Kill Switch

by William Hertling

Igloo > I can’t wait.

  Essie > Me too. I’ll wear something sexy.

  Essie’s idea of sexy was slutty, but that was okay by Igloo.

  Essie was a constant joy in her life, although the relationship was an immense distraction. Igloo missed a few too many band practices, showed up late, tried bringing Essie to practice. Essie was intoxicating. Was that such a bad thing?

  She was sitting in the lounge chair holding her dusty guitar and fantasizing about Essie when Angie knocked and entered without waiting for an answer.

  “What’s up?” Angie asked, settling onto the drum kit’s stool.

  Igloo didn’t know what to say. Too many thoughts raced through her head at once, a kaleidoscope of emotion and thoughts. Angie was finally here, and now she was speechless.

  Angie picked up a drum stick and tapped at a snare. “Think I should take up drums?”

  Igloo shook her head. “Too cliché. Def Leppard has that locked up.”

  “How can a lone one-armed drummer single-handedly exclude all other amputees from a career in drumming?”

  Igloo glanced over to see Angie carefully staring at her. Angie’s humor seemed like a genuine attempt to connect. But jokes were no longer enough to bridge the separation between them.

  “I never get to see you anymore.” Igloo didn’t want it to come out petulant, but it was hard to keep the whine out of her voice. She hated needing someone like this.

  Angie experimentally tapped at a few drums. “Things have been crazy lately…I have—”

  “Are hiring plans and company culture what you should be spending your time on? Is that what’s going to change the world?”

  Angie sighed, and tossed the drum stick onto the floor. “I used to mock people who made slides. But you remember how many presentations I did to get our VC funding? Sometimes this is the stuff that needs doing.”

  Igloo wanted to talk about hacking, but they couldn’t, not here at work where they couldn’t absolutely control the environment. All it took was one compromised phone or laptop, and their conversations could be recorded, transmitted to someone in the government, and they’d jeopardize not only themselves but the entire company as well. This wasn’t just paranoia. The government was monitoring them.

  “Everything’s good with chat?” Angie asked.

  Igloo nodded. “Incremental improvements. The psychologists have a few ideas. I made tweaks around detecting non-consensual language patterns. If we intercede early enough…” She trailed off to see if Angie would understand.

  “If we get preteens and teens to use consensual language patterns, then it will change how they think, and changing how they think will affect how they behave.”

  “Exactly.” She set the guitar down.

  They stared at each other. There was an ease in the quiet, and for a moment Igloo felt a hint of connection between the two of them. It went unspoken that what they were doing would be objectionable to most, that their out-and-out goal was changing how people behaved, manipulating them to be kinder, and more aware. Most would focus on the method, not the outcome. But they understood each other. They would do what it took, regardless of how socially unacceptable it would be to the masses, but they would still accept each other. It was such a relief to feel that connection with Angie that she almost cried.

  “It’s good work, but you’ve been working on chatbots for a long time.”

  “They’re not chatbots—”

  Angie held a hand up. “Sorry. What I want to know is if you’d like to work on something different.”

  Angie had a knack for being mysterious. Igloo pulled her hoodie back and shook her hair free. “Go on.”

  “The world hasn’t had a really private communication network since the NSA cracked TOR. There have been a few islands, small oases in the desert of surveillance, but nothing totally secure.”

  “We’re encrypting all our traffic. Tapestry is secure.”

  “Probably,” Angie said. “We’ve gotten to a moderate level of privacy. But think about our users. Most of their traffic to anything other than Tapestry is still in the open. But it doesn’t have to be. What does an onion routing network do?”

  “As you know, Bob,” Igloo said, rolling her eyes, “an onion network routes traffic through multiple nodes, with each node unraveling a layer of the onion. None of the interior nodes know how far away the packet originated, nor how far it still has to go. So even if the government manages to insert themselves into one or two places in the network, they can’t see the payload, the source, or the destination.”

