The Metaverse: Virtual Life-Real Death

by William Kurth

  “So that’s how you do it.”

  “Do what?” MD snapped.

  “You are on the server controlling the pods. You don’t hack in. You are part of the operating system.”

  MD grew panicked. He brought up his control panel. Could he still teleport? He selected a random spot in New Polis then pushed the button.

  Reynolds’s avatar vanished. Wu found himself alone in the DLS HQ in New Polis. He walked through the empty DLS offices before teleporting himself back to the HQ.

  At the Denver HQ Argosi was still trying to catch his breath. His windpipe still felt partially closed off. His right wrist hurt like hell, and he could not move it. It had been a terrifying experience especially when the power cut off, and everything went dark.

  Wu helped him out of the shredded pod and the exoskeleton.

  “Tell...” Argosi had to catch his breath again. “Tell everyone to eject from their pods, now!”

  “Yes sir.” Mr. Wu relayed the order to the other agents of the MCT.

  Argosi slid to the floor cradling his right arm with his left hand. Argosi leaned against the dead server box that controlled his pod as one by one the other pods popped open, and the MCT agents began climbing out of them.

  Wu turned back to Argosi.

  “Commander, I know how he does it. I wounded him so he may even be more distracted until he can recover. We should use that time to evacuate all humans from their H-Pods of a certain model year and newer.”

  “Wounded him? How?”

  “I infected him, sir.”

  New Polis, Metaverse

  MD landed in a public teleport station in the Entertainment District of New Polis. The crowds were considerably thinner than normal. People are staying away. Good.

  MD was baffled about what just occurred, but he was confident he could figure it out. He just needed the time. More troubling was that everything now had a pinkish-reddish tint to it. He did not understand why the graphics appeared that way, but he had little time to worry about that now. He needed to get to one of his safe locations so he could set up shop and determine his next moves. MD squirmed at the people staring at him as he strolled casually past.

  I’ve got to get out of Reynolds’s avatar.

  He needed to find a PDR. What he didn’t know was that was not why people were staring.

  FBI Building Denver, Colorado

  After some argument, Dominic Argosi acquiesced to Parker’s demands that he go to the hospital. Parker assured him that if anything major came up he’d notify him immediately. Parker planned to use the time to look further into what Mr. Wu had discovered, along with continuing to sift through the massive download from the offices used by Maddox and Reynolds in New Polis.

  Argosi spent only a couple of hours in the hospital. Modern medical treatment could easily fuse fractured bones. Once he got past the ER docs, who wanted to check him for other injuries especially around his throat, the rest went smoothly.

  In the Orthopedic Fusion Lab, Argosi’s fractured bones, under MRI guidance, were positioned into place. A surgeon guided a thin needle to the fracture site then injected a solution of “living bone” a combination of bone cement and Stem Cells. Direct heat via sonography fused the materials to the bone forming an internal cast of sorts that would become permanent reinforcing and supporting the bone at the fusion site.

  Argosi left the hospital ER just like he arrived, on one of the Bureau’s VTAL aircraft so as not to waste any time. Argosi walked back into the FBI MCT HQ and went to the lab and tech area where Parker, Callum, and Wu waited for him. Argosi removed the sling that he was supposed to wear for a few days as soon as he got into the lab, his right wrist wrapped in a thin protective sleeve.

  On the projection table in the middle of the lab laid an exoskeleton from one of the MCT H-Pods. Argosi looked at it and then nodded to Mr. Wu.

  “First of all, thank you, Robert, for your quick action earlier. If you had not acted in the manner that you did with the speed that you did then. Well, I would have a lot more than a broken wrist, to say the least. It’s given me a new respect for non-biologics.” Argosi slapped his back.

  Wu responded in his characteristically non-emotional manner.

  “Thank you, sir. My level of respect for you, for all the biologics here in this room, has not changed.”

  Parker and Callum laughed as Wu looked at them searching for the source of the humor. While Mr. Wu was a physically and intelligently enhanced sentient being, his strong suit was not for human social interactions.

  Seeing this, Argosi trudged on.

  “Okay, Mr. Wu, you have the floor. Explain to me what you discovered.”

  “Very well, Commander.” Wu then pointed to a large monitor hanging above the table, currently divided into several separate screens.

  “Sir, if you watch the screen on the right it is representative of a standard DLS server that operates the exoskeleton and the H-Pod.”

  Wu clicked on it, and the outline of a human which had been still began to move. At the same time, the exoskeleton on the table moved with the same motions as the image on the monitor. Wu pushed against an appendage of the exoskeleton and the appendage pushed back with equal force.

  “The exoskeleton is mirroring the human movement. If you notice the bars on this screen.” Wu pointed to a screen to the left of the one with the human image.

  “You will see that it remains in the normal zone. Equilibrium is maintained in the pod, just as it is in the real world. A healthy human need not continually push against something to stand or stay balanced, or to sit or do regular stationary activities or even some requiring slightly more effort. Likewise, if you look at the bar graph, you will see that it goes from green to yellow to red. A properly functioning exoskeleton will never move into the yellow let alone the red. It won’t move to a position or with a level of force that might be harmful to the human element. If it did, the protocols would shut it down.”

