"In what way?"
"Need smart dust motes inside their space. No other way."
“Huh?” said Max
“Dust particle sized radios. We place them on people. They pick up stray communications, store them. Just need the right victim.”
"What do you need?" Alice asked.
"Middle level insider. Access to the servers. Authentication especially."
"Serious nerd?"
"Yes."
I looked at Max and Alice. They were already working out a plan. It would happen this way. We would watch where they had lunch, where they arrived at work. Once we had a space, we would try to spray motes.
The motes didn't have enough internal power to transmit further than a few metres. So we couldn't monitor them remotely. They stored their information on internal memory, and we had to access them later.
So Phil and I planted an exploding bunch of motes at the exit of the subway. When we triggered it thousands of the tags would spray out into the air. Barely visible, floating. Some of them would stick to everyone who was within about 5 metres. Ideally we needed a day that was still, and not too windy - otherwise they would just blow away. They were all early starters, so this worked in our favour. Not too crowded, and not likely to be windy.
6am. Watching the Flagstaff station exit. It was ideal. A stairway upwards to an exit onto the street. They would have to go past our installation, no way to dodge it. Much better than the other exits, which were wide and hard to mark.
We had to rely on the scouts below watching for security people coming off the train. Then allow enough time for them to climb the stairs to the exit. Precise timing needed.
"Any victims?" Alice asked
"Plenty. About 10." I said.
The next phase was tricky. We had to harvest the motes. After their day inside, we needed to get close to the motes to interrogate them. We needed to get up close and personal to download the information.
"Lunchtime?"
"Yes."
We had detectors either side of the security building main entrance. They interrogated motes, looking for likely targets. We knew what we were looking for, so we could trawl for the targets. We only needed to be within a metre or so for about 20 seconds to download everything that was on the tag.
"OK. We have two likely targets on Bourke St heading west towards William St." Max.
Alice got ready. She was dressed for the occasion. Office dress. She would blend into the crowd.
"Here he comes. Brown pants, white business shirt." Max again.
Alice was towing a bag on rollers. Typical office stuff. Not heavy, but it was the thing to tow a bag. As she got in front of him she veered right, as if to go to cross the street. But stumbled, and the bag got directly in his path. Down she went, on one knee to the pavement.
"Locking on. Yes, loading. I need 20 seconds from here." Max.
Now she had to just keep him within range. She pulled off her shoe, apologising profusely.
"I'm so sorry, you must think I'm so clumsy."
Beaming, the big grin. Got him. He stopped and helped her to her feet.
"Not at all, those things are difficult to navigate. You must have some gear in there."
"Just the usual sales pitch stuff."
As she got up, we were working to extract data from the dust.
"OK. Got it." Max.
So the intercept was over. Time enough to get about 10M of data. Gotcha.
Stray fields. Every computer has electrical fields. Even highly secure equipment leaves a trace of its activity within a small distance. The motes picked up on that and recorded them. No real processing onboard, just recording. They only had limited energy storage, just enough to deliver the memory contents when prompted. Small enough to evade the scanning for bugs. They were formidable, but clumsy.
I sat with Phil as he trawled the tag traces. It would have half a day's recordings. Raw. There might be one authentication attempt in the whole recording. I didn't doubt his ability, but it sure seemed like a long shot to me. There was too much riding on getting through this gateway.
"OK. I have to do a broad search first. That will take a day or two. Then we'll have some possible targets."
"Soon. We need it soon." A note of urgency in Max's voice.
To keep me amused, Phil put up a 3D display of the traces. Sometimes it helped to visualise - occasionally we would discover something that all the algorithms missed. Not often, but enough to keep us looking. I couldn't help but feel that he was just giving me the task to keep me busy.
Chapter 26
"How did we end up here?" I asked Phil.
"We woke up, had breakfast and resumed our glorious quest for the authentication codes."
"No, I mean how did we end up fighting for this side?"
"It's the path of the true believers. Also I seem to remember your thirst for knowledge about the lost daughter, followed by grappling with Kylie’s jeans. You dragged me along as an accomplice."
After a long day of what was basic low level hacking, late in the evening we both needed a break. Down Elizabeth St. Suddenly it all came back to me. I never thought I would be sentimental about the wall of lights. Seemed like several lifetimes ago. Who was that person? It was as if I might meet myself walking in the opposite direction down this street, huddled from a hard day staring at the wall.
Phil liked seedy places. It was his thing. The seedier the better. So we found ourselves buried at the back of ‘The Castle’. I couldn't believe it. He'd excelled himself. A strip show in progress. Bored eighteen year olds shedding clothing slowly. Probably thinking of a troubling plot development in their latest novel. Hopeless middle aged men sprawled across tables. Beyond drunk. Everyone staring into the middle distance.
We downed Scotch and Cokes. Classy we were.
"Rest and recreation for the front line" I asked.
"Class. It oozes class."
Just to the right of us was a thirty something woman with dark glasses on. It was dark enough in there without shades on. ‘Future's so bright, has to wear shades’ I thought. She looked at home in the place, which was an achievement in itself.
"Come here often?" Phil asked.
