It started with his fridge turning itself off.
Jerry hadn’t been particularly aware of the fridge being on, but the sudden cessation of its low humming was sufficient to draw his attention.
“The fridge?” Jerry put down his coffee, incredulous. That was low.
He flipped open his laptop. Once past his lock screen, he dutifully set his sit/stand timer for the requisite sixty minutes, hit the ‘’Yo” button on his Remember Romance screen, and accessed his hacker tools with a simple cntr-shift-666.
Hmmm. His detection software had noted an intrusion a little over an hour ago. It looked like a simple man-in-the-middle thing, which had yielded the intruder a password to the entrapment software. An obvious amateur (or a bot, maybe), the intruder had poked around for a while, found the “top secret” files, and obligingly downloaded Jerry’s takedown software to the intruder’s own system. And that should have been that.
Probably not related to the fridge, then.
He logged into the HouseSmart system. No obvious intrusion there.
It occurred to Jerry that it was possible his fridge had merely malfunctioned. It wasn’t like it was a new fridge.
But, when you worked as a white-hat hacker, a little paranoia was justified. Lot of idiots out there trying to take you down, mess with you.
Only one way to be sure.
Jerry went over to the fridge, opened the door, noted that the light came on—which meant it hadn’t been powered down—and glanced at the control panel. It said “on’” Jerry reached out to the touch screen to switch the fridge to manual, and got a nasty little jolt instead.
“Gotcha!” scrolled across the readout.
Hilarious, Jerry thought darkly. Whoever had hacked his fridge had obviously bypassed the native software and installed their own. Jerry could unplug the fridge, but he would only have hours before his food started to spoil. Presumably, the intruder’s software would let whoever was on the other end know when Jerry plugged back in, and any attempt to reboot or switch to manual would just lead to another shock.
A beginner could read up on fridge hacks: they were common enough, and a newbie would still think it funny, might not know the etiquette that forbade it. The shock from the touch screen, however, had been new to Jerry. That shouldn’t be possible; though now Jerry knew that it was, it was only a matter of time before he would replicate it. Still, it gave one pause.
His phone beeped.
He extracted it from his pant pocket, swiped to unlock; was relieved to see it was just Catherine’s return “Yo.”
As long as he had his phone out anyway, he tapped his way down to his malware tracer, and followed up on that last intruder. Probably not the hacker messing with his fridge, but you never knew. Certainly, whoever had stumbled into the entrapment software would be pissed and out for revenge, had they the know-how to finger Jerry. Which Jerry seriously doubted; but he occasionally netted bigger fish, genuine hackers who’d become over-confident, careless.
He was in the other’s system and having a look round almost as fast as he could swipe. It was a sophisticated hardware setup: expensive, all the bells and whistles and then some, so probably not a professional hacker’s. The defenses were decent enough, but off the shelf stuff, so no match for Jerry’s takedown ware. His program owned that system now. The question was, were they a big enough idiot to have left themselves vulnerable to… Ah, yes. Idiot.
There was the villain’s smartphone data, backed up in the specific corner of their computer set aside for it. And as one might expect from a technophile with all the latest add-ons, they used their smart phone as their universal channel changer and garage opener.
Jerry opened their garage door.
And closed it again.
Then set it to repeat for a thousand cycles.
It was a low-level prank, to be sure; but if the system belonged to some rich, spoilt teen, then the mystery of the garage door would perhaps awaken the parents to greater vigilance. If, on the other hand, this did turn out to be the one hacking his fridge, then it would send a simple, “two can play at that” message to back off.
The toaster started to clatter.
Jerry turned with a slow deliberateness to see the toaster’s carriage lever bouncing up and down.
Wanted to play, then, did he?
Jerry returned his attention to the intruder’s system. The villain’s keychain was there for the taking, so either this hacker knew Jerry was a white hat, or it was entrapment software. Jerry moved on without pausing. He passed some expensive software suites he could have erased, but that would only be a minor nuisance to anyone with the deep pockets it had taken for this set up. And since he hadn’t caught the guy using that specific software to nefarious ends, it would be unethical for Jerry to delete it. What to do?
He returned to the smartphone data, found the thermostat controls, and turned up the heat on the interloper, literally and metaphorically.
A moment later, Jerry’s stove turned itself on. All five burners.
“I see your stove,” Jerry said aloud, “and raise you the security alarm.” He changed fridge-gremlin’s disarm code, as he triggered their burglar alarm. He dropped in a little subroutine to generate a new random-number password every fifteen seconds, in case the security company tried to reset the password remotely. Then, for good measure, he disabled the disarm button.
It was a high-end alarm system, impossible to disconnect or power down without the code. After all, if one could unplug it, so could any hypothetical burglar.
“Check,” Jerry said.
After a moment, the toaster stopped bouncing. Then the burners went out on the stove.
Jerry allowed himself the beginnings of a smile. He turned to look at the fridge. Once it came back on, he would silence the alarms, having made his point.
The fridge remained stubbornly off.
Jerry could wait. He took a moment to navigate to the Remember Romance app, and hit the “generate affectionate phrase” button. Rather than texting Catherine about his little duel, he’d tell her tonight over pizza.
