by I C Cosmos
What bloody nonsense. Helen crossed the bridge over the Roya river, walked to the eighth-century Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, and then circled through the narrow streets feeling like she’d traveled hundreds of years back in time.
Fascinated, she took in the ancient houses with their peeling paint revealing the raw stones from which they were built, laundry hanging between windows, the slightly musty smell hugging the sidewalks, and boys chasing a soccer ball and cheering every time it hit a heavy wooden door with a loud thump.
>> Operation Ventimiglia terminated.
Helen’s phone jolted her forward to modern times. Her current assignment was finished, but she ventured into several more streets, the romantic in her hoping that Nic would peek from a half-shuttered window and wave her in. You aren’t in a novel, the realist protested and headed toward the bridge and the new town.
When she was almost across the bridge, she stopped and sharply turned around. Her followers weren’t far behind. An old man was limping behind them, on the other side of the bridge. Helen would have sworn it was the same man she had passed in the Hanbury Gardens. But then again, there were so many old men looking like him on the Mediterranean coast.
Helen drove back to Nice, sorting her thoughts. Her top priority was to solve the mystery of the sptfr3 stats going from the TP server to Frank and back. She had to visit the server and get into the dead drop with the stats to see what else was there. A tricky business, as the dead drop seemed heavily protected and she didn’t want to trigger anyone’s attention.
The best way would be to copy the dead drop and crack it off-site. Better yet would be to ask Bobby to copy that section of the server for her. It would be far less suspicious because it was his server and he frequently worked on it. Quite amazing for a CEO, but Bobby was a hands-on guy.
That solved, Helen’s mind drifted to the old man from the Hanbury Gardens. She had seen him somewhere before. But where?
Monte Carlo, Monaco
Make a timeline! Collin leaned back in his chair, raised his arms, and clasped his fingers behind his head. He needed to think. This op was getting out of hand. Rather than working on cybercrimes, his core business, he and his team had become Frank Crawford’s chore boys.
Collin’s guys were following Santini’s guys, who were following Helen, who in turn was followed by Collin’s second team. Which meant that Collin’s guys were following each other, giggling their way around Nice, watching Santini’s guys trying to stay invisible. Hilarious if it weren’t so serious. Collin winced.
Three teams followed Helen, who sauntered through Nice like a rich girl who had more time and money than she knew what to do with. Doing God only knew what because they still weren’t able to infiltrate her devices. Collin’s team thought a few times that their programs made it in, but they merely entered an “antechamber” of Helen’s digital empire, where they were promptly rendered ineffective. And undoubtedly copied and stored for future reference. Collin sighed.
He had never seen devices protected better than Helen’s. He wanted to work with her, if only to learn some of her technical hacks. Merely following her around without knowing what she was up to was a waste of time, no matter how important Frank found it.
Thank God for Omar’s vigilance. He put them back to cybercrimes. So far Collin followed Frank’s orders without asking too many questions, but the operation was getting too tangled up. Which was where a timeline would come in handy. It would give Collin a helicopter view, whereas now he felt as if he were steering a submarine through dark, muddy waters.
Collin sat up and opened his sketching app. The action that kicked off this sorry-ass op had been Frank’s visit to Dallas. Collin wanted Santini, and Frank needed him, so asking Collin’s team to keep tabs on Santini until he was no longer needed made sense. Sort of.
Surveilling Helen was another question but could be explained. After all, her and Santini’s ways crossed frequently. And Helen was a top-notch cyber specialist. “Potentially dangerous one,” as Frank put it, justifying Collin’s involvement.
Following Bobby was the easiest but made the least sense from Collin’s point of view. Until Omar revealed Frank’s connection with TP, and Pal put it all in a wider perspective. Is Frank a fraud?
Collin was adding more events to his color-coded timeline, consulting his emails and notes, connecting related “time bubbles,” looking for patterns. Soon a major pattern emerged that confirmed what Collin was aware of already. When Helen was somewhere alone, nothing happened. When Helen and Santini were in a place together, either nothing happened, or incidents were prevented. When Santini visited alone, incidents happened.
Like the fires in Guangzhou. Or the race car accident here in Monaco. According to Bobby Bullock’s star driver, the accident wasn’t an accident. It was a sabotage. And it had been sheer luck that no one had been hurt. Santini was on the scene. Helen wasn’t.
The evidence was clear. Helen seemed to prevent trouble, Santini caused it.
Of course, Collin didn’t know what Helen did cyber-wise. But he was getting the idea. He plotted the latest activities.
Helen arrives in Nice. Pal contacts Bobby through the communication wormhole. Bobby discovers political propaganda gushing out of his platform. The propaganda flood stops immediately, but stats are generated as if it’s still running. The stats are sent to Frank.
Who is Pal? Helen?
Collin sat back for a while, hands clasped behind his head. If Frank was involved in some kind of scam, he made a huge mistake by having Collin follow the three major players involved. Because Collin could put two and two together and see the playing field better than anyone else. Except Frank, of course.
Which was no longer true, Collin corrected himself. Frank lost his know-it-all advantage because Collin didn’t report to him anything about Pal, the communication wormhole, Bobby’s turnabout, and the cooked stats.
