ARC OF ANGELS
by zeroaltitude
for DefCon 22

=1=

2076-11-01T22:00:03.8675309Z
Transcript ID: 0102030508132134
Date range of target event: 2022-08-08 -- 2022-08-14
Machine intelligence: Exoneuros systems v10.0.2-0d1e6c3a9f-so-0b4a3d2

The following summary of events surrounding DefCon 30 was produced by machine intelligence to facilitate review of important historical events leading up to the Information Wars of the late 20's.  To offer inferences into unknowns, the MI used was set to "storytelling mode with factual restriction to recorded data," margin-of-error +/-0.05.  Artistic liberties mode: proto-Zeraus, fill-in-the-blank.

Data was obtained during the date range above from the following sources: optical (intercam, CCTV, comm camera passive/active.covert, traffic cam, LE vehicle-mounted, ATM camera passive/active.covert, ...), audible (CCTV+audio, phone microphone passive/active.covert, LE vehicle-mounted, ATM+audio, comm conversation passive/active.covert l-line+cellular, ...), digitally transcribed (HTTP/S-decrypted, passive/active scan: search engine, VOIP plain/decrypted, SMTP/S-decrypted, firmware/OpenFirmeware/onchip/keylogger Intel v11, 12, 13, 14.x, on-disk archive clone, ...), satellite: friendly/non-friendly, ... [798 source classes omitted; detail at http://bit.ly/1oL0FBc].  Access to this information was provided by -CLASSIFIED-.  Accuracy estimated at margin-of-error +/-0.0001.

Completeness/invasiveness level for data retrieval was set to maximum (255) [public, private, private-illegal, LE, government, government-illegal, government-foreign, government-foreign-illegal, classified, secret, top-secret, NTK, undocumented, --all--].

Direct queries to noadmin@openlyhostile.net.

=2=

David hardly noticed the pungent smell of solder that pervaded the dimly lit basement workspace.  His father had only partially finished the rooms under the newly constructed portion of the house, leaving them perfectly suited for tinkering and experiments that might not work out exactly as planned.  Lights from screens and LEDs threw cold shadows against concrete and exposed wood and the chill, dank air raised small goose bumps on his exposed forearms.  What had grabbed David's attention was an unusual line of text on his large computer monitor.  One of his terminal windows appeared to have regurgitated something unexpected:

<gabriel satellite 1:~> $ aHR0cDov L3dlYi1h cmMuczMt d2Vic2l0 ZS11cy1l YXN0LTEu YW1hem9u YXdzLmNv bS9ncm9j ZXJ5Lmh0 bWw=

Garbled output was nothing new -- runaway processes and loggers gone wild spewing binary output straight to stdout were normal.  But in this case, David simply wasn't running any jobs on Gabriel.

The hum of fans and the faint chittering of old mechanical hard drives were punctuated by the squeak of David's chair as he shifted to move closer to the green-on-black text.  His lips pulled down in a thoughtful frown as he reached to the side, fumbling for his Opulon Gazes.  A pair of 20-sided dice clicked and skittered against the concrete floor as David's hand found the carbon fiber frames of the highly customized glasses.  This pair was the most recent version of the augmented reality lenses and had cost him all of his saved up consulting money and a great deal more than that: at least two birthdays worth of promised presents and a fair bit of personal pride left behind as he begged his father to make up the difference.  Even then, were it not for the fact that his dad was a sympathetic gadget freak himself, he would have had no chance.

This pair of OGs was unlike any other.  David had modified the left temple which now sported a small, carefully designed extension box the size of a quarter that hung almost like an earring from the very end of the temple cover by a tiny but immensely strong wire.  It housed 2ZB of additional storage, an sFPGA for on-the-fly custom hardware emulation, and a secondary CPU and ran a surprisingly powerful and efficient software-defined radio of David's own design whose mothlike antennae fanned out in wispy strands.  The firmware for the device, which David had also written from scratch, allowed his OGs to offload processing and external connectivity requests to small computer that was sewn into a pocket in the David's backpack.  It rested near his feet, leaning against an inductive charger that topped off Gabriel, the little machine's hostname.

The frames slid onto David's face, still warm from their own charging cycle.  Several notification icons were visible, blinking and rippling in glowing blues and reds in the periphery of his vision.  But he focused on the strange output and whispered, "Base-sixty-four-decode."  In an instant, another line of text was visible, superimposed on the first.

<gabriel satellite 1:~> $ your presence is requested at the arc of angels

"What the..."

The sudden musical sound of Cassie Ventura's "Celestial" nearly caused him to slip out of his chair as it echoed from both his earpiece and the speakers at his makeshift plywood desk, a new blinking call icon appearing at the top right of his visual field.  "Answer."

Tatiana's tanned face, framed in the dull blue and white miasma of the Los Angeles sky, beamed at him from a point in his vision that seemed only a few feet away.  "Are you ready for this?" she asked, her voice oozing excitement.  David's breath caught in his throat.

"Please tell me you mean..."

"Uh huh!" she interrupted, the image of her face wobbling across his lenses as she bounced and skipped, looking down at the sleek band of translucent plastic around her wrist that was at the moment operating as a camera.  "I'm coming with you to DefCon 30!"

The joy on her face, spreading her lips wide across her straight, white teeth, felt to David like a gentle squeeze directly on his heart.

"Wow."  David took a deeper breath and let it out in a long sigh.  "Can you come over tonight to game?"

