💾 Archived View for clemat.is › saccophore › library › shorts › defcon › 25 › DEFCON-25-Don-Franke-B… captured on 2021-12-03 at 14:04:38.
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BRICKS by DON FRANKE
Most people don't own communication devices. They borrow them.
And when people talk about a brick, they're usually referring to
a Community Communication Device (CCD). A brick is about the
size of a bar of soap. It fits into the palm of the hand, with a
rounded beige frame encasing a slab of clear acrylic. The shell
is made up of a carbon-threaded polymer, making it nearly
indestructible. When in contact with someone the rectangular
screen instantly lights up with content specific to that
individual. It can then be used to exchange text messages, read
the news, or consume other digital content. The device cannot
make voice calls, however, due to the increasingly unpopular
Landline Only Telecommunications Act. When no longer needed,
the brick can simply be tossed onto a nearby table, counter,
etc. The display instantly clears and its memory is
automatically wiped. Bricks litter bars, cafes, fast food
restaurants and other establishments. Inductive charging pads
are embedded into the tables and counters at many of these
places to help ensure that they are always ready for use. The
proliferation of bricks is also responsible for a surge in hand
sanitizer use. The device and the service that gives it life
are provided free of charge by a single company: Avocadeaux
("avocado") Inc. The free bricks are part of their community
outreach program to promote free learning and information
sharing. Emphasis is on underserved and lower-income
neighborhoods. A study was done recently that showed an inverse
correlation between the average income of a business's clientele
and the number of bricks that could be found there. When the
program first started, the bricks were stolen and resold, but
the company kept dropping off more until they no longer had
resale value. Now you can find one just about anywhere.
Avocadeaux has always maintained that the content they serve is
100% user-driven, and usage history is completely confidential.
Their mission statement reads "We don't want to influence the
information being delivered. We just want to provide access to
it." The company makes its money by selling the more upscale
Personal Communication Devices (PCD's) to consumers with
disposable income.
In the alley behind Gary's Pub (about fifteen minutes west of
the Chicago loop) Detective Emily Jensen kneels next to the
motionless body of a man in his early 20's. He is propped up in
a corner formed by a dumpster against a brick wall. His wrists
and ankles are bound by duct tape. His lower face is also
covered with tape, and a charred hole is where his mouth used to
be. She peers into the burnt orifice with a penlight to confirm
her suspicion: death by OC. A brick was shoved into the victim's
mouth, and taped over so that it couldn't be removed. Then a
hacked induction transmitter was used to overcharge the device's
high-density battery until it exploded, shooting fragments into
the brain cavity. There are shards of plastic in the smoldering
cavern, looking like bundles of toothpicks. It reeks of burnt
plastic and flesh. "Fire in the hole," she overhears an officer
say.
Emily frowns but says nothing as she stands to assess the victim a final
time. Then she nods to the coroner who has been waiting for approval to
bag the deceased.
The detective goes to the sidewalk at the opening of the alley,
carefully stepping over yellow evidence markers along the way.
She closes her eyes and tilts her head back to feel the
afternoon sun on her face. This is the second homicide she
caught in as many weeks with this M.O. The murder rate in this
area has been increasing exponentially over the past few months.
True, it always got worse in the summer, but this year has
already outpaced the last one by a long shot. She opens her
eyes and looks around the neighborhood. It used to be a safe
place. Lower rent, sure, but always a strong sense of family and
community. It's like there's something dragging neighborhoods
like this down, she mulls. Something multi-tentacled and
powerful reaching up from the inky depths. Emily enters Gary's
Pub and scans the poorly lit room. There are a few people
hunched over the bar who could be regulars, and a man with a
trim gray beard behind the counter. He is staring down at a
brick in his hand. She approaches him. "Are you the owner?" He
looks up and answers, "I am." He deftly slides the brick down
the bar where it comes to a rest atop an induction charging pad.
