DEF CON Safe Mode Hacking Conference - Short Story Contest - https://forum.defcon.org/node/231200

July 1, 2020, 16:54
4 1/2 acres of freedom
by D

THUNK. "Motherfucker..." After six months of sleeping in this damn rack, you'd think he'd have gotten used to the cramped bunk enough to have kicked the reflex of sitting straight up at the sound of his alarm, but AB1 Johnson was a slow learner. Shit, he thought, if this leaves a bruise, it'll be weeks of dodging suspicious stares. He'll have to go to the sick bay to get another test just to prove he doesn't have the virus--that he doesn't need to be quarantined for the duration of a quick death. The virus starts ravaging the body by weakening the walls of blood vessels, leading to massive bruising and eventually the body bleeding out internally. It is far deadlier than the one that killed almost a million people in 2020, when AB1 was an infant. Within a week of getting symptoms of this virus, you'll be gone, and the doctors can't do anything to help--they'll only shut you in a quarantine pod, which will pump in oxygen and intravenous nutrition while keeping the contagion (as well as the sounds of the pain and delirium) sealed off.

Holding his head, AB1 rolled over to look at the snapshot he kept taped to his rack. In it, a gleeful baby was being held by her mother. Both their eyes were bright, looking straight at him. It was his daughter's first birthday today. This thought made him happy, and then sad. He wanted to give them a hologram call--or at least message them--but the ship had been conducting a comms-denial drill for the last few weeks, and he guessed that comms would still be turned off today. He brushed off the sadness. He will be home again in a few months--hopefully he'll be there for her first words, and countless other milestones. The baby won't remember his absence today, though he wished he could say the same for her mother.

"Even I heard that," said IT1 Gonzalez sleepily from the bunk below. It was 0500 aboard the USS Biden aircraft carrier, which was conducting drills in the middle of the ocean. "Is it bruising? You're going to have to get tested again," IT1 chuckled.

"Piss off," AB1 said quietly so as not to wake the 80 other sailors in his berthing area, which was designated for male-identified Petty Officers. He climbed down from his rack and stumbled into the khaki slacks and long sleeved, yellow shirt that made up his underway uniform. He had washed these clothes just yesterday, but the black grease from the flight deck was so ground into them that he was hardly sure why he bothered.

He only nicked himself shaving a few times, and laced up his steel-toed, fire-resistant boots. "They're showing Top Gun IV at 1900," AB1 said to IT1, who grunted from his rack. With that, AB1 was out the door, although he paused to catch it before it slammed.

AB1 hurried up the narrow passageway and down two ladders to the mess hall for enlisted sailors, which was built to accommodate more than 2,500--about half of the sailors on board the Biden. It wasn't open yet, but he grabbed a Pop-Tart--which was laid out, along with some decidedly healthier options, for sailors who worked odd hours or needed a snack. AB1 ate the pastry while he hurried back up the ladders and cut through the hangar bay, where jets, helicopters, and one cargo plane stood like statues, some part way through maintenance iterations and the rest just there to make room on the flight deck three stories above.

AB1 looked out at the still ocean through the giant cut-out in the side of the hangar bay, then over to an early morning fitness class taking place in an empty area of the workspace. He wondered how the sweating sailors were managing in the humidity. At least it was still cool out, though--he would be baking under the sun in a couple of hours.

He arrived at the flight deck after the morning briefing, which doubled as an attempt at a pep talk, had already started. AB1 slipped into crowd of brightly colored, grease-stained shirts that indicated each sailor's job on the flight deck. At six months in, and without any of the typical port calls--the virus was too contagious to risk it--everyone had lost motivation months ago.

But the work was too dangerous to get complacent. Between spinning helo rotors, the 3-inch thick arresting cables that caught the jets when they landed, and the deckbots that crawled around the flight deck towing aircraft and loading ordnance, it was all too easy to lose a hand, or your head.

The pep talk finished and everyone jogged to their stations. On his way, AB1 glanced across the flight deck and saw LT Cho walking to their aircraft, suited up for flight. The air wing crew was several levels above the flight deck crew in the at-sea hierarchy, but LT was nice to AB1 and the others.

LT smiled and nodded at AB1 from across the steel deck. Reaching their jet--an ancient F/A-18, although it had been upgraded with the latest decision and flight aids--LT checked the aircraft and climbed into the cockpit, ready for yet another training sortie.

Still, LT knew they were lucky. The aviators were the only ones who ever got off the ship these days, even if it was only for a few hours at a time. And when LT flew, they forgot about the dreary afloat routine and felt, instead, a euphoric sense of freedom. This was LT's calling, even if they hadn't gotten close to combat in their time in the US Navy. Being a member of a military at peace was still more exciting than anything in the civilian world.

A deckbot taxied LT's jet onto the runway and the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System catapulted them into the sky, with their wingman in another F/A-18 just behind. LT input the coordinates of the training range into the jet's Automated Navigation System and looked out over the open ocean, which was sparkling in the early morning sunlight.

LT saw no other ships on the water. They frowned. Inexplicably, they hadn't seen another ship in weeks.

Approaching the range, LT saw the shape-shifting targets in the distance. The targets were projected optical and infrared facsimiles of city blocks, villages, and various commercial and military ships. LT checked in with their wingman and adjusted their approach to one of the targets that looked like a village. They pushed a series of buttons to launch one of their missiles and guided it to the target. As the missile locked onto the target, its software cross referenced the target with a ruleset that had been developed based on the Defense Data Repository. The DDR was a massive labelled data set that DOD had been developing since 2010, containing everything from pattern of life data to millions of biometric samples. DOD developed machine learning algorithms for its weapon systems that trained on the DDR, becoming the most precise weapons the world had ever seen. This technology was used in hundreds of types of systems, from micro drones that could target individuals based on their DNA to bombs that could engage or disengage based on whether malicious or innocuous behavior was detected.

