The land of Oz

000; The Guardian, 8 April 2015;

“Today, Earth received message that the Mars expedition discovered fossil evidence for life on Mars. The fossilized remains of what appear to be a trilobite have led scientists to the startling conclusion that life in our solar system most likely originated somewhere else. On Earth, Nuclear weapons were used again by both Israel and Iran. Iran suffered the loss of its only carrier fleet, and Israel, as usual, suffered massive industrial and civilian losses. Accusations of Palestinian genocide have circulated microblogs, but the accounts have not been confirmed. Meanwhile, cyber-terrorists are purportedly carrying out sustained Distributed Denial of Service attacks on infrastructure points in Israel. Skeptics suggest that this is not the most likely scenario, and make the sound point that the Israeli government is profiting from what amounts to complete internet censorship.”

001; Berlin, 9 April 2015;

Seal Team 6 are a team of the most efficient killers on the face of the planet. Seal Team 6 does not take prisoners. Completely black helicopters, modified for stealth, maneuver into position over an apartment building outside of Berlin. Seal Team 6 chose tonight because it was especially dark. The group of cyber terrorists are inside, but Seal Team 6 does not know where. The cyber terrorists are responsible for all the internet outages in Israel, and they have orders to to kill every one of them on sight. There is a directive that Seal Team 6 takes very seriously. The confidentiality directive. Any witnesses will be killed on sight. As the assassins rappel onto the roof, an RPG strikes the side of the chopper and explodes like a flash of lightning. The helicopter rolls over, making a screaming, grinding noise, and some of the team are disintegrated by the rotor blades before the chopper pitches itself off the building. The first Seal to open fire is General Hugh F Krieger, who speaks German fluently and has 50lbs of thermite strapped to his belt. He scores a headshot, killing the boy who fired the RPG. “Geh kacken.”

General Krieger orders two men to stay on the roof and snipe anyone who flees from or approaches the apartment building. He leads the rest of his unwounded men into the only staircase in the building. Krieger rappels to the bottom of the staircase and opens fire on a fleeing family before he even hits the bottom. The other men shoot every man, woman, and child who don’t run straight into Krieger’s stream of bullets. The team quickly removes all computers and data storage devices. A message on the com lets the Seal team know the backup transport has arrived. Krieger throws off his belt and casually moves a few dead bodies so he can saunter his way up the stairs.

All the media will know is that the terrorists behind the internet outage in Israel are dead, and they enjoyed animated tentacle child porn while they lived. Of course, none of this is true.

002; Fairfax VA, 25 May 2015;

Greg Oz has created the most accurate model of the universe with a self-made bot-net. He lives in his mother’s basement, is only 25, and has improved physical theory more than Einstein or Newton. He never went to college but instead became a hacker. Greg’s dedicated his life to hacking. As consequence, he doesn’t appreciate anything that can’t be summed up in a tidy equation or bit of code. There is no credit even among his close friends, who regard him as an insane loner. Greg, known online as GoZ, fears the science community would never accept his findings because he doesn’t speak their language.

About a year ago, GoZ discovered that the “strings” from String Theory are roughly analogous with objects in object-oriented programming. An object in this sense is just a set of data and instructions for what to do with that data. Each string acts out a self-defined recursive process, as opposed to interacting with other strings. It is this discovery that allowed GoZ to begin modeling the universe accurately. Each bot is capable of rendering a single string. However, resolution decreases exponentially as the time dimension approaches the present. GoZ calls his software ‘Oz,’ and considers the approximation of our universe a creation of its own. In fact, it is possibly the greatest scientific achievement in the history of mankind. Still, ‘Oz’ is incomplete. Indications of life have either been beyond Oz’s resolution, or they are not included in the model to begin with. GoZ spends every waking hour desperately trying to find signs of life inside his fractal. It is this desperation that has led GoZ to recklessly over expand his bot-net.

GoZ has been transfixed by the news from the Mars expedition, and obsessed with trilobites. He has paid no attention to the events in the middle east. An idea strikes GoZ as he’s viewing computer generated illustrations of swimming trilobites. Perhaps life is a single set of instructions that were present in a single string, capable of copying itself to other strings. Oz needs the perfect meta-virus to be present in the moments directly after the big bang. These thoughts cause GoZ to close his eyes for a moment and enter a trance-like state. This state of mind is shattered by gunfire and his screaming mother. GoZ does not even open his eyes before he is shot dead in his greatest moment of transcendent enlightenment. General Krieger is his executioner.

The computers of GoZ end up in the hands of security specialist Aaron Braun, investigative analyst for Mithril Technologies. Aaron Braun finds images of the Earth in different geological periods, strange planets from other stars, and closeups of lifeless landscapes. Quite quickly, Aaron Braun decides that this dead hacker was no average cyber terrorist. He forwards the documents, including the majority of GoZ’s scientific findings, to his supervisor over a not entirely secure network.

003; Excerpt; The Mithril Leak, 19 June 2015;

“…Braun, we cannot allow the source of this discovery to be named because of the obvious security issues it encompasses. However, the levity of this discovery requires it end up in the hands of those who can benefit, i.e. Department of Defense. I will name you as my co-discoverer and we will never speak another word about Greg Oz. I believe I can sufficiently demonstrate a working knowledge of the theory behind his software, as can you. We will likely win the Nobel Prize in Physics for this, so let’s spend the next few months getting more acquainted with our little ‘discovery’ before we make the big announcement…”