Phil Elmore's Blog, page 18

Technocracy: Are You Vulnerable to Internet Blackmail?

My WND Technocracy column this week is about the dangers of extortion as facilitated by the Internet.

Internet blackmail can happen to anyone who uses the Web.

There are any number of Internet blackmail schemes. People are getting killed over these capers, too.  How secure are you? And do you do anything online that could be used to extort you?

Read the full column here in WND news.

Stony Man: Triplecross

My latest Stony Man novel, Triplecross, hits newsstands on 3 June, 2014.

Tensions erupt between Pakistan and India after Pakistani soldiers are found massacred in an Indian village, along with the body of an American—a businessman who had no reason to be there. Phoenix Force must stop ongoing battles in the area—skirmishes led by two rogue generals. When Able Team investigates the mining company that employed the dead American, the men are attacked by a group of mercenaries. With relations between Pakistan and India hanging in the balance, the Stony Man teams are faced with daunting missions…and the knowledge that failure could trigger a nuclear war.

Buy Triplecross wherever Gold Eagle action books are sold.

The Rise of the Brony and the Death of the American Man

I contributed a column to the much-reviled Return of Kings recently.  The Rise of the Brony and the Death of the American Man chronicles what has gone wrong with so much of American masculinity, in which grown men now exult in children’s escapism.

“In other words, a brony is a wretched, immature male who engages purposefully in behavior and entertainment that should have been left behind when he transitioned from childhood to manhood.  His devotion to a children’s television show calls into question his ability to function as an adult and to adopt and maintain adult responsibilities. All adults are, wisely, suspicious of age-contemporaries who exhibit inordinately immature personality traits…”

Read the full column here in ROK.

Episode 22, “145 Months Ago”

 

[image error]He is alone in the heavy-gravity room of the prison. The room is controversial. Many civilians have protested its existence.

There is no property in prison. Any personal effects are confiscated on entry. A man’s clothes are borrowed, worn and laundered and shared with all others of the same size, recycled and reissued each week. He is allowed to accumulate nothing in his cell. His books are borrowed. His diversions are few. His vices are not tolerated.

In such an environment, some turn to violence. The weak become property; the soft become sport. There are more reasons than boredom to use the gravity room. To build one’s body. To increase one’s strength.

The prison sits on a peninsula, at the edge of Hongkongtown, buffeted by the ink-black waves of a dead ocean. It is named the Promontory, though none call it that. It is simply the prison. Thirty percent of all Hongkongtown’s citizens will end their days there. That is the price for the city-state’s freedom. It is a place of chaos, a refuge for the worst the mainland can funnel to its shores. Its freedom is the freedom of the penal colony. In Hongkongtown, one may make whatever life one can.

Some lives are short.

If he is honest with himself, he knows that lifting the electronic gravity bar, even on its highest override setting, does nothing to make him stronger. The growth hormones, the enzymes, the adrenaline coursing through his body… these chemicals and more flow through him, pumped to his cells by transplanted organs grafted to his endocrine system. The Project has made him what he is, has caused him to gain height and weight, has given him power like no human has ever possessed.

His cells heal quickly. He has been set on fire and shrugged it off; he has been stabbed and walked away; he has been shot with prison-built firearms and laughed.  When he came to the prison, he was a victim. Then came the Project.

Prisoners are not stupid. Individually, they may commit foolish crimes — crimes that ruin their lives and the lives of others. Collectively, they possess a keen intelligence. It is an intelligence that looks ever inward, policing the organism that is the prison, searching out and destroying any threat to the body. Cancers are cut out. Sickness is attacked. If the body must suffer the fevers of a bloody riot, then a riot it will be.

They came for Peyton as he grew. They understood what he was becoming. Their efforts were too little and too late. Every attempt failed. Eventually, even the Warden stopped asking after his well-being.

They call Peyton the Monster. They are not wrong.

The Warden is a coward; the Warden understands bureaucracy. Bureaucracy rewards the absence of disorder, not the assertion of reason. Bureaucracy keeps Peyton alive.  The Warden begs him to kill as few inmates as possible; to show mercy; to make no trouble. Peyton does his best to cooperate. The craven Warden does small favors for him in return. It is an adequate arrangement.

