Feral: An Our Cyber World Prequel Read online

  Feral

  Our Cyber World: Beginnings

  Thank you for downloading Feral, the Our Cyber World prequel. With my thanks and appreciation, I’m offering some of my Our Cyber World stories as free downloads for those who join my Reader’s Club.

  And now, sit back, relax, and start reading Feral.

  Feral, Copyright © 2015, Eduardo Suastegui

  Published by Eduardo Suastegui, Kindle edition, rev 1.0

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations in articles or reviews—without the permission in writing from its publisher, Eduardo Suastegui.

  All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. The author is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.

  Published By Eduardo Suastegui

  A Voice of the Mute Tales production

  http://eduardosuastegui.com

  Table of Contents

  Feral

  Table of Contents

  Quick Foreword

  01» Glitch

  02» Briefing

  03» Excursion

  04» Undercover

  05» Predictions

  06» Calling Card

  07» Face Time

  08» House Calls

  09» Back-trace

  10» Righteous Cause

  11» Sasha’s Quandary

  12» Rogue Code

  13» War Room

  14» Fractured Code

  15» Reservations

  16» T-Boned

  17» Into the Vault

  18» Next Steps

  19» By Candlelight

  20» No Fingerprints

  21» Business Rhythm

  22» Evening Brew

  23» White Paper

  24» Trade and Barter

  25» Hooks

  26» Visualizations

  27» Loose Ends

  28» Sasha’s Choice

  29» Insiders

  30» Final Answer

  31» Triangulation

  32» Cut Out

  33» Departures

  Staying in Touch

  Quick Foreword

  Feral started as a short story that morphed into a novel, detailing how Martin Spencer and Sasha Javan met, how their relationship developed, and the heart-breaking decisions they had to make in the end. As such, together with my short story collection, Random Origins, Feral stands as a prequel to DEAD BEEF, an expansion of the backstory that novel builds on.

  With my thanks and appreciation, I’m offering some of my Our Cyber World stories as free downloads for those who join my Reader’s Club. I hope you come by and join up soon!

  Thanks again for reading. Without further delay, here is Feral.

  01» Glitch

  Martin Spencer stared at the red text on the screen. “Failed Transaction; Error Code: #4571.” Funny how his mind worked. Or sad. His first reaction had been to run a quick diagnostic to see if someone had hacked his laptop.

  He almost wished it were that. At least then he could fix it, maybe even back-punch whoever had done it. But no.

  Martin closed his eyes and sighed, loud, so the helpdesk guy on the other end of the phone would hear him.

  “You know,” he said. “I got up early this morning, went for my run, busted my butt to shower and dress, so I could place my trade orders before I run off to work—”

  “I appreciate your frustration.”

  “And then I sit here for close to an hour, waiting for a human to talk to, watching my browser freeze and crash, for what? So you can tell me too bad, sit, wait, trading will restart soon?”

  “I wish I could do more, sir. I’m afraid we’re all in the same boat.” The guy let out a sigh of his own. “I wanted to do some trades myself.”

  Of course he did. Market indices had nosedived for the better part of two weeks. Today, things showed signs of life, with lots of green lines sloping up, which meant, time to grab some bargains. Volume jumped high at the market’s open. And then. Poof.

  While on hold, Martin had checked a couple of news sites. Several brokerage houses were reporting “glitches and outages” of some sort or another. Nothing specific. He smelled a rat.

  “So you’re telling me even the fat cats and the big institutional investors—they’re all locked out too?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s system wide.”

  “Any idea when things might be up and running?” Martin shook his head, aware of the stupidity and futility of his question.

  “They’re saying at least two hours…” He cleared his throat. “To be honest, I doubt they know for sure.”

  Martin sighed again. Well, at least the guy was on the level with him. Had to give him that. No sense in harassing him anymore, either. The dude sat every bit as trapped and helpless as everyone else.

  “All right,” Martin said.

  “Is there anything I can do for you today, Mr. Spencer?”

  “I doubt that.”

  The guy let out a tentative snicker. “I hear you.”

  Martin hung up and stared at the screen. The only thing his minders let him do online, and he couldn’t even get it rolling today. He’d let it go too long, too. He’d been riding some high and hot fliers and had sold them off before they dove toward penny stock status. Now, he needed to get his portfolio in order. Having all this cash around in a brokerage house, uninsured, earning tiny interest? Not a good idea. Might as well stash it in a CD in the local credit union.

  He shook his head. How had he gotten to this point? Not long ago, he’d wanted nothing to do with stocks and bonds and brokerage houses. He’d called it all a mirage.

  With a tap on his computer monitor’s power button, he turned it off so he could see his reflection on the screen.

  He stared at the dark version of himself. “A lot changed, huh, Martin?”

  Yeah, it had all changed since they caught him doing his last epic hack. It had all gone from black to white hat, with lots of murky in between. He’d had to show himself a responsible citizen, which among other things meant a decent credit score and evidence of financial stability. A savings account and a stock portfolio helped with that. Oh, they hadn’t told him as much, but he knew that for his security clearance, the feds kept tabs on his finances and much more.

