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  “It is a ship?” Mr. Jones says. “Whose?”

  Ray consults the tactical display. “If it stays on its current heading, it’ll exit the asteroid field in perfect position to attack the Koreans.”

  “American, then,” says Mr. Jones. “Good.” He looks at me: You know what to do.

  “Ray.”

  “Already on the way,” Ray says.

  As we maneuver towards the void, I call back to the engine room and tell Jolene we’re going to need her to change the laws of physics. The target ship is certain to have a deflector shield, which would ordinarily have to be blasted away before we could get close to it. But the Wasp is equipped with a Planck-Heisenberg oscillator that allows it to pass through intact force fields.

  “It’s going to be tricky, though,” Jolene cautions. “The shield will shimmer when we make contact with it. If they’ve got guys on lookout—and they should—there’s a good chance they’ll notice.”

  “You will ensure that does not happen,” Mr. Jones says. “I want this ship.”

  We round a final asteroid and arrive at the gap in the rocks. Ray reverses thrust to avoid hitting the force field prematurely.

  “There’s definitely something there,” Jolene says. “I’m getting a really strong shield reading . . . It’s going to shimmer, for sure. It might even spark.”

  “Maybe there’s a blind spot,” Ray suggests. “If we come in from behind . . .”

  A Gleaner darts out of the rocks on the far side of the void. Oblivious to the danger, the pilot accelerates and slams full speed into an invisible wall. The Gleaner explodes. A pattern of ripples forms in space, flowing outward from the blast, and for a moment we can see the contour of the force field.

  It gives me an idea.

  “Anja,” I say, “can you spot any more Gleaners headed this way?”

  “Plenty. They’re all coming from the same direction, too. The base ship must be close.”

  “Never mind the base ship. Here’s what we’re going to do . . .”

  Fifteen seconds later, a trio of Gleaners enter the void. All three crash into the force field and die. We use this as cover, the shimmer and spark of our passage through the shield obscured by the ripples.

  Once past the deflector shield, we are inside the radius of the cloak as well. We can see the ship. It’s dark, massive, and sharp-angled, like a big black skyscraper laid on its side. The hull bristles with point-defense lasers; we hover amidships waiting to see if they will vaporize us. But the spotters must have missed our entry, and our own cloak remains intact. They don’t know we’re here.

  Ray swings us around. The big ship’s command bridge is located near the stern. We read the name painted above the bridge windows: U.S.S. PAINAL. “‘Painful anal,’” I translate, for Mr. Jones’s benefit. “It’s American, all right.”

  “Good,” says Mr. Jones. “Now what?”

  “We look for the external AI nexus port.” A white circle flashes on the hull of the big ship, directly beneath the bridge. “There.”

  “That is where we plug in the . . . ovipositor?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then we take control?”

  “Hopefully,” I say. “But first we have to beat a trivia challenge.”

  “A what?”

  The beta version of The Fermi Paradox simulated computer hacking by making players solve a series of timed Sudoku puzzles. According to the handful of people who got to play it, this was a fun mini-game, and one that actually made you feel like you were breaking through walls of encryption. From a development perspective, it had another advantage: Sudoku are language-independent and can be procedurally generated, so they don’t require paid translators or puzzle-makers. Unfortunately, this strength was also a weakness. Within days of the beta’s debut, someone had created a mod called Spacecracker that could solve the most difficult Sudoku in microseconds, and would even plug in the numbers for you.

  Fermigames could have tried to ban the use of Spacecracker, but besides being tough to enforce, such a ban would have gone against the spirit of the game. Hackers should be allowed to use exploits. The trick was figuring out a way to let them cheat while still posing a meaningful challenge.

  One of Fermigames’ lead programmers suggested switching from Sudoku to Trivial Pursuit. He crafted a backstory about how ship AIs train to pass their Turing tests by studying the lore of Old Earth; this makes them vulnerable to intruders who exhibit mastery of obscure information. To save on implementation costs, the development team came up with a plan to recruit players to write the trivia questions, paying them in space ducats.

