Counting from Zero (26 page)

Mick’s ride from New Jersey to Charleston, South Carolina was a little cold, but acceptable.
 
On the first night of the ride, he had called his Australian friend Ian Brown from a payphone and explained his plan.
 
Ian was happy to help out, and began immediately prepping his catamaran named 'Gypsy Moth' for the voyage.
 
When he showed up at Ian’s door on the second day, Ian was almost ready to set sail.

“G’day, Mick!” Ian said as he opened the door.

“G’day, Ian!
 
Ready to go?” Mick asked.

“If you’ve got it?” Ian asked, rubbing a thumb and forefinger together.
 
Mick threw a duffle bag at Ian, who grabbed it and peered inside.
 
Seeing the cash, Ian grinned back at him.
 
Mick knew Ian wasn’t doing it for the money; Ian would have helped Mick without it, but provisioning for a
three week
trip (and the return) would cost quite a bit of money.
 
Mick had other reserves, but for now he was just going through his emergency cash.

Less than an hour after parking the Ducati, Mick stepped onto the Zodiac dinghy that took him from the shore to the moored Gypsy Moth.
 
Before darkness fell that day, they were sailing out of Charleston Harbor into the Atlantic.
 
Ian’s Brazilian girlfriend Mariana was also crewing on the trip.
 
She was an amazing brunette with piercing brown eyes.
 
Not to be mistaken for arm candy, Mariana was an accomplished sailor in her own right.

The first two days sailing had been very nice, with the weather getting warmer each day as they tracked south.
 
On the first day they hit the Gulf Stream, and the water warmed up considerably.
 
Although the northern route was shorter, this time of year the southern route was more comfortable, and allowed them a stop on the way.

By the fourth day, Mick had slipped into a routine.
 
Lying in his bunk with his computer open, he could hear Ian moving around above decks, probably adjusting the trim of a sail.
 
Ian was an ocean yacht racer at heart, and a charter captain to pay the bills.
 
Even though they weren’t in a terrible rush, Ian couldn’t help himself making little adjustments and honing their speed.

Mick checked mail again, getting decent broadband speed from Ian’s satellite Internet antenna mounted on the deck.
 
The usage charges would be pretty high, but well worth it.
 
Mick wasn’t concerned about having his Internet traffic tracked because he was using Ian’s account, and all his traffic was encrypted and relayed through a P2P anonymization network then to his own Internet servers.
 
No one monitoring his traffic or his servers would notice anything different in his traffic patterns.
 
A bigger challenge would be spending nearly three weeks at sea without sharing any of the fun with anyone.
 
He had decided to tell no one of the unusual travel arrangements until he was safely in London.

There was a conversation Mick knew he needed to have.
 
He had been delaying it but decided to get it over with.
 
He poked his head out the hatch.

“Ian, I’m going to be on a video call, so don’t do anything loud, OK?” he called out.
 
Ian, a knife between his teeth, gave him a thumbs-up as he worked on the starboard safety rail.
 
He looked at him quizzically.

Some kind of pirate homage?

He ducked below decks, set up a background, and fired up the video software.
 
A moment later he was looking at Kateryna in her office in San Francisco.

“Hey Kat, how’s things?” he asked.

“I’m good, Mick…
 
So what’s the news?
 
I haven’t had any mail from you these past few days,” she started.

“Well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about, actually,” he began, not quite knowing how to begin.
 
“I’m getting a little nervous about all our emails – don’t get me wrong, I enjoy writing them and even more reading them from you.
 
But I’m worried that someone else could read them, or even just notice the frequency of our mails, and draw conclusions.
 
I’m sure you don’t want to deal with any of that aggravation.”

“I understand,” she interrupted.
 
Mick noticed her body language shifting subtly.
 
“I admit I’ve been thinking along the same lines myself.
 
You are right.
 
We should stop exchanging them.
 
But we can still keep videoing and calling, right?”

“Of course!”

“OK, then.
 
This is fine.
 
So I guess you aren’t going to make it to London.”

“No,” he lied.
  
“Not this year.”

“When are you going to get your flying problems sorted out?” she asked.

“Don’t worry, I’m working hard on it,” he replied, grinning.
 
She gave him a killer smile that instantly made him feel better.

“Good.
  
I’ll be arriving in England the week before the conference starts.
 
I’m also considering a trip to the continent the week after the conference.
 
It has been many years since I’ve been back to the old country or even Eastern Europe.”

“That sounds great,” he replied, feeling relieved.
 
He hoped she wasn’t sensing that he was hiding things from her.
 
“Oh, I forgot to tell you, I have a new consulting job that is keeping me really busy,” he lied.

“With JCN?
 
Gunter asked me to convince you to take it but I told him you were a big boy and could make up your own mind,” she replied.

“No, a different one...
  
lots of work, at least for a couple of weeks.
 
And, I need to run now, actually.”

“OK, sounds good!
 
Hey, I’m glad we had this conversation, Mick.
 
Thanks for bringing it up.”

“No problems,” he replied and they signed off.

Three days later,
they were joined by dolphins
.
 
Mick took pictures, wondering when he would get to share them with his friends.
 
They swam alongside and in front of the hulls for hours, occasionally leaping out of the water.
 
They seemed to live only for fun, and Mick envied them.
 
They swam so close to the hulls that they must occasionally touch, Mick thought.
 