"You sure have a way with words. Screenwriter?" she responded.
"Phil. Front line eco-warrior. This is Andrew, my trusty sidekick."
"Kate Harvey, front line journalist in the quest for truth."
"Hard day at the office? Fingers worn out from thumping the keyboard?"
I started to feel like the third person. As in the third person that makes up the crowd. After all, they seemed to share a passion for squalor, amongst other things. So as the show drifted on, I could see that soon I was going to make an excuse, then make an exit.
"I've got to get back to some analysis."
I expected Phil to laugh, but he was otherwise engaged. So off I went into the night.
Chapter 27
Colin hated meetings. He had an impatience that didn't lend itself to fine chatter.
"What do we have?"
"We lost tracking."
"I expected that - they know our techniques."
"We have footage of the incident in the laneway."
"You're not telling me anything I don't already know."
Robert stood there politely. Protocol didn't allow him to speak his mind.
"Hacking?"
"Of course. Progressing."
"Their current objective?"
"Not clear yet."
"Bullshit. They have ambitions. Our destruction is what gets them out of bed in the morning. Don't jolly me along with this pap. It's not worthy of your talents."
Robert took this as his cue to sit. He didn't want to aggravate the situation any further.
Chapter 28
Screens. Just screens. Mostly just numbers. Scrolling. Phil could stare at them for hours. He would throw up an animation occasionally, spinning and twirling in 3D space. I realised that it was just to keep me entertained. He didn'
t need it. It all happened inside his head. I couldn't do much to help. This was a territory where my mental horsepower wouldn't cut it.
In the other room Kylie was amusing herself by baiting the fossil fuel lobby on Twitter. It was like a sentimental recollection of earlier days. When we lived to tweet and tweeted to live.
"Fossil fuel leeches sucking the life out of the planet."
"Australia: a world parasite."
"Time to pull the plug on Oz."
She really enjoyed baiting them.
"Ever thought of leaving Australia?" I asked
"For good?"
"Yes."
Who were the smart Jews that left Germany early? You don't see memorials to them. 'Saw the writing on the wall. Walked across the border in 1934. Eventually settled in America.'
"Sure. Haven't you?" she replied
"Lots."
It was fiercely logical. The rest of the first world was well into the post-carbon age. Plenty to do, lots of opportunities. Australia was an anachronism. A mildly annoying one at that. The money behind the blockade fund was vast. It showed the country was slated for destruction. Small country, no friends. Toast.
I looked across at Kylie. Did we have a relationship, or was I just tagging along? Hard to tell. Not a question to be asked. She paused, collecting her thoughts.
"It's going to sound sentimental."
"Try me."
"You know, when you are on a bicycle tour in the middle. Miles from nowhere. Just you and the bush."
"Yes."
"Everyone says: why do you go there? There is nothing there."
"They don't get it."
"Well, when I'm out there on the bike, East of Bourke. Just dust and the horizon. I feel welded to it. Like it's in my blood. I couldn't live with the thought of never being there again. I would rot away inside. Become a shadow of a shadow.
If I die here then so be it. Everybody has to die somewhere."
Chapter 29
I couldn't resist having a go at Phil.
"How's things with your new friend Kate?"
"We just shared a few drinks. Nothing to it."
"OK. If you say so."
I wondered if he was just being cautious. I don't think Max would react well to a journalist. Not with them, but certainly not with us.
"Progress?" I asked.
"Look at this."
He projected it onto the wall. Curiously beautiful. But meant little to me. If it wasn't all so serious.
"I feel like I'm close here. Just need a little longer."
Max wandered in. He stared at the projection. Looked expectant. When nothing was forthcoming, he wandered out again.
I trawled the newsfeeds. Riots. Mostly food riots. Footage of desperate people on the move. Where to? I wondered. It wasn't as if things were going to be better at their destination. But I guess I was the same. Waiting was harder than moving. When you were moving you could imagine a destination.
Chapter 30
At the height of summer, we relented. Just too hot. Too hot to sit sweating over projected hacks. So we piled onto the magic 96 tram to St Kilda. When the city was young it was the preferred place to escape. In a way it still was.
Crowded at the beach. The arc of sand. As we walked along the footpath beside the beach wall it seemed as if every centimetre of had an owner. Littered rectangles of cloth marking the spot. Civilisation, I guess. You could leave your towel and come back and it would still be there.
Like kids on a day out. I don’t think I’d ever seen Kylie in a swimsuit. In a dirty old man sort of way I was looking forward to it. But you just mostly noticed how tall she was.
Max and Alice walked ahead. Like stockbrokers off on a yachting weekend. Purposeful in a place without serious purpose. Even they got into the mood of it. So hot. No wind.
By the time we found a place the sand it was so hot on our feet there was no alternative. Straight in the water. Dithering in the shallows. But not Alice. Off and swimming. Where did she learn to swim like that? I dived in. Icy, but great.
You stayed in the water until you were cold. Starting to wrinkle. Then tiptoed back across the sand back to the towel. Stretched out.
I asked Kylie: “This is great. Did you spend much time at the beach as a kid?”
