The Progression Switch (4 page)

It took Báo about four years, in a seriously cramped family barracks with a decent computer that he almost starved to death to purchase.

About two years into the operation he risked his life to get hold of a bunch of spare, discarded and faulty tablet parts from one of the garbage processing rooms to the south of the factory. It took weeks of casing, but he eventually figured out a way to avoid detection, and sneak bits and pieces out over the span of a couple months.

After that he set about building something. No one cared, or asked many questions. He kept to himself, and got hold of the things he needed like prisoners do. He bartered, swindled, and stole what he had to. There was no other option, because spending money was pretty much unheard of.

For most of his life he was a young man of few words who barely looked people in the eyes. Báo wasn’t overtly anti-social, he was just preoccupied all the time. Instead, when there was a moment to spare away from his job and hobby, he watched and paid close attention.

Everything being equal, it’s probably random that his genius appeared in a Chinese body. As if the tribe of fate is up in space, half drunk on supremacy and chucking bits of grace into the world like heavenly rocks. They hit whomever happens to be born in that perfect moment like a skipped rock penetrates a wave.

Báo.

That no one was aware of his genius was of his own design.

Reality struck him like a freight train that nothing would change. The global economic depression might slow things down a bit, and the Chinese bubble might explode, but the precedent was set.

The chances that suddenly humanity would evolve out of slavery, and Chinese like him would begin making decent wages, and enjoy respectable lives, were nonexistent.

The reset button must be pushed. If he didn’t do it, who else would?

Sure, there was climate change to worry about, the desalination of the oceans, the overall degradation of the biosphere, the current mass extinction of species, and so on.

None of those mattered to him, because they all had a singular solution. Everything fit neatly under the umbrella of his cosmology.

Humanity must be stopped and put in time-out. The over-arching control grids and economic systems were too strong, and due to the population boom the corporate stranglehold was too overpowering.

The culture machine was impersonal, on autopilot, and completely out of control.

In his spare time all he did was study computer viruses, and things associated with them, like website programming for example. That’s it. He poured over data like an archeologist dissects prolifically old artifacts or the way a saucy climatologist looks at the erotic shifting of the magnetosphere.

There’s no telling how many he created and played with, like a fledgling geneticist experiments with tomato plants. Along the way it taught him volumes about programming, and within the span of a few
months he possessed a running knowledge of C, C++, C#, Perl, PHP, Python, and Java programming languages, among others.

Most people are afraid of computer programming, but for Báo it felt like it was a part of his being. He loved and devoured it whenever he could until it was all he knew or considered.

There wasn’t much spare time in his life, but his mind was exceedingly efficient. And, his job was mindless. The majority of his day’s work was done through muscle memory alone.

On the outside he looked like any other slave; drowsy, tired, half dead, and resigned. However, inside, the apparatus of his mind was creating scripts and computer languages that haven’t even been written to this day.

They may never be.

The conveyor belt of his consciousness was alive, and brimming over with what on paper would look to the brunt of the human species like a long list of obscure and meaningless formulas.

In the months leading up to the big day he was a zombie.

His mind had transformed.

You and I are used to spontaneous thought, or causative thought where ideas bounce off one another; the progression of his contemplation was similar to the way a computer behaves.

Consider this parallel.

Human beings are unaware of the majority of functions that their bodies perform every minute of every day. From simple things like breathing or neural functions, to digestion and immunities, we’re oblivious.

When we sit down to a computer, typically we are completely ignorant of just about 99% of what is actually happening while we browse, post pictures, chat, or whatever, within the computer, network, internet
etc.
All we see and experience are the results of basic actions like typing, but have no clue what it takes to make such seemingly simple functions a reality.

It’s hard to fathom, but for Báo, he was aware of almost all of it at once. Like, if a doctor were so intelligent that he could look at a naked body and visualize or grasp what was happening beneath the surface collectively.

