by E. C. Myers
GroundSloth: Unverified.
ZeroKal: Already been over that, *amigo*. Read the threads. It don’t make no sense.
GroundSloth: People have just been leaving lately. It happens. Right, 503-ERROR?
0MN1: 503, did STOP send you anything before his broadcast?
Max froze. How could 0MN1 know about the text message?
If anyone could help Max crack Evan’s code, it was these guys. But Max wasn’t ready to share it with people he didn’t trust, especially not when any one of them could be logging the chat or have someone looking over his shoulder.
Max turned around, suddenly nervous about being watched. Two elderly women were now sitting on the far end of the lobby holding paper cups of coffee from the complimentary station in the corner. They didn’t look like secret agents spying on him, but one of them did give him the once-over as she took a sip from her cup.
Max’s earbuds dinged again. A small window popped up on his screen. Max clicked on it and found himself in another private chat room named “doubleplusungood.” DoubleThink was the only user inside. Curious, Max logged in.
DoubleThink >> 503-ERROR: Do *not* share what Evan sent you with DP. Especially not with 0MN1.
It took Max a moment to realize DoubleThink had said “Evan” instead of STOP. He leaned closer to the screen.
503-ERROR >> DoubleThink: He didn’t send me anything.
DoubleThink >> 503-ERROR: ;) He didn’t send me anything either. Better write back to 0MN1 before he thinks something’s up.
503-ERROR >> DoubleThink: What’s the deal with 0MN1? Can we trust him?
DoubleThink >> 503-ERROR: Evan didn’t trust him, so I don’t either. Not sure why.
Max switched back over to the group chat.
0MN1: Hello? You disappearring on us again, 503?
503-ERROR: Sorry, spotty signal here. I didn’t get anything from STOP. Like I said, we hadn’t been in contact much since I went dark.
0MN1: OK. Did *anyone* get anything, or did STOP say anything unusual?
Boy, this guy was pushy.
503-ERROR: What do you think he had, 0MN1?
0MN1: STOP said he was working on something BIG. . .
Something worth dying for?
0MN1: . . . He wanted my help. Said he was gonna send me some ‘insurance’ in case anything happened to him, but I was offline most of yesterday. I thought maybe he got it out to someone else he trusted.
503-ERROR: I don’t know anything else. I didn’t even know STOP was part of DP :-/
DoubleThink: You must not have been that close to him after all. This was his life. We’re his family.
That stung, mostly because Max couldn’t deny it. Evan wouldn’t have kept this part of his life from Max if he had shown any interest. It was Evan’s way to respect Max’s decision to cut off ties with this world, and to keep Max out of it for his own protection. So if Evan had decided to drag him back into it after all, it must be serious.
DoubleThink’s last message had been in the group chat instead of in their private room, so it had to be for the benefit of the others. To throw them off?
Kill_Screen: i bet STOP was flipped. He probably informed on the others to the FBI and the guilt got to him. And now ‘503-ERROR’ is here to pick up where he left off. Are you a puppet, 503?
Ding.
DoubleThink >> 503-ERROR: We have to talk. Let’s go to voice.
print*is*dead: or maybe the fbi killed him / we won’t know what happened until we see the whole vid
Another link appeared in the chat room, from an unidentified source. Max clicked on it, thinking it was another picture from the video. It launched a new tab in his browser and a dialog box appeared with a warning: This program is requesting control of webcam and speakers.
“Oh no, you don’t,” Max said. Someone was trying to clickjack his webcam.
Max had already taped over the webcam and changed his computer’s security settings to notify him of attempts to control hardware, so this was no threat. But it told him that someone wanted to know what he looked like or get a glimpse of his location. The simple hack was way too amateur for anyone in Dramatis Personai, but who else would be interested in him? It was too soon for the government to have tracked him down. Or so he hoped.
Max left the dialog box open without clicking Cancel, so whoever it was wouldn’t know he was wise to the attempt.
503-ERROR >> DoubleThink: Is this you trying to get access to my camera?
DoubleThink >> 503-ERROR: Pffpt! If I was, you wouldn’t know it. But it isn’t me. You took care of it?
503-ERROR >> DoubleThink: Yeah, I got it. I’m surprised/insulted they thought it would work.
DoubleThink >> 503-ERROR: Someone must know more than he’s saying.
Max switched back to the group chat.
503-ERROR: So who were the others? What happened?
Going to voice with DoubleThink would at least cut down on the likelihood of Max typing in the wrong window. He initiated a voice chat.
0MN1: No 1 knows for sure. they just went away.
print*is*dead: they go by L0NELYB0Y, Infiltraitor, and @sskicker / if they were arrested, they didn’t expose us at least.
Kill_Screen: which probably means they weren’t arrested. . .
0MN1: Oh? Would you turn us in to save yourself?
Kill_Screen: in a heartbeat
print*is*dead: maybe they turned each other in / they disappeared one at a time / like a horror movie
GroundSloth: As far as we *know* they didn’t turn us in. But we should move servers again in case we’re already being monitored. Like I’ve been saying for *months*.
