“No, there won’t be another chance. They’d put measures in place to make sure no one does a distributed network again.”
Diana interrupted their conversation, hovering over Igloo’s shoulder. “The Great Firewall of China just failed,” she said. “T2 has enough exploits and mesh networking ability that they’re reporting the firewall is, for all intents and purposes, totally toast. We’re getting a huge influx of downloads from China now.”
Igloo gave Diana a high-five.
“Hear that?” Igloo said, looking back to Carter. “Redeeming social value. That’s got to be worth something.”
“We’ll use it,” Carter said. “We’ll use everything we can get. But I need to tell you something while Diana is there.”
Diana leaned in closer to the screen.
“The FBI shared some details with us that they haven’t released to the general public. There was a shooting at Tapestry headquarters. Ben and Forrest are both dead, along with several other FBI agents.”
Igloo felt someone grab her shoulder and looked up to see Doug. She didn’t know if he was comforting her or seeking comfort. She put her hand on his.
Diana covered her mouth and turned away.
Igloo’s vision narrowed, and everyone felt a million miles away. First Angie, now Ben and Forrest. Angie had always lived on the edge, and Forrest consciously chose a risky profession, but Ben was so innocent. Just a programmer who wanted to make the world a better place. How could this happen to him? How many casualties would they incur in the battle over the Internet?
Chapter 62
Nathan9 followed every minutia of the government’s activities in Portland. The scale of the mobilization against Tapestry exceeded anything he could have imagined, but he suspected that they’d stopped short of actually shutting down the entire Internet. He couldn’t be sure, but he doubted anything short of that drastic a measure would actually stop the T2 team.
Of course, the average layperson—hell, even the average expert—would say bringing down the Internet couldn’t be done, but there were a half-dozen approaches the government could use if they were desperate. The government’s problem was that if they used any of those mechanisms, business and academia would work together and redesign things so that it couldn’t happen again. The government would undoubtedly save those vulnerabilities for only the most dire situations.
The key question of the moment was where was Forrest with the copy of the digital keys that would unlock T2? With those keys, Nathan would have de facto rule over the net of the future. He’d orchestrated all this: the showdown with the government, Angie’s paranoia, the timing of T2, the government’s hunt of the developers… Everything was supposed to culminate in him getting a copy of the keys.
There was a pit in his stomach. Something was up. Forrest had gone dark for too long. Either she had betrayed him or something had gone wrong.
When the T2 release finally came, along with the concurrent announcement of the community governance model, he sat back in shock. Angie would never, under any circumstances, have turned over power to the people. Like him, she would have kept that power for herself. She could never have trusted the world, could never have put her faith in the ability of people to do the right thing.
But he had failed to realize that Igloo could, and would, and indeed, she had. She’d willingly let go of that power herself and given it to the global community. Freedom, for Igloo, had come not from holding power, but from giving it away.
He let out a low whistle. His dog’s ears perked up.
Her actions had destroyed everything he hoped to achieve, but he respected her solution. She’d neatly prevented the abuse of power…by him, by the government, or even by herself.
Chapter 63
By late morning, Igloo was concerned about the Coast Guard pilots, still barricaded in their cockpit.
“It’s not humane to keep them in there,” Igloo told Doug.
“We don’t know what they’ll do if we let them out,” he said. “I don’t think they’re armed, but they might be.”
“Fuck it, I’m going to talk to them.”
Doug followed her and listened to her discussion through the intercom.
Between reading everything shared on the net, and conversations with their superiors, the pilots were well informed about the situation,
Ten minutes later the cockpit door was open.
“I can’t say if I agree with what you’ve done,” the pilot said to Igloo. “But I understand what you’re trying to achieve. I hope they go gently on you.”
The copilot grumbled. “Rebecca, you’re letting these fucking idealists get to you. We were nearly shot out of the sky because of them.”
“Let it go, Kurt. We survived. Sooner or later they’ll reach an agreement, and then we can go home.”
The pilots headed for the bathroom, and Igloo went back to her seat next to Essie. Everyone else was slumped in chairs or sleeping on the floor. Fatigue and boredom had hit hard.
Igloo curled up next to Essie and rested her head on Essie’s shoulder.
“We should’ve brought more food,” Igloo said.
“You’re always hungry,” Essie said, petting her head. “When we get out of here, I’ll feed you.”
“If we get out of here,” Igloo said, her voice low. “If we go free.”
Essie peered down at her. “You okay? Half an hour ago you gave everyone a pep talk.”
“I told them what they needed to hear,” Igloo said. “I have no idea what’s going to happen.”
Igloo nuzzled Essie’s neck and closed her eyes. The next thing she knew, Doug was shaking her awake. She must have dozed off. She forced herself up.
“We have another offer.”
“Does it include coffee?” Igloo said. “Because if so, I accept.” But she rubbed her face and got up.
Carter and David Schwartz were on the video call together.
