by Mike Bursell
“... have attacked key national infrastructure. Government experts have restricted the damage to a single city, Newcastle, where the only impact has been to telecommunications for a single Enforcer station.”
The announcer was looking stern, and a picture of the Enforcer station in Newcastle, the one which had been on the news at the end of last week, but this time without the rioting, the smoke and the bodies lying on the street. For this report, they had managed to find pictures of a number of Enforcers standing outside the station, looking quizzically at their phones. They looked quite cross. The headlines started scrolling again:
“Dangerous terrorists, apparently from a group calling themselves 'Floyd' have been identified. Government experts believe that they are based in Belgium: European police are close to making arrests. The group, described by a spokeswoman as "Youthist Sympathisers", have attacked key national ...”
I looked away from the TV and noticed, in the corner of my eye, that Mo was trying to catch my gaze. I carefully avoided him, trying all the while to keep a smile off my face, then stopped when I realised that most of the people around me were grinning and chatting excitedly with each other. It appeared that the other pupils – and, I could see, some of the teachers interestingly – seemed to like what they were seeing. And if they thought this “group” was based in Belgium, then the Government had clearly been fooled by how Mo had covered his tracks by routing his attack through multiple computers. I'd have to have a word with him about how they got hold of the tag “Floyd”, though, but that could wait. As I moved along with the queue, listening to people wondering who'd carried out the attack, noting that it was the same Enforcer station that had been involved in the riot, and asking themselves who this new group was (“Floyd doesn't sound very Belgian, does it?”).
Our first attack had succeeded, it seemed.
Classes were interesting that afternoon. We were supposed to have a science lesson, but nobody was paying much attention. I was sitting next to Erin Walker, who I tended to get on quite well with, and who was usually interested in getting on with lessons, but on this occasion, she just wanted to talk about the attack. It was quite difficult, because I was pulled in three directions: the first was that I quite wanted to get on with the science (it was some chemistry that I was quite into). The alternatives were keeping quiet and just listening to find out what everybody thought, and joining in with the discussion that was raging around the classroom. I decided that I was going to have to tread a line between them, because although it was going to be very interesting to find out what people thought of the attack, if I kept too quiet, it might look suspicious to anyone who was paying attention. I looked quickly around, but couldn't see anybody keeping an eye out – who would? - so decided to join in at least a bit.
Erin reckoned that it was probably someone from Belgium, as the news had said. “They've got to have some reason for thinking that, surely?” she insisted.
I shrugged: I really had no idea. It might have been down to some technical part of the attack that Mo had masterminded, but he hadn't given me the details, and I hadn't asked. Or he had explained it, but I’d zoned out by that stage. “But why hassle the Enforcers?” I asked.
“Why hassle the Enforcers?” Erin was incredulous. “Well, if you're going to hassle anybody, then obviously you start with them.”
“Well, yes,” I conceded, “but if you were Belgian, then why the Enforcers?”
This sparked off a conversation with Ryan, who was sitting to Erin's left, which was abruptly interrupted by Mr Wilberforce. He clapped his hands several times and waited until everyone was looking at him – though some people were still half-turned in their seats, caught mid-conversation.
“Right,” he said. “Is anyone, honestly, going to be paying any attention during this lesson?”
There were a couple of giggles, and one of the boys seemed about to speak up before he was hushed by his neighbour. Then Erin raised her hand.
“Yes, Erin?” asked Mr Wilberforce.
“Do you think it was someone in Belgium?”
“Well, my first suspicion would be no, because...” Mr Wilberforce caught himself. I hadn't realised that he was just as interested in this as we were. “OK, you got me. But I'm not going to discuss this with you. You've got two options: either we carry on with this lesson and everybody, and I mean everybody, pays attention and gets on with it...” A groan went round the room. “... Or, I sit here and do some marking while you get this out of your systems. Which is it to be?” I assume those were his last words, but I couldn't hear them for the sound of the conversations which had just restarted. Mr Wilberforce shrugged, and sat down, logging into the system on his desk and starting doing some work.
Conversations flowed around the room, with people moving tables as the subjects which most interested shifted. I was careful to move around, and kept to my decision to participate a least a bit so that I didn't seem too left out. Mo wasn't in this class, and I wondered what he was up to. I decided that nobody would notice if he kept himself to himself – but then again, they probably wouldn't have noticed if I had, either.
Key questions seemed to be: Who – or what – was Floyd? Where were they based? Why had they targeted the Enforcers? Why had they targeted this particular group of Enforcers? (This one was settled pretty quickly – everybody agreed that it was to do with the riot which had taken place a few days ago). Would they attack again? When, who or what would they attack again? And, the same question which kept arising, again and again: who were they, and what did they want?
