Psycher Chronicles

Cybersecurity 301

(Misha Tulley)

Being on the Basketball team came with a few restrictions, the most important aspect being that Jasmine and Misha were both expected to keep a minimum of a 'B' average or higher if they wanted to maintain being starters as Freshmen. This put a level of strain on the pair that was not entirely insurmountable, but did add complexities, nonetheless.

For Jasmine, this meant she had to rely heavily on attending classes that were hosted by faculty members who were more accommodating towards student athletes. While Misha interpreted this as a need to focus on knocking out easy classes and likely assume most of her elective courses would fit into at least fulfilling a minor in computer science.

This was how Misha found herself in what was typically a junior level class as a freshman. The only problem with this class was that it dealt with absolutely nothing with computers. Well, it did, but computers were not necessary, and security was more of a philosophical inquiry, rather than a definitive focus.

That was how Misha found herself in class not quite bored, for Misha being bored was akin to being on a perfectly maintained ship during a firefight and waiting for either energy bursts to be over, or for something to break. While waiting for time to pass for her to be able to get up and leave her classroom could be similar to waiting around for bursts of energy to pass by, she never had to worry about anything truly breaking here.

Which was why Misha found herself focusing on tracking the individual from the police station who managed to place a transmitter on Darcy. Thinking back she realized it was done by the door clerk who had them sign in and provided visitor badges to the group.

Only once she got back and could hear the faint squelching sound of Darcy's transmitter brushing up against the range of the transmitter placed on Sergeant Knight did Misha even register the device and its effect.

To be fair, the fact that it took Misha a moment to pick up on the small transmitter was not too hard to fathom, as there were a lot of electronic devices going off, many on multiple frequencies. The most glaring were on the walkie talkies that were on HF frequency bands, which seemed louder than the EHF, or Extremely High Frequency range that these transmitters used.

Being on Frequency Range 2 (FR2), at roughly 42 GHz, placing it within the EHF frequency range band. From this discovery, Misha knew a few things, first she realized that this was the band range for Millimeter wave (mmWave) signals, a band range that Misha normally attributed to Military and Firefighters, and was part of why Misha nearly dismissed the signals. Until she realized that the police did not use this same frequency range for anything. One think Misha did know about these types of frequencies was that they traveled shorter distances and are noted for their ease of being blocked by obstacles. This was why Misha chose to choose a more scenic route back to campus, as she used this to map out the network of base stations that were set up to continue to power the devices and receive communications.

The fact that they were covered by signals regardless of where and how she turned, showed that this network of people was larger than she thought. Also, she couldn't help but wonder if there were two groups of people. That or two groups that both seemed to work in conjunction with each other. Misha couldn't tell. Despite her best efforts it was clear that the group that backed Mr. Love was powerful, connected, and above all diligent in their efforts.

So far Misha had only managed to find a terrible manifesto, all but demanding that monsters be hunted down. Similar to what she thought members of the Inquisition would wield while conducting an exorcism. There were also notes of both werewolves and vampires existing. The whole thing was quite comical, especially as werewolves while loosely based off warrior class Bakshee members had a few major flaws in their descriptions. The most glaring obstacle was that the true warrior class members were nothing like what was being described in these manifestos. Even their depictions of vampires, which Misha assumed related to the Worker Class were drastically different, at least from the ones she had encountered thus far.

There was a lot out there, but the one class that was surprisingly missing from all the depictions were those of the ruling class, which made Misha wonder if there was a reason why an entire group was apparently missing. Granted ruling class members were supposed to be rare, but magic was something spoken about in every folktale and version of recorded history that Misha had found to date. Even the Salem Witches, where many of the short-sighted visions of how to deal with these so-called Vampires and Werewolves came from were steeped in witchcraft and magic. Yet, that group was surprisingly absent. Leading Misha to wonder more about that aspect than anything.

In fact, Misha was so engrossed in her own thoughts about everything that was going on and how clear-cut evidence had been altered or mismanaged so badly that the case against Mr. Love had been thrown out that she failed to notice how class had changed to follow the reading for last night.

"Now who can tell me the particulars of the Duval Vs Surreal LLC case?" Professor Moxley asked his tone that of someone searching for an unsuspecting target. It was likely this exact reason, the want to focus on students who were otherwise disengaged that his eyes seemed to settle on Misha. "You there, freshman from the basketball team, can you tell us the particulars of this case, and why it would be important to this class in particular?"

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Pausing for a moment, Misha mentally replayed all the words spoken about for the last two minutes in class and quickly understood the question. Not only that, but she realized that this was likely some sort of power play, trying to show the professor as not being biased towards players. An aspect that Misha had picked up quite early in the classes, in particular with this particular professor who seemed to try to use her attendance as part of a Basketball scholarship to be a mark against her. For even now, having gone through mid-terms and nearing the final weeks of class, he still chose to refer to her as basketball player, versus her actual name. Regardless, Misha didn't rise to the bait, nor seem to care about the perceived sleight.

