#2 Lot of Exposition
Moebius is serialized fiction about an indie private detective hired to solve crimes related to technology. This is the first edition.
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#1 Wave Navigation
Part 1: World War 3
We were back in Majuro atoll, the capital of the Marshall Islands. The palm trees lining the coast reminded me of home back in India. No one exchanged words on the way back. When we got out of the canoe, Riz gestured in the direction of what looked like a dome without a roof, with the metal truss left behind, and said, “We should talk about this more at the Peace Park, we have a couple more hours here, and I’ve never been there.” Quick google search between looking over standard NDA docs on our way there told me that the Japanese built the Peace Park after the Second World War. The Marshall Islands was briefly under their control before the Americans won it in the Pacific Theatre of the second world war. The sound of the palm trees rustling in the wind and the breeze from the ocean had begun to put me in a trance about the scale of the War when Riz broke me out of it. “Quite the place to contemplate the next war, don’t you think?”
“Don’t think either the US or China can afford a war,” I replied. Meta conversations where the priors were assumed seemed like the standard tech bro conversation to me.
“Well, that’s not what Mr. Zhan here tells,” Riz said, gesturing at the Chinese guy who stood about 15 feet from us, glancing at the dome in the peace park.
Was this guy now trying to recruit me into some kind of conspiracy theory? “Who is Mr.. Zhan?” I asked, waving my hand in the direction of the Chinese guy.
“He works for the Chinese government. Do you know who was convicted for the Halos Jets crash?”
“What.. what do you mean he works for the Chinese government? Who do you work for?” I was concluding that it was time to head back home and the sinking feel in the pit of my stomach told me that this had been a bad idea all along.
“I work for myself,” Riz said in his nonchalant tone, which by now I had become accustomed to. “Well, I take that back. That sounds like I’m some kind of missionary. People come to me with gigs that require a specific expertise and pay me for it”. Riz said as he looked away in the direction of the Chinese guy and then into the ocean.
“What kind of expertise?” I asked, not knowing why he paused mid-way through that explanation, like the scene was going to cut into some kind of flashback.
“They hire me to solve problems, usually ones that they cannot pay employees to solve and ones that require some amount of discretion.”
“So you’re a private detective of some sort?” I asked without skipping a beat
“Do you see me carrying a gun or a magnifying glass or using my skills of deduction to figure out why your fingernails are long?” Riz replied deadpan with no sarcasm whatsoever
I was still perplexed, but the part of me that always jumped into interesting things that surprised me and later put me in trouble took over. Insight porn is a hell of a drug.
“What do you need me for?” the words slipped out against my better judgment.
“Now we’re talking. We need to figure out how the Halos Jets crashed and potentially exonerate a Chinese national who is currently in jail for a crime that looks like he did not commit. And may be prevent world war 3 if you want to be all dramatic about it”
“I thought it was figured..” Before I could complete my sentence, Riz cut in, “Yes, the US government beliefs it was a Chinese hack that led to the crash, but we think that’s not true.”
Still not sure why I’m here, but I plodded on, “How do you know it’s not true?”
“We have something I’ll share later, but before that, the reason you are here is..” Riz said as he took a couple of steps towards me to be about 2 feet from me.
“We need someone who can run simulations of a plane that is on complete autopilot, using Sophie, the same software that was on the Halos Jets that crashed.”
I had no idea how Sophie worked. The panic that had settled in came back in all its strength. “I’ve no idea why you think I can do that?” I replied, unsure myself if I meant it as a question or an exclamation
“You are 50% of the answer, you’ve worked on autopilot software for cars before. The other 50% is the people you know at Octave, “Riz replied, making open palm gestures with his hand as he spoke.
The people I know. I had a contract gig with Octave about two years back. Riz had done his research before contacting me.
“So you want my contacts at Octave to leak me information about how Sophie works so that we can run this simulation you’re talking about?”
Riz smiled gently and replied, “Not quite, I want you to get in touch with them, find a new contract gig there and then get the information you need yourself”
“How do you know I can get a gig there?” I asked.
Riz turned towards the Chinese guy and said, “Thats where Mr.Zhan comes in”. By the time he had spoken the words, the Chinese guy had walked toward us. For the first time, he spoke directly to me “I know that Octave is working on finding a new GPU manufacturer, and they are working with SuperMicro to conduct due diligence on the GPU suppliers”. He had a thick accent that made me lean in to understand him. SuperMicro is a processor design company similar to ARM. They designed chips and GPU architecture but never manufactured them. Their claim to fame was designing GPUs used by self-driving cars of the old guard of automotive manufacturers.
