It was roughly a month later, beginning of March 2249, that there was a big commotion in the Abyss.
For the third time in a month, the Phantom had struck again. Nobody had any idea why now, after more than half a year of nothing, ‘he’ now had such a flurry of activity.
Well, nobody but Ben and me that is, naturally. To be fair, only two of these actions were planned by Ben. I included the third one by myself.
The first step was getting the banks to back off. For that, I used Hermes on the private grav-yacht of one of the bank execs. The chief security officer of Markham & Stiegler International, the third biggest bank in the system.
It was ridiculously easy to get access to the automated janitorial service of his marina, and smuggle a few Q-links onto the ship. Seriously, don’t they have any sense of security in these places? Oh well, sure, until I developed the Q-link the worst one could do with the janitorial services was annoy people. But still, it should have taken me longer than 20 minutes to completely infiltrate and take over any system in one of the most prestigious marinas in the system.h hah
And again, as soon as I had physical access to the onboard computer of the yacht, any security was quickly breached. When he used his yacht the next time, as soon as it was a safe distance away from anybody else, I first launched Newton followed by Tsar. Don’t get me wrong, I had managed to get the pilot somewhere else, and only the CSO was on board when Warden remotely piloted the yacht.
In the wake of the nuclear fire reducing the yacht, and the CSO of one of the most powerful banks in existence to monoatomic gas, I sent a message as the phantom to the other bank execs:
“You have been hunting me for months. That ends now! As you see, you are not beyond my reach. If you do not stop looking for me, I will destroy one of you every month. It depends on you how much collateral damage these sanctions will cause. I will not refrain from destroying your orbital palaces if you cower there.
Should you, by a miracle, be able to find me, you are all dead. Your families are dead, your friends are dead, and your organizations will be destroyed.
I bested your defenses. Accept it, and live with it. It is a feat that will not be repeated.
Or die trying to rail against it.
The decision is yours.
The one you call The Phantom”
I felt a bit sick by threatening their families and even the whole population of their space stations. But it had to be done. According to Ben, they needed to be convinced that they personally would pay if they did not let go.
The sick thing was, doing that would probably even rescue many of them. Warden was… less than forgiving, and should they come even close to finding my identity she would use everything in my arsenal to destroy them.
This threat did not go unnoticed naturally. A couple of minutes after I send the message, the exact wording had been known all over the world, and everybody was talking about the phantom again.
And while I was not quite happy with the idea of using Newton and Tsar, it was unlikely that this limited exposure would stop me from using them. Especially as nobody seemed to get the idea that the systems of the yacht themselves were the weapons. The speculation was that the phantom had smuggled a combination warhead onto the yacht.
And I still had The Lamb and Enola Gay in reserve in the unlikely event they were discovered and beaten.
Yes, I know, it was in all but name a declaration of war against the banks, but honestly, they were the ones pushing it to the limit with their persecution of hackers. Let the shoe be on the other foot for once.
Naturally, nobody heard a formal answer from the banks, but the reward for information about the phantom was quietly reduced to a Pro-forma level. I could live with that.
The second action was actually planned to be the first, but I had not expected to break through the defenses of the marina that fast. Or that it would be that slow breaking into my second objective.
In retrospect, I should have, but despite all the groundwork I had done since even before I left Seattle, the target was just so dang big.
But that was the advantage of Hermes. I did not have to do it all at once and there was at best a negligible chance that they discovered my work early. I left the actual target computer systems alone until the one glorious day when I managed to hurt Panacea as it was never hurt before.. .
I got everything. Their research, their contacts, their internal memos, all their software, their drug formulas, their auto-surgeon decision tree, and they had indeed a significantly more refined one, the names of their spies, agents, their bought politicians, and bureaucrats, literally everything they had in their computers.
And I deleted it from their systems, before putting it on the dark web. It was glorious. All the different ways they had screwed over all their customers or all the crimes they had committed. All free to see for everybody.
Unsurprisingly, quite a few of their puppets lost their positions. It was hard to guess how much power and influence they lost in that single momentous day, but it was a large chunk of both.
Unnecessary to mention that this special use of my technology was not planned by Ben. Yes, after a mostly token attempt to dissuade me from it, he shrugged and accepted it.
Well, I did exclude their project Morpheus from the info dump. Nobody needed to have the specifics of a drug designed to work on Pures. I stole it of course, but I did not publish it.
Would it point to a vendetta of the phantom against Panacea? Yes, of course it did. But honestly, the choice of targets for the first action of the phantom did that as well. And it was a thing of use it or lose it. After the last activity of ‘the phantom’ Hermes would rapidly lose efficiency. At the moment, it was only possible because nobody knew that it existed.
