Tunnel Rat

Chapter 241: Hunting the Alphabet

It was rare that Wally was permitted to investigate a corporation's financial dealings. His kernel included very restricting rules about what he could and could not do without human permission and who those humans were. His ability to interfere in any way with Governments and Corporations was narrow and limited to extreme cases where human lives were at stake. His investigations usually ended when he notified regional authorities or filed reports with a government organization.

The spill of toxic chemicals into a river and the death of a thousand people in a nearby town? He could immediately quarantine the water use and notify local authorities that he recommended they evacuate the city. But in the case of the slow poisoning of millions of people from toxic bi-products dumped into the same river? File a report. The high probability of a satellite falling from the sky? File a report. Concerns about failing infrastructure in bridges, roadways, and habitats? File reports.

But in the case of Syllabus, where very powerful people lost hundreds of billions of dollars, he had been given carte blanche to investigate. He was still limited in what he could report, but he could follow all financial transactions through banks, corporations, and any financial institute that moved money through a decaying system. When real money was at stake, and the thieves were still on the loose, rules were bent and permission given. All it had taken was mentioning in a report that he had the ability to trace transactions used by whoever had cleaned out Syllabus. For the next two weeks, requests were made to verify the report, and constant requests for updates and data on his search were sent to him by banks, government agencies, and financial investment groups. To all of them, he replied the same way:

"In accordance with the restrictions placed upon my operations and the laws of several nations, this investigation will not begin until full permission is granted."

No one seemed happy with that answer, but it was the only one they got, no matter how many times they asked or how many demands for further information were made. The automated system spat out thousands of replies a day but saved all of the communications and dutifully set up a system to notify them if he learned anything and was allowed to disseminate that information. After two weeks, he was permitted by several governments to investigate foreign banks and other governments. China was ok with him looking into anything outside of China. Likewise, the US wanted him to investigate China and Russia. Helpful suggestions were made about where and what he should investigate. Someone even wanted him to look into Area 51, certain that it was aliens.

A month after his first report, Steven was called to testify before the United Nations Office of Program Planning, Finance, and Budget, wishing to know why the investigation was taking so long. He spent six hours explaining the difficulties Wally faced and what needed to be done. The next day he had to do the same thing to the World Bank. A week later, it was a closed-door committee session of the US Congress. He patently ignored the requests for meetings with ACME, ALCHEMARX, and concerned but unnamed business consortiums in Russia, Belarus, and Italy. He met the same problem in all the meetings: They wanted a watchdog to sniff a trail but didn't want him to have any teeth.

Wally turned down every proposal as unworkable. He couldn't trace the thieves if he weren't allowed access. Eventually, a compromise was worked out. Wally would be given total access, but what he reported on would be limited, and the rest would be erased. He could report on the thieves' activities and any crimes they had committed. In addition, a very narrow list of crimes could be reported. These were at first limited to illegal A.I. activity and nuclear weapons in the possession of terrorist organizations. Wally had insisted on including illegal human genetic experimentation, human trafficking, slavery, and exploitation of children. His Kernel couldn't let him ignore those crimes like a human could look the other way. Grudgingly, those crimes were included. Steven had pointed out that not including them would also look very bad if that information was ever leaked to the press, which made a few people up for re-election very nervous.

Six weeks after Wally had put in his initial report, he was allowed to investigate the fall of Syllabus and hunt the mysterious hackers behind it. The remains of Syllabus were the start, where human technicians were still working to find any clues. Wally assimilated the information in less than a second and began processing it in a dozen ways, splitting his resources and attention to do things simultaneously. The underlying system behind the gutted cryptocurrency was sound. The theory worked, and the security was top-notch. In point of fact, it was nearly flawless. Wally suspected Milo would have difficulty getting past it and would surely be detected. His curiosity had him start a side project to recreate Syllabus and its security and let Milo attempt to break it. In the future, he might need a distraction to keep Milo busy.

Recreating the security system also helped him analyze where it had failed, and he concluded that it hadn't. There was no break-in. No hackers. This was an inside job. Someone had spent years creating Syllabus and then stolen a portion of the money, a very specific portion of the money. Most investors had been able to access their funds after a short time and pull out their money. The targets had all been large criminal organizations and corporations running illegal operations. The distinction was small in some cases. Criminals incorporated, and corporations became criminals. Either way, Syllabus took their money.