As he moseyed and slouched around, inside he was devising one of the most dazzling creations of humankind, a coded unknown dimension.

The architects in the fictional Matrix film trilogy had nothing on this kid. He was Neo’s anarchistic twin who couldn't give a shit less about oracles, pills of any shade, or white rabbits.

Báo didn’t want to change, influence, or buddy up with the Matrix. He sought to still it like a guitar string at the end of a hair-raising atonal song. The good news is that not everyone would die off in the process. Some would survive the awakening.

First, we go from the basic tools of cavemen to a living, breathing, and reasoning computer virus capable of bringing the entire technological concert to a screeching halt.

Impressive.

What you or I could absorb in a matter of months, took him only hours, and what he learned, he retained with photographic precision.

Báo was especially interested in worm viruses. For example, a worm made its appearance in 2007 that was appropriately named Storm. It sure did cause a shit storm. Through perverting social engineering techniques to get clueless people into downloading the worm, around 50 million computers were infected.

Brilliant.

Forget about organic viruses. Yes, nature is mesmerizing in its luminous complexity and simplicity of execution, but so are some of the more recent manifestations of digital outbreaks.

Visualize the World Wide Web as the central nervous system of a human being. Pretend that the more than five billion registered IP addresses are like neural pathways that lead to every function in the body, which is composed of cell phones, servers, laptops, tablets, desktops,
etc.
These are the joints, tendons, soft tissue, bones, and ligaments.

This virtual body also has a powerful immune system, composed of paid professionals and programs that are meant to wipe out anything that does damage.

Nothing, until Báo, had ever been created that ultimately threatened the life of this body. Sure, hardcore hackers did stuff that caused sections to be under attack. Things like malware, spyware, and Trojans went on daily that put chunks in jeopardy, but no computer virus had ever been created that could altogether dethrone man’s most prized possession.

It wasn’t long before anti-virus makers were hot on the trail and figured out how to track Storm, despite its ability to quickly and efficiently change forms. While it was believed to at one time be responsible for almost a third of the total spam mail on the web, it wasn’t overtly destructive, only an annoyance.

What Báo needed to create was a viral wolf in sheep’s clothing, a digital master of disguise that could trick even the most sophisticated protection protocols. It had to be something that would be invited in, like the Devil, smooth, charismatic, charming, and seemingly harmless.

Not asked in by humans though, but by the mechanical programs and protocols of the internet at large, like automated bodily functions.

The virus needed to look like oxygen and nutrients, nothing out of the ordinary, foreign, or threatening.

Forget about spam, or the destruction of data alone.

It was the digital version of the AIDS virus, or more correctly put, an unparalleled plague injected into the virtual body of the net that first invaded all soft tissue, organs, and then silently attached itself to every neural pathway and motor unit.

When he got a rare moment to be outside at night, he would look up but wouldn’t see the stars. Instead, what he saw was an invisible web of data floating through the air going every which way.

Everything revolved around the transference of data. Most of all, mobile data, cloud data, and tracking algorithms. He himself played a role in manufacturing countless mobile gadgetry for American consumers to play around with, and then complain about.

Yes, because of things like iPods, smartphones, and tablets, it was easier to surf the net and worry less about getting and spreading viruses. This was a bridge he would have to cross to see his plan through. Traditional virus codes are written for specific platforms in certain languages. For example, something that was made to infest Windows wasn’t really applicable to Mac operating systems.

It was the same in the mobile arena. For example, the iOS and Android platforms were each unique and different from PC.

Considerable time was spent going over the Commwarrior virus of 2005, mainly because it is recorded as the initial cell-phone virus. It didn’t do much, and only infected a single company. The execution was simple; it basically replicated itself through a two-pronged approach dealing with Bluetooth and multimedia messaging services like texts.

So, one person got the text on a company channel, it was opened, then it replicated itself, and sent mirror texts to every other phone number programmed into the address list.

