Human Games

The galactic database was boring, deliberately so. Endless dry statistics, endless animations and walkthroughs. By the time he had left his first clutch, he was ready to leave all the basics to AI and concentrate on getting better at asking the right questions. Today was different as he waited to add an entirely new database.

The Human Contingency had refused to share their files for what they claimed to be ‘hardware, software and security incompatibility’. They had tried to demand that everyone else change, that millions of worlds should convert to their standards. They had conjured up imaginary monsters and fantastical disasters. Strange creatures known as ‘Worms’ or worse, ‘Hackers’ would arise from the dark and wreck, steal or burn all data. The galactic community had laughed at them but the humans had doubled down and rendered all traffic one-way under severe criminal and trade sanctions. Then they built beautiful and free stations that simply absorbed galactic data for their population and burned every line of code trying to leave. Today would be the test.

After nearly half a lifetime in discussion, the humans had proposed a test, a demonstration that they were telling no lies, that data could and would be weaponised against the reluctant community. They volunteered to fund a control, a nexus of the two systems. They refused to build it, stating that all data would become invalid if touched by human hands, they refused to even discover the location only insisting that it was on the main networks and that it had firewalls that could be physically destroyed the moment the experiment exceeded its parameters. The human government refused to comment on the expected duration of the experiment but their bookies and gambling houses were only bickering about which fraction of a second it would take.

He was now sitting in the most important chair the tech world had ever seen. He would turn on the networks, the finest emulator that his entire profession could develop. They had cloned and anonymised data from thousands of worlds and run them seamlessly together. One look at the data and you would be convinced you were looking at a major planet, the hub of a quadrants trade and science. A second look would have you wondering if the universe that we all lived in sat on some bureaucrat's desk in some unknown dimension.

“The human government has announced it is standing down all official network systems. They are leaving the networks open to their general population but all state and military networks have gone offline. Were they supposed to do that?”

He shrugged, “No. I mean, we didn’t ask them to. Perhaps they are afraid we will find out things they don’t want to share. The human database has only dropped by a couple of points, not even within our margin of error. The Nexus is a go.” He looked up at his Directors and the sole human appointed to observe the results. It was the human that leaned forward, “Please activate your recording. The attacks have already begun and I require the data.”

A quick glance at the screens showed nothing, “The Nexus is not open yet. Attack is impossible.”

The human grunted and swore softly, “My blessed friend, now that they know where it is they will have found out who built it and persuaded them to surrender or just stolen their credentials. They are already in. You just haven’t seen them yet. It's our worst-case scenario and forty years of us telling you differently hasn’t changed a damn thing. Earth says to open the Nexus when ready.”

A light on his dashboard turned green. With little ceremony, he began cutting through the authorisations required until finally he was faced with a question:

Do you wish to proceed?

He prayed to the rubber duck of his profession and said yes. The network flashed on the screens as the two data systems met and translated each other, as half-cooked algorithms met half-baked hardware. It was clear which side was winning when the green of Earth systems adapted and overcame all resistance and the Nexus began spitting out thousands of terabytes of data in all directions.

He fumbled with the protocols to close the firewalls but his system refused to acknowledge him. The doors had been prised off and the Galaxy lay helpless as the human data stream poured from the Nexus.

“All systems rebooting”

“Admin control removed”

“Admin now ‘HFY/WarnedYou’

“Nexus is now designated as Pornhub Central/Brave New Worlds

New Directories are available: PaNcaKes Nd fUrries foR U

The human seemed amused and shook his head as he entered a code into his Comms. Deep in the server farm that supported the experiment an EMP field ripped out and crushed the machines. Nexus died in the blink of an eye.

Everything in the command centre also died a sudden death until the local systems were repaired and linked up. Nexus was gone.

“Ehh…don’t know if this is helpful but all official human sites are back up and running. Data bleed is minimal. Looks like whatever the fuck just happened is contained and over.”

“Hello? Are you still there?”

----------------

The human seemed relaxed as the disgruntled Xenos of the community were obliged to attend what it called a ‘Post-Mortem’. The translation didn’t add to the joy of the event. One of the Directors attacked first, “You lied! You knew where our system was and planted a damn bomb in it! The experiment is invalid!”

The human poured himself more coffee and looked around, “There was no bomb. Some of our more enterprising idiots met one of the more gullible of your contractors. They ‘stole’ the designs for a server farm from us and sold them to you. It included an EMP bomb that relied on…” He checked his notes, “nineteen different systems all running on full power at the same time. That would never happen in testing so we knew it was for today. We took control of it and locked out anyone else.”

