He felt like he was coming home.
// George
It was almost as if the wall organised its own sweeps. Searched the nether reaches of data, then woke up a human to do the gathering. This morning it had for George a video of an older man wandering outside to attempt to douse a car on fire. At first he made some progress, but then the flames jumped to him. It quickly enveloped him.
“We got one of the Peregrini” Steve said.
“The what?” George said
“The guy that torched himself. That was a Peregrini stunt.”
“Are they clowns or something?”
“You are showing your lack of a classical education. Ancient Rome. The dispossessed. All those not allowed to own property.”
“So you devote your life to trashing other people’s. Is that how it goes?”
“That’s the advertised script.”
“You have your doubts?”
“They don’t often take credit for their events. They don’t seem to fit the mould as agitators.”
“Where is he?”
“Holding cell. He’s been stewing for about five hours.”
George caught a glance of him through the cell door. He was sitting comfortably against the wall, as if waiting for a bus. Short hair, fit. Dark. He didn’t look Italian. The wall had a profile up, of course. Dennis Kennington. Twenty something, string of casual jobs. University drop out. No apparent financial means of support. The wall had him at a large number of Peregrini sites. Maybe he’s a supervisor, George thought.
Dennis didn’t look up as George entered. Either he was a hardened operator, or he had assumed the part.
“Stirring up the suburbs.” George said.
“Somebody has to.”
“Except that this time somebody died.”
“You’re not going to pin that on me. All his own work. I wasn’t even there.”
“Sure. I’m sure you can point to some hard evidence somewhere that puts you completely across town.”
“Exactly.”
“Interesting calling you have. This Peregrini stuff. All a bit much. Impresses the young girls in the back bar does it?”
“I’m a legend. Yes.”
He didn’t seem in the slightest bit worried about George charging him with something. It all seemed like another day at the office.
“Tough customer.” George said.
“Look at this.” Alice said. She had an animation of sites of Peregrini style attacks. Time based.
“What am I seeing?” George asked.
“Pattern of attacks. They pick an area, launch a wave of attacks, then move on.”
“So?”
“It’s systematic. Not just random hooligan style behaviour.”
“Says you. Maybe they do nine to five, performance plans, bonus payments. ”
Alice laughed, and looked back at the wall. Thing was, that was exactly what it looked like.
// Mia
Oscar sat, while Mia crafted identities, and lit fires online. As it grew she stopped monitoring messages, and instead just displayed graphs. It sputtered and slowed, then took off. A flurry of retweets, and quoting. The first top level articles began to appear. Some international articles. She watched the Norwegian site, and the responses. They responded with the script the backers had prepared. Yes, it was a real study. They fed out graphs. In most cases the research and data were real, but it was presented in a way to amplify the message. It rolled on like a very large army of tanks traversing a desert.
She turned towards Oscar.
“You better go.”
“I better.”
He was reluctant. He didn’t need to have the conversation with Mia about having second thoughts. It would end up back at the point where he viewed his future, and chose the shelter of the backers. Indeed, ‘every form of refuge has it’s price’.
He messaged Nicole.
“Breakfast @ Achelaya”
“Up early.”
“Sure.”
Dodging early bicycles as he walked around to Docklands. Looking across at the Melbourne skyline, looming and shimmering in the early morning light.
She smiled. That smile.
“You’ll be able to show me all of your best haunts. The long trail. All the way from Bali to Xian.” she said
“My pleasure. We don’t need to follow my tracks though. We can make our own tracks.”
“You won’t miss Melbourne?”
“It will be here when we get back. I doubt it will miss me.” he said
She smiled again, and searched his face. As if there was a sign there that would show his commitment. That even though he was a wanderer, a permanent traveller, that he was now a traveller in tandem.
“Your friends?” she asked
“My friends are mostly in motion all the time anyway.”
“Maybe there will come a time....”
She thought better of pursuing that line. It was a twenty something thing. That commitments were not to be nailed down. That it was enough that they share a ticket. It wasn’t cool to question things, or to ask.
