Evasion

by Mark Leslie

  “Prince Hamlet was expounding on the fact that, despite all of the things that we know, there are often things beyond that we can understand or even perceive.

  “He spoke that line to his friend Horatio when they were speaking about the rumors of Hamlet’s father, the King, being spotted walking around, in ghost form, sometime after his death. They were debating the existence of ghosts when Hamlet suggested this.”

  “Okay, sure,” Scott said. “Whatever. But what does that have to do with programming?”

  “Do you remember the psychology program we worked on last week?”

  Prescott was referring to the special intricacies of how to program a simple Artificial Intelligence subroutine that mimicked human conversation; in this particular case, the human question and answer rhythm of a therapist speaking with a patient.

  The subroutine began with a statement introducing itself as a doctor and then asked the user to type in their name.

  The user would type in their name, and the program would return with. “Pleased to meet you, X.” – inserting whatever the user typed as their name into the X variant.

  Then, the computer would say: “So, X, tell me how you are feeling today?”

  When they used typed in a phrase, the computer would repeat it back. For example, if the user types in “blue” then the computer’s response would be: “What do you think might be making you feel blue today, X?”

  The conversation went on in that similar fashion, with the program set to look for certain keywords in the response and, based on detection of particular phrases, it would respond with various lines. It made it appear, to the average user that the computer was actually attending to what the user was saying and responding genuinely and in an unscripted fashion.

  “Sure, I remember that.”

  “What did you learn from working on a program like that?”

  “That you could fake a real-life conversation using a set of pre-programmed routines, scripts, and keyword indicators.”

  “Exactly. What else can you intuit from that?”

  Scott caught on. “That some things aren’t exactly what they seem.”

  “Bingo!” Mr. Prescott said, his index finger thrust into the air. “And that, my young friend, is precisely what is happening to you right now.”

  “But there’s no program running,” Scott said. “I’ve stopped the program and I’ve run the script to see the lines of text; I’ve made modifications to particular lines and I’ve re-run it.”

  “Yes,” Prescott said. “Or so you thought. Maybe this program was set to trick you into thinking that you had stopped the program, when, in fact, you had done no such thing. What if all of the commands you typed were within the still-running program, and not at the code level you thought? What if the program was designed to make you think that you had hacked into it when, in fact, you hadn’t and were still working through a pre-programmed routine?”

  Scott slowly nodded his head and a giant grin spread on his face.

  “That,” he said. “Is deceptively crafty; absolutely marvelous.”

  And then he set about to try to actually stop the program itself. For real this time.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Today

  “Dad!” Scott yelled.

  “Hi Son,” Lionel replied, nodding his head. “Duck!” He raised the gun a little bit higher as Scott instinctively followed his father’s advice and dipped his head down between his shoulder blades while bending his knees.

  His father stepped forward, out of the elevator and produced, seemingly from nowhere, a thin plastic novelty clown mask that he slipped onto his face, while leveling gun in front of him with his left hand.

  Scott stepped forward and to the side, turning to watch what his father was doing.

  Lionel Desmond pulled the trigger and, instead of a gunshot, Scott heard a static-sounding electrical hiss and saw something shoot out of the front of the gun like Spider-Man’s webbing shooting from his palm, or, perhaps more accurately, some sort of wired hook from a gun on Batman’s utility belt.

  The mechanism shot out and struck the hippy full in the chest and an additional electrical buzz shot through the air. The hippy dropped to the floor, immediately unconscious. The wire shot back to the gun. Lionel quickly pocketed the gun with his left hand and switched hands that were holding the mask to his face while his right hand simultaneously pulled something out of his breast pocket that looked like a lipstick tube.

  He aimed the lipstick tube at the bylaw officer, pressed a button, and a blue flash of light shot out from it, striking her in the chest. She reacted in the same way as the hippy, and, twitching on the spot for a second, dropped to the corridor floor.

  Lionel Desmond then pocketed the lipstick tube and stepped forward, intercepting the middle aged woman who was running closer. She reached out for him. “Surrender Desmond to us!” she said, in that deep robotic voice Scott had started to recognize and hate.

  Scott’s father moved forward as if to take her in the warm impassioned embrace that two long-lost friends might display when seeing one another in an airport terminal. But, as she moved in, he twisted around, held her in a half-nelson move by thrusting his arm up and through hers, forcing her neck down. Then he twisted and her head fell forward and she crumbled to the floor.

  “Did you break her neck?” Scott asked, watching her fall.

  “No,” Lionel said. “Sleeper move. She’s alive. Just out cold. Let’s go.”

  Lionel shoved his son all the way into the elevator and stepped inside to join him.

  He immediately thumbed the DOOR CLOSE button, poked the button for the top floor, the eighteenth and turned to face his son as the doors whooshed close.

  “I knew you were still alive,” Scott said quietly.

  “I saw the conviction in your eyes that day, Scott. I was afraid that you’d keep pushing, that you’d dig and uncover what was going on.”