"The case involves former Senator Duval who abdicated from office after his daughter committed suicide thanks to constant alleged hounding generated by users of the Surreal application, a mobile app game that let people level up by being made aware of monsters in the environment and tracking them. The case noted that while almost anyone with a phone could be labelled as a monster, certain people were constantly labelled as monsters. Worse the game gave monetary rewards to people who finished in the top ten in points each recording period."

Part of why Misha's knowledge of this case was at the forefront of her mind, was not just due to this being part of the required reading. But there was also the fact that many members of Mr. Love's network of murderers used this application to track and stalk awakened monsters. Aided by this information that was suddenly pertinent to ongoing crimes around campus, Misha continued to answer the question.

"People wishing to be atop the leaderboard were thus encouraged to find these so-called constants, as in people who were guaranteed to be labelled as a monster that day. At which time, they would track the constants from location to location, creating a potential hostile environment. Having been surrounded and followed by users of the Surreal app, people found that many high-ranking Politicians and their children were all labeled as constants. This constant surveillance caused many revealing photos and encounters to have been recorded, leading to embarrassing moments and the quote unquote destruction of Senator Duval's daughter's life where she self-deleted herself to avoid the harassment. All of which the former Senator swears was generated by the application that ultimately resulted in a pay-to-stalk and harass application made popular by media and financial rewards." Misha summarized all the data she had been asked to read, along with a few other resources that she had also cited for her paper that she had turned in last night as part of the assignment.

Hearing her comment, Professor Moxley just stared at Misha, as if wondering if she was somehow trying to mock the professor. Finally, after a long pause, Professor Moxley just nodded in acceptance of her reply, about as much as she could expect from the professor.

Then without word of confirmation, or acceptance of her reply, Professor Moxley shifted his gaze and tried to find the next student who seemed inattentive.

With the attention diverted, Misha felt her mind come to life where she thought about creating her own version of Surreal, one that focused on outing every member of this network of killers and sociopaths. Realizing that this might cross apparent legal and ethical boundaries of society, she wondered how far she should expect to try to spread this new application, and how to market it so that it didn't focus on rewarding the tracking and harassment of individuals, while still helping everyone maintain vigilance over the monsters who remained in plain sight.

For a moment, Misha wondered if it would be poetic justice to have all the members who were outed by her application to then be forcefully awakened into the role of a warrior class. Mentally she noted her own paradoxical nature with this being noted as a possible solution to the problem of campus violence. That being that she, a former Psycher, now found a solution to a problem to be the need to forcefully convert innocent lifeforms to fill a role within Bakshee society.

While the paradoxical nature of such a cure existing for her current set of problems wasn't lost on her, Misha found that this was likely one of the easiest solutions available to her. Also, this would either cause the network of killers to start hunting their own kind, show the hypocrisy of their acts as they turned a blind eye to the converted members of their cult, or cause the cult to ramp up its activities. In all three scenarios, Misha determined that acceptable risks were noted for each set of perceived variable outcomes that she had noted.

Realizing that there would not be any truly perfect response to the circumstances that were happening, Misha felt that this would be the easiest for her to enact. As a fully advanced Reaper unit, she now had the ability to force a mutation in others. Best of all, given that it was a forced mutation, the level at which the mutation occurred could be at any strength and gradient, meaning she could force the weakest of transformations to occur within her newly identified list of targets. A list that was growing larger and larger by the day.

With her mind made up, she soon found that class ended and they were all allowed to leave for the day. As she left, Professor Moxley decided to stop Misha on her way out.

"You there, basketball player," the professor began, hearing him Misha paused and realized this was similar to the way she was treated on the ship by many that did not know, nor wish to know of her name. Thinking back, she remembered the all too familiar, "hey you, maintainer." From there, her perceived titles and the way people reached out to her devolved rather rapidly. Hearing the professor, Misha expected much the same. A fact she was sadly proven correct on.

***

(8 Hours Later)

That night, two men met up at the end of a particularly dark street. Looking around, they say the signs warning everyone to walk in pairs, a sign that they pointed to and openly mocked with derision. For they knew that they had nothing to worry about while on campus. Here they were the undisputed kings, even if no one knew about them or their perceived importance.

For a moment it looked like the two would have to wait another night, as no one was out.

Clip-clop.

At least they thought no one was out, until they heard the unmistakable sound of a singular set of feet quickly marching across campus.

Seeing the figure, they waited, watching as the person came ever closer, their tall silhouette illuminated by the dim streetlights that lined the walkways. Aided by the illumination, the figure of a voluptuous female was clear to be seen.

"Looks like we might need to help out a fellow student," one of the guys stated.

The second person held a phone and pointed it at the individual, only for them to shake their heads. "Not tonight," the second individual stated.

"What a shame, maybe next time." The first male responded. Turning their attention away from the quickly walking figure that quickly stomped their way past.

Realizing that that wasn't a target, they switched their vision back down the pathway, trying to see if any more stragglers would be making their way back to the dormitory. Only after a few seconds did something catch the first one's attention.

"Hey, did it suddenly go quiet?" The first asked. Hearing the question the second one was about to reply no, but then he noticed it too, the clopping of feet abruptly ended.

Turning, they faced the darkness where the tall figure had gone, only to see an open street. Then they waited…