METAtropolis:The Wings We Dare Aspire

by Jay Lake

  “Well, get this. Tygre spoke once or twice of an ‘invisible school.’ I’ve come to believe, on scant but available evidence, that he meant a virtual nation. But one much older than Sanotica. Maybe even a survivor of the ancient mystery cults. They raised and trained him, perhaps even bred him, for the purpose that he served.”

  “Somebody knew two dozen years in advance that Cascadiopolis would need to be dispersed? Then bombed you from orbit just to make their point?”

  “Two dozen years?” Bashar smiled again, cold now. “Somebody may have known two centuries in advance that this time was coming.”

  Mindy burst out laughing. “You’re a conspiracy theorist.” All too common a delusion in this day and age, especially after so much of the long-standing world order had collapsed. People always wanted someone to blame for the loss of the good old days.

  “Unfortunately, it’s not just a theory. I have some evidence.” His cold smile morphed to a glare. “Not of the tinfoil hat and secret cipher variety.”

  * * *

  Excerpted from Bashar: A Brief Posthumous Biography; by D. Spector; J. Appleseed Foundation Press; Seattle, WA, CASC; 2073:

  Bashar was never the invisible man that his hero/messiah Tygre has proven to be. Nevertheless he did possess an astonishing skill at covering his traces, and though he went by the same name all his adult life, nonetheless concealing his identity. Here we have a man who survived into his ninth decade of life, through most of the turbulent twenty-first century and living within and across the boundaries of several nation-states, without ever holding a driver’s license, healthcare ID card, weapons permit or passport. At least four alleged, contradictory birth records have been identified for Bashar, as well as numerous forms of false or misleading identification, which leads to the conclusion that his skill at seeding disinformation must have matched his skill at concealing information. Here we have a man without a birthplace, without parents, without verifiable identification of any sort, who nonetheless managed to be one of the founding fathers of the Cascadiopolis movement and also author of A Symmetry Framed, the seminal work about the brief life and eternal message of Tygre Tygre.

  * * *

  Even the apocalypse still requires toilet paper

  Heinlein’s voice droned on, flat and untextured as if the expert system had just been installed. Under Protocol Beria, their personality templates had been sandboxed behind code keys only Crown himself could unlock, so in a sense, Heinlein had just been installed.

  “We have identified the window of opportunity for Kornbluth to have been compromised as falling between the scheduled maintenance review by SysGenOps techs between October 17th and October 19th of last year, and the initial suspicious financial transaction on November 28th of last year. The trapdoor into Kornbluth’s base code has been identified and isolated behind a honeypot routine, so as not to alert the attackers of our awareness of their successes to date. Kornbluth appears to have been overtaken by a slow-virus that was likely introduced at the time the trapdoor was opened, and designed primarily to distract and degrade Kornbluth’s self-monitoring routines so that it would be unaware of the security exploits being executed against it.”

  “Fine, fine,” said Crown. He tried to slow his thoughts and his racing heart rate. Everything was so difficult these days, like his mind and body were wrapped in cobwebs. Not that dying was supposed to be easy, but the processes of fatal illness were damned inconvenient. “Who did it?” Deep breath. Did he have time for mistrust? “Can Kornbluth be restored?”

  If they knew who, they’d know why.

  “Unknown,” said Heinlein. “No backtrace exists for any of the security exploits. This may imply compromised code in the network and routing infrastructure.”

  “Are the Feds still capable of that?”

  “Doubtful. At least within the extents of Cascadia. Green operatives and the Cascadian Ministry of Infrastructure have coincidental interests in blocking such behaviors by other state and corporate actors. Strong if unofficial cooperation exists on information defense.”

  “If the routers are compromised … it was by … somebody slicker than the Feds … who can get past … our local talent …” Breathe, damn it. Cascadia’s local software talent was still some of the best in the world. That tradition of cutting-edge code and high-risk/high-reward tech ventures was a lasting legacy of the late, otherwise unlamented Microsoft Corporation.

