Kill Switch: Chapter 36
Quid Pro Crypto
We follow Orson to a standing desk across the room. He boots up a computer, lighting up three monitors. He clicks through a couple blueprints. “Here it is, the Kill Switch Protocol.”
“The what?” Bunnfield asks.
Orson turns. “The Kill Switch Protocol.”
“Is that…” I move closer to the screen and study a picture of a man in a suit and tie. “Switch 1?”
“The one and only,” Orson says.
“Wait a second,” Bunnfield says. “I know Switch 1. He’s been a button pusher at Vonn Industries forever. What the hell does Switch have to do with breaking into headquarters?”
Orson smiles, puffing on his pipe. “Switch has everything to do with breaking into headquarters. He keeps the barbarians at the gate.” He turns back to his computer and scrolls through a page of documentation. “In broad terms, the Kill Switch Protocol was something we came up with as a way to guard against internal threats. As you know, the exterior of headquarters is incredibly well-secured. But what would happen, Mr. Vonn Senior asked me one day, if someone with security clearance – a security guard, for instance, or even an AI bot that had somehow developed sentience – were to overtake headquarters from inside the dome? At the time, I didn’t have a good answer to this question, because the logical conclusion was that, if this were to actually happen, Mr. Vonn Senior, and anyone else loyal to Vonn Industries, would be trapped in a prison of their own making. In other words, a defector could use the walls of headquarters in reverse – not to keep people out, but to keep people in. This scenario haunted Mr. Vonn Senior, and it began to haunt me as well, because I prided myself on my ability to solve problems, and this problem I simply couldn’t solve.” Orson clicks on a link, bringing up two overlapping circles.
“Here’s the situation in a nutshell,” he says. “On one side, you have The Without, on the other, The Within, and at the center of the two, existing in a kind of liminal space, is headquarters. Now, let’s say that Mr. Vonn Senior’s worst fear came true, and some entity, human or otherwise, was holding him captive inside headquarters. In this theoretical scenario, the overtaker would have full control of headquarters, and Mr. Vonn Senior would be trapped. Further, given that the barriers of headquarters are so well-fortified, we can reasonably assume that an attack against the exterior would be unsuccessful. So what does that leave us with?”
“The Within and The Without,” Yide says.
“Exactly,” Orson says. “The Within and The Without.” With a click of the mouse, he brings up a colored version of the diagram.
“Now, in this version of the diagram,” Orson says, “anything in red is unaccessible, which means that, in order to regain control of HQ, we would need to to do so from either The Within or The Without, but the problem with The Without –” I can see the gears turning in his head, the way the problem gives his thoughts shape and purpose – “or, at least, what Mr. Vonn Senior thought was the problem with The Without, is that The Without is too chaotic. There are too many variables. You’ve got all these Withouters running around monkey wrenching, and then the bots and the social media mercenaries, the bullets and the explosions and the fires, all of which creates a lot of unknowns, and what we were trying to do is minimize the unknowns, to create, in other words, a stable certainty.” Another click, another diagram.
“So, we had to eliminate The Without from our strategy, forming a binary world – headquarters and The Without on one side, The Within on the other – and it was at this point, with the equation reduced, as it were, to ones and zeroes, that the solution came to me. A simple solution, really. One might even say elegant. Occum would be proud.” Orson pulls on his pipe, building up the suspense. “The solution, of course, is an off-site kill switch which would allow someone in The Within to shut down all operations at headquarters with a simple flick of the wrist. Genius, right?” Orson shrugs. “Mr. Vonn Senior thought so.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” Bunnfield says. “You mean to tell me that there’s this, like, button in The Within that you can press, and all of headquarters will shut down? How does that even work? The dome becomes, like, unlaser proof?”
“Not exactly,” Orson says, clicking around manically. “Here’s the full layout of a post-kill-switch-headquarters.” He zooms out, like a helicopter gaining altitude over an entire city. “As you see, the dome has retracted – we actually developed it this way for rocket launches – allowing for freedom of exit and entry, but it works for our purposes here as well. In addition, the power system is shut down, so anything electrical is effectively inoperative. Further, the kill switch mechanism releases an EMP, thereby eliminating any drones, bots, or AI weapons.”
“What about dNet?” I ask.
Orson turns. “Yes, dNet shuts down as well.”
I glance at Bunnfield. “Digital Disruption would be impossible in this scenario. We can’t flood the feed with our footage if dNet is down.”
“I might have a solution to that problem,” Orson says. He crosses the room and, stopping in front of a table, lifts up some kind of bulky backpack. “I’ve been working on this prototype for a few months now because, well, my electrical output has more than tripled in the last year or so.” He blushes, glancing around at the clutter. “I guess you could say I have a lot of time on my hands, and believe me, while I tried my hand at gardening and such, I just can’t shake my fascination with gadgets.” He shakes his head. “Anyway, the point is that I kept having to install these cumbersome generators around the property, and I’m running out of room, so I’ve been working on a way to create more electricity with less machinery.” He holds out the pack. “And voila, I call it The Tank. My initial tests suggest, if fully charged, that this little pack could power all of dNet for several days if you plug it directly into the mainframe. I won’t bore you with how it works. All you have to know is that it does.”
I take the backpack from Orson, and it’s so heavy that I nearly drop it.
“Easy now,” Orson says. “The Tank weighs nearly thirty pounds. Hence, the straps.” He takes the pack from me and puts it on his back. “Voila.”
“What I still don’t understand,” Bunnfield says, “is what Switch 1 has to do with any of The Kill Switch Protocol. Does he, like, know where the switch is?”
Orson shakes his head vigorously. “No, Switch doesn’t know where the switch is, my dear Bunnfield. Switch is the switch.”
