Tower of Cards
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From the novel "Infinity"
By Areaze Jiuare
That's it , thought Teodor Marković, as he stood in front of the mirror and adjusted his tie. He had been trying for a long time to make a double knot - it seemed somehow more serious and appropriate for the occasion, but with each attempt, the thinner part would peek out maliciously from under the wider part of the tie. Finally, after several unsuccessful tangles with his fingers around a piece of fabric, he managed to tie the tie so that there were not too many creases in the knot and it fell perfectly over the shirt.
Teodor Marković had been preparing for the upcoming event for a long time. He knew that his words would cause disbelief, denial, nervousness, and then fear in people. Countless times, he conducted a dialogue with imaginary interlocutors, tried to get into their shoes, to guess what they might ask him, what they would think about during his presentation, how to answer them, what grimace to make. Of course he hesitated, and even considered giving up and keeping his knowledge to himself. But he couldn't. It was something so big and dark, menacing. Like the sword of Damocles, the problem hung over the fate of an entire civilization. The whole world.
The meeting he is going to will be on TV. He knew that his speech did not fit into the agenda, but his goal was to get the message to as many people as possible.
He put on his best coat and headed for the building where the meeting was being held.
When Teodor entered the building an hour later, the hall was already full. The guests who arrived a little before him took the last free seats. He didn't want to be the first to present. It was more suitable that discussion develops with another topic first, for the people in the audience to settle down, do all the small things that distract them from the speaker, and finally focus on the events on the podium. In the corner he saw a TV camera and a cameraman who was looking the other way and talking to someone from the audience. He still didn't pay attention to what was happening behind the stage.
Teodor was was trying to find the best sentence to start his speech with. He could shock the audience with his opening words, to attract their attention. People were usually lethargic in meetings with common topics. If he didn't wake them up with something, they could sleep with their eyes open during his entire presentation. The subject is not simple and will need their full concentration.
Now was the moment!
He raised his hand. He coughed.
"Dear gentlemen! I have one a bit cheeky question! Will you allow me to ask it?”, he said loudly, emphasizing the word “cheeky”.
The hall stirred, there was a soft murmur and some giggles, people gave each other looks. This was exactly what he planned - cheeky things always attract the attention of the masses.
"Here you go," said the chairman after a short pause.
He continued:
“You all use payment cards, right? Is there anyone who doesn't use them? Let him raise his hand!”
No one raised their hand.
"I thought so. In addition, you use the Internet: surf the Web, shop online, use email, check your account balance, pay taxes.”
He paused for a moment to let people settle on the subject, then took a deep breath and continued:
"Our entire e-business infrastructure is built on the foundations of encryption. And asymmetric encryption. In short - private and public keys are used. Neither of them are anything but numbers, and the security of encryption is based on the fact that with current technology it is impossible to factor a number into two prime numbers if those numbers are really, really... big. It has been proven mathematically and we have no reason not to believe the proof.”
He looked at the mass of glassy eyes fixed on him.
"So, all this you do, you do every day, because we CAN'T crack the code even with the most powerful computers."
He's going to have to lighten things up a bit if he wants to wake up the crowd.
"Thanks to today's computers being COMPLETELY UNABLE to crack the code, we shop online today, pay bills, withdraw money from ATM instead of waiting in long lines in front of bank counters." Most of those counters have been closed in recent years. Banks, private companies, as well as many government services, rely entirely on this powerful code.”
He took another pause to let the listeners process the information.
"Imagine all of that disappearing one day!" he spread his palm and pulled his hand through the air, like a magician performing a disappearing trick.
"Abracadabra," he whispered into the microphone and continued in a ghostly voice: "You woke up in the morning, got ready, went to work, stopped by the ATM and - POOF! The ATM is not working! It happens, what are you going to do, you go to another one, it doesn't work either. You start to check all the ATMs in the area in turn, no ATM is working. Don't worry, you'll say, you are going to the store to buy what you need, but damn! You can't pay by card!"
He made a pause again, the story must seem as believable as possible so that the audience can empathize with the problem.
"You're reaching for your cell phone, but your bank account isn't working!" Any other account you had is no longer working.” Theodore now began to walk left and right on the stage, like an actor, getting in the faces of the people in the front rows, shouting lines.
"You go to work, but the system no longer works! You cannot log in to your computer! Who do you send the goods to? What goods? At what price? Who owes you, who do you owe? Everything was saved there - in the computer, there is no more paper! We no longer use paper, because everything is saved in the computer. And the computer is DEAD!”
He paused for a moment, then quietly repeated into the microphone, looking the individual participants in the meeting straight in the eyes: "The computer is dead."
For a moment there was silence in the hall, and then a rather hoarse voice from the audience rang out:
"Teodor Marković, you claim that something could destroy all the computers in the world?" What that? Some kind of computer virus? Well, we see them every day, it's not something new. New ones keep appearing, there's a panic around them, and they're always somehow stopped."
The audience finally woke up and the first question came from a gentleman in the third row, who, he noticed, was looking sideways at Teodor the whole time. And - BINGO! This was the question that Teodor hoped for the most because it would give him an excellent introduction to explain the essence of the problem.
