The Mission

It was a week after I agreed to take the sponsorship for the study abroad research fellowship that I finally sat down to discuss the details with Olson and Nagisa. I spent the previous week celebrating. My parents—my real, biological parents, for whom I have nothing but love—and I had gone out to dinner the previous night to commemorate the event. Ordinarily with their salaries we’d never be able to afford an educational program like this, so this really was a stroke of good fortune. I was in a pleasant mood as I sat down at a sturdy office table across from Olson and Nagisa in a large briefing room.

“Everyone’s here now, so let’s begin discussing the current situation in Miklagardia,” Nagisa said with a sharp determination that broke through her regular taciturnity.

“Miklagardia?” I asked. “What does that have to do with me? I thought you said I was going to study abroad in the West.”

“You are going to the West to study,” Olson interjected. “For the next few months, we’ll have you transferred to a sister facility in an allied Western nation. From there, you’ll study the Miklagardian language to fluency, as well as the rapid advanced program for intelligence gathering and spycraft used by our agents in the field before entering Miklagardia as an exchange student.”

“Woah, woah, please slow down Commander Olson,” I pleaded. “You’re making it sound like I’m supposed to become some kind of secret agent. I’m just a student.”

“It’s true that you are a student. It’s equally true that you will act as the eyes and ears of the Ustasian Intelligence Corps while in Miklagardia,” Nagisa said. Her face and tone were completely neutral, but I still detected a hint of smugness in her voice.

“But why me? Get one of your other guys in there instead!”

“That’s a perfect segue into our next topic. If you’ll turn your attention to the screen…”

Nagisa pointed toward a large screen at the end of the room. A projector whirred to life and began to display a slideshow of the aftereffects of the Cyber Monday attacks.

“The recent mass shutdowns were speculated to have originated in Miklagardia. Until recently, speculation among Western governments was that it was an organized hacking group sponsored by local crime organizations cooperating with international mafias, perhaps with some state-sanctioned assistance from the Miklagardian government,” Nagisa repeated in a monotone voice as if reading from a teleprompter.

She moved to another slide. It was a picture of various men and women in purple overcoats posed for a candid shot in front of a small, decrepit building.

“This is an image of the research staff of the mathematics department of the Miklagardian Institute of Technology. During the Cold War, they collaborated extensively with the Soviet Union to make important advancements in the field, but they’ve gone under the radar in recent times. However, last month, one of our agents managed to intercept communications, suggesting they may have made a massive breakthrough in the field of cryptography,” Olson commented as he swiveled his chair to view the screen before turning back to face me with a grave look on his face. He glanced warily at Nagisa, who wore a solemn expression of her own. After a few seconds, he broke through the uncomfortable silence with a declaration I’ll never forget:

“We believe they successfully created an efficient algorithm to solve the integer factorization problem.”

“No way! That’s impossible!” I cried out.

You might be wondering why factoring a number was such a big deal. I’ll try to break it down in a simple manner, but I’m not the best teacher, so you may want to look it up on the Internet too.

Essentially, most of the encryption we use to secure access to computers and personal information relies on various algorithms, which themselves rely on the principle of one-way functions: that it’s easy to put in a number and get a result in a trivial amount of time, but harder to take that result and obtain the original number in any reasonable amount of time. Most of our internet security relies on the fact that factoring a large integer (particularly semiprimes, numbers that are the products of two large prime numbers) is extremely complex and time-consuming with our current best algorithms. Now, we have this incredibly large number, N, which is the product of two large prime numbers, p and q, where p and q are prime numbers. Now, you also have a private key calculated from the secret numbers p and q to complete the key pairing. When you do a secure transaction with a website, you can take their public key, apply an operation to encrypt your data with the public key, and thanks to the beauty of math, no one can decrypt it unless they have the private key. All of this can be done asymmetrically without needing to exchange any information in person. What’s neat is that you can use it for authenticating your identity as well: simply take your private key, encrypt a basic message with it, and publish it along with your public key and the original message. Only your public key will be able to take the encrypted message and translate it to the original.

