Protocol 1337 (4 page)

Once all of us were ready, we set course to the reservoir, telling jokes along the way. We usually found things along the side of the road, mostly “Trucker Bombs”, bottles of liqueur filled with urine. Occasionally, we would find discarded, unopened beer tossed to avoid a DUI, or just plain laziness. Just before we reached the wide corner, I saw something flash out of the corner of my eye. I walked off into the brush to find it. There she was among the weeds; a partially buried, shiny coin. I quickly scooped it up. I took my water bottle out of my backpack and washed the dirt off my new found treasure. Once I realized what it was, it caused quite a commotion with the boys. There were a lot of celebratory cheers. I have kept this coin with me since, and every time I need advice I toss my Maiden of Salvation into the air to settle it once and for all.

Also in the drawer was my Zippo lighter with its engraved cross, and my silver pentagram. Both were gifts to me and I cherish them deeply. The Zippo was a gift from a catholic priest. We used to have deep theological discussions, and once, during a heated discussion, admitted that even I tested his faith. Soon after that, he gave me that Zippo, not that he condones my views, but wanted me to have something to remember him by. He passed away in his sleep 3 months later, and I have kept it since. The pentagram is the most prized possession I have. It's made of my favorite metal and is shaped in the most intriguing symbol I have ever encountered. I keep it hanging from a silver necklace around my neck so as to hold it close to my heart. I feel naked without it and, for some reason, I believe it protects me. Since I was a child, I have been drawn to the symbol of the five pointed star, and I can't actually say why. I know it's one of the symbols that have never been explained throughout society. It has no origin, and no explanation of where it comes from. It doesn’t really matter. It makes me feel at home and that is all that matters.

Eve enters the room and wheels me out into the hall.

“It's time, Haus, your first mission. We suspect that there is a weak link in Healy Defense Inc, or HDI for short. They are a private security firm that we contract with in Latin America. Your mission is to sniff him out. So let's get you down to the CCC and get you set up.” Reese says with conviction.

“The CCC?” I ask.

“That would be your working station. We call it the CCC. We cleared out all of the technicians so you have a clear playing field. You'll need something first before you enter it.”

“The police confiscated it from your room when you were arrested, and we simply made it disappear as misplaced evidence. We wouldn’t have bothered to retrieve it, but RedneK insisted we claim it. He said that a fox keeps his eggs away from the hens nest. Not sure what he meant by that, but he was confident that tombstone contained everything you needed.” Reese adjusted his collar and instructed Eve to follow him down the hallway.

We walk past the desk, and down the hallway toward the service elevator. Reese stops in front of the service elevator and presses the down button. We wait for the elevator door to open then step inside. The door closes. I can see the panel B3, B2, B1, G,F1,F2 buttons are glowing. We wait in silence for a few moments then Reese begins to speak into the air.

“Edith, initiate voice recognition.” Reese says.

“Protocol acknowledged, Director Thomas Reese identified. What is your command?” Edith’s voice plays on the overhead speaker in the elevator. It's very refined, soft, and has the accent of a southerner. Without the formalities, it sounds surprisingly human.

“Edith, floor 13, Central Computer Command.” Reese barks.

“13 central coming soon, and god speed you director Reese.”

I have a tendency to notice subtle things, both in conversation, and in my surroundings. Most people filter out small details so they can focus on a main objective. There was a video floating around once that showed several people in a circle tossing a basketball back and forth. The video challenges the viewer to count how many times the ball is passed by people wearing a specific color of clothing. The video starts off passing slow, and then they start moving around to confuse the viewer. Towards the end of the video, a guy dressed in a gorilla costume walks into the center of the screen. By no means is he trying to sneak in, in fact, he even drums his chest in the center to draw attention. He then proceeds to walk calmly out of camera view. When I first saw this video, I was in a room with 15 other people. I started counting the passes like everyone else, and then I stated out loud, whats with the gorilla?

At the end of the video, they ask how many passes did you see? In a room of 14 peers, not a single one of them saw a gorilla even though I stated it out loud while it was happening. Things that I did notice aside from the gorilla, were six total people, three white, three black, nice balance there doc. There were three elevators, two pointing down, and one neutral. There were two wall columns separating each elevator and on each was an S spray painted on the wall. The S to the left is larger, but lower on the wall, as opposed to the higher, but smaller s on the wall on the right. Little details like this are the things that keep me awake at night. Over analyzing details that no one else cared to remember.

Why would an artificial intelligence refer to god? My first instinct tells me the programmer wanted to add artistic expression to the program. That could easily be the case. Anyone who has taken a printed circuit board and examined it under a microscope would understand. True artists tend to leave a mark, some are subtle, and others are more obvious.

We descend for several minutes, and then come to a stop. I hear the familiar ding and wait for the door to open. When it does open, I am taken aback. My pupils dilate the size of marbles and I can't force myself to breathe. The large room is circular in shape with many bright computer screens. Some are very large like the one in the center. It had to be over 15 feet across. The lighting was very dim and the glow from the screens cast shadows in every direction. In the center of the room was a pentagon inlaid into the carpet. Resting upon the pentagon were five working stations with three large computer monitors arranged in a half arc around a designer office chair. Each station was arranged around the pentagon so one could look across and see nothing but the back of the others monitor. It looked like a LAN party setup, the kind a spoiled child of a billionaire would have. All the best technology and accessories; all paid for with a bottomless spending account.

I wheel myself toward the center cluster of screens like a zombie in pursuit of a fresh victim. I brush my hands across the desk and trace the outside lines of the large monitors with my index finger.

“Are you going to have sex with it or are you gonna sit down and get to work?” Reese gestures me over to the furthest south station. I sit down in the chair and am shocked how comfortable it really is. The mesh backing cradles me like a hammock. I lean back a little and Eve pushes me forward. A red laser beam appears on my chest and starts flickering about zeroing in on my lanyards bar code.

