by Grady Ward
Logically, one way to confirm or to falsify this paranoid configuration is to see if there were in fact a persistent charm coded into the guts of old computer firmware; Joex needed help for that. This was a wonderful place to take a nap. A comfortable chair, a quiet room, the quiet susurrus of air-conditioning and the remote conversation, next to an embracing library among young people realizing the future.
Once again, Joex drifted off, but burst awake into a sudden clarity. The television projection was showing today’s date, Tuesday, his sister’s face, and then a shrouded gurney; then there was Joe’s twin in a black & white surveillance camera video. His twin was wearing the exact clothing as he had on now. What, what was this? Another paranoid delusion? A projection from his head? The program seemed real; how could his own mind project the annoying logo bug on the corner of the display?
A jacketed bullet, an armored car, an uncanny pursuit by a Church—aligned with Chinese spies? And all because he might have known someone who had had coded firmware twenty years ago? Maybe it was he on the screen. They showed it again slo-mo. The face was turned away, but—the same height and weight. The same coloring. The same haircut. He wished he could hear what the announcer was saying. He could choose the delusion he preferred. “My poor sister,” he thought. Am I tired because of my guilt? Another slo-mo presentation. Frame by frame. It looked exactly like him from the back. But the shirt had planes where its ironing had not all fallen out. And one more thing. A thing that caused Joex to put his fingers to the back of his head and to trace the razor-cut outline. The figure on the screen had no right-dominated cross on the back of his scalp. The same overall length, but no Crux. Hired help. No delusion that he knew could erase a haircut. His poor sister. She was even one step further removed from the center of the Crux, but it hadn’t saved her.
Chapter 40
All of Assistant Director Kiley Fletch’s suits were deep blue Brook Brothers, except the charcoal Armani which he was wearing now. The President of the United States extended her hand, and motioned for the chief of counterterrorism at the F.B.I. to sit at the one of the chairs at the longer end of the Cabinet room table closest to the entrance and its lunette crown. She turned to Admiral Hawkins of the National Security Agency also to have a seat next to Director Fletch.
The Cabinet room was otherwise empty, the French doors were open to people going about their business in the remainder of the West Wing. The room smelled of furniture polish and leather. The cabinet secretaries were allowed to purchase and use their own finely upholstered chairs in which they competed to evoke understated elegance and power. Assistant Director Fletch chose the chair with the brass nameplate labeled “Secretary of Defense.” The President drew out the chair next to it and relaxed into it, pushing herself all the way to its back. The thick golden draperies overlooking the Rose Garden were partially closed, giving the room a darkened, intimate effect. It was hard to see the wrinkles in the President’s face distinctly.
“What is your analysis, Director?” said the President to Kiley Fletch, purposefully omitting the qualifier in the Assistant’s title.
“Kiley Fletch glanced at Admiral Hawkins, who seemed to have shrunken into the stiff boards of his uniform. “There is a danger. Our agent in charge of Salt Lake City spoke to an informant who claims that there is a high possibility of that our Chinese friends are not just probing our national cyber infrastructure and opportunistically grabbing technical data.”
“Systematically?” The President asked.
“I wish that were the whole of it.” Fletch looked at Hawkins again, who seemed to be burying his chin into his decorations. “The informant gave us specific information suggesting that our friends are not only taking technical information, they are actively implanting trojan horses into our infrastructure, and have been doing so for years—decades.”
The President exhaled and looked at the ceiling for a moment. “’Suggesting?’ Is the purpose known, or at least bounded?” Although the President’s training had been in history before taking her law degree, her undergraduate degree had been taken from MIT. She was more than comfortable with technical jargon and encouraged her science advisors to give her the most accurate and up-to-date account of developments, using the most precise language possible.
“According to the informant, who is, or at least was, a qualified and experienced computer engineer with relevant knowledge, the purpose is likely to either disrupt or to control the fundamental switching capability of the Internet. The entire Internet.”
“’The entire Internet.’ That sounds alarming,” said the President dryly, “Admiral Hawkins, your people have discussed the specific facts—she looked back at Director Fletch—with the Bureau. What is your assessment?”
The Deputy Director of the NSA gave out a little puff of air before taking in a full breath. “The only fact which rates a careful look at this informant’s allegations,” this time the Deputy Director looked at Assistant Director Fletch, who was looking smaller than when he arrived, “is that the Agency has unraveled alternate code in the electronic control units of Toyotas and equivalent circuits in GM and Ford vehicles. In short, there are inactivated instructions in those circuits, which would cause varying malfunctions depending upon the vehicle. Some of the instructions merely degrade the performance, mileage, engine wear, transmission shifting, and in others, cause catastrophic failures such as unlimited high-speed acceleration, emergency braking or air bag deployment at speed. Some vehicles are still operable after degradation, others are ‘bricked’ and the ECU must be replaced before the vehicle can be used again. We have compared the manufacturing contingency chains backwards through the design of the units. These overlays show that in every case, for every affected vehicle manufacturer, the suppliers of the key circuit is a Chinese firm whose address is the city of Hangzhou in central-eastern China. In other words, the key circuits with the bad instructions are included in larger subsystems which are universally used by the major automobile manufacturers.”
