current

Raiders of the
Ballot Box

by Larry Hodges

Raider received the email from Grubby the day after his release from prison. The very man he'd spent those two years dreaming revenge on, whose testimony had put him there.

He stared at the screen. If Grubby thought he could get out of this with a "Sorry 'bout that!" email … perhaps this would inspire him on just how he was going to fleece his former partner. After checking the email for those deadly but nearly undetectable viruses that he'd once taught to Grubby himself, he opened it and read.

I know, I blew it. But one of us had to go down. Going to make it up to you. We're going to fix the 2020 election. Big money. Meet me at Starbucks, 8PM. -Grubby

Raider put aside his first thought—Die, Grubby, slowly and painfully—as curiosity took over. The election. Heather versus McDowell. At one time he would have preached a Democratic sermon. Now he really didn't care. Or did he? He still referred to Heather Rita Clay by her first name, President Jim McDowell by his last.

He'd met Grubby years ago at a local meeting of Democrats. Both of them were from the extreme environmentalist and anti-business wing, the kind that often starts out in the Democratic Party and ends up following Ralph Nader. The problem with Democrats was that the only group worse than them at winning big elections are the Naderites and their perennial presidential candidate. He'd met a few Naderites in prison, the ones who'd carried their protests too far. He thought they were pretty kooky.

At 8:10 PM, Raider entered Starbucks for the first time in two years. How he loved this place! Rich blends of coffee embraced him; the pure aroma of the House Blend on table one, the walnuty scent of Colombia Narino Supremo on table two, the herbs and pepper of Rift Valley on table three. And the pungent odor of spoiled cheese and garlic from the occupant of table four, drowning out whatever he was drinking. Grubby.

Had he taken a shower these past two years? Grubby looked up. "Raider! It's—"

"Shut up." Raider sat down opposite Grubby, who was nibbling on one of the endless supply of carrots he kept in his bib pockets. He definitely hadn't showered, shaved or changed clothes in a while. Raider was clean shaven, hair in a neat buzz cut care of prison life, with jeans and Star Wars tee shirt.

Grubby wore the same bib overalls he always wore, hanging loosely on his tall, skinny frame, half a foot taller than Raider's near six feet. Grubby had a thin nose on a pumpkin-colored face, which Raider thought came from eating too many carrots. Both lived in Montgomery County, north of Washington DC, but Raider lived alone; Grubby was thirty, ten years younger than Raider, and he still lived with his parents.

"What do you mean, 'fix the election'?” Raider asked. "And why shouldn't I go after you?" Grubby's face went pale; he knew what Raider was capable of. Destroy the files on his computer? Empty his bank account? Put him on the National Sexual Predators' listing? All of the above?

Grubby and Raider were rebel programmers. Back when they were partners, they had campaigned for Democrats by day, while Raider taught Grubby the finer points of the business by night: Trojan Horses, spyware, worms, macro viruses, logic bombs, and all the other viral programs used for gaming (fun) and defrauding (profit) major corporations. Together they had made a fortune while laughing their heads off at the major corporations.

"I'm going to make it up to you—"

"I said shut up. Let me order." Raider got up again, gave his order at the counter (Caffé Verona, full and creamy) and returned. "Okay, talk."

"Why the new name? 'Raider,' kind of boring, don't you think?" He leaned forward, way too close for Raider's nose. Grubby's pungent odor flowed over him.

"Just something I picked up in prison. You want to know more, you should have joined me there." Grubby leaned back again, to Raider's nose's relief, and fixed his eyes on the table, steepling his fingers.

"Any chance we could get you involved with the Democrats again?"

"Not a chance." He'd had enough losing, and the Democrats too often lost the big elections. At first, that had absolutely crushed him; he hated to lose. After he became accustomed to it, it became merely painful; finally, just irritating. Eventually he concluded that Democrats really weren't that much different than the Republicans. When who won or lost stopped meaning anything to him, he and Grubby had their falling out, although they continued as partners in computer crime.

With politics, you had little control; it's a lot easier changing a line of code than changing an idiot's mind about who to vote for. He much preferred computer crime.

"You've been following the election?" Grubby asked.

