Ongoing Investigation, #2

A Knowing Mars story, by tycho garen
on 26th September 2008. (commentary)

This is the second instalment of a Knowing Mars story from the third chapter. While many of our hereos are getting settled in on Mars, Thom Busby and his assistant Adrian Rathe continue to work on their investigation. Read part one here, and thanks for reading. Enjoy!

“Not really, I guess. I just I wish we could get a look at the report of that incident a year ago, that might help, forensics is sure sitting on this one,” Adrian said.

“Good luck getting stuff from them, the geeks over there are practically rebels.” Busby’s sudden venom almost surprised Adrian, but by now he was pretty good at covering it up.

“Quinn Dasen seems to be pretty approachable,” Adrian said.

“She’s the one that’s been sitting on that file for months! She’s squeaky clean and very approachable, unlike some of the rest of them. Beyond that they’re all the same.”

“But if they are telepaths, should it really matter in cyberspace? I mean, if they had a hacking gene mod or onbard processing implants, then yeah, but as long as we stay away we should be safe. Right?”

“You don’t know that.” Busby’s response was abrupt and unambiguous.

There was a pause in the conversation, and if Adrian had had anything else in the world to do he would have started doing it, but there really wasn’t work to be done.

“And don’t you go trying to talk or meet with them, we may be ISA, but we’ve not made a great deal of progress on this case, and we have no idea what they can do. I can’t have you going rogue on me.”

“I just feel like–”

Adrian was cut off by the alarm, and then by Busby. “Don’t feel. Get to.”

Something had set off one of the their units cyberspace alarms. This happened pretty often and usually it was just some kid hacker’s or some intermal long abandoned script gone awry. or another ISA team that had forgotten the operating standards; but false positives were the price of having a sensitive system that could detect even the most surgical attacks. Adrian reluctantly reattached his net teather but Busby was a bit ahead of him, but an instant later it didn’t matter. Their office disapeared and they were on the net.

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Ongoing Investigation, #1

A Uncategorized story, by tycho garen
on 25th September 2008. (commentary)

In this Knowing Mars story, while many of our hereos are getting settled in on Mars, Thom Busby and his assistant Adrian Rathe continue to work on their investigation. This series will “air” in two installments. Enjoy

“So we’re done?” Adrian Rathe, checked all of the company boards and his own messages for a third time before he finally admitted defeat to the boredom.

Thom Busby, however, had long since given up the pretense of being enthralled in his work, or frankly, upon closer investigation of being awake. Adrian wondered how often Thom had been able to feign wakefulness in the past, but quickly abandoned the project. Adrian coughed, “Busby! are you seeing anything?” Surprising his boss like that might not have been his best idea in a while, but he was desperate for entertainment.

“Wha? No, nothing.” Busby was surprised a bit, but he didn’t fluster easily. Adrian reasoned that although wasn’t as entertaining it was probably a good quality for an ISA Agent.

“What are we even looking for anymore, there hasn’t been any more attacks on our “telepath” files in like a year. Do you think maybe they’ve gone to ground or something.”

“They’re still there. Be sure of that,” Busby’s eyes glazed over, or maybe they hadn’t fully unglazed from his little “nap.”

“We have the sniffers up, I can be on the net within five minutes of an alarm. I mean, what’s really stopping us from working on other things?”

“This is the best case in the entire cyber crime department This is the stuff that could make our career, and no one else has a clue about it. We could be directors within the year.” Busby’s gaze cleared up.

“After it breaks. I mean, hell we’re not even sure that there are really telepaths–or whatever.”

“What else could explain it? Besides that’s what they call themselves, normal hackers for the tough persona, these folks… don’t. And they still have the net wrapped around their fingers.”

“You think,” Adrian said.

“Do you have a better idea?”

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SA Thom Busby, ISA; Part 2

A Knowing Mars story, by tycho garen
on 15th August 2008. (commentary)

This is the second part of another excerpt from Matthew Connor’s narrative written in 2597 in the Knowing Mars story. Read part 1 if you haven’t already.

In the intervening years, I have tried to avoid considering if Taban and Kalian–all of us really–attracted undue attention to ourselves by hiding out or leaving Earth, but Quinn assured me that this wasn’t the case, and that despite appearances Busby was really too busy pining after some ill gotten notion of lost glory or some-such, to think through his cases objectively. And yet, I do believe that although Busby might not have set out to chase after telepaths, there is no doubt that he became a telepath hunter.

