Flee or Kill: The Future Of Reality TV (Future Forward Book 2)

by D. Frank Green

  "Fokking awesome," yelled Mallory. "Great timing Captain, you nailed that one perfectly."

  The Captain merely nodded. He'd seen it over and over in his mind ever since he'd pulled the trigger. Between his upbringing and his conditioning during training, killing wasn't supposed to bother him but now and then, when the moment was this real and this dramatic, the act slipped through his defenses. But he couldn't let his biometrics show that of course, so he took a deep breath and forced out a laugh good enough to fool those around the table.

  "Do not mess with the First Team," he yelled to an enthusiastic, table pounding response from his men.

  "Mr. Mallory, do you have ambitions to be like our Captain," asked Beck.

  "Sir James, I do indeed strive to be a Captain some day," said Mallory. "Then I could ride your sorry ass until you got good enough with your pistol to be able to hit anything, something other than your own foot."

  "Fok you!" said Beck to much laughter. He continued, "My objective however is to be as good a shot as our Mr. Adams. I understand he's requalified as 'Master Expert' with his pistol. Now if he can only learn to hit the damned urinal with his other pistol, we'll all be much safer."

  "Yeah, but that one only shoots blanks and is still rated as a "training unit"," said Mallory.

  Adams smiled, turned to Mallory and said, "But at least it shoots which, I hear, is more than yours does."

  Their chorus of laughter drowned out the music and others in the bar turned to see if there was any action to accompany the laughs. All they saw were ten men around a table laughing and pointing at each other as they, too, went to private notes back and forth.

  A few brave, or very drunk, souls tried to intercept the messages. They failed and Security logs noted their actions.

  The Captain leaned back in his chair and surveyed the room. He met sub-Lieutenant Chamber's eye from across the room where the young man was sitting with a group of friends, nodded briefly and smiled. A thought formed in the back of his mind about the young Lieutenant and holding the young man's gaze, he nodded again, more definitely this time. He smiled as the thought emerged, laughed and turned back to his men. Tonight was a night for partying and enjoying life. His thought would hold for a few days.

  14/05/2167 09:17:42

  In a much poorer section of town, some would call it a student ghetto, the music pounded in heartbeat rhythm and Jake danced to the beat. Dance is a charitable word for what Jake was doing. His reflection bounced back to him from the large wall screens and a casual observer would have seen him clearly in his own dancing world.

  In the reflection Jake saw his glasses threatening to leave his face so he pushed them back. His parent-planned genetic enhancements involved increased mathematical abilities while physical abilities took a back seat. A very faraway back seat as it turned out. As a student, he couldn't afford cosmetic surgery to correct his eyes but he'd promised himself he'd do it someday.

  "Dance, dance, dance," The lyrics were simple and repetitive. Once you heard them, you sang them to yourself over and over whether you wanted to or not.

  Jake sang the words, but he was nowhere near the tune. A twisting dance move threatened to topple him into his console. He recovered to once again face the large reflective screen.

  He strutted, he posed for the image and in his mind, he danced and managed to hold onto the beat. With no inhibitions, he flowed with the music. It helped that his compartment was windowless and nobody else could watch. He couldn't afford windows and the increased level of comfort they indicated. Not yet.

  "Dance, dance, dance." He flexed imaginary muscles as he bounced across the room.

  Not a fan of housekeeping, it was impossible to remove the musty smell from these old port-side buildings even if he tried, Jake discovered a way to fold his bed back into the wall without having to make it so he raised it every morning before opening his cooking area. As a young man, having the kitchen and snacks available while he was working was a much higher priority than his bed. Right now though, he raised everything except the console as he didn't want or need any distractions.

  When units were folded back into the walls, the then-visible surfaces became interactive screens for the programming Jake did. All four walls were computerized to respond to his every command. It didn't matter whether that was working on his schoolwork, displaying relaxing scenery and music to help him sleep or full-size porn that helped in other ways.

  "Rip it out, rip it out," the music blared.

  Jake stopped singing for a moment and took off his shirt to mimic the male dancers. The shirt was, as all clothing was, microchipped, and removing it took away a layer of surveillance. Back to strutting across his room, he somehow managed to make the turn exactly when the dancers did.

  "Yesss." He laughed out loud. "Give me one of those sweet bints and I could do this."

  Knowing what was ahead, he focused solely on the music.

  He increased his speed to almost stay in time with the music but once again, he was off beat. He concentrated harder on the music and beat as he didn't want to trip any Security biometric warnings with this afternoon's adventure. It would be too easy to get into major deep water with the Secretary if he made a mistake now.

  "Dance, dance, dance," enveloped him from all four walls with the beat.

  Jake did, enthusiastically and with a great deal of energy.

  The Security system Jake was working around was the end product of over a hundred years of development. Hooked into every citizen's seven biometric chips, Central Computing read and recorded an incredible range of information and did it almost instantly. Reading the biometrics and associating them with different behaviors was now a well-established ability. Even the relationship between different biometrics in the same individual could be interpreted for behavior and the results of doing so had long been admissible evidence. This was taken for granted within the city; the Corporation picked the judges, so they got to set the rules.

