Immortal

by Nick M Lloyd

  ‘What’s new?’ asked Sam. She had been there once the previous year for a large MIDAS install, and she knew the basic layout. There were five zones: Control, Storage, Assembly, Launch, and Harbour; lots of warehouses, fences, roads …

  ‘New temporary buildings going up all over the place,’ said Tim. ‘And Tosh sends his regards.’

  Sam liked Tosh; he ran security for SpaceOp. ‘Cool. Send them right back at him. What else is new?’

  ‘I’m not sure if I should say this but they do seem to be preparing for plutonium. There’s a place here they’re calling the Hot Zone – massive razor wire fences and security guards in hazmat suits.’

  ‘Has any arrived yet?’

  ‘Everyone here says no,’ replied Tim. ‘And the official position is that it may never arrive … hold on.’

  Sam waited on the end of the phone.

  A minute ticked by.

  Tim was back. ‘Sorry Sam, MacKenzie’s personal bodyguard Juan just arrived to tell me they’re ready for the encryption reset. I have to go up to MacKenzie’s desk to run the workstation piece. You set your end running.’

  Sam hung up and kicked off the data encryption scripts.

  Two minutes later, Tim texted.

  Starting my end now.

  Tim initiated the scripts to link MacKenzie’s workstation with the existing MIDAS Production system, and then pointed them both at the Butler Street encryption servers.

  At the right time, Sam keyed in her authorisation key from Butler Street.

  It was all over in a few minutes.

  ‘All good with you?’ asked Tim.

  ‘Sure,’ said Sam. ‘You?’

  ‘Fine here,’ said Tim.

  ‘Come back safe,’ said Sam. ‘Come back soon.’

  ‘I’ll visit my dad later today,’ said Tim. ‘And then Sunday I’ll be back in London.’

  ‘Butler Street gossip at five-ish Sunday afternoon?’ asked Sam.

  ‘It’s a date,’ said Tim.

  ‘Well, if it is,’ said Sam, trying to keep her voice light, ‘I won’t tell Charlie about it.’

  Naughty girl…

  Sam hung up and turned back to … the encryption logs … there was an issue.

  --------

  Sam’s Flat, Later that Evening

  Sam returned to her flat with a predicament. The timestamps returned with the encryption key exchange indicated trouble.

  There was no problem with the actual reset – MacKenzie now had a fully cleaned MIDAS system in Anglesey, just as he wanted. The issue was the exact values of the timestamps.

  05:32:12.347349

  05:32:12.461463

  The millisecond-microsecond elements of each timestamp had been replaced with three-digit twin primes. The chances of that happening randomly were astronomically high.

  My code …

  Unbeknown to Tim, Sam had hacked in guerrilla code to the MIDAS application. It checked the value of the flag that prohibited data aggregation for single individuals – the ‘n greater than 5’ setting. As it had to be a tiny amount of code, it didn’t review when the settings changed, or what individuals were targeted.

  It just identified the crime.

  Obviously, given the Ankor situation, Sam could come up with hundreds of scenarios in which MacKenzie was targeting individuals for politically and morally positive reasons.

  Should I tell Tim?

  She looked around at the flat, searching for inspiration. She couldn’t tell Tim. He’d remove the code to protect their investment.

  No. This was a red line. However well-intentioned MacKenzie’s reasons may be – if they were well-intentioned at all – they led to data privacy oblivion where people’s deepest secrets were identified and sold.

  Her mobile rang.

  Fuck!

  She’d left it on the kitchen table when she’d dumped her stuff.

  She stood up a little too fast. A jolt of pain deep in her left side punished her.

  Taking a deep breath to stabilise the pain, Sam hobbled to the table.

  Francis MacKenzie

  Double fuck!

  For a moment, she considered not answering.

  Then she thought better of it. ‘Hello, Mr MacKenzie.’

  ‘Sam. Are you well?’

  ‘Passable, thank you. Today appears to be a good day.’ Sam never complained about her pain, but she liked people to understand that all was not always sweetness and light. ‘What can I do to help?’

  MacKenzie paused. ‘I wanted to call you to thank you for doing the security reset.’

  Really?