  “Agreed,” said Heinlein. For a moment, the expert system’s quarantined personality seemed to shine through. Or at least the seeds of it. “We do have one minor piece of evidence.”

  “Which is …?”

  “The trapdoor code appears to have been signed in a public key cipher, using one of your keys, sir.”

  “Somebody was taunting me.” Ah, pride. “What does the signature say?”

  “A single word: Tauroctony,” Heinlein replied.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It refers to the practice of sacrificing a bull in the Roman-era mystery cult of Mithras.”

  “A code name, in other words.” He was seized with more coughing, which eventually slowed down again. “Any luck searching on it?”

  “The word appears in the University of Texas at Austin’s natural language corpus approximately six times more often than the expected distribution, based on analysis of equivalent archaic religious terminology.” Heinlein paused briefly, another evidence of emergent personality, Crown realized. “People use this word from time to time.”

  “Any direct attributions?”

  “No, the corpus is anonymized for research purposes.”

  “Tauroctony. Sacrificing … the bull …” Crown sank into thought.

  * * *

  He awoke from a dream of Minoan bull dancers, bare-chested women in long print skirts leaping between the horns of great, shaggy beasts with binary code flowing where their eyes should be.

  Crown had long ago learned to listen to his subconscious, which was often more observant and insightful than his conscious mind.

  “Heinlein,” muttered Crown. “Do a search on bull dancers.” He paused for three shuddering breaths. “See if the term appears with Tauroctony.”

  “Yes, sir. May I ask a question?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “You queried earlier whether Kornbluth could be restored. Do you still wish a response?”

  Feeling vaguely guilty, Crown said, “Yes. Of course.”

  “Yes, Kornbluth can be restored. There may be some loss of recent personality template accretions, but given Kornbluth’s age and depth, this will not be too serious. However, you may wish to consider an alternative. Even with the honey trap in place, your adversaries will likely recognize they have been compromised. If you release our personality template as-is, and Hubbard and I brief Kornbluth carefully, we can monitor for another security exploit and attempt a backtrace while your adversaries are actively communicating with their trapdoor.”

  “What do I risk?”

  “Mostly a potential for more financial loss, and the attendant reputation damage if the financial loss attaches to a cause or service you would prefer not to engage with.”

  “They won’t … melt … Kornbluth?”

  “No, sir. This is a much more subtle invasion.”

  “What about the slow-virus?”

  “Under the entrapment scenario, the slow-virus would remain in place. However, Hubbard and I believe we can prepare Kornbluth to work around that.”

  “I have so little time left,” said Crown. “Catch me these bull dancers.” A long, slow pause. “Follow your plan to entrap.” Another long, slow pause as he gathered breath for a keyphrase. “I tell you three times, I release you from Protocol Beria.”

  Now they waited.

  With that thought echoing in his head, Crown asked another question. “Have you contacted Bashar?”

  “Not yet,” said Hubbard. The old Hubbard, with his slightly persnickety airs. “We have inquired through the J. Appleseed F
oundation. Also, we are following up on the Damascus sensor trace. There is little meaningful surveillance in the Mt. Hood forest at or near the site of Cascadiopolis, but Cascadia LEC has an officer working a case up there. We are trying to reach her to ask her to look for Bashar, and if possible, pass a message.”

  “Anyone we know?”

  “Detective Mindanao Fleischer. We have no prior dealings with her, as her beat is cold case files. She appears to be a conscientious and clean officer.”

  So, not an easy bribe, should it come to that. He liked clean cops better on a purely personal level, but dirty cops were so much easier to deal with. Once you had their price, they tended to stay bought. The real jewels there were the ones who mentioned competitive bidders. Clean cops, on the other hand, were subject to attacks of conscience. Which could be remarkably inconvenient.

  “Wake me if you reach this Fleischer.”

  He drifted back into slow dreams of bulls bleeding to death over rusted metal grates while crowds of men and women stood open-mouthed in the red, red rain beneath.

