Auto

by David Wailing

  Joanna’s stomach is rolling with excitement as she leans closer and reads out the tiny code imprinted on the front panel. “BBX4001 SA586.”

  Greg: “Shit, that matches! Different serial number, but same model. You’ve found one, Jo! That’s our baby!”

  “That’s our baby,” she breathes.

  “Amit told me to destroy it,” Nick says. “He didn’t want there to be any record of it ever being at TransDigital. As far as he’s concerned, this is in a thousand pieces on a scrap heap somewhere.”

  “So it should be,” mutters Larissa. “I don’ like it in the house.”

  Harry nods, brawny arms folded. “Sodding piece of junk.”

  “It’s fine, guys, it’s safe,” Nick assures them. “It’s not online, there’s no power, don’t worry.”

  Larissa is giving the BBX server the same evil eye she gave Joanna when she first arrived. But then she turns and places a hand on her arm. “You wan’ tea?”

  Joanna knows what this offer really means. She’s a guest now, not an intruder. “That would be grand, thank you.”

  As Larissa heads to the kitchen, Joanna turns to Harry. “You know, poor old James will be getting a bit lonely, sitting out there in the car by himself. Why don’t you nip out and say hello?”

  Harry’s eyebrows jump with delight. “Yeah?”

  Greg: “No!”

  “Sure, he’d love a bit of company. He’s a bit shy though. You’ll have to, you know, make all the first moves. He prefers it when another guy takes charge.”

  Greg: “What?!”

  “Sweet! Just the way I like my boys!” beams Harry, rubbing his hands together. Then he’s off like a shot towards the front door.

  Greg: “I’m gonna kill you for this, O’Donnell!”

  For a quiet moment, Joanna and Nick stand together looking at the BBX4001 server, crammed into the tiny cupboard under the stairs.

  “Why did you keep it?”

  Nick heaves a sigh. “I should have destroyed it, like Amit said. He’ll go crazy if he ever finds out I didn’t. Larissa keeps telling me to get rid of it. She thinks it’s going to come back to life and... I don’t know.”

  “That doesn’t answer the question,” she says softly.

  Nick stares down at the box of metal and plastic. “I suppose I kept it because… I want to know what this bloody thing really is.”

  Joanna nods. “Good. Me too.”

  Exasperated, he adds “None of that should ever have happened, you know? Autos shouldn’t be able to change their own privacy settings! And they don’t migrate from server to server by themselves either, that needs authorisation. I know autos, I know servers, I know everything about this kind of technology, but I don’t have a bloody clue why this happened! And I should know!”

  Nick turns to her. “I suppose you want to take this to Global Investigations, run some tests? You’ve probably got labs and whatnot.”

  “No. I want you to do it.”

  He jolts slightly. “Me?”

  “This is off the record, Mr Brady, remember? Global don’t know anything about it, for a number of good reasons. Right now I can’t ask any of our guys to look at this server because I’d have to explain why. What I need is someone to run an analysis for me privately.”

  She looks up at him. “I need someone who knows autos. What do you think, Mr Brady? Are you in?”

  “As long as you stop calling me Mr Brady, Joanna.”

  “That’s a deal, Nick,” she smiles, holding out her hand. Its swallowed up by his as he shakes it gently.

  There’s that big-kid smile again on Nick’s face. “Actually... call me Killswitch. Spies all get code names, right? That’s always been mine, when I’m gaming!”

  Joanna laughs. Boys!

  But that’s that, the deal is done, leaving Joanna with a surging sense of achievement. This has gone even better than she’d hoped. She has an ally!

  “Now,” she says, listening to the noises coming through her earpiece, “I’d better pop out to the car and help my boyfriend keep his clothes on.”

  *

  “Open secure case files. New document. Report template. Title: latest developments.”

  Barefoot, Joanna pads into her operations centre and sits in the chair, as one of the smartscreens lights up. Her auto is there, opening a blank document.