Peyton lifts the bar again. He wants the effort to strain him; he wants the effort to hurt him. It does neither.

Tears stream down his cheeks.

He hates himself for crying. He hates himself for feeling regret, for knowing anguish. He has never felt such things before. He has never known emotional pain.

It is the Project. They have changed his body chemistry. They have restored something, given him something he was born without. He does not want it back. He does not have a choice.

The Warden has come to him today. The Warden is a messenger. The Warden resents the role he has been asked to play. Powers above him, powers that have decreed the Project will take place within the Warden’s domain, have pressed him into service. The Warden does not understand the message he has been asked to relay.

Peyton understands.  Peyton has been waiting for this day.  The Project has offered him much.  In exchange he has given his cooperation. He has let them test him. He has let them evaluate him. He has let them take his blood and scan his organs.

He has given them a sample of his DNA.

That sample has been used to make a child. Peyton does not know why the Project wished this done. At the beginning, he did not care. But that was before they changed his body.

That was before they gave him back remorse.

Tears continue to pool on the bench. He cannot stop them. He can do nothing to escape the pain. The awful, clinging guilt, the regret, the wish never to have been… these pass into him, through him, and over him. It is an ache. It is a torment. It is drowning him.

His child and her mother are dead.

The Warden can be forgiven the indifference with which he has delivered this coded news. He does not know. He cannot know. The Project has not shared the information with him.

Word has come to Peyton all the same.  The child created using his DNA, the surrogate mother chosen to bear this child… they have died on the operating table. He has never met the woman. He grieves for her.  He has never seen the child.

He mourns.

When he was told a child would be created, a child that would become the custody of government scientists, he felt nothing. What was this child to him? He was Ian Peyton. He cared for nothing. For no one.

Now, knowing this son, this daughter, this baby is dead, he wants only to die.

He pushes the bar up and down. He prays for fatigue to come. It does not.

He has asked the Project to kill him. They have refused. He has asked the Warden to snuff him out. The Warden has said no. He will live out his days here in the Promontory. He will sit in a cell alone. He will spend each day knowing that his child is dead.

He can’t do it. He won’t. He has formed a plan.

He will watch. He will bide his time. He will choose a victim who deserves to die. Here, in prison, he will commit one last murder.

They will put him on death row. The appeals process is automatic. It will take years.

When he has committed his murder he will ask the Warden for a final favor. Ian Peyton has been no monk; he has known his share of women. Somewhere in the world he may have a living child. He wants to know. He needs to know. He has never cared before. He cares now.

He will barter his cooperation. He will ask that a search for his DNA be conducted. The price will be years of quiet occupancy — years on death row in which he will do everything he can to take no more lives. Bureaucracy will reward the Warden for these years of peaceful residence. Bureaucracy is the Warden’s only god.

Years stretch before him. They are years he must endure. At their end is the death he so desperately wants.

He will wait.

Technocracy — Life After Facebook: The ‘Next Big Thing’

My WND Technocracy column this week was inspired by news that Yahoo intends to introduce a competing video service in an effort to take on video-sharing giant YouTube.

Users migrate to the next big thing, and the formerly popular site is left to die.

Google Plus is one great example of a well-funded attempt to compete with the big boy on the block (in that case, Facebook) that failed. Consumers are fickle and, if you can’t do something new, you aren’t going to win them over.

What’s the next big thing after Facebook?

It’s hard to say. What we do know is that all social networks die. It’s a question of when, not if.

Read the full column here in WND News.

 

Thoughts on Elliot Rodger’s Murder Spree

Like Somalis dancing on the burned-out hulk of a Blackhawk, you’re going to see a variety of libs and scions of political porrectness exploiting the ravings of a crazy person — and his murderous rampage — in order to further the politically correct narrative that men are all engines of predation who will rape and murder you because they hate all women (unless they make the appropriate mouth noises expressing contempt for themselves and all other men, bowing and scraping at the altar of self-hate).