“Personnel identified... Loading custom settings. Remember, these are the default settings, and can be changed at any time. Activating voice recognition setup. This may take a few moments, please wait.” The screen changes from black to a simple green blinking prompt.

“Please state your job function followed by your full name. Speak as you would in normal conversation; do not pitch your voice as this may alter our baseline phonetics. You have five seconds to comply.”

“Agent Haus Long” I reply.

“Very good agent Haus, we are almost finished here. Please say the following statement; again speak as you would in normal conversation. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. You have 20 seconds to comply.”

“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. You have 20 seconds to comply.” I sarcastically reply and give myself a quick chuckle.

“Nice try agent! You think you're the first to think of that? Let me guess, you still try to fool people with the Alt+F4 joke? Voice recognition finished... have a wonderful day.”

The desk in front of me lights up with a full digital keyboard and an outlined twelve inch box on the right. Lying inside the blue lines of the box are three metal rings, the rim of which are glowing red. The main screen flashes an animation of placing one ring on my index finger, the other on my middle finger, and the last on my thumb. I place each glowing metal ring on the corresponding finger and instinctively place them over where a mouse would be.

“Meta Mouse configuration complete.” The rings flash a golden light, and then dim to a pulsating blue. I move my hand to the left and the computer screen comes alive. The terminal converts from a blinking green cursor to a vivid display of the milky way. It spirals, flexes, and glitters as I pass my hands over it.

“Open web browser...” I command.

The screen opens to an empty search bar. I place all three fingers on it, and throw it to the left screen. It automatically goes into full screen mode on the left monitor. I insert my tombstone disk drive into the tower's USB.

“Open z:/haus.exe” The screen flickers for a moment, an animated skull appears, and begins laughing. Dark melodic music begins to play as the skull rotates back and forth. A distorted voice sounds over the main speakers in the room.

“I'd like to play a game..... It's a simple test, but very effective. Don’t make the same mistake twice. Are you ready to begin?”

I type Y into the console and press enter. I designed this program to keep my encrypted files and other sensitive information safe from intrusion. If anyone got a hold of it, unless they knew the correct sequence, and the correct response, the information wouldn’t be useable. If the user fails the confirmation sequence, the stick would be digitally shredded 16 times and a small virus would implant itself into the system. The virus would continue to replicate itself constantly. It also hijacks their contact information and forwards itself to everyone on that list.

The virus continues to replicate itself using random file names until the entire hard drive is filled with smurf files. It constant writes and rewrites until even the system files are replaced. Luckily for me, they never attempted to solve my riddle. I included two fail safe responses. Nein is for ignore current response. I gave myself two tries for the correct answer.

“Whiskey Delta Tango?...Nein...Hotel Oscar Tango?...Nein...If a bear craps in the woods does it still stink?...Nein...Foxtrot Oscar X-ray?...Duck Soup. Are you sure? Yes.” I read the words aloud while I type my responses. It irritates some people when I think out loud but it's just another one of my quirks. The program installs all of my personal files, images, and other tools of the trade.

“Open Tunez.exe. File, Open, Playlist, Pwned, Play, Repeat all, Shuffle yes.” I throw the audio player to the right screen and the room is filled with a heavy techno vibe. A simple search yields HDI's main website. I bring it up and tab over to the new hires section.

“What are you doing? I thought you were good at this. Can't you just hack into it?” Eve asks.

“Eve, hacking is exploiting weakness, and despite what you have seen on TV, it's not that cut and paste. Often times it's easier to let someone hang themselves than to actually do trial and error. Right now I am fishing for a noob.” I regain my focus and search for a new recruit. The name, Ted Wilkons, jumps out at me immediately. New hire, in accounting, recent grad, yep that’s my bitch.

“Open Smurfer. New Message, Ted.Wilkons.HDI.com, from [email protected]. Subject: New update

Greetings all:

Due to a recent update, we must apply a hot fix. Normally we could apply this for you, but there is a problem with authenticating it. We apologize for the inconvenience, please download the attached file. Upon downloading, simply double click it, it will ask you for confirmation, simply click yes, and then restart your PC. If there are any questions, please call my extension (255). Thank you so much for your cooperation and happy holidays.

IT Support:

Greg Williams”

I have used this technique before to install backdoor software on remote machines. Being the new guy at work, he will most likely not suspect the email and will follow the instructions quickly. It didn’t take long for the software to become active. The information started streaming to my screen within just a few minutes. Once I had the entire company email directory ready, I loaded it into smurfer. I picked five random male names and used Ted's email address to forward a favorite picture of mine. I added a few forwards and junk email addresses as recipients. Then, I changed the subject line to make it more appealing to open. Most men will not hesitate to open forwarded email from other men because more often than not it's porn. The image is of a fat chick riding a bike, but embedded in the image is also the code for my backdoor program. Now, I just need to wait for it to get forwarded around the office.

“Trap is set, now we wait.” I say.

“How long do you think it will take, Haus?” Reese locks his eye's on mine. I can tell he isn’t a man used to waiting.

“Shouldn't take more than a few days, and my program will be tracking emails, instant messages, and incoming VOIP calls. The longer it runs, the more effective it becomes. The more pc's it infects the better the data mine will be. If we are lucky, it will find its way into phones, laptops, and home pc's.”

“I will leave you to your work, agent. Your ID has been updated to give you access to CCC along with your room in the medical wing. I expect some results by the end of the week.” Reese spins around and walks out of the room. He walks like a man on a mission, someone who doesn’t know the meaning of relaxing.

“We should head back to the medical wing and get some more physical therapy done. We need you to be walking soon. The sooner the better.” Eve says.