“You got the tickets.” he asked
“Yes.” she said, showing them on the screen.
“Have you been to Bali before?”
“Only when I was very young. I have few memories.”
“You’ll love it.”
Oscar brought out the drive, fingered it. Then placed it on the table. Glancing up at the surveillance cameras, hoping that nobody had a capture running. Sometimes you had to take the chance. If he passed it to her without showing her then it would be an indication of it’s level of seriousness. He didn’t want that.
// George
“Have we accounted for all of the SciTec team members?” George asked
“All those working with our victim?” Steve replied.
“Yes.”
“There were two off sick.”
“The wall?”
“If they are in hospital the wall will know.”
The wall sometimes was like your mother. It had a medical report of the sickness of two SciTec staff from Legionnaires disease. They were in a critical condition, not expected to last the day.
George turned to Steve.“Legionnaires: it’s about dodgy air conditioners, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I thought it was a hygiene type thing.” Steve said.
Steve adjusted his microphone.
“Use of Legionnaires as a weapon” he said
The wall paused a moment. Then listed suspected infections, and their spread. No definite cases. Just rumors. George summoned up the location on the wall.
“Time to talk to our favourite chatty people.” George said. They headed for the exit, for the short drive to Footscray.
Once again they were ushered into a standard corporate environment. Somewhere there was a factory that made these places, George considered. They were again in a conference room, with a group of nervous people. George addressed them.
“We are treating these sicknesses as suspicious.”
He looked around the table, for signs of emotion. They were calm, but nobody had slept much.
“It seems beyond doubt that your colleague’s fate is a direct product of where they work.” he said, and paused. “Perhaps somebody could give me a short overview of what you do here.”
They looked at each other. It seemed the absence of the executives created a problem. Nobody was going to volunteer anything. In the end Li Guang began.
“There is a limit to what we can disclose.” he said.
George looked annoyed. “No, no. That’s the wrong script. Let me make it crystal clear for you. I am here to investigate what looks like a triple murder.”
He scanned the table again. To see the reaction to the word ‘murder’. They were confused.
“I’ll give you the overview. I’m sure it won’t be a problem.” Li said, then continued.
“Our activities are across several continents. Difficult locations to secure. This site is where we develo
p our security solutions, for all of those sites.”
George looked across at Steve and Alice. In a sense they didn’t need to know much more.
“So you might enlighten me, why you might be a target.” George said.
“I’m afraid that you will have to wait for somebody more senior to answer that.” Li said.
Before you could say ‘more to SciTec than meets the eye’ they were heading back towards the fun palace. They assembled at the wall. Like devotees. Desperate for what the wall might be able to find for them.
“Coincidence?” George asked Alice and Steve.
“SciTec. It might be.” Alice said.
“It’s quite different. One is highly specific. Almost like an assassination. This is almost indiscriminate.” Steve said.
George gazed over the wall.
“If it is specific to SciTec then there is something they are not telling us.” he said.
“As in anything. What have we got from them?” Alice said.
“Delivery. We are looking at a highly secure facility. They can’t just wander past the front desk and spray stuff. Can we trace it?”
“I don’t think so. Small amounts moving through the air conditioning.” Steve said.
“Random or specific. Look at what the three have in common.” George said.
“OK.”
“Find out where the air conditioning vents are. If there is any surveillance on them.”
George turned to the wall.
“Links between first and second group of SciTec victims” George said.
He waited. Yes, that was exactly the point. If it was all about SciTec, then how and why? It was something to pose questions for the wall that stumped it. Some of his friends were nostalgic about these things, preferring the old days of walking about and writing things down. Old days much over-rated, he thought.
Having said that the wall wasn’t giving him much. Maybe there wasn’t much to give. Trivial things like the date of their joining SciTec was similar. Those at the middle level would have joined at the same time.
