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💾 Archived View for clemat.is › saccophore › library › shorts › defcon › 27 › Intrepid_Ones_by_Robot… captured on 2022-07-16 at 15:43:48.
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The Intrepid Ones By Robotron

Three blocks off of the coastal highway a deafening series of
high-pitched whines erupted from within the abandoned Desert Nomad
travel agency building. �Is this another damn false alarm?�, Leto swore
as he lumbered out of bed to inspect the eardrum piercing sounds which
emanated from his early warning radio beacons. Carhart, unfazed, had
already arisen and was silencing each of the alarms. Glancing across the
room, they both stood in brief silence while they observed the server
fans in their cluster screaming along to accommodate the GPU-hungry
facial recognition algorithms they had been developing over the last two
years. Live video feeds from the street level IP cameras that Carhart
had hacked now gave life to a panel of dormant, OLED monitors. These
feeds were sourced by a seemingly endless array of PTZ cameras,
installed years ago across the city by the Security Commission. The
effort initially gained public support when it was heralded as a remedy
to curb street crime and help capture wayward fugitives who sought safe
harbor in the city from time to time. Lately, however, something just
didn�t feel right about the feeds. They all seemed too �clean�. It soon
became evident that Carhart, Leto, and other members of Defender were
now in jeopardy. The video feeds revealed an unusual amount of road
traffic for a Wednesday morning at 3:00 a.m. Humvees appeared to crawl
out of the darkness of night from every direction. �Let�s see where they
are headed�, uttered Carhart with an unreasonable sense of easiness.
�How can you be so calm!!�, Leto panicked.  Carhart throttled a few
keystrokes into the server�s console, and moments later one of the
monitors showed the position heading, and velocity of each vehicle, all
superimposed on a digital street map. In large bright red letters, the
words: �Predicted Time of Arrival 5:31� were displayed with a
transparent yellow rectangle highlighted over their neighborhood. The
time was ticking down now, second-by-second. �Get ready. They found us.
Tonight, is the night�, Carhart now said woefully.

For years Carhart had been attending the annual Def Con conference where
he met other like-minded individuals who shared his passion for
technology and hacking. Always one to venture outside of his own comfort
zone, he made his way into the biohacking village where he met a group
of guys who referred to themselves as grinders. People he met had
implanted magnets in their fingertips which allowed them to pick up
small objects. Others added a mysterious black dye to their corneas
which stimulated the rods and cones � allowing them to see at night.
This is also where he met Leto, a biohacker from Brazil. Leto was also a
surgeon which alone made him somewhat unique among the hacker crowd in
general. Both became great friends and met up regularly at Def Con and
also communicated with each other over IRC.

During one visit, Leto was particularly amped up. �Hey Carhart, you
didn�t even say hello. I�ve been standing next to you for last 5
minutes!!�, Leto exclaimed. Baffled by Leto�s claim, Carhart learned
that he had developed a facial implant, composed of small metal strips
of wire encapsulated inside a silicone gel the body wouldn�t reject.
When exposed to a tiny electrical current discharged from a
micro-capacitor, the strips deflected by up to two millimeters. This in
effect, would cause one�s face to temporarily deform. It was perhaps,
the coolest biohack that Carhart had ever seen. No wonder why he hadn�t
recognized Leto.

�Man, I don�t even see any scars from the implant surgery. That�s
amazing!�, Carhart replied.

�Well, it�s not just for fun. Some people can�t go out in public without
some facial recognition program detecting them and reporting them to the
authorities. I just want to help people who are unfairly being targeted,
and enable them to have the ability to live in freedom. Maybe this will
help some of them�, explained Leto.

It wasn�t long afterward that we learned that some governments were
assigning numerical values to their own citizens - branding them with a
social credit score based on their public behavior. Designated
individuals from the government, referred to as Information Collectors
(ICs), obediently carried out these duties by reporting their own
neighbors and their scores to their governments. Low scores which
resulted from bad public behavior, restricted people from getting
personal loans, traveling by airplane, and getting high paying jobs. In
the beginning, people could redeem themselves by improving their
behavior which, in turn would raise their scores. But soon the system
became entirely corrupt with rogue ICs demanding payment for favorable
government scores. Just walking down the street would trip the
surveillance cameras and tip off all local passerby via smartphone apps
to stand clear of these undesirables with their low scores. Little did
they know the truth behind the numbers.