  “Unless they…” Angie pointed a finger out the window, which meant nothing, but Igloo knew she meant the NSA. “…insert themselves into a whole lot of nodes. One of the problems with TOR was that there weren’t enough nodes. If the NSA decided to run a few thousand nodes, well within their ability, they’d get to spy on most of the TOR traffic. If they ran a hundred thousand TOR nodes they’d have a total panopticon…statistically able to see virtually all TOR traffic.”

  Igloo stared down at the digital pickup she’d installed on her guitar. “The only way to avoid that kind of attack is if the network has vastly more legitimate nodes, enough so that the government could never hope to control a significant percentage. If the government could do a million nodes, then we’d have to make an onion network with at least a hundred million nodes.”

  Angie smiled and nodded.

  “Tapestry has more than a hundred million clients running.” Igloo raised an eyebrow at Angie. “You want to turn all Tapestry clients into a giant onion network?”

  “With encryption we can really trust,” Angie said. “AES isn’t enough because we can’t be sure it isn’t compromised. Run Twofish and Serpent. Randomized numbers of hops.”

  The Advanced Encryption Standard, or AES, might be suspect, but what Angie was proposing just wouldn’t work. “It’ll be too slow,” Igloo said, shaking her head. “TOR always was.”

  “Because in a traditional onion network, bandwidth is limited. With a hundred million clients, it’s not. There’s a surplus of clients sitting idle all the time. So you piggyback a torrent-style algorithm, using multiple downloads to make up for the slowness.”

  “Parallel downloads won’t fix the latency problem,” Igloo said. “Bulk downloads like file transfers will be fast, but not interactive stuff.”

  “Then you layer in other techniques: predictive downloads, prefetching, distribution of content through the network. You give publishers a way to run their code on intermediate nodes, not just the endpoints.”

  Damn. Marrying all these cutting-edge techniques together the way Angie wanted would be tremendously complex.

  Angie caught the look in Igloo’s eyes.

  “Don't worry about all that. Just focus on the onion routing. We’ll get into the optimizations later.”

  “Fine.” Igloo set down the guitar and stood. “I get it, I do. But what do our users care about onion routing and encryption standards? Would they even appreciate what we’re talking about building?”

  “Most won’t care about the details,” Angie said. “They may not be thinking about privacy. But that doesn’t mean they won’t appreciate it when they get it. That’s what leaders do—figure out how to satisfy needs people aren’t even aware of, and that no one else has figured out how to do yet. Our users want data ownership, control over their communications, and deep privacy. Even if they don’t know it. A secure network is the backbone on which all that is provided. Tomo’s gradually changing their tune, emphasizing privacy, user opt-out. We need to stay ahead of them.”

  “This needs a whole team, not just one anti-social programmer.”

  “Then build up a new team. Hand over the chat stuff to Amber. Tell her you’re working on a g-job for me, and I’m giving you dibs to poach anyone you want in the company. But keep it as quiet as possible. And only recruit people who can keep a secret. No leaks.”

  “It’s too ambitious,” Igloo said.

  “That’s why I’m g
iving it to you. You need a challenge. You’re bored of chatbots, and you’re getting bored of Tapestry. I have to fix that before I lose you.”

  Igloo was too startled to say anything before Angie got up and left. How did Angie know? Was her behavior that obvious? Was her distraction with Essie also evident? Was she as transparent to other people as she was to Angie?

  Chapter 2

  Igloo biked home quickly, eager to see Essie. She arrived slightly out of breath, her back damp with sweat underneath her messenger bag.

  Essie greeted her inside the door, a glass of water held in the flat of one palm, the other hand steadying the glass, her head slightly bowed, eyes down.

  Igloo let her bag slide to the floor.

  Essie was a vision, as she always was. A blonde, elfin woman with a pixie cut and a septum piercing, she stood just an inch taller than Igloo. Igloo appreciated a range of aesthetics, but she had a type, and Essie was as close to her ideal as she’d ever dated.

  Thirsty, Igloo took the glass from Essie’s hand, and drank. The water was precisely the temperature she wanted it, just a hair warmer than the coldness of the refrigerator, the type of water you could take a long swallow of and feel perfectly refreshed.