“Always. Long bike rides, the surf. Lived for it.”
“Of course.”
At least we were together, relaxing. That was rare enough. We waited until at least the edge had gone off the heat that little bit.
I wanted to linger, but of course Max and Alice didn’t. We shook off the sand, and gathered our clothing. For the ride back to town. It was crowded on the footpath, with people following the same rhythm. Now that we were coming to the end of the day it was cooling slightly.
“Back to the hack.” I said to Alice.
“You love it. How many days of your life have you spent staring at a computer screen?”
“Seems like all of them.”
“From here on, maybe not so many.”
We walked to the crossing, to get across Beaconsfield Parade. Making our way to the tram stop on Fitzroy St. What was it that made me take notice of the van? Going East around the curve of the street. It was slowing, in a place where there was no reason to slow.
“That van.” I said to Max
All of a sudden it turned, and accelerated. Right towards us. Across lanes of traffic. The door slid, quickly. Two men wearing balaclavas, and holding automatic weapons. Aimed straight at us. Two more men behind those. In an instant they had Alice. She kicked and yelled, but it was all too fast. The van was moving even before the door shut.
We stood, as if glued to the spot. Max was on the phone, talking quietly, sending orders. In a moment of stupid ordinary everyday activity, the tram arrived, and we got on it.
Sitting on the tram, we just stared at each other. Speechless. Max, Kylie, Phil and I. I looked across at Max. He had known Alice since she joined up. In a sense he was the only constant in her life.
The tram shook its way down the leafy avenue. Now so little car traffic. My old school. The expensive one, loomed up on the right. What would they make of me now? Effing terrorist. But ironically the set of skills, the strength, it all came from there.
Past the shrine. Wasn’t it about how to live? Isn’t that what they fought about? Isn’t this what it is about?
Max broke the silence.
“All battles are mental. All battles are personal. The way we are feeling. That is the way that they want us to feel. We can’t be like that.” He paused. I could see a tear in Kylie’s eye. She brushed it away.
“They know about the strike against CoalGen. Somehow they know about it. They know that Alice was key to that.”
Now the tram was shaking past the Arts centre, over the Yarra. Looking south the river snaked past Southbank. It was low. The tourist boats had to put extra steps down to reach the boats.
I struggled to not let my shaking show.
We split up, and merged with the crowds, to shake surveillance. All of us like bloody samurai, I thought. All we needed was a shiny sword each.
Yes, all conflict is personal. I summoned up an image of Colin from the security hacks we had. It didn’t help. Then Phil spoke.
“Time to call in all favours.”
Chapter 31
Colin sat in the monitoring room. Looking at Alice. Yes, she did look like her mother. The dock warehouse was a dedicated interrogation centre. Not a location with passing traffic.
It had all the tricks. But they couldn’t use drugs. All of them had the nano-implants - first sign of truth drugs and they expired.
Alice was only 21 or 22 according to their intelligence. She sat calmly. Sleep deprivation was the first phase. Sometimes it worked really quickly. Throw in some of the primitive stuff, and most of them just crumbled. He tuned into the interrogation.
“They have left you for dead. You are expendable.”
“All you need t
o do is give us the time of the attack. We’ll arrange for you to disappear. A new identity in New Zealand.”
Then he turned it down and just watched without the sound on. What the hell, he thought. He grabbed the photos of Susan. Large, A2 size. Then he hooked into the interrogator’s communicator circuit.
“Just leave her alone. I want to try something.”
After about 30 minutes, he just walked in and threw the photos on the table. Waited for a reaction. She hadn’t said a word since she had been captured. Not a word for five days.
Alice looked down at the photos. Slowly her gaze settled on each of them. No hurry, taking them in. Then she looked up at Colin.
“You are a dead man walking.”
Colin turned and walked out.
---
“What’s that?” I turned to Phil, as he scanned a feed.
“The exit corridor at security.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really and truly.”
“How the fuck did you set that up?”
“Called in old favours. It’s dropped behind a fire extinguisher. It will give us stuff until they do a scan in a couple of days.”
“But in the meantime.”
“Yes.”
Every time somebody went past we got the vibrations. No pictures or video, but we could use it as at trigger for other scans. We couldn’t send pictures or video out of their building anyway - they would pick that up. We had to hide this down in the noise.
I looked at the other feed. It looked like an ordinary house. An up-market one. Phil anticipated my question.
“Colin’s house.”
Then I had a horrible thought.
“We’re not going to kidnap one of his kids are we?”
Phil gave me that look. The long-suffering look.
“No. We don’t do that sort of thing. We’re the good guys, remember?”
“Yeah, right, the hired gun eco-terrorists working for a foreign fund guys.”
“Yeah, the good guys.”
Phil just continued to watch the two feeds. He was obviously hatching a plan.
“Ideas?” I asked.
“Colin is the key. He will be supervising the interrogation personally. He’s a bit of a control freak.”
How do we know that, I wondered? But I followed the thought through.
“So we can trail him?”
“Not easily. We only have a few drones, plus the hacked feeds from the street cameras. We can’t put a tag on his car as it goes through the scans at security every morning when he goes into the car park.”