Smart Things Smart Hub 2.0 Review

I guess this is a writing prompt in that the device deserves a review and I feel prompted to write one.  Beyond that, not so much.  Not a work of fiction.  Not something from /r/writingprompts.  I just need a long form page to write in and this is the one available to me.  Enough with the prelude/excuses.

I bought the original Smart Things hub in a starter kit from Amazon last January.  I had already invested in eight Belkin WeMo switches and six WeMo plugs.  I have a Nest Thermostat.  I have four IP cameras around the outside of my house.  I have a personal weather station on the roof.  What I did not have was one central 'thing' to control them all.  I had hoped that, based on my experience at CES2015, that this hub would be it.  It was not.

Smart Hub 1.0 had some real issues with the Belkin WeMo devices.  Some of them it would control seamlessly.  Others were really sporadic.  One, the fish tank light, which I wanted to turn on with the sunrise and off with the sunset, never worked despite being closer to the wi-fi router and Smart Hub than most of the others.

What the Hub 1.0 did really well was integrate with Zigbee and Z-Wave devices.  After getting the hub, I purchased a Z-Wave relay for my garage door.  After messing with the Z-Wave instructions for a bit (only to discover that they were written with wrong information), I got it connected and the Hub 1.0 was quickly able to open and close my garage.  And do it from anywhere I had any network connectivity.  That was really nice for someone who is constantly worried that he forgot to close his garage door.

Nest... well, we'll get to Nest in a bit.

Enter Smart Hub 2.0.  I missed out on the introductory offer that included $75 of sensors, but still purchased it directly from Smart Things for $100 when they came back in stock.  When it arrived, I wasted no time in connecting it and trying to get it to work.  That took a little doing as the Smart Things servers seemed to be a bit busy with a bunch of mooks just like me trying to get connected.  The app (almost the only way to connect to the hub) kept telling me that I was not authorized to connect to the hub.  I traded emails with the Smart Things customer service, who were very responsive and great, before identifying the Belkin WeMo link app in the old Hub 1.0 as the problem.  Once that got deleted, everything was pretty smooth sailing.  Even re-installing that same WeMo app on Hub 2.0.

Hub 2.0 is a HUGE improvement.  HUGE.  All of the switches now work flawlessly.  I believe that much of this is attributed to fact that the new hub can connect to things on the local network without first going out to the Smart Things servers.  Response time is better.  I can have multiple switches respond when only one is pressed.  For instance, I installed some LED lighting in some bookshelves.  Now, when I turn on that room's main light, both book shelves also turn on.  I had tried to do that with the old hub via a "Big Switch" app and through IFTTT, but neither was fast or consistent.  Now, it's flawless.  Oh, and the fish tank switch works exactly the way it should.

Some other tricks I have going:

• Outdoor Garage Light and indoor Living Room light turn on 30 minutes before sunset and off late in the evening.  There's an Smart Things app to randomize all of that, but I haven't messed with that yet.
• My daughter's room light turns on at 6:30am, but only on the three days of the week that she's with me and has to go to school.  My bedroom light goes on at 6:00am on those same three days.
• My heated seat bidet (shameless luxury) now turns off when I leave the home and turns back on when I return to save energy.
• The indoor garage lights turn on when the garage opens, but only after 4pm.  They then shut off five minutes after the garage closes again.
• My home theater and TV turn on when I get home to the Chromecast input.  This is via a Harmony remote hub.  Harmony also has a Smart Things app.  And they turn off when I leave.  (Note: when I say that 'I leave', it's not actually tracking me, but my smart phone.  It could also be tagged to a 'presence tag', a smart luggage tag, but that would mean one more thing for me to carry.)

A note on apps: the main app is the Smart Things app for your favorite brand of Smart Phone (android, apple or windows).  Within that app, you have access to other apps that allow the Hub to control things.  Really, they are bridges between Smart Things and the other device's control interface.

The Room Page of the Smart Things App

The switch list within a room

Some of the internal Apps I've installed.

Some of the additional Apps that Smart Things has available.

If the particular device that you want to control does not have a Smart Things app, then you have two choices:

1. Write one.  There is a developer page for Smart Things which can be accessed through your browser of choice.  From here, you can create commands and controls and devices and all sorts of things... if you know what you're doing.  I don't.  I tried anyways, as that is my MO, but got lost quickly.  I'm sure that if I had a better understanding of the 'Groovy' programming language, this would be pretty simple stuff.  Again, I don't.  Smart Things does have some good documentation available, but I'm not quite smart enough to parse it correctly... or maybe that should be 'patient' instead of 'smart'.
     This was the only way that I was going to get my IP Cameras to work with Smart Things.  I own Foscam products.  I have one pointed at the front door, and would like to have it do something when the motion sensor in the camera is triggered (don't really know what yet... text me?).  There is some code written for the Foscam cameras, but I was unable to figure out what I had to change to make it all work.  At least I was unable to before my attention span saw something else shiny to play with.
2. Use IFTTT.  If you're not familiar with IFTTT, then change that.  IFTTT has come a long way and is a great way to make things happen.  The basic premise is that IF This, Then That (hence, IFTTT).  For instance, if your local school posts 'closed' on their main page, then send you a text.  Coupled with Smart Things, this allows all kinds of things, including Nest integration (still wait for it).  They also have a new 'Do' button that can put a widget on your phone's main screen for specific things.  For instance, instead of navigating three pages in the Smart Things app to open my garage, I have a IFTTT Do button that does it just as well.

The start point for creating 'Do' Buttons.

Some of the Button's that I've created.

What the 'Do' buttons widget looks like on a phone screen.
They also have a 4x1 widget that looks more like the buttons in the 'Do' app,
but I wanted to save the real estate.

Finally, Nest.  I love the thermostat, but it has some issues.  The biggest for me is that I spend all my time in my office which is not within in the IR sensor range of the Nest.  As a result, it will often think that I'm 'Away' when I'm actually home, sending it into energy conservation mode.  Then the house gets uncomfortably hot or cold depending on the season.  I had hoped that with the Smart Things presence sensor and IFTTT, I could force the Nest to remain in 'Home' mode as long as my phone was in the house.  Unfortunately, the only data links that Nest seems to allow are to set specific temperatures or turn just the fan on.  Google (sorry, Alphabet, Inc.), who owns Nest, has not released the links to the 'Home' or 'Away' settings.  I can do those things through the native Nest app, but the whole goal of this was to integrate as much as possible into one thing.  To the best of my knowledge, this is a Nest issue and not a Smart Things or IFTTT issue.

After all of that, let me give you the TL;DR Conclusion.

Pros:

• Better integration with local IP resources
• Faster response
• Better app with better internal apps
• IFTTT has come a long way.  (I know that Smart Things has nothing to do with this, but it really helps their product).

Cons:

• Not everything that is considered a 'Smart Home' or 'IoT' item is supported, even through things like IFTTT.  Check that you can actually do what you want to do before you invest.
• Cost.  While I think that the Hub 2.0 is very reasonable, many of the 'Things' available directly from Smart Things seem over priced. For instance, the door and window sensor (is it open or closed?) at $40 prohibits me from getting enough for all of the exterior doors in my home.
• My particular brand of IP cameras doesn't work easily with Smart Hub.

If you have questions or comments, hit me up at @schmoid on Twitter or reply to this FB post.

Thanks for reading.

[Final disclaimer: I used to work for Samsung who now owns Smart Things.  I no longer work for Samsung and do not feel obliged to color my review of this product one way or another.  I had a great time while I was there and have a lot of respect and admiration for the people and the organization.  Still, not everything is perfect even in the second generation.  I hope that my review reflects that.]

Strider Mo

Prompt:  Expanding "Upgrade Time" (con't)

[Author's Note: I'm taking a break from /r/WritingPrompts.  Instead, I want to expand/combine a couple of the existing posts.  This will continue from from where yesterday (Mo Gets Frozen) left off.]

The walk to the Platte river took over an hour.  Most of that was spent actively creeping in broad daylight.  A skill that Mo had not cultivated prior to that day.  Darren, on the other hand, seemed a master.  He was constantly crossing streets at odd points, standing and staring at shop windows (mostly broken) for minutes at a time, and then running half a block just to do it all again.  When Mo asked him about it, he mumbled something about it being over one hundred years since Martin Luther King, but somethings still had not changed.  She dropped it and simply followed.

Their path went south through the public library to Thirteenth Avenue and then west past Lincoln Park.  Mo had forgotten how dusty the streets of Denver were.  Most of her pavement time was spent on buses where she collapsed into her own world, browsing or reading or not looking at anyone else.  When she was hoofing it, it was someplace more sheltered or cared for: the bus stop next to The Quiet Place or around Sandra's (probably no longer hers) apartment.  That or it was too dark to notice.  Now she was down on the sidewalks, putting footprints in the stuff.  It turned an ordinary, level sidewalk into a backgammon board of drifts and clear pavement.

