Kill Switch

by William Hertling

The hacker advantage always lay in exploiting that which was expected. Forty years ago, knowing the back office number for the telephone company meant you were a lineman calling in, and so the operator would do what you asked, no questions. Today, that was achieved with phishing emails. The sheep expected emails from their banks, so when they got one, they clicked on it. Simple.

  People expected Nathan9 to be blind. When he wasn’t, that was one more advantage he’d have. He’d spent two years getting his chess pieces in order, and this was the last move in a long sequence of preparations for the coming battle. This time around, Nathan would come out on top.

  “Go ahead,” Nathan said.

  The lead research doctor spoke, and Nathan recognized her confident voice. “It’s going to take time for your brain to integrate these signals. We’ve never attempted this procedure in someone who has been without vision for so long.”

  He felt the doctor move next to him, and a moment later there was a flash, a something. It wasn’t a feeling, it wasn’t a smell, it wasn’t knowledge, but there was something new in his head.

  Neurons that had long since forgotten their original purpose fired, and a kaleidoscope of sensation triggered in Nathan’s mind.

  Chapter 9

  The car dropped Igloo off in front of her building. The night was dark and cool. She looked up at her windows and wondered exactly what she would say to Essie. “Hi honey, I’m home. I fucked another woman. It was really hot.”

  She wished she could go inside, get a hug from Essie, and go to sleep without speaking. It was too scary to think about discussing her feelings when she wasn’t even sure how she felt, let alone sure about how much she wanted to share with Essie.

  She let herself in and immediately felt the emptiness. Essie wasn’t home yet. Still out on her date? It was almost two in the morning.

  “You coming home?” she messaged before she even put anything down.

  She let the toy bag slump to the floor in the bedroom and headed for the bathroom. She stripped for the shower. Somehow it felt wrong to get into the bed she shared with Essie while still covered with the aftereffects of sex with Charlotte.

  She turned the shower on and waited for the water to get hot. She caught a whiff of Charlotte and stopped. She smelled herself and found a hot spot on her shoulder that still smelled of Charlotte’s essential oil. She breathed in deep. Could she shower but not get her shoulder wet? Holy smokes, she was behaving like a love-sick teenager.

  She took one more deep breath of Charlotte’s smell, and hugged herself, thinking of Charlotte wrapped in her arms. She sighed and forced herself to get in the water.

  Afterwards, she lay in bed, in the dark, Charlotte’s smell gone, regretting that she’d washed.

  She heard keys at the door, the door opening. Oh shit. She was going to have to tell.

  Essie came into the room without turning on the light.

  “It’s okay. I’m still awake.”

  Essie turned the lights on low.

  “How was your night?” Essie asked.

  “Fine,” Igloo said. “Yours?”

  “It was good. We…” Essie paused. “Do you want to hear about it?”

  Yes? No? Maybe? Some of each? Could she save game, hear about Essie’s night, and then if she didn’t like it, revert back and choose another path?

  “Sure,” Igloo said.

  “Give me a sec,” Essie said. She went into the bathroom and came out a few minutes later. She slid naked into the bed next to Igloo. She wrapped an arm around Igloo and nestled her head in the crook of Igloo’s neck.

  Charlotte’s head had been in that same exact spot only an hour ago.

  “I had sex with Charlotte,” Igloo blurted out.

  “Oh.” Essie pulled slightly away. “I, um…”

  “What?” Igloo heard the bristle in her own voice.

  “I’m surprised. I didn’t realize that was even something you were interested in.”

  Igloo didn’t know what to say. What she had done felt wrong but it also felt right in the moment. She wanted Essie to hug her, to tell her that everything was all right, that she still loved Igloo, that nothing was going to change between the two of them. She couldn’t put all of that into words, couldn’t explain how her heart tugged in two directions until it felt like she was going to break.

  “Are you going to say anything else about it?” Essie said.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Did you like it?” Essie asked.

  “I did.”

