by J D Lasica
Over the past ten months, he had probably processed more than a quarter million records here in the Pit. Like the other data scrapers, he used all the black hat tools, techniques, and zero-day exploits the company made available—plus a few home-brewed recipes in his rootkit—to fill in the gaps for each entry.
“Ha ha! Gaydar alert!”
Anton showed the profile he was working on to Sergei, the data scraper to his right and the only other programmer he interacted with in the Pit. The facial detection system they were using, along with a hack Anton used to access Facebook’s database of billions of photos, gave a ninety-two percent probability the man on screen was gay, though Anton could find nothing in his profile information to confirm this.
He entered the sexual orientation prediction into the profile, alongside all the other datapoints about this loser from East Paterson, New Jersey. Blood type B. Eight pounds, seven ounces at birth, now weighing one seventy. Hazel eyes that later turned green. Bushy eyebrows. Age forty-seven. Five foot ten inches. Three moles on his back, a birthmark on his right butt. Learning disability in preschool, pronounced stutter in grade school. Impulsive marriage. History of depression. Straight brown hair gone prematurely gray by his mid-twenties. High cholesterol. Addicted to pain-killers. Avid user of porn sites .
On and on it went, a parade of pathetic little highlights and lowlights, all of little consequence as far as Anton Bors could see. An alert on screen flagged a recent arrest report for domestic violence, and Bors added that to the profile.
He had no idea what all this data was for, and he didn’t give a rat’s ass. The pay was decent and the work was steady, if tedious. A while back, to break up the boredom, he created a script with an AI component that automated part of his job, inserting unverified data into profile datasets as long as it had at least a ninety percent chance of being accurate. Now all he had to do was to verify that the algorithm didn’t screw up.
He had no intention of showing his ingenious program to the boss, Andrei Cazac, a man who had shown zero interest in recognizing creative genius or rewarding productivity. You finished your tasks early? Good, here’s another pile of crap for you to dig out of.
Sergei tapped him on the shoulder. “Look at this one.” He tilted his screen to show off a beautiful muscle-toned girl in a running outfit with a fitness tracker bracelet on her wrist. “She would have sex with me, for sure.”
“Oh, for sure, Sergei.”
Sergei had identified the girl through her social accounts, and he used the exploit Anton had mucked together last month. It took less than two minutes to hack into her wearable device, snarfing up all the data her fitness tracker had slurped up whenever she wore it over the past two years: her heart rate, activity schedule, sleep habits, and real-time location.
“Make sure you send me that one.” Anton couldn’t take his eyes off Sergei’s screen. He and Sergei routinely swapped the records of hot girls they came across.
“Okay, but I get to crack her first,” Sergei joked.
Sharing of data assets was against the rules, but Anton had worked out a clever subterfuge to bypass the company’s security system. In fact, each day he sent himself a copy of all of the records he’d worked on, storing it in his Black Swan installation in the cloud.
Never know if it might come in handy some day.
Accessing someone’s confidential information was sometimes a challenge for the data scrapers, but their work had gotten much easier recently thanks to the Internet of Things. More than eighty billion smart devices were connected to the Internet, most of them with backdoors that hackers like Anton or Sergei could just stroll through. Smart TVs, printers, cars, refrigerators, baby monitors, door locks, faucets, smoke alarms, light bulbs, watches, medical devices, pet feeders, interactive stuffed animal toys—they communicated not only with the Internet but with each other, generating unfathomable amounts of data. And the beautiful thing was, nearly all of these devices had dogshit security. It was a trivial matter for Anton and his co-workers to jump from one device to another on a home or corporate or government network, allowing them to grab millions of email addresses and passwords and access videos, photos, voice recordings, student records, medical records, employee records—you name it.
Anton’s favorite Internet of Things exploit was “Fake Off mode,” first developed by the CIA and British intelligence, which makes the screen on some smart TVs appear to turn off but keeps the power running so hackers can capture video and audio of anyone in the room. When things got boring at home, he would spend hours using Fake Off mode, hopping from one girl’s bedroom to the next until he got lucky.
