by Malka Older
Ken is trying to sharpen his ingenuity and political acuity on the nine centenals they are campaigning in, but it’s hard to get excited about his job, and as much as he appreciates being home for Sayaka, it’s weird to leave the office at 6 P.M. during an election. He has just left the Free2B campaign office in Saigon to wend his way home when he gets a call. He jumps when he sees the ID: Vera Kubugli, the remaining Mighty V and head of state for Policy1st.
“Ken!” she says as soon as he picks up. “Good to speak with you again. It’s been so long.”
“Hi!” Ken says, uncertain how to address her. He met Vera a few times when he was working for Policy1st, but only briefly. He wouldn’t have thought she knew his name. “What can I do for you?”
“Ken,” Vera says, her chumminess morphing into gravity. “As you know, this election is of vital importance to our government, and to the world. We are being monstrously outspent by corporate governments, and we need all hands on deck.” A pause for that to sink in. “I know what great work you did for us during the last election, and I wanted to ask if you’d consider coming back to give us a hand.”
“Oh.” Ken suddenly feels like jelly. “I would lo—I’d be honored to help, but” (as Vera must know) “I have a job with Free2B. I’ve been working with them for years now, and I’d hate to leave them this close to the election.”
“Of course,” Vera purrs. “Commendable, indeed. But you have to consider where your efforts will have the greatest impact. Eking out another centenal for Free2B will affect at most 100,000 people. If Policy1st loses the Supermajority—in this election, after half our term was stolen—that will be a disaster for millions.”
A disaster might be overstating it, but Ken is still mad about the five-year thing. He reminds himself that he’s campaign director for Free2B. “What exactly is it that you think I could help you with?”
Vera knows what he’s asking. “We were thinking Executive Strategy Developer,” she says. “Leading our centenal mapping and prioritizing, working closely with the communications people in charge of messaging, finding innovative ways to present ourselves to skeptical voters in centenals we haven’t previously contested.”
Ken is breathing fast. She knows exactly what he wants, what buzzwords to drop and buttons to push. He tells himself that it’s probably too good to be true. “Can I get back to you?”
* * *
Mishima asks her assistant, Amran, to do some preliminary searches on the unexplained ads. It’s not so much a necessary delegation as a mentoring exercise. Well, not so much a mentoring exercise as an experiment. She was given budget for an assistant three months ago, and picked Amran over several people with more relevant experience because Roz had vouched for her, but also because she had heard that Amran had been diagnosed with a level-four narrative disorder. As part of her lifelong informal and self-directed research project on her condition, Mishima finds it useful to observe the narrative expectations of someone with an entirely different cultural and family background, and this assignment is the perfect test case.
Amran starts by giving her a decent, if uninspired, rundown of the facts that Mishima already knows, with a few additional instances she’s managed to dig up: a Burmese nationalist centenal apparently advertising in Luanda, and a small policy-oriented government with no current centenals promoting itself on the northern bank of the Rio Grande. “It’s not certain yet whether that last one fits the pattern,” Amran clarifies. “Since they don’t hold any centenals and don’t have a specific local or nationalist focus. But they are based in and primarily campaigning in and around Dushanbe. Every indicator—demographic, ideologic, or other—says that centenal is unlikely to be a strong target for them.”
“What about the money?”
“The advertising seems to have been paid for out of the campaign funds allocated to those governments. I say ‘seems to’ because I’ve spoken to representatives from all of the governments, and none of them will admit to authorizing the ads; they haven’t found any missing funds, either. It looks like the perpetrators found a way to announce for an additional centenal and then used the additional money for the ads.”
“It’s amazing that rule doesn’t get abused more often,” Mishima mutters. Governments receive campaign funding for each centenal they officially contest, with the money, other than an overhead percentage, constrained to be used in that centenal alone.
“People don’t like to lose,” Amran notes, and it’s true: governments care about their win-to-contested ratio.
“And they didn’t notice they’re contesting more centenals than they planned to?”
“These governments are campaigning only in a few places, most of which they are almost certain of winning. It’s not as hard to keep track of three centenals as a global election; they probably don’t spend too much time thinking about it.”
Mishima forgets that not everyone is as obsessed with the election as she is. “The account signature was hacked.” That should narrow the suspect list.
“Or…” Amran hesitates, continues when Mishima nods at her through the projection. “Possibly someone within each government authorized the ads.”
“Possible but unlikely, unless there’s a single person working for all of these tiny far-flung governments. Or a consulting firm?” Mishima has to repress a shudder: ever since being ambushed by consultant assassins with incredible hacking skills, she’s found consulting firms highly sinister.
“I’ve checked, and there’s no overlap in their consulting profile either,” Amran says.
“So hacking seems more likely. Anything else? Motive?”
“I haven’t found any pattern in terms of who benefits,” Amran says. “It feels more like pointless chaos.”
“You investigated the home centenals of these small governments too, right? If someone is stealing their campaign funds…”
“None of them is in a particularly close race.” Amran hesitates again.