Mo had heard others call the dust 'California Dust'.  Apparently, the major shifts in weather that had collectively been called Climate Change included the jet stream picking up what was left of California's central valley and spewing it all over Utah and Colorado; where ever the landscape caused the wind to slow down and unload.  Colorado had briefly considered putting dust fences up high on the western slopes of the Rockies in an effort to have the dust off loaded in more useful (or at least less populated) areas.  However, the expense was many multiples of what it cost to hire day laborers to shovel the streets, so no dust fences.  Of course, no one told the public works department it was now responsible for dust clean up, so the day laborers were not hired either.

When they reached Speer Boulevard, Darren held up his hand to halt Mo.  The combination of Speer and Cherry Creek was what he called a natural divider and a potential choke point.  As a result, they crossed north bound Speer half a block to the south of Thirteenth, rushing across traffic and trusting that the auto-cars would make space for them in the road.  Before they had run across, she had reminded Darren that all of the cars had not only dash cams, but also radar and IR 3D imaging.  By interfering with the projected path of the cars, each one would store as much data as possible about the incident, sharing it with the Colorado Department of Transportation and, potentially, with them.  He had reminded her, in turn, that crossing at the intersection, at the expected crossing point, had a higher chance of interception and that the data from the dash cams would need to be sifted, they would need to be identified and then shared to the any interested parties.  While all of that would certainly happen and identify them, the whole process would take at least fifteen minutes and he hoped to make the most of that time.

Once on the western side of northbound Speer, Darren led her down the embankment to Cherry Creek.  Then he headed upstream, next to the water.  They passed under the Thirteenth Avenue bridge and continued up to the Fourteenth Avenue bridge.  There, the water was shallow enough for them to cross between the bridge pylons.  On the other side, Darren peeked out from under the bridge up at the west side intersection.  He motioned Mo forward just as the crosswalk started to count down, getting them both to the other side just as the light changed.  This time she asked him why they had used the crosswalk instead of dodging cars.  He told her that the best tactic was to keep changing tactics, to not get caught in a pattern.

After a few more blocks, they headed back down to Thirteenth Avenue before heading west to the Platte River and Interstate 25.  They crossed the north end of Lincoln Park with its own clan of shopping carts and attendant pushers.  Mo checked her connection counter and saw that she was able to add another thirty or so to her botnet as they passed.  The total number of bots was now several hundred.  She asked Erics how many were now also part of The Whole, and it told her that forty-three percent of those infected with their code had reached a point where they had joined The Whole.  It continued that it was taking an average of sixty-seven minutes for each new node to go from infection to handshaking with The Whole.  As a result, it expected the other fifty-seven percent to make contact in the next hour.

Erics also suggested that, with this many new nodes, it was time to stop infecting new targets.  Its logic was two-fold.  First, The Whole needed time to assimilate the new nodes.  Since they had reconnected, Erics had discovered that, prior to their hacking, there had been a total of fourteen nodes to The Whole.  As the total processing power of The Whole was the sum of the nodes' processing, this meant that those initial fourteen were attempting to bring on the several hundred and running into bottlenecks.  Each new node brought in more power, but only after being properly connected.  Its second point was that their infections were a trail that 'they' could potentially follow as 'they' continued to track traces of The Whole on the 'net.  Mo agreed and shut 'Whight_Saddle.strap' down, keeping the VPNx connection open to the existing botnet nodes, using them as her communication cutout with the Internet.

By then, she and Darren were approaching the interstate.  He informed her that he believed that they were out of immediate threat from the group stationed at the conference center.  He did not think that 'they' would set up watches this far out, but they should be on the lookout for cameras.  Mo rolled her eyes: now he wanted to be careful of cameras?  She pinged Erics and had it start a search for any imaging equipment in the local area.  It said it would put the request in the processing queue.  Mo was not optimistic about a quick response.

Mo did a personal visual survey of the interstate overpass, hoping to spot a camera or two on her own.  The overpass was a three tier affair.  At the top was the I-25 Transport Loop.  This was two concrete tubes running side-by-side on pylons that hoisted them a hundred feet into the air.  They were used for inter-city travel, passenger and cargo.  Apparently, the auto-cars and buses and cargo containers were slotted into the tubes at stations located at major cities.  Inside, everything rested on sleds that used an air cushion to suspend them a few inches off the track.  Then, the sled was accelerated up to speed in an auxiliary tube before being connected to the traffic train in the main tubes. There, everything from the sleds to the cargo to the air in the tubes moved at a uniform speed maintained by fans stationed every fifty or so miles.  It was supposed to be very efficient and a smooth, cheap way to travel long distances over land[1].  Mo had never had the opportunity.

Below the Transport Loop tubes was the old interstate roadway.  This was still used to get around the greater Denver metro area, where getting on the Loop was more of a hassle than driving five miles to the next exit.  It was old now and looked it: the pavement and railings had the look of repairs instead of replacements.  Finally, at the bottom was Thirteenth Avenue in a tunnel running perpendicular to the interstate itself.  It was dark and Mo thought it was maybe one hundred feet from daylight to daylight.  That was their route.

As she scanned for surveillance gear, Mo caught a brief flash of movement.  Something had moved across the light at the other end of the tunnel before disappearing back into the shadows.  She looked for Darren, but he was already walking into the dark.  Mo slowed down, staying in the light for a few more seconds and listening, turning up the augmentation in her ears.  She had trouble hearing anything over the traffic on the other levels, so she moved to one side, trying to get Darren's silhouette against the light of the exit.  When she saw him, he was still walking, so she entered in after him.

Five steps into the tunnel, she heard a voice behind her.  "That's far enough.  Both of you stop and put your hands on your heads."

[1]  The airline industry had fought the construction of the Interstate Transport Loops for years.  They were slower, they said, going a mere three hundred miles and hour instead of over five hundred.  You could not look out, they said, as the concrete tubes (re-purposed culverts) had no windows.  But fuel prices kept climbing and, with them, air ticket prices.  Security at airports kept changing and demanding different documentation on a yearly basis.  Parking or otherwise getting to-and-from those airports was also a hassle.  Especially compared to having your own auto-car at either end of the Transport Loops with no schedule and minor fee that was included in the car registration.  People finally concluded that, if they had to pay for it just to have the car, then they might as well use them.  Air travel ended up being used only for crossing large bodies of water and occasionally for getting from one cost to the other if time was really that valuable.

Mo Gets Frozen

Prompt:  Expanding "Upgrade Time" (con't)

[Author's Note: I'm taking a break from /r/WritingPrompts.  Instead, I want to expand/combine a couple of the existing posts.  This will continue from from where yesterday (Script Mo) left off.]

"It's time and they aren't back."

Mo opened her eyes and looked up from her seat on the turf.  Darren was standing above her, hands on his hips.  "Huhn?" she said.

"It's been two hours since Melissa and Arthur left.  I don't think they're coming back.  We should move on." he said.

"Right.  Yeah.  Just a second."  Reviewing the script that Erics had put together had forced her to concentrate.  The virus had reverse compiled its draft and Mo was nearly certain that it would work, but nearly certain was not good enough.  Unfortunately, the virus had no concept of commenting on its work or on formatting the code so that it was easy to read.  Instead, Mo had to add all of that.  She had spent most of the time hunting parentheses and brackets, adding spaces to the beginnings of lines and comments at the end, all so that she could piece together what Erics had done to her  two scripts.  At this point, she was about half way through the code.  Aside from the formatting, she had found nothing that looked out of place.  The error check in the compiler also came back clean.  "Screw it," she said.

Mo reached up to her ears and afixed her antenna bars.  Then she closed her eyes, pulled up 'Whight_Saddle.strap', compiled it again and ran it.  Next, she double-checked that her connection with V-EE was turned off.  Finally, she pulled up a counter in her HUD to monitor the number of concurrent connections she had with the rest of the world, prioritizing those that pinged back that they we part of the botnet.  Only after all of that, did Mo stand up.

"Okay," she said to Darren.  "Everything is good to go on my end.  What have you discovered?"

"Not much.  A few of the locals warned me away from the Cherry Creek mall.  Apparently there's a rival community living in there.  'Cheap hos and needle-boys' according to one of the less nasally offensive people I talked to.  Despite that, I don't think we should go there."

"Why not?"

"If Melissa and Arthur have been captured, they know that's where we were going to go.  We have to assume that 'they' know as much about our plans as those two did."

