The void Jake always felt inside was gone.
“Yeah, let’s go,” Jake said to everyone, sliding the door closed.
Walking around the other side, he got into the driver’s seat and stared at the open road ahead, turning the ignition switch.
A living was what you earned, but a life—Jake glanced over his shoulder at his family—a life was what you gave.
And it was time for Jake to start giving.
OCTOBER 14th
Monday
53
Schenectady
Upstate New York
Anna Ingmar had just finished washing her dishes when the postman’s truck pulled up outside the house. More bills, she sighed to herself. Putting down her washcloth, she wiped her hands on her jeans and walked to the front door.
“You guys okay?” she asked as she passed the TV room. She was fostering eleven young boys right now, and she’d love to take more…but she didn’t have space. Or money. Steeling herself, she swung open her front door and the screen door, and then walked to the mailbox.
Anna knew that Jake had been cleared of his troubles. He’d called the day before, saying that they’d bought a place in Virginia Beach and inviting her to come stay. She was happy for him, but she knew her place was here with her boys.
Sheriff Ralston had helped Jake in the end. She hadn’t seen Joe Ralston in years. They’d dated briefly when they were young, but it hadn’t lasted. Still, he’d brought Jake into her life, one cold and snowy evening, and for that she’d always be grateful.
Opening her mailbox, she shuffled through the letters—telephone, heating, and insurance bills—but one of them was in a blank envelope, addressed to her, no return address. Frowning, she stuck the bills under one arm and tore open the envelope. There were papers inside: a letter and a check. She couldn’t help but look at the check, and she had to blink and literally rub her eyes. It was a donation to her Albany Foster Boys charity. For ten million dollars.
She glanced around, seeing if anyone was watching. Was this a joke? Shaking, she unfolded the letter.
Mrs. Ingmar,
This is an anonymous donation of ten million dollars for the construction of the Albany Foster Boys home in the woods outside of Schenectady. Before you try, we want to assure you that there is no way to return this money. Attached you will find a land deed for ten acres that you can use for this purpose.
Anna’s breath caught, and tears filled her eyes. She looked at the land deed. It was for that old farm where Jake and Sean used to hide when they were kids. She looked down to finish reading.
There’s only one condition. Over the front door, we’d like the inscription ‘Nuggets House’ written. And over the back door, the one the boys use when they go outside to play in the woods, we’d like you to write in big gold letters:
‘Never Give Up’
****
Thanks for reading!
If you want more, you can read all about DARKNET in real life on the next pages, so continue reading! If you want more fiction like this, check out my award-winning novel CyberStorm.
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DARKNET IN REAL LIFE
While DARKNET is a work of fiction, things like murder-for-hire on darknets and the Assassination Market, autonomous corporations, cryptocurrencies, darknet marketplaces, and chatbots—that can fool you into thinking they are people—are all real and operating right now.
A machine beat the Turing test for the first time in 2014, forever changing the world that we live in. From now on, it will be increasingly difficult—if not impossible—to tell if we are talking to humans or machines when we get on the phone (or even a video call).
My first job, over twenty years ago now, was working as a research assistant at the McGill Center for Intelligent Machines, reputed as the Harvard University of Canada. It was there that I first studied artificial intelligence and conducted my own research into machine vision. After McGill, I went on to pursue several other technical fields before becoming a writer of fiction, but my fascination with the idea of intelligent machines never left me. You could say that Darknet was a novel twenty years in the making.
One issue that I always had with book and film portrayals of the ‘rise of intelligent machines’ was that they always seemed to create these ‘superhuman’ entities that were like human beings in a box, just much smarter and faster than we were (and inevitably seemed to want to destroy the human race). I didn’t see it happening like that, not the ‘first’ time, anyway. The desire to see a novel that explored the rise of the first intelligent machine network, but not characterizing it as a human-like entity, was my inspiration for writing Darknet.
The process of writing Darknet opened my eyes to many corners of the new informational world that surrounds us—these things like the Assassination Market and autonomous corporations. I invite you to go on the web and research these for yourself. I have included a list of links below:
Real-life murder-for-hire case on darknets (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/01/judge-govt-can-show-murder-for-hire-evidence-in-silk-road-trial/)
Forbes article on the new Assassination Market (http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/11/18/meet-the-assassination-market-creator-whos-crowdfunding-murder-with-bitcoins/)
An Economist article on Digital Autonomous Corporations
(http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2014/01/computer-corporations)
A list of active darknet marketplaces (https://vault43.org/chart.php)
The Silk Road darknet site was shut down, but dozens of others have replaced it
Cryptocurrency market capitalizations (http://coinmarketcap.com/ )
A Discover magazine article on the Turing test being beaten
(http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2014/06/10/turing-test-beating-bot-reveals-more-about-humans-than-computers/#.VEUGvPnF_zU)
Feel free to email me with any questions or comments. I’d love to hear your thoughts or share in things that you find out there!
Best regards,
Matthew Mather
Oct. 20th, 2014
author.matthew.mather@gmail.com
***
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Other books by Matthew Mather:
CyberStorm
Atopia Chronicles Series:
Atopia Chronicles
Dystopia Chronicles
Table of Contents
AUGUST 10th
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AUGUST 11th
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AUGUST 13th
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AUGUST 15th
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AUGUST 16th
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AUGUST 20th
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SEPTEMBER 1st
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SEPTEMBER 2nd
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OCTOBER 13th
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OCTOBER 14th
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