In the three months since she hired her, Mishima has tried to get used to Amran’s insecurity. It’s not something she’s ever had a problem with, and yet she can imagine, if circumstances had been slightly different, if she had ever confused the uncertainty of distinguishing narrative from real with uncertainty about her own intelligence and ability … For the first time in her life she is, while not exactly grateful, aware of the advantages of an early diagnosis. “Was there something else?” she asks, hoping she sounds encouraging.
“Looking at the ads longitudinally across the five cases,” Amran says, “they are escalating.”
Mishima frowns.
“It’s a small sample size,” Amran says hurriedly, “so it’s hard to be sure.” She flicks an infographic into their shared projection: the extrapolated line is shallow, but it is indeed trending upward. “It’s odd because…” Another hesitation. “The other data seems to suggest general disruption, but escalation points away from that.”
Mishima nods, pleased to hear her own intuition echoed. “It could be a small planned increase after an initial trial.”
“Or maybe a viral pattern?” Amran suggests. “Something self-replicating?”
“Hard to do with this kind of activity,” Mishima points out. “The ads have to be tailor-made for each jurisdiction. Keep an eye on this, okay? I’m going to snoop among likely suspects.” She knows just where to start.
* * *
Maryam was not convinced when Batún suggested that the tourist guides might be related to the ex-Information group she’s been stalking. Part of it is that she wants nothing to do with tourism, or obnoxious vendors who pick her out of a crowd to accost, or strange outdated technologies. Part of it is that it seems too small and ridiculous: she is looking for people who are trying to take over the world, not touts.
Then she scans the pamphlet. As the sensors touch the surface, it disintegrates. Maryam jumps away. This outdated technology has some very up-to-date technology built into it. It creeps her out even more now, but she’s also galvanize
d: this may turn out to be important, and it’s a neat challenge to boot. Within minutes, she’s set up a program to comb every feed she passed through this afternoon to get pictures of the pamphlet and search for the vendor. While it runs, she starts designing a more complicated search for references to obscure travel guides, but she’s distracted by a news alert: another transfer-station attack, this one outside Luanda. Maryam gets swept in, obsessively following along with the commentary on the Information intranet. Coverage outside of Information is muted, which reminds Maryam of Taskeen’s uncomfortable point about public but invisible data. She flips through the feeds in the surrounding area, dreading the occasional oblique shots of those featureless masks but unable to resist dwelling on them when they appear.
She emerges an hour and a half later with no clues but one new idea.
“A data transfer station?” Batún asks, when she finds him in the canteen and corrals him back to his office.
“I want to take a look at one and see if I can figure out what these people are after when they attack them. They can’t just want to inconvenience us.”
“There are a couple of small transfer hubs in the city, but they’re mostly automated,” he says thoughtfully. “Your best bet is probably the one on Isla de Pinos, at the Presidio Modelo.”
Maryam blinks up the details and has to repress a shudder: it’s not a cute etymology lost in the dust of time. The data transfer station is housed in the remains of a refitted panopticon prison from the late twentieth century.
“I know some people there,” Batún says. “If you’re sure this is a good idea?”
“It’s the only idea I have right now, and we’re running out of time.”
CHAPTER 6
Getting to Isla de Pinos used to mean taking a ferry from Puerto de Batabanó, but Maryam sees no reason to be circumspect about this trip, and Batún offers her one of the office crows. She flies almost directly south from La Habana, follows a straight road inland from the coast that leads her past a residential zone and a baseball field and straight to the former prison.
Isla de Pinos has a population just short of the normal 100,000 benchmark but, like many other islands, it was granted its own centenal anyway. Information has carved out a small section around the data transfer facility under their own jurisdiction. As usual, Information has gone out of its way to concretize their principles in the landscape, as an optional projection when she enters the site shows in detail, contrasting historical footage side by side with what she sees in front of her. They’ve reforested the once-stripped grounds, and the cylindrical buildings, which old vids show as tattered hulks with holes in the roofs, have been sheathed in heat-reflectors and solar cells, and painted or projected with swirls of brilliant color.
“We’re trying to make something good out of the site,” explains Veronica de la Campana, the site supervisor, who welcomes Maryam at the gate, thanks to Batún’s introduction. “Of course, the data transfer facility is useful—and pleasantly ironic for a former panopticon—but we also wanted to build a beautiful, multifunctional space for the community, something inspirational, that they would look to for hope and maybe use as a park, for picnics, games…” The sentence ends in expansive gestures. De la Campana speaks at Cuban velocity and with a slight rural accent, and Maryam turns on her translator set to subtitles in case she misses something.
“Has it worked?” Maryam asks.
De la Campana shakes her head slightly. “Not yet, not so much. They remember the bad times. It will take more work, more outreach. Maybe a tourism program, the local businesses would appreciate that, but it’s so hard to do properly.” She nods at three people inside a small hut that Maryam’s Information tells her is a recent addition.
“New security protocols?” she asks.
“For what it’s worth,” de la Campana says. “It’s obviously much easier to get in here now than when it was a prison.”
