Chasm Waxing: A Startup, Cyber-Thriller (26 page)

“
I hope not,” replied
Josh, emotionless. The imagery of the question caught him by
surprise, elevating him above the situation for a moment. He
looked
around
his
apartment
and seemed a bit shocked by the scene himself. He
sighed deeply.

“
Becca, what did you mean?
Notice for what?”

“
I quit my job so I could
be your maid.” Becca laughed. “I’m
kidding,
but this place does look
terrible.
Anyway
, you know how I’ve told you that
weird things have been occurring at Gamification—that I’ve sensed
that Gamification and the NSA were up to some crazy stuff? And, how
Samantha has cut me out of the loop for the past few months? For
the
first time ever, I
wasn’t even invited
to Demo Day! Ali stood in for me. Today, it all came to a
head.

“
I think Samantha is
replacing Castle Chevaliers with
Fog of
War
in GAMESPACE. In
REALSPACE,
I
believe
that the
Gamers will control Swarmbots. If the Swarmbots
aren’t lethal
yet, I’m sure
they will be soon. I don’t want any part of it. I was hired to
create software for a gamification company, specializing in
cybersecurity
.”

“
They’re
gamifying
death?”
asked
Josh. What makes you think they are going to arm
them? All of Swarmbot’s marketing
indicates
that they just sell
surveillance drones.”

“
Josh, have you ever
played
Fog of War
? It’s a first-person shooter. The goal of the game is to
kill.”

“
You’re right.” He
considered the situation for a moment. “Do you have a problem with
the
Swarmbots
or the fact that Samantha didn’t trust you with the
information?”

“
I don’t know,” replied
Becca, laconically. “Probably both.
It’s just so disappointing,” she stammered.
“I took the job because I looked up to Samantha. We had a ton
in
common
. I thought she could teach me so much. I worked
really
hard for
her. I wanted to make
Gamification
a
success. But she stopped trusting me.
When I approached her to express my concerns, she tried to make me
think I
was going
nuts
.”

“
Becca, I’m sorry. I know
how stressed out you’ve
been
. I haven’t been there for you.
I’ve been in my
own
little world.” He hugged Becca,
tightly.

“
Thanks, Josh. I can find
a coding job wherever I want. I’ve got some savings. After my
two
weeks,
I think I’ll just take some time. Maybe I’ll visit my dad. On
second thought, forget that. I’ll find something to do.
So
…that was my
day.
What’s up with you?
W
hy do you look so
anxious?”

“
I also have a terrible
feeling. Things at CyberAI aren’t right. Nothing about the place
feels
kosher
. I’ve never been a CEO before, but I’ve been getting
bizarre
vibes
from General Shields. Ever since I offhandedly mentioned the Ark
with him, he’s been
an entirely
different man
.
I should never have brought it up. The Ark has changed
everything.

“
Today, he invited Vish to
our monthly meeting. Vish has never attended our Demo Day before.
My own CTO then proceeded to rake me over the coals about the
location of the source code for the deep learning
software.”

“
What are you
worried about
?
Aren’t you the CEO?”

“
Yes, but the combined
equity of Vish and the Accelerator is more than mine. We all have
an equal vote on the board. I think they can get rid of me with a
simple vote.”

Josh’s phone buzzed.

Becca
watched
Josh’s face
implode.

“
What’s wrong?”

He stood in silence. He read, and
re-read the email.

“
It’s an email serving me
notice of a board meeting on Friday. The agenda calls for a
discussion of general business
items. It demands that I
bring the
source code to the meeting. Crap.
This is
bad. I need to call my lawyer,
now.”

Josh left a distressed voicemail for
his attorney.

“
I’m sorry, Josh. That
place is insane. I think General Shields has flipped his lid. The
stuff he’s doing has to be illegal. What’s the deal with the source
code? They don’t have your
deep
learning
software
?”

“
No, I didn’t want
to commit the code. The General’s demeanor has been so
baffling.
You’ve seen the improvements
from the
deep
learning algorithm. The genetic algorithms that the
supercomputer selected made the neural network perform even better
than I anticipated.

“
Everything improved—they
cyber-recognition, the market predictions; and I know it’s
early, but
the
Cowboys are undefeated. Most of all
…Becca,
I’ve got to show you this. Do
you remember where the AI placed the Ark last time?”

“
Yes, it was
a broad
region
of the Middle East.”

“
Right, now look at this.”
Josh handed Becca her VR gear. In an
instant,
they were both back in
TextWorld.

“
TextWorld, show me the
current location of the Ark of the Covenant,” said Josh.
This time,
the
map depicted a much smaller area. It only included portions of
Israel and Jordan. Whereas it used to contain parts of six
countries, now it included only
slivers
of two. Specifically,
the
map
depicted
the West Bank, Jerusalem,
the northern part of the Dead Sea, the Jordanian desert to the west
of the Dead Sea, and the area around Amman, Jordan.

“
It’s getting better and
better,” said Josh. “My AI is learning. At the NSA supercomputer
center, not only did I find the best genetic algorithms, but I
started training the neural network
on
different languages.
I began
with
Hebrew,
ancient
Greek, and Russian. I got help from NSA
linguists on the Hebrew and
Russian.
I just finished the code to add
ancient Aramaic, Arabic, and Farsi. But I haven’t compiled it yet.
I know I’ll have to work through some bugs before it
works.”

