Attack
The market trend was painfully obvious to me. It wasn't just a muddy stream, it was a full-on tsunami.
Just as I had predicted, the market collapsed as soon as the afternoon session began. It only takes one trade to trigger a major market collapse. When the market is calm, trades are executed with perfect control. However, whenever a trade is executed, the monetary value is rounded off to the nearest decimal place. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, but if all those fractions were to be added together with a specific purpose in mind, it could begin to crash against the failsafes in the programming. If that were to happen, people would begin to take notice and realize that the risks they thought they had under control weren't the only risks they should have been worrying about.
Like a system of beacons being set aflame one after another, a sell order will trigger more sell orders, which will in turn trigger even more. If humans were to intervene, they could counter this by making purchase orders at the right time. For a program, however, the logical course of action is to continue selling, regardless of whether or not it is leading them straight off the edge of a cliff.
If an actual person were sitting in front of their display, they would be doing research before buying up stock. Anyone employing this outdated method could make a fortune in a market such as this. The market as a whole was dropping, meaning that stocks were not losing value when compared to the rest of the market. The automated programs would not take this into account and would just continue selling at a loss. A real person just has to wait until the dust settles and pluck up all the nice, juicy apples knocked down by the storm.
Compared to a program, humans will make more mistakes on average. However, one out of a hundred times, or perhaps even ten thousand times, a person will be right where the computer is wrong. That's where the real money is made.
I was considering getting in on the apple gathering, but found myself financially unable to due to the sudden price increase of 5421A4381. Covering losses caused by failing stocks by purchasing popular ones is a tactic that both humans and programs share. No matter what terrible filter you were using, at this point 5421A4381 was so glaringly obvious that everybody began to buy it. This caused the price to spike upward even more suddenly.
The stock had risen so quickly that any sort of stop order was completely useless, and the avalanche of buy orders was only increasing its value. The numbers were so far past the limit order values set in place by just about every algorithm out there that every single automatic trading program had caught scent of the profit, and it filled their limited intelligences with a single thought: "Buy! Buy! Buy!"
Despite having made more than enough from my initial investments, I still wanted a little more. I couldn't tell if it was by instinct as a trader or if I had been overcome by a lust for money. The only thing I was sure of was my brain telling me, "More! More! More!" I placed one last order using nearly all of my remaining funds and it was executed immediately.
The stock was still going strong. Should I quit while I was ahead and sell? That would be crazy. I should use the stocks I already had as collateral and buy even more! Just as I was about to have Alice do just that, a thought occurred to me. With this many purchase orders out there, how was it that my orders were being executed so quickly?
That same instant, the display in front of me went dark, along with every light in my room.
A moment later, my display returned to life, the rest of the room remaining in darkness. Probably switched over to the backup generator. I had it programmed to place priority on the power-heavy network devices such as my display. Was there a blackout?
"Alice," I said. "What's going on?"
"Unknown, Master," came her reply. "All power and external network connections, both wired and wireless, to this room's network have been severed."
"Can you open the window?" I asked.
"Affirmative," she answered. "I have access to the backup generator. However, I am receiving no data from outside this room. That includes the panopticon."
The view through my window was the same as always. Nobody running through the streets screaming. All the other rooms were still emitting light. It appeared as if my room was the only one to have lost power and its connection to the network.
"Is it possible we were hacked?"
"Negative. I was in complete control of all networks connected to this room."
What happened, then? I thought to myself.
"Check the status of all network devices. Can you find any abnormalities?"
"Master, all network devices are completely silent."
"Is there something wrong with the backup generator?" I asked, growing worried.
"Negative. All devices are receiving power."
Damn! Was I physically attacked? Hurriedly, I slid back a panel in the floor to take a look at my hub. At first glance, I noticed nothing out of the ordinary. Then I noticed a small, broach-like device emitting a faint, crimson light attached to the top of the machine. I immediately thought of the kind of glowing red eyes snakes from mythology always have.
I reached down and carefully detached the device. I was quite sure it wasn't rigged to explode; if whomever was behind this wanted to kill me, I'd already have been dead.