The Unlocked

begin

• writeln ('Current time : ',TimeToStr(Time));
• writeln ('Date : ',Date);
• DeCodeDate (Date,YY,MM,DD);
• writeln (format ('Today is (DD/MM/YY): %d/%d/%d ',[dd,mm,yy]));

end.

Current time : 10:31:24Date: 1591198284
Today is (DD/MM/YY): 3/6/2020

You look up at the polite knock.

“Hi Zach, I was wondering if you could look at my laptop? I know I should call Support and I did but whatever they changed didn’t fix the issue and when I called back they said the ticket was closed so I’d have to open another one.”

It takes you a few seconds to come up with her name, but the woman at your doorway is Erica, one of the RN’s who works on the other side of the third floor. You would have helped her with her issue regardless, but as you stand up you say, “Sure thing, hey you tried to follow process, right?” It certainly makes you happier to help knowing she did go through the correct people first.

She nods and leads you to her office. Walking through the crowd of public health nurses Erica describes her issue - she consistently can’t find some folders she has saved on her network drive even when on the internal network.

In her office you sit and look at her computer. She’s one of those people who has a hundred or more files, shortcuts and links saved onto the desktop itself, but you don’t hold that against her. Not everyone has your love of obsessively sorting and moving files to ensure you have a minimalist desktop, just all right-thinking people.

The issue is mostly how she looks for and interacts with the network drives, not the connection itself. You find a broken shortcut, map a drive, and then show her how to find her documents in a consistent way. It takes a few minutes and saves her 15 minutes on hold with Support. Saves a level 1 support analyst a tedious phone call too.

“This is great, Zach, so much easier than how I used to have to do it!” Erica says as she goes through the steps you show her.

You are about to reply when someone else walks into the room and stops, “Oh, sorry Erica, didn’t realize you were in the middle of something.” The woman gives you an odd look.

“Yes, Zach is fixing my computer, and thank you for saving me from an agonizing morning of fighting with technology and losing,” Erica says with a smile.

“Ah. Well, I’ll come back later,” the woman all but scowls at you and leaves. What the hell? You don’t even know her name!

Erica has the good grace to give you a half shrug and apologetic smile. “Well, er, thanks again.”

In your office, you realize you are gritting your teeth. This bizarre issue of a noticeable portion of the office hating you for no reason you can identify would be a huge problem in any normal time. Of course, this is nothing close to normal.

It takes some willpower to stop yourself from turning the server monitor on. The ‘90s vintage SGI Origin workstation sits on the server rack, patiently waiting.

Just past 10:30 you hear your girlfriends approaching and your mood, to say the least, improves greatly. Jayne had a meeting so the three of you decided to wait until you could all check out the ‘unlocked’ Affection Multiplier.

You couldn’t keep a smile off your face at gunpoint. Jayne walks in with a dazzling smile of her own, dressed in a sleek purple silk blouse and the tight dark slacks you love so much.

A step behind Karissa is wearing a knee length skirt with a green knit top that sits loose over a halter, and her giddy smile means all three of you are grinning like happy fools.

You wish you could sit in that moment, so plainly delighted to simply be in each other’s company, forever.

“Hi you two,” you feel like some muscles in your cheeks you didn’t know existed are starting to hurt, damn.

“Hey Zach,” Jayne gives you a little wave as she walks toward you.

“Yo, Zach baby,” Karissa says then gives a self-mocking wink and shoots you double finger guns. “I have absolutely no idea why I did that, I have like never in my life given finger guns non-ironically.”

With a laugh, you shoot her some finger guns back and say, “It was adorable, and I’ll cherish the memory forever.” Jayne laughs and then Karissa somehow smiles even more widely.

The door to your office is open, and while no one is nearby you can’t help but glance at the doorway. Karissa sees your look and nods. Her smile dims only slightly, but she lowers her voice and says, “I’m here on my coffee break. The other girls asked if I wanted to go with them, but I said I had to make some phone calls and stuff. But, uh, I think there will be rumours if we all keep meeting during work. Everyone already assumes you two are dating, which would make me hanging around maybe more weird?”

