Defcon 18 Short Story Entry

Posted by FirmWarez on 16 Mar 2012 in Blog | 2 comments

My entry for for the Defcon 18 short story contest, titled “Random Mental Packets from the Con”.

Censorship done per contest rules.

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Random Mental Packets from the Con

Attention: 0x55 0xAA

Preamble: Take the laughing man story – you know, the Comanches, baseball, Mary, the chief and all – and turn it in to a hacker tale. The system, the dream, the dark truths that change who we are. It’s in there, bring it out, and cyberpunk it. Nightvision and wow-tech. Phonies. Global news and midnight coding. Goddam choices and all. With a taste of papa Hemingway thrown in…a nice and peaceful place with “f*** you” written on it.

Data Payload:

Another buffet breakfast. My mind wanders over the choices and the arbitrary nature of “breakfast foods”. I mean, should I eat the eggs and a bagel or do I really want kimchee? The haze of the previous night’s solder fumes and beer combined with a naïve anarchism make me go for an omlette (that I can’t f***ing spell this early in the morning) covered with kimchee. Hey, I’ve got all day to wash the bad breath away with cheap Vegas beer. I try not to drip food on my black t-shirt, my eyes drifting around like a net-noob who stumbled on 4chan, and I sense it again, the feeling that somehow all this technology, all these people, the connectivity, that in some mysterious way it is allowing me to become more. I slowly crunch on a jalapeno and hope that “more” is something that our synth rift and Hawking voice producing buddy Kurzweil envisions, and not the “more” that consumed Tetsuo.

My mind is lost in a feeling, a moment, something like when I first realized the literal meaning of the phrase “this address routes globally”. Globally. The world. Way before that it was beyond words to watch hardware I’d built with my own hands communicate via RS232 across my work bench; but now globally. Those packets went places I imagined only being able to dream of; but they were my packets, a part of me, traveling across the globe at a speed approaching the universal constant. It’s not a feeling that can be stated in an executive summary; this went beyond the next VC backed biz plan. It was profound but merely a feeling; a skin-walker, a moment, and it was here again.

The feeling faded as instantaneous reality sank in; our normal moments are non-maskable. I realized I had defeated yet another Vegas buffet. A little more coffee – hey, I planned on having a good buzz later, I d**n better be awake enough to enjoy it – and I was on my way. Deep in my heart I knew there was a way, a place, a something that was out there. Maybe today would be the day.

I find myself with shades on before noon, inside, standing in line. The goons rush past, and then my eyes scan from face to face in the line. Each person carries a story which seems real and imagined simultaneously – the poser, the pro, the old hand, the groupie. Dreamers and wannabees, elites and commons, we blend in to one, the hotties and the normals, we’re extremely different and the same. With the right hardware and a few tweaks I could monitor all their communications, read their e-mails, see their profiles on raunchy “dating” sites. That sort of exploration is beyond mere voyeurism; it’s a method of truly connecting, seeing the things about others that we see or want in ourselves. A way of thinking we could connect. Yet I stay trapped in my realm, flashing green light on my backpack strap, trendy logo glued to my outfit, my mind disconnected from theirs, and I wait. Waiting is what kills us all; and even those with the experience to know far better sometimes are silent and wait. Fortune favors the prepared, and the prepared are ready to act.

The moment passes, the opportunity slips away, and the connection is lost. The hardware doesn’t care; the algorithms toss CRC errors away like yesterday’s trash. But in our human minds we lock on to what could have been; it’s a PLL of the maybes, About 44,800 results (0.40 seconds), and they’re all the same – you should have, could have, would have. The line moves on, and in a few minutes the insular world of waiting with strangers turns into another talk. We listen, learn a little, and tune in to our personal communicators, Kirking out to texts, updates, and instant distractions.