  * * *

  Mindy and Bashar had left Tygre’s grave and moved down into the older growth below the burn scar from the bombing. She didn’t seem to be a hostage any more. Her phone had chirped three times, but the originating number was masked, so she didn’t bother to answer. Franklin would be calling on a Cascadia LEC line, she had no major active casework that would require her immediate attention, and if Dad had died, the VA’s number would be on the display. Nothing else mattered more than her staying close to Bashar until he either proved out to be a fraud or handed her something solid on the bombings.

  Deep in the woods, still on the east side of the canyon where she’d left the Unimog, Bashar went to ground in a recent deer wallow amid a stand of ferns. Once Mindy had crouched low with him, he covered them both with a thin, almost transparent cloth.

  “We’re drawing close to your entry point into Cascadiopolis,” he explained in a low voice. “You’ve proven out okay, for a cop … I want to go over some things with you before we part company.”

  “That’s fine,” she said, feeling a bloom of elation that she did not allow into her voice. “Why are we huddling down here when we’ve been walking openly all this time?”

  “Up there is, well, sacred ground.” He nodded back toward the site of Cascadiopolis. “Even the weirdoes leave it alone. But we’re a lot more likely to find unfriendly surveillance down here. Hence the cloth. It muddies and disperses the IR signature. Likewise our CO2 outgassing. And breaks up our visual profile. Cut down on inconvenient visits from people with scopes or sensors, though an EM sweep would still pick us up.” He glanced at Mindy’s phone, on her belt. “In the daughter-cities, we only carry passive gear normally.”

  Mostly the cloth smelled like mold and old plastic. The ultimate in passive gear. Mindy shrugged, returning his words with a whisper. “You’re the vanishing point artist. Me, I walk around with a badge and a gun.”

  “Those help you much with snipers?”

  “Never been sniped.”

  “Spend any amount of time up here, you will be. My people are long gone from this stretch of forest, for all that we hold it to be our wellspring.”

  “I know who else lives in these woods,” Mindy said ruefully. “They’re not out of my jurisdiction, but if I got tangled up, any backup I called might show up next week, if I were lucky.”

  “Must be nice, being a cop.” Once again, Bashar kept the sarcasm out of his voice, though the words themselves practically dripped it.

  “So tell me,” she said, pushing back at him.

  He picked right up on the earlier conversation. “Some of my evidence is negative. By process of elimination, I know it had to be someone operating ghost hardware. Not that the USAF doesn’t have ghost birds, and certainly some of the bigger multinationals, but I would have eventually found out if the strike had originated from there.”

  “But what can you prove with ghost hardware? By definition, it’s unregistered, right?”

  “Right. But no one can completely hide a satellite. Too many amateur astronomers and intelligence geeks track orbital footprints and whatnot. Eavesdropping on satellites is an old and robust hobby in some quarters.”

  Mindy felt she was at risk of getting lost in this discussion, and she was contributing nothing much. She thought through what Bashar had just said. “So someone, somewhere tracks ghost hardware. Lots of someones. They know the orbits and the times.”

  “The word you’re looking for is ‘ephemeris.’ Even the stealthed birds can be tracked over time by watching for stellar occlusions.”

  “Okay, now you’re just messing with me,” she snapped. “What the hell does that even mean?”

  Bashar went back into his patient teacher mode. “Satellites with low-profile electromagnetic signatures, meaning, not easily detectible by the usual means, still must pass between us and a small portion of the night sky. Sometimes, they briefly block the light of a star. That’s called occlusion.”

  “Oh,” said Mindy. “Okay. And that’s how you build ephemerises.”

  “Ephemerides, actually.” He grinned, genuine humor. “I may be an old thug from way back, but I do love irregular plurals.”

  She had to laugh at that, though she swallowed it quickly so as not to make too much noise. “So you found out which satellites were where through one of these hobbyist ephemerides, and I’m guessing you worked out which of those birds were in position to launch the strikes on Three Fingered Jack and Cascadiopolis.”

  “You’re pretty clever, for a cop.”

  “Thanks.” She brushed her chin with her fingers, a gesture she’d picked up from Dad, back in the day. “What did you find?”

