Chipped Chaos Session 3

Princess Guard - The New Era 2016/06/23 	 Titan Charm Harlequin Cecila 12

Talking to Stavros Benton
Unit 37 is indistinguishable from any other Unit in the Industrial Park except for the sign mounted above the main door. Benton InfoTech Designs PLL. A two-year-old sports model hover car is parked outside. It is the only vehicle in the twenty place parking lot that comes with the Unit.

Titan raises a brow and heads over to the door. He knocks on it, and waits a moment to see if there's an answer.

A small viewscreen beside the door lights up to show an unshaven face. "Yeah. What is it?" comes from a speaker grille as the face speaks.

Charm follows along quietly. She knows this is one of the suspects, but, not really understanding the technology behind the crime she's rather out of her depth.

Titan smiles. "Mr. Benton, we're the Princess Guard. We'd like to ask you a few questions."

Harlequin thinks. o O(It's the razor of the month club. We have your back orders.) Fortunately, he keeps the snark internalized.

The face shows puzzlement, "The who..?" Then it clicks, "Hey, you're Titan aren't you? Loved your role in Rifts. Come on up." Stavros says through the speaker. And that's probably when it clicks for Titan. Why he half remembered the name. Stavros Benton was one of an interview panel at a Si-Fi convention that Titan appeared before. Good publicity.

There's a buzz as the door lock disengages.

Titan raises a brow and heads inside. He says to the others, "Given that reaction...probably not our guy. But he still might know something."

Charm reserves judgement. She hasn't seen enough of him yet to guess if he's hiding anything.

Harlequin follows along behind Titan. He casually looks around, all senses on the alert, when he enters.

The inside of the Unit is cluttered. One corner is obviously an electronics workshop. The elevated office area has been converted into an open plan living area. At first glance it appears most of the space in the Unit has a lot of old computer junk in it. But on second glance it becomes clear it's a museum, a private museum detailing the history of computing.

Stavros appears at the railing of the elevated area, "Hi. Up here." he calls down to you.

Charm really just sees computer junk. She looks up at Stavros - people she has some understanding of.

Stavros is wearing a dressing robe over crumpled PJs.

Cecila follows along quietly, not that she's got much in the way of a fan club or anything herself.

Charm observes Stavros.

Stavros is putting on a good bluff, and he is genuinely thrilled with Titan's presence... but he's trying to hide uneasiness.

Titan heads up the stairs to the elevated section and looks around. "Sorry to disrupt you while you're working. We just wanted to ask you some questions in regards to the recent issues with ATMs around the city."

Charm says in a quiet voice to the rest (Titan having gone ahead), "Take care - he's nervous of something."

Stavros brings a hand up to rub his lower face and then shakes his head slightly, "I.. uh.. don't know anything about that."

Harlequin watches Titan up in the raised area as he stands back by Charm. "Hmm, I wonder if that is a tell..." he muses softly.

Titan smiles, remaining personable. "We were under the impression that quantum computing was involved. And since you are a local expert on such...we figured it was prudent to ask you whether or not that's feasible."

Stavros actually seems to relax a bit at Titan's question. "Yes, it's certainly feasible. A working Quantum Computer of sufficient Qbit depth will instantly render every conventional cypher obsolete. I've shown that N=NP doesn't hold in the Quantum realm and... --extended--technobabble..." You seem to have triggered off one of his pet theories and he seems ready to talk and talk.

Titan waits for a gap in the technobabble. "Do you know of anyone whom you've met that might try to do such a thing?"

Cecila listens for a bit longer than she cares to admit before being glad she's not taking quantum computing classes at the college ~So he just said anyone can screw with ATMs if they have a quantum computer or something?~

Harlequin listens in apparent rapt fascination to Stavros' technobabble. Sometimes a completely face covering mask is very useful. Over the PG comms, he murmurs, "Yes, that does seem to be the core of what he is saying. Of course, as far as I know, which is not very far, such a computer does not exist. Unless some meta-inventor has one stored away some place or time."

Stavros is talking freely now, his previous uneasiness vanished. "Myers and Hanstead at MIT have made some progress. How much is theirs and how much comes from Kingson I wouldn't like to say." It's clear from his tone what he believes. "And I met a University Fellow in Mexico a couple of years ago at a conference who seemed to have some understanding of my ideas. Uh... Sanchez. Prof Sanchez."

Titan grins, "Those are people with the technical skill to do so. But do you know of anyone who might be inclined to cause this level of chaos?"

Cecila smiles some and listens ~Well you know if I had some fancy thing that let me spit out a ton of money to random people... it'd be kinda tempting to use it~

"Not personally. I mean it doesn't seem to have any motive except causing chaos? So other than an insane person... Uh, well maybe a student prank that wasn't thought out?" he replies.

Titan nods. "How about you, Mr. Benton? Did you do it? You certainly have the know-how."

The question seems to catch Stavros out. He blinks and then stutters a denial but it's not very convincing.

Titan folds his arms, "You know more than you're telling, Mr. Benton."

Charm starts humming a little tune, to induce a sense of trust in Benton.

Stavros reluctantly nods. "Not know. But suspect. I sometimes supplement my income by bespoke design and fabrication of electronics. Some weeks ago I was contacted to built a number of router relays, one side standard 801n modulation with a range of maybe 100ft, and the other a split band LPOI system with a range of several miles. There was a physical side to the design requirements. They had to be less than an inch in width and depth. When I heard about the ATM hack, well I wondered if what I built had played a part."

Titan says, "Okay...so who did you do the work for?"

Harlequin tilts his head to one side as he thinks. o o(Please do not say Amelia Steinberg.)