He wished he could dive in and
swim
with them, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep up.
 
He watched the dolphins the entire two hours they swam with Gypsy Moth, as they might be their only company on the long trip.

Mick kept active on his social networks, but avoided saying very much about
himself
.
 
He read about Lars’ annoyance with a broken link on the website of the “Journal of Irreproducible Results,” and about Liz’s dilemma with an old friend from high school who, having reconnected with her on a social network, wouldn’t leave her alone.

During the voyage, Mick and Ian had developed a kind of end-of-evening ritual in which they would jokingly discuss Mick’s predicament.

“So tell me again why the bloody hell you can’t fly to London on an aeroplane like a normal bastard?” Ian asked one evening.

“I told you, I’m on the No-Fly list – you know, the one filled with terrorists and eight-year-old cub scouts?” he responded.

“So which are you, then?” was the response.

“Neither, I’m just a
nobody
who must have pissed off someone.”

“And why is it so bloody important you get there?
 
There’s a sheila involved, right?” Ian said, using Australian slang for a woman.

“I told you, I’ve been set up.
 
The botnet that I’m fighting –”

“Yeah, right.
 
Whatever floats your
boat…
 
I’m going to bed – ‘night!” Ian replied as he headed below decks.

“Very funny,” Mick called out.

Mick heard a bang and a swear word as Ian hit his head on the bulkhead.

It was Mick’s turn on watch so he stayed up on deck.
 
When he wasn’t scanning the horizon, checking their course, or monitoring instruments and radar, he was looking up at the night sky.
 
He looked up star charts and identified the constellations and planets.
 
He reacquainted himself with Ian’s sextant and used it to take bearings and readings.
 
He even did the math to see how accurate it was, compared to the GPS, and found his sights were fairly accurate.
 
In short, he distracted himself and made the most of this unique opportunity.
 
He also thought a lot about Kateryna.
 
Now that he didn’t get a mail from her every day, he found himself thinking about her more.
 
He wondered what she was doing,
whom
she was with, and what she was thinking and feeling.
 
He estimated it was still over ten days until she would leave for Europe.
 
He debated sending her a mail, but decided against it.

He enjoyed the sensation of seeing the horizon in every direction – nothing but water and sky.
 
Out in the middle of the ocean, it was not hard to understand why sailors believed in the edge of the world, where the maps ended, often labeled ‘here be dragons.’

Five days later, they hit the first ‘weather’ of the trip.
 
The wind had been building to twenty knots, and the seas increased to about two meters in height.
 
Fortunately, the wind direction was from the north, giving them a nice broad reach on their southeasterly course, the fastest and most stable point of sail.
 
His GPS indicated they were making almost 18 knots as they cut through the waves.

He mused about the origin of the knot as speed over the water.
 
Back in the early days of sailing ships, speed was measured using a wooden board, known as a ‘log’ that was thrown overboard with an attached rope.
 
As the ship sailed away from the log in the water, the rope was payed out.
 
The rope had knots tied in it at regular intervals.
 
By counting the number of knots that went past in a set amount of time determined by an hourglass, the ship’s speed over the water, in ‘knots’ was determined.
 
This information was taken regularly and recorded in a book that became known as the ‘log book’.
 
The term also found its way into computer jargon.
 
A computer generates ‘log’ entries every time a user does something or runs a program.
 
To use a computer, a user ‘logs in’ in, which involves being authenticated by the computer, gaining access to the computer.

In the rough seas, Mick gave up doing any work and stayed above decks; he felt it was better to get a bit wet than get seasick.
 
Mick had avoided any seasickness so far, helped greatly by the gradual buildup of wind and waves.
 
He was almost fully adjusted to life at sea.
 
He knew he would experience the reverse when back on dry land: a feeling of queasiness due to the lack of the wavelike motion of the sea that would take a few days to overcome.

Mick hoped to eventually be able to infiltrate the botnet, to read and understand messages sent in it, and even
be
able to send his own messages.
 
But first, he had to fully understand the messages.
 
With his daily decrypted messages, he was building quite a dataset of the operation of the botnet.
 
Using the P2PMSG source code provided by Turing, Mick was able to interpret the botnet messages.
 
He was even able to turn one of his servers into a member of the botnet.
 
But, he was very careful not to tip off the owners that their botnet was being infiltrated.

Mick cranked the handle on the winch – the ‘coffee grinder’ Ian called it even though it was actually a modern self-tailing winch.
 
Mick made a slight adjustment to the jib – the forward sail – for the umpteenth time today.
 
The wind had picked up even more.
 
With enough wind, a smaller catamaran such as a Hobie would start to fly one hull – leaning or heeling over until it lifted out of the water.
 
An ocean-going cat such as Gypsy Moth would not do this, but instead would start to bury the leeward (side away from the wind) hull in the water.
 
When this happens, the sailors have to either reef the sail (reduce the sail area to depower the boat) or change course so the wind isn’t blowing so hard on the sail.
 
So far, they had not needed to do either.

A few days later, after the weather had passed, the crew of Gypsy Moth sat around the cockpit enjoying the warmth of the morning sun on their skin.
 
They were now far enough
south
that they all wore shorts.
 
Mariana wore a bikini top.
 
Mick suspected that Ian had told her that he was a Yank/Pom (Aussie slang for an American/Englishman) prude, or some such, and she should refrain from going topless on deck.
 
Mick greatly appreciated this.