It was undeniable. They could see a server and a chef frowning and eyeballing an unknown entity—the chef actually shouting and waving the unseen person away. As they watched, another shimmer disrupted the air of the tape. It was a ripple in the fabric of the screen’s reality. There were blurred reflections on stainless steel counters.
Shen tapped the location on-screen. “These cameras, Mr. Haverford. They are digital CCTV cameras? The very latest, I imagine.”
Haverford just stared at him. “Of course. And Chinese made, I might point out.”
Shen just laughed to himself and shook his head. Of course they are. He recalled Ross’s words again. . . .
The Chinese people want to be free, Liang.
He pointed at another screen—one that showed the mouth of the alley behind the restaurant. Where it met the street. There was no one in the street, but quite clearly, there in the reflection from a darkened window was Jon Ross, looking rather dapper in a Hong Kong pin-striped suit. Shen smiled to himself. “I think we’ve found the problem, Mr. Haverford.”
Now a gasp went over the assembled engineers. More leaned in to see what appeared to all present an absolute impossibility.
Haverford just kept shaking his head. “But . . .”
On-screen, a block away, plainclothes policemen were gathered in a group on a corner, smoking—awaiting a signal that came too late.
Shen turned to General Zhang, but spoke to everyone. “Let me tell you what your system is, Mr. Haverford. It’s a six-billion-dollar . . . how do you Americans say it? Oh yes: clusterfuck.”
Haverford stood up and turned to General Zhang. “This is ridiculous. This is a glitch. That’s all.”
Shen pointed to the cameras. “Mr. Ross is invisible here to a dozen cameras. Show me a camera where he reappears. Blocks away? Hours later? I’ll bet you cannot find him. Because your system has been defeated.”
General Zhang studied the screen. “How, Shen? How did he do it?”
“There are two million digital cameras. They are all unified with layers of digital image-processing software. With camera firmware. Someone has created a system where points on the screen are replaced with the background image.”
“The background?”
“Yes. Somewhere along the chain of custody between where the image is recorded and where it’s seen on our monitors, the empty background imagery of each camera’s sweep is substituted for the image of a person who is wearing some sort of electronic tag—to identify their movements through space.”
“But how could the camera know the location of that person in three-dimensional space relative to the camera?”
Shen was nodding as he said it. “The camera’s position is probably already known, but it could also be derived from a geometric analysis of surrounding landmarks. Software, General. It could all be done with software.”
Haverford was still shaking his head. “But that would . . . it’s just not possible.”
“Why not, Mr. Haverford? Do you think Americans are the only ones who can think ‘outside the box’?”
Zhang was unreadable. “How do we fix it?”
“The first rule of computer security, General, is don’t leave your equipment where people can mess with it.” He gestured to the screen. “What do we have here? Two million cameras sitting around in public? How many fiber-optic lines connecting them to publicly reachable network cables? Literally anyone anywhere in that complex chain could have done this.”
“Then we need to have the cameras fixed. Replaced.”
“And how do you know that you can trust the people who do the replacing?” Shen stood up and turned to the general. “I hope I have not spoken out of turn, sir.”
General Zhang stared with great intensity at the image of Ross still on the screen. “You are dismissed, Captain Shen. I will be in touch with you soon.”
Shen saluted grandly once more, casting Haverford a slight grin. Shen moved to depart.
“Oh, and Captain.”
Shen turned.
“Excellent work.”
He replied in Mandarin. “It was my pleasure, General.”
Shen continued toward the buttonless elevator, and all he could think of was the great game that was now under way out there in the world. A game an old friend told him about. One that he had just now resolved to join.
Chapter 17: // Immortality
Darknet Top-rated Posts +392,783↑
The Burning Man Project has finished prototyping a fully functional Roy Merritt avatar linked to darknet and public Internet news feeds. Presidio and Enoble_6 have begun development of a “just-in-time” hero module. Individuals wishing to donate levels, credits, or powers to the avatar can contact any Order of Merritt signatory.
Loki’s traveling rig was a tribute to American automotive excess. He drove a customized Ford F-650 4x4 with a Caterpillar diesel engine. It had nine hundred foot-pounds of torque and could pull twenty-six thousand pounds up an unpaved 7 percent grade. With a series of three chromed fuel tanks tucked beneath each running board, that incline didn’t need to be anywhere near a gas station either. Composite-laminate windows and ceramic composite plating meant the driver and three passengers could recline in comfort while enduring a barrage of small arms fire. It was, in short, the ultimate vehicle for commuting through the Apocalypse.
It could have accommodated five passengers if Loki hadn’t extended the storage area to provide room for various pieces of high-tech wireless communications equipment and supplies. This was, after all, his mobile base of operations for running the one-man Stormbringer faction.
Toward that end, Loki towed an enclosed forty-four-foot Gooseneck racing trailer, whose exterior surface was emblazoned with the image of a black-helmeted motorcycle racer viewed from the shoulders up and done in the style of a Japanese anime character. The entire branding effort was completed with the logo for Stormbringer Motorcycle Racing, jagged with lightning bolts.
To all outward appearances, Loki was a professional motorcycle racer following his circuit through the Midwest. The fact that his real business was hunting down and destroying at any cost a shadowy mercenary army hired to kill Daemon operatives was well concealed behind the patina of professional racing. With his big corporate sponsors (unwilling though they might be) listed on the trailer’s wall, he looked more than legit. He looked downright establishment.
However, in this fight, as in all things, Loki remained a loner. He had no crew of mechanics. He preferred instead to communicate his needs through the darknet—pressing into service local maintenance factions to repair his fleet of razorbacks and microjets. That was, after all, what the trailer was for—a storage facility for a score of Type 2-E razorback interceptors and half a dozen microjet aircraft—as well as his personal black Ducati S-version Streetfighter motorcycle, which he rode into battle against The Major’s people. So far he’d slain or captured at least a hundred of the bastards, and he was on his way to tracking down more—dragging them screaming from their motel rooms or safe houses like pigs to slaughter. Their blind trust in the anonymity of their communications would be their undoing.
But each battle brought damage, and for this Loki had to seek out darknet communities where he could get replacement bikes and turn in his damaged units. This had brought him here to Garnia, Missouri—a small, economically depressed town out in the plains that was transforming itself into a bustling new darknet community. Founded by a logistics faction—an Order of Merritt signatory, no less—they’d be able to service his razorbacks, provide fuel cell batteries, replace wireless receivers, and so on. Loki would also be secure in the knowledge that he wouldn’t be hassled by the police—because, as in all darknet communities, the police here would be fellow darknet members.