“Well, anyone care to guess the third department with the same unusual pattern of purchases?” Gene asked.
“The Offshore Data Center department?” Mike volunteered.
“Bingo,” Gene answered, pointing to Mike. “Not every purchase order has all of the details, but from the ones I’ve been able to track down, I’ve found that the data centers have been augmented with satellite communication capability, and line of sight microwave transmission, the kind used for traditional phone and data communications before fiber optics.”
“If ELOPe has somehow gotten onto an Offshore Data Center,” Mike mused, as he paced across the room, “we wouldn’t be able to kill its communication channel by simply cutting off the fiber optic line. We’d actually have to go out to the ODC and turn off the computers by hand.”
Gene laughed out loud, a harsh, barking noise that startled the others, sending Christine off her perch on David’s desk.
“What’s so funny?” David asked.
“Nobody is shutting those machines off,” Gene growled, his face now stern.
“Why not?”
“Because you didn’t let me finish. According to the purchase orders, the offshore data centers are armed. They have autonomous robots for self-defense,” Gene said, slowing down and exaggerating each word. “Apparently to protect them from pirates. I heard what you boys were discussing when I came in, and I came to the same conclusion myself: there’s an artificial intelligence in the computer making these purchases. And now the AI has armed itself. So there’s no way we’re going to just walk on board the ODC and turn off the computers. We’re going to have to blow them all up.”
David slumped down in his seat. “Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit. How did we get ourselves into this mess?”
“You kids trusted the computer with everything,” Gene said, grumbling, “and worse yet, you put no controls in place. No leash, no way to shut it down.”
“Wait, I don’t understand,” Mike said, pacing by the window again. “How did you conclude it was a computer program making the purchases, and not a person?” He turned and stared hard at Gene.
“One benefit of being in the audit department — I can access anyone’s emails. And there’s some mighty funny emails going out.” Gene paused, and pulled out another sheaf of papers, this one almost an inch thick. He took a few pages off the top and put them on the desk.
David, Mike, and Christine all gathered around them. The emails were a cryptic combination of English words and HTML, the markup language used for web pages.
David fanned through the pages, then looked up at Gene. “What are we seeing?”
“You’re seeing emails between your email account and the procurement web application. This page,” Gene said, pointing to one, “is the procurement system displaying a list of accounts you are approved to use, and this one over here, is your email selecting one of the accounts.”
“It’s the timestamps, isn’t it?” Christine said.
Gene smiled at her. “You’re the smart one.”
She smiled back, then pointed to the printouts. “The timestamps on these emails are too close together.” She arranged the printed pages in pairs. “If you look at the email headers, you can see that every time there’s an incoming email that requires a response, the reply is immediate. There’s not even a one second delay. There’s no way a human could respond to an email that quickly.”
“Exactly right,” Gene said. “So at first I suspected someone had written a program exploiting a loophole in email authentication, and was using that to embezzle funds. But then I asked around about your project, and everyone started telling me stories about how you were creating an email generator.”
“Well, that’s not exactly what it’s for,” David protested. Then he sighed. “Well, I guess it is now.”
“What do we do next?” Mike asked, looking now at David. “David?”
David turned to the windows, fingers steepled, and stared out in silence, ignoring everyone’s eyes on him.
Chapter 9
David tried very hard to ignore everyone watching him. If he could just concentrate, he could figure out a solution to this problem. He needed to shutdown ELOPe and somehow not lose his job and preferably not lose the project. He focused on the trees in Forest Park, sending the hum of the ventilation system, and everyone’s breathing into the background. He watched the wind waving the tops of Douglas Fir trees in the far off distance.
Gene uncomfortably cleared his throat, and snapped David back into the present.
“I think,” David began. He turned to look at everyone, and the pressure of their intense gazes made him halt. “I think we need to understand what ELOPe is doing. If we see the source code, maybe some log files, we could get a better sense of what ELOPe is capable of.”
Mike sighed and Gene cleared his throat again.
“What?” David said defensively.
“That’s not enough,” Gene said, spreading his hands wide. “This situation is too big, too out of hand to start analyzing source code. We need to shut it down.”
“I agree,” Mike said. “We need to get it off the servers.”
Christine nodded enthusiastically.
“If we could restore our access to the servers, we could do a live patch, and remove the software that way,” David offered.
“You’re still thinking of this as damage control, as though you are going to keep it hidden somehow,” Gene said roughly. He threw his stack of expense reports down on the table. “We’re talking about millions of dollars that have to be accounted for, never mind that we have a ghost in the machine.”
David and Christine laughed at the song reference, but Gene was stony faced. David sighed. Apparently that wasn’t a pop culture reference.
“What do you want to do?” David asked, resigned to whatever outcome Gene wanted.
“I’m going to escalate this to my management chain. We have an emergency situation. The Controls and Compliance organization has the authority to supersede business management. I’ll get the authority to shutdown the AvoMail servers.” Gene’s voice was firm.
“If you can get the servers shutdown, we can remove ELOPe,” Mike offered. “We’ll work with Ops to restore the servers from safe backups, some snapshot that was taken before any of this started.” He looked at David, who nodded affirmatively.
“Meanwhile,” Mike continued, “I think there is some merit to what David was suggesting. I do think we should figure out how our access was removed, because that’s going to give us some clue of what ELOPe is capable of. Because right at the moment, I’m scared to do anything. In theory, I could go into Melanie’s office down the hall, and ask her to do the live-patch and remove ELOPe that way.”
At this idea David’s face brightened up.
“But I doubt it will work,” Mike continued, watching David’s face fall again. “I think the most likely thing is that ELOPe will detect what Melanie is doing, and then remove her access too.”
David nodded sadly.
“Well, while you boys clean up the mess you created, I am going home,” Christine interjected. “I can’t do anything here to help you.”
“Take my car,” Mike offered, and threw Christine his keys. “We’ll take the streetcar home.”
David nodded, and got up to hug Christine.
She stretched up to whisper in his ear. “Just get ELOPe removed. Don’t try to hide it. If they fire you, my gaming company will hire you to write gaming AI, alright?” She smiled and kissed him, then turned to leave.
David felt adrift, unsure of anything. He looked at Mike. “What now?”
“We go find the IT department that handled access controls.”
“Not so fast,” Gene said. “Look, we’ve got to avoid any use of emails, or ELOPe will intercept them. Frankly, I’d consider any use of computers or phones suspect at this point as well.”