Forensics of Madness
| Forensics of Madness | |
|---|---|
| Date of Cutscene: | 09 January 2024 |
| Location: | A Motel Room - New York |
| Synopsis: | Vermilion analyzes a ledger and files - a dive into madness. |
| Thanks to: | Frank Noble |
| Cast of Characters: | Jane Roe |
| Tinyplot: | 215 |
A few days ago, Frank Noble had inquired for data analysis. Now, after getting the files the floor of the cheap motel was cluttered. On a bench was the strange ledger full of numbers and code. There was a computer that was probably compromised by an unknown third party that was allegedly used by a "Mr. Boom". And then there was the hard drive with the files of Mr. Noble's company's cameras and access control system. Between them, almost in a nest of cabling and keyboards sat a Jane Doe. A person without a proper name. Vermilion. A web of half a dozen screens were flickering with information, arranged around her in such a way that she could switch between them by simply turning around. They display scans of the book, extracted files, the video, and timestamps. If one wouldn't know better, the whole arrangement might appear to have something of dark magic turned modern. If someone made a photo, it could be titled 'The Summoning of Daemons', but then you'd use Daemon as a term for a program called upon by a background process. Because each screen was showing the results of several.
Practically swimming in the flood of data washing over her, the young woman had her fingers caress the shape of an old keyboard, the keys pressing deep and with a quite satisfying click as she entered a few short lines. Not the fastest way of data entry, but the clacking of the breadbox-shaped keyboard had an appeal of its own. Screens changed, information flickered, and started to take a new form. It was hard work to filter the files, skimming them for actual content that was worth to be put into the dossier, but it paid off.
The only screen that stayed somewhat static only occasionally started to gain lines. In contrast to the other showing the whole plethora of information flowing through in a structured but seemingly chaotic way, it only carried clear text, words forming at the speed of the keyboards clackering and typing as Vermilion put in the text of the dossier.
As the text grew, it started to lay out as much of the usage history of the PC could be dissected from the cache and logs, and matched it with the movement data and cameras from the office building to create a movement profile. Then, the profile grew an increased online presence, the amount noted in graphs about posting behavior with the posts archived in an appendix where possible. It explains how starting around Christmas 2021 the profiles accessed became more outgoing. Besides the cameras and access logs, news reports were added, indicating days and places, when he was where. Even articles and commentary were referenced, together with a separate file of those musings for Noble to read and assess. Chemistry wasn’t her big deal.
Some of those reports seemed to match with patent numbers from the ledger, and she indicated them appropriately. Generic drugs seemed to connect them.
When the more mundane stuff was finished, she added an appendix of coordinates, matched with addresses and even satellite photos of the locations. It started with a list of places in Central and South America. Large compounds, to which she also unearthed the ownership records. The owners were connected to the cartels, some of them were even openly known to be leading figures and wanted. After a list of smaller places, mostly offices, came a cluster of coordinates in Central Park. They were indicated on a map of the park, and roughly circled on photos of it from various angles.
The Keyman Island bank account she found in the ledger was, so the bank claimed, registered to a G.F. Kensington, the profile for him indicating legal and semilegal trade of arms. Russian Mi-24V helicopter gunships, relabelled as rescue helicopters, transported to Africa, missile pods in a different container and put together even before arrival. Just weeks later they flew combat patrols for a warlord. Wanted for forgery in Austria since they managed to stop a shipment of badly documented BMP2s, but no extradition came up. However, a bunch of other lawsuits. Court numbers followed, including one in which someone claimed that he was paid by the man for bribing the right people so Frank Noble would end up in medical care.
She followed with a section on IP addresses and serial numbers. For the latter, she neatly identified each as what products they belonged to, including a sample picture for each, but the IP addresses were resolved to a couple servers. The logs on the servers were gone, but they were known to Vermilion. They lay in her own area of expertise: The Dark Net, where little was archived deliberately, but where you still would get what you wanted if you just looked hard enough. Where no Google worked, and you had to know who to ask. The report didn’t mention how she managed to track down the postings, but a certain Mister Boom, using an icon of an explosion, was ever so boldly inquiring about the market prices of chemical compounds and precursors, alluding that he might manage to provide them. Chemicals he identified via the USPTO patent numbers.
The last section contained an annotation index, the index here elaborating on the strange, nonsensical markings and glyphs that were added in the ledger and now reproduced as a list of pointers back to the other parts of the report. The best indicator of what they might be was a small number of reference pictures from the British Isles. If there was anything magical about those notes, someone else would need to solve that, because for all of Jane's skill as a hacker and digital native, magic was beyond her horizon.
