Zero days, p.7
Zero Days, page 7
Then the General said, ‘With respect senator, it’s not so simple, and it’s not something we are able to discuss in a public forum.’
The Senator threw his hands in the air and then called a recess. CNN cut back to the studio.
Drayton turned away from the television and cut back to his beer. ‘You know why they won’t discuss it?’
‘Sure,’ said Norgaard. ‘Because the US intelligence agencies, and those in Britain, France, China and Russia are the biggest buyers of zero days on underground markets.’
‘And they’ll pay millions of dollars for the most destructive. It’s big money,’ Drayton said. ‘The new arms race.’
*****
Drayton called up Anna’s number as he left the Control-Delete bar. It went straight to voicemail, and he began to leave a message. ‘Honey, I’m sorry about the computer…’ But then stopped, deciding it was far better to talk to her in person.
An app on his smartphone located a scooter, and fifteen minutes later he was at the hulking Ostbahnhof, one of old East Berlin’s main railway hubs, where he dumped the scooter and walked to the Spree River. Along the river bank, the longest remaining fragment of wall was now an open air gallery plastered with paintings and graffiti, pride of place given to the former Soviet and East German leaders, Brezhnev and Honecker, giving each other a smacking big kiss.
He hardly recognised Anna’s factory complex, set back from the river. The place had been tidied up, the junk removed, the yard now full of cars, nice cars. A well-dressed, geeky crowd lined up at a desk, waiting to squeeze into the gallery beyond, from which discordant noises came in waves, first the heavy base beat of dance music and then what sounded like a million manic birds trapped in an aviary. Heavy security with squiggly earpieces roamed around the entrance, eyeing new arrivals with a look of boredom and menace. A young woman ticked names off a list. She was wearing a tight green dress, which looked as if it had been sprayed on, and a permasmile to match.
‘I’m a friend of the gallery owner,’ Drayton said, when she couldn’t find his name.
‘You’ll still need an invitation,’ said the woman, eyeing his shabby black bomber jacket, over dark blue shirt and dark jeans. Looking at him like he’d just swum across the Spree to get there, via a couple of large bushes.
Then, from close to the door, another woman said, ‘Chuck! Chuck! What are you doing here?’
It was Brigitte, one of Anna’s partners, and she agreed to add him to the guest list, a bit too reluctantly for Drayton’s liking, and then said, ‘Sorry, but Efren Bell takes his security very seriously.’
‘I’m sure he does. Where is the great man?’ Drayton asked.
‘Anna’s done a fantastic job, Chuck. You should show her a bit more appreciation.’ She paused and then added, ‘She’s really pissed at you. The computer thing.’
‘Yeah. Bit of a misunderstanding,’ he replied. ‘How’s it going?’
‘Good. It’s going good. Efren Bell’s investing twenty million Euros in the factory. Twenty million. He’s going to refurbish the place and turn it into Berlin’s biggest incubator for start-ups. He really believes in this city Chuck. He’s going to make it his main base outside America. He’s such a visionary.’
The gallery was packed. A long T-shaped stage ran down the middle, big posters around the walls. Bell with an OmniX, his futuristic electric car, soon to be fully self-driving. Bell with a mock-up space station, another project. Bell with a bunch of robots. Drayton took a red wine from a server, then another since he figured it might be a while before the server next returned, the place being so busy.
‘He’s such a cool guy,’ said Brigitte.
‘His autonomous car hit a cyclist. Killed her. It happened during tests last week in the States,’ said Drayton. ‘That’s not cool.’
‘It was a statistical inevitability. That’s what Efren told us while we were showing him around. It was the cyclist’s fault.’
‘Efren told you that too?’
‘Yes he did. The cyclist cut in front of the car in a really unpredictable way.’
‘Isn’t that the point? Humans are unpredictable. They’re different from computers. They’re impetuous, not always rationale. Driverless cars are programmed to follow the rules. Humans don’t always do that. Humans can do weird things, which only other humans can anticipate. Human drivers and autonomous cars will never work well together.’
