Hacking the Naked Princess

by Andy Kaiser

Chapter 0x12

Speeding down roads that my car had no business speeding on, I alternated between cursing my vehicle and myself.

I'd just dropped the most important bits of my case right into the hands of the person who shouldn't know them.

Oober, for all I knew, was not Oober.  Or he'd hidden his true nature really well.  Playing the role of a down-on-his-luck, emotionally-abused high school kid had worked well on me.  Enough that I'd felt bad for him. Enough that I'd completely bought his story and shared confidential information.

He'd wormed his way into my case, and he'd used me to translate the clues from the Naked Princess into arrows pointing toward P@nic.  P@nic, who needed to stay hidden from those who wanted to find her.

She'd trusted me.  I was supposed to protect her.  But I'd told Oober just what he needed to contact her, and he'd somehow used that info to find her.

As I swerved through intersections and lurched over bumps that I hoped were curbs, I replaced cursing myself with a more effective form of motivation: Using my anger to focus on learning and taking the next step.

I'd had plenty of evidence that Oober wasn't who he'd claimed to be.  The connection to the Naked Princess.  The confusion with his mom and dad.  Twice as many hints as I usually got to work with, and I'd ignored them.  That wouldn't happen again.

Lessons learned late are better than early, (A horrible metallic grinding noise permeated my car.)

I won't forget pain when I'm feeling so surly.

There was a moral from this colossal snafu.  And the moral rhymed, so, hey, bonus points.  Anything to take my mind off the fact that I'd just clipped a fire hydrant.

I was getting close to P@nic's neighbor-hood of fancy mansions, immaculate lawns, and looming mortgage debt.  I did the opposite recommendation of the nearest road sign, and slammed the accelerator to the floor.  My car rewarded me with a few extra MPH and vomited the rest of my effort in a cloud of black tailpipe smoke.

I locked up my brakes trying to drift-spin into P@nic's street.  My clattering, dented, hydrant-molested car caught disgusted glares from the neighborhood Teslas, Smartcars, and a refurbished DeLorean.

My car's engine sputtered and died from embarrassment, but I could see P@nic's home just a couple doors down, so I pushed out of my car and ran.

The front door was open a crack - that was always a bad sign - and I shoved it all the way open and entered through the foyer.

Next room over was a large family room.  A comfy place, with a half-circle of laze-inducing furniture that angled towards a projector screen that spanned at least ninety inches.

On the screen was a collection of photos, clearly generated by the Naked Princess app.  Some graphic and disgusting, some abstract yet weirdly disturbing, and some so nasty I took in a glance then looked away.

Oober and P@nic sat on the couch.  Oober was slouching back, relaxed and comfortable, one hand behind his head, the other caressing a wireless keyboard.  P@nic was sitting on the edge of the couch cushion, her back straight vertical and her mouth a flat horizontal.  She was staring at the screen.

Oober glanced in my direction as I stumbled into the room, and spoke casually over his shoulder.

"Hey, Mister Information Technology Private Investigator.  Let's talk about you."

He touched the keyboard and the screen changed.

I saw my own personalized Naked Princess photo, the overly-complicated Rubik's Cube puzzle, expanded into glorious 90-inch detail.

"I've seen it," I said.

Oober frowned at the picture and then looked at me.

"That's it?  What did you do to the program to get it to generate that?  Give it random input?  Lie?"

"Something like that," I said.  "A lot like you did when we first met."

"Yeah," he smiled.  It wasn't the sad, young, wistful smile I'd seen before.  This smile was cold.  Dead inside.  "I screwed up my story, didn't I."

"It's hard to believe you were so abused, when the abuser changes from your dad to your mom.  Especially after I'd just met your mom."

"Yeah.  That.  'Mom' really isn't the best word for her."

"So what is she?"

"She's nothing.  Let's get to what's important."

"Right," I said, moving into authoritative mode.  "P@nic, let's get out of here.  I can help you.  We can -"

She was already shaking her head, and Oober was already smiling.

"No," she said.  "I don't need to go anywhere."

"If this guy's threatened you, we can fix it."

She looked at me full in the face.

"He did.  You can't.  I'm fine."

"You don't look it.  I can see your hands shaking from here."

"Reboot bought me out."

"Who?"

Oober pantomimed a sarcastic hat-tip.

"That's me," he said.  "Reboot at your service."

"You're called Reboot?  Or that's who you work for?"