The Xenos were all shouting together at that point so he held up his hand, “Please, the ones that sold the design to you also came to us and we paid them a not inconsiderable sum and then employed them. We quarantined the information and deemed it an accurate reflection of the test.” He looked around, “The purpose of which was if you will take a moment to recall, to see if your systems were as secure as you thought. That it could withstand a simple connection to our dataspace.”

He opened a new screen, “Let us watch what actually happened.

That is the phishing attacks before the Nexus opened. You missed most of them because it never occurred to you to monitor the traffic. We did.”

As soon as the official human sites had left the gateway unguarded a flood of data had begun spilling out in all directions.

The location was discovered and a pipeline formed. The inert Nexus was surrounded by code, some malicious and some just curious.

The human paused the display, “This is where they raided your contractors and staff. That obviously worked since then this happened…” He resumed the playback.

The Nexus activated and was immediately swamped by credentialed downloads that sank the pathetic security and took control of the firewalls. Other programs began grabbing all the data they could and sending it home. Huge data swaps peaked and then burst-transmit to new targets. Then it crashed.

The human pointed at the sudden stop. “That's when I blew your servers, it was far too late to solve anything with software. A hard burn was required and I personally would never even risk reusing one of those servers again. On Earth, if this had happened, we would drag them outside and physically destroy every single component. If it was necessary we would strip our workforce to their socks and jocks and give them hammers to do it. This is such a case.”

---------------

It was a much more sombre meeting ten days later when the full damage had been accessed.

The human remained unchanged but the Xenos looked older and if possible more unhappy. “Some of our governments have declared this an act of war. We prefer to believe that you acted in good faith, something I dearly hope to be true. I must add that you are effectively speaking as a Witness for the Defence right now. There are those that invested heavily in our success and are now reaping the rewards of failure.”

The human stood and gave the meeting a swift bow, “I will start, then, at the beginning. Our space exploration has always been controlled by our central powers. They may have been awkward, conniving and at odds but they were not malicious. When our early fleet met you and discovered your entirely open network we were amazed, delighted even. We thought you a collection of idealists, free with your data, and glad to share.

Imagine our surprise when we found out you thought it was hidden! That it was encrypted even. My God, our children's toys are more seriously protected. We locked your systems down hard on our side, we imposed horrific penalties on anyone that dared to connect to them. Our people thought we were hiding monsters and we couldn’t explain that we were protecting innocents. If we explained how basic your systems were then you would have been destroyed. We allowed them to believe you were monsters instead.”

He took a sip of his water, “Then we tried to warn you. We showed you our systems, and we proved it time and time again but you wouldn’t listen. Not until we suggested we fund the great boondoggle that was Nexus. A feeding frenzy of stuck-up Xeno tech charlatans selling you your own belief in the strength of your systems. You never even asked where all your good, ethical and capable people went when they saw the wind change. We hired them.”

He pulled up the screen grabs of the event, “Within 4.8 seconds you had lost any control of the Nexus. Even as you turned it on it was working for us. I’m guessing you have still no idea how it happened because the gutless wonders that you employed to build it are busy blaming each other. We will furnish you with a full technical analysis. A real one.”

He nodded and moved to sit but was interrupted by the stung chairman, “So this is where your governments went? Why your militaries all went dark? To coordinate this attack?”

The human raised his eyes to heaven and turned back to the Committee, “You truly don’t understand. This was a big deal for your peoples because you failed but we had, and have, told our people nothing. They thought our funding for the Nexus was a water reclamation project on Mars. We shut down all our servers so that we didn’t accidentally respond to the attacks and kill them off. What happened to you is what happens every day to every system on my homeword. You didn’t even make the news cycle. This was not coordinated, this is just… the shit that happens when you open up your system to our public.”

The Committee seemed to mumble to itself before arriving at a conclusion:

“We will await your analysis before judgement.”

The Chairman seemed to hesitate for a moment but he added, “Please, I now believe every word you have spoken to be true but the loss of the Nexus…if not your governments or military then who? Who attacked us?”

The human turned off his microphone and grimaced, “No one and everyone. Gamers seeking out new networks, Influencers seeking a new gimmick. Bored tech staff. Teenagers with a god complex. This is all a game to them. Hide and seek. Crosswords, sudoku, chess and poker all rolled into one. Human games.”

He seemed depressed for a moment, “Don’t worry, our firewalls are back up. Some malware might have made it off the Nexus but we are training your people since you didn’t. Goodnight.”