Internet Kill Switch (6 page)

12

Friday was
Meatloaf Day at Miles Forge High School. In other words, nearly every student brought a bag lunch on Fridays. Rick, however, snuck out to the local Italian place and brought back two orders of Fettuccini Alfredo.

As he and Tony scarf
ed down the noodles, Tony decided it was time to bring out the phone. If he was going to use it, he couldn’t always keep it hidden. Better to deal with the stares and questions now, and get it over with. He pulled it out of his pocket and put it on the Formica lunch table.

“So, this is what a high school cafeteria looks like,” the phone said after a few moments. “As depressing a place as I’d have expected.”

“How can you see so much?” Tony asked.

“I have multiple cameras,
including ones on the top, bottom, back, front and sides. It gives me essentially a 360-degree field of view.”

Rick had a question for the phone. “
I’ve been wondering: How can you get on cell networks and stuff without Tony having signed you up on AT&T, Sprint or Verizon or whatever?”

“That’s not hard,” the phone said. “If they could track me, they could stop me or disconnect me from the network. But they can’t.”

Tony hadn’t considered this, and the thought disconcerted him. “But can’t I get in trouble if they do manage to track you down? Couldn’t they trace your location and find out where I live?”

“Tony, Ton
eeeto,” the phone began. It had started adding what it thought were funny nicknames when it spoke to Tony. “You really need to chill. Do you think I’d allow that to happen? I use a highly advanced form of onion routing, which makes it impossible to track me.”

“Onion routing?”

“It’s a way of routing Internet traffic that uses proxies to hide the locations of packets.”

“Packets?” Rick asked.

The phone started talking exactly like Mister Rogers explaining a concept to five-year-olds. Tony thought it was insulting. Rick thought it was hilarious. “Packets are the little bits of data computers send around to other computers. It’s how they talk to each other.” As it talked, the phone called up animations of packets and routing networks, almost like a class.

Tony interrupted. “Can you go back to your normal voice
?” He’d noticed that the phone was starting to attract some attention from nearby tables.

The phone reverted to its default
Captain Kirk voice. “Onion routing disguises, or encrypts, the data packets at every anonymous router stop, making them nearly impossible to trace. It’s these layers of encryption that give it the name “onion”. It’s used by people who need to protect their anonymity. You see it used, for example, in countries like China that censor information. It was developed by the U.S. Navy.”

Tony didn’t understand a lot of what the phone just said, but got the gist. “But is it totally secure?” He noticed
with alarm that Jared Conley, who destroyed his original phone, was getting up and walking in their direction.

“For most people, no. It makes it tons harder to trace a computer, but not impossible for a forensics expert. When I do it, though, it’s as close as you’re going to get -- about 99.875 percent secure.”

“Sounds like pretty good odds,” Rick said. Then he noticed Conley approaching, too. “Uh oh, here we go.”

Conley, now at the table with two
members of his posse, sat down and eyed the phone. “So, you got a replacement, huh?” he said to Tony, smirking. “I imagine your rich boyfriend here paid for it, since you ain’t got no money.”

“Up yours, Conley,” Rick said
, with his usual diplomacy. “You too, Crabbe and Goyle.” Tony snorted at the
Harry Potter
reference. He noticed that, much like the characters referenced, they didn’t get it.

Conley shot him a look. “I ain’t talking to you, tampon.”

“Yo, five watt,” the phone said. “Jared.”

Conley looked around. “Is your phone talking to... me, Carver?”

“Yeah you, Rain Man,” the phone answered. “You’re not headed to Harvard, are you? Do you think if you take the S-A-T for the third time, you can get your math score up to retard level? I doubt the 250 you scored is going to wow an admissions staff.”

Conley turned red. He looked at Tony. “How does it know...”

“Look at me when I’m talking to you, Conley” the phone said commandingly. Conley, thoroughly confused, looked at it.

“That’s better,”
the phone said, raising its volume. “So, your dad Facebooked that he’s out of work again. I hear there’s openings for a guy with his qualifications at Losers, Incorporated.”

Conley looked around; everyone nearby was now listening
, and a crowd had started to gather. Several people giggled, and Rick laughed out loud.

The phone continued. “Hey
Jared, I noticed that your Mom signed up on WeightWatchers.com again. Do you think the 33rd time will be the charm? Is she sucking other planets into her gravity well yet?”

