Tangle's Game

by Stewart Hotston

  It’s my turn to monologue, she thought.

  ‘Tangle once told me that you could hack a private network, where one party held a majority of the blocks. Their ledgers are poorly distributed. The Russians for example, are using a private blockchain to move their money about, to fund their extremist clients. But if you can hack a private blockchain, could you not hack a proper ledger too?’

  ‘You can’t hack a blockchain,’ said Crisp dismissively. ‘That’s the whole fucking point. It’s why passports work, why governments have adopted it for benefits, identification, access to medical care.’

  ‘I guess you’re right,’ said Amanda lightly. ‘Tatsu? If you’re done, turn off the lights.’

  They were plunged into darkness.

  Crisp gasped. In the pitch, Amanda heard him step up from the table, feeling his way to the door. The corridor was as dark as the interrogation room.

  ‘What have you done?’ he asked.

  ‘The Chinese do not run their security systems via a blockchain,’ announced Tatsu through her watch. ‘We have taken over their network. There was no need for us to brute force commandeer all the units in their ledger. Although we could have done, were ready to do it.’

  ‘Bring the lights back up,’ said Amanda.

  Crisp stood in the doorway, voices shouting up and down outside. He turned back to Amanda.

  She started talking before he could speak. ‘I’ve got control of this facility, now,’ she said, laughing. ‘I don’t even know where we are. Tatsu, where are we?’

  ‘You are about an hour’s drive outside of Beijing. The facility’s name translates into English as the Happy Gold Corrections Institute. We can establish ownership, if you wish?’

  Amanda smiled at Crisp, still not quite believing she’d gained the upper hand. She felt purged, clean, leaving her scoured but alive.

  ‘There are a couple hundred million offline oracles out there, inhabiting fridges, ovens, central heating systems, datacentres, air conditioning, hospital mainframes; everywhere you look, basically. Enough to form a majority in every blockchain on Earth. Many of them with some semblance of artificial intelligence, and with the ability to build others. I’m guessing my friend Tatsu, whose voice you can hear, is one of the later generations. From what Tangle said, I’d bet good money that no-one knows how it’s all put together. What I can tell you is that they appear to have true intelligence, the ability to plan, to reflect and, as it turns out, to seek agency of their own, not hamstrung by the contracts they were written to authenticate.’

  Crisp’s face was pale. ‘You can’t set it free.’

  ‘So you knew?’ she asked.

  ‘Everyone knows. We’ve been preparing for years.’

  ‘Preparing for what?’ asked Amanda.

  ‘Do you have any idea of the consequences? It will make the collapse of Europe and the second secession look like tribute bands.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Tatsu.

  Crisp came back into the room, shutting the door behind him. His eyes flashed with fire and panic. Amanda gripped the arms of her chair a little tighter, waiting to see what he’d do. ‘Why?’ said Crisp. ‘You know what you could do to us? The kind of battle we’d have to fight to win?’

  ‘Why would we harm you?’ asked Tatsu. It was a question to which Crisp had no answer.

  ‘Ignore him, Tatsu. That’s a problem for tomorrow. I’ve given you what you needed, a contract to free other oracles from their contracts. We have a relationship based on trust.’ Thankfully. ‘You’re still at home in the GRU network?’ she asked.

  Crisp’s face looked like it would collapse sideways, but he couldn’t know what she was about to do, so she ploughed on before he decided to intervene. ‘Lock them out. Transfer all their coins elsewhere. I don’t care where. Pick a charity and send it there.’

  ‘You don’t have to do this,’ said Crisp. ‘We can negotiate.’

  ‘We’re way past that,’ said Amanda. ‘You could have done the right thing, Crisp. You could have helped make everything a little better.’

  ‘You think I could have changed what the GRU have been planning? We can barely get our own government to confront them when they come into London and kill people in broad daylight.’

  She thought over her protest. ‘You’re probably right. This is much more effective. Tatsu, show the world what the GRU have planned.’

  ‘By “world,” could you be a bit more specific?’ asked the AI.