Ironically, from what I heard Dalgon began to sanitize their network massively in the wake of my Panacea adventure. Who knows how much data they lost during this hasty move?
But my crusade against Panacea did cost me most of the month. I did use that time to prepare for the last action, naturally, but I did not even start there before I was done with Panacea.
And finally, it was time for the capstone of Ben’s plan. This I had started three days ago. Predictably, I had been summoned, along with all the other techies in the Abyss, when the door to room 1 of Hut 2 suddenly gaped open, with some strange message written on the walls of the otherwise empty room.
Don’t get me wrong, it is possible for the owner of one of these rooms to personalize their rooms. Heck, even the size is not predetermined. It is not intended that there is no furniture, but even that can be worked around.
No, the ‘problem’ was that the Phantom had bypassed the whole register procedure. As far as the Abyss was concerned, the room was in pristine unchanged condition, and there was no user that owned and had customized room 1.
According to our software, the Phantom did not exist.
And then there was the message. It left the assembled elite hackers in quite a tizzy, let me tell you.
I had written the word Seeberger, followed by the corrected equation on the walls. Talk about making a splash.
We techies were of course ordered to drop everything else and find out what the message meant and more important how the phantom had done it.
In all honesty, the hardest part was finding out where the servers for the Abyss were located. The creators of the Abyss had been smart and had created an echelon of servers, all at different locations.
With the user database and the various rooms kept in the innermost server. Yes, the outer shells had been hacked a few times. Heck, some of us made it a sport to play with them.
Things like the message boards, or the general design of the Abyss were stored there. The visitor database. In other words, the more unimportant parts. All of it could be reset on a moment's notice, so barely anybody cared if a hacker got creative here.
The inner workings? As far as I know, only Colossus and Bletchley had access to that. Oh sure, they had a couple of techs who managed the hardware, but that was it.
That might explain the well, panic is not quite the right word, but it comes close.
In the end, we techies had our orders and were sent out. I had Warden assume the persona of Spectre and keep an eye on things, so I was quite aware that other techies were pretty fast to find the connection to Seeberger and the equation.
I was a bit disappointed that not one of them noticed the difference between the published equation and the one written on the walls. Still, that left me to shine.
That was the point when I manifested in the Abyss again, moving directly to the HQ, where the majority of the top 20 were still assembled. Or assembled again? Who cares?
Point is, I deliberately was a bit absentminded and, well not rude, but even less concerned with social norms than normal.
I had a role to play after all. It helped that all this happened in the Abyss, and my avatar had a distinct lack of facial expressions. Or a face, to be honest. I just needed to be projecting the impression that I was grumpy and annoyed.
Stolen novel; please report.
That was easier than I thought, as I just had to think about that I was now showing the world my best, most secret weapon.
In the beginning, the top 20 of the hackers, except for the phantom naturally, were present, and I had Warden slip into the role of Spectre. It helped that I designed Spectre’s personality as taciturn, reclusive, and mostly silent.
By now, only two of them were present at once. I ‘lucked’ out and found Maestro and Splinter.
Maestro was not too bad, but Splinter was, frankly, an idiot savant. He was brilliant at working with computers, but anything outside of that… I knew the moment I saw him there that I would have to use the small words.
And that with something so complicated and mindblowing as the Seeberger equation. Could somebody just shoot me now?
Don’t get me wrong, he was nice enough but so dense… it hurt. But it couldn’t be helped. With an inward sigh, I entered the conference room, to be greeted by the two hackers, and a couple of their hangers-on.
Maestro was the one who greeted me:
“Well, hello Seraphim. Nice of you to finally report back as well.” Oh goody, he was in a mood. Well, all the better for my role. Annoyance was pretty easy now.
“Finally? As well?” I managed to keep my voice mostly calm.
“Yeah, finally. I would have expected you to be the first to report her findings here, but no, you are actually the last. So, do you want to tell us that this equation is what Dr. Andreas Seeberger published 170 years ago? Too late, we already know that. All the other techies took less than a day to find that out. They are now working on finding out how the phantom hacked the Abyss.”
Oh yes, he was condescending as hell right then and there. I took the opportunity to sit down.
“The clown brigade reported that? Not surprising that not one of these idiots actually did the work.”
Maestro and one of his underlings bristled at that, with Maestro answering me:
“Harsh words for the slowest, and apparently dumbest of the bunch.”
That made Splinter, who had just watched obviously bored out of his mind, flinch.
“You are on thin ice here right now, but I let you off with an apology. You see, that, I gestured towards the still open door of room 1, is not the equation Seeberger published. And if any of the chuckleheads had done the work that I did you would know that already. Well, probably not, because they would not have reported back yet. So, how about you call in the adults so that I can explain it to the people who actually matter?”
