Virtually Undead Read online

  The plant ran with minimal personnel, and was, as Harold Strong had noted, almost entirely automated. The six members of the design team were Gary Little, Luisa Jessup, John Morrison, David Schapiro, Clark Grunfeld and Leslie Yang. Their education and work history seemed entirely appropriate to their current positions.

  Jim Jameson and Ellen Scott, he noted, were both MBA’s, presumably brought in to put the business on a business footing, to be the face of the corporation and to develop strategies to sell the product. Michael had once read that the majority of corporations, once they reach a certain size, turn their business over to a management team of some sort, at which point, the vision and innovation that had fueled the company’s growth up until that point tended to slow, and often die.

  Businessmen, according to this view, tended to view business as a zero-sum game. They looked to consolidate, to cut costs, to watch the pennies, and to sell the crappiest, cheapest products that would successfully make a buck. The reason that Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Apple had managed to stay on top was that they had kept the corporate reins firmly in the hands of the visionaries.

  Or so it was claimed. Michael hadn’t a clue.

  The two dead designers were Gary Woodson and Sandra Devine. They had died together, early last year, in a boating accident off the coast of Connecticut.

  He rotated his head, trying to work the crick out of his neck, took a deep breath and rose to his feet. It was Friday, and he wasn’t on call. Time to take a quick shower and pick up Melody. They had a date and she, he hoped, would put his mind on other things.

  Melody, however, seemed reticent. They had tickets for the 8:00 showing of Mean Girls, which might have been a mistake. A good chance that Melody would see a bit more of herself in the production than she would appreciate.

  Also, he had made a 6:00 PM dinner reservation at Daniel. Generally, Michael would have regarded a meal at a place like Daniel as the high point of the evening, and he didn’t enjoy being rushed. However, Michael knew from prior experience that Daniel operated like a well-oiled machine, the service on top of every detail. Unlike some other pompous establishments that proudly proclaimed the table to be yours for the entire (genteel, tedious, boring) night, Daniel allowed a comfortable ten minutes or so between every course.

  Michael started out with the white horse mackerel, curious to see what a high-end restaurant was going to do with such a rustic dish, while Melody, not exactly adventurous where food was concerned, went with the more mundane lobster.

  Caviar, he noted, was a mere $390 extra. Melody, he had learned, tended to order the most expensive item on the menu but she disliked (thank God) caviar.

  Years ago, Michael’s father had given him some good, fatherly advice. “If you want a girl to like you, ask her about herself.” Good advice, indeed, and it applied to men as well as women. Everybody likes to talk about themselves.

  “So, what’s new?” Michael asked.

  Melody glanced up, shrugged, and toyed with her lobster.

  Hmm…

  Michael also shrugged and tried the mackerel. Not rustic at all, it turned out. It was served over a lemon balm salad with a sea urchin vinaigrette. After the first course, Melody moodily allowed her eyes to wander over the spacious dining room. Usually, Melody was eager to pick out the celebrities. The last time they ate at Daniel, she had nearly swooned at the sight of Taylor Swift, Robert DeNiro and Arianna Grande. Not tonight, however.

  Melody, evidently, was in a snit.

  The second course arrived right on time: for Melody, the strip loin, for Michael, boned Scottish grouse stuffed with foie gras. Upon reflection, it was probably the best thing Michael had ever tasted. He cut it into very small pieces and ate it slowly.

  “How’s your steak?” he asked.

  She shrugged again.

  Oh, well…

  Michael had been involved with Melody for nearly six months. At first, he had doted on her, entranced, like most men, by the superficial. Melody, however, aside from being gorgeous and uninhibited, had never responded in kind, and by now, a pretty face and excellent sex were no longer enough to make up for the lack of emotional engagement.

  “I’ve been wondering,” Melody said, “where this relationship is going.”

  Michael froze, his fork halfway to his lips. What should he say…? What relationship? came to mind. Instead, he gave a cautious, “Oh?”