Stumped, he did what he did when he was stumped. Rode a tram. Out onto the street and sitting on the 70 tram, heading for Wattle Park. Past Flinders Street station, heading for Swan Street. He would ride it out, and then back. If he didn’t get any inspiration then he’d just ride it all the way back again.
He thought about motives. Greed, jealousy. It was easy to become trapped in the statistics and just zero in on the immediate family. Suddenly school children charged onto the tram, breaking his train of thought. Shouting, and waving phones.
So it went. At a very high volume. George smiled. Remembering that this was the only place where they could actually shout. That in the school room and at home they would have to toe the line. He tried to remember what he had been like at school. His reports all said the same thing: ‘..it is obvious that George has incredible talent. If only he decided to use it.’ Every year, the same thing. Until in the final year he woke up one morning and realised that he was in trouble. If he wanted to get to University then he would need much higher grades. From that day on he studied pretty much 24 hours a day. If he was awake, he was studying. That was when the chase had started, and pretty much it hadn’t stopped.
Now the tram was heading for Camberwell junction. Rattling past the cinema, then patiently waiting at the five way intersection for a long time. George had grown up east of here, in what were then the new suburbs. It seemed like the country to him. Now it was almost the geographic centre of Melbourne.
He returned from the tram ride, and headed in an uncommon direction. Towards Kate’s office. Several levels above. What was it, closer to heaven? He thought to himself. The more powerful and important you were the higher up the building.
She turned to greet him. “You’ve come to resign.” Kate said. Smiling. “A sudden passion to become a Zen monk. Up at 4am, the slaps of the staff on the back. Ten hours a day meditating.”
George smiled. In the nature of these things he still saw the gangling kid who had joined more than ten years ago. Nobody else saw that now. She was mid thirties, attractive in a serious way, dressed to match that. No wasted energy. No wasted anything. What was she? Two below Chief Commissioner? Speculation that she would make it all the way.
“Would you like that?” George said.
“Of course not. The force would lose its best.”
Kate sat back in the chair. She could tell George that he should know that. Or where to look.
“You figure a politician like me is the right person to ask?”
“Yes.”
“Movers. Shakers.”
“Into everything. I get the impression that they are moving in, taking over.”
“Emphasis on the word ‘taking’. It’s not a tea party where they pass the scones around. Think kids in a sandpit, fighting over the toys.”
// Mia
Oscar watched Nicole walk from the cafe. Paying particular attention to the way she walked, swaying of the hair. How this played havoc with his pulse rate. He opened up the laptop and looked at the brewing storm. Lots of mainstream media were picking up on the Norway report, pushing it, paraphrasing it. CBSH had come out and denied the reports, but the reference to the report just seemed to feed it all.
“How goes it?” Oscar asked Mia.
“See for yourself.” She said, feeding him a link to the image of the ATM queues. It was impressive. Some of the images were in darkness, from Europe. People getting up out of their beds to convert their money into cold hard cash. Impressive.
“When?” Oscar asked.
“About an hour. I’ll send the signal.”
Timed for opening hours across China. Maximum pressure. Then he thought about Nicole, and the trail of images in surveillance cameras all over Melbourne. How long would it take them?
He only sent a cryptic message to Nicole.
“10.50” he sent.
The Yarra didn’t really flow. It just drifted. The saying was that it flowed upside down, which was a bit unkind. At least it didn’t flow with raw sewage floating in it, he thought. He scanned the crowd, and decided he should find a less public place. Just in case they traced back to the laptop. It was always possible. Following the protocol he had distanced himself from the apartment. It wasn’t really possible to trace Mia’s stuff, but what he was about to do he couldn’t do without leaving a trail.
It was always possible that it wouldn’t work, he thought. He remembered images of Bali, the light. So easy then. Easy to be sentimental, but even then it was more about what he was doing on the laptop than what was happening on the beach.
It popped up. A message. From the drive Nicole had planted. All he to do was tunnel back to it. He looked at the clock, and began the process. In New York a fight began in an ATM queue. Nothing unusual, really. But it went viral within minutes. Mainstream news began leading with it. Oscar had a window with the fight on his laptop. He had everything set up, ready to go. A door closes, a door opens.
