The Passengers(95)
‘Who is that?’
‘My brother.’
‘And what was his role?’
‘He’s one of the people you called the Hacker.’
‘Your brother was the Hacker?’ she said slowly.
‘One of the Hackers. The Hacker wasn’t just one person. The voice you heard was a speech synthesis – an artificial production of the human voice. A handful of people – men and women of different ages, accents, dialects and languages – took it in turns to dictate what the Hacker was going to say while others controlled what images you saw on screen. To make what happened a success took a global network of people. Please, will you sit down so I can explain?’
Libby paused. She took another look over her shoulder at the door behind her and determined that if she felt threatened by Noah, she could reach it before he reached her. She softened her grip on the knife and chose a chair two tables away from him. Then she gritted her teeth and tried not to lose herself in the eyes she’d once longed to see again.
‘I should start at the beginning,’ he said. ‘Back in the forties, during the Second World War, my granddad started a business building engines for army vehicles. Then over the years, it diversified and was handed down to our dad. When Alex and I left university, we began working for him as computer programmers creating software and developing radars, orientation sensors and lidar for Level Five cars. Dad was in line for a multi-million-pound Government contract to provide the software and cameras for emergency service vehicles. It was the biggest deal in our company history. And because Britain was going to be the first country to go completely autonomous, the plan was to then sell our software and systems globally. Years after Brexit, we were still a little shaky but this meant job security for our six hundred employees.’ Noah clicked his fingers. ‘Then just like that, it was all over.’
‘Why?’
‘We were good to go – we had the staff and technology in place and we’d expanded our premises. It was Alex who spotted a flaw in the software that’d already been developed by others and that we were now working on. It was like a tiny gap in a fence but a gap nonetheless. It meant the so-called secured, unhackable software could, in theory, be breached. We reported it and we were assured it was going to be repaired. Then a week before the contracts were to be signed, a rival company from India appeared and undercut us with a cheaper tender. We pushed back until we price-matched them, but when they did it again, it was all over. We’d have been operating at a massive loss. So the Government gave them the contract. We were sure the Indians couldn’t offer a better product than us and we were right. Because when we reverse engineered their software, it was identical to ours. They’d stolen our work and the only place they could’ve got it from was inside the Government.’
‘Then why didn’t you sue for copyright infringement?’
‘Vital sections of our paperwork for our patent applications had “gone missing” once they reached the Intellectual Property Authority. By the time we found out, it was too late. The Indians had fast-track patented our work. Every international lawyer we approached told us we had no chance of winning litigation or compensation.’
‘And your dad’s business?’
‘Within six months, the shareholders demanded it went into administration and the workforce was made redundant. Most of our staff lived in and around villages near to the plant and within a handful of years those areas became desolate. People were forced to move away to find work, house prices dropped so those who stayed were in negative equity, there was rise in alcoholism and even suicides. Some of these people had worked for Dad and his father all their lives. And my dad blamed himself for it all. The guilt and stress hit him so hard that he had a stroke and within the year he died of complications from pneumonia.’
Noah paused to reach for a bottle on the floor. He unscrewed the cap and offered it to Libby. The dust in the room was making her throat scratchy, but she declined.
‘What happened hit my brother harder than it did me,’ he continued. ‘We were both close to Dad, but Alex was the firstborn and a chip off the old block. I watched him sink into a deeper and deeper depression. He’d been diagnosed as bipolar as a teenager and he stopped taking his prescribed drugs and started self-medicating. He was unstable, he became bitter and angry and would lose his temper over nothing. Several times he was arrested for fighting and ended up behind bars for a few months. Then on his release, he vanished. We couldn’t find him; he wasn’t at his flat, he didn’t answer his phone or reply to our messages. When the police couldn’t locate him either, we began to fear the worst. But as suddenly as he went, he reappeared.’
In spite of herself, Libby was becoming drawn into Noah’s story. ‘Where had he been?’ she asked.
‘He wouldn’t tell me, but there was something different about him. It wasn’t just that he was sober or back on his meds, it was that he’d developed a focus I’d not seen in him for a long time. Eventually he admitted he’d been spending time with a group of what he called “like-minded people”. It sounded like he’d joined a cult or something, but it was a community of Hackers he’d found hiding on the dark web. Alex had joined an organisation whose goal was to wreck the British driverless car industry. He learned we weren’t the only company the Government had shafted over cheaper foreign tenders. There were at least a dozen businesses that played an early part in the Road Revolution that had also had their products stolen from right under their noses thanks to patent tampering and theft. Alex was encouraged to join and find a way to work together to bring the industry to its knees and create awareness of what they’d been doing to home-grown businesses. And he begged me to become involved.’