The Project

by I C Cosmos

  DEI was an acronym for divide et impera. Divide and rule. Phyllis frowned. Divide and rule… That was it! She jumped up and almost knocked over her tea.

  Divide and rule!

  They were dividing their members and pitting them against each other! But how did they plan on ruling? Phyllis shook her head. It still didn’t make any sense.

  She had thought that TP was acquiring as many members as possible and would increase their prices later, when they got people hooked. But if they went on with altering messages and alienating friends, they would lose clients.

  Baffled, Phyllis texted several other friends and received the same answers. They all got the altered message. She wanted to post both screenshots and explain what happened but stopped herself. What if the same thing happened again and her message was mutilated?

  Instead, Phyllis texted the other two cruise winners and asked them whether they noticed anything strange going on with their TP accounts. The teacher from Detroit responded right away. He had given up his TP membership and didn’t want to hear about it again. Could Phyllis please leave him alone?

  She didn’t, and after some gentle nudging, the teacher admitted that he had quit because of the trolling that destroyed his TP presence. Winning the cruise was the biggest thing that had happened to him and his family, but now the fun was all gone.

  The hairdresser from Houston took several hours to respond. She had been busy with opening her second salon and wasn’t on TP so much anymore, and yes, she noticed the trolls taking over her posts but didn’t pay much attention. Checking her account now, she realized they weren’t just anonymous complainers.

  “Oh my gosh,” she wrote, “my friends are insulting me too.”

  Phyllis sent her the screenshot of her original and altered post. In a few minutes she received similar screenshots from her Houston friend.

  This isn’t a coincidence, Phyllis concluded. It’s a sabotage.

  Not wasting a second, Phyllis bundled up the evidence and emailed Bobby Bullock.

  Monte Carlo, Monaco

  “Lynne, you have to come. I know I behaved like shit and you have no reason to put up with me. But it will all change. I’ll make it all up to you. Trust me,” Bobby pleaded, trying to convince his ex-wife to join him in Monaco.

  “Why should I trust you, of all people?” Lynne responded coldly.

  Good question. Why should she trust a guy who had cheated on her? He hadn’t wanted to—he loved her more than he ever loved anyone in his life. But she had been married to her job more than to him. Bobby understood Lynne’s ambition to make partner in her law firm. He supported it, he rooted for her when she despaired about the office politics, and he understood the grueling hours.

  But at the same time, he grew tired of waiting for her to come home in the evenings and waking up alone on weekends because she was gone already. Things happened, and he got the full blame for it. He was on a shaky ground asking for trust. His last resort was to be absolutely honest.

  “Because I love you, Lynne. Always did, no matter what happened between us. And I need you. I need your help.”

  His honesty was rewarded with a deadly silence. Bobby held his breath, hoping for the best. But the prolonged lack of response wore down the optimist in him. He was ready to give up and concede his defeat when Lynne came back.

  “I’ll get on the next plane, Bobby. But you better have a good reason for this.”

  Relieved and immensely grateful, Bobby collapsed on the couch and spent a few motionless minutes regaining his composure. He needed Lynne’s legal advice. And he needed her levelheaded approach and laser-sharp focus. He was involved in TP too deeply to objectively assess what was happening. But one thing he was certain about. He was in serious trouble.

  Bobby stood up and paced the room. Every word from Phyllis’s email was ingrained in his memory. He didn’t have to reread it to know that someone was messing with TP’s platform. He sat down on the floor and scrolled through 7’Heaven’s system files, looking for the culprit. But whoever did this wasn’t an amateur. Bobby searched in all the obvious places but didn’t find a shred of evidence that would help him further.

  Hesitating, Bobby scrolled through his texts and stopped at the message from JasonC.

  >> Hey Bobby. Enjoying French Riviera?

  >> Hey. You’d love it here.

  Bobby’s hands trembled when he sent the message. He didn’t know when a response would come, or if it would come, but he stared at the screen, too nervous to concentrate on anything else.

