Swarm Read online

  GUY GARCIA

  __SWARM__

  Morphic Books first edition, February 2017

  Copyright © 2017 Guy Garcia.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

  Cover art: Emil Alzamora

  Cover design: CirceCorp

  Photo credit: Kenneth Willardt

  ISBN: 978-0-9974398-0-9 (sc)

  ISBN: 978-0-9974398-1-6 (hc)

  ISBN: 978-0-9974398-2-3 (e)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016913601

  Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

  Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

  Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

  Publisher info:

  Name: Morphic Books

  Address: 450 West 42nd St. 40M New York, NY 10036

  Phone number: 9174064132

  Legal name: GDG Inc.

  rev. date: 01/13/2017

  Contents

  Preface

  Part I

  Embryo

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  Part II

  Emergence

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  Part III

  Evolution

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  A Brief History Of Mind Control

  About The Author

  Even the most harmful man may really be the most useful when it comes to the preservation of the species; for he nurtures either in himself or in others, through his effects, instincts without which humanity would long have become feeble or rotten.

  —Friedrich Nietzsche

  It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

  —Charles Darwin

  For a minute there, I lost myself, I lost myself.

  —Radiohead

  PREFACE

  In the beginning, it was all fun and games. Long before the barricades fell and the pyres were lit, before the dream became a cold sweat in these dis–United States of imperiled possibilities and perpetual discount plans, before the stars strayed from the stripes and the iTribes gathered their dismay and forged it into something different, before they became something different, before everything was different, it all still seemed the same. Nobody noticed, nobody knew, nobody cared. There were signals, hints of the yawning abyss, of course, in the nattering re-tweets and bloodshot blink of LEDs, in the predator drone of bilious blogs, and the dopamine drip of the next text alert. It could be glimpsed in the slingshot shrapnel of Asteroid apps, the fuming funnel clouds and insistent hacker’s cough, the warm-weather kudzu vines creeping up our forests and our spines. It was there in the Oprah revelations and Jackass stunts, in the grim smile of the alligator hanging by its teeth from Steve-O’s underpants. It was right under our noses, in the video clips of IEDs and the collateral damage of Deal or No Deal. Maybe it had always been in the cards, a DNA Dear John waiting for its moment to reshuffle the deck and up the ante. It was in the fading strokes of a quill pen—invisible and indelible—written into that sacred space between the lines, tabula rasa, a palimpsest plain as day for all the blind to see. And even before that, in ritual chants and mossy tombs, pyramids lined up like landing lights, pointing not to the past nor to the future but to the ever-impending present, the imminent now. In any case, it was already a foregone conclusion—even in those gasping last days of denial, when the foundations foundered and the heavens heaved, when the prayers of trampled hope were finally answered and the levies broke and the water rushed in, carrying everything and everybody along with it. And for the first time in a long time, the table was cleared and the tab was paid, gifts were given and taken, all was lost, and everything was gained.

  Part I

  EMBRYO

  It was true that Air Force Airman Donald Westlake was even more withdrawn than usual that morning, hunkered over a low row of benches that bordered his bunk, oblivious to everything except the sounds from the compact MP3 player clipped to his sleeve. Westlake’s barracks were situated away from the bustle of center base, an unadorned concrete box near the perimeter gate supervised by a lackadaisical contingent of Afghan government troops. Westlake was wearing high-fidelity headphones that covered his ears, but the crunching chords and booming beats were faintly audible over the rattle of the communal air conditioner. The singer sounded angry, livid, his voice ripping into the lyrics.

  You gotta load the ammo and cock the gun

  You gotta point the barrel and make them run

  Don’t give them time to pray

  The maggots won’t forget this day

  In the base commander’s report, after the government launched its official investigation and the global media fanned the flames of mutual distrust and recrimination, nobody remembered exactly when Westlake had become obsessed with skinhead metal music. It wasn’t unusual for the whipsaw cocktail of chronic stress and numbing routine to warp the habits and tastes of the most mild-mannered recruits, suddenly pumping iron around the clock until their bodies bulged like G.I. Joe action dolls, tattooing themselves with the names of dead relatives in Morse code, muttering lewd and sarcastic comments in the showers. Idiosyncratic behavior was the norm, tolerated as long as the strangeness never boiled over into a bona fide situation. Exiled in this color-leached land of blinding heat and giant biting spiders, nobody felt like himself, so how could he expect it of anybody else?

  The pieces of Westlake’s improvised battle set were laid out before him on a neatly folded blanket. He had cleaned and reassembled his M16 rifle at least twice since dawn, carefully loading the magazine and laying it next to his Beretta M9 pistol, which was designed to withstand temperatures of up to 140 degrees Fahrenheit and function after exposure to saltwater, mud, or sand. Westlake pulled on his camouflage flak jacket, stowed the pistol in his Bianchi side holster, and counted out four M67 fragmentation grenades. He gently hooked the grenades onto his utility belt, making sure not to accidentally snag the pins, grabbed his rifle, and headed for the door.

