Magic World (working title): Chapter 10 part 7

The gear selection process for a trip like the one Gary was about to take was a long drawn out affair, and normally he would try to make sure that he had exactly everything he would need to complete the assigned task.

But time was of the essence and he couldn't afford to hedge over whether or not the quad-copter drone would actually be needed. He had been in enough situations where it had been useful, and too many where it would have been useful if only he'd had it, so it came.  Same went for the rest of his gear, from scanners, to oddball interface adapters, to arcane CPU software, there was always a possibility that something would come in handy.

Hacking, after all, was not just done on computers, it was a process that began, and ended with people, and how they dealt with computers. Therefore anything you could do with a computer, you had to know how that would affect the user.

Which is why he had The Van. He called her Buttercup.

She was a white Plain Jane on the outside, but like with most ladies, it was what was on the inside that really counted. Not only was there a state-of-the-art system with every wireless connection method known to man, and a few he had come up with himself that were beyond ridiculous.

But that didn't mean that outside was all bad. The sides had e-paper panels which allowed him to display any logo for any business he wanted, real or imaginary, and there was an automated license plate changing system, with plates for all 50 states, and duplicates of some, like Illinois, California, Florida, or New York.

He smiled at her contentedly, then opened the back door and secured the tub of gear he'd brought into the parking garage from his apartment. Then he walked around to the front of the cab, and climbed up to the seat, which as usual for the smaller races, was raised a little along with the pedals. He set the GPS, and drove the van out of the parking garage, then activated the auto-drive. He'd had to work a little harder to liberate the tech specs and the program from the current owners, as of course they were an internet company, but the task was not insurmountable, and in the meantime he'd uncovered a few exploits in their firewalls, and in their operating system software.

When he'd given them that information, anonymously of course, then told them what it was he had copied, he promised not to give the info away, nor sell it, but only to keep it for personal use, if in exchange they promised to keep providing him with software updates.

Sometimes it helped to be a Digital Native in the Internet Age.

Magic World (working title): Chapter 10 part 6

Sorry about the lack of updates over the past couple of days. This Upper Respiratory Infection (aka Cold) has really been kicking my ass.

However on the plus side Codine is Awesome. Totally totally awesome. Sleepy, yes, which of course is why I haven't been updating.

So then let's get back into it!


* * * * * * * *

Gary went up to his current apartment penthouse, which was just south of Lincoln Park, off Lake Shore Drive, and had a fantastic view of Lake Michigan.

When the previous occupants moved to San Diego a few months ago, the listing somehow failed to show up on the listing agencies website, or in the classified ads if the Tribune (or any other paper) though the listing agency somehow didn't realize this fact. After a month they'd only had a few disinterested inquiries, but nothing serious.

Finally after a month and a half an "offshore business interest" made an offer which was about 25% less than the asking price, which was already mid-seven figures. The listing agency declined the offer without even making a counter.

A few days later a buyer that sounded interested asked about the "curse," then backed out of the deal a few days before the close of the deal. When the listing agency checked into this "curse" they found several stories on the internet about a supposed haunting, and about several rumored deaths that had occurred at that location. The stories dated back several years, but the listing agency had never had any record of any killings, or hauntings. Only 2 people had ever died in that apartment. One a 78 year old man who had a heart attack while entertaining two young ladies, who, when taken together added up to about half his age.

The other was a lady who had slipped while getting out of the shower and broken her neck on the sink, a freak accident. The police and the coroner had ruled out any foul play or even any suspicious activity, it was just an accident, plain and simple.

But the websites had listed tons of other deaths as well as those two, and though none of them could be proven, no prospective clients looked too hard before declining.

So when the offshore holding company called back with an offer that was 20% below list price, there wasn't even a counter offer, the agency accepted the deal, and pushed through the paperwork as quickly as possible.

Gary would have felt a little bad about that if he hadn't known how much of a commission the agents got from these deals. On the other hand he did the agency a few favors by ferreting out a nasty worm in their system which had been stealing client and agent information, and uncovering and exposing that one of the agents had been skimming, to the tune of several million dollars per year. He figured in the end the agency came out ahead in the end.