Tatiana's smile widened and her eyes drifted down as she looked anywhere but directly at her wristband.  "I think so," she answered quietly.

"How did you get your mom to let you go?"  The strange message from his computer had faded behind Tatiana's window, but he could still see the lettering, almost like an embossing over the video stream.

Her smile froze and David could see tension springing into her neck and shoulders.  "I don't want to..." she started, the pitch of her voice rising.  The subject of her family was one that he should have known to avoid.  He had been her best friend for almost their entire lives; he knew her better than any person alive.  And still he knew nothing about her family, other than that the only feelings and emotions she associated with them were fear and anger.

"Sorry."

"So listen," she continued, suddenly chipper again, "I was thinking that I might get a Laser Etch, like on my eyelids or something.  But instead of normal ink, I have been reading about an experimental smart-LED-infused formula.  Wouldn't that be amazing?!  We could link it to your OGs and it would be so cool while we're in Vegas!  We can use some of your sensors, and I wrote a few biometrics programs I'd like to try."  Experimental.  David grinned -- the idea of having several thousand intelligent microscopic LEDs laser-injected into her eyelids was just the kind of crazy plan Tatiana always loved.  And like many of her ideas, this one was just too cool to dismiss solely on the basis of its insanity.

"That's gonna cost a small fortune," David objected halfheartedly, his own grin now bigger than hers.  In his head, he was already considering how to mount sensors in both of their clothing and then write a driver so that the LEDs could show little Tufte-style his/hers bio stats on her eyelids.  He wondered whether Tatiana experienced a sensation he knew all too well, whether her heartbeat raced when he was near.

"I'll find a way."  She always did.

=3=

"We're not far now," David's dad said, turning his head to look at them together in the back seat.  It felt strange to be in such a perfect, temperature and air-quality controlled environment while just outside the thin shell of the car, the world was lit up in a burning, bright yellowish orange of sand and sunlight.  Dust swirled in little eddies in the wind, 135-degree gusts whipping radiation-laced air over the dunes.  It had been 4 years since the meltdown at the Cedar City reactor, and though these deserts were considered safe with the right protective gear, it still made David's skin tingle to be out here.

Tatiana was curled against the car door, staring out the window at the endless expanse of yellow and brown, her breath making a small translucent spot against the glass.  Though he couldn't see them now, her eyelids were just slightly darker than before, as though she were wearing a subtle eye shadow.  He imagined sliding his hand into hers, her thin fingers winding through his and then grasping, their palms warm and moist together, and how it would feel to be leaning against her, pretending to appreciate the scenery.  But he knew that she couldn't stand to be touched, not by anyone.  Her phone rang again, a quiet chiming from the little half-moon device she wore tucked behind her left ear.  Her face went thoughtful and she tapped "ignore" on her bracelet.  She didn't disable the notification, though.  Ignore: the active voice of not caring, reserved for when that very act of disdain was one you cared about very much.

David returned to staring at the message he had up on his OGs.  It was the third time he had stumbled upon a code that seemed to be intended for him.

begin 644 taia.pl.bz2
M0EIH.3%!62936:D//J\``%??@``0=_^Y7\0@?L^_[__[,`&!%@0@(TI^IDQ3
MTRGJ/3)-/4T>IL4T/4>FIFFH>*$5/T"F\@C21FB8C(81@!#!&`@DD0*?E3Q0
M]3(9J'ZH:-```,F@!5SW"`B]5<>0H/DG[S<,2@BWUG0K;X*.)#A5S#H$LBF2
MIR#"`)I0B&-J-Q4]),-+'4L)@86`B4K3]B4Z^!"CQSA:.U"6"XJ)=!'`O+K(
M(O.I2=IQ5T$0>AXS(QH=D[83!/#,P-A+;ZZ:-I0>\;<.PS%=YMZ\3@A#9\E=
M&TDU$2JM=IM#+`4;E$IMM-$<E(N?53C;3L4=EFI$.W>!PHD04?"+1ENC6.HU
M5L*D9T$^R$IO,("4PKF2QRNY)MC.3)D),@%BTL>N@0<:S=20\(C/Y.!6D*J%
M!,SG"R9RH'-::MK.)1*A==$Z5"UC9$V"?3C9U6/K!U8-L]9VD%_<L,Y0@,<V
M8B(B`_&S\V)XJRPTIWDK%5H#)LR6_,BYC-PT;79.B&]>/24MO+*F<;\<DC1D
MKCP1,$U)FBY%E1RCT'FF1@8C3A>DI8K#7N#]:*5KZB$UHV&NI,7U/)%D`)\M
FS=4R$XC\#7VJ="=`<BV#@**'+5:(']H-)D^/^+N2*<*$A4AY]7@`
`

This one he had found in a garbled page in his e-textbook for linear algebra.  He had spent half a day disassembling the device and patching into the JTAG port so that he could examine the unencrypted memory.  Whoever had put this coded copy on his reader had performed an impressive hack.  David had downloaded the e-book directly from Amazon.  It was protected from tampering and copying by DRM encryption and a SHA-5 2048-bit hash.  There were no recorded timestamp changes to the material since its time of download.  Yet examining Tatiana's copy, he could see that the textbook was clearly different even though it sported the very same verification hash.

The code, it turned out, was a program written in a venerable programming language and it output another clue.  This one, however, also mentioned a date: 8/14/2022, the last day of DefCon 30.  The output wasn't terribly cryptic, but it presented a challenge of another kind:

"When Loamer brings the car door to the Scavenger Hunt table, you will be on a hunt of your own: get his quarter.  Bring the results 20220814."