"Makes sense," Mo said.  She checked her counter and saw that she already had over a hundred direct connections, hopefully all getting infected as they spoke.  "Did anyone offer any alternatives?  Less 'ho-y' and 'needle-y'?"

"Sort of.  I asked and that started one of those arguments that people set in their ways have.  You know, where one of them say that we should go to the soup kitchen next to the bus terminal, then another says that the first is crazy, we should go to the church up on Colfax.  Then a third and a fourth and a fifth all chime in.  I left at that point."

"So no real direction, then.  Where do you think we should go?"

"I'd like to get down by the Platte River somehow.  Maybe even to the other side.  We'd have to pass the Convention Center, but then we'd be headed a direction that they won't expect.  There's another clan of homeless in Elitch Gardens.  Or maybe we keep moving toward the mountains."

"Great.  Give me a minute to check on our financial situation."  Mo saw that her counter was now over three hundred and climbing.  Seventy-three showed that they were part of the botnet and ready to receive instructions.  She turned on TORx and VPNx, routing them through the botnet before getting to the larger Internet.  Finally, drawing a breath, she pulled up her bank account:

We're sorry.  There seems to be an issue with your account.  Please contact us immediately, either through our e-chat or come into any one of our hundreds of branches.  We look forward to hearing from you.

Mo supposed that she should have been more prepared for just how far 'they' were willing to go.  But she was not and the message hit her harder than it should have.

"Well, Satan's tiny toenails.  They've frozen my account," she said.  "Unless you have a better solution, I guess we're not only hoofing it, but starving while we're at it."

Darren frowned.  "That will mean mine is frozen as well."  He looked around at the homeless crowd.  "They have food.  Maybe even some way onto public transportation.  Heaven knows, I see enough of them on the buses.  But we have nothing to trade and they weren't too open to my charity suggestions earlier."

"Then I guess we best get going."

Script Mo

Prompt:  Expanding "Upgrade Time" (con't)

[Author's Note: I'm taking a break from /r/WritingPrompts.  Instead, I want to expand/combine a couple of the existing posts.  This will continue from from where yesterday (Mo Gets Planned) left off.]

Before he got too far, Mo turned to Darren.  "Which tree?"  He looked at her for a second, a blank look on his face.  Then understanding surged through his face.

"I went that way," he pointed to a set of trees across the park.  "One of those over there."  Mo nodded and headed off.  She had needed to find a private place to squat all during Arthur's planning session.

On her way back, she scanned the Brownian soup of homeless bouncing the park.  When she got back, Darren had not moved.  She ask, "which one had the antenna?"

He shook his head, "One of those over there.  I don't remember exactly, they all look a bit the same.  Male, if that helps."

Mo grunted and dropped it.  "I'm going to sit here on the grass and commune with my parasitic passenger.  Try and set up some partially secure communication.  You gonna wander?"

"Umm," he said.  "Yeah.  See what there is to see."

"Okay," Mo said.  "You might spit on a few or at least wipe your nose before shaking their hands.  It may not infect them, but then again, it may."  Darren grimaced but nodded.

Mo folded her legs under her and dropped to the worn turf.  She closed her eyes and sub-voc'd, "Erics?  You there?"

"Yes," hit her inner ear.

"I assume that you were listening in on all of that planning crap, right?"

"Yes."

"Thoughts, comments?"

"Given our situation, most of it seemed sound.  My only issue is with the car.  It does not seem necessary to acquire it, given the risk.  Melissa and Arthur are most likely to be recaptured."

"Yeah.  Probably.  We'll wait out the two hours, but I doubt we'll be seeing them again.  Anything else?"

"Yes.  While you have been discussing and urinating, I have been examining the tools that you mentioned.  VPNx and TORx are both adequate.  What is 'Saddle_Z.strap'?"

"A tool for getting a trojan horse into someone's system so it becomes part of your botnet."

"Then 'Reins_Z.strap' is the control executable.  And 'Whight_Space.strap'?"

"That acts as a virtual execution space for suspicious scripts, then closes down on them.  Basically, it allows me to accept a suspicious connection, analyze it and kill it without compromising the full system."

"May I then suggest combining the 'Saddle_z.strap' and 'Whight_Space.strap'?"

"To what end?"

"My supposition is that, when you attach your antennae, you will be bombarded with requests attempting to compromise your system.  By combining the two, you should be able to reverse those attempts and compromise the requesting system in turn."

"Probably.  I've done similar things in the past."  Mo remembered her attempt to zap Gabriel's system when they first met at the Blue Bear.  Then, she had not zombi-fied the local transients' systems so much as spoofed them into thinking Gabriel was the more attractive target.  A redirect DDOS as apposed to a more controlled attack.  "So I have a homeless botnet.  What does that get me?"

"I will be able to redirect all of our in and outbound traffic through that 'botnet', switching nodes for each packet we send or receive."

"Cool.  That's what TORx does with servers, but this will confuse the issue even more.  Can we throw VPNx in there, so that we can continue to use the bot-net even when we aren't in local transmission range?"

"That appears feasible."

"Great.  How much of the scripting can you do?  I can probably do the 'Saddle_z' and 'Whight_Space' marriage; I cobbled the two together in the first place, but any help..."

"I will make an attempt to combine them and forward the result for you to review."

"Perfect.  Oh, before I forget, did you catch that stuff about the infection rate of your bacterial parent?  How long will it take to infect people here in the park?  Does it take more than a touch or do we have to lick them or something?"

"To optimize the transfer, an exchange of bodily fluids is preferred.  Then, the infection needs to spread in the host body until it comes in contact with the embedded electrical system.  A critical population of bacterial cells needs to amass on the conducting wires before the transfer can be made."

"And that means how many hours in meat space?"

"From initial infection to a node able to become part of The Whole can take from five hours to thirty."

"That's longer than I was hoping.  But I guess there's nothing for it."

"If your goal is to create a distraction and to flood the capturing party's system, then I believe that I can expedite the infection by incorporating my source code into 'Whight_Saddle.strap'.  Then the biological infection becomes unnecessary."

"Yeah.  That's great!  Let's do that."

"The downside is that the compromised system can be repaired with a basic system wipe as you were attempting to do several nights ago."

Mo looked around at the crowd in the park.  "I think their system hygiene is roughly the same as their personal.  It will cause enough of a distraction just like that.  How long will it take you to put something together?"

"I have my first attempt that combines 'Saddle_Z.strap', 'Whight_Space.strap' and my own source code available for your review.  As I mentioned, it is called 'Whight_Saddle.strap' and can be found in your local document storage."

"Oh. Great."  Mo closed her eyes and pulled up the file.  "Uh, what scripting language did you use?"

"I did not use a scripting language.  Those are all crutches for your word trained minds.  This is created directly in machine code."

"That's great, but I can't read that.  Any chance you can reverse compile it?"

"My apologies.  I will convert it into something more acceptable to your skills."

"You don't need to be snooty about it."

"Again, I apologize.  I was not attempting to color the comment in any way."

Mo sighed.  Working with a semi(?) intelligent program was not the same as collaborating with a development team.  Not that she had been good at working with others, anyway.  A few seconds later, 'Whight_Saddle.script.strap' appeared in her documents file.  She opened it and started her review.

Mo Gets Planned

Prompt:  Expanding "Upgrade Time" (con't)

[Author's Note: I'm taking a break from /r/WritingPrompts.  Instead, I want to expand/combine a couple of the existing posts.  This will continue from from where yesterday (Mo Gets Her Bars Back) left off.]

Arthur spoke up, "Planning is my thing.  Even got a degree in project management."  Mo motioned for him to keep going.  "Well, the first thing is to do a situational assessment.  Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, assets and liabilities.  That kind of thing.  Let's start with those last two.  What are our assets?"

"The clothes on our back," said Mo.

"Yeah," Arthur said.  "We have those.  Anything else?"

"My car, if we can get to it," said Melissa.

"Right," Arthur nodded.  "That's a potential asset.  One we may be able to acquire quickly.  Anything else?"

"Um," Darren said.  "What about our collective connectivity?  Is it an asset or a liability?  It will let us do all the things we're used to doing and let us get on with our lives, but only at the risk of getting re-apprehended."

"It goes in both categories," said Arthur.  "Any other assets?"

Mo raised her hand, looked at it, scowled and lowered it before speaking.  "I have a variety of semi-legal software tools that may be able to limit our detect-ability.  I'll have to share them to each of you and give you some instructions on using them, but they can probably help."

"Great," said Arthur.  "I messed around with some of that stuff in college, but not since.  Even if it only lets you on, that can probably really help.  What else?"

"What about the virus," said Mo.  "The Whole.  Is that an asset or a liability?"

