Murder in the Fabric

by Andrew Jennings

manner of a chain reaction. Within thirty seconds, the server had slowed to a crawl.

  Anoop was on to it. He patched from the main server at Toronto to the mirror server. There was a small pause, then the mirror server caught up. He was pleased. In a normal week, this was a highlight. But he looked across the screen, and every server was either in a state of overload, or getting there. Then the board itself started to slow, and updates became fewer and fewer. It was like a very slow internet download. It sputtered, and then it died.

  Only seconds later, the twitter feed showed the response. ‘CBSH’ frozen. ‘ATMs on four continents down’. One after another the posts came. Closely followed by the news stories. ‘CBSH under cloud, now service underwater’. Anoop began to probe, using only the computer on his desk, which was still working.

  // George

  Li Xiu began by gathering footage. The SciTec building had a number of external cameras, and every room had a camera high in the corner. They focussed on the cameras close to air conditioning intakes outside.

  “How much dust?” she said

  “Not much. I could get the expert if you like.” George said.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll assume only ten seconds are needed to deliver it.”

  “Somebody walks up and squeezes a puffer?” George said

  “Maybe. That sounds a bit bull in a china shop to me.” she said

  “How would you do it? A drone?”

  “Maybe.”

  “So how do you configure the search?”

  “Motion filters. Size based. We look for movement in the frame, of the target size. Simple movement search will get every person walking past.”

  “Sort of like a signature movement.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So how long?”

  “Quite a while. We’ve got thousands of terabytes of stuff here. Best to set it running and come back in a couple of hours.” she said.

  George turned away, scanning the wall. It was picking up news stories relevant to the cases, but nothing terribly exciting. He checked in with Steve and Alice.

  “Anything?” he said to Alice

  “Not really.”

  George walked past into the street outside the fun palace. Turned right towards the water.

  // Mia

  A bit like letting loose a tornado. So fast. Mia looked at the queues world wide. As the ATMs froze, some in the queue gave way to throwing missiles at the building. She flicked to the financial feeds. To the bond spread for CBSH - as the liquidity disappeared she could watch the spread grow. In the space of three minutes it went from 3%, climbing to 10%. Then the first media stories dribbled out onto the feed. For a moment or two the spread hovered at 13%, as if pausing for breath. Then it began an almost vertical ascent. It was as if in an instant the market gave up on CBSH.

  She sat back, and waited. It came in the form of a seemingly innocuous story:

  ‘CBSH rescued’

  A group of investors has this morning acquired control of the CBSH banking network. A spokesman said that synergies with the broader business network would bring benefits to CBSH. The American bank has been lackluster in performance for several months. Just today it has been further downgraded by IT systems failures. The spokesman said that he did not expect any difficulties in integrating the new business.’

  Mia messaged Oscar:

  “OK. All done. See you.”

  A single keystroke, a few hundred bytes, and the logjam was broken. Oscar looked up, almost expecting somebody to come in his direction. But all was in its place. The backers had their result, and they would be happy. Now all he had to do was disappear. Airports, international terminals would all be monitored and watched. On their systems, the most likely paths would be marked. Based on Oscar’s movements since he was born. Somewhere in Nhong Khiaw a computer would be receiving a message. Someone would be awaiting his presence.

  Oscar walked beside the Yarra in the direction of Southern Cross station. Just in case, he had the hood and the dark glasses. With his personal drone hovering overhead. Enough pedestrian traffic for him to huddle in. Even if they got a lock, it would be difficult to keep on his trail. He had to be out in the open for the gait analysis to get a clear series of images. The more crowded it was, the better.

  He thought about Mia, alone in the apartment. It wasn’t as if you easily got to know Mia, but in a sense each was all the other had. The backers were their owners, but he had no idea how quickly they might discard them. Maybe that process was already in motion.

  At the entrance to Southern Cross station, he paused. Monitors high up showed the news. In a silent performance he could see CBSH. Against a rising graph, which he took to be cost of debt. A falling graph, which looked like the stock price. He smiled. At least he had a result.

