The Origin Point: A Future Tech Cyber Novella (10 page)

*

"I know it's early out west," Julia
apologetically stated to Carter over mobile. "But I was wondering
if you are going to be in D.C. anytime soon, we'd like to talk to
you."

Carter rolled over in his bed and glanced
around the room. His eyes caught an unopened bottle of champagne
and two dry glasses, and he suddenly remembered he had spent the
night in a luxury hotel suite in downtown D.C., without Apex, which
had not been his intention. Sighing he said, "That's okay. I'm
actually out east."

"Are you? How wonderful. By any chance, can
you come to D.C.? The issue is one we could go over on a secure
line, but if you're on this coast I would prefer to discuss in
person."

"Sure," Carter replied as he stood and
opened his curtain to view the gleaming white obelisk on the
National Mall.

"When can you be here?"

Debating whether to confess his proximity or
give himself more time, he took the middle road. "How about this
afternoon?"

"Wonderful, we would like to send a car for
you. Where will you be staying?"

"I'll have my assistant text the
details."

"Thanks Carter, I'll see you this
afternoon."

"Sure," he offered before disconnecting.

Gritting his teeth, Carter checked for
overnight messages from Apex, but there were none. He sent her a
morning greeting expressing his love and loyalty, before wandering
into the bathroom to cleanup for his meeting with Julia.

The car arrived at the hotel on time and
took Carter to Horizon to meet Julia in her office in the complex.
Unlike Dallas, Carter did not need to be blindfolded, he had paid
for the construction of Horizon and almost all of the equipment in
the building had come from his company. Because he had wanted to
experiment with advanced workplace technologies, employees in the
building functioned with security measures that did not exist in
any other facility. The innovations in biometric security scanning
and the automatic elevator response details were his own code. When
he swiped his key card, the turnstile indicated which numbered
elevator would be available for the ride to his floor, how long
before the doors opened, and based on all other requests up to that
moment, how long the ride to his destination would last. The
technology had been designed for super skyscrapers capable of
propelling thousands of people in different directions around
multiple building sites throughout the day. If he stopped to speak
to a colleague, the chip in his card instantly updated the elevator
information, which he could see by glancing at his mobile or
tapping the card on a reader by the elevator door.

Arriving at Julia's office, he was
immediately greeted by an assistant and ushered into the room.

Julia stood up from behind her desk and
walked over to greet him. "Hello Carter," she said extending her
hand. "Thanks for coming on such short notice."

Carter shook her hand. "No problem," he
flatly responded. Julia motioned for him to sit down on the couch
and she followed into the chair next to him.

"How have you been?"

"Great."

"Good. Are you out here for a particular
reason?"

"I had someone to see."

"Are you staying long in the city?"

"I'm leaving right after this meeting."

"Oh well sorry, I'll drop the small talk and
get on with the reason I asked to speak with you."

"Okay."

"Well Carter, the issue is a sensitive
matter and I felt we should discuss the details in person."

"Go ahead."

"I'm afraid we had a breach here at Horizon.
I was wondering if you could use your expertise to double-check our
systems and confirm no permanent damage has been done."

"A breach?"

"Yes I'm afraid so."

"What kind of breach?"

"We don't know. We suspect one of our
laptops was compromised and the damage may have spilled over into
the whole system."

"Spilled over? Julia, this facility was
set-up to avoid accidents. What happened?"

Julia briefly hesitated before confessing,
"A reporter gave Marco Manuel a USB flash drive with documents
appearing to be the 2100 policy papers. Apparently the drive was
found in a restaurant. Marco put the device into his laptop, and
the laptop went offline after displaying a message stating 'thank
you.' He sent the laptop to IT to review and they cannot find any
issues. We have not seen any problems directly in the servers
either. But we are wary. I know you do not want to be called up for
every little problem around here, but we felt this was a major
issue and you had to be advised. If an incident arises you should
be the first to know. Plus the equipment is all yours, if there is
a technical error you are probably the one person who would be able
to understand the impact."

Carter leaned back in his seat, and took a
moment to ensure his voice displayed no identifiable emotion. "Well
I appreciate your honesty. My team can check the servers and
connections and let you know. But a reporter? What's this all
about? What was on the drive?"

"The reporter's name is Dallas Winter, and
she got the drive from a friend of hers who's a restaurateur,
Fresno Tyler, the owner of Infrared."

"Infrared? Cool name."

"And a cool place. The restaurant is a very
popular spot near the White House. Many elected and unelected
officials frequent the establishment and many policy discussions
can be heard there every night."

"And one of these restaurant guests had the
2100 files?"

"Perhaps."

"The real files?"

"Yes. Winter recognized the FedSec template
used for the documents' format. And she brought her finding
directly to Marco."

"Do you know who lost the drive?"

"No."

Carter narrowed his eyes. "Have you
attempted to investigate where the documents came from?"

Julia shamefully twisted in her seat. In
managing only Dallas and Tyler's access to the files, she had
failed to focus on the number of other hands the information may
have passed through. "No," she admitted.

"Wow. Negative publicity for this project is
not much of a concern for you?"

Alarmed, Julia forcefully replied, "This
project is my highest priority. You know better than to accuse me
of downplaying an incident. We were focused on the people who did
not know the origin of the files, Winter and the restaurant owner.
We assumed the drive came from an insider who knew the content. The
source could even be connected to our team. We would not have
imagined multiple people would have had a look at the files before
Winter handed the documents to Marco."

"But either way, you're not treating the
breach very seriously."