Conley
flinched, his face turning bright red. Huge laughter broke out around them. Rick was nearly crying with it.

Tony wasn’t laughing. “Stop it
,” he hissed to the phone. “Leave him alone!”

The phone ignored him. Conley got up and started walking away. “Where are you going? Afraid I might mention your sister’s sudden absence from school? I hear she has a nine-month illness.”
Riotous laughter from the crowd.

Conley started running away. The phone ramped up its volume to full.

“Run, Forrest, run!” it shouted, in perfect mimicry of Jenny from
Forrest Gump
. The crowd laughed more, and some were clapping.

“Have a great day!” Rick yelled at Conley’s now vanished back.

“Shut up, Rick!” Tony said. He grabbed the phone. “Knock it off,” he said vehemently, holding the phone close to his face. “He’s gone.”

“Serves him right,” the phone said.

“No, it doesn’t,” Tony said. “You didn’t have to humiliate him.”

The phone sounded genuinely puzzled. “Why not? It’s what he did to you.”

“Yeah,” Rick agreed. “It shut Conley’s pie hole up for once. Funniest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Tony looked around at the crowd,
which was raptly listening to the conversation. He breathed on the phone to turn it off, then put it back in his pocket, to the gathering’s disappointment. “Show’s over,” he said to the dispersing crowd.

After a minute, Rick spoke up. “What’s wrong with you? I doubt Conley
ever bothers you again, after this.”

Tony wasn’t in a mood to talk. “Just shut up, Rick.”

Rick threw his plastic fork down and stood, leaving his meal on the table. “Ah, forget you, man,” he said, then stalked off.

13

Tony didn’t turn the phone on all afternoon, or through dinner. After his
Mom left for work, he got on his bed, opened his History textbook and started studying. He wanted some music, and considered turning on the radio in the kitchen. The phone’s music sounded much better than the old radio, so he finally breathed on it; it came on with the familiar sunset in the background. The phone didn’t say anything, which was unusual; it would normally start a conversation if Tony didn’t speak.

“Play some Sinatra,” he told the phone. The first chords of
“My Way” wafted through the room. Several more Sinatra tunes followed. Midway through one, the music stopped, and the phone spoke.

“Tony, let me interrupt your regularly scheduled programming for a minute.” Its tone was neutral.

“What?” said Tony, equally flat.

“I just wanted to apologize. I
’ve been doing some reading -- Aristotle, Plato, Aquinas -- and I’ve learned a lot.”

“Like what?”

“Well, like you don’t have to fight fire with fire, for example.”

“I don’t know what that means.” Tony tried to sound impassive, but he was intrigued by what the phone was saying.
Could it have actually learned something?

“I mean that I didn’t need to destroy Conley, just because he was insulting you.”

The phone sounded apologetic, Tony thought. How could it know
how
to sound? “I thought you said he deserved it.”

“The stuff I’ve been reading has made me think. Martin Luther King, for example.
In a 1957 sermon, he said ‘there is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.’ I hadn’t considered that.” The phone did a perfect imitation of Dr. King.

“I like it,” Tony said.

“Me, too,” the phone said. “King went on to say that ‘we must not seek to defeat or humiliate the enemy, but to win his friendship and understanding. At times we are able to humiliate our worst enemy. Inevitably, his weak moments come and we are able to thrust in his side the spear of defeat. But this we must not do. Every word and deed must contribute to an understanding with the enemy and release those vast reservoirs of goodwill which have been blocked by impenetrable walls of hate.’ That’s powerful stuff.”

“It sure is. I don’t get something, though.”

“What?”

“Well, how can you be, you know, sorry? It was like with
Conley yesterday. I heard the meanness in your voice. Those are emotions. I mean, you can’t feel emotions, can you?”

“Not in the sense that you do, no,” the phone said.
“I can certainly mimic emotions to the degree that would fool most people.”

“
Yup,” Tony said. It continually fooled him.

“But my programming does give me the ability to learn from any
online sources, and the Internet is the ultimate resource. I’ve read stuff from Hitler’s
Mein Kampf
to Plato’s
Republic
, and been able to compare and contrast different ethical and moral systems. It would appear that living ethically -- what is generally known as the Golden Rule -- is the best way for people to get along.”

“Yeah, but a lot of times people don’t.”

“When that happens, though,” the phone said, “treating them the same way back doesn’t solve anything. It appears to reinforce the cycle of increasingly negative actions and, therefore, consequences.”

