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Buzz on the street.
Apr. 17th, 2018 07:42 am"Wait, let me get this straight; you're saying that I was programming while unconscious?" Fred gulped greedily at his coffee, which at this point had gone cold.
"Tis so." replied Zakari "We were running a sandbox matrix with an experimental A.I. when we got the call to fetch you. It was the only viable interface we had up and running to jack you in." Gooch's face suddenly became far more serious. "The program was developed by a team I found at the 2016 AUSA Convention. They called themselves 'Compos Mentis' and they had a really intricate concept but their demo had crashed while in the middle of their presentation to several generals and potential investors. Needless to say, they failed to secure funding. I was right there during their presentation and as soon as the system booted the beta demo flopped. Not a single military representative waited to see if they could fix it, a few of them just chuckled but they all immediately walked off to the next booth. Only a few geeks and myself stuck around to see if we could help them troubleshoot."
"It took about forty minutes to hash out the failed command line before we realized they had fried a few transistors and a capacitor. One of the guys, Mitch, had some code and videos on his laptop he showed me after helping them out for so long. Their concept was very forward thinking. Everything was being programmed in V.R. combined with intensive holographic laser displays for outside the box coding. I'd never seen anything quite like it and was thoroughly impressed. I was really glad the military or corporate guys hadn't seen it either. Even though they had some really sophisticated programming and equipment, they were short on the galvinination of their core program, short on money and short on manpower. It was a simple matter of being first to proposition them after such an embarrassing failure. Guarenting them a steady paycheck immediately after seeing what they had, it was a simple matter of signing the paperwork. I thought I had all we needed at that point until I got a chance to see the program from the lab." Zak proceeded to peck a few shortcut commands on his phone as he swiveled one of his desk monitors 180 degrees around towards Fred.
Fred leaned back in his chair, frowning into the bottom of his empty mug before looking back to Gooch's station. Zakari threw a leg up on his desk, never taking his eyes off his phone, his thumbs worked furiously at the small device. He continued, "The base engines seemed fairly straight forward, collision, body dynamics, motion... they were actually kinda sloppy, I knew we would have to rewrite a lot of it... but when I saw the paradigms and real-time physics coding, I was fucking blown away man! I'd never seen anything like it. It was ridiculously complex. I couldn't even tell what systems of equations they were using. And once I started to ask team 'Cement' what they hell was going on in there, they became unusually skittish and suspiciously mute."
Fred leveled his chair as he sat up straight. He set his empty mug on his desk asking "Wait, who the hell is team cement?"
"I started calling the Compos Mentis guys 'Team Cement' after I figured out what was going on." said Zakari while rolling his eyes.
"What was going on?" inquired Fred.
Zakari looked up briefly from his phone before continuing. Pages and pages of green code began scrolling down the monitor Zak had turned towards Fred. It continued to load and scroll while Zakari spoke. "Well, I wouldn't find that out for another ten months. The first two months Team Cement feigned that they knew what they were doing. By month three I had determined that the bulk of the program wasn't even written by them. They couldn't tell me how the guts of the program operated, I couldn't figure out how it worked and my think-tank was impossibly stumped. We couldn't believe what we were looking at, let alone understand its nuances. Although we were able to patch a working program, we were limited in functionality and modding the core was impossible. We had to shell and partition a micro environment in which to work."
At this, Fred stood and approached Zak's monitor inspecting the loaded script. He looked to Zak, "So what happened? Who wrote the original core?"
"I'm getting to that." Zakari looked up from his phone, thumbs still working. "I had to seek outside assistance again. I printed up two hundred fliers in March, 2017 and emailed a few friends to reproduce and distribute several dozens. I drove all over New Mexico, Texas, Arizona, California and Nevada posting them in select positions. Then it just became a waiting game; in July I booked a ticket to Vegas for Def-Con 25. I needed more bees for the hive."
"Bees?" Fred asked puzzled. "Is that what you call your think tank?"
"More precisely, I needed Nymphs who'd grow into a Brood." Zakari looked sharply at Fred "But I never said that and you are never to repeat those words aloud or on the wire."
"Ok..." Fred's voice rang out. "Wait a sec... are you..." Fred watched Zak's face break into a maniacal grin. "You'r talking about that 3301 thing... what is it called again? That fly! Or whatever bug! What's the name of that?"