It has already started and it’s going to get worse. Elliot Rodger will become a symbol for all that the politically correct fascists would like to see done to you for holding any opinion but that which they deem proper. The formula is this:

A = B = C = D

A. Any expression of thought or opinion that is not politically correct is hatred.

B. Free speech is fine, but hatred is not free speech.

C. Hatred causes murder and thus hatred should be illegal because murder is illegal.

D. Anyone who is politically incorrect is a potential murderer and thus his speech should be curtailed before he hurts someone.

This is what we call a slippery slope — the attempt by the left to marginalize the opinions of anyone who disagrees with them. If they can make your opinions illegitimate, if they can declare that there is only ONE side of any issue (and the other side is “hate”), they can make your beliefs illegal and relegate you to the status of second-class citizen.

This is the truth. Remember that when it happens.

Episode 21, “‘Billy’”

 

“Eating spun sugar,” said Montauk. His cameras were at full extension. He made some kind of adjustment; the cameras turned and whirred. “They look perfectly content.”

“You’re sure you can watch them from here?” asked Peyton.

“Certain,” said the Og. “Samuel has an electric baton. I’ve taught him to use it. Aimee carries a phone. We will know should anything go awry.”

“Electric baton,” said Peyton. “Wouldn’t that be…”

“Deadly to me?” Montauk supplied.  “Yes. In short order. Samuel is fourteen. Almost a young man, if small for his age. It has been sadly necessary to give him great responsibility.  What did you tell Annika about the incident?”

“I explained to her that the person she came to the amusement park to meet was a bad man who wanted to trick her,” said Peyton. “That he lied to her when they spoke through the computer. That there are more like him out there and she must be careful. I also told her it isn’t safe to agree to meet new friends without me.”

“That sounds reasonable,” said the Og.

Peyton and the Og sat at a table next to a robot soy-dog vendor. They were across the street and diagonal to the amusement park. It had been three days since the death of the man pretending to be “Billy.” His death had not appeared in the news.  Montauk had explained that this was unusual. It had taken all three days for the Og to finish deciphering the complex encryption carried by Billy’s contact circuit.

“You’re message said we’re in trouble,” said Peyton.

Montauk’s voice was completely synthetic. It had a lilting, almost mocking quality to it. Neither male nor female, it was carefully neutral, its vowels clipped and its consonants crisp. Only when the Og laughed was the illusion broken. The ratcheting noise it made when amused was wholly alien.

“Trouble,” said Montauk, “is the vaguest of adjectives for your peculiar predicament. I would like your permission to destroy the chip.”

“Why?”

“Because if you had simply put that contact circuit in the wall,” said the Og, “you would have heard police sirens three hundred seconds later. It is DNA encrypted to the owner. It connects to only one other party. Neither ‘Billy’ nor the man his chip contacts is someone you wish to know. If I were a creature of fewer precautions, the authorities might already have found and deported me.”

“I don’t understand,” said Peyton.

The Og took from within its slicker a pair of plastic print-outs.  They were photographs. The first was of “Billy,” the toad-faced man. The second was a lean, hollow-eyed figure dressed in black.

“This ‘Billy’ was a man named Emmet Temken,” Montauk reported.  “He works, or worked, for Government Intelligence. His civil service record goes back twenty years and is utterly unremarkable.  He is what we would call ‘legs.’ He does gruntwork for the Powers that Are, in this case, the Intelligence service.”

“And him?” Peyton tapped the photo of the man in black.

“For our purposes, that is the Intelligence service,” said Montauk. “That is Marion VanClef. The details of his service record are sealed. His current rank is listed only as “Agent,” which means he’s very highly placed.  I believe Temken worked for this man.”

“So Annika wasn’t targeted by a predator,” said Peyton.  “She was being stalked by a government operative.”

“It would seem so. There is an interesting complication.”

“What?”

