Drugged, Kidnapped, and Left to Ponder my Fate

The next thing I remembered was being violently pushed forward and the tightening of the seat belt on my shoulder and chest. My head hurt and I'm thinking how I could have a hangover on one beer. I had a hard time focusing on any thoughts. In my last post, Is Jake Stone a Hoax? I passed out in a Japanese restaurant and now I suspect there was something in the beer. The last thing I remembered was a Japanese businessman rushing towards me and then everything went black.

I looked around and the blackness of the night surrounded everything except for a faint yellow bug light about 100 yards away burning on the front porch of a small house. Suddenly, the blackness seemed to escape out the driver's side door as the dome lights sprayed the inside of the car.

"Let's go," said a clean shaven, military type guy dressed in black. He grabbed my arm and helped me out.

"Who are you? Where am I?" I managed to get out through the fog in my mind. The man ignored me.

As we approached the house, the bug light revealed that it leaned to the right. Now, I'm a lot more alert as I feel the adrenalin seep through my body.

"It is safe to go inside?" I said assessing my options to make a run for it.

"As safe as it will be," the man in black said.

We walked up three creaky steps to a small front porch with a gabled roof. The multiple coats of white paint curled away from two narrow pillars that supported the roof. The military type knocked on the door five times and five more knocks came from the other side.

The door opened and a thirty-something man with a crew cut appeared wearing a black flack jacket and a shoulder holster with a 9mm tucked inside. The two nodded.

The house smelled musty and the floor moaned as we walked through the narrow kitchen into a small, dark hallway that opened into a small living room. A single lamp with a dented black shade dimly lit a brown, worn sofa with a large jagged hole in the middle backrest. A robust man with deep wrinkles and lines in his face sat on the end of the sofa next to the table lamp. His eyes were in shadow.

"Sit down," the man said in a raspy, crackling voice. The military type next to me pointed to a worn and smelly recliner facing the sofa. I sunk so low that my butt touched the floor and I instinctively gripped the armrests. The man in shadow smiled slightly.

"I'm Jake Stone," the man in shadow said.

"How do I know?"

"I left you a Starbucks gift card with information that faded away within three minutes," he said.

(See my post, The Starbucks Caper – Is This for Real? about that incident.)

"About a cyber terrorist plot to take over the cell phone network and the power grid. The barista gave you the gift card with the information."

"Okay, so you are real?"

"Your book..."

"Dark End of the Spectrum?"

"…is too accurate."

"It's fiction."

"Where did you get the information?"

"I made it up."

"Some of it's true. You must have a connection."

"I don't know what you're talking about. I wrote a book and that's it!"

Jake Stone took a sip from a tumbler on the end table.

"You know a lot of people pawn off the truth as fiction."

"Oh, really?"

"This could get dangerous. You sure you want to continue running my information?"

"How dangerous?"

"Your family."

"I'm not convinced. I don't even know if people are reading it. I don't get much traffic."

"You will and then things could change."

"I'll deal with it."

"You won't be able to once it starts."

"You sound like you don't me to run your stuff."

"I just want you to know what you're getting into." He took another sip from the tumbler.

"Okay, fair enough."

He got up and extended his hand. I took it and we shook.

"Thanks," he said revealing his cold steel blue gray eyes. They made me shiver.

The two military types appeared behind me like unpleasant shadows. We headed for the kitchen, but never made it – two booms erupted so loud they seemed to stop time momentarily. The military types slammed me down and I hit the floor hard. I thought the house exploded. The gunfire shattered the windows in the living room and destroyed most of the wall. We crawled into the kitchen and one of the guys in black went out. I heard others join him and then we rushed into the black SUV parked close to the house. Another military type jumped in and the driver hit the gas hard. We took off down a dirt driveway and skidded onto a paved road nearly toppling the SUV. The guy next to me grabbed my face and held his hand over my mouth and nose and I thought this was the end. Everything vanished. I woke up in my car in the mall parking lot where I left it to go to the Japanese restaurant. It was three am and my head pounded in pain.

Is Jake Stone a Hoax?

It's been ten days since I last heard from Jake Stone, and now I'm thinking this whole thing was a farce. Maybe one of my friends pulled it off as a joke and is laughing his a-- off right now. I'm even thinking of un-publishing my earlier posts to avoid further embarrassment. Until I got a phone call on my cell and the number was all zeros. I pushed the call button and listened. (If you've read my earlier posts, you'll know Jake Stone is an alleged covert operative who claims he has information that will shock the world. See my earlier post Operative Reveals Cyber Terrorist Plot for the details.)

"This is Jake Stone. We need to meet now. Can you get to Kanki in Crabtree in twenty minutes?" The voice is disguised by one of those electronic voice scramblers. He sounds like Stephen Hawking.

"Yeah, I think so. It's rush hour so…"

"Sit at the Hibachi bar. Order a Kuronama. I'll find you."

I rushed out of work and headed towards the mall thinking he'll never show – he doesn't exist. It's one of my friends pulling this off. And what's a Kuronama? I didn't know until I got to the Kanki grill and ordered one.

The young bartender placed a long tapered glass in front of me filled with black liquid and a golden head. I took a sip. It's Japan's version of dark beer. Asahi makes it and it has a smoky taste with hints of honey. I'm hooked on it.