  “What is going on, Dad? How is it that you’re alive?”

  “Long story,” Lionel said. “Let me see your bag for a second.”

  Scott handed his father the backpack. Lionel took a small flat black plastic object about half of the size of a smart-phone from his jacket pocket and ran it over the bag. The object beeped quietly in three short tones and a green led light on the top of it flashed.

  “Okay,” he said. “It’s clean. There are no tracer bugs in it.” He looked at Scott again. “How about your phone?”

  “It’s dead.”

  “We still need to toss it. Even when non-operational, some of the GPS functionality can still be there.”

  “Okay,” Scott pulled the mobile phone out of his pocket and held it up to his father.

  Lionel took the phone, looked up at the ceiling of the elevator and then pointed up. “Give me a boost, would you?”

  Scott locked his fingers together and Lionel placed a foot into his son’s make-shift step, pulling himself up with his right hand on the wall. Once he got up about a foot, he popped the drop ceiling tile to the elevator open and slipped the cell phone in. The tile settled back down and he said. “Okay, let me down.”

  Scott did so.

  Lionel then hit the button for the fourteenth floor. The elevator stopped at that floor. “C’mon,” he said, stepping out of the elevator.

  They stepped out and the elevator resumed its ascent empty.

  “Stairs,” Lionel said, heading down the hall and beckoning for his son to follow. “Let’s go.”

  They were moving too quickly, even with his father’s debilitating lurch, to really speak. They were both enough out of breath that it made conversation difficult. And every time Scott did try to say something – he had a thousand questions after all – his father held up a single finger to his lips.

  “Let’s get away, make sure we’re safe, and I’ll answer all your questions. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  The proceeded down the stairwell for six full flights and came out into the hallway on the eighth f
loor. Lionel led his son to the left down the corridor, over to a spot that contained a walk-way connecting two of the buildings at an upper level. They then ran down another couple of flights before getting to the sixth floor of the second building where they went back into the hallway and this time caught an elevator on its way down to the lobby on the ground floor.

  They cut through the lobby then crossed the street, went in through the main doors of a hotel lobby, then cut out the side door, crossed the side street, went East until they were on Yonge Street and they took a cab six blocks north, where they got out, Lionel Desmond paying cash with a ten for a six dollar fare, but not bothering to ask for any change or a receipt.

  They crossed the street, went through another hotel lobby, slipped in to the hotel restaurant, then, at the end of the hallway that led to the restrooms, they slipped out the emergency exit, raced down the alley and jumped onto a streetcar on King Street heading West. Whenever Scott tried to say something, his father repeated the gesture of placing a finger in front of his lips.

  They got off the streetcar just a few blocks later, at the corner of King and Peter, and walked back to the hotel there, went in the side door of the lobby and stepped inside the elevator where Lionel hit the button for the tenth floor.

  When Scott opened his mouth and attempted to say something his father merely said. “This is our last stop, son. Once we get to our room I’ll tell you everything. I promise.”

  They got off on the tenth floor and took a left down the hallway to a room. Lionel produced a card, unlocked the door and they went inside. It was a large room with two double beds and a roomy sitting area with a small sofa and an armchair.

  Once the door was closed, Lionel guided them over to the sitting area, waited for Scott to sit down and said: “You’ve got a million questions. Which one can I answer first?”

  Scott sat there, stunned. He did have a million questions. So many things to ask. But, ever the pragmatist, he figured he’d start with the first.

  “How are you still alive?”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Today

  “How am I still alive?" Lionel Desmond said. "It's a long story, son. So let me take it back a bit. I know enough about your investigation into my death to determine you know I wasn’t always out on fishing trips all those times.”

  “No. I figured out that much. You’re working for CSIS or some government group like that, aren’t you?”

  “Something like that,” Scott’s father said. “It’s a secret group. A spin-off of CSIS. We work collaboratively in unison with an offshoot of the CIA in the US.”

  “Holy shit. What’s the name of the group called? How long has it been around?”

  Lionel Desmond looked down at the floor and pursed his lips together. “I have been cleared to let you know the type of work that I do, particularly since your investigation, if it continues, could compromise the security of this operation. But I’m not authorized to explain further details about the group I work for.”

  “But I have been very careful, Dad. I haven’t left any trail, any breadcrumbs.”

  “I know. You’ve done very well, Chief, and I’m proud of you.”

  Scott couldn’t help but feel a warm glow at those words. It had been ages since he’d heard his father utter anything like that. And he couldn’t be sure if it was the pride his father expressed or just the fact he called him “Chief” just like he used to when Scott was young.

  “How did you get started working for this group, Dad?”

  “It related to my own father; but I can’t get into that right now. There isn’t time. There’s a lot that’s more pressing that I need to explain to you in a very short time.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I need you to understand this quickly and make a decision right now.”

  “About what?”

