"What is a computer? What can a computer do? It all depends on what you put into it."
— Gilles Deleuze, Deux régimes de fous : Textes et entretiens 1975-1995, « Qu'est-ce que l'acte de création ? », Éditions de Minuit, 2003
April, D-14, two weeks before the election
This morning, France was voting. The first round. Gabriel should have been somewhere with his team, waiting for the first projections. He was here, on this forgotten hill, and he would not vote. He could not show himself.
The radio tower rose from the top of a hill no one farmed anymore. Brambles had swallowed the access path. The utility poles leaned like drunks. Gabriel had been forced to park five hundred meters away and walk through wet grass, his dress shoes sinking into the red earth.
The building was a grey concrete cube, windowless, with an antenna climbing toward the sky like an accusing finger. The metal door was secured by a padlock that looked new.
Gabriel knocked. Three times. Pause. Two times.
The door opened onto a dark corridor. Zara stood in the doorway, a pistol in her hand that she tucked back into her waistband when she saw him.
— You're alone?
— Yes.
She let him in. In the corridor, the dust mingled with a smell of overheated metal. Cables ran along the walls, held in place with grey duct tape. At the far end, a larger room lit by screens. Five computers on folding tables. A generator humming in one corner. Bottles of water and packets of dry biscuits stacked against the wall.
Étienne was sitting in front of the central screen. He didn't turn around when Gabriel entered.
— Sit down, he said. You look like a man who's walked too far.
Gabriel sat on a plastic chair. His legs were trembling. He wasn't sure whether it was from the walk or something else.
— Lucien is dead, he said.
Étienne turned his head. Slowly. In his grey eyes was the dull, washed-out reflection of a rainy sky.
— We expected it.
— You expected it?
— The system has more eyes than we can count. The question isn't whether they'll find you. The question is what you do when they find you.
Gabriel looked down at his hands. They were trembling too.
— He left a message. He said the game no longer exists.
Étienne nodded. A slow movement, almost imperceptible.
— Lucien saw things more clearly than most of us. He understood before we did that democracy had become an interface. A pretty home page with buttons that don't work.
Zara came closer. She set a cup on the table in front of Gabriel. Tea. Hot. The smell of mint rose up.
— Drink, she said. We have work to do.
Gabriel took the cup. His fingers were still trembling.
— What kind of work?
Zara exchanged a glance with Étienne. Then she opened a laptop and turned the screen toward Gabriel.
— This.
The screen showed a satellite photograph. A white rectangular building surrounded by a car park and chain-link fencing. Cameras at the corners. A single road leading to a security booth.
— Massy data center, said Zara. It hosts the cognitive profiling models for the entire Île-de-France. This is where VIVRE trains its citizen-scoring algorithms.
Gabriel studied the image. The building looked like a shoebox dropped on tarmac.
— What are we going to do?
— We're going to inject a worm into their training pipeline.
Zara spoke quickly, as though reciting a text she had learned by heart. Her fingers danced across the keyboard.
— The worm will create a systematic bias in the model. It will start flagging loyalists as potential dissidents, and dissidents as loyalists. They'll spend weeks trying to figure out what's wrong. In the meantime, the profiling is useless.
Gabriel stared at the screen. He didn't understand half the words Zara had just said.
— I don't know how to code, he said.
— I know.
— So what am I doing here?
Zara closed the laptop. She reached into a canvas bag and pulled out a phone. Not a flip phone. An old Nokia, with rubber keys and a green screen that blinked.
— You're going to make a phone call.
She set the phone on the table. Beside it, she spread out a folded sheet of paper.
Gabriel unfolded the sheet. It was a script. Sentences written by hand, in a tight, precise script.
Hello, my name is Thomas Mercier, infrastructure engineer at VIVRE. I'm dealing with a critical incident, I need remote access to the load manager in Building B.
— You're going to call the data center's IT helpdesk, said Zara. You're going to read them this script. You're going to make them believe you're a VIVRE engineer who needs urgent access.
