Mad Worlds Collide (16 page)

"Could you please show me an office where I can connect into the AD2100J Central?  I have some ideas that I want to try.  I would prefer just a cup of strong coffee and a box of donuts rather than a regular lunch today.  Let’s meet at around 2:00 to go over my results."

Robert had balls of steel too.  He needed to figure out who was hacking into the system, and what had happened to AD2100. Glazed donuts, strong coffee, and connection into the mainframe’s memory were the only things Robert wanted.

"I guess you really are Mr. Davichi.  I was warned that you never stopped until you solved a problem.  Gill said you were his number one guy.  He said you had balls of steel, and I see why. What kind of donuts do you like?"

"Gill’s great at flattering people.  Glazed if you can get them, and please show me where I can log in."

Mr. T ordered his staff to find a box of glazed donuts and directed Robert to a private office. Robert did have some ideas, especially since he saw some strange data traffic on his flight through the main server. He would work privately to solve this one.  He knew he had to before there was another major hack.

Robert opened up his notebook PC and re-read the letter from Joey before checking the Big Blue server:

Robert things are pretty screwed. The other day I was working on a project to hack into Missile systems to make sure they were secure when I got an e-mail threatening my life. Said that if I went back home I might get killed. It came from the NSA mail server. Checked everything---seems impossible. You and I are only ones of five who built the system for the NSA. Do you have any ideas of what’s going on? Don’t want to sound paranoid but…

Ideas thought Robert, ideas. Hey Joey Boy, can I call you Joey Boy? I’m in the same shitstorm, you paranoid fuck. You always were the paranoid bastard.  I guess that’s why you took up the NSA instead of getting a real job. Robert continued reading:

…one part of the e-mail, said: check out the Mil-Sat one transmissions. I did, and Holy Horse Turds!  It seems like there is a signal coming in from space, over eight hundred million miles away! First I thought someone was bouncing a connection way off some Jupiter satellite to hide their whereabouts.  I was real careful to use another user’s ID from some other agency I had hacked -- you know, I am a little paranoid, you always said it. But this time, Robert, this time I’m sure something really screwed is going on. 

Someone knocked on the door.

"Yes, who is it?" asked Robert.

"I am Mr. Taknaka’s secretary, I have coffee and donuts."

Well why didn’t you say so?  I could never stomach too much of paranoid Joey without food. "Please, please come on in."

A young woman dressed in the corporate MicroIntel blue and white uniform came in with a tray of coffee and four small and delicate, but glazed and delicious looking donuts.

"If you need anything else please let me know."

Robert looked at the girl, not too pretty but a nice body, thin and sophisticated looking.

"Thanks." Keep the eyes off the girls. Every foreigner is known for probing eyes and hitting on the girls. I have to stay professional.

Robert trained his eyes back on the e-mail, munching away. Hell, if I’m gonna get whacked from some alphabet agency, I might as well die with a donut in hand. Robert read on to the part the troubled him the most:

Robert, I can’t really figure it out, but it seems that the satellites are being used to hack into Big Blue. I think the hacker is alien. The only other possibility is that the NSA secretly changed the NSA SEC chip. In that event, I’m supposed to be informed. If they changed the chip there is no way of knowing, but you guys at MicroIntel burned the chip. Did you do anything to change it? Also, I checked the Mil-Sat One.  It looks like there is a huge backdoor into the MicroIntel AD2100. If you guys load up the code in Japan you’ll open up these guys who are eight hundred million miles out to everything.

And last, I don’t think the person who sent the warning is the same as the guys out in space. I think it’s someone else, but it would need a new NSA SEC chip to do that. Take it from a paranoid -- you should be careful. Send back any ideas at 09:30 hours Japan Time on the old WebSite. Use the opening stock price of the Nikkei as the one-time code. Use a one-time mail drop, so if I don’t get it we’ll know we’re compromised. Take care, Robert. Boy, I wish you were over here in Colorado.  It’s very intriguing.