  Although MacKenzie did sometimes thank people for their efforts, this did not feel like one of those occasions.

  ‘That’s kind of you,’ said Sam, seeing an opening. ‘Are you able to use MIDAS to help the Ankor effort?’

  ‘It’s useful in all sorts of ways, Sam,’ said MacKenzie.

  No immediate confession then …

  She waited. There would be another reason for the call. It was not unprecedented. MacKenzie checked up on her from time to time.

  In the first pseudo-personal call she’d got from him, twelve months ago, MacKenzie had asked her opinion about all sorts of aspects of MIDAS development … and specifically asked her not to mention it to Tim. At the time, thinking it was a one-off, she hadn’t said anything to Tim. A few months later she’d got another call … and she hadn’t told Tim about that one, either. Another call followed a month after that.

  Now, she couldn’t tell Tim.

  More pertinently, most of the questions in the last few months had not been about MIDAS – they’d been about Tim. Sam got the impression that MacKenzie couldn’t quite read him. In all cases, Sam simply ensured MacKenzie got rosy views whilst occasionally slipping in a tiny criticism for the sake of balance.

  She also used the call to promote her own agenda, trying to cement MacKenzie’s support for enhanced data privacy. He’d always been very receptive about cyber security to avoid data loss … but was notably less forthcoming on protecting individuals’ identities.

  Thinking for a few seconds to frame a question, Sam reran it in her head a few times to ensure it was light enough to avoid drawing suspicion. ‘With the Ankor arrival imminent,’ she said, ‘are you going to change the focus and format of the data aggregation?’

  A suitably open-ended question. MacKenzie knew how important ‘n>5’ was to Sam, and so if he had changed the flag and wanted to explain it to her then she’d given him the opening.

  ‘Given my role in SpaceOp, I am asking respondents about the Ankor,’ said MacKenzie. ‘Data aggregation remains at group levels.’

  Sam knew he was lying, but was no closer to determining why, and she couldn’t dig any further without causing suspicion.

  ‘How’s Charlie doing?’ asked MacKenzie. ‘Not too stressed?’

  Charlie?

  Normally, MacKenzie asked about Tim.

  ‘I haven’t noticed any significant difference,’ said Sam. Not quite true. Charlie’s meditation – and chanting – sessions were now lasting an hour, up from twenty minutes a few months previously. ‘He’s excited.’

  ‘I suspect he is,’ said MacKenzie, with a tone in his voice Sam couldn’t place.

  ‘What do you think of the Ankor?’ asked Sam. The prime minister’s twice-daily briefings were always careful not to be critical of the Ankor – to the extent of being apologetic about their dogmatic communications approach.

  ‘I trust them absolutely.’

  ‘What are the surveys saying?’

  ‘The wisdom of crowds … that’s classified information, Sam,’ said MacKenzie. ‘But I can say that people are not as worried as the press make out.’

  ‘Understood,’ said Sam.

  ‘With regards to Charlie, I would feel responsible if he cracked. I know I’m putting him under some strain,’ said MacKenzie. ‘Please text me if you see anything unusual.’

  Sam agreed and they both hung up.

  Unusual abou
t Charlie?

  Returning to the sofa, she thought about it. He was still attentive and loving when he put his mind to it. But he had been very distracted over the previous six months, and that had led to a drop off in physical intimacy … but that seemed to suit them both fine.

  --------

  Sam’s Flat, Sunday 21st April

  ‘So, what’s up?’ asked Sam, as Charlie entered the flat with a bag full of groceries.

  ‘How do you mean?’ he said, loading up the fridge with the food he’d brought: salmon fillets, Brazil nuts, and brown rice.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Sam. ‘You seem tense.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Charlie took a breath and his face cleared. ‘I’m fine. I haven’t done my meditation today, that’s all.’

  Sam smiled. ‘What’s the latest with MacKenzie? When’s he launching?’

  ‘I haven’t seen anything of Francis for a few days,’ said Charlie. ‘He’s been in Anglesey since Thursday. I hope to catch him tomorrow, before the meeting with the prime minister. Tim will know the latest.’

  ‘Tim’s visiting his dad,’ said Sam. ‘Is MedOp still pushing forward?’