“How long have these circuits been used? And what percent penetration?” asked the President.
“Over eight years, Madame President, Upwards of sixty percent.” said the Deputy Director, who was now staring into the President’s eyes, whether attempting to assert dominance, or frozen in fear it was impossible to say. “Since the control unit is an expensive part that normally lasts the life of the vehicle, there is a perpetual shortage of replacement ECU’s and—of course—the replacement ECU’s have the same subsystem and ultimately the same shadow code circuits at the current compromised ones. The plus side is that we do not think this code has ever been activated, no do we see how it can be activated en bloc.”
“You describe that as a ‘plus?’ said the President, “Not knowing something is not a cause for celebration, Admiral.”
“We deem the purpose of the shadow code as a disruption, more of a ‘denial of service’ attack on our transportation infrastructure rather than overtly destructive,” the Deputy Director continued, “looking at the variations we have seen, it is as if this were an exercise, training, for embedding trojan code rather than a real attack. Thank God.”
The President steepled her fingers and spoke to the air toward the West Wing doors, “Destruction is not merely blowing things up, Admiral, or erasing data or cutting wires. What do you think that a large fraction of our transport infrastructure being impeded would do to our economy for eighteen months?”
No one said anything for several uncomfortable seconds.
“Is this information public?” said the President.
“No. Agency only.”
“Good. Now Director Fletch,” again the President omitted the word “assistant” from his title, “who is your informant and how close are you in assessing the scope of his—speculation?”
The Assistant Director of the FBI looked unhappy. “We have assigned some of our best agents to the job of unwrapping the informant’s technical background and reviewing everything relevant in his pas
t to assess both he truth and the possible implications of his allegations. His name is Joex Baroco, formally Principal scientist at Mooneye in the Silicon Valley.”
“I’ve heard of Mooneye, Director,” the President said. “One of the innovators that makes us great.” She asked Hawkins, “have you interviewed this source yet, Admiral?”
“Kiley Fletch interjected: “he can’t yet, Madame President.”
“Well, have it done immediately. This could be a time bomb,” the President voiced arched up half an octave,” to defend the United States I need not only power, but all effective facts. We need to rule out a threat now. As in right now.”
“The informant walked away.”
The President widened her eyes and stared through the Assistant Director. Her head showed a fine tremor silhouetted by the harsh light through the crown of the French doors.
“We were considering holding him as a material witness in the Riu Bao case but he walked out of the office,” said Kiley Fletch. He felt the corners of his eyes water. “Re-acquiring him is task number one at the agency. We are also following the leads that he gave, but it will take some time.” He clamped together his teeth and grinned while speaking through the grill of the simulated smile. “We have had reports that he attacked his sister in Boston and that days ago he attacked a woman in a Church in Portland. We are flying out from New York one of the Church’s counterterrorism experts to assist with our task force. A woman named Cassandra Jones. She is what they call their Security Throne at the Church of the Crux.
“Why am I not surprised that the Crux has their hands in this thing? But for all their craziness, they are effective in seeking out and correlating information. As long as it moves from them to us and not the reverse.” The President’s tremor seemed to flow into her arms, her voice deepening. “It is accurate to say that we do not know how much time we have, if his allegations are true? And that, if true, that we do not have any idea on how far this technical rot, shadow code and Trojan horses extend into our entire technical infrastructure?” said the President, now making her hands into fists and pushing the knuckles into the marble edging of the meeting table.
Once again the silence extended for ten, twenty seconds.
“How do we know that this Baroco isn’t himself a perpetrator?”
Again, no one offered an opinion.
“You will both report to me by Wednesday on an extended interview with Mr. Baroco, independent analysis of every particle of code that he worked on, a concurrent analysis of code now in use, and what can we do to thwart a technical attack on the United States. Finally your progress in executing your plan for preventing this kind of attack now and in the future. If this were a bio threat…”
Assistant Director Fletch quietly said “one other fact you need to know, we verified that Riu Bao worked with Joex Baroco at Mooneye designing firmware for the original internet switches.”
“Does ‘Internet switch’ have the import that I imagine it to have, Director?” said the President, equally coolly.
“Yes, sir, Madame President.”
The President held the leather-wrapped arms of the chair and pushed herself standing. “That is all, gentlemen.” She walked out through the partially open doors and under the arched glass over them, back toward the Oval office.