And the owner of the penthouse made their money by investing in and buying clothes and shoes and other items from Chinese sweatshops that employed absurdly underpaid child labor. The death rate in those shops made Gary shiver a little in his soul. He was working on some way to fix that, but the issue was... troublesome. But at any rate they would never get paid for the penthouse. By the time they realized that the payment reports were spoofed, and not genuine, it would be far too late, and Gary would have moved out a long time ago. Then the holding company would fall apart at the merest glance, and then the whole thing would be wrapped up in court forever before they would get the apartment back, if they ever did.

But that had nothing to do with what was going on now. Right now he had to get ready to go to...

He stopped and thought about that for a second. He knew that Raul had died in a storage park in Terre Haute Indiana. Since finding that out he had read up on everything he could about the place, though there wasn't a ton to know. There was a University that specialized in metaphysics and metaphysical engineering, aka "Magic" and "Practical Application thereof." He wondered if that had anything to do with it.

He didn't know a ton about magic, except what was written in Wikipedia about the subject, which was pretty far over his head. He had some vague notion that it somehow resembled computer engineering, except it required a lot more in the way of memorization, using mnemonics, and a lot of math, and chemestry, and formulas, which were a lot like computer code from what he could see. The layouts were novel, but most of the alchemy code he had seen seemed sloppy to him, though there was probably something he simply didn't understand about it.

He read up about the University, which was actually the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, which had a reputation for being one of the finest engineering schools in the country, if not THE best. But he couldn't see anything that would explain what was going on.

So he focused on the other thing he knew for sure.

"Sonka," Jackie had said. He searched it phonetically first, adding the term Terre Haute, and immediately got a hit.

Sonka Irish Pub. 4 1/2 stars on Yelp. Well wasn't that nice. For someone who was acting so paranoid Jackie wasn't really trying to cover his tracks was he?

Or was he? Maybe it was that obvious on purpose? To throw others off?

He tried searching the term in general, and found that it meant "Ham" in Hungarian. So he tried searching Ham and Terre Haute. The first 2 results he found were The HoneyBaked Ham Company and Cafe, which seemed far to obvious, and Heavenly Ham, which was some kind of sub shop. That one seemed more likely based on recent circumstances.

There was also refferences to T.H.'s HAM radio scene, and something about a HAM radio field day, where they were all going to be jamming on the radio waves. Apparently it was starting today.

'Well,' he thought. 'It's a start at least.'

Magic World (working title): Chapter 10 part 5

The line rang once. Then twice.

On the third ring someone answered with a slight sigh. They said nothing.

Gary waited a moment, but didn't hear anything more other than some slight rustling as if someone was moving around a little.

"Hello?" he said hesitantly.

No reply.

"Is anyone there?"

No reply, but there was a somehow condescending sniff.

Gary sighed as he said, "Look, I was given this number by..." He hesitated. He wasn't sure who he was talking to, and he didn't want to end up giving anything away to someone if that someone happened to be part of the reason that Raul was killed. Who knew who had gotten the phone or the number? So he continued cautiously. "...by a good friend. One who just died. He said I should get in touch with you."

No reply again, but this time there was a slight cough of acknowledgement. A clearing of the throat really.

Gary rolled his eyes. "Fine," he said. "I'll just figure this out on my o-"

"Where are you?" The mans voice was precise, almost clipped, as if each word had it's very own place in that small sentence, and he was bound and determined to make sure they all stayed exactly where they belonged.

And for some reason that scared the shit out of Gary.

"Uhhh... Wwwa-" he started in a mutter and continued making confused noises until he hung up the phone.

He sat back in his chair, his hands shaking slightly, and took a sip of his chai, then nearly spit it out as his phone rang. Instead he swallowed, which was very difficult.

He looked at the caller ID. There was no name, no number, which was ominous. Very few people ever learned how to turn the caller ID off on their phones.

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and  tapped the button on his bluetooth headset. The call picked up, but he said nothing. Neither did the person calling.

