Global panic. The sort of panic that accompanies declarations of war. Governments pressured to obey Walker’s demands. Intense riots outside every parliament building in every developed nation. Martial law declared in some countries. Hundreds dead, thousands injured.
The digital world prepared to be turned off forever.
And then... nothing.
Rumours: Walker had been assassinated, imprisoned without trial, fled the country, kidnapped by terrorists, hired by black ops agencies. Whatever the truth, there were no more messages from him. The internet continued to live, and governments assured people the auto-virus had been nothing but a hoax.
The IIR became law on 1st January 2018 as planned. Still plenty of people grumbled, but over the months came gradual acceptance. After all, nobody wanted to give up their auto.
Joanna jerks at the voice of the man she’s reading about.
Walker: “All right. So you’ve got timeline shields. If you work for Global Investigations then you’ll know today’s network security code.”
“Seven one zero eight four!” she barks.
Greg: “Of course I do. It’s seven one zero eight four.”
Walker: “And which department do you work for?”
“Tell him you work for Robert Sheraton in the Specialist Surveillance team, it’s part of the Investigative Operations department, based in the Farringdon office!”
She listens as Greg repeats her words, his voice still level. She’s astonished that he can do this! She’s so used to seeing him act like a big kid, making her laugh. This is a side to Greg she hasn’t seen before. And right now it’s keeping him alive.
Walker: “Okay. You can get up.”
A sigh of relief like a hurricane. Gaaaaaaaah, that was close! Now they have to –
Walker: “Wait. I’ve just lost connection.”
“Shit!” Joanna checks the signal from her infinity transmitter, and finds none. No networks nearby for it to use.
Walker: “No wi-fi... no 5G or 4G... I know what that means.”
His voice becomes harder. Lethal.
Walker: “It means the police have found me.”
Damn it, he’ll think Greg has led the police to him! Quick, think –
Greg: “Yes they have. They identified you today. We don’t know how, but they know you’re here, Mr Walker. That’s why Global sent me – to warn you and get you out. But it looks like I didn’t get here in time.”
Joanna’s jaw drops. This is a phenomenal piece of blarney Greg is putting out there.
Walker: “Mmm. Makes sense. Safer to send someone in person. They’ll be intercepting all online communication from here.”
Greg: “Exactly.”
Unbelievable. Joanna represses the urge to laugh, knowing it would sound like a shriek of relief. Unbelievable! Greg you bloody beauty!
Walker: “They’re probably sealing off the hotel already. Here we go. Look down there... see all the vans driving up? Armed response units. They’re bringing firepower with them this time.”
Greg: “That’s... a lot of police.”
Walker: “Mmm. I wonder if Madam Neapolitan is down there somewhere...”
Greg: “Who?”
Walker: “Never mind.”
Joanna imagines both of them looking down through the hotel room’s window, seeing the Metropolitan Police arrive in force on the ground. What the hell do they do now? Wait, this is Michael Walker, he’s too smart to be caught like this. “Greg, ask him what his exit strategy is.”
Greg: “What’s your exit strategy?”
Walker: “Ha, you are a spy, aren’t you? Don’t worry. Any second now you should... see that car coming out of the hotel car park? The blue Cortina? That’s mine. Well, registered to Eanga Tepaki. It’s programmed to auto-drive away from here at top speed with the windows darkened if the link to my tablet gets broken. That should keep some of them out of the way.”
Greg: “I see it. Yeah, the police have seen it too, they’re chasing after it. Won’t they just shut it down?”
Walker: “Nope, I’ve installed Roadnet firewalls, it’ll just keep driving until they shoot it off the road.”
Woah. That’s serious blackware, thinks Joanna. Vehicle theft has plummeted in recent years thanks to most cars being plugged into Roadnet. Traffic police can override any auto-driven car and remotely control it, bringing joyriders and fleeing criminals to a standstill, or redirecting them to somewhere secure. Even Global Investigations don’t have anything that could stop a police override.
