Blake Schwendiman's Blog and Blook

Chapter 47

Sunday, 13 March 2022 – 6:00 a.m. IST

Daniel had chartered a direct return flight to Bangalore. He normally preferred to fly commercial first class as he hated the claustrophobic solitude of small jet aircraft. Sireesha had never understood his fear, but rarely fought against it. This trip, however, had to be made immediately. Daniel could not wait for the daytime schedule of South African air. He flew through the night and crossed three-and-a-half time zones to arrive in Bangalore just before six a.m.

Sireesha met him at his office just after he arrived. “How was the flight?” she asked. Daniel replied with a cold glare.

“This may take a little while,” he remarked as he activated several viewscreen panels around his office. He had learned never to order Sireesha to do anything, but he knew how to get what he wanted. She left.

Daniel worked quickly to connect the device he had taken from Brad’s home to his local network. In moments he had gained access. It was a simple device, just a small box with enough memory to store a basic operating system, a few standard software tools and some data. There was almost no security on the files, but it had no reason to be secure. The device had been constructed to do one thing: to send a few well-crafted data packets into the switches developed by Q-Morrow and Naidu.

Daniel studied the payload of the data packet. He found two very small sets of executable instructions and a data set. He skipped quickly past the executable code to the data and extracted it to a separate viewscreen. His jaw fell open.

“Sireesha,” he called out. He knew she wouldn’t have gone far. She heard the urgency in his voice and returned to his office immediately.

“What is it?”

“Take a look at this,” he said. He split the data onto several views so the entire message could be read at once. “It looks like Brad had a contingency plan.”

Sireesha read the message. She re-read it then pulled a chair up beside Daniel and slumped down in it. “Is there more to the message?”

“This is the text part,” he answered. “There are several attached data files. It’s everything a person would need.”

“Has this message been sent?” she asked, hoping for an answer that she did not expect.

“Not sent. Sending,” replied Daniel. “The device sent out a payload to a few switches and the payload infected them with a small set of instructions to relay this message.”

“To who?”

“Anyone. Everyone. I think. I need to look at the code, but I think Brad’s message is canvassing the network at large. It will eventually turn up in instant messages, emails, file transfers and everything else.”

“Can we stop it?”

Daniel stared at Sireesha for a moment. “Apparently not,” he answered. “The future is already corrupted.”

“I can’t accept that,” she fumed. “There has to be something we can do.”

“What do you suggest?”

Sireesha paused for a moment. She considered the options. “Can we purge our switches? Reset them?”

“Yes, but I don’t...”

“Can you do it?” she barked.

Daniel shot any icy glare. “Yes,” he answered. “If I’m right, though, we’ll be infected again immediately. Quinn’s network was infected too. We have to shut this down on both networks.”

“Then we can backtrace the timeline and clean up the mess,” Sireesha said.

Daniel understood what she meant, but doubted it could be accomplished. Brad had initiated a chain of events that was so comprehensive and extensive that Daniel could not begin to estimate the impact.

“It’s a big mess,” he whispered. He looked up at Sireesha. “And it’s getting bigger. It’s a self-propagating infection. It’s infected three percent of our systems already and growing exponentially.”

“How much time do we have?”

“Give me an hour to study the code and I’ll know,” he answered.

“One hour,” Sireesha shot back. “And look for options. It’s unlikely that we’ll have Quinn’s cooperation on this.”

Daniel rubbed his eyes. The clock read six-thirty a.m., but it felt like three and he hadn’t had much sleep. He reclined back a bit in his chair and began examining Brad’s message in detail. He activated some additional viewers to log the infection and message rates on the switches.

The hour passed quickly. Sireesha entered exactly when the deadline arrived.

“First, I have added a filter that will slow the propagation of the infection within our network. Second, I think I found a way to shut it down,” Daniel stated as she entered.

“Yes?”

“The infection is a simplistic program that was designed to do two things. The first is to propagate. It does so by exploiting an esoteric bug in Quinn’s original futurestream program.”

“What about our systems?” Sireesha interrupted.

“I think Brad had one of our engineers leave a back door in the code,” he said.

“Ravi,” Sireesha commented. Ravi had been a close friend to Brad. They had spent hours together outside the office discussing everything from politics and religion to the elusive rules of American football.

“In any case, this little program will eventually infect all of our switches and all of Quinn’s. The second function is to blindly relay messages. All of the switches are sending out the message I showed you earlier. But there is a provision for uploading a new message.” Daniel raised his eyebrows and looked to Sireesha.

“Can you do it now?”

“No. The new message must be property encrypted.” Daniel smiled in spite of the problems at hand.

Sireesha found nothing about the situation amusing. “You told me you had an option.”

“I think Brad left here with two devices. This one,” he pointed at the small network box, “and something else. A message transmitter. We need the transmitter. It would be the fastest way to disarm the program – and it doesn’t require Quinn’s cooperation.”

“And the transmitter? Is it still in Durban?” Sireesha sighed.

Daniel shrugged. “If it were me, I wouldn’t keep the two together. But Brad ... I don’t know what he would have done.”

Sireesha stared at the message screens for a moment. She sifted through the options. “This was a very clever idea,” she said just loudly enough to be heard.

She turned slightly and stared out the windows into the morning sky. Her mind raced as she tried to regain control of the situation. For the past few days, she had been decisively in control of events in her company and in the world at large. She had effectively dethroned Quinn, but this was unexpected. Brad had posthumously managed to force his personal agenda onto the table. Now he was in control. Sireesha pondered for a moment longer. She would allow neither Brad’s agenda nor Quinn’s agenda to interfere with hers.

Sireesha finally broke the silence, “Clearly we need this transmitter. And whether he knows it or not at this point, Quinn also needs it.” She turned to Daniel directly. “And I believe you’re right. The transmitter is not likely to be there, in Durban.” Sireesha stood. “I believe it is time to visit our old partner.”

As she walked out of Daniel’s office, she called back to him, “I’ll take care of the flight. You just be ready to leave in two hours.”

Daniel sighed, glancing at the time again. He would sleep on the plane.