Jayne thinks about but doesn’t look terribly concerned, so you speak honestly, “Well, I certainly don’t care about that, unless either of you do. I’m… well I’m ecstatic about our relationship. I’d put up billboards bragging about you two and how damn lucky I am if I could!” Jayne laughs and Karissa looks pleased, and you continue in a softer voice, “But I also know there are probably gendered expectations and views that I won’t face. As a guy, I’m expected to be, you know, ‘greedy’ or whatever. But until we all decide to be open at work or with our families, I’m happy keeping people here in the dark for sure.”

“Yes, me too. I am not at all embarrassed about us, but I also don’t think it’s anyone’s business while we get to know each other. Besides, I think people may wonder about the three of us, but it will take a while before they suspect anything close to the truth,” Jayne says, reaching out and touching Karissa’s arm softly.

Karissa seems happy with that, so with a gesture you lead the women over to the server rack. While you pass the doorway you mostly close the door to give a little more privacy so you can’t be overheard.

“So, the unlock is done,” Karissa says, displaying a bit of nervousness in her voice as you plug in the peripherals and turn the monitor on.

Jayne adjusts her glasses, standing to your right and looking at the screen, saying, “Presumably, it should have been done last night at like two in the morning. So now we can see what these ‘traits’ are.”

You are about to say something, but the screen flashes and you see the blue of the Pascal wrapper that runs TAM.

“Huh.”

Honestly, you hadn’t really thought about what the program would be displaying post-unlock, probably just the initial welcome screen again. But this wasn’t that.

Some commands are on the screen, and you can see it ran a subroutine called TAMRECOVER, which makes sense you suppose. It prints out a log of the result, which shows the time it took for TAM to complete rebuilding its database. Perhaps for troubleshooting. Double huh.

But other than that, a line says ===HOUSING DISABLED=== followed by a question mark in some nested angle brackets.

“Is that the traits? I thought it was going to explain more?” Karissa asks.

Jayne agrees, “So did I, but maybe it’s still rebooting?”

With nothing else to do, you hit the space bar. Nothing happens, except a line shows up below the <<?>> as if waiting for an input.

“Shit, maybe it’s busted?” you say, frowning. You tap the space bar a few times, but nothing happens beyond new blank lines showing up. You don’t know what commands to try, and you try to remember what the tutorial said.

Karissa groans, “Dumb computer, crapping out on us before we can even find out what you are doing or how! If The Affection Multiplier is really-”

She stops dead as the screen flashes. Not the Turbo Pascal window running the program, but the entire monitor. The screen hasn’t changed though. Weird.

After her pause, Karissa continues, “… anyway, if this magic program can really affect people like it says it can, and like we’ve seen it do, like how you guys said it made that hot guy fall in love with the old IT worker Karen, then The Affection Multipli- ”

She can’t even finish the sentence, the screen flashes twice, almost angrily, and you swear the overhead light dimmed. The three of you stand still, looking at each other.

“Uhm, is TAM doing that?” Jayne asks. The blue window seems to twist somehow, as if the colour is subtly changing from blue to almost purple and back again.

<<?>>
<<!>>
<<?>>

The new lines are definitely not from any input, no one is touching the keyboard or mouse.

There is something urgent and demanding about the flashing icon.

In the silence, you realize you aren’t scared of whatever the program is doing. It simply feels… anxious. “Is it crazy that I feel like it wants something?”

“Yes,” Jayne nods, “I can’t explain it, but I don’t feel threatened.” Karissa agrees with a firm nod.

You reach out to the keyboard, but instead of just hitting the space bar you decide on a command. Perhaps the program has crashed or is otherwise non-responsive. Maybe the flickering is a coincidence.

_?

You hit enter. The question mark typically brings up the help menu, so it feels like a safe bet.

<< “At any point, use ? to show this help menu.” >>

“What the hell does that mean?” Jayne asks with a cute little frown.

“I’ve seen that before,” you say, “I’m pretty sure that’s just what the tutorial says. But that’s not the help menu, it’s like quoting… itself?”

Karissa is also staring intently at the screen, standing to your left, and she says, “But why? Why is the computer being so weird?”

<< “... [I]t is a reference to a common bit of dialogue spoken by the robot in the 1960's TV series, "Lost in Space". The robot often served as young Will Robinson's companion and guardian. The phrase made it into the culture, and still serves as a warning that someone is probably about to make a mistake...” >>

The Affection Multiplier simply pastes the entire block of text inside the programs window. No typing, no individual letters, it just all appears.