  >> I am sure I would.

  Bobby rested his head on the glass door. A wave of relief swept away the tension from his shoulders. Pal kept his word. That was a good sign. But Bobby still felt anxious about sharing 7’Heaven’s problems with someone he didn’t know. What if Pal was behind altering the messages?

  Bobby opened his brainstorming file, his mind racing. He needed help, he needed a pal. But was Pal really a pal? A new message came almost immediately.

  >> Telepathy. I was just thinking about you.

  >> How come?

  Optimism was returning to Bobby, although he couldn’t explain why.

  >> I could use your help.

  >> That goes both ways, Pal.

  >> What can I do?

  Holding his breath, Bobby explained what happened to Phyllis.

  >> Ask Phyllis for permission to go into her TP account. If it is what I think it is, I’ll give you a fix. Send a text to JasonC when you are ready and come back here.

  >> K. What can I help you with?

  >> I need a copy of a section of your server. It’s connected to the problems you are experiencing.

  Bobby rubbed his chin. No way. He wouldn’t give a copy of his server to someone he didn’t know, Pal or not.

  >> I’d like to help. But I can’t copy anything unless I know who you are.

  >> You know me. Remember Jakarta a year or so ago? You promised to call me and never did ;-)

  What? Bobby reread the message. Is Pal her? That can’t be… Why not? I’ll be damned. Bobby laughed.

  >> I did call. But I waited too long and they told me you weren’t there anymore.

  >> No problem, it wasn’t meant to be anyhow. And now we have more important stuff to worry about. What else do you need?

  >> Tell me what to copy.

  Life is full of surprises. Bobby shook his head, smiling to himself. Who would have ever guessed…

  Sassari, Sardinia

  One day later

  This should give us a few days to figure out what’s going on, Helen thought, and sent the fix to Bobby. The fix would stop the distortion of people’s new posts, but unfortunately some of the old posts would circulate on the platform for several days, or even weeks.

  Helen bit her lip. Lots of angry people out there, letting off steam and keeping threads of nasty messages alive by adding new vitriolic comments.

  Paradoxically, the trolls provided a cover by keeping the threads live, but sooner or later someone would notice that the artificial intelligence programs had been disconnected. What would the crooks do then? Reinstall the programs?

  Helen still didn’t understand why they used her AI programs to distort people’s posts. Distributing political propaganda was obvious, but undermining TP’s clients? Helen tried to get into their mind. What were they after?

  Something big. The last time you were in their way, they tried to kill you!

  Not so fast, Helen admonished herself. Although she had plenty of circumstantial evidence, she had no proof that the people who misused her artificial intelligence were the same people who had tried to kill her.

  Nonetheless, one fact towered above everything else.

  The president put the Consortium in charge of the Project. And it was the president who benefited from TP’s illicit operations.

  By countering TP’s shenanigans, Helen and Bobby crossed the president.

  The enormity of it tightened Helen’s chest.

  She and Bobby w
ere entangled in a conspiracy that possessed seemingly unlimited powers. A behemoth that trapped and exploited people and then destroyed them.

  Appalled, Helen thought about what Bobby had shared with her when he had given her the copy of the dead drop. How his board tricked him:

  >> I wanted this deal more than anything. It was a springboard to the next level. A giant breakthrough. But now I feel like a bride who wanted to get married so badly, she signed a deadly prenup on her way to the altar without even reading it.

  >> That doesn’t sound like you.

  >> No. Not really. My people went through the contracts with a fine-tooth comb. We did our due diligence. But we assumed that DEI wanted to do BUSINESS. Become a big player, make profits. But their decisions make no sense. Zero. I have no idea what makes them tick.

  That was the million-dollar question. What makes them tick?

  Helen held her breath, lips tightly rolled in. Her bot was almost finished downloading documents from Bobby’s copy of the dead drop. A list of folders filled the screen, each of them labeled with one or two capital letters.