  "Rip it out, rip it out" Jake did not sing this line, allowing it go past. Instead he launched himself into a ballet leap across the room. The only thing that saved him from a total wipeout was the door to his bathroom. Bouncing off the door, he managed to grab the door jamb and stay on his feet. He took a second to catch his breath and then bounced back across the room, albeit in smaller bounces.

  Like most citizens, Jake took Central Computing and being chipped for granted. The chips gave him instant access to his student programming computers, provided visual messages, videos, hearing and information access without the need for devices. He'd never known anything different. It simply was.

  And he was like any normal teenager, looking for the line he shouldn't cross but likely would in search of lulz.

  "Dance, dance, dance."

  Jake's dancing was energetic if not artistic, and his heart rate had risen to sync with the beat. He was sweating from the workout and his energy level was at maximum output. His biometrics were perfect.

  The adventure he was about to release took him over six months of careful work. The program existed on a third-level virtual computer within his own computer console. While gifted students often ran a second, hidden operating system, Jake was the first, as far as he knew, to have three nested systems. The third one was so well hidden only a senior programmer, on a very lucky day, would be able to find it. Security knew some students ran a second system, and this marked the most brilliant programmers but none knew, or thought it was possible, to run a third.

  "I am a programming god!" Jake thought and he laughed out loud.

  This was only the start of his protective systems. Because he knew the Security spiders and tracker bots would be all over this program once he let it loose, he designed it as a secure, self-replicating system. Its first step was to sever all links to himself and instead, point to the Corporation's Marketing Department. The software would then create a series of messages and relays of a single image. As soon as the image flashed five-hundred times, the entire program would se
lf-destruct and remove all parts of itself back to its multiple origins.

  "Dance, dance, dance."

  Jake was fully engrossed in singing along. He wasn't acting now, he was completely inside the music, completely separated from the reality of life in the city. He couldn't close his eyes, he'd lose balance but he was fully committed to the experience and the pounding beat.

  His friends were clear in their assessment of both his dancing and his singing. He should stick to working on computers.

  "Dance, dance, dance."

  By the time the program was ready to disappear, Jake calculated there would be ten thousand individual components and each one would be too small to hold any identifying information.

  However, he was most proud of his server-side programming. Even the server logs would be erased as the program self-destructed. This hack of the servers would be the first time this had ever been done by anybody. Others had gained server entry, but making the server forget the hack was a brilliant bit of programming and one that was considered impossible.

  Even his two virtual systems were programed to self-destruct, to remove themselves from the main drives, libraries and histories. Once the program started running and the initial message sent, everything would self-destruct and he'd have a plain-vanilla computer system.

  He expected the entire program to run for one minute before total and untraceable erasure and all ten thousand bits disappear forever. He hoped. And with that, he lost his concentration, stumbled, caught himself, jumped in the air to mask his thoughts. You can do this, not a problem. You can do this, not a problem, he thought. You can do this, not a problem.

  A wave of his hand turned the volume even higher. The room itself started vibrating in time with the steady beat.

  The image was the highlight. As a senior tech student he had access to extremely powerful graphics programs, but this one was so simple even a kindergarten kid could do it. He stuck the face of George Carpenter, the Secretary of Homeland Security, on the form of a vulture looking down at a dead rabbit. He vaguely thought if caught, he'd claim he thought the bird was an eagle and not a vulture but given he didn't intend to be caught it wasn't a major part of his plan.

  "Dance, dance, dance."

  While he had unlimited computing access, speed and power, there was a certain sense of artistry in programming with the smallest amount of code possible. This code was as sparse as they came and Jake was proud of every line. His tests had all been positive, but you never knew you'd succeeded until you let your software loose to work.

  "Rip it out, rip it out" Jake sang these lines with a great deal of off-key enthusiasm.

  When he sang the keyword "rip" out loud, the program ran. And rip it did. Right out onto the grid, building and destroying backlinks as it went.

  And then nothing, absolutely nothing happened.

  "Dance, dance, dance."

  He danced as if his life depended on it. He strutted, he posed, he flexed his muscles for the screen and in the end, he enjoyed himself more than he had in a very long time.

  He smiled again because he knew the pic was out there but nobody was would comment or admit they'd seen it. To do so was to invite a visit from Security. And nobody wanted to bring that sort of visit down on himself for any reason. Ah no, but they'd seen it. The buzz from his friends would tell him what he needed to know.

  He wasn't going to be able to tell anybody about this triumph but he knew he'd just beaten the best. He'd savor this prank, but only until he'd designed his next one.

  Take that suckers, he thought.

  14/05/2167 09:18:19

  The hunt started faster than even Jake anticipated as one of the vulture images flashed onto the Secretary's personal screen. Carpenter started speaking and the system automatically connected him to his target.

  "Palmer." The system hesitated a second to connect directly to the tech's ear feed. "Did you see that flash image? Track that damn thing, find whoever's responsible and have him in the holding cells within the next half hour," said Carpenter.

  "Haven't seen it, Sir. Didn't pop up on our systems, sir, but we're on it," said Palmer.

  "Drop everything else you're doing. I want this one," said Carpenter.

