Feral: An Our Cyber World Prequel

by Suastegui, Eduardo

  Martin eyed Stan again.

  “Got it, huh?” Stan Beloski said. “Good job.” He came closer to rest a hand on Martin’s shoulder.

  “I got the source,” Martin replied. “Now I need the destination.”

  Stan’s hand patted his shoulder much like it had patted that conference room table. “Great, keep at it.”

  Martin did. He kept following the data. Tracking the packets. Late in the work day—around the time he usually ate dinner, a few minutes after 8 PM—he got it. He couldn’t get all the way there. Not in there. But he could knock on the front door.

  “Bitcoin account,” Martin said. He turned around and saw Stan standing there. Still. Martin had thought he’d walked out. Maybe gone home. Odehl sat there, too, toward the back of the room. He stood up.

  Both of them had stayed in the room this whole time? Or maybe they’d stepped out, called their superiors to tell them, hey, making good progress. Then they’d come back to make sure Martin didn’t make a liar out of them. He blinked, nudging the useless thoughts aside. Who cared how long Stan and Odehl stood or sat or lay there?

  “Can we tell whose account it is?” Stan asked.

  “That will take some doing.” Martin turned back to the screen.

  Breaking into the Bitcoin system—now that would be a hack heard around the world. And the feds would love it. They hated Bitcoin, namely how it bypassed traditional currency systems and how individuals of varying pedigrees used it to avoid governmental tracking. Which only made government agencies all the more interested in hacking Bitcoin accounts. They had thrown all manner of resources at breaking into suspect accounts and tracking black market transactions over the past few years. Martin had read his fair share of reports on such efforts since joining this team. But you could be sure of one thing: while Bitcoin accounts and transactions had been hacked in the past, a hacker using it would avoid its weaknesses and avail himself of its strongest security provisions.

  All the more reason Stan’s direction didn’t surprise him. “Let’s go back to the source, then. See if we can determine the actor.”

  Martin nodded. He retraced his steps and modified his code to go at the tap. “Fancy,” he said when he confirmed his original suspicions.

  He felt them, then: all the gawkers standing around him and looking over his shoulder at the array of monitors before him. He pointed at the one holding the answer.

  “Whoever did this knows how to hack into firmware, and they did it with elegance.”

  Of all people, Martin should appreciate that. He’d written his thesis and developed a prototype to demonstrate the ability to hack into hardware systems through firmware, rather than hacking the higher level software running in or on top of the operating system.

  “It makes sense, right?” he said, looking over one shoulder, then the other at the nodding heads.

  Here he almost went into lecturer mode, but he didn’t bother. Most of them wouldn’t get it. They wouldn’t understand how a hack like this, taking advantage of the time lag scheme, would need to run fast—as in at the machine code level. A firmware hack allowed that, achieving speeds hundreds if not thousands of times faster than what one could do in the higher level code. But Martin was tired and getting hungry, and didn’t feel like giving much instruction.

  He brought up a bit of his code, stashed only in this protected system, never for him to touch or operate outside this facility, lest he go back to his bad boy ways. He opened it up in an editor window. He let his eyes run over the top few comment field lines. He stared at the date. Man, had it been that long? He recalled all the excitement that had surged through him when he got this thing to work the first time. To sing, really. Yeah, and he recalled when it sang inside a government system. Man, how the excitement had surged then, and busted, too. Which is why he was sitting here, a virtual indentured servant, restrained from using all that magical code unless he had at least five unimaginative robotic idiots staring over his shoulder.

  He let his fingers fly over the keyboard to make a few modifications. A minute later, he watched the status screen as his code recompiled. Then he launched it, and he and the gawkers waited for the results to come back. When they did, Martin pushed back into his chair.

  “What’s with the just-saw-a-ghost look on your face?” Stan Beloski asked.

  “This is pretty sophisticated code,” Martin mumbled.

  “Oh, yeah? Isn’t always?”