Montauk tapped the photo of Temken with one metal pincer.  “Temken is a convicted sex offender. As a man of 19 he propositioned two young girls and was intercepted. It’s possible his government service was a plea deal. It would explain why he’s never excelled.” The Og checked the children again, scanning with his cameras.  He turned back to Peyton.  “This VanClef is a very powerful man. If Temken sought Annika, he may have been doing so for his own purposes. Or he may have been doing so for VanClef.”

“Why would Government Intelligence want my daughter?”

“As a means of getting to you?” asked the Og. “From what you’ve told me, You are not vulnerable to much else.”

“My escape is a matter for law enforcement,” said Peyton. “I know nothing that could be of use to Intelligence. I sat on Death Row for more than a decade and never once did anyone question me.  The Warden and I reached an agreement based on my cooperation. It was easier for him, easier for his bureaucracy, to give me small considerations if I waited out the automated appeals and made no trouble. If not for the legal maze he was forced to navigate, I’m sure the Warden would simply have evacuated the air from my cell. It would have been easier.”

“You are missing the obvious,” said Montauk.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” said the Og, “if the government has no interest in you, there is only one person they could possibly be hunting.”

“Annika,” said Peyton.

“Annika,” said Montauk.

Technocracy: Our Minders Go After E-Cigarettes

My WND Technocracy column this week is about e-cigarettes and the push to ban or regulate them.

In a free society, smoking should remain legal. Smoking is also very dangerous and one of the worst habits, from a health perspective, that a human being can adopt.

Whether these things help you quit smoking or actually introduce dangers unique to the e-cig technology (such as breathing solder particles) doesn’t really matter.

What matters is whether we live in a free society or not.

If we are free, we should have the choice to smoke (or “vape”) even though we shouldn’t.

Read the full column here in WND News.

Episode 20, “Something About Clocks”

 

[image error]“I’m going out, Daddy,” said Annika.

“Where?” said Peyton. “It’s late.”

“Hongkongtown,” Annika said, as if this explained everything. “We need more proteins for the printer. I’ll get some. You should try to sleep.”

Peyton looked at her carefully. “All right,” he said. “Be careful. Screen me if there’s any trouble.”

“You’re becoming very modern, Daddy,” she said, smiling. Twice now, she had relayed messages to him from her forearm tab — which she always wore — to the wall screen in their flat. She now took for granted this method of communicating with him. She hugged his leg, waved, and was out the door before he could say anything else.

He counted to one hundred.

When he was finished, he went to the bedroom. On the top shelf in the closet was the pasteboard box in which he kept Marachuck’s cut-down shotgun. He had added to this a plastic sack of shells. Briefly he considered taking the weapon with him.

No, he thought. It isn’t that bad. She’s too smart.

He put the gun back in its hiding spot.

Go or stay? He was running out of time. He did not argue with himself much longer. It took him only minutes to catch up with her, using the traffic between them to screen himself as he paced her from the opposite side of the street. His height worked for him and against him. It enabled him to watch her while she could not see him, but threatened to expose him whenever the traffic cleared.

When it became obvious that she was heading to the amusement park, Peyton circled the block, jogging past pedestrians and pedicab pilots who were quick to give him a wide berth. He came up behind the park. The Tiltrotor, Annika’s favorite ride, was at the rear of the fenced space, placing its maintenance channels against the wall. This meant a deep, wide pit, of sorts, backed the ride and separated it from the fence.

He saw neither drones nor mounted cameras. The slats of the fence bent easily. They were much worse for wear after he bent them back, trying to conceal his breach. The Tiltrotor was very loud, groaning and wheezing as its hydraulics spun alloy carriages at high speeds.

Peyton spotted the man almost immediately. He was squat and round and waiting near the ride’s entrance, standing against a light post. Peyton thought he looked familiar.

He saw Annika approaching before the man did. Placing his hands against the lip of the maintenance pit, he prepared to hoist himself up.

 

* * *

Temken shifted his weight. His left foot was asleep. He forgot this when he saw the little blonde girl. Annika Peyton was approaching, just as they’d agreed. He braced himself against the light pole.

