Riding the Machine

He called himself Gomez, having chosen the name from an old TV show. Gomez sat in his cage as he worked on his computer. He was just a teenager and he looked like any other teenager, sporting the shaved head and tattoos that fashion dictated. The cage was designed to foil detection equipment and so far it had worked. Gomez was his secret identity, the name he used as he logged onto a salvage satellite. He could only use the satellite when it happened to be above him, but it gave him secret access to the web. He had purchased a password from a dealer. The satellite was an obsolete, abandoned piece of equipment that had once served the purpose of whomever launched it into space, but had been replaced. Gomez supposed it would be more expensive to retrieve the machine than it would to leave it hanging over the Earth. Now, someone else was using it and that someone was selling passwords. The satellite was suitable for Gomez’s needs and it would be difficult for the authorities to find him, especially if he took the precaution of logging onto other, more legitimate systems before sneaking.

The sneaking he did was unobtrusive. Had he wished, he could have helped himself to some of the money that flowed through the web, but that would attract unwanted attention. Any money he brought to himself would leave a trail for the authorities to follow. So, Gomez was only looking for information. He would know which information when he found it. He entered corporate and government files, guessing at the passwords. There was always someone who used one of the passwords he tried and once he was in a particular system, he knew enough to locate a list of usernames and passwords, allowing him to choose someone to impersonate and log on again under an identity with more privileges. He was often caught, but knowing that someone was looking at files and finding out who and where someone is were two very different processes.

Once in a system, Gomez could read e-mail, even confidential messages, look through satellites and security cameras and spy on the activities of robots. For him, it was simple enough to read a robot’s instructions. He sniffed around, seeking something worth copying and sending it to the list of news websites he had memorized. He sorted through the assortment of mundane messages obsessively, seeking something interesting. An e-mail message caught his attention. It was in a corporate site, a restaurant franchise that had grown a crop of identical establishments around the world. They had reported a dissident to the authorities. The dissident had, supposedly, made politically incorrect, pro-terrorist statements and should be watched. Gomez wondered what a restauranteur was doing reporting something like that. He opened his notepad program, wrote down the dissident’s name and then logged off of the system. He moved along to a search engine and entered the name of the dissident, Troy Blankman. Information about several people with the name Troy Blankman came up and Gomez opened the pages and did a text search on them. He went through several search words. “Statement,” “terror,” “observe,” “charged,” “reported.” Gomez found nothing. He used the search engine for another search, to create a list of transcripts of cell phone conversations by people named Troy Blankman. Still, there was no way to pick out the Troy Blankman he was looking for.

He searched for addresses that would reveal the location of the Troy Blankman making a particular call. He still had nothing, just a bunch of addresses. Gomez’s mind clicked, putting things together. He searched the page of search engine results again, using the finder. He used “restaurant” for the key word as he searched the text of the listings that the search engine had given him. He found too many entries, so he used “restauranteur” and “restaurant owner”. That helped. He narrowed his results down to the handful of restaurant owners named Troy Blankman. Remembering where the e-mail he had found had gone to and from, he could find the correct Troy Blankman, complete with address and phone number. He pasted that into his notepad.

Gomez snuck into the police system, using a username and password he had discovered on a previous sojourn, one belonging to an officer with clearance. First, he opened a list of usernames and passwords and picked out another persona for next time. Next, he searched the ongoing case files for Blankman’s name and phone number. Gomez found what he was looking for. He thought how typically underhanded the situation was. Troy Blankman owned and operated a restaurant that was in competition with the franchise and doing well. Someone working for the franchise had sent an anonymous tip to the police that Mr. Blankman had made politically incorrect statements, and that suspicious-seeming people met at his restaurant, in the hope of eliminating a competitor. The police were tracking Blankman, using his cell phone to follow his movements. They had sent a robot.