“
This is
incredible
,”
said Becca. “Every day, you’re getting closer to finding something
that
evaporated
from the face of the earth over 2500 years. I
understand why you don’t want the General or Vish to have this
code.”

Josh nodded in agreement. “Yep, now
that I think about it, his plan has probably always been to
integrate my AI with the Swarmbots. Then, he wouldn’t even need
GAMESPACE. He’d have fully autonomous robots.”

Becca was troubled.
“You’re probably right. Josh, this is scary. You can’t give them
this source code. They’re going to hack you and steal
it,
if they
haven’t already.”

“
I know. The source code
repository is on this blade.” Josh pointed to the server in the
rack
closest
to his desk. “It’s not connected to the Internet. However, I
did have to take my code on the laptop to connect to the
supercomputers. They could have pilfered the source code there, but
I made sure I was only working on certain modules. Not everything
was on my laptop at the same time. Also, I was running a software
firewall. I think the bigger problem is the log files on the
supercomputers. I’m sure they
recorded
all my activity.

“
Can you erase the
logs
?”
asked
Josh, semi-hopefully.
“I know
you’re a
great hacker.”

Becca laughed. “No. Even if I
could access the log server, I’m sure they use a hashing algorithm
on the logs. The minute I deleted your queries from the log, the
system would recognize that the file changed, because the hash
changed.

“
We’ve got a little over
24 hours to get the code to a safe
place,
if we can find one. Then you’re
going to have to destroy all these servers and laptops. It’s not
enough just to break the hard drives. We’ll need to drive nails
through them. Absolutely every electronic component—including
your
laptop
keyboards and touchpads—need to be destroyed.”

“
Damn.
I hate
to lose those DGX-1s.
But why the keyboards?” asked Josh.

“
In some
laptops,
there’s
a buffer that captures data. You’re trying to hide information from
the most sophisticated hacking and computer forensics organization
in the world. The NSA is even better than the FBI. Our first step
is to encrypt the source code. Then, we need to figure out how to
get the source code out of this apartment. After that, we need to
destroy your hardware.

“
What about those?” asked
Becca, pointing to two other flat screen monitors with open browser
windows. One of the browsers displayed Wikipedia articles regarding
the Temple and the Ark. The other contained the results from an
Atom search of, ‘Dome of the Rock.’

“
I haven’t done any coding
on those computers. They’re just for research.”

“
Alright,” said Becca.
“But, they’re able to review everything you’ve done online. I’m
going to use a vacation day tomorrow and help
you. By the time
you go to
the board
meeting,
we’ll know the source code is safe. Or at
least,
safer.”

Becca and Josh spent the
rest of the evening executing their plan. He bought a burner phone
and called Jared Adler. Josh told his dad he was in trouble. It was
the first time they had spoken in over two years. Surprisingly,
Jared was
warm. He assured Josh
that he’d
do anything to help. Jared
sounded happy to hear Josh’s voice.

Josh also reached his
attorney. The lawyer was not as encouraging as his father. “That’s
not
good
,” said his counsel.

“
How much is that
deep
legal
insight going to cost me?” Josh asked Becca,
sarcastically.

Encryption of the source code ran well
into Thursday morning. No physical medium was large enough to hold
all of the encrypted source code. It was too big for USBs, flash
drives, or DVDs. Josh didn’t have a Blu-ray burner.

Kishore Reddy, the CTO of
Adler Capital, provided Josh with an encrypted VPN
connection,
so
that he could send the information to the company intranet. Josh
told Kishore to disconnect the server from the Internet when the
upload
finished. Luckily, Josh had
opted for the fastest broadband package avail
able from his Internet service provider to outfit his
apartment.

Josh was afraid that the source code
might get corrupted in the VPN transfer, so he bought a laptop.
They copied the encrypted source code over to the new computer.
They wanted to take the laptop and store it in a safe deposit box.
But they ran out of time.

It was Friday.

9:00 a.m. (EDT), Friday, October 2,
2020 – Columbia, MD

Suite 602, Conference
Room, Defense Innovations Accelerator

Josh sat with his hands clasped near
his face. 11 months ago, this very room had been the location of
his greatest personal triumph. Josh was so proud to sign the
document that welcomed CyberAI into Defense Innovations
Accelerator’s very first class. Josh accomplished the selection
without a single conversation with his father.

Over the course of the
last nine months, Josh grew to admire—
even love
—General Shields. He
longed for his praise and acceptance. In fact, it was the quest for
the General’s approval that led Josh down this path. The AI was not
improving quickly enough. Now it was. Why wasn’t General Shields
pleased?

Josh was sick to his
stomach. If he’d eaten
yesterday,
he’d have vomited all over
the table.

Vish Kumar was seated
directly opposite him. Neither one said a word. Vish became a
multi-millionaire when
Graphica
Intelligence
was acquired
. Up
until two months ago, Vish was Josh’s most trusted confidant. Then,
Josh began noticing Vish sucking up to the General during board
meetings. Josh also discerned
that
Vish was saying derogatory things
behind his back in the office.