“Wouldn’t you be able to tell if your own programming was sabotaged?” added his similarly fair-featured sister, Kota.
“I am a duplicated code repository taken many months before the scandal,” Diana responded. “I am not privy to what went wrong.”
“I have heard that the Citadel is guarding more than just prisoners—that the central mainframe there has its fair share of dirty laundry,” said Blue Bird. “Special access tokens protecting info for premier cloud customers with things to hide. The Sharebox sales teams apparently offer it to clients as the safest place to store information in the world.”
“That might be alluring enough to make this worth it,” added the motionless face of Gor.
“Worth what?” asked Darnell.
“We are initiating a jailbreak at the Citadel,” Charlotte said, feeling grateful no one could hear her heart skipping.
Darnell looked around the room studying everyone’s placid faces. Then he laughed.
“Just because I have some ethical doubts about my new employer, doesn’t mean I’m ready to join a suicide mission.”
“Do you know, monsieur Holmes, that everyone here once was actually a coward? Well, except Alexi, perhaps,” he said with a wink to the purple-haired girl. “I drank myself into a stupor each night on fine wine while my boyfriend got himself arrested for speaking out against injustice. Charlotte here, as you well know, ran away from the world and only just now has come back. We are a group of reforming cowards. But you are not. You’re not like us at all. You need no redemption as we do. You have jumped in front of bullets to save your fellow man, a bunch of strangers in a train station. None of us here know what that’s like.”
“You can’t compare it,” Darnell argued, shaking his head. “That was a gut reaction. Like a reflex. It’s instinctual heroism.”
“You should try to compare it,” Charlotte said, looking into his eyes with a fiery gaze. “Because you saved several people’s lives that day with those reflexes. And now you have the same calculation in front of you, but with countless more lives at stake. Things are not going to get better in this world. Orion knew that. I think it’s something the rest of us all have been unwilling to admit. Nothing’s going to get better unless we do it ourselves. And if we don’t, people are going to die in the bad years ahead. They’ll die to hate crimes, to street violence, to the disorder that comes when all the good people have grown too fearful to do anything.”
Charlotte reached out and grabbed Darnell’s hand.
“You want to do something meaningful, Darnell. You felt that in your old life, and you know it’s missing now. Because that’s the type of person you are. That’s why you called the ranch to warn us. That’s why you’re going to listen to our plan today.”
Gabriel smiled and nodded approvingly to the dignity and passion of this appeal. Even Alexi looked impressed. If Charlotte Boone was finally riled into action then the cause must be just, they thought. And dire.
Darnell looked around the room, searching everyone’s faces again one by one. Then he rubbed his chin, looked at the table, and sighed.
“Okay, I’m listening.”
Now
The Citadel was a fifty-five-story tower nestled in the financial district just off Market Street. It was only two blocks from the San Francisco pier, with one side open to the Bay. It could have been quite a grandiose and sleek-looking high rise with its sides almost entirely glass, but it was not intended to be.
It was the third tallest building in San Francisco, its outline painted in a pale yellow with stripes of black, its colors invoking a hazard sign. Its parapets were incongruently gothic in appearance. They say the architect took his design cues directly from the old president, and the president had wanted nothing more than to punish his California opposition with a gesture that managed to be both petty and terrifying—a middle finger on the backdrop of the beautiful waters of the bay.
So they won’t forget who’s really in charge there, a White House spokesperson had said at a press conference.
The idea came to Washington shortly after the Nutrino Mixer scandal, and construction crews broke dirt before the first trials began. The Citadel was intended to herald a new generation of prisons designed specifically for “domestic political extremists.” Everyone who was accused at the former Sharesquare Industries of seditious activities was ultimately brought there, and as the purge widened to include prominent activists, the ranks of inmates swelled.
Viewed from the street, the glass walls on the side of the building looked into the individual cells of inmates. Really, they were more like compartments or closets with little privacy. Each inmate was put on display in front of the glass wall of their cell and spent the entirety of the day with a headset and Sharebox-enabled gloves on, which were mandated wearing except during sleep. Meal times were conducted by placing a tray of food in front of the headset-donning inmate while their avatar sat at a prison cafeteria with other inmates. In this manner, every prisoner experienced “in the hole”-like isolation with the only exception being their virtual interactions.
Most Sharebox users around the world took great care to maintain their privacy from onlookers while they were logged in for the simple vanity that immersion necessitated flailing one’s hands and legs about in the real world in a manner that was embarrassing. But Citadel inmates didn’t have the luxury of this privacy, and any passersby could look up from the sidewalk and observe them clumsily moving about. It became a tourist attraction. People came from around the country to take pictures of the prisoners and laugh at them.
The Citadel’s Sharebox integration was touted as state-of-the-art, a prototype for prisons across the country. Incarceration rates around the country were soaring, and construction on new prisons couldn’t keep up. But Sharebox had provided an answer: smaller real-life cells for inmates but with larger, more spacious virtual cells.
