Wild Fyre

by Ike Hamill

  “You said you’re trying Twofish encryption?” Kevin asked.

  “Yeah,” Maco said.

  “Why did you pick it?”

  “Like I said, it’s popular and its free,” Maco said.

  “State of the art?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then that’s it,” Kevin said. “Try the whole stanza just like this. Put in Oh-D, Oh-A for carriage return and line feed, like a C programmer would.”

  Could not decode.

  “Come on, Jim,” Kevin said. “You have any ideas?”

  “I’m trying to think—I haven’t seen that much of Jim’s code. What does he do for variable names?” Maco asked.

  “He’s a strongly-typed guy. I think he uses Hungarian typing with lower Camel Case,” Kevin said.

  “I haven’t tried lower Camel,” Maco said. “Let me try that.”

  Could not decode.

  “Should we put types on the lines? Maybe null-terminate each line?” Maco asked.

  “Wait, I’ve got an idea,” Kevin said. He tore the paper from the pad and started with the first sheet. He worked carefully, analyzing each letter of the stanza and then smiled. He handed the paper back to Maco. “Try that.”

  The paper read, “wHosewoodstheseareIthinKiknow.hishousEisintheVIllagethough;hewillNotseemestoppingheretowatchhiswoodsfillupwithsnow.”

  “I don’t get it,” Maco said. “We tried the whole thing with no spaces.”

  “No, look closer. I capitalized some of the letters,” Kevin said.

  “Randomly?”

  “Nope. It spells, ‘Hi Kevin’ in the capitalized letters, see? He told me this was his favorite poem, and he might be acknowledging that in the code itself,” Kevin said.

  “A message in a passphrase,” Maco said as he typed. “If this works…”

  He hit enter and nothing happened. Maco and Kevin leaned forward waiting for the machine’s reply to appear on the screen.

  Maco’s jaw dropped as the monitor filled with text.

  “That’s really clever,” Kevin said as he read the words.

  CH.13.History ()

  {

  Lunch();

  /*****

  JULY, 2013 (1 WEEK before Jim was killed)

  “Harry,” Ed said. “What are you doing here?”

  Ed set his bag down on the long table and pulled out a chair.

  Harry was typing something on his phone. He glanced up at Ed and then returned his concentration to his typing. After he finished, he looked up.

  “I don’t know,” Harry said. “I was just in the neighborhood, so I didn’t figure I wanted to go all the way back to the office before lunch. I’ve been sitting here for an hour.”

  “I can’t believe they let you in,” Ed said with a smile.

  “Must be my winning charm,” Harry said.

  Ed took his seat and stowed his bag under the table. He had planned to answer a couple of emails before the other guys arrived. The email could wait.

  “I haven’t seen you around much lately,” Ed said.

  “I was at Jim’s demo, remember?”

  “Yeah, I mean these lunches, or Kevin’s cookout. And you haven’t been working,” Ed said. He didn’t expect Harry to open up, but he wanted to give him the opportunity.

  “I’m just taking it easy lately,” Harry said. “I figure there’s no sense in doing a whole lot of shit I’m not interested in doing.”

  “You still seeing Brendon?” Ed asked.

  “Nope. We broke up,” Harry said. “He wanted to move back to Michigan.”

  “That sucks.”

  “I didn’t object too strongly,” Harry said. “He was one of those people who gets worse the more you know them.”

  Ed nodded.

  “I mean, that’s the worst thing about breaking up with him, is that everyone else thinks he’s such a great guy. It’s not until you start to get close to him and he opens up that he feels free to let his inner douche come out. He would get pissed off about stuff and then just not say anything. It would build and build. By the time he finally got so pissed that he couldn’t hold back, it would be a surprise emergency. He would say, ‘I can’t live with XYZ anymore,’ and I’d be like, ‘I didn’t even realize it was a problem until right this second.’ If he had just let me know before he was ready to explode, I would have gladly changed, you know?”

  “Yup,” Ed said, still nodding.

  Harry grunted and looked at his hands. He sighed and leaned back in his chair.

  “You seem relatively normal, how come you’re not with anyone?” Harry asked.

  Ed smiled.

  “I mean, Maco I understand,” Harry said. “He’s too paranoid to have a girlfriend. I bet he doesn’t even let his hand get too intimate for fear that it would tell someone.”

  Ed laughed.

  “So what’s your deal?” Harry asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ed said. “I was married for five years and then she left me. It wasn’t a huge fight or anything, we just never really had any fire. She’s married to a great guy now. I went to their wedding. I just don’t attract passion.”

  “You haven’t met the right person,” Harry said. “You should try speed dating.”

  “Have you done that?”

  “No,” Harry said. “Gay guys don’t have to worry about finding partners, they just show up. I’ll probably be in another relationship before the end of the week.”

  “That sounds convenient.”

  “As long as you don’t count the centuries of repression that led to the revolution,” Harry said.

  Ed nodded.

  Harry rubbed his forehead and then dragged his hand down his face.

  “Hey—you should meet my sister,” Harry said.

  “We’ve met,” Ed said. “We met over at Dale’s that time. Remember?”

