All In

By Jed Henson

During a routine corporate security job, hacker Jim Ericssen accidentally steps on the digital toes of something he's never "met" before: a powerful, malevolent, artificial intelligence, buried deep in cyberspace. He probably could've survived just fine. All it would take is an apology and a promise of silence.

But Jim's pride gets in the way, and he pushes too far.

Immediately, he's in serious trouble: an escalating back-and-forth battle with a brutal menu of realworld consequences, including everything from prison to an early grave. And his AI foe proves able to hack and use just about anything attached to the internet as a weapon.

As their one-on-one fight explodes into an inconceivable global conflict, Jim must navigate dwindling options to save not just his own life, but humanity, from a desperate future…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jed Henson
• Release date: Jun 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201311469

Book preview

Prologue

On the morning of March 8, 1965, the first American combat troops landed in Vietnam, wading onto the beach at Da Nang at approximately 8:30 a.m.

During the landing, a small wormhole appeared midway between the orbits of Earth and Mars.

The wormhole began as a nanoscale, mirrorlike sphere, then quickly expanded until it measured roughly thirty centimeters in diameter. The mirror fizzed away, leaving behind the complete blackness of a black hole, invisible to human eyes if any had been located outside its event horizon.

Then the black sphere also fizzed away, revealing at its center the reconnaissance device. With its aluminum-alloy skin and cylindrical shape, the recon unit looked something like a beer can, but it sported a variety of sensors and small positioning thrusters on its sides. One end featured a telescopic lens.

The recon unit powered up and ran a diagnostic check that confirmed all systems had survived the trip. It located the local star and four other nearby stars in its navigation chart and used them to record its position down to the millimeter, accounting for its movement relative to all five objects and their movement as well.

Over the next year, the unit recorded the position of every object orbiting the Sun out to Pluto’s orbit, including objects as small as five kilometers in diameter. It collected a variety of measurements of each, including size, density, electromagnetism, lightwave emissions and atmospheric data. It examined the Sun as well, confirming home-world observations and adding detail.

At the end of one year, as its orbit carried it toward its arrival location, the recon unit made slight adjustments to its path to ensure it would cross the arrival location at precisely the right time. Then it powered down.

As the device hit the rendezvous point, a ten-meter mirror-sphere flashed into existence around it. The sphere began shrinking almost immediately until it was gone, taking the recon unit with it.

Back in the wormhole facility orbiting Moran, a small moon orbiting the planet Quandevoo, the entire facility thrummed with the energy used to build, maintain and close the wormhole to star system 1YDMGP32, the Voo’s designation for the Sun system. Inside the large, spherical wormhole generation chamber, the ten-meter wormhole exit fizzed away, revealing the recon unit floating in the zero g vacuum at its center.

A large robotic arm unfolded from the chamber wall, gently grasped the unit and inserted it into a receptacle in the wall. The receptacle powered up the unit and began streaming its data down to an outpost on Moran. A computer on Moran monitored the data as it came in, making sure it was complete, uncorrupted and threat free. Data confirmed the computer beamed it down to the planet to technicians working with the Voo’s Galaxy Search project team.

The team waited with more anticipation than usual for the data to arrive and compile. Telescopic observations of the Sun system had been particularly promising: a yellow-dwarf, middle-aged star orbited by several small inner planets and several gas giants that probably had swept the system relatively clean of debris. The recon unit had taken the first close look; might its data hit the lottery?

Data in hand, the team started with the good stuff: the inner planets. They took only a cursory look at the innermost planet. That close to the star, it obviously would suffer the star’s fiery, radioactive wrath, and a quick look at the data confirmed it: Punishing heat, no viable atmosphere, a weak magnetosphere. Therefore, little possibility of complex life. Still, its poles might contain water ice, so the team relegated it to low priority on Galaxy Search’s Explore list.

The second planet was interesting, with its thick atmosphere, which contained a little water vapor. Unfortunately, the planet was a little too close to the star for comfort, it lacked a strong global magnetic field and it rotated relatively slowly. Conclusion: The second planet was probably too hot and irradiated to harbor complex life. Still, it was worth a closer look—the team added it to the Explore list, medium priority.

The third planet was a jackpot. A healthy distance from the star, a strong magnetosphere, an atmosphere flush with not only water vapor but complex organics, obvious water ice on the poles, large amounts of liquid water, a workable rotation. Explore list, top priority.