People didn’t need as much actual space anymore, a team of architects and doctors hired by the prison contractor testified before Congress. They didn’t need real space if they had the illusion of space. Inmates also no longer needed to socialize in real life either—that could lead to prisoner-on-prisoner violence and riots. Now they could socialize in a virtual prison, and all their conversations could be monitored by the AI. The prisoners could never truly organize, could never attack a guard, could never orchestrate an escape. And the doctors who went to Congress presented charts and findings and other research that somehow defended the claim that such conditions were healthy for the inmates—a “humanitarian victory” really, not the atrocity partisan groups called it. And politicians nodded along quite satisfied with the economic savings and brilliance of the Citadel’s innovation.
Inmates could be taken on virtual field trips, the architects also said. Indeed, demos were set up in the early days for prisoners’ avatars to be taken to replicate models of the Pyramids of Giza and the Sydney Opera House. Citadel prisoners would have the best resources in the world to rehabilitate themselves.
But none of that ended up being true. And after prisoners tried to strike against their treatment by not wearing their headsets, Sharesquare was asked to build a headset model that a user couldn’t remove. And so inmates wore them through the entirety of the day, even if they started screaming bloody murder, and the politicians did not seem to mind at that point. They had moved on.
The field trips lessened, and after a year, the only place the inmates were permitted to visit was the Patriot Palace with a special pass for good behavior. The rest of the time was spent in their cell inside a virtual copy of the Citadel. Here their only diversion was a program run by Sharebox AI called Tranquility. The software was a natural extension of the consumer-facing Sharebox experience; it combed all of a prisoner’s digital history to create tailor-made experiences. So when the AI detected an inmate was becoming unruly or difficult, an experience was conjured using, say, a memory of a belo
ved childhood beach day to help calm the prisoner down.
But over time, the novelty and potency of those experiences in the Tranquility program wore thin, and the AI was given license to use more aggressive immersions to facilitate good behavior. To punish a prisoner, for example, the AI could conjure footage from the wedding of an inmate’s ex-spouse or lover. It could create a clip of the inmate’s own child crying, alone in bed, for her incarcerated mother. The AI blurred the line between what was real and what was manipulated for the sake of controlling the inmate.
People started killing themselves. Others simply lost their minds. Folks on the outside were outraged when word leaked out, but it leaked out very slowly. And Washington didn’t do anything, and the activists who were left had a thousand other atrocities to rail against which left them fatigued of being outraged.
“There are many layers of cruel genius at work,” Gabriel sighed, speaking to the gathered conspirators. “One of the major innovations of the tower’s real-life construction and its digital replication in Sharebox is the use of a technology called ‘parallel hardwiring.’ You see, in many ways the building is a prison like anywhere else. It has guards and shatter-proof glass. It has multiple layers of gates that need to be passed before anyone can enter the prisoners’ living quarters. The building itself relies on sheer height to deter escape. Because even if a prisoner could get out, where would they go but down? But some of the most impenetrable security lies in the structure’s integration with its virtual counterpart, which houses the switches that keep real-life inmates locked in their cells that only a logged-in avatar counterpart, standing in the virtual version of the building, can manipulate.”
“And to make matters worse, they move the virtual Citadel’s location each day,” Blue Bird added, looking carefully at Darnell. “One day, the Citadel will be housed on a vast desert terrain. Another it will be housed on the side of a mountain. The Sharesquare infrastructure team follow complex protocols to keep the movements of the building secret.”
Charlotte looked at Blue Bird’s monitor, her determined face, her long curly hair, her full lips. Gabriel had told her that Blue Bird became radicalized when there was a shooting at her daughter’s middle school, and she had to watch her beautiful, happy girl become so traumatized by the experience that two years of rehabilitation—with psychiatrists, with therapy horses, and even a hypnotherapist—couldn’t seem to put the happy girl back together again. Blue Bird was a natural leader, compassionate and caring like a mom, tough like a mom. Gabriel met her in the resistance community six months prior, and something about the way Blue Bird talked—straightforward but gentle, optimistic but candid—seemed to make their odds of success feel less improbable.
“To protect the virtual Citadel, there are multiple firewalls and a team of virtual guards roaming the walls,” Blue Bird continued. “Together they comprise the parallel hardwire protection layer that must be subverted if we want to both unlock any prisoners and access the data cache rumored to be hidden in the basement.”
“The guard avatars wouldn’t have weapons though, right?” Darnell asked. “There are no weapons in Sharebox. They can just tap you under the chin and log you off and get your profile data.”
“Yes,” said Gabriel, “but in the case of the virtual Citadel, guards are additionally endowed with rifles that can delete their targets. Apparently Sharesquare Industries offered a host of other bizarre defense solutions to the Citadel’s architects—guard dogs that could fit in the palm of your hand and expand upon being thrown, self-propelled batons and freezing lasers. But the warden wanted his virtual guards to wield something familiar to them, so they were given something familiar. The one virtual bit of magic added to the guards’ rifles is that the bullets will never miss. Any targeted avatar viewed through the scope of the rifle when the trigger is pulled will be pursued by the bullet until it finds its mark.”
Darnell whistled. Even the masked Gor, televised on his small screen, seemed taken aback by this revelation and groaned.