Robert munched away on a glazed donut looking at the e-mail. That boy is one paranoid fuck, he thought, but he was my best grad student and the girl he helped was one pretty thing. Joey is onto something.  I need to dig into Big Blue. There is one other way to do this shit without the SEC chip being compromised, but that would mean something stranger than aliens.

Strange or not, Robert would check it out.  As a fan of Sherlock Holmes Robert knew to leave no stoned unturned, no matter how improbable
.

Date:             February 14, 2021

Place:             Earth,

Location:        White House

"Very funny, Scotty. Now beam down my clothes.

--Trek Star—Big Wheel Universe TV series

George W. Bush:
Ma," said George W. Bush on the phone, "the latest polls show that I am ahead of Gore!  

Barbara Bush:
Honestly?

George W. Bush:
Ma! Why bring that up at a time like this?

President Newton W. Bush heard a light knock on his bedroom door. He got up from the presidential bed. It was early Sunday morning.  His head pounded with every heartbeat -- one hell of a hangover. First one since my inauguration day a month before, he thought.  Better quit drinking.  I promised Pappy I’d quit if I made President.  Hell no one knows except maybe the secret service and Ann. Too many reporters following everyone around. What time is it? 3:40 a.m.?! I’m not supposed to be up until 6:30? What the hell’s going on here?

The knock came again and Secret Service Special Agent Lance spoke from behind the door. "Mr. President, sorry to bother you, but we have a call from a General Schwartz, he said it was urgent. Would you like to take the call in you room, Sir, or should we cancel the request?"

Bush lay on his back looking at the ceiling -- they even painted the presidential emblem on the stupid ceiling! The emblem seemed to move and wobble with every pounding heartbeat.  Dang, if Ann were around I’d never have got so drunk!

Ann, the First Lady went to visit her comatose father. Ann’s mother Margaret had passed away right before the inauguration and that put her father in a state of uselessness.  The doctor said he wouldn’t eat, and friends said he looked like a zombie. As President, Newton W. Bush had responsibilities to America that required him to stay at the White House. Yet the night before he’d drank like a fish with Senator Lebowitz from NY and Texas Oil President Fudbaker. Must have drank until 1:00, he thought, and now they want me to work at 3:40 a.m.? Dad said this job would put ten years on in four.  It feels more like twenty.

Bush, being a professional slugabed needed lots of sleep, but this was tough. Bush got out of bed, sat on the side and grabbed a pitcher of ice water. He poured a glass full. "Have them page the call to my study, and get me some cappuccino with two sugars.  Make it a large, and see if they can get it to me soon Lance." Bush’s own voice hurt his head.  He hoped he wouldn’t have to repeat the message. He drank the water. It cooled the head.

"
Yes Mr. President, we’ll patch the call through and get the coffee right away, Sir."

            
President Bush was 53 years old, and his body ached more than usual. I have to get a new bed; this one’s nice but too soft, thought Bush. Bush grabbed his blue presidential robe and walked into an adjoining study. The mirror on the wall was not showing a pretty picture. The red bloodshot eyes and rumpled graying hair looked very different from the recent pictures run all over the world. Amazing what a few shots of facial agents and a little makeup can do, thought Bush.  He smiled as he looked at his messed up hair.  Hell I look like Jack Nicholas in the Shining.  The image of Jack cutting through a door with an ax flashed through Bush’s head.  Heeeeres Johnny!!!

Ring…Ring…
Bush stopped looking at himself in the mirror and picked up a phone on his desk. "President Bush speaking, is this George?"

"Yes Mr. President, this is General George Schwartz."

"Well, let’s not get too friendly General George Schwartz.  May I askwhat isso importantthat you’re waking up your newly inaugurated, and tired, President at 3:45 a.m. in the morning?"

           
"Sorry Mr. President, but I need to inform you that we have discovered a hacker in the Net-Chameleon project, Sir."

President Bush heard a buzz on his door. "If it’s the man with my cappuccino come in, otherwise I’d like someone to shoot whoever’s ringing that buzzer." The buzz felt like a hammer.  Bush guzzled more water. Lance carried in a tray of coffee. "Had the staff put a rush on it, Sir."

