Beautiful Red

by M. Darusha Wehm

  1000 UTC

  Eastern systems reporting fluctuations. They have a new sysadmin. Lucky to have access at all.

  1030 UTC

  No anomalies to report.

  And so on. Jack enjoyed Gilles’ reports, particularly since they made up the majority of the conversation they ever had. Her own reports were generally less amusing but more well developed, and Jack felt that between their daily reports, she and Gilles had developed a friendship of a sort.

  Later, she would check on the Eastern systems, mostly just to have something to do. The Eastern branch had their own Security department who was responsible for their systems, but since they interacted with the Western systems, a problem in one area could quickly become a problem in another area. But first she checked the video imaging logs for the night shift. She wanted to see Henson’s new hair.

  The Eastern system problems were exactly as Gilles had suspected – pebkac. Problem exists between keyboard and chair. The new admin misconfigured one of the databases to create multiple connections on each new action. It was a rookie mistake that looked a lot like a denial of service attack on the logs. Typical. Most of the actual problems Security dealt with were really just internal incompetence.

  Jack spent the rest of the day reading Gilles’ report and writing her responses, with a smattering of commentary on the logs and news of the day. There were no fires to fight today, just like it had been for a few weeks. There hadn’t been any new hiring at the western branch of Bellis lately, so there hadn’t been any noob errors to correct. It was comfortable, if boring.

  Quitting time rolled around without any further interruptions from the other inmates; Tony had cornered Ravinder from Finance at one point, but Jack stayed out of their path. She packed her few personal items back into her pockets, and after finishing off her report to Gilles, logged out of the Bellis system. The company’s required daily run of Everlock quickly scanned her onboard system, a process which always slightly nauseated her. It was over soon enough, though, and she marched out the door to the Security Room. Somewhere, on some log on someone else’s field of vision, the note “TIMESTAMP 0102 UTC — EMP 456873 — EXIT” scrolled up and away.

  Chapter 2

  As Jack left the building, the rain was falling lightly and making the streets shine in the dim late afternoon sun. Without even thinking, she opened up a program called "shades" from her home brew launcher and a dark platinum tinted screen rolled over her field of vision. To any bystander she looked like she had silver eyes – utilitarian but not very fashionable. The trendy look was to have glowing or animalistic prints on the outside of your shades, but Jack couldn’t be bothered.

  She started heading directly for the train stop, but was distracted by a sidewalk vendor selling spare electronics. The seller was obviously a scavenger, one of the many street people who eke out an existence on one or other side of the law, but always close to the line. The spare parts gleamed in the wet, and Jack stopped to take a look. She wasn’t working on any particular project, but you never knew when you might need something.

  The seller had spread an old rug on the sidewalk and had arranged her wares carefully on top. Jack recognized this as a sign of someone who actually knew what she was dealing with, not just someone who will grab anything that looks like it may fetch a euro or two. Jack looked over the merchandise, waiting for something to catch her eye.

  There was the usual array of those thin flexible screens that used to be used for portable monitors but now was really only used for clothes or wallpaper, and a handful of nearly invisible add-ons that attached to implanted diodes. There were personal recorders, translators for several languages, taxonomic determinators and a whole host of devices Jack couldn't or chose not to identify by their overly large packaging. None of these interested her, although her hunch was right on the money - every item was good quality and up to date. She eventually picked up a small bag of what appeared to be small marbles.

  "Are these what I think they are," she asked the stall's minder quietly.

  "That depends on what you think they are, doesn't it?" the streeter replied coyly. Jack grinned, and asked if they were encrypted. "Of course," the vendor smiled, showing her crooked and rotten teeth. "What would be the point if they weren't?"

  "Indeed," Jack said, "what would be the point? I'll take them." She pulled up her account, walking through a virtual gallery that appeared before her eyes. She stood before what looked like a statue of damned souls descending into hell. She saw her hands manipulating the statue, moving various parts of the figure in a complex pattern. The statue cracked open, and its hollow space inside was filled with what appeared to be gold coins.

  "How much," she asked, looking through the statue and coins to the scene on the other side, in the physical world. The vendor named a figure, and Jack counted out coins. She saw herself handing them to a representation of the woman in her immediate focus, while the actual vendor shivered slightly as the upload took place, Jack's system wirelessly transferring the funds to the seller's account.

  Jack still smiled to herself every time she paid for something. The statue and coins trick was a piece of user interface she had written herself along with the walking-through-the-museum representation. The whole gallery probably seemed more impressive than the funds transfer, but getting her home brew interface to hook up with the program that controlled personal accounts was more than a little difficult. The funds program was covered in layers and layers of security and average users weren't supposed to be able to play with it. They obviously didn't want people crediting themselves with extra funds, but they also weren't very keen on people modifying their user interfaces either.

