Let me tell you a story. About a paranoid guy I worked with for a short time.
He drove around with his PC tower in his car. When he got home he would hook it up and use it only to check email, when he was finished he would unplug all the peripherals and put it in a large steel ammo can.
He was a world-class bullshitter. He worked for the movie industry. He won the lottery. His parents were rich. He had wild parties with Hollywood stars. And here he was, a fucking janitor at a vacation resort.
He told us how he had bought several computers in the last few years and the only way to keep them from being compromised was to carry out the ammo can ritual.
He eventually overheard me talking about computer hardware with another guy at work. He started asking me crazy questions about being hacked. But not the usual “I think I have a virus” stuff. He was specifically asking about tracking and remote surveillance bugs that could be put inside the computer. As in, hooked to the motherboard or hard drive.
I told him anything is possible, but it’s highly unlikely. I was thinking he just wanted me to check it out, but didn’t want to outright ask. Well, one night he had somehow broken his ammo can ritual and went to sleep without locking the ammo can. At least he says he doesn’t remember specifically doing it but is pretty sure that “they” picked the lock and forgot to place the lock in the exact position.
Of course I ask him how he knows “they” haven’t already done it and placed the lock in the correct position, or why they haven’t done it in his car where he won’t know the position of the lock. He was placing fishing line and/or hairs around the ammo can and taking pictures every time he had to leave the ammo can!
At this point I was trying to make him realize that no one would go through such great lengths to do such a thing, unless… I was now considering that this guy may have CP or some kind of presidential killing plot stored on his disk. I really didn’t know what to say after the whole fishing line thing, but he had somehow seen me as a ‘trusted’ person and I figured if I helped him and did see anything weird I would take appropriate measures.
I asked him if he wanted me to look at it. I would take it home, have a look and bring it back to work in a few days. Maybe someone was fucking with him hard-core and didn’t realize he was in a fragile state, or maybe they did realize he was mentally ill and wanted him to off himself in police assisted suicide or make his mind implode in some sort of cruel joke.
He was extremely reluctant and told me he was going to destroy the next day in yet another crazy ritual. First he would take it to a friends shop and run over the whole case with a fork-lift. He would then build a roaring fire, place the broken components it and then feed the flames with a propane torch until it was red hot! After that it would be doused with bleach, run over again and finally discarded in a dumpster outside his friend’s shop.
I didn’t believe much of that; you know he partied with famous actors, right? After a little more coaxing I finally told him that devices exist which fit onto hard drives to reset information and they could be used restore drive states even after the data had been deleted. I told him about key loggers and the Tempest for Eliza (http://www.erikyyy.de/tempest/ ) projects. I was trying to let him feel like I may know some inside information
He finally conceded and let me take it home. Then he told me not to have any other computers on, don’t dial-up to the internet and keep all other electrical devices away when I plug it in. He told me that no one else should be around and if the phone rings don’t pick it up. I assured him I would follow the instructions and asked him if there was anything else I should know. He said the it would start up, but when Windows started there would be a black box that would appear for a split second, then disappear. He also told me he was going to destroy the computer either way, but needed it back the very next afternoon to do so.
I went with him to his car. He pulled out a Polaroid. Sure enough it was a close-up picture of the ammo can in his trunk, with a curl of fishing line between the seal on the can. He verified it was as he left it. He took a key off a chain around his neck and opened the can. I took the computer home and he left out a huge sigh. He seemed reluctant and nervous, like he was giving me a curse.
So much was going on my mind by the time I got home. What if he rigged this thing to fucking explode? What if he followed me and was going to to have a psychotic break and kill me in the driveway? Did I really want to turn it on? I calmed down and remembered all the bull-shitting and pathological lies he kept repeating. He was just mentally ill.
It then dawned on me that I could check him out on-line. This was way before broadband and Google dominance, but there was the IMDB, albeit it in an early state. I IMDB’d the names of the movies he said he worked on, AND SURE AS FUCK, HE WAS LISTED ON THE CREW It couldn’t be a coincidence. Why pick no name movies and say you worked on them?
Further searching revealed that he had in fact won the lottery. Well his parents did, but for some reason his name was signed to the ticket. It was in the paper. There were other things he told us that I did not mention, but signs were pointing to true for nearly all of them, even with the sparse data I found. Locations, Hollywood stars being there at around the same time, people listed on the IMDB that he probably worked closely with that would have access to the people and places he would talk about. It begged many questions. Why was he back here on the East Coast? Why did he leave Hollywood? The parties? More on that later.