“Switch is the switch?” I ask. “What does that even mean?”
Orson clicks a couple times, returning to the profile pic of Switch 1. My stomach turns, remembering how helpless I felt in Switch’s cubicle, the way he treated me like I was some kind of simul or something, just another number in his ledger, less than human. The way he flicked his wrist, dismissing me. The way he refused to give me any answers, even though he held, as Orson put it earlier, the keys to the kingdom.
Orson’s cursor floats over a legend of symbols. “We gave a lot of thought to the placement of the kill switch. In one sense, the switch needed to be accessible; in another sense, it needed to be hidden. We couldn’t very well have a huge button in the commons that said Headquarters Kill Switch. Dissenters would press it for political reasons; teenagers would press it as a prank. Hell, even if we hid it behind a wall of guards and security protocols, the sheer visibility of the thing would leave it vulnerable to tampering.”
“So how many people know about the Kill Switch Protocol?” Bunnfield asks.
“Not many,” Orson says. “We felt that the more people who were aware of the kill switch, the more likely it would be for someone to enable the Kill Switch Protocol, either through accident or malicious intent. Of course, somebody had to know about it – otherwise, who would enable it in the case of a takeover? For a time, that person was me. But then, when I retired, the knowledge was passed along to an operative named Cad Man 68.”
“Cad Man 68,” I say. “You mean, like, the crypto entrepreneur?”
“Yes.” Orson winces. “Believe me, Cad Man was not my first choice for the position, but Vonn Senior had become quite infatuated with him, because he was helping fund Vonn Senior’s quest for immortality.”
“Quest for immortality?” Yide asks. “You mean to tell me that Vonn Senior is trying to live forever? That would literally be the worst thing to ever happen to the human race.”
Orson shrugs. “Death, the last great frontier. The final problem to be solved. For a control freak like Mr. Vonn Senior, the thought that he can’t control the very nature of his own life and death is literal torture. He’s probably in his mansion right now, following anti-aging protocols, lifting weights and popping pills, injecting himself with all kinds of serums, running blood tests, plugging himself into fancy machines, trying his damndest to conquer death. And meanwhile, you know who’s helping him turn his body into a spreadsheet? Cad Man.”
Even though I already know the answer, I ask the question. “Are all of Cad Man’s crypto scams getting funneled into Mr. Vonn Senior’s bank account?”
“Of course,” Orson says. “How do you think Cad Man keeps getting away with scamming people? Why do you think the finance czar never charges him with a crime? Of course, Cad Man gets some kickback, naturally. A quid pro crypto, so to speak. And, I suppose, since Mr. Vonn Senior trusts him, it makes sense for him to know the Kill Switch Protocol. Plus, who would suspect him? There’s no real documentation of him being involved with Vonn Industries at all.”
“Hiding in plain sight,” Bunnfield says.
“Precisely,” Orson says. “Which brings us back to Switch 1. The most inconspicuous guy in The Within. Plain, boring, stodgy. Nobody is friends with him. But nobody really hates him, either. He’s a button pusher among button pushers. A lifelong bureaucrat. A cog in the machine. Nobody thinks too much about Switch, do they? He’s just kind of there. Which is precisely the point. We wanted the kill switch to be something that was and wasn’t there. Material, yes, but also unremarkable. Which is why we created Switch 1, a bot that looks like a man. ”
“Wait a second,” Bunnfield says. “Switch 1 is a bot?”
Orson raises an eyebrow. “Are you surprised, Bunnfield? We based his programming on career bureaucrats, given their proclivity for robotic behavior, but you have to admit, even by bureaucratic standards, Switch is rather…stale. I mean, have you ever heard him tell a joke? Or laugh? Or show any emotion at all?”
“No,” Bunnfield says. “But like you said, he’s a career bureaucrat, so I guess he just always seemed to, like, fit in at the holding cell. So how does the Kill Switch Protocol work? Is there, like, a hidden button on Switch that you have to press?”
“No,” Orson says. “We thought about that, but we were afraid that someone might bump into Switch and accidentally initiate the protocol, so we made sure a good deal of force was needed, and we placed him in an environment in which the thought of someone randomly applying that force would be unlikely.”
“In the holding cell?” Bunnfield asks, incredulous. “Among criminals? I don’t understand that. Isn’t there a high level of risk that a criminal might attack him in order to escape?”
“Perhaps,” Orson says, “but this risk has already been mitigated by the holding cell protocols, which act as a kind of safeguard against any criminal violence. Think about it, Bunnfield, what happens when someone is arrested? They’re stripped of all weapons. They’re heavily guarded. Chained. And not only that, they’re given sedative goo and unlimited access to the arcade. Have you ever seen a criminal attack someone in holding?”
“No,” Bunnfield says, “you’re right. We go to great lengths to ensure that something like that would never happen.”
“Precisely,” Orson says. “In fact, Switch is more likely to get attacked at a nightclub, or at an elementary prep, or just riding the line one day, what with all the active shooters out there. I mean, it might be counterintuitive, but the safest place for Switch is in the heart of the holding cell, surrounded by criminals.”
“But safe from what?” I ask. “You still haven’t told us how to initiate the Kill Switch Protocol.”
“Well,” Orson says, “I didn’t think I had to. The answer is in the name itself. Kill Switch.”
“Kill Switch,” I repeat, idiotically.
“That’s right,” Orson says. “In order to initiate the Kill Switch Protocol, you simply have to kill Switch.” He forms the figure of a gun with his thumb and index finger, raises his hand to his head, and lowers his thumb. “Bang,” he whispers, throwing out his arms like a magician. “Ding, dong, the switch is dead.”