Psycher Chronicles

Chapter 62

Espionage

(Misha Tulley)

Over the course of the next week, things seemed to mostly settle down. Though there were talks of creating a quarantine, especially as people from Pennsylvania and the surrounding areas were noted as being under restricted movements.

While the media was mostly quiet about the whole ordeal of what happened at the Hasty concert, there were reports that Hasty herself had managed to leave and was safe, but was currently avoiding the limelight.

As for the phone app game Surreal, it was still as popular as ever, though one particular note of interest came from the fact that while people noted the same few people were always the monsters in other parts of the world. There were reports of the game constantly changing from day to day as advertised at one location.

In Jackson West Virginia the people who woke up daily to be different types of monsters changed daily.

While the total number of monsters remained the same for the area, everyone, or almost everyone, changed from day to day.

There were a few odd abnormalities, like the way Alishia, Rodger, Abraham the pack alpha, and Bruce the pack’s shaman all remained the same. Always setting off alerts and causing countless people to exclaim in delight whenever they appeared in public.

Also of note, the sponsors of the App were already making payments out to the people who managed to gain the most levels in the same day, making the app even more exciting to participate in the game.

Surreal: The game that pays you to explore the hidden depths of hidden world around you.

Yes, advertisements about the game were going viral, just as micro adds and newer transactions were being made available to the game.

While the game still focused on the leveling of the individual playing, they could now purchase double experience multipliers, helpful hints on where the last known monster might be, and daily completion bonuses for tracking and identifying each and every supernatural within a 15-mile radius of your house.

This last feature, of setting a daily to find all of the noted monsters that were out and about in the world around you at first seemed harmless. In fact, the entire game was meant as a way to go out, exercise, and meet new people.

The only problem came from when it was the same people day in and day out that were being tracked and not just by one person but a whole community things began to escalate.

While there was a strict no following people when they were in a residential community, this restriction didn’t stop people from stalking the last two or so people they needed for the daily completion by taking a zoomed in picture of the individual at their house. By using a new version of jailbreaking a phone, people found that by downloading a $4.99 package, they could temporarily remove their phone from broadcasting and receiving mode, where their phone would go dead to the network.

As long as the new package was activated while in a community area, the phone’s geo-tagging feature for images would list the last saved location.

Then the user would track the missing individuals to their dwelling, take a picture of them at their house. Where they would then promptly leave the community area, deactivate the new jailbreak feature where they initially activated the feature. Which would make it so the user appeared to be at the same location the entire time.

With this, a lot of people were able to easily get the daily missions for finding everyone that was identified as a monster. And was a feature many who had already received payments for leveling touted as the ultimate return on investment. For $4.99, they managed to turn that investment and a little bit of work into a $1,000 payoff.

After details of this new jailbreak feature went live, the game took on a more ominous tone.

“Have you heard about Alishia?” Jasmine asked during stretches before practice.

“No, what?” K-Bar responded.

“She hasn’t been to school in a week.”

“A week?”

“Yeah, she is apparently getting stalked every time she leaves her house. It’s getting so bad that she has taken to dressing up with disguises, but still gets found every time she leaves.” Jasmine continued.

“Yeah, my dad and uncle have the same issue. Though they are mostly using the new app as a way to promote their business.” Amoni stated, adding her own observations to the issue.

“All I can say, is I’m glad I have never been identified as one of those monsters.” Jasmine said with sincerity.

“I was, at least on the first few days.” K-Bar noted.

“Same.” Two-Tone and Amoni both replied in unison.

“I’ve never had it, but then again I have to say that I’m kind of glad it’s never randomly fallen to me.” Michelle said, adding her own thoughts to the mix.

Misha for her part just nodded along, not wanting to tell everyone here the real reason why they weren’t targeted by the program. Instead, she let them think it was all a coincidence.

“Did you hear about the Surreal Murderers?” Candice from the b-team asked.

“What?” All the girls asked nearly in unison as they all chose that moment to switch the outstretched foot they were reach for and turned towards Candice for this juicy bit of gossip.

“Yeah, it’s all over the news. They say that someone is targeting the monsters in Surreal and killing all the monsters.” Candice replied.

“What? No way.” K-Bar said.

“Yeah, that is just an urban myth.” Jasmine responded.

“It’s true. Or at least it is true that someone is going around and killing people who have been identified as monsters for ten days in a row.” Candice continued, her voice dropping to show the severity of the information she was sharing.

Hearing the information, Misha’s ears perked up as she thought she now understood the reason for the Surreal tracking app. Or at least a reason.

“Oh my gods,” Michelle all but squealed.

“What?” Amoni asked the tall backup center.

“Could you imagine if someone had the Jailbreak app on their phone. They would take it, save their location as being in town. Then go out, commit the murder of the individual, then come back to the spot they were at when they turned the phone off. Turn off the Jailbreak and boom permanent alibi.” Michelle stated.

“You know, you have a devious mind.” Amoni said, staring at Michelle as if seeing her for the first time.

At that Michelle mostly pulled in on herself as she blushed at the comment and sudden attention.

“I, I didn’t come up with it on my own. But it is on the site.” Michelle noted.

“The site?” Jasmine asked.

“Yeah, the site where you get the Jailbreak app. Though there it is written as a joke.”

“A joke?”

“Yeah, they say something like. This is intended for entertainment purposes only. Any crimes you commit while this feature is enabled can be caught by other recording devices as such be careful, but at the very least this will help your phone from self-snitching on you.” Michelle said, repeating the warning almost verbatim.

