A more troubling thought came to mind. Maybe they had me under surveillance. I watched the motion capture again. It looked like a search, but they’d spent plenty of time outside the view of the camera from the bedroom. They hadn’t installed anything in the bedroom, but they could easily have installed a bug or even a camera out in the living room. I could no longer consider my apartment secure, and I’d have to find places elsewhere to do any work I wanted kept secret. That would only complicate my life further.
My apartment would take time to cool down, so I decided to go wardriving and grab a bite to eat, being careful to look for anyone following me. I didn’t see anyone, but they could easily have stuck a tracking device on my truck.
I settled in for dinner and accessed the WiFi at a McDonalds across the street and down the block. A couple minutes of navigating TOR and reconnecting through a Berkshire Inn in Syracuse, NY, and I was online. I reported the incident to Rob and the sheriff. If I was being investigated, the next obvious associates for them to check out would certainly include Rob. Sheriff Gunn would have to ask his deputies to keep a special eye out for strangers poking around Sherman County. We didn’t have a specific code for “Someone broke into my place; be careful,” that I could send to Amit over an open channel. He’d already rid himself of anything suspicious, so he’d probably be safe.
Larry wasn’t going to do anything about Professor Glyer’s killbot project. He was delighted with the big contract and might not even be aware of the sinister implications. I wondered if he was in on it, or if Travis was keeping the details from him. In any event, U.S. Robotics was about to be underbid by TAGS on the new Army robot contract. Surely they’d be interested in doing something. I took a directory listing of all the files in Glyer’s “USRobotics” folder, created a new throwaway email account, and sent off the listing of stolen files with a brief anonymous cover letter to U.S. Robotics.
* * *
“You’re late,” Mr. Humphreys welcomed me back from my vacation.
“I’ve been in the office nearly an hour already. Julie at the reception desk caught me as I was coming in. She opened another email virus, so I had to clean it off and get a scan going.”
He had pulled out my resume and was scrutinizing it. “You did work pulling cable and installing a network for a hotel?”
“Yes, at a Berkshire Inn and Suites.” Amit’s dad hired me to help install the network at the hotel they ran, and I’d done any number of network cable installs while working for my father as an apprentice electrician.
“How long do you think it would take to train some other interns to pull cable?”
Outstanding! My scheme with Uncle Larry was already paying off. “I could show them the basics in an hour or two. It’s mostly on-the-job training,” I explained. “We could do some network installation here, if there’s anything you like to have done. It wouldn’t take too long to get everyone up to speed.”
“Good,” Humphreys confirmed. “Here’s the list of interns with clearances.” I saw Johnny’s name and a few others I didn’t know as well. “Start training them tomorrow morning. For now, I want you back on prepping the servers for the Jekyll Island job as soon as possible. Get to it!”
* * *
The help desk calls really slowed down after July 4th. Not much being accomplished with so many folks taking a long vacation, I figured. One of the highlights of early July was the big DARPA announcement. Roger Thorn was counting on funding from DARPA to get his ultra-wideband mesh networks out of mothballs and back on the road to development. He’d been involved in the group of subject-matter experts that defined the specifications of a DARPA program, and he was confident his solution would be an ideal fit. “They may not want it commercially available, but if DoD is using it, eventually it will be everywhere,” he said confidently. I went to listen to the conference call of the DARPA announcement with Roger in his lab.
“For too long, we have rested on our laurels,” the DARPA Director began. “For half a century, our country has fielded high-performance, high-complexity, high-cost systems. They are fragile, difficult to maintain, take a long time to develop, and take even longer to develop the tactical expertise needed to employ them successfully because their logistical overhead and cost prohibit frequent test and use in exercises. Meanwhile, our adversaries are evolving, iterating, far faster than we can match. They employ simple, improvised, effective techniques in asymmetric fashions to inflict disproportionate harm.
“Today that changes. Today we announce a new chapter in DARPA’s long legacy of funding high-risk, high-reward projects: DARPA’s Communications Challenge. Here to tell us more is Program Director Dr. Ken Frederick.”
“This Director actually gets it,” Roger smiled as the Director stepped away from the podium to a round of applause that sounded thoroughly artificial through the computer speakers. “DARPA keeps supporting Rube Goldberg contraptions,” Thorn continued, “complicated, costly, ‘system-of-systems’ projects that don’t break any new technical or scientific frontiers. Instead, they merely recombine existing technology in byzantine ways. For too long, DARPA has been welfare for politically-connected systems integrators. Finally, they’re going back to their roots, supporting fundamental innovations, like mine.”
I wondered if that was a part of the Circle’s game plan: divert attention away from fundamental breakthroughs and instead squander the efforts of the best and brightest in merely recombining existing technologies in different ways. Perhaps DARPA’s new leadership was going to break the cycle.