"Do you know who did this?" she asks. "I already told you cops
I didn't see nothin', don't know nothin', and don't want no part
of it. This is a respectable establishment, okay? That alley is
public property, got no control over that." Defensiveness is
another thing that has increased over the past few months. Fewer
witnesses willing to speak up, and less cooperation with police.
"The victim looks like he's not even 20," she says. "Don't know
who his parents are by chance?" She asks this to try to evoke
some sympathy and willingness to help. He closes his lips tight,
looking like he's working hard not to be swayed by emotion. She
waits a few moments for a reply but gets none. "Okay, well, if
you think of anything..." She places her card on the bar. He
ignores it and picks up a different brick which flashes to life,
resuming the video he was watching a few minutes ago. She looks
at the small screen. On it is Ed Belicaski, a challenger in the
upcoming Chicago mayoral election. He is at a rally, talking
tough about crime and cleaning up the city.
Emily sits on a worn couch in her Rogers Park apartment,
drinking a Goose Island pilsner. She is dressed in sweatpants
and an Army T-shirt that still faintly reeks of sweaty workouts
from her time in the service. She is using her laptop to view
the Avocadeaux, Inc. web site, looking at CCD usage statistics.
The company makes this information publicly available as a free
service. Emily zooms into a map of Chicago, and clicks the
"sentiment" box. Semi-transparent blobs of different colors
overlay the map. The colors represent different emotions: blue
is sad, orange is happy, yellow is afraid, and red is angry. She
clicks and drags left, away from Lake Michigan, and red shows as
the predominant color over Garfield Park, the 29th precinct
where she was earlier today. She clicks the "trend view" box and
the map morphs into a line chart. The same colors are used, now
shown as curves over a timeline. The red line of anger arcs
upward at a severe angle. She switches tabs in her browser to
bring up the Chicago Police Department site. She navigates to
the crime stats page which also has a map of Chicago. She checks
boxes labeled "homicide" and "past 30 days", and red dots appear
on the map. The densest cluster appears over the same
neighborhood. "Thought so," she says to herself. She sees a
correlation between negative CCD user sentiment and the murder
rate. Her PCD vibrates on the table. She leans over to see the
display. "Code 4. West Van Buren and South Sacramento." "Great,"
she says. "Back to the 29th."
It is almost midnight on a Tuesday when Emily arrives at the gas
station. There is a crowd of about 15 people gathered on the
other side of the yellow police tape that surrounds the crime
scene. Many of them shout and jeer, and hold up CCD's with the
same headline displayed: "Civil Rights No Longer Guaranteed."
The victim lies on the stained concrete next to a gas pump. A
plastic sheet has been draped over the body. Dark crimson pools
out from beneath the sheet and reflects purple in the
fluorescent lights above. "What happened here?" Emily asks a
sergeant standing near the body. He reads from his notebook.
"Looks like an argument, which he lost. Vic still has his
wallet. Took two to the chest. Found brass for a 45. No
witnesses so far, of course. The gentleman working behind the
counter says the cameras work but don't record worth a damn." �
She kneels down and pulls back a corner of the sheet to reveal
the face of a male in his late 30's to mid 40's. His eyes are
closed, and looks like he is in a peaceful sleep. She replaces
the sheet, stands, then looks out at the agitated crowd. She
goes up to the tape, standing across from an older woman who is
waving a CCD and shouting, "You can't make this a police state!
That goes against everything this country stands for!" "Can I
see your brick?" Emily asks. The woman stops, looking a little
perplexed, then quickly holds the CCD close to the detective's
face. Startled, she leans back a little and examines the
display. She then looks at the other bricks being held in the
air. They all have the same message on their screens. "May I
remind you that we're the taxpayer," the woman continues. "And
that you work for us?" Emily does not respond. Instead she holds
out her hand, palm up. The woman hesitates, then hands over her
brick. During the handoff, the screen goes dark. Once in her
hand it lights up again. But the display is the same as before.
