“Whoa Marty − first things first. What we want is to figure out a way to prevent people like you from doing just that. So here’s what I want you to do next.”
* * *
47
Rock, Paper, Scissors
It was October 31. With the election only a few days away, Frank was sitting in front of his laptop – now with the video camera attached − waiting for a Skype call with Marty. His fingers were drumming against his stomach like the legs of a dog having its stomach rubbed. Time was running out.
Finally the call came through, and Marty’s smirking face lit up the screen. Frank was about to say hello, when the hacker’s eyes suddenly squinted. Then his face zoomed in to the screen, eyes widening. Frank pulled back involuntarily.
“Say! You’re the dude that shot down the North Korean missiles!”
“Well, not exactly.”
“Somebody just gave me your book! I read the whole thing last night! Hey, man, it’s really cool to be working with you!”
His book! He’d forgotten all about it. Or more accurately, he’d been ignoring it. He was still queasy about the manuscript Grover had shown him. For weeks he’d been filing every email his co-writer, his agent, and his publisher had been sending him without opening them. Suddenly he was happy to be in hiding on an island 14 miles off the coast of Maine.
“Say, would you send me a signed copy of your book?”
“Sure – absolutely. And thanks. But hey, I’m in kind of a hurry, so let’s talk about the game app, okay? Are we good to go there?”
Marty was now eager to impress. “Absolutely. Here’s what I did….”
He launched into a long and technical explanation, with Frank nodding and tapping away at the keys, taking notes as Marty walked him through everything he’d accomplished since their last call. From time to time Frank interrupted, asking him to fill in the details where he’d skipped past something, or testing the hacker’s assumptions, or asking him if he’d considered potential weaknesses in the approach. It all seemed to hold together.
“That’s cool, Marty. Really nice job.”
But Marty wasn’t quite done yet.
“So hey – you know how you asked me to keep my eye out for anyone else trying to hack the same program? Well you wouldn’t believe it! They’re going ape shit in there! Everybody’s trying to plant something the other guys can’t find while blocking what they find. It’s wild – like some kind of hacker sitcom! You want me to join in the fun?”
“No, I think we’re good if we just stick to the original plan.” Frank suddenly remembered the grainy, Photoshopped picture George had sent him of his camper at the bottom of a ravine.
“In fact, it’s pretty important that nobody knows that we’re doing anything at all – or that you even know me. As long as we can shut down that radio when we want to, that’s good enough. That, and planting the code I sent you where they’ll never look for it. I want you to leave the smallest number of tracks possible.”
“Works for me. They’re going crazy playing their games against each other and don’t even know they’re doomed. What a hoot!”
“Right. So the bottom line is that I need to know that any time I want to, I can send the host site an order to tell the game apps not to send an NFC signal, and also that our command can override any directions from anywhere else to the contrary. So are we good to go with that?”
Marty smiled but said nothing.
“Uh, do you have something else to tell me, Marty?”
“Yeah. The answer to your first question is yes, except for one little detail. The command will only work for one hour.”
Where could this be going? “Okay, I guess there’s something to say for not having a permanent override. If it goes on too long, someone would be more likely to figure out something was going on.”
Marty was starting to giggle now.
“Something else?”
“Yeah. One more little thing, dude. You can only give the command at the same time you’re reporting a new high game score for the day.”
“What? Why?”
“How much do you expect for just ‘a good word at my parole hearing?’ Go test out what I just told you, and when you see it works just like I said, we can talk again. But when we do, be ready to tell me the warden’s ready to let me walk. Do that, and you’ll get the full key.”
“That wasn’t the deal!”
“Course not! A deal takes two sides, not one. Your offer gets you one hour at a time. My offer gets you permanent control. Deal?”
Frank was speechless.
“And don’t get any fancy ideas about finding the code you asked me to plant – the code that would really tell the app whether or not to block the radio. If you keep racking up the high scores, it’ll keep running fine, but I hid it where you’ll never find it. And if you did, and tried to change or remove it, it’ll send a blast of intrusion warnings to the security admin he couldn’t ignore even if he was asleep at his keyboard. Same thing if you try to install your software yourself with an override module. ”
“But we don’t have any control over your sentence! All we can do is speak on your behalf in a month!”
“So you keep saying. When you’re ready to make a deal, you know where to find me. Meanwhile, Trick or Treat!”
* * *
“So I don’t know why I even called you, but I’ll ask anyway. Can you cut a deal for him?”
Silence.
Frank continued, “Okay, shall we say it together? ‘Sorry Frank, but there’s nothing I can do?’ Am I right?”
“I’m sorry Frank, but nothing’s changed. Do you have an idea?”
“Not one I’m very wild about.”
“What’s the one you’re not?”
“Get real good at Cavalry and Indians before Tuesday.”
