"So, who's George?" Charlie scanned the young men for someone who looked like he might be named George.
Alicia pointed to the far wall, which Charlie now saw was made of dark glass. Behind it, in shadow, was a second wall made of racked 1U computers stacked in columns. Joined as a cluster, they each served as neurones in a single super-computer brain. Through the dark glass the machines themselves were almost invisible, but the blue-white LED indicator lights created the appearance of an organized array of stars. It was a galaxy created by a God suffering from OCD. "Meet George," said Alicia with a smile. "George surfs thousands of webpages per millisecond, intercepts emails, accesses blogs. He's basically a specialized search-engine but instead of giving you the top twenty sites on whatever, he looks for the top twenty terrorists. He knows pretty much everything published or communicated online. He hacks systems without any human help. That's why we call him George, as in Curious George."
"Ah," said Charlie, "I was thinking of a different George." Charlie gazed at the starfield that was George and wondered what he'd gotten himself into. Everyone knew the political explosion that the NSA's PRISM program had created, once exposed by Edward Snowden in 2013. Similarly, the domain of the CIA was, ostensibly, limited to foreign intelligence gathering. In practice, however, the line between foreign and domestic was often blurred. Foreigners corresponded with Americans, travelled to the United States, owned US companies, and so on. "Doesn't this contravene the idea that the CIA isn't supposed to spy on US citizens?"
There were chuckles around the room, which Alicia silenced with a harsh stare. "We're not spying on US citizens," she explained, "we're spying on suspected terrorists among US citizens. We just don't know which is which until after we've looked. It's like using a trawl net. We sweep the ocean floor and throw back any innocent dolphins that get caught."
"Don't the dolphins usually die in a trawl net?"
"The point is, George is a black box. We don't get to see what he sees unless he identifies it as a possible concern. It's exactly how Google works, they don't read your emails and search results, their machines do. So that makes it okay. Only after George finds something algorithmically suspicious does he send it to a team member. That agent then uses human judgement to determine if the issue is 'actual' or not."
"I see," said Charlie. George was different from PRISM in that its information gathering didn't require the cooperation of private partners or even CIA agents for that matter. Somehow, it acted autonomously. George wasn't human, so it couldn't break the law by itself. If George raised an alarm, a warrant could no doubt be obtained from the FISA court making it legal to look at what it had found. Charlie wasn't sure if that made it better or worse.
"So he—it found something 'actual'?"
"Paul, show Mr. Draper what George found."
One of the young men nodded and clicked his mouse to bring up a browser window. In it was an eBay auction page showing what, to Charlie, appeared to be one of those reusable steel coffee cups sold at Starbucks. He leaned over the agent's shoulder for a closer look. Instead of the Starbucks logo, it had the words "US Government" and "Top Secret" clearly engraved on its side. "Okay, so it looks like something. Army trash maybe? Do we know what it is?"
"No idea," said Paul as he cracked open a Diet Coke and took a sip. "George won't tell us."
"The thing is this," said Alicia, "George has a huge database of stuff to look at. Much more than we know or have access to. When George finds something he ranks it from one to ten in importance. One being, say, a Muslim buying a handgun illegally. Ten being known terrorists building a nuclear bomb in Albuquerque."
"Okay..."
"Most of this stuff is harmless. We get a lot of red herrings. So being, well, a bit understaffed, we only look into the fives and above."
"Got it," said Charlie, " so... what ranking did this get?"
"Eleven."
Charlie smiled. He then realized Alicia wasn't joking or, if she was, had great deadpan delivery. "I thought the rankings only went from one to ten."
"So did we."