But what if someone figured out an algorithm to quickly factor any integer? The entire foundation of its security would crumble. Today, in the best case scenario, it would take decades to factor these massive semispheres, since our best algorithm is in exponential time with regards to the size of the original number. But if you reduced that exponential algorithm to one with a polynomial runtime, which can easily be run on any modern computer or smart device, anyone can derive the original secret prime numbers p and q from a public key N. From there, it’s trivial to derive the private key from the basics of the algorithm. This would let anyone intercept and decrypt your data, forge digital signatures, and generally render the majority of our current security mechanisms useless. There are other algorithms that aren’t susceptible to this. Elliptic-curve cryptography (which has its own complexity dependent on discrete logarithms) comes to mind, but those aren’t as ubiquitous as the public key algorithms.

“That was our first thought as well, but I can assure you that the evidence is there. We’ve extensively reviewed it, and the fact is it may be possible. Judging by your outburst, I see you also realize the implications, and that’s exactly why we need your assistance. Miklagardia is a fairly isolationist nation, but they do still cooperate with nations they consider their allies. Miklagardia has historically kept good relations with Ustasia, which has only solidified after the Firasian War. Right now, they’re seeking to increase their power in the region, and to that end are trying to establish better ties with Ustasia. It’s unprecedented, but one of their methods is to offer international research positions to students in from countries. Nominally, we’ve had an alliance with the Western powers, but the Ustasian government wants to expand their options. They want to push ahead with creating new geostrategic partnerships,” Nagisa explained.

“So you want me to go abroad to make a positive impression?” I asked.

“Not exactly,” Olson replied. “The current administration may be interested in breaking off from the West, but there’s a fair amount of other government factions and institutional power who disagree, us included. A partnership with Miklagardia will only bring us disadvantage. We’d be crushed right under their heels. At least with the West, we have some form of dissent. That’s why we need you.” He nodded at Nagisa, who returned in kind.

“Your age and technical skills make you a perfect fit for Miklagardia’s research fellowship. You’ll easily be able to infiltrate the institution and gather evidence on the algorithm. You’re our best hope for defending the safety and privacy of the free world. If we can’t stop them, then we can at least even the playing field,” Nagisa said.

If she was trying to butter up my ego, she was doing a great job of it. That made me sound really impressive.

“Well, that and the fact that you were the only one of the candidates without a social media presence. We’ll need to fabricate your records for the operation, and we can’t have the Miklagardians be able to easily track down any connections to your past life,” Olson said.

Now that made me sound a lot less impressive. Good thing I only use anonymous accounts online. Still, I had already agreed to it, and it wasn’t as if the military brass would let me back out after they’d shared such top-secret info.

Olson slid a manilla dossier, filled to the brim with official documentation, across the table to me before continuing, “Starting today, your name will be John Caesarea. Short, sweet, and to the point. All the papers you’ll need for your new identity are in there. Your backstory and character profile is on page eight, so make sure to commit it to memory.” This felt more like I was playing a tabletop RPG rather than doing espionage. I guess there’s a thin line between being a spy and an actor.

Nagisa then decided to drop a bombshell.

“That’s right. Before I forget, from now on we’ll be acting as your parents.”

What?

“As virtually all forms of communication are now insecure, especially over voice, we will play the part of a family to ensure constant updates, and it’s completely natural for a student to call back home.”

“Don’t worry though,” Olson interjected, “we’ll still send you communications through a satellite device, encrypted with secure one-time passwords.”

That’s not the part I was worried about!

Nagisa turned and looked Olson straight in the eyes. “Now, we’ll need to all practice being a happy family for the deception to properly work.” Her usual deadpan expression morphed into one of gentle concern and, bizarrely enough, tender affection. She scooted over to the grizzled veteran before pouncing and clinging onto his arm.

“So honey, how was your day?” she said with sickening sweetness.

I tried my hardest to suppress the vomit coming up my throat.