  Well, fuck 'em, Jack thought, as she slipped her bag of new micro video recorders into her pocket and headed back toward the train stop. She had no plan for the recorders, but had always wanted to try them out. They were tiny spheres that recorded and narrowcast audio and three dimensional video directly to their owner. Like almost everything else with a chip in it, they were connected to the everywherenet, the wireless network that connected everyone and everything everywhere. Using the nets, the recorders sent real-time images and sound to their owner using an encrypted signal. They had originally been developed for military espionage and police surveillance, but like everything else soon became available on the open market. Jack couldn't wait to try them out.

  As she was waiting for the train, she noticed a couple of Security goons from another firm. It must be Lentech - only their cops wore that horrible crimson uniform. Jack thought they looked like packages of tomato flavoured soup as they grabbed some guy and patted him down. It was probably a private crime, since Lentech's offices were nowhere near the Bellis office, and the guy looked more like a mugger or something rather than someone who made an enemy of a firm. He must have targeted a Lentech employee, so the firm's security cops went after him as a violator of The Law.

  Jack thought she had read once that there was a book full of a bunch of different laws in a dusty cabinet somewhere, but the only law that was really enforced was the protection of employees from harassment. Like any other asset, employees needed to be protected from harm, and part of any compensation package was the protection by the firms Security. This effectively allowed the Security departments of the various firms to arrest, detain and punish criminals. Some of the large cities still employed police departments, but they were really just Security for the city. Any offense against person or property was dealt with by the Security department of the victim's employer. They were tough on crime, so most people were perfectly happy with this arrangement.

  The train arrived as the Lentech cops let the now beaten and bedraggled suspect go. Either he wasn't the guy or the offense was pretty minor. The train ride back to her neighbourhood was uneventful, though, and Jack spent most of the time online catching up on the underground cracker boards she followed. A couple of her online buddies were getting into a small conflagration over the Everlock tools being developed by the A
frican cracker known as N$0now4. They were fighting about anything that could be argued - whether the tools worked, whether the job they purported to perform was useful, whether the Pope was Catholic. It was a typical day on the boards.

  Jack scanned their arguments, and moved on. She checked her mail and found a message from Adrian, a friend she had met on a board that specialized in talk about the role of intelligent agents in security, on both sides of the fence. They messaged each other most days and had real-time conversations a few times a week. Today's message read:

  "Hey J. Read about the missing crap in Brugges? Nets are full of it here, like some thieved h-ware is some great fucking scandal. Makes you wonder if there's more to it, right? Catch you tonight if you're free. A"

  Jack always found Adrian's messages funny. She had no idea where "here" was, though a couple of years of context had narrowed it down to somewhere in Europe. Every time she asked, "where are you," Adrian evaded the question. Jack wondered if the mystery was part of the charm; she suspected that it was. She knew that she would be disappointed if one day she found out that Adrian was the anonymous handle of, say, Tony the class 3. She shivered at the thought, then immediately dismissed it. Tony couldn't go two minutes without mentioning Chanel or Hilfiger, let alone two years.

  Jack's onboard geophysical locator notified her that her train stop was coming up, so she logged out of her mail client by walking out of the Postal History section of the museum in which she saw herself. She refocussed on her surroundings and stepped to the door of the train. As it slowed into the stop, the door dissolved and Jack stepped onto the sidewalk. It was almost completely dark by now, and she felt herself tense slightly with awareness of her surroundings. Things seemed pretty quiet on the street, but you could never be sure. She made it to the beautiful wooden door without incident, however, and it unlocked in response to the ping from her implants and a recognition of her biometrics.

  She walked up the stairs to her floor, not bothering with the automatic firefighter's pole. She felt better getting some exercise, rather than letting the pole spiral her up to her floor. She approached her apartment door, and heard the locks disengage in response to her proximity. Her apartment door wasn't wooden - that was just for the street door. The door to her unit was some kind of polycarbonite and it split down the middle disappearing into the walls on either side to let her in, then closed almost silently behind her.

  Jack pulled the contents of her pockets out and dumped them on the side table by her bed. She took off the Bellis pants, shoved them in the autoclave and grabbed some more comfortable clothes out of her drawer. After she got changed, she opened up her fridge and grabbed a bottle of beer, opening it with a flick of her thumb. She drank a long swallow, and threw a meal packet into the zapper. While the machine blinked and whirred, Jack picked up a fork with her physical hands and paged over to a site devoted to micro three-d video recorders with her virtual fingers. The zapper made its "done" noise, and Jack pulled the hot food to her small table.

  As she ate, she learned about how the recorders worked, not just how to deploy them and receive their output, but how to program them as well. By the time her food was gone, she was ready to start playing with her new toys. A chime sounded, and she saw on her display that one of the paintings in her museum was blinking. She felt herself walk toward it and stand facing it. It took on the appearance of an old-school screen, and text began to appear.

  Incoming realtime secure message from ADRIAN:

  >Hey J. You there?

  >>I'm here, how's it going.

  >Good, I guess. Things here are the usual. Everyone's all crazy about some such thing while roam burns. But that's the cost of life in the fast lane.

  Jack smiled to herself. Subvocal recognition was so close to perfect that it was always amusing when it got things wrong.

