Turing's Delirium (27 page)

His fingers drum on the parquet floor to the beat of a song by Air, a French group he has been listening to lately. The bones in his hand ache. Maybe he has carpal tunnel syndrome? He has read about the symptoms on the Internet: fingers, hands, and wrists falling asleep, tingling, and aching—all symptoms he has. It should be easy to fix the problem, but he doesn't want to go for a checkup. He doesn't think there are specialists in Rio for a syndrome that is caused by overuse of a keyboard. Or perhaps it is the panic that he associates with clinics and hospitals: he is afraid of losing control, has dreamed that they anesthetize him and he never wakes up. Or it might be just one more step in his progressive abandonment of all physical contact with other human beings.

He sometimes has panic attacks: he will become paralyzed, unable to type a single letter for the rest of his life. And all before he even turns twenty-one.

He sighs, his face lit up in the night by the blue light of the computer monitor. Violent winds pound the windows. He is wearing an alpaca sweater but still feels cold. He has come a very long way in a short time. Now he has to turn down volunteers who want to form part of the Restoration. He does it all online, by means of avatars, and has no interest whatsoever in meeting the people who control them offline. It becomes continually more complicated and requires a good nose and extreme paranoia, since there is no shortage of security agents who want to infiltrate the group. It is alarmingly easy to invent identities in Playground. That same ease provides him with a defense: he uses over fifteen identities to constantly review both candidates for the Restoration and those who are already in it. His suspicious inner circle—his few trusted avatars—do the same. There have been a few infiltrators, but he has been able to eliminate them in time. He sleeps little, less and less every day, but he knows that the only way to preserve the integrity of the Restoration is by means of microscopic attention to detail. Only leaders who are willing to take nothing for granted survive. A little paranoia—or a lot of it—never hurts.

He takes off his earphones and stands up, stretching muscles that are in need of exercise; his joints crack like the sound of a broom handle breaking. Feeling his way in the darkness, he heads to the refrigerator to look for food: hot-and-sour soup in a take-out container. He empties it into a bowl and puts it in the microwave. He has not been out of the apartment for days. His scraggly beard and long bangs are both in need of a trim.

He looks out the windows at the vague outline of the Government Citadel on the hilltop. The local offices of the ministry of information. If only they knew that his computer stores as much information about the government as all of the computers in all of the buildings in the Government Citadel.

On a table are file folders containing all the information he has downloaded from the Internet regarding the bid for the power plant in Rio Fugitivo. The company that will be in charge, GlobaLux, is an Italian-American consortium. To Kandinsky, this is the most vulgar symbol of Montenegro's neoliberal policies. In a desperate race toward total privatization, the government has carried on the work of its predecessors and relinquished control of sectors that are strategic to the national economy. Not many are left. The railway has been passed into Chilean hands; the telephone company is held by the Spanish; the national airline was owned by Brazilians for a while but fell back into the hands of a local group—backed, rumors say, by an Argentine holding company. The Americans are looking covetously at the natural gas and petroleum and now, together with the Italians, will have control of the electricity in Rio Fugitivo. This final blow, in Kandinsky's opinion, is an indication of the government's complete abdication in the face of the forces of globalization. When there is nothing left to sell, the Restoration will reach out from the virtual world of Playground into the world that sustains reality.

It is time to go out and initiate the Resistance.

"Go out" is just a metaphor. It is time to go online and initiate the Resistance.

***

Ever since his time with Phiber Outkast, Kandinsky has done everything possible to erase his prints from the world. He does not even go out with women now. Even though he misses spending time with them, and though he is sure that by shying away from them he has lost something very important, he is convinced that the mission he has set for himself makes any kind of contact dangerous. Anonymity, he reminds himself when he feels like wandering through the streets of Playground in search of avatars that will lead him to women. He is a twenty-first-century monk, his apartment a monastery, the computer an instrument that allows him to isolate himself without isolation. He should shave his head, put on a tunic, and turn his movement into a cult.