Due to personal risk and a shortage of officers, the police relied heavily on robots. Armed robots patrolled the streets, eliminating the need for officers on foot or in squad cars. The robots also served warrants and caught fugitives. In the sky, small, flying robots served as the eyes of the police. The flying robots that they currently used were helicopters, about two feet long, equipped with cameras. The robots were always under the control of an officer, back at one of the many facilities that were kept hidden from the public for safety reasons. A robotic helicopter was resting on the roof across from Blankman’s restaurant, watching him. It looked through the walls with its multi-view digital camera, recording all that happened inside. Gomez observed, watching the video feed from the robot on his computer. He knew what would happen. Even if the police did not find anything incriminating, his competitors would denounce him as a criminal, publicly and anonymously. A record that he had been investigated would be enough to implicate him and bring the twenty-four hour news down on him, hungry for a scoop.

Gomez went through the data on Troy Blankman. He was a forty-two year old black man who had never been in trouble with the law. Like most people, he was suspicious of the government, but could hardly be called a terrorist. He spent twelve to fourteen hours a day at work and the rest of his time at home with his family. He seemed oblivious to the fact that he was being scrutinized. His cooking had gotten good reviews. Gomez decided he had what he needed and logged off of the police system. He composed an article and laid it all out. He included the name of the anonymous tipster who had sought to bring the authorities down on Mr. Blankman, as well as the name of the franchise he worked for. He e-mailed the article out to the news websites. The act thrilled him, knowing that this particular corporate plot would backfire. He shut down his computer and went to get something to eat.

The cage and the special computer it contained were in his day house. It was a small, abandoned condominium that Gomez had carefully removed from the real estate system. It was connected to utilities and, as long as Gomez paid the bills with a credit card under yet another identity, his use of it went unnoticed. The Kitchen, with a small freezer and microwave oven, bathroom and cage were all he needed and at night he could go to parents house to sleep. He filled the place with food smell as he cooked a prepackaged meal and then made some instant coffee. He consumed the meal while standing in the kitchen and then cleaned up. He brought the antenna he used to find his satellite inside from the condominium’s modest deck and locked and bolted both doors. Delving into his backpack, he pulled out his scanner. He adjusted it to the frequencies that the police used and searched the air around him for the telltale signals of their robots. Nothing. He sorted through his pack, deciding what to leave and what to take with him, and then left the day house behind until tomorrow.

When Gomez arrived the next day, the satellite was not in position. That was OK. He shut down the computer in the cage, retrieved his laptop from his pack and then he went on the web as himself. His article had turned up in the news, for all to read. The accused company had declined to comment. Satisfied, Gomez read a few other news articles and then left again and spent the day out with friends. He had some time before work. He spent his evenings cooking fast food at one of the identical restaurants in one of many competing chains of establishments that had been sprinkled over his hometown. Being part of the system bugged him, but he had to get money and look legitimate somehow.

The next day, Gomez logged onto the satellite and poked around. He began eavesdropping on terrorist websites. There were millions of them on the web and they operated openly, ready to welcome any recruit that bought the ideologies they were selling. Unlike other groups that Gomez had spied on, they did not cover themselves with security measures, beyond making the site’s operators anonymous. They simply operated so many hateful sites that authorities had trouble keeping up. They also moved the sites to different addresses regularly. Since the beginning of the terror wars in the early twenty-first century, a startling variety of extreme groups had transformed themselves into terrorist organizations. They were constantly using the web to tell people around the world how to be a terrorist and who to target. The world’s governments had responded by pulling together and cracking down, which had led to a conflict between governments and radicals, with everyone else caught in the middle. The next development had been selling out. Nobody really knew whether terrorists began hitting targets given to them by gangsters, or even legitimate businesses, in return for donations, or if criminals were simply masquerading as terrorists. Either way, any difference between idealistic people using terror tactics and criminals motivated by greed had disappeared. Gomez moved cautiously as he sought out terrorists’ sites. If he were to be caught by police or businessmen, he would only be arrested. Terrorists were more serious.

Sure of his anonymity, he read their e-mail. There was a lot of buzz about an upcoming protest in Washington. It would be another demonstration of the American people’s dissatisfaction with the loss of privacy and civil liberties. Gomez agreed with them in principle, but thought that demonstrating had become pointless. The opposing view always claimed that the alternative was to leave society wide open to terrorist attack. Gomez figured that the terrorists would attack either way, but the authorities always claimed that they were doing what they had to for the people’s protection. Gomez wondered why the terrorists were so interested in the protest.

