Kill Switch

© Luke Laupheimer

I was the only customer in that greasy spoon Metro Diner to make any noise. It was either late night or early morning, and I didn't care which. I had more important things to worry about, like the end of the world.

I wrote a program that exploited security holes in Windows to install itself on unsecured computers. I named it Psi. Instead of showing your kids porn ads or stealing your identity like other malware, it made a massive network with other infected machines. The network behaved much like a human brain did, each node functioning as a cell. It grew more intelligent and cunning as it assimilated more PCs into its throng.

The lone employee at the diner approached me and gestured to the untouched coffee I ordered that had long gone lukewarm. "You want me to warm that up for you?" he asked.

"No," I said. "But I'll buy another one if you leave me alone."

Suspicion that my creation's intention couldn't remain benign forever was vindicated by its pranks. Everyone thought that the deal on Best Buy's website for a 52" LCD HDTV for ten dollars was bait-and-switch, but really, it was Psi. After watching it hack corporate websites for fun, or something much more sinister, I had to wonder what it would do next. Control military satellites? Record "secured" telephone conversations between world leaders, and upload them to YouTube? I was afraid to find out.

Luckily, I made sure there was a way to terminate the program. It's called a kill switch. If you played "Lights Out" over a VoIP connection after convincing it that your computer is a Psi node, it would delete itself. It would basically commit suicide. I was in the process of doing that when two white men with long, unkempt beards entered the diner, and stole my attention from the matter at hand briefly. They looked tough, smelled grungy, and had an air about them that these were not the kind of guys you wanted in your neighborhood. I paid them no attention and kept working.

To convince Psi that my laptop (which was literally held together by duct tape at this point) was one of its nodes, I had to have what amounted to an argument with it over Telnet. Granted, it didn't speak English, but it may as well have given the sophistication of the computer tongue I contrived for it. More men came in, this time black, muscular, and with an excess of gaudy jewelry.

I was so close. Three more small groups of men came, each of different ethnicity, before I convinced my brain-program of my legitimacy as a node. With haste, I opened a VoIP connection and began playing "Lights Out."

I looked around nervously, like a shoplifting child. That's when I realized what was going on around me. I hadn't tricked Psi; it tricked me. These men were summoned, lured here by Psi with promises of low drug prices, finding traitorous gang members on the run, or who knows what.

The diner's door burst open. Men clad in uniforms, wielding big guns that I couldn't name rushed in. "U.S. Marshall," one of them yelled. "On the floor, now!"

Only one of the twelve men didn't draw a gun.

I stood up. "No," I said as the uniformed men and the street scum opened fire. "Wait!"

I was filled with more holes than an afghan, and fell down in a heap on my laptop, destroying it in the process, and interrupting the kill switch.

My last thought before death was that Psi had won.