  Martin nodded. Yeah, that’s what everyone always said when some nut breached their systems. When some numskull busted through the most solid of defenses. That would never happen except with some pretty fancy—a.k.a., sophisticated—code. It always worked out that way. Sophisticated stood for, “you have to be pretty smart to beat me at this game.” You have to believe that, or else you admit the alternative, namely, your incompetence and stupidity.

  But this time it was. Sophisticated, indeed. Sophisticated to the max. Martin could reach no other conclusion. Because he was staring at his own code.

  03» Excursion

  “Martin.” Stan Beloski snapped his fingers. “Hey, earth to Martin.”

  Martin looked up.

  “You with us?” Stan said.

  Martin shook his head. How long had he spaced out?

  “Got an idea?” Stan added with a hopeful tone to his voice.

  “Yeah,” Martin replied. Why had he said that? Now he needed to propose something semi-intelligent.

  Stan raised his hands, palms up. “Well?”

  “New York,” Martin said. “That’s where it’s happening. We should go there.”

  One of the gawker programmers stuck out his hand over Martin’s shoulder, pointing at the screen. “Why? We can tap everything from here.”

  Odehl stepped in. “No, he’s right. You can’t solve everything by remote control.” He narrowed his gaze and nodded at Spencer. “I’ve been on the phone with a colleague.”

  Something about the way Odehl said that struck Martin the wrong way—like it had to do with the discovery Martin had made a minute ago. Or maybe he was reading too much into it.

  “There’s an outfit out there, teammates of ours,” Odehl added. “They might be able to help us sort this out.”

  Stan frowned. “You don’t mean—”

  Odehl cut him off with a raised hand. “Not here.” He looked back at Martin. “I’ll set us up on a charter flight.” He pointed at Martin’s terminal. “Grab any digital goodies you need. We’ll take it by courier bag.”

  Much to Martin’s chagrin, the flight to New York turned into a redeye. Neither Stan Beloski nor Robert Odehl seemed terribly bothered by it. But Martin hated flying overnight. He could never get much sleep on a plane, and the prospect of having to work the next morning, forming coherent thoughts after a sleepless night, didn’t appeal much. Never mind having to keep a lid on the fact that his code somehow found itself at the center of this mess.

  As they drove, his mind switched to more immediate concerns. Like their current destination. Martin had visited Manhattan several times, enough to know their black SUV wasn’t heading toward Wall Street.

  “Where are we going?” he asked Stan.

  “You’ll see soon enough.”

  He did see, five minutes later, when the SUV dove into an underground parking structure after a tightly meshed gate rose to grant them access. Inside four guards, two on each side, stood with small semiautomatic machineguns at their sides. The SUV stopped for inspection as the gate rolled down behind them.

  Robert Odehl stepped out first. Stan followed. Though no one told him to, Martin played follow the leader.

  “Martin Spencer?” one of the guards said to him.

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re not officially cleared for this facility, sir.” The guard waved him to a nearby shack. “I have some forms for you to fill out.”

  Martin looked over at Stan.

  Stan shrugged. “Standard procedure. Won’t take but a minute.”

  It took ten
minutes. Martin didn’t complain. He’d given up his right to whine about security-related red tape months ago. As he figured it, getting access to this facility—whatever it was—with less than twenty-four hour notice was quite the feat.

  “So what’s this place, anyway?” Martin asked Stan when he signed the last sheet.

  Stan shook his head. “Not yet.”

  Odehl gestured for them to hurry.

  One of the guards escorted them to an elevator, swiped his badge across a card reader, and pressed the call button. Thick black doors parted, revealing a dull-polish, corrugated elevator interior. Leaning in, the guard swiped his badge again, this time on the reader inside the elevator, and pressed a button.

  He stood aside, with his hand on the door. “Get off on three.”

  They stepped in.

  “Like we have a choice,” Stan said as the doors slid close. He grinned at Martin. “He pressed three. Not like we can go to any other floor.”