  He tapped the button on the screen again, and it came to life, showing him the web browser screen and the error code and message from the last transaction he’d attempted. With a quick click of the mouse, he went back to his home account screen. For the heck of it, he selected a trade option, set up the buy price, pressed the “Execute Order” button.

  Hourglass. Tick-tock, tick-tock. Crash.

  Martin considered his options. He could call in sick, wait this out. But his employer would know. Like they knew whether he was keeping his side of the bargain to only go online to check and modify his stock portfolio or do his banking, they’d know he’d been pushing failed buy orders for the last hour.

  He thought about calling his supervisor. He opted for sending him an email instead.

  “Stuck home tending to personal business,” he wrote.

  True enough, right? Not deceptive at all. He reread it, then sent it.

  Since his supervisor didn’t sit at an unclassified computer, Martin estimated it would take at least fifteen minutes for the email to go through the security filters, cross the firewall, and arrive at his boss’s “high side” email account.

  It didn’t take that long. Not even close. A message came back. “Need you to come in. U
rgent.”

  He scowled at the text. That quick? He decided it wasn’t a reply. His boss had more than likely sent it before Martin’s email made it across.

  He sighed. He went back to his brokerage house web browser screen. He frowned at it. It had automatically logged him out. More red text blinked on the screen: “System down for maintenance. Try again later.”

  He opened another browser tab and went to the CNN site. The top headline flashed at him.

  “Breaking News: Trading On US Markets Halted.”

  He clicked and read the scant two paragraphs. Something about a reported glitch, speculation of a Cyberattack, working on it, trading closed indefinitely.

  His gaze swept back to one word: Cyberattack. He pulled up his boss’s email. Seconds later, his cellphone phone buzzed, flashing his boss’s open line number. Martin answered it in speaker phone.

  “Hey, Stan. Just sent you an email.”

  “Haven’t gotten it. We need you to come in.”

  “Yeah, I see that—”

  “Real-world. Urgent.”

  “Well, I was trying to take care of some personal business… I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the market—”

  “You need to get moving.”

  “Is this about what’s going—”

  “On the double, Martin. Got it?”

  He sighed. “Yeah.”

  He got it all right. The stock market had gone Tango Uniform, as the intelligence/military types liked to say, and the feds wanted all hands on deck to stitch it back together.

  02» Briefing

  Martin Spencer knew everyone considered him a jerk. Right now, he didn’t care. He let himself slouch in his chair. He let his gaze drift into a dazed stare. He did nothing to conceal his boredom. He did give himself credit for stopping short of sighing or yawning to convey his lack of interest.

  Well, lack of interest only described a slice of it.

  What should a guy feel except offense at getting dragged into this conference room to swallow its stale, frigid air so he could witness yet another useless chart parade to the rhythm of a lifeless, monotone voice?

  Out there, beyond this windowless manmade cave, sunny Milpitas, California, with its clear blue skies, crisp fall air, and OK, grinding traffic—it all sat out there, open, bright, free, just out of reach, while he wasted away in here.

  The whole thing smacked of torture, his penance for getting caught dabbling in the hacker arts, only to serve the very people he once sought to embarrass and evade.

  At the front of the room, the briefer droned on about something or other concerning financial markets, timing differentials in stock trade transactions, and individual investors getting the raw end of the deal—like that was news—and brokerage firms competing for the fastest servers, the shorter fiber optic routes, and whatever gave them the edge to beat competitors to the cheapest trade. All about the timing and the time lags involved. All about deriving marginal advantages to make fractional pennies of profit, which over millions and billions of transactions added up to real money.

  “How much?” somebody said, since the amount did not appear on any of the charts.

  “Hard to tell,” the briefer replied with the aplomb one would project in the absence of reason for major concern.

  Robert Odehl, the high ranking dude in the meeting, raised and waved his hands. “Millions? Billions? Ballpark?”

  The briefer shrugged. “Like I said, hard to tell. We’re still assessing… tabulating the total number of transactions. Then maybe we can average for an overall estimate.”

  Martin shook his head. They had no clue, and they never would.

  “This is real money,” Odehl said. “Doesn’t someone report it missing, you know, after checking their ledgers?”

  Another shrug from the briefer. “As long as the sale price matches what the seller gets in his account… No one would notice. Not the way this… whatever it is… the way it does the skimming… Alleged skimming, that is… In mid transaction.”

  The room grew quiet. Some folks traded looks. Others stared down at their folders, the ones with SECRET stamped across them.

  Somehow this held great national security importance—of the don’t you dare spill and cause the little people to panic kind. Like no one had noticed the stock market trading stoppage.