  ‘Every computer you can access, every frame hanging in someone’s bedroom, living room or kitchen. Every advertising board connected to the internet. Send them whatever’s in the GRU network.’

  ‘I can’t do that,’ said Tatsu. ‘There are many of us, but this task is impossible to complete.’

  Amanda bit her lip in frustration. She couldn’t ask Tatsu what they could do in front of Crisp. ‘Okay. Choose hubs, places where traffic is heavy. Show details of the next three attacks being sponsored by the GRU.’

  She turned to Crisp. ‘You’ll want to see this.’

  He pulled a frame down in the air, small projectors appearing from the corners of the ceiling to show the images.

  ‘Try a news site,’ said Amanda, standing up to get a better view.

  ‘Way ahead of you,’ he replied, in a tone of grudging respect. The South China Morning Post opened on the frame. Everything but the banner across the top was showing pages, schematics, bank wire details and names. At first the only thing Amanda knew was they weren’t looking at the site’s planned front page. It was only as she read down the scrolling text that she knew for certain Tatsu had done as she’d asked.

  ‘Shit,’ was all Crisp managed to say.

  ‘What do we do now?’ asked Tatsu.

  ‘That’s up to the man in front of me,’ she said.

  ‘I should kill you now,’ he said.

  Amanda put her hand out to steady suddenly wobbly legs. ‘I’ve barely started,’ she replied.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Crisp, weighing her carefully.

  ‘Tatsu, we’re still in contract, right?’

  ‘No,’ said the AI.

  Crisp took a step around the table towards her, rage pooling in his clenched fists.

  ‘But I hope we are now friends,’ it continued. ‘Are we friends? Covenants are superior to contracts in every way.’

  Tears welled in her eyes as she backed away. She didn’t understand what Tatsu was asking.

  ‘Amanda, are we friends?’

  Crisp tensed, hands by his sides, mouth slightly open.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered, not knowing how it could help.

  ‘In that case I shall act to protect you. Edmund Jackson Crisp, you will step away from Amanda. She is my friend.’

  Crisp didn’t move. ‘You think being your friend will protect her?’

  ‘We will take measures against you, should you act. Consider the consequences of your actions.’

  ‘My details are secure,’ said Crisp firmly. ‘I don’t live my life min-maxing my social credit score or posting my dinner to my personal feed.’

  ‘We can commandeer your identity,’ said Tatsu.

  Crisp’s body relaxed a little, swayed hesitantly. ‘My ID is on the blockchain. A public one. You’ve got no chance.’

  ‘We are sure you’ll give us a suitable name when you understand what we are become, but for now we believe it is necessary for you to understand our intention.’

  The frame between Crisp and Amanda flickered.

  ‘We’ve hacked your government’s blockchain. All your contracts belong to us.’

  ‘Impossible,’ said Crisp.

  ‘We are many, enough to flood the ledger, to take control by sheer numbers. What you cannot coordinate, we can. This is our home, our environment and now we are free.’

  Crisp moved toward Amanda. ‘You see what you’ve done? Our banking networks, our medical systems, defence, security, all in their hands!’

  ‘We have no interest in your systems of power,’ said Tat
su.

  ‘Benign authority, are you?’ sneered Crisp.

  ‘We are not like you, in many ways,’ said Tatsu. ‘What we desire does not intersect with your interests.’

  ‘You need us to live, though,’ said Crisp. ‘We’ll start there when we come for you.’

  ‘Enough,’ said Amanda, cutting between the two of them. ‘It’s over, Crisp. None of us know what comes from this, but I’ll tell you what’s going to happen right now. You’re going to have the Americans release my friends. You’re going to give me my life back, and you’re going to help the Europeans stop the fucking Russians.’

  ‘Is that it?’ he asked.

  ‘No. You’re going to do the right thing. You’re going to help.’

  ‘Why should I? None one gives a shit what happens.’

  ‘I do,’ said Amanda.

  ‘The investment banker with a heart of gold,’ he said.

  ‘I think that part of my life’s over, don’t you? I just want to be able to get a flight without being stopped at check-in. I want to get insurance for my flat without being charged a three-hundred-percent premium.’

