Allen Zhang stretched his muscles as he stepped out, tossed the briefcase full of Paper Currency into the car, and after returning, he made himself a glass of lemon water and chatted with Dominic on his cell phone, informing him of the recruitment news.
Dominic: I’ll get on it right away. There’re loads of people waiting for your side job arrangements, I trust nobody would turn down a job with a juicy paycheck.
Allen lounged on the sofa browsing short videos when he noticed Sieg getting up, rubbing his waist as he descended the stairs, looking wilted like he had a rough sleep. Clearly, his energy was zapped!
"How do you feel? You must have stayed up late last night, right?"
The General Sect Leader asked with concern, "How many was it? Enough to make you walk by bracing against the wall?"
Sieg, a bit embarrassed, "Not bad, actually. Just one, but my goodness, you can’t imagine how forward she was."
"Just one and you ended up ?" Allen raised his middle finger, disdainfully saying, "If you’re unskilled, practice more!"
"Boss, you think everyone’s like you! I did my best already!"
Sieg felt a mix of envy and resentment.
"That’s my talent, it shows I’m popular, if you had the skills, you could do the same." Allen said unflinchingly.
Are you capable? No! You don’t have the ability, got it?
Of course, Sieg knew he wasn’t on the General Sect Leader’s level and so didn’t dwell on it any further.
When Jennifer, Erin, and others had all gotten up, they scavenged some ingredients from the kitchen, whipped up breakfast, gobbled it down quickly, and then went their separate ways.
Allen drove Jennifer and Erin to work at Armed Nation, while he himself returned to the base to find Blitz, to inform him of the BTC intelligence job and asked him to upgrade the firewall on his phone.
"4 Bitcoins? The employer is really generous; it must mean the intel is important, too. I know about WikiLeaks, they specialize in digging up scandals of foreign dignitaries, politicians, and celebrities. The Little Saint James Island incident was exposed by them, and they’re holding lots of dirty secrets," Blitz replied.
"I can share a super mobile software program with you that can prevent hacking. This is no issue for me. The folks from WikiLeaks might be gathering intelligence on the underground networks, but they certainly wouldn’t hack into the informant’s identity without notice, or no one would dare to leak to them again."
"I’m just being cautious. After all, who knows if the person behind the screen is human or Ghost." Allen said.
"I have a software I often use, I can copy it and send it to you right now." Blitz immediately started working on his computer, and after a few minutes, Allen’s phone received an anonymous message.
He opened the link and saw an unknown software, which he promptly downloaded and unzipped, then followed the steps to bind it to his phone. It had an icon of a black and red skull. Upon opening it, he saw a few straightforward options.
[Black Box Mode] allows you to block your phone’s signals and messages, encasing yourself in a black box. You can receive messages from others and respond, but no one can trace your location, similar to Stealth Mode in the VT exchange. However, its functionality and privacy are much more potent, and it’s also free and open-source.
In Black Box Mode, you can still use other app stores on your phone, connect to the internet using a decoy network, which means using someone else’s hotspot or wifi without leaving any browsing traces—it should be called Global Stealth Mode or Parasite Mode.
If something goes wrong, it’s someone else’s problem, not yours. As long as you avoid a confrontation on the scale of national defense forces, it’s mostly safe.
[Signal Search Mode] allows you to search and display nearby cell phone signals and by clicking on an avatar you can even gather some personal information about the individual. However, this is limited to previously recorded information, such as name, age, home address, annual income, and resume—unless it’s a marked trackable VIP, it won’t display.
In other words, if the information database is filled, privacy is a non-issue for anyone before you.
Behind the great nations’ information forces, there’s a whole system of logic and databases that support them, and internet big data analysis can easily control a person.
Allen then saw Jennifer’s mobile signal avatar coming from West Street, Sarah’s location information, nearby folks like Jack, Dave, Sieg, and several shops and police officers, with a [Family] tag added.
With a peculiar expression, he looked at Blitz, "You’ve always been able to see the basic locations of the camp members and their daily activities?"
What a voyeur, no wonder most hackers are creepy hikikomoris.
"I usually don’t activate this mode," Blitz said, "I know you all well, there’s utterly no need to monitor anyone."
Allen delved deeper into this homegrown software.
[Sentinel Mode] after activation, consumes part of the phone’s memory for activating the firewall and antivirus and to block outside intrusion. If someone tries to hack and control your phone, it triggers a barrier to protect your information and counterattack.
[Reverse Walker Mode] once activated, can block other people’s phone signals, hack into cameras, manipulate traffic lights, and even mobile screen casting. It can also imitate electromagnetic signals to, for instance, steal vehicles, unlock fingerprint doors, and face-recognition security systems. Literally, you can hack and unlock with a single tap.