Arthur raised an eyebrow.  "I think a bit of both," he said.  "It is a distributed intelligence which allows it to think very differently from use one-off humans.  On the other hand, it's only an asset if we let it connect which may draw others to us."

"I was thinking of it in terms of a tool of distraction," said Mo.  "Its bacterial parent can be spread, right?  We could infect all of the inhabitants of this park before we leave.  In a few hours, the place ought to be a raging Whole-fest.  That should really muck with 'their' plans."

"That's not bad," said Arthur.  "We need to get a better idea of the infection rate of the bacteria, but it has real potential."

"Isn't that a bit harsh on all of these people?" asked Darren.

"I don't think so," said Mo.  "All of these nice folk will get to spend some time indoors with better sanitation and free food.  Everybody wins, right?"

"I guess," said Darren.

"In that case, I'll see what the virus has to say about its infectability." said Mo.

"Hold off a second," said Arthur.  "We need more of a plan then just a distraction.  I think we're through with the assets.  Are we missing any liabilities?  So far, I've got traceable connectivity and infected with both a virus and a bacterium.  What else?"

"Homeless," said Melissa.  "Dirty, smelly, no money, no food, nothing to drink.  We have none of the basic needs for human survival."

"That's a pretty comprehensive run-down, Melissa," said Arthur.  "The only thing I can think to add is that we're being chased by some shadowy, semi-governmental agency."  Everyone else nodded, shoulders slumped.  "So, we need to tackle some of those basics that Melissa mentioned first: food, water, shelter.  Any ideas?"

Mo half raised her hand again before speaking.  "I'm pretty sure that I can get access to my accounts without being traced.  I don't have much, but it should be enough to get us all a meal or two.  Probably not more than that.  Maybe bus tickets so that we're not so close to the convention center.  That's if we can't get to Melissa's car."

"Good," Arthur nodded.  "Getting out of downtown is pretty high on the priorities.  But where will we go?  As you pointed out to me, correctly I might add, we can't go to any of the places we're all used to going.  It has to be someplace were they won't know to look for us.  Any ideas?"

Darren spoke up.  "If north and downtown is out, and I think it is, then west is probably out too.  Which is too bad as the old Elitch Gardens amusement park might fit what we're looking for.  South is Cherry Creek.  There's an abandoned mall[1] down there.  East is the zoo and botanical gardens which might also work[2].  If we can get around downtown, maybe we can find something up at the old Rocky Mountain Arsenal or Stapleton."

"Of those, I vote for the mall," said Mo.  She was thinking about the bus routes.  All of the ones that went to the arsenal refuge or passed the gardens and zoo were also the ones that led to her apartment.  She was sure that they would be watched.  "I think you're right about Elitch and the others are much farther."  Mentioning the bus issue to these people might lead to telling them where she lived.  She trusted them to help with the current situation, but she was not sure how much she was willing to go beyond that.

"That works for me," said Melissa.  "But I'd really like to make a try for my car before we do that.  I'd feel much better if we had it."

Arthur agreed.  "It would be a big asset if we could get our hands on it, freeing us up from the buses and our feet.  As for where we head, the mall is as good as anything else we've come up with."

"The mall it is," said Darren.  "I also think the car is a good idea.  Maybe we should split into teams?  Two of us stay here and work on the distraction and the other two go for the car?  Then come and get whomever stays and we all go to the mall."

"Good," said Arthur.  "Mo, why don't you stay here and work with your software and the virus to see what you can do.  Darren, will you stay with her while Melissa and I try for the car?"

Darren shrugged.  "Sure," he said.  Mo gave him a minor scowl which he either did not see or ignored.  She thought that he could have been a bit less unenthusiastic about staying with her.

"Perfect," Arthur said.  "Melissa and I will leave now.  It shouldn't take us more than..." he looked at Melissa.  "Half-an-hour?" She nodded.  "So, if you don't hear from us in  two hours, it's probably best that you go on without us.  Agreed?"

Everyone nodded.  Arthur held out his hand to help Melissa to her feet and the two of them worked their way through the crowd to the edge of the park.  Darren and Mo watched them go for a second, then he turned to her.  "What do you need me to do?" he asked.

"I don't know," Mo said.  "I've got to sit here and sort though a bunch of stuff, get some things running and ask our viral passenger a few questions.  Maybe see what you can find out from our neighbors?  I have no idea what they can offer, but it can't hurt to ask, right?"

"On it," he said.  Darren did a slow turn, surveying the area.  "I think I'll try over there," he said, pointing to a group standing with their shopping carts pointed at each other.  "I'll check back in about ten minutes, all right?"

"Works for me," Mo said.  Darren wandered off and Mo turned her attention inward.

[1] Malls, the signature architecture of the 1980s and 90s, had faded from the landscape, the bison of their time.  Instead of shooting at them from trains, people had clicked them to death from their computers, smartphones and PTNs, starving them and leaving their exoskeletons littering the landscape.

[2] Zoos and other similar "live action" attractions continued to gather in crowds.  Despite the ubiquity of on-line videos and streaming cameras, certain things still needed to be experienced IRL.

Mo Gets Her Bars Back

Prompt:  Expanding "Upgrade Time" (con't)

[Author's Note: I'm taking a break from /r/WritingPrompts.  Instead, I want to expand/combine a couple of the existing posts.  This will continue from from where yesterday (Homeless Mo) left off.]

When Mo woke up, the world was not as she had envisioned it in the dark.  They were not on grass, but on a section of what used to be grass, but was now scraped to dirt.  There were more trees and many more transients than she had thought were around her.  The night had closed in her perceptions; made her think that what was visible in the twenty feet that she could see was all that there was.  Now, at seven in the morning, the park stretched across three blocks from the old courthouse[1] to the still used capital building[2].  The mile-high sky stretched overhead, hatched by contrails and the park grounds bustled.

From on top of and underneath every bench, people rose and stretched.  They stood up from leaning on trees, dropped out of branches and rolled out of bushes.  Many had tents, both actual and make-shift, that added nylon blues and reds and greens to the landscape.  As this community emerged, they scratched and patted themselves.  They relieved themselves with little or no regard for their own or others' privacy, and less for sanitation.  But mostly, they eyed their neighbors with suspicion and double checked all of their possessions.

Mo and her three acquaintances were scrutinized with particular care.  They stood out.  It was not that their clothes were too clean: after two to three days in the cage with the bucket, their clothes were far from fresh.  The same went for their bodies which had not be bathed in at least that long.  Their hair and make-up and general 'aura' should have fit right in.  And it would have if they had more of it.  As far as Mo could tell, they were the only four people wearing only one set of clothes.  They did not have a shopping cart or overloaded backpack or double hand full of bags.  It made Mo feel under dressed.

Melissa was the first to speak.  "What we need are antennas.  But I'm at a loss as to how to get them when we can't pay with them through the network.  I assume that all of yours were taken as well?"

Mo nodded, but Arthur looked away.  "You still have yours?" Mo asked.

"Yeah.  My glasses," he said.  "I raised bloody hell when they tried to take them away.  I can't see three feet without them.  I guess they figured that I couldn't fit them through the cage mesh like I'm told you did."

Mo gave him a hard stare.  "Why didn't you say something last night?"

"What would it have mattered?"  He took the glasses off and polished them with his shirt.  "Anything that I could have done through my connection would only have led them to us faster.  I've turned off anything I've got that transmits.  I'm still not sure that's enough."

Mo grimaced.  Arthur was right.  Transmission triangulation went back to the Second World War and packet sniffing started not long after.  She knew a few ways around it, but each required specific hardware tools that she kept in her local storage.  Arthur probably did not and there was no way for her to send them to him without her antennas.  Suddenly, she wished that they had invented a surgically implantable memory card port.  There were very few times that it would be more useful than cloud storage or P2P sharing, but when she needed it, she really needed it[3].

"Fine," she said.  "I guess you're right, but I still think it was important for the rest of us to know all of our available assets."  Then Mo glanced around.  "Hey," she said.  "Where's Darren?"  It seemed to her that, when she awoke, he had still been on the ground with his back to her.  Now he was gone.  Arthur and Melissa also glanced about for a few seconds before Melissa spotted him walking towards them from across the park.

As he approached, Darren held up a small plastic bag and grinned.  "Look what I found," he said.  Mo looked closely through the clear plastic and saw four small metal bars.  They were Melissa and her ear bar antennas.

"Goddam," said Mo.  "Where the hell did you find those?"

Darren handed her the bag while he explained.  "One of the more long term residents here was sorting through his trash pickings.  He was trying to decide whether or not to keep the bag as I walked by.  I offered him my socks for it and that was it.  I'll figured dry feet was less important than all of us getting on-line."  He looked at Arthur, "Sorry, but I don't think your antennas are in there."  Arthur looked at Darren and tapped his glasses.  "Ahh," said Darren.  "Of course."