  MD. H. N. BB. FC. PS. CH. R. TP…

  The MD, market data, folder was bursting with the daily summaries of TP’s sptfr3 stats. Helen clicked on H. Two new folders showed up.

  The first one contained the reports she had sent to the Consortium.

  She opened the second folder and drew her breath in sharply. Someone had done a thorough job of collecting as many details about her life as they could put their hands on. The places she had lived, the schools she had attended all around the world, childhood friends, high school boyfriends, her grades, babysitting jobs…

  Helen felt a wave of nausea rising to her throat. She stood up, twisted open a bottle of mineral water, and drank it in small sips, aghast. Who are these people?

  She quickly scrolled through the folders of Nic, Bobby Bullock, Frank Crawford, and Paul Santini, which seemed put together just as meticulously as her own file. If necessary, she’d go through some of the details later, but the helicopter view was sufficient for now.

  She moved on to the CH folder, which contained documents about TP’s factory in China. This was something for Bobby to review. Helen bundled the docs and created a safe viewing site where Bobby could go through them without anyone else watching.

  R stood for a list of Russian hackers, all of them well-known criminals. According to the notes next to their names, they had all been recently contacted. Hm… Helen’s heart thumped against her chest.

  She took a deep breath and clicked on TP.

  Sassari

  TP1, TP2, and TP3 jumped in front of Helen’s eyes, waiting to be revealed.

  TP1 stood for Operation Terrorism Prevention. Mesmerized, Helen dove into the logistics of the project she had signed on to. It was all there—the selection of candidates, the field trials, the introduction of the Chinese super-phones in Sardinia. The schedule of the testing sessions. Sassari, Alghero… Helen rushed through the places to the last destination: Olbia–Livorno, launching event for TP2.

  A launching event? What did they mean by that? Nothing had been launched as far as Helen could tell. Only her new contract, but surely that wasn’t what they meant. And that had happened a couple of months later, after a fight with the Consortium.

  Helen sat back, flabbergasted. The fight with the Consortium…being accused of sabotaging the Project…after aborting two attempts to bring a bomb on the ferry…was that…that couldn’t be…

  Was the car filled with explosives their launching event? And was the 1080 poisoning on Flores supposed to be another “launching event”?

  An invisible iron hand constricted Helen’s throat.

  Santini had put a bomb in her car after she stopped the ferry attack in Olbia, and someone had tried to kill her on Elba, shortly after she had stopped the Flores poisoning…

  Helen clicked on TP2, hardly breathing. The objective of TP2, Operation Total Protection, was to dominate the security market worldwide. Starting in the US, users were to be locked in by irresistible gaming bonuses, rewards, and eventually security products they would become totally dependent on in their everyday life. Computer security, home security, financial security, security of family members…

  Gaming activities were to be utilized as a vehicle for bringing about a global social movement that would fuel the Consortium’s commercial and political objectives and eventually divide and crush its opposition.

  Now Helen understood. DEI. Divide et impera. Divide and rule.

  Hands shaking, she opened TP3. Operation Total Power. There were three files in the folder.

  Operation Total Power; launch

  USA

  World

  All three files were empty.

  Stunned, Helen sat back. A cold calmness took over her. One step at a time…

  She took a deep breath and collected her thoughts. The TP folder was a mere summary of what they were doing. Their daily operational details must be recorded somewhere else. Good chance it would be on the TP server. Helen made a mental note to ask Bobby to look for it.

  Operation Total Protection was in full swing, but Total Power didn’t seem determined yet. Or the specs weren’t entered into the file. Any which way, it had to be stopped.

  Misappropriating Helen’s software was just a minor event in the grand scheme of things, no doubt about it. Creating fixes and sending her bots to disable the programs wouldn’t stop the conspiracy. This wasn’t a private matter she and Bobby could hold back on their own.

