Turing's Delirium (9 page)

She heads to the Golden Strip.

There is a street fight. Two men are surrounded by a jeering crowd; one has a knife in his hand and the other is wielding a broken beer bottle. The neighborhood around the Golden Strip is dangerous. The police have abandoned it to the drug traffickers and whores. Erin likes the sensation that anything can happen. Last time she wound up in a sleazy hotel room with a mocha-skinned Thai girl with a scar on her cheek.

She doesn't stop to watch the outcome of the fight. Beside the Golden Strip shines the sign from another bar, Mandala. Rafael had used that word. She decides to go in. She heads to the bar but is accosted by a blonde with enormous breasts who asks if she'd like a little action.
Yeah, but not with you.
She orders a shot of tequila.

A while later the dark-skinned man sits down next to her. Even though he isn't wearing the trench coat, she recognizes him: it's the same guy as last time.

 

RIDLEY
: i thought ud never come back

ERIN
: u gotta have faith specially when street encounters r hard 2 forget

 

Flavia would never be able to say something like that in person.

 

RIDLEY
: what street encounter

ERIN
: 1 in a galaxy not 2 far from here

RIDLEY
: ur confused my name is ridley

ERIN
: kandinsky

RIDLEY
: ridley

 

Erin looks at him closely, trying to discern Rafael in his features.

 

RIDLEY
: my face looks like lotsa others were not very imaginative we all choose the same tall dark handsome avatars w/ sunglasses and trench coats theres also the question of technology being notoriously behind when it comes to facial details itll get there 1 day

 

Flavia thinks that if the police don't intervene, Playground's private security agents will. The person calling himself Ridley has just committed a mortal sin: references to a character's digital nature are prohibited in Playground. Early on that type of conversation had been frequent, but a movement had fought valiantly to prohibit it and managed to impose its vision of the digital world. The cardinal rule of that world was not to shatter the illusion of reality, to suspend belief so that a person's avatar could be seen as real. When she is in Playground, Flavia tries very hard not to mention the world that awaits her the moment she turns off her computer. That doesn't mean it sometimes doesn't just slip out, like her reference to the "street encounter in a galaxy not too far from here"—a second-degree infraction: no reference was made to the digital nature of persons, but one was made to the reality outside.

Two armed men appear on screen wearing the navy blue uniforms of Playground security agents. They read Ridley his rights. Ridley says goodbye to Erin, shakes her hand, turns around, and lets himself be escorted by the guards. When they reach the door, he surprises one of them with a blow to the neck and runs out. The guard falls to the floor, writhing, while his partner chases Ridley.

On screen, Flavia can see the panoramic view from a security helicopter flying over Playground. The powerful searchlight glides over the streets in the Boulevard until it focuses on Ridley. Immediately there is submachine gun fire from the helicopter. Ridley gets hit in the arm but manages to escape, losing himself down a narrow, garbage-strewn street.

There is a knock on her door. Flavia has just enough time to put a screen saver of Dennis Moran, Jr., over the image of Mandala.

"How are you, princess?" It's her dad, his smile forced. "I'm sorry I didn't make it home for dinner. Work is crazy. And to top it all off, there's an emergency."

She gets up and gives him a kiss, smelling the whiskey on his breath. Whom is he trying to fool?

R
AMÍREZ-GRAHAM ENTERS
the interception room accompanied by Baez and Santana. Baez had worked with the administrators of Playground for a while, specializing in tracing hackers who tried to penetrate its security systems; Santana was an expert in the new, lethal generation of viruses with which malicious programmers infected computers on the Internet. Ramírez-Graham, having embarked on his project to revive the Black Chamber, had stopped hiring the linguists and professionals in the humanities that Albert had surrounded himself with and instead filled the main positions with computer analysts. It was true that certain areas of modern linguistics and computer programming languages had much in common; in fact, he had known many linguists at the NSA who had been recycled as experts in various computer languages. Still, it was, a question of emphasis. If the priority was cybercrime, he preferred to have people trained in computer science who also knew something of linguistics and not vice versa.

Already seated at the table are the other members of the Central Committee. The pale, late-afternoon light filtering in through the windows whitens their faces. An enormous photo of Albert dominates the room. Folders are scattered on the table; a map of Rio Fugitivo posted on a whiteboard is dotted with several red x's that have no apparent order. Each one represents the location of a computer that sent the virus to government offices. The entire city is the scene of the crime. The entire fucking city.

"Any news?" Ramírez-Graham asks, sitting down. "Sin pérdida de tiempo. I'm tired of this game."

When he is upset, his American accent becomes more pronounced and he forgets his almost perfect Spanish syntax. It is disconcerting: it's as if a foreigner holds one of the government's highest positions. Well, Ramírez-Graham is a foreigner.

"The computers that sent the virus are in private homes and Internet cafés, research centers, and public offices."

The voice is Marisa Ivanovic's. She is the first woman to form part of the Central Committee. Ramírez-Graham has seen her working in her office until late, playing distractedly with her necklace while reviewing data on the screen. She always looks disheveled; locks of brown hair fall over her eyes, and he wonders how well she can see. In a way he admires her. He knows how difficult it is for women to break into this field, to stay in it, and to find their voice.

"Which means that..."

"Those computers were used via telnet to launch the attack. The owners are innocent. We're tracing the virus's steps—its fingerprints, so to speak. But we probably won't find the source, the mother computer. Just like before. The Resistance tends to be very careful."

Ramírez-Graham detects a note of admiration in Marisa's voice. That is one of his problems: his employees are seduced by the romantic notion of hackers that has been spread by the media. The myth of Kandinsky: a local hacker who was able to infiltrate the Pentagon's security system. There is no proof, but that is what legend says, and legend does not need to be founded on truth in order to become established as truth. Kandinsky has easily paralyzed the government whenever he has felt like it, and those who defend the law cannot compete with the glamorous hacker counterculture.