She would be looking for a boy her age, not a grown man. They had arranged to meet at this ride. When she saw no boy, she would circle around the ride, wondering if he was nearby. Once she did, once she got close enough, he could grab her. His fingers found the bottle of anesthetic spray in his pocket. Any moment now.

She did not look at him when she walked past, but she was too far away. He did not dare tip his hand too early; she was faster than he was. If she bolted, he would never catch her. He had not dared deploy a backup team. He feared the presence of so many police had tipped the Peytons before. He was alone. It should not take more than one operative to scoop up a single twelve-year-old girl.

He moved farther from the light pole, into the center of the walkway. She would reach the dead end behind the Tiltrotor and then come back. When she did, no matter which side she took, he would be within reach. He waited.

She did not appear.

Five minutes passed. Ten. At fifteen, his nerves were shot. Had she found some other exit? Was there a path behind the ride, something small enough for a child? If he had missed her, she might not fall for his lure again.

There! In the recessed area behind the ride. He saw her blonde hair, even in the darkness. There were alone here. She was cornered. There was no more need for caution. He ran for her–

A hand, twice the size of his head, stopped him.

Lightning bolts fired in his vision. He tasted blood. The blow from Peyton’s open palm had driven the breath from his body. He had run into a wall once. This was worse.

He gasped, rolled, tried to gain his feet. Someone drove a hot iron through his back. He collapsed to the pavement on his stomach. From the side of his eye he saw Ian Peyton pinning him to the ground with a single finger. Peyton’s finger flexed. Something, a rib, cracked in Temken’s chest.

“Please,” gasped Temken. “Please! I won’t tell anyone I saw you.”

“Annika,” said Peyton. His voice was almost a whisper. The girl appeared from the shadows next to him. “Go home. Go right home, no stopping. I’ll be there soon.”

“Okay,” she said. “All you all right, Daddy? You seem upset.”

“I’m fine,” said Peyton. “But you and I will have to talk about this.”

“Because of that man?” said Annika. “He’s bad, isn’t he? He’s a bad person and you’re going to fix him.”

“I’m going to make him go to sleep,” said Peyton. “Because he’s bad, yes.”

“Okay, Daddy,” said Annika. “I’m going home now.”

Temken tried to speak. Blood poured from his mouth. He could feel broken ribs grating together. The stabbing pain in his side was unbearable. He could not breathe.

The girl left. She was skipping. Singing a song. Something about clocks.

The government operative managed to drag the contact circuit from his pocket. It fell to the ground. Temken’s fingers were numb. Peyton took the chip.

“She’s mine,” said the big man. “She’s not for you. How many like her have you taken?”

Temken tried to speak. Air hissed from between his lips. “Help,” he said.

“There are so many of you,” said Peyton. “I’ll never be able to get you all. Never be able to make the world safe for her.” He placed the palm of his hand against Temken’s skull. “That’s why I’ll never stop.” He began to push.

Oh God, thought Temken. He’s crushing my skull.

“I shouldn’t enjoy this,” said Peyton. “It’s wrong to enjoy it.” He pushed harder.

He’s crushing my skull! Stop! STOP!

“But I’m going to,” said Peyton.

It hurts so much and he’s going to crack it open please God it hurts please I’m sorry–

Technocracy: All Software Must Die

I admit that my ostensible hatred for George R.R. Martin is really just jealousy for his success. The man probably sleeps in a bathtub of gold coins at night (but only because J.K. Rowling does). He’s the jumping off point for this week’s WND Technocracy column.

Viewed in that light, a devotion to ancient technology is no longer a quaint eccentricity. It’s a lapse in judgment.

Martin revealed recently that he works on an incredibly antiquated machine running MS-DOS. He writes the “Song of Ice and Fire” books in Wordstar 4.0, a program that was popular before WordPerfect was invented. It’s as if that damned fisherman hat he wears everywhere wasn’t enough to assure Martin’s fans that he’s eccentric enough for them to venerate.

It’s merely funny when a famous author does it. When our business and, worse, our utilities use outdated software and hardware, we’re facing some real vulnerabilities.

Read the full column here in WND News.