“DARPA’s Communications Challenge will take back the communications domain – a domain our adversaries exploit against us. We will enable communications dominance with new breakthroughs and new technologies,” the Program Director began. “We call our approach ‘SLIP,’ Security, Location, Information, Performance. A multi-disciplinary team contributed to the specifications…”
“I was on that team,” Roger confided as Dr. Frederick droned on, “and ultra-wideband is ideal for all four aspects of SLIP. The physical layer is inherently secure and robust against eavesdropping or interception. The signals can be used for localization using time-of-arrival or time-difference-of-arrival techniques. You can perform real-time radar scans of your surroundings, getting information about the propagation environment. Performance? The potential data rates are incredible.”
Finally, Dr. Frederick concluded his self-congratulatory remarks, lauding DARPA and the team of some of America’s finest scientists and engineers: the best and brightest that made the program possible. He began to define what DARPA meant by “SLIP.”
“First and most important is ‘Security,’” the Program Director explained. “We must secure our communications from use by unknown parties, and require positive identification of everyone using every channel. We must not allow our adversaries or bad actors to hide behind online anonymity, and we must enable our military and police to monitor relevant communications through secure backdoors that cannot be exploited by hostile actors. Securing communications is ‘DARPA hard,’ but American scientists and engineers are up to the challenge DARPA poses!”
“That’s not security!” Roger was shocked. “That’s ubiquitous surveillance!”
“Next is ‘Location,’” continued Dr. Frederick’s online explanation, oblivious to Roger’s outrage. “We must be able to locate all users of communication services in case of emergency, so we can summon paramedics – or other first responders – to take the appropriate actions. Terrorists, criminals, and other anti-social individuals will no longer be able to threaten us from their hiding places.”
“They’re trying to build a goddamn Big Brother system,” Roger muttered as Dr. Frederick continued. “They’ll be sending the police after not just terrorists but anyone else they deem anti-social.”
“We need ‘Information’ about the users of our communications. Biometric confirmation of users’ identity needs to be a part of all next-generation communications hardware to enable our poli
ce and military to positively identify the bad actors and trace hostile communications back to their source.”
A stunned Roger was just shaking his head in disbelief.
“Finally, ‘Performance.’ We must achieve all these goals – securing our communications from our adversaries, locating them and others in need of help, identifying all participants in communications, all without sacrificing performance.
“To that end, DARPA encourages and incentivizes integrators to assemble teams of experts to compete in the DARPA Communications Challenge.”
The Program Director described the competition – participants had to design a communication system to compete in a series of tests and exercises, resist attempts at anonymity, employ biometrics to identify users, locate users, and benchmark data rates. In addition, the system needed to be multi-modal to be robust against jamming or disruption, while compatible with a broad range of options including cellular telephone and WiFi.
Roger still looked stunned. “This is exactly the kind of high-performance, high-complexity, high-cost system the Director warned against! You’d have to integrate a host of conventional radio systems, biometric sensors, and radio-location gear to pull it off. It makes no sense.”
It made no sense to Roger, but I had a pretty good idea what was going on. Roger’s idea of ubiquitous, secure communications based on UWB was too much of a threat to the Civic Circle, even for military and government uses. They were going to shut him down by any means necessary. Would he believe me?
“I need to show you something in the screen room,” I lured him to the door, made a show of setting my phone down outside, and gestured to him to do the same. He looked puzzled but he set his phone down and followed me in. I secured the door behind us, and turned on the radio he kept there, generating loud static to cover our conversation. I wished I could try an anonymous contact, but I didn’t think there was time. I was going to have to take the risk.
“Remember your story about how Armstrong’s FM radio project got shut down?”
Roger nodded, not understanding the relevance.
“I think the same kind of thing is happening today. You remember those professors at Georgia Tech who were in the news a couple months ago for espionage?”
“Yes,” Roger still looked confused.
“I worked for them. They weren’t spies. They merely started poking around in technical areas that are regarded as sensitive by… by the powers that be. Just like yours.”
“The powers that be?”
“From everything you told me, DARPA was about to fund your work. I think the Director was on your side. You heard what he had to say. But someone got to him and the Program Director. They ignored what the advisory team you were on recommended, and they made DARPA sponsor this travesty of a research program instead. They’re so concerned about secure communications technology getting in to the hands of civilians that they won’t even sponsor the development of your ideas for military purposes.”
“I suppose that could be,” Roger nodded with a puzzled expression.
I think your life may be in danger,” I explained. “The next step is, you’re going to get an offer you can’t refuse,” I explained. “It’ll be a nice bump up in salary. They’ll send you off to some secure lab in Nevada or somewhere they can watch you, and be sure anything you do is contained where it can’t possibly leak out to the public.”
“How do you know this?”
“There’s a researcher I met here earlier this summer with a novel idea for space elevators. She’s gone now, off to Nevada.” I looked him in the eye and hoped he’d believe me. I’d lost the space elevator lady, but maybe I could save him. “Same offer my professors got. Only my professors turned them down. The next step was the trumped-up espionage charge. I really don’t believe that was true.”
“Don’t they think that one professor got lost hiking?” Roger was following the news, apparently.
“I suspect foul play. My point is, you’re next. You need to either accept the Nevada job, or somehow manage to convince them you’re out of research and on to something innocuous.”