He smiled.

"I don't have to tell you everything."

"No.  But it would help."

"We'd been watching P@nic for a while.  We saw the results we got from the Naked Princess.  Give full credit to P@nic here," he said, giving her a nudge that earned him a glare.  "She did a great job in the solution design.  She'd already hacked through the social media APIs to get at the juicy big data, built the algos, and linked it all together with a seriously leveled-up understanding of psychology.  All I needed to do was to get to the source code.  After you led me here, the rest was just a question of cash, credit, or bitcoin."

"You know this won't work.  It can't."  I gestured at the screen, which was still showing off my personalized non-terrifying Naked Princess picture.  "Bad data is too easy to collect and impossible to always filter out.  You're gonna do what - use the Naked Princess as a picture generator to strike fear into your enemies?  That's assuming your enemies all fill in their FriendyFace profile?  Then what?  People will freak out for a while, and just for a while, before they're desensitized.  Show a kid a horror movie when they're young, and they'll be traumatized for a week.  Then they assimilate and get over it.  You're not going to accomplish anything!"

Oober - or Reboot - was nodding along with me patronizingly.  He was nice enough to let me say my piece before he put my argument through the shredder.

"You might've been a part of this project, you know.  You're okay at analysis and have a passable respect for reality.  Except you've got it all wrong, man.  You're thinking way too small.  This is just a prank to you?  Some social experiment gone wrong?  A virus that needs to be stopped?  No, you idiot, the Naked Princess is being weaponized."

"I don't see -"

"I know you don't.  So shut up.  We don't care about the photos.  We don't care about the mental damage we're doing to all the precious snowflakes who are stupid enough to take everything they care about and put it online.  Abusing that is easy, but it's a dead-end street.  Like you just told me, the end game is already compromised.  And like I just told you, this is about Big Data."

Reboot watched me and laughed.

"That stupid look on your face is why I'm a part of this and you're not.  Spooky pictures were just a proof-of-concept.  Step back and see another possibility.  Using the source code, psychoanalysis, and data behind the Naked Princess, we can predict what people will do, and we know what levers will force them to act.  From individuals to the masses, we know the future because we can make it happen.  Stock market crashes, political elections and social revolts, hell, even something as simple as sports betting.  Imagine what you could do if you had the power to influence these things, to know ahead of time, to stop them -"

"Or to start them."

"Yeah," he grinned.  "That too.  Very much.  There will be damage.  There has to be.  But we'll use that damage and our influence to improve the world."

I looked at P@nic.  Despite having been paid up into what I assumed was Officially Wealthy status by Reboot/Oober, she looked miserable.

Reboot caught the glance.  He slapped his legs and stood up.

"I'm done here.  I got what I needed.  And you -" he stared at P@nic.  "You got what you deserve, I suppose.  Plenty of money and guilt.  RedAction thanks you for your contributions to humanity."

He left.

P@nic and I stared at each other.  There were tears in her eyes.

"You don't have to hide anymore," I said.  "He's gone.  You're safe."

"Don't you dare try and make me feel better.  I know what this means.  I don't know what I'm going to do.  He said they'd pay me plenty and get out of my life.  But if I didn't give them the source code, he said they would..."  She swallowed.

"You didn't have a choice."

"How can I even report this?  Who's supposed to help me?  Can you?"

With a stab of guilt, I realized that P@nic didn't know about my mistake.  She didn't know I'd led Reboot right to her.  I'd find a way to tell her.  Later.  Maybe.

"You're not alone."  I spoke with confidence I didn't feel.

"Well, then great.  Here we are," she threw up both hands.  "What are we supposed to do?  There's nothing left.  They gave me enough money to last me for life, and I don't even want it.  It's dirty.  They'll probably monitor how I use it, too, and keep me in a cage unless I drop completely offline."

"Well, that's not going to happen.  We've got plenty to do before you should even think about going off the grid.  I've got some ideas, thanks to our friend Reboot.  I hope we never see the guy again, but something tells me we will."

"We will?" her face paled for a second, then anger flushed in her cheeks.  "We will.  We will.  If you can fix this, I'm in.  What's next?"

"Well, apparently there's the threat of social and political domination, so we might want to think about that at some point.  But we just heard a name that makes me feel even worse."

"What?  Who?"

"Reboot just told us the name of his boss: RedAction."

"I don't know what that is."

"I do."