  >>Wish I were in the fast lane. Work is so boring I'm thinking of writing a bot to automate my breathing and then just put myself in some kind of hibernation.

  >(laughter) Yeah, things haven't been the same since the bad guys actually got away with stuff. So what are you doing to occupy your mind?

  >>Reading logs and reports, watching the boards, you know, the usual. You might be interested in this, though.

  >Well? Spill it.

  >>I picked up some micro recorders today from a streeter.

  >Ooh, those are fun! Have you played with them yet?

  >>No, I just got home when the usher started flashing.

  The silent speech recognition software had problems with proper names. Jack had previously told Adrian about her home brew interface and explained that the message program was represented by an image of M. C. Escher’s Sky and Water I, the famous line drawing of the fish and the birds. Ever since then, whenever they talked about getting messages, they referred to the Escher image.

  >Well, then, I’ll let you go so you can play with your new toy.

  >>Sounds good. Maybe I’ll flash the fish later.

  >Once you get into the guts of those wee balls, you won’t be doing anything else tonight. I’ll flash you tomorrow.

  >>OK. Later.

  >Later.

  The words scrolled up to the top of the frame, then the famous birds and fish slowly faded into view. Jack felt herself turn and walk toward the museum’s door. As she passed through the door, the image of the museum faded and she became more aware of her real surroundings. She was sitting in her chair with a third of a beer and a dirty plate in front of her. She blinked, had a swallow of beer and reached for the sack of marbles.

  Jack picked up one of the units, and rolled it between two of her fingers. It was pale blue, lighter than the colour of the Bellis logo, and it shimmered with an iridescence when the light glanced off it. It was small and round, about the size of a marble, but covered in hundreds of tiny spheres. Each one of the little nubs was a self-contained camera, capable of recording three dimensional video and audio. Taken together, the unit could wirelessly narrowcast up to a thousand still images at once or create an immersive three dimensional recording in real time.

  Jack looked closer and adjusted the magnification of her vision to 10 times normal. She inspected the tiny ball, looking for markings, imperfections and seams – anything, really that made it look different from a pale blue raspberry. She found the tiny depression you could use to open the unit and also caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a logo. She adjusted her vision to a greater magnification, and saw that the logo looked like a stylized B created in lace.

  She didn’t recognize the brand, but she had been out of the hardware market for a while so she was not surprised. She slipped a thin tool into the opening crevice and gently pried open the sphere. The recorder split in half, revealing tiny circuits and what were almost certainly clusters of nanotubes. Jack noticed a slight gleam on one side, and increased her magnification even more.

  “There you are,” she said aloud, having found the uplink code. She copied and pasted it to her scratch pad, and closed up the sphere. She sat back and was momentarily disoriented as she refocussed her eyes back to normal magnification. The brief sense of vertigo passed and she took another swig of her beer. She called up an underground board devoted to micro recorders and ran a search for the latest version of a well known controller program. She quickly scanned the file with her own copy of Everlock as well as her homemade scanner that searched for less malicious but equally annoying bits of unexpected code, then when it was pronounced clean, she downloaded the software to her own system.

  As it started up, she was immediately impressed by the interface. No kludgy windows and menus here. Rather, it was a graphical representation of a recorder – a nice, shiny sphere with an obvious entrance slot. She navigated to the slot and felt herself drop into the sphere. Once inside, she was in a maze that clearly mimicked the circuits in the real recorders. The maze was well marked, however, and at the first door she encountered a reassuring voice pleasantly offering a tutorial.

  Jack usually eschewed w
izards and walkthroughs, but this program was unlike anything she had used before. And more importantly, the programmer in her was dying to find out what the tutorial would look like. She audibly said the word “yes” and immediately the door opened revealing what appeared to be a nice looking young man.

  “Hello,” he said, “I am the tutorial.” He offered his hand and Jack shook it. The warmth and firmness of his grip surprised and delighted Jack. This is great work, she thought. “Are you a new user, or would you like to go straight to the advanced features?” he asked.

  Let’s see what he can do, Jack thought to herself. “I’ve never used a micro recorder before,” Jack said, “ but I’m a Security Officer Class 5 and I’ve done some complex UI programming. I don’t think I need the dumbed down tour.”

  The tutorial was frozen for a microsecond, then said, “I am sorry. I did not understand your last sentence. However, as a new user, you may find the complete tour most beneficial. Please, follow me.” He started walking down the corridor, and Jack thought to herself that the designer was clearly better at mimicking tactile sensation than verbal interface. Oh well, she thought, I can waste a few minutes on the full meal deal.

  The new user’s tour took only about twenty minutes, and Jack had to admit that she probably would have an easier time working with the recorders after having gone through the process. In fact, by the time she felt herself leave the sphere, the micro recorder in front of her on the table was fully configured to use.

  She went to get a water and a snack and quickly checked the recorder. For a disconcerting moment, she was watching herself perform the very actions she was currently doing – getting a slice of toast from the food machine and pouring water into a tumbler. There was absolutely no noticeable lag. It was amazing technology, that she could not deny.