Are We or Are We Not

“I have to fly to Washington.” Rhonda stated, taking a sip of her tea and running a hand through the mess of her uncombed curls.

“That’s quite extravagant.” Emily replied on cue. “What gives?”

This was a gimme. Emily was lucky that “extravagant” had slipped right into the sentence. Rhonda pushed the reset button on her timer and glanced down at the old crumpled piece of paper, spread carefully on the tabletop by her computer. Her own next code word was induction. In fifty seven seconds she had to work the word “induction” into a sentence.

“Do you remember Anand Klein?”

“Of course, I remember him.” Emily shrugged. Her image on the screen froze mid-shrug, but her voice was still coming through. “He was like the least popular guy in school. A complete nerd, but he made it big. Last time I heard he was like a colonel in the Crypto Mining Force.”

“He was in the CMF all right. But the rumor is that he’s the President now. It kinda makes sense. If he kept being promoted, then by induction he would rise to the very top.” Rhonda took a deep breath. “What do you think?”

That was lame. Emily’s face unfroze as another DOS attack was over and Rhonda could see her friend’s lips curving up. ‘Is that all you got?’ her smile was saying.

When Emily spoke she, of course, made no reference to the source of her amusement. “Can’t help you there, babe. Here in Miami, the word is Abigail Lee is the President. But I don’t think she is in D.C.. In any case, I thought D.C. was no longer the capital. Isn’t the Kingpin in Austin now?” Kingpin. Another lucky break for Emily.

There was a genuine reason to work the code words in seamlessly. Malbots tended to detect extra security in conversations and increase the level of attack in the hope that there was a bitcoin transfer involved.

Trying to one-up each other at inserting the code words was also a game between them. There weren’t many people around that Rhonda could actually have fun with.

“Well, here in San Francisco they still call Washington the capital. I need to find out.”

“It’s not safe to go there now. I don’t know much about the government, but I know finance. I track the flows.” Emily turned serious. “The Treasury has no currency. Its main store must be locked or hacked.” She was clearly avoiding words like “crypto,” “bitcoin,” or “wallet” to avoid attracting malware.

“That would be the hack of the Era!” Rhonda responded triumphantly. At last she got a freebie.

“I don’t know what it was, but something’s up. If they have no reserves, they can’t pay the Secret Service or any other security. There might be chaos around the White House, whether any government is there or not.” Emily’s eyes narrowed a bit. “But, really, why do you care if he is the President?”

Rhonda briefly considered telling Emily about the last time she had a link with Anand. If it had indeed been Anand, of course.

Emily was the only bitcoinaire among Rhonda’s friends and she could help with her connections or advice. Rhonda hesitated and glanced at the paper again. The word she saw made her smile wickedly. She would wait for Emily to speak again first. Let her try to work the word colander into the conversation.

“Anyway,” Emily continued, “If you do decide to travel, I have a website for you. Associated Airlines. For the next thirty minutes or so you can reliably book plane tickets and transfer payment.”

Rhonda’s timer went off. She sighed, disconnected from the network, and entered the command to wipe her hard drive. She put the paper with her code words in the shredder and launched her profile on the spare laptop. What she had been talking to for the last few seconds of their conversation was no longer Emily.

While the start-up sequence spun on the new device, she got up and opened her safe. There were eleven sheets of paper in an old fashioned plastic folder. The untitled green folder was for Emily. Eleven more secure conversations with the initial password and code words to last for thirty minutes. She wondered briefly if using green was in and of itself a security risk: somewhere on the net there might be a record of green being Emily’s favorite color.

There was no point in wasting another precious sheet to call Emily back. She was on the malware radar now.

Rhonda scooped a few gold coins and a USB drive from the safe, leaving the green folder untouched.

Driving across the country was not an option – she’d never dare to plug in her car at an unknown charging station. Trying to search for airplane tickets on the internet was useless as well. The malbots were now aware that she was in the market for air travel; she would just run into more scams like Fake Emily leading her to the Associated Airlines website.

She’d have to go directly to the airport kiosk. There was nowhere safe to leave her car, so she’d ask her neighbor to give her a ride in exchange for a massage.

It took Rhonda hours to make it through the ticketing line at the airport. The clerk had a mass spectrometer to verify her coins, but still wouldn’t accept them.

He sounded apologetic. “Sorry, I can’t be sure of the price of gold now. Normally we are allowed to take some risk, but these days everyone is talking about the government selling precious metals to make up for the lack of bitcoin reserves. All the quotes we get are like ten times apart.”

