Street Game (29 page)

Javier nodded. “And—even though all the security specialists recommend it—we’ll never be able to convince most people to choose random passwords with more than twenty-three characters.” He winked at Mack. “Bet your password isn’t more than twenty-three characters.”

“I lived with Jaimie for a year. Believe me, I can barely remember the damned thing it has so many letters and numbers.”

Jaimie smirked at him. “You can always ask me if you ever forget it.”

Mack rolled his eyes. “I told you it was useless. She can get into my computer.”

Javier grinned at him. “I don’t think you’re ever going to get away with sending hot e-mails to Internet babes.”

“Another approach people have tried is biometrics: using the unique characteristics of a person’s biology to allow only that person, or a group of people, to have access to something,” Jaimie continued, giving Javier a warning kick beneath the desk. “The most familiar use of biometrics is retinal scanning: You place your eyeball in front of a retinal scanner, it measures various features of a person’s retina against a database that stores the retinal info for legitimate people.”

Javier put down his coffee. “We’re all familiar with retinal scanners as a way of limiting access to sections of buildings. But you can add retinal scanning to a computer as well, as a way of making sure that only you are allowed access to your computer or to certain files. A major drawback is that you have to add this ‘retinal scanning’ hardware—a special device you press your eyeball up against. You can’t just run a program on your computer. In addition, there are horror stories that go along with this technology, like security break-ins being accomplished by cutting out a person’s eyeball and holding it up to a retinal scanner . . .” Javier wiggled his eyebrows to look evil.

“Unfortunately”—Jaimie gave a little shudder—“that really does work.”

“Can I just bring the kid down here and shove his eye at the computer, or do you need me to really cut it out?” Mack asked, straight-faced.

Jaimie made a face at him. “I don’t think we need to do anything quite so drastic. My PhD dissertation introduced a new approach that combines the idea of generating more secure passwords with the idea behind biometrics: coming up with a unique identifier for each person. Here’s the idea. Just like a person’s retina or fingerprint, everyone’s brain is unique. In particular, everyone has memories that no one else has. If we could identify a unique memory for a person, and find a way to express it in the form of a sequence of words—enough words to be secure of—we’d have a password no one could ever break. The program would be a terrific new tool for security without requiring the extra hardware that biometric approaches like retinal scanning does, and without having to remember an impossibly long sequence of random letters and numbers. I call it ‘mememetrics’—because, in contrast with biometrics, it’s based on unique memories rather than unique biological characteristics.”

“How does it work?” Javier asked.

“Here’s how it’s done. My AI program conducts an interview with a person aimed at ferreting out a memory unique to that person, and expressing it in six words: the password. A password made of six unguessable words is just as secure as a password made of twenty-three random letters and numbers.”

“Because there are about 170,000 words in the dictionary,” Javier said, grinning with excitement. “Brilliant, Jaimie. I knew there was a reason I fell madly in love with you.”

Mack smacked him on the back of the head. “She’s in love with me. Keep talking, Jaimie.”

Javier ignored him. “If you choose six words at random from the dictionary for a password, a program trying to crack the password would have to search through an impossibly large number of combinations.”

Jaimie nodded. “Multiply 170,000 by 170,000 by 170,000 by . . . you get the idea: six 170,000s multiplied together. Our fastest supercomputers would take over three hundred years to search through all the possibilities. So this kind of password is pretty secure.”

“You never told me about this, Jaimie,” Javier said. “How does the program work?”

“It has about a thousand different ‘schemas’ representing different kinds of remembered personal experiences: from happy childhood memories, to low-grade traumatic experiences, to fantasies, to love or sexual memories, to memories of accomplishments, on and on.”

Mack frowned at her. “I don’t want to know the kid’s sexual fantasies, Jaimie, just his password. I need a look into that computer.”

“You have no patience,” Jaimie reprimanded. “The program is looking to find an
uncommon
memory or fact. So, exactly
not
the kind of thing you often are asked for in security questions like, ‘your mother’s maiden name,’ ‘your favorite pet’s name’—that sort of thing. And
not
your sexual preference, you perverts. A lot of people besides yourself could acquire those pieces of information. So the program steers away from those sorts of things. Instead, it looks for facts or memories that are unique to you, and that you have never shared with anyone else.”

