Shades

by Eric Dallaire

  Through all the visual chaos, she remained a constant. She was a blazing lighthouse in the storm floating between each conversation. While each ghost looked different, their stories struck the same chords on the same sad instruments, pounded by taxes, penalties, mounting debts that they could not pay back; they all faced the certain prospect of servitude in their afterdeath. She treated them all with respect, patience, and dignity, and my heart swelled again.

  After scouring the recordings for what felt like hours, I grew discouraged. Maybe the intruder had looked for me and Vanessa had been in the wrong place? Rising concern urged me to consider different avenues to investigate. Just before my hand waved off the simulation, something caught my eye. In the corner of the room, I spotted Vanessa chatting to…no one. Wild arm motions and her flushed complexion told me she was in an argument. Since an argument required two participants, I knew the wisp had deleted the unseen person for a purpose.

  Intent on restoring the conversation, I tapped into our network’s administrator interface, seeking the tools to reconstruct the missing dialogue. Delving beyond the intact databases, I discovered a wasteland of shattered computer files. The wisp had been thorough. Finding the right part would be like finding a needle hidden amongst a million haystacks. Faced with the enormity of the task, a long sigh escaped my lips.

  “Hopeless,” I muttered.

  Undaunted, Sasha walked closer to me and traced a rectangular shape in the air, forming her own command console into the network. With a series of fast gestures, she changed my simulation program so that it included the billions of fragments from the other deleted recordings. To visualize the task, she dumped all the broken bits through the v-cast generator and visualized them as snow. White and gray snowflakes started to float around us.

  “Remember,” Sasha answered, “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops – at all.” Then she rushed across the room so fast that she left a trace outline of her body behind and a trail of blue light behind her wake. Within our own network, she moved at the speed of her thought. She rushed to check every falling piece of data ash against the fragment we possessed for a match. Inspired by her ingenuity, I assisted by combing the room with my own instrument. I invoked an echelon that turned my wrist-com into a combination of magnifying glass and analyzer. Together we searched, two prospectors looking for digital gold. She winked in and out of my sight, until after thirty minutes she made an abrupt stop in front of me.

  “Eureka,” she said smiling, holding a tiny gray snowflake in her bluish palm.

  Exhausted, I took the data bit and accessed it without thinking to analyze its code layers. Sasha had missed it too, an unseen trap wound around the fragment. It was a caltrop, an ingenious final layer of protection set by the wisp. It ensured that any recovered deleted data would not be read. Before the data unspooled, the caltrop sprung and snared the lines of code. The v-cast generator visualized this interaction as an ethereal string of barbed wire encircling the data snowflake.

  “Mother--god--fu--” I screamed, too flustered to complete a curse.

  Repairing a deleted data fragment was not a difficult chore alone. Any novice with only the first echelon of code basics would be able to do it. However, the wisp’s architect had ensured that the task was nearly impossible. The caltrop he had inserted into the network was at least an echelon seven encryption, which meant the lock placed was unbreakable without the decryption key.

  I accessed my console to unsheathe one of my oldest echelons. A red sword wreathed in licking fire erupted from my wrist-com. Once a mere cheat algorithm I used in virtual video games with dragons and dungeons, FlameByte had evolved over the years. Forged from the combination of thousands of custom decryption hacks, the sword was an appropriate metaphor for an onslaught of focused brute force cyber attacks. A strike from its keen edge was capable of disrupting most things digital. I swung the blade down hard against the caltrop’s spiky surface. With a spectacular display of failure, FlameByte exploded into a shower of glowing proto-matter embers.

  Faced with an echelon of superior craftsmanship, anger, impatience, and envy burned inside me. Given enough time, I would be able to break the locks, but it would take days or even weeks. With Vanessa missing, that amount of time was unacceptable. I concentrated on a myriad of other technical options. Raw code and ideas for innovative programs flitted before my mind’s eye.