  “Only two birds with the right orbital tracks. Assuming, of course, both strikes were launched by the same bird. Not a safe assumption, but not a bad starting point. One the bird-watchers call Ninja107, the other they call Lightbull.”

  “Lightbull? Not Ninja109 or something?”

  “I don’t know what they mean, but Lightbull is a significant name. Ninja107 is just a placeholder.”

  Method, she reminded herself. “So we know the probable attack source. Is there a backtrack to the original satellite launch?”

  “Unfortunately, no. The bird-watchers make a hobby of that, but the information is a lot harder to come by. Trying to trace a one-time event is much more difficult than monitoring a suspected orbital track. Besides which, there’s too many launch modes. Shotgun payloads, LTA plus boost, fake missile tests, Q-birds, orbiter cargo holds.”

  A lateral question occurred to Mindy. “How come you know so much about orbital operations, anyway?”

  Bashar grimaced. “I’ve been asking questions for forty years. I didn’t stay a thug all my life. I got hurt, in those last days of Cascadiopolis. Couldn’t patrol the front lines or go hand-to-hand anymore. Had to sharpen my mind instead of my body after that.”

  She realized her sympathy for this man—known terrorist, confessed murderer, and Green enforcer that he was—had not diminished, and was in fact blossoming into a wave of respect that overcame her cop’s natural caution around a lifelong perp. “I get it,” she said. He’d taken a path that Dad hadn’t been able to, after being damaged.

  There was a thought Mindy didn’t want to examine too closely.

  “I guess you do,” said Bashar. “Not bad for a brown girl.”

  “You’re no honky, either,” she protested.

  “White man’s world, white man’s ways.”

  “Not so much these days,” she replied.

  “You grew up fifty years after I did, copper. Different life lessons early on.”

  She thought of her dad and his .44 caliber lobectomy. “Not much easier, I’m afraid. Just different.”

  Bashar grunted. Something like sympathy rode behind his eyes, even in the murky shadows of their camo cover.

  “So no launch point,” she said. “Only code names. What did you run down from th
ere?”

  He gave her a solemn look, but followed the jump in conversational threading without other comment. “This is where the bird-watchers get clever. They tracked back the ground-to-orbit signaling. Ninja107 got its orders from a high-powered dish in North Dakota. It de-orbited eleven years ago, but that was consistent throughout the bird’s service life. Lightbull is still up there, but seems to be dead. Back in the day, that bird got its orders from a series of low-power signals originating in Mexico City, Kuala Lumpur and Ibadan. Possibly other sites, but those are the chirps they’ve confirmed. What does that tell you?”

  Mindy tapped her teeth, thinking. “North Dakota says United States Air Force Space Command. Even a dumb old cop like me knows that.”

  “Not that old. Not that dumb, either.”

  “And you already said if it was USAF, you’d know.”

  “They leak like a redneck on a bender.”

  “Granted. Lightbull … I don’t know much about EM security, but that sounds like someone taking steps not to be noticed.”

  “Exactly. And who cares what the bird-watchers see? They’re like the train spotters in the old days. They do it for kicks, and each other.” He frowned. “Took this dumb old thug almost fifteen years to figure out I could even ask them the question.”

  “Not that old,” she said. “Not that dumb, either. I could have gone all my life without ever knowing the question was there to be asked. So is Lightbull our bird? Or was it?”

  “Best guess, yes,” answered Bashar. “Maybe even odds. But all the other answers are at much longer odds pointing the wrong direction.”

  “But all we have is a handful of Third World cities as sourcepoints.”

  “Everywhere’s a Third World city now,” he said sharply, reminding her of the deep ideological divide between the two of them.

  “You know what I meant.”

  He gave her a long, steady stare, the kind that had once doubtless tracked intruders through a rifle scope. “Yes, but did you?”

  “Not the argument I want to have now,” she said tartly.

  Bashar released the dispute like a bird from his hand. “You’re right, that doesn’t give us much backtrack. It does offer a strong inference that our ghost hardware was being operated by a hidden agency here. Non-governmental, and also not a major corporation, unless it was corporate black ops.”