Entering the slippery slope, aren’t you? a little voice challenged. Collin didn’t answer. Because of a girl? Collin swallowed hard. Maybe the girl had something to do with it, he admitted. But mostly because he wasn’t going to give Frank any ammunition unless he was certain Frank wouldn’t misuse it.
Collin had a few days to find out what was going on before reporting it, and he was going to use every second. He scratched his cheek, leaned forward, and continued with his timeline.
Helen walks around Nice, followed by an army of babysitters. Nothing happens, except Bobby’s intervention. Santini arrives in Nice. Helen goes to Ventimiglia. Babysitters follow. Santini doesn’t. Nothing happens.
Collin gasped. He was missing something. And something was about to happen.
He had to connect with Helen.
Washington, DC
The library
“I didn’t invest in Total Protection to see sales slide.”
“They are not sliding.”
“But don’t go up fast enough.”
“Bullock said that Europe and Asia don’t follow the US model.”
“I don’t care what he says. We pay him to exceed expectations.”
“We pay him for his expertise. He sold zillions all around the world. Knows his markets.”
“OK. But we need to go faster than this.”
“Yeah. He has to turn on his genius.”
Winning, and winning big, was the only acceptable outcome for the Consortium. Winning small was as good as losing and as such not in the members’ repertoire.
“And the approval rating slowed way down,” an outraged voiced complained.
“Let’s don’t get overly excited about this,” a mellow voice took control of the conversation. “We’ve commanded a phenomenal jump in the approval rating. The president has never been in better shape. Pushing too hard doesn’t work. Believe me. I’ve been in this business for decades.”
“So what do you suggest? That we sit back and watch nothing happening?” an angry voice shouted from the darkness.
“No. The electorate is sharply split. Now is the p
erfect time to divide and shatter the opposition.”
“Divide and rule.” Chuckles broke the tension in the library.
“Exactly. Once the opposition is divided, we don’t have to worry about the approval ratings, do we?”
“What’s your preferred strategy?”
“The artificial intelligence, of course. We got it, let’s use it.”
“We are testing it out in a small group already. It works like a charm. Talk about lifelong friends at each other’s throats in no time.”
“In that case we should roll it out on a large scale.”
“Do we still need Helen for it?”
“No.”
“But we need her as insurance in case Nic sabotages us.”
“We are wasting our time with both of them.” The angry voice was back.
“Let’s give it a few more days. Move the show to Sardinia and trap them there.”
“And if he doesn’t show up?”
“We discussed this before,” Andreas interjected sharply. “We capture her and put out a contract on him. And proceed with Operation Total Power according to our plan.”
That said, he waved his hand and disappeared in the shadows of the library.
Divide and rule.
Boston, Massachusetts
Phyllis scrolled through her TP account. Something was wrong. She was sure of it now. She’d had a strange feeling about TP for days but didn’t want to believe it. TP was her life. All her friends were on it. But no one had responded to her posts in the last week. No one had even liked them.
She had tens of thousands of friends and followers. Her posts easily got a thousand likes within minutes. The comments on each post used to live on for days, with several threads of responses running in parallel and inviting hundreds of people to share their opinions.
At first, she thought there was a glitch in the system and her posts didn’t get to her friends. She had even chatted with the help desk about it, but they were not aware of any malfunctions. And today the worst thing had happened. She got a nasty, brutishly negative comment on her latest post. She had expected people would ignore the comment or drown it in positive responses, but the opposite had happened.
The trolls came out in full force and made her look like a monster. Phyllis never experienced anything like it before. She wished Todd were still alive. Todd would laugh it off. Tell her to ignore the trolls.
Well, if Todd were alive, she would have never been on TP in the first place. They would be spending their time together, perfectly happy on their own. Phyllis let out a sob. She had never anticipated Todd going so early. Only six months after retiring…
She’d never forgive herself for wasting the first two months after Todd’s retirement because she had been unnerved by his being at home all the time, “in her way.” Disrupting her routine and always coming up with unplanned activities like walks through different parts of the city, gallery openings of unknown artists, lunches in the most unexpected places. It was fun, Phyllis enjoyed it, but the problem was that she couldn’t get anything done.
Then, out of the blue, Phyllis saw the light. She remembered the day like it was yesterday. It had been a beautiful sunny day, they had been on one of their walks, and suddenly a torrential rain had come out of nowhere. Neither one of them had brought an umbrella, which wouldn’t have protected them from getting soaked anyhow. They looked at each other, and in a flash life made sense. They ran to the nearest café, holding hands, laughing. That’s what it’s all about, Phyllis thought. Deep connections.
Phyllis had dumped her routine that day and never looked back. Who cared if the handles of her kitchen cabinets wouldn’t get unscrewed and soaked in warm soapy water as Martha recommended? No one. And no one cared that she didn’t bake the pies for the monthly meeting with her sales representatives. The ladies were delighted to discuss new cosmetics samples over petits fours from the little French bakery Phyllis and Todd had discovered on one of their walks.