David and Tatiana discussed this one repeatedly over the prior 12 hours.  She was convinced it was meant to be interpreted literally: Loamer would have a quarter somewhere on him at that exact time, and David needed to take it.  He had come at it as a metaphor over and over again, but in the end he grew convinced that she was right.  But how were they going to get that quarter?  First of all, how would they know when Loamer would bring the door?  Second, where would the quarter be?  In one of his pants pockets?  Which one?  And if they asked for the quarter and he said, "no," then how would they get it?

He was frequently distracted by Tatiana's warm presence, which he imagined he could feel through the chilly, conditioned air.  But he had hours to think about these problems while the hot asphalt sped by underneath them.

=4=

Las Vegas was a strange and wonderful place.  As you approached by car, buildings appeared in the distance, seemingly larger than human construction could ever be.  It was incongruous: there you were, on a dusty, barely maintained road with tumbleweeds blowing by, and less than five miles away, a glittering, pulsing explosion of lights and glass and clean steel sprouted from the arid ground like a silicon and iron beast roused from its slumber by the lusts of humankind.  The need for sex, for love, for adventure, learning, exploration and self-discovery -- all of them concentrated in this unlikely location for reasons that no one who was there knew.  The city was magnetic north for the human id.

The Rio had grown over the past decade, expanding across West Flamingo and Dean Martin Drive and even over the highway, gobbling up smaller properties and erecting a network of bridges and towers that competed with the Caesar Bellagio Pleasuredome to the East.  DefCon, too, had grown.  Over 25,000 people made the trip, many who had just attended Black Hat the week before, and many more who would stay on after DefCon for the after-conferences that had sprouted up.

Inside, the Rio continued to be darker, cooler, less gaudy and somehow just a little bit retro compared to other hotels and casinos right on the Strip.  Last year's model slot machines were organized in a circular area near the entrance, lined by storefronts that were a mix of clean, sleek fluorescent signage and tired, 90s-style dark wood punctuated with hand-written chalk-on-blackboard signs and hanging halogen bulbs.  Even at 3:30 in the morning, a thrumming, monotonous bass line vibrated through the open space, punctuated by sound effects of cash piles spilling onto the ground and throaty women's voices saying vaguely enticing things to no one in particular.

Both he and Tatiana were bleary-eyed as they made their way down the long, wide hallway that led to registration.  "Do you have everything set up?" Tatiana asked with a yawn, leaning and letting her shoulder and forehead press against the cool solidity of the wall.

"I think so," David answered, rubbing his eyes and mentally taking stock.  He had spent all of the previous evening working on a solution to the Loamer problem.  It was a shoestring hack -- literally.  One of the things he had packed for the trip was his book of circuit stickers: stickers with batteries, LEDs, GPS units, Wi-Fi and other useful electronics that could be assembled simply by sticking them on paper or bulletin boards or book covers to form real circuits.  Among the newer substrates for the electronics was a very durable, incredibly thin skin like substance.  Though the kit stickers were designed in sizes that were easy to use without having to do any real hacking on the materials themselves, the electronics in them were incredibly small.

With his OG's 256MP camera and Tatiana's steady hand, they were able to carefully isolate and snip out several useful components.  The critical core of his work was building an accurate, indoor positioning system using triangulation on the cellular MDMA teraband-100 system that was now standard for mobile devices.  By the time he had collapsed into bed, he had carved a groove into the bottom of one of his sneakers and added a simple delivery mechanism for the "Findinator-3000", a tiny, gooey ball of incredibly sticky electronics that would affix itself to Loamer's shoestring.  It would then connect to a program running on Gabriel that would alert him if Loamer's movements matched a specified pattern.  David was quite proud of this part of his makeshift system.  Since he could not detect whether Loamer would have a car door with him, and since people constantly visited the game area where the Scavenger Hunt booth was located, his program made a simple assumption: that Loamer would only have a car door with him if he left the building to go fetch it from where ever he had found or stored it previously, and then went straight for the Hunt booth.  It was a gamble, but it offered him a good chance of finding Loamer at the right moment.

It wasn't long before the number of people in the hallway grew, foot traffic increasing as the line got longer.  As it did, the volume increased, an excited buzz punctuated by cheerful shouts of "DefCon 30 is cancelled!"  Once through registration, blinking and buzzing badges in hand, they made their way to the still quiet hallways that led to the Wireless, Lock-picking and Robotics villages.  The villages wouldn't open until the following day, so it was a good place for them to curl up on the floor, head to head against the wall, and nap.  It would be a few hours before the 101 talks began.  That was where they would find Loamer.

=5=

There was some shouting and clapping and a general murmur of voices as people got up and collected their things and made to leave the DefCon 101 talk.  The speakers began making their way off the stage and were met by little crowds of people who vied for those moments to ask a question, say hello or just overhear what others were saying.  Loamer had started towards the nearest exit and was also waylaid by a small group of eager faces, young and old.

David could hardly stand; his heart was racing so fast.  He was comfortable with the risks involved in his world of bits and volts -- that world was familiar and it was one where he knew his abilities.  Here, though, he was going to have to actually try to bug a guy who would probably notice and throw him out on his ass.  DefCon: over, and for what?  Some encoded message from someone he didn't know, for some purpose he couldn't figure out?

