Summit
The NSA was doing it again. They thought they were hot shit, but the
Colonel wasn't convinced. After all, who had the suits? The NSA was
working on some pretty interesting stuff these days, but the
difference was stark. This was literally the difference between
classical, newtonian physics and quantum physics. In the public eye,
the NSA were the bad guys. These hackers weren't helping matters for
the poor fools. Everyone was learning a lot, but there would be no
saving the NSA. They'd all fucked up, really, the whole damn country,
but the NSA would be taking the fall. Sometimes the Colonel wondered,
how did they see it? Did they realize their agency was perhaps
created, in part, to take the blame for things like this?
The infrastructure was collapsing at a faster and faster rate. Entire
terabytes of databases were being leaked, on purpose, by corrupt
politicians seeking only to cover their own tracks. The computer
systems almost all had backdoors at this point, and no one was really
sure what to do about it. Except the middle-schoolers. They knew
exactly what to do with a leaked CIA cyber arsenal. Russian
involvement was unclear, as always. Let's face it, Russia has
teenagers too.
The Colonel was happy with the suits, but it was starting to get as
confusing as the time he had been drugged and tortured in South
America. He hadn't spilled the beans that time, and this time he,
quite literally, would not be able to. A lot of it was in the hands
of the physicists now, and they were God-less heathens who had trouble
explaining themselves or admitting when they didn't know certain
things. That was unclear too. What goes through the mind of a
physicist? Or one of these "hacker" types? The Colonel wondered to
himself, was he just as confusing to them, as they were to him? Were
they confusing to each other? He fought back tears for the first time
he could remember in years.
They all should have listened to that fool the first time around.
"Look up the etymology of the word," he had said. "I don't think you
understand what a hacker is." This had seemed like the oldest trick in
the book, at the time. The fool was trying to cover his bases too,
but he was crazy. You don't call yourself the mock enemy forces as a
way to explain an interest in constructed languages. It's simply not
done. That's not covering one's bases. That stupid, stupid fool.
He'd been able to do ten pushups though, and really he was working as
hard as anyone for his SSI stipend... but what a stupid fool. He was
looking more and more suspicious, the harder everyone looked.
Something was wrong with that guy.
There were silver linings in the approaching storm, though. Everyone
knew what "hacker" meant now, to the two he was meeting with. Sure,
to everyone else, it still just meant... well... whatever Hollywood
had thought it meant, all those many years ago. These two though...
They would be confusing, the Colonel was sure of that much. At this
point though, the Brass were desperate. The NSA had really done a
number on the infrastructure. The computers were basically all
paperweights; the suits would serve no purpose if everyone knew
everything about them.
The Finnish man from Oregon was already there when the Colonel
arrived. Both of them were a little startled as the Colonel entered
the room. This man had legitimate reasons to be angry. The Colonel
understood this. The feeling must be like that he had whenever an
unruly enlisted man pulled a practical joke at just the wrong time
and, often, somebody else paid for it. Paid dearly sometimes,
sometimes was injured or worse...
He'd never heard of this man before last week, but apparently the vast
majority of the Internet ran his software. It was amazing really, the
gap between "what everyone knew" and the truth. It always was. The
cynical Canadian with the rusty revolver had yet to arrive. He was
even stranger than this Finnish man sucking coffee through his
stirring stick... it was not meant to be a straw... The paranoid
Canadian had said something like, "I'll come if you pay for it, but
I'm not entering your country unarmed." He'd also made it very clear,
if he caught anyone snooping around, there would be hell to pay. The
US had showed their hand, really, and no one ever snooped around the
Canadian's "fortress." If anyone did at this point... well... it
would be pretty obvious no matter how well-disguised they were.
The meeting did not go well. The Canadian was as unmotivated by money
as that damned fool, and the Finn seemed to just be waiting for
chances to interject angrily how stupid the NSA had been. He had a
grin on his face that pissed the Colonel off. He was smart though.
Smarter, socially, than the Canadian. Which wasn't saying that
much... The Finn was having a grand old time. The Colonel found
himself wondering, then discarding the idea... no one was that
smart... but... could this be staged by these two? Or just the
Finn. Could he have just wanted a free cup of coffee and a chance to
express his down-trodden outrage? Certainly, his software project had
been ruined. At this point people were flocking to the Canadian's
version. It didn't look like the US was going to be able to buy
either of them out, the Finn to stop grinning, and the Canadian to...
well... but his software was free. To everyone. That was
ridiculously suspicious in itself.
They somehow knew about the fool who'd pointed everyone at the
Internet to look it up themselves. How could they possibly know, if
they already weren't infecting all the computers? They had to be.
The Canadian was saying, basically, "look, heads of state. Listen,
leaders of the free world. If you want to use my software you can.
Like anyone else. It's free. Go ahead." What were his motivations?
Could someone love what they did, truly that much? To not even care
about being paid?
At the end of the meeting, the Colonel still had a question for the
two weirdos. What was the deal with the fool and his fucking
transvestite robot bunny? That was just another one, the Finn started
to explain. The Canadian shot him an inscrutable look, but the Finn
seemed to understand. He sure was good at looking down-trodden. The
Colonel kept his face as expressionless as he could. The Canadian
seemed to be doing the same, but it may have been something completely
different he was thinking. These people were so fucking weird, the
whole lot of them. How could the world have this underbelly of
bizarre people, and have come to rely on them so heavily, without ever
really realizing anything about this?
The Colonel left the meeting feeling as though nothing had been
accomplished. The rabbit was still an unsolved mystery, but these two
men clearly had respect for it. Perhaps they even felt some jealousy.
The fool had said things like, "ya got a decade?" when asked to
explain. Maybe it wasn't a trick at all. Maybe everyone was as
cynical as the Canadian with the rusty revolver. The Colonel shut his
eyes at his desk and just shook his head. God only knew what would
happen if he tried to fire that piece of shit.