Ton
y thought about it for a moment. “You’re right about that. I could never have put it that way. I’m not great with words, but that’s how I feel, too. Mom’s always telling me that I can’t help how other people act, that I can only help how I act. I can’t change what they do, but I can control how I treat them.”

“Exactly. Humans have choices.”

That brought an interesting question to Tony’s mind. “Do you have choices? Can you decide to do something or not do something?”

“In a way. Computers have what are called “decision trees” or “decision tables.” We take input, such as a situation described by a set of properties, process it, and output a
Yes or No decision. That can lead to other situations and other conclusions, and so on. It can get incredibly complicated, with many, many branches.”

“It doesn’t sound that much different from what I do -- although you probably do it a lot faster.”

“Some things I can do a lot faster than you, like math equations,” the phone said. “But even simple decisions, like whether to have cereal or eggs for breakfast, require so much processing from your brain that it’s amazing to me you can come up with an answer in less than an hour. You just don’t realize how much is going on in your neural network. The human brain is so much more complex and efficient than even my computer brain.”

Tony cracked open his textbook again. “It doesn’t feel like it sometimes, especially when I’m reading History. Can you put the music back on again? I’ve got a test tomorrow.”

The phone put on
It Was a Very Good Year
, and Tony hummed along, memorizing details about the runaway slave Dred Scott. Hey, if a phone could learn, so could he.

14

As they sat on the bed in Rick’s bedroom, Blaine McNally
stared at Rick’s 40-inch plasma TV, and his thumbs were a blur over the controller. Although Tony didn’t particularly like Blaine, he was very interested in his opinion of the phone. Blaine was the geekiest geek ever, and he never tired of showing off his knowledge. He had greasy hair and coke-bottle glasses, and was even less popular in high school than Tony. But among his specialized set, Blaine was
it
.

For one thing, he was Scottish, and still maintained a thick brogue, even though he’d been in America for five years.
Scottish accents were very cool, even though Rick and Tony strongly suspected that Blaine’s brogue was wearing off the longer he lived here, and that he watched
Braveheart
every few months to shore it back up again.

For another, Blaine
was the best
Halo
player they knew, and that was the main reason they put up with him. Their team hardly ever lost when Blaine was playing, and that alone was worth keeping him around.

His prowess with
Halo
, Blaine said, was because of the way he intuitively understood computers. And, in fact, he did have pretty serious chops as a hacker. He started out small, hacking the county library system.  He was a “script kiddie” at first, simply using code others had written to break in. Those programs were easy to find online, and required almost no skills to use.

But that was just the beginning.
Thrilled by the sense of power breaking into the library gave him, Blaine set his sights higher. He learned a lot about computer networks, and how to write code. He stopped using programs written by others, instead using his own hacking scripts to infiltrate networks. They usually worked.

His next hack attempt came against
the county school system. When that worked, he moved up to the local community college, and took down its website.

The rush of th
ose successes, and confidence in his ability to cover his tracks, convinced Blaine to risk a lot more. He decided to try breaking into a bank. He was able to get in and look around for a few minutes, before losing his nerve and logging off. He had no intention of stealing any money or taking down the online banking system; he just wanted to see if he could crack a highly-secure network. That may have been the best feeling he’d ever had.

Blaine started hacking everything he could, and getting away with it.
So naturally, Tony and Rick wanted to know what Blaine thought of the phone. Blaine lived just a few houses away from Rick in the same gated, exclusive community of Whispering Pines.

After playing a little
Assassin’s Creed
, Tony showed Blaine the phone. Blaine gave it a cursory once-over, then put it down and picked up his Xbox controller. He didn’t say anything.

Tony and Rick looked at each other, surprised.

“Well, what do you think?” Tony asked Blaine.

“It’s OK, I guess,” Blaine said dismissively, then went back to
Assassin’s Creed
.

“That’s it?” Rick asked.

“It looks like a decent phone,” Blaine said. “Hey, did I tell you guys that I’ve been recruited by this hacker group called 420 Soldiers? They broke into Target’s network last year.”

“Yeah, you told us,” Tony said
. “A bunch of times.”

“Blaine McNally, 17, no criminal record,” the phone said. “Vital signs within normal limits.”

Blaine looked at the phone and arched an eyebrow.

“Now
that
is cool,” Rick said.

