What if you had the power of the world in your fingertips? The knowledge of the people around you, the knowledge of those from afar? What if you were able to tell where people were and would be at the flick of a wrist? Maybe narrow a person's fatal flaw by the most menial of hobbies? Not only is this possible, but this was years ago.
The Internet at its basest form is a superhighway. Moments at a time, information is sent to and fro on roads shared by thousands, millions of people left and right. All of this data is entered by the very ones that use it, or those that need a library to fit the palm of their hand. Some even fooled the world to enter their most personal of information in the name of social communication. Such trust could be depicted as the a next step in human potential or the greatest con in existence.
Many users in the network have no idea how to work the very thing they use. Yet, they blissfully inform whoever will read about their location, their flaws, their troubles, all of this. Highs. Lows. Plans on reaching a middle ground. Ignoring the fact that billions could access this information, this free information.
But what would one use it for? People can be like most: discarding it as another fish in the sea of mediocrity, others can use it as mildly stimulating entertainment. But what about those who aren't like the others? The ones that can read the Greek from the code and script behind the scenes? There are bad guys in this world, those that abandoned the beaten path for something quick, something sinister. Something in which they use this platform as an opportunity to exploit their edge they have over the rest of the world. This is the introduction of one of those very people.
If you saw this person, he would be like one of the others. Plain, austere, unremarkable. His features weren't striking, he wasn't going to be offered a modeling contract, but he wasn't repulsive or hideous. No, this man was just like the others, a person that could blend with any crowd. No piercings of any kind, no scarring, nothing that was distinguished. Just an ordinary guy. His clothing was just as regular, he had on a gray hooded sweatshirt with a baseball cap on his head. His denim jeans were a dark blue with some faded accents, but nothing too loud. He was sitting inside Cafe Ghost, his hand straddling a lukewarm green tea while he spoke to the waitress about his order. It was quick, a simple patty melt with some bacon inside the gooey sandwich. Smiles were exchanged, as necessary in the name of hospitality, and with that, she was off to continue her routine. The man gave a lasting gaze before returning to his cup, he took a sip of the drink and was pleasantly surprised of it still being as refreshing as when he first ordered it. But, back to business.
He set the cup down, sliding his hands in his sling bag to pull out an all black laptop. The color of it was matte, no labels of any kind, brand or sticker. Just a lid that was obviously customized for his kit. But looks didn't matter, he needed it for this job he could do on the go. What was this man's job? Let's just say he works at home. His home being wherever it needs to be, since he's always on the move. Said 'job' was a dicey one to say the least, one could only look at where this man previously lived throughout the years. Glasgow, Shibuya, Rio, Moscow, and now Essex. Why did he have to travel so much? How could he afford such means? Let's look into what he's doing to find out.
With the laptop open, the man placed a data free phone he pulled from his pocket and a USB cable to connect both devices. Startup took all of thirty seconds, thank God for SSDs, and with some clicks of some keys, multiple windows were open. There were pictures, documents, feeds even. All of this fed him the information he needed of this town. The man didn't like to be surprised, so why not learn about everything he could? The city was interesting, filled with opportunity and he had one job that suddenly popped from his E-Mail feed. How much info would the hacker receive from this guy? Open up the mail, not a lot. The usual. As the hacker read the entire contents of the message, taking all of the information in mass clusters to form perfectly coherent comprehension, he was aware of who this client was. They spoke earlier, though he didn't expect such a response so soon. The task wasn't hard, just good ol fashioned identity fraud. The man remembered the call, the client wanting this “b***h to fall from grace”, “pay for what she's done” and all that. He never asked what she “did”, nor did he care. There were plenty of reasons why he didn't ask questions. The first one being that it only complicated things. As long as you did what you were told, you could not be dragged into anything deeper. This was especially important for a guy that was fresh off of a plane, he needed this money to be as “clean” as possible for his foundation.
One of the hacker's rules was simple: give him as few contents of information as possible. Sending such precious data was a risk. A person of his profession knew this best. It would make clients skeptical at first, until they saw the world bend at the hacker's whims. This one was just as bright, only giving the hacker a name, and an obscure candid image of the mark.
Speaking of which, let's take care of that. Fill a line here, another there. Drag her image to some proprietary screen software and wait for the web search. One by one different pictures of the lady with the same kind of obscure angles would pop up, a decent face shot here and there. Add in the name, and we have a person!
Linda Anderson. Plus her address as well? Good. She had a phone number for the home but those were practically useless.
Now let's see if she's active in the mobile world. Skirting through securities of mobile networks was a breeze, same with scanning all of the Linda Andersons in the area. Though a generic name, he would eventually find the woman and with that her number. All of which would get him access to one tool that most would fail to realize the importance of, her front facing camera.