  “We eat dinner someplace. We go to a movie or a show. We go to bed. That’s nice as far as it goes, but I’m starting to get the feeling that you don’t see me as anything other than a good lay.”

  A very good lay, a world class lay, but pretty much, yeah. Michael sighed. He was getting the feeling, and he been getting it for quite a while, that Melody didn’t see him as anything other than an accessible bank account.

  “I think we should start seeing other people,” Melody said.

  Michael pondered that. There was a line in a book somewhere, or maybe it was a movie—one character had said to another, “Do you think she has a boyfriend?”

  The second character had responded, “Girls like her are born with boyfriends.”

  Melody had always been a girl like that. He wondered for a moment who the next lucky guy might be. He would bet good money that she already had him lined up. “Really?” he said. “Are you sure?”

  She raised her head and looked him in the eye. “Yes.”

  He sighed. “Okay,” he said.

  Thank God, he thought.

  “Rachel?”

  “Yes. Is this Michael? Michael Foreman?”

  “It is. How are you?”

  He wasn’t being merely polite. He meant the question. Rachel Foreman was a distant cousin, living in Chicago. He had last seen her three years ago at the wedding of their mutual cousin Sylvia, in Evanston. Sylvia, like Michael’s parents, was an archaeologist. She was on the faculty of Northwestern and had collaborated with Sybil and Klaus Foreman on three papers dealing with the differences in mummification practices between the Middle and New Kingdoms.

  Rachel had, two years before, been kidnapped, fitted with a suicide vest and used to blackmail Rachel’s mother, Ellie Foreman, into returning a flash drive containing information on a prominent defense contractor that conspirators within the corporation were attempting to smuggle to China. Ellie, a video producer, had somehow gotten involved in the plot. Michael wasn’t exactly clear on the details. Rachel had barely escaped with her life.

  The experience still haunted her. Rachel and Michael, though they had met only a couple of times previously, were seated at the same table at the wedding, being only a few years apart in age. Rachel had drunk more than she should have.

  “Thank God for Zach Dolan,” she had muttered.

  “Zach Dolan?”

  She smiled blearily at Michael. Her face was ashen. Her voice shook and she seemed on the verge of tears. “An acquaintance of Mom’s. He’s a cybersecurity expert. He used to be a hacker.”

  Michael was a neurosurgeon, not a psychiatrist, but he knew a lot about brains and the way they worked. The memories of severe trauma can run in an obsessive loop around a victim’s psyche, haunting them—unlike most memories, never fading away with time. It wasn’t only soldiers who suffered from PTSD. Better, Michael had thought, to change the subject, if Rachel would let him.

  He talked about the food at the wedding, which was better than usual, and the latest TV shows, and Disney’s purchase of Lucasfilm and what that might mean for the future of the Star Wars franchise, and little-by-little, Rachel seemed to cheer up. Michael never forgot the conversation, though.

  “I’m good, thanks,” Rachel said. “It’s been what? Three years?”

  “About that, yeah. Mom tells me that you’ve entered the police academy.”

  Rachel sighed. “Entered and left. Too much violence.”

  This was not surprising. Michael was only surprised that Rachel had tried it in the first place.

  “I’ve gone into private security. I’m a fra
ud investigator.”

  “Cool,” Michael said. “Look, the reason I’m calling is, the last time I saw you, you mentioned a guy, I forget his name—a cybersecurity expert.”

  “I did?” Rachel chuckled. “The only thing I remember is getting drunk.”

  “I need to talk with a cybersecurity expert.”

  “Do you?”

  “Afraid so. Something has come up.”

  “Can you tell me about it?”

  Could he? Michael’s role in the case was peripheral and his interest barely legitimate. Still, he knew nothing that wasn’t public knowledge. “A friend of mine was killed, recently. Some strange things have been going on. I’d rather not say any more.”

  “Okay…” There was silence on the line for a moment. “His name is Zach Dolan. I’ll give you his number.”

  Zach Dolan, according to Rachel, had started out as a hacker, before seeing the light. He was now an ethical hacker. “Don’t ask him to do anything shady,” she had said. “Now, he works for the good guys. He’s a hacker who catches other hackers.”