Gary's eyes began to shift around himself, looking for anyone that might be the person on the other end of the phone, but all the Bluetooth users were chatting away, and everyone else was either talking on their phones, or checking their emails or text messages, or whatever. Nobody seemed about to grab him, Even when he checked over his shoulder.

Finally, after a couple minutes of sheer terror during which neither of them spoke, the voice on the other hand said, "Good. You pass."

Gary started at the sound of the voice. But this time it seemed commiserating, and a bit more relaxed.

Gary took a deep calming breath, and said, "Right. Thanks..." though he was still a bit wary. "So..." he said, drawing the word out. "I take it you knew my friend."

The man on the other end gave a grunt. "I was told you would call, after... The Event. I was even told what time you would call. Nine-Thirty am. It's now Nine Thirty-four."

"Huh." Gary's brow furrowed, and his jaw hung slack. How could he have... He pulled his email back up on his phone. The news post had come in at 7:55 am, then the email had come in at...

...precisely 8:00 am. And zero seconds. His mind followed the chain of logic. Raul had some kind of emergency dead-man drop, which would send an email to him if he didn't prevent it. He knew what time the drop would happen, and so he must have had some idea about how long Gary would take to decipher the message.

No... how long it would take Gary's phone to decode and run the program. Then allow a little extra time to discover the message and the other code, and even more time to work up the courage to make the phone call- then of course Gary's subconscious tendency toward OCD. He hadn't realized it, but part of the stall was to wait for exactly 9:30 am.

He nodded, exasperated with himself, and sighing. "Yep, that sounds like-" he caught himself, "-like my friend."

Jackie grunted again.

Gary was still getting annoyed, but he tried not to let it show in his voice. "Okay. So how do I know that you're the one I'm supposed to speak with."

There was no response for a moment, as if the other man was taking a moment to find the answer to that question. Then he said, very carefully and deliberatly, "The Silver Fox found his prize, thanks to the Clever Hyena's distraction."

Gary took a deep breath, and it almost caught in his throat. It was a reference to the first time they'd met. Gary had been the Hyena, distracting a cajoling the mercenary hacker group while Raul, who Gary had called Silver Fox after seeing how young ladies had reacted to him, had acquired what he'd needed.  Raul had thought this nickname was a little ridiculous, and had never seemed interested in pursuing the younger ladies, but he'd flirted with them endlessly. And the name had stuck, at least with Gary.

"Fine," he said. "That checks out. Now what?"

There was a slight pause as if Jackie were taking a moment to consider his words. "You know where it happened." It wasn't a question.

"Right, yeah."

Another pause. "Sonka," he said, then disconnected the call.

Gary say stunned for a moment, then shook his head, saying to himself, "And here I thought I was the anti-social one."

Magic World (working title): Chapter 10 part 4

A final note from The Man himself... And more code. It was like a layer within a layer. And this new code was... odd. It didn't seem to follow any pattern that he could see. There were numbers and letters, and sometimes even what seemed like commands, but nothing match up with anything else. There were patterns, it seemed, but they didn't last, surviving for maybe two or three iterations before disappearing.  This....

...This was going to take some time.

He didn't want to search even a portion of the code online in case it was intercepted, so he would have to set his computer to look through and find any pattern, and look at it himself when he had more time.

For now though, it was time to call "Jackie."

He found an outdoor cafe and took a seat on their raised "small peoples'" section, designed to put gnomes, Halflings, and occasionally dwarves on an even level with the taller races. It was surprising what a difference fourteen inches could make. For the most part the smaller races could pass as taller when you took height out of the equation. He ordered a Chai latte and braced himself mentally.

Gary hated talking to people. He hated phone calls, face to face, voice over IP, even FaceTime. Conversation was just too difficult, and draining, when having to condense the conversation, and go back and forth with people. And trying to explain things to people was it's own kind of hell.

Online was easier, less abrupt, and he could take his time to think about what he wanted to say, and how he wanted to say it. Conversations might take longer, sure, but hey, that's the price we pay for these things.

His Chai arrived and the cute waitress barely looked at him as he left her a five dollar tip, but smiled brightly at the ever-so-cute elven pretty-boys who were on their third free coffee refill, and would likely not tip anything.