Javier shook his head, his mouth open, his eyes lit with respect. Mack’s chest expanded. He loved how intelligent Jaimie was, that she could do things few others could do and he had no understanding of. But he loved to listen. Sometimes, when she talked, he felt like her accomplishments were the best in the world. He was more proud of her than of anything he’d ever done. He wanted to show her off to the world—and he wanted to keep her strictly for himself.

“The program uses a natural language interface and a unique AI learning algorithm that almost always allows it to converge on a unique memory for a person within five attempts. So it might start off looking for a low-grade traumatic experience from childhood—something you remember but never told anyone else about—but then it discovers that you are someone who basically doesn’t recall any unhappy childhood memories. So upon learning that, the program might shift over to looking for mildly happy childhood memories.”

“I see you’re focusing on ‘low-grade’ traumatic experiences or ‘mildly’ happy childhood memories,” Javier said, speculation in his voice.

Mack wished he could keep up; this was obviously exciting stuff.

Jaimie nodded. “Because
horribly
traumatic experiences or the
fantastically
happy childhood memories are the kinds you might very well have told others about. We’re looking for a memory that doesn’t stand out that much, but is still unique, but is something the person can remember as their password, because after all, it’s created from one of their own memories.”

Mack made a face at her. “I hate to tell you this, honey, because I hate it when you have something to lord over me, but I have no idea how that applies here.”

“Well, while Javier doesn’t recognize this program, I do. This was my approach I came up with for my PhD dissertation, but then I went on to create a working program. It was classified. I don’t know how Paul managed to get hold of a top security program, but he’s using it to protect his e-mail messages. Unfortunately for him, I recognize this. It’s definitely my program.”

“Are you certain?” Mack asked. “How can you tell?”

“Look at the screen.” Jaimie pointed it out. “Look what it reads.”

Mack stepped close and peered at the laptop.

ENTER YOUR MEMEMETRIC PASSWORD
[ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]

“This is my program. There’s no doubt. No other program has an access screen like that or refers to ‘mememet ric’ passwords for memory instead of biometric.”

“Tell me you left a backdoor,” Javier said.

“Of course. Doesn’t every programmer? I should be able to go into any computer using my program and get their six-word password. I just have to load this little tool program of mine.”

“I’m so in love with you, Jaimie,” Javier said. “Sorry, boss, I can’t help it, she’s a mega badass.”

Mack shrugged. “As long as you know you’re risking getting yourself shot. Then I’m okay with it.”

“Uh-oh.” Jaimie took a drink of her coffee, frowning at the laptop. “Very clever, my boy. You found the backdoor and closed it, didn’t you, smart one? But you’re not dealing with just anyone here. I wrote this mother. It’s my brain-child, honey. You’re not defeating me. Good try, but I never leave anything to chance. Let’s just see how clever you really are.” She set her iced coffee down a good distance away and began typing on the keyboard again.

“Talk to me, honey,” Mack said. “Not to the machine.”

“He found my main backdoor and shut it down, but I’ve got another, much more subtle. And he didn’t find it. No one would unless they knew exactly where to look and what to look for. The first one would have given me his six-word password straight away. Much easier.” She hunched closer, her eyes glued to the screen. “But this isn’t impossible. What the second backdoor enables me to know is which ‘experience schema’ the password is based on—and that should narrow down the possibilities.”

Mack groaned. “Narrowing things down sounds like it will take some time.”

“Of course it will. The kid’s good. He managed to get his hands on top-notch protection. It’s his bad luck that it’s my program.”

Javier burst out laughing. “Everyone calls him ‘the kid.’ He’s older than you are, Jaimie.”

“Everyone’s older than she is,” Mack pointed out.

“Ha, ha, ha,” Jaimie said, without looking away from the screen. “There you go, boys. ‘Low-grade traumatic childhood experience.’ I’ve got him now.”

Javier lifted an eyebrow. “How is knowing that going to help us figure out his six-word password, Yoda?”