  “Oh right. My nephew was on the same soccer team as Dale’s daughter. She’s lost weight since then. She looks good. You want me to set you two up?”

  “That’s kind, Harry, but that sort of thing never works out well, does it?”

  “It can,” Harry said.

  “I don’t think I’m in the right frame of mind to start something.”

  “Who said anything about starting something? I just thought you might go out to dinner. Never mind. I’m just meddling.”

  Ed didn’t disagree.

  After a minute, Harry changed the subject.

  “Jim coming today?”

  “I doubt it,” Ed said. “Last I heard, he was wrapped around the axle on some project.”

  “He sent me a letter a few weeks ago,” Harry said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “I mean an actual physical letter, you know? With stamps?”

  “Really?” Ed asked, smiling.

  “Yeah, it was funny. It was handwritten. I couldn’t believe it.”

  “What did it say?” Ed asked.

  “I don’t know. Oh, it had condolences about my grandfather. He died months ago. I just got the letter last week. Funny guy,” Harry said.

  Ed nodded.

  “I see him at these lunches, but I’ve never talked to him much. I sent him that code for email parsing a while back, but really we haven’t had very much contact.”

  “He’s sincere,” Ed said.

  “I know. I could tell. Anyway, I just thought that was funny. So he’s not coming?”

  “No.”

  The door slid open and Lister came in. He was followed quickly by Kevin and Dale. Maco came a few minutes later, and the lunch was underway. They took their time with the menus, making careful deliberations before placing the same orders they always settled on.

  “I was telling Kevin on the way over, there’s someone using a couple of the major online retailers as a shell,” Dale said.

  “Government?” Maco asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Dale said. He blew on his tea and then took a tiny sip.

  “What do you mean by ‘shell’?” Harry asked.

  “May
be that’s not the right word,” Dale said. “Let’s say you want to sell some contraband, like weapons or something. You would have to arrange a meeting and then exchange cash for the weapons. It could be really dangerous, and one of the parties could try to short-change the other. What you really want is a controlled marketplace, you know?”

  “Like what?” Harry asked.

  “Well, like one of the online stores. You want somewhere to do the transaction where the funds will be verified and transferred.”

  “I don’t get it,” Maco said. “What if you pay the money and the merchandise never shows up? Isn’t that why someone would do a weapons deal in person, so they can verify that they’re getting the right goods?”

  “That’s what I said,” Kevin said. “And why would you want the transaction in someone else’s database? Why would you want a paper trail?”

  “I don’t know,” Dale said. “It’s the only explanation I could come up with. There was a weird product—very short description, high price, and no picture. It showed up on the system, was purchased once by a fake-looking company, drop shipped directly from the supplier to the customer, and then it disappeared again. An hour later, another transaction went through. I’m working with a couple of big retailers right now, so I checked another site and they had the same type of traffic going on.”

  “Maybe it’s not about the goods,” Lister said. “Maybe they’re laundering the money.”

  “So nothing is delivered?” Dale said.

  “Perhaps nothing,” Lister said. “Perhaps boxes of cash. Maybe they’re doing symbiotic transactions? That’s not the right word. Symmetric transactions? You know?”

  “Could be,” Dale said.

  “Still,” Kevin said. “Why would you want a record of that transaction on some commerce site? Why not just wire the money and give back cash?”

  “Could be for tax reasons,” Lister said. “At my job, we were looking into several companies that were trading suspiciously. We thought they were using our algorithm, so we compiled their trading history. One of our researches tracked down their financials and it looks like all of their profits go to infrastructure. They’re constantly spending as much as they make on physical goods. Because they take no profit, they don’t have as many flags for the regulators.”

  “Huh,” Dale said.

  “Put those two things together,” Maco said. “What if your investors are the same ones Dale is seeing making the purchases? Maybe the purchases themselves are causing the market fluctuations that make the money in the first place.”

  “That can’t be,” Lister said. “It would be a zero sum.”

  “Not if they influenced other investors,” Maco said. “Right?”

  “But how could they?” Lister asked. “The trades I saw were too small. They were just micro-trades done in milliseconds. There was no real investment. It’s like the scheme Jim was talking about. You remember how he suggested his program was funding its own server space? So how could they influence the market without drawing any attention?”

  The table fell silent as the men considered the problem and churned through the evidence. Ed looked at each of them. He didn’t have any idea what they were thinking, but it was interesting to watch them all attack the question at hand.

  “What if you’re not seeing the larger scheme because you’re too focused on the details?” Kevin asked.

  “How so?” Lister asked.

  “You’re looking at a cog and you can’t figure out how it operates because you’re ignoring that it’s mounted on an eccentric arm,” Kevin said.

  “You just gave a mechanical analogy to a math guy,” Dale said, laughing. “That’s not going to get you anywhere.”

  “No, I think I understand,” Lister said. “You’re suggesting that taken alone, the micro-trades don’t form a pattern. But perhaps there’s a larger patterns involving several parties and even several markets.”

  “Yes, exactly,” Kevin said.

  “Who are you kidding?” Harry said to Kevin. “You didn’t mean that at all.”

  Kevin smiled.