Gabriel ran his eyes over the sheet. The words swam before him.
— I'm not an actor.
— You don't need to be an actor. You just need to sound beaten down and stressed. That's easy. Everyone is exhausted and stressed.
— What if they check?
— They won't check. The number that will appear is a VIVRE number. The domain name of the email I'm going to send at the same time is a VIVRE domain. Everything is in place.
His eyes lingered on the phone. The plastic was cold under his fingers.
— And if it works?
— Then we get in. We inject the worm. We wipe the logs. And we disappear.
— And if it doesn't work?
His eyes searched for Étienne's. Étienne was staring at the screen.
— If it doesn't work, said Étienne, we try something else.
Gabriel picked up the phone. He turned it over in his hands. Lighter. More fragile.
— How much time do I have?
— Thirty seconds to establish the connection. Two minutes for the injection. Five minutes to erase the traces.
Gabriel straightened up. He took three steps toward the wall. He turned around.
— All right.
— Sit down, said Zara. You'll do it from here.
— I can do it standing.
— Sit down. Your voice will be steadier.
He sat. He propped the phone on the table. He read through the script once, twice, three times. The words printed themselves into his memory.
Hello, my name is Thomas Mercier, infrastructure engineer at VIVRE.
— Now, said Zara.
Gabriel dialed the number. His fingers trembled. He pressed the call button.
The dial tone. One ring. Two.
— Technical support, hello.
A female voice. Young. Professional.
Gabriel breathed in. He breathed out. He spoke.
— Hello, my name is Thomas Mercier, infrastructure engineer at VIVRE. I'm dealing with a critical incident. I need remote access to the load manager in Building B.
His voice was flat. Neutral. He didn't recognize it.
— Can you give me your VIVRE identifier?
Gabriel consulted the sheet. The number was written below the script.
— M-E-R-C-I-E-R-7-4.
— Thank you. One moment.
Silence. The seconds passed. Gabriel felt sweat running down his spine.
— I've confirmed the identifier. What is the incident number?
His eyes searched the sheet for the answer. There was no incident number.
— It's an unlogged incident. That's why I'm calling directly.
— I see. Can you give me more details about the problem?
Gabriel felt his stomach clench. He hadn't anticipated this question. The script didn't cover this question.
— The load manager in Building B is showing temperature anomalies on racks 12 through 18. We have an overheating alert. If we don't reduce the load within ten minutes, we risk a cascading failure.
He was improvising. The words came out on their own. He didn't know where they were coming from.
— Understood. I'll open an access for you. Validation code: Tango-7-4-1. You have six minutes.
— Thank you.
The connection was established. Zara's screen lit up. Lines of code scrolled past.
— We're in, said Zara.
Gabriel hung up. His hands were trembling. He set the phone back on the table.
His gaze moved to the screen. The lines of code were scrolling faster and faster. Zara was typing, eyes fixed on the screen, fingers flying across the keyboard.
— How long?
— A minute forty for the injection. After that, we wipe.
Gabriel counted the seconds in his head. Sixty. Eighty. A hundred.
— Injection complete, said Zara. Launching log wipe.
— Wait.
Étienne's voice was calm. Too calm.
— What?
— Look.
Étienne pointed to a side screen. A graph. A red line climbing.
— What is that?
— The network traffic from the data center. Someone has opened an outbound connection.
— Is that us?
— No. Someone else.
Zara froze. Her fingers stopped above the keyboard.
— They detected us?
— Not the worm. The injection itself. They're tracing it back.
Étienne tapped the screen. Another graph appeared. Red dots on a map of France.
— The trace leads back to Lyon. A relay server.
Gabriel felt cold rising in his chest.
— Where in Lyon?
Étienne zoomed in. The map drew closer. A red dot blinked on the Croix-Rousse plateau.
— That's the same building as your campaign headquarters.
Gabriel's phone rang.
He pulled it from his pocket. The screen showed a number he knew.
Marianne.
He answered.