‘Efren said the cars can learn, and it just shows why we need to get rid of human drivers as soon as possible. They’re a menace.’
‘Well, here’s to Efren Bell’s brave new world,’ said Drayton, raising his wine glass.
‘Do you realise he’s also developing levitation technology for his cars, so they can skip over traffic jams?’ Brigitte said.
‘And how’s that gonna work?’
‘I’m not entirely sure. Some sort of elevated magnetic overhead lane they can switch to. Come on Chuck, have a bit of imagination. Look at his plans for space. Elon Musk wants to colonise Mars, but Efren wants to build towns along the way, sort of way stations hanging in space.’
‘Kinda like a motorway service station? To pick up a room and a Big Mac en route?’
‘Oh, come on Chuck. How is he not inspiring? The man’s bold. He’s a visionary. He’s working on teleportation. Like Star Trek!’
‘Kinda like ‘beam me up Scottie’?’ Drayton said. ‘That’s not gonna do much for his electric car business. Because why would Scottie drive to the office when he’s got a teleporter in the garage?’
‘Chuck! The guy’s ahead of his time. He’s visualising the future. The Leonardo of our time. How can you not see that?’
Drayton thought he spotted Anna across the other side of the stage. Short spiky blonde hair, big glasses, black T-shirt. That had to be her. He waved and shouted. She looked across. Then looked away. She was with Efren Bell, leading him to the back of the stage. They were smiling at each other, sharing a joke. Bell putting a hand on her shoulder, before the great visionary bounded onto the stage like an overexcited Labrador.
He was dressed in a black suit over a grey turtle-neck. He looked tanned, his greying hair slicked back in his trademark ponytail. He wore a pair of tinted glasses with round lenses. Designer stubble. A wireless mic so he could roam around the stage, parading and preening like a model on the catwalk.
There was wild applause. Flashes from cameras. A video camera-operator followed him around at a respectful distance. Two remote cameras were attached to runways above him. All relayed onto big screens at either side of the stage.
The future was about vision. Courage. Imagination. Youth and energy. He said he’d found it all in Berlin, the most edgy and exciting city in the world to be an entrepreneur. The capital of creative people. It would be the centre of his European operations.
Drayton watched him work the stage, work the crowd, telling them how he’d made his fortune from the 2008 financial crash, but wanted to give back, to invest in the future.
‘I didn’t come out on top because of what I knew about finance. It was clever mathematics that predicted the market. Algorithms made my fortune. And they will shape the future. Those who write them are the real Masters of the Universe.’
He started pointing, picking out random faces below him.
‘You. And you. And you. You are the future. The pioneers. Algorithms drive artificial intelligence and artificial intelligence will drive everything. AI is going to transform everything we do, everything we are. Everything is now a computer, and computer code is the new universal language. Powering a digital future. Zeros and ones. And those with the vision, those who speak that language will make our future. The Masters of the Universe.’
His last words were drowned out by fevered clapping and cheering.
But Drayton was no longer paying attention. He was trying to cross the room, to the far side of the stage where Anna was now standing. He squeezed and pushed through the crowd, wishing that Bell had brought along a teleporter or two.
He then tucked in behind a server, who parted the crowd in front of her with biblical efficiency. The geeks showing a good deal more respect for the server’s tray of wine than for Drayton.
He was now behind Anna, stretching his hand, tapping her arm. She turned, looking surprised and then plain angry.
‘Chuck. Not now!’
She turned back to the stage, smiling again. Smiling at Bell, who was standing directly above her and was smiling back. Then he moved back to centre stage. The lights went down and he stood in the crosshairs of several spotlights, raising his hand to calm the applause. He looked like an evangelical preacher calming his frenzied followers.
‘One hundred billion dollars. That’s what the Digital Pagoda Fund is raising to invest in the future. One hundred billion dollars to back smart ideas. Smart people. Smart systems. Secure systems.’
He waited for the cheers and whoops to subside again.
‘Secure systems,’ he repeated.