Still in my heart I know that something is out there. I listen and learn that security is always a weapons race, that fixed fortifications are monuments to the stupidity of man. It’s mostly theater, an attempt to convince those who can’t handle the truth that we are somehow safer than we really are. A mirage mostly, the idea that passwords and limitations of on-board beverages can actually protect us in a world of ICBMs and organized crime with uber black-hats. You don’t have a choice; you shall play the game. You are in and you can’t quit. But some of us know that real security is an obtainable goal, if the right minds, time, and money coalesce. I wander and wonder, for I still have an awareness of the pulsing future. It’s in my veins, and in the thoughts of those around me. I see that, even through the hidden shyness and subterfuge of personalities.

I need to move. Or at least get my hands on some hardware. I’m six; I’m in the village, and tumblers tumble and the tension of the wrench peels away the tension of my life. Whether it is just a geek game or an analogy for all tech and security, I thoroughly enjoy my successes at turning the plugs. I feel like I could be another famous short good-guy burglar, but one more driven by the works of “Eddie the Wire” rather than that guy with too many middle names.

Back in the real world I have dependents and a partner who expect trinkets of my travels. I buy a beer first, then explore the noise of and activity of capitalism corner. A couple of circuits and I find the right gifts and maybe something for myself, and then I walk more, soaking in the faces and features.

Reflecting on my professional and personal experience again I caught myself thinking of some others as posers. I think about my wardrobe and realize that we’re all posers, even with exceptional cred or skills we’re just acting out the fantasy of our residual self image. Here we project the combination of who we are with who we want to be. It’s liberating. Pure luck provides me with a “DC moment” that breaks my over-analyzing of the situation: I step onto an elevator while DT is stepping off, and he momentarily laughs at my t-shirt (a “Hello Kitty” holding a Kalashnikov automatic rifle). It snaps me away from too much thought and back to the world emanating from this place, a world of thoughtful activity. The truth of this place is all about the doing, not just thinking and knowing.

The action of the day melts into a disjointed night. Parties and rooms; black and white mixes with the bi-component of gray; fast paced schedules succumb to islands of intensity.

There are profound actions and there is profoundness in the mundane and even the self-indulgent. At this late hour I realize that the best action for me is not scribbling on a white board or arguing with a compiler, but the hyper-intense action behind closed doors guarded by big guys checking badges that one doesn’t earn in scouts, well, that is unless the scouts in question are members of a fabled mysterious Japanese shadow warrior culture.

The realities of “life” meant that I had spent way too many years away from the pounding immensity of a good set of bass bins. Degree leads to job to career; date leads to wife to family. Each shifts my worlds of foci, and slowly the throbbing laser lit fantasy realm of the techno clubs morphs into the dreams of “maybe someday” and then the nostalgia of “those were the days”. But for this brief time in Mos Eisley, the past and the future impact and become the freedom of today, and again my chest resonates with the pounding of deep analog synthesizer derived bass, electronically produced claps, and repeating samples. I briefly hypothesize that the timing of the bass line affects my alpha waves like a dreamachine, something in the 8Hz to 15Hz range, a phenomenon that has been repeatedly demonstrated to induce hallucinations…but whether alpha waves or just the primal nature of sound, I’m pulled in to an altered consciousness, the music, the lights, the pulsating bodies, creating a realm that is both erotically sensual of the most primal nature and completely transcendent of the body.

During all of this hammering electronica induced floatation, I sense it again: the idea that maybe, in all of this hedonism, hardware, and hollow hope, that there really is something, a shift, a difference. The idea for a moment, that at a bare minimum if we aren’t the path to a stronger future, what is happening here is a glimpse into an amazingly possible future, a timeline only a funny blue box with a British accent could hope for. It’s there for a moment, like the first time on a BBS, then the feeling slips away into the strobes, lasers, and sampled drums.

When it was all over, I was unsure of the past and the present. Fantasy and possibility had became welded to dreams and reality; and then the dry desert heat beat them all in to a mundane now. Whatever I had experienced I knew it had become a part of me, and through me would continue on as a repeating part of the tale told by people connected through a desire to see the hidden; to experience some semblance of the truths obviously tucked away behind society’s facades. Wherever they gathered in big cities or remote forests, this force and need to share would always pull them together.

Cyclic Redundancy Check: this must be real.

Transmission ends.

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