Tucker didn’t spend much time in the computer labs. Mostly, that was because there were several computers in the apartment he shared with his brother and Drake. Also the technopaths were a cliquish bunch- though to be fair, so were the telepaths.
He could feel the way their minds were linked up across their devices; it was in a lot of ways analogous to telepathy, but also similar to any computer network. He could see thousands of operations being performed every second, though he couldn’t follow what was going on.
“You’re lucky I recognized you,” Ryan said without turning his wheelchair to face Tucker as he entered the room. “Otherwise I might have hit you with one of our countermeasures. I’m not sure what they’d do to a brain; they’re more designed to attack an electronic infiltrator. But a human mind also isn’t so different from a computer that I’d want to invite a viral process into one- other than scientific curiosity.”
“Aside from your trigger finger getting itchy, how are things going?” Tucker asked.
“We’ve got our hooks in the phone grid. We’re waiting until the last possible second to take it down; the fewer people have to be impacted the better, and it’ll make it harder for them to work around the issues. We’ve also taken over every radio transmitter in a mile radius around their offices, the apartment building, and their likely route. We can fill the airwaves with so much radio traffic they won’t be able to hear themselves monolog.
“We’ve tanked their internet. The plan had been to take it down completely; probably tie up an agent roaming the hell that is broadband customer service phone trees. But we came up with something more clever this morning: we crashed them down to dial-up speeds. Since they’re still technically getting internet, it’s a different problem- one with a hundred different issues to chase down. All the while their emails and intel load like it’s 1999. Doing the same thing to their cell phones was trickier, but we took over the cell towers nearby and route all of their traffic- phone and data- through us.
“Demi fried everything plugged in at their offices, too, so they’d already been thrown back into the dark ages- but we’re keeping them from making any progress.”
“And you think it’ll hold?”
He grinned. “I’ll put it this way. The NSA poked some feelers in this morning, probing for infiltration. We’ve sent them on a goose chase that will send them on a time-release quest around the globe. First it’ll look like a Chinese infiltration, then the Russians spoofing the Chinese, then the Israelis spoofing the Russians spoofing the Chinese as revenge for backing Iran… anyway, it ping-pongs over the next five weeks before tracing back to an NSA terminal using Edward Snowden’s somehow resurrected credentials. The only conclusions available at that point are that it was an inside job of terrifying proportions, or that they got so thoroughly outclassed that letting the public know they’re basically a failed security agency is their only other option besides covering it up. Which is irrelevant, because all of the relevant intel will by that point have been erased.
“And because we had more volunteers than we needed, I’ve got a B-team running counter-int. They do background checks on Feds, but there are limits to the amount of time, effort, or invasiveness the government is willing to do, all of which pales in comparison to what Google and Facebook know about each and every one of us, to say nothing about international hackers or other online ne’er-do-wells. Current figures look like we can probably clear a third of these agents out just shining a light on their actual nefarity- a little tax-cheating here, a kiddie porn collection there. One of these freaks writes immigrant snuff fantasies; maybe that’s not enough to get him canned, but they sure as hell can’t leave him in the field once that comes to light. And becomes a trending topic on social media.”
“This is all terrifying,” Tucker said.
“It is. It’s also the same basic toolset used by social media companies and the NSA. We’re just better at it. And we’re using it to defeat bigots- so we’re doing it for a good cause, and not for capitalism. Besides, ICE weaponized social media first. They called down this thunder- it’s a little late for them to get squeamish about getting electrocuted.”