— Gabriel, the police are here. They have a warrant. They're saying the campaign was involved in a cyberattack against a private company. What have you done?
Marianne's voice was taut. Not anger. Fear.
Gabriel didn't answer.
— Gabriel? Are you there?
— I'm here.
— What have you done?
— I can't explain right now.
— Gabriel, they're searching the office. They're taking the computers. They're asking questions about you. About your movements. About your contacts.
Gabriel closed his eyes. He saw the office. The fluorescent lights. The plastic chairs. The stacked files. He saw the uniformed police officers, the blue gloves, the yellow evidence seals.
— Marianne, listen to me. You need to say you don't know anything. Because that's the truth. You don't know anything.
— Gabriel, what have you done?
— I'll explain. Later.
— When?
— I don't know.
He hung up. He turned his attention back to the screen. The red dots blinked.
— They'll trace it back to the tower, said Zara. How long?
— Less than an hour, said Étienne. Maybe less.
Zara stood up. She began unplugging cables, packing computers into bags.
— We move. Now.
Gabriel remained seated, the phone in his hand, eyes fixed on it. The weight. The cold plastic.
— Gabriel, said Étienne. Get up.
— Where are we going?
— Somewhere they won't find us.
— What about Malik?
Étienne froze.
— Malik?
— He's at the Lyon office. He's there with the police.
— Why?
— Because it's my campaign headquarters. Because they're searching everything.
Étienne met Zara's gaze. Zara held his. The silence lasted three seconds.
— Malik is a code name, said Étienne. No one knows who he really is. He'll be fine.
— What if he talks?
— He won't talk.
— How can you be sure?
Étienne didn't answer. He turned to face the screen. He typed something. The lines of code disappeared. The screen went black.
— I can't be sure, he said. But I know that Malik knows what happens to people who talk.
Zara slung a bag over her shoulder. She held out her hand to Gabriel.
— Come on. We don't have time.
Gabriel took her hand. He stood up. His legs were trembling.
— What about my phone?
— Throw it. In the river, at the bottom of the hill.
— And the flip phone?
— Keep it. But don't use it. Not until we give you the go-ahead.
Gabriel pulled the flip phone from his pocket. He examined it. The cracked plastic. The worn keys. The weight.
— What if I need to use it?
— Then you'll be dead. And so will we.
Gabriel slipped the flip phone into his inside pocket. He followed Zara toward the door.
Outside, night had fallen. The sky was black, starless. The wind blew across the hill, bending the dry grass.
Gabriel walked down toward the river. He pulled his phone from his pocket. He looked at it one last time. The screen was cold. The battery was nearly dead.
He threw it into the water. The splash was brief. The water closed over it. The phone disappeared.
He walked back up to the car. Zara was at the wheel. The engine was running. The headlights were off.
— Get in, she said.
Gabriel got in. The door slammed. Zara pulled away without turning on the headlights.
They drove in the dark. The road was narrow, lined with trees. Branches scraped against the roof of the car. The sound was steady, like breathing.
Through the window, Gabriel could see nothing. Just the dark. Just the trees streaming past.
— What happens now? he asked.
— Now we find somewhere to sleep. And tomorrow we start again.
— Start what again?
Zara didn't answer. She turned right, onto a dirt track. The car jolted. The headlights came on for a second, illuminating a stone wall, then went out.
— We start again, she said. Because that's all there is left to do.
Gabriel sank back into his seat. Exhaustion pressed down on his shoulders with the weight of lead. His eyelids grew heavy.
He saw Marianne again. The office. The police. The worm now operating in the depths of the Massy data center, warping the models, creating fissures, sowing chaos.
Lucien's words came back to him. The game no longer exists.
His hand slid toward the flip phone in his pocket. Toward the red button. Toward the nine seconds.
The car kept driving through the dark.
The wind blew.
Somewhere, in a climate-controlled server room, an algorithm was beginning to make mistakes. Mistakes that would propagate, multiply, become impossible to ignore.
Gabriel didn't know it yet.
But it had already begun.