  These days demand guts

  No ifs ands or buts

  A million miles high and looking down

  It’s time to run amok

  It’s time to give a fuck

  Some of Westlake’s fellow soldiers peered up from their cots as he passed, hardly seeing him through the groggy haze of their own preoccupations. They didn’t ask him where he was going or why he was suited up for combat. As far as any of them knew, he
was following orders, just one more flyboy trying to get through his tour without succumbing to the ache of distant wives and girlfriends raising kids without their fathers. Men who were just doing their jobs defending democracy or at least defending each other from the dread of being a living target, not just for bullets and body bombs but also for the serrated stares of children and old women who saw Allah knows what in the speckled camouflage and expensive battle accessories. Men who felt not just the weight of their ammo and dehydrated rations but also the psychic baggage of soldiers sent to regulate wars on foreign soil, protecting moist green lawns in the summertime, or at least the idea of moist green lawns in a place where no such thing existed and never would.

  Airman Westlake pushed through the door and paused, squinting as his eyes adjusted to the blare of the parched terrain. Less than a hundred yards away, a half dozen or so Afghan commandos were on sentry duty at the base checkpoint, Ray-Bans glinting and rifles propped against the whitewashed perimeter hut as they gregariously recounted the previous evening’s escapades. Westlake held his M16 by its middle grip as he sauntered toward them, just another early bird American coming to shoot the shit and share a smoke. As Westlake approached the checkpoint, a couple of the Afghan soldiers recognized him and smiled. Even when he leveled his weapon in their direction and clicked off the safety, their comprehension of what was happening lagged behind the dry clatter of the gun and the impact of the first bullets on flesh and bone. The few rounds that missed their marks chipped dark holes in the wall, which was soon splattered red in Jackson Pollock patterns. Without breaking stride, he unclipped a frag grenade and lobbed it toward the far end of the group, its dull thud and shock wave knocking two of the men to the ground as they scrambled to return fire. Westlake took his time, his eyes cold and unblinking as he picked off his targets with brutal efficiency.

  This isn’t Iraq

  There’s no turning back

  Don’t be a nigger

  Pull the goddamn trigger!

  Most of the men at the checkpoint were already dead by the time Westlake’s fellow airmen began pouring out of the barracks, horrified by their comrade’s confounding carnage, their shouts and commands no match for the grinding guitars in his head. Westlake kept advancing and firing even after his hapless victims were all dispatched, pausing only to load another clip, when an American hand grabbed his shoulder and swung him around. He didn’t hear the report that would end his remorseless rampage, a bullet to the head at close range, to be later classified, for PR purposes, as an unfortunate case of friendly fire. Westlake died in the dirt, surrounded by twitching corpses and speechless half-clothed US servicemen, the music in his headphones still blasting.

  Don’t hesitate—attack!

  Don’t negotiate—attack!

  We reap what they sow, bro.

  Send them down below!

  The singer’s scream was guttural, primal, insistent, inhuman.

  1

  Tom Ayana entered the glass facade of Austin’s Frost Bank Tower and took the high-speed elevator to the top floor. He was dressed in his customary uniform of plaid shirt, jeans, and black cotton hoodie, a padded backpack slung over his shoulder. The receptionist for the Texas headquarters of Free Range Energy Industries was on the phone as he walked in, and he waited for her ersatz eyelashes to flutter in his direction.

  “Hang on a sec, Sheryl.” Her metallic blue nails flashed as she moved the phone away from her mouth. “I’m sorry, young man, but all deliveries have to go through the service desk down in the lobby.”

  “I’m here to see Frank Reston.”

  “Do you have an appointment with Mr. Reston?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Sheryl, I’ll call you back.” She punched a button on the office intercom. “Mr. Reston, a Mr. …”

  “Ayana.”

  “Mr. Ayana is here to see you. He’s not on your calendar, so … I see. Yes, of course, sir.”

  The woman rewarded him with a brittle smile. “You can go right in.”

  Reston was a hale fifty-something in khakis, a wrinkle-free blue dress shirt, and a tightly knotted silk tie. He rose from his desk with the easy confidence of a self-made millionaire and trapped Tom’s hand in a bear paw grip.

  “Thanks for dropping by,” he said, waving to a sturdy lacquered chair. “Tom, I don’t usually answer unsolicited e-mails, but I was intrigued by your pitch about cybersecurity threats.” Reston sat in his Aeron ergonomic chair and leaned forward. “So what can I do for you?”

  “Well, Mr. Reston, it’s really about what I can do for you.”