I look around for Jake and see only one other person, a middle-aged Japanese man in a blue suit sitting several seats away. He's drinking a light beer. Now I realize how Jake would find me – the dark beer. It serves as confirmation that I am who I am. Clever. But, I'm still not convinced Jake Stone is real. I imagine a bunch of my friends will pop out any minute laughing like hyenas at what they pulled off. In any event, I'm in a nice restaurant with a great tasting beer.

I check my watch and fifteen minutes have passed. Half the beer is gone and I'm feeling pretty good. Actually, too good for only a half a glass of beer. Another ten minutes pass and I finish the beer. I'm feeling pretty buzzed and wondering if the alcohol content of the beer is higher than most. I usually don't get this buzzed on one glass of beer. Now my head feels really heavy and I'm having a hard time holding it up. I put my hands on my head trying to steady it. This is so weird, I'm thinking. I just need to rest for a short time and I'll be alright I tell myself. I place my head down on the bar. Actually, I can't hold it up anymore. The rest feels really good and my eyes are slowly closing. The last thing I remember was the businessman coming towards me with a hurried look on his face. I try to put my hand up to stop him, but I can't feel it anymore. Something lifted me from under my arms and then there was nothing.

All of this started with the introduction of my novel, Dark End of the Spectrum.

Mysterious Text Messages, Neural Bracelets, and Direct Brain Communications

So I receive a text message on my phone at work and I don’t know who is it from because the number is ten zeros. I open the message and it says,

“Call 555-4237 as soon as you receive this message, JS."

Now I know who is it from – Jake Stone, the mysterious, covert operative, who has claimed that a secret group of powerful and well-funded individuals have hacked into the cell phone network and taken control. See my earlier post Operative Reveals Cyber Terrorist Plot for the details. Naturally, I call the number thinking it’s not going to work. Numbers with 555 prefixes are not assigned. My phone connects instantly no rings. A computer-generated female voice with a French accent says:

“Go to the fax machine, code 4237.”

Now, I’m thinking how does Jake Stone know my office has a fax machine? I guess you can assume most do even though most business communications are done with email.

I walk over and peer down at the gray display. The machine is sleeping. I linger there for a short time and then the machine awakes. The display says, “Internet fax – enter password.” I enter 4237 and wait. Seconds later, the machine rolls out a fax. It’s blank except for my name on the top in faint gray type. I wait some more thinking another sheet might come out. Nothing. Ok, another Mission Impossible message with appearing and disappearing type. I go back to my desk and drop the fax next to my phone and I notice there is blue fuzzy type where my fingers held the paper. I gently rub my hand over the paper and more type appears. Ok, its heat-activated text. I quickly start typing the information into my computer.

“Our government has developed a wireless device, a wrist band that connects directly to your neural system and communicates directly with your brain sending communications over your neural network. When connected, transmissions sound like voices in your head and you cannot know who’s speaking until they identify themselves. You just have to whisper to communicate back. The wireless frequency it uses is undetectable and comes across the radio spectrum as white noise. You must get one to stop ICER.”

I barely finished typing and the text begins to fade. I rub my hand over the paper again, but it doesn't work anymore. Within seconds the paper is blank and I’m thinking I don’t want any part of this. And I discover that that 4237 spells ICER on a telephone keypad.

Maybe, I shouldn't have written Dark End of the Spectrum.

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What is the secret society called ICER?

In the last piece of information I received from Jake Stone, the covert operative, he wrote that a secret group of powerful and well-funded individuals calling themselves, ICER, have hacked into and taken over the cell phone networks. He wrote that they took control of a special device installed by Homeland Security after 911 that can reprogram any computer wirelessly from aircraft to PDAs. Well, I was curious about ICER and did Google and Ixquick searches.

Curiously, ICER stands for the International Computing and Educational Research Workshop held every year at a major university in different countries since 2005. The first workshop was held at the University of Washington in Seattle and this year’s conference will be held this weekend (Sept 6-7) at the University of Newcastle in Sydney, Australia.

Here’s the mission statement of the workshop from the 2005 ICER workshop web site:

“Computing education, as a research discipline, is the study of how people come to understand computational processes and devices, and how to improve that understanding. As computation becomes ubiquitous in our world, understanding of computing in order to design, structure, maintain, and utilize these technologies becomes increasingly important both for the technology professional, but also for the technologically literate citizen. The research study of how the understanding of computation develops, and how to improve that understanding, is critically important for the technology-dependent societies in which we live.”

I don’t think Jake Stone was referring to this ICER. First, they are not a secret society; they are an open educational organization of computer professionals, educators and developers. Besides, I don’t have any proof what Jake Stone says is true. For all I know, he could be making this stuff up from my novel, Dark End of the Spectrum.

Interestingly, Wikipedia also has a listing for ICER. It is image compression software used by NASA on the Mars rovers, “Spirit” (MER-A) and “Opportunity” (MER-B).

From Wikipedia:

“ICER is a wavelet-based image compressor that allows for a graceful trade-off between the amount of compression (expressed in terms of compressed data volume in bits/pixel) and the resulting degradation in image quality (distortion). ICER has some similarities to JPEG2000, with respect to select wavelet operations.

The development of ICER was driven by the desire to achieve high compression performance while meeting the specialized needs of deep space applications.”

I also could not find the meaning of the photo-enhancing ICER acronym, if it is an acronym.