  Hesitating at the coffee cart in the south-eastern corner, the crowd looked harmless enough. The protocols called for him to break contact with everyone. No messages. He was to vanish. Out of sight. Nowhere was really out of reach of the drones, but some places were more difficult than others.

  At least they still have cash sales, he thought. No trail left. He made for the ticket counter, still with the hood and the glasses on.

  “Ararat. Next train. Can I get a bus ticket for Halls Gap?” he asked

  “Sure. One ticket. That will be $30.”

  Handing over the cash, and clutching the ticket he consulted the departure board, and made for platform 4. It was still about 45 minutes, but he figured he would be safer there than in the waiting room. So far, so good. Somewhere there was a statistical analysis system thrashing about. Looking for him in plane departure lists, airport waiting rooms. Airport buses. He smiled to himself. Stupid computers.

  Oscar pulled the hood closer as the train pulled in. A small group of passengers got off the train. There was a wait until he could board it, as they cleaned it out and did all of the checks. A slight jar as the engine shunted itself onto the carriages. Soon he would be able to board. He would feel safer actually on the train. He surveyed his fellow passengers, looking for signs. But they were uniformly nondescript. That one looks like a student heading for the Deakin campus. That one a farmer.

  // Oscar

  Oscar dozed off as they left Ballarat. The scenery became an endless loop of open grassland and sheep. Normally this would be incredibly soothing. A feeling of going home, in a sense. When he wanted to shake something off - the end of a relationship, or a problem. He would just take off out here.

  As they came into Beaufort station he suddenly woke. Last station before Ararat. He could see the mountains hovering in the distance, like a challenge. He started to gather his things together. The tour group started talking louder, and collecting things from the overhead racks.

  Coming into Ararat he was on edge. If they had somehow got him on the Southern Cross cameras, or anywhere along the way, this would be it. He felt incredibly exposed as he stepped out of the train and walked. The platform was just a lonely step-up surrounded by open scrubland on one one side, and the outskirts of the town on the other. The station was not in the center of town - in the time when the railway had been downgraded, it had all migrated elsewhere. Which meant it was open and not crowded. Not that anything was that crowded in Ararat.

  He blended in with the tour group as they huddled around the bus. Some got off and made a run for the toilets, after they realised that this was the only stop. Only a short bus ride to Halls Gap. So far, so good, he thought. There were no signs of anyone taking an interest in him.

  The student in the adjacent seat struck up a conversation.

  “Camping in the mountains?”

  “Yes. I’ve done it before.”

  “First time for us. We are staying at Halls Gap - local walks.”

  “You’ll love it. ”

  Rather than double back from the information centre, he headed East, towards Mount William. Not a popular track. He was realising that he had to start to reject the first direction that came to mind.
That those pursuing him would have a history, and would feed this into the analysis programs. Somewhere there was a model of Oscar, that predicted where and when he would be. He searched above the tree line for drones. He felt silly, as if he was play acting. It was early afternoon. In the camping and walking scheme of things, too early to stop. But he had to search for the best hiding places, rather than just making distance. He needed some serious tree cover.

  // George

  “What was that woman’s name?” George said.

  “Which one?” Alice said.

  “The one that cried after the meeting.”

  “Amy.”

  “Yes.”

  “What about her?”

  “She might be useful.” he said as he walked toward the elevator.

  George was wearing a path back and forth to the dungeon. Alan looked up as he made his way.

  “Again.” he said.

  “Again.”

  “Data scraping.” George said.

  “You want some? You want to know what it is?”

  “Both.”

  “It’s an alternative to bugging. Everyone knows about bugging. You plant a device and it has to transmit. So the victim monitors the radio waves and looks for your bug doing its stuff. As soon as it comes to life, it gives itself away.”

  “So we have to be smarter.”

  “Lots smarter. A device that just listens. It gathers up all it hears, stores it in memory. You retrieve it later, and you have your listening post.”

  “They have scanners.”

  “What did you expect? They are a security company. It’s their job not to be penetrated.”

  “What if I had an