That doesn't make sense, Emily observes silently. I should be
seeing my own content. She hands it back and nods thanks. She
studies the other people who have gathered, looking for anyone
who stands out. In the back is a man in his mid-to-late 30s. He
has shaggy, curly brown hair, his face is unshaven and gaunt,
and has a slightly cleft upper lip. He just stands there with a
blank expression, not caught up in the fervor of the crowd. He
also has a canvas backpack with him. He sees her staring and
quickly turns to leave. She goes up to two uniforms nearby and
points. They give chase and Emily quickly follows. She
unholsters her 9mm and holds it at her side as she runs. She is
thankful she wore her gym shoes. The suspect runs down an alley
and jumps a chain link fence into a backyard. The cop in the
lead busts through the gate, his partner following. Emily
instead runs down the sidewalk to the next block and turns down
the street to see the man dart out of the yard, cross the
street, and disappear into the shadows of another yard. The
streetlamp is out, feeding the darkness. The uniforms and Emily
stop in the front yard, panting as they search the darkness with
flashlights. They listen for any clues of where he has
disappeared to. Suddenly the homeowner throws open the front
door, a shotgun in his hands. The cops raise their handguns in
response. "Lower your weapon!" one shouts. "Don't you do it!"
yells the other. Emily holsters her handgun and raises her
hands. "Easy, easy! We're just looking for someone. Just put
down the gun." The man is older and appears confused, eyes wide,
mouth agape. He points the weapon at her, lowers it, then raises
it at the cops. Two deafening thunderclaps rend the night. The
homeowner is thrown back against the railing that surrounds his
porch and it breaks. He falls into the perfectly square bushes
below. The shotgun crushes a garden gnome as it thuds heavily on
the ground.
Emily is in a bar working on her third Maker's Mark, neat. She
is in The Loop, which might as well be a world away from the
neighborhood she keeps answers calls for. She is drained from
the two homicides yesterday, the accidental shooting, and the
debrief and paperwork that followed. As she mentally unwinds
everything, a dark thought keeps creeping back: It's almost like
the neighborhood itself is cursed. A beige brick is on the bar
next to her. She took it from Gary's Pub a couple days ago.
There are no other CCD's here, of course. The place is too nice.
Her gaze keeps returning to the brick and its scuffed acrylic
screen, as if staring at it long enough will divine its secrets.
Someone's building something, she considers. And they're using
CCD's to build it. She overhears a conversation between two
guys sitting a stool away. At some point one of them will try to
engage her in conversation. She will be leaving soon, so will
hopefully avoid the awkwardness of letting him down. She does
not have the energy to be nice about it. "They're going to let
you make phone calls on them," one says. "One day, you'll see.
It's just a matter of time." "Telecom's too strong," says the
other. "They have lobbyists working full time to prevent that
from ever happening. We'll be using copper lines forever!" In
the reflection of the mirror wall behind the bar, she sees the
one closest to her hold up his own black and shiny PCD as an
example. Its screen lights up. "So we're just going to keep
using bricks that we can't make phone calls on?" His friend
lifts his own from the bar and holds it up. It has a brushed
metal frame and also glows to life. "Until the friggin telecom
companies let the government change the landline act, yeah," he
answers. "You mean the other way around. The voters will be
heard!" "Our new mayor will be heard!" They laugh. She drains
the glass and places it back on the napkin on the bar. "Is that
yours?" The question is distant, and it takes a moment for Emily
to realize it is directed at her. She turns right and follows
his nod to the brick next to her. "Yes." "I'm surprised. I
mean, a community POS? You're much too fine for that." He
smirks. She looks at the PCD he holds, then at the PCD held by
his friend. The content on each is very different. One shows
lacrosse scores and the other displays a stock ticker. She looks
down and picks up the CCD. It glows to life and the screen shows
information about Chicago homicides. The guy sitting closest to
her notes this. "That's pretty grim," he says. "It is," she
agrees. "But that's my job." This catches him by surprise. He
sits back a little, eyes going a little wider momentarily. His
movements are exaggerated and sloppy from the alcohol swimming
in his veins. "Well, I guess I'd be drinking too, then." He
raises his glass. "Here's to our new mayor. May he bring a bunch
of his military friends to help you out." "And get you some good
news to look at for once," adds the other.