In his ear, Max heard a synthetic voice—actually, two voices, only slightly out of sync with each other, and eerily similar to Evan’s filtered voice in his video.
“Hello, Five-oh-three,” DoubleThink said.
Max picked up his cell phone and once again pretended to be carrying on a conversation with someone while speaking to DoubleThink through the microphone in the cord of his earbuds.
“Hi,” Max said. “Why do you want to talk?”
The concierge shot him an annoyed look. Max might have been wearing out his welcome.
“To see if I can trust you.”
“You can trust me. I was Evan’s best friend. You’re the one using a voice filter.”
“I know Evan vouched for you, but I still don’t know if I can trust you not to do something stupid.”
Max’s face burned. “I’m not a noob.”
“Pause your ego, hotshot. I’m trying to help. You have to start being more careful. Don’t reveal anything to the group. I think one of them is working with the enemy.”
“Who’s the enemy?”
“That’s the other thing we need to figure out.”
While he carried on the conversation with DoubleThink, Max kept an eye on the ongoing text chat.
Kill_Screen: More worrying that one or more of us is probably already working with the Feds. . .
0MN1: If a hacker was busted the news would be all over it. They love to brag.
Plan(et)9: YEAH! Maybe they got to L0NELY, Infiltraitor, and @sskicker!
Edifice: Unless they’re dead. Then we’d never know unless we find out who they are IRL.
0MN1: Told you—I doxxed ‘em. No sign of anything bad. They’re fine. . .
Edifice: Then why won’t you tell us who they are so we can stop worrying?
0MN1: For the same reason I won’t say who *you* are, Ed.
DoubleThink: I bet they just got scared and went into hiding like 503-ERROR did.
0MN1: Exactly, DT.
“Hey! Why are you giving me such a hard time in the chat room? Are you on my side or not?” he asked.
“I’m on Evan’s side,” DoubleThink said.
/> DoubleThink: No offense, 503! Just making a point.
“Happy now?” DoubleThink asked.
“Thanks. How are you doing that? Saying one thing while typing another at the same time?”
“I’m not called DoubleThink for nothing.”
“I only left because I thought if I kept hacking, I would get in too deep one day.”
“You were scared.”
“Okay, sure. So what? I was scared.”
“Hey, you were right to be, as it turns out,” DoubleThink said. “I’d get out too if I could. Do you think there’s a chance that’s what Evan’s doing?”
“I wish he were, but I don’t think the FBI would say he’d committed suicide for no reason.” Max didn’t want to share why he was so certain that Evan was dead—not yet.
“They could have captured him. Saying he’s dead would let them get away with silencing him too, if that’s what they’re doing. Evan was working on something major.”
“Do you think he was talking about those three hackers in his video?” Max asked.
“He was kind of obsessed with their disappearances. It’s weird enough that it happened to three members of Dramatis Personai. Now four.”
“I keep trying to understand why Evan would kill himself. He wouldn’t do it if the others had been arrested or gone into hiding. But murder . . . . Could they have been killed?”
“That’s a bit dramatic,” DoubleThink said. “That’s not how the Feds work. And why wouldn’t Evan just say that instead of this ‘silenced’ business?”
“Because people would dismiss the idea immediately, like you are. He obviously wanted someone to investigate this, but he was speaking in code to be sure it was the right someone. We don’t know who or what Evan was trying to expose, but it seems to have something to do with Senator Tooms or Governor Lovett, and whatever ‘the silence of six’ refers to.”
“You can silence people without killing them. Quite effectively, in fact. It happens every day. All you have to do is make them afraid. Maybe that’s what this is. Making examples of people like Sabu and Manning hasn’t worked—it just gives hacktivists like us something to rally around. But you put someone in prison, and you keep it quiet from the media, and no one knows what happened. Anything we imagine is probably worse than the reality. And pretty soon the rest of the group stops taking risks, because the unknown is scarier than the truth.”
All of that sounded reasonable, except Max had seen Evan die. He didn’t know for sure that the other “offline” hackers were dead, or were connected to Evan’s message at all, but it had to be more than a coincidence. The truth had to be pretty freaking awful if Evan would rather take his own life than suffer the same fate.
503-ERROR: If you know anything that can help us figure this out, 0MN1, you should share it.
0MN1: We might know more if we had the rest of that video.
“Seriously, drop this for now, okay? We don’t know who’s involved yet,” DoubleThink said.
“How do I know you aren’t working with the ‘enemy’?” Max said. “Maybe that’s why you’re called DoubleThink.”
“Good. You should question everything and everyone. Maybe I’m not wasting my time with you after all.”
“Yeah? Well . . . your robot voice is creeping me out. And you haven’t answered my question.”
“We all have to trust someone,” DoubleThink said.
“You just said the opposite a second ago,” Max said.
“DoubleThink, remember?”
“Right. But believing two opposite things at once is also called ‘insanity.’ You saying you’re the exception to the rule?”
“Questioning people’s motives doesn’t mean you can’t trust them. You can always trust them to do what’s best for themselves, and you can use that.”
“And what do you want?” Max asked.
“I want to help Evan,” DoubleThink said.