Contemporary phone-to-phone viruses were archaic, and weak because of the huge amount of proprietary operating systems on the market, but he would design something that could jump from one to the other through wireless transfer.

What he would create must not only get into the hard lines like Storm, but infect and take over the airwaves as well. His creation must be versatile, and adapt at a faster rate than anything else ever devised.

It needed to quickly shift and conform to any and all platforms it encountered like a ghost, skip from mobile to land-based, from one language to another, and then overwhelm at the appointed time.

While it looked like the net destruction bomb was set off in China and then spread for days, in reality what was happening was a rapid and unstoppable domino effect.

A silly way to envision it would be to picture humanity taking the time to start from one village, and then set up dominoes all across the world, covering everything. Báo’s work was first to get them in place, and then when the time came, to knock over the first few and start the chain reaction.

Oceans make this example unrealistic, but come on, we’re talking about dominoes and the eradication of the central figure in technological evolution.

The time had come, and there was no more room left for violent demonstrations and talk. He would create the most shocking thing ever seen; the crowning achievement of technology, but it would be its undoing, and bring humanity back in time within the span of a few precious days.

By mixing elements of artificial intelligence, multifaceted programming languages, complex algorithms, and net culture itself, the end was in sight.

His entry point into the more land-based net would be the Chinese blogosphere 20 million-strong, where it began. Simultaneously, his second entry point was made by a single cell phone call and text to the Chinese ministry.

***

Weeks before the historic day of unleashing TupaiaDRD4, Báo skipped work, and instead rode a random bike all the way into the nearest city to mail a package off to America.

He gladly took his berating and rude comments, but because he never missed a day before, or came up on the factory administrator’s radar, they accepted his lame excuses and didn’t beat him.

Once he returned home, he sent an extra-special text to the Chinese Ministry from a basic cell phone, and simultaneously released an electronic infection into the Chinese blogosphere that Báo called the “TupaiaDRD4” virus.

Tupaia was a Polynesian priest who in 1769 tagged along with a British captain named James Cook on the historic
Endeavor
. He was the first man ever encountered by Europeans that could navigate through the islands of the South Pacific without any compass or charts.

He unwittingly handed over to the white men a map covering nearly 3000 square miles of islands and virgin waters, not knowing what would happen down the road. According to some Western historians, when Cook was murdered a decade later by a group of pissed-off Hawaiians it marked the end of a truly memorable era of human exploration.

Bummer.

The reason the virus was named after an old indigenous map maker who could point in the direction of his homeland no matter where he was at sea, was because like Tupaia, the techno-germ could navigate through the islands of the digital ocean seemingly without any guidance systems, maps, or traditional navigation protocol.

Sailors marveled and gawked at the way this odd looking and yet magnificent stranger could point towards his homeland, day or night, cloudy or stormy, without any tools whatsoever.

The virus had goals, and no matter what platform it crept into, and no matter where in the digital-sphere it multiplied, the end zone was always in sight. Yet no one could tell what this goal was, other than to shut down the net and eradicate data and programs used to access it.

It was erratic, unpredictable, behaved illogically, and was impossible to track for ordinary folks. No one can read a man’s mind, and no one could see into the protocol of TapaiaDRD4 either.

Cook realized that the heavily tattooed man was doing it all by memory, and the charts were in his mind, passed down for generations as his people settled that vast area of the world.

DRD4 is also interesting. It’s the supposed “Novelty Seeking” gene in some human beings that makes them more apt to be adventurous. Those with this particular gene adore originality, spontaneity, and as it turns out, are less likely to be heavily influenced by emotions when it comes to internal risk assessment.

Some have claimed that it was this gene that influenced the human species to head out of Africa and explore in search of new lands, food, and technology.

How appropriate - the virus would scrape away all the superficiality, and bring us back to our core. Or perhaps this part of the title was supposed to be indicative of how the virus reasoned, and acted the way it did.

With a sense of exploration.

Báo set up a basic free site, uploaded his newborn creation, and then posted a blog.