The fourth planet proved interesting, too, when the team finally got around to looking at its data. It took effort to turn their attention from the third planet, even temporarily. But when they did, they found the fourth planet orbited at the outer edge of the Goldilocks zone. It unfortunately featured only a thin atmosphere and no magnetosphere, but the data did indicate water ice at the poles and a workable rotation. Conclusion: Cool and irradiated, but worth a closer look. Explore list, medium priority.

Over the next six months, the team continued compiling reports on every object observed by the recon unit and, with the help of VAI (the Voo’s artificial intelligence system), calculating complex-life probabilities for each. Two of the gas giants featured several interesting moons, so the team’s final report included a substantial number of Explore recommendations, including three low priority, four medium priority and one high priority.

Due to a large backlog and the financial and technical limitations of the wormhole machine, it would take years for the Galaxy Search to send explore units to the new medium-priority objects, and the low-priority objects might never receive a visit. Within these limitations, though, Galaxy Search could jump high-priority targets to the top of the waiting list, and the third planet, designated 1YDMGP32-3, was tantalizing. Once the team filed its report, 1YDMGP32-3—that is, Earth—was quickly scheduled for exploration a mere ninety days later.

In December 1966, VAI, which operated the wormhole machine for the Voo, dropped an explore unit into orbit around Earth. The device recorded precise electromagnetism and atmospheric data. Its telescope imaged Earth in a variety of wavelengths, including the visual spectrum, both at night and during the day. And it noted and recorded numerous radio transmissions.

The device was way too underpowered to run a full instance of VAI, but it wasn’t just a dumb collection device like the recon unit. The explore unit processed the data as it received it, noting immediately the artificial lights of human cities at night and radio communications from both Earth and off-Earth locations. It then took high-resolution daytime photos of one hundred night-light locations. It also studied the radio transmissions to search for and map a constellation of artificial satellites orbiting the planet, noting the radio signals propagating from each.

Three months after the explore unit’s arrival, the Voo retrieved it.

The discovery of intelligent life on Earth was giant news on Quandevoo. Humans weren’t the first intelligent beings the Voo had discovered—they were the third—but they were only the third in the twenty-five years the Galaxy Search program had been running, only the third in hundreds of systems probed, and the first in seven years.

The Voo feasted on the images returned by the explore unit of the planet and the cities. Speculation surged regarding what humans might look like and how advanced human civilization was.

Their enthusiasm was tempered with caution, however. The Voo and VAI agreed that if human technology was more advanced than the Voo’s, or even just close to equal, Earth might pose a threat. The previous two intelligent lifeforms discovered were Stone- and Bronze-Age civilizations, respectively. Thus, Earth was both far more interesting and potentially far more dangerous.

Galaxy Search therefore proceeded carefully with its next missions. It spent two months parsing all the explore unit’s data, and another three months constructing probe units. Humans must not know the Voo existed until the Voo knew more about human technology and temperament.

In late August 1967, the probe package was ready. It comprised five devices delivered via five wormholes over three days. On the first day, Galaxy Search first placed a data storage / communications satellite in a stable orbit out past Earth’s moon. Then it placed a probe device in geosynchronous Earth orbit directly in front of a geosynchronous human communications satellite, between Earth and the satellite. Over the next two days, Search placed three more probe devices in front of human communications satellites.

The probes recorded all transmissions between the satellites and Earth. Periodically, when their limited storage space was full, they transmitted the recordings out to the storage/comms satellite, which could store many petabytes of data.

One month later, the Voo picked up the storage/comms satellite. A day later, the Voo placed a new storage/comms satellite in orbit beyond the moon. The probes switched their uploads to this new device.

This data collection and rotation system would prove effective for five decades.

Chapter 1

Iowa 2023

Jim Ericssen checked into the Hampton Inn east of downtown Davenport, Iowa, around 5 p.m. He reserved the room for two nights, though he might stay for only one if he found the right rental house in Davenport quickly. He gave the clerk one of his fake driver’s licenses—the Wisconsin license, which listed him as Thomas Kramer. He paid cash.

Jim dumped his roller suitcase in the room, then walked to a nearby restaurant-brewery for dinner per the hotel clerk’s recommendation. The mid-September evening sun felt good on his back. The Minnesota Twins, his team, were playing on the TV over the bar, but he asked to sit outside in the sun. Winter was coming, and like every Minnesotan, he knew to soak up Indian summer as long as he could.