He shook his head at the sheer stupidity of the whole thing...

...and realized he was stalling.

He grimaced but went ahead and put his bluetooth headset on, took a tiny sip of his scalding hot chai, and put the number in his dialer.

Then decided to add the number to his contact list.

Then assigned a specific ringtone for that contact; Livin' la Vida Loca.

Then looked up the lyrics for that song.

Then watched the video for that song on YouTube while he drank a little more of the Chai.

Then realized that he was once again stalling. He cursed to himself, and pulled up the contact on his phone....

....then decided to add a tiger as the contact picture for that contact.

He shook his head. "Fuck," he said quietly, then took a long, deep breath, let it out slow, and just as he was reaching the end of that exhale, tapped the "Call" icon.

Magic World (working title): Chapter 10 part 3

One might infer from this seemingly anti-social behavior that Gary was something of an introvert. In terms of Real Life interactions, he found himself easily bored with the conversation when it was so inane that you could find yourself falling asleep standing up, so from a certain perspective it was true.

However online, he could find people with similar interests, where the discussions were relevant to him, and had some purpose. And where he could express everything he wanted to say without interruptions.

And no interruptions was exactly what he needed right now, to decipher this programming language, and see what it did. 

But that actually turned out to be the easy part. After a little bit of searching on the Internet, he found that the language was called INTERCAL which was created long before he was even born. He found a virtual emulator, and a compiler and it turned out to be a very long "hello world" type of program. When he ran it spit out a short message and will look like the code for another program in another programming language. 

"Dear Gary,

If you're reading this, it probably means I'm dead. I don't know how it happened, or what the repercussions will be, but I needed to make sure that somebody knew what was going on.

I made some incredible discoveries recently, but if I'm gone I need someone to make sure that these don't fall into the wrong hands.

My last update to this text is in Terre Haute Indiana where I've rented a storage garage at the south side of town. I can't really afford to say anymore right here, the first layer was designed to be easily openable, but the other layers would have most people pulling their hair out inside of two minutes. You on the other hand have hacked a bank security system with one hand while playing Tetris in the other. 

I have confidence that you'll be able to find everything. 

When you get to Terre Haute call Jackie at this number - and he will help you get to where I... was. But hopefully, if everything goes according to plan, you won't be working alone. 

Good luck,

Raul

*************************************************************

Tired lately. Sorry for all the short and/or random posts since chapter 9 ended. I've been having a hard time getting this chapter straight in my head. I have a kind of idea what's going on, but fleshing it out has proven to be... difficult. But at any rate I'm going to have to plow through this chapter, and try to get as much done at work as I can. Other than the holidays, I'm going to try to stick with one post every day during the week. 

They just may be short posts like this one, till I can figure this out...

Magic World (working title): Chapter 10 part 2

He really wanted to take time to work out the intricacies of this code, but this really wasn't the moment. However now he was far more motivated to complete his current assignment. 

He switched over to his console emulation app, which showed a string of green text, and code. Most of it was meaningless, except for a small prompt on the bottom left hand side where there was a green cursor blinking.

This was the result of a little programming glitch that Gary had discovered by accident one time while deconstructing his own operating system. He was getting bored, and he had gone through all of the allowed remote commands, then the restricted ones, then just for the fun of it, he started making up commands that didn't exist, like "Peruse dir.C:" which didn't do anything. After 100 such attempts the computer suddenly gave a different command prompt. Normally it was a colon or a drive name, but now it was just a cursor.

 He'd tried a few things just to see what would happen. He found that he was able to do all the things he could do at a normal command prompt, but for some reason, he also had access to some administrative functions, like copy/paste, and write protection, and every directory, including the hidden and protected files and directories.

In other words, he pretty much owned the system.

Well... it was his system to begin with. But still.

But here's the thing, this was the operating system that almost every business used. It was versatile, customizable and most of all: secure.

So of course that meant that Gary had to be very careful about how he used this little backdoor. Any overt intrusion would be quickly noticed and shut down.