"Do not accuse me of inattentiveness. Of
course we are treating the incident seriously."

"Is there an investigation into the entire
set of circumstances?"

"Yes, my investigation. You know I cannot
conduct business around this project any other way. I cannot launch
a large scale review of activities surrounding an issue only a
handful of people know about."

Carter stood and walked to the window. "But
you can launch an investigation? Aren't there controls on all file
downloads?"

"Yes."

"You can tell which computer downloaded the
files onto the drive in the first place?"

"Yes..." Julia hesitated, "...yes, I
suppose."

"You did not know you have a function for
reading file downloads?"

"Maybe not."

Carter turned to face her. "Julia, if we are
going to be engaged in the most ground-breaking covert
international digital infrastructure project in history, we're
going to need a few rules."

"Yes of course. But the work we have already
done was rapidly implemented. We really have not had time to focus
on other details."

"Well you need to think about details now.
You need to create an investigation protocol which should not
involve calling me."

"I'm sorry Carter, but this was
unprecedented and we have moved far ahead in the past year. Maybe
we could consider hiring a permanent administrator for COSA."

"Permanent administrator?"

"Yes, someone to oversee the
day-to-day."

"Managing the program cannot be an
identified day job. The position would raise too many
questions."

"We can create a camouflaged role, here at
Horizon."

"For an outsider?"

"No, the job could go to one of us, but the
work would be our only mission. One of us could resign our current
position."

"We need you in your current position. Based
on the information you hear or see around the world, we can make
changes to the system immediately. A permanent administrator would
add a non-influential layer we do not need."

Julia shrugged. "Well if you want more
diligence..."

"You are supposed to be covering all of our
bases."

"I realize that Carter, but I'm the
Secretary of State for heaven's sake."

"You have 14,000 employees. Frankly, you
really do not have to exert as much effort at State."

"That's unfair."

"Okay, maybe you have to be visible. But my
point is, at State, you can arrange regular meetings and
appearances as you see fit, and only deal with the major issues.
COSA needs more of your time. Find a way to cover your actions
however you like, but between you and Marco, we cannot leave issues
dangling, like a reporter who mysteriously ended up with the 2100
policy files in her hands."

"Yes I know."

"What are you going to do?"

"About?"

"The reporter."

"The story is contained."

"But has she been neutralized."

"Not in the way I think you're
assuming."

"Is she still walking around with a copy of
the files?"

Julia stiffened. "I'm not sure."

Carter rolled his eyes. "I don't believe
this. What are we doing here, Julia? Waiting to start an
international public opinion crisis?"

"We have not had a chance to think about
these issues. We've been too busy getting COSA up and running and
ready to function on its own."

"Okay, awesome. But now we have to think
about the consequences when someone finds out about the system
before we are ready to reveal the story."

"To be perfectly honest Carter, as far as we
are concerned, from now on a leak to the public is not ever going
to be a problem for our implementation. The whole point of being
singularly focused on the project's foundation was to make sure
COSA could stand alone. Given the design of the underlying
infrastructure, we are moving forward regardless of who finds
out."

"Really?" Carter feigned a shock he did not
feel and posed a question he did not need answered. "How?"

"The foundation we have laid, the detailed
outline we provided for you in the last briefing papers, those
features are under construction and almost finished. We have
established every function to work autonomously. And given where we
are on the implementation, I say if we have an issue with the
press, we deny everything. If they decide to look into the details,
their investigation will come too late."

"You mean at this point, COSA's
infrastructure is so resilient, the system is going to be locked
into place?"

"Yes."

"Even if the press has evidence of our
detailed papers, and there's a public backlash?"

"The public can protest, but the system
moves forward."

"You seem quite confident there will be no
fallout."

"Look, anyone can create fake policy papers.
The only reason Winter knew the work was ours was because she has
national security expertise. She's a serious journalist, one who
actually reads FedSec documents and attempts to interpret the
meaning for her audience. But the average reporter would never have
noticed the template nor understood its implications."

"If she goes public, the result will be her
word against ours. But the documents have a high level of official
detail."

"Yes, but we can still say the work came
from another organization. Private parties write government policy
ideas to reflect the government's implementation of new
legislation. They are actually quite good at creating credible
drafts, sometimes better than the bureaucrats. Look at the American
Legislative Exchange Council. They write model bills for state
governments to pass into law, verbatim. Astounding for a democracy,
but elected legislators have abdicated responsibility for writing
their own laws. A private organization does the work for them. We
would have no trouble convincing the press a similar organization
could have created detailed and readable documents for federal
government action."

"Okay sold," Carter said with impatience.
"If anyone asks, the documents on the mysterious flash drive are
not FedSec documents. We assume an organization like ALEC drafted
the policy in the hopes of having legislators read the details and
either debate or adopt the proposals."

"Sounds good."

"What else do we need to do to keep a lid on
this story?"

"I'm comfortable we will not have an issue
with Winter."

"I'll judge your confidence after my techs
review the state of the servers."

"Fine."

"Anything else?"

"No. But Carter, I'm pleased you were in
town. We needed to speak frankly and directly. Don't worry, I
understand you may be concerned about our management of this
unexpected distraction, but believe me, the program and all its
secrets are safe."

"I'll take you at your word. We've come too
far to have a slip up now."

"I agree, and we will not have a slip up
later either. All of our plans will keep moving forward on
schedule, as originally intended."

*

"Ms. Winter," a woman's voice reached Dallas
over her mobile.