Walker: “Right, I need a minute to back up everything. Turn on the smartscreen and get into hotel services, go to the admin menu. Password is six nines.”
Joanna listens to the sounds of activity, wishing she was there, or at least could see what’s happening. Presumably Michael Walker is storing something onto a portable hard drive... the CORECODE for the BBX4001 servers? If so then they need to get their hands on that. She can’t see a way out of this yet, but she has to extract Greg from this situation safely. Probably the easiest way is if the police manage to arrest Walker. But armed police! If they think Greg is an accomplice, if they start shooting...
Greg: “I’m in the hotel’s admin system.”
Walker: “Activate fire alert level one. Password is greengage hash one.”
Joanna jumps as a harsh electronic ringing blasts from her speakers. The Hilton’s fire alarm, she realises. There’s a hissing sound too – the spray of water.
Greg: “Jesus!”
Walker: “I’ve got what I need, let’s go! Turn left and keep going to the stairs!”
Their voices are loud now, shouting over the alarm. Leaning forward on her chair, Joanna listens intently as the acoustics change from room to corridor. She can hear other voices distantly, shouting and screaming. Her imagination pictures the entire hotel suddenly coming alive, the terror of the guests as the alarm and fire sprinkler systems both come on, suggesting that this is not a drill, that they should not calmly proceed to the fire exits in an orderly manner, but that the Hilton is about to burn to the ground and they need to run like buggery if they don’t want to die trapped in its flaming wreckage.
Clever, she admits. The police surrounding the building will suddenly have a crowd of panicked hotel guests swarming out to meet them. In the chaos, there’s every chance Michael Walker will be able to slip away. He’s planned for this well. She almost admires it.
As poor Greg gasps his way down twelve flights of stairs, obviously soaked to the skin from the sprinklers, Joanna has time to wonder about the arrival of the police. It can’t be a coincidence that they’ve worked out who Eanga Tepaki is today of all days, can it? Surely she hasn’t somehow led them there? No, all her communications with Greg are secure, not even the CDCU could intercept them. There’s nothing on their profiles to give them away. Their autos aren’t sharing anything or autoing anything like they normally do.
So is it coincidence they tracked down Michael Walker just as Greg met him? But who could have tipped them off? They only discovered it was him two minutes before the police arrived...
Walker: “Do you have a car!”
Greg: “What! Er, yes, a couple of streets away!”
Walker: “Okay! When we’re outside, take us there!”
Joanna listens to their shouts as the background noise gets louder. Lots more people, and the alarm is deafening. Suddenly the acoustics change again and she can tell they’re in the open air, on the ground. The whoop of police sirens takes over from the fire alarm, but they don’t sound close. There’s the hubbub of dozens of scared people running and shouting. And the constant sound of Greg’s breath heaving in and out.
A new voice: “This way please, head to the front entrance, this way!” It’s female and authoritative – a police officer, Joanna realises, just as she bellows “You two stop, this way I said!”
Walker: “Keep running.”
“Stop right there! Police! Get down on the – ”
BLAM.
/> The noise drills into Joanna’s ears, making her wince. And then she covers her mouth in shock.
Was that... oh Christ, that was a gunshot!
There’s the sound of running, gasping, distant traffic and sirens.
Walker: “Get in. They’ll have drones coming in, we have to get out of the area. I need to get a 5G signal so I can upload my work.”
Greg: “Did... did you just shoot that policewoman?”
Walker: “She’s still alive, I hit her armour I think. Come on, get in the car!”
Joanna can easily imagine them clambering into Greg’s white Ford Focus Electric, because she hears that sampled futuristic noise – shhhiiiwuh – twice, as both doors open. The car interior encloses them, deadening the background. Greg hits the ignition button and the electric motors hum into life. A calm female voice that’s obviously meant to be a computer says “Engines at full impulse. Leaving spacedock.”
Walker: “What...?”
Greg: “Um. Just my car. Sorry.”