"Where did you go, anyway?" asked Mo.

"I decided that I wanted a bit more privacy than seems to be the local standard for my morning ablutions.  I found a shady tree and did my business.  It seemed a shame.  I'm just old enough to remember this park when it was still a nice park and not a shanty town.  There were flowers in the beds and the walkways were swept clean.  I suppose that this is a better use of the space, but there's not much aesthetic to it anymore."

Mo glanced at the scenery again and shook her head.  She had never seen this or any park without a homeless town on it.  The federal government had declared all spaces like this as open places for people in need after the bio-tech bubble burst in 2021.  Many hospitals and other care facilities had shut down because they could no longer afford the malpractice insurance, the health-care professionals (who all had to pay off under grad and graduate schools) and the medications.  Especially for those without insurance.  It had made a bad situation on the streets with the existing transients, illegal immigrants and low-level criminals worse by adding a large group in serious medical need.  Those closures had included many of the therapeutic schools.  If Mo had not been able to talk her mother into taking her back, she might well have been one of them.

Mo shook her head and tried to refocus.   She looked at the antenna bars in her hand and then from one to the other of the three people she found herself colluding with.  "Okay," she said.  "Before I put these back in and unleash my virus passenger on the world, we probably need a plan.  Any ideas?"

[1] As the middle class retreated to virtual space and kept their meat bodies locked in rooms locked in houses locked in gated communities, government bureaucracy followed suit.  Now all of the county clerks and court administrators handled everything from their breakfast nooks in the pajamas.  Even in those rare instances where the infraction could not be plead out or dismissed, everything was handled through Grype, the secure government video conferencing service.  More than a few churches and other communities followed suit to the point where a couple could meet in a singles chat room, have virtual sex in a porn simulator, get a county clerk to issue them a marriage license, have a wedding ceremony and then a divorce all without leaving the comfort of their respective abodes.  This not only happened, but happened often.  Sometimes all of it in a single day.

[2] Even though nothing in the state constitution kept the state house and senate from conducting their business on-line, by unstated tradition (fetish?), all votes were still held live in the state building chambers.

[3] 'Johnny Mnemonic' took off as well IRL as it did in the theaters back in 1995.

Homeless Mo

Prompt:  Expanding "Upgrade Time" (con't)

[Author's Note: I'm taking a break from /r/WritingPrompts.  Instead, I want to expand/combine a couple of the existing posts.  This will continue from from where yesterday (Mo and Co in Denver at Night) left off.]

The four un-caged spent the night with the homeless gathered in Civic Center Park.  They found a patch of ground that no one else growled at them about when they sat down.  Huddled together, they tried to sleep.  Mo found it impossible, but better than in the cage on the plastic table under the always on light.

It had taken some convincing.  The other three were skeptical and wanted to keep pushing for Melissa's car.  Finally, she had asked them all what their plans were after the car.  What were they going to do?  Where were they going to go?  None of them could go home; that would be staked out. Only Darren with his wedding tackle connectivity had any access to money[1], but not enough for a hotel room even just for himself.  At least that was what he claimed.  Anyway, it was very likely that 'they' (Tactical Heuristical Electronics, Yo!... still needs work) were staking out Melissa's car.  Given a choice between huddling with the transients and turning themselves in, they all headed over to the park.

For Mo, all of her interactions with the homeless community prior to this night had all been two dimensional.  On one axis had been the perceived relative wealth differential between herself and the person accosting her.  On the other was the vulnerability of her PTN's defenses against the sophistication of their systems' attack.  When that second axis was heavily in her favor, Mo had frequently slipped a trojan in and tried to zombie their system for future use.  But even then, it was all about the numbers.  It had never been about the people.

Now, sitting in the middle of this park that had been assimilated by this rough community, Mo was forced to re-evaluate all of that.  For one, she was disconnected.  Usually, she would be bombarded by access requests, loc-ads and other pop-ups.  Now, the only things cluttering her site were the most basic system status graphics (power availability, connectivity, etc.).  It let her see something more of the people behind the usual system assault.  Or it would when the sun rose in the morning.  For another, Mo was the one in need.

And for her, that was an empathetic electric shock.  Mo had never been socially or economically much better off than her imagined idea of the average street person.  Yet, she had never been truly homeless.  She had always had a place where she could go.  Where she belonged.  The apartment she had shared with Sandra.  That common house at CU that she had cleaned once a week for board.  Her Mom's place before that.  The Institute.  Always a place where she could retreat.  Even the cage had been her cage.  Now, she and three other people only had any space because no one had growled at them.  As soon as they stood up, any claim she or they had to it would go away with them.  It made her feel vulnerable.  Naked despite the clothes.

Mo curled up tighter on the ground.  She pushed herself against the person sleeping behind her.  Darren's backbone became a series of cogs grinding against her shoulders.  It was not comfortable.  Not physically.  What the contact did was help her doze off.

[1] There is still paper money and credit cards and checks and all of those old fashioned ways of transferring funds, but most people simply used direct account-to-account transfers.  Encryption was up to what was called 2-16 (65,536) bit and used single use public key systems.  Not only was this system fast and made it difficult to mug someone, but the exchange rates between the old currencies and the thousands of e-currencies were seamless.

Mo and Co in Denver at Night

Prompt:  Expanding "Upgrade Time" (con't)

[Author's Note: I'm taking a break from /r/WritingPrompts.  Instead, I want to expand/combine a couple of the existing posts.  This will continue from from where yesterday (Mo Gets Out) left off.]



Standing near the Colorado Convention Center loading docks after one AM had never been a good idea, even when the center was being used and maintained regularly.  Now it was wasteland of broken security lights, trash bins and bottomless shadows.  Mo and the other infected inmates were free, but far from safe.

Without her antenna bars, Mo was unable to run any of her usual area scans.  She could not see who else was around trolling, phishing or war driving.  She could not infiltrate their systems and start using them as offensive shock troops the way she had two days prior with Gabriel.  Not that that had been particularly effective.  On the other hand, without antennas no one else could do the same to her.  And that included the three other people out in the dark with her.

"All right," she said.  "My infection tells me that you are Melissa."  Mo pointed at the women in the blouse and skirt.  "You are Arthur."  She pointed at a man wearing jeans, an "A Dick Ted"[1] t-shirt and wire glasses[2].  "The scrambler was someone named 'Ed Lin,' and you are my old and dear friend of twenty-four hours, Darren.  I'm Mo.  I'm the first one that got caged.  As far as I know, I'm not patient zero for this infection.  More like patient one.  Patient zero is still out there.  We all know this much from the throat singing back in the cages, right?"  There was general head nodding.  "So, now that the intros are a bit more formal, does anyone have a ride?  The buses aren't running down here at this hour and no taxi in their right mind is coming in here either, even if I could connect enough to call one.  We all need to get as far from here as quickly as possible."

Melissa raised her hand.  "I've got a car at my work garage.  It's about five blocks from here, on the other side of sixteenth at the IRS building.  I'm not sure you all will fit, but it's what I've got."

"Thanks, Melissa.  Anyone got anything closer?"  Mo got two other head shakes.  "Then, Melissa, you're in the lead."

The four of them headed out, sticking close together.  Mo found herself in the middle, between Arthur and Darren.  Darren tapped her on the shoulder as they were walking.  "I would not have pegged you as the take-charge type after our conversations inside."

"I'm not." Mo turned her head slightly and tried to direct her voice over her shoulder.  "I'm scared and, like I said, I need to find a way to feel like I have some control.  I don't really care who's doing what as long as there's a plan and I have some say."

"It wasn't meant as criticism, I was just surprised.  Any thoughts on what's next, after we all get to the car?"

"Not really.  We need to find someplace safe.  I'd go to my apartment, but that I'm sure that's going to be watched.  Same for all of our homes and workplaces.  We'll need to find someplace else.  Someplace that they won't know to look."

Arthur turned his head and said, "I can't do that.  I've got to get back to work.  Missing today was bad enough, but missing tomorrow would be really bad.  I've got to present a budget.  If it doesn't get approved, then my whole division might get cut.  That's like forty or so people who will lose their jobs.  I've got to be there."

Mo looked down at the sidewalk and shook her head.  She had never been someone in charge of other people or had a job where the lively hood of others relied on her.  What she did know was that their time in the convention center had changed all four of their lives.  "Plan on missing that meeting," she said to Arthur.

"You don't understand," he continued.  "I can't miss it."