“I don’t want to do directed research in captivity in Nevada.” He looked disgusted at the thought. “I suppose I could always teach.” He’d made the transition from confused to thoughtful faster than I’d anticipated, but then he was clearly a very smart man.
“Start sending out your resume. Ask for some vacation time off to do some interviews, like you’ve been thinking about this a while. I’ll see if there’s anything I can do on my side.” I looked through the screen door. “Get your data and designs backed up and get me a copy. When you leave, they’re going to be sure you don’t take anything with you. Is there anything critical you can pack up for me now?”
Roger looked across his lab full of his life’s work. There was no way I could take and hide it all, and he knew it. He was going to have to abandon almost everything he’d been working on for years. I saw him take a deep breath as he reached his decision.
“I have a current backup of my data. You should take the initial prototype boards for the pilot system, and the chips to build more. How can I get in touch with you?”
“Think of a couple creative but plausible IT problems,” I suggested. “Call me on the helpline with one. I’ll come. I’ll figure out a longer-term plan and tell you tomorrow. If something happens today and they march you out the door,” I thought a moment, “come to the Highlander Coffee House on Bob Wallace Avenue at 10 am Saturday. Ignore me, but note where I’m sitting. I’ll leave when you go order your drink. Sit at my table and look for an envelope taped to the underside of the table. Grab it, hide it, and read it later, when you’re sure you’re in private – not at home. It will include further instructions.” It wasn’t a great dead drop, but it was the best I could devise on short notice.
I stashed his data backup DVD in my IT tool bag, and went to get my cart. I hid Roger’s DVD in the server room with a bunch of other disks. I had a printer I was supposed to deliver, so I opened the box from the bottom and set the printer on the top level of the cart. I folded the flaps in on the bottom of the box and set it down on the lower level of the cart with the beautiful factory fresh tape intact on top. By visual inspection, no one would be able to tell the big printer box was a shell covering empty space within.
I arranged a box of ink cartridges on the top level of the cart along with the new printer. I hoped no one would find it curious why I was simultaneously moving a printer and a printer box, but then most of my co-workers took IT for granted. They weren’t quite as bad as Rachel in HR who didn’t have a clue what “IT” was or did, but by and large they took it for granted, never appreciating, let alone understanding, the effort it took to keep their computers connected. I was seen wheeling computers and printers around all the time. It was what IT did. The only person savvy enough to ask questions was Mr. Humphreys, but judging by the fact someone had just opened up a connection to the World of Warcraft server from his IP address, my little adventure would probably be over before his.
They moved fast. I saw Travis Tolliver and another man in Roger’s lab, so I wheeled on by to drop off and set up the printer. On my way back, the coast was clear. “That connection we discussed looked like it might be needed?”
He smiled. “It’s a good backup plan,” he acknowledged, “but with the DARPA funding not in the cards, the company decided to fund my research out of internal research and development funds, anyway. Apparently Larry Tolliver himself, the CEO of Tolliver Corporation, wants to go forward with the commercialization!”
Oh my. That was interesting.
“I think I may need that printer back when you get a chance,” he said with a smile.
I checked my watch. “Would Monday be soon enough?”
“No rush,” he said. He looked around and added softly. “Thanks for the warning. You really had me going there. I’m glad you were wrong.”
“Me, too. I’ll see you Monday.”
On my
way back to the office I got a text on my cell phone: “The Dungeon is now closed.” I’d continued to refine “VirtualPete.exe,” writing my own set of scripts modeled after the ones Mr. Humphreys used. I’d added a script to keep an eye on the Ethernet traffic from Mr. Humphrey’s office. It pinged me when he was in, when he left, and when he was “adventuring.” If his online escapades were over, I had a great opportunity to catch him before he left.
He glowered as I poked my head in the door of his office. His computer was already off and he’d clearly been moments away from departure.
“Quick question before you go, sir. I just wanted to confirm that I’ll be on the team to Jekyll Island.”
“No,” he said.
“I thought you were taking all the interns with clearances.”
“I need someone with a clue to keep IT running smoothly here. You’re staying.” He got up to leave.
“No, sir,” I insisted, blocking his way. “I’m going to Jekyll Island with you.” He looked confused. Before he could say anything, I played my trump card. “I’ve identified $24 million in suggestions that I will be turning in tomorrow – suggestions that fall within your IT responsibilities. You think the big boss was mad about handing over $50,000 to a manufacturing tech? Just wait until he’s told he has to write a $2.4 million check to an intern for my 10% cut, and what’s more, it’s all your fault.”
“No fucking way,” Mr. Humphreys was in my face.
I smiled. “Have a seat, and I’ll explain.”
He stood frowning at me.
“Well, at least stand aside so I can write on your white board and explain what I figured out.”
He stepped back. I closed the door to his office, picked up a marker, and sketched the floorplan of the modular buildings.
“The main traffic hallways in those modular buildings go around the perimeter of the building. There are four blocks of offices, twenty feet wide and a hundred feet long. At each end of each block is a fifty–foot firehose.
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