“Are you serious? Is that the best you can do?”
“It’s not as harebrained as it sounds. The whole game has to do with trajectories. In the real world of three dimensions and wind, that’s super complicated, but here it’s just a matter of figuring out what two-dimensional elevation works best at each cycle of the game. And the target window is always really small. I’ve started writing a program that just keeps playing the game, firing incrementally higher at each cycle until it nails it, and then goes on to the next cycle till it’s got that one, and so on. Nothing fancy like a real artificial intelligence program, because I don’t have time to write one. Just repetitious trial and error, like a password cracking program. Unless you get access for me on a super computer I can’t speed up the game, but there should still be time if I get started soon.”
“Really.”
“Well, that’s all I’ve – we’ve – got. Anyway, once I’ve got all the data I need, all I have to do is reverse the process, and feed the same data back into the game controller. That part’s a little tricky, but it’s still just programming, and I can do that piece while it’s cranking away on trajectories.”
“So you’re telling me that the election of the next leader of the free world is going to depend on whether you can build a better fourteen year old?”
“Something like that. Got any better ideas?”
“You don’t want to hear me say it again, do you?”
“Right.”
“Then I guess I’d better let you get to work.”
“Right again.”
“Then good luck, Frank. Here’s hoping you can do it.”
* * *
Someone walking up the long dirt driveway to Frank’s unoccupied cottage over the next few days would have heard a constant stream of war whoops, bugle calls and bellowing ruminants emanating from the camper parked by the ocean. It wouldn’t matter whether it was night or day; the only difference would be that at night the camper glowed
with flashing colors.
Anywhere else, such a person might have been surprised. But not here. Everyone on the island knew that people from Away were strange.
* * *
Election Day was rapidly approaching, and Frank was getting nervous. There was so much riding on him, and he had so little to work with – including any way to know for sure what the opposition would do on Election Day. He was also fretting over his lack of a back-up plan. What if one of the other teams found out what he was up to, or just came up with a more clever plan than he had?
What indeed? Marty continued to assure him that everything was fine. But he also refused to budge on telling Frank how to get past the one-hour refresh requirement, and it was too late for Frank to figure out a way around it on his own. Anyway, he had no reason to doubt Marty’s claim that his code was booby-trapped – it would be too easy to do.
With nothing else to distract him, Frank had started playing Angry Indians/Angry Cavalry as soon as he arrived on the island. He’d never been a gamer, so at first he only fooled around with it to kill time. But it wasn’t long before his anxiety over Election Day made him compulsive. By his third day there, he was playing it almost non-stop whenever he wasn’t working. Now he was trying (unsuccessfully) to beat his robot program. He was rationally relieved but irrationally pissed off that so far he hadn’t.
That ambivalence evaporated by the second to last day before the election, because his robot program was starting to bog down. The problem was that every time the robot made it to a new level, it was confronted with a more complex situation, with more target elements, more randomness, and more defenses. That meant the program had to test at least an order of magnitude more alternatives each time it graduated to a new level, and now it seemed to be making no discernible progress at all. What if it didn’t make it far enough to maintain control all day when it really mattered?
With no time left to switch strategies, all he could do was try to get better at the game than his program did.
Like the program, he’d made good progress and then leveled off. After most of a sleepless night spent wracking his brains for some way to accelerate his progress, he invested a couple of hours adapting his game controller to interact with a virtual reality helmet he had lying around. His hope was that immersing himself more completely in the game space would give him an added edge over anyone else playing on what he had begun to think of as VE Day dawned. Assuming he didn’t throw up first.
Happily, his guess proved to be true; his skills began improving again. He had made it to the eighth level several times, which was one tier above where the robot was still laboring away.
He was taking a break to let his reeling head return to its normal configuration when there was a tap on the camper door. Who in the world could that be? No one was supposed to know where to find him.
To his delight, it was Marla.
“How did you know where to find me?”
“From George, of course.”
“I’m surprised he told you. Wasn’t he afraid someone might follow you?”
“It’s possible I might have promised him I wouldn’t come here. But don’t worry. I was more than careful leaving Washington. And when I got to Maine, I spent the morning window shopping and then ran on the ferry at the last possible second. Nobody got on after me, and there won’t be another boat till the day after the election.”
He bet there were lobstermen who’d take a passenger across for the right price. But there was nothing to be done about it now, and he was starting to get anxious again.
“It’s great to see you and I’d love to catch up, but I’ve got to put this helmet back on and practice as much as possible before Election Day.”
“Of course you do. But might I ask what, and why?”
“Oh. Right. So…” He brought her up to date. “Anyway, I can’t stand more than a couple more hours inside this helmet. There are a couple of restaurants in town, so let’s talk then. Meanwhile, there should be a key under the doormat of the cottage, so why don’t you make yourself comfortable there.”