  Essie pulled a little further away. “Was this a one-time thing or something you are going to repeat?”

  She should say: It was a one-time thing. Please don’t leave me, Essie. Don’t hate me. Tell me everything is going to be okay. I need you. But she wasn’t going to, and that scared her almost more than anything. “I would do it again.”

  “Oh.” Essie settled back, no longer snuggling up against Igloo.

  Igloo turned onto her side to look at Essie. She put a hand on Essie’s chest.

  “What about your night?” Igloo asked.

  “It was nothing.”

  “No, you wanted to tell me something.”

  “Nothing.” Essie said.

  “Come on.”

  “We went to an art exhibit.”

  “And?”

  “And we had dinner and we talked.”

  “Was it nice?” Igloo said. She did the math in her head. Essie had been out for six, seven hours. How long did it take to see an exhibit? To have dinner. What did they talk about?

  “It was nice. I learned about a bunch about Dutch artists. We talked about the role of the viewer in the meaning of art. The differences in the perception of 2D versus 3D art.”

  “I didn’t realize you had such an interest in art.”

  Essie looked at Igloo as if she was a stranger. “I’m a photographer, of course I have an interest in art. You think being a barista is my fucking career?”

  Ugh. How could she have said that? “I’m am so sorry,” Igloo said. “I’m exhausted, and I’m not thinking clearly. Obviously you would have an interest in art.”

  Essie looked like she was going to say something, then shook her head. Then she continued after all. “When we met, you were so concerned about your work, with making a difference. So serious and righteous.”

  “And?” Igloo said.

  “You never talk about work anymore.”

  “I just want to enjoy myself for a change,” Igloo said. “Is that so wrong? What is the ultimate point of life, except to be happy and experience pleasure?”

  “I don’t think the purpose of life is to fuck everything that moves,” Essie said.

  Igloo choked out a laugh despite what she sensed was a deadly serious situation. “You have got to be kidding me. I had sex with one other person. One time. How do you get from that to ‘fucking everything that moves’?”

  Essie shrugged. “I’m tired. I’m going to sleep.” She turned onto her side, away from Igloo.

  Igloo’s pulse pounded in her head. Part of her wanted to get up and run away from the whole situation. She could go to the office, sleep there. No, that was childish. She wasn’t going to run away.

  She forced herself to lie down and put her arm around Essie. Essie didn’t pull away, but she didn’t snuggle into place like she usually did. She felt like she was hugging a rock. Igloo waited a moment longer, then pulled her arm away.

  She lay there replaying the conversation through her head for a long time before finally drifting off.

  In the morning, Essie got up, delivered Igloo’s coffee perfunctorily, and left before Igloo had drunk enough to fully awaken.

  Igloo sat in bed, wondering what had happened. She got dressed in a daze. When she thought about Essie, all she felt was pain and confusion. Then she’d think about Charlotte, and she’d smell her again in her mind, and think of her naked body pressed up against Igloo’s, and she’d be fully of happy, horny feelings.

  The whole thing w
as so disconcerting that Igloo had no framework to even try to puzzle through the experiences. She gave up and biked into work.

  Igloo sat at her desk, door closed and locked, and tried to focus through the haze of continual distraction, oscillating between pleasurable memories of Charlotte, and anxious worries about Essie and her reaction.

  She messaged Essie.

  Igloo > I love you. You are important to me. I don’t understand what’s happening exactly, but please don’t push me away.

  Essie didn’t respond.

  She didn’t know exactly what to do about Essie. But Charlotte was easy.

  Igloo > Hey, I really enjoyed last night. How are you doing?

  Charlotte replied a few minutes later.

  Charlotte > That was amazing. Can do we do it again?

  Igloo > I’d like that. You looked beautiful in the rope.

  Charlotte > You looked beautiful on the cross. I can’t wait to give you another beating. :)

  Igloo had mixed feelings. She was way more comfortable with her dominant side. Being subby with someone else… Sigh. Why was she getting aroused again?

  They bantered a little more about what each enjoyed.