He had polished off twenty or so tasks when he noticed the top-level metadata of the next few assignments in his queue. Profiles of nine-year-olds in foster care. Profiles of young kids in day care. These profiles were different from the normal ones, and he could see by the annotations at the top that they were supposed to be reviewed by someone with a higher clearance level than Anton had. Mess-ups like this happened all the time in the Pit .
He tried to call one up, but he got an error message: ACCESS DENIED
Well, that won’t do.
These file entries were the damndest thing. He had never seen entries like this, with a second set of ID codes and a special “tracker” field. Who would want to track a nine-year-old?
Anton knew he shouldn’t, but his curiosity got the best of him. He decided to turn his prodigious hacker skills toward a new target: the Pit database itself.
He huddled closer to his monitor and checked over his shoulders every few seconds. He knew he was breaking the first rule of the Pit: Don’t ask questions . He glanced over at Sergei, who was busy downloading the data from another girl’s fitness tracker.
He went to work. After a few minutes of deploying his favorite exploits, amid the rhythmic, reassuring humdrum of clattering keys around him, he had tunneled into a restricted area of the database through a backdoor. He executed a search for all files that contained the special Tracker field. He decided to begin at the beginning.
He pulled up the first tracker profiles and began browsing them. The earliest entry was the most extensive, a profile that began when the girl was thirteen and documented her physiology, disease history, allergies, test scores—the whole shebang. It went back nine years—far longer than the Pit’s database had been around.
So these “trackers” have been around longer than the Pit has been around. That kind of creeps me out.
He scanned a few more files to see if he could detect any patterns. Then he felt a sensation, a premonition that he needed to get out of there. He looked around and didn’t spot any of his overlords bearing down on him.
But to play it safe, he’d look these over at home. He copied the first twenty profiles to his Black Swan installation and made his way out of the system through an encrypted exit route without being detected.
16
Miami, August 17
V alerie curled up in her hardwood chair in the corner of the co-working space and stared into her smartphone. “This is highly unusual, Miss Ramirez,” Erica, the genetic counselor, was gently scolding her on their video chat. “Let me see what I can do.”
“Thank you.” Valerie lowered her phone and got up to stretch her legs. The cavernous room served as the headquarters of Axom, the privately funded news site where her boyfriend Alex served as senior correspondent. The pay wasn’t great but, as he once explained, the upside was that he could write about whatever the hell looked interesting.
She’d just finished her final day of classes and was waiting to celebrate over dinner with Alex, but he was still wrapping up a story at a bare-bones table by the kitchen.
“Valerie, is that you?” Lance Harrison filled her phone’s screen, bringing his face closer to his tablet’s webcam. “It’s good to see you.”
“Hello, Lance. Sorry for the trouble. ”
“No trouble at all. What can I do for you?”
Valerie recounted the
decisions she had already shared with the genetic counselor, who was well-meaning, young, and almost definitely not a mother.
Yes, she would opt for a surrogate using IVF.
Yes, she would pay extra to have the surrogacy take place in the U.S. rather than overseas.
And yes, she had decided to have Jordan’s genetic identity used for the procedure. She was careful not to use the word “clone” after Harrison had told her at the Island Retreat that they preferred to avoid that term. After all, she didn’t want to load down her new son with identity issues.
“I’m excited to get this rolling,” Valerie told him.
“That’s wonderful to hear. So what can I help you with?”
Valerie headed to an empty couch where she could spread out. Someone in the kitchen area was frying bologna, and the smell of it filled the room.
“I’m not sure what to do about all the different add-ons.” She found all the options confusing—a bit like buying a new car.
“Sir,” Erica the counselor broke in, “I explained to Miss Ramirez that the Basic Package screens out all identified major genetic diseases and defects, at no extra cost. The only outstanding question is whether to add the Premium Health Package, with additional protections against Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and heart disease. And whether to opt for any of the Premium Enrichment Packages.”