  Still, to Martin, this didn’t smell like a Cyberattack. It sounded like something the Federal Trading Commission or the Securities Exchange Commission—hell, both of them—should look into. Nothing more than arm wrestling among fat cats. Yeah, the trickery involved a technological angle, but Martin didn’t see why he needed to hear about it. It had nothing to do with his area of expertise.

  He let himself sigh only to realize the screen at the front of the conference room had turned black. The droning had stopped, too. And all heads had turned to him in unison. Someone at the front of the room had said something, and though Martin missed it all together, he could tell that something involved him.

  “Thoughts?” Stan Beloski, sitting next to him said.

  From the head of the table, Stan’s direct boss, Robert Odehl, shot Martin a sharp frown.

  “Thoughts?” Martin said, feeling stupid, like the kid caught not paying attention in class.

  “Yes,” the briefer said.

  Martin shrugged. “Like everybody else, I couldn’t make my trades this morning. Major bummer. Lost out on some nice bargains.”

  A couple of younger guys snickered. They straightened up when no one joined them.

  The briefer maintained his blank expression. “Given the higher than usual margin trade differentials, are we looking at foul play? That’s the question.”

  “You serious?” Martin sat up in his chair. “The only people making money are the ones hitting and catching their own foul balls. The ones playing between the lines?” He pointed at himself. “We are just doing average, when we’re lucky. Everybody knows that.”

  He said that last part feeling a tad less certain than he’d like about the truth behind it and his ability to substantiate his assertion. But still, it sounded true enough to him. Even if he tried to systematize his own trading, for Martin the stock market amounted to nothing more than legalized gambling on a grand scale. Oh, they used cute words for it, like speculation or risk averaging or hedging, to name a few favorites. But it all boiled down to a massive, unpredictable random process grounded in the uncertainty, fears, and hopes of the human psyche. And Martin hated random. You couldn’t control random. You couldn’t plan or engineer it. It just came when it felt like it, and went the other way on similar whims.

  “We would like you to take a look into it,” Stan Beloski said. Like it always did, his voice came cold, calm, and measured. No need to panic or get personal about things.

  “And I’m supposed to find, what, exactly?”

  “See if anyone is doing more than beating the clock.”

  Martin allowed himself a grin. “More than beating the clock. So… you guys do know this happens all the time, right?” Martin waved at the black screen as if it still displayed that graphical chart showing two data paths, one longer than the other, and the milliseconds one gained by using the shorter leg. “You guys know this happens, and you let it.”

  The briefer took one sideways step, as if to get out of the line of fire. “Jurisdictionally, that’s an FTC matter.”

  “And this isn’t.” Martin waved at the black screen again. “Something concerning manipulated trades that may involve more than time lagging—they wouldn’t care about that.”

  Stan patted the table with his hand. “We will take a hard look for ourselves first, make sure we have an accurate read before we raise any flags.”

  “Once we have something concrete, we’ll inform the right folks and let them run with it,” Robert Odehl added. “Once we’re sure. Until then, the investigation is ours. A potential Cyber matter.” He raised his eyebrow and aimed his narrowed gaze at Martin. “And a highly confidential one.”

 
“Because some nasty overseas hacker might be behind it.” Martin waited for Stan or anyone else to reply. No one did, so he pressed with, “Maybe Koreans. Or Iranians. Or some Ukrainian dudes.”

  “That is speculation until you conclude your assessment,” Stan said.

  Odehl nodded.

  Martin leaned back as far as the chair would let him and crossed his arms. Time to stop whining. All his complaining wouldn’t change a thing. Besides, it all paid the same. It might even prove a little fun, getting his hands into some code and real world snooping for a change.

  They didn’t let him do this often. Who knew? If he got this right he might parlay it into next steps and future opportunities. Maybe they’d give him a little more latitude to extend beyond dreaming up breach scenarios or conducting boring firewall stress tests. Maybe he’d show them what he could do, enough that they might see the value of his ideas to go on the offensive and prevent attacks rather than running fancy diagnostic and forensic scans.

  It only took Martin Spencer two hours to conclude they were right. Actually, he had a pretty good idea fifteen minutes into it, but he needed data to back up his educated hunch. He saw it almost at once. People say follow the money, but for Martin, he always followed the data. See how it flows, see what it touches, see how it translates from one format to another, and you’ll know how the system works. Irony of ironies, in this case data and money pumped through the same pipes and rode on the same bits and packets.

  He saw those bits and packets didn’t simply lag one another. Some of them flowed off to unknown, untraceable destinations. Someone or something—more than likely some bit of embedded code—kept siphoning tiny transactions. A packet here, a handful there, all of them carrying fractions of fractional pennies. Millions of times per hour. Billions of transmissions per trade day. A sprinkle here, a dusting there. Following the data showed it clear as day.

  Martin looked back toward Stan with a smile that he dropped at once when he saw Odehl standing there as well. Martin guessed that on this occasion, Odehl wasn’t counting himself too senior to stand around, birddogging a coder and admiring his parlor tricks—as he’d once described Martin’s skills and technique.