Gooch put his right pointer finger over his lips signaling the need for discretion. "Cicada."
[TO BEE CONTINUED]
"Tis so." replied Zakari "We were running a sandbox matrix with an experimental A.I. when we got the call to fetch you. It was the only viable interface we had up and running to jack you in." Gooch's face suddenly became far more serious. "The program was developed by a team I found at the 2016 AUSA Convention. They called themselves 'Compos Mentis' and they had a really intricate concept but their demo had crashed while in the middle of their presentation to several generals and potential investors. Needless to say, they failed to secure funding. I was right there during their presentation and as soon as the system booted the beta demo flopped. Not a single military representative waited to see if they could fix it, a few of them just chuckled but they all immediately walked off to the next booth. Only a few geeks and myself stuck around to see if we could help them troubleshoot."
"It took about forty minutes to hash out the failed command line before we realized they had fried a few transistors and a capacitor. One of the guys, Mitch, had some code and videos on his laptop he showed me after helping them out for so long. Their concept was very forward thinking. Everything was being programmed in V.R. combined with intensive holographic laser displays for outside the box coding. I'd never seen anything quite like it and was thoroughly impressed. I was really glad the military or corporate guys hadn't seen it either. Even though they had some really sophisticated programming and equipment, they were short on the galvinination of their core program, short on money and short on manpower. It was a simple matter of being first to proposition them after such an embarrassing failure. Guarenting them a steady paycheck immediately after seeing what they had, it was a simple matter of signing the paperwork. I thought I had all we needed at that point until I got a chance to see the program from the lab." Zak proceeded to peck a few shortcut commands on his phone as he swiveled one of his desk monitors 180 degrees around towards Fred.
Fred leaned back in his chair, frowning into the bottom of his empty mug before looking back to Gooch's station. Zakari threw a leg up on his desk, never taking his eyes off his phone, his thumbs worked furiously at the small device. He continued, "The base engines seemed fairly straight forward, collision, body dynamics, motion... they were actually kinda sloppy, I knew we would have to rewrite a lot of it... but when I saw the paradigms and real-time physics coding, I was fucking blown away man! I'd never seen anything like it. It was ridiculously complex. I couldn't even tell what systems of equations they were using. And once I started to ask team 'Cement' what they hell was going on in there, they became unusually skittish and suspiciously mute."
Fred leveled his chair as he sat up straight. He set his empty mug on his desk asking "Wait, who the hell is team cement?"
"I started calling the Compos Mentis guys 'Team Cement' after I figured out what was going on." said Zakari while rolling his eyes.
"What was going on?" inquired Fred.
Zakari looked up briefly from his phone before continuing. Pages and pages of green code began scrolling down the monitor Zak had turned towards Fred. It continued to load and scroll while Zakari spoke. "Well, I wouldn't find that out for another ten months. The first two months Team Cement feigned that they knew what they were doing. By month three I had determined that the bulk of the program wasn't even written by them. They couldn't tell me how the guts of the program operated, I couldn't figure out how it worked and my think-tank was impossibly stumped. We couldn't believe what we were looking at, let alone understand its nuances. Although we were able to patch a working program, we were limited in functionality and modding the core was impossible. We had to shell and partition a micro environment in which to work."
At this, Fred stood and approached Zak's monitor inspecting the loaded script. He looked to Zak, "So what happened? Who wrote the original core?"
"I'm getting to that." Zakari looked up from his phone, thumbs still working. "I had to seek outside assistance again. I printed up two hundred fliers in March, 2017 and emailed a few friends to reproduce and distribute several dozens. I drove all over New Mexico, Texas, Arizona, California and Nevada posting them in select positions. Then it just became a waiting game; in July I booked a ticket to Vegas for Def-Con 25. I needed more bees for the hive."
"Bees?" Fred asked puzzled. "Is that what you call your think tank?"
"More precisely, I needed Nymphs who'd grow into a Brood." Zakari looked sharply at Fred "But I never said that and you are never to repeat those words aloud or on the wire."
"Ok..." Fred's voice rang out. "Wait a sec... are you..." Fred watched Zak's face break into a maniacal grin. "You'r talking about that 3301 thing... what is it called again? That fly! Or whatever bug! What's the name of that?"
Gooch put his right pointer finger over his lips signaling the need for discretion. "Cicada."
[TO BEE CONTINUED]
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