“That’s right,” Valerie chimed in. “Lance, you know my situation. Do I need any of these?”
Harrison explained that chronic illnesses like heart disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes, obesity, and arthritis are the result of the interplay between environment and multiple genes spread across multiple chromosomes, and science was still at the beginning stages of identifying the genetic factors at work .
“A healthy lifestyle would accomplish more than anything we could tweak in your son’s DNA and RNA,” he said.
“That makes sense.”
“As far as the Premium Enrichment options, I don’t see the need.” Harrison multitasked on his computer as he answered her questions. “You’ll already have a healthy little boy. I think that’s all you’ll ever want.”
“I think you’re right.” That put her mind at ease.
“Sir,” Erica broke in, “I was also about to go over the legal disclaimers for this procedure.”
“The usual legal mumbo-jumbo?” Valerie asked.
“Well, no,” Harrison said. “I wrote those legal notices. In a case like yours, you have to keep in mind that we’re still in somewhat uncharted waters. Remember, half of your son Jordan’s DNA came from you—but half came from the father.”
That caught her attention. Her shoulders and knees tightened. She knew this reckoning was coming. Her ex-husband had been out of the picture for going on seven years. They no longer spoke. She’d have to see if he still lived in Florida.
“Whatever you decide to name the new Jordan, you’ll need to confront some tough decisions,” Harrison said.
In her talks with Alex, she’d been referring to her prospective son as Jordan 2.0. It was too early to settle on a name—there wasn’t even a pregnancy yet!—but she knew she wanted another J name. Maybe Joshua, or Jerome. Until then, she’d use Jordan 2.0 as a placeholder.
“What kind of tough decisions?”
“The person who was the original Jordan’s father will be the genetic father of your new son.”
“He’s my ex. Ex as in extinct from my life.”
“I realize that. But will you tell your ex-husband about having an identical son? Some would suggest he has a right to know. Imagine stumbling across a child on a playground who looked exactly like your deceased child. ”
She really wanted no part of Rick Sanchez’s life anymore. Not if she could help it.
“It’s possible he might assert some parental claim, given his biological ties,” Harrison said. “You should talk with him about that. And what will you tell your son about his father when he gets a little older?”
The genetic counselor nodded a bit sadly in her separate window.
“I don’t have the answers,” Harrison said. “I just pose the questions.”
Just then, Alex padded down the middle of the room, cup of coffee in hand. “Sorry I’m late, Val. Just filed.”
He looked at the video chat screen in her hand.
“What am I interrupting?” Alex asked.
She realized at that moment that her decision touched more than just herself and a microscopic speck. There were others who’d be a part of this new chapter in her life. Now there was a surrogate. A boyfriend. And an ex-husband.
17
Dallas, August 18
W aterhouse rode the glass elevator down from the penthouse of the Birthrights Tower and tried Dmitri Petrov’s phone one final time. He winced and grasped his right side, still sore from the UCLA melee. But he had other things to worry about. They were behind on the deliverables owed to Petrov, and today was the ten-day deadline Petrov had declared.
In the past seventy-two hours he had tried to negotiate with Petrov, but Petrov had shown no interest in being awarded more phantom shares of stock in exchange for a one-year delay. In fact, Waterhouse couldn’t remember a time when Petrov had shown the slightest glimmer of interest in the quarterly balance sheets and profit statements sent to him.
Waterhouse had also exchanged frenetic calls and texts with Chi Jiang, head of Reproductive Fulfillment. There was an outside chance Jiang could score some Chinese babies on the black market in Xi’an and other cities around China. But that would be costly and take some time, and Petrov had indicated he wasn’t interested in Chinese newborns. Only European or American baby girls or toddlers would do.
