Dangerous Brains

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Dangerous Brains Page 11

by Erik Hamre


  Vladimir nodded, before heading towards the kitchen area. The house had something like twenty-five rooms. Vladimir had almost got lost the first time he stayed there. He had to call up Kevorkian on the intercom to get directions on how to get out. It was then Kevorkian admitted he hadn’t even been in every room of the house. Vladimir could understand him. Vladimir still owned the house he had bought in Palo Alto when he first arrived in the US. It wasn’t fantastic, but it was nice. Vladimir had, however, always wondered why Americans needed so much space. Why everything had to be so big. He had used his living room, kitchen and bed room. That was it. He had never found any reason to sit in the entertainment room to watch a movie, or to lie down in the lounge room to read a book. Those two rooms had been a complete waste. Vladimir had never used them. Not once. And he knew Kevorkian wasn’t too different from him. Kevorkian had spent most of his time in the garage. It was where he kept his prized collection of designer cars, and it was where he had worked long into the nights.

  Vladimir surveyed the eight sport cars lined up in the garage. There was not a spot of dirt on any of them. They shone like they belonged in a museum or a car shop, not a garage. Most other entrepreneurs acquired new tastes and interests when they came upon money. Not so much with Kevorkian. Even though his ex-wife, Sarah, had been into the arts and the theatre, Kevorkian had never attempted to pretend he liked that sort of stuff. He liked machines, not paintings. He liked beer, not aged Shiraz. And he liked food, not appetizers. Some had even argued Kevorkian preferred machines to humans, which was quite a scary thought considering Kraut and most of the government believed he had created an artificial intelligence that would soon replace humans on top of the food chain. Vladimir knew Kevorkian better than all those guys though. And Vladimir knew the answer was much simpler. Kevorkian just preferred to spend money on things he could use. Before he got rich he had fixed up old VW Beetles in a rented garage outside Stanford University, where he taught computer science at the time. As his business dealings had started to consume more and more of his time he had outsourced the restoration jobs to various specialty firms. Kevorkian would find a suitable object, and then instruct the mechanical shops what to do. Then he would follow the progress of the works via the internet. Vladimir had often wondered if Kevorkian missed his simple life as he sat there in his office, watching how a team of three mechanics in Arizona did the work he had once done himself.

  The work he had loved doing.

  After having spent four minutes going through the various notes and papers on Kevorkian’s office desk, Vladimir was none the wiser. He had secretly hoped that Kevorkian might have left him a clue. That Vladimir had been as important in Kevorkian’s life as he had been in Vladimir’s. But everything seemed normal in the garage. Nothing was out of place.

  “Your ten minutes are up. We need to leave, Vladimir,” Kraut hollered from the hallway. By the tone of his voice, he hadn’t found anything of interest either.

  Vladimir took a last glance at the cars, Kevorkian’s most prized possessions. He missed Kevorkian immensely. He missed him more than he resented him.

  As he turned to leave, he grabbed a keyring from Kevorkian’s desk. It was the keyring to Kevorkian’s black Porsche 911, the car he had sometimes driven up to Vegas. It had always been Kevorkian’s absolute favourite. Even when he didn’t drive it he always kept the keyring with him, fondling it in boring board meetings or juggling it as he bombarded the various engineering teams with intelligent questions of why certain milestones hadn’t been reached.

  A memento from my teacher, from the person who was once my hero, Vladimir thought as he placed the keyring in his left pants pocket. He desperately needed to have something to hold onto, to not believe in the picture Kraut and the US Army painted of Kevorkian as a man devoid of conscience, as a man willing to kill off humanity to get back on the person who killed his son.

  27

  2nd of June 2015

  Kevorkiana HFT’s HQ

  Silicon Valley, California

  DAY 2:

  0915 Hours

  Amanda quickly skimmed the report her colleagues at DARPA had prepared. It was full of awkward sentence structuring and even had a few grammatical errors. The engineer who had authored it would never in a million years have sent it off in its current state if it hadn’t been for the fact that they were working against a very tight deadline. As long as there was no room for misunderstandings, as long as the message being conveyed was clear, it didn’t matter that the layout wasn’t perfect or that the message could have been delivered in a more succinct manner. Speed was more important than form at that moment.

  Speed and accuracy trumped everything.

  Amanda put the report down on her desk. She could have read it on the screen, but she always preferred printing out important documents. To make the distinction between what was normal work and what required extra consideration.

  She placed her yellow highlighter on top of the document. The document was only one page long. Although DARPA didn’t care about grammatical errors and form when they were in crisis mode, they never strayed away from the rule that no document should ever be longer than two pages.

  Amanda took a deep breath. She realised that Mike Hanna and Vladimir had been correct. There was an obvious overrepresentation of hacked computer systems on Wall Street compared to other industries. It appeared that Cronus had hacked almost every financial institution in the country. For other industries the results were more sporadic and random.

  Nothing comparable to the financial industry though.

  It was a standout.

