Swarm

by Guy Garcia

  Xander’s blooming confidence filled the room like a rise in barometric pressure. He was on the brink of breaking into the big leagues, and Vegas would be the flashpoint. There was no way Tom could miss his buddy’s coronation at one of the biggest EDM events in the world. Besides, Tom had never been to Las Vegas, and he couldn’t imagine a better reason to get his own chips.

  “It’s gonna be like the Rat Pack on ecstasy,” Xander quipped.

  “Yeah, and you’ll be chairman of the mixing board.”

  Xander took a breath, suddenly serious. “You know, I never doubted that this would happen, but now I can feel all that space between the molecules, invisible forces, electrons, and billboards flashing. Everything connecting across platforms in multiple dimensions.” He looked at Tom as if for the first time. “Nothing will ever be the same again, will it?”

  “Probably not.”

  Xander put his hand on Tom’s shoulder. “But you and me, Tommy, I mean it—we will stay brothers no matter what, right?”

  “Absolutely.”

  They exchanged a heartfelt hug. “I want you to know I consider you a part of what’s happened to me,” Xander said. “You listened to my tracks and told me they were good, you told me to keep going when nobody else gave a shit, you loaned me money when I was broke and let me crash on your floor till I was back on my feet. You’ve been with me all the way, mano a mano, brother to brother. We did this together.”

  “Yeah, Xan, we did.”

  “C’mon, then. Let us go forth and inebriate!”

  “Sorry, man. We shall go forth, but not tonight. I’ve got a date.”

  “Really? Where?”

  “Luminescence.”

  “Wait, let me get this straight: you’re taking a girl on a date in a fantasy world video game.” Xander shrugged. “I guess it beats stuffing bitcoins into a virtual stripper’s thong.”

  “You would know.”

  “Yep,” Xander affirmed before exiting through the window.

  A moment later, he telegraphed his adieu with the pedicab bell—a single exuberant ding.

  Tom checked the time. He had a few minutes before his date with Lucy, just long enough to scan the posts on 4chan/b/. Helping Xander become an EDM star wasn’t the only thing Tom had been up to during the past few months. After a series of sporadic, occasionally disturbing chats, macktheknife and his friends invited Swarm into their inner circle, tutoring him on the ins and outs of the 4chan underworld. The site’s structure was deceptively straightforward—forty-nine different multimedia message boards, each with its own subject and abbreviation bracketed by slashes, ranging from 4chan.org/an/ (for animals and nature) to /x/ (for paranormal). Tom’s new chums were denizens of /b/ (for “random”), an image board that served as a playground and online hangout for an unruly aggregation of self-proclaimed “b-tards”—hackers, anarchists, and social malcontents, some of them harmless, some not, all of them resourceful, opinionated, and stridently anonymous, which Tom soon learned was not at all the same thing as unknown. Macktheknife, quasar539, toke, bbreath, and the rest of the gang were alt-J celebrities in their own right, online lords of mayhem who patrolled the posts and lashed out at those deemed unduly dense or unworthy.