Joanna palms her forehead with dismay, realising Greg’s stupid car is going to be coming out with all sorts of sci-fi bollocks, just like it does whenever he drives her anywhere. A second later she berates herself for spending a single second worrying about what Michael Walker thinks of her boyfriend’s car, when a police officer might be bleeding to death outside the hotel. He shot her, he actually shot a copper!
And Greg is his getaway driver.
“Warp two,” says his car. Joanna knows this means he’s driving at 20 miles per hour. She imagines the Ford Focus accelerating through the steel and concrete of Docklands. “Warp three. Warp four.”
Walker: “Fuck, that’s annoying. Give me your Roadnet access code.”
Greg: “Er... it’s NCC one seven oh one D.”
Walker: “Okay. I’m uploading my firewall app onto your Roadnet profile. They’ll stop the police from taking over.”
Greg: “Talking of the police....”
Joanna can hear the rapid whoop of a siren.
Walker: “Drive faster.”
“Warp five. Warp six.”
Greg: “Look, I can’t outrun a police car, maybe we should – ”
Walker: “I’ve got them, it’s fine. They’re on Roadnet too.”
Joanna distinctly hears tyres screeching for a long five seconds, followed by a sort of clanging thud which cuts off the siren. Her mind’s eye imagines a police cruiser losing control, ploughing into a wall. Or another car.
Greg: “Holy shit! Did you do that?”
Walker: “Keep your eyes on the road! Head for Islington. Hawkhurst Drive, N7. We’ve got a safe house there.”
She says “Greg, can you still hear me?” He coughs once. “Good, okay listen, stay with him! I was going to try and get you out of there, but if he’s got a safe house that means he’s working with others, he could lead us to them and we can find out everything. He won’t harm you as long as he thinks you’re just a professional doing a job, stay that way and you’ll be fine.”
You don’t know that. You just hope that’s true. No, shut up, of course he’ll be fine.
She says “You can do that, stay professional, I know you can! I’m so proud of you, you’re doing great, you’re friggin’ awesome!”
She doesn’t say “That should be me in that car, it’s my mission, I should be the one risking my life, not you, you stupid bastard.”
She doesn’t say “I’m scared to death. I’m so scared.”
She doesn’t say “I fucking love you.”
Joanna rocks back and forth, rigid with unsaid words.
Greg: “I’m gonna need a drink after this. At least turty-tree points o’ the black stuff.”
Walker: “Didn’t think you were Irish.”
Greg: “I’m not, I just love the accent. Really love it.”
And Joanna’s heart melts.
Greg: “Listen, I hope you don’t mind me asking... professional curiosity, I suppose...”
Walker: “Go on.”
Greg: “I was wondering about your appearance. I mean, I understand you had to change your identity when you came back, after everything that happened, but... why something so, you know, loud?”
Walker: “I didn’t do this just to get back into the UK. This is who I am. I’ve been Eanga Tepaki for four years.”
Greg: “What, you’ve been living in the Cook Islands all this time?”
Walker: “They’re the only places still free now... islands, tiny countries. That’s where all of us have to live.”
Greg: “When you say ‘us’...?”
There’s a pause, filled only by the whine of the car’s engines. Joanna expects Greg to be told to mind his own business if he wants to keep breathing, or something equally threatening.
Walker: “There’s a group. A sort of network. They were going for years before I hooked up with them, but they’ve kept me safe. We don’t have a name or anything... and some of us like to stay anonymous... we’re just people fighting for our rights. Our privacy rights.”
Greg: “You mean like before, protesting against the IIR...”
Walker: “Ha, a lot more than just protesting now, I’m doing something about it. We all are, we’re breaking down those stupid laws bit by bit. Producing the tools people need to keep their freedoms intact. We’ve got some gorgeous pieces of kit out on the market now.”
“God. He means blackware!”
Greg: “You mean blackware. So you’re the ones making things like K8 programs, false locations, that sort of thing...”
Walker: “Ah of course, you’re from Global, you’ll have seen them. Yeah, the press call them ‘blackware’, just like they call us ‘hacktivists’. Makes us sound evil. Much easier to be branded a criminal when you’ve got an evil-sounding name.”