  1.43am Thursday 6 October

  2022

  Report no. 13

  Latest developments.

  Verbatim™ app running.

  Transcription standby...

  The spare room feels a little cold, but then it is nearly two in the morning. Joanna pulls the blue-checked cotton shirt tighter around her. It’s one of Greg’s, and she can just about pick up his scent still on it, the sea-salt taste of his skin. She can’t remember ever stealing boyfriends’ clothes before. Not really sure why she’s doing it now. Greg himself is still fast asleep. He didn’t even stir as she slid from under the duvet, with his floppy brown hair half-covering his face and one arm jutting out over the side of the bed as usual.

  But she can’t sleep. So much has happened over the last few days! She needs to get it written down. That’s her investigative training, pushing her to document her progress. Even though nobody else will ever read it, she knows it’s a good idea, and will free up her thoughts.

  Joanna takes a deep breath and starts talking, keeping her voice low so she doesn’t wake Greg.

  “We’ve made a discovery,” she says. “We’ve worked out what is causing people’s autos to over-function.”

  Joanna sweeps her hair back, marshalling her thoughts. “As mentioned in my last report, Nick has been analysing the BBX4001 server. I’ve managed to get him some of our – some of Global Investigations’s software tools.”

  She pauses, wanting to add something about how amazing Nick Brady has been. He’s risking his job by doing this, right under his boss’s nose. It seems like he’s hardly done anything except work on the BBX for the past week. He’s obsessed!

  As obsessed as I am, Joanna thinks. The poor sod.

  “Most of the BBX server was unremarkable, Nick tells me. In fact in some ways it’s even simpler than other servers, and incorporates a lot of open source software from years back. That’s probably why any kind of auto can be run on it. But he also found something he’d never seen before, called CORECODE. It’s a security-locked subfolder, buried deep in the server’s operating system – ”

  Joanna stops herself. She stares at her transcribed words. Properly formatted sentences, grammar and punctuation all correct as usual, but…

  CORECODE is written in capitals.

  Exactly as it is inside the BBX server.

  Joanna wonders briefly how her auto knows this particular word is meant to be capitalised, before pressing on.

  “The suspicious thing about CORECODE is that Nick can’t get inside it. Not even with one of our – one of Global’s – decoders. Which means it’s seriously encrypted.

  “Now, I’d also given Nick the laptop we got from Amy Pearce, and asked if he could find a reason why her auto went out of control. And what does he find hidden away on the laptop? CORECODE! It’s part of the prototype Auto-Mate™!”

  Joanna knows she’s getting excited all over again. She’ll have to clean up this report when she’s finished. But for now, that buzz is back, as strong as it was when she realised this was a serious breakthrough.

  “We reckon CORECODE is Macroverse’s proprietary code, the stuff that Amanda Pearce’s team came up with in the beginning, which they built their Mk1 autos from. That’s why it’s sealed. Macroverse wouldn’t have wanted any of their competitors to get hold of it.

  “So, this is our big discovery. The fact it’s on both Mk1 autos and BBX servers suggests CORECODE is what’s causing people’s autos to over-function. That’s why so many of our leads involve Mk1 autos, because they’re built around CORECODE. And that’s also why modern autos being run off these BBX servers go crazy, because the same code is bein
g used on them!”

  What must I look like? wonders Joanna, waving her hands and grinning. Kid on Christmas morning! But this deduction is a big deal. She and Nick had babbled at each other for hours.

  “Obviously this wouldn’t have been Macroverse’s intention, and the early autos all worked fine. So we think that the CORECODE inside the Mk1 autos is becoming fragmented. Macroverse stopped supporting the first generation years ago, there’s been no upgrades or patches to keep them working properly. So they’re gradually degrading over time. That makes sense.”

  She takes a deep breath, considering whether or not to mention the hour or so during which she and Nick – suddenly paranoid – wondered if this meant they were up against Macroverse itself. That huge company, an industry giant, one of Britain’s success stories, exporting auto-related technology all over the world. Us vs Macroverse! Shit! But before long they came up with a more sensible scenario, and that’s what’s going in her report, she decides.

