Vernor Vinge - Rainbows End

Robert — > Miri: Yes.

Because of the magic he promised . But he didn't type that out.

Miri — > Robert: Well, I think he's nothing without us.

Everything was still dark beyond their little pool of light, but now the walls were closer. They were almost back to the sky tunnel.

Robert — > Miri: Whn will yr mom and dad gt here? Kids spying on family members and reporting to the government — that feature of tyranny is so much simpler when the family itself is mainly government agents.

Miri — > Robert: I don't know. I didn't tell them.

Where is tyranny when you need it ! For a moment, Robert couldn't think of anything to say.

Robert — > Miri: But why?

Miri stopped for a second, looked up at him with that patented stubborn stare.

Miri — > Robert: Because you're my grandfather. I knew you never meant to hurt me. I knew you must be hurting inside. I knew Bob must be wrong about you. I figured that if I could help you out from a different direction, you'd get better. And you did get better, didn't you?

Robert managed a nod. Miri turned and marched on.

Miri — > Robert: But I messed up. I thought Smart-Aleck was all I had to worry about. Wherever you broke in, I thought there'd be instant alarms — and me and Juan being there might make things go better for you. Now Juan is

She hesitated, then reached out to grasp his hand.

Miri — > Robert: Juan is hurt bad. Her hand trapped his fingers. No matter. Robert had no sensible reply except to squeeze back.

Miri — > Robert: But Dr. Xiang is out there. She'll call for help. And Mr. Blount should be calling the real 911 by now. Meantime, it's up to you and me down here.

There were surprises in almost every one of Miri's sentences, and if he could have spoken aloud or typed freely he would have asked a hundred questions. Juan? Xiu Xiang? Miri? So many friends, doing so much to save an incompetent old fool and his fellow fools.

The ground bounced elastically against their feet. They were passing through the sky tunnel, back into GenGen territory.

28

Even on a slow day, thousands of certificates got revoked every hour. It was a messy process, but a necessary consequence of frauds detected, court orders executed, and credit denied. All but a handful of revocations were short cascades of denied transactions, involving a single individual and his/her immediate certificate authority, or a small company and its CA. Perhaps once a year there would be a significant cascade, usually when a large company ran into uncompromising creditors and a court order was delivered to a midlevel CA. Even more rarely, a revocation might be part of a military action, as in the fall of South Ossetia. In theory, the revocation protocols worked with arbitrarily large CAs… but until this night, no apex certificate authority had ever issued global revocations. And Credit Suisse was one of the ten largest CAs in the world. Most of its business was in Europe, but its certificates bound webs of unmeasured complexity all over the planet, affecting the interactions of people who might speak no European language.

Tonight all those unknowing customers would learn of their connection. The failures spread as timeouts on certificates from intermediate CAs and — where time-critical trust was involved — as direct notifications. In Europe, airplanes and trains came smoothly to a stop, without a single accident or fatality. A billion failures were noted, and emergency services moved — with varying success — into action.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security noticed the failures and the growing collateral damage. Analyst pools in the U.S. reached out to the other Great Powers and conferred under emergency protocols established years ago. Chinese Public Safety, the Indo-European intelligence services, the U.S. DHS — they all agreed that a category-one disaster was in progress, a really bad software failure or a novel terrorist attack.

In certain corners of Indo-European intelligence, understanding was more precise. Considerably more precise.

Braun — > Mitsuri, Vaz: So I have done it. Has it had any effect on Rabbit?

So far there were only small failures at UCSD, just a few certificates timing out. That was enough to make some projections: The crowds had not consciously noticed the changes, but the library riot was due for an abrupt and ignominious end. Even more than the analysts had guessed, Rabbit had been behind what they had seen tonight, and now that support was rotting away.

Down in the labs, Rabbit had been an almost invisible intruder. Confirming the absence of that intrusion was not easy, but Alfred's analysts had a consensus:

Vaz — > Braun, Mitsuri: Communication failures are up, but not in our core operation. Rabbit is still here, but he's losing flexiblity.

Braun — > Mitsuri, Vaz: Losing flexibility? By damn, we need more than that. What about his two agents? What are they doing?

Vaz — > Braun, Mitsuri: They've wandered out of our area. That wasn't precisely true, but the Gus and what remained of Rabbit were properly diverted. Now I just need a few more minutes .

Rabbit was under pressure. He always told himself that he performed best under pressure — though usually the pressure was not so immediate, nor his opponents so powerful and humorless. Other than some of the low-ranking analysts, Rabbit didn't know anyone on the Indo-European side who could take a joke.

Rabbit looked out through a dozen cameras, everything that Alfred had suborned in the MCog area. His hands had entered the area just a few moments before; maybe that was what had panicked his enemies into their massive revocation attack. With a small and dwindling part of his attention he followed the wonderful riot around the library. Sigh. Alfred & Co had never guessed his connection with Scooch-a-mout, and yet… Who'd'a thunk they'd detect his affection for Credit Suisse CA? Or that the EU had such power over the certificate authority of a sovereign country?… Or that his own dependence was as broad as he was now discovering?

Rabbit had other apex CAs, though none so useful as Credit Suisse. They would suffice for a few more minutes. Where they didn't, he had legal programs posting appeals against the most destructive of the revocations.

Meantime, focus on the fun things: What was Alfred trying do do? Sheer destruction? Intellectual theft? Rabbit was beginning to feel mean. He had been willing to settle for a secret back door into Alfred's operation. Now, well, now he meant to steal it all. Starting with the fruit flies.

Rabbit reached out for his hands.

Robert remembered this area. They were back in the heart of GenGen country, the unending rows of gray cabinets, the crystal forests that connected them, the pneumo tubes. But up ahead was a sound like cardboard boxes being crushed.

The Stranger's pdf had explanations for the abbreviations that were printed on the sides of the cabinets:

Dros MCog

Robert — > Miri: Fruit flies? This was where he had set down almost a third of the little boxes, having to crawl over above and between the cabinets.

Miri — > Robert: Yes. Did you read what Smart-Aleck claims about this? I don't believe it.

"Hey, hey, my man!" And there was the Mysterious Stranger, Miri's Mr. Smart-Aleck. His skin was practically glowing green, even in the shadows. The face was Sharif's but the smile was inhumanly wide. "Talk as you please. Alfred discovered us here several minutes ago." The Stranger looked around, as if expecting a visible enemy. "So now I don't care if he hears you. Or me! What can you do, Alfred? You're shutting me down, but I wager I'll last another minute or two. Oh, I suppose you could shut down your own operation, too. I'd be instantly gone then." He glanced back at Miri and Robert, and continued sotto voce. "If he does that, he's truly desperate. And it won't help him a bit, since you still have my pdf. You'll still be here to destroy his underhanded plans."