Simple as that.

For three days it traveled freely, from one blog to another, whether people wanted to see or share it or not. It didn’t look or sound intrusive, and while those who deleted it brushed it from their minds, TupaiaDRD4 didn’t leave. It set up shop and had a few babies that within a few seconds were ready to leave the nest in search of new prey.

Here is what he wrote; a sort of poem if you will.

.
.*

“Sickness and slavery, it’s merely movement for a few on the tip of a spear.

We stumble and look dazed, biological machines for consumers, both from afar and intimately near.

I will have no more of this, and neither shall you, for what is in store, is liberty for all, from all, to be clear.

But first, our train of anguish must pass through a tunnel of harrowed flames, that when we arise again, in the ashes of the old world, our perspectives will have changed.

Free will is lacking, an illusion, a slight of hand that powerful magicians and social engineers use to misdirect the masses; I’ve released the cure and made the exchange.

This is not a brick wall, fashioned by suffering, but a step back in the right direction, dynamic transverse motion.

Whether my creation is shared or not, it will dominate and subdue.

Whether it’s declared from me or not, it will eliminate and renew.

It’s now or never, the precipice has unfolded, the foundation being laid, prepare to be remolded.”

.
.*

Cryptic, lyrically melodic, hazy, but poignant.

Innumerable Chinese bloggers logged into their accounts to find that they’d left a comment under his post, shared it, liked it, and then followed him.

How was that possible?

Anyone who interacted with these people as well, in any way on any social network was immediately a transmitter.

It set off no alarms and had infected tens of millions within a matter of hours. The more it infected, the exponentially faster it grew. Now, to make things interesting, no matter what kind of firewalls were in place, Tupaia visited every site that these bloggers had liked before or were already following.

History is never completely erased.

To make things even better, any IP address that visited and mingled with these blogs in some way also got a seemingly harmless visitor.

This went on and on, and spread to every corner of Asia’s net. At the same time, his text message to the Chinese ministry was an entry point into the entire interconnected web of mobile data.

The Chinese government was obviously the first target, and from there it crept into every phone in the minster’s vicinity, about a quarter mile.

If you were a tourist talking to your mom in New York on a completely different phone down the block from the minster’s location, kaboom, you and Mom would be transmitting Tupaia.

You were tiny streams of infection, leading from your phone up into the sky, where your signal began to conquer all others around it.

Apps, friends and phone lists, you name it.

For example, if someone has a really nasty cold virus and they go walking around a busy shopping mall coughing, tons of people will contract the sickness. They don’t need to be connected to this person at all, but only to have breathed infected air.

Even deeper down the viral gopher hole, like the cold, Tupaia doesn’t show any signs right away, but invades, settles, and then, later, symptoms arise.

Now imagine that once Tupaia is released into the mall, everyone who contracts it becomes another transmitter instantly, so everything they touch, look at, point to, talk about, think about, or consider instantly becomes infected as well, regardless of whether it’s in another wing of the mall or not.

The mall is the internet, the air is mobile data, the people are all of its connections, and Tupaia was an airborne digital virus.

Back in 2001, supposed experts were heralding the end of the net because of a worm they called “Code Red.” Like Tupaia, for a little under a month it spread in stealth and inserted a hacked message in the place of infected web pages.

Big deal.

Although there was no message, and the White House had no clue what was going on until it was too late, Code Red was impressive for its class, boasting of a quarter million replications in about nine hours' time.

In ten hours, Tupaia was present on roughly forty-seven percent of the overall web. And from there, it grew at an incredible rate.

If you throw a pebble in space, there is absolutely no friction to slow its momentum. There’s no air in the computerized realm either. It could move around freely, because it was a thinking being, a chameleon worm.

The core virus never changed, but whatever it touched, it copied, and that copy then proceeded to do whatever it wanted with that data.

Some estimate that it moved
faster than the speed of light with perpetual energy.