  “So! We think the CORECODE has been stolen by someone. They’ve used it to build the BBX servers, and are hawking them around, giving free trials to internet service providers and other companies, trying to find a buyer.

  “But what they haven’t realised is... the CORECODE is duff! Because it’s old and fragmented, it’s causing autos to go wrong. So all of their potential BBX buyers are returning it and hushing up the trial, so they don’t look bad. Obviously they don’t want to advertise their mistakes.”

  Joanna licks her lips, wishing she’d made herself a coffee. As if she isn’t bouncing off the walls already.

  “Okay. So, we’ve worked out what is causing autos to go wrong, but we don’t know why. More importantly, we don’t know how. If we could see what the CORECODE actually does, we might be able to stop it happening... maybe even develop a patch, like a vaccine. Nick says the only way to learn how the BBX server works is to run an auto on it, and monitor what happens.

  “So that’s what we’re doing. With, uh, Greg Randall.”

  Joanna switches on the other smartscreen, and brings up Greg’s profile. It looks the same as it always has. Disappointingly. Come on, she thinks, go wrong!

  They needed a guinea pig, and Greg had volunteered. Sort of. Joanna is a little ashamed to admit (and this certainly isn’t going in her report) that she half-pressured, half-manoeuvred him into it. She explained that it needed to be a genuine auto running on the BBX4001 server. Too dangerous to use hers, after what happened last time... it has too many Global Investigations tools and apps built into it. It had to be a normal auto. They could use Nick Brady’s of course, but there had been enough stress for him and Larissa, not to mention the rest of their Circle, don’t you think, it wouldn’t be right to make them go through it all again –

  “All right, all right,” Greg had sighed, “bung me on there then!”

  So, they had migrated his auto to TransDigital’s data centre in Enfield. Nick immediately moved it onto the BBX4001 server, deleting all traces. And then the monitoring began.

  “Wait, woah, hang on!” Greg had panicked. “What if my auto starts telling people about you? I’ve been keeping you secret, you’re in your own subCircle, what if it shares that with everyone else?”

  “That’s what I’m hoping for!” Joanna had replied. That’s why she wanted it to be Greg’s auto, because it held a secret it was never supposed to share. If it does share it, it is definitely being affected by the BBX server, and Nick can work out how. She’d reassured Greg that she has firewall gates in place to lock down his auto immediately, and redaction techniques to fully erase any evidence.

  “I’ve got it covered,” she told him, holding his worried face in both hands, “so you just keep being pretty and leave it to me. Oh, you’re so sweet. Who’s a little sweetie? Who’s a sweetie-pie? Is it you? Is it little Greggy? Yes it is!”

  Haha, his little sulky pout! There’s a smile on Joanna’s face as she explains all this out loud for her report. As she talks, she idly browses through the public messages and posts on Greg’s profile. His auto is keeping busy by responding to people – or to their autos – on his behalf.

  Joanna reads an autoed reply to a post from his parents, assuring them he’s fine and will drive out to Chelmsford for a visit soon. There’s an autoed hello to his older brother Eamon, a career soldier serving with the 160th Infantry Brigade up in Wales (Joanna likes Eamon’s cheeky reply, that the Brecon Beacons have frozen his balls solid so it’s up to Greg to have kids now). There are autoed conversations with friends around the world, and with his workmates at On Course Consulting, and –

  Oh. And with Roxanna.

  The dead ex.

  Hey Roxy Music, did you see

  this news report about the

  Auckland Bridge bungee

  jump? Remember when we

  did that?

  Of course I do, Mr G! I

  loved it. It was you who

  pooed his pants, haha!

  Oh hush, Roxarella! I was a

  very brave boy, Mummy

  said so!

  Joanna doesn’t realise she’s biting her lip until she tastes blood.