  At first, Tom found himself intimidated and rattled by the scabrous stew of midget porn, cartoons, snuff-joke video clips, and non sequiturs, but gradually certain personalities had emerged, distinct themes and voices bubbling up out of the piquant cyber soup. The underlying assumption was that society was broken and corrupted, which demanded a radical intervention and reboot of the American experiment. The Internet, with its unmarked boundaries and dark crannies, was a safe haven for the neo-patriots who would save democracy by keeping it honest, by taking carefully aimed potshots at the corporate gentry and the military-industrial plutocracy. It eventually dawned on Tom that “random” was anything but. The constant barrage of queries, invectives, miscellaneous facts, and outrageous accusations was all part of a vetting process guided by contrarian stipulations and unreasonable expectations. Those found lacking in skill, wit, zeal or bravado were quickly hounded out, marginalized, or ignored. To be called a fag, for instance, had nothing to do with sexual preference. While hetero lewdness generally ruled, nobody cared what anyone did with his or her own body or anyone else’s, for that matter. Alacrity, audacity, and programming pluck were the valued commodities of this geek-ruled realm. Before long, Tom was giving as good as he got, solidifying the respect and trust of the b-tards, who were intrigued by his uncanny ability to fire up flash mobs at a moment’s notice. Except that it wasn’t really Tom that the mobbers were following anymore—it was Swarm. Swarm was the one who communicated an authority that transcended ego, his confidence emanating from a deepening awareness of allied forces, not just his 4chan cronies but also the minions who acted out his wildest fantasies with fanatical verve, storming shopping malls in rabbit suits, converging at busy intersections for instantaneous pillow fights, assembling for candlelit Edwardian dinner parties in a parking lot at dusk. It was Swarm, not Tom, who was beginning to regard the flash mobsters as a physical extension of his will, a congregation of connected brains and limbs reaching out across the city, materializing out of nowhere and then melting away, leaving no trace. It was Swarm as much as Tom who was drafting a message, a manifesto that would speak to the masses, which would make them understand that they were part of something that had never existed before, something that could fulfill and even transcend the lofty ideals sketched out by the b-tard bros and every soul who felt a sea change coming but didn’t know what to call it or how to help make it happen. Tom had created Swarm as a protective alias, a disembodied alter ego invented to crystallize and lead social media disruptions without revealing who was behind them. Gradually, though, Swarm had begun to embody something beyond flash mobs and mere weapons of mass distraction, a possibility that demanded a new language and a new definition of the here and now, where it was going, and what was coming next.

  But tonight Tom was focused on more mundane concerns. After Sonia came to Tom for help with his aunt’s predicament with the Munificent Life Insurance Company, he had spent weeks corresponding with the adjuster, patiently explaining that the forms should have been sent to Tom’s aunt in Spanish, to no avail. An appeal directly to the CEO, Wallace F. Brown, went unanswered, phone calls deflected. At that point, Tom decided to take a different tack. Thanks to tips from his 4chan pals on how to launder the cash from the magazine subscription scam, Tom had more than enough money to cover his aunt’s medical bills. The b-tards also agreed to help Tom teach the company, particularly its callous CEO, a lesson in community relations.

  Tom’s war on Munificent Life was waged on multiple fronts. The first volley was in the form of a DOS attack on Muni-life.com, followed by a corresponding flurry of negative instant messaging that triggered a hail of bad publicity and shut down the company’s website. Meanwhile, macktheknife and a few other b-tards focused their ire on Brown. It didn’t take long for them to unearth and publish an e-mail string between the CEO and his underage mistress, a University of Texas junior, which did not sit well with Brown’s wife—or the conservative church congregation of which he was a prominent, and soon to be former, member. In an effort to stem the damage, the company reimbursed Sonia for her sister’s denied coverage, but not before Munificent’s stock plummeted by 15 percent.

  The coup de grâce had come just a week ago, when one of Swarm’s hacktivist confidants passed him a tip that Munificent Life had engaged former NSA data analysts to help them sift through social media sites to preemptively identify and freeze out customers with higher than average health risks. Details of Munificent’s malfeasance were leaked to strategically chosen industry bloggers, eventually flowing upstream to major media and progressive pundits, who in turn demanded a federal investigation. The final touch was an AR image that appeared from nowhere and instantly went viral. It showed Brown as the Grim Reape
r, smiling as he entered the Munificent headquarters building made to resemble a tombstone. The caption: “Business is good.” Within days, Brown announced his resignation, taking most of the company’s board of directors down with him.

  Tom logged on to 4chan/b/ and checked a forum he had authored under the heading “Cancers in the Munificent C-Suite.” All the comments on Tom’s C-suite message string were verbal high fives; one had even attached an animated gif of a triumphantly fluttering pirate flag. “This one goes out to Jeremy Hammond!” announced Toke, referring to a hacker who had been sentenced to ten years in prison for breaking into databases of corporate and security firms. “The geek shall inherit the Earth,” crowed macktheknife. “And meanwhile, they will beat the shit out of mendacious Munificent fucks who try to withhold medical coverage from helpless widows! Bravo, b-tards. It’s been a good day in the good fight. The cloud has spoken! Long live Swarm!”