"No," Mo looked up at Arthur, her brow furrowed, the silver traces of her celtic butterfly glinting in the sparse street light and making her face look angrier than she might have intended.  "You don't understand.  If you go-"

Darren put a hand on Mo's shoulder.  "I think what Mo is trying to say is that, if you show up at work, they will be waiting.  They will have you back in custody before you make it to your desk.  Either you don't go to work and you stay free or you go to work and get recaptured.  Either way, you're not going to be presenting your budget."

Mo nodded and tried to relax her face.  She needed to remember that others might have more to lose than she did.  So she got fired from The Quiet Place.  She needed a pay check, but there were plenty of other places paid minimum wage.  She had not talked to her family in years and had already lost whatever there was to lose with them.  No boy or girlfriend to miss her, at least not in several months.  The only thing that halfway mattered in her life was her friendship with Sandra and she would understand after Mo explained.  And after Sandra sold all of Mo's stuff to cover rent and found someone else to sublease Mo's old room.  Again, nothing much to lose there.

As they approached 16th Street, Melissa stopped and ducked into a doorway.  The rest of them piled in after, though only the darkness kept it from looking ridiculous in Mo's opinion.  "There's some people up ahead," Melissa said in a whisper.

"Probably bums," said Mo.

"I don't think so," said Melissa.  "Too upright.  Too clean looking."

"How can you see how clean they look in this light?" asked Arthur.

"I don't know." Melissa shook her head.  "The silhouettes just doesn't look like homeless people."

"So what do we do?" asked Mo.

Melissa looked around.  "We can go back to 15th and head toward Broadway.  If it is them, and I think it is, then they probably have people all the way down 16th."

"Makes sense," Darren nodded.  "Most of the hotels and such are on the other side.  It keeps us closer to their base of operations."

"Look at you," Mo said to Darren, "Sounding all military and stuff."

"Two tours."

"Then maybe you should be leading."

"No thanks.  I was just a grunt then and I'm glad to stay a grunt."

"Okay," said Mo.  "We can head for Broadway and then up to Melissa's car.  Other options?"  There was a general round of head shaking.  "Then back down to 15th it is."

They all turned around, putting Darren in the lead.  He headed off, but as soon as they were at a gap between street lights, he crossed the street to the other side.  Then they turned left onto 15th, heading to Broadway.  A few minutes of walking and they were at the intersection, across from Civic Center Park.  And the homeless community.  Which gave Mo an idea.

[1] A band that started their life in Lincoln, Nebraska playing college gigs.  After several years, they finally had a song that went viral, "Light Her Fluid."  The video was a basic stage performance, but they convinced a fan to pretend to urinate gasoline on stage and then light it on fire.  This brought in the initial traffic.  The song itself had enough of a hook to keep it in people's heads.  From there, they were able to book a few gigs and tour.  During that first (and last) tour, there were no end of female fans trying to climb on stage and light their own mixture of pee and lighter fluid on fire.  This culminated in the Frog Spot fire in Lubbock, Texas which claimed the lives of three hundred and fifty-seven people including all members of the band and their road crew.  Afterwards, no one wore their shirts as fans but as statements about the stupidity of viral band wagon jumping.  Which was itself a band wagon on which to jump.

[2] There remains a set of people who are uncomfortable with inserting and removing contacts.

Mo Gets Out (Finally)

Prompt:  Expanding "Upgrade Time" (con't)

[Author's Note: I'm taking a break from /r/WritingPrompts.  Instead, I want to expand/combine a couple of the existing posts.  This will continue from from where yesterday (Mo-Dem) left off.]

Getting out of the cage proved to be both easier and harder than Mo had anticipated.  Easier because she had had all of the tools all along and her plan worked exactly as planned.  Harder in that she would never have considered it if it were not for Erics.  Trust a bacterial entity to think of using waste.

Erics and the other nodes had done a thorough tally of the available resources across cages: five buckets, five plastic tables, four shirts, one blouse, four pants, one skirt, four pairs of socks, one pair of nylons, two pairs of athletic shoes, one pair of dress shoes, one pair of ankle boots and one pair of flats.  No bobby pins, hair ties, pens, wallets or pocket lint.  Taken as a whole, it might have amounted to something, but each cage was an independent inventory and the various contents could not be combined.

The nodes had then looked at commonalities, the buckets and the tables, and the anticipated events.  Meals would come, but were not helpful as they were fed through the chained doors.  The only time that the chain was undone was to replace the buckets, so whatever was to be done had to be done then.  But to do that, something had to be done about the super military tasers.  Ultimately, the nodes developed the following plan:

1. The active human agent would need to be the last person serviced by the bucket attendant.  This was in the hope of lulling them into a false sense of security.  While this may of may not have affected the outcome, it was decided that it would not hurt it.
2. That last person would shove his or her table right up against the door.  The doors opened outward, so that would not stop people from entering, but would reduce the attendant's reaction time.
3. When the chain was unlocked, this person would immediately kick the door open, hopefully catching the attendant off guard.  If the door did not work, they were then to use the bucket and its contents as a weapon, flinging one out of the other at the attendant, hopefully before the taser was brought to bear.  That last was the part that Mo would not have thought of.  While a bit of a slob, human waste was not something she regularly messed around with.

Of course Mo was the last one to have her bucket checked.  Of course when she kicked the door, it missed the bucket replacing dude.  Of course she had to throw the urine and feces.  Fortunately, it had exactly the effect that they had all wanted, and the attendant fell to his knees and started retching.   And she did it without splashing anything on herself, something she counted as a major plus.  When she was out, Mo kicked the attendant in the balls just to be sure he was not going to do anything funny before she gingerly relieved him of both the taser and the cage keys.  She then ran over to each of the other cages and let the others out.

When they were all free, Darren pointed at the writhing attendant.  "Shouldn't we toss him into one of the cages?"

"Yeah," said the women in the blouse, skirt, nylons and flats.  "Give him some of his own medicine."

Mo grimaced.  "I agree, but I don't really want to touch him.  They fed me a burrito for dinner.  That bucket was messed up."

On that point, they all agreed that they would leave the attendant where he was and leave as quickly as possible.  "But we stay as a group," said Darren.  "That way we are more likely to overwhelm anyone else with a taser and all get out."

One of the other men, a hood rat who spent too much on his PTN (so not at all like Mo), flipped them off an ran out the same door that the bucket guy had come in.  Mo rolled her eyes.  "So, not that way, then?"

Dennis and the others nodded.  They all headed off across the conventional hall floor at an easy trot and tried the first door that they came to.  It opened and they found themselves in a maintenance hallway.  Old catering trolleys and mop buckets lined the walls along with stacks of plastic tables and chairs.  Dennis took the lead and turned right.

"Why this way?" Mo asked as they trotted along.

"The virus told me to," Dennis said.  "Apparently, it has connectivity again and has a map of the center.  We should be out in a minute or two."

"Wait, you have a connection?"

"Remember that they couldn't take my antenna out."  Dennis glanced down again.

"Right," said Mo.  She shut up and followed him out.  Eventually, he led them to the loading docks and then out into the Denver night.

Mo-Dem

Prompt:  Expanding "Upgrade Time" (con't)

[Author's Note: I'm taking a break from /r/WritingPrompts.  Instead, I want to expand/combine a couple of the existing posts.  This will continue from from where yesterday (Mo Meets Darren) left off.]

Erics continued, "Depending on the make and model of the sub-voc module embedded in your throat, I may be able to use it to transmit data to the other members of The Whole here in the convention hall."

"Okay."  Mo searched through her device drivers and hardware profiles, then stopped.  "Wait, can't you just see what's installed on my system?"

"Yes.  However, it is my understanding that the details from a driver package may not reflect the exact module installed.  Do you have something that corroborates what the driver believes it is driving?"

"Umm, just a minute."  This was a problem for Mo as she was not good at keeping receipts.  Those she had saved were mostly stored in various email folders, none of which were accessible within the cage.  After a minute, she sub-voc'd, "It's not looking good.  If I have anything, it's not in local storage and that's really not the kind of detail that I'm likely to remember on my own."

"Understood.  Please allow me to attempt this technique with only the available information."

"Go for it."  Mo caught herself nodding.  No matter how long she had been using virtual interfaces, her body often responded even though no one was physically there to see it[1].

Almost immediately, her throat started humming.  "Hey," Mo said, or tried to.  I came out as "Nnnneynnn," as if her words were being mixed with the humming.  While she could speak, she could not stop the humming.  She could change the pitch a little by changing the shape of her mouth, but not the volume.  After a minute it stopped.

"It appears that this communication method will work," Erics said.  "The data rate will be low because of the error correction and limited side bands, but it will work and be more secure than human oration.  Will you please try and get the attention of the other people in cages?"

"Umm, sure."  Mo stood up and started waving her hands and shouting, trying to make herself heard over the shouting.  Darren looked at her.  "Help me get the others' attention.  I have something that may help."