// George
George glanced at the wall, and then at Steve and Alice. He decided that following the trail of geopolitics was only going to generate a fog of confusion.
“SciTec?” Steve asked George
“I talked to Kate. Movers and shakers. Important. All code words I think. There seems to be some sort of turf war. But it’s not clear who with.”
Alice responded.
“I’ve got nothing from the surveillance yet. I tried looking for somebody loading up the air conditioning with dust. But there are several inlets, and it is hard to get a lock on it. I doubt that they would be stupid enough to walk up to the inlet and hold a nozzle to it.”
“But the physical evidence is our best shot.” George said. “Somehow somebody got it in there. It’s a physical trail. Can’t be wiped. The three shared an office. Let’s get a search expert to go over their internal footage.”
“Sure. I’ll get SciTec to upload, and ask Alan who he recommends.” Alice sai
d.
It wasn’t possible to search the footage with stuff like ‘..look for something unusual in room X’. For a start, what was unusual? Statistical? Every time somebody from outside the workspace entered, that would trigger the gate. They needed an expert.
Alan was fast. Within minutes, their best imaging expert was standing in front of the wall.
“I’m Li Xiu. Alan said you have a tricky image search problem?” she said. Li was mid twenties, neat. She had that hardcore nerd look. As if she spent her off time doing marathon running.
George laid it out.
“Legionnaire’s disease.” she said. “What makes you so sure that it is introduced?”
“Within the same work area.” George said. “But yes, we don’t have anything that tells us that they were killed.”
She began.
“It’ll take a while. Best to check back.” she said.
// Anoop
Anoop Menon came in early to the operations centre. Cradling an extra large cardboard cup of coffee, he appreciated the quiet after the Mumbai streets. The centre was new, with its own power and air conditioning. Unlike the streets outside, it was calm and ordered. He was looking at a ten hour shift, and he placed the coffee as he ran the reports. An animation of the past twelve hours on the CBSH network sprung into the air.
To most people the animation would have meant little. But to him it had the same level of appreciation as a classical music concert. It was smooth, and well behaved. He liked that.
“Anything?” he asked.
“You might like to look at the news.” Akish said.
The video of the fight was in a loop at the top right of the large screen.
“What’s this?” he said
“Depositors queuing for their money. The fight broke out in the queue.”
He looked at the system load. It was high, but not unusually. The ATM network really didn’t generate much traffic. They could handle a 50% surge without any drama at all.
“Some rumors about liquidity.” Akish said.
“It’s ridiculous.” Anoop said.
“You know that. I know that. But they don’t know that.”
It was quite a contrast. The calm of the displays, with the fight in the upper right corner. Anoop was annoyed at it all. He didn’t want the disorder to penetrate his world. It was as if the chaos on the streets of Mumbai was at the door knocking, trying to get in.
//Oscar
Oscar was still sitting. He was asked whether he wanted another coffee. Taking it as rent for sitting, he decided to take it. So now he had an excuse to hold off, as he sipped it slowly. Soon Mia would be asking what the delay was. She would be waiting. He pressed the key, and let it loose.
At first it was innocuous enough. It sat in the background on the CBSH server in Williamstown, gathering network data. Spreading itself. It didn’t announce itself to Anoop. As it slipped onto the main monitoring servers. Within a few minutes it had spread to every corner of the CBSH network. It’s aim was not to crack passwords, or to gain access to accounts. It only had to find its way. All of the defenses were for access. It didn’t need access. It simply had to be there.
No more guidance was needed. As the various incarnations spread, messages on progress filtered across the planet. Each of the installations gathered them, waiting for the torrent to cease. He eyed the exit, and thought of what he had to do, where he had to go.
So it began. On a server in Toronto, a process was launched. It seized the highest priority on the server, and captured a small amount of processor use and memory. Then it launched two new processes. Each of those then did exactly the same. In the
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