Which is exactly what LT's missile did. Three seconds before impact, the missile completed its calculations and abruptly diverted away from the target, becoming inert before it smashed into the sea. "VALID TRAJECTORY," LT's console blinked. "SYSTEM DECISION SUCCESSFUL," it continued. LT made a note of the successful drop in their training log. They and their wingman took turns dropping the rest of their ordnance on the targets.

On the way back to the ship, the two did a few rounds of dogfight simulations against one another. LT love squeezing in this kind of air-to-air training. It was the one thing that the pilots could do that wasn't ultimately controlled by their aircrafts' decision algorithms. Once the pilots were back in sight of the Biden, the jets' flight aids took over and landed the aircraft, while LT thought about dinner. The officers' mess executed Taco Tuesday with nearly the precision of LT's missiles. But before dinner, the pilots had to debrief the flight and log their training. LT grabbed an apple from the mess on the way and settled into a long session in the ready room--and back into the dull routine of life at sea without comms or port calls.

If it weren't for this damn virus, they could at least look forward to pulling into some foreign port where they could relax (read: party) for a few days. But the virus wouldn't allow for that anytime soon. The virus had, coincidentally, been developed from the DDR--the same data set that had helped to guide LT's missiles. Two years ago, a biologist at DARPA had developed it in his laboratory in secret. An investigation later found that the biologist, who had hidden his membership in white supremacist groups, and created it to "cleanse" the earth by targeting nonwhites. The biologist had been experimenting for years to develop such a virus, but only happened upon a technique that produced a sufficiently viable strain by accident--at a biohacking talk given at a hacking convention in Las Vegas that his girlfriend dragged him to called DEF CON.

Investigators had only belatedly realized that the virus was a bioterror attack, due to the low correlation that law enforcement records had identified between white supremacy and intellectual capacity. The biologist was an outlier in this respect. He designed the virus to be fast-evolving, making it impossible for vaccine development to keep up with emerging strains. Unfortunately for him, this also meant that it quickly morphed to target all races. It had killed him before his trial was finished. And now, because of its isolation, the USS Biden was one of the safest places on the planet.

LT was nearly finished with the debrief as the sun was starting to set. (Or so LT deduced. There were no windows anywhere on the aircraft carrier, aside from the bridge.) CAG Novak, the commander of the ship's air wing, stopped in to ask how the flights had gone. CAG was gruff but competent--most in the wing had a grudging respect for him. On hearing a positive report, CAG nodded and left the pilots to finish. The evening commander's update briefing would be starting soon.

CAG walked down the passageway from the ready room to the cramped flag conference room. He settled into his chair at the table while the rows of benches around the perimeter of the room filled with staff. IT1 Gonzalez was doing comms checks with the commanding officers of several other ships dialed into the video conference line and loading the evening's briefing slides onto the display. "ATTENTION ON DECK!" someone said, and everyone in the room stood at attention while Admiral Levine strode in and sat down at the head of the table.

The briefing proceeded largely how it had yesterday and the day before that, and the day before that. CAG briefed the air wing's readiness (in fact, he was just about the only one at the table with good news). The Supply Officer briefed ongoing delays in parts and food supplies, and the intel lead gave the latest update on the new, more aggressive strain of the virus. The intel shop had updated the graph of the worldwide death toll to a logarithmic scale to better display the sharp uptick that had begun one month ago. A full quarter of the US population had been lost in that time.

CAG glanced down at his wedding ring. His wife and son were among the dead although his daughter, who had been away at college since the winter, had avoided the virus so far. There was no utility to mourning right now--the officers sitting at the table had 5,000 sailors to protect.

A small number of cases had broken out on board the Biden. Since the ship had isolated itself--not allowing anyone to arrive or depart (aside from several quietly conducted burials at sea)--the cases on board probably stemmed from recent deliveries of supplies. The Medical Officer reported that the ship's quarantine pods were now full.

"I'm not sure how much longer we can keep up the comms-denial drill," someone at the table voiced anxiously, and the conversation around the room switched to brainstorming new excuses for keeping communications on board the ship down for a little while longer. Once the crew learned of the new strain and that many of their loved ones at home were probably already dead, panic would surely set in, and could overwhelm good order and discipline on the ship. Which must be maintained at all costs, the Admiral said, striking the table. With the close quarters on the ship and the ease with which the virus spreads, any additional cases would likely mean a death sentence for the whole crew.

Some in the benches shifted in their seats, and CAG eyed the promotional poster framed on the wall behind the Admiral. "4 1/2 Acres of Freedom!" it proclaimed over a photograph of the Biden. From his chair wedged behind a rack of computer equipment, where he was able to troubleshoot comms whenever they went down, IT1 scratched his nose.

The Admiral's staff hemmed and hawed, and the meeting went late before the Admiral concluded it. The room stood at attention again when she left and then the staff glumly filed out. IT1 stayed behind to disconnect the videoconference and log off from the display.

The credits were rolling on Top Gun IV, playing on the ship's closed-circuit TV network, by the time IT1 got back to his rack. "How was it?" he asked AB1.

"Awful. Tom Cruise has to be 100 years old!" said AB1 with a yawn and a grin. IT1 turned away when he changed out of his coveralls. "'Night!" AB1 added as IT1 slipped gingerly into his rack, wincing from the bruising that was spreading across his chest.