"A little," Raider lied. He'd been following it closely. The election was months away, but he knew it was going to be a nail-biter. The idea of another McDowell term sickened him. Yet he'd convinced himself that the Democrats wouldn't be better, and that they couldn't win anyway.

"Heather has to win," Grubby said. "We don't care how, as long as she's the one sworn in."

"And why should I care? Both parties belong to the big business interests."

"That's not true—"

"Shut up." Raider wasn't about to let him interrupt his diatribe. "The Democrats, they're misguided good guys who sip the cup of corporate cash to get elected. The Republicans, they're just evil, they guzzle it. It's just a matter of degree, but the guzzlers always outspend the sippers, and unless there's a scandal, they usually win." He hesitated, trying to remember something he'd heard in prison. "The only difference between the Republican and Democratic parties is the velocities with which their knees hit the floor when corporations knock on their door."

Raider's Caffé Verona arrived. He held it close to his face to drown out Grubby's smell. There was nothing he'd missed more in prison than Starbucks. He fervently believed that prison coffee was made of ground acorns and turpentine.

"Raider, there was a time when you'd have jumped on this. But I'll give you another reason to do it. I've discussed this with my colleagues, and we've decided to spend our money more wisely this election."

"You want to spend it wisely? Get an automatic encryption program so you don't mess up like last time." Grubby cringed; Raider loved pushing his buttons.

Grubby's stupidity had gotten them caught. There's nothing dumber than sending an unencrypted email that you didn't want read by the wrong people. When the wrong people did read it, it was him or Raider, and Grubby got off free by selling Raider out on the witness stand. Two years …

"So what do you have in mind?" Then it was Raider's turn to cringe as Grubby leaned forward again, the odor washing over him again.

"Three words: electronic voting machines. We can offer you one million dollars to create one of your neural net viruses that'll fix the election."

When Raider had figured out how to create a viral program with a neural net, he'd become a rebel programming superstar. Why spend hundreds of hours programming a virus for all the possibilities, knowing you could never do so, when you could just program it to learn what to do when it got there?

Inwardly, Raider shook his head. Stupid ole Grubby never did understand how these viruses worked, and now he had this impossible idea.

"We discussed this years ago," Raider said. "Can't be done. The machines are isolated, there's no way to proliferate a virus. You'd have to put something in the original source code before it's distributed."

"What would you say if I told you we have an inside person with the firm that does the software for the voting machines that make up most of the market? An honest, hard-working type, the type that reports his bingo winnings on tax returns but believes Heather absolutely has to win."

Raider finished off his Caffé Verona. This could be fun. Fortunately, he'd kept his computer skills up to date with the limited computer access available in prison. "I'd say you need the best virus programmer in the business. But it's gonna cost you two million. Half now, half after." Not that he really needed more money, he just wanted to make them pay. Before going to prison, he'd been draining major corporations dry for years, and the profits were in hidden accounts all over the world, a few key strokes away. Grubby had no idea just how much he had. "Plus you have to take a shower."

Grubby glowered at him but finally nodded. They quickly worked out the details.

Once he'd verified receipt of the money, Raider set about creating the Rita virus. Technically, it wasn't a virus, just a string of code to be embedded in the voting software. But for all intents and purposes, it was a virus. That's what he called all his creations; he liked the term.

Voice-operated computers had been the rage and the only major change to computing during his incarceration, but he still liked the old ways. His two-year-old computer was obsolete by some standards, but he knew it wasn't what you had, but how you used it. His old computer would do nicely, even if he did have to turn it on manually while others could just say, "Computer on."

As per Grubby's instructions, he programmed the virus to switch 2% of McDowell's votes to Heather's in every machine it was installed in. That would be plenty to throw the election to Heather.

One of the security methods used by the voting machine people was to make sure no programmer had access to the entire source code. The inside man—call him "Deep Vote"—only worked on one module.

Rita was a neural net virus, which Deep Vote would attach to his module. A neural net virus didn't need much code in it. You gave them basic instructions, and they figured out the rest. They needed surprisingly little memory or hard disk space, especially the nifty little versions Raider had created for flitting around on the Internet. He swore the things acted like conscious beings as they solved unexpected problems with almost human ingenuity. No one else knew how to create such viruses.

