The Silence of Six (18 page)

“You’re Evan’s ultimate encryption key, Max,” Risse said.

“Which is why the FBI wants him so much,” Penny said.

The progress meter showed only five percent of the file had been decrypted. Six percent.

“A watched progress meter never completes,” Risse said. She covered her ear again and went back to work on her own computer.

Eight percent.

“Jeez,” Max said.

“Come on, Jarvis,” Penny said.

“Jarvis?” Max asked.

She patted her computer affectionately. “Jarvis is my laptop.”

“I know it’s a thing to name your electronics, but I’ve never done it. Not that it’s weird or anything,” he said.

“It’s weird not to,” Penny said.

Evan had gone through a succession of computers with geeky names he’d selected in alphabetical order. When he and Max first met years ago, he was using one called Eddard. As of a few months ago, his primary laptop was Rorschach.

Now all those computers were in the hands of the FBI, or whoever had broken into Evan’s house the day he died. Max wondered what Evan would have named his next laptop.

“Technically, this one’s Jarvis Mark VII. I have way too many machines to give them all individual names,” Penny said.

Max cleared his throat. “Computers are just tools. I try not to get too attached.”

“I think that attachment helps us work together better,” Penny said.

“Attachment can also be a liability.”

“You may have a point.” Penny’s voice was low.

The progress meter was only at eleven percent. Max banged his fist against the rock in frustration.

“Ow.” His hands were still sore from his fall during their escape from the mall.

“Are you okay, Max?” Penny asked.

“I’m fine.” Max watched Risse click through some dialog boxes on her audio editing software.

“I’m glad one of us is. I’m not doing so well myself,” Penny said.

“I’m sorry. I should have known . . . I mean, I didn’t think . . . .” Max faltered.

She scooped sand with the top of her feet and let it fall through her toes. “It’s okay. You didn’t even know I existed until a couple of days ago.”

“It’s weird that we were both such important parts of his life, but we didn’t even know about each other until after he was gone.” Penny lowered her voice so Max had to lean closer to hear her over the surf.

“That was Evan. He compartmentalized everything in his life. You must miss him a lot,” Max said.

“I do. We used to chat every day. But you knew him in real life a lot longer.”

“Yeah. We used to hang out every day.” Max covered his eyes with his hand and rubbed his face. “I still see him though. Whenever I try to sleep.”

“Nightmares?”

“Just one. You just saw it on that video.”

“That’s awful, Max. I’m sorry.”

His dreams played out as if he was there in front of Evan while he died. Not only would Max fail to stop Evan from pulling the trigger, but he handed him the gun. Over and over again.

“You have to stop blaming yourself,” Penny said.

“Maybe I didn’t kill him personally, but it’ll be my fault if I can’t figure out what he’s trying to tell us.” Max glanced at the computer again. Thirty-three percent.

Evan always used to say that good hacking required you to take your time and be patient while you researched, prepared, and waited for an opportunity. It was about positioning yourself to be where you needed to be, with the right tools, to act when the moment came.

Some of that philosophy applied to playing soccer too, but at least on the field Max was always in motion. At least he got to kick something. And he always knew where the goal was and how to get there.

“No, it’ll be
our
fault.” Penny locked eyes with him.

Max smiled.

“What?” she asked.

“I’m just glad you’re helping me. I know trust doesn’t come easily for you.”

“Or at all. It’s only been me and Risse for so long.” She glanced past him to her little sister.

“You two are lucky to have each other. When I was little, I wanted a brother. Maybe that’s why Evan and I were such good friends,” Max said.

Penny tilted her head to the right. He wondered if Risse had gotten the gesture from her, or vice versa. “Would you believe Risse and I hated each other when we were little? I didn’t like having to share my stuff with her. After our dad left, I used to hope he would come back just to take her with him.” Penny glanced at Risse and lowered her voice. “I think she wanted that too. She was his favorite.”

“So what changed?”

“We found something we had in common: computers. We must have gotten it from Dad, because Mama can’t even send a text message. After the divorce, she kind of checked out, giving us plenty of time to mess around online. Dad’s old computer taught us more than he ever did.”

“I’m sorry,” Max said. “Did you have any luck tracking him down?”

Penny blinked. “What makes you think we tried?”

“Because I’ve been trying to find my mother. I thought she might have gone back to France, but she has no internet trail,” Max said.

“Right? How is that even possible? It’s like Dad doesn’t exist. It’s pathetic how easy it is to get into the DMV and IRS systems.”

“They may as well make them public databases,” Max said. “What will you do when you track him down?”