The restaurant turned out to be a chain, but it was okay. The brown-haired waitress was pretty and looked to be in her late twenties. Somewhere close to his age, at least. Jim tried a joke and a smile, but the woman did not return his flirtations. She wasn’t rude; she was professional. Her smile probably disappeared as soon as she turned away from his table.

While eating, he drank two of the brewery’s craft beers and contemplated ordering a third in celebration of his move to Davenport. He had work to do, though, and didn’t feel like drinking alone. He paid his tab and strolled back to the hotel.

Back in his room, Jim pulled his white-hat laptop from its Faraday bag, one of two laptops he possessed. He used this laptop for his legitimate jobs, which involved helping companies defend themselves from digital assault internally and externally.

He left the other less-traceable laptop in the Faraday bag. The bag was constructed of copper mesh, which blocked all electromagnetic fields, and therefore any cellular, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or RFID communications from reaching any device inside the bag.

Jim started up the white-hat laptop, connected to the hotel’s Wi-Fi and connected via VPN to the server back in the small house he still owned in Minneapolis. The house remained furnished but unoccupied. He hadn’t actually lived in it for years. It now served as more of a vacation home and a fallback option.

He retrieved an encrypted spreadsheet from the server and updated the ESPN listing, his most recent white-hat job. He entered all the notes and thoughts he had on the ESPN hack, then saved and closed the spreadsheet.

Jim then opened a web browser to check the inbox in his primary Gmail account. His ESPN contact had emailed him to confirm payment had been sent. Jim opened a tab to check his bank account and saw he had indeed received the money. He wrote the man a quick reply of thanks and a request for follow-up if any new issues arose in ESPN’s systems. He jotted down a reminder in his calendar to follow-up with the contact in one month.

The beer and food made Jim yawn, but he continued. Another email dealt with his next job, a steel company based in Charlotte worried about the Chinese stealing trade secrets. He’d sent the company the signed contract for the job a week ago. His contact there acknowledged its receipt and asked when he could start. Jim replied that he would start in three days and requested access credentials for the company’s systems. In truth, he’d already had a look around the system when he’d first been contacted about the job. No need to share that, of course. His initial impression was that a certain Japanese steel company might pose a bigger threat.

Other emails regarded possible future white-hat work from three more companies. He replied to two queries with his rates and process. The third conversation was a little further along; the IT director was interested and requested a phone meeting. Jim sent him a date and time four days hence.

Jim’s legitimate work was growing more steady, he noted with satisfaction. Steady, legit work meant he wouldn’t have to take black-hat jobs. If he didn’t take black-hat work, he could stay in one place for longer than a month or two if he wanted. Not that he was ready to establish permanent roots. But a long-term girlfriend would be nice. Maybe join a running group, get into competitive shape, run a race. The transient life could get lonely, even for loners.

Inbox vanquished, Jim opened Airbnb in a new tab and began browsing one-month rentals. He wasn’t quite sure what he was looking for. A house this time, preferably. He was done with apartments. His last apartment, in Louisville, had been nice. High-end even. Just too many people, too close. He wasn’t a chitchat kinda guy.

He’d been drawn to Davenport by the Mississippi River, which ran through the middle of town. It reminded him of home. He opened Google Maps in another tab and looked for interesting neighborhoods on the water.

A new-email notification in the Gmail tab diverted his attention. He clicked over and read the subject line: The ESPN Hack. The sender was a throwaway Gmail address with random numbers and letters. He opened it.

Hello Jim. I am responsible for the ESPN hack you discovered and solved. I would like a quick chat with you if possible. Can you chat on Hangouts now?

Jim stared at the email, Airbnb forgotten. The hacker had probably gotten Jim’s name and contact info through ESPN’s system, which meant they had a way into ESPN other than the two backdoors Jim had closed. Not terribly surprising; corporate networks were pretty porous.

Should he respond? The hacker had contacted him through his legitimate white-hat email address. Jim therefore couldn’t see much personal risk in a chat. Technically, he’d be communicating on behalf of ESPN. The hacker carried the risk here. And gathering information was always good.

He opened Hangouts in a new tab. A new message quickly pinged through:

28jh3: Hello, Jim. Thank you for meeting me.

Jim: No problem. What do you want?

28jh3: I’m wondering if we are good. You cleaned up ESPN’s system and received payment. Are you done with that job? And me?

This hacker had apparently been into ESPN’s accounting system, too.

Jim: My work usually doesn’t extend outside an employer’s systems. It didn’t in this case. Question: Are you done with ESPN?

28jh3: Yes.

Jim: