The Soul of the Matter (10 page)

Chapter 23

T
he midday sunlight bounced off the vigorous chop, spraying dancing patches of white light across the walls of the second floor study that overlooked the beach. A brisk sea breeze easily penetrated the screened windows, filling the room with marine-scented air that infused Dan's lungs and invigorated him. In the distance, Martha's Vineyard's contours were clearly visible, while closer to shore, a regatta of sailboats from nearby Falmouth Harbor erased a winter's worth of creases from their sails as their crews competed to reach the next mark.

After a ninety-minute drive that seemed far shorter, Dan was in Stephen's summer home.

With Stephen standing nearby, Dan opened an old brown Coach satchel, pulled out a metal-cased laptop and flip-style cell phone, and placed both on the desk that faced the windows and the water. As Stephen reached for the computer, Dan said, “Remember, this is a two-way street. In exchange for what I'm doing, you're going to tell me everything about your work. With the risks I'm taking, I have a right to know.”

Stephen answered, “Agreed. But after a major experiment on Tuesday. I'll know a lot more myself then.”

“Why not tell me now?”

“We're just getting comfortable with each other again. I need to reestablish my credibility with you before I explain some remarkable things, and having the evidence from the experiment will be helpful. Also, to be honest, I want to know more about your state of mind.”

“Fine. Keep in mind that my security requires dual keys to access
it. I provide one for accessing the servers and you pick another for encrypting your directories. Without mine, which I can change anytime, you can't do anything,” Dan replied.

“I guess that makes us partners.”

“I suppose, except at the moment, I'm the one at legal risk with the technology I'm giving you.”

“Then why are you doing this?”

“Based on what you've told me, you need the best tools to protect your work. I'm the only one who can get you them. Plus, perhaps I think I'm too clever to be caught, or in my state of mind I don't care much about what happens, or maybe I just like the idea of putting you at risk with me,” Dan said with a half-smile.

“I like the first reason more than the last three,” Stephen said.

“They're a package deal. Anyway, for starters, the computer and cell phone are both as secure as any device of their kind in the world. No one, not even the government, should be able to get data off this computer without your consent. The cell phone has a special secure channel that cannot be hacked, tapped, or listened in on. It's a flip phone because it's a more secure interface and was easier for me to obtain. I have a secure smartphone, and we can use them to communicate with each other. There are two other important parts of the setup. The first is encryption—how we prevent unauthorized people from reading whatever you're working on or storing. The second is network masking—how we prevent people from monitoring your communications, or in fact even knowing that you are communicating, whether with another person or with remote servers. You'll need help with both of these. As I'm sure you know, encryption is a series of steps that translates comprehensible data into apparently random gibberish. The trick to it is to set up sufficiently complex translation steps and the key that determines how those steps operate. The longer the key, the more difficult it is for someone to crack the code and access whatever it is you have encrypted. Got it?”

“Yes.”

“Good. The next part of this is the masking. If people don't know you've stored anything, they can't find it and try to decode it. However, in today's day and age, almost anything can be monitored.
Network sniffers, hacking into Web servers, wireless snooping, really any technology you can imagine can be used to monitor electronic communications.”

“Your old colleagues in the government have made this abundantly clear. What can we do about it?”

“The trick is misdirection, masking, and physical separation. If you break things into enough pieces, send them to lots of different directions, make it seem like they're something else, and have them appear to jump out of the network only to reappear in a disconnected point that's off the monitored grid, then you stand a pretty good chance of being unobservable. And that's really important, because what can't be decrypted today might be easily decoded in the future with much faster computers.”

“Where are the computers you're using? And where's the data storage?”

“All over the place. Mostly cloud-based. Some privately hosted.”

“I'm impressed. I knew I asked the right person for this.”

“Don't forget, there's significant risk to both of us. You'll be in possession of classified capabilities, and I'll have broken federal laws in giving them to you. We could be charged with serious criminal offenses.”

“I'd be happy if that's our biggest risk,” Stephen said.

“They're not our only computer risks.”

“What do you mean?”

“Watch what I found out a little while ago,” Dan said, then opened his computer.

After a few moments a network diagram with a lot of dots and lines connecting them appeared. One green dot near the center had a green circle around it. A little to the right side of it, a blue dot had a blue circle around it.

Dan pointed to the green dot and said, “That dot represents the internet gateway for your network at HBC. The blue dot represents the remote server I'm using. Watch what happens when I initiate a transmission that appears to try and hack in to HBC.” Dan entered a few commands. A line between Dan's server and the HBC gateway pulsed briefly. Immediately afterward, a line pulsed from HBC to a
dot on the far left. Then several lines from the far left pulsed briefly to the blue dot that Dan had initiated the original command from. Periodically, the pulses repeated.

“See that? My attempt to probe HBC triggered a reaction from a monitoring layer outside of HBC to other servers that then sought to probe me. Of course, I let them see my server, or at least what they think is my server.”

“So HBC has good security and is trying to track you down. Why is that a bad thing?”

“It's not that simple. Now watch this.” Dan entered a few more commands, and lines pulsed from his server to the servers that had sought him. Rapidly, a myriad of lines pulsed from the left of the screen and seemed to besiege his server, trying to find a path from that location to the computer in front of him and their location. “What you're watching is a widespread cyber attack that has figured out my server is a dummy server and is trying to find us. They won't succeed, at least not today. I've terminated all connections. What's particularly interesting is the origin of the attacks and the HBC monitors.” Dan hit a function key and a map was superimposed over the network diagram. The far left of the screen was all within China. “Do you want to explain to me why a large number of Chinese hackers, which is what these network addresses belong to, have to do with HBC, and why such sophisticated technology is being used to monitor your company? While Chinese hackers are commonplace, they usually try to break into things, not keep others out.”

