Whatever answer Ben was tempted to give had to wait, as we were interrupted by somebody softly knocking on the door.
Immediately I became aware again about my attire, or the lack of one to be more precise, and I felt my face heating up. Somehow I had become strangely comfortable around this mob boss.
While I tried to vanish into the chair, Ben walked to the door and came back with a tray full of what I had to assume was traditional breakfast fare. I could identify scrambled eggs, some bacon, sausages, and a stack of pancakes. And judging by the smell it seemed to be real food and not ersatz grub, something that surprised me a little after I had seen the prices real food did cost.
As he placed the tray on the table, he saw my expression and chuckled softly.
“I decided to splurge today. This is not an everyday occurrence. And I called the kitchen when I heard the shower.” And he sat back down.
I took a sip of my astonishingly good coffee, humming in understanding.
“I have seen the prices the fixers take. Talk about scalping. What I can’t understand is how you can go back to the replicator muck.”
“That depends. If you get a high-class replicator with the appropriate specialized algae tank you only need some spices. The food is bearable.”
Hmm, that was an option I had not considered.
“You know, I never had access to a high-class replicator. I’ve gone from standard bottom-tier replicator directly to real food.”
He looked at me askance.
“Really? That is a big jump.”
“Yeah, but the old buildings in the commonwealth still have a kitchen, and I could easily hide getting food, but not getting the new replicator and the tank. And at that point money was no longer a real concern for me.”
He handed me a plate and some silverware.
“Oh, right, you were hiding your income.”
Then I tasted the food. A couple of centuries earlier and it would have been nothing special, but now…
“That is good. I have to compliment you for your cook.”
“I will tell her. And yes, she is pretty good. Sadly she rarely has something to do here.”
“I understand that. But while we are on the topic of money, how do you do it? Pay for the big house here, the clinic, your headquarter, your men… I mean, Queens is not the most affluent place.”
It took a few long moments before he answered.
“The clinic is a joint project of several of the bosses who were at the meeting. It is here in my territory because I had the idea and started it, but five of us pay for it now.
The rest, well, the usual, I fear. Gambling, prostitution, contrabands. I provide muscle with plausible deniability for some of the corps. The tribute of course, even if that is mostly a rather small thing.”
He chuckled a bit.
“That was the reason why I gave you such a hard time about Frankel. As unpleasant as he was, his 15% tribute contributed big time to my operations.”
I tilted my head.
“15%? I thought you took 10%?”
He shrugged.
“And adjust accordingly. I just don’t care to have business with slavers. Dirty business that. But it is a sad reality that it will happen. Now that Frankel is gone, I think it will be a couple of months before somebody else takes over. So I let him work from my territory and gouged him.”
“I think I understand. I don’t like it, but that happens pretty often with reality. And reality does not care one bit. And you will take 10% from me?”
He snorted.
“No, not really. Unlike Frankel, I like you. And I like to have access to your business. So for you, I will adjust downwards. I think 8% are more like it.”
I thought about that for a moment, masking my thinking behind chewing.
“I don’t think that is the right thing.”
He lifted an eyebrow.
“You think that is too much? Honestly, I can’t go much low…”
He stopped when I lifted my hand.
“No, wrong way. I don’t think you should go that low. In all seriousness, I don’t need the money. I see the prices I take as a sign of my customer respecting my work. The money is… unimportant. So take your 10%.”
He looked at me and then nodded.
“Ok, if you want it that way. But jobs you do for me or my men are exempt.”
I shrugged.
“I can live with that. But contrabands, what do you mean with that?”
I already had a decent idea what he meant with contraband, but I hoped against hope that one thing was not on the list.
“Again, the usual. Weapons, hot merchandise, counterfeit stuff, and drugs.”
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
And there it was… but I had expected it.
“Drugs…”
He looked at me concerned.
“Do I understand it right that you have problems with drugs?”
I nodded, feeling a lump in my throat.
“Yes. I had… let’s say I have seen close and personal the damage drugs can do.”
He nodded slowly.
“I understand. It is another unfortunate reality that drugs will come in, and will be used. I can put my head in the sand and ignore it, giving that part of my territory to somebody who might not be so, benevolent, or take control of it. As it is, at least now I can keep out the more dangerous stuff, and keep the list of shit the drug is cut with to non-dangerous stuff.
And it finances around 20% of my operations.”
The worry crept into his eyes.
“Will that be a problem between us?”
I had to think about that for a moment.
“I don’t know. I don’t quite understand what is between us enough to say what will and will not influence it.
But I understand your perspective. I don’t like it, but again, reality is not known to be all that likable.”
He nodded.
“I will keep that part of my operations away from you then.”
I nodded too.
“That is probably for the best. Now, change of topic. What was that ‘I know who you are’-stuff yesterday? I was… I seriously was in a panic.”
He shrugged.
“To be honest, I did it as a bit of payback.”
I had to shake my head.
“Payback? For what?”
He grinned.
“Well, you remember when we met for the first time, the fib you told that Spectre would be unhappy if something happened to you? We both know that that was a lie, as Spectre was sitting in the chair opposite of me.
I was actually a bit anxious about that.”
I shrunk into my chair, while he spoke, and then answered in a weak voice.
“Uhm… that… was no fib. If you had killed me or just imprisoned me, you would have regretted it.”
He looked at me astonished, before taking a deep breath.
“A deadman switch? But, how would you have targeted me and my organization?”
“A timer. If I had not stopped it at least six hours after I entered your building it would have released the Lamb.”
He chuckled.
“Oh, wow. The lamb… that does not sound very frightening. Where did you get that name?”
I searched his gaze and looked him directly into the eyes.
“The Bible. Book of Revelation 5:6.”
Instantly the mirth left his eyes, and concern replaced it.
“You… you think that context is appropriate?”
I took a deep breath.
“Yes, it is very appropriate.”
He wiped his hand over his eyes.
“How… how bad is it?”
“That is a bit… complicated. To explain it I have to first explain some other things.
First, there is Enola Gay. It is, for all purposes the strongest attack utility I am willing to use in normal use.”
“Ok, I can’t identify that name.”
“Enola Gay was the name of the B-29 bomber that dropped the first nuclear bomb on Hiroshima.”
He blew out some breath.
“Ok, that is a name that sounds badass. What does it do?”
“It uses a library of weaknesses in usual computer hardware to destroy every system it can reach. And by that, I mean the hardware. It will melt the processors, destroy the storage and burn the mainboards. And it does it in the whole LAN.”
He coughed at that.
“Oh wow, that sounds… scary. But seriously, I can’t believe it. There are so many types of processors, you can’t get them all in one utility.”
“54 different CPUs, in four families, an average of three chipsets per family, three network controllers, four GPUs, five storage controllers, and six operating systems and you have just included 90-95% of the computers running at this time.
Most people have no idea how much computer technology has stagnated in the last 100 years. It took me a few virtual years to find weaknesses in all of them. Ways to destroy them via a program. But I did find them.
So that is Enola Gay.
But wait, there’s more.
Second, we have Tsar. Named after the biggest nuclear bomb ever detonated on Earth.”
He had become pale.
“Worse than Enola Gay?”
“In a way. Do you know the difference between a fusactor and a fusion bomb?”
He weakly shook his head.
“Essentially, the programming. Oh sure, the bomb usually has no fuel pumps, but the grav-coil arrangement is the same, the fuel is the same.”
He took a careful sip of coffee.
“Ok, I can see that. And I can see where you are going. But a fusactors has tiny amounts of fuel compared to a fusion bomb.”
“Usually the fuel pumps have some room to increase fuel, and it is relatively easy killing the fusion, pumping in fuel for a couple of seconds and then igniting it.
That depends on the fusactors of course. I mean, an Enertech Enermax 75, which is the cheapest, most basic fusactors you can get, will blow up with the power of around 300 metric tons of TNT.
A Simpson & Proctor Excelsior 2800 on the other hand is more in the range of a couple of hundred megatons.
At least according to my simulations.”
Now Ben looked downright sick.
“That is… awful.”
I nodded.
“Yes, and that is still not everything.
Next, I have Newton. Essentially, it turns most commercial grav-ships and skimmers into gravity pulse bombs. A big grav-ship will pulp every living organism in a radius of around 50-75km, somewhere between 30 and 45 miles.
As you can see, it is unlikely for anybody to survive if the three of them go off somewhere.”
He nodded weakly.
“And that brings us to the Lamb. In a way, it is the most complicated of these programs. To describe it in one sentence, it is a polymorphic, multi-system downloader virus.”
“And that means what?”
“I first tried to find a weakness in every firewall and anti-virus software, but that is an area where there is no stagnation. There are a couple of hundred each, and there are new ones constantly.
So I took another route. I wrote the downloader in as many programming languages I could get my hands on, as well as assembler.
When the Lamb encounters a compiler it will download the appropriate source code, randomly set optimization parameters, and compile it, distributing the new version as well as the old version.
As I see it, no anti-virus or firewall can stop them all. And there are versions for every OS on the market.
And then, after 24 hours, it begins to download the other three utilities, executing them at a timestamp exactly 48 hours after the Lamb was released. My estimate is that it will wipe out 95-98% of Humanity.”
He just that there for several seconds, looking at me, and then sighed.
“I will give you the benefit of the doubt and won’t call you insane. I… I can’t see a reason to create something like that. So, would you, please, tell me what has made you do it?”
I took a deep breath.
“It… I think calling the me that created it insane is… not quite wrong. You know these school shootings that happened before the third civil war?”
He nodded slowly.
“Yes, they still happen now and then. At least here in the US. Every three to five years one. Why?”
I smiled sadly.
“Let’s say I understand the shooters. Their hate, their rage. When I started creating the Lamb, Enola Gay, Tsar, and Newton, I was… I was in a bad place. At that point, I just wanted to see the world burn.”
“And that changed?”
“Humanity is still alive, isn’t it?”
“Obviously. What changed?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose.
“I… matured. I spent a couple of virtual decades building the package, and by the time I was done, I had found something else for me to think about than revenge. At first, I had started as a tech to earn money long enough to finish my work, but I soon enjoyed it. I found that I like tinkering, figuring things out, learning things. I… just did not want to die. Also, I realized that not everyone was… a valid target for my rage.”
He nodded.
“Hmm, I understand. And why did you keep these… horrible weapons?”
I sighed again.
“I… I just can’t make myself destroy them. Yes, I know that, realistically, I will never use them, but in a moment when I… feel insecure, I find it comforting that at least whoever takes me out will not be happy for long.”