"It's not about the virus. Not at all about the virus, you are absolutely right, we have a cure for computer viruses, there are some serious companies involved in the development of antivirus programs. It is about something much more dangerous, something for which there is no cure."
Theodore now turned to the other side, he wanted them to understand all the helplessness and despair of human civilization in the face of the threat that loomed over it.
"Now I come to my cheeky question, which is - what if someone does manage to find a way to crack the impenetrable code from the beginning of the story?" he said, making a foxy face.
After a short pause, one of the attendees finally got up the courage to ask a logical question:
"Didn't you say that scientists have determined that the code is unbreakable?"
That's it! Straight into the trap! He was glad they hadn't slept through the intro.
"I did," he said coldly. "I said that scientists have proven that it is impossible to crack codes with EXISTING computers."
All eyes were now on him expectantly.
"What they couldn't know was - what the capabilities of future computers would be." When we talk about the future, we usually mean something that will happen in a few decades, or centuries. But, gentlemen, that future is coming much sooner than we expected!”
He darted his eyes from one end of the hall to the other, looking at the faces of the audience.
"In two weeks, it was announced that a brand new computer would be put into operation. The fastest so far! You must have seen the announcements on television...”
"We've seen some of that, we're not that uninformed..." someone quipped over the ensuing murmur in the hall.
"The computer was heralded as the new wonder of the world and grand plans were made to harness its power to discover the fundamental forces of the universe, create new drugs to fight hitherto incurable diseases, and so on and so forth. But no one mentions the dark side of this invention!" continued Teodor Marković.
Some of the listeners started yawning...
"Every invention in history has had a dark side, but the dark side of this invention will lead to catastrophic events all over the planet!"
Now he raised his voice to rouse the sleepy ones.
"Imagine penniless people raiding supermarkets and fighting over food." Think of companies going out of business and people out of work on the streets. Those same people will not have any money to pay the bills, the rent, there will be general chaos and anarchy in the whole world..."
"And we've already seen that many times, in the movies," came a slightly mocking comment, followed by a laugh, and then a question. "And why would everything stop working?"
"Because, dear man, the most powerful of all computers, which starts working in just two weeks, will be able to easily break the code which is the foundation of this whole tower of cards in which we now live." For that computer, the code, which for all today's computers is as inscrutable as Chinese characters for the average European, for that computer, therefore, reading that code will be like flipping through a children's picture book. After that, the whole tower of cards in which we live will collapse, and this will not only lead to the fall of some computers in the scientific laboratories, but also to all these dramatic, cinematic, as you say, events that I described to you a moment ago.
He picked up the glass from the table in front of him and sipped some water.
Now he was looking into the eyes of individual people in the audience, he was walking around the hall and he could feel the neurons in their heads crackling in the background. They finally understand the magnitude of the problem.
"Well that's really scary!!!", someone finally spoke. "Banks will stop working, world stock markets will fall, people will not be able to buy food, many will lose their jobs, houses, cars... there will be riots! Maybe wars! It can lead to total chaos on the entire planet!”
Theodore was proud of himself. The speech was a complete success. He drew people's attention. He had been preparing for this event for a long time and had already wondered countless times if he would be declared another freak predicting the end of the world, if they would even be able to understand the scale of the whole problem.
He looked at the cameraman who was standing in the corner behind the camera and typing something on his mobile phone. The camera was pointed at Theodor. He hoped he wouldn't look too stiff with the tie on television.
"But what can we do?" asked one farmer. "After all, we are just simple people, I suppose that in that big world, there is some intelligence that will solve the problem." We are to simple and unknowledgeable to solve such a big problem. I have another, small problem that we could deal with," he continued. "The last flood washed away the bridge that connects my farm to the main road, and since then I walk twenty kilometers to get to the center of the village, and the villagers who come from the village to the lake have to take the road that leads through the forest!"
There was a murmur in the hall.
"I think it's time to get organized and fix that bridge," the farmer concluded in a confident voice, with thunderous applause from the audience.
The cameraman now put the phone down and reached for the camera.
The farmer continued his speech about the importance of the local bridge, and Teodor Marković headed to his place to wait for the end of the village assembly. Agreements about the construction of the bridge turned into background noise, covered by a pulsating rumble that echoed in Theodore's head.
He felt a great relief that he had finally told the world about the disaster that threatened him.
On the other hand, many of the hives where he kept bees were left without swarms. Probably one of the farmers used some chemical agent that kills his bees. But he did not want to bring up that issue now, to dilute a much more important matter.
After an energetic speech, he sat down on a chair, his arms falling limply at his sides – he felt like a deflated balloon. He threw out the poison that was eating away at his mind. He didn't want to keep the knowledge of such a threat to himself.
He looked around, at the people who were now arguing around the bridge. He looked at those rough, furrowed, raw faces: in the evening, would they even remember what he told them today? Maybe this wasn't the right gathering for his speech.
Fortunately, there was television, so the topic he started would reach a wider audience. It was important to him that the message he had just sent spread and reached the ears of someone who could prevent the disaster.
Infiniti
Areaze Jiuare, 2020
Formats: epub, mobi(Kindle), pdf, pdb, Online Reader
ISBN: 9780463582275 -- Say: 89050 -- 14.05.2020
Copyright 2020 Areaze Jiuare
Lecturer: Anđela Pendić
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