"Dude, let's go," Tatiana urged, her eyes wide with impatience.  He took a deep breath and got to his feet.  She led the way, continuing to look over her shoulder with a scolding look as she coaxed him forward.  It didn't take them long to join the small group of people talking to Loamer near the stairs leading down from the stage.

"I just wanted to say, I'm really enjoying the work you're doing on the Panopticon gaming console, man -- the hardware is amazing!  And the games, man?"  The guy talking was tall and thin with greying brown hair and aluminum rimmed OGs.  Loamer smiled and nodded.  "Thanks!  It has been crazy over at Goo lately.  So much cool stuff happening."

To David's surprise, the conversation between Loamer and this group of people who were mostly new to DefCon was quite natural.  If he had been here just to listen, he might have been able to relax and enjoy the moment.

Tatiana's sharp poke in the rib brought him back to the task at hand.  But he couldn't do it.  He just couldn't make himself take the four or five steps that would have put him right next to Loamer.  The little group thinned, opportunity quickly fading.  With an exasperated sigh, Tatiana stepped forward, tugging David firmly with her, and smiled at Loamer.  "Hi!  You mentioned that there are lots of people at DefCon who might be looking for people to hire, or people to consult, or whatever.  I do a lot of bioinformatics and stuff, but I don't know how to find out who's looking for what.  How do people find each other here?"

Loamer nodded and started to answer, and that was when it happened.  Tatiana brought her knee behind David's and with a seemingly innocently shift of her weight, caused him to stumble forward.  Had he been expecting it, he could have caught himself.  As it was, he lurched forward and had to reach out to not fall, one hand on Loamer's forearm and one on Tatiana's shoulder.  He accidentally stepped on Loamer's foot, and that was when realization dawned on him.  Hurrying, he slipped his hand from Tatiana's shoulder and pressed against the small device in his left pants pocket.  He felt a satisfying "click" from his shoe.

Righting himself and apologizing, his face bright red and the moist feeling of sweat at his hairline, David looked up at Loamer, expecting to see irritation or worse, suspicion.  To his surprise, the man with the bright red Mohawk was smirking, his eyes squinting in something like bemused respect.  Without a word, Loamer held out one hand with his fingers in a "V" shape, pointing downward.  Just as quickly, he nodded at David and Tatiana briskly and left, leaving the two staring at each other with mutual looks of admonishment and excitement.

=6=

"Yellow alert: ad hoc trigger 4 pulled with confidence 0.68."

"Damn it," David whispered.  His father and Tatiana both turned towards him with quizzical expressions.

They were sitting at the noodle place near the entrance of the Rio with bowls of steaming vegetables and rice.  The smell of ginger and curry was almost cloying in the crowded seating area.  Many of the other people that came late to avoid the crowds that had shown up at noon were wearing the telltale blinking rectangles around their necks.  There was already speculation circulating that that year's badges were broadcasting some kind of message that could only be decoded when there were sufficiently many badges in a small area, prompting a flurry of plans for trying to fit as many people as possible in one of the party rooms later that evening.

"What is it David?"  His father tilted his head and leaned in closer.

"Loamer went near the entrance to the loading dock and is on his way to the game room already!"  It had only been a couple of hours since he and Tatiana had managed to tag him, and David had been hoping for more time to consider how he was going to get the quarter.

"Well, that's good, isn't it?  Once you get the quarter, you'll have more time to puzzle through what it signifies."  Sometimes his father's calm could be incredibly annoying.

"But how am I going to do that!?" David snapped back, openly exasperated.  "I don't know where it is, and I don't have any way to get it from him even if I did know!"

His father paused and furrowed his brow, nodding.  Tatiana fidgeted nervously, looking over her shoulder out towards the slot machines.  "I think," his father continued slowly, "that the Key to most Human Puzzles is Misdirection."  Seeing David's mystified look, he smiled.  "Follow me," he said.

David's frustration wasn't immediately quelled, but now he was curious, too.  They walked the long way back towards the conference area in silence.  He could see that Tatiana was nervous -- her eyelids were a vibrant pink and a blue line zigzagged across at intervals showing her heartbeat.  His OGs tracked Loamer's own progress; they had only a few minutes before he would make it to the booth.  Outside one of the gift shops, David's dad asked them to wait a moment and soon emerged carrying a bottle of tequila and two shot glasses.

They reached the game room at about the same time as Loamer, who was carrying a generously dented blue hatch door.  David's heart raced -- he had only moments and no idea what to do.  His dad walked quickly across the large room, navigating between the small crowds that were already there signing up for games and socializing with people they knew.  Loamer leaned the door against the Hunt table and was talking to one of the people there -- a short, tan woman who had on what looked like swimmer's goggles and a wide, gold nose hoop.

"Sir, I exercise my right as a Knight of Sosaria to challenge you to a duel with the weapon of my choice."  David's dad slapped each glass down on the table with a sharp "thunk" and then produced the bottle of amber liquor, handing it to Loamer with a little bow.  The display had attracted several inquisitive looks.  No one was quite sure what was going on, Loamer included.  He took the bottle and looked at it appreciatively, then handed it back to David's father.  As it dawned on him that he was being challenged to a battle of knowledge and stamina, Loamer began to grin.

He turned and looked David's dad up and down, his expression wary.  "Toughest Jailer in Al'Taieu?"

"Love."

A nod.  "Night Stalker?"

"Intellivision."

An appreciative jump of the eyebrows.  "'Aiur is my home, my birthright and my destiny.'"

"Commander Protarus in The Return to Aiur, campaign 2763."