Nobody had any real answers by the end of the lesson – no, that's not true: I had pretty much all of the answers already, but I wasn't going to share them – but I'd yet to hear a negative word about Floyd, or the attack. We'd clearly tapped into an undercurrent of dislike that I'd half guessed would be there – though the joy with which people greeted the Enforcer's discomfort was far greater than I would have expected.
I was preparing to have serious words with Mo when we spoke that evening, but as the day wore on and I heard more and more from those around me supporting the attack, I decided against it. We certainly hadn't agreed that he should give any information suggesting that “Floyd” had carried out the attack, and, on first seeing the name come up, I had been convinced that it had been terrible decision on Mo's part. Surely giving the Government any clue whatsoever about who we were wasn't a plan at all? However, the more I thought about it, and the more I'd heard around school, the less it bothered me. I realised, first off, that part of the reason that it had felt like a bad idea was that I hadn't thought of it, and Mo hadn't asked me about it. I was, to be honest, a little miffed about that, but I could get over it. In fact, they seemed to have latched on to the idea that there was group out there called Floyd, and, if anything, they were less likely to work out that it was just a couple of school pupils if they were fixated on an international terrorist group trying to attack them. Another thing was what I'd noticed through lunch, and during lessons that afternoon. The word “Floyd” was on everybody's lips: even the teachers and staff were talking about it, and though they were very careful not to mention the word in conversations with pupils, there's a particular set of shapes that your mouth makes when you say it that was very obvious if you watched them. Bet you're trying it now, aren't you? “Floyd”.
So, when Mo called me up that night, I let him spend the first 5 minutes getting excited about how well the attack had gone before I even mentioned the naming thing.
“So, how did the Government find out about 'Floyd', then?” I asked.
“I thought it might be a good idea to let them know who was attacking them, so there was a message at the beginning of each divert saying ‘Greetings from Floyd’,” he said, defensively, “and it seems to have worked. I used a speech synthesis system, not my own voice: I’m not stupid. Did you hear people at school going on about it?”
“Yup, it did: nice one.” I could actually hear him sighing in relief: he'd bee
n worried about annoying me. I didn't think I was that scary. Anyway, best not to let him get too pleased with himself: “So, what's next? I think we should follow up with something as soon as we can.”
There was silence for a while: I knew that Mo had a few ideas, because we'd discussed them, but I wasn't sure how well formed they were, or if they were just at the “wouldn't it be good if...” stage.
“I noticed something about the Newcastle attack,” I started, “which surprised me. I know we planned it as a 'damage' attack, and I think it will have hurt them, but did you notice how many people were laughing at the Enforcers? That clip with a bunch of them outside the station, staring at their phones, made them look really stupid.” I'd had the chance to watch the coverage in more detail when I got home from school, and Mum had had to work hard not to laugh when she saw it: it was the part of the report that seemed to be getting the most coverage all over the various news channels.
“You're right,” agreed Mo, “it turned into an undermining attack, as well, didn't it?”
“So, what do you think we should do next?”
“If we want to do something quick and obvious to follow up on today, how about changing the schedule for parliament tomorrow?”
“You could do that?”
“That's pretty simple, to be honest. I've got access to most of the central Government servers and machines, so making changes to that sort of thing isn't hard.”
“Is it risky?”
“No, I don't think so. Should be able to do it in a few minutes, to be honest.”
“Even with going through all the other machines, like last time?”
“Are we going to have to do that every time?” complained Mo.
“Do you want to get caught and thrown into a Children's Internment Camp?”
“Um, no,” he replied.
“So …?”
“Well, if I have to go through all those machines, then maybe half an hour. Forty-five minutes at the outside.”
Wow, he's good, I reflected. Out loud, I said, “Do you think that maybe going for such a high profile target, with so many people, is a bit too much? We could save that for another occasion.”
“What do you reckon, then?” He sounded a little disappointed.
“Let's just choose one part of the Government's business." What, I wondered, should we go for? No, not what: who? "How about the Prime Minister?”
He perked up: “Ooh – nice. Don't like Condie at all. But that's assuming that he's due to be doing something tomorrow."
"Well, if he's not doing something tomorrow, we can wait a day or so." If she liked the attack today, I realised, Mum's just going to love anything that goes after Condie, given how she feels about him.
"If he does have an agenda, what do you think we should change it to?” Mo asked.