  “When the group I work for began following your investigation, they knew you would keep hacking until you found something. And you were getting close. Really close. In fact,” Lionel continued. “Your adept investigation techniques and hacking skills are what led me to convince them that you should join me.”

  “Join you?”

  “Yes. Fight the good fight alongside me.”

  “Hold on, Dad. Back up for a second. This is all coming too fast.”

  “It’ll continue to come fast, son. There’s a lot more. So, please, just give me a few minutes to lay it out as quickly as possible. Let’s back it up for a minute, okay?”

  “Back it up? Sure. Can we start with you explaining why you’re not dead? Why your death was faked the way that it was?”

  “Yeah,” Lionel said, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers as if staving off a migraine. “I was going to explain that. It wasn’t easy to do, but it was my only choice. You and Mom were in jeopardy if they thought I was still alive. You see, I knew too much. “

  “About what?”

  “About a top secret security project. A project run by a small faction of the secret offshoot of CSIS. A group that became convinced of their own power, their own invincibility, their own belief that they knew better, had the answers, and could take control. Few people knew about this group that was going rogue. But I found out about it, and I protested. So they needed to get rid of me.”

  Scott got up and walked over to the window.

  Lionel stood up, maneuvered in front of his son and closed the blinds. “Stay away from the windows, son. As far as they are concerned, you’re dead now, too.”

  “What?”

  “Please,” Lionel said. “Sit down and listen. Just listen.”

  Scott did what his father said and Lionel paced back and forth, consulted his watch, then looked at his son.

  “Okay. Let me try again.”

  “I have been working on projects related to the national security of Canada and the United States. As I mentioned, I learned something I wasn’t supposed to learn.

  “Do you recall the G20 Summit in Toronto the summer of 2010? Do you remember the violence that happened in the clashes between the protesters and the police? The innocent people who were brutalized, the millions of dollars in damage to businesses and personal property?”

  Scott nodded, struggling hard to stay silent as he listened.

  “Notoff’s research in nanotechnology led to an incredible find. He learned how he could inject micro-bacterial elements into the bloodstream that would trigger something in the innate fight or flight instinct in humans. Instead of engaging “fight or flight” it triggered surrender. Complete and full surrender.

  “The effect was what riot police had been looking for when they used chlorobenzylidene, or tear gas. It was as efficient, but could be introduced through airborne agents or via injection, very quickly.

  “Notoff’s research, stuff that was completely stripped from medical records, related to how one side effect of this reaction made subjects entirely complacent with external commands.

  “Those side effects led to mind control.”

  Lionel’s phone hummed, announcing a text message and he looked down at it for a quick second. “I’ve got a minute to tell them if you’re in or not. If you decide you want this, there’ll be two bodies found in the alley at the bottom of that eighteenth story building from an accidental fall. They will be identified as you and the unknown stranger who assisted you on the elevator – a fictitious vigilante agent named Tom who supposedly disappeared into hiding about six months ago.”

  Scott nodded that he understood. “Keep going.”

  “The mind control was consistently pervasive. Notoff later learned how to use nanobots injected into the blood stream to send messages directly to the brain; with the right number of trained operatives, a whole army of people could be controlled in a hive-mind manner.

  “When I found out about their plans it I spoke out against it. My role, after all, had always been about preserving and protecting the liberties and freedom of citizens. A weapon like this, it stripped away liberties, it
took freedoms away. I hated it from the moment I first learned about it.

  “That’s why they wanted me dead, out of the picture. That was something I could deal with. But the threats from these people started to come against you and against Mom. That's the only thing that kept me from speaking. But the underlying threat was still there.

  “So I had no choice. My death had to be faked so they would stop worrying about what I might do. Hidden, I could continue to watch and monitor, to try to infiltrate them and eventually take them down.

  “Only, you spotted me that one day. And your insatiable curiosity led you to continue to uncover things. I knew there was no stopping you, which is why I convinced them. I knew . . .”

  Lionel’s phone hummed again. He looked down at it, tilted it forward.

  “Time’s up,” he said. “I need your answer. Are you in?”

  Scott considered the life he had been living, the solitude, the lack of friends, the absence of any sort of meaningful long term relationship. He lived the idea type of life to easily slip away from, leaving virtually nothing behind. Unlike his father, there was no family that would mourn him. For him it was an easy question to answer.

  Scott nodded. “You don’t even need to ask. Of course I’m in, Dad.”

  “Good,” Lionel said, thumbing a quick reply into his phone. “Good,” he said a second time, this time letting out a long slow breath.

  Scott stood, put his hand out toward his father. He father looked at his hand, looked back up at him and then pulled him into a tight embrace. Scott couldn’t remember the last time his father had hugged him; all he knew is that it felt good.

  He had been alone for such a long time.

  But not anymore.

  He not only had a purpose, a skill he could put to good use to serve his country, just like his father and his grandfather, but he was given a second chance to be with his Dad, to learn from him, to fight alongside him.