  ‘It’s being slowed,’ said Charlie, ‘but Francis is adamant it’s not stopping.’

  ‘Fancy a little OrcLore?’ asked Sam, nodding towards the games console.

  ‘You go ahead,’ said Charlie. ‘I’ll make lunch.’

  Levering herself up from the kitchen table and reaching for her crutches, Sam hobbled over to her gaming chair in the living room. Every third day was a crutches day and the pain was significant, but it was important to keep fully vertical periodically.

  Launching OrcLore, Sam selected her dwarven pit-fighter. ‘Is it too easy for you now you’ve learnt from the best?’

  In the year after they’d started seeing each other, Charlie had played with her quite a lot. In the last few months he hadn’t played once.

  Well, not with her, anyway. Sam opened the OrcLore Guild screen and checked Charlie’s main character: Edward Mariner the Half-Elven Pathfinder. It was fortieth level and had awesome gear. Charlie was obviously still playing.

  ‘Maybe you’re embarrassed the guards are too dangerous,’ she said.

  ‘Kind of you to say,’ said Charlie, with a smile. ‘OrcLore does use some of my code.’

  In fact, the NPCs in OrcLore were not the most complex in the gaming world. OrcLore guards obeyed clear rules. If you shot at them, they hid, or shot back, or both. They used physical cover – mostly walls and trees – but their choices were effectively hard coded based on their health status and their weapon.

  ‘You know,’ said Charlie taking a few steps from the kitchen. ‘My most recent NPCs play dead and they can choose to pretend to swap sides.’

  ‘Very cool,’ said Sam, working through the opening screens of the game.

  ‘In a few years, I’m sure a wounded guard could start begging for mercy, or telling you he or she had children.’

  Sam paused the game. ‘Maybe even to the extent the guard didn’t know it wasn’t a real person? Maybe it would become aware of us out here?’

  Again, Charlie stepped into the doorway between the living room and the kitchen. ‘Maybe if we spoke to them, they’d say they were the real ones and we’re the simulation.’

  ‘Zhuangzi,’ said Sam, ‘the Chinese philosopher …’

  ‘Zhuang Zhou,’ said Charlie, using the more formal name. ‘He said that one night he dreamt of being a butterfly, but it was so real that in the morning he wondered if—’

  Sam cut him off. ‘He was a butterfly dreaming of being a man.’

  ‘A valid line of investigation.’

  Sam switched subjects, hoping Charlie’s defences were down. ‘Is MacKenzie still doing the individual data protection?’

  Charlie didn’t look around. ‘As far as I know. Why?’

  ‘I worry that he’ll use the Ankor emergency as a reason to go back on his promise not to sell individual data.’

  ‘He didn’t promise,’ said Charlie. ‘MedOp costs money.’

  ‘Isn’t he making enough with the aggregated data?’

  ‘Plenty,’ said Charlie.

  A lie? Or is Charlie also deceived?

  She returned to her game.

  Charlie brought the food through to the living room. ‘When is your Triple-Bs game?’

  ‘A couple of hours,’ said Sam, putting her gaming controller aside. ‘I’ll go after lunch.’

  Just as Charlie put the plates of food down, his phone rang. Indicating for Sam to start eating, Charlie went back to the kitchen.

  Sam watched through the doorway. The conversation looked terse. Charlie spoke in hushed whispers and absentmindedly rubbed the bandage on his lower arm, now visible as his sleeve had ridden up. It had to be MacKenzie.

  Sam had queried it at the time and been brushed away.

  A scratch, nothing more ...

  Sam ate as Charlie’s phone conversation dragged on.

  Eventually Charlie hung up. He grabbed his coat immediately and headed for the door. ‘I have to go. Sorry.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ said Sam, used to Charlie’s sudden departures.

  Five minutes later, lunch eaten and cleared away, Sam left the flat herself – off to her Triple-Bs gaming match.

  Her mind racing as she entered The Den, Sam winked at Barney, the owner.

  ‘You’re on in twenty minutes, Sam,’ said Barney. ‘The others are already set up.’

  Maybe just a quick look then …

  ‘I just need to cover a few things,’ said Sam, finding an empty booth. ‘Please tell them I’ll be right over.’