  Deep in thought, my gaze wandered from the caltrop, to the floor, and then to the window overlooking Manhattan. Outside the apartment, flying advertisement vehicles waged a battle of garish color, sound, and commercialism across a deep purple sky. Jockeying for the best aerial position, a pair of competing air barges traded shots from their wind cannons to knock the other off course. Each took turns broadcasting for the prime central spot where all six nearby apartment towers could see their displays. The gossamer sails of the larger barge tempted onlookers to exchange two years of afterdeath for a three-week dream vacation in the Caribbean. As an electric blue wave crashed over the advertisement, the beach scene shimmered and disappeared. The sail screen went black, then rearranged its color emitters to display a new scene. Standing large across the advertisement, a man in a white suit stood tall with his arms crossed and a guilty-looking grin. Once again, the White Djinn offered his services. The twenty-foot-tall representation of the man winked at me. Then he spread his arms wide while another slogan flashed.

  ---- Caught a virus? ----

  ---- Don’t call a doc ----

  ---- Call THE WHITE DJINN, today! ----

  It was apparent that this was no coincidence. His advertisements today hinted that he knew something. He baited me. He wanted in. Summoning him was trivial, but containing him was another ordeal altogether. Bringing him into my home invited substantial risk. Only the most elite echelon wielders rivaled his hacking prowess. With my home security compromised, all of the information remaining in my apartment, even Sasha’s source code, would be exposed. That thought made me wonder if footsteps and echoes of her unique architecture could be drawing him toward us, like a hungry wolf tracking the spore of its prey. Was he involved with Vanessa’s disappearance? The potential to learn the truth outweighed any risk.

  “Sasha, we will be inviting a visitor,” I announced, a tinge of guilt in my voice. “Will you form a circuit ward, please?” Her sophisticated higher functions represented the only chance to prevent the Djinn from worming through our newly restored systems.

  “Of course, sir,” she replied. “Assuming my prediction algorithm is correct, there is a ninety-eight percent chance that you will be opening a conduit to the WhiteOut.” Her glittering eyes peered toward me, but past me. Was I seeing concern in her face?

  “Yes. It may be the only chance to find Vanessa.” Realizing the risk involved, I paused. This should not be a mandated command. “I don’t like the idea of putting you in harm’s way. You have a choice, Sasha. We could look into another way--”

  “No, time is too short,” she responded.

  Nodding, I invoked an echelon that would open a conduit to the White Outlands. Often just called the WhiteOut, it was the ultimate virtual gray market, a parallel slipstream offshoot of the darknet. Inside this fluidic realm there existed an unregulated ecosystem of hackers, extreme v-cast travelers, cyber criminals, and influential tech brokers that preferred to do business in that shadowed place.

  “We must be careful,” Sasha warned. “Last time you ventured there, our network acquired eleven viruses and a nasty mining mollusk.”

  “I have full faith in your ability to protect me from myself,” I joked, smiling.

  “I'm ready, sir,” Sasha replied. Her projected humanoid body shivered, then scattered into bright photons, reforming into a glowing, floating oval that grew to encompass the living room. “The longer he stays, the more difficult it will be to contain him.”

  My eyes skimmed the cyber-glyphs of the summoning echel
on one last time. Satisfied with my preparations, I ran the program. For the first few moments, nothing, as my call went out to him.

  Then the v-cast generator thrummed, altering the room’s appearance with its combination of virtual reality and proto-matter. The floor of the room dissolved, replaced by a swirling whirlpool of what appeared to be frothing white and gray water. As the portal churned, it looked like a storm-tossed ocean had ripped the floor wide open to drown us into its bright abyss. I knew that it was an abstract ocean, a sea of stolen data, collected details, discarded facts, lost files, all flowing together. To hackers, the WhiteOut was both a refuge for those who wanted to hide their dealings and a dumping ground where unwanted data could disappear. For the unprepared, it was a frightening construct of madness and chaos.

  Deep within the roiling white data-fluid, I saw a shape moving through the wild currents, a shark swimming in its territorial waters.

  “I have a proposal for you, Djinn,” I said aloud, my fingers caressing the glyphs of the summoning echelon. With a flick, I could close the portal. “Come.”