  Helen created a new super-secure dead drop, bundled the most important pieces of evidence, and deposited them in it.

  Then she picked up her phone and dialed the number that was carved in her memory.

  “Yes?” Deep, pleasant voice.

  A wave of hope enveloped Helen. “I am ready to break bread.”

  “So am I.”

  “OK. Please open your ‘Daily’ file. I’d like to discuss several items in it.”

  Helen hung up.

  Please be the real deal.

  Monte Carlo, Monaco

  “Omar, come here. Quick.” Collin waved urgently at Omar and tapped the camera icon on his secure phone. “Please stand behind me and record my screen.”

  “What’s going on?” Omar adjusted the camera view and started recording.

  “Looks like we might get initiated into the mysterious communication wormholes.”

  “How—”

  “Later.” Collin put his hand up to silence Omar as the notes in his “Daily” file popped on the screen. Nothing happened for a few seconds. Then a message appeared in the middle of the file. Omar gasped.

  >> Thank you for connecting with me. This is a secure communication channel I established without your permission, for which I apologize. I’ll explain everything shortly. But first, do you agree to stay connected via this channel? Please type your answer in the space between my text and yours, directly below this line.

  >> Yes

  Collin swallowed hard. To his knowledge, he had never been hacked before. How has she done it? Part of him admired her chutzpah. And her skills. Still, he wished she’d connected with him legally. Did she have a legitimate reason to do this? Was she cautious or criminal? The moment of truth…

  >> Thank you. I want to report a criminal conspiracy.

  Mouth dry as sunbaked leather, Collin stared at the screen, hoping her story checked out.

  After months of following her, she became part of his life. Like a beloved character in a popular TV series. More than that. Collin reached for his cold coffee, dreading an unhappy ending. Please, don’t be a criminal, he caught himself thinking.

  >> Here is a link to a secure data repository, which contains the most important evidence. It’s self-explanatory. Please get in and download the data now, in case we get cut off. I texted you the password.

  >> Are you in danger?

  >> Not directly. Fetch the data, please. The most important part is the TP file. The rest is suppo
rting evidence.

  Collin’s heart pounded in his chest as if trying to break free. He forgot about her hacking his laptop. He wanted her safe. The latest report he received from his people put her in Sassari and Santini in Olbia. Just a stone’s throw away. Collin sighed. I must get to Sardinia ASAP, he decided.

  He entered the data repository, downloaded the data file, and unzipped it. A whistle escaped his mouth. It was a lot of stuff to go through, but the names of the files told him the story.

  “Oh my God. This is a gold mine,” Omar whispered.

  Collin had forgotten that Omar was looking over his shoulder, recording his screen.

  “Yeah. Ready for another all-nighter?”

  “No problem. But I still want to know how she does the wormholes.”

  “Let’s ask her. But first things first.”

  >> Are you still there?

  Collin felt better as he typed into the wormhole. His instincts were right. She was the real deal.

  >> Yes

  >> We have the data. I am working on it with my associate. It’s a lot of stuff. Could you give us a quick guided tour so that we can orient ourselves? And can we record our screen as we chat?

  >> Yes and yes. Where do you want to start?

  >> At the beginning.

  >> K. You can jump in anytime if you want to ask something. Just type it in.

  >> Give us a sec to test the recording. OK?

  >> Sure

  “Interesting. She froze Bobby’s screen recording but not ours,” Omar said.

  “That’s because we have his laptop under surveillance. Ours is clean,” Collin said. “Let’s ask her about it later.”

  He typed as Omar pulled a chair next to his.

  >> We are ready.

  For the next hour and a half, they were glued to the screen, reading Helen’s story, asking questions, making notes, marking files.

  The enormity of what she had discovered shocked Collin, but his first priority was her safety. He was ready to send his guys to pick her up immediately in Sassari. Knowing that Santini was nearby unnerved him. Collin held his breath as he typed.