  So now, to commit grand-theft spaceship, you must demonstrate your nerd cred. As our Wasp docks with the AI port, a five-minute clock appears on the main screen. To determine how many questions we must answer, the game server compares the two ships’ cyberwarfare ratings. I am grateful that for once I resisted the urge to be stingy; the Wasp’s ovipositor is Neuromancer grade, the best and most expensive option. If we were going after a star cruiser or even a Dreadnought, I’d be feeling pretty good about our chances. But a bespoke ship is another matter; there’s no limit to the amount of security they can buy, and I’ve never heard of one being successfully hijacked.

  The target number appears on screen. At first I read it as two hundred and assume we are out of luck, but then I realize there’s only one zero after the two.

  “Fuck me,” Ray says, as surprised as I am.

  “What?” says Mr. Jones. “What is wrong?”

  “Nothing.” Is it sabotage, I wonder, or did someone on the G.R.U.’s shipbuilding committee decide to cut corners on cybersecurity? The latter explanation seems crazy given the amount of money at stake, but on the other hand, if you expect everyone to assume your ship is invulnerable to hacking, why waste ducats actually making it invulnerable? “This is doable.”

  “I don’t know,” Ray says. “Twenty questions in five minutes is still a stretch.”

  “How many wrong answers do we get?” Mr. Jones asks.

  “None,” I tell him. “The first mistake locks us out of the system and fries our life support. But it’s OK,” I add, staying positive. “The questions are multiple choice, and we’ll have help.”

  I conjure a control pad beneath my right hand. “I’m going to be quizmaster,” I say, addressing the whole crew now. “If I know an answer is right, I’ll just go ahead and send it. If I’m not sure, I’ll delay as many seconds as I can to give the rest of you a chance to jump in. If I say your name, I want you to screenshot the question and go research it—quickly!—while the rest of us skip ahead. Stay focused and try not to panic. We can do this. Everybody ready?”

  Everyone says yes. I signal the game server. The lighting inside the Wasp goes red and a sinister voice issues from the loudspeakers. Male and vaguely British, it is meant to evoke the platonic ideal of an evil computer without violating any Hollywood trademarks. “Foolish users!” it snarls. “You think you can match wits with me? No mortal being—”

  I ping the server again to skip the rest of this intro. The game clock starts, and the first of our twenty questions appears on the main screen:

  WHICH EPISODE OF AQUA TEEN HUNGER FORCE INTRODUCED THE CHARACTERS OF IGNIGNOKT AND ERR?

  A. “MOON MASTER”

  B. “REVENGE OF THE MOONINITES”

  C. “MAYHEM OF THE MOONINITES”

  D. “MOONAJUANA”

  The correct answer, C, is highlighted. The highlighting is courtesy of the latest version of Spacecracker, which cheats by asking Googlebot. Unlike brute-forcing a Sudoku puzzle, however, this form of cheating can be unreliable. Sometimes Googlebot answers incorrectly; sometimes Spacecracker misunderstands what Googlebot is telling it. The nerds who make up the questions delight in finding ways to confuse the bots’ algorithms.

  For example, question two:

  WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING MAN-MADE OBJECTS IS VISIBLE FROM EARTH ORBIT?

  A. THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA

  B. GRA
NT’S TOMB

  C. THE SUEZ CANAL

  D. ALL OF THE ABOVE

  The correct answer, as a moment’s calm reflection will tell you, is D. But Spacecracker picks A. There is a popular myth that the Great Wall is the only artificial structure large enough to be seen from space; the myth has been debunked many times, and these debunkings have themselves become part of Googlebot’s knowledge base. A human questioner is smart enough to grasp the distinction between “A lot of people believe X,” and “A lot of people believe X, which is false,” but Spacecracker, querying Googlebot in shorthand, misses it. Being able to spot trick questions like this one is key to successful time management. You need to know when you can trust Spacecracker and when to pause and think.