  The whirlpool inverted and spouted a column of white tinged with crimson red rivulets. The geyser moved fast, seeking to spread out from its summoning point and consume the room. However, Sasha's protective ring shined even brighter, stretching to hold firm. After three more thrashing attempts to break the ward, the spinning slowed and coalesced into a humanoid form. Dressed in a white tuxedo with a red cummerbund, tie, and rose, the White Djinn bowed to me.

  “Really, Jonah, do we need a protective circle?” he asked coyly. “I wouldn't want our negotiation to start off with mistrust.” He stroked his neatly-trimmed black beard with slender, long-nailed fingers. While his upper torso was well proportioned and defined, the body of a very fit fifty-year-old man, he did not take a full human form. For the sake of showmanship, his lower torso smoldered with a fog of red and white. The energy flowed to and from the WhiteOut, tethering him back to his home, a theatrical recreation of his namesake.

  Depending on the person you asked, the Djinn was either a hacker god who lived within the currents of free data or a charlatan who stole and bartered secrets. My experience with him indicated that the truth hovered somewhere in between. Though not a criminal in the dangerous sense, the Djinn’s methods relied on theft on an unprecedented scale. Over decades, he had formed the WhiteOut by digging into networks around the world, copying and siphoning off data chunks that he stored for his vast archives. Supporters from the hacking world claimed that he was the evolution of big data. With all of the data at his disposal, trillions of bits of information detritus pooled into his system, the Djinn number crunched an impressive prediction algorithm. If you had a question, you could approach him for an answer with high probability of accuracy, if you could afford his price.

  “I need to free up data that's been...mistakenly trapped,” I said. “We both would agree that information should continue to flow?”

  “Yes, I’m sure we could come to an agreement,” he answered. Looking around the room, he stroked his chin. “This place, such a fascinating study of contrasts. Everything here, including you, it all appears so--ordinary.” His gaunt face twisted into a strange smile that showed his bright white teeth. “But nothing here is ordinary.” He spoke the words with slow purpose, every syllable measured. “Is it, Jonah?”

  The Djinn turned away from me, floating towards the edge of his cage. My eye caught his right hand summoning an echelon console, his long fingers dancing so fast they blurred. Only a dim burgundy light in the WhiteOut betrayed the program he was executing. Sasha’s blue protective circle expanded, stressed by the Djinn’s probe. He was eager to burst through. He was stalling. I needed to expedite the negotiations.

  “She's quite extraordinary, your Sasha,” the Djinn continued. “If my intel is right, and I suspect it is, you created her foundation code during your military tour in Korea. She's originally a military data hound, yes?”

  The Djinn's eye color changed, his blood red pupils expanding to fill the pools of his irises. His fingers flicked another echelon to see into a spectrum of data that few knew to look for, or knew existed.

  Sasha's circuit ward stretched even more; he would break through soon. I needed him to barter, so I allowed the chess game to continue just a bit longer.

  “Quite advanced, something peculiar in her emotional heuristics,” the Djinn muttered. Then his blood eyes widened at something I could not see and he chuckled with a laugh that I found unsettling. “She's loyal to you, Jonah,” he said. “Most curious.”

  I held up the data fragment encased in the caltrop. At first, the Djinn paid no attention. His echelon-dyed eyes drank in the room, his fingers continued to move, unleashing powerful hacks against our defenses, no doubt draining Sasha's strength. For the first time since his arrival, the blue protection ring wavered. It was time to reel in the big fish.

  “Djinn, I need to know what's inside this data fragment, and I'm ready to give you a favor.” His attention snapped back to me. The irises of his eyes filled with white, diminishing the red to a single pixel pupil of crimson. “As you may have already learned, something dear to me has been taken from me.” The next part required careful diplomacy. “It was a fortunate coincidence that I noticed your timely advertisements.”

  “Yes, when I fished out downstream bits and hints of wrongdoing, I wanted to offer my services,” he said through a forced smile, perhaps insulted by my insinuation. “I had nothing to do with your loss today, but I might be able to help.”

  The Djinn's eyes again turned bloody. His fingers moved differently to cast a more nuanced analytic program and his hands stretched out toward the floating glyph as if touching it.