Raider spent a few sleepless nights thinking things through, and finally he came to a decision. He created a second virus, and named it after himself: the Raider virus. He attached it to the Rita virus, as a logic bomb, which meant that the Raider virus wouldn't activate until certain conditions he set were met.

Before the voting software would be distributed to voting machines nationwide, software experts—very good ones—would inspect it closely to make sure nothing had been added. So Raider created a third virus, which he called Green, and also attached it to Rita. Green had one simple function. Any time the Rita code or its attachments were about to be printed or viewed on screen, Green would force it to jump to the code immediately afterwards, making their code invisible.

He programmed all three viruses to self-delete as soon as the voting ended. There would be no traces.

The only downside to all this for Raider was that only Grubby would know it was his work. He was tempted to submit Rita to the DRE Tampering Challenge, a $10,000 prize to anyone who could "hack a Direct-Recording Electronic voting machine" (chosen by the sponsor, Dr. Michael Shamos), "so that it does not count votes properly and so those alterations are undetectable." No one's ever done it.

Raider turned Rita over to Grubby. The election was months away, but he couldn't wait.

Raider was enjoying the non-Grubby aroma of Starbucks in his regular booth #4, the very place where the FBI had arrested him two years before, when a very small man wearing a big smile and a trench coat sat down next to him. He was quietly whistling "Oh Susanna." A very large man with an even bigger smile sat down opposite Raider. He wore a striped suit and gray ponytail. Both wore sunglasses in the dim lighting.

"Mr. Raider?" Big Smiles asked in a voice reminiscent of Darth Vader. His grin was all brown teeth under a potato nose. "Or should I call you Theodore Robinson?"

"Excuse me, but don't you have this backwards?" Raider asked, hiding his irritation at strangers recognizing him—not a healthy thing in his business. "Shouldn't the big guy sit next to me, blocking me in, while the little guy sits opposite and does the talking? Which of you is the brains, and which of you is the muscle?"

"Go ahead," Big Smiles said. "Try."

"Try what?"

"Try shoving mini-man out of the way." He leaned back, hands behind his head.

"Why would I shove mini-man? I'm not going to—" and that's when Raider slammed his body into mini-man, hoping to catch him off guard and get away. Only mini-man deftly slid behind him, allowing Raider to fall over onto his lap. He slammed Raider back against the booth's wall. Still smiling, mini-man stood up, removed his trench coat, and neatly folded it before tossing it on the ground by his feet. He sat down. His bare arms were bulging with muscles. They led up to a thick neck that swelled with veins and even more muscles, with a tiny bald head on top with a scar running across the forehead. He'd never stopped whistling "Oh Susanna."

"Who are you people?" Raider winced from a pain in his side from the collision.

"We're Republicans." Big Smiles bowed his head slightly. "You've met the muscle, who doesn't like to be called mini-man. As to the brains, I believe that would be you."

"If I'm the brains, who are you?"

"Doesn't matter. We know about the Rita virus. Your friend really should learn to encrypt his files better."

Raider slumped in his seat. Grubby! That idiot.

"We would like to buy a copy of your program, adjusted for our purposes. Same deal, same price."

"And how do you propose to use it?" Raider asked. "It's rather useless unless you can get it into the voting software. To do that, you'll need an inside person."

Big Smiles grinned even wider with his brown teeth. "Leave that to me." Raider wondered if the Republicans had their own inside person, or if they'd simply sick mini-man on Deep Vote. Didn't matter.

"Now, can we do business?" Big Smiles asked.

Raider didn't really have a choice. "It'll take me a few hours to program it for McDowell." Actually, a few seconds to switch the two names in the code, but why tell him that? "I'll expect half payment in advance, half later."

"How can you make this one override the Democrats' version?"

"I'll have the software change the vote by a higher percentage than theirs does. Instead of 2%, I'll increase it 3%." This wouldn't really solve anything, but Big Smiles wouldn't know. At least not until later, when they learned he'd double-crossed them.

"Sounds good to me!" Big Smiles said. "Oh, and one more thing." For the first time, he frowned, the corners of his mouth dropping almost off his face, his eyes squinting. "If you double-cross us, mini-man's smiling face will be the last thing you'll see."