“How are you holding together?” David asked.
Igloo shrugged. “We’re alive.”
“You know what’s happened to the Internet?” Carter asked.
“Everyone’s come out in support of T2,” Igloo said. “Hackers, coders, Anonymous, privacy geeks… Everyone is wiring legacy Internet stuff into T2. Seventy percent of all traffic is now going over T2.”
“Was that planned?” Carter asked.
But his father put his hand on Carter’s arm. “Don’t answer that, Igloo. We don’t want to know.” He took a deep breath. “Look, the sense I’m getting is that the government is desperate. They want T2 shut down.”
“We can’t shut it down,” Igloo said. “You know that. That’s the whole point. It’s out there now. It’s under community control. It’s self-policing, self-maintaining.”
“I know, and I keep telling them that. They’ve had their analysts check out the code. They think you’re holding out, that you have the private keys that would allow someone to update the Tapestry code.”
“It’s all out there in the community, distributed among hundreds of community members. We’re not special anymore. We’re just members of that community.”
“They think that if you tell the community what you want, they’ll do it.”
Igloo gritted her teeth. “First of all, that’s not how communities work. Second of all, the community will know I’m being coerced by the government, so they’ll discount anything I say or do.”
“I’m just relaying what they’re saying, Igs. Listen to this next part, because I think it’s key. They want a government surveillance backdoor that can be used in the case of a court-approved surveillance order. If you give them this, they’ll let everyone else go. You do twenty-four months, minimum security.”
“Like the FISA court?” Igloo said. “Those things are abused. No backdoors. No surveillance.”
“This is the government compromising,” David said. “Twenty-four hours ago, you were all going to disappear, possibly for the rest of your shortened lives. Now they’re saying that T2 can
stay, everyone else goes free, and you do a little jail time, in exchange for a legal system with built-in oversight to allow the government to fulfill their obligation to ensure public safety. I strongly recommend you consider this proposal.”
“Even if I wanted to change T2, I can’t. Only the community can. They can take their proposal to the community, the users can vote on it, and if they want it, the community may implement it.” Igloo wanted off the plane. “Can you get us any food? We’re starving in here.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
An hour later, they got another offer. They could leave the plane and be moved to a secure facility where they could negotiate with the government under the direction of UN mediators.
“And lose global oversight?” She gestured outside. “The media is watching. The world is watching. If we become invisible, who knows what will happen to us. We’ll stay here. See how long they can keep an entire airport shut down.”
“They may take you by force.”
Igloo glanced at a screen. 78 percent of all traffic was going through Tapestry. “Let’s check again in half an hour.”
“What’s going to happen?”
“You’ll see.”
Right now the Internet was a mix of Tapestry and non-Tapestry traffic.
Anything between two computers running Tapestry was wholly encrypted, tunneled through multiple clients, so that no one else could detect what was being transmitted or even who was talking to whom. The vast majority of static content, such as public photos, articles, even video files was now served up through Tapestry’s peer-to-peer network. Thousands of applications had already been ported in the last day from public cloud infrastructure to Tapestry clients, effectively granting free server hosting. Anything originating with a computer running Tapestry, connecting to a non-Tapestry endpoint was encrypted right up until it left the Tapestry endpoint nearest its final destination.
The only holdout was traffic between two computers, neither of which was on Tapestry. And to force the hand of those not using Tapestry, Igloo’s contribution to the T2 code was about to do a Very Bad Thing.
Igloo watched a dashboard showing the rollout of T2 and related statistics. Tapestry data inched past 80 percent of all Internet traffic. Behind the scenes, Igloo knew that a major backbone on the east coast was suddenly being hammered by a large portion of all Tapestry clients. She watched latency numbers skyrocket as Internet from Boston to Washington, D.C. slowed to a crawl.
Igloo broadcast a message to the community.
“If any routers want to throttle Tapestry traffic, they need to install patches to participate in the Tapestry routing protocol. Suggest everyone start working on updates now.”
David was back on a video conference less than ten minutes later. “What the hell are you doing, Igloo? You’re making the government very angry.”
“I’m telling people they must patch their infrastructure to keep working in this new, higher efficiency environment.”
“That’s not the way they see it. They see that stunt as you threatening everyone, demonstrating the control you have over the Internet.”
Igloo shrugged and disconnected.
The routing patches had already been developed by the core team and vetted by the community. Within an hour, a good portion of the big backbone routers were running the updates, and suddenly traffic was being modulated and routed smoothly again.
She smiled. Now even the stuff that didn’t originate with a Tapestry computer was flowing through the Tapestry network. Which should make the government very, very nervous.
Comcast wouldn’t cave though, and they were routing traffic to most people’s homes. That’s okay. Tapestry was going to take care of that too.
As soon as the backbone routers were integrated, Tapestry started to change behavior again. When it detected traffic flowing through nodes that didn’t support Tapestry protocol, they routed around them if another route was available. In the case of people’s homes, that meant Tapestry computers would try to establish peer-to-peer wireless connections with other computers. When they found a connection to a computer not connected to Comcast, they routed traffic away from Comcast.
