Chasm Waxing: A Startup, Cyber-Thriller (3 page)

“
Yes!” replied Becca. She
was excited that Shields was
clearly
following her
presentation.

“
For example,” said the
General, “a G-Agent could be put on a drone and talk to
G-Bridge.  And GAMESPACE can be any
game,
although right now,
all you support is the Unreal Engine.  Do I have that
right?”

Becca grinned broadly,
“Rig—” 

“
That’s exactly right,
sir,” said Samantha. “We’re a gamification company.  We
want to support all types of games in GAMESPACE, and varied
scenarios in REALSPACE.”

“
Outstanding,” replied the
General.  “So Becca, tell me more about
GAMESPACE.  Walk me
through
the demo I saw of Castle
Gecko.”

“
Ok,” said Becca, as she
left the whiteboard and returned to the conference table. “Castle
Gecko in GAMESPACE represents the Gecko test network in REALSPACE.”
 Becca’s pace of speech increased and her face
brightened.  Becca loved the world of Castle
Gecko.  

The beautiful castle, the
trebuchets, the swords, the armor, the
orc faces
; Becca enjoyed creating
everything.  The detail—the sheer number of pixels she had to
render in VR—boggled her mind.  Her job was to use the game
depicted in the VR headset
to
completely block out reality
.  A
VR game was successful when the Gamer felt like they were more
present in the VR
world,
than they were in the physical world.

Becca started hacking when
she was 10.  Hacking offered her a way to escape the pain
of her mom’s death from ovarian cancer.  Over time, she
moved from a hacker that ran someone else’s software for attacks,
to writing her
own
programs.  

Becca liked the concreteness of
writing software.  Unlike the real world, she could always
find the answer.  While other girls were playing house and
dressing up dolls, Becca was infiltrating computer networks.
 But, after 15 years, hacking and programming were becoming
rote.

Something happened to
Becca when she created Castle Gecko.  The process of
imagining
a world
and filling it with characters was
cathartic. Or, maybe it was the romance of the castle and
envisioning a prince charming?  Something that was dead
in 
Becca
was coming back to
life
.

Becca continued, “As Team
Bravo moved about Castle Gecko, their
top priority
was to make sure
everyone on the test network could do their work. When a network
threat—like a
virus
—is identified, a couple of big
things happen. The G-Agent talks to
G-Bridge. And
G-Bridge
communicates
to
the game engine to spawn the
appropriate
monster or situation for
the attack vector.

“
That’s the epitome of
gamification software; it makes a game out of standard tasks. Like
when you check in at a restaurant to earn a badge on A-Friend or
Foursquare. We’ve just taken gamification to a whole new
level.
Typically
, all the cybersecurity tasks
would be performed by a human security administrator. Those
administrators have to watch the network around the clock. That
costs a lot of money.

“
Once the threat
is neutralized
on the network in REALSPACE, and the monster
is killed
in
GAMESPACE, Team Bravo can go back to collecting treasure in
GAMESPACE. The treasure they find during the campaign is part of
the Bitcoins they earn.

“
They also get Bitcoins as
a daily wage, for achieving objectives, and for completing the
campaign. There are lots of rewards to motivate them to stay
engaged. We switch teams every eight hours. To ensure they keep
coming back, we pay the teams at the end of the week.”

“
First, tell your grandma
what Bitcoins are?” said the General, with a wry smile.

Becca rolled her eyes and smirked.
“Bitcoins are digital money. You can email the money to anyone in
the world.”

“
How do I get
Bitcoins?”

“
There are two ways. You
can convert currency into
Bitcoins,
or someone gives you their
Bitcoins. You don’t need any personal information to send the
Bitcoins. All you need is their Bitcoin address. And they don’t
have any of your personal information. The transactions are
completely
anonymous;
well, pseudo-anonymous. Something called, the
‘Blockchain,’ allows every transaction to be viewed by anyone in
the world. There’s just no personally identifiable information
associated with the
transaction
.”

The General frowned. He
stared at Samantha menacingly. “So who is Team Bravo? How much are
they making? Are they Gamification employees…and what about taxes?
Geez, I can see the headline now, ‘NSA Director serves on board
of
company
that thwarts US tax laws.’”

Samantha gulped. “Like
with a lot of new technology, there are some
gray
areas here. Remember
when ride-hailing companies—Uber, Lyft, and Didi—first launched? Or
driver-less cars? Or house and apartment sharing through Airbnb?
Laws always have to catch up with the technology.

“
I’ve spoken at length
with our lawyers and they believe that it’s the responsibility of
the Bitcoin recipient to declare the income and pay the income
taxes. Our lawyers also believe that Gamers are not our employees.
I’ll call them again and see if they can suggest any
alternatives.

“
Just to use this demo as
an example, the most anyone made was the level 19 Sorcerer. And she
made under $800. You can see that paying a Gamer is much cheaper
than paying a security administrator.”

Becca admired how quickly Samantha
thought on her feet. She wanted to emulate that trait in her
mentor. They were close, and like Becca, Samantha lost her mom at a
young age.

“
Do you know the Gamers?”
asked the General.