All the people in the room reeled back from my words, but only a moment later Maestro sneered at me:
“Don’t be ridiculous, of course it is the Seeberger equation. Do you think we did not look into it ourselves when the first tech reported it back?”
I tilted my head.
“Really? You, personally, compared 14 pages of the equation with the equally long equation that is written on the wall in room 1? And it took only a couple of hours for all of you to do that?
Quit the bullshit. You, like everybody else, took one look at the equation, saw that the overall appearance is the same, and then decided it is the same equation.
Congratulation, you played yourself. Because that is not the equation that Seeberger published. There is a tiny, visually insignificant, easy to overlook difference between the two. But actually finding it takes a real comparison.”
Again he reeled back but then waved dismissively.
“Whatever. It is unimportant anyway. The important thing is how the phantom managed to break into the servers here. And all the other techs are already working on that since the second day at least.”
I snorted derisively before I answered:
“Oh really? Just to make it clear, the phantom, the obviously best hacker humanity has to offer, breaks into the Abyss servers, rearranges room 1 of hut 2, writes an obvious message on the wall, and you think that message has nothing to do with him telling us how he did it? Get real.”
Maestro growled, but it was Splinter who answered:
“Uh, not to bust your bubble, but of course it means something. All the others are looking into Seeberger's life to find out any clues. We think it is a riddle.”
I burrowed my face in my hands.
“Seeberger had dozens of publications. Maybe hundreds. A couple of them are easier to collate with him than his last work. If all it was designed to was to point us toward Seeberger there would have been many better choices. Easier to write, easier to point towards Seeberger, oh, like for example writing his goddamn name on the wall.
Instead, the phantom took the pain, the time, and the energy to write this equation onto the wall, and people think that is just a clue? An equation that he modified, for god’s sake.
No, he told us exactly how he did it. He pointed to the only publication of Seeberger that mattered here.”
Splinter seemed confused, while Maestro clearly seethed at my words.
Before Maestro could do anything, Bletchley entered the room. He looked exhausted but otherwise fine.
“Ok, stop right there. Calm down, all of you.”
It was almost funny seeing Maestro sulk, but I just sighed.
“Finally. Hello Bletchley. I assume somebody woke you up?”
He sighed as well.
“As soon as you were reported to enter the Abyss. Now, what was going on here?”
“Well, Maestro here explained, in fine detail, how all the other techs have reported back that they identified the equation the phantom wrote on the wall as the one Dr. Andreas Seeberger published in his last paper.
And I informed him that that is wrong. It is not Seeberger’s equation.”
Bletchley took a deep breath, sat down, and rubbed his eyes.
“You sure? All the others told us it is the Seeberger equation.”
“As I told Maestro, I am pretty sure not one of them actually took the time to compare the two equations. There is a difference.
Admittedly, I assume that what is written on the wall is the equation Seeberger intended to publish, but it isn’t. Again, I can only assume here, considering that the man in question is dead for more than 170 years, but as I understand it, Seeberger made a typo.”
“And you can prove that?”
“That it is not the equation Seeberger published? Easy. Can I modify the walls here?”
When he nodded, I changed one wall to a giant whiteboard and projected the equations on it.
“To the right, we have the equation from the paper. To the left, the one the phantom wrote on the wall.”
“Hm, they seem the same to me.”
I then zoomed to the typo, highlighting it.
“The equation published has an h here, while the equation on the wall has a g in the same place. A single typo on 14 pages of math.
The g changes the equation from madness-inducing gibberish of garbage to headache-inducing gibberish that works.”
Bletchley raised an eyebrow.
“It… works?”
I growled.
“Yes, that was what I did the last three days. It was… trivial to find the paper and Andreas Seeberger. I honestly don’t understand why the others thought that that was anything worth reporting.
If anybody of them had taken the time to run a fucking Beowulf cluster over the equations and compare them, he would have found out about the change in half an hour at most.
I spent the rest of the time trying to understand what the paper was trying to say, and how the change in the equation played into it.”
Bletchley frowned at me.
“What is wrong with you? You are usually so… composed.”
I growled again.
“I spent most of a subjective year trying to understand that.”
I gestured towards the wall. Maestro chuckled.
“Hey, it is just a bit of math, what’s the matter?”
“Then why don’t you dive into it? Learn it, understand it? This is nightmare fuel for mathematicians. I am at the end of my rope right now and need rest. I am so nice and try to report my findings only to get admonished by an idiot who can hack reasonably well, but otherwise has the education of a cockroach.”