And no one cared if the newsletter to her email list was a day or two “late.” Which didn’t happen often. She no longer saw the newsletter as a chore. Writing it became fun because she shared humorous details about her and Todd’s expeditions in it. Readership increased and sales went up.
The best part was that every morning she woke up energized, looking forward to new adventures with Todd. They felt young, rediscovering the world together. She never felt so connected before, so full of life. And love.
And then it was all gone. A massive heart attack had taken Todd away in the middle of the night and hadn’t even given them a chance to say goodbye.
Tears filled Phyllis’s eyes and dripped on the keyboard. She fought the tears at first, but then let them go, feeling as if Todd were with her, whispering in her ear, “I love you, Phyllis. Let’s go for a walk.”
Yes, why not? Phyllis thought. She grabbed her windbreaker and rushed out of the door before she had a chance to change her mind. She had abandoned the walks and lunches and galleries after Todd’s passing, unable to bear his absence in places they had cherished together. She had escaped to TP, a world Todd was never part of. She could exist there for hours without being reminded of how much she missed him.
Being one of the very first and most active members of the platform, she had created a large following and became a TP celebrity. She shared opinions on everything from the weather to the latest developments in Washington. TP made her feel connected. Not anymore. Her “friends” trolled her with abandon.
Phyllis zipped up her windbreaker. A nasty spring storm greeted her on the sidewalk. Wind gusts blew rain in her face, the cold water stinging her cheeks. But her heart rejoiced. She was with Todd again, their souls deeply connected. Nothing could keep them apart.
Not even death.
Boston
Phyllis switched on the teakettle and unwrapped the delicacies she’d bought in her favorite Lebanese bakery. The brisk walk through the wind and rain had invigorated her spirits. She was no longer dependent on TP. But she wouldn’t let it go either. Something shady had happened at TP, and she was determined to bring it to light.
Todd had been a forensic accountant, and Phyllis had learned a thing or two about crooked minds from him. An accountant herself, she knew how to put two and two together. She followed the money, and something certainly didn’t add up. Dubiously so, to say the least. Because TP’s business model didn’t make sense.
TP couldn’t possibly have been making any profits because they charged considerably less for their membership than the 7’Heaven gaming membership used to. Millions of 7’Heaven gamers switched to TP after 7’Heaven became part of the DEI family, and they could play all the games they wanted to for a fraction of what they used to pay. Plus they got access to TP’s security products and all the new quizzes and brain exercises TP brought in. Not to mention the rewards system.
That was the thing. The TP folks weren’t after money, Phyllis concluded. They were hooking people on low prices and high rewards. Their aim was getting as many members as possible playing games or taking quizzes as much as possible. Security, their primary business, was hardly ever mentioned.
That’s what triggered Phyllis’s warning bells. She had built her own online cosmetics business from scratch and could spot the tricks of internet entrepreneurs with her eyes closed. They all tried to lure new clients with special deals and irresistible bonuses. But in the end they all focused on their core business.
TP’s promotion of security products was lukewarm to start with. They focused on promoting the bonus, which wasn’t even related to the core business! TP rewarded people for staying online and playing free games. What are they getting out of it? Phyllis was missing something.
All that said, she loved TP’s reward system and had been thrilled when she accrued enough points to become eligible for TP’s VIP status, which gave her access to better security products and more interesting games and quizzes. And double reward points. The prize everyone talked about was a ten-da
y cruise for the whole family, given to the three TP members with the highest points on the day of TP’s one-year anniversary. Phyllis was one of the lucky three.
All three of them had been flown to San Francisco and received a bottle of champagne and their cruise tickets from Bobby Bullock himself. Pictures of the event were shared on the platform for days, and Phyllis’s following almost doubled.
Phyllis stopped in her tracks as an idea crossed her mind. The trouble on TP started shortly after she had returned from San Francisco. Were the trolls the new people? Envious because she won the cruise? Phyllis poured herself a large cup of tea, turned on her computer, and clicked on the TP icon.
That can’t be… Phyllis read the comments in disbelief. Several of her dear TP friends left nasty remarks on her latest post. Which was an innocent remark about Washington… Why in the world would anyone have a fit about that? Phyllis sat back for a few moments, sipping her tea. Then she texted her best TP friend and asked her what was going on. The answer came immediately.
>> I would have never expected anything like this from you, Phyllis. Such a nasty attack on the Speaker of the House.
Phyllis didn’t understand. How could giving the Speaker a compliment be seen as attacking her? It took several texts back and forth before Phyllis sent a screenshot of the disputed post to her friend. A picture is worth a thousand words… The reply was as quick as it was shocking.
Her friend sent Phyllis a screenshot of the post she had received. In which Phyllis accused the Speaker of being a stupid, unpatriotic cow.
Someone had altered Phyllis’s post, but it looked one hundred percent authentic. If Phyllis hadn’t seen it herself, she wouldn’t believe it. What was going on?
What was Bobby doing? Phyllis liked Bobby but was taken aback by his business decisions. 7’Heaven had been doing great on its own. Why would a clever guy like Bobby merge it with a company like DEI? Who did they think they were anyway? Gods? Phyllis snorted and searched for more information.