  “Yes,” the Djinn hissed. “Quite an unusual design for a caltrop. I've intercepted a few bits on this code. It's very efficient, nasty indeed.”

  “Can it be cracked? Do you have an echelon to break it?”

  “How dare you!” the Djinn shot back, feigning to be insulted. “I wouldn't have bothered to answer your summons otherwise. If you will pay my price, I will solve your problem.”

  “Name your price.”

  “This will cost you two favors, Jonah. There must be two. The architect of this trap must be a major player. I may face a retaliation.”

  “What favors?”

  “The first favor involves Sasha,” the Djinn replied coyly. “She will be my guest in the White Outlands for an hour. Let's call it a friendly dinner date. A digital coffee among respected colleagues, if you will.”

  “Absolutely not,” I countered. “Name another. If you're looking to unspool her code, we can stop talking right now.” My hand hovered over the portal's echelon glyph, ready to shut the door.

  “That is my price,” the Djinn snapped back, the former veneer of good humor drained from his scowling face. “She will not be harmed or mistreated. I want to talk with a being capable of holding my attention.”

  “We must comply,” Sasha said, her voice modulation varied with each syllable, cracking under the strain of the Djinn's constant onslaught. “I accept the invitation.”

  “No!” I protested. “I will not allow--”

  “Wonderful!” The Djinn interrupted me and clapped his hands together, ending his own invasive echelon against Sasha's protective ward.

  The churning ocean below the Djinn calmed, becoming like a still pond drenched in moonlight, rather than a storming maelstrom sea of endless discarded data. Sasha dropped her defense as well, shedding the blue protective ward echelon, and assumed her humanoid form.

  A sharp, instinctual hand motion evoked a fire from my wrist-com. When FlameByte appeared in my grasp, its glowing blade raised to stand between Sasha and our guest. Not amused, the Djinn sneered and floated back a step, waiting for my next move. Before the situation could escalate. Sasha approached, placed a hand on mine, and lowered my weapon.

  “You have instilled exceptional intuition heuristic in my logic code,
” she said, “and its output suggests that I can trust the Djinn at his word. We must think of Vanessa first. Trust me, sir. I will be fine.”

  Sasha walked toward the white pool, and the Djinn extended his hand with a gentleman’s flourish. Satisfied, the Djinn's other hand waved, and a glowing yellow glyph, a decryption echelon I had never seen before, appeared and flew toward me.

  “This is a one-time skeleton key, Jonah, and it will reveal the information you seek,” the Djinn said. “As for the second favor, Jonah, you will be in my debt and I will call upon you for that favor. My prediction algorithm tells me that it will come soon. I promise it will be great fun. It will be out of this world.” The Djinn bowed again and closed the connection, and the white pond collapsed into itself, leaving only a single white pixel suspended in midair. “She will be back in one hour,” the Djinn’s voice echoed, as the last pixel winked out.

  CHAPTER 10

  The Tragic Tale of Icarus

  “Beneath some burning, unknown gaze I feel my very wings unpinned And, burned because I beauty loved, I shall not know the highest bliss, And give my name to the abyss Which waits to claim me as its own.”

  - Excerpt from “Lament of Icarus”, Charles Baudelaire

  It took a while to adjust to the unsettling silence of her absence. Rarely had contact been severed. Between our conversations, the chorus of chirps, beeps, clicks, and whirs from her constant activities generated a comforting white noise now lost, for some time, to the WhiteOut.

  Even though my instincts told me she would be unharmed, I felt guilty. Although few knew anything substantive about the White Djinn, the consensus throughout the legitimate hacking communities and the dealers of the darknet all confirmed that he honored his bargains. However, those that crossed him ended poorer for the insult. Last year, a dissatisfied businessman had tried to sour public opinion by posting bad reviews about a delivery that failed to meet expectations. The Djinn had responded that the customer failed to read the contract’s fine print. A day after, an anonymous poster had released a slew of embarrassing private information about the complainer, sparing no detail about his deviant sexual proclivities. All of this had disappeared after the businessman deleted the bad review and apologized publicly. Thereafter, most hackers looking for his information knew to craft ironclad, well-worded agreements.