Yet, I remain unable to completely comprehend his motives, even after all these years. Telepathy, or more properly, the existence of free telepaths living and operating in society was a possibility that he was unable to assimilate normally. Many people had problems with telepathy in similar ways, but it’s clear that Busby was exceptional in this regard. He was not simply worried that someone might learn his deepest and darkest secrets, but rather took telepathy as some sort of personal affront. This is conjecture: I never talked to him earnestly, if that were possible, and no telepath that I’ve ever known of got a read of him, so I suppose we’ll never know.

At first, Busby wasn’t a special concern concern, there were ways for Taban and Kalian to avoid getting caught for cyber-crimes, but as the Morgans developed their skill they became much more worried about discovery. Or perhaps I should say, they were worried about being discovered if it wasn’t on their terms. Even before they left for Mars, there was a fairly substantial community of telepaths on Earth, and a minority of non-telepaths like myself, who were all “in the know.” Particularly in retrospect we all knew that it was something of an open secret, but it was hard to see that in the moment.

So by early 2542, Taban and Kalian left Earth for Mars. I had never expected to join them, nor do I think at the time they intended to move back to Earth when telepathy had “blown over,” but that is I suppose the reason why the future is always “yet to be.” In any case Mars Colony was far from perfect in many respects, more so then than now, but it was controlled and Mars represented a fresh start that we all found attractive in contrast to Earth, which to all of us felt wrapped up in too many traditions and stale habits.

I suppose if I had to come up with only one thing that I learned from Taban and Kalian, it would that we all need fresh starts from time to time. Thankfully I don’t.

Matthew Connor, MD
Mars, 2597

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SA Thom Busby, ISA; Part 1

A Knowing Mars story, by tycho garen
on 14th August 2008. (commentary)

This is the first part of another excerpt from Matthew Connor’s narrative written in 2597 in the Knowing Mars story.

In early 2542 Taban and Kalian left Earth for the still new Mars Colony. If asked at the time, they would have probably spun some tale about wanting to be on the frontier, about having grown tired of Earth with the growing population, dwindling resources, and the increasingly provincial attitudes. While these reasons certainly contributed to their decision1 to leave Earth, we knew by this time that ISA2 Agent Thom Busby was investigating them for cyber-crime and they left to avoid the surveillance.

This was in and of itself not terribly unusual; the Morgans were known to be active and influential members of the cyberspace community. While they probably were guilty of the crimes as charged, the fact is that most people were easily guilty of at least a dozen such crimes. Anyone who strayed from the commercial or common spheres of the net much was likely guilty of a dozen minor infractions. The fact that they were being pursued for these crimes was sign enough that Thom Busby’s investigation was punitive: it wasn’t possible to legally send people to jail because they were telepaths. In 2541 and ‘42 the general public didn’t know that telepathy existed. Thom Busby’s hostility was clear to Taban and Kalian, the telepath community, and even a mutual colleague–and friend on my part–of Busby and myself: Quinn Dasen. Though we never worked closely, we did interact professionally a number of times. At the time I just thought he was driven enough to be a pain in the ass and too self centered to be much more than a nuisance. How wrong I was.

Matthew Connor, MD
Mars, 2597



Notes:

  1. The fact of the matter is that, at that time most people said that they were at least a little interested in moving off world if you asked them. Significantly fewer were willing to pack up and leave Earth. The Mars colony had been established in the 2480s, but had never attracted the large number of colonists that the instigators behind the project had initially predicted. ↩

  2. International Security Agency. I suppose in the interests of full disclosure, I should say that I too was an agent in the research/forensics department of ISA, in the ’40s. ISA was the sprawling Earth-based security, intelligence, and law enforcement agency that had near universal jurisdiction. Far from being a coherent organization, ISA was far too large to consistently secure, know, or enforce much of anything. This made it all too possible for possible free agents like Thom Busby to operate inside of ISA without much recourse for the rest of us. ↩

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Running, Net #01.05

A Knowing Mars story, by tycho garen
on 21st July 2008. (commentary)

This post is the fifth and final part in the Running Net sequence of the Knowing Mars story. Read part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4 at your leisure.

“What?”

“Mars Colony.”

“Wow.” Gus couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Not now, insertion point isn’t for a while, but once we get word, and the database, to Taban and Kalian, I think I better go.”

Gus was still speechless. It wasn’t every day that your best hacking partner announced that he was moving to Mars. Allowing for a bit of denial, Gus handed Kyp a glass of water. “Drink some of this, and we’ll talk about it when you wake up.”

Kyp took the water, which was needed, but the water was refreshing, and he did indeed need to sleep a little if he wanted to recover properly.