Bletchley rapped onto the table.
“Calm down. And” he shuddered when he looked at the equation “I understand that this did cost you quite a bit. But why did you do it? We all think the equation is only there to point us toward Seeberger, and the phantom used something in his life as a clue for the next part of the puzzle.”
“You all are wrong. The phantom not only took the time, and energy, to write out this equation, he had to understand it well enough to know what Seeberger wanted to say, and well enough to realize that the equation in the publication is fucking wrong. That is not a clue.
The equation was the important part, and the name of Seeberger was only there for us to make it possible to find the paper.”
A general frown from all the people here was my answer. Surprisingly, it was Splinter who posed the question:
“But why then? What is so important in this equation that he wrote it on the wall?”
I sighed again:
“Do any of you, or any of the techs you tasked with solving this ‘riddle’ even read the paper in question?”
Bletchley slowly shook his head.
“No, not that I know. From what I heard, there is only the German version available by now, but even the Germans took a look into it and gave up. It is not called Seeberger’s idiocy as a joke.”
“No, it is called that because of the typo. If the math would have worked, it wouldn’t be called that, I guess. But to get why it is so important here, I have to change the tangent a bit.”
I took a deep breath.
“I assume that some of your techs have already examined the servers? Physically I mean.”
“The servers are none of your business. You don’t need to know more about them.”
I waved my hand for a bit.
“I don’t need to know where they are, what their specs are, or anything else. I want to find out if I am right.
I think you found some strange contraptions in some of the OPB or LAN ports. Plugs without any cable, or tech or anything, just terminating in some solid inert matter. Am I right?”
Bletchley hissed at my description.
“How… how do you know about that?”
I snorted.
“Well, nice to know I am right. And it might have helped to know that for those of us who were tasked to solve the mystery. Well, not really, in this case, but it might have.
My point is, that Seeberger wrote his paper to explain quantum entanglement.”
“Quantum entanglement? That is just useful for encryption and signature. Why is that important?”
“QE as we know it is only useful for those tasks because all we have managed so far is entangle minuscule particles. Photons, the odd electron, things like that. Particles so small that any attempt of reading out any information would randomly change that information. We can use it as a tamper seal or a missing element of encryption because in these cases the information needs only to be read out once.
But the important part about the Seeberger paper is that he postulated that it should be possible to entangle larger particles and bigger things. Like atoms, or molecules. Things that can be used pretty easily for data transfer.
If Seeberger is right in that, then it is likely that the phantom has not only found the equation and corrected it, but found out how to entangle atoms.
In other words, these plugs are the endpoints of invisible, intangible cables that have zero latency and infinite transfer speeds. I would bet he hacked the maintenance bots and had them put the plugs into the servers, and then had for all purposes physical access to them.
In other words, he wrote exactly how he did it directly on the wall. And the clown brigade you sent out to understand it was too stupid to get it right.”
They all were flabbergasted. After a few moments, Bletchley cleared his throat.
“Uhm, you might be right. Not about the clown brigade, but the equation. But… I would expect you to crow your triumph out for everybody to hear and see. Instead you… seem to be pissed off by this discovery.
Why?”
I scowled at him.
“Yes, I am pissed. I have worked for nearly half a year to redesign the Cirrium processor. I’ve managed to eke out a bit over 3% of performance gain. I was just in the process of finishing the design, and beginning on optimizing the peripherals when this happened.
All that work, all the energy, all for naught.”
Luckily I did not need to lie too hard here. I had started the redesign, had done the work, and had achieved a 3.07% performance gain, just before I cracked the Seeberger equation. It just didn’t happen over the last half-year.
“What? 3%? That is phenomenal! Why are you… wait a minute, you are saying all for naught? Why that?”
I rolled my eyes, even if nobody of them could see it.
“Oh please! Do you think I will put more work into getting a mere 3% gain if this promises increases by an order of magnitude? I… I will have to study the paper extensively and try to figure out how to do it, but… no, this avenue is a dead end. And all that work and nothing to show for it. Yes, I am pissed.”
In my own humble opinion, I managed to play the huff pretty well. To be honest, when I did have the realization back when I discovered the Q-links, I was pretty peeved. I then decided to wait with the new generation until I understood Q-links enough to incorporate them into the processor design.
Then I got the inspiration of making the NADA work and decided I had to wait until I could make it in the 413 pm process.
Yes, the final result, the Hyperion, was worth it, but the constant delays were frustrating. To make my frustration known I had just to think back to that time.
I shook my head and began standing up.
“Now, if you would excuse me, I have a date with my bathtub, followed by my bed. You can contact me the day after tomorrow. For now, I am at the end of the line.”