  Fine with Michael. Maybe even better. An ethical hacker should have some sympathy for what Michael was trying to do (whatever that was…). For the moment, he told himself defensively, he just needed some advice.

  Zach Dolan didn’t answer at first. Michael left a message and Dolan called him back a few minutes later.

  “Sorry for not picking up,” Dolan said. “I get so many spam calls, I don’t answer the phone unless I know who it is. If anybody else wants to talk to me, they can leave a message.”

  “I understand,” Michael said. “I do the same thing.”

  “So,” Dolan said, “you’re Rachel Foreman’s cousin and you have a problem. What can I do for you?”

  Dolan was good at listening. He asked a question now and then and when Michael finished talking, Dolan said, “It’s been all over the news, of course. You’re not the first person to mention it to me. So, let me ask you this: aside from the fact that one of your friends was killed, what’s your interest?”

  Good question. “That, and simple curiosity.”

  “You’re not in a position to investigate this. You don’t have access to the victims, the suspects or the data, and you have no relevant expertise.”

  So, everybody kept telling him. “The NYPD and the FBI have asked me to consult on certain aspects of the case. I can pick up the phone and call them. They’ll listen to me. As for expertise, that’s why I’m talking to you.”

  A soft chuckle came over the line. “Okay,” Dolan said. “What do you want to know? Also, how much are you willing to pay?”

  “What am I paying for?”

  “Exactly my point. You have no idea where to take this, do you?”

  Michael frowned and felt himself becoming annoyed. “Not yet, no, but neither do the cops or the FBI.”

  “You might be wrong about that. They could be ninety percent toward solving the case and they just haven’t told you, because why should they?”

  “Okay. Fine.” Michael repressed an urge to slam down the phone. “I will admit that this is not my area of expertise, and maybe it’s not any of my business, but so what? I have no intention of interfering in a police investigation and I do have some personal interest, and that interest is not harming anybody. So, are you going to answer my questions or not?”

  “Sure,” Dolan said. “No reason not to. I charge by the hour.”

  “Good. So, my first question is, how did they do it?”

  “As to the interference with the exosuits, that was almost undoubtedly done from inside. Have you heard the term ‘lights out manufacturing?’”

  “No.”

  “It means that a factory can work with the lights out. It doesn’t need lights because the process is entirely automated. There are no people involved. It’s not a new idea. In 1784, a guy named Oliver Evans, who owned a gristmill, invented a way to move wheat from carts to a grindstone to storage barrels, one operation after another, using a series of conveyor belts.

  “Today, there are hundreds of factories, making highly complex parts and devices, that involve no human beings at all. For instance, a company called Fuji Automated Numerical Control has been using robots to manufacture other robots since 2001.”

  Michael stared at the phone. “It sounds like science fiction.”

  “Doesn’t it? Science fiction writers spend a lot of time thinking about the future. In 1955, Philip K. Dick wrote a short story called ‘Autofac.’ It accurately predicted the way that automated factories would work.”

  “Somebody must build the place, though.” Michael said. “That would require people.”

  “Of course. That’s why I say it was most likely an inside job. These plants are computerized, but people have to set up the machinery and program the computers.”

  “Could the computers have been hacked?”

  “Possibly, but probably not. Such factories are usually isolated from the internet, specifically to avoid outside interference. Any changes in the programming or instructions would have had to be made on-site.”

  “That wouldn’t have applied to the tournament, Virtually Undead. Ten people were killed, in ten different cities.”

  “This is true. There were three hundred players, and hundreds of other people were watching what was going on and gathering data. There would have been plenty of opportunity for somebody to trigger a kill switch.”

  Michael sat back for a moment, considering the possibilities. After a moment, he said, “So, not to change the subject, but let me ask you about traffic lights in New York City.”

  “Huh?”

  “Traffic lights in New York City. Also, storm run-off systems. Would you know anything about the way they work?”