Kyp stared, and there was a long silence. Thoughts didn’t pass between them, but they might as well have. “Ok, sleep now, but we’ll have to talk about his later,” he relented as his eyes fluttered shut. Sleep glorious sleep, Kyp thought loudly enough for Gus to get a sense of it, as Kyp gracefully slipped into unconsciousness.

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Running, Net #01.02

A Knowing Mars story, by tycho garen
on 16th July 2008. (commentary)

This post is a continuation of part 1 of the Running, Net sequence.

Gus had, on Kyp’s insistence, stayed back during the operation, no use in letting the young-or at least the younger–take a fall for you, Kyp figured. If anyone was looking at the logs latter they’d just see Kyp, still this wasn’t the time for self sacrifice.

“Faster,” Kyp sent to his colleague, even though he couldn’t keep up with Gus as it was.

“There aren’t any goddamned nodes, I’m trying!” Gus snapped back.

“Exit on different nodes? You can escape out if you want.” Kyp was trying. He could sense that someone was on his tail. Shit. He didn’t turn back to even look. “Faster” he muttered to himself.

The ISA agent on his tail was wasn’t telepathic, probably. No. Sure as hell, the ISA agent wasn’t telepathic, and even if the agents were, they couldn’t use the edge without attracting attention to themselves, and ISA agents hated drawing attention. Telepaths had an edge in cyberspace, always had, probably because they were so used to thinking outside their body. At least that’s what Kyp always figured. No one knew why for sure, yet. He kept running.

And then he passed a node, that he missed on his first sweep. Shit.

“Gus, where are you? I found one.” Kyp circled around, not daring to slow down anyway. Catching the node was going to be tough, but it was probably the quickest way to get out.

“Three minutes from you, and probably about seven to the public node and civilization, though blending in at this speed won’t work.” Gus said, even his voice in the channel cracked and he sounded breathless.

“Damn. I have an ISA flock of bots and an agent on my tail, and its good,” Kyp managed to eek out: he didn’t know this for sure, but it seemed like a fair bet, and he didn’t want to quibble over such things. He couldn’t turn back and fight with all the data in his buffer, and he could only barely manage to say ahead of ISA with a full buffer.

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Running Net, #01.01

A Knowing Mars story, by tycho garen
on 15th July 2008. (commentary)

The following is the first installment in the Knowing Mars story. This sequence of events will keep us busy for the next week.

Location: ISA Netspace, American Consortia, Earth; 2541

“Gus, I got it! Go! Go! Go!” Kyp managed to whisper and yell all at once. It was, of course completely unnecessary in the virtual privacy of their secret channel on the net. Kyp knew that this operation had taken too long, and he could feel that they were about to be caught. Pessimism or not, Kyp knew they had to get out, and get out now.

This was the net, though, and semi-classified government operated net at that. Kyp and Gus were telepaths on an operation to take back some surveillance data that ISA, or more correctly ISA Special Agent Thom Busby, had collected on them and some of their friends. Mostly, however, Kyp and Gus were just damn good net operators and hackers.

Gus was already running when Kyp’s message came. Well, not so much running as soaring, but it felt like running in the virtual environment. Leaving together was safer, if a bit more complex to arrange, but right now they had to get out of the system–with their prize. To do that they needed an access node, and there didn’t seem to be any around. Crap.

“Shit, Is Busby pulling the nodes offline? Where are they?” Gus said, turning around to survey the netspace for an open node. Nodes, among other things, managed log-on and log-off operations, and they ran on neutral-dedicated hardware and were the only way that Kyp and Gus could get off the net right now without losing their prize. Escaping out, a disconnect without proper log off sequence would save their asses, but not the data. Escaping was seeming less untenable as the seconds dragged by.

It took Kyp a half instant to realize that Gus had stopped. “Keep going! Don’t stop! I’ll be there.” Kyp was worried. Their movement and speed was probably the only thing that kept Busby or his goons from getting a hook on them. Gus had to get out.

Kyp was worried that they’d be caught, more so than usual. This operation was a sting on the ISA, the g-d forsaken International Security Association, the cops, the feds, whatever they were, this was a much bigger job than Kyp and Gus usually undertook. The attack had probably been more brute-force than necessary, and it had taken too long. ISAs net was too far off common areas on the net.

Everything about this operation was too messy. Starting with ISAs database of participants and sympathizers the telepath movement was more organized than the telepaths’ database of themselves. The leaders of the movement, in consultation with Kyp and Gus, decided that they couldn’t beat ISA at their own game. So they started a new game: steal the database and use whatever it contained before ISA could.

And now they were terabytes deep in ISA’s netspace with stolen data, and no good way to get offline.

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