Waterhouse was out of ideas. As far as he could see, they were at a standoff. He and Tornquist had reviewed the agreement he’d signed with Petrov way back when. The real crunch would happen on the last day of the month when twenty baby girls were due to be delivered to the Minsk Children’s Home and Family Services in Belarus for placement with local families.
But Birthrights was already behind schedule on delivery of five other infants under the performance guarantees in their agreement.
Petrov will have to understand . I can’t just whip up five Western baby girls out of thin air.
The last thing Waterhouse needed was a dust-up with the company’s earliest funder. Up until now, they had maintained a cordial long-distance relationship. Petrov even agreed to fly in six of his girls for the Island Retreat—the ten-year-old girls who were delivered to Petrov’s group home as toddlers as part of the original terms. When the girls arrived on Nesper Island, they seemed perfectly fine, apart from being fixated on their looks.
Halfway down the elevator, Waterhouse saw three black SUVs pull up to the low-slung building across Birthrights Plaza at the Fertility Clinic and Birthing Center. In the past few years the clinic had become a regional powerhouse for IVF procedures, with surrogates happy to snap up five or six figures for their trouble. All the company asked was that they agree to keep all details of the procedure under wraps—or face forfeiture of their payment—and agree they would have no interactions with the biological parents during the pregnancy or afterward. Jiang’s fertility clinic in China was a larger space, but most clients preferred that their children be born in the USA.
Now, what the hell are those SUVs doing here?
Waterhouse reached the ground floor, brushed out of the tower, and headed toward the clinic. As he crossed the plaza, Petrov hopped out of the lead vehicle and marched briskly toward Waterhouse.
“My friend, I warned you what would happen if the terms of our agreement were not met.” Petrov raised his left hand and half a dozen stone-faced security personnel, dressed in light-colored suits like Petrov, stepped out of their SUVs.
“What is this?” Waterhouse demanded.
Petrov reached into his jacket pocket and produced a single sheet of paper. He held it up in front of Waterhouse, then handed it to him.
He grasped at once what it was. The l
etter from Petrov’s legal counsel advised that the agreement Waterhouse and Petrov had signed all those years ago trumped whatever agreements Birthrights Unlimited had subsequently made with anyone else. Petrov had first dibs on five infants for immediate transport to the Minsk Children’s Home. Any other contracts with would-be adoptive parents were deemed invalid.
“This is from your own law firm!” Waterhouse protested. The letter didn’t say which five infants, or how he was supposed to produce them, or how the Minsk Children’s Home intended to enforce their counsel’s legal opinion. Two of Petrov’s security goons closest to Waterhouse pulled their jackets back to reveal handguns in their shoulder holsters. Jesus. Real subtle.
Waterhouse recognized them as Browning Hi-Power semis. He knew his way around handguns—in fact, he kept a mint bore East German Makarov pistol in his office desk—but he wasn’t about to mess with Petrov and his men. At least not today.
Petrov smiled. “Shall we go inside?” He signaled to his security team to follow him, then paused at the clinic’s front entrance and let Waterhouse lead the way.
“Mr. Waterhouse, what a nice surprise,” the receptionist said. It had been months since he’d visited this particular building.
“Special visitors today. Let’s dispense with the sign-in sheet. ”
Waterhouse took in the incongruous scene: Petrov and his men trooping through the clinic’s reception area with its soothing lullaby music, candy-colored chairs and sofas, kitten posters, whimsical sea creatures, and inspirational nursery room quotes rotating on the bright digital wall screens.
He led the entourage down a hallway, nodding at a passing embryologist. Through the large glass windows to the right they could see rows of babies asleep in their sealed bassinets, swaddled in soft pastel-colored blankets decorated with bunnies, kitties, hearts, and balloons. A nurse, wearing light blue scrubs and a matching protective face mask, was trying to bottle-feed a crying baby girl in her arms. He noticed the neonatal isolette and ventilation units were empty—that was always a good sign—while two newborns jostled their arms and kicked their legs in the radiant warmer.