  8

  The damage was already catastrophic and getting worse by the second. Several hundred dead, power stations and electrical towers in six states leveled by explosions, police and medical teams delayed by malfunctioning GPS systems, online defensive response and coordination efforts paralyzed by DOS attack viruses and worms, millions of Americans left in the dark without power or phone service. The offensive was being carried out simultaneously in major cities across the country, all with the same goal, which was to destroy the nation’s power grid and emergency response abilities and foment chaos and panic in the civilian population.

  In a windowless room filled with wall-size screens, Duggan watched the disaster unfold on a map of the United States as dozens of technicians and cyber-defense strategists struggled to fight back. Nearby, a young man in a white shirt was calmly humming to himself and pressing buttons on a tablet computer. He spoke to Duggan without looking up from his screen. “Having fun yet?”

  “Nothing fun about losing a cyber war.”

  The man looked up at the situation map. “We’re not losing,” he said. “We have auxiliary backup systems on the eastern grid and satellite offensive options that the Russians can’t match. This is just the beginning. You wait and see.”

  A text popped up on Duggan’s phone. It was from Jordan Sharpe, asking for a meeting, just as JT had predicted. They agreed to coffee at a Denny’s not far from the operations facility. Sharpe was slightly pudgy, balding, and visibly stressed—classic NSA. Duggan was pretty sure there would be no official record of anybody named Sharpe attending the cy-ops games. Sharpe had the drooping posture of a man who carried the weight of the earth’s atmosphere on his sloped shoulders.

  “JT tells me you’re discreet,” Sharpe said wearily, “which is the only reason I’m here.” Sharpe emptied a pack of sweetener into his coffee and slowly stirred it. “I hear you got fed a pile of crap in Kandahar.”

  Duggan gave Sharpe a brief description of his trip to Afghanistan. As Duggan told his story, Sharpe’s foot started to jiggle slightly. It made Duggan nervous to see Sharpe getting excited.

  “Have you heard from Mr. Post-it?” Sharpe asked.

  “You think I will?”

  Sharpe shrugged. “It’s possible. But that’s not the part I find interesting.”

  “Go on.”

  “No offense, but NCSD is small potatoes for Cyber Command. If they were serious, they never would have outsourced an investigation for something this juicy. From what you just told me, I’d guess that your visit was a pro forma Band-Aid designed to stop anyone else from kicking the tires.”

  “I’ve come to the same conclusion.”

  “Did you tell your boss?”

  “He declared the case closed and sent me here to watch the cyber games.”

  “Ouch.” Sharpe’s condolence was genuine. “Look, you can do what you want, but your boss might be right. There’s no upside in getting your tit caught in a tiff between NSA and Cyber Command. Plus, whatever happened is probably outside your jurisdiction anyway. My advice would be to enjoy the games and double down on room service.”

  “Maybe, but I don’t like getting on airplanes for no discernable reason. Twice.”

  Sharpe sighed. “Only amateurs take this stuff personally.”

  Duggan started to get up.

  “Hang on,” Sharpe said. For the first time during the entire conversation, he looked Duggan straight in the eye. “There’s a DOD research wonk who turned up MIA just a few days after your buddy Westlake went apeshit. The only reason we know about it is because DOD wanted to make sure we didn’t have him. The inquiry came from the Cyber Command office in Afghanistan. There might be a connection. Or maybe it’s just wishful thinking.”

  Duggan put a ten-dollar bill on the table and rose to leave. “Thanks for the coffee,” he said.

  Back at his hotel room, Duggan ordered a cheeseburger, fries, and two rye whiskey and sodas before noticing the blinking red message light on the phone. It was Sharpe’s voice, uttering a single sentence: “My missing friend was studying electromagnetic effects on the human brain.”