“Not sure yet. Either get in touch or ruin his life. Maybe those aren’t mutually exclusive.”

“Fair,” Max said.

Seventy-three percent.

They watched the progress meter silently for a while, and then they both spoke at the same time. “You remind me a bit of Evan.”

They stared at each other.

“Weird . . .” Penny said.

Max looked away and focused on the computer screen. Still seventy-three percent.

It wasn’t that Penny was anything like Evan, except that she was brilliant at computers and committed to finding the truth. But spending time with the only other person who had been close to Evan made him feel a little like his friend was still around.

She was also a constant reminder that he wasn’t.

He knew what Evan had seen in her. She was intelligent and snarky and pretty and . . . and she had been his best friend’s girl until a few days ago, so that was as far as he was going to take that line of thought. Especially now, when they were both grieving and had so many other things to worry about.

The decryption meter jumped to eighty-nine percent complete. Ninety-three . . . ninety-seven . . . 

“And . . . we’re in. Risse!” Penny waved to get her sister's attention.

18

Penny opened a folder and
a long list of file names filled the screen. “No wonder it took so long. This is, like, a gig of e-mails.” She tilted the screen back and leaned toward it as she tapped on the first file, nails clacking on the plastic keys.

Risse draped her headphones around her neck. “What are we looking at?” she asked.

“There are hundreds of e-mails in here. Most of them are from defense-dot-gov addresses. So that’s U.S. government.” Penny paged through them quickly. Each message came up for only a split second but she seemed to be reading them all.

“Penny, can you speed-read?” Max asked.

“It’s my ‘superpower,’” she said. “Almost as cool as a photographic memory, huh?” She slowed down then scrolled backwards. “Hey . . . there you are,” she crooned to the screen. She pointed at the address of the sender in one of the e-mails: [email protected].

“Geordie,” Risse said. “What’s the e-mail about?”

Penny opened an attachment, a scanned PDF with 150 pages of tiny text, illegible until she zoomed in.

“A contract. I don’t read legalese, so I’m not sure what all this ‘reps and warranties’ and ‘agreed-upon services’ is referring to. This one’s a renewal, so we have to dig deeper to see what it’s referencing,” Penny said.

“Look who it was sent to.” Max pointed:
[email protected].

“Panjea,” Max said. “Can we figure out which account it’s linked to?”

“Only if you’re logged in to Panjea and the sender is one of your Peers.” Penny jumped through the rest of the document. “Who’s Kevin Sharpe?”

“He’s a technology consultant for political campaigns. Why?” Max asked.

“He signed this contract.” She pointed out two electronic signatures on the last page: Victor Ignacio, CEO of Panjea, and Kevin Sharpe, President and Founder of Kevin Sharpe & Company.

Max scrolled backwards through the document. Penny didn’t even react when he took over the keyboard in front of her. “This is outlining a workflow for ‘mutual information exchange.’ I guess Sharpe’s company is helping Panjea manage its users’ information?”

“Or Panjea’s sharing its users’ information with Sharpe,” Penny said.

“Their whole ‘thing’ is they promise not to sell information to
anyone
. They specifically mention the government. Their promises about making the world’s first truly safe and secure system and improving the internet are why they’ve been so successful.”

“I always thought that was too good to be true,” Penny said. “The loophole here seems to be that they aren’t
selling
the information. They’re giving it away.”

“For nothing? Ignacio’s supposed to be a savvy businessman,” Max said.

Vic Ignacio was known as a visionary and something of a renegade who started a boutique internet café called Synthwerks in the Bay Area a few years ago and turned it into the social media giant that Panjea was today.

Penny kept reading, dipping into random e-mails and files, the expression on her face a mixture of fascination and abject horror.

“Here’s a PowerPoint laying out the framework for streaming all user actions on-demand to a ‘backup server.’ Kind of a digital wiretap logging every action we take on Panjea.”

“That’s gotta be boring. ‘Max Stein Amplified Penny Polonsky’s note.’”

“That’s gotta be so illegal. Why would Sharpe—or anyone—want that stuff?” Penny asked.

“They’re consultants and data nerds, so they probably just study it all day. The more data they’re tracking the better: our habits, our interests, our—”

“Voting patterns,” Penny said. She highlighted a file called Poll_Projections_Prelimv2.docx.

“That’s it. That’s the connection. Sharpe was at the debate!” Max said.

“He was at your school? What for?”

“He’s doing work for Governor Lovett’s campaign. Mostly related to . . . her social media presence. But that doesn’t make sense. This goes way beyond monitoring metrics to see how their campaign is doing.”