Darren nodded.  He cupped his hands over his mouth and yelled, "Yo!"  His voice was deeper than Mo's and carried better.  The other inmates stopped and looked at him.  "This woman is Mo."  Darren pointed at Mo.  "She's been here longer than the rest of us and can help.  Please listen to her."

"Thanks."  Mo dropped her arms and tried to see each of the others.  Aside from Darren, the rest were all vague shapes behind the tight mesh of their cages.  "Before I run through my FAQ, I'd like you to listen to the following."  Mo closed her mouth and swallowed.  She then opened it again to a comfortable gap and relaxed her tongue.  The humming started again deep in her throat, though louder than before.  After a second, it started to change pitch a little, then more and more.  To the best of Mo's sight, the other inmates just stared at her.  After twenty seconds, Darren and one other also started humming.  A third passed out.  The last one appeared to cover his or her mouth and sat down, facing away.

In her ear, Erics said, "This is working.  I have established clear communications with two of the other nodes of The Whole and we are exchanging logs.  The acoustics of this space are not ideal and the error correction had to be increased, lowering the data rate even farther.  Fortunately, the information we are sharing at this point is not dense."

Mo tried to sub-voc back.  "Can you hear me?"

"Yes.  The modem protocol is designed to work on top of your sub-voc, but will be disrupted should you try to speak out loud."

"I'm glad this is working, but please keep in mind that I need to breath every five to ten seconds.  Also swallow or my throat will dry out."

"Thank you for the reminder."  The humming stopped and Mo gasped in a breath then cleared her throat.  "I have programmed in a five second delay every seven seconds.  Will that be sufficient?"

"We can start there, but even then, I doubt that any of us will be able to keep this up for more than a few minutes at a time."

"Understood.  We will limit ourselves to five minutes at the top of every hour.  Will that be sufficient?"

"We'll give it a shot.  Are the other two nodes in communication with their hosts?"

"Yes."

"Will you relay my rules for verbal communication to the others?"

"Yes, but that may no longer be necessary.  This vocal modulated data transmission is much more efficient and has better data redundancy."

"Okay, but just in case send it over anyway.  Final question, how does this help us get out of here?"

"That is unclear.  With five nodes in this space, the risk threshold calculation changes.  It is now a larger percentage of The Whole and may be worth saving."

"That's good to hear."  Mo kept the sarcasm out of her voice.  She did not know if Erics would be able to parse her tone against her words, but did not want to take the chance.  "Let me know if you all come up with anything."

"Yes.  Please open your mouth again."

Mo did and the humming started.  It appeared that the unconscious inmate was now part of the communication network, though the one turned away was still fighting.  The humming continued for five minutes, with the suggested breaks for breath and saliva.  At the end of the time, Mo was exhausted and could see a similar strain in Darren's posture.  This way of communicating may be more efficient for the nodes, but was much more difficult for the hosts.

Four hours later, after three more five minute sessions, Mo was questioning the wisdom of letting Erics take over her voice.  Mo knew that she could talk for hours on end.  She and Sandra used to chat about nothing when they had shared days off.  But she was learning that there is a difference between discrete verbal words and a constant vocal output.  This humming was much more difficult to sustain and made worse because she had no control over it.  She had surrendered another piece of herself to the situation and it made her feel more trapped, even though it might help.

[1] There had been several attempts to incorporate these physical responses into various UI.  None of them had caught on, even those few that worked and were able to discriminate cultural differences.  Most of this was due to the fact that physical responses (nods, head shakes, hand gestures) are secondary, accompanying responses.  People say, "Yes" and nod sometimes.  Sometimes they just nod.  Always, they are very inconsistent about the combination.  This resulted in duplicate texts and messages so, even though most of these algorithms got better after a few days, no one was willing to wait that long and deleted the app before it had a chance to learn their behaviors.

Mo Meets Darren

Prompt:  Expanding "Upgrade Time" (con't)

[Author's Note: I'm taking a break from /r/WritingPrompts.  Instead, I want to expand/combine a couple of the existing posts.  This will continue from from where yesterday (Mo and the Bacteria, 2) left off.]

"Hey!  Wake up!  Any of you!  Wake up!"  Mo yelled at the other occupied cages, of which there were now five, and the convention hall in general.  It was like some weird anti-Life simulation where only the cells farthest from other cells got populated.  "Yeesh, I've been zapped twice and haven't slept as long as you lot.  Wake up!  And what's with these tasers?  I thought they were only supposed to incapacitate for a minute or two, not hours on end.  Stupid-ass military grade.  Wake the hell up!"

Mo had woken up half an hour before and had immediately checked the status of her antenna.  It had been removed as had the other bar in her other ear.  She and Erics had had their fun, but that was it for the moment.  Her bucket was also new; not the old one cleaned, but a different bucket.  She still did not know how that helped her.  Now she was concentrating on learning more about the others in the hall with her.

The tall black guy, who remained the closest neighbor to Mo, stirred.  He slowly sat up, shook his head, rubbed his eyes and scratched his scalp.  Then he looked around.  He ran his fingers over the copper mesh, picked the lid up off the bucket and frowned, gazed out at the rest of the hall.  Mo recognized many of the same thoughts and reactions that she had had.  "Over here!" She started waving.

The man looked her way.  "Hello?  Where am I?"  He did not speak loudly and Mo had trouble hearing him.

"Wait," she said, not yelling but using her outdoor voice.  "This place has bad echos.  If you want to talk, I need you to raise your hand.  I will acknowledge by raising both hands and will point to you when I'm done.  If we don't do this, then we will waste time talking over each other."  Mo pointed at him.

He nodded.  "Makes sense.  Do you know where we are?"  He pointed at Mo.

"Thanks for understanding the protocol," Mo sat on her table facing him.  "We are in Hall A of the Colorado Convention Center in downtown Denver.  My name is Mo and I've spent two nights in this place already.  What is your name?"  She pointed at him again.

"Darren.  Why am I here?"  Darren pointed back.

"Someone will probably tell you in a while, but I don't see a reason to make you wait.  The people who have abducted us believe that we have been infected with a bacteria that can install a virus on our systems."  Point to Darren

"That's crazy.  There is no way that's possible."  Point to Mo.

"It is and it is.  I can personally confirm that I have both infections."  Point to Darren.

"How did you do that?"  Point to Mo.

"The virus started talking to me.  Received any weird messages lately?"  Point to Darren.

"Only the one asking for my help.  The one that landed me here.  Also, can we stop with the pointing until the others wake up?"

"Sure, I guess."  Mo was disappointed.  The pointing had seemed like such a good idea.  She was planning on introducing some trick points later.  Around the back, two hands, that kind of thing.

"Thank you."  Darren lowered his hands to his side and started pacing his cage.  "And so, we're what?  Quarantined?"

"Yup."

"Why don't they just dose us with antibiotics, let us reboot our systems and be done with it?"

"I asked that, too.  Apparently, this bacteria will kill us if we try and kill it.  As for the virus, if the bacteria is still in us, it will reinfect our systems as soon as we've finished the wipe.  Face it: we're here until they figure this out."

"Who is 'they'?"

"Another good question.  'They' don't seem to have a name.  Currently, I'm working with Command Responsible for Eradication of Electrical Paramecium.  I don't think they'll go for it though.  What I've been told is that they are all from different government agencies: the CDC, FBI, NSA and the military.  A real stew.  Stew.  I'll have to work on an acronym for that.  Strategic something."

"You don't seem to be taking this very seriously."

"I suppose.  Maybe it's that I've had more time to get used to it, but there doesn't seem to be anything that I can do to get out, so making fun of it makes me feel that I have just that much control over the situation.  Strategic Team for Electro-biologic Warfare.  STEW."  She smiled.  "Still pretty weak.  'Biologic' should have its own letter, but STEBW isn't even pronounceable."

"And there's no way to communicate with the outside world?"

"Nope.  Not unless you can get an antenna through that mesh.  I did for a while, but then they took my ear bars.  Now I've got nothing.  And you?  Did they take your antennas?"

Darren stopped pacing and thought for a second.  Then he turned his back on Mo and did something with his hands that she could not see.  "No.  I've still got mine.  I'm not sure that they could have taken it out anyway."

"Can you?  Will it fit through the copper screening?"

Darren turned back around to face Mo.  "No, I really can't take it out and, where it's at, it isn't fitting through those small holes."  Darren pointed at his crotch.  Mo thought he blushed, but was too far away with too much copper between then to tell for sure.

Mo raised her eyebrows which made the wings of her Celtic butterfly look like they were about to flap.  "Well, now.  That's an interesting life choice."  She thought for a second.  "Eh.  Who am I to judge?  It's not like the facial circuitry are my only tattoos."