Stavros shrugs, "I don't know. A lot of my clients for this kind of work require privacy. Some because they are worried a competitor might find out what they are doing and beat them to it. Sometimes because having my name connected to a project would make senior management cancel. I, well, I have a reputation as a bit of a crank."

Titan says, "How did you contact the person? And then get them the hardware?"

"They contacted me. Via TOR-2 eMail. Payment was by direct money transfer to an account I have for this type of work. I posted the finished relays to a PO box in this city. The Main Post Office Package service." he says

Charm thinks. o O (I have a lot to learn about Earth.)

Titan nods again, thinking about it. "It sounds like you didn't really do anything illegal. It would be of great help if you knew of a way to figure out who this person is."

Harlequin murmurs gently, "What is TOR-2 email, sir? I have never heard of it before. May I assume it is a more encrypted, more private, hmm, band of email?"

Stavros thinks for a moment and then lifts his head. "It wasn't very long ago. The Post Office might still have the CCTV recordings. The PO boxes are under continuous monitoring to prevent theft."

Stavros nods to Harlequin, "Yes. The original TOR network was developed by the US military as a secure way to send and receive messages. But in the early 2020's the NSA broke it. TOR-2 is an updated network that, as far as I know, is still secure."

Harlequin nods politely to Stavros. "Thank you, sir." His attention then turns to Titan. "The post office then, Titan?"

Titan nods. "I think so. Thank you again for your time, Mr. Benton. We might be back if we have more questions."

Stavros nods, "Anytime. Uh... before you go.." He points to a poster on a partition. It's the poster produced for Rifts. "Could you autograph it?" he asks hopefully.

Titan smiles. "Sure. Happy to." He pulls out a pen and signs the poster for Stavros.

Charm smiles. She's heard of this human custom.

"Thanks." Stavros says delightedly.

At the Post Office
The Post Office authorities are happy to co-operate with a hero group. They tell you the recordings are still on the system, and play-back the camera covering the PO box Stavros posted the relays to. Only to find that the camera recording for a short period has been erased. At the start of the erased section the PO box is closed, and when the image returns the PO box door is open...

The security technician looks at Titan, "Did you expect this?" he asks. Somehow he doesn't seem all that upset.

Titan sighs. "I wasn't expecting it. But I'm not that surprised, either." He rubs his chin, "Can you tell how the recording was erased? Some kind of interference? Or did someone erase it after the fact?"

Charm watches the technician as he answers.

Cecila shrugs a bit 

Harlequin looks over at Cecila and smiles behind his mask. 

"If the camera signal had ceased an alarm would have sounded. So almost certainly erased after the fact by someone hacking into the system." he tells Titan. Then he smiles, "With your luck you should consider a career as a gambler. One of the cameras in that area had a network card burn out. So instead of sending the recording to the main system it stored it locally in the camera. That camera hasn't been repaired, despite multiple complaints from my boss to the technical department. The recording ought to be still on the camera."

Titan raises a brow and smiles, "Well...let's see what's on that one, shall we?"

The security guy takes you to the camera. It covers the entrance to the PO boxes but not the specific PO Box. "I'm not supposed to do this." he says while disconnecting the camera and opening it up to get the memory chip out. Plugging it into his PDA he accesses the recording of the time when the other cameras were erased. There's several people enter and leave the area of the PO boxes. But only one is a young man of about twenty wearing leathers, the jacket having a logo on the back, a snake shown crawling through the center of 'O's and wrapping itself around the stems of '1's. There are four binary bits on the jacket - 1001.

Titan says, "Well, that's interesting. I think we know our culprit, at least by his handle. Snakebyte."

Charm says, "Snakebite?"

The security guard zooms in the image. The camera resolution is not great. It's a toss up whether you'd recognise the guy out of leathers, although its good enough to let you eliminate 99 people out of every random sample of 100.

Titan nods to Charm, "The 'byte' part is spelled like a computer term."

Harlequin taps his porcelain chin for a moment then murmurs, "So, what exactly do we know about the Information Liberation Front?"

Titan says to the security guy, "Thanks for your help. Is there any way you can tell where the intrusion into your system came from? That might be too much to ask, I bet."

Harlequin murmurs, "Well, the ILF is, as you know, well perhaps not you Ablewoman Charm, a group of hackers who believe in total transparency. That all information should be freely available to everyone."

The security guy shakes his head. "We haven't found that out. We're none of us experts and while we try our best this isn't the first time we've been hacked."

Charm says, "When has it happened before?"

The security guy looks up the dates. Several incidents stretching back over decades. Only this one erased camera images. One was to re-route a parcel. Another was a prank by a pair of students changing delivery addresses, etc..

Titan says, "Interesting. Well...thank you again."

Another was also interesting. The system was taken over by an AI fleeing from another hostile AI. The fleeing AI apologised and made improvements to the PO programs as a thank you.

Charm asks if that could be relevant.

That date, as it turns out, coincided with a Replicator attack at a construction site. The diggers broke into a chamber with dormant Replicators, which woke up.

Harlequin smiles slightly. "Well, it is good to know AIs can be apologetic and thoughtful of others." He tugs at his sleeve cuffs for a moment then murmurs, "Well, who do you wish to question next, Titan?"

Titan furrows his brow. "Replicators are connected, perhaps? Maybe HeXer knows about this Snakebyte guy? HeXer is currently in Stronghold...so I'm thinking we head there, unless someone else has an idea.

Harlequin nods. "And what can we offer HeXer to try to gain cooperation?"

Titan says, "Honestly? I have no idea. But I have no idea what he'd want, either."

Charm says, "What do you know about this HeXer?"