Mr.Zhan continued, “I can get you a short-term gig with the team that is doing the due diligence work”.
Should I be even asking how? Based on how things have gone, that seemed pointless. I let all that happened in the last few hours ping around in my head. It made no rational sense to commit to this, but no one probably knew it better than Riz. Yet, there was the irresistible pull to jump into the unknown and intriguing. Some corner of my mind also nurtured the megalomaniac dream of going up against a Goliath such as Octave. I wondered if Riz knew about this and if that was why he had picked me for this project. Before my thoughts made any logical sense, I had arrived at the answer, “When do we start?” I asked and looked at the two gentlemen.
Part 2 : Confirmation Bias
I was back in Austin again. Riz had asked me to set up a Protonmail address as soon I got back. I sent an email as soon as I set up and then waited. On my other tabs, I was figuring out who Riz Moebius is and what I was getting into. My earlier simple searches had not yielded anything. I was casting a new Jules Friedman podcast appearance on Joe Rogan on my TV to top it off. This setup seemed like the perfect amount of sensory deprivation that I justified as necessary to work, but it was also staving off the isolation that kept me awake all night.
If Riz had worked on any gigs with corporations, there would be some trail of it, especially if he worked on high-profile things similar to the Halos Jets crash.
On the podcast, Jules, the CEO of Octave, was talking about the supposed Chinese hack that led to the crash. “Alex Zhao was an employee with our contractor who helped design the GPU for the autopilot program. We value radical transparency and trust in each other and our partners to a fault at Octave, and I think Alex took advantage of that”
“Mm..so Alex was working for you and also working for the Chinese government? How could you have missed that” asked Rogan in his unmistakable manner.
Jules paused for a moment, I thought he had been caught flat-footed, but the reply that followed made it seem that it was a strategic pause. “Yes.” he paused again, the camera cut to Rogan and back.
My partial attention shifted back to Riz. My amateur stalking skills had not yielded anything yet. I tried searching his name along with the companies listed on his LinkedIn. I tried to see if he had accidentally been caught in a picture with an executive at one of the companies. Reverse image searched his LinkedIn profile pic. Nothing.
I saw in the corner of my eye that I had a notification on my Proton Mail. The subject line said “set up” and the first set of instructions was to set up an ID on Scenius. I had heard of it before. Scenius is an open-source operating system where each person who uses it runs their own personal server without relying on centralized infrastructure of any kind. The Scenius ID was the unique ID needed to access your system, and it existed on the blockchain. Scenius has its owns apps and programming language, which is why I’m guessing Riz wanted to use it. Any messages sent between two Scenius IDs only existed with the senders and nowhere else. It was going to take a while to set up; meanwhile, back to the podcast.
Rogan was now on a rant about grifters in the tech industry and why, because of them, revolutionary technology such as Sophie had also become sus.
“You remember there was that woman. What’s her name? She had this TED talk about female orgasms and then basically started this cult where men wore masks and gloves and fingered women,” said Joe, and this piqued my attention. I looked up from my screen like a rabbit that just got alerted to a predator. “Nicole Daedone” came the reply to Joe from off-screen. “Yes, Nicole Daedone” Joe declared and continued on his rant.
I googled her name and clicked on the fourth result under the fold, which seemed to be about the grift allegations. My partial attention was now split between the three things that I intended to finish tonight and this fourth rabbit hole about orgasmic meditation. The article chronicled the experience of Michelle, who had signed up for OM classes and retreats where a fully-clothed man would stimulate her clit in a 15 minute OM session. It detailed how she lost control of her mental and financial health as she became more dependent on the program and the people in it. Towards the end, the article mentions that OM is currently being sued and has sex trafficking cases filed against it. As I scanned through the piece with half my attention on the podcast, one line caught my eye. “I spoke on the phone with a whistleblower who lives in the Marshall Islands..”
My eyebrows shifted up, and I stood up from the chair and read that sentence once more, and I laughed. It was an oddly precise yet vague detail - whistleblower in the Marshall Islands. I’m sure there are other secretive whistleblowers in the Marshall Islands, but I had that gut feeling of certainty who this was. It was also rather odd for a journalist to leave behind the location of the whistleblower. Was this some kind of Moebius calling card he left behind, or had the journalist just been sloppy? I had to know more about how the OM grift came to light or, better yet, ask Riz about it.
The Jules Friedman/Joe Rogan interview seemed to have gone well with the Twitter crowd. I saw I had a notification for a message on Scenius, it