  Wu paused to look around. “Any questions so far?”

  “So far so good,” Argosi said.

  “Very well, sir.” Wu continued. “If you look at the next screen to the left you will see a similar control interface with the same human image. It’s identical. But the difference here sir is that this is a program that we downloaded from Maddox’s offices in New Polis.” Wu then moved the human diagram, and the exoskeleton moved in a similar way.

  Wu continued. “Now look one more screen to the left, at the safety zones.”

  “They’re gone, the safety limits. Each bar is solid green from top to bottom.” Argosi said as his eyes went wide.

  “Exactly, Commander,” Wu said as he clicked on the human image running on Maddox’s system.

  All the agents, except Wu who was expecting it, jumped back as the exoskeleton jerked up off the table and began to contort itself into a ball. The servos screamed, overloaded with power. A burning smell quickly emanated from the suit followed by smoke as the exoskeleton continued to contort itself in ways that would break a human apart. Wu clicked on the image, and the suit quit moving.

  “How did he hack the suit? There’s no electronic trail.” Parker asked.

  “There is an electronic trail, but it’s not visible Agent Parker,” Wu answered. “There is one of sorts, if you know where to look. More importantly, you have to know how to look.” Wu cleared the monitor screens.

  Now lines of code appeared on each one. Wu merged the two screens together into one, so they were side by side.

  “The screen to the right is the same as the one on the left; the lines of code are identical. What you are looking at is the individual server for the pod and exoskeleton on the table represented by the screen on the right. The screen on the left is the DLS server. The two must match for the individual pod to have access into the Metaverse, or more specifically an area into it. This is the protocol that the DLS server uses to know whether the individual account or server is permitted to access a third server, fourth server, fifth and so on depending
where in the Metaverse one travels to that are not public areas, say an individual house or another non-public place. When access is granted or denied the code is added or deleted to both servers by the third or subsequent server giving permission. You have to get through the DLS server to get into the third party server.”

  Wu paused for a moment. No one said anything, so he continued.

  “The Metaverse is so vast and complex that like the internet it cannot and does not reside in just a few servers, or even a few million. For example when you enter into MCT-NP from here, the building in New Polis which belongs to the DOJ, resides on our servers as well as the server of any person authorized to enter it. But the outside, what is visible from the public part of New Polis resides in a myriad of DLS servers in any number of server farms with extensive redundancy. Anyone can walk up to the MCT-NP and even into the lobby. But to enter the interior to the lab or to the residential areas they would have to be allowed access to one of the servers where the interior of the building resides.”

  Wu paused for a moment before continuing. “This is where it gets more complicated. The hardware in each server has what is known as a motherboard, although no board is involved any longer. That term refers to an old design, but the reference continues. This is the heart of the system.” Wu looked around.

  “That’s where all the graphics get created, stored, edited and adjusted as you move through a given space and so forth along with controlling all of the other aspects like the safety margins. But there are lesser programs built into component hardware that is not part of the motherboard but interface with it in some manner, primarily in a support role. That is where Maddox created his backdoor, or more accurately an open door. In this case, the door is open, but the data that goes in and out of it is invisible.”

  Argosi raised his hand. “You are losing me. I get the idea of a back door. Even a door that is open. But how does data move that rewrites the code to hijack the pod?”

  “It’s like invisible ink, Commander.”

  Argosi shook his head and looked around wondering if anyone was getting what Wu was trying to explain.

  “Okay, Mr. Wu can you explain what you mean by invisible ink?” Argosi asked.

  “Certainly. Invisible ink really isn’t invisible. It is just ink that is lacking a component to make it visible, an important distinction.” Wu studied the puzzled faces, and his electronic mind told him that more elaboration was needed.

  “As an example, when one wants to pass written information only viewable to the recipient they might write with ink that goes onto the paper but lacks the other ingredient to become visible. The recipient knows this, and so he or she may receive a written letter with visible ink. However in-between those lines, viewable by anyone, is other information only viewable to the recipient after they sprinkle a compound onto the paper that makes the previously un-viewable, viewable. Understand?” Wu asked.

  “You’re saying that the lines of code become viewable when the recipient adds the third component?” Callum asked.

  “No,” Wu answered curtly. “There is no third component. There are the DLS servers and their security protocols that communicate with the individual pod servers. Within the pod server are other components, maybe that just turn on a fan, keep the time and date for systems outside the motherboard or handle some other role in support of the server. That is where the invisible lines of code reside. When queried by a DLS server nothing happens, DLS doesn’t have the magic dust, but Maddox does. The recipient server in the supporting software uncovers the lines of code and then recognizes MD as a DLS server, which covers his tracks.”

  “Doesn’t that cause a conflict? With competing lines of code and commands?” Callum interjected.