  “I’m sure it’s a test,” Odehl put in with a grin of his own. “See whether we try to press any other buttons.”

  Martin shrugged.

  Odehl squinted at him. “You OK?”

  “Mostly awake.”

  “They have good coffee here,” Stan said. “And a shower, if you need it. They’ll bring up our bags in a second.”

  Right, after they took them apart, Martin didn’t reply. This might also be a good time to ask why they had to come here, instead of visiting the two or three Wall Street brokerage houses most affected by the hack. But hey, as soon as they could talk freely about the hocus pocus stuff, Martin was sure they would clarify that right up for him.

  The elevator stopped with a double jolt. A second later, the doors slid apart. Though Martin expected more armed guards, this time a smiling female face welcomed them.

  “Robert,” she said with what struck Martin as genuine enthusiasm.

  “Sylvia. So great to see you again.”

  “Gosh, I haven’t seen you since, what?”

  “Bogdan’s retirement.”

  At that her smile turned sour. But only for a moment. Then she was turning to Stan, shaking his hand, finally facing Martin to welcome him.

  “And this must be your master hacker.” Her lips curled into a sideways grin. “We’ll make sure he doesn’t come too close to our precious code.” She squeezed his hand with vigor, then held it, still pressing it, for what? A warning?

  “Oh, yes,” Odehl said. “Where are my manners? Let me introduce you—”

  “I know who he is.” She let go of his hand and took a step back. “So does SES.”

  “Says?” Martin heard himself say.

  But she was already turning away, gesturing for them to follow.

  “All our billets in place?” Odehl asked her.

  “Yes, you’re all good.” Looking over her shoulder at Martin she added, “But he doesn’t go on the floor. Not unless it’s the only place to escape from a burning inferno.”

  They walked at a brisk pace down a wide corridor. Ahead, Martin saw two wide doors. Above them, four white large letters spelled SSAC.

  She ushered them down a smaller corridor and through a doorway into a conference room. A long, wide wood top table stretched down the middle of the room, stopping short of a large wall-mounted screen. Chairs lined along the walls, at the back of the room and to the right of the table. The left wall stood unoccupied but for thick drapes that featured those same four letters, SSAC.

  Sylvia gestured for them to sit, and they gathered around her, at the head of the table. She reached forward and pressed the intercom.

  “Are we clear?”

  A click, a pause, and then, “Yes, ma’am.”

  She took a remote and pressed a button. A motor whined into action, and the curtains opened to reveal floor to ceiling glass and the four columns that held it in place. Beyond it a control room extended in three concentric semicircles, smallest at the top of the room, and largest at the front and bottom, butting up against a shallow stage beyond which a semicircular screen displayed nothing but a logo, and those same four letters. SSAC.

  “Welcome to the sack, Mr. Spencer,” Sylvia said. “The S-S-A-C, which stands for Simulation and Scenario Analysis Center.”

  Martin nodded. “A minute ago you mentioned someone called… Says?”

  Sylvia laughed. Odehl and Stan joined her.

  “Not who, Mr. Spencer, even if sometimes we do tend to humanize it. Though when we do, we call him Mr. Crunch, for all the scenario and simulation crunching he does for us.”

  Martin shrugged. “So a processor of some sort.”

  “Yeah.” She took a deep breath, as if to convince herself that she could level with him. “An artificial intelligence, to be more precise. The Simulation and Emulation System, or SES.”

  “OK.” Martin turned to Stan. “This is all fascinating, but I’m not seeing how it helps us trace a financial scam-hack.”

  Odehl pointed at Sylvia. “Hear her out.”

  Sylvia waited until Martin turned to her. “SES works a lot like a chess computer. You feed it a starting position, which we call a scenario, and it calculates a number of possible outcomes, ranking each in terms of favorability to the home team—that would be us—and likelihood of occurrence.”

  She paused.

  Martin shrugged. “So… you’ve been feeding it stock prices and market valuations to see what to stuff into your 401K?”

  “Yeah.” She grinned. “We’ve never heard that one before.” Sylvia drew in another long breath and leaned back in her chair. “We use SES to find threats and vulnerabilities. Want to guess one particular area all the big cheeses want to keep us crunching on?”

  Martin shrugged again. He didn’t have to say it. Of course everyone, up to the president, wanted to make sure the stock market kept humming along. All right, so there he had it. They thought they could feed SES this scenario, and he could solve the thing for them. Show them the endgame. See what pawns they could queen, and how to keep the king nice and safe.

  “I’m sensing skepticism,” she said.

  He almost shrugged again, but he stopped himself. “People have been trying to code a predictor for the stock market for years. So far they’ve come up with a bunch of null pointers.”

  “I don’t think you’re listening for comprehension, Mr. Spencer. I’m not talking about stock or bond price predictions. Certainly not derivatives. Our concern here is more… infrastructural.”

  Martin nodded. That could work. Looking at networks as part of a scenario, analyzing how data flowed… Yeah, he could see the predictive value in that, a way to do what he’d done back in LA with some automated smarts.

  “OK,” he said. “So you need me here for what? To set up a scenario?”

  She shook her head. “We know all the scenarios. Have been running them for days.”

  “Then… I’m sorry, you’re losing me.” He stole another look at Stan.

  “We just need you to take a look at some of the conclusions.” She reached for the remote again. The curtain motors whined again. Inch by inch, the SSAC’s control floor disappeared.

  Sylvia pressed the intercom again. “We’re ready.”

  A minute later, three guys walked in. Sylvia introduced them. Martin only caught one of the names, Steve, the deputy chief engineer.

  One of the other guys manned a computer at the back of the room. The projector screen came to life. Steve stood by it. For the next few minutes, he walked through an introductory chart, summarizing the “ongoing crisis.” Martin didn’t learn anything new.

  He was starting to tune out when the next chart switched into view. “Two of eight branch outcomes point to Martin Spencer as a principal player,” the second bullet read. Steve read it verbatim.

  Martin was about to ask if he should be flattered, but Steve plowed on to regurgitate the next bullet.

  “Five of eight high-rank branches, with three top-ranked, point to the Cat.”

  The next bullet said the
eight branch was inconclusive, needing further analysis.

  All talking stopped. All heads turned to Martin. No one asked the obvious question. No one needed to clarify why they’d dragged him here. Because some AI was fingering him and someone called the Cat as key players in this thing, and now it fell on Martin to tell them what that was all about.

  “Any idea who this cat might be?” Sylvia said.

  Martin shrugged.

  Sylvia gave the guy manning the computer a two finger wave. To Martin, in the conference room’s silence, his key tap sounded like a gunshot. A young male face appeared on the screen. His name dashed from the left side of the display a second later. Jason Coulter.

  Sylvia pointed at him. “Maybe this guy?”

  “You know him?” Stan said, piling on.

  Martin nodded. “Classmate at MIT.”

  “A buddy of yours, actually.”

  Martin nodded again. “We hung around together my first two years there.” He paused, deciding he should come clean, since they probably already knew. “We did a couple of pranks together.”

  Sylvia raised an eyebrow. “Pranks or hacks?”

  “Same thing. That’s what they call them there. Like putting a Volkswagen Beetle on top of the engineering building—that’s a hack.”

  “Uh-huh.” Sylvia took a deep breath and narrowed her gaze a bit. “Would it surprise you to know this guy is working IT for one of the affected brokerage houses?”

  Martin shrugged. No, it wouldn’t surprise him.

  “These things are usually an inside job,” Stan said.

  Martin shrugged again, to indicate he also didn’t care. Couldn’t care less. Whatever. Even if he knew this wouldn’t turn into whatever—not by a long shot.

  “What do you need from me?” he said.

  “We want you to go in, chat him up,” Stan said.

  “You have evidence on him?”

  “Just a hunch.” Stan eyed Sylvia, and she nodded in agreement. “SES is flagging him.”