"Believing in Ghosts" by André Lopes
A security expert hired to find the flaws in a Presidential candidate’s campaign system finds more than she bargained for.
“Short Stories For Long Discussions…”
Mission Statement: After Dinner Conversation is an independent, nonprofit literary magazine that publishes philosophical short stories to encourage discussions with friends, family, and students.
Letter from Tina
“Bioethics” has been released!:
Click on the image to get your copy.
It’s a collection of focused short fiction that’s perfect for classrooms, book clubs, or leisure reading. Our themed books “Technology Ethics” and “Crimes & Punishments” are on sale now.
And as always, if you enjoy these stories, support writers, and support what we do, you can always subscribe to our monthly magazine via our website (digital or print), or via substack.
Tina
Take the poll for this week’s story, “Believing in Ghosts”:
Last week’s poll results for “Teddy and Roosevelt”:
Free Partner eBooks Downloads
(Updated Weekly, Click The Photo)
"Believing in Ghosts" by André Lopes
Scroll down for audiobook.
CHAPTER ONE
The politician stood on the podium and addressed the nation. Dressed in a dark suit and red tie, he answered all the questions the reporter asked him.
“The people are tired of the same old faces in charge of policy. Policy that has been a disaster, particularly among the young,” said the politician.
“And how are you planning to overturn the course of this nation, Mr. Booker?” asked the reporter.
“We need to take a look at our healthcare options. Currently the system is a disaster. Our young workers are underpaid and overworked, and our elderly, after a whole life of working for this nation, are left abandoned in poverty,” said Booker.
Booker was an experienced politician who came from a long line of famous lawyers and economists. His immaculate presentation, charisma and natural knack for leadership were certainly three of the main reasons why he was the frontrunner in the polls nationwide.
A campaign employee approached him as he left the conference room:
“We just got confirmation of another ghost,” informed Booker’s prime assistant.
“Who?” replied Booker.
“Jared Benjamin.”
Booker paused for a second: “The one that spread those fake sextapes a few months ago?”
“Yes, the one. Our intel team just confirmed that he’s a composite.”
“Any word on who’s the puppet master?”
“No clue yet, the platform he was using for his webseries is very proud of their privacy policy.”
Booker checked if he was already away from the cameras.
“No one is liable for defamation in this country anymore, fucking bullshit,” Booker said.
“We’ll continue to pressure for them to identify the ghost.”
CHAPTER TWO
Rain rolled on her bed and stared at her mobile phone’s screen. Most of her social media feed was auto-generated clickbait articles written by AI. She received job offers received on a professional social network sent by non-existent human resources employees. The effortless creation of content made its supply near endless. This was fine, no moral panic concerning technology has ever produced anything of note. She scrolled through social media and saw an ad for a quack medicine, the man promoting it, bald, with a shirt and green tie talks about all of the benefits this all-natural drug has, he may be an actual person passionate about bullshit medicine, a complete fabrication or something in between.
Rain felt lazy today but she made an effort to be productive. Mr. Booker had emailed her a new scope for security auditing. She did most of her work remotely and this gig at candidate Booker’s campaign wasn’t her only show. Despite that, she had no schedules, which meant that most days were a foggy mess of sleep. In the winter, she regularly woke up to almost dark outside and her diet was mediocre at best. Grocery shopping she felt like an astronaut stepping on a foreign planet.
“Not again,” she thought. The clock on her phone marked 1pm, “I swore I’d wake up at decent hours.”
“Not again,” she thought. The clock on her phone marked 1pm, “I swore I’d wake up at decent hours.”
While heavy work late in the night was more productive to her, the almost flipped schedules compared to a regular person intensified the feeling of alienation to regular people. Now with the dramatic failure of an early get-up plan, the routine was the usual: get out of bed, make something to eat and sit in front of the computer, scroll through work e-email and, of course, procrastinate on social media. After a while, she fired up the virtual machine used to work.
As a cybersecurity consultant or, as better known in popular culture, a hacker, her job was to find security vulnerabilities on her clients. Hacking is not the same as breaking things, well, not necessarily, hacking is the art of exploring a piece of tech’s features and try to make it perform amusing things - amusing to the hacker at least. This philosophy allows a competent hacker to explore the infrastructure of a client in a way a regular user might not, but a malicious user might. If, filling up an online form, it is prompted to insert your age what would you put in? Something between 0 and 120, any sane person would guess. The hacker might input -2, 9999999999999999, or a piece of code. If this online form, when presented with these strange inputs exhibits a weird, unexpected behavior, congratulations, you’ve hacked it. Now time for exploitation, how can you manipulate this weird behavior in your favor? If you’re lucky, you might gain access to a database, if you’re not so lucky, then nothing interesting will happen beyond that. This process of trying all these different things to trigger unexpected, potentially dangerous, behavior is what Rain would call, perhaps in poor taste, weaponized obsessive-compulsive disorder.
She opened the website of her favorite news outlet. The headline caught her attention.
THE PHANTOM VLOGGER: JARED BENJAMIN IS THE LATEST CONFIRMED GHOST IN THE POLITICAL COMMENTATOR SPHERE
“So JB’s a ghost.” Jared Benjamin was a treasured vlogger and internet political commentator so him being a ghost shocked somewhat, but it didn’t surprise a whole lot of people. A ghost was the common term used to describe a fabricated person, from looks to voice and personality, all made up using clever algorithms.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to After Dinner Conversation - Philosophy | Ethics Short Story to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.