Marla would have asked another question, but he had already disappeared into the helmet, and now resembled a futuristic storm trooper. One glance around the rat’s nest of the camper’s interior persuaded her to take his advice.
* * *
It wasn’t far to town and the ever-present fog had finally lifted, so a somewhat wobbly Frank suggested they walk to dinner. Except for his morning run, he hadn’t left his camper since his first trip into town. Now he was startled to see how beautiful his surroundings were. The weathered shingles of the fish houses perched at the ends of stone and timber wharves gleamed a pearly gray in the last light of the setting sun, and the fleet of lobster boats swinging in the wind at their moorings like synchronized swimmers completed the classic picture of a Down East fishing community.
Main Street was mostly quiet when they arrived; the handful of stores and the post office were already closed, but the bar and grill was jumping. One of the two restaurants was open, and only half full. They took a quiet table there.
“How’s the food here?” Marla asked.
“No clue. But I’m expecting it to be cooked and not right out of a can. I can’t wait.
“So what’s happening with the election?” he continued. “I haven’t been keeping in touch.”
“Not much new since you left, really. Nobody knows what to make of a real three-way race. The pundits keep saying nowhere near as many people will vote for Yazzie on Election Day as the polls indicate. But a lot of people aren’t so sure.”
“Maybe the pundits are right. After all, you and I know you can chuck the polls if the hacker is still in control.”
Marla shook her head. “But if that’s so, I don’t understand why he’s keeping the three front runners so close together? Why doesn’t he show his candidate pulling ahead?”
“Good question. Maybe the poll hacker’s candidate is actually pretty far behind. There are only so many votes the game app can control, so maybe pulling off anything more than a squeaker of a victory is beyond their power.”
“I guess that would make sense,” Marla acknowledged. “Anyway, we don’t have long to wait to find out.”
When their dinner arrived, Frank wolfed his down, and fidgeted until Marla was done. Then he insisted they head back to the camper so he could disappear once more into his virtual race with parabolic destiny.
* * *
Meanwhile, Randall Wellhead was puddle-jumping around the country in his private campaign jet, making last minute stops wherever Fetters thought it might make the biggest difference. Ironically, Fetters was now desperate to garner as many legitimate votes for his candidate as possible. Wellhead was still blissfully ignorant of how the election would actually be decided, as he was about most matters of importance. He was having a great time, smiling, hand-shaking, and, as much as possible, keeping his mouth shut.
Fetters, on the other hand, was busy doing what he had been ever since he learned from Butcher that White Crow was falsifying the poll numbers: scanning endlessly through multiple sets of numbers − downloads of the game app, downloads of voting apps, and projections of voter turnouts by Congressional district and party affiliation. Would they all align well enough to allow his candidate to win?
And was it all just a fool’s errand, anyway? He’d been hounding his hackers unmercifully to watch out for other black hats. But he had no way to tell what was really going on, since he was communicating through the same layers of intermediaries he had maintained from the beginning in order to cover his tracks. Certainly his hackers were gouging him unmercifully on their fees. Whether they were really fending off multiple opponents or simply fabricating that story to extract ever higher payments was just one more thing he had no way of confirming.
If they were being straight with him, the
re were two other teams of hackers going at the game app. Could that really be true? If so, and if Adversego really had been killed in an accident, who could the third team be? Was the President of the United States hacking elections now? What was the world coming to?
* * *
White Crow was on a rare trip away from the reservation, taking up temporary residence in the same hotel the Yazzie campaign had chosen for its election night activities. He had rented two adjacent rooms, one for himself, and the second as a war room he had filled with tables, computers and a large wall monitor that would provide a live video link to the crew of Uzbeki hackers he was relying on to outfox the competition and bring his own candidate across the finish line in first place. His assistants had moved all of the original furniture from the war room into his sleeping room, where he could now barely move.
The report he had spoofed out of Voldemort had been very helpful, but he would have liked to feel more confident than he did. Amazingly enough, the real poll numbers – the ones only he had access to —showed that Yazzie’s message was connecting ever more powerfully with the voters as their disgust with business as usual politics continued to build.
Nor was that all. Despite the best efforts of his handlers to contain him, Wellhead had made enough new gaffes to leave many conservatives privately aghast. Turnout predictions in hundreds of red state districts were waning as a result. At the same time, the Republicans had succeeded in convincing the voters that most of the blame for the country’s numerous woes should be placed on the President, causing the slide in his popularity to continue unchecked.
Truly, the nation seemed to be poised on the edge of a defining moment in the grand narrative of the American experience, with the presidency of the United States tantalizingly within reach of a Native American.
The Lafayette Campaign: a Tale of Deception and Elections (Frank Adversego Thrillers Book 2) Page 34