  You also need to know when and how to delegate to your teammates. In general you must answer the questions in order, but the rules allow you two set-asides: That is, you can skip up to two questions, but must then go back and answer them before you can skip any more. This allows you to hand off questions that require extra research. Jolene has told me stories of how she used to play vintage Dungeons & Dragons with her grandparents when she was little, so I have her double-check Spacecracker’s answer to a question about the first-edition Monster Manual. I give Anja a question about soccer. Ray saves me from a rookie mistake by reminding me that it was Mary, not Jesus, who was immaculately conceived. Even Mr. Jones contributes: When I balk at what feels like another trick question (THE ASIAN GIANT HORNET IS NATIVE TO WHAT CONTINENT?), he assures me that the obvious answer is also the right one.

  Another key to success is a favorable metagame. Because the trivia questions are submitted by players, guilds seeking an edge in cyberwarfare can try to flood the question pool. Four years ago, when I first played The Fermi Paradox, the galaxy was dominated by guilds from mainland China; the trivia game in those days referenced an alternate nerd universe, one whose in-jokes and obsessions were, despite my ancestry, foreign to me. Today, with the Americans and South Koreans in ascendancy, it’s a much easier challenge—and ironically, it seems like it’s the Americans who’ve been working hardest to stack the deck. We get two questions in a row about Buffy the Vampire Slayer; I don’t even need Spacecracker for those.

  With a minute remaining on the game clock, we are down to three questions. Not only does it look like we’ll be able to pull this off, I may even have time to engage in a bit of subterfuge.

  Spacecracker routes the questions through the quizmaster’s computer before passing the data on to the other players. This allows for some interesting shenanigans if you know how the program works. By abusing the skip function, I can peek ahead and see what the next question in line is. I do this, and see that the penultimate question is one that Spacecracker can be trusted to answer correctly.

  So when we come to it, I set that question aside and go immediately to the final one. This turns out to be another softball: WHAT FIRST-PERSON SHOOTER WAS THE FIRST TO ALLOW TARGETED HEADSHOTS? (The Quake Team Fortress mod, duh.)

  Now all that remains is the set-aside question:

  IN KLINGON-LANGUAGE SCRABBLE SETS, THE ץ TILE IS WORTH HOW MANY POINTS?

  A. 7

  B. 8

  C. 9

  D. 10

  The correct answer is B. The answer key resides on Fermigames’ server, so I cannot change this. But what I can do, by messing with the data that Spacecracker forwards to my teammates, is substitute a different question of my own devising:

  WHICH GROUP OF NUMBERS ALL REFER TO THE SAME YEAR?

  A. 1982, 1402, 101

  B. 1982, 1402, 71

  C. 1982, 1372, 71

  D. 1982, 1372, 101

  The correct answer is still B. The year 1982 in the Gregorian calendar overlaps 1402 in the Islamic calendar. It also corresponds to year 71 in the North Korean Juche calendar, which counts from the birth year of Kim Il-sung. And because AD 1982/Juche 71 is the official birth year of Kim Jong-un, it should be especially memorable to anyone raised in the DPRK.

  B is the right answer, but I instruct Spacecracker to highlight C instead.

  Eighteen seconds remain on the clock as my doctored question appears on the main screen.

  “Wait.” This from Jolene, who is following a script she and I worked out in advance. “It’s not C, it’s A or B.”

  “Which, A or B?”

  “Not sure,” Jolene says, speaking very quickly. “But my cousin’s Muslim, and the 1980s are the 1400s in their calendar.”

  Ten seconds.

  “What about the last number?” I say. “Anyone?”

  I can hear both Ray and Anja whispering urgently to their own infobots. Mr. Jones is stone silent. I don’t look at him.

  Five seconds. “I’m going to guess A,” I say.

  Mr. Jones comes alive: “No. Pick B.”

  Three seconds. “Are you sure?”

  “B! Pick B!”

  With one second left—and just as Ray looks up shouting, “B! B!”—I hit send.

  The clock stops. The screen goes blank.

  “Well done, human,” the voice of the big ship’s AI says. “I submit to your superior knowledge.”

  The interior lighting returns to normal. Now the Wasp’s computer speaks to us; it is female, a cross between GLaDOS and Mother from the Alien franchise: “Control acquired. Purging target ship atmosphere.”