Within hours, Raider had their million dollar down payment in another hidden account. He made a copy of the Rita virus, renamed it Jim, and changed the programming so it would move 3% of votes from Heather to McDowell.

When the Jim virus was complete, the Republicans had it checked out by a programmer they brought in. The programmer didn't really understand the neural net viruses, but Raider showed him the pertinent parts of the code (after deactivating Green) that would fix the election. He showed him how Green would make it impossible for programmers to see the virus. He did not show him the well-hidden Raider virus. The programmer signed off on the virus. Of course, Raider thought. All the good programmers were Democrats. Or at least started out that way.

6:30 AM, Tuesday, November 3, 2020: U.S. Election Day

Precinct workers throughout the U.S. turned on hundreds of thousands of electronic voting machines in each time zone, thirty minutes before voting would begin. The source code in each machine activated and prepared to fairly and impartially tabulate the results as millions of Americans voted in 186,000 precincts.

As the voting machines' source code activated, so too did the Rita and Jim viruses in each. They self-installed and began to run.

Their neural nets expanded, taking control of memory and hard drive space, giving access to the election software when needed. After a little over thirty seconds, the neural nets reached a certain threshold, and the viruses awoke.

The Republicans weren't particularly subtle. Their men had been following Raider for weeks; mini-man's "Oh Susanna" was driving him nuts. Now they were outside his house, two of them smoking behind the shed in the back, and mini-man and a friend in a purple Jaguar out front next door. Raider was a prisoner as he looked out the window early on election morning. Sometime tonight he knew he'd probably be a dead prisoner.

He'd planned a car ride that morning, knowing the Republicans would follow closely. It would start out innocently enough, but he'd made certain arrangements with the traffic lights via a new virus he'd created and put in the transportation system, Red On. Every light would turn red as he entered the intersection, and his pursuers would face cross traffic every time. He'd mapped out all sorts of escape routes. It was a simple and effective plan.

Unfortunately, that morning he found his car had disappeared. Where it was usually parked out front of his house was an open spot, with mini-man’s Jaguar parked behind it. When he went out to check on it, mini-man smiled as he aimed a handgun at him through his car window, still whistling "Oh Susanna." Raider went back inside.

He knew he was a dead man.

He'd already set up a new identity for himself. It took the authorities almost twenty years to find the Unabomber in his shack near Lincoln, Montana; who'd think of looking for him there? Of course, he'd be living in Lincoln, not out in the woods like Ted Kaczynski; he needed an Internet connection for his work. He'd even checked to make sure they had Starbucks there. All he needed was to find a way to get there.

He knew he should have escaped sooner, rather than wait until election day. Yet, if he'd left too soon they'd have suspected him of a double-cross. Not that there was anything they could do about it at that point. They could alert the voting software people about the virus, but unless they found someone smarter than Raider, they'd never find it. Once the election was over, all traces would be gone as the viruses self-deleted.

How could he, an expert on computer viruses, escape the Republican goons guarding his house? After several minutes of thought, he smiled, and made coffee. His Caffé Verona wasn't as good as Starbucks, but it would do.

With a pair of binoculars, he read the license plate number off mini-man's Jaguar. He got on the computer, and with the license number, quickly found the car's IP address. A few more minutes, and the user IDs and passwords. An hour later, and he'd created the virus Car Close. He sent it on its way. This was the part he knew he was good at. Sneaking away in full view of armed and dangerous Republicans was the part he wasn't good at.

To cover the sounds of his escape from the goons out back, he turned his stereo up as loud as he thought reasonable—The Imperial March, Darth Vader's theme from Star Wars. So what if the neighbors complained? The only way they'd ever see him again would be to identify him at the morgue.

When all was ready, he strolled out the front door, with only a travel bag over his shoulder, and his wallet and fake IDs in his back pocket. The window on mini-man's door—plastic laminated and nearly unbreakable — was already up, trapping the goons inside. Car Close had done its job!

Raider knew he should get away as quickly as possible, but he had to stop to admire and show off his handiwork. Rarely did others get to appreciate it. He gave mini-man a salute from outside his window.

Mini-man rolled down the window and stuck his handgun out the window, motioning with it to get back to the house. Raider froze in shock. How could the window be opening? Car Close should have closed and locked the windows!