Bell’s picture on the big screens was replaced by an aerial shot from a drone flying low over a vast plain at sunset, the plain dotted with red brick temples, golden towers and stupas. All accompanied by music, a heavy base beat growing in intensity.
‘You know, we can learn a lot from Buddhism. And like the ancient Buddhist temples, I want the fund to be a focal point, around which we can gather. I want it to be a point of inspiration, enlightenment and support.’
The screens faded to black and the aerial video was replaced with a single image of a golden bell-shaped Buddhist stupa, which was then framed by a computer screen and superimposed on an image of a padlock, the online world’s symbol of security. Letters appearing below, in capitals, one by one as if they were being typed.
It spelt the words THE DIGITAL PAGODA FUND.
But Drayton missed the grand finale because he was fighting his way to the back of the room. He’d received a call from Norgaard. It was hard to hear him clearly above all the clapping and cheering, but he heard enough, the big Norwegian saying, ‘We need to meet, and we need to meet now. It’s about Neo.’
*****
Chuck Drayton met Norgaard and Milo at a sausage stand under a railway line in Kreuzberg, where the Norwegian was tackling a big hot dog, his coat splattered with mustard and tomato sauce like he’d had a bad afternoon at paintball.
‘There’s a meet-up in half an hour at the bar across the road,’ Milo said, pointing with his sausage at a graffiti-daubed five-storey building. At ground level it was covered in big bulbous letters and contorted comic-book characters. In some places the graffiti climbed up the wall like ivy. In its midst was the entrance to a bar called Wizard’s Brew. There was a Bitcoin symbol in the window.
‘The meet-up’s about cryptocurrencies and it happens every month,’ Milo said.
He said this area of Berlin had the highest density of places in Europe accepting cryptocurrency. ‘Maybe even the highest in the world. Even my local bar, a rooftop place, down the road. In Neukölln. Not much to look at. It’s taking Bitcoin.’
During the Cold War, Kreuzberg had been in West Berlin, but surrounded on three sides by the wall. The place had been a ghetto for hippies, squatters, anarchists and impoverished Turkish immigrants. Back then, nobody else had wanted to live there. Rioting was a popular pastime. Since the wall came down, a lot of new money had flowed into the area. But it retained its libertarian buzz, and had embraced cryptocurrencies with gusto.
‘I think Neo is coming to the meeting,’ Milo said. ‘He’s been in a chat room run by a group organising the Wizard’s Brew meeting, and he said he’s coming along. He’s been asking a lot about Initial Coin Offerings, to invest Bitcoin in business start-ups. He sounds like he’s got a lot of Bitcoin to invest.’
‘So how do we identify this Neo?’ Drayton said.
‘I think he may be an old guy. I mean more than thirty. Maybe forty. And English. Maybe Scottish,’ Milo said.
‘Yeah, that’s really old,’ said Norgaard. ‘How do you arrive at that?’
‘Neo was the name of the computer hacker in The Matrix movies. Remember them?’ Milo said. ‘And they were made between 1999 and 2003.’
‘Yeah, I remember,’ Drayton said. ‘Weird movies. But maybe our Neo here just likes the name. And why do you think he’s a guy? And why English or Scottish?’
‘A guy because most of them are. English because of the slang he uses. When he joins a chat he says “hiya”. He talked about having to break away from the chat to get some “grub”. Another time when he signed out he said he was “knackered”. Then he described the Initial Coin Offerings as “the dogs bollocks”.’
‘The dog’s what?’ said Norgaard, spilling another dollop of mustard down his coat.
‘Bollocks,’ said Milo. ‘It means really fantastic. I like looked it up. Comes from the fact that dogs lick their bollocks so much, they must taste really great.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake Milo,’ said Norgaard, throwing away the remains of his sausage. No longer hungry.
‘And the Scottish bit?’ said Drayton.
‘He talks a lot about whisky. All Scottish brands. Like he’s pretty familiar with that stuff.’
‘Or just likes whisky. Thinks it’s the “dog’s bollocks” maybe,’ said Drayton.