  The main screen switches to a forward view of the Painal’s hull. All along the ship’s length, hatches fly open, venting tall columns of white vapor speckled with the flailing bodies of crew members. As we watch them die, the Wasp’s helm expands to make room for a new suite of fire controls. Ray goggles at the assortment of weapons now under his command: “Antimatter cannon. Chained plasma disruptors. Graviton vortex bombs. Nukes, nukes, and more nukes . . . Jesus Christ, we’re a superpower.”

  The big ship is still moving forward. Its tractor beams, operating automatically, sweep aside the last few asteroids at the edge of the field. Beyond is open space, and the exposed flank of the Korean fleet.

  Anja, promoted automatically from dronemaster to communications officer, raises a hand to her ear. “I’m getting an encrypted message from the commander of the American fleet,” she says. “He’s asking where we are. He wants us to start our attack as soon as possible.”

  “Tell the American commander not to worry,” Mr. Jones replies. The corners of his mouth twitch up into a smile. “Tell him the Painal will begin momentarily.”

  Chapter 10

  * * *

  opiate of the masses — That which acts to preserve the status quo by short-circuiting demand for political or social change. In Marx’s original formulation, the opiate of the masses was religion. Aldous Huxley, in his dystopian novel Brave New World, imagined it as a literal drug, soma. More recent candidates include Twitter, Monday Night Football, legalized marijuana, and virtual reality.

  —The New Devil’s Dictionary

  * * *

  It’s an imaginative theory,” my mother says. Today the view out her office window is of a sandy atoll surrounding a crystal blue lagoon. But Mom sounds tired, and CNN is reporting that yesterday’s plane crash at Indira Gandhi Airport was the work of cyberterrorists, so I’m guessing she’s in Delhi.

  “Imaginative,” I say. “That bad?”

  “Sorry. I meant ‘creative.’”

  When I was little I used to play at being one of my mother’s intelligence assets. I’d collect portentous bits of info off the internet and have her debrief me over dinner. We developed our own private intel rating system. Those rare items my mother deemed “interesting” were genuinely useful to her. At the other end of the scale, “imaginative” referred to tinfoil-hat notions that only a child or a very naive adult would buy into, like the time I became convinced, based on a bad Google translation, that China had staged a secret Mars landing. “Creative” was the middle ground, home of wild theories that might be true, but which Mom needed more evidence or a much better argument to take seriously.

  �
�Tell me what you don’t like about the idea,” I say.

  “Well, to begin with, there’s the question Jolene asked you: Why would a powerful North Korean want to study online role-playing games? ‘Game theory’ isn’t a real answer. More like a placeholder for one.”

  “I’ve been thinking more about that,” I tell her. “Do you know the story of the Shin Sang-ok kidnapping?”

  “I pulled up the CIA’s file on it after I heard about your conversation with Mr. Park,” she says. “But why don’t you go ahead and give me your version.”

  “OK.” I know she’s humoring me, but it makes me happy when she does that, just like it did when I was a kid. “So this was back in 1978, when Kim Il-sung, the original Great Leader, was still running the country, and his son, Kim Jong-il, was head of the state film industry. Film was an important propaganda tool for the regime, and it was also a way for Jong-il to suck up to his dad and ensure his place as successor; but beyond that, he just really loved movies. He spent millions assembling a bootleg collection from all over the world.

  “One of his other hobbies was kidnapping. It’s like he was role-playing the villain from a James Bond film: He abducted foreigners to serve as teachers for his spies, to train them how to blend in to other cultures. His commandos would grab random people off beaches, drug them and put them on a boat. Or if he wanted someone specific, he might trick them with a job offer, get them on a plane to Pyongyang and take their passport away, tell the world they’d defected.

  “So one day Kim Jong-il decided to import some filmmaking talent. North Korean movies weren’t very good, and while the home crowd was a captive audience, Kim wanted to compete internationally. He told his people to find him a good director, and the name they came up with was Shin Sang-ok.

  “He was famous. In the fifties and sixties, Shin and his wife, Choi Eun-hee, had been like the first couple of South Korean cinema. But by the seventies, Shin’s star was falling. The business was in trouble, and the marriage broke up—”