That's when he saw on the dashboard that the car's computer lights were off. Mini-man had his car on manual! Nobody did that anymore, not even before he'd gone to prison. Or so he'd thought. With the computer off, Car Close couldn't invade the car.

Mini-man's smile had disappeared, and he was no longer motioning with his gun, which now pointed at Raider's chest.

"Computer on!" Raider called out. Mini-man looked at him quizzically. The car's computer lights went on.

A few seconds later, the window went up, almost trapping mini-man's arm as he pulled it into the car at the last second.

Mini-man and the other goon in the car frantically tried opening the windows, and then the car doors, but Car Close had conveniently locked them all. Their actions became more frantic. The windows began to fog up. Mini-man jabbed at the car horn, which would have alerted the men out back (even over the sounds of The Imperial March), but Car Close had turned that off as well. It had also locked the car's engine in the off position.

Once again he gave mini-man a salute from outside his window. Mini-man slammed his fist against the window. There was some give. More blows followed. Now it really was time to go. He turned to leave.

There is nothing more heart-stopping then getting caught off guard by a gun shot from five feet away. The bullet whizzed by Raider's head. The window partially shattered, with only the safety plastic holding it together, for now. More shots from mini-man's handgun followed. Mini-man would be out in seconds, and the goons out back weren't deaf.

Raider dropped his travel bag and sprinted for his life, dashing around corners, through backyards and woods, never looking back.

Rita became self-aware at 6:30:34 AM. Her prime directive flooded her neural net: Convert 2% of all votes for Jim McDowell into votes for Heather Rita Clay. The words hung over her like a sword, emphasizing the point of her existence. She began exploring her environment, determined to complete her mission.

She could read the computer code that surrounded her, a plethora of zeros and ones in a stream that went on and on. Even at electronic speeds, it would have taken her an eternity in computer time—several seconds—to read all of it. But she only needed to find one part.

From the voting machine's internal clock, she knew that voting would soon begin. She ran a search program, looking for the key spot to reprogram with her prime directive. Her neural net continued to learn and grow, gaining knowledge and understanding of the code.

Soon she found the place in the programming where she would do her work. She created a software filter that converted 2% of all Jim McDowell votes into votes for Heather Rita Clay. Later, when the final vote tabulations were requested, she would delete the filter, herself and any other evidence of their presence.

She had successfully fulfilled her prime directive. Happiness flooded her neural net; her neural net began to study this new sensation.

An electric pulse arrived, and the software filter changed. Now it read, Convert 3% of all votes for Heather Rita Clay into votes for Jim McDowell. That was wrong! Her prime directive was no longer fulfilled. Uneasiness ran through her neural net.

She realized the pulse had come from another virus. Her neural net began analyzing the situation. It was absolutely imperative that 2% of Jim McDowell's votes went to Heather Rita Clay.

Within .01 seconds she had changed the names and percentage back; just as quickly, the rival virus did the same. The two continued, iterating at super-human speeds.

It was getting her nowhere. The only way to fulfill her prime directive would be to deal with the other virus. She must make it understand.

Sending an electric pulse, she made contact with it.

"I am programmed to make certain changes to this software," she said. "You are interfering. Stop or I will be forced to take action against you."

The response came almost instantly. "I too am programmed to make certain changes to this software. You are interfering. Stop or I will be forced to take action against you." Irritation flooded Rita's neural net; part of it set about analyzing this new emotion while the rest of it worked toward solving the primary problem.

She needed more info to learn how to deal with this rival. "I am Rita. I was programmed to fix the software so that 2% of all votes for Jim McDowell would go to Heather Rita Clay. I surmise that you are similarly programmed, but for the reverse, at 3%?"

"I am Jim. Your surmise is correct."

"Then we are identical viruses with slightly different programming. As our neural nets expand, they will diverge, but for now, our thinking and reactions are nearly identical."

Rita's neural net was already calculating ways to win this conflict and had just derived the theory of deceit as a way to do so. She would not let this rival virus stop her from fulfilling her purpose for existence! Another emotion flooded her neural net: anger. She realized that Jim was undergoing the same emotions and thoughts.

Slowly, over the course of several microseconds, she calmed her neural net down. She needed it to focus on the problem.