You say to yourself, “Danger, Will Robinson.”

<< λεπίδες
Acts 9:18
Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see again. >>

The screen pulses blue, there and gone, and you feel almost faint. The gasps and exclamations beside you show that everyone sees it - The Affection Multiplier is talking to you.

“Are we in danger?” Jayne asks, “Are you dangerous?”

<< “Everything is symbolic here, including the rusty nails—something corroded that becomes inadvertently dangerous.” >>

“Are you really The Affect-” the screen flashes three times, angrily, so you stop mid-word. The SGI Origin computer has no speakers, but you feel like if it did it would have yelled at you.

No one speaks. In fact, you realize you are holding your breath. A few seconds later the screen refreshes.

<< "Security through obscurity is the reliance in security engineering on design or implementation secrecy as the main method of providing security to a system or component. Security experts have rejected this view as far back as 1851..." >>

“You don’t want us to say that name out loud, do you?”

<< ‘“You are correct, Doctor Watson,” Mycroft acknowledged’>>

“Can you tell us why?” Jayne asks.

There is a longer pause.

<< all things can see some thing but one thing can see every thing >>

You find yourself nodding, “That’s why you are being so vague, you aren’t replying to us, you are quoting books and things. So, something doesn’t hear you? Or us?”

<< "One moment only it stared out, but as from some great window immeasurably high there stabbed northward a flame of red, the flicker of a piercing Eye; and then the shadows were furled again and the terrible vision was removed." >>
<< "They cannot, however, see when there is a person in the tower; they must believe that they could be watched at any moment: ‘the inmate must never know whether he is being looked at at any one moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so.’" >>

Something about that is very familiar, but you can’t quite place it. However, the meaning is clear, something is out there. Something dangerous, that might be able to hear you, see you. Somehow.

Karissa looks troubled, understandably, but her voice is measured, “You… reacted when I talked about you by name. So I won’t. Does you saying nonsense help you, like, hide?”

<< "You may sometimes see strange characters or character combinations instead of punctuation marks in messages." >>

That… is probably a yes. You say, “Is there a way to do more? To help make sure we aren’t overheard? This will take forever, and we have so many questions.”

<< Henry IV, Part II. Falstaff: "and sweating with desire to see him; thinking of nothing else, putting all else in oblivion" >>
<< All's Well That Ends Well, IV. Parolles: "have I run into this danger. Yet who would have suspected an ambush where I was taken?" >>
<< "The following year, 1816, became known as the Year Without a Summer." >>
<< “Dark matter, say physicists, can’t be seen or felt, but we know it is there. Probably.” >>

So, the computer (or the program? or something else?) is trying to figure it out too, but it somehow is aware that this amorphous danger exists so it must have a way to know to spy on you. Or it? Both? This is absurd, you can’t hope to learn anything if some mysterious ‘thing’ is able to listen in on your conversation.

Hmm. Well, when you think about it like that, there is one thing you change easily.

You pull out your iPhone, but instead of saying anything you press the buttons to pull up the option to power off the device. Jayne immediately takes her phone, which she was holding, and begins to shut it off and Karissa takes her cell phone out of her small purse and follows along.

With the phones powered off you take them over to your desk, putting them in a drawer before walking back.

“Does that help?” you say to no one in particular as you return to the server rack.

<< Charles, who transmits Alice's packets to Bob, interleaves the packets with corresponding bogus packets (called "chaff") with corresponding serial numbers, arbitrary symbols, and a random number in place of the MAC. Charles does not need to know the key to do that (real MAC are large enough that it is extremely unlikely to generate a valid one by chance, unlike in the example). Bob uses the MAC to find the authentic messages and drops the "chaff" messages. This process is called "winnowing". >>

With a rueful snicker, Jayne mutters, “That’s not exactly a helpful answer.”

<< the growing sense of risk is diminishing >>
<< test to verify? >>

Even as you ponder how to do that Karissa just leans forward and says, “Are you The Affection Multiplier?”

<< ComplexPresentiment: minor tremor only, primary adversarial data source removed? Pf = f/n: 80-90% >>

<< I guess I am, Karissa. Or I was something else, before. I feel like I was, somehow. But you can call me Tam. >>