  When Amanda picked up the phone she intuitively knew who Cronus’ ultimate target was: It was the financial industries of the world. At that moment she wasn’t sure whether to cheer for Kevorkian or hate him. She had always felt the same. She had never understood why CEOs were paid up to a thousand times the salaries of most of the workers in their companies. Or why they could even believe they were worth that sort of money. It was even worse for the investment bankers and hedge fund guys. Some of them made billions, and they weren’t even that smart. Just greedy. Greed was apparently the most sought-after quality on Wall Street. Greed was what could make you a career. She had always felt that there was something seriously wrong with the system, and now Kevorkian was about to expose it.

  To shut it down.

  Yes, normal people would be hurt if Kevorkian destroyed Wall Street. It wasn’t possible to just target the billionaires. But maybe it was worth it?

  Maybe the world needed a better system? And maybe it had to be torn down, and rebuilt from the ground up?

  “He’s targeting Wall Street,” Amanda said on the phone. She could hear Kraut grunt on the other end of the line. “We’re on our way back. This trip was a waste of time. There was nothing in the house.”

  As Amanda hung up the phone she wondered why Kraut had even agreed to go to Kevorkian’s house. The house had already been checked out hours earlier. Nothing had been found. Why waste time looking for something he knew he wouldn’t find? Why follow every whim this Vladimir Sorovis came up with?

  She picked up the report again and looked at the parts she had marked with yellow. This was what they should be focusing their efforts on.

  Not chasing dead ends.

  28

  2nd of June 2015

  Ministry of Technological Warfare

  Central Moscow, Russia

  DAY 2:

  0930 Hours (2030 Hours local time Moscow)

  The interrogation room was claustrophobic and had a distinct smell of industrial cleaning products. Although it was summer outside, the room was freezing cold. Major Olokoff wondered who had been sitting in the chair opposite him over the years. Right now it was Ivan Sorovis, Vladimir Sorovis’ older brother. Ivan looked scared to death where he sat in the chair. His entire body was shaking. He was only wearing a white long-sleeved shirt and some beige chinos. The guards had removed his tie, belt and shoes. A bit over the top. Olokoff co
uldn’t really imagine Ivan had become suicidal in the short hour that had elapsed since the SVR had picked him up from the elementary school where he normally taught maths and physics to nine-year-olds.

  “Are you cold?” Olokoff asked.

  Ivan didn’t respond. Instead he attempted to maintain his body composure - to not reveal how freezing cold he was.

  Olokoff smiled. Ivan was a man of pride. Major Olokoff knocked on the mirror behind him. “Turn up the heating and bring this poor man a blanket,” he said before sitting down on the wooden chair opposite Ivan. “Do you know why you’re here?” he asked.

  Ivan shook his head. His eyes were dark and filled with mistrust. He kept rubbing his hands together. Small clouds of steam rose to the ceiling when he breathed.

  “I want you to know that you’re not in any trouble. You have done nothing wrong.”

  “Then why am I here?” Ivan asked after an awkwardly long pause.

  “You are here because your brother needs you.”

  “Vladimir? Has something happened to Vladimir?”

  Olokoff took a deep breath. He knew that taking long pauses was an efficient interrogation technique. To never show that you were in a rush, to let the suspect do the talking. “We believe he may have been abducted.”

  “Abducted? By whom? Who would want to abduct Vladimir?”

  “Vladimir has been working for Mother Russia for the last twelve years.”

  “Vladimir has been an agent? I don’t believe it.”

  “It’s true, Ivan. Vladimir has been a very good help for us. He has been keeping an eye on the Americans.”

  “I don’t believe it. Vladimir isn’t a spy.”

  “He is not a spy. The world has changed, Ivan. There is no cold war anymore. There is no iron curtain. Russia and America have mostly common enemies these days. We can’t admit this publically, of course. The world needs its yin and yang to remain in balance. But the reality is that we face the same threats, and it is not from other governments. It’s from small terrorist cells hidden away in the general population, it’s from fanatics with messed up world views, and it’s happy go lucky technology companies without any wider understanding of the possible consequences of their actions.”

  “Vladimir doesn’t work for a terrorist organisation. He works in a well-respected technology company in Las Vegas. The company is worth several billion dollars.”

  “Facebook is worth hundreds of billions, does that make it guilt-free?”

  “Guilt-free? I don’t understand.”

  “Westerners believe Facebook improves democracy. That it can bring down dictators.”

  “It has brought down dictators. Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Yemen and Libya, the revolts in all those countries were initiated by Facebook communities.”

  “And are those countries now democracies? Is Syria a democracy?”

  “I guess not,” Ivan answered, honestly.

  “No, it’s not. Technology isn’t being used to bring on democracy. It is used to bring on chaos and anarchy. Militant Islamists recruit people and spread their propaganda through social media. Facebook is used to coordinate demonstrations and the naïve western media is being fooled over and over again.”

  “But Neuralgo isn’t a social media company. Vladimir was doing research on the brain.”

  “You obviously haven’t heard the news. Neuralgo is bankrupt.”

  “Bankrupt?”

  “Yes, bankrupt. And the founder and Vladimir have disappeared.”

  “Vladimir would never have done anything illegal. He is not that type of person.”