  “Thank you.”

  Essie raised her eyes to Igloo’s with a smile. “Welcome home.”

  She leaned forward, and Igloo went in for a quick kiss, cognizant of her sweaty clothes.

  “Salty,” Essie said, wiping her lips. “Go shower.”

  “Don’t go getting bossy,” Igloo said.

  Essie smirked. “Or you’ll punish me?”

  “Maybe.” As she walked to the bedroom, she called back, “If you’re lucky.”

  She entered the room and stepped over some loose rope, a vibrator, and a ball gag. Igloo had been mildly kinky before she’d met Essie, but together they’d gone deeper than she’d gone before. BDSM wasn’t something they reserved for the bedroom. It was part of the fabric of their relationship. In less than a year, Igloo had gone from owning a pair of handcuffs and some clothesline to an entire closet full of specialized gear.

  Essie had been way more experienced right from the start. She helped Igloo get more involved in the scene, the local BDSM community. Convinced her to take rope lessons. And brought the rituals of Dominance and submission, or D/s, into their day-to-day relationship, like when she’d been waiting with the water when Igloo had arrived home. Some part of it ran counter to everything feminist Igloo had ever learned and embodied, and yet it was more than undeniably hot, it was a source of happiness for them both.

  Ten months they’d been together. Essie had moved in a month ago and Igloo was thrilled about her first romantic cohabitation. Waking next to Essie every morning was blissful, and she loved seeing Essie’s stuff all around.

  Igloo stripped off her clothes and showered. She hoped to feel refreshed afterwards, but mostly she felt tired, the caffeine from her last round of coffee wearing off.

  Essie found her sitting on the edge of the bed. “You’re tired. Take a nap before tonight.”

  “Do I have time?” Igloo asked. It was good to have someone to take care of her. Someone else to make the little decisions like whether there was time for a nap.

  “Yes. I’ll wake you and have your coffee ready.”

  Igloo pulled the covers back and crawled into bed naked. Her head hit the pillow, and she lay there, her mind racing back and forth between Essie and work. Angie was right, there was something wrong at work, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. It wasn’t that she was bored exactly. It was more like the fit wasn’t right anymore. Shit, she was never going to fall asleep. Then she wouldn’t nap, then she’d be tired for tonight.

  She closed her eyes for a second, and the next thing she heard was the creak of the bedroom door. The bed shifted as Essie climbed in next to her. Essie cleared her throat, and Igloo opened her eyes to find Essie kneeling on the bed, presentation pose, coffee in the palm of her hand.

  She blinked a few times, trying to focus. “Did I already sleep?”

  Essie nodded without looking up. “An hour and a half.”

  Wow. No wonder she was so groggy. She sat up, took the mug from Essie. “Thank you.”

  Essie smiled and raised her eyes to meet Igloo’s gaze. “Drink up, come have dinner, and then get ready. You have an hour before we need to leave.”

  Igloo took a bunch of small sips of coffee, trying to get as much in her system as possible without burning her mouth. She joined Essie in the kitchen and sat at their little table. Essie brought plates of jackfruit tacos.

  Igloo glanced down and forced a smile to her face. She’d been vegan once and wasn’t particularly excited to go back. Living together was mostly awesome, but it did leave her hankering for more meat.

  “You gotta try steak tacos someday.” Igloo said. “You’d love them.”

  Essie shook her head. “Gross. There’s no way I’m eating meat.”

  “Just try it with me. You’ll have more energy. We’re made to eat animals.”

  “No, no, no. That’s gross. You can eat dead flesh when you’re on your own.”

  Igloo sighed. She’d grab a burger tomorrow at lunch.

  They talked about each other’s days while they ate. Then Igloo glanced at the clock. She had time to epilate, if she hurried.

  “Gotta go,” she said, giving Essie a kiss.

  After she finished prepping in the bathroom, she went back to her walk-in closet.

