Next History: The Girl Who Hacked Tomorrow Read Free

Strand’s drive is to capture and model enough Internet information to calculate future realities.
    “ Tommy, Tommy. Black swan events are impossible to simulate. It was off the grid.” An irritating squawk from the phone at Strand’s ear. He knows who it is. General Solberg wants to talk. Glancing to the windows, Strand is certain what the general wants to discuss, the solitary figure that has stood motionless in the Pentagon’s central courtyard for the last hour. Nothing in Strand’s event clusters showed any hint of that abrupt arrival. Next History is zero for two on the day.
    Strand ’s dark eyes make out forms of armed men on adjoining rooftops. In the corridor, alarms are going off. Clear the building .
    “Tommy I have to go. All hell is breaking loose over here. Evacuating the place.”
    “ Chris where the hell are you?” The stress intensity of Kites’ voice like acid bile.
    Strand is not about to give up his location to a music exec, no matter that he has a dead superstar on his hands. “I’ll talk to you when we have something.”
    Strand flips to his incoming call, but the party has either hung up or bumped to voicemail. At his laptop he scans four text windows open with members of his remote staff, private contractors scattered from North Carolina to Vermont. With brisk keystrokes he invites them all into a single window.
    ninj98 : setting up a neural net for her web and voice traffic
    charlebois : three confirmed sightings in the city this morning all neutral – then she went to her apartment
    sami : forget it this is off grid
    stranded99 : set up new adaptive model. adjust chi-square tolerance. look for hits in prev. unclassified dataset, use k-neighbor, new induction rules
    sami : off grid boss – black swan
    stranded99 : IKR sami dont give up – agree but dont stop running sims
    ninj98 : wild data - no chance with genetic algorithms
    sami : and what’s with the pentagon
    stranded99 : BLACKOUT ABSOLUTE. no electronic channels. f2f only until cleared by me – break –
    Loud knocking on Strand’s office door. He scans the five wall-mounted screens, reading data flows and inference vectors, looking for weird trends but there’s nothing unusual, everything tame. Wonders what are the odds, two major events the same morning, both completely silent on his event scans. A fifth monitor shows the corridor outside his office. Half an hour earlier there had been a rush of uniforms and suits in A-ring corridor, several had banged on his door. Now the view is empty save for two Pentagon Force Protective Agency uniforms that stand with his Department of Defense liaison and sometime racquetball partner, U.S. Air Force Two-Star General Ralph Solberg. Strand closes his laptop and opens the door.
    Solberg steps in with the Pentagon police, a head shorter than either of them, but with the unmistakable mark of authority from thirty years as Air Force pilot, officer, and commander. One of the uniforms speaks first.
    “ Sir, on orders of General Solberg here, we must escort you from the premises. Immediately, sir, we must go now.”
    Strand looks to Solberg, who says, “We’re all leaving, Corporal, but Mr. Strand and I have matters to discuss. Kindly wait outside.”
    “Sir, all respect, personnel are in danger here, we must leave at once.”
    “The snipers aren’t going to miss. This glass is bulletproof. We’ll have box seats. Now, give us the office.” The two police execute a smart about-face and exit. On the monitor, Strand sees them take parade rest outside his door.
    “Snipers?”
    Solberg ignores the question, leans against Strand’s polished desk, resignation on his face. He’s been onsite since shortly after the lone figure appeared beside the courtyard gazebo. “Well, Chris, what have you got for me?”
    Strand shakes his head glumly. “A tree of empty pointers, Ralph. This came out of nowhere. Whoever that is down there, he’s not connected. Nobody knows him, no one misses him, no one