They are approaching two cylindrical buildings, with another, larger one visible between them. “Over there is our on-site power generation,” de la Campana says, pointing to the rightmost building, which is done in brilliant sunburst colors. “But there’s not much to see. Let’s start here.” She guides Maryam toward the building on the left, adorned in a resplendent interpretation of Starry Night Over the Rhône.
The interior is less colorful and looks nothing like the photos of the former prison. The panopticon design mandated a central plinth from which the guards could see into every cell lining the circumference. They’ve kept the pillar, which in a nice inversion of design has been turned into an automat food dispenser, the little doors mimicking the grid of cells that once girded the walls around them, but the rest of the building is entirely different, a spiral of office floors punctuated by stairs at different points on different levels. From where she is, Maryam can’t see into any individual offices—even on the ground floor, all the doors are turned away from her—but by peering up the wavering column of stairwell openings, she can see all the way up to the roof, giving her a sense for the overall layout of the building.
“Wow.”
“Isn’t it something?” De la Campana leans in slightly. “Designed by Afolabi. Such an amazing dialog with the original structure.” She gives Maryam another few moments to gaze around and recover, then leads her to the first staircase, a graceful curve of broad, shallow stairs with no handrail. “Have you ever been in a data transfer station before?”
“Only hubs,” Maryam says, slightly embarrassed. Until now, she had assumed that they were basically the same thing, minus the senior leadership and administrative functions hubs provide. “Can you tell me how they’re different?”
“There is some overlap, of course,” de la Campana says, comfortingly unsurprised by the question. “For example, we have a bloc of translators in the southwest cylinder that manages overflow from La Habana and Mérida Hubs. As the system has grown, hubs and data transfer sites have both multiplied, and grown, and grown more similar, as we have needed more and more of the functions that are provided by both.”
“Like translation.”
“And analysis, sorting, distribution management.” The first floor is done in cool aquamarines and blues. As the corridor they are following spirals close to the outer wall, Maryam sees that the casing is translucent, and the light glows through it in deep blues, with startling gold around the stars and reflected lights. “Hubs tend to have more analysts. Data stations, on the other hand, include storage.” She gestures through the slightly rippled transparent wall toward where the largest of the cylindrical buildings looms. “And, obviously, we have a strong focus on distribution management. Initially, these were minimally staffed sites composed mainly of storage and transfer hardware.”
“Do you still have that old infrastructure?” Maryam asks.
De la Campana smiles with a touch of smugness and opens the door to her right to reveal a closet clogged with cable. “We do.”
Maryam wonders if the attackers could be planning some kind of hardware hack, and gazes at the cables in hope of inspiration, but she doesn’t know enough about anachronistic electrical engineering. They continue the tour, going up to the next floor.
“So what do you think they’re after, attacking these sites?” Maryam asks as they walk past a series of collaboration rooms.
“I don’t know,” de la Campana says. “They seem like stunts to me.” (The word she uses is comemierdería, which Maryam’s auto-interpreter never knows what to do with, but Maryam has heard it often enough since moving to La Habana to get the gist.) “This type of attack could take us offline for a few days”—the station in Mandalay was down for a week, Maryam remembers—“which is annoying for us, but in the grander scheme it doesn’t matter. Data gets rerouted around an inoperative station. Maybe a few of the nearby stations are overloaded for a little while, but nobody outside of our staff would even notice.”
“How many would they have to knock out at the same time to make a difference?” Maryam asks
.
“I don’t know; dozens? Hundreds? Surely someone has done the calculations.”
Trying to envision it from an attacker’s perspective, Maryam pulls up the feed for the entrance road. The camera angle includes the guardroom and much of the road; she can see a small group that has just passed the guards moving toward them. It wouldn’t be hard to go around the feed, she thinks; the trees would make it difficult with a vehicle, but on foot—
One of the figures on the road looks up at the camera, and the face is bone-white and featureless.
Primordial horror grips her: an icy clench of wrongness passing over her body in a wave. As reason slowly clunks back online, Maryam registers a more specific terror. “They’re here,” she whispers.
“¿Perdón?” De la Campana turns to her. Maryam opens her mouth to try to force words out, and the image disappears as Information blinks off. There’s a muffled boom.
“The attackers,” Maryam manages, though her tongue doesn’t want to move. “They’re here.”
De la Campana’s face goes ashen. One hand reaches out for the wall, and she flutters the fingers of her other.
“Information is out,” Maryam gasps, but de la Campana has already figured that out, and is lurching toward a nearby office.
“¡Directora!” The young man inside steps away from the workstation he was frowning at in frustration. “I’m sorry, Information doesn’t seem to be working…”
Ignoring him, de la Campana finds a button on the wall and jams at it with her palm. “¿Seguridad? ¿Seguridad?”
Standing in the doorway, Maryam begins to pull out of her daze. “They don’t hurt anyone,” she says, and then she manages to say it a little louder. “They leave everyone unharmed.” The analyst at the workstation looks over at her, and she sees his face change as he interprets her words and realizes what they must mean. Fear spurts over his face, transmitted like a virus. “They don’t hurt anyone!” Maryam snaps at him, and he nods, pulling back from panic.