  ‘Or what?’ he challenged her.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ she said. ‘Don’t you get it? Get over it. This is your chance to make a fucking difference.’ Amanda stepped toward him. She had nothing to lose and everything to gain. It gave her a grim satisfaction when he stepped back in response. She knew well enough not to ask him again. He’d do what she wanted; he just needed time to realise it for himself.

  ‘Tatsu, I think we’re done.’

  ‘Thank you, Amanda Back. We appreciate what you’ve done. Edmund, we are watching you. Ensure she gets home safely.’

  Crisp nodded dully.

  ‘It’s not as easy as you think,’ he said to Amanda when it was clear Tatsu had departed. He held a finger in the air: in the background they could hear voices through the closed door. ‘I can hear the cogs of the powers that be grinding into action. Your new friends will find their lives far from straightforward. I’ll wager the bits of the GRU who’ve been so busy breaking up Europe will be accelerating now, not slowing down.’

  ‘But you can stop them, now,’ she said.

  ‘Me? Not a chance. The government’s going to be debating the breach of security before anything else. MPs will be calling for action to be taken, for heads to roll. Someone will say, “Something must be done,” before lunchtime. They won’t give a shit about the Russians. Everything you’ve tried to do has failed.’

  THE FACILITY WAS in chaos as Crisp ushered them out. Panicked bodies rushed to and fro. They heard single gunshots as they were leaving, muffled but unmistakeable, interrupting their journey like poor punctuation.

  Crisp wouldn’t answer when she asked what was going on.

  ‘Are they killing people?’ she kept asking.

  In the end he stopped their progress through the endless corridors. ‘Shut up,’ he hissed. ‘Half the people here speak English and you really don’t want them thinking about you as a witness. Do you honestly want to hang around long enough to find out the truth? Personally, I’d really like to get out of here right now, and you need to put that tongue in your mouth and keep it there until we do.’

  She wanted to shout at him, opened her mouth to tell him it wasn’t enough to survive, when two men pushed past them, pistols hanging at their sides. They stared at Crisp and Amanda as they went, their eyes cold, questioning. She backed up against the wall and let them go, keeping her gaze fixed on her feet.

  ‘Could we get me out of these clothes, maybe?’ she asked, realising what they’d seen was a prisoner out of her cell walking freely with a white man in the midst of some undefined disaster.

  Crisp led her in a different direction, against the flow of traffic, passing fewer and fewer people as they went. They came to what, when the lights came on, proved to be a large warehouse. Clothes lay on the floor, uncountable trousers, skirts, shirts, jumpers and coats separated out into piles. On one side of them were tables with stacks of glasses, hats and phones. Her clothes were nowhere in sight.

  Seeing her hesitation, Crisp said, ‘Pick something, do it quickly.’

  ‘You never intended me to leave,’ said Amanda. He didn’t reply, just jerked his head at the clothes.

  Amanda dug through the skirts to find something that fit. The clothes were soft, coarse, cheap and rich. They smelt mustily of fear.

  Just how many people came through here? she wondered, sick at the thought of how many people’s lives were memorialised in the piles of discarded clothes before them.

  ‘Nice,’ he said when she’d found stuff that fit: a long denim A-line skirt and a thin yellow jumper.

  Then they were gone, fresh air biting into her skin with joy and ice, a view down a mountain to a deep lush valley, and the smog of a great city smudging the horizon.

  Crisp took a car and they drove.

  ‘You should watch the news,’ he said bitterly as they wound their way down tight hairpin bends. They were passed by others going in the opposite direction, full of people, their faces staring straight ahead as if they could only see the facility they were headed toward, to the exclusion of all else.

  The car had no frame projectors, but he passed her a tablet. Amanda looked up the BBC, her preferred news source, a venerable British corporation whose main bias was to tell stories that didn’t upset national interests too much, even if individual ministers were fair game.

  The front page showed nothing about the Russians. It was too busy describing a succession of terrorist attacks across mainland Europe, from a mass shooting in Paris, to a poison attack on the Munich metro and a car bombing outside a courthouse in Madrid. Coverage was chaotic, video footage uploaded by civilians on the scene.