It helps that no one knows him. The mystery of BoVe in Playground is due in part to the fact that no one knows who controls him. But how can he mount an attack against GlobaLux and the government without knowing the hackers who will form part of the Resistance in real life? Can he simply trust those who control the Restoration avatars in Playground? Impossible. There are some whose real identity is not at all like their behavior in Playground. Playground is a fantasy world, a universe where one can try on multiple identities, wear them as if taking part in a huge street carnival, and take them off when the party is over.

Late at night he walks through the rainy streets of the semi-deserted city. He arrives at his parents' and approaches the house. There is a silhouette against the window: his brother. He finally confirms what his intuition told him before: he has embarked on a road of no return. They have grown apart, and there is no way he can one day play the role of the prodigal son, as he has hoped for so long.

And yet he is fighting for them. Fighting to give his parents' jobs dignity and worth. Fighting to give his brother a future. One day they will understand.

When he returns to his apartment, he will have decided that it is not yet time to show his face. After hours of hacking into the files of those who are in charge of the Restoration's avatars, he will come to the conclusion that he can trust four of them. One is Rafael Corso, a Rat who works in the vicinity of a shopping center in Bohemia. Another is Peter Baez, a computer student who works for Playground. The other two are Nelson Vivas and Freddy Padilla; both earn their living working for the online edition of
El Posmo.

That same night he sends them an encrypted e-mail message asking them to meet him in a secret IRC chatroom in Playground. There he tells them of his plans. All of them accept without Kandinsky's needing to insist.

 

The group that Kandinsky has named the Resistance begins to operate a few weeks later. The first attacks are aimed at large corporations: a virus in Coca-Cola's accounting system in Buenos Aires, a DoS attack on AOL-Brazil and Federal Express in Santa Cruz. Lana Nova, who has just been given an upgrade and now has twice the number of her original facial expressions, reports that the only concrete thing the police know is that the attacks originate in Rio Fugitivo. Some editorials proudly point out that in terms of technical ability, "our youth have no need to envy those in the so-called First World."

Months go by. GlobaLux takes control of the electricity in Rio and immediately decrees an average rate hike of 80 percent (some companies have their rates hiked by 200 percent). The government pays no attention to the first signs of civil unrest, violent demonstrations outside the GlobaLux offices. Soon after, it is announced on the news that a Coalition Party has been formed in Rio Fugitivo, a heterogeneous group of political parties, unions, industrial workers, and campesinos that is willing to confront the government.

Kandinsky, who has decided to unite the Resistance's fight with the Coalition's, laughs to find himself in such strange company. Ideologically, he thinks that his fight goes beyond the joint struggle with the Coalition. However, the truth is that teenage hackers unable to face reality except from behind a computer monitor are marching side by side with weathered unionists holding dynamite in their hands at street protests. Unknowingly, old and new ways of fighting join forces against the same enemy.

***

Sitting in front of his computer, Kandinsky plans his next move. The fingers on his left hand ache. He should rest for a few days, but he won't; he believes he is capable of overcoming physical pain. He feels powerful, illuminated by a divine mission. Nothing can stop him. He will do what needs to be done, whatever it costs, whoever falls.

G
RAY CLOUDS WHIZ PAST
. Thunder can be heard in the distance. Lightning illuminates the sky for an instant. Immobile ... Between these stinking sheets. Pissing myself ... Saliva dripping from my half-open mouth. I have to appear as if death is near...

It won't arrive. It won't ever arrive.

I am an electric ant...

I've been in this situation many times. A knife sliced through my stomach five centuries ago. A bullet exploded in my head in the nineteenth century. I persist ... I don't know what else to do...

Turing left quite a while ago ... Luckily ... He will spend hours mulling over my words. As if they made sense. Maybe they do ... I can't see it. My memory is failing. Which is strange. When it's my own memories ... And not something else. Such as. A parasitic memory of one of the other beings that I was ... That I am.