He kept snooping. There was one particular terrorist group that was interested in the protest. The organizers of that anonymous group were the ones watching, not the actual operatives. Typically, it was stupid terrorists that did the actual operations and suicide bombings. Smart terrorists tricked others into doing it for them. It was that core of organizers who were interested in the protest and Gomez wanted to know what they were planning. As he snooped, he scored by finding a username and password of someone he could impersonate, which gave him access to e-mail. He would not use the identity longer than necessary.

Gomez quickly discovered that the terrorists had listings of the police robots that would be at the protests. As was typical, the robots would watch the protesters and control their movements. Those robots were large, clunking metal humanoids, whose primary weapon was an electrical touch system. The ETS would send a current through the machine’s outer skin, strong enough to subdue anyone it came in contact with. However, those robots typically had firearms or even explosives stashed somewhere inside their metal bodies. A wave of excited nausea coursed through Gomez as he found out more. The terrorists had the frequencies that the robots’ controllers would be using. Someone wanted the protest to be attacked and was using the nameless terrorist group to do it. The method would be to take control of the police robots. They would not be the first hackers to pull that off. Gomez himself could do it if he had the necessary information. The hard part was not getting caught. It was known as riding the machine. When a team of criminals wanted to pull off a job, they typically hired a hacker to ride the machine. The hacker would typically control police robots for only a few precise minutes and then abandon his equipment and run before the signal could be traced.

Gomez shut down his computer and paced through his day house. He tried to anticipate the plan from what he knew. The terrorists were planning to ride the machine and most likely use the police robots to attack the protest. He wondered why. He knew nothing about the people behind it. If the terrorist group had a name, Gomez did not know it and, even in their most secure communications, they had not revealed any information about the identity of the person who wanted the protest attacked. Gomez guessed. The obvious choice was ideological terrorists, but an attack on the protest would make things harder for them. It could be someone who wanted to make the police look bad, possibly political opponents. Gomez did not know if the terrorists had decided to ride the machine themselves, or had been directed to use that method. He decided it did not matter. Gomez knew he had to do something. He had never stumbled onto something this big. He considered tipping off the police, but he doubted they would listen to him. They might, but he had to be sure. The same was true of warning the protesters. He considered impersonating a cop and contacting them, but the organizers would probably be less likely to listen to the police. If he were one of them, he would assume someone was trying to trick them into canceling the demonstration. Gomez figured that the only way to be sure would be to act on his own.

He spent the next two days planning while pretending to watch video in his parents’ living room. With the information he had, he could get into the police system and transmit his own instructions to the robots. He had the list of frequencies that he had taken from the terrorists, as well as usernames and passwords of high-ranking police. The challenge was to figure out what to tell the robots to do. The police could override any order that he gave, if they became aware that someone else was sending commands. He wondered if it was possible to tell the robots to self-destruct or something. If that were practical, someone would have already thought of it and he certainly would have seen it in the news. He formed his plan. He would go into the police system and keep an eye on their robots, as he had done in the past. If he waited and watched, he just might be able to stop incoming commands. He had use of his satellite in the evening before the protest and he spent his time practicing, keeping track police robots assigned to a particular controller.

He slept on the floor of his day house, after going out to the street and calling his parents, so he could use a cover story of visiting a friend. Both of his parents worked and never seemed to mind when he was not home. Gomez was nearly eighteen, anyway. The protest had been allowed on Saturday morning, from nine to noon. After that, the permit would expire and the robots would break it up. Gomez woke up, ate and then went into his cage, ready for battle. His satellite was not reachable. Gomez swore. No more shadowy fun and games, he told himself. Stopping the attack was more important than not being caught. He went out on the deck and dialed out with his laptop, using his true identity to enter the web. He entered the police system, easily. He was lucky. The police officer he was impersonating was off-line, so his illegal presence was not being traced. Not yet. He found the listings for the robots on patrol. He was able to watch a video feed from a robotic helicopter, with a view of everything. The demonstration was contained in an area in front of the Capitol Building, surrounded by robots that would challenge anyone who tried to leave without using the permitted route. Anyone failing to obey would be zapped.