I sat back on my bed and had a thought: then something suddenly occurred to me: “do you know what doesn't get enough attention from the Government?”
“Erm – schools?”
“No – they spend all their time going to schools and telling people how children don't work hard enough. And we don't want too much attention focussed even vaguely in our direction, do we?” I paused for a moment. “How about waste water treatment works?”
“What are waste water treatment works?”
“Well, no-one calls them that, obviously. Think sewage.”
“Sewage works? Oh, yes.”
“But how do we make sure that everybody knows he's going there, that the press follow him: that sort of thing?”
“Well, they get his schedule, I guess.”
“But - and assuming that he does have something planned for tomorrow - they probably already have a schedule: the real one. How can we make sure they follow him: how do we make sure he does what we expect?”
“How about a press release? The Government love press releases. If the Prime Minister makes a big press release about how important water treatment works are, then he'll have to go and visit some, and at least some of the Press are bound to follow him.”
And so it happened: Mo created an urgent press release from the Government, made it look like it had come from a fairly junior member of the Prime Minister's office, and set it up to be sent out to all the major Press agencies at two in the morning. We figured this would make it look like there'd been another change in policy – which Condie was always announcing, after all – and so everyone, or at least enough people, would go for it.
“How do we make sure they know it's us?” I asked.
“Leave that to me,” said Mo, and I did.
I was early to the lunch queue the next day, hoping for more news, and I wasn't disappointed. The Government, having issued a press release about a major new policy – or seeming to have released one, anyway – had needed to think very quickly, and come up with something which fitted. It appeared that in an attempt to improve the health of the nation's workers – which meant people over 30, as 'youth' didn't count – “the Prime Minister, Mr Condie, is committed to increasing Government spending in order to bring the Nation's Waste Water Treatment Facilities into the 21st Century”, whatever that meant. It appeared that he'd travelled to three separate sewage treatment works before anyone had worked out that the original press release had announced that the new policy was entitled “Financial Leadership On Your Drainage”, or F.L.O.Y.D.. The BBC was being very careful not to say this out loud, but their rolling headlines below spelled it out well enough for anyone with half a brain to see it. The lunch queue was forming and as they caught the news, a hubbub grew up, with people laughing, pointing and explaining what was going on new people joined the groups in front of the TV. I saw Mo walking into the hall, and this time, I let him catch my eye, and gave him a little smile. He smiled back, and I turned away: we'd managed to undermine them, this time.
The reaction in class wasn't as extreme – Ms Callaghan was able to keep things under enough control that we managed to have our English lesson – but that was partly because people had already spent most of the lunch break talking about it. Nobody seemed to have any more idea about who or what Floyd were – though there were lots of theories – but the reaction, again, was positive. Condie had been an obvious target from my point of view, but, like the Enforcers, the amount of love for him around the school wasn't high, and seeing him tramping around sewage treatment works trying to look like he cared about what he was looking at had gone down very well.
We managed a couple of damage attacks – both of which also included an element of undermining, as it turned out – and also planned an education attack. This was one that I came up with, and it was really simple. Mo hacked into the Government tax website, and made sure that although the first page anyone connecting to was what they expected, every single page they visited after that showed them a different paragraph from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on the United Nations website, with a little message “a gift from Floyd” at the bottom. We ran it for just two hours – enough for people, including the news sites, to notice – and the Government were furious. What we realised very quickly was that even if only a few hundred people, at most, actually saw the pages, once the news sites had picked it up, they mentioned the Declaration so many times that tens of thousands of people – at least – who'd never heard of it before would now be reading it. The Government might try to block it – in fact, they probably should have done that before – but once it was out on the Net, there was very little they could do to stop it going truly viral. It was exactly the sort of thing that the Government were very careful to ensure didn't get taught in schools, and now there it was, being published all over the Net, with Floyd's name attached to it. Genius, though I say so myself.
I should admit to something at this point: really, these attacks were completely run by Mo. When we'd started, I'd thought that maybe I would be able to help a bit with the technical stuff, and I could usually follow the first part of any description he gave me, but after that, I soon got out of my depth. M
o was frankly brilliant at breaking into systems, and, now that I'd educated him in how important it was, at covering his tracks. He would delete logs, create fake trails for investigators to follow, and always use a different approach so that it would be difficult to work out what he'd done, and where he'd broken in. Once I realised that he didn't need any assistance from me – in fact, I'd have got in his way – I concentrated on the planning. Mo soon started coming up with interesting projects himself, but I worked to make sure that we had a balance, and also that they were consistent with what we were trying to do.