  She felt more than a little guilty about the whole exchange. If she’d been home with Essie, she doubted she would have had been messaging with Charlotte. But here at work, where Essie couldn’t see, she could and did.

  It felt fundamentally dishonest. If she and Essie were really going to practice polyamory, they couldn’t hide what they were doing from each other. She should be as comfortable messaging Charlotte at home as she would have been at work. And yet, look how it had gone last night when she’d been honest about having sex.

  She had to stop with the distractions and get some work done. In theory, she’d been working on Angie’s onion routing as a side project for nearly a month now. In practice, between her other responsibilities for the chat personalities, and the distraction of Essie, and now Charlotte… She’d made way too little progress. She had theory and diagrams and some code, but she’d failed to make any sort of serious headway.

  Maybe Essie was right. Maybe she was too caught up in her own pursuit of pleasure. What was the purpose of life?

  She wasn’t going to answer that now. She had work to do, and it was becoming clear that she wouldn’t make progress on her own. She’d do better if she recruited help. Then there’d be accountability, progress too, especially if they weren’t as distracted as she was.

  It was time to kick this project into high gear. To do that, she was going to flaunt Amber’s diktat. She wouldn’t allow Amber to prescribe who she could or couldn’t talk to. She would need to ensure she wasn’t going to run into Amber herself. Well, she had a little tool that could help with that…

  The distributed, decentralized architecture of Tapestry meant that the social network consisted of many different components, some created by Tapestry, some by other companies. All of them were connected to each other via standardized APIs.

  Often this decentralized structure made it a challenge if Igloo or Angie wanted to engage in a bit of surreptitious hacking. But in this case, Amber used the Tapestry reference client, as a little more than half their users did, and that made everything a lot easier.

  Igloo uploaded a small JSON file containing a diagnostic payload to Amber’s notification queue. Igloo waited until the file disappeared, then she smiled. For the next twenty-four hours, or until Amber rebooted her phone, whichever came first, Amber’s phone would upload detailed GPS coordinates every ten seconds. A simple backdoor into the client that programmers used when they need to debug location-aware features.

  It would be nearly impossible for Amber to notice, unless she were monitoring her own data transmissions, which would be silly for her to do.

  Igloo started a script, called MaraudersMapUpdater, which sent Amber’s location to Igloo’s phone, where it was displayed on a map. If Amber approached within fifty feet on roughly the same altitude as Igloo, then she’d get a long buzz. Igloo had an Amber-proximity alert.

  Armed with this defensive data, she made her way to Ben and Diana’s desks on the floor below. Regardless of what Amber wanted them working on, Ben and Diana were the ideal candidates.

  Their side-by-side desks were empty. Ben’s desk was pristine, but then it usually was, because he usually worked from the couch on the adjoining wall. But his messenger bag was present, and a pastry rested on Diana’s desk. They were around, somewhere.

  Her phone buzzed, not the long pulse of the Maurauder’s Map, but her normal notification. She slipped it out of her pocket to find a message from Diana.

  “That which you seek can be found in the stadium.”

  Igloo glanced up, saw the red indicator light next to Diana’s webcam blinking slowly. She nodded at the camera.

  She took the staircase downstairs, to the stadium seating area where they sometimes held presentations. The seating area was empty. She turned to the raised dais where presenters spoke, but there was no one there either.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she caught one of the stadium bench seats folding up. “In here,” Diana called.

  Igloo wanted to be surprised, but she couldn’t. This was typical of the two of them. A few months back, Ben had converted an electrical junction room into a makeshift office, which was uncovered only when a routine fire marshal inspection had discovered him sleeping in there.

  She stepped down into the narrow opening afforded by the raised seat and lowered herself inside. Then she crouched down to let Diana close the seat behind her.

  She crawled toward the back of the stadium seats, where the inside space was taller. They had a small sofa, bean bag, coffee table, and a couple of Ikea table lamps. Ben nodded to her. “Hey, Igs. You’ll be cool about this, right?”