It only took a matter of roughly a week to infect quite literally every single piece of data and software program in existence that was connected to the worldwide web.

No one knew a thing at first, but on the back channels the smartest people in the hacking community saw what was going on and were helpless to stop it.

Try to imagine infamous hackers calling up the American government or contacting the CIA/FBI, trying to warn them and show them what was taking place.

Hackers, that governments hire to protect them from other hackers, networked around the globe, were able to track it - sort of.

As usual, defense departments were slow to react. Eventually, nerds were arriving in debriefing rooms from Washington DC to London to Moscow. Their monitors flickered and profusely sweating IT guys tried to explain to politicians and war mongers what was taking place.

Yes, it was traced back to its original touch-off point in Báo’s corner of the room where he usually fell asleep in his chair at the computer.

His chair was one of those cheap pullout models you find around the tables at weddings or in small circles at AA meetings. Except the small little pad on the backrest had fallen off. There were no screws to hold it attached, so after 1000 hours of his back, it had simply fallen off.

This left two sharp metal moldings where the pad was connected, and they tore holes in the back of all of his shirts. His back even began to get scraped up, but he was oblivious and completely focused on his creation.

Báo was to virus creation and programming what a Tibetan monk is to meditating.

Imagine how frustrated our rulers must have been when trying to comprehend why it couldn’t be stopped. This was unheard of! Impossible!

No, not impossible. It would be like trying to find and capture an invisible man capable of jumping great distances in still desert sand. You could see where he first leaped from, and you can see where he has landed, but you have absolutely no way of knowing where he will hit next.

Sure, if you were close enough, by the direction of his prints in the sand and the indent from his shifting weight you might be able to roughly guesstimate what direction he was headed, but that’s not enough.

All in all, the first phase lasted ten days. As Tupaia grew, its awareness of the net and of itself did as well. Once critical mass was reached - more than 85% of the net was infected - the dominoes started falling with righteous momentum.

After it became obvious that no official statements would be released to the public, there was sporadic news spread grassroots-style.

People hurried to explain on Facebook and Twitter, but many probably thought it was a joke until their net and all the aspects of their lives connected to it disappeared.

How do you think world governments reacted when it became clear this global attack came from China? Imagine how much money was lost in the first week alone. Try to comprehend that.

What do you think happened to the unregulated derivatives market, worth more than one quadrillion dollars?

The modern world was already bent over under the weight of an incredible unemployment crisis. How many jobs do you think were lost within the first couple months after the attack? Everything from trucking and software development to water purification was crippled.

Forget about 21st century capitalism, or emailing anyone, or sending texts, video calls, or files at all. If it was intimately tied to the internet’s infrastructure, it was in the throngs of a grizzly demise. Productivity froze instantly like the mysterious Beresovka Mammoth, found sitting with a broken foreleg, frozen stiff, 10,000 years old with food still in its mouth.

Countless people lost their jobs, too many to know for sure, because most of the programs used to figure out numbers like those were taken down…

Web designers, web-content writers, Amazon, Facebook, Google, eBay, social media marketers, Fiverr, Apple, Microsoft, everything!

No web sites period… ecommerce immediately took a dirt nap.

Guess what folks; just that right there, that one single sector within a matter of months was costing the industrialized world trillions of dollars.

Consider that back in 2007, years before the Progression Switch was flipped, the U.S. Census Bureau showed that ecommerce accounted for around 35-40% of manufacturing shipments worldwide.

All industries were affected, and the Second Great Depression looked like an easy stroll through Candycane Lane. Global GDP collapsed like a cardiac arrest victim mid-sentence ordering another double cheeseburger with heaping mounds of glistening greasy brown fries.

The first world set aside, how about emerging and developing countries? No more global trade, no more communication, no more aid money coming in from other nations.

To add to the panic, online banking as well as banking in general was demolished in nanoseconds, along with all the financial institutions, trading companies, firms
etc.
that depended on heavy virtual integration.