  On the shelf behind Reston’s sprawling hardwood desk, college football trophies shared space with a photo of him wearing a yellow hard hat and stepping jauntily onto a gas-rig elevator. The actual hard hat was on the shelf too, conveying the message that Free Range Energy’s CEO was a man of action, a man who didn’t mind getting his hands dirty, a man who didn’t like to waste time.

  Reston looked at his watch and interlaced his thick fingers. “Okay, you’ve got ten minutes.”

  “That should be plenty,” Tom said.

  “But before you start, I have to warn you that I’ve got lots of smart guys working for me who know plenty about that.” He pointed to the computer next to his desk. “And we’re doing just fine without any outside cybersecurity experts. That’s what people like you call yourselves, right?”

  “Actually, we like to think of ourselves as cyber ass protectors.”

  “No kidding.” Reston smiled and glanced at his watch. “How’s that?”

  “Because once someone penetrates your back door, you’re fucked.”

  Reston guffawed. “That’s nice, Mr. Ayana. I really do appreciate your, ah, metaphor. But I think our back door is just fine. I’ve got an extremely busy day, so if you don’t mind …”

  “Mr. Reston, if you have an operations dashboard on your desktop, you’re probably already in trouble.”

  Reston glanced at his computer screen. “I’m listening.”

  “Well, you can’t have a dashboard unless your IT and OT are linked, and we all know what happened to Talvent after it was breached by Comment Group, or the ATG network hack, a while back. They thought they had all the security they needed too.” Tom was referring to a case where a Chinese hacker group successfully broke into the remote administration tools that monitored the status of gas and oil pipelines stretching across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, including the widespread disabling of the software that measures the levels of gasoline station fuel tanks across America.

  “Well, Mr. Ayana, that’s scary stuff, to be sure,” Reston said. “And the government is going after the people who are responsible, as they should. But I don’t see what that has to do with Free Range.”

  “What if I told you that your entire OT smart grid was vulnerable to online intrusion? I’m talking up, down, and midstream—in real time.”

  “In real time?” Reston chuckled amiably. “I’d say prove it to me.”

  Tom removed his laptop from the backpack, flipped it open and spent the next fifty seconds typing in a series of commands. When Tom put the laptop aside, Reston looked bemused. “I thought you were going to show me something.”

  “Your operational technology and hydrocarbon supply chain switches at your main processing plant in Colorado, and all three of your Texas gas rigs have emergency surge cutoffs that are triggered by pressure gauge controls,” Tom said. “Once the master grid server is compromised …”

  Reston shook his head. “You can’t change the pressure in the storage tanks without setting off the emergency compression shutdown alarm.”

  “I don’t need to change the pressure if I can use your own OT grid to control the pressure gauge monitors. Think of what could happen if your plant managers kept raising the pressure in the storage tanks when they’re already full.”

  Rest
on’s office intercom buzzed. He raised his finger. “Hold that thought.”

  “Hank Lakusta is on line one, sir,” Tom heard the receptionist say. “He’s says it’s urgent.”

  Reston punched a button on his phone. As he listened, his jaw clenched and his complexion reddened. “Yeah, I heard what you said. Don’t do anything yet, Hank. Just sit tight. I think I might have the fix right here in front of me.”

  Reston hung up and glowered threateningly at Tom. “I could have you arrested, you know.”

  “You told me to prove it to you, Mr. Reston. The main thing, what should matter to you, is that if I can do it, then so can someone in China or Russia—or a hacker working for one of your competitors. And when it happens, and sooner or later it will, I guarantee that the people behind the attack won’t be sitting in your office.”

  “This isn’t a joke, son,” Reston said with something akin to contempt. “Unlike your little virtual scenarios, the things we do here are real. The gas we harvest from the earth helps people cook their food and heat their homes. The country depends on it, and the men who work for me have families to feed. This isn’t some kind of friggin’ video game.”

  “Cyber intrusion is definitely not a joke or a game, sir. The hackers who can get inside your system and shut it down or even blow it up are real too. Just ask Hank.”

  Tom watched Reston’s expression morph from anger to comprehension and finally resignation. “Okay, you’re hired,” he said sourly. “Now will you please turn my damn company back on?”

  The savanna bristled under the equatorial sun, its grassy shoulders hunched over the banks of a squiggly ravine. Off to the west, the inflorescence fanned out to the horizon, welded to the sky by molten bands of mercury. The shadow of the single-engine chartered aircraft flickered across a caravan of giraffes gliding toward the mountains like a fleet of tall ships. Lions, cheetahs, and leopards lurked in the undergrowth, and hippos and crocodiles patrolled the lakes and rivers. Under the flat-topped acacia trees, baboons kept a wary lookout for hyenas and snakes as they groomed one another. In this sublimely raw and rugged terrain, it wouldn’t be that surprising to spot a grazing triceratops or a velociraptor poised to pounce on its prey—just two more genetic wild cards in the primordial contest for water and blood.