Anyway back to this fucking beige PC case in my garage. I flipped the breaker to the outlet and plugged it in. I was pretty sure nothing bad would happen, but I propped a big sheet of particle board against it anyway. I threw the breaker and nothing happened. I turned the breaker off, hit the power button on the PC and turned the breaker back on. This was when the power switch was a toggle, so you didn’t need to have power on to boot the system. It POSTED one beep (it did sound a little odd, kind of “droopy”, but who knows, because now I’m a little paranoid.
I took the computer inside and opened the case. It was a god-awful old-school case that required a degree in cryptic analysis to open. Push in on case , hold tab, remove a few screws, then there was a fold-out section where the hard drive and floppy where connected. I noticed that the ribbon cables were pinched between the hings. One fan, but it was immaculate. Slot 1 Pentium. Its less than one year life in the ammo can was very good to this PC.
It was so compacted it made me cringe. There was no way someone could open this thing while he was asleep and do anything without waking half of creation. It was a rats nest.
I hooked it up to my computer setup and booted it up. Windows 98. Many people hadn’t made the switch to 2000 and I thanked god I didn’t see ME.
It started up very fast and hit the desktop. Then I saw it. It was extremely quick, but I saw it. A black window flashed in the upper left corner and seemed to minimize to the taskbar in a split second. Not something I had seen until years later with XP, when a cmd window pops up and runs a script. Sometimes you don’t notice it, other times it stays on the taskbar for a second or so.
Then I heard a funny noise I heard before. It was high-pitched and faint, but I knew what it sounded like. It was when you would run an older DOS based game on a 386DX with Turbo enabled. There was a frequency being emitted by a certain repetition in the CPU. Consequently the CPU was running so fast, you couldn’t play Pac-Man for instance. The moment you hit start, you would die so quickly you thought the game hadn’t started. I read something not long ago that others experience this as well and can make certain tones by running certain loops on certain processors.
The mouse cursor was now jittering on the screen a few pixels in the X every second or so. The refresh on the monitor seemed out of whack ever so slightly. I was getting a headache. This happened all the time in years past where monitor refreshes would “sync” with fluorescent lighting and cause mysterious headaches for workers. The TV in the room looked like the V-Hold was going out as well, kind of a bend in the top of the tube, not a full out V-Hold issue, but weird nonetheless.
I hadn’t heeded his warnings. I unplugged the PC. The TV was now fine. I booted the tower up again and sure enough, the black window flashed on the desktop and a few seconds later the whining started from inside the PC case and the TV did the same thing. So did the mouse. What. The. Fuck. Now I noticed the LCD clock on the computer desk was out of sync too. I could see waves of refreshes.
I unplugged the LCD clock. The battery was in, but it way still oscillating. I went upstairs and the television in the bedroom was doing it too, but not as pronounced. Maybe the PC power supply was doing something weird to the house wiring causing a ridiculous kind of EMI.
This was too weird. I can see if he thought something was up. But what were the chances he had the same power supply in all the computers he bought? I needed to swap the power supply out.
I grabbed a KWG one from the garage and began to dismantle the PC. I had the IDE cables removed and remembered I should swap them out because they were pinched pretty badly. I went and got spares from the garage.
I had the tray removed with the drives attached and was begining to yank the power cables out when I noticed something really fucked up. Almost like I wasn’t really seeing it because it couldn’t possibly be there. A small IC chip (8 pin maybe) obviously soldered to the motherboard after manufacture. Between the RAM and CPU. Two tiny red wires and a yellow wire came out of a few of the legs and were soldered to points on the motherboard, one by the first ISA slot and the other two near the P6 and P7 (IIRC, they were the two power supply connectors that you could put in backwards and fry your mobo). Not a fucking clue as to where they would be going, except for the red ones which I though power. It looked as if at least two of the legs were to points soldered directly to the motherboard. That did not belong there. No fucking way in hell that should be there. They just don’t do that.
The phone rings. I pick it up instinctively and a hot flush runs through my body. I wasn’t supposed to do that either. Modem hand-shaking. No fucking way. I hung up. It rang again. This time there was static a few clicks, then more hand-shaking. What the fuck have I done?
Done. I was done. I didn’t know if he had somehow did this himself or what. There was the remote possibility he had a split disorder or something where he was doing this to himself and forgetting that he did it. With his somewhat technical background experience in movie sets it was a possibility. Maybe he was big into electronics and just went mad. What if someone really did this to track him? Why even have a fucking computer for just email? It wasn’t adding up.