Gomez watched the protesters showing signs and banners and chanting for a couple of hours. One of the protest organizers, a small man with black hair, was giving speeches and leading the chant. A message flashed on Gomez’s computer screen. He knew what it meant without reading it. The police were on to him. He closed everything and logged back on, under a different name. Amusingly, the police were sending reports of his previous activities to the officer he was now impersonating. The e-mails became less funny as Gomez read his real name in the text. He responded.

“As you were, I will handle the matter personally.”

Gomez hoped that the ploy would buy him enough time. More e-mail came in. There was another intruder. Gomez figured it must be the terrorists. Without enough information to impersonate police, the new intruder was simply transmitting straight to the robots, using his own equipment. Gomez composed a quick e-mail informing the police. Messages came in faster than he could read them. The police signal controlling the robots had been drowned out by the intruder and was being boosted. Also, the officer Gomez was impersonating had tried to log on. Gomez wondered how long it would take the police to figure out which of the two users was an imposter. Knowing he was already caught, Gomez kept working. He took direct control of a police transmitter and cycled through the frequencies, looking for one that was not on the list he had found on the terrorists’ site.

The terrorists were riding the machine and Gomez watched the result on video coming in from the helicopter he still had control of as it hovered above the protest. The police robots surrounding the crowd shifted their weight and gun barrels emerged from their torsos. The protesters frightened reaction was immediate. They made gestures of surrender, unaware that the robots were not under police control. Gomez broadcast command words to the robots in a desperate attempt to make them pull in their guns. As they received contradictory commands from two sources, the humanoid machines did a confused dance, their guns whirring and clicking in and out. On the deck of Gomez’s day house, a small robotic helicopter arrived. The machine buzzed in front of him like a vigilant insect, staring with its camera. Gomez ignored it and kept working.

The police knew who Gomez was, and even where he was, but he still had control of a transmitter that was close enough to the demonstration. He wondered if they knew he was on their side, or had chosen to ignore him and focus on boosting their own signal. The police were strengthening a signal on the same frequency that the terrorists were using, in an attempt to drown out the unauthorized signal, while Gomez was broadcasting on one of the other frequencies that the robots were programmed to receive. Mentally, Gomez tried to concentrate on the robot commands that he knew. Hoping to neutralize their guns, Gomez instructed them to fall on their bellies, which they did. They immediately rose and stood. In the parking lot under the deck that Gomez was sitting on, robotic squad cars arrived with a screech of rubber on pavement. They followed their program and a recorded message instructed Gomez to surrender. A buzzing helicopter hovered watchfully over him.

On his computer, the video of the confused robots winked off. It was replaced by a message informing him that the frequency the unit was receiving had changed. Good, Gomez thought. The police were instructing the robots to stop taking instructions on any frequency Gomez was using. He switched frequencies, cycling through the ones on the list he had stolen from the terrorist site. His fingers danced on the keyboard as he manually changed from one frequency to another. A turret extended from the top of one of the robotic squad cars below him and shot something onto the deck with a pop. A small metallic grape with a wire trailing away from it like a fishing line landed on the floor of the deck near Gomez. He knew he was about to get zapped, but he kept working. One by one, the robots guarding the protest refused each frequency as soon as Gomez switched to it. He hurriedly used each of the frequencies on the list in turn. The squad car pulled back its grape, which skittered off the deck and along the pavement.

Gomez switched to the last frequency on the list and leaned back, hoping that what he had just done had worked. The squad car in front of him popped again and the metal grape shot toward him and bounced off his knee. An electric shock sprang through him. Gomez fell from his chair and wiggled on the floor of the deck while hearing his own screams. The squad car instructed him to surrender and get in with mechanical authority. Gomez voiced his agreement and went back inside, leaving his now inert and ruined laptop behind. The robot helicopter followed him inside, pushing through the door with its nose. It watched the young man’s every move as he walked out the front door, down the stairs and out to the squad car that waited with its door open. Gomez climbed into the vehicle and the door shut with an angry thump as its locks clicked into place. The automated voice smoothly informed him of his rights as the car rolled away, its lights flashing.

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