“Because, little grasshopper, as creator of the program, I know how the program goes from the schema to the six-word password.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t,” Mack said.

“See the six pairs of brackets where you’re supposed to type in your six-word password?” Jaimie pointed to the screen. “Here, let me show you.” She dragged a notebook across the desk and hastily sketched a picture for them.

LOCATION WHAT HAPPENED WHY TRAUMATIC [ WORD1 ] [ WORD2 ] [ WORD3 ] [ WORD4 ] [ WORD5 ] [ WORD6 ]

“My backdoor showed us that his six words describe a ‘low-grade traumatic childhood experience’ that he had. As the designer of the program, I happen to know that, together, word one and word two describe the location where that experience occurred, such as ‘cellar stairs’ or ‘front yard.’ Word three and word four describe what happened—something like ‘pit bull growling’ or ‘gun fired.’ And the final two words are used to describe why it was traumatic, like ‘terrified me,’ that sort of thing.”

“Jaimie,” Mack said in his best you’re-driving-me-crazy-get-on-with-it voice.

“Okay. Sheesh, Mack, things take time. I’m running a special purpose, ‘brute force’ program. The two words for the ‘location’ are drawn from a database of about a million words. The two words for ‘what happened’ are drawn from another database of about a million words. And the two words for ‘why the experience was traumatic’ are drawn from a database of about 100,000 words.”

“That sounds like it’s going to take more time than I think we have.”

“Mack, come on,” Javier said. “This is a miracle. If Jaimie hadn’t written the program in the first place, it would be virtually impossible to even get close. We’d have to try all combinations of six words and that would take centuries.”

“Exactly. It may sound like a lot of combinations, babe,” Jaimie assured, “but it’s small enough that we can ‘brute force search’ our way through all the possibilities in under two hours. Can you give us two hours?”

She’d called him “babe.” She hadn’t done that in two years. It had come out easy and natural, with that little intonation of affection she could never quite mask. It had always annoyed him before because she’d begun doing it in retaliation when she objected to his calling her “baby.” He liked calling her “baby,” not because he thought of her as a baby but because it was a term of endearment his father had used with his mother. It was one of the few memories he had of his father. He supposed it was silly on his part, and he should have stopped when she’d objected, but he’d continued. She’d retaliated and then gone on from there. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed that small exchange between them.

“I can wait a couple of hours. That kid is quite the puzzle,” he added, toeing a chair around and straddling it.

“Actually, boss, everyone likes him. He’s secretive, really keeps to himself, but he pulls his weight and never once has objected to the ribbing we give him. He sometimes even gives back as good as he gets,” Javier said.

“Who, of the men, is Paul closest with?” Mack asked.

“Gideon, but Gideon gets along with everyone,” Javier said immediately. “Probably Lucas and Ethan.”

“Turns out our Paul is a very valuable commodity,” Mack said. He lowered his voice from habit. “We think he’s a psychic surgeon.”

Javier turned in his seat so fast he nearly fell. “I thought that was a myth.”

Jaimie frowned. “How come you didn’t know, Mack? That’s big. Huge. No one really believes such a thing exists. I can hardly believe someone has that kind of talent. If he does, no one else must know about it or he wouldn’t be in your unit.”

Mack frowned. “Every unit should have a psychic surgeon going into combat with them. Think of the lives you could save. If you could take the violence, even you, Jaimie, would have an easier time of it if we had a skilled surgeon. Hell, we talked about this for months when we were in the hospital undergoing the psychic evaluation and enhancement. Psychic surgery was the one talent they screened for aggressively.”

“There are a few healers, but not an actual surgeon,” Jaimie pointed out. “Do you really think they’d put the only one they had in the field, Mack? They’d want to study him and figure out how his talent works, to maybe try to reproduce it.”

Mack closed his mouth, teeth snapping together. “I didn’t think about that.”

“Like Gideon and Joe, Mack,” Jaimie said. “I don’t think anyone knows about their differences, not even them.”

“Or you,” Mack said. “We know Whitney wants to know how your talent works.”