* * *
Charlie and Alicia sat in the Meringue conference room. All of the conference rooms in this area had been renamed after desserts as part of a more 'family friendly' initiative. The NSA PRISM fiasco had put the whole intelligence community on the defensive. So the CIA was trying proactively to soften its image. Of course, no actual families were allowed into the area, but still, the idea was to make them feel welcome should that change. Whenever the agency attempted to soften its image it usually ended up looking desperate or creepy instead. Charlie thought of last year's attempt at a neighbourhood open house. All of the staff wore stickers that read "Hello my name is...", but with their actual names redacted out with a black bar. Still, the confectionery conference room names served another purpose as well. It was felt that, should the rooms ever be referred to in the context of, say, a Senate inquiry, dessert names might make the proceedings sound a little less menacing. So, next to Meringue was S'mores, where many of the most lethal oversea drone attacks had been planned. On the other side of the hall was Twinkie, booked for the week by Narcotics. Finally, there was Cream Puff, where a review of the effectiveness of water boarding was currently underway. Faith would have loved this, thought Charlie. The image of his daughter's face popped unwillingly into his thoughts. He remembered her eating s'mores on a camping trip, marshmallow dripping on her shoes. Not now, he said to himself, forcing the image from his mind.
Charlie and Alicia faced a teleconference screen filled with the looming face of CIA Director, Robert Morely. The problem with the 70" high definition screen, Charlie decided, was too much detail. For example, Charlie could see that the CIA director wore contacts and had a plethora of old acne scars. When he wasn't talking, Morely's jaw moved up and down with the mesmerizing motion of a cow chewing its cud, only in this case, its cud was tobacco. "George who?" he said in a thick Kentucky drawl.
"George the computer, sir," offered Charlie.
"Ah right, George. So you think George ID'd it by the identi-fo-cation numbers?"
Charlie glanced at Alicia, who nodded and said, "Yes, sir."
Morely considered this as he unwrapped and stuffed another wad of chewing tobacco into his mouth. He did so without removing the plug that was already there. "I thee," he said, the additional tobacco somewhat impairing his speech. Charlie wondered if the excessive chewing was a sort of nervous twitch and if so, why the Director was so nervous. Did he know something they didn't? At that moment a woman leaned into view on the monitor and whispered something into Morely's ear. His face went grim and paled noticeably. "I thee," he said and crammed a third plug of tobacco into his mouth. He waved the woman away and stared at the screen, brow furrowed, cheeks stuffed like a chipmunk. As he chewed, Charlie watched in 1080p as a trail of yellow nicotine spittle ran from the edge of his mouth. Morley wiped his chin, smearing rather than removing the liquid. "Mow wiffen Chawee. Tha's a' ode id mumba buh i' is vawid."
"The number's valid?"
"Yeth, we weed to recova tha' i'em a' any coth't."
"We need to recover the item at any cost?"
"Yeth!" shouted the CIA Director impatiently, spitting on the camera lens. Despite his stern front, he was clearly unnerved. This made Charlie nervous as well.
"Right," said Charlie. "The problem is, sir, there's only minutes left before the auction ends."
"So wha' a' you goo-ing abou' it?"
Charlie paused to mentally decipher Morely's garbled words.
"Well?"
"We've already dispatched a team, sir. They should arrive at the listed address in Michigan in ..." Charlie glanced at his watch, "...one hour, and fifty-five minutes."
"Goo. Wha' elf a' you goo-ing?"
"Um, well, we're, um... bidding on it, sir."
Tom Morely studied Charlie. Sitting in his Washington DC hotel room, he was viewing them on his laptop. The two agents looked small and insignificant. Too small, too insignificant,
he thought. The CIA Director nervously mashed another wad of tobacco into his mouth and considered what to do. "Goo," he said.
* * *
Alex and Gerald stared intently at the computer screen, waiting for the eBay page to update. "Your connection is a piece of crap," muttered Gerald as he tongued the hole of his pop can.
"I know," said Alex.
"You should get cable. DSL sucks."
"Your cable is out all the time."
"Yeah, but it's fast as Hell when it works."
The first six days the mystery canister had been up for auction there had been a total of six bids and a few random inquiries from army-surplus nuts, driving the price to a total of $62. Suddenly, just an hour before the auction was set to end, the price had jumped to over $200. The webpage loaded. Gerald almost sprayed Dr. Pepper out of his nose. "Holy crap!"