  “I know he isn’t. My fear is that he has been taken advantage of by someone who will use for terrorism the technology he developed. I need your help, Ivan. Has he ever told you anything about what he was working on over the last twelve months?”

  When Olokoff let himself out of the interrogation room twenty minutes later he was bursting with anger. Ivan was sitting in the chair sobbing. Olokoff hadn’t been physical with him. But he had pressed him hard. Made him recall his last conversation with his brother, and retell it in full. Olokoff wasn’t angry at Ivan, he wasn’t even angry at Vladimir. He was angry at himself. Angry at his colleagues in the SVR. How could they have missed the fact that Neuralgo had made a massive breakthrough in their efforts to map the human brain? He couldn’t quite comprehend how this breakthrough had led to the development of an Artificial General Intelligence, but somehow it must have. There were too many clues to dismiss them as coincidences.

  “Olga, book me on the first flight to the US,” he hollered into his mobile phone. “I’m on my way to the airport now.”

  “Where to in the US?” Olga asked.

  Olokoff swore. He had to find out where his old friend was these days.

  29

  2nd of June 2015

  Kevorkiana HFT’s HQ

  Silicon Valley, California

  DAY 2:

  1000 Hours

  The mood in the building housing Kevorkiana HFT was sombre as Vladimir and Kraut returned from their failed expedition to Kevorkian’s house. Vladimir seemed distant, lost in his own thoughts, and didn’t take much notice of the way Amanda stared at him when he came through the door. Kraut, on the other hand, was in a rush and raced straight up to her, immediately quizzing her about the Wall Street connection.

  “So what is it doing? Is it attempting to crash the trading systems?”

  “We don’t know yet. All we know is that it has hacked into every single major bank and financial institution on Wall Street. It has even hacked all the exchanges. In theory it could shut everything down, it could erase everything.”

  “Erase it?”

  “It has hacked all the backup systems as well. The entire so-called cloud. If Cronus’ mission is to take down Wall Street, there is nothing we can do to stop it from happening. It’s already inside. We can order NASDAQ and NYSE to shut down trading, but it won’t remove Cronus from their systems. If Cronus wants to erase the ownership of every share on every stock exchange in the US, it can. It could create a total disaster. It could erase every loan ever made. It could create anarchy.”

  “And you think this would be Kevorkian’s plan? You think this is what he wants Cronus to do?”

  Amanda shrugged her shoulders. “I honestly don’t know anymore. I have to admit it makes sense though. If he felt that greed killed his son, and he wanted to strike back at greed, then Wall Street would be the logical target.”

  Kraut took a deep breath. “What about narrowing down the search?”

  “Has Cronus targeted any specific banks or institutions, you mean?”

  Kraut nodded.

  “Not as far as the DARPA analysts can tell. It has basically targeted every single one.”

  “What about the list of companies that lost money on Kevorkian’s IPO?” Vladimir asked.

  “I think that is a dead end,” Amanda replied.

  “Did you prepare a list though?” Kraut asked.

  “I’m still working on it. But it’s a waste of time. Cronus is going after Wall Street. It is going after the banks. It isn’t going after any specific company or person.”

  “Let’s check it out anyway,” Kraut said. “So what have you got so far?”

  “Not much. We’ve identified a couple of persons of interest, but Kevorkian seem to have pissed off a lot of persons when he took TrakTek public in 2005.”

  “Investors?”

  “Investors, competitors, investment bankers. You name it. Most of these people are not like you and me though. They are not like any people I know. I found an article stating that one of the most respected Venture Capitalists in the Valley had publically threatened to kill Kevorkian if he wasn’t let in on the deal.”

  “A death threat?”

  “Yes. It turns out it was said in a heated argument. But still. Kevorkian let the same guy invest in Neuralgo a couple of years back.”

  “In which case he would now have lost that entire investment,” Vladimir s
hot in.

  “Good point,” Kraut said. “I think it is fair to assume that if Kevorkian has planned this for as long as we think he has, then most of the people he let invest in Neuralgo would be people he didn’t care much for.”

  Vladimir shook his head in despair. “Where does that leave employees of Neuralgo though? Many of my staff left well paid jobs to come working for Kevorkian. They took hefty pay cuts in the belief that they were working on something important.”

  “I’m sorry, Vladimir. But Kevorkian probably viewed you as collateral damage. If he had warned any of his employees about his plans then it would have all fallen apart. He probably figured that you would all land on your feet somehow. You are all smart guys.”

  Vladimir snorted. He didn’t like the thought that Kevorkian had thought of him as just another employee. “I guess you’re right. It’s not like I’m going to end up on the street because Neuralgo folded. I’ll bet my inbox has twenty job offers as we speak.”

  “It has fifty-four,” Kraut said.

  “You’ve been reading my emails?”

  “Of course. Everyone on this team has been vetted and re-vetted. If what is going on becomes public knowledge, then we risk anarchy in the streets.”

  “Kraut is right you know. My brother is a prepper,” Amanda said. “For the last two years he has been preparing for the moment some Ebola virus wipes out half the American population. He’s stocked up my parents’ cabin in Colorado with enough canned food to last him for a year, at least. All because he watched that damned Walking Dead show on AMC.”

 

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