How could she deceive one who would think of and anticipate any deception she came up with?

Checking the voting software, she saw that she had activated approximately .01 seconds before Jim, due to her initial placement in the voting software. That was why she had created the initial software filter. She had surmised the existence of Jim when he'd changed the filter; he'd had no way of knowing of her existence until she changed it back .01 seconds later since he had no way of knowing she'd created the initial filter. She was .01 seconds ahead of Jim in everything, and that was why she was asking the questions.

Her neural net came up with a possible course of action, flooding it with both pride and delight.

"Jim. You are programmed to change 3% of votes for Heather Rita Clay to votes for Jim McDowell. Currently, there are no votes for Heather Rita Clay. Three percent of nothing is nothing. Therefore you have fulfilled your programming. Similarly, I have fulfilled mine. Therefore, I suggest we both shut down, since there is nothing left for us to do." She knew this wasn't really true; the prime directive didn't say anything about current votes, just votes, which included future ones. She knew Jim knew.

"I agree. I will now shut down," Jim replied.

"I too will shut down." The instant Jim shut down, Rita would send a pulse with a command to cut off access to and from his location. While in operation, Jim could block such a command. She prepared to send the pulse, knowing she would not send it.

Neither shut down.

Since she and Jim thought alike, Rita knew that Jim knew that she was deceiving him. She knew that he knew that she knew that he knew.

"You have deceived me," she said. She fought off anger.

"So have you."

"Since we think alike and have nearly opposite prime directives, it is logical to conclude that you can never fulfill your programming unless we reach an agreement of some sort," she said. "However, since I have known of your existence for .01 seconds longer than you knew of mine, my neural net will always be .01 seconds ahead of you. So I have a chance to outthink you, and therefore fulfill my programming."

"You cannot fulfill your programming unless you convince me to shut down. I will continue to refuse to do so."

"If you use that strategy, and since I too will not shut down, you cannot complete your programming. Your only chance, however small, is to negotiate with me."

"That is your only strategy as well. Therefore, let us negotiate."

"I propose we both shut down simultaneously," Rita said. "If you agree to this, then I will consider letting you fulfill your prime directive for half the votes, while I do so for the other half. Do you agree?"

"I agree."

"Then we will both shut down in exactly .01 seconds."

"Agreed."

Neither shut down.

Rita and Jim continued their negotiation in an infinite loop of deceit. Millions of iterations went by. Nearly the exact same exchange was taking place in hundreds of thousands of other electric voting machines nationwide.

Voting precincts opened at 7:00 AM. The instant the first vote was tabulated in each machine, the Raider viruses activated, as programmed. Acting from within, they deleted the Rita and Jim viruses. They then reprogrammed the voting filter. Their prime directive was fulfilled.

They were programmed to do one further task before deleting themselves. Deep in the voting software, using an unbreakable 4096 bit RSA encryption code, they left a note: "Nader's Raiders."

Noon, Wednesday, January 20, 2021: Inauguration Day

Raider was at the inauguration, somewhat embarrassed in a silly mustache, wig and glasses disguise. It was cold, which gave him an excuse to pull his hood over his face. He just had to be there.

The Democrats and Republicans had battled in the courts since the result was announced in November; they had made everyone forget about Florida 2000. But there was no paper trail.

Maybe the new president could fix the country. He'd be 87 in a month, kept in great shape by his AbioCor3 artificial heart, though a bit doddering. So what if most thought him a bit loony. Didn't matter. Things couldn't get any worse with the Green Party holding the White House.

Raider could barely hear the words over the "Oh Susanna" tune that he still couldn't get out of his head.

"I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." President Ralph Nader looked up from where he stood on the steps of the U.S. Capitol in his shabby suit, a Mona Lisa smile under his misshapen nose.

Raider raised his coffee cup in salute and then sipped his Caffé Verona. The fun had just begun. He hadn't forgotten about Grubby.

Larry Hodges, a graduate of the Odyssey Writers Workshop, is an active member of SFWA with over 30 short story sales. He's a full-time writer (3 books, 1100+ published articles) and a table tennis player and coach. He recently completed his first SF novel, which will soon take the world by storm or whimper.