Emily edges her way past a crowd of uniforms that line a dark
apartment building hallway. It smells of piss and decay. She
stops in an apartment doorway that opens up to the kitchen. The
front door has been kicked in. There is a yellow Formica table
in the center. The deceased is seated behind the table in a
chair that is tilted back on two legs, leaning against the sink
counter. His arms are down at his sides, his head is back, mouth
open and eyes closed. She recognizes the cleft lip. She also
observes that a chunk of flesh is missing from the left side of
his neck. On his shirt dark blood has blossomed around his
throat, from the center of his chest, and from his stomach. A
CCD is jutting out from each of the two torso wounds. A third
brick is embedded in a toaster on the counter behind the
victim's head. The kitchen wall is splashed with blood and
debris like a frozen fireworks display. She recalls a recent
demonstration provided by the local FBI at an outdoor gun range.
On exhibit was a weapon called a bricker that was recovered from
a drug bust. A bricker is a bastardized version of a pitching
machine that runs on a car battery, with a gear train that
massively increases the motor's output. The result is a portable
cannon that can launch CCD's at close to 800 miles per hour.
Bricks make great high velocity ammo because of their ubiquity
and near-indestructible nature. It was invented as a novelty
hack, but ever since the plans went public, a bricker has been
the murder weapon in at least half a dozen homicides so far this
year. She remembers the sounds of the bricks shooting out with a
clap (the sound of the projectile breaking the sound barrier)
and obliterating a slab of ballistics gel from 50 yards away.
The victim probably died of fright when he saw the weapon
pointed at him from the doorway. "And you think you're having a
bad day," jokes a uniform standing nearby. Emily resists the
urge to slap the grin off his face. She stretches latex gloves
over her hands as she approaches the victim. She notes that the
CCD's impaling the body are active. An article with the headline
"Violence Erupts in West Chicago Neighborhood" lights up their
display. On the floor against the oven is the canvas bag she
saw the man with earlier. She goes to it, carefully expands the
loosely cinched opening, and peers inside with a penlight. There
is a box with blinking lights, connected to a battery pack. From
the box extends two thick sticks that look like antennae. It
reminds her of a wireless router, but military grade. She
reaches in and yanks the power cord out from the back of the
device. She knows this is reckless and done partially out of
anger. The lights on the box go dark. She takes a deep breath
and exhales slowly to regain self-control. "Okay, we're going
to need to get all of this to the tech team," she announces to
the room. "Bag everything." She looks at the body again and
notices that the content on the CCD's has changed. The devices
now display anime.
They are sitting in a caged lab located in the basement of the
18th precinct station house. The wireless router sits on a
nearby table, its antenna sticks removed. "It's a
man-in-the-middle device," the forensic tech explains. "It
injects content into the communication stream of any brick
that's in range." "I thought bricks were locked down," Emily
says. "That only Avocadeaux could serve them content." "Well,"
she answers. "It looks like he figured out a way around it. Or
he got some help. I'm still working that part out. It might be
in the firmware which can kind of complicate things." Emily
considers this for a moment, then asks, "Do you know what
content was being pushed?" "I was able to look at the source
code for a daemon that runs on the router. It's a tiny web
server that provides content to the hijacked connection. The
program reads a text file that's located in the same directory.