“It’s predictive modeling. Look. This document is describing an algorithm that can figure out how people are going to vote based on their online habits. Not just on Panjea, but everywhere. If they’re somehow tracking that stuff live, and their algorithm is any good, they may know more about us than we consciously do ourselves.”

“That won’t change anything,” Max said.

“Oh? Let’s think about it. They can get info on any person’s account, any time they want. It’s like Max TV, on-demand. They’re watching your every user action, sometimes while it’s happening. When you log in. Which profiles you look at. Who you send messages to. What those messages say. What your friends are posting. What they’re
not
posting—look, they’re even capturing Panjea notes that were abandoned or deleted! It’s like it’s setting up a live feed of a person’s life.”

“So what do you do with all that?” Max asked.

“If you know what someone does every day, you have a good shot at predicting what they’re
going
to do in the future, maybe even before they do. And if you know that, maybe you can manipulate them into doing something else.”

Max nodded. “You could write an algorithm that makes them only see Panjea notes that support Governor Lovett, or say negative things about Senator Tooms.”

“Or send them the wrong information about their polling location. Or let them think that their candidate’s victory is locked in so they don’t bother to vote. Or divert their campaign funds without them realizing it.” Penny’s eyes widened, flicking back and forth as her imagination went wild. The problem was: If a hacker like her could imagine it, then it was very likely possible.

“That would be a very sophisticated algorithm,” Max said.

“Nah,” Penny said.

“I thought we were just talking about aggregating information and passing it on,” he said.

“You wouldn’t do that if you didn’t intend to do something with it one day. It’s possible they’re trying to capture everything because they don’t know what will be useful, but with the election coming up next month, Sharpe would need to act on it quickly. Even without an algorithm trying to influence you subtly, with enough information and access to other systems and infrastructure, you could interact with people in other ways. Maybe go old-school and try to affect people in the real world.” Penny jumped to her feet and started pacing in front of her computer.

“Sharpe wouldn’t kill Ariel and the others just because they discovered this,” Max said. “It’s not a big enough secret. There has to be more to it.”

She scrolled through more files. “We have to review it all and figure out how the pieces fit. What is this?” she muttered. “‘Direct access to the user environment,’ ‘unique opportunities to capture the population.’” She shook her head. “This is horrifying. Panjea’s into some nasty business.”

“I think I’ve got something too.” Risse pulled her headphone plug out of her computer and turned up the volume. “I’ve isolated the tones from Evan’s video.”

“What does it sound like?” Max asked.

“I’m not sure.” Risse played the tones again. “D, E, C, C-down an octave, G.”

“For the love of God, stop playing that,” Penny said.

“
Re Mi Do
Do
So.
” Risse sang the notes. She had a nice voice.

“
That
sounds familiar. Really familiar. But I can’t pin it down,” Max said. “I can also only hear that last bit on the clip. Do
Do
So? Da daaaa da. Da daaaa da?”

“Da da da, daaaa da. I lowered the pitch on these to something you both can hear.” Risse turned her computer to face them and bumped up the audio as high as it would go. She pressed play.

DUH DUH DUH DUHHH DUH

It couldn’t be.

“Play it again?” Max said.

DUH DUH DUH DUHHH DUH

“So the notes are—” Risse began.

“I know what it is,” Max and Penny said at the same time.

Max gestured to Penny.

“It’s from ‘Closer’ by deadmau5. It was Evan’s ringtone,” she said.

“Good ear,” Max said. “But it came from a movie first.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
.”

“Oh.” Penny blushed.

“What?”

“Evan took me to see that. It was playing at an art house theater during HGH. I should have remembered that,” she said.

“Didn’t you say you didn’t see much of the film?” Risse asked.

“Risse!” Penny said.

“Hmm.” Max looked away.

He was jealous.
Crap
.

Despite everything, even with all the intrigue, and their mission, and Evan’s death . . . .

Max was starting to fall for Penny.

Penny met his eyes. She opened her mouth, then turned back to her computer screen.

“So what does it mean?” Risse asked. “It was obviously meant for one of you.”

“Or both of us,” Penny said softly.

Max cleared his throat. “I’ve seen the movie dozens of times. Those tones were a message scientists sent to an alien spacecraft to let them know that we’re intelligent. It’s a mathematical signal—”

“Using the critical tones of the major scale!” Risse said. “Aha! So aliens are behind this. I knew it.”

“Ha,” Penny said. “It’s a message, but I don’t know what it means.”

“I do, but you aren’t going to like it,” Max said.

“Well?” Penny and Risse said.

“It means we have to go back to Granville.”