  She stares at the messages flying back and forth between Greg and Roxanna’s autos. For Christ’s sake, she told him to shift Roxanna to his outer Circle. Why are they still...

  Remembering the good times. Little pet names for each other.

  “Ahhh,” she exhales, scrubbing her face. You sensitive cow. Nothing to get annoyed about. All Greg and Roxanna’s autos are doing is recycling old messages they sent years ago, when they were together. Joanna’s own auto does that too, with people she hasn’t met for years. It’s normal, it’s how you stay in touch without having to make any effort. It’s autoed.

  How ridiculous am I? she thinks. The poor girl’s been dead for two years and I’m feeling jealous of her!

  Yeah, but he doesn’t have any pet names for me though...

  A yawn stretches her jaw wide. Okay, finally getting tired. She scrolls back over her transcribed report, filled with messy pauses and blocky paragraphs. She says “Apply formal style,” and her auto rewrites the text in two seconds flat into a more professional layout. Good enough to hand over to Gordon. Ha, not that he’s ever getting wind of this, obviously.

  Joanna gets up from the chair, stretches and yawns again. She’s looking forward to sliding back into bed beside Greg, and soaking up some of his body heat. It’s October now, the nights are definitely colder. Good time to have a boyfriend!

  Before turning off the smartscreens, she quickly checks her auto’s search results. She has several deep-search algorithms running, scouring the entire internet for anything that matches her search criteria for auto misbehaviour. This is how they ended up with a list of leads to follow. A list that’s getting longer every day. And every time they find out something new, Joanna adds more keywords, trying to refine the searches and really focus in on those that will be –

  Specific match found.

  Keyword: CORECODE

  Joanna catches her breath. What’s this? Then she tells herself not to get excited, it’s most likely some old archived Macroverse website, that mentions their coding for the Auto-Mate™. She brings up the details.

  She backs away from the screen with both hands over her mouth.

  In a whisper, she says “No.”

  Quietly, she says “No no no no no.”

  And then, loud enough to wake Greg, she shouts “Oh God, NO!”

  *

  Friday 7th October is a normal day at work.

  Totally normal. Nothing unusual about it at all. Just another day in Global Investigations (UK) Ltd’s head office.

  Joanna spends her normal day doing normal stuff. She helps out one of her fellow analysts, by deduping the results for his current case. She runs a short internal briefing session, part of the induction programme for new staff. She receives a call from the police, informing her that they are finally closing their case file on Derek Thorpe and are satisfied by he
r report of the incident.

  She wonders which of her colleagues killed him.

  Throughout the day, Joanna finds herself double-checking the faces of every single person she passes in the corridor. During her briefing, she stares intently at each of the trainees until they fidget nervously. Men and women she’s known for years and chats to every day, even goes out for drinks with... she glares at each of them as if they just fell from the sky.

  Seven people ask if she’s okay. Each time she just nods, not wanting to talk. Not trusting her voice.

  Not trusting them.

  She gets through a lot of coffee today. She can feel exhaustion gnawing away at her from a distance, and wants to keep it at bay. No sleep at all last night. Not for Greg either, after he had bolted from the bedroom to find her standing there, looking horrified by what was being displayed on the smartscreen.

  The message.

  Non-transparent proxy node

  GIUK4445

  Data packet 63,882 of

  64087

  Trans: 20221003-14:32:12

  Rec: 20221003-14:49:07

  Content: Revisions to

  CORECODE approved.

  New instructions in usual

  place.

  Greg had stared at it, not sure whether to be excited or not. All he saw was the text – someone was making changes to CORECODE. What! Really? So this is a proper lead, isn’t it?

  He didn’t see the whole picture. He didn’t recognise GIUK4445 as a secure communications server used by Global Investigations.

  Oh God, Joanna was right again, she’s always bloody right, why does she have to be right!

  “This has come from us!” she’d explained to Greg. “I mean, from Global Investigations. Someone in my agency is involved with this whole thing. For Christ’s sake, we’re chasing somebody I know!”