  Lister wasn’t paying attention. He was working towards a solution. “That would mean the manipulation is of an enormous scope. Some giant organization who control it all? It would explain so much. We’ve seen the prices soaring and yet the equity isn’t going to any of the normal places. Everything is being reinvested in manufacturing. You’ve heard the stories that local manufacturing is rebounding.”

  “Well, if you’re talking about local manufacturing, then the Organization is not creating jobs,” Dale said. “All the new plants in this area are ordering equipment, but they’re only hiring for construction and setup. I’ve picked up some good work setting up lines.”

  Ed looked at Dale. This was the first he had heard of Dale getting his own work lately.

  “Yes. The investment reporters are saying that automated assembly is the new paradigm,” Lister said.

  “Once the new plants get up and running, they’re fully autonomous,” Dale said.

  “So you guys are suggesting that there’s an organization that’s pulling money out of investors and sinking into robot assembly lines?” Maco asked.

  “Not an organization,” Lister said, “The Organization, with a capital O. It would be bigger than any other company in the world.”

  “You said that the trading is similar to Jim’s algorithm?” Maco asked.

  “The scheme is the same one I talked with Jim about,” Lister said.

  “What are you thinking, Maco?” Dale asked.

  Maco hesitated. He often found himself ridiculed for his extreme conspiracy theories, and it never seemed to bother him. This time, he hesitated.

  “The Organization just described by Lister is using Jim’s scheme to make money and then going out of its way to use machines to create physical objects. What if she’s taking the next step?”

  “Who?” Kevin asked.

  “Fyre,” Harry said.

  “Oh, come on,” Kevin said.

  “It’s an interesting concept to explore, at the very least,” Lister said.

  “You start with an assembly plant,” Dale said. “And then you branch out into fabrication. Finally, you’d have to extend to resource allocation as well.”

  “I’m not following,” Ed said.

  Dale turned to answer Ed. Everyone else stopped to listen as well.

  “I’ve seen an increase in the number of assembly plants being set up in Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, North Carolina, all around. These plants take parts and put them together. In the most advanced ones—the ones Lister mentioned earlier—a lot of the assembly is robotic. Imagine a lot of snapping together connectors, screwing, putting on labels. It’s the last step of manufacturing before the product goes in the box. If you back up a step, and think about how those parts are all made, you need a lot of specialized skills. It takes a much bigger array of processes and equipment to fabricate and test a circuit board, for instance. You send that work overseas where it costs much less. Behind those manufacturers, you have even broader skills—mining, smelting, farming. I’m not familiar with those, but I imagine they take even larger equipment and specialization. I know they use robotics and automation, but I think the farther back you go in the process, the more human expertise you need.”

  “What’s the goal?” Ed asked.

  “If you wanted to achieve independence from human workers, you’d need to automate every step,” Maco said.

  “Why?” Kevin asked. “Even if there were a super-intelligent program, why would it go to such lengths? Why not just stay hidden instead of trying to become self-sufficient.”

  “Maybe her plans require a public presence,” Harry said.

  “Maybe it’s just self-preservation,” Lister said.

  “If Fyre is worried about self-preservation, she ought to worry about Jim,” Maco said. “Jim writes time bombs into everything.”

  “Pardon?” Ed said.

  “Jesus, Maco, don’t tell th
e recruiter about time bombs,” Kevin said. “What good can come from that?”

  “I’m not familiar,” Ed said. “I mean I know what a time bomb is, but what is it in the context of software?”

  “It’s a killswitch that’s time activated. You know, a safety,” Maco said.

  Ed still looked confused, so Kevin disregarded his own advice and explained.

  “Look, I’m sure it wouldn’t happen with a job you got for me, but let us say I was working for a really crappy company. I might surmise that they’re planning to let me go before the end of my contract so they can bring in someone cheaper to do finish things off after all the hard work is done,” Kevin said.

  Ed nodded.

  “In that situation, I might put in a ticking clock. When I show up to work in the morning, I reset the clock. If I don’t show up for a few days or maybe a week, then the clock counts down to zero and… BOOM,” Kevin said.

  “What’s ‘BOOM’?” Ed asked.

  “The code disables itself,” Kevin said. “Or the server goes down, or the hard drive erases. Everything blows up.”

  “Like a time bomb,” Maco said.

  “It’s the ultimate revenge for someone who has been fired,” Kevin said.

  “Or, if you know you’re going to have access, you could program a killswitch,” Lister said. “A command that you can enter which the system cannot ignore. If you send that command, the system shuts down.”

  “I think Jim has done both in the past,” Maco said. “Although now that I think of it, a killswitch would make more sense for this application. He wouldn’t want his creation to die just because he was in a car wreck or something.”

  “Maybe that’s what happened to him today,” Lister said. “Fyre grew so powerful that it discovered his killswitch. It couldn’t disable the killswitch, so it manufactured a robot to go kill him in his sleep. Self-preservation by murdering your own creator.”

  “No,” Maco said. “If she’s that powerful, then she would kill Jim in a huge public display. What better way to ensure that nobody screws with you? She would kill him where there were lots of cameras and lots of physical evidence, just to send a message to anyone else who might be hunting for the killswitch. Touch me and die.”