I'm left with no one but myself. As usual. Exhausted by my own ideas. Incapable of being surprised by my own feelings...

I am many ... But I am only one...

Historians always focus on those who led wars. They think that the ones who ordered the movements of troops are the ones most responsible ... For the course of events ... They also focus on the soldiers. The fate of a nation can be found in their bravery or cowardice. They're not very interested in cryptologists ... Those who cipher and those who decipher. Office work isn't terribly exciting ... All that math ... Too much logic...

And yet they have determined the course that wars have taken.

This was never as true as in World War I. During the day ferocious battles were fought ... Five hundred thousand Germans killed. If we include Verdun and the Somme. Three hundred thousand French ... One hundred and seventy thousand British...

But the real battle was fought by cryptographers and cryptanalysts ... The radio had been invented. The military was fascinated ... By the possibility of communication between two points without the need for wires ... That meant there were more messages. It also meant they could all be intercepted ... The French were the best. We French were the best. We intercepted a million of the Germans' words over the course of the war. A code was created ... And deciphered ... Another was created ... And deciphered ... And so on. A war without cryptographic discoveries goes down in history. All good intentions ... That ended in failure. Handing over all of their secrets.

During the war I was the Frenchman Georges Painvin ... I worked for the Bureau du Chiffre in Paris ... My job was to look for weak points in the Germans' codes. One of the most important was ADFGX ... They began to use it in March 1918. A little before their big offensive that same month. It was an intricate mixture of substitution and transposition procedures ... Since the code was transmitted in Morse. The letters ADFGX were keys. You see, they didn't resemble one another at all in Morse code. So there was no possibility of confusion.

In March 1918, Paris was about to fall. The Germans had come to within sixty-five miles. They were preparing for the final attack ... All that was left for us Allies was the possibility of penetrating the ADFGX code ... And thereby learning where they would concentrate their attack.

And I ... Georges Painvin ... Dedicated all my efforts to just that. I lost weight. Two pounds. Five pounds. Twenty pounds. Thirty-five pounds ... Until the night of June 2, when I managed to decipher a message written in that code ... Which then allowed other messages to be deciphered.

One of them urgently requested munitions ... The message had been sent from a location fifty miles from Paris ... Between Montdidier and Compiegne. If the Germans needed munitions there ... It was because they would attack from that area. Our reconnaissance planes confirmed it. Allied soldiers were sent to reinforce that section of the front ... The Germans had lost the element of surprise. And then they lost the battle.

My throat is filled with phlegm ... It's ... Hard ... To breathe ... All of my passages are narrowing. Even someone who is immortal. Feels pain ... And the unmistakable sensation of imminent death.

I am an electric ant ... Connected to these tubes. I'd like to escape. Jump through the window to freedom ... As I once did.

This waiting for another body exhausts me ... Who will I be incarnated as this time? In whom will the spirit of Cryptanalysis live on?

Perhaps an adolescent, by himself in a recreation room. With a crossword puzzle ... Acrostics ... Anagrams ... Or doing calculations on a computer. Trying to create his own algorithms ... An algorithm that will get to the root of his thoughts. There's something artificial about our intelligence ... Or perhaps the artificial intelligence of machines is what allows us to understand our own ... It's the prism through which we see ourselves.

I think I just heard the sound of a gun being fired with a silencer ... But I can't do anything. The guard who was at the door has shot someone. Or maybe they shot him ... Maybe they're coming for me. I wouldn't be surprised. Nothing surprises me ... Except the long wait ... How long the wait is...

I don't know where I was a child. I don't know if I was a child.

I worked at Kaufbeuren.

It's raining. And thundering. Perhaps the shot I heard was thunder. But no. They're impossible to confuse.

But what Painvin did. What I did. Wasn't as important for the course of events ... As what happened with the Zimmermann telegram. You could, in fact, say that this particular deciphering altered the outcome of the war. And no one would argue ... Not even historians who know nothing of cryptography. Or perhaps they would.