  “Well, it would if the new message conflicted as you said. But remember this is software not a piece of paper. In this process, the invisible lines don’t just appear they also make the previous ones disappear. That’s why we could not see any outside link or hacking trail. Maddox essentially re-wrote the code to that server or any server where the invisible code resides including those here in this building. We only see the communication with DLS because that’s what the server records. Remember Maddox wrote much of, or was at least aware of the security protocols used by both DLS and SDG. He was uniquely positioned to place code into these systems that remained latent until queried.”

  Argosi let out a low whistle. “How did Maddox get all of this into all these systems? We’re talking millions, tens of millions of pods and servers.”

  “By my calculation somewhere around 200 million servers worldwide commander,” Wu said.

  “How is that possible? That many servers?” Argosi asked.

  “Remember, Maddox didn’t have to write it to everyone individually. He designed it in an area that no one noticed. Those components were then built by the tens of millions over the last three years worldwide. As the Metaverse and Full Emersion Virtual Reality became popular with the intermediate suits and then with the SecondSkin in the last few years, those components found their way into the latest models. Those parts, small ones but still vital, were designed by Silicon Digital Group and specifically by Maddox. That design was then farmed out to vendors large and small who replicated it. There were no inspection issues because no one ever looks at the minor components when a glitch occurs. Or if they suspect that is the issue they just replace the part.” Wu finally hit on something that Argosi could fully comprehend.

  They had all been looking at the primary operating systems for hints of hacking or hijacking from the outside. But the hacker or rather the hijacker was already on the server, latent and waiting to be activated. Hidden in a smaller supporting component rather than being part of the primary operating system. That module in itself would not be able to do much. It didn’t need to. Its value was in its access to the primary operating system which it tricked into believing it was communicating with the DLS server.

  Simple in its concept, but complicated to design. “Okay. How do we combat it? What has to be done to eliminate the open door and invisible ink as it were?”

  “Short of a complete recall and rebuilding of all of the servers built and sold in the last three years worldwide there is no way to be sure. If we knew which components have the latent code and that was the only open door, the task might be easier, but we are still talking about switching out components. Actual hardware on a massive scale. Firmware is a possibility but can it remove something designed to remain latent?

  Argosi shook his head. “Well, those are decisions for the engineers at DLS and their management. It’s going to cost them a huge sum of money to do. If we can catch Maddox alive then maybe a deal could be struck. He seems the type to want to talk about his brilliance. In the meantime, there is not any intermediate fix that we can apply or ask DLS to apply?

  “No, sir. Not without some uncertainty. Keep in mind that Maddox knows as much or more about the DLS systems as their engineers. He may have included a redundancy.”

  “Something we need to consider,” Argosi rubbed his square jaw. “Parker get with the U.S. Attorney assigned to this case and give him a synopsis of the information. The DOJ needs to do a press release to let people know that the models of H-Pods which include almost all full emersion and many of the intermediate ones are not safe to use. DLS won’t be happy. When I was waiting in the ER, I looked at the numbers. The Metaverse population is less than half of what it was before the murder of Dr. Sullivan. While that doesn’t break my heart, it does mean the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars a day. Factor in the bot issues with BMM and this has the potential to cripple the economy.”

  “Got it, sir.” Parker made some notes on a tablet.

  “Wu, where are we on the bots with BMM?”

  “Those components have been shipped to the MCT lab at Quantico. While I do not have the data to make an estimation it is a probability that Maddox did the same thing, included code into the bot that would have given him control of them. That will be a
much more challenging problem to solve.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Wu. Right now our priority is finding Maddox in the real world.” Argosi said.

  The Bank of St. Petersburg, New Polis, Metaverse

  “So, this Dr. Maddox co-opted this free sentient being to commit these atrocities in our world?” One of the council members asked staring at Alex Reynolds before shifting his gaze to Mathias who sat at the head of the large conference room in his office suites at the Bank of St. Petersburg Tower.

  “I’m afraid so. Moreover, Dr. Maddox is continuing to use the avatar of Mr. Reynolds.” Mathias answered.

  “How do we know that this human, Maddox, isn’t still controlling Reynolds? You may have put us all at risk by bringing him here.” A female sentient member seethed from the other side of the table.

  A chorus of voices rose in support of what the woman DSB had just asked. Mathias let the ensemble go on for several moments. Some were directed at him, others in agreement with each other, a few in support of Reynolds.

  Edgar stood from his seat and motioned with both of his hands for order. After another moment or two, the members yielded to Mathias, giving him the floor. Mathias looked around.

  Most of the DSB’s currently were in male form, six in female form. The concept of gender among DSB’s had more to do with the real world and the humans that they dealt with than with each other.

  DSB’s, when created, are assigned a gender for personality and mannerism. Feminism and masculinity were not something that their digital thoughts troubled themselves with. If a DSB believed it an advantage to be another gender for a certain reason, then they could simply change their appearance. Just as the humans did in the real world and more completely in-world. The irony was that the DSB’s thought nothing of gender. They rarely switched from their assigned gender, whereas humans did it all the time to deal with a perceived problem. The DSB’s had no capacity programmed or learned to give them a reason to question their gender, perhaps because for them changing it was a simple task.