"A thousand bucks!" shouted Alex. He couldn't believe his eyes.
"Keep it down in there!" his mother yelled through the wall.
"Sorry mom!" Alex put his finger to his lips to silence Gerald, who wasn't even supposed to be there. Gerald had snuck over after Alex had emailed him that the price was climbing. "I'm gonna be rich!"
"A thousand dollars isn't rich. Anyway, half of that's mine!"
"Yeah, right."
"If I hadn't made you go around that rock—"
"Holy crap, two thousand bucks!"
Alex blinked at the pixelated numbers on his screen in amazement. He glanced at the silver canister sitting on his dresser. The gleam of light on the top rim seemed to wink at Alex knowingly. "I wonder what's inside that these people want it so badly?"
"Money," said Gerald.
"Really?"
"No, dumb-bum, the hopes and dreams of suckers. If it was money, we'd keep it. Anyway, hit refresh."
* * *
Alicia crouched down beside Paul, the analyst, who entered their latest bid on the eBay auction page. Charlie observed from behind. He was still not convinced this wasn't some sort of hacker prank or bizarre bug in George's programming. The problem with black boxes, he knew, was that they're black boxes. Nobody really knows what's going on inside the damn things. They simply spew out results without repercussion, like a late night psychic hotline or the FCC. They become like the obelisks in 2001: A Space Odyssey—powerfully mysterious and utterly confounding. Unlike the obelisk, George wore his stars on the outside, but Charlie still had no idea what it all meant. "How are we doing?" he asked.
"Currently at $9,350," said Paul. "You want to stop at 10k?"
"No."
Alicia and Paul both stared at Charlie.
"We can't lose this," he stated emphatically. He realized he was biting his nails and shoved his hands into his pockets. "Keep going."
Paul nodded and upped the bid. The screen refreshed. "Ten thousand," said Alicia. "This is crazy! What lunatic would bid that high besides us? Not that we're lunatics, I mean, but—"
"Someone else who knows what it is," said Charlie. He ran his fingers through his hair as he tried to consider the possibilities. "Who could know what this is besides us?"
"Well, technically, we don't know what this is."
"Morely does." Charlie had seen fear in the Director's eyes. He'd also seen half-chewed tobacco stuck between the Director's teeth whenever he spoke. Charlie banished the entire unsettling image from his mind. "But, yes... exactly."
Paul waved at them, "Auction ends in one minute. We need to put in our maximum bid, or we could lose it. I could put in a million bucks."
"Put in a trillion bucks."
"I can't, the field only accepts ten characters. So, the most I could put in is nine-billion, nine-hundred and ninety-nine million, nine-hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine-hundred and ninety-nine dollars."
"Do it."
"You're the boss." Paul dutifully entered the long string of nines, then clicked the "Place Bid" button.
Alicia stared at Charlie, "That's more than our entire operating budget!"
"Auction's closed!" shouted Paul. They all stared at the screen, waiting for the result.
"It's the property of the US Government, we're not going to have to pay. Plus it's not even that much by Fed standards."
"And eBay only increments your bid to the amount needed to win," said Paul. "We'll owe far less than that."
"You couldn't have told me that before?" said Charlie. He realized he was chewing his nails again.
"I thought everyone knew that." As Paul spoke, the screen refreshed. "We won! For... twenty-million and ten dollars? Holy crap!"
"Congratulations," smiled Alicia, "I think you just became the single highest online auction bidder ever."
"Pay it," said Charlie.
"What, now? We have time."
"Now."
"Why?" asked Alicia.
"Because someone else was willing to pay twenty-million dollars to get this thing. So lets lock it down. We'll get the money back. Go on, Paypal it." Charlie pulled his jacket from the back of his chair and turned to leave. "Meanwhile, I'm going to Michigan."
"I hear it's nice," said Paul.
Chapter 4.6692
"...and, if I turn it upside down, it spells BOOBIES!"