  “Of course,” she said, a little indignant. It would be a terrible day if Ben and Diana started lumping her in with adults like Amber and Angie.

  “You mind?” she asked, gesturing to the space next to Ben on the couch.

  “No, go for it.” He shuffled energy bars and chips off the couch and onto the coffee table to make room, and Diana took the bean bag.

  The underside of the stadium seating was hung with several monitors. It took a few seconds to recognize the images being displayed, but Igloo puzzled out that one monitor displayed the feed from the webcam at Diana’s desk, and another had a view from what appeared to be a security camera in the stadium seating area.

  “How’d you get the furniture in?”

  “There’s a small access door at the end,” Diana said. “It was labeled with a door ID, but we peeled the numbers off and changed the lock, and nobody’s come in since.”

  “Why don’t you use the door to get in?”

  “You can see the door from the break room down the hall,” Ben said. “But the seats aren’t really visible from anywhere other than the stadium itself. Less likely to be detected.”

  “This is hardcore. Where does everyone think you are?”

  Ben shrugged. “In meetings? Sleeping? I don’t know.”

  “We just want to work without interruptions,” Diana said. “Let me manage my own time without all the hassles. And besides, Amber keeps asking us to babysit the new companies we’re onboarding.” She mock yawned.

  “Yeah, about that,” Igloo said. “I’m guessing you have bandwidth for some real work.”

  Ben shut his laptop. “What do you have in mind?”

  “This has to be hush hush. I don’t want Amber or anyone else to know about it.”

  Ben and Diana exchanged glances.

  “Spit it out already,” Diana said, her own laptop closed now.

  Igloo wondered how much was safe to say at work. Angie herself had told Igloo at work, so clearly this wasn’t a secret on the level of their hacking. But she had also asked Igloo to keep it quiet.

  Igloo reached into her pocket and pulled out a black box, a little smaller than her smartphone, and placed it in the middle of the
table. She flipped a switch and an LED glowed green, the only evidence of it working. The video on the hanging monitors froze, then turned black.

  “Wi-fi, ultrasonic, and infrared jammer. It should disable any data transmissions from mics or cameras in the room.”

  “Well that’s neat,” Ben said, leaning in to inspect it.

  “Don’t touch, please,” Igloo said. “I’m working on a project for Angie.” She proceeded to relate the details of the onion routing network Angie wanted added into the Tapestry client and explained the privacy benefits.

  Diana shook her head. “We get it. You don’t have to spell it all out. But the impact on bandwidth usage will be through the roof.”

  “Latency will go up,” Ben said. “You’ll get bottlenecks at certain points.”

  “We won’t do onion routing in isolation,” Igloo said. “You’re already bringing content into the system through IPFS. That’s peer-to-peer, and it means you’ve got a topographical network map built into every client.”

  Igloo flipped one of the monitors into whiteboard mode and dismissed the network connectivity error message.

  Ben grabbed an apple, put his feet up on the table and munched away.

  “Don’t think about onion routing by itself.” She sketched out a diagram of multiple clients talking to each other. “We have several tools at our disposal. The peer-to-peer network can move content closer to a requesting party. The onion routing network can disguise who has asked for content. The network map can tell us about the quality of the connectivity to many different clients, including both bandwidth and latency. You combine all of those, and what do you get?”

  “Optimized onion routing,” Diana said. “Not only that, but since we’re already requesting content on behalf of other nodes, there’s really no way to know if the content took one hop, two, or ten hops. Traffic analysis attacks will never work.”

  “Yeah, but two-thirds of our client sessions are on mobile.” Ben poked at his tablet, then turned it around for Igloo to inspect. It was a slide from a talk Igloo remembered him presenting last month. “Of the third that use desktop browsers, slightly less than a third of those have our browser plugin. So, out of all of our users, only about ten percent are serving up IPFS. Add in the content provider seed servers, and that number goes up slightly, but it’s not anywhere near the total saturation you’re talking about.”