A long, thoughtful pause.  "I accept your challenge."

By now, a small crowd had formed around the two, and there were catcalls and whoops as they faced one another and each took a shot glass.  The woman behind the Hunt table came forward and opened the bottle of tequila, pouring each glass full to the rim.  Loamer smiled broadly.  "You're goin' down..."

"Res arcana."

What followed could only be described as the most epic gaming trivia challenge-cum-drinking game-cum-bragging and shaming battle that had taken place to date.  David and Tatiana looked on in awe.  David had never seen his dad in any other light than as a nerdy, somewhat academic older man who was a pretty good dad and overall soft-spoken guy.  Now he was the center of a growing crowd of cheering and hooting geeks from all walks of life, pounding shots of Patron when he missed a question but winning just as many points from his knowledgeable opponent.  It was almost enough to make David forget that he was here on a mission.

Unfortunately, it was impossible to get close to the competitors -- the crowd grew more raucous with each question, as though the alcohol were somehow affecting them as much as the participants.  David watched on with a rolling cycle of nervous energy and bemused awe as the two men grew drunker and drunker.  His frustration at being unable to make any obvious progress on getting the quarter traded places several times with his relief that Loamer was clearly not going anywhere any time soon.

The two competitors, having battled, consumed and taunted fiercely, were practically hugging an hour and fifteen minutes later when David's dad placed his hands on Loamer's shoulders and said in a slurred and overly loud and dramatic voice, "I concede!"  The crowd began to drift off, laughing and chatting and sharing messages and recordings.  David's dad waved David and Tatiana over.  "I want you to meet my son and his friend," he said, waving at the two of them.  Loamer made an indistinct, slurred greeting but gave no indication that he remembered running into them earlier in the day, though that didn't strike either of them as odd considering how obviously drunk he was.  Then, to David's amazement, his father gave him a much more sober grin and winked.

"Let's make sure we all get back up to our rooms, shall we?"  He gestured to David to get on the other side of Loamer and put one arm around Loamer's shoulders.  As David, slightly embarrassed, put his own arm behind him and linked it with his dad's, they stumbled to one side and then the other, causing them to step on each other's feet.  David looked down as he caught his balance and his eyes widened.  There, embedded in Loamer's shoelaces near where he had affixed the Findinator-3000, was a quarter.

Tatiana, who was watching them with open amusement, stopped giggling when she saw David's expression.  Her wristband buzzed and when she looked down, she saw a picture of the quarter in Loamer's shoelaces David had taken from his OGs.  Her head snapped up, her mouth an almost comical "O."  She tried to keep her voice from squeaking as she hurried forward.

"Uh, Loamer, your shoelaces are untied.  Let me get that for you before you fall and break your face."  She knelt down and tugged idly at the laces while slipping the quarter safely into her palm.  Patting his shoe she stood up and continued brightly, her eyes twinkling.  "All set!  Happy landings!"  As they stumbled down the hall, David turned to look at her again.  She waved the quarter excitedly in the air and gestured upwards -- they'd meet back in their room to work on the fresh puzzle.

=7=

David's dad was passed out in his bed in the adjoining room of the little suite.  Tatiana had been examining the quarter for almost a half an hour while David watched and tried to come up with helpful suggestions.  They had already tested its weight and displacement and found it to be a match for a normal quarter.  They looked at it magnified in the OGs, tapped it gently and examined the pitch of the sound it made and even shaved off a tiny sliver and found the guy who had brought a micro-mass spectrometer to the Con and paid for a test.  75% copper and 25% nickel, just as it should have been.

Tatiana looked at David, exasperated.  "It's just a frickin' quarter!"

David leaned forward and rested his head in his hands.  They had been at this for hours with nothing to show for it but empty stomachs and a scuffed quarter.  Tatiana glanced over and noticed his frustration.  She bit her lip thoughtfully, struggling with something, as though she were trying to decide what to do.  Then she got up and moved to sit near David.  He turned towards her with a curious expression, as she was sitting closer than she normally would.  He could feel the warmth of her thigh so close to his own although they were not touching.

"Hey," she said, a nervous smile playing on her lips.  David turned to face Tatiana fully, now baffled by her strange behavior.  He opened his mouth to speak, but she spoke first.  "Can we try something different?"  The combination of her smile and her obvious distress made him pause.  He nodded slowly.

She swallowed with difficulty and reached up behind her neck, her hands already trembling slightly, and undid her necklace, with its embedded biosensors and particulate composition recorder.  Then, the shaking in her hands first increasing then steadying, she leaned over and very gently slid off David's OGs.  Reaching carefully behind his ears, she slid off one and then the other of his earpieces, her fingers gently brushing the edge of his ear, sending tingles down his spine.  It was David's turn to feel a sudden dryness in his throat.  Tatiana slid the plastic bands off her wrists and they both worked off their shoes.  Their connections to the wider world outside the hotel room were severed, and it seemed very quiet all of a sudden.

"What are we looking for?" Tatiana asked softly, and when David gave her a puzzled look, she nodded, urging him to respond.

"We're looking for... a clue, a code, something that will help us learn something about what we're supposed to do."

"What kind of clue?  Do we know what it might be?" she continued.

"A picture?  Words?  A recording?  Maybe a cipher."

"And all we have is a quarter."  Tatiana's voice trailed off as she thought.  "A quarter we know to just be a quarter."

"So what's special about a quarter?" David asked, smiling a little and looking into her eyes for the first time since she had come to sit so close.  "What is its nature?  Is there anything special about it?"

