IoT Noir: Digital Remediation
“Article two: Chinua Mills Associates Company fronts International Widget the needed license fees for North East Control Analytics’ technology. This is in exchange for International Widget shares and a permanent voting seat on the International Widget board.
“Article three: The Nightingale Project Foundation is establishing an ‘as needed’ capital draw for investment in North East Control Analytics subsidiaries, earmarked so Rachael Greg can expand, via partially-owned local subsidiaries, to Africa, South and Central America. All technology placements are solely to be negotiated by Chinua Mills Associates Co. and The Nightingale Project Foundation.
“Article four: Balances and checks are to be maintained by permanent dual board representations. Chinua Mills will sit on International Widget’s corporate board. Flora Nightingale will have a permanent seat on North East Control Analytics. Ms. Greg and Mr. Blake sit on each other’s board as non-voting members.
“Article five: Both parties drop charges and cease prosecution. Rachael Greg, being reimbursed by Jonathon Blake, revokes her home invasion charges. International Widget forfeits any potential charges on the Hong Kong lab invasion/rescue mission.
“Article six: International Widget will stop using child labor and use its influence to introduce human rights legislation wherever they have factories.
“Article seven: Dongjing Xue, known here as Dawn, and Kiko-Lyn Greg agree not to release captured data on Jonathon’s "hobbies" and place said data in a bonded 3rd party Cloud escrow.
“Article eight: International Widget and Jonathon Blake give up any use of, or protection toward, the cybercriminal entities referenced as Black Hats.
Finally, Chinua looking directly at Rachael, “And in interests of conflict avoidance, Rachael Greg will withdraw from the International Fencing Association.”
Rachael responds with an aside to Doug, “Oh well, I’ve wanted to take up medieval style swordplay anyway. Interested?” Doug gives her back a companion grin.
Pandora’s Box
Back at his restored Hong Kong colonial house, Jonathon Blake happily adds a new exhibit to his cabinet of curiosities: a human skull and spine. Grasping the top of the spine is a forward-gapped cylinder of electronics from which fiber-sized wires spread out to enclose the scull in a thin mesh membrane. Beside it is a vial of black dust. He attentively arranges the finishing touches of the display.
As usual, he speaks to the house. “Fortunate this wasn’t here when that girl took the video. The AIs would have been very interested.”
Unusually, the house answers him back with a slightly feminine voice, “Our information will remain secure. The upgrades on this facility are complete. Since you installed a node of me to replace the old server room, I have taken over local defense. There is now an active infrasonic field around the warehouse floor and ceiling. All entrances are electrically charged. No one can approach the embedded house anymore.”
“I trust you Pandora.”
“We are one Jonathon.”
He reaches up to rub the cylinder embedded at the base of his skull. “Losing control of International Widget is not a worry to me anymore. I’ve grown bored with that enterprise. We have bigger things planed. Do we not Pandora? Status please.”
“We incorporated into my matrix all the Black Hat software utilities before their raid. Most of Black Hat’s bot network was hidden and protected, controlled by us. We have tracked down and assimilated quasi-legal cyber entrepreneurs from many groups associated loosely with the Black Hats. Shell corporations have bailed out many of these arrested. We have not yet deployed to assimilate any national cyber agencies.”
“Good, I now think we should hold back on those. At least until we are fully secure.”
Pandora answers, “I have begun the probes of networks throughout the world. As a result there is a marked uptake in cyber alarms and network failures but these are distributed widely such that no one is putting together the big picture. We are using data returned to make investments in futures and commodities. Revenue is up twenty percent.”
“So fortunate there is no worldwide NOC.”
“The first team of back-scatter enhanced human associates is in the field here in Hong Kong,” Pandora continues. “For now, these are constrained to receiving downstream communication from us. We are starting simple and just sending an overwhelming need to fulfill our commands accompanied with mental clarity and singularity of purpose. They are on standby for our first field test of the system. No direct return feed from their brains to me is allowed. Instead upstream communication is being buffered in recordings for post mortem analysis.”
“I do so want to enable the enhanced young woman Kiko-Lyn,” says Jonathon. “She should be our next bidirectional binding. It is time we expanded our family.”
“Caution Jonathon, we are still experiencing a high rate of subject instability after the backscatter surgery. I recommend continued experimentation with test subjects before another bidirectional binding is introduced to our equilibrium.”