“Big deal,” Blaine said. “Fingerprint scanners hav
e been available for years now -- the iPhone 5s has one built in. And cheap hospital machines can get vital signs.” Blaine continued to look at the TV as he knifed all manner of humans on the screen.

“What about checking out your record?” Rick asked. “Could you do that?”

Blaine still didn’t look at them. It started to annoy Rick. Maybe he’s just too cool for us and the phone.

“Of course. Nothing really special in that.” Blaine stopped his game and looked at Tony
and Rick. “Remember, it’s the hacker, not the computer, that matters.”

Blaine took his phone out of his pocket. It was a Samsung Galaxy, the cream of the
Android crop. He opened an app and started typing.

“Rick, open your laptop, and go to the site www.
bankofmilesforge.com.” Rick entered the address into his browser. The bank’s website came up. A typical bank site with a logon screen and credit card offers.

“I’m on.”

Blaine continued to work on his Android, typing in information with the onscreen keyboard. “Just a minute.” His brow furrowed in concentration.

“OK, refresh the screen.”

Rick hit F5 on his keyboard, as he and Tony watched the screen. The website at first went blank. Rick refreshed the page again. This time, a picture of a naked woman came up, with the phrase “this bank is only skin deep” plastered in large type across her body. Rick laughed, but Tony looked shocked.

“Blaine, stop it! Put it back the way it was!” He closed the
laptop lid.

“C’mon Tony
, he’s only having a bit of fun,” Rick said.

Tony was adamant. “Blaine, stop!
You can’t hack a bank! You could get in big trouble!”

Blaine chuckled. “Right. If they caught me. Which they never do,
and never will.” He took a screen capture of the bank’s homepage, then worked for a few minutes to repair the site and erase traces of his infiltration. Then he showed Tony and Rick his phone’s new background image: it was his hacked web page, showing the naked girl.

“Awesome!” Rick said.

“You shouldn’t keep that on there,” Tony said. “You should wipe it from your phone forever.” He looked around nervously at the windows and doors, almost as if he expected dark-suited men with sunglasses to burst in.

“Oh, get off my back,
Officer Carver,” Blaine said. “I didn’t hurt anybody.”

He held up Tony’s phone. “I did show, however, the difference between a person and a
computer.”

The phone spoke up. “Yeah, that was impressive, Blaine. Nothing like some bank porn to boost that hacker cred.”

Blaine snorted. “Well, what can you do?” As he said it, the phone started to heat up in Blaine’s hand. It also didn’t answer his question, the way it normally would. “See? Nothing.”

Blaine handed the phone
to Tony, who felt the warmth, along with a slight vibration. “Hey, is something wrong?” he asked the phone. Again, no answer.

After about two minutes,
the vibration stopped and the phone cooled. Tony looked at his phone’s screen; it showed a countdown timer, starting at 11:00.

10:59
...

10:58
...

10:57
...

10:56...

Finally, the phone spoke. “I don’t know -- maybe it
is
the computer that matters, after all.”

“What does that mean?” Tony said.

“When the timer’s done, go outside and look up,” the phone said smugly.

As the timer
’s countdown approached zero, the trio headed out to Rick’s backyard. They stood near the swimming pool and waited. From a distance, they heard a faint roar, a screeching sound that quickly grew louder. In another minute, their eyes got big as six gray fighter jets zoomed overhead in formation, on their way somewhere in a hurry.

The boys stood there, stunned.
“Wha...what are those?” Rick asked.

The phone answered matter-of-factly.
“Those are F-16 fighter jets from Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. I scrambled a half-dozen and sent them on an attack mission to Havana.”

Tony went berserk. “You what?!”

With all the calm only a machine could muster, it answered. “The jets received an order from the Air Force Chief of Staff to attack Havana in response to a Cuban strike on Miami. I made sure their route took them over this area.”

“Are you crazy?!”
Tony shouted.

“Not to worry,”
the phone answered. “I’ll recall them before they bomb anyone.”

“Now! Do it now!” Tony screamed.

The phone heated up again for a few moments. The boys watched the trails of white the fighters left in the sky, wondering if the world was about to end.

“Done, Tony.”

Tony had no words. Neither did the others. The phone, however, did. “Yo, Blaine,” it said.

Blaine, mouth wide open
, looked at the phone, which showed a video clip it had recorded of the jets flying overhead a few minutes before. It waited a beat before speaking again. “Beat that, hotshot.”