There's a bunch of news articles that it cycles through. The
comments in the code aren't as well written as the articles, so
maybe he got them from somewhere else. I'd ask him where he got
them from, but..." the tech trails off. Though she wasn't told
the details about where the gear came from, she has a suspicion
that the owner is dead. "Can I see some of the headlines?" The
tech brings them up on a flat panel. Emily leans closer to her
to read. She can hear the tech's breathing quicken. "Violence
Erupts in West Chicago Neighborhood, Civil Rights No Longer
Guaranteed, Wage Gap Continues to Increase, Anger Sometimes is
the Best Medicine, OC How-To Manual Now Available Online." Emily
sits back, crossing her arms. "Do you think he acted alone?" she
asks. "I don't know," the technician replies. "I guess it's
possible. Someone probably got him the router, though. It's
pretty serious, not something you can just get on eBay. I did
find something kind of interesting though..." She picks up the
router, turns it over and holds it under an examination light.
She points to two words scratched into the case: The Truthmaker.
"Looks like he took his work personally," Emily comments. "Maybe
he was acting alone after all." "Maybe."
Emily is in the office of the precinct captain. The door is
closed. The captain sits across from her, behind his imposing
mahogany desk. His fingers are interlocked precisely and placed
atop the mirror-polished surface. "The device is made by Sigma
Tech," she reports. "It's a military contracting company that Ed
Belicaski worked for." "The mayoral candidate," he confirms. She
nods, fighting a tinge of nervousness. "Do you know how the
perp got the gear?" he asks. "Not at this time." "Do you know
where he got the news articles from?" "We're still working on
that. We're thinking it came from anonymous sources. He might
have just known where to look." "Did you get his browsing
history?" "Didn't find any computers at his residence and his
service provider was Avocadeaux so..." "...so it's
confidential," he finishes. "Understood." She sees him glance at
someone behind her, beyond the glass window that looks out onto
the desk floor. She does not turn to see who he is looking at,
but she has a strong suspicion it is the unfamiliar suit she
passed on her way here. He exhales deeply. "I'll advise you not
to make any allegations you can't retract, Detective Jensen."
"I'm just trying to get the bottom of this, sir." This is
followed by an uncomfortable silence while she considers her
next move. She decides to roll the dice. "It seems pretty
coincidental that someone is trying to stir up a hornet's nest,"
she says. "In a part of town that a mayoral candidate says he's
going to clean up by bringing in military hardware that his own
company sells." The captain's eyebrows furrow almost
imperceptibly. While this is the only outward indicator of his
emotional state, she knows that he is furious. He unlocks his
hands and places them on the armrests of his worn leather chair.
He grips the rounded edges tightly, but otherwise remains
composed. "I think what we have here is a political activist
who acted alone, and was met by an untimely demise. Probably at
the hands of one of several enemies he made along the way." This
is his way of bringing the matter to a swift conclusion. She
stares back blankly while performing a series of a risk
calculations: How far do I want to push this? Do I really want
to take on the Chicago political machine? What is there to gain?
To lose? Am I really ready to lose my job? My career? She
decides not to say anything and instead exhales quietly. The
captain nods, probably to the same person standing outside the
office. Then, with two fingers, he slides a folder from the side
to the center of his desk and opens it. It is her personnel
file. "You've been doing great work, Detective Jensen. You have
no problem getting your hands dirty, that's clear. How would you
feel about getting reassigned perhaps? To something with more
visibility and upward mobility?" He smiles and she fights the
urge to recoil. "Someplace where you can actually make a
difference."
A couple of weeks later, Ed Belicaski lost the mayoral election.
Emily was reassigned to financial crimes and was quickly
promoted. She watched as the murder rate in the 29th decreased
over the next several months, but not as much as she had hoped.
The Landline Only Telecommunications Act was repealed the
following year. This resulted in new products and services that
let people consume digital content and make voice calls using
the same handheld device. People called it a smart phone. The
hard plastic beige "bricks" quickly disappeared from existence.
Some were collected, some shelved and forgotten, but most were
recycled or dumped into landfills. Emily kept the device she
took from Gary's Pub. It is in a shoebox in her closet, dead.
There are no more inductive charging pads that can bring it back
to life.
THE END