The Origin Point: A Future Tech Cyber Novella

  *

  "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, s
omeone 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 hope 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."