But there were other little things that someone could do, like add an address to a mass email to an online dropbox email. Which is pretty much what he was doing now. Except HE was the one telling the CEOs computer to send the email, quietly in the background. He opened the dropbox through a proxy server, while he was connected to the Wi-Fi network of local Starbucks, then he sent a copy to the company he was working for, or rather their dropbox, to be picked up later. Then he walked away from the coffee shop.

He put his phone away from moment and look around the Plaza. He smiled them, thinking about how many people were around him and yet how many people he would never speak to you . In a group of people this large he looked and felt utterly alone.

But that's the way he liked it.

Drones and Launchers

Welcome back friends and readers, I'm back from my temporary vacation/hiatus. I figured I could afford to take the past few days off for the holiday, but now I'm back and ready to get back into things.

Before I resume the story though I want to offer my comment to this FB post by my brother-in-law from another mother-in-law.

-Jerry Archer via Facebook:

Amazon thinks that by the year 2015, with the right governmental regulations in place, they will be delivering packages within 30 minutes of purchase via unmanned drones. Its illegal right now for an unmanned drone to fly out of the pilots sight, domestically. This will require Amazon to completely overhaul its distribution infrastructure. To me this is amazing and exactly the reason Amazon is so profitable. Thoughts anyone?

Sure, I'll have a go.

It's very interesting, but for me it raises a few questions: How fast do these drones go? What's their maximum payload? Maximum range at max payload? Will the drones be automated or remote piloted? If it's remote piloting are they hiring pilots? (And will it be a VR rig? And @Chris Swanson Where do I sign up?) If it's automated how will they refine delivery so that packages don't go to the wrong address? Will the drones read house numbers? What's to prevent people hijacking the drones and reprogramming them? Or just smashing them? Will it only be available to those places and people who are in range? Will it be incredibly expensive? Will it be somehow cheaper? 

So yeah, these are just a few of the logistics they will have to work out before they can fully implement the idea. Along with tagging items of the appropriate size and weight. 

On the other hand I think I might have an alternate idea. It's going to sound a little crazy, but hear me out on this.

Ballistic package drops. You literally shoot the package in a parabolic arc toward the destination.

You aim to overshoot of course, and you have stabilizers and fins to help guide the course, and of course a parachute for the final approach. Now of course you would need to know things like windspeeds at various heights, to plan the appropriate trajectories, and of course the weight of the package would have to be taken into account, but depending on how you launch, it would likely use only half the energy, because gravity's doing half the work for you.

But of course, that wouldn't be enough to get it to most destinations, which is why you would need a network. So at various strategic places across the country, you establish a ballistic launcher with a place to catch packages, and sort them, so that they can be launched to the next place in line. Then you wouldn't have to waste energy to bring a drone back. And all the electronics could be housed in one simple tiny throwaway chip.

So a typical delivery goes like this: you order something, like shoes for example. The shoes get packed into a simple cardboard tube, then the tube is sealed. That gets loaded into something approximately the same shape as a lawn dart, which then gets sent to the launcher. The launcher is constantly getting information about weather, and windspeeds, and is factoring that information every time it turns to make another launch, which it does about once per second. The shoes arrive, and a small RFID tag is scanned, which says where the item will go. The system has already planned it's route, so the launcher picks it up, and fires into the air. (I'm not sure if it should be compressed air or possibly some kind of mechanical means, or maybe even chemical propellant, I'm not an expert, just a visionary.) 

While in flight, the three fins, which move independently, correct any course deviations that occur along the way. Then the lawn dart descends toward the next launcher about ten miles away. About five ten feet up the parachute deploys, lowering the tube onto the next conveyer to the next launcher. Total flight time: 30 seconds. Then the process gets repeated about 175 times, assuming that the a average distance per shot is about 10 miles, to get from L.A. to Chicago, the whole thing would only take about 87 minutes. Then the final launch is local, and assuming you aren't blocked by trees or buildings, the package is dropped on your front porch.

Order to door, 1750 miles in under 2 hours. 

Ah well, I'm sure this idea has some logistical problems too.

Anyway, comments and suggestions welcome.

Thanks for reading.