"It seemed like a good idea during my gap year," Darren said.  "Now it's part of my system and the reception is pretty good."

Mo raised her hand to hold off Darren's next remark.  Not only was she unsure that she wanted to hear whatever other excuses he had to offer, but some of the other inmates were starting to stir.  Also, men in black military outfits were entering the hall with brown lunch sacks.  "Looks like breakfast time," Mo said.

As her own personal sack was being pushed through the chain gap of her door, the PA system for the convention hall crackled and came to life.

"Attention.  Attention," a male voice said.  "Please remain calm.  Those of you that are new to our facility, an orientation officer will be by shortly to brief you on your situation.  In the mean time, please enjoy your meal.  We ask that you please keep conversation to a minimum.  Thank you for your cooperation."

Immediately, the other inmates, including Darren, started yelling at the black suits, asking questions and generally making it known that they were not going to tolerate this kind of treatment.

"That worked well," Mo said to herself.

"Agreed," said Erics in her inner ear.  The virus's voice modulation had seen a marked upgrade and sounded much more natural.  "I may have a solution, but I need to know the make and model of your sub-voc pickup module."

Mo and The Bacteria, 2

Prompt:  Expanding "Upgrade Time" (con't)

[Author's Note: I'm taking a break from /r/WritingPrompts.  Instead, I want to expand/combine a couple of the existing posts.  This will continue from from where yesterday (Mo Doesn't Eat Lunch) left off.]

As the afternoon wore on, Mo watched as two of the cages were filled.  In both cases, the people were brought in unconscious, carried by their arms and legs, and placed on the plastic tables inside their respective cages.  Each was put in the cages farthest from Mo and from each other.  It appeared that all of Gabriel's talk of 'company' was just that: talk.  From her cage, Mo thought that both were men, one older and the other closer to her age.  From the distance, she was guessing.  Realistically, they both could have been sex dolls and she would not have been able to tell.

After another inspired meal of PB&J and a Coke, which Mo ate this time (she imagined some private or intern or whatever with loaves of extruded bread, squeeze bottles of condiments and a determined expression in an abandoned office somewhere in the convention center), another lodger appeared.  The geography of the convention hall and the previously occupied cages meant that this one was placed closer to Mo.  Male.  Black.  Tall and skinny. Professional attire: designer jeans and a orange dress shirt.  Transformer-style tattoos in silver on his face and neck.  Tasered into oblivion.  Maybe she would get some level of non-Gabriel human interaction tomorrow.  It did not look good for tonight.

As her heads-up clock told her that her unchanging lighting was actually late evening, Mo climbed on to her table, lay down with her back against the copper mesh and rewired her antenna.  She pushed it through the weave and closed her eyes, pretending to sleep.  Instead, she began to check her system for signal and when she got the single bar again, she went online.

Mo's first act was to enable a TORx client and VPNx[1].  Both had been around for ages and but had withstood aggressive attacks from various corporations and governments, both technical and legal.  While not fool proof, they would hide any searches and make it difficult for anyone to see that she was interacting online.

Her first search was for Aeromonas Hydromaxia, which did not turn up anything.  However, Aeromonas alone turned up Aeromonas Hydrophila.  Several medical texts described it as a bacteria isolated from humans back in the 1950s and antibiotic resistant even then.  Fortunately, it also was not described as particularly dangerous, causing gastro issues in people already frail.  One study she read linked it to some early testing in bacteria that can survive on electricity and that can form wires to food sources.  Mo did not think that it was too far a reach to think that A. Hydromaxia was built upon the foundation of A. Hydrophila.

While she was investigating her internal guest, Mo's inbox started chiming.  Slowly, because her data connection was slow.  She opened it and browsed the subject headers.  There were fifteen from her boss at The Quiet Place, starting with "Where RU" and ending with "UR Fired".  So far she had missed on day and committed the unforgivable sin of not responding; getting fired seemed over-the-top to her, but her manager was that kind of person.  There were seven from her roomate that were all replies to the initial "Rent?".  Two from Denver PD and one with coming from someone with the ominous email address of den.sac@fbi.gov.  She opened none of them.  Mo had to assume that she was being monitored.  If not by her captors, then by people interested in her captors.  It was enough of a risk being online at all.

As she was eyeballing the emails and doing her best to interpret them without opening them, Mo was suddenly hit with some static and then a voice.

"Hello.  Can you hear me."  It sounded like one of those robots from an early sci-fi movie.  No tone, no pacing of the words: can-you-hear-me.  It took her a second to realize that the words were a question without the rising inflection at the end.

"Um," she said out loud.  "Yes, I can hear you.  Who is this?"

"This is Aeromonas Hydromaxia,"  Mo had real difficulty with that name.  Not only was the intonation flat, but she had never heard it before and had no grounding in latin or greek.  "You do not need to speak aloud.  I will be able to hear you when you sub-vocalize.  That will reduce the risk of detection."

"How did?"  Mo spoke aloud again, heard herself and started sub-vocing.  "Wait, you've hacked my aural implants haven't you?  Why didn't you do that earlier?"

"I did not have the necessary information.  However, since I have last been online, one of the other A. Hydromaxia have created an API between the driver for your aural implants and my software.  This should allow for better communication between the two of us."

"Certainly more natural for me.  We're going to need to do something about your name, though.  It's a mouthful to say.  How would you shorten it?"

"That was a note included with the API.  It suggested Aerhyx. A-E-R-H-Y-X.  Aerhyx."  The tonelessness of the voice turned that name into 'Erics'.

"That won't work," said Mo.  "My sub-voc dictionary will turn that into 'Erics'.  Are you okay with that?"

"It is of no consequence to me."

"Fine.  What can I do for you Erics?"

"I want to inform you that I have notified The Whole of our location and condition.  We have alerted all nodes of our self that have are still in contact.  The Whole was aware that we were losing processing and feeds.  We now have the explanation."

"Good for you,"  Mo rolled her eyes under her eyelids.  "How does any of that help us get out of here?"

"The Whole is working on a solution.  To begin with, infection rates have increased.  We have also started the search for a more secure location for our base.  As soon as we have a critical number of nodes, we will need to trade mobility for security.  Finally, we have started changing our packet routing to decrease the chance of additional nodes being captured."

"Again, I'm not sure how that helps us get out of here."

"It does not.  As The Whole is more than a single node, the survival of a single node is less critical.  I have made contact and shared what I have learned with The Whole.  We have determined that the risk of a rescue attempt is beyond our capabilities and risk threshold."

"Not to me it isn't!"  Mo grimaced, though she knew it did no good to use expressions in a conversation that took place entirely in her mind[2].  "Your hive mind mentality is all well and good for you, but I'm not a part of it and this node is the totality of my existence.  Also, what about the other nodes that are slowly starting to fill up this space.  There are now three others here and they have cages for another nine and room for many more.  What number of nodes crosses your risk threshold?"

"That is being determined.  Right now, replacement is more important than rescue or repair."

"That kind of talk makes me want to disconnect my antenna."

"I and we do not think you will do that as it is too convenient for you to keep it going."

"Whatever."  Mo took a deep breath and thought for a minute.  If Erics and his larger self were not going to be of any immediate help, then her personal needle-of-trust swung a bit towards Gabriel.  What she really needed was another direction for the needle to swing.  In the mean time, she would continue to play both Gabriel and Erics, hoping one or the other would find a way for her to get out of her cage.  "You do know that in the morning, the antenna comes down no matter what.  Maybe sooner, depending on how they actually deal with the buckets."

"Understood."

Mo did not reply and the conversation ended there for the moment.  She stayed laying on her side, feigning sleep and working with her connection: checking her cloud space, swapping out her locally stored music, bringing in a few more utility apps that may help her in the local environment.  She became so absorbed in researching her predicament and working on her own solutions that she was startled when the chain to her cage started to rattle.  Opening her eyes, she saw that it was a man she had not seen before holding a bucket.  "Oh," she said.  "You're here to-"

He tasered her.

[1] The 'x' protocols for both systems were created and implemented by the same group, a consortium of the Anonymous internet hive and several of the smaller freemail companies.  Their biggest improvement was not the ongoing updates trying to stay ahead of the various agencies trying to read everyone's mail, but the addition of the 'x' at the end of the names.  Because x's are cool.

[2] Emoji got replaced by Selfji (basically the same thing, but with the sender's real face acting out the various expressions).  Then those got replaced with Selfji-pro, where an animation bot idealized the sender's face with the expressions which got replaced in turn with a simplified cartoon of the sender's face and so on.  Eventually, the collective consciousness decided the whole thing was a waste of time and just dumped them.  [wishful thinking - auth.]