The hacker would copy the number and type in some magic to hop on Linda's camera feed. Things were going smoothly and there she was. The mark was staring at the phone, with not a care in the world. There were some small instances in her tone, but not of fear or paranoia. No, she was smiling. Snickering to herself, and with the messages she was typing, it was obvious why. Her texts were friendly, almost too friendly. Innuendos and flirty emoticons decorated a long chain of her input to this conversation to this unknown number. Curiosity started to rear its ugly head, so the hacker would hop on the phone of the text partner. Well, this was interesting, a strapping younger gentlemen that was tall and chiseled was on the other end. Both of them showing interest amongst each other. Beyond textual intercourse, they had some voice messages exchanged between each other as well. Plug in the ear bud, play the sounds, and bear witness to the confirmation of one's thoughts.
That was the second reason as to why the hacker never asked questions, he could get the answers himself. These people weren't the smartest in the world, so finding out how things worked was easy. With all of this data circulating in his mind, the evidence of the phones plus more information in Linda's bank account (plane tickets, masculine gifts), the hues of the intent were merging into quite the image. The client must be the husband of Linda, and he must've found out about the infidelity of his wife. Now, the client might've been angry enough to hire a hitman, but those guys were either too dirty or cops undercover. That's why the hacker was hired, people's lives can be taken digitally and the client knew this like all the others. Whatever would work for them, the hacker would let whatever moral code deal with that. At the very least, he knew his work was clean, untraceable, it was what almost gave him a clairvoyant aura to him. But, it was all a matter of using all of the technology around him.
Onto the job, snap a picture of the woman. A decent full frontal face shot, nice. Now send that to an image search to get more pictures of her while the hacker scans what cell tower is the woman using. Now, he had to work on locating the woman. Turning on the GPS would be the best thing, but they usually took too long for a job he wanted to get done right away. Besides, more information meant that he could keep track of her behavior to confirm actions. Better to have that than nothing. Besides, surveillance screening was more fun, underrated too. With the software creating a low res 3D face mesh, it made scanning all those spotty videos child's play. Now, he was not only aware of where she was, but the locaton of Anderson during this day, this week, and maybe part of previous months. Location was at a corporate building. With a couple of glances of her LinkedIn account and social network files, this was her job. Not only that, but Linda was on her lunch break, which was ending quite soon.
The client wanted this woman to pay, and one thing that he informed the hacker of was how hard she worked to get into her position at work. The woman was nearly next to the CEO when it came to business, and she had goals to take over the business. Besides this little devious slip up, the woman was fairly clean. No criminal record, immaculate credit, no points docked against her at work. Yes, she was a monument of cleanliness and order. Perhaps this was why she decided to cheat, the boredom of it all. It wasn't his place to wonder, but he could start chipping away at the foundation of the Anderson tower.
This was the time that the hacker believed that he was an assassin in his line of work. More information was surfacing, each keystroke added more hue to the picture of who this woman was. As this image was built, the man was becoming more aware of what he had to tear down. He couldn't go for the immediate kill, but instead go for a slow maneuver like poisoning. It'd take a while, but she would fall. First would come the symptoms. As the man went to her bank account, draining her assets and shredding her credit, he was thinking about how the lady would respond. She would probably hear the news from a bureau or at the very least start off with her investigating why her card was declined. Next off, she was paying off a car? Thanks to the money, she wouldn't have any money but let's say she was a couple of payments behind. Erase a couple of payment records and alert the car dealer...done. Decorating the police record was also basic, but it's time for the coup de grace.
The chef slid the patty melt over the serving table, yelling the order so the waitress can finish the deal. “Order up!”
The woman smirked at the chef, taking the plate on one hand before asking. “So, Carlos. What are you doing tonight?”
Carlos peeked over his shoulder to see his team working amongst themselves before leaning towards the waitress. A little personal break wouldn't hurt. “I'll probably hit up some of these parties. I hope some clubs will still be jumping.”
The waitress smiled even wider. “Yeah, but make sure you don't walk in with that grease spoon of an outfit on.” She gave the cook a small wink, “Tell me when you're off, I'll follow you up.”
With that, she walked towards the man that was typing up a couple of last keystrokes of his job. Right on time. The lady gave the smile that was donned like any part of her uniform as she served the sandwich. It looked like everything he wanted. The man cracked the laptop closed, moving it out of the way so the melt can get a better spotlight. As she left, the hacker went to work, a large bite was a small reward to himself. He would've continued, but he forgot to do one more thing. Time to open up the laptop one more time, Linda was about to make her way back into her office. The hacker knew that he wanted the dominos to fall and the turmoil to snowball into something sinister. Let's make that happen, going back into the mobile network. A small recorded video of the mark's sexual endeavors from the partner of the affair's phone, all about to be sent to every account in her job. Massive priority to her superiors.
Is it wrong to think of one's self as a god? Omniscient, omnipotent, all while sitting in a small diner this guy could turn any device into a Death Note or whatever he desired. It was all here, but this guy knew better. Gods were restricted to a certain role, gods were egotistical, gods were petty. This guy was none of this, he only interacted in the world that he knew the most. A practitioner of the Dream: he became whatever he wanted, and whatever he needed to be.
Today, he was going to dive into a patty melt while being responsible for a very possible suicide. All he knew, this was going to be delicious.
Send.
((Hopefully this makes sense. Kinda Frankensteined two ideas into one post.))
Location: Cafe Ghost
With: Everyone and no one at once.
Feeling: Hungry.