Taking furtive looks around her, Rhonda reluctantly dug into her pouch for her USB. Fortunately, the airport kiosks were still secure. She finally made it to the red eye after spending the whole day in the airport.

The attendant on the plane did accept a coin in exchange for a stale bagel and an overcooked egg. Later, she wished she had skipped the meal.

The next morning, Rhonda was disheveled and exhausted. Fighting bouts of queasiness, she was pushed through the throngs of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Entry to the White House was closed. Rhonda contemplated climbing the fence. One benefit of giving deep tissue massages for living was that her arms were strong enough to swing it.

However, despite what Emily had said, there were in fact a bunch of people on the White House Lawn. They wore uniform jackets with “Security” printed on their backs and sported fancy earpieces and shiny name tags.

Rhonda was reasonably certain these people had nothing to do with the government and would certainly not go anywhere near them with a USB in her belt pouch.

She wrapped her arms around herself as a shield against the jostling crowd and mumbled. “Anand, how do I get to you?”

“Rhonda? What are you doing here?”

She spun around to face his intense dark eyes and narrow nose. They were the exact same height, which was something she had always considered auspicious. His too short khaki slacks showed old tennis shoes and his sweater was a bit too heavy for late spring in D.C. There was a sheen of sweat on his smoothly shaven face.

“Anand! What? Aren’t you…?” she motioned at the White House.

He made a shushing motion. “Follow me. My digs are right here.” He pointed at the Herbert Hoover Building. “I just stepped out for groceries.”

“Oh, I am the President all right,” he said once he locked and secured the door.

The Federal Building had long been a residential apartment complex, but Anand’s place was separate, accessed only by a maintenance door left from when the National Aquarium was situated in the building.

The residence had no windows but was spacious and well-appointed. The living room had a large oval wooden table, which tickled Rhonda’s memory as having something to do with movies she had watched as a kid.

“Not many people know my face.” Anand continued. “So I can sneak around a bit.”

“But the White House?”

“It’s a decoy. Since the March Insurgency, it hasn’t been safe for me to appear in public.”

“So, there was an insurgency?” Rhonda blurted out. “I thought it was a media hoax.”

“No, it was quite real. Guns and shit.” Anand shook his head. “You look beat. Why don’t you sit down.” He pointed to a plush armchair. “Tea, I assume? Or have you switched to coffee over the years.”

“Still tea.” Rhonda nodded and slowly lowered herself onto the soft cushion and continued to study Anand as he bent over the kettle.

They hadn’t spoken since the ceremony. It was conducted from the mining space station, which was his command, through a secure military link. Anand had stood with his back to the observation deck. She could see the enormous span of the solar panels powering the bitcoin mining facility, like wings above the insignia on his shoulders. It seemed too perfect to be real. In truth, it was even too perfect to be a fake.

Now Anand’s shoulders were marked only by the fuzz from his sweater. He still projected authority.

“The insurgency,” Rhonda said. “How did you survive?”

“Everything was compromised, everything was overrun. I thought I would be captured at gunpoint at any moment. Fortunately, the digital offensive which preceded the physical attack had attracted an army of random malbots. Their communication was scrambled and they ended up fighting each other. All the Secret Service had to do was to clean up the mess afterwards.”

“And where is this Secret Service now?”

“Left for the private sector I assume. The government’s too broke to compete. And the job just got too dangerous.”

He poured the tea and stepped closer, gingerly placing the steaming mug on the polished wood.

“Speaking of danger, I can’t even imagine how hard it must have been for you to get to Washington.” Rhonda took a sip of hot liquid. It settled her stomach nicely. She stood, gathering her courage, and fumbled for her pouch.

She pulled out a glossy sheet of paper with multiple watermarks. “I came all the way here to ask one question, Anand.” She held up the certificate. “Are we married or not?”

Without a word, Anand walked to the wall and palmed an ordinary looking panel. It swung open to reveal a safe. In continuing silence, he keyed in a password and let his retina be scanned. There were multiple folders inside, but Anand reached for the yellow one without hesitation. He pulled out a sheet matching Rhonda’s and placed it on the oval table.

“When I thought all was lost, I encrypted access to the Treasury Bitcoin Wallet with our marriage certificate. Without you, I wouldn’t be able to release the bitcoins, regardless of what they did to me. Later, I needed you to unlock the Cryptex, but I had no way of approaching you securely. Thank heavens, you came on your own.”

Rhonda lined up her certificate on the table next to Anand’s and looked back towards the folder in the still-open safe. Yellow was her favorite color.