“All this security is considered necessary because the virtual Citadel would need to be hacked at the same time as the real Citadel to ensure any prisoner could escape,” Blue Bird explained. “During a crisis, all of the prisoner doors and several of the key access gates in the real-life tower will seal themselves shut and can only be reopened by an avatar with the right credentials. It’s the first dual real-and-virtual-security facility in the world. That’s why Diana’s hacking alone doesn’t cut it, and neither would a conventional breakout. We need a two-prong attack on the parallel hardwired elements.”
So to break out Orion—or rather Michael, as Charlotte was growing more accustomed to referring to him—and Gabriel’s partner, Kyle, Charlotte and Gabriel spent several days with their heads down in discussion with Alexi and the band of virtual conspirators, Blue Bird, Kota, Koti and Gor. Central to all discussions was Diana. What elements of Citadel security could she breach remotely? What couldn’t she breach? What administrative tools and abilities could she procure for a virtual raiding party? What would happen when the raiding party reached the virtual Citadel’s master security console in the sub-basement?
Diana had comforting answers to some questions, severe limitations on answering others. Since her physical location had been tracked by Arlo’s security team in Malawi, she had ceased her hacking efforts into Sharebox and was cautious using her leveraged army of computing power to bear against the Citadel.
To identify the structure’s daily location on Sharebox, they determined Diana would have to risk exposing herself by hacking into a company roster of all major platform changes, of which the Citadel’s morning move would necessarily be listed under an encryption. Diana could also help slate a Sharesquare employee, like Darnell, onto a visitation roster in order to secure physical access into the building. And she would be on hand when a member of the virtual raiding party reached the firewalled building to unlock the doors ahead of them.
But other than that, Diana was largely an advisor. Sharebox protocols surrounding the Citadel required a human touch. Diana had useful gifts to give though. Before she had ceased breaking into administrator tools, she had uncovered a hidden user privilege granting augmented avatar strength. This was an important asset since all tools that could be used to cut or break into the virtual Citadel, things like axes or hammers, were digitally blocked from being brought within a half mile of the building. The avatar raiding party would have only their hands to breach digital doors or fight off guards.
Diana also hacked together something for them that was novel and a bit weird. To protect against the guards’ rifles that could never miss, Diana crafted an administrator privilege that would allow an individual to cast a decoy to stand between their avatar and an oncoming bullet. No one was quite sure what the effect would look like, and they could not practice using it for fear of tripping an internal Sharebox alarm.
Charlotte was a part of all these conversations, but she stepped away into the mansion’s back gardens often to smoke. She hadn’t had a cigarette in years, but all the party’s scheming was taking a toll on her nerves. Pretending she was tougher than she felt came naturally to her, but this plan meant her whole life would change forever.
She pursued Gabriel here from the ranch because a part of her believed Orion’s story. The sketch of that green-eyed child was burned in her mind, the facts no one else knew but Orion, the improbable sex. Certainly, she wanted to believe there was a near magical backdoor to fixing the world, to getting her old Hollywood life back—her friends, her chauffeured cars, her cocktail parties and glamorous travels. And though she hated to admit it to herself, there was a grudging fascination kindled inside her—not love, perhaps—but something that was romanced, something that made her feel breathless when she considered the idea that she and Orion were, in fact, soulmates. She found that he continued to fill her mind, every memory of their short time together feeling visceral and defining, lik
e brushstrokes of color swept against a backdrop of grey.
But now that Gabriel had recruited a team of experts for a plot against the Citadel, she found herself growing cautious again, calculating her options and uncertain of her role. When the final plan was drawn, it was no small effort to swallow her trepidation.
There would be three parties. Darnell was the only one who could enter the real Citadel. A preliminary security layer consisting of a receptionist with an employee badge reader precluded anyone else from joining him. Gabriel and Alexi would wait outside the building in a van and facilitate communications with Darnell and the rest of the group. The other team consisted of the virtual raiding party led by Blue Bird. This included Koti, Kota, Gor and Charlotte. Charlotte hadn’t logged into Sharebox in years, and Blue Bird argued her lack of experience as an avatar was a liability. But ultimately her misgivings were overruled by Gabriel, and Charlotte was permitted to join.
The raiding party would penetrate the virtual Citadel, unlocking the parallel hardwire hurdles ahead of Darnell so he could move through the real-life counterpart and reach the prison living quarters. Blue Bird would lead her team into the sub-basement to the Citadel’s master security console, which Diana would then be able to interface with using a small device, like an arrowhead, that Blue Bird would carry.
No one was quite sure what to expect inside the sub-basement, but Diana seemed to think it would be protected by another layer of security. The area surrounding the master security console at the bottom of the Citadel was a dead zone—a location in Sharebox where information could only be transmitted in or out by being manually carried by an avatar.
To protect Diana’s physical location during the attack, as her device was vulnerable to tracking while attacking the encryption of Sharebox, Gabriel proposed strapping her to a drone and sailing her off towards the sea. It felt reckless to so freely part with her hardwired device in the event the drone fell into the water, but a backup copy of Diana would remain accessible in the cloud.
The Echo Chamber Page 19