Tatiana paused.  "Well, it's a copper core, a nickel and copper shell.  It's produced by a government and has etchings on its front and back, and along its rim.  But David, we've looked at it endlessly!  There's nothing special etched..."

"I know, I know," he responded, lips curling in a frown.

"Could there be anything special about copper?  About nickel?  About the things depicted on the faces of the quarter?  Maybe something in the symbolism of the eagle..." she offered, but then looked doubtful.

"Well, the faces are iconic -- they represent people, events and symbols having to do with the formation of our country.  And copper is... well, it's a good conductor, but..."  David frowned and hit the arm of the sofa with his hand.  Then his eyes widened.  His head jerked up and he looked at Tatiana with sudden excitement.  "Oh my god," he whispered.

"What?" Tatiana replied, her own voice rising.

"Nickel!  Tatiana, nickel!  It's one of only a few metals that are magnetic at room temperature!"

Tatiana looked at him in confusion and then it dawned on her.  "Holy hell," she said, grabbing his hands and causing his heart to skip beats for yet another reason.  "You're amazing!" she offered, causing him to flush instantly red.

"Oh, stop," he whispered.

"How are we going to read it?"

"Well, if we get a hyperfine iron dust, we can clean off the surface of the quarter very carefully and then blow the dust over it.  My OGs should have enough magnification that we can read the magnetically aligned portions as long as the letters are at least, say, 1500-2000 nanometers tall."

"Where are we going to get iron dust?"

"There's got to be an electrode welder or powder coating shop in Vegas somewhere.  We don't need much -- just a few grams in case we make a mistake."

"Let's go -- we don't know how many more clues we need to find before Sunday!"

They found a shop that was still open and hurried out.  By the time they got back, the sun was setting, deep red and orange rays emanating from the bright glow of the Western horizon, seeming to set afire the few clouds that drifted overhead.

They tried several different methods of getting the dust applied in just the right way to be able to read the message embedded in aligned nickel molecules on the surface of the quarter.  It was completely dark by the time they had the next code.

pQqglWQ8lUSbOAfMDGQKYRz/MR++BTGWRklQ5q8CxCK8qOpB+4TuThwLvP7LFhMtFKHpC7FfwdFR3EM8thA2EHqaSKC3snn14fpv+kWCMWVIu8yY3sT2wNdV+Eygu0HDcTu+6wpok4BbeI/CugixIUmc2ayKFee4Jaw75ZC6RWoqamKwYeNN7QFZjcoFWQf/

This one took a few more tries to decode, but eventually they realized that not only was the message encrypted using AES, but also, the message had been passed through a Caesar cipher.  Finally, though, they managed to get at the contents:

"Down the rabbit hole at 00:00:00.000001, 31deg 56min 42sec N, 34deg 52min 19sec E."

Tatiana sat back in the couch, resting her head back on the soft leather, looking up at the glitzy lighting and stretching her arms over her head.  "Ok, so, where is that?"

David frowned as his OGs translated the coordinates and zoomed out to an overhead map of the first floor of the Rio.  "It's smack in the center of the conference area, in the corner of one of the little rooms there.  I don't get it?"

"What's going on the night of the 14th?  No wait, midnight... what's going on the night of the 13th?"

David snapped his fingers.  "Oh, whoah.  That's where they're going to hold the Megabattle on Saturday night!"

If Laser Tag was the toddler of real world, live-action combat simulations, then Megabattle was his way older brother who had just graduated from MIT with a chip on his shoulder.  A combination of whole body, thin-fiber body suits with thousands of active and passive sensors, laced with haptic and bioelectric feedback mechanisms, modified real-world weaponry with sophisticated high-throughput microcontrollers and a modular obstacle course assembled from tens of thousands of prefab parts, it was the most sophisticated simulation anyone could admit to knowing about.  Two teams faced off with one goal: to capture their opponent's General.  Each team had a stationary, booth-enclosed command center with banks of computers manned by 10 systems programmer types.  By trying to hack into their opponent's systems, they could gain valuable tactical information and possibly even determine the exact location of the General.  Certain hacks also unlocked new weapon and shield capabilities and could turn the tide of the whole game.  On the ground, 50 troops deployed by each team attempted to gain ground and uncover the movements of the opposite team in the hopes of getting a glimpse of that team's all-important leader.  The weapons themselves were custom created by the individuals participating and had to pass a strict verification check.  Beyond meeting the size and technical requirements of the game, though, anything was legal.  And that meant some very creative hacks, from additions of carrier viruses delivered with the weapon output to over-sized, strobing shields that were only on for a microsecond at a time to meet overall power output limits.

"We have to be at this exact spot right at midnight," David said, standing up and beginning to pace.

"But the only way to do that..." Tatiana began.

"...is to somehow get ourselves on one of the teams," David concluded.

=8=

"Absolutely not.  Not a snowball's chance in hell.  Unquestionably no.  Impossible.  Am I being clear, kid?"

The conversation with Jor-El, captain of the Enlightenment team for the match, was not going as well as David had hoped.  Unsurprisingly, the captain's view of the matter was simple: he had 60 people who had waited a year or more to get the chance to Megabattle at DefCon 30 and who had trained for months.  They had passed three qualifying rounds as a team, knew each other and worked well together.  David had probed Jor-El about whether any of his team might be under the weather or sick.  He had tried to appeal to the man's sympathy, having memorized some conversational tactics that Tatiana had prepared for him.  "But it might be our only chance to go to DefCon."  "Our dad would be so proud."  "Lame," was the captain's response, and rightly so as far as David was concerned.