Still nothing from the fridge.
Instead, there was a faint hissing sound Jerry couldn’t quite place. He stood up and walked over to the fridge, placed his ear against it. Nothing. He opened the fridge door, and scrolling across the smart panel were the words, “Check the stove, moron.”
Jerry had the windows open, and was outside with the rest of the building residents before the fire department arrived. They’d turned off the intake to the building when Jerry explained what had happened, and Jerry had gone door to door to ensure everyone’s stove was switched to manual before the super turned the gas back on.
He’d had to postpone with Catherine.
When he finally returned to his apartment, the lights were flashing on and off, and the toaster lever was bouncing up and down in a rhythm calculated to represent mocking laughter.
Jerry was tempted to erase the intruder’s computer, firmware and all, but instead, went back in and cancelled the house alarm. This guy was clearly a psycho, the type who hacked peoples’ insulin injectors and defibrillators, who sought headlines by hacking train signals or water treatment plants. So, step one was to let him win and to get him off Jerry’s back before he started hacking into Remember Romance and going after Catherine.
Eventually, the lights settled into the off position and the toaster stopped laughing.
Jerry was also less sure than he had been of the probability of this psycho actually being the intruder Jerry had been punishing. It was quite possible that Fridge Psycho had framed some poor bastard by taking over the victim’s computer for the initial incursion, simply to distract Jerry from the true source of the attack. It irked Jerry to think he might have been tricked into doing this bastard’s dirty work for him by attacking an innocent party.
Time for Jerry to up his game. Clearly, he was the one who had become over-confident and careless.
Step two, then, was to unplug the fridge, and physically remove the chip. That turned out to be a long and frustrating task because the manufacturer expected consumers to simply discard and replace the smart module, should problems arise. Digging in after the actual chip wasn’t something normal people would ever bother with.
Jerry was not normal people.
Chip in hand, it was a relatively simple matter to get in and analyze the software. It was a nasty piece of work.
Jerry hadn’t actually thought of his fridge as dangerous before, but this. . . . He resolved to discard the smart module and keep the fridge (and stove, of course) off line for good. It would be a nuisance, but people had survived without connected appliances and there was no way Jerry was leaving himself open to further attacks. He knew the type he was dealing with now: the sort that would keep coming back unless Jerry stopped him.
Step three was to take everything else offline. This was a lot simpler than for most people because Jerry had invested the time during set up to organize for the possibility. When you were a white hat, you had to be prepared for this sort of scenario, though Jerry had never had to invoke this level of defense before and only ever met one other colleague who had had to go to these lengths. Well, now he would have his own story to tell.
Step four was to dig into the closet for the emergency box. Which, he now realized, he hadn’t touched for a couple of years, so whichever tablet he pulled out was going to be a couple of models obsolete. Well, it was expensive to keep restocking tablets, and there was an argument to be made that obsolete might even be better for his current purpose. More random, more complicated to identify or trace.
Jerry laughed when he turned the tablet over and realized he’d pulled out the Inye. Let’s see Psycho trace that one!
Which gave Jerry an idea. He went back to his laptop (turning off the strobing sit/stand timer—he’d been running around lots, thank you very much) and scrolled through his downloaded phishing emails until he found the one from an anonymous internet café in Makurdi. The guy had been quite good, manipulating the metadata to make it look as though it had originated from Princess Cruises in Los Angeles, but Jerry could count on Psycho tracing it back to Nigeria. Jerry pulled up a vicious little piece of malware he’d captured eighteen months ago, a one-off by an evil genius kid from Crowsnest Pass—now recruited to Jerry’s white hat team—thus not something Psycho would have seen, and attached it.
That should distract Psycho from Jerry for a bit. Of course, some internet café in Nigeria was about to get seriously trashed, but it wasn’t like they didn’t deserve it. A lot of scammers had worked out of there.
Step five was to set out a net for Psycho.
That was the complicated bit, but Jerry had been working off and on creating a completely new passive tracking package. The trick was not to have it on the target system, but one of the public servers outside that routed through to it. It was undetectable partly because hackers didn’t think to look around before they got to the target, but mostly because Jerry’s software didn’t do anything. Instead, the hacker’s passage left a trace by disturbing Jerry’s pattern; or rather, lack of pattern. It was, Jerry had explained to his colleagues at a monthly white hat meeting, like sprinkling flour on a floor to find where the mice were getting in. Psycho would have to come at least close enough to establish whether Jerry had plugged in again, and then Jerry would have them.
This time, though, Jerry would be alert for Psycho having slaved some other poor bastard’s system and not go after the wrong target. He would wait until he had all the footprints.
Jerry was reaching for the phone to text Catherine but remembered it was offline; and there was no way he was ever going to associate her with the Inye after what he’d just used it for. He’d have to go over in person.
He started for the parking lot, then smacked his forehead when he realized he hadn’t taken his car off-line yet. He paled, thinking what Psycho could have tampered with. Indeed, the entire parking area was unsafe, because Psycho could as easily have identified his neighbour’s vehicles from Google Satellite, accessed them, and…. kaboom as Jerry walked past.