Chapter 41
Sam was wandering the streets of Freetown, evading the go-boys who now were looting the DataTel café. It was a stroke of luck that Sam was not sleeping in his cardboard pallet among the cables and orange flickers, but his exchanges with “Jim Rogers” had kept him awake. On both sides of every downtown road in Freetown there was a steady stream of barefoot men and women, boy and girls with baskets of goods overhead. Sometimes there was a candle carried by one or another; mostly there was darkness, the shuffling and whispers interrupted by the stray tan dogs that demanded others’ give way. Occasionally an expensive SUV purchased by foreign donation for the use by some Non-Governmental Organization sponsored by this or that Church or this or that UN commission sped by in the darkness. A dog or person clipped by these cars lay on the ground, stepped over by the steady stream of commerce. Sam stepped on one mat on the ground, flat as his cardboard duvet, that had once been a person—an old man who had survived the sleeping sickness, malaria, civil war, tribal jealousies, and more simply stomach sickness for sixty or seventy years, but had succumbed to old age or a glancing strike by a new swerving Range Rover with black GPS stalk, or perhaps a beaten minibus with ‘God’s Promise’ as its figurehead. Now he was rug of withered leather and bones that had finally crumbled under thousands of feasting insects and human steps. His suffering was over.
But Sam’s was not. His wandering was leading him downtown toward the shell-marked towers that had what little financial and communications infrastructure that had survived ten years of civil war or was chosen by Care and HOPE and USAID and the Red Cross and various other gongos and quangos to house their missions, accept funding, and to point their satellite arrays at the heavens. Returning to the café was out. Even if he could skirt Cousin Robert, the Lebanese owner would warn the other Datatels about him and the destruction which followed him. But despite the fear of the go-boys which was receding into the streams of midnight people incessantly tracking the warm edges of the city, and his growing need for food and shelter from the festering monsoon, Sam thought about the code he had retrieved and sent to “Jim.” So primitive, the Internetwork operating system. Even though it could be executed thousands of times faster now, back then they sought, as now, to optimize, to hack, to bless the center of the code, to sacrifice clarity upon the alter of marketability and competition. He had heard the computer scientist Donald Knuth say in a grainy avi that the computer doesn’t care how many goto’s are used. But Professor Don, its coder does: twisty little passages, all alike.
Sam really had no idea of the mind he had been given. It never occurred to him that most others could not review what they had seen as if on a scrolling chart within their head. He looked and thought about the code’s then nascent and primitive function, and what it had evolved into. His mind’s eye decoded instructions, saw errors, and corrected them. He ran simulations of the code in his mind, saw how simply it functioned. He then played games, beginning again with input collisions in the interfaces and random power failures. As he walked toward the center, his eyes sparkled from the searching candles and the globes of sweat on his black skin reflecting the smoky faces of the men and women moving silently around him, as if a mass for the dead.
Sam had reached the Grand Plaza in Freetown. It was surrounded by pock-marked high-rises that before the war held multinational corporations, French, English, Dutch. Now there was a single bank and the French telecom company. Sam squatted at the center fountain, which to his knowledge had never worked. It was filled with picked-over open toilet of dog corpses, rotten mangoes and random scraps of shiny brown paper mixed with pulpy newsprint. Sam took inventory of what he had. A ripped and sun-faded T-shirt of a west African pop star who had never caught on in the west despite his outrageous use of palm wine and local wild ganja, and a pair of olive-drab boxer shorts. It had no pockets. His flip-flops were long lost. He might as well forget his Datatel treasure bundle. For now, a meal would be welcome, or even more so, some tobacco. But he had nothing, with no prospects. And Freetown was not a good place to have nothing. The hollowness of his stomach made Sam feel smaller.
Meanwhile, he had his thoughts. The ancient ios code welled up without effort and Sam’s mind could scroll it backwards and forwards. If he had been asked, Sam could not explain what he was doing—he simply did not have the right language to describe the landscape of traps, semaphores, flags, sentinels, stacks and queues. But he knew it; tight loops of execution would feel hot to Sam and appear in his mind’s eye in a bright warm color. Branches of code that were rarely taken were cool and blue. Dead code was black. Sam could substitute his own instructions and then watch the new fork execute, change registers, have side-effects. So, w
hat was the issue here with this code?
There was nothing obviously wrong here, in Sam’s mind. The code implemented a simple switch that would re-route a data stream based upon the condition of several registers that would change based upon rules that were not immediately obvious. There was some implied parallelism with two main threads but as this old code was written back in the day, it’s main function was as much speed as possible, which meant as little operation on the data stream as possible.
Ancient code, some significance now. Must be code that is still somehow relevant, unlike the billions of lines of code written for hardware that no longer existed for functions no longer needed. And, whatever that was different about this code much be subtle, but fiendishly hidden, for this would be the innermost loop code that had to have been reviewed dozens of times for efficiency not to mention plain error. Maybe he could look at it as if it were a Chess puzzle, mate in seven. Like a Chess puzzle, the position had to be a legal one or code in this case had to work both at what it was supposed to do and whatever it was not supposed to do (or not do); but while the position had to be a legal Chess on (can’t for example have a puzzle with nine white pawns on the board), it didn’t necessarily have to come about from a legal game or nor was it required that it was even possible to come about in any reasonable real-world scenario; for example, he remembered one puzzle featuring four white knights; while possible, it was unlikely that white would promote two pawns to knights rather than, say, a queen, or rook, or even bishop.