  The tone of the Secretary's voice was clear to the young officer. His computer division, staffed with the top code experts in the city, swung into action sending bots and spiders out on the hunt. All forty members of the Team took different tasks from the lists created for emergency security penetration problems.-

  Screens changed from lines of code to images and overlying biological reports as the coders flicked fingers on keyboards and waved hands. The room looked like an out-of-control ballet troupe all dancing to different music as the techs worked independently on their assigned emergency tasks.

  Palmer didn't believe the hacker could remain anonymous when his Team focussed on him and his confidence was shared by his staff. Collectively, they were the best hackers and computer staff in the city; indeed, they were responsible for tracking and breaking the last Anonymous circle a year ago.

  Palmer was certain this would be an easy assignment. Compared to the Anonymous hunt, the image should be kid stuff. The programming trails would be simple to find.

  "Give me real-time data people. Give me a fast run-through on level five data. What are you pulling up?" said Palmer.

  "Nothing outside of norms, Sir. Looks like we have a few joggers at the park and the typical exercise routines for this time of day."

  The Lieutenant thought about this for a moment. "Go straight to level ten. Give me deep biometrics based on oscillatory activity, heart, endorphin, and amplitude combinations. Report anything outside of norms by 50 percent."

  A different tech responded. "I have a target climbing trees. Apparently looking for a viewing vantage point according to his eye feed. Thirteen years old, tree in his backyard. His visuals show the neighbor's back windows. Older teenage girl lives there." This view appeared on one wall screen and received only the briefest of looks from Chambers.

  "Flag it, send a note to his father. Record what his father does." Kids will be kids, but only the stupid or unlucky get caught he thought.

  "Sir, I have a range of possibles in the suburbs. There's three of them and the hacker wouldn't have done a group job. We know Anonymous all work as individuals. Got the eye and voice evidence. Voice data says they're discussing a union and they're running masking software. Stupid entry level program shit. Gotcha fokkers." The tech, a recently promoted Junior Lieutenant Chambers, was pleased with himself on this one, he knew the recordings were sent to Corporate and a reward would come his way. That view too appeared on the screen taken from a nearby CCTV and one of the participant's eye feeds.

  A tech on the other side of the room spoke up. "I'm checking the entertainment district and am flooded with results. There are too many for reliability. Sexual stimulation amplitude, testosterone and heart hormones are all spiking. Frankly, if they weren't, Corporate wouldn't be doing their jobs. How do I treat this problem?" Multiple walls screens showed the different bars and hotel lobbies with meaningless numbers scrolling alongside.

  "Good catch. This means hackers might hide better down there than anywhere in the city. Forward this to Corporate and flag it for the Secretary's attention. Also, put it on our development agenda, it's a hole we have to plug.

  In the meantime, set up a search association to tie video into those who are 50 percent over normal biometric bounds. We'll flag a bunch of excessive partiers and sex activity but possibly we'll see a hacker or two. Keep it running for now. It's worth the bandwidth until we design a better solution."

  Palmer slowly turned a full circle reviewing the data flowing across each tech's primary wall screen.

  "Gentlemen, switch focus to computer techs and students across the city. Give me a level ten on those. Trace that programming too."

  Palmer couldn't believe they hadn't found the hacker on the first pass and a wave of doubt crossed his mind. Even if w
e missed some of them, Anonymous wouldn't do something this small and stupid. The individual graphic components appeared on screens surrounding a main screen showing the completed project. Palmer turned towards that screen to absorb what they were all searching for. A vulture with George Carpenter's head took shape on the wall. To their credit, nobody sniggered.

  "Analysis," said Palmer.

  "Sir, the graphics are basic photographic code used by beginning school children. Just to complicate things, it's registered to Jonas Campbell in Marketing for his children. Sir, he doesn't have kids. I stripped it into components, they're all legitimate and they're also all registered to him. All server activity for it is similarly registered. But Mr. Campbell has been in the hospital for over two weeks now and he's apparently dying. His biometrics aren't healthy and are getting worse. Not him. We don't know who owned the software and I'm not sure how we'll find out," said the tech.

  "So you're telling me we can't find the real user?" said Palmer. Silence answered his question.

  Another main screen changed focus from scrolling mainframe code to a live view of an apartment bedroom.

  "I have something here," began a tech at the far end of the room. Palmer turned to him. The tech continued, "Ah no, I don't. But it's interesting anyway. You know George Grace, the lead tech in applications-maintenance? Turns out he's on holidays today and he and his wife are way beyond normal biometrics in their bedroom. Funky stuff! Didn't know George had it in him. Anybody want the room vids or the eye and sound feeds?" The tech hadn't posted George's videos but allowed a small snippet of sound to escape. There were a few groans in the room in response.

  "Crap, I'll never look at George again without laughing."

  Palmer didn't identify the speaker, he preferred to stay away from anything that wasn't his target on this one. The Secretary would be checking. And while it wasn't unheard of for Security to record and bootleg sex tapes, collectively and intuitively the entire Team agreed with him and decided they didn't want to be identified with this search or problem in any way. There were no takers for the offer.