  ‘Okay.’

  As she settled in, Sam reviewed her hastily made plan. She wasn’t being stupid. She could do this quickly. Perhaps not as easily as Tim, but it wasn’t a difficult hack and she was responsible for monitoring how MacKenzie was using MIDAS.

  Our technology!

  The Den was a good choice; it had IP scramblers that routed via the Baltic states. Any intrusion would never be traced back here.

  Time to hack.

  The computer had a separate webcam. Sam turned it to face the wall.

  Sam knew the IP address of the MIDAS encryption server by heart – 1.32.256.14. She opened a command window and logged in using dummy admin credentials she’d created earlier in the year for just such an eventuality.

  The encryption server believed it was talking to the real MIDAS Production Anglesey system and assigned Sam a valid key to access MacKenzie’s workstation in Park Royal.

  Next, mimicking a system package loss, Sam tricked the workstation into resending the last set of BinCube creation parameters.

  MIDAS was being instructed to create files indexed on individual names.

  Bastard.

  Unfortunately, all Sam could see were the current system parameters for the BinCube creation; she couldn’t tell how long the individual setting had been active.

  It could be months … or it could be the first one.

  Sam checked additional parameters. She would have been mollified if they had shown MacKenzie was only creating individual information packs for the top fifty most influential people.

  Not the case – it was tens of thousands of individuals.

  Strange…

  A different set of parameters appeared to be altering the standard output file structure. Sam was too smart to write it down, but she memorised the settings.

  Next, she sent a command instructing the workstation to resend the latest survey questions; she wanted to know what people were being coerced into telling MacKenzie.

  A few seconds ticked by.

  Extreme secrecy surrounded the contents of the surveys. Every MedOp participant signed a punitive non-disclosure agreement, and the internet was constantly monitored for anyone transgressing. Immediately after the MedOp launch, with the prevailing open data-sharing environment, it had been impossible to stop survey questions leaking onto the web: photo images, blogs, allusions in opinion
pieces.

  MacKenzie had come down hard. Within a week, executives and board members of internet service providers were being removed from MedOp patient waiting lists.

  Within a month of that, survey questions were nowhere to be seen; neither posted, nor discussed. The ISPs and physical network companies had initiated significant additional security features including monitoring, and blocking, transmissions from the so-called Dark Web rather than letting them cross their infrastructure.

  Sam breathed out. Her screen filled with free text. Triple checking no-one could see over her shoulder, Sam started to read.

  It was a survey sent out in the last twelve hours.

  Do you think Ankor are friendly?

  Do you trust the Ankor to defend us from the gamma ray burst?

  Do you accept the Ankor travelled here faster than the speed of light?

  Do you trust Francis MacKenzie to succeed at SpaceOp?

  Do you expect to contribute materials and effort to Earth’s defence?

  Were the deaths of the poisoned heroin addicts tragic or acceptable?

  Her eyes returned to the list. There were many more survey questions, but all covered aspects of the Ankor or humanity’s expected response to the situation.

  A chair scraped across the floor behind her.

  She turned.

  It was simply a kid moving a chair.

  Nothing more.

  Bastard.

  With a long list of actions in her head, Sam joined her gaming team.

  CHAPTER 8

  Park Royal Estates, West London, Monday 15th April

  Sitting down at his desk, having just arrived back from yet another COBRA session, MacKenzie was content. When he’d told the COBRA meeting that the Ankor had given explicit orders to prepare for plutonium – and he’d started already – Nadia Peterson had tried to make him squirm, saying that he was mindlessly obeying the Ankor and that Britain would never send plutonium into space. The prime minister had not backed her up and agreed MacKenzie could continue to prepare Anglesey to process plutonium.

  Subject to an overriding condition that the British army will oversee any physical plutonium.

  It did not go entirely his way; the prime minister had challenged him on the data volumes being sent into Anglesey.

  MacKenzie had attempted to look confused, and told them it was normal MedOp business that was continuing as before. Furthermore, he’d told them that out of public duty, he’d set up the most recent surveys to focus on the country’s perception of the Ankor; and that he had every intention of sharing the results with COBRA.