(The Zero Protocol) Demo Version

[Samaritan]

Bishop was sitting comfortably at one of the chairs in the Unbound Smokes Library, which was adjacent to his private quarters. It was one of those rare occasions, where he allowed someone into his quarters and therefore the door to the next room was open. He had set up a laptop with a beamer projecting at his white-board, that was cleared of all text for the time being. The Laptop was set-up with a secure cable line to a secondary hub, that routed through a variety of hosts to a final point located at a wireless antenna mast on one of the many buildings in downtown sacramento. Even though it represented a certain security risk setting the connection up so early, he was confident, that just this once, it would be in order to stay connected for a little longer than the usual ten minutes once a month.

He had prepared a top to bottom approach for this little demonstration, that would follow the average users path down the rabbit hole, complete with all obstacles Bishop had set up in order to challenge those individuals. Now he was waiting for his guest. His quarter was cleaned up, all things in order. Small items were spread throughout the room in regular spacings, which Bishop used for training his memory on occasion but at least twice a week. The windows were closed by curtains to protect them from prying eyes.
Ariadne Kelreth

[Ariadne]

A knock heralds Ariadne's presence just before her head pops through the open doorway.

"Bishop?"

[Samaritan]

"Ah, Mrs. Ariadne, please come in." Bishop said, rising from his seat and making his way over to her. He offered his hand.
"Would you like refreshments? I have helped myself to some of Master Ermons creations, so I do not need anything at the moment.
Bishop escorts Ariadne over to his private quarters and closed the door.

[Ariadne]

"Just Ariadne." The Warlock replies after a flick of a frown crosses her face. "Nothing at the moment, thank you though." Blue eyes take in the projector system.

"I hope I don't have to Will myself to be able to understand this. That would be embarrassing." She says with a smile to push away the frown.

[Samaritan]

Bishop smiled encouragingly.
"Well, I have prepared to make this as understandable as possible."
He started his presentation. The first image displayed a schematic of the core system, a local area network with star-topology. The central mainframe was marked as "Zero". It was linked to four secondary servers, which were deliberately unmarked.
"As you can see, I have taken the ressources you provided so generously to good use. The core of this particular instance of the Labyrinth consists of four building blocks, which are directed by a central mainframe, dubbed ZERO. ZERO itself is, for all intents and purposes my very own puppet and I use it to generate...things."
There was a tiny hind of pride in what was otherwise a completely professional tone of voice.
"At the moment, ZERO assigns four different roles to the server. This happens either at a time specified by me, or otherwise completely random. The roles consist of a secondary master, which runs subscriptions for our subjects trapped in the labyrinth, spreads the myth of Alan Turings mind digitalized and provides bits and pieces for new initiates. The second role is just a database, slaved to the master, which is updated by either me or the four sys-ops, that we have ensnared at the Sacramento Bee. It is actually just a stash of blogs, forums, tools and chatrooms, providing the ressources for our subjects."
Bishop readjusted his stance.
"The core illusion of this is provided by the remaining two servers, which are basically mirroring one another and emulate empty space. A vast amount of empty space. Enough for people to assume, that there may in fact be an artificial intelligence stored on this space. Mirror one and two only go online for a specific time frame of 15 minutes, either assigned by me or at a random time once a day. Penetrating the mirrors represents the last initiation for this cult. Can you follow me so far?"

[Ariadne]

"You've made a set up that looks like it could hold Alan Turing's mind in a digital form?" It takes Ariadne a minute or so to respond. Her words spoken carefully. "So it's designed to pull people in who think they've met the online copy of Turing's mind but they can only access it randomly for short periods of time?"

[Samaritan]

Bishop tilted his head."At this point, it is only a mind, digitalized and randomly available for short times. I think, that its "identity" needs concealment. The Turing-myth is something, to encourage a suspicion, which works in most cases. The more doubtful have argued, that it is likely someone following up on Turings idea - since the man commited suicide before digital technology was invented. That is something to be determined, when the time is right and when it is needed."
He nodded his head in confirmation. "But you are right, that is essentially the way to pull people in. The first layer is to find the mirrors and ping them online. That will prompt a second degree of initiation, providing full access to info-boards, online ressources and Alan Turings alleged letter of farewell. That is, how novices are recruited."
Bishop gave a sharkish grin. "From here, it runs like any other cult, really, except that the prophet is not physically present. But I have used the mirror-entity to store a text file from time to time, which is read only and can be found by those good enough to actually penetrate the server in the 15 minutes of its online time. I have fed small bits and pieces, sometimes of nonsensical information to the flock and so far the resonance has been outstanding. I have also made two minor prophecies - which I fulfilled myself, once by a proxy and once be being there in person - in order to add some credibility to this whole affair. So far, these were just test runs. But it was enough to mobilise the initiates. One of the two particular events involved a car breaking down on Freeport Blvd and very fast a group had hacked enough CCTV-cameras to get eyes on the road. So it has potential."
Bishop turned to his laptop, minimizing the network layout and opening a number of different windows and applications, one of which said merely "offline" and had a writing prompt.
"If you wish, I can demonstrate, how the innermost layer operates right now."

[Ariadne]

"Ooo" Ariadne leans forward a bit. "I'm going to guess that those who make it in are the most skilled as well as the most dedicated? I don't know enough about computers to guess as to how its done but it sounds good." She grins.

"Carry on, I'm curious to see more of what this can do."

[Samaritan]

"Right away." Bishop said, beginning to execute a cascade of programms on his laptop.
At his command, the server activated the two mirror entities and launched the fifteen minutes active period of Zero Protocols core myth.
Bishop switched the projector to a chat room, which suddenly flooded with activity, while on the other half of the image a table showed an increasing number of IP-addresses, currently trying to bypass the firewall of the server.
"The message of the day is something nonsensical. I am currently implementing a few ideas, so to speak. Derived from one of the esoteric tenets, it is about thrones and authority."
The server message displayed the words I dream of crossing the field in bright day and black night, yet I will never be king.
One of the IP-addresses suddenly turned green, indicating a user had been able to break the firewalls.
"Ah, yes. Icebreaker. He is a regular. Undoubtedly he will now transmit the ports to some of his associates. Initially, I tried to surpress this, but it is too hard to keep tabs on the inner circle and it has actually allowed me to encourage some sort of team play."
Within the next minute, four more IPs hacked the server. The chat room filled with discussions about todays message.
"As you can see, they are quite easily nudged into directions, if one works their agendas delicately."
The timer ran out and the server shut down. Activity started to decrease in the chats, but picked up on some blogs of the mainframes host.
"So there we are. Should you wish to give this a green light, I have set paperworks in motion to found a small software company licensing code for some of the more ingenious programs, that this community has generated. It should generate a steady stream of income for the Department, which we could use for our agents and other means - money is quite universally useful." Bishop finished with a soft ironic touch in his voice, obviously quite pleased with himself, even though he tried to maintain a professional attitude.

[Ariadne]

Ariadne watches the flurry of activity and can't help but laugh. "That is wonderful."

"They must be watching it constantly....the focus required." She continues with a hint of glee.

"Yes, definitely do what you need too to start this. Do you need help with any of it?"