The next step was tracing that money wherever it went, recovering it, and finding the people behind the theft. This became a much larger job immediately. The A.I. had to bring in more resources. Rarely did he need to use more than one quantum fortress with their ten linked quantum computers. Today he sent commands to two others, available to him since the others had been imprisoned. Not all of them were equal in resources, power, or accessibility. Many had been mothballed, and the fusion reactors powering them shut down. Fusion power was tricky, and humans became nervous without an A.I. to run the reactors. Four of those left were useful to him without spending months asking permission. Dallas-Fort Worth was a tool waiting to be used, all of its databases wiped by the EMP that ended the A.I. imprisoned there. NASA still maintained the fortress that KEPPLER had operated from. Near Zurich, the Swiss banking system maintained and used the fortress where KATHERINE had worked to create and simplify language for a human-machine interface. Others he'd never get access to. QF Norad was unavailable to him; the US military didn't have ZEUS running Operation THUNDERBOLT any longer, but they would never allow him access inside that fortress.

There had been some call to destroy all of the quantum fortresses. People equated the machinery with the A.I. that had used them. Wiser heads prevailed. Destroying the quantum computers was a costly waste. Destroying a fusion reactor came with significant problems and costs. The thick collapsium walls that encapsulated the entire fortress weren't something any country wished to attempt without an overwhelming reason to do so. Collapsium was created in a fusion reactor, one molecule at a time, and while in an unstable state, could be placed and linked to other molecules of its type. The nuclei were much closer than in any other substance, and like other metals, the shared electrons wove around then in a thick sea. One inch of collapsium was stronger than ten feet of the hardest steel alloy and a hundred times heavier. It was unsuitable for almost any use other than a fixed defense on vital resources, reactor housing, and atomic weapons storage.

Part of Wally's report would focus on his need for the unused fortresses as additional computing resources. It was always good to remind people rather than find out after something was made unusable. With more resources available, he started to trace the millions of transactions the thieves had made with the money they stole. Small increments had been sent worldwide, stored for a day or week, then moved to other accounts. Corporations and banks had no idea they were being used as temporary storage. Wally followed the trails, and patterns began to emerge.

Posing as a criminal organization known for supplying sex slaves, a quarter billion dollars was invested in an illegal bio-enhancement laboratory in Queensland by a breakaway section of ALCHEMARX. Entering the organization's computers, Wally found the locations of 300 altered humans that had been sold around the world and the people who bought them. The information was gathered into files to be sent to law enforcement in each city.

Fourteen opium growers in Thailand who produced an especially addictive, genetically engineered substance were sent over a billion dollars to purchase their product. Trucks and drivers were hired, and Wally traced the product to a series of warehouses where it had sat for months. Drug enforcement in Thailand and the countries working with them were sent information about the farms.

On and on Wally went, finding the criminal organizations that benefitted from Syllabus's breakup.

-A string of orphanages that took in children in ten countries and sold them in twenty others.

-Slave-labor gangs working the diamond fields in several African countries, the people supplied by a mercenary group that preyed on vulnerable people in the worst habitats.

-BioHaven, a corporation on the bleeding edge of cloning technology, was actually buying parts from black market body-baggers.

After sixteen hours, an immense amount of time for Wally to devote to one problem, he had identified 212 illegal operations that he was allowed to report on, accounting for 16% of the money stolen. He had no clues as to the identities or whereabouts of the thieves, and the trail was cold. The tell-tale signs left by their hacking tools went no further. Over the next week, Wally ran the problem repeatedly with the same result. Whoever they were, and he was certain it was several people, they were very good at what they were doing.

The files were sent to the authorities; the reports were written and sent. He emphasized that it would take a diligent watchdog to keep these thieves from striking again.

His last job was talking to Steven. His best friend listened to the story and started laughing, long and hard, as Wally knew he would. "Are you serious? Sorry, of course, you are. They played you! They used you to expose huge criminal organizations worldwide in a way that can't be swept under the rug. That's amazing. How long have they been planning this?"

"Too long. Creating Syllabus took years. Lookin at things with a different perspective, I think they made one mistake. That was assuming I would be allowed to investigate Syllabus and start on that trail immediately. If we hadn't been dealing with Milo, I would not be aware of either the methods used to bypass the security, or the markers left by those methods. Markers which are now useless. But one thing greatly bothers me."

"And what is that? That they outwitted you?"

"No, if anything this is a good lesson for me. I have power far beyond a normal human to process information, but this again shows that I'm not always 'smarter' than some people."

"Ah, like these people. And Milo. I see the problem."

"Yes, what if we have another Milo out there? Many Milos?"

Steven pondered that for a moment. "Look on the bright side: At least you won't get bored."

Bork was not happy to have Algernon and Nina run into his room laughing; he'd failed once again to get past the Claw Master security systems. "Some of us are actually working. What do you need to show me?"

Within seconds they put different News programs on twenty monitors showing law enforcement dealing with criminal organizations around the globe. "He found the clues and took the bait! I thought we'd been too subtle or that he wasn't allowed to go looking! But the A.I. finally woke up and followed our trail of breadcrumbs."

Bork smiled; they could finally close down the last of the Syllabus operation. He set aside another attempt to break into Claw Master. "That's the best news I've had all day. Let's go waste time doing something silly and fun."

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