  Duggan erased Sharpe’s message and opened his laptop. For the next few hours, he trolled the Internet, delving into something he had always known bits and pieces about but had never really paid much attention to until now. Duggan was surprised, intrigued, and finally alarmed by the mountain of verified information he encountered, some of it published by various departments of the US government itself. The origin of mind control as a weapon, Duggan learned, dated back at least to the 1950s, when a Chicago-born MD of Yugoslavian descent named Andrija Puharich discovered that electromagnetic pulses of extremely low frequency, or ELF waves, had dramatic—and potentially destructive—effects on people and the environment. Puharich was influenced by Nikola Tesla, the turn-of-the-century mathematician who had already explored the concept of using radio waves to transmit electrical energy through the Earth and its atmosphere, even filing a number of US patents based on that idea. Puharich found that a person’s emotional state and health could be modified by exposing him or her to signals that corresponded to particular points on the electromagnetic spectrum, literally “tuning” a person’s mind like a radio set. In tests conducted in conjunction with Robert C. Beck, Puharich reported that human reactions to various ELF frequencies ranged from headaches, nausea, and anxiety to a sense of well-being, as well as aggression and riotous behavior. Tesla himself had foreseen a form of future warfare that would be “conducted by direct application of electrical waves.” In 1908, Tesla predicted that the greatest achievement of science would be to master the universe by manipulating the invisible ether, a “tenuous fluid” of matter that encapsulated the earth, and usher in a new reality in which “old worlds would vanish and new ones would spring into being” and man would “fulfill his ultimate destiny.”

  Duggan’s fingers drummed on the imitation wood veneer desk as he scrolled down a list of news reports and documents that cataloged a zigzagging trail of mind-control weapon experiments conducted by the CIA and the DOD, beginning in the 1940s and continuing right up to the present day. Was this why Sharpe had gotten so excited at Denny’s? And why the delay before telling him about the DOD researcher who’d gone AWOL?

  A related news link took him to an article published the same day in the New York Times under the headline “Agency Initiative Will Focus on Advancing Deep Brain Stimulation.” The article mentioned that one hundred thousand people with Parkinson’s disease had already received electrical implants to help them control involuntary movements. Then it got to the point of the story, which was that DARPA had announced that it was spending more than seventy million dollars to develop technology that would help scientists “acquire signals that can tell them precisely what is going on with the brain.” DARPA’s project, the article continued, was “partly inspired by the needs of combat veterans who suffer from mental and physical conditions,” which by definition included PTSD.

  Duggan thought about what the Pos
t-it had told him: Look for what’s not there.

  He rubbed his eyes and took a gulp of his second whiskey. He had read enough to know what he was going to do next. It was Thursday. Duggan e-mailed the office to say he was taking a personal day and spending the weekend with friends on the West Coast. Then he logged on to Expedia and booked a flight to Spokane, Washington.

  Tom was still exhilarated from the endorsement of his victory over Munificent Life when he logged onto Luminescence and made his way to their usual trysting place near the castle. In the magical mythical reality where Tom and Lucy courted and flirted as 3-D avatars, Mr. Aws was a dashing young wizard, powerful enough to unleash lightning bolts from his hands and repel attacks from trolls, zombies, and dragons. Lucy always looked lovely, her long blond hair cascading over a white gown studded with glowing stars and planets, a crown of diamonds floating above her head. Her hidden power was an ability to control the weather. Her freezing rainstorm could immobilize large animals and paralyze stout knights who found themselves trapped inside their own icy armor.

  The key attraction of Luminescence was the way any group of players could pool their power to create new areas of the game, ranging from Jurassic jungles and futuristic clone colonies to medieval kingdoms, like the one Lucy and Tom had chosen as the pastoral setting for their amorous trysts. The very real politics of how and why different players came together to create—and sometimes destroy—virtual realizations of their wildest communal desires and dreams was what gave the game its addictive charm.

  It didn’t take Tom long to cross the meadow, making sure to avoid the testy winged lizards that lurked in the weeping willows, and climb the hilly path that skirted the battlefield. He could hear the clinks and zaps of swords and wands, grunts and screams, and the whooshing sound of a fighter using earned credits to increase his powers. Deaths in Luminescence were always temporary, but in order to buy back one’s soul, it was necessary to earn regeneration crystals by doing good deeds. The key to survival, besides being courteous and kind to everything and everybody, was to stay in the brightly lighted parts of the kingdom, where unicorns roamed and butterflies floated over the ferns. Those who wished to indulge their darker fantasies could seek out like-minded adventurers in the Dionysian caves and crannies of Pan’s forest.