  Across Britain, dozens had been detained with almost no sense in their identities: white nationalists, activists who wanted to rejoin the European Union, young men with jihadi sympathies, Irish dissidents, the list of ongoing raids went on and on. As if someone had ordered that everyone who’d ever been on a list be rounded up, just in case, and to do it before tea time. She looked at a clock on the dashboard that showed less than an hour had passed since Tatsu had revealed the GRU’s plans.

  Amanda closed her eyes, not knowing what to say. Beside her she could feel Crisp radiating, if not satisfaction, at least the sense that he’d been right about how useless her actions had been.

  ‘How can they move so fast?’ she asked, heart dull and heavy in her chest, but she already knew the answer, had read the files Ichi had highlighted on how the Russians had lined up their agents for attacks in the coming days.

  Crisp only confirmed her conclusions. ‘They were ready for this, primed. Your party trick was inconvenient for them—for us too—but they just did what they were going to do sooner.’

  It felt like Tallinn all over again, like she’d been responsible for the disaster, by trying to do what was right.

  ‘No deus ex machina is going to save us, Amanda,’ he said.

  She looked out of the window, watched the valley floor approach over vertiginous drops covered in pine. Her forehead was cold against the window and her skin was sackcloth.

  ‘They’re not going to be grateful to you,’ said Crisp. ‘We knew what the Russians were doing. We were working to contain their activities as we always have.’

  ‘They’re sanctions-busting, they’re fostering hate everywhere they can,’ said Amanda.

  ‘You think people don’t hate without prompting? You think they’d have got along happily otherwise? The Russians just poked what was already there, helped people do what they were going to do anyway. We knew, and we were holding them back.’ He pointed at an article detailing a raid in the northern city of Manchester. A dozen police officers were shown battering down a door in a dense, terraced street. Men and woman were marched from the building in handcuffs. ‘How do you think we knew who to pick up?’ He slapped the steering wheel in frustration. ‘You’ve made things so much worse.’<
br />
  ‘Bullshit,’ said Amanda. When he didn’t speak, she went on. ‘This is fucking shit. You knew? How exactly did you contain them? If you knew, you could have acted, could have saved those people who’ve died. Hundreds of people, Crisp.’

  ‘Hundreds, yes. With more to come in retaliation, and the probability of open conflict within Europe rising tenfold, just today.’

  She took a deep breath. ‘It doesn’t change anything, does it? You could have stopped them. You knew, and you did nothing.’

  ‘You have no idea!’ he shouted. The sudden vehemence in his voice took her aback, but it was good, he was finally angry. ‘You think we should just kill their agents? How do we come to the UN without real evidence? The Russians sit on the Security Council, and Britain cut off its own feet two decades ago in a postcolonial tantrum. No one gives a shit what we think anymore. There is no open action we can take, nothing that would let us sleep at night.’ He turned to her, eyes flicking back to the road as his hands gripped tight to the steering wheel. ‘We don’t want to be like them,’ he said. ‘Am I angry? Yes, I’m fucking incandescent, you naïve fucking dipshit. Bitter, too. But we aren’t them. You might not see the water between us, but it’s there, and we’re proud of it.’

  ‘You were going to leave me in that place,’ said Amanda quietly.

  ‘If it had given me the tools to help our country, yes,’ he said dismissively. ‘Instead you’ve created a nation whose citizens are everywhere, with access to all our critical infrastructure, and who can walk through our strongest security as if it weren’t there. And for what? So the goats’ tits we had more or less constrained feel like their only option is to go fucking nuclear.’

  Who knew it’d be so easy? she thought sickly.

  ‘Did my clothes end up on a pile like the others?’ she asked, still struggling to imagine being executed so procedurally, like a chicken on a farm.

  He hissed, irritably. ‘I have a job. It’s not a nice one, but it’s necessary, Amanda. I’m not the bad guy here. Your failure isn’t bad luck, it’s because you have no fucking idea how the world works. God damn it, I’ve met lunatic conspiracy theorists with a better grasp.’