0MN1: Someone at that school must have recorded it on a phone.
PHYREWALL: Word is everyone’s phones were confiscated and wiped. Tell me that isn’t suspicious.
“Tell him you’ll work on it. Then log out,” DoubleThink said. “We have our own plans to make.”
503-ERROR: Good idea. I’ll try to dig something up. Gotta go for now.
print*is*dead: good to have you back / you should come to haxx0rade nxt wk /it’s gonna be epic
Panjea had recently announced their first annual Haxx0rade for the end of October, a combination hackathon and costume party. They were inviting hackers from all over the world to work in their San Francisco headquarters, developing their own apps for Panjea over a twenty-four-hour period.
503-ERROR: I’ll see, but I doubt it. SF’s a long way for me to travel.
0MN1: Hope you can make it. Keep us posted if you learn anything else.
ZeroKal: Hasta la vista
Max signed off.
“Well, that was fun,” DoubleThink said. “We have to meet. In person.”
“Whoa. I don’t know who you are. What can you say in person that you can’t say here?”
“Um, everything? I don’t trust talking about this online any more than we have to. Evan sent me something that you need to see.”
Evan had sent DoubleThink a message too?
Max felt a mix of relief and jealousy. It was good to know he wasn’t alone in this, but he’d felt a twisted sort of pride that Evan had chosen him. What if Max were just one of several people he’d reached out to?
Of course all that mattered was finding out what Evan had died for.
“What is it?” Max asked.
“You’ll see it when I see you.”
If DoubleThink wanted to trick Max into the open, this was the way to do it.
“That’s a big risk.”
“For both of us.”
“Still. You have to give me more than that,” Max said.
“If I wanted to turn you in to the Feds, they would already have you surrounded, Maxwell.”
It took a moment for it to sink in that DoubleThink had used his real name—sort of. No one actually called him Maxwell.
It also came as a shock to hear his name after just half an hour online. Despite his long absence, being 503-ERROR seemed to come more naturally to him than being Max, the popular kid at Granville High. It took effort to be one of the guys on the soccer team and Courtney’s boyfriend. He doubted she would ever understand this part of his life—which meant she’d never really understand him.
“How do you know my name?” Max asked.
“Evan. He wanted me to contact you if anything happened to him. I just hope I don’t regret it.”
Max took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s meet. But in a public place, and I’ll come to you,” Max said. “Where is that?”
A short pause. “Seattle.”
“Oh.” That was a long way from Granville, especially without a car.
“Why don’t we meet halfway? There’s a Denny’s just off Interstate five in Roseburg, Oregon,” DoubleThink said.
“You want to meet at a Denny’s?” That was always Evan’s favorite spot to work.
“You don’t like Denny’s?” DoubleThink asked.
“It’s fine,” Max said.
“They have good pancakes and they’re open twenty-four hours.”
“Sold.”
Max googled it. The map showed the diner was almost exactly halfway between Granville and Seattle.
“Um. Evan told you where I am?” Max asked.
“No, you just did. I knew where Evan lived, and I guessed you might be close by.” DoubleThink said.
Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to meet DoubleThink after all. He knew way more than he should about Max. But Max didn’t have any better leads at the moment, and it would be good to get out of town for a little while.
“Okay, fine. When?” Max said.
“Dawn tomorrow.”
“Are we going to duel? Why such a hurry?”
“Just having this makes me nervous. The sooner I pass it off to you, the better.”
And the sooner Max could get to the bottom of this, and hopefully back to his life.
“The thing is, I had to abandon my car today when some shady guys came after me,” Max said. “I’ll have to take a bus or train, if they even go to Roseburg.”
“There’s a Greyhound station, but that will take you too long. Just get a new car.”
“For six hundred dollars?”
“That shouldn’t be any problem for you,” DoubleThink said. “Wink, wink.”
How much had Evan told this guy about their past hacks?
“I don’t do that anymore,” Max said.
Max heard a garbled digital sound that he eventually identified as DoubleThink snorting.
“I don’t care how you do it, just get to that diner by seven thirty tomorrow morning,” DoubleThink said.
“I hope you’re for real.”
“I don’t go into meatspace for just anyone. The only hacker who knows what I look like in real life is Evan.”
“Then I’m honored.”
“You should be. But, like I said, I’m doing this for him. As for whether or not you can trust me. . .”
A link popped into Max’s chat window.
“It’s okay,” DoubleThink said. “That link is totally safe.”
“Uh huh. You just sent me a link to prove I could trust you, but I have to trust you in order to follow it.”
“Just click it.”
Max did. A video window opened. When the image cleared up, he saw black and white surveillance footage of a familiar hotel lobby. He looked around. It was definitely the lobby of the Gateway Suites. And when he spotted the figure sitting in the corner of the image on a computer, he knew he was viewing a live security feed of himself.
“No way,” Max said. “How did you. . .”
“It doesn’t take a genius to realize that you’d favor free public Wi-Fi networks to get online to avoid being located. Lots of supposedly private security cameras all over the world have been hacked. Breaking into new ones is a hobby of mine, but ironically, this one was powned by Evan first.