"Have you investigated the code that was used to create the virus?"

"It's still too soon," Santana says. "Right now the only concrete thing we have is that it bears the Resistance's signature. It's a delicate piece of work, probably written by Kandinsky or one of his closest collaborators—nothing to do with script kiddies. I'd hazard a guess that it's a new version of Simile.D."

Santana knew a great deal about the worms the Resistance used: Code Red, Nimda, Klez.H, and Simile.D. Simile.D was a "conceptual virus," a lab sample that its programmers had made public for others to see. By being able to change its features on the fly, it could fool antivirus programs that trace a code's fingerprints (which, for example, was how Klez.H was stopped). In this case, all that antivirus programs could do was trace behavior that looked like a virus, find ways to replicate the structures that were programmed in an encrypted routine modeled to hide a virus, or study the virus code itself. It wasn't hard to do, but it did take time, which is why Santana had recommended other ways of maintaining system security: accepting codes that had digital signatures from reliable sources and maintaining a database with all of the accepted codes. To do so, Ramírez-Graham needed a budget that he simply did not have.

"There's no visible structure," Baez says. "No figures are formed on the map of the city, faces don't appear in the binary code ... Kandinsky isn't as obvious as Red Scharlach. His labyrinth has no order."

Ah, Baez's literary allusions. Of all the members of the Central Committee, he is the one who seems interested not only in his work but also in what surrounds him—the political situation, the economic crisis. Ramírez-Graham has even discovered that Baez is quite the literature buff. He does have to laugh at the way Baez dresses, though; he tries to be elegant, but the details escape him—white socks with a dark suit or a loud tie. He had been the same, just another unkempt programmer, until he met Svetlana.

"So," he says, "perhaps his chaos is a type of order—"

"Like in fractal geometry," Baez interrupts.

"Please," Ramírez-Graham continues, "put all of the coordinates on the map into an algorithm of progressions. Maybe that will give us the next point in the continuum. Maybe the location of the next attack. Or maybe the source of it."

"I've already done that," says Marisa. "You're going to be surprised at the result—it gives me the Twenty-First-Century Towers, the building where you live. The computers weren't chosen at random. They were chosen expecting that we'd do what you just suggested."

"So they're jokers on top of it all. They're making fun of us, and we can't stop them. But make no mistake, this time heads will roll if we don't dismantle the so-called Resistance. There's discontent in the upper echelons."

"Well, imagine that," Baez says. "Maybe it's time to tell them that they can't expect miracles of us. We can intercept a ton of information and efficiently decode everything that's encrypted by low-tech means—which luckily for us is the norm in this country—but if we're faced with people who really know how to program, there's not much we can do. And this is only the beginning."

"If we take your argument further, then we're no longer needed," Ramírez-Graham retorts. "Instead of reorganizing the Black Chamber, we should simply close it."

"Maybe we haven't been needed for a long time," Baez replies. "You've got to admit that we can't stand up to your average hacker. We can't even easily read e-mails that have been encrypted with a good piece of software, the kind you can buy on the street—unless each one of us spends three months trying to break the code."

Baez pauses, looking at the faces around him as if confirming that they are waiting for him to continue. His only defect, thinks Ramírez-Graham, is that he's always trying to steal the show.

"The cards we've been dealt have been to work in Rio Fugitivo," Baez continues. "So we entertain ourselves by intercepting and deciphering homegrown codes, but when something real comes along, then, then..."

An atmosphere of pessimism invades the room. After months of being defeated by the Resistance, Baez, Marisa, and Santana have been made to feel impotent, to mistrust the usefulness of their own work. Ramírez-Graham had chosen each of them after a long and careful search, had trusted them because he thought that they were among the best computer programmers and analysts in the country, and he was angry that they felt defeated so soon. Even worse was the fact that perhaps they were right. He had gone through a similar crisis during his last few months at the NSA. That was why he was here. But by the looks of it, the problem could not be solved by a change of geographical location; it had become inherent to the profession. It was programmed into the code of today's cryptanalyst.

He would like to tell them that they are right, but he is the boss, and as such he has to set an example.

"It's not the time for existential questions." He pauses, taking a drink of his Coke. "Let's get Kandinsky, and I promise you that, out of my own pocket, I'll pay for a month of psychoanalysis for each of you. It's time to get creative. Let's hear your opinions. Estoy abierto a sugerencias."

I'm open to suggestions
... At times he can't help translating from English: after all, it's the language he thinks in.

"We've already done a couple of things," Marisa says. "The virus was programmed so the infected computers would launch a DoS attack at a certain time, aimed at all the computers that until then had been safe. This would have crashed the entire system. We've blocked the address of the ISP where the attack originated. At first we thought about just changing the addresses of the Presidential Palace and other government buildings, GlobaLux and the Black Chamber, but the attack would've continued and debilitated the entire network structure even further. Still, we did that too."

"Well done. But that's defense, and what I'm interested in now is offense."

"If I may," Marisa says, "I've spoken with Baez about this. It might be time to try to get information through unorthodox methods."

"So we're back to the same thing," Santana says. "Why are we here?"

"Not necessarily," Baez says. "Albert also had paid informants. Sometimes it's necessary. How many codes were really deciphered during the cold war? Most of them were obtained thanks to the work of spies, saving both time and money. If you'll allow me, and I hope you won't take this as a criticism, but you have a very purist view of what we're doing. As if intelligence were sufficient for dismantling codes. Sometimes it's not."

Ramírez-Graham does not like to be criticized, but he tries not to show it. He needs to play fair with them. After all, he encouraged them to make suggestions that depart from the norm. Thinking outside the box is good, thinking outside the box is good...