Leto and Carhart wanted to change this by enabling individuals to freely
travel wherever they so desired � at least within their own countries.
Leto would travel internationally to handle the facial modifications.
Carhart, on the other hand, could work anywhere. He was tasked with
taking control of the enterprise network cameras which the governments
used to track their citizens. Together they formed a group called
Defender, along with other freedom hackers across the globe.

As Defender evolved they developed a piece of malware called MasterReset
which, on the New Year�s Day 2019 was deployed globally with tremendous
success. Suddenly peoples� social credit scores were all set to the
maximum value of 1000. People who had been relegated to reside within
just a few city blocks could now come and go as they pleased. This upset
tyrannical regimes by disrupting years of carefully orchestrated
crackdowns on citizens across the globe.

Once their identities were discovered, MasterReset also made Leto,
Carhart, and their international cohorts marked men.

�It�s time to go. Let�s get moving!� Carhart yelled.

A second afterwards, two more monitors illuminated at almost the same
time. One showed a face from Ryo and the other from Gunter. They were
both international members of Defender.

�I just cut power to the north end of the city. It may buy you some
time, but you�ll need to get moving. Gunter will being working with me�
offered Ryo.

�Thanks but we�ve gotta go! Let�s go Leto. Move into action� said
Carhart, finally with a sense of urgency.

The video monitors now showed three individuals inching their way in
total darkness up to the old Desert Nomad. The facial recognition
algorithms instantly identified three of the four men as members of the
Strelka syndicate, a rogue group of mercenaries hired by organized
groups of criminal ICs. Quickly gathering his laptop and asthma inhaler
Carhart placed the forefinger and thumb from each of his hands onto a
portable desktop scanner. Instantly his identity was confirmed and
several ShockBit processes were spawned across his LAN, slowly erasing
all of his local server data. The pressure was mounting now, and his
flight or fight instincts kicked in giving him a razor sharp focus. He
could feel his heart pounding in his chest like he did from nights of
marathon programming sessions while binge drinking Red Bull with his
crew. Now a bead of sweat rolled off his forehead onto his glasses,
briefly clouding his view.

Keep it together Carhart reminded himself. Two puffs from his inhaler
seemed to partially restore his breathing and calm his nerves, but time
was running out. Leto had braced the front door with an old section of a
telephone pole they kept at hand just for this type of situation. With
the front door secure, he began chiseling away at a false wall comprised
of only a thin layer of sheetrock. Carhart sped up the process by
promptly destroying the wall with one swift kick, exposing a steel black
ladder. �Head on up and get the chopper ready,� Carhart ordered.

All set now and ready to go. Carhart clawed his way through the remains
of the wall and made his way to the rooftop where Leto was removing a
tarp disguised as an industrial air conditioner. The sleek black
aircraft was now clearly visible to both of them and anyone else at
rooftop level in the nearby vicinity. As he approached the aircraft his
and Leto�s phones both vibrated and flashed a warning message indicating
that the front door to the warehouse had been breached. They both
quickly boarded the vessel with Carhart assuming the pilot position.
Instantly the red and green glow from the EFIS flashed before them. As
he strapped himself in he punched in a set of preprogrammed waypoints
which the autopilot ingested, sending the Moonshot 1604 quadcopter into
the desert night sky. Climbing to 2000 ft. above the ground he looked
over his shoulder at the warehouse with the stark realization that both
he and Leto would have to go deeper underground to survive the freedom
operation they spearheaded five years earlier. A sinking feeling
overtook him as he looked back at the loft knowing that he would likely
have to start all over.

Thirty minutes later, they quadcopter landed safely in a remote enclave
outside the city limits. A black Suburban made its way to the agreed
upon emergency rendezvous point and retrieved both of them. Two
individuals departed from the vehicle and quickly began to dismantle the
aircraft for burial in the remote desert sands. The vehicle made its way
down the dark highway off into the night. Leto and Carhart would survive
to fight another day.