  The left half was all band t-shirts, jeans, and white hoodies. The same everyday clothes she’d been wearing since middle school, clothing that she used to hide away from the way men stared at her body. She could bury herself in an oversized hoodie, and in some part of her mind, she was concealed, just a blob with a mind, divorced from any physicality, any sense of being embodied in a very human body. Because to be human, to have a body, exposed vulnerabilities. A body elicited dangerous attention from men. Her body was something that could be used against her, to hurt her, not merely physically, but to control her mind. And that was so unacceptable that she’d spent the vast majority of her life building layers of protection against that possibility.

  But the right half of the closet was for play parties and the scene. Aside from being all black, the clothes there consisted mostly of form-fitting latex, pleather, and mesh. Pretty much the opposite end of the spectrum from everything she’d allowed herself to be for the past fifteen years.

  Entering the BDSM scene had allowed her to tackle her fears, even embrace them somehow. She’d taken back ownership of her deepest vulnerabilities. She controlled what happened to her, even when it was something that, on the surface, she didn’t want. Consenting to being beaten or acting out a rape fantasy empowered her in a way that years of unwanted therapy forced on her by her parents had never touched.

  Being in the scene had finally given her permission to be herself. There was no need to hide from everyone, not in the community where people accepted anything and anyone as normal, and many shared stories of surviving abuse.

  Even though the intellectual in Igloo was almost completely unappreciated in the scene, she’d experienced a level of acceptance she’d never found in the tech community. Somehow she could wear clothes that left nothing to the imagination and still feel comfortable, whereas to walk into the office, she had to bundle up.

  If she ever revealed what truly went on in her mind, shrinks would have a field day with her.

  Back to clothes. Deviance was the most upscale play party in Portland. She riffled back and forth and grabbed a black vinyl mini skirt with a side zipper (easy-on, easy-off), a stretchy mesh top, and a black corset. No, what was she thinking? She had to tie, to be able to bend. The corset would be a nightmare. She had to save that for a munch or something.

  She considered her normal military pants and black tank, her rigger uniform, but that didn’t feel right. Not for the venue or for a fancy date with Essie. She wanted to look good.

  She tossed the skirt and
corset away and picked a pair of stretchy pleather pants and a black pentagram bra. She’d wear the mesh top over the bra. She added a pair of chunky heeled boots, and a long black coat for street modesty.

  The toy bag was packed, ready at its usual spot just inside the door. If only she could be so organized in her professional life. Then she realized that Essie had probably unpacked and repacked the whole bag today to make it perfect, and that maybe the problem was that she couldn’t bring Essie to work.

  She wondered what would happen if she told HR she needed to hire a full-time submissive to take care of her at work.

  She picked up the bag, and glanced over to where Essie was putting the finishing touches on her makeup.

  “Are you almost ready?”

  Essie looked up, eyeliner in her hand. “Give me two minutes.”

  Igloo let the bag slump down to the floor. Two minutes meant ten or fifteen. She had time for another cup of coffee.

  Angie made her scan Essie’s car regularly for surveillance devices as a preventive measure, since Igloo sometimes used the car to meet Angie. So the car itself was a clean environment. Igloo made sure her and Essie’s phones were off, then she inserted them both into an antistatic bag.

  Between the two measures, Igloo was fairly certain that the government wouldn’t know they were going to Club Privata for Deviance, their monthly kink event, but if they really wanted to be sure, they’d need to take even more counter-surveillance measures: switching cars and clothes. All of which was kind of pointless, since she was moderately well known in the BDSM scene. As one of the few female rope tops, she attracted attention, and some had drawn the connection between kinky Igloo and Igloo the tech cofounder. She wasn’t out with her coworkers though, and fuck only knew what would happen the day her two worlds collided.

  Her first visit to Deviance had been with the guy who’d introduced her to kink. He’d asked to be led around on a leash. He’d brought his own flogger and asked her to hit him. It was one thing to play at home, in private, but something else entirely to do it in public, in a room full of people watching or doing their own scenes. The noises had been so distracting she’d been almost unable to focus on what she was doing. People screaming or crying had set her on edge, in a constant state of hyperarousal, her sympathetic nervous system insisting that there were serious threats nearby.