  Dolan sighed. “I make my living pointing out the flaws in vulnerable systems. I know how all sorts of systems work.”

  “Okay. Any way that traffic lights and storm run-off systems could be hacked?”

  “Now, that is an interesting question, and one I haven’t been asked before. About ten years ago, New York City began to install a new traffic control system, called ‘Midtown in Motion,’ or MIM. From what I recall, it was completed in 2011. It has a traffic management center somewhere in the city, and it works by wireless. Could it be hacked? I wouldn’t be surprised. Also, you should understand that government systems, while they might be new and innovative when they’re first put in place, are rarely kept up to date. Even NASA is using computer systems that were obsolete years ago. Would their Security protocols stand up to modern hacking? I don’t know but I wouldn’t bet on it.”

  Michael sat back, thinking. “What about the storm drainage system?”

  “Very different from traffic control. The drainage systems in modern cities are based on principals that are literally thousands of years old. They’re not high tech, and they aren’t too different from what was done in ancient Rome, Crete, or Machu Pichu. Some of the pipelines in New York have been in continuous use for over a century. Their operation is largely passive. If the capacity of a pipe is exceeded, excess might run into a drainage chamber. If the drainage chamber is filled and the sewage keeps on coming, then it overflows and is discharged into local waterways. There’s no central control and there’s nothing to hack.” Dolan’s voice seemed to hesitate. “Now, I’m intrigued,” Dolan said. “Why are you asking this? What else is going on?”

  “Probably nothing,” Michael said. “Thanks for your time, and don’t forget to send me your bill.”

  Chapter 10

  Harold Strong, Michael had no doubt, knew how the New York City traffic control systems worked. Michael’s newly acquired knowledge would do little to impress him. Still, for Michael, such knowledge opened up at least a few areas of inquiry.

  Zach Dolan had been helpful, but Zach Dolan, according to Rachel, might not be the best person to ask for what Michael needed next.

  He picked up the phone and dialed.

  “Michael?”

  There
was palpable silence on the other end of the line, then, “Hey, what’s up?” Michael Morse said.

  “There have been some interesting developments in the case. Remington Simulations?”

  “Yeah? Tell me.”

  It didn’t take long for Michael Foreman to tell Michael Morse everything he knew.

  “That’s…disturbing,” Michael Morse said.

  Pretty much, yeah, Michael thought.

  “So, why are you calling me?”

  “I was wondering if you might know the name of a really good hacker.”

  “Aside from myself?”

  “I thought you had outgrown the sins of your youth.”

  Michael could almost hear the amusement in the other man’s voice. “This is true,” he said. “There’s more money to be made in devoting my talents to the forces of good. Also, my current job requires a security clearance. It wouldn’t do for me to be crawling along the underbelly of the dark web.”

  “So…a hacker?”

  “You’re serious?”

  “I’m afraid I am.”

  “You told me that the FBI is on the case. The FBI has plenty of computer experts, and they’re not going to appreciate you butting in.”

  Michael frowned at the phone. “I have no intention of stepping on their toes.”

  “Yeah? How is a hacker not going to step on their toes?”

  “The things I’m interested in are peripheral to the case.” I hope, Michael thought.

  “I think I can come up with a few names, so long as you’re willing to pay.”

  “Huh…I thought that hackers did it for the challenge. You know, penetrate impenetrable systems? Stick it to the man?”

  “Go to jail? For the rest of your life?”

  “There is that.”

  “Give me a day or so. I’ll get back to you.”

  “Great. I’m looking forward to it.”

  Art Tatum, it was said, could play over a thousand notes per minute. Vladimir Horowitz, considered by many to be the greatest classical pianist of the Twentieth Century, was supposedly in awe of Tatum. Horowitz once said that if Art Tatum ever decided to devote himself to classical music, then he, Horowitz, would quit his day job. Horowitz went on to say that he himself might have been as fast as Tatum but he simply lacked the sheer creative ability that seemed to come so naturally to jazz pianists in general and Tatum in particular.