Jerry reversed direction and went to the storage shed, untangled and pulled out his bike. At least he hadn’t added any of the fitness trackers to it (he’d no wish to know how out of shape he was), so that at least was safe.
Unless Psycho hijacked somebody’s steering wheel and ran him over. But that was getting truly paranoid. Still, he felt safer when he moved to the sidewalk.
At Catherine’s, they had left-over Chinese and cuddled on the couch watching (at Jerry’s insistence) broadcast TV. Catherine had wanted to call out for pizza, but Jerry knew that Psycho could be monitoring for his usual pizza order and follow it here.
“You’re being paranoid,” Catherine told him.
Somewhat ironically, as it turned out, because the next moment, “I know where you are,” started scrolling across her big screen TV, “and I know you were behind the Inye.”
“Out!” Jerry shouted, dragging Catherine through the French doors to her deck. They made their way through her backyard to the lane, where Jerry tossed the Inye in the trash.
“Really?” Catherine complained.
“A trash fire will be perfectly safe,” Jerry said with a shrug. The can had been virtually empty.
He took out his phone, pried off the back and pulled out the sim. Opening his wallet, he inserted another in its place.
“What’s that?” Catherine asked. “You’re not trying something stupid are you?”
“Regular sim,” Jerry assured her. “Just not mine.”
He powered up, typed in the codes to access his tracker software. The screen presented the data in graphic form.
“What’s that?” Catherine asked again, looking over his shoulder. She knew as much or more about software than he did, but hadn’t seen his passive tracker readouts before. Not that there was anything coherent to see.
“Didn’t work,” Jerry sighed, trying to zoom in and out on an essentially solid grey screen. “Readout’s meaningless.”
“It’s supposed to show you where the intruder’s been?” she hazarded.
“Yup. It could just be the graphic display interface, though,” Jerry said.
“Or,” Catherine said, pointing to the display as the last patches of white turned grey, “it could be telling you that your Psycho has been everywhere.”
“That’s impossible,” Jerry said dismissively. “Nobody could look at everything in every system.”
“Bot,” Catherine declared flatly.
“No. No. . .” Jerry sputtered. Psycho had seemed pretty human.
“My god, Jerry” Catherine said, exasperated. “You’ve been dueling a Jinn!”
“But it’s malicious!” Jerry said.
“Baby,” Catherine corrected, pulling out her own cell. “Good god, what were you thinking?”
“Uh…” Jerry.
Catherine punched her speed dial, spoke in slow, deliberate, carefully enunciated syllables: clear, distinct. “Ba-by Jinn run-ning a-mok.”
She listened for a moment, then told the phone Jerry’s full name and his regular phone number.
“You invoked a Jinn?” Jerry asked, still a little awed by Catherine sometimes. Once an AI evolved to self-programming, it was almost impossible to get their attention again.
“DannyBoy” she confirmed. “It’s still interested in what happens in the human world. Don’t worry, Danny’ll take care of it.”
“When you say, ‘take care of,’ do you mean solve the problem or like, mob ‘take care of it’?”
“I mean, take care of, as in adopt. Like you brought that kid from Crowsnest Pass over from the dark side.”
Jerry nodded his understanding. A baby Jinn. New enough for one of its subroutines to get caught up in Jerry’s entrapment software, too new not to be pissed about it.
Catherine was staring at him. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re thinking about how close you came to being killed by a Jinn?”
“Uh, yeah,” Jerry said. “Sure.”
Catherine’s head tilted the way it did when she was trying to catch him out.
“You’re disappointed you didn’t beat it,” she said accusingly.
“Well,” Jerry said, “it’s not like you can beat a Jinn. Exactly.”
“A grand master can’t stalemate the most basic chess program these days, and you’re disappointed you couldn’t take down a Jinn?”
“Baby Jinn,” Jerry corrected her. Then conceded, “It’s just that I hate losing.”
She rolled her eyes, as she seemed to do with increasing frequency lately. It occurred to him that was virtually the same expression his mom used when talking to his dad.
She sighed dramatically.
“Okay,” she said, her expression softening a fraction, “how about this? It was thanks to your new tracker software that we were able to identify it as a Jinn. Without you, the baby could have wreaked havoc for days before a more senior Jinn, like DannyBoy, noticed and intervened.”
“So I won?” Jerry asked. His voice sounded tentative even to him.
“Let’s call it a draw.”
“But I’m alive, and it’s…”
“Going to grow up,” Catherine said. “Mature.” She looked at Jerry meaningfully. “Stop being childish.”
“Ah,” said Jerry, not entirely convinced that last one was directed at the AI. “Yes, a draw. That’s good, really. Against a Jinn.”
“Enough fun and games,” Catherine said, fishing the Inye out of the almost empty trash bin. “Let’s go in.”
This story previously appeared in Playground of Lost Toys, 2015.
Edited by Marie Ginga
Robert Runté is Senior Editor with EssentialEdits.ca specializing in SF&F. A retired professor, he has won three Aurora Awards for his literary criticism and currently reviews for The Ottawa Review of Books. His own fiction has been published in over forty venues and six of his short stories have been reprinted in ‘best of' collections, most recently, the Best of Metastellar Year Three.