by Korban Blake
RINGLANDS
A Kaplan Short Story
Copyright © 2013 by Korban Blake - All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. The moral rights of this author has been asserted.
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Cover Illustration Copyright © 2013 by Korban Blake
Cover design by Korban Blake
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Dedicated to the memory and work of Aaron H. Swartz
November 8, 1986 – January 11, 2013
Champion of citizen-drive political change.
~~~oo00oo~~~
“Hackers for right, we are one down” - Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the web. January 12, 2013
CHAPTER ONE
I am writing this in case something happens to me.
In case something happens to me.
In case someone murders me and set it up to appear as though I committed suicide. That’s the sort of something I’m thinking about here.
Just a few long weeks ago I was a regular twenty-five year old working from my city home designing web sites, mostly for people starting new local businesses. Good, hard-working people, none of them had very much money so I never charged them a lot for my time. It was work I found tedious and simple, but it was a creative outlet with the bonus of a reasonable income and allowed me plenty of free time to do the things I not only enjoyed, but also felt to be my real work, online activism.
Over several years I had built up a relationship of trust with a circle of people across the globe. None of us had ever met in person, and between us we organised and implemented actions to highlight unsavoury or unethical practises.
We sought out corrupt businesses, abusing their power, mistreating their employees, or engaging in any activity at all which the general public would disapprove of if they were ever to find out. Corporate theft, unethical trading practices and so on. Our research was thorough, we backed up our claims fully and always allowed the target of our attention the opportunity to change their practises before we took action. The few that did agree to make changes, we would keep a watchful eye on, and we left them alone unless they did anything else to draw our attention. However if they didn’t change their manner, we would launch our attack. Our attacks were never designed to hurt anybody physically or personally, though they may have caused corporations to lose money.
No physical harm, just short-term - anywhere between one hour to twenty-four hour - awareness-raising exercises.
Often we publicly announced our intended action and explained our reasoning. On the whole, the public supported the motives behind what we did, even though many were inconvenienced by the absence of online services, albeit temporarily. We never permanently destroyed anything, we never did anything that was irreversible. We were merely interrupting the online presences, exposing corrupt practices. What we did was not legal, but the targets of our attention were not exactly squeaky clean either. If they were, there would be no need for us.
Together we successfully disrupted web sites belonging to companies and organisations, banks and politicians, without leaving any trace back to ourselves.
We were powerful, but never abused it. We were ghosts. Ethical warriors of the digital age. Many people would disapprove, my own parents included, but then, they were not exactly very knowledgeable on the subject of digital revolution. On merely hearing the word ‘illegal’ they’d recoil in horror and wonder how I could let them down so horrendously. Never mind what the issue was, or the reasons why, or whether our actions were for the greater good of the people over the establishment. It was too black and white for them, it wasn’t their fault, but they wouldn’t understand.
People in our circle were all very experienced and accomplished at leading ordinary, unremarkable lives - all the while causing governments to curse our existence - and we kept this up for so long we could almost feel we were invincible, powerful. Nobody knew our true identity. We were so careful never to leave breadcrumbs.
It would have been so easy to become complacent, but I was always vigilant not to allow my guard to drop. Over the course of at least five years and hundreds of cyber-attacks, not one of our members was ever tracked down and caught.
That is, until now.