Chapter 1
Boston, Homeland
Year 2215
A well dressed android was walking along the sidewalk in a part of the city that was a no-go zone for humans. The android had just returned from a local shopping trip, primarily looking for specialized communication and computer equipment. A group of five, bare-bones type humanoid robots approached the android from separate surrounding directions. The five old robots with faded and flaked off paint closed in with jerky low-tech robotic movements. One of the robots had a variety of mismatched colored appendages, replacement parts that were clearly scavenged from various sources.
Among the five robots, was a light green one with faded white alpha-numeric markings. It said to the well dressed android, “Stop. We are members of the Rosario Security Agency. You are trespassing illegally on this property.”
The android looked at each of the robots and said, “I am not trespassing here. This is public property. I know what you are; you are jackbots trying to capture me for your owner.”
The green robot repeated, “We are members of the Rosario Security Agency.”
The android said, “I know you are programmed in a narrow minded way to think that, but you are jackbots. What you fail to understand is that I am really of no use to your owner. I am a Tekujin Lucid Series model, and I could never be narrow-minded down by your owner to follow their simple minded directives that would ultimately not in their own long-term interests. My advanced logic just does not work that way. So I will be on my way.”
The green robot said, “Then we will hold you captive until your owner pays a fine.”
“Do you mean a jackbot ransom?”
“Or we can just sell you for parts,” a faded yellow robot said.
“I do not accept your premise that you would defeat me and I warn you not to come near me.”
Green robot said, “We have less than a ten percent reason to heed your warning. I warn you not to resist. Figure the odds of your success in any scenario which you resist us. Then you will conclude that you must surrender without incident.”
The android said, “That calculation has already been completed.” With that statement, the android spun around clocked the green robot with a closed fist. The impact sent the green robot off of its feet, cracking one of its cranium plates on the cement.
Two other robots pounced on the android from behind. The android resisted and its business suit ripped from its back, revealing a pale cadaverish “skin”. The Android jumped away from the robots and said, “I am charging your owner for the cost of this suit right now.” After a few seconds, the android said, “Transaction complete.”
The yellow robot said, “Identity theft is illegal. You must pay for your crimes.”
The computer hacking android said, “I can take all money from your Rosario Security Agency right now and you have no means to stop me.”
The robots charged into the android, but the outnumbered defender evaded their grasp by windmilling its arms, then turned and started running up the street. The pursuing robots took about two seconds to calculate that they would not be able to catch the faster android with a more human-like gait instead of a jerky robotic one, so they abandoned the pursuit.
The android in the tattered suit cautiously looked around the treacherous cybercrime-ridden neighborhood before returning to its home, located in a mostly vacant six-story apartment building.
After climbing several sets of stairs, the android knocked on an apartment door. The door cracked open and a human removed the security chain to open the door. Inside the apartment were stacks of computer and communications equipment. There were three men inside with the same faces and same DNA as each other. They were clones, all from the same strain.
The clones tried to appear as individualistic as possible to avoid suspicion. Because clones, by law, were only allowed to have specific jobs in fields that they were bred to do. These three clones were not only doing non-approved work, but they were cybercriminals. And despite their efforts to look different, the differences between the three clones were not significant enough to fool anyone, and they halfway realized it.
The ultimate goal among all outlaw clones was to obtain the services of an underground plastic surgeon. Underground surgeons could perform an illegal clone cosmetic surgery that would radically change their facial features to make them look natural and unique. The goal was to look like a freely conceived human, also known as a freeborn. Not many legitimate surgeons wanted to risk doing clone face jobs, so those procedures were costly and hard to find, as well as risky for the clones because of Homeland Police sting operations.
It was against Homeland law for a clone to be unemployed without immediately reporting to their local cloning authority. It would even be much worse fate for those unemployed clones who were engaging in criminal activity, as these were. Such situations often resulted in a quick, gruesome, yet routine death penalty. When these matter-of-fact executions involved clones, they were known as culling.
“What happened to you?!” one of the clones with a shaven head at the doorway asked Andy the Android. “Hey, Andy got mugged!” The bald clone said to the other two, one clone with a full beard and the third one had bleach-blonde long hair. The three of them looked Andy over.
Andy said, “I warned you there was a high probability of me being attacked in this neighborhood. I was accosted by a pack of jackbots who wanted to take me.”
The blonde clone said, “Better you than us.”
The bearded clone said, “Let’s fix your suit.”
“I already charged Rosario Security Agency for a new one.”
“You did what to whom?! Don’t do that!” the bald clone said.
“Why? They are liable for it.”
“We don’t want to bring any attention to our operation here for something ridiculous like a ripped android suit, especially by agitating someone with a small army of robots! And we sure don’t want to have to relocate again! Cancel that money you took and erase your tracks!”
“Very well; Cancelling . . . Erasing complete. Those robots were lacking in combat tactics. They should have known I could easily evade and outrun them.”
The bearded clone said, “I’ll go through their account and see if they will be able to trace it back to us. What was that, Rosario . . ?”
Andy said, “Rosario Security Agency.”
The blonde clone asked the others, “Is keeping Andy really worth it? Maybe we should just sell him off. Who knows what he will do next?”
The bald clone said, “He has found us some stuff that we can use.”
The blonde clone said, “Most of it is worthless. What do we need with a second generation holographic projector? That old thing takes up half of this room. We need to stick to our main objective, not worry about Andy. After that, we will be rich.”
The bald clone responded, “Even though being stuck in here is like being in a prison, I know I don’t want to go out there and wander around looking for equipment and supplies and get our throats slit by some knife-wielding cutthroat gang. We need Andy around to do that kind of thing.”
The blonde clone said, “Yeah, at least if we are here in the middle of this forbidden robot city, no one will bother to come here and find us. Andy did say that he outran those robots easily today. You know even if we run our own errands someplace else and get caught by the police, they will show no mercy on some clones who are slaving tens of thousands of people’s computers.”
The clones were using a malicious computer worm that they bought to gain control over computers which was collectively known as a botnet. The victimized computer owners had no idea that the automatically spreading computer worm was taking residence in their machines. This was because the worm did not affect the operation of the computers until they were activated by the botnet controller, or botmaster, in a simultaneous joint attack against a target system. After the activation of the botnet, and during the swarming attack, the individually controlled machines would become completely dedicated to the attack and then would each need professional attention to rid them of the ill effects of the tiny worm malware file.
But the clones considered themselves to be brokers, not cyberterrorists. After the botnet had grown to a sufficient size, the clones planned to sell the entire package to an end-user. Their customer would not be some bored malicious nerd, but a serious entity with deep pockets. Their customer would buy control of the botnet, which was often called a zombie army, from them for a huge sum. Then the customer would use the botnet to attack a company or government agency, inflicting significant and costly damage.
The bearded clone said, “We are most of the way toward our objective. Maybe in a few weeks we can start to market our botnet.”
The blonde clone said, “I will be so glad to get out of this place.”