Bush accepted the coffee. "Thanks Lance." 

Lance quietly exited and closed the door without a sound. Bush sat savoring the hot coffee and rubbing his head.

           
"Ah, Mr. President, did you hear my last statement?" asked the General.

"Wait a second, will you General." President Bush took a long sip of the hot cappuccino and tried to remember Project-Chameleon, but for the life of him couldn’t.

"General, please refresh my memory.  What is Project-Chameleon?"

"Mr. President, it was in your Presidential Briefing."

Bush needed to use the toilet but had to word it carefully. "General, please hold for a second." Bush put the phone on hold and ran into the toilet and closed the door. Drank too much damn beer last night.  Jeez this doesn’t look good, everyone outside watching my every step! Now my stomach hurts, ah!  This shit is going to take time.    

President Bush sat onto the toilet and looked at the telephone on the wall. Might as well use it -- that’s what they put phones in the toilet for!

President Bush picked up the phone while waiting for nature to take its course. Nature was taking longer after fifty but so did many other things.

"Hi General, are you still on the line?" asked Bush.

"Yes, Mr. President." The General heard an echo from the toilet but didn’t say anything.

"Now that Presidential briefing you’re talking about.  Was that in the box I received? The one that had six or so documents, about six inches thick, with four boxes of appendices, was it in
that
Presidential briefing General?" Bush’s colon opened, and passed gas. Shit, I’d better cover the phone while this one finishes, he thought.

"Ah, Mr. President I know that was a lot of reading for your first week in office, Sir, but yes it was in those documents, yes. I take it you haven’t read them yet?"

"Well General, I admit you have me on that one, I scanned through it. How to start and stop a nuclear war was interesting,
I do say
, and the section on how we caught a few of those little green men and have them on ice is great stuff, but
no
I don’t particularly remember the Net-Chameleon section.  Please, General, spare me the hassles, and tell me why you woke me up at 3:45 a.m.!"

President Bush let a big loud fart that echoed in the toilet. His stomach felt better but he didn’t have time to cover the phone.

"Sir, are you OK? I thought I heard something?" inquired the General.

"No need to worry General, everything is fine here. Now start explaining as my sleeping time is valuable."

"Yes Mr. President, well the Project Net-Chameleon was put in place by your father’s CIA director, Starper. You see with everyone on the Internet we had our boys write up software that can secretly load onto a person’s personal computer, or better yet, change a web connection--"

"Do what? Change a web page? You woke me up for that?"

"Mr. President, please allow me to continue."

"Continue General, please continue!"

"Ok, well the guys in Psych created a whole system where we would track e-mail, web sites -- everything on the net and if we decided to target someone we’d send phony e-mail messages, or change their web site stories to ones we modified. We could do all kinds of stuff to basically ruin people. For example, you might never get the e-mail for an interview, or a girlfriend would get different e-mail that her boyfriend had sent, with small but vital changes. We also developed a voice synthesizer that would sound just like a target’s voice, or their husband, wife or lover. We could use this for almost complete control of a subject, we—"

"I’ve heard enough General, I’ve got it.  I’d love to use this during the next election.  Hell, we could really get out the message." Bush laughed but his head hurt and he stopped.

"Well, Mr. President, we have a problem with the system."

"Well spit it out General. Hold on a second, I’m going to put you on hold again."

President Bush washed his hands, returned to the study, and picked up the phone. "Please continue General."

"Well, it seems that the system is hacked. Someone is using Net-Chameleon to do the same things to our agents, Sir. It’s being used against us!"

"Well, as long as they don’t recount any ballots, I’m sure we can fix the problem.  What the hell do we have all those agencies for anyhow?  Get fixing General, why call me at 3:45 a.m. for that?"

"It appears that the same hacker also has control of our computer link to missiles in Yokosuka Japan and Colorado, Sir."

"Japan? We don’t have any missile silos in Japan, General."

"Not silos, Sir.  They have control of an Aegis Missile cruiser’s computer system on a ship docked in port.  We need your permission to go to DEFCON 2"