With that everyone paused as they took in the information that was given.

“Man, I should get that app so my parents can’t keep on tracking my location all the time.” K-Bar said.

“I got it for that exact same reason,” Candice agreed.

And like that, all of the members of the Jackson High School women’s basketball team decided to invest $4.99 for their own peace of mind. Well everyone but Misha, but Misha knew that altering her data provided by her electronic devices was child’s play to her at this point.

From there, the team was met with an intense array of drills that would push the girls to their limit before the next game in two days’ time.

***

While Misha had never stopped altering the data that she transmits, she had begun to alter the way she reaches out to different connected devices. As she remembered all too well the damage, she suffered from the psychic backlash received when she tried to get Bruce Jacobs to admit to his crimes.

She had been cocky, almost too brazen. All but storming into enemy lines and trying to perform a psychological attack. In a way the backlash she received was good as it helped her take defensive measures while extending her mind to different data sites.

This was why she had taken the act for what it was, a wake-up call.

The threat here was posed by an enemy that had won against her forces. That concept was still hard to understand, at least it was hard to understand how, until she met a master level practitioner.

Their magic while seemingly trivial was capable of great things, and Misha needed to be aware of that.

This was why Misha had taken to being extra careful while interacting with the Surreal servers.

There was something about the layout and design of these servers that felt simultaneously familiar, and also treacherous.

The meta data stored was so precise, so accurate that it was almost too easy to change and manipulate.

Even the encrypted packets of data seemed too easy to find and alter.

But that was when she realized something.

The cypher used to encrypt deeper modules was a unique cypher taught to my Psychers. For Psychers, encrypting and decrypting information was easy, and something that was taught at an early age.

The basic cypher just needed one of the elements, from there the Psycher would fold data using one of the known elements and ultimately lock them in place.

At first Misha had no talent for any of the elements, which was why she was placed in the Maintenance section. Only after a few years of working did Misha realize that her pathways were backwards from normal Psychers, making it so she had to cast her element from the opposite direction than what all of her instructors told her.

Of course, after realizing this learning to use and manipulate the element of Fire became easier. But rather than letting her get reclassified to a fighter, Misha found that she was allowed to get promoted quickly within the Maintenance sector, first reaching acclaim by joining the fire suppression team. Then by proving she could easily perform the work of a Maintenance fire suppression team by herself, she quickly became a crew chief and ultimately never looked back.

That said, she did understand the basics used by Psychers to use the elements to encrypt data. While Misha only now had an affinity for Fire and Electricity, she found that these two affinities were perfect for decrypting data on the internet.

Basically, all that standard decryption did was take the energy components of a file and turn them slightly, altering their appearance rotation and meaning. This process would create a decryption key, but unlike how others thought of it, this wasn’t some major component, but one that seemed rather easy to solve. At least from a Psycher’s perspective, as all one needed to do was find the open slots, where the key would fit, then place in a little bit of malleable energy, and slowly rotate the energy particles until they all lined up and effectively flipped the information back into its standard location. The entire process sounds a lot harder to accomplish than it actually is.

With these Psycher locks, it was mostly the same, all except that certain files had an extra layer of protection. Basically, nothing more than a giant bow that needed to be pulled from the correct string, at the correct time, in the correct order. The idea being that by pulling the wrong elemental thread at the wrong time, or pulling an elemental thread for too long, the chosen thread would tear through the encrypted data and thereby eliminate it.

Seeing the Psycher encrypted data, Misha had mostly avoided the data. Finding that altering the collected data, and protecting herself and her friends from being targeted by this Surreal tracking system was more important than finding out what was being held within the Psycher encrypted boxes.

The only problem was that the more times she came to investigate the area, the more Psycher encrypted boxes she inevitably found.

Of course, Misha knew this practice for what it was, a honey trap. Setting out more and more Psycher encrypted documents knowing that only a Psycher could decrypt them. Maybe one of the advanced Bakshee could as well, though someone that powerful would likely never come down to a planet that was still in the process of being terraformed. Meaning that only a fellow Psycher would be able to decrypt these files. Not just any Psycher, but one versed in decryption methods.

Of course, Misha herself had never been allowed to take the decryption and encryption courses. But that didn’t mean she never had a chance to learn, for as the lead maintainer, it often became her job to help operate on, maintain, and update the latest training modules for the fleet.

Which invariably needed her to fix, and test the products before returning them.

The fact that she was privy to otherwise classified information was often overlooked by the fact that she was highly capable at her fleet assigned tasks and mission.

For days Misha had avoided touching the Psycher encrypted payloads, but unfortunately today it seemed that her luck had run out.

The reason the sudden change in ability to avoid the clearly intriguing payloads was due to relevance. Before now, none of the payloads that appeared had any value.

Also, based on the computing capabilities of the server, it seemed that once the data available had been Psycher encrypted, it was inaccessible by the computers as it would require someone to come in and manually unlock the encrypted files with actual elemental control.

Unfortunately, today would be the day that Misha would have to unlock the Psycher encrypted file, if only to see what they knew about her.

As she arrived today, there was a slight difference to the layout of information. And Misha could almost feel an oppressive aura over the entire server, though Misha knew from her mental probes that she herself was safe.

That was until she saw that not only her file, but the files of her fellow teammates that she had been altering daily were all Psycher encrypted.

Worst of all, her own encrypted payload let her know that someone was onto her. For on her file that she had altered the name of early on, once again stated her real name.

Name: Rose Ambhurst. Misha Tulley