Stephen got up, walked to the window, looked at the water, and said quietly, “I can't answer that.”

“You can't or won't?” Dan demanded.

“Can't. Though maybe you can help me find out,” Stephen challenged.

“You're going to have to let me,” Dan replied.

Stephen looked back at computer screen as a large number of lines pulsed all over in an ongoing attempt to find them. He nodded, then said, “How are you able to find all of this out without being observed yourself?”

“I made sure that I initiated my probing using proxy servers that
are set up specially to capture and transmit this information without being monitored themselves. I also used a ‘ghosted' server for my communications. It seems physically real, in a specific location, when in fact it's not. A non-network relay, untraceable unless you know where to physically look for it, routes communications to my computer here.”

“Impressive. Why do you have this setup?”

“I got bored with my agency work and wanted an anonymous way of operating.”

“Can you find out what's going on with those other computers?”

“I can try. Watch this,” Dan said, entering a few commands.

Moments later, the screen pulsed with lines flashing from the China-based networks to a new dot on the map.

Dan pointed to it. “Do you know where that is?”

Looking at the superimposed map, Stephen said, “It's near DC.”

“It's actually a secret computer facility for the NSA. By now, alarms are going off and they are going to do everything they can to find out the source of the attacks and deal with them. They'll do our work for us, without even knowing it.”

“You like playing with fire.”

“The heat reminds me I'm alive.”

“Get too close to it and that won't be a question you'll be able to ask again.”

“How did you get involved with an outfit like HBC?” Dan asked.

“They had been pursuing me for a while, but I wasn't interested. Then I had Ava's genome tested for predispositions for a set of inheritable diseases that new tests could detect. Ava's showed the potential to develop a nasty form of leukemia. I decided to join HBC to find a treatment for it in the event she might need it. Our research also looks at the possibility of gene editing, and I want to know where that is going and what I can do to help direct its ethical use. Shortly after I joined HBC is when I discovered the DNA coding, and I formed a small team, with Alex, to try to decode it. After Alex died, I put the decoding on hold and focused on understanding what I already had. Soon thereafter, Ava did actually develop leukemia, but not as nasty a type as we first feared.”

“Did your work identify a cure?” Dan asked.

“No, that was going to take a long time. So I had to search for existing, cutting-edge treatments. Some seemed promising but couldn't be developed quickly enough in the US. Another organization found foreign corporations that could speed up development. Trish—I mean Dr. Alighieri—was setting up trials at her hospital to test current treatments and prepare for foreign ones, should they become available. But, unexpectedly, a conventional treatment was quickly effective.”

“What organization was helping you find new treatments?”

“I can't tell you yet. Maybe soon.”

“Stephen, it sounds like you're the pushing the envelope big-time, with questionable people. You really should let me help you further.”

“I will, when I know I won't jeopardize you.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“It's nothing too serious. I'm just being cautious.”

Before they could say anything else, they heard a car drive up. Looking out the front window, Dan saw Nancy, Ava, and Trish get out of the car. Ava looked up and waved to them as Nancy and Trish carried their bags up the steps of the house.

Seeing the awkward look on Dan's face, Stephen said, “Don't worry. She's not staying long.”

“I can handle it.”

Stephen turned to look out the window to the beach beyond, and said in a wonder-filled voice, “Imagine what it would mean if finding out everything there is to know about DNA, including its origin, revealed everything there is to know about science and the universe.”

“I think that would explain your need for security. It would also beg an enormous number of big questions,” Dan answered, questioning how what Stephen said could be true.

“That's right.”

Dan decided to change the subject until Stephen was ready to share more. “So the genetic code is really a code, like a computer programming language.”

“Exactly,” Stephen said.

“And once it's fully understood, along with all cell processes, then
scientists, if they have the right tools, will be able to change anything they want—whether it's something simple like making people bigger, stronger, and faster, or creating a whole new species.”

“Well yes, though there is an enormous amount of complexity that needs to be understood well beyond just the DNA sequence,” Stephen replied.

“And this is where you come in. You're trying to figure all of this out.”

“You're making me feel like I'm being interviewed. But yes.”

“That's an awful lot of power for scientists. Who will make sure they make the right decisions, do the right things? What about whatever you're doing?” Dan asked.

“These types of questions are what the whole field of bioethics is about. The president has chartered a committee to look at these issues.”

“I've seen the list of its members. An unelected, eclectic bunch that meets four times a year is going to decide this for us? I don't think so. I think it's more likely that a lot of scientists will do whatever they want, whether they have the right to or not.”

“Now you're into the territory of what makes anything right or wrong,” Stephen said.

“I'm an expert programmer. I'm very familiar with targeted cyber attacks that, in effect, aren't all that different from biological viruses. So I have to ask, what's to stop someone from designing viruses that target portions of the population by specific traits? Could someone go after something as simple as hair color, or even just a specific individual, based on their sequenced DNA?”

“Nothing but time. After all, look how common and cheap DNA sequencing has become. It might be near impossible to stop the development of designer viruses unless the first to master the technology somehow finds a way to control all of it.”

“That's all very scary,” Dan replied.

“Unless, of course, there are other limitations we're not aware of. I think there may be some. That is part of what you're going to help me with.”