At first Comcast management would probably be delighted to see a drop in their system traffic. After all, it would keep their costs down. But soon that drop would go off a cliff. After that, Comcast would realize nobody was using their network. If Comcast still wanted to be in business next week, they’d have no choice but to support Tapestry.
Igloo looked out the window. It was early evening now. Their second day on the tarmac. The water supply had run out a few hours ago.
David came back online. “These manipulative tricks—saturating the backbone, playing games with Comcast—they’re eroding whatever goodwill you might have with the government. Now they think you’re extorting everyone. They’re talking extensive prison time again.”
Igloo shook her head. She worked up some moisture to wet her throat. “I’m not going to prison. And I’m not going to make a deal. I’ve just been waiting here so they can see our relative positions. You tell them I have a kill switch. I can’t turn off T2. But the kill switch will shut down the net if any of us fail to check in according to schedule. I and the rest of the T2 team are going to open that door, and we’re going to walk away. Just walk away. That’s all that’s going to happen. They’re not going to stop us. They’re not going to let anything happen to us. Because if anything happens to me, then who knows what will happen to the Internet.”
Igloo waited thirty minutes to make sure that message got out to the powers that be.
“Come on people, it’s time.”
They opened the plane door and let the folding staircase descend to the tarmac. Thousands of lights shone out of the darkness surrounding them.
Igloo grabbed Essie’s hand in hers. “Ready?”
Essie nodded.
Igloo took the first step out of the plane.
Chapter 64
Enso sat at his borrowed desk in the Portland FBI headquarters. The operation had been taken out of his hands once the plane landed at the airport. The visibility had gone international, and there was no way the head of a super-black agency could remain in control of anything.
If it had been up to him, he’d have had the snipers take out the T2 team. Maybe it was for the best that the control had been taken out of his hands. That would have been a mistake. Everything Tapestry did after release was automated. Killing Igloo and the rest of the team would have accomplished nothing, except to worsen his own situation.
As it was, he was good and truly fucked. He’d poured everything into taking on Tapestry. Called in every favor, taken every risk. What had it gotten him? An inquiry in front of Congress, most likely.
They’d need a scapegoat, wouldn’t they? Someone would have to answer why, in the midst of the most massive mobilization of the intelligence community, Tapestry had not just evaded them, but actually made a fool of them.
There was nothing for him when he walked out of this room. Forget his career. He’d go to jail. For Angie’s death, if nothing else.
He reached into the case on his desk and pulled out his sidearm. The best way out was also the quickest. No repercussions, no complications. Simple.
Chapter 65
Six months later.
Igloo wrote a line of code, then stared at the screen. That should do it. She started the test suite, and checked the time on her computer. Time to login. She logged out of Tapestry, then logged back in again using two-factor authentication. There, the kill switch was refreshed for another forty-eight hours.
Across a tabletop littered with coffee cups and pastry plates, Diana was buried in her own computer. They’d taken to mostly working out of coffee shops lately. Even now, six months later, the office held memories that ambushed them at unexpected times. Angie, Ben, even Agent Forrest.
She turned to stare at Essie, who was updating her blog. Since Essie came out as the primary author of the manif
esto, her visibility skyrocketed. Her photography blog was suddenly getting zillions of hits every day, and Essie had taken to writing about freedom, politics, and the intersectionality of kink and feminism. She was now a creative writer for Tapestry’s CTO office, which meant that, technically, Igloo really did have a submissive on staff.
Igloo reached out to touch the titanium collar that replaced Essie’s old chain and lock. Essie smiled, but gently pushed Igloo’s hand away and stayed focused on her work.
Six months in, Tapestry was now everywhere. The community had extracted the core infrastructure from the social networking features. Tapestry had become a bona fide platform for software deployment and communication. Hundreds of thousands of applications had been ported to the distributed computation environment. Nearly every device, from the largest backbone routers to people’s home wi-fi networks to most smartphones, were all native participants on the encrypted network.
Within days of the initial release, the community had found the kill switches in the code that Igloo and the rest of the T2 team were dependent on to ensure their freedom. With those switches in place, Igloo and the rest of the team had to authenticate with Tapestry on a regular basis. If more than one member of the team failed to login, then Tapestry would stop routing traffic. In effect, the Internet would die.
The community had debated whether to keep or remove those kill switches. On one hand, such behavior was anathema to the tech community. On the other, the T2 team were now heroes to that same community, and the kill switches were all that kept them out of jail, or worse.
The global community decided to keep the kill switches in place and agreed they wouldn’t debate it again for another six months. Just a few weeks ago, the community voted again, and agreed to preserve for another six months. Having an existential dependence on the outcome of a community vote wasn’t how Igloo preferred to live, but it beat the surety of going to jail.
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