“
No,” replied Samantha.
“They need to remain completely anonymous to us—and us to them.
Gecko Insurance Company will never buy our
software
,
if the Gamers are aware they’re traipsing around the Gecko
network fighting monsters and rogue routers.

“
Going forward, this is a
huge issue for our business model. We have human Gamers playing
games in GAMESPACE. At the same
time,
these
Gamers are
also performing work in
REALSPACE. But they don’t know they’re
working
in REALSPACE. And, we’re
not paying them for work in REALSPACE. We’re just rewarding
them
for playing the game in
GAMESPACE
.”

“
Maybe we just need robots
to perform the job,” said the General, in half-jest. “I want to
talk to your attorneys. You’re using Loreal & Hammer,
right?”

Samantha nodded. Loreal
& Hammer was a shadowy law firm. General Shields recommended
the
firm
to all the Accelerator’s portfolio
companies.

“
Please schedule a secure
teleconference with them during next week’s board
meeting.”

“
Yes, sir,” replied
Samantha.

General Shields’ cell
phone buzzed. “Excuse
me.
I
’ve got to respond to this
text.”

6:05 p.m. (EDT), Friday, July 24, 2020
- Columbia, MD

Suite 601, General
Shields’ Office, Defense Innovations Accelerator

General Bernard F. Shields
stood an even six foot, with broad shoulders and a square jaw. He
was in his
early
fifties
, very young for such a
high-ranking General. Shields sat at the same English Oak desk his
father had
used as
an Air Force General during Viet Nam.

Most Generals who
commanded cyber-forces
were
“nerdy.” General Shields was not. He saw himself
as a digital Patton. He didn’t
walk;
he sauntered. Shields leaned back
in his chair and rested his feet
on
the desk.
Numerous
photos of the General
with famous people adorned the paneled walls. A
special section
was
dedicated
to his
family,
including his wife of 31 years, Lisa Shields.

Pictures
of
his son,
Charlie Shields, filled his office. The largest
photo
was General Shields’
favorite. The
blown-up
snapshot depicted Charlie’s Navy SEAL graduation
in 2014. Navy SEALs
were widely
regarded
as the most elite special
operations unit in the world. SEALs conducted extremely
dangerous
missions,
like killing Osama Bin Laden.

In the photo, General
Shields was in full Air Force blue uniform, covered with medals
and
numerous
brightly colored insignias. Lisa snapped the picture.
Of course,
Lisa
wasn’t in the
image
, but the General could still feel
her joy.
At the time of the
photo,
Shields was merely a
three-star.

Charlie wore a gleaming white Navy
uniform. He was hugging his dad and pointing to his golden SEAL
Trident. His badge signified that Charlie was now a member of that
elite community of special operations warriors. Both men’s faces
beamed with love and patriotic pride.

General Shields returned his wife’s
text with a call.

“
Bernie, I’ve been
sleeping all day. I just wanted to apologize for last night. I
think it was the combination of Prozac and alcohol. You’ve told me
I shouldn’t mix
them,
and I keep doing it. I’m going to try to get back
into
church
. I’m sorry I yelled at you, I—”

“
Lisa, I know. I keep
telling myself the pain will end.
Yet, every
day it’s back. It’s like a
rain
soaked coat hanging in
a
steam room. It won’t
dry. And
we can’t take it
off. We just got to keep pressing forward.”

“
I know you’re busy,” said
Lisa. “I know you’re working your tail off to kill those bastards.
Get them Bernie.”

“
I’m trying.”

“
Thank you for
understanding.
”

As the General ended the
call, he could hear the relief in Lisa’s voice. He didn’t share
Lisa’s passion for
church
. He felt God was for the weak of
mind. But, he was
in favor
of
anything that helped her constructively
deal with the pain.

Shields gaze
was drawn
back
towards Charlie’s picture.

Tears streamed down his
face. The General slogged to the wet bar in his office. DIRNSA did
two quick shots of
Tovaritch!
Premium Russian Vodka
. It was the
only Russian he liked. He dried his eyes
with
a cocktail napkin.

In February 2016, a year
before General Shields accepted the position as DIRNSA, Charlie
Shields
was beheaded by the Caliphate,
while it
was still known
as ISIS
. The Caliphate
was a group of radical Sunni-Islamists. They initially emerged from
Al Qaeda in Iraq—AQI
.

Under the leadership of
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,
AQI
led
the Sunni-Iraqi
insurgency
, baiting
Shia-Iraqis into civil war. In 2006, Zarqawi was killed by a
500-pound
bomb.
Ultimately, AQI was decimated by General David Petraeus’ Iraq War
Surge. AQI went underground until the Americans left in
2011.

Then they reconstituted
themselves, filling the vacuum created by the absence of US forces
in the region and the Syrian civil war. The ISIS backstory
surprised
many. ISIS had
seemed to appear out of nowhere in 2014,
capturing vast tracts of Syria and Iraq.
This included
Iraq’s second
largest city of Mosul. In early 2017—the organization known at
various times as AQI, ISIL, ISIS, and the Islamic State—rebranded
itself as the Caliphate.

Special Warfare Operator,
1
^st
Class, Charlie Shields was abducted while advising ‘moderate’
Sunni rebels
attempting to
overthrow the Shia-led, Syrian
government.

The moderates
weren’t
really
moderate
.