– M. Feigenbaum
The rain was oppressive in the sort of way that rain is. Not content with merely landing on you like most forms of weather, rain insists on soaking through your clothes, making them cling cold and wet to your clammy skin. In this way, rain wasn't merely oppressive. It was downright rude. At that moment, however, Alex loved it. It was invigorating. Its sensory assault seemed to affirm his very being by defining it with a feeling of wetness. Even the invisible man becomes visible in the rain, he thought. Alex sometimes thought of himself as invisible, at school, at home. This was not one of those moments. This was a moment where he felt alive.
"You don't have to send it today, dickweed!" shouted Gerald.
"I told you, I don't want to risk it," said Alex as he charged down the gravel side road. The two boys dodged pothole puddles as they made their way through the colonnades of tall trees. Alex glanced at his watch. If they didn't hurry, they would miss it. Alex had been begging his mother for years to move closer to town, and she'd always told him that she preferred the isolation of the woods. The truth was, they simply couldn't afford it.
"They've already paid you, so what does it matter?"
"It matters," said Alex. He was scared that if he did anything wrong, the millions might vanish. It was all so surreal. Technically he had been paid. It was all right there, in his Paypal account. Still, he couldn't actually withdraw it yet. Apparently, such a large amount required some sort of hold. Now, he felt a desperate need to keep up his side of the bargain. With that kind of money he could buy his mom the home they'd never dreamed of. Despite all of their arguments, Alex loved his mother. As much as he made her unhappy, he wanted to make her happy.
The boys reached the last dip in the road. Alex managed a controlled descent on the wet gravel. Gerald wiped out, rolling painfully over the small stones. "God damn it! This is your fault, Alex!"
Alex ignored his fallen friend and sprinted towards the main road. He could just make it out between the trees—the white metal frame of the USPS truck. "Wait!" Alex yelled. He reached the asphalt road just as the mail truck started to pull away. "Wait!" he cried, frantically waving his arms. The truck's brake lights brightened. The truck pulled to a stop. Alex, ran alongside to where the driver sat. The postman watched him, bemused, through rain speckled glasses. "Yep?"
"I've got a package," said Alex, panting to catch his breath. He then offered up the white plastic shopping bag he'd been cradling.
"You want to take it out of the bag?"
"Oh, yeah." Alex tore off the water soaked bag and handed him the brown paper parcel. The postman peered at the entire book of stamps that coated one side. "Is that enough?" asked Alex desperately. He glanced at Gerald who had arrived now beside him, looking as pissed-off as possible.
The postman
shrugged and tossed the parcel into the back. "Probably."
Alex opened his mouth to object but, before he could say anything, the driver put the truck in gear and pulled away. Alex stood slack-jawed on the shoulder. He turned to Gerald, whose normally curly red hair was now plastered across his forehead. "Do you think that's enough?" asked Alex.
"How should I know numb-nuts?"
"What happens if it's not?"
"Then, they return to sender, and we sell it all over again... or whatever." Gerald turned around and stomped back down the side road. He'd had enough of Alex running the show. He wasn't even sure how that had happened. Somehow Alex had stopped letting him make all the decisions and where had it got them? Freezing their asses off in the rain like losers, that's where. "Come on!" Gerald growled.
Alex suddenly felt deflated. With the canister gone, the whole thing seemed like a dream. It had to be a dream; it made no sense. He trudged slowly up the road and, for the first time that day, felt cold and wet.
* * *
Colonel Rynard Gruber did not move. A single raindrop hung from the tip of his long aquiline nose but did not fall. More rain beaded on the camouflage grease paint he wore on both cheeks. Spread out on either side of him, hidden under the shadows of the forest ferns, huddled a small contingent of men, stock still moss covered statues in the garden of good and evil. They were invisible, save for where the rain drops defined them. "No sign of the boy," said a voice in Rynard's earpiece, "he must be away from the windows."
Chaos Theory: A Feel Good Story About the End of the World Page 4