I was shakily putting everything back together, waiting for the phone to ring. What the fuck do I tell this guy? Did he want me to see it? Was he testing me? How in the fuck did it send out a signal that would cause a modem to dial me at that moment? I had been playing dial-up deathmatch (doom) with a friend earlier that month. Maybe he dialed in by mistake.
No. Couldn’t be a coincidence. He said this would happen. I didn’t care about the black window. I didn’t care about the mouse cursor. The PC was going into my garage and he was going to destroy it.
Why would he specifically ask about chips on motherboards and hard drives? Had he seen these before in his other computers? Just by looking at it you would know something is amiss. Some people think it’s all magic inside the box. He knows what a motherboard is. He knows what a hard drive is. He knows how to check email. Why does he need email to talk to his friend? WHAT THE FUCK?! I was up all night and came up with the perfect excuse. I didn’t look at the computer. I just didn’t have the time. I forgot about a homework assignment and had to finish it. Perfect.
The next morning at breakfast my mother tells me her alarm clock is dead. My father tells me there are colored spots on his TV from EMI and asks if I know anything about it. My father works in electronics, but I dare not mention anything for fear of what might transpire. I once put a magnet on the TV and he had to buy a degaussing ring to fix it. If it wasn’t for the phone call and the TV, I would have told him everything. He may have been able to JTAG it at work and dump the code, but I was too young to realize what exactly was going on inside those chips and how they really work. I was worried my dad would put the alarm clock and TV incident together, but I guess there wasn’t really a reason to.
The fact there may now be people who know everything about me and could be waiting for me down the road in a black van was enough to make me nauseous. Then I went to work. No black vans.
I rehearsed the lines to perfection. The only way it could fail was if he did this mod himself and was baiting me. I carried the computer in to the break room and he was waiting there acting extremely nervous. The ammo can was also there underneath the work bench. I told him my story.
He asked me if I just plugged it in for a second. I told him it never left my car. He seemed relieved. So was I. Then he asks if I got any weird phone calls. I knew it! He dialed me with a modem to test me! I was onto this fucker. He’s not crazy, this is all a part of some fucked up thing he does do get idead for movies or something. Like a game. they play in Hollywood or some shit. I told him I didn’t get the phone, because I was in my room banging out a homework assignment.
He seemed relieved again. So maybe he wasn’t fucking with me. Now I’m the paranoid one. He put the PC in the ammo can and went out to his car. He told our boss he would back in a few hours. I knew what he going to do, or pretend to do.
The story continues…
A few days go by and he hasn’t mentioned the PC thing (I guess it was routine for him by now), but keeps telling us wild stories about his Hollywood adventures. I am purposefully withholding names of the actors because I don’t want this to go back on anybody in any way shape or from, hence the throw-away account. By this time I had told my close coworkers about the incident and we played detective. We just couldn’t come up with a solid angle for this guy. The best we came up with was it was speed or PCP. It made a lot of sense. Hollywood, partying, paranoia. He was caught up in a lot of bad shit and ended up back on the East Coast after running from shadow people.
A few days after that he calls up and says he can’t come to work anymore. Not a big deal. The turn-around at that place was unbelievable. Dozens of workers a season would come and go. Don’t like being janitors I guess.
A week or so after that my boss was visited by a few detectives at work who had questions about this paranoid guy. They just wanted to know how long he worked there and if he saw anything suspicious. My boss told them he seemed to be paranoid person that got nervous all the time. He didn’t tell them the whole nine yards. Just enough to leave us alone.
We figured we would never truly know what happened to Mr. Hollywood. Did he put that chip in there himself? Had he gotten my number and made those modem calls?
He probably hadn’t. He was under surveillance. Some organization had been tracking him. FBI, CIA or DEA. It was on TV. Certain actors and actresses were caught up doing some bad things. The bad things he said they did when he hung out with them. He fled back here when the heat was too much. All the holes in his stories made sense. We could fill them all in now. He was trying not to implicate himself, although it didn’t matter in the end. They had a ton of evidence.
Whatever became of him? For the life of me I couldn’t remember his exact last name. Then it hit me as I wrote the last paragraph. I went to IMDB and typed it in. Apparently he’s not in jail (not sure if ever was) and is still working in Hollywood. He has added a few more movies to his IMDB entry, so I guess it worked out OK for him.
I don’t really know if that chip had anything to do with it. I’m leaning on a hard yes, but it still seems far fetched. It could have been a trial thing or something. Kind of a field test for more discrete components
I was never bothered by any agency nor have I received any more modem phone calls.
If there really were little chips many years ago that could do that, imagine what the fuck they have now.
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Grabbed from Horror/creepy short stories
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