwork, and communication. He had never been promoted, and received disciplinary letters for insubordination, chronic lateness, and misuse of equipment.
Waylee gathered the others to discuss their options. Pel settled behind Big Red on the front couch. He slid over to let her in. Charles and Kiyoko sat opposite them with the other computers. They smelled fresh as flowers. Arriving last, Shakti took one of the chairs across the aisle.
Peter climbed on board and waved a hand before they could start.
“Something up?” Waylee asked.
He cleared his throat. “I’ve been calling folks at the farm every day. Just to stay in touch, farm business and whatnot.”
Pel interrupted. “And?”
Peter frowned. “I just wanted to let you know that people are still talking about you. Amy in particular.”
The teenage girl who tried to sell them out.
Pel peered at him. “That’s kind of vague. What do you mean, talking about us?”
Peter ran a thumb through his long white beard. “Well, should they have turned you in, that sort of thing.”
Heart poundin
g, Waylee sprang into the aisle and faced him. “What?”
Everyone tensed.
Peter held up a hand. “Whoa. No need to panic. I told them you’re long gone and I’m coming back soon. And besides, one doesn’t betray their guests, especially if they’re fellow People’s Party activists. That’s just completely wrong.”
“So how did they respond?”
“They agreed that yes, the concept of hospitality is as old as humanity itself, and it’s bad karma to violate it.”
Waylee rested a hand on the table. “Amy too?”
“I just talked to Sunshine actually, but I assume so.” He scratched his head. “They want the computers back. They figured out I’m helping you and took the computers and said they can be traced back to the farm.”
“We need them, and we wiped them before we took them.” Charles said.
“Start looking for replacements. And another thing.”
“Yes?” Waylee asked.
“If you go ahead with this mission of yours, you’ll need to find alternate transportation. The bus stays here. Actually, I should return it.”
She hadn’t thought of that. “We’ll build that into the plan.” She sat back down, thinking of Kiyoko’s truck.
Peter walked to the kitchenette and opened the white cabinet doors over the stove. “I’ll see what kind of lunch I can slap together.”
Kiyoko stumbled out of the sofa, bit her lip and turned toward Waylee. “I want to go with you.” She looked serious.
“What?”
“I can drive,” she said. “Help you get in and out. Or do whatever.”
“Well, that’s nice of you to offer, but…”
Kiyoko crossed her arms. “I’m not a child anymore.”
“Did I say you were?”
“Obviously I don’t want to get caught. But I don’t want anyone to get caught. We’re family. I wanna help.” She spread her hands. “And I was thinking, maybe our band isn’t done. Once we’re safe somewhere, we can admit what we did and we’ll be famous.”