‘You’d better get over there,’ Milo said, looking at his watch.
‘You not joining us?’ said Drayton.
Milo said that might not be wise since he lived in the area and might be recognised.
It was dark inside the bar, a series of antique-looking lamps built into black walls more for decoration than any light they provided. The bar lined the far wall, craft beer on tap, shelves well-stocked with spirits and wine. There were a couple of overhead fans, not operating, and a pair of big tired-looking plants near the door. Some kind of electronic trance music in the background. Drayton reckoned there were perhaps thirty people. He ordered two beers.
The language switched between English and German. The crowd seemed to be divided into three broad groups. Three tribes. There were the Kreuzberg originals, the libertarian revolutionaries. They were scruffy, but cool scruffy. Then there was the academic tribe, who were just plain scruffy. The third tribe were the techies and the geeks, the type he recognised from Anna’s factory, seeing Bitcoin as a cool new way of financing their start-ups.
‘So prices have crashed. Who gives a fuck,’ said a bearded Kreuzberg original, by way of introduction. He was sitting near an open window smoking a joint. A black Labrador at his feet looked more stoned than its owner. ‘So speculators get burned. Fuck them. We don’t need them. Cryptocurrencies are the most important invention since the wheel, man. We’re gonna make the corrupt old banks squeal.’
As a warm up act, it served its purpose.
‘Too fucking right,’ agreed an academic.
‘Fuck the banks,’ said another.
The bearded original went back to his Labrador and joint.
‘That’s Hans,’ whispered Norgaard. ‘Quite a Kreuzberg legend. Spent five years in jail for selling explosives online. Now he thinks cryptocurrencies are a better way of blowing up the system.’
The geeky crowd, not averse to a little speculation, and giving somewhat more than a fuck about the system, examined their drinks and exchanged awkward smiles.
‘The cryptocurrency economy is still fifty times bigger than it was a year ago,’ said another of the academics, who launched into a roll call of all the new businesses in the area now accepting Bitcoin. There were shouts for him to speak up, since the Labrador had fallen asleep and was snoring loudly.
‘There were always going to be booms and corrections. We were never going to build a new economy overnight,’ said an original.
An academic launched into a jargon-stew of a lecture about smart contracts and traceable tuna, decentralised economies, the purity and equality of an economy without rent-seeking and parasitic intermediaries, where citizens were empowered by the immutable truth of cryptocurrency.
Norgaard whispered to Drayton, ‘It’s an immutable truth that my beer glass is empty, and so is yours.’
Then tribal warfare broke out.
The libertarian tribe, inspired by the academic’s stirring speech, decided Initial Coin Offerings, using cryptocurrencies to finance new businesses, might not be such a good thing after all, because instead of striking a blow against the capitalist system, it might just prop it up, further postponing the arrival of their crypto-anarchist utopia.
One geek thought that was ridiculous. ‘You guys need to get real.’
Which tested the limits of libertarian tolerance.
‘Shut the fuck up!’
‘You shut the fuck up.’
‘Let him speak.’
‘He’s got nothing to say.’
But the geeks were finding their voice and their confidence. Progressively they got the upper hand, the originals and the academics taking time out to refuel on craft beer and freshly rolled joints. The geeks had already filled up on coffee, and now took possession of the floor, focussing it on business, talking start-ups with hunger and enthusiasm because of course as any right-thinking person knew, cryptocurrencies were about making money, lots of money. What was the point otherwise?
Nobody identified themselves, names never given or asked for, that was one thing the tribes all had in common.
So who was Neo?
Drayton and Norgaard assumed he was among the geeks, since investing his Bitcoin was what had brought him along.
Norgaard focussed on three people drinking what looked like whisky. Though one seemed too old, and another spoke with a French accent. The third was a younger woman with long red hair and big round glasses, who had entered the bar on her own. She was a possibility.
Drayton was focussing on two men in their early twenties, who were sitting among the geeks, though not quite fitting in. The others mostly knew each other, but not these two. They were drinking beer, not saying much, but listening hard and occasionally taking notes.