David had also tried to appeal to skill, pointing out that he and Tatiana were pretty likely better at some key elements related to the game than some pair on Jor-El's team.  Of course, that didn't mean that they'd work as well with the team, a point that the well-bearded, burly captain made very clearly in response.

David sighed and looked at Tatiana.  It was time to try the very last gambit.  "Alright then.  There's one more possibility I want you to consider.  There's a rule that states that your team can have more than 60 people if, and only if, the opposing team agrees and adds a like number of members to its own roster.  Add us both and let them add a pair of players they had wait-listed.  Everyone wins."

Jor-El stared down at David with a big, unhappy frown.  "You sure are persistent, kid.  I'll give you that.  But now tell me why in the hell I would add two unknowns to my team and let my opponents add two people they had trained together with almost as long as their A-string team?"

David grinned and tapped his OGs.

"Jesus kid, look around you.  About half the people running around here got those."

"Not like these, Mr. Jor-El.  Watch."  David concentrated, selecting several options with his eyes and whispering under his breath.  In his HUD, every pair of OGs in the area suddenly lit up, displaying their GUIDs and supported protocols; Jor-El's pair was among them.  David selected them and with a flick of his eyes, engaged a protocol he had designed himself and had not ever tried out on anyone other than Tatiana, who had helped him with parts of the design: take-down mode.

Because his earpieces were also in, to Jor-El, it appeared as though his world suddenly went absolutely quiet and dark.  He pulled off the glasses and stared at David with astonishment and a hint of admiration: it wasn't supposed to be possible to block the functioning of OGs from any remote interface.  "Interference?"

"Not exactly, captain.  It's a modified version of the weapon beam for Megabattle and it's perfectly within spec.  It causes a crash in the audio and video kernels in your OG -- a reboot will fix it.  Of course, a reboot takes some time..."

"Hey, Snitty, come take a look at this," Jor-El called over his shoulder, gesturing at a man bent over a pile of chips.  They talked quietly for a moment and the captain pointed at David's OGs and gestured at his own.  Snitty raised his eyebrows and whistled quietly.

"You do that yourself, little man?" he said over his shoulder.

"I most certainly did, sir."

"How did you get past the hardware sandbox?"

David smiled.  "Found a zero-day in the IC used for the wireless communication port."

Snitty grinned and looked at the captain, giving him a thumbs-up and returning to his work.

Jor-El, his poker face returning, turned to David and continued, "So, you're trading a temporary blindness ray for a spot on the team?  It's a neat trick, kid, but once they figure it out, they'll lock down signals from non-team OGs and patch the kernels on the fly and we'll be stuck down two useful players again."

"But I'm not just trading a blindness ray, captain.  My OGs have an integrated sFPGA and can emulate custom in-game hardware and find new exploitable weaknesses on the fly.  I can create new capabilities for our weapons in real time and exploit the enemy's sensors and weaponry under the right conditions.  It isn't a knockout blow, sir, but it's a solid advantage in our favor."

The captain hmphed and crossed his huge arms across his broad chest.  "'Our favor,' huh?  And already calling me 'captain.'  Alright, alright, fine.  But just you, kid.  Sorry, lady, but I can only risk one insane, game-losing move at a time."  David looked over his shoulder at Tatiana.  He knew she'd be disappointed, that she wanted just as badly to be there when the last clue was revealed.  There was sadness written all over her face, but she said, "Do it -- the messages so far have all been for you.  You know where I'll be."

David wasn't sure what she meant, and though seeing her upset made him feel a little bit smaller than he felt before, he turned to Jor-El and said, "Deal."

=9=

"Discipline and punish!" shouted k0r36r34ch as he unloaded a virtual clip into the small makeshift hut that the little squad suspected of housing several of the enemy.  They had been pushing east, heading towards a key capture point that would give them ammo and shield recharge and, as it happened, was close the spot where David knew he had to be standing at midnight.   The digital display on his OGs read 23:55:01.  Somehow David had managed to stay alive and uninjured both virtually and physically.  For long segments, he would follow behind squads making reconnaissance missions or capturing key, lightly defended points.  These he would set up as a kind of remote sysops and create sensor arrays and modify troop weapons, slowly extending the reach of his team's influence over the map.

To their surprise, the hut was empty.  "Where do you think the attacks have been coming from?" asked Senator, sitting down near the capture point and making a detailed sweep of the area.

"Hell if I know," growled k0r3, frowning into the darkness of the fake trees and fences around their exposed position.  "What I do know is I don't like it."

The silence in the game area was spooky.  Acoustic paneling created an almost perfect barrier between the Zone and the rest of the Rio, where hundreds of fans of Megabattle drank and hollered and watched the 'cast of the game on dozens of enormous LED screens.  No one had bothered to create fake crickets or any kinds of weather simulation for the game, so the only sounds that anyone could hear were each other.

23:57:30.  All he needed to do was get 30 meters further north to what looked like an abandoned tool shed and he'd make it.

"Son of a!" shouted Senator, his energy levels dropping straight to zero as he keeled to one side with more cursing.  "The Philistines are upon us!"

The sound of dozens of boots rushing through the woods toward them made David freeze in panic.  It was an ambush and they appeared to be significantly outnumbered.  K0r3 dove between two parallel stands that held up the capture point silo and Bean followed suit.  David couldn't make his legs move -- he stood rooted to the spot, wondering how hard the haptic would sting him when he was hit and whether he'd ever be contacted about the arc again.