Joanna’s fear starts to give way to excitement. It’s precisely this ‘group’ that she’d set her sights on. Her and the world’s police. “Keep him talking!” she whispers, checking to make sure it’s all still being recorded. Oh, CDCU are going to love this!
Greg: “So… your group is trying to…?”
Walker: “Preserve basic human rights. That’s what the IIR has taken away from us. The right to pretend to be someone else. The right to lie! It’s insane to think we can still be human and not lie to each other, of course we have to, it’s how society works, it’s how people function. That’s what should be automatic, not all the other shit that people use their autos for these days. That’s what the internet used to be all about, nobody owned it, it was the last great freedom. We’re trying to restore that ability to wear a mask, or be someone totally made-up, or stay incognito, whatever you want. Not have your auto share your whole life with the world, whether you like it or not.”
Joanna can hear Walker’s voice becoming louder, more forceful. Heading towards rant. A ranting lunatic.
But... it doesn’t strike her as lunacy.
She’s well aware how many hoops she’s jumped through recently to keep her private mission secret. To keep Greg secret. If she wasn’t a digital data specialist, it would be impossible to keep so much from the rest of the world. And yes, actually some blackware would have made it much easier. As easy as it used to be a decade ago, when the internet was everyone’s secret playground.
Joanna shifts uncomfortably in her chair. Public enemy number one is making sense.
Greg: “So... could you have really wiped out the whole internet? With your auto-virus?”
Walker: “Oh no, of course not.”
Greg: “Well, that’s good to – ”
Walker: “I didn’t finish developing it. I had to get out of the country before it was ready.”
Greg: “...Right.”
Joanna is riveted. This is incredible. A living historical figure is sitting in Greg’s car and talking as if they were old friends down the pub. She cannot believe Michael Walker, of all people, is sharing his thoughts like this. She wonders if perhaps he hasn’t talked openly to anyone – outside this ‘hac
ktivist’ group he mentioned – for a long time. He might not be able to stop himself sharing, now that he has a captive audience.
Walker: “But now I’m working on something better.”
There’s a tapping sound of fingers on plastic... either a tablet or a portable hard drive, Joanna guesses. Michael Walker’s backup of his work. That’s the holy grail – the thing they need to get their hands on. The thing that has damaged the lives of so many people, she reminds herself. Amy Pearce. Nick and Larissa Brady. Derek Thorpe. All the names of her list... thousands of others.
“Greg,” she says, “ask him exactly what he’s – ”
Walker: “I’ve weaponised CORECODE.”
“ – up to.”
Greg: “What’s that?”
Walker: “It’s the algorithms we developed when I was at Macroverse, for the Auto-Mate™. The original algorithms, that is, not the flabby shit they all use now. I managed to get a copy from my old boss.”
Greg: “Is that Amanda Pearce? I thought she was dead?”
Walker: “She is, but her auto had a copy in its data store. Which it shouldn’t have, CORECODE should never have left the labs at Macroverse. Naughty Amanda. Anyway, it’s not there any more.”
“He got it from Amanda Pearce!” exclaims Joanna. In a heartbeat, she understands how Walker has a beta-test prototype just like Amy’s... it’s the exact same one Amy’s mother gave her, back in 2012. Walker stole it from her unliving auto, and then – ah, yes, of course – covered his tracks. That’s why Amy Pearce’s auto doesn’t remember working there when she was alive. He must have deleted all references to Macroverse from the auto’s memory.
That seems impossible. Everyone knows you can’t hack into an auto! Unless, Joanna has to concede, you’re the man who invented them.
The notion gives her a sudden chill. Walker can let himself into anyone’s auto whenever he likes. He’s got the keys to everybody’s life.
Walker: “I’ve made some changes to it, made it part of a server operating system. So it’ll affect any autos being run on my servers. Even sim-autos. I set up a special test for one of those that worked like a dream. Turned out to be a serious source of funds for my group, too.”
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