jasmine:
you weren't nervous last night 😍
rohan:
today's the big day
jasmine:
what time's ur presentation at Innova?
rohan:
noon - hopefully I'll convince them
jasmine:
to run your neuron simulation on the BrainNet cluster?
jasmine:
it's a no-brainer!
rohan:
haha, but they're idiots
jasmine:
that's what you get for waking up before noon 😜
rohan:
wait the meeting's cancelled
rohan:
holy shit I just got a text from melissa
rohan:
you won't believe this
jasmine:
she's clever, guess she really doesn't want you presenting
jasmine:
Oh shit, just googled it, it's true
rohan:
no I think it's real, just got another message from Tom
rohan:
just got to work, gtg will update soon.
rohan:
they're saying he died of a drug overdose
jasmine:
found something juicy on hackerIRC
jasmine:
apparently Devon used to host experimental drug parties
rohan:
guess that's why he was always tweaking like the energizer bunny
jasmine:
haha, less funny now that he's dead
rohan:
it’s crazy, was just in a meeting with him yesterday
jasmine:
did he seem ill, or off in any way?
rohan:
actually he was super excited
rohan:
he was almost ready to show his data from the gene experiments
jasmine:
you mean his "Rats of Nimh" project
rohan:
yeah he was using the results of the Gene Map to engineer smarter rats
jasmine:
didn't you guys work together at Stanford?
rohan:
he was a post-doc in Granger's lab where I am
jasmine:
class in five minutes. Ugh Physics
rohan:
He supervised my work on the neuron simulator
jasmine:
90 minutes of quantam mechanics. Why can't the cat just be dead?
rohan:
because then we wouldn't have lol cats
rohan:
sorry, just got out of Gil's office.
rohan:
Innova's chief lawyer
jasmine:
huh? what did they want with you?
rohan:
it was about Devon
rohan:
they kept asking me what I knew about his work
rohan:
whether he said anythign out-of-the-ordinary recently
jasmine:
isn't it a bit strange that this high-powered lawyer had time to talk to you
rohan:
he was super aggressive, almost like he was afraid i knew something
jasmine:
I'm going to do a little research
rohan:
oh man, know what that means
jasmine:
:) let's see if we can read his emails
rohan:
be careful, they might be watching
jasmine:
they dont know who i am
jasmine:
just going to try a simple password recovery hack
rohan:
i wouldn't be so sure, that lawyer shook me up
rohan:
maybe we should forget about this
jasmine:
hmm usual approach isn't working…
jasmine:
ok need your help. You still at Innova?
jasmine:
Do you think you can find the MAC address of a router Devon might have used?
rohan:
We worked on the same floor. should be easy to get near his pod
rohan:
ok got it: c8:e0:eb:18:03:35
jasmine:
ok gimme a minute to crack it
jasmine:
I think I got the cache, diggin for gold
jasmine:
OK looks like the last several days of mail are here
rohan:
how many of Devon's?
jasmine:
OK maybe a few hundred?
jasmine:
shit they're encrypted
rohan:
getting a call from a weird number.. Brb
rohan:
I just got a call from a reporter named Gina
rohan:
she said it was urgent and concerned Devon
rohan:
but she wouldn't give any details, but wants to meet asap
rohan:
this is getting creepy
jasmine:
hmm seems like we may be onto something bigger than we thought
rohan:
we need those emails
jasmine:
no way we're breaking this 256-bit encryption
rohan:
wait, hmm there might be a way
jasmine:
how? His private key is prob on his laptop
jasmine:
by know it must be locked up somewhere
rohan:
he was still going to the Stanford lab
rohan:
everything get's backed up when you plug in
jasmine:
so the key might be saved on the network
rohan:
exactly, going there now
rohan:
started a low-level search on the drive for the key
rohan:
taking forever, there's a shit ton of data on this
rohan:
wait, wait...BINGO!!
jasmine:
OK got it, let's see if it matches
jasmine:
we have a match! Decrypting now…
rohan:
do good intentions make things less illegal? :)
jasmine:
no, but I don't plan on getting caught
jasmine:
sending the emails. can you run an n-gram analysis?
jasmine:
gimme the counts.. cant stand the tension
rohan:
got'em … counting 'em up
rohan:
the phrase "Galton's Warriors" keeps coming up
jasmine:
Galton? the father of eugenics?
rohan:
and Darwin's cousin
rohan:
maybe just some twisted code name?
jasmine:
didn't Galton believe that genes were the key to human abilities
rohan:
no it's too far fetched
rohan:
what if they were being literal
jasmine:
as in "Galton's Warriors" = superhuman killers?
rohan:
there must be a simpler explanation
jasmine:
we have to keep digging...any ideas?
rohan:
hmmm...going to run a network analysis to map everyone he was talking to
jasmine:
you mean using the "to" and "from" fields of all his emails?
rohan:
yeah exactly, a map of all his relationships
rohan:
most of the people are in clusters, they form a clique
rohan:
but.. there are two outliers that don't connect to any of his other contacts
jasmine:
probably just random spammers
rohan:
maybe not, i filtered out the spam
jasmine:
send me the emails and I'll try and figure out their real identity
rohan:
here's the first...
rohan:
masteroftheuniverse@lavabit.com
jasmine:
what's new, another dude trying to message god
jasmine:
should be easy to find him... we just have to pray 🙏
jasmine:
ummm forcesofeveil@lavabit.com
rohan:
wait...you'll never guess who the second is
rohan:
hahah, except this is not funny
jasmine:
maybe Devon was just getting ready to do some PR on the Nimh project
rohan:
the reporter that called me earlier today
jasmine:
didn't you say he was going to release the data soon?
rohan:
yeah but that always goes strictly through Innova PR
rohan:
must call the reporter back
rohan:
but what about his "Galton's Warriors" phrase
rohan:
is there anything to confirm our speculation?
jasmine:
well...I started to do a sentiment analysis of all the sentences the phrase appears in
jasmine:
they all contain highly emotional language
rohan:
nothing like Galton to fire you up
jasmine:
here's an an excerpt of something Devon wrote to god
jasmine:
"galton's warriors must be stopped. You took my work and are using it in ways it was never intended. I will fucking go public, I swear"
jasmine:
and a little while later mr.masteroftheuniverse responds with "OK calm down, we're shutting the program down. Don't worry your lab will continue to be amply funded."
jasmine:
what did Devon know that might have cost him his life?
rohan:
and who is masteroftheuniverse@lavabit.com
rohan:
whoever he was, he clearly wanted to stay anonymous
rohan:
lavbit is an encrypted email service used by whistle blowers, leakers, and terrorists
rohan:
anyone who has a strong interest in remaining untraceable
jasmine:
no surprise then that I'm getting nothing by doing a traceroute on the ip addresses that he used
jasmine:
don't see how we can find his true identity
rohan:
lemme try something
rohan:
searching all the emails that have the phrase "Galtons warriors"
rohan:
they're all between Devon and this mysterious dude
rohan:
this can't be true
jasmine:
what do you mean, spit it out
rohan:
the only other email that mentions "Galton's warriors" is addressed to Zhang Wei
jasmine:
the motherfckn CEO of Innova!?!
rohan:
there Is no f-ing way they could be that stupid
jasmine:
masterofhteuniverse is none other than Innova's CEO!
jasmine:
you realize what this means
rohan:
Zhang Wei was trying to use Devon's work
rohan:
he was experimenting on humans
rohan:
to create genetically enhanced humans
jasmine:
that's what Devon was threatening to go public with
jasmine:
that's why Devon was killed