Suddenly, a hand wrapped around his wrist and tugged him into a run straight in the direction of the approaching footsteps.  He was sure he had been captured; perhaps they had found out what his system could do and were going to try to use it to their own advantage.  But fifteen seconds later as the footsteps grew fainter behind him, he realized that he didn't know what the heck was going on.  Stiffening his legs and leaning against the direction he had been running in, he brought himself and the stranger to a halt.  Whoever it was had on a bulky hat that made it very difficult to see his face in the dark.  "Who are you?" David said in a breathless whisper.

"I'm surprised!  You don't know your Savior when you see her?"

David blinked stupidly.  "Tatiana?"

She pulled off the hat and her dark hair fell around her shoulders.  Teeth white and perfect glowed in the darkness as she smiled broadly.

"But how?"

"I don't do 'no.'" she quipped stepping forward.  "And you only have about 30 seconds -- let's go!"

They sprinted as quietly as they could, making a wide arc around the capture point and then curling south to reach the rickety shed.  They were both breathless, leaning forward and resting their hands on their knees.  23:59:54.

"Get ready," Tatiana said, standing up and smiling at David again.  She unholstered two long-barreled semi-automatic pistols and rested the barrels on her shoulders.

There was a loud "clank" and a hiss; both of them started and took a step back from the shed door.  David looked at Tatiana and she at him and then he slowly pulled open the door to the small wooden structure.

The ground inside the shed was shifting; in seconds, a hole had opened in the ground that grew wider and wider, until a ladder leading down became visible.  The shock on their faces would have looked comical to an outside observer as they watched the ground part and invite them in.

David turned to Tatiana.  "What are you going to do?" he asked, eyeing her guns and shaking his head, which was still spinning with surprise and admiration.

"I'm going to take your place on the battlefield and kick some Resistance butt!"

"See you on the other side," he laughed, watching as she disappeared into the trees. Then, with a deep breath, he descended the ladder into the unknown.

=10=

The rungs were cold and led him a very long way down.  When he finally hit solid ground, David found himself in a large, concrete room lit by one lone incandescent bulb.  The air was cold and moist and stale and David shivered.  There was only one way out of the room -- a hallway that seemed to go on indefinitely, punctuated by a trail of light bulbs.

David followed the lights for what seemed like an hour, hiking down interminably long corridors and then turning and winding his way through still more.  At long last, a room appeared in the distance that looked quite different from the rest of the cement labyrinth.

It was a large room, much like the one he had climbed down into.  But instead of concrete, this one was paneled with wood on the floors, walls and ceiling.  And instead of being lit with a single bulb, it was filled with little LED halos: they lined the walls, the ceiling and covered the floor except for a small path that led into the center of the room.  There, a large circular clearing was visible, a much denser rainbow of halos arcing above it.

David approached slowly, his heart thumping in his chest.  In the clearing were 5 beanbags, four of which were occupied by two men and two women, all of whom looked up at him with serious smiles.

"I'm very glad you could make it," said a man whom David immediately recognized as RosT.

David stared; he was speechless.  "Thanks?" he stammered.  RosT motioned for him to sit down on the remaining beanbag.

"Freezer, please engage the protections."

The man to the right of RosT nodded and made a complex motion in the air with his right hand.  All of the little halos in the room began to twinkle.

"David, we are the arc of angels.  It must have dawned on you by now that though the governments of our planet have maintained a reasonable amount of control over the stockpiles of physical armaments we humans have created, they have not been anywhere near as successful at maintaining control over information.  Here, in the world of information flow and trafficking, where ideas of all kinds can be exchanged instantly and secretly, organizations as slow and cumbersome as governments will never be able to keep up.  Many of those governments know of us -- many of them work with us to help protect the safety of their people.

"There are already signs that a war is brewing -- several wars, really.  Wars over information: over access to it, over what is exposed to the public and over who can control it and thereby control the public.  The arc does not fight for any particular government.  We fight for safety, for freedom and for some measure of justice.  We are the protectors, the guardians over those who cannot protect themselves in this kind of battle.

"If you join us, as you are invited to, you will become part of the most elite technical group ever created.  Will you help us keep vigil, David?"

Before he even had a chance to think, he blurted out, "Can I tell Tatiana?"  It immediately dawned on him how foolish or irreverent his outburst might have sounded and his face flushed darkly.

But the four other angels looked around at each other seriously.  Finally, RosT said, "It's up to you, Ecca."  The woman immediately to David's right looked at him critically for a moment and then turned to RosT and nodded once.

"Yes," RosT said.

"Then I'm in," said David, relaxing back into the beanbag and squeezing his knees to his chest, looking around at all there was to see.

=11=

The air conditioner in the little car hummed, slowly bringing the car's temperature down to manageable levels as they sped away from Las Vegas.  It felt a little strange to leave -- the idea of returning to everyday life wasn't completely unpleasant, but it was somehow rendered foreign and incongruous by the freedom one was leaving behind.

Tatiana's head rested on David's shoulder and in the front of the car, David's dad whistled tunelessly with the radio.  Then, remembering the most powerful moment he had yet experienced in his life, David slipped off his OGs and earpieces and closed his eyes.

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Transcript ends.  Produced at -CLASSIFED- by Exoneuros, SN0000191018283839010101929100.0192910a.  All rights reserved.  More information at http://bit.ly/TWTL1E.

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