[Can’t Opt Out]

“Oh… yeah, that’s pretty normal,” Meeho Kun’sai said, looking up from her continued attempts to get the xphern relay machine—Halen’s new name for the thing, which had an ancient name that didn’t translate quite right into modern Dionese—working. The woman didn’t look at Yujao, who had been telling Hurinren about how Emilia’s friends had learned there was a chance the xphern transmission network was down for Falmíer’s locals, and instead peered into the middle distance of the wall. Light from the flickering lamps—yet another thing that needed to be upgraded but were traditional, and as a result, certain factions of the Inner Court refused to approve upgrading—looked odd across her glasses.

It wasn’t the first time Hurinren had thought her glasses odd, not just for the fact that she had them at all, but for the way the world seemed to be reflected through them. The woman’s soft brown skin, containing the yellow tones common in certain families of the Inner Court, looked slightly different through the glass, while her eyes appeared a single shade of murky brown through it. Having been watching over her for so long—mostly making sure his partner didn’t kill her for not getting the xphern relay machine working fast enough for his taste—Hurinren had been able to catch sight of her eyes without the glasses in the way a few times.

They weren’t normal. The woman was good at hiding it—good at keeping her eyes cast down and tilting her head up to keep herself from peering up at anyone without the barrier of glass between their eyes.

Hurinren had still seen them, the odd flecks of a near-white yellow in her eyes. They weren’t like anything he had ever seen before, nor had he heard of any irregular deviation that would give her eyes such an appearance. It was possible they were nothing but an aesthetic irregular deviation, of course—not all genetic spasms that left a physical impression of the fetus’ body were indicators of some other power lingering within them—but then why would Meeho Kun’sai bother hiding her eyes so intensely?

At the moment, it didn’t really matter. In the future, however, it might, especially given there was no way the woman was leaving this room without swearing her undying loyalty to Yujao—and Yujao, Hurinren had no doubt, had also noticed her eyes.

“What is normal?” Hurinren asked when the woman didn’t continue, his partner also having taken to staring off into space. Hurinren could guess what was normal, but the woman was a seemingly bottomless wealth of information. Not only did he want to be sure they were all thinking along the same lines, but any information she had could be relayed back to Emilia and her friends, further keeping them all connected in their lines of thinking and knowledge. Not too connected—they needed room to form their own thoughts and opinions—but having the same base knowledge was important, especially given none of them had thought to consider that Falmíer’s xphern transmission network might be used to keep the locals from communicating about the situation.

Plus, with how knowledgeable Meeho Kun’sai was, it was possible they’d be calling on her again in the future; therefore, it was imperative they know as much about how her mind worked as possible.

“That Falmíer's residents no longer have working xpherns,” the woman explained, her gaze still absently trained at the wall, which was a rather boring, red-lacquered wood, instead of returning to her attempts to reconstruct the machine laying in a mostly assembled scramble before her. “Lüshan blocks their resident’s xphern exchange protocols regularly, in order to control dissent and keep gossip contained. You would have to find someone with more knowledge of recent incidents to know if blocking the Drini from communicating is normal, though. That seems a bit odd to me,” she noted, fingers tapping on a bit of twisted metal that seemed to have been damaged at some point, and she was now struggling to get back into the proper form. They had called one of the Inner Court’s rumai’se who was loyal to Yujao—through choice, rather than whatever Yujao did to force loyalty out of many of their allies—to come force it back into shape, but they had yet to arrive, their living quarters quite a ways away from the room they had brought Meeho Kun’sai to work within.

With Samina, Lux, and Levi still within the cave system, they still wanted to get the machine working—although, Hurinren thought Levi likely to have killed his Censor while he was away from his friends—but as everyone was no longer missing, there was no longer so much pressure on her to do so quickly, and Yujao had stopped glowering at her. He still wanted her to get it working—especially as there was a possibility the cave system may be used to escape the city—but he had ceased snapping at her whenever she did something he didn’t like.

“Lüshan’s government has always been rather authoritarian, and the xpherns sold within their borders are highly regulated. They also have spying capabilities, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they also had a way to shut down network access xphern side, rather than network side, but that is mere speculation. In more solid possibilities, someone likely blocked some amount of the local xphern exchange protocols. If someone who is part of the corrupt part of the Drini”—they had discussed enough of the situation with the young woman for her to know most of what was happening, while neither Hurinren nor Yujao had been intent to leave her alone whenever they were given more bits of information to discuss—“has access to that system, they may be disrupting specific xpherns of certain officers, while shutting down the network for all civilian xphern exchange protocols. It would seem rather silly to lock out all Drini xphern exchange numbers—such things would raise questions among high-ranking officials, if such blocks began without their knowledge, after all—but from what you’ve said, the situation is a mess of incompetence.”

“The Crisharian man seemed to have bought his xphern in the entry station,” Hurinren pointed out, glancing at all the messages that had come in to his and Yujao’s xpherns in the last few minutes, “and his still works.”

The messages had come from several different people, giving them various updates on the situation, and asking if they knew anything about why the local xpherns were down. A message from Yujao, explaining what Meeho Kun'sai was saying, slipped through the group chat, which included all of the xpherns Emilia and her friends had, as well as his own and Yujao’s. They had also added Meeho Kun’sai’s—although it was currently being used to potentially power the xphern relay machine, should she manage to get it working—while Emilia had recently added someone named Clemence, who, while a local, also seemed to have a xphern that wasn’t affected by the outage.

Shaking her head, Meeho Kun’sai turned back to her work, explaining that there were so many international agreements about not spying on foreigners in place that Lüshan probably directed people who sold xpherns to give foreigners an unmodified xphern with a different xphern exchange protocol. “Maybe if they were clearly from a nation Lüshan doesn’t have good relations with, they’d want them given the modified version, but under the current regime, most of those people wouldn’t be allowed within Lüshan anyways. Some nations might see it as worthwhile to try and spy on foreigners, but a random man from Crishar? Lüshan and Crishar have nothing but a benign trading relationship.”

In other words, there was no reason to bother risking any sort of incident by giving the Crisharian man a modified xphern. In the background, Meeho Kun'sai had gone back to her attempts to get the machine working, the clinking of tools underlaying her babbles about how Lüshan’s government was so transparent about its spying through xpherns that most nations specifically forbade xpherns purchased in Lüshan from being used by their citizens.

“There isn’t much most can do to stop them when they’re outside their borders, of course, but if someone is found using a Lüshanian xphern for official business—especially if it's related to the government—or bringing one home with them, they can get in big trouble. It doesn’t matter if it’s a so-called normal version, the fact that it came from Lüshan is often seen as a threat that the person has become a spy—xpherns with those sorts of modifications are a good way to get information back to Lüshan’s government without explicitly giving them information, you know?”

“In most nations, the network itself can block specific xphern exchange protocols, so no xpherns with an exchange protocol from certain nations can be used on the network unless they are registered with the government. Most nations block Jinkaiden exchange protocols. A few block Lüshan’s. I read a document once about how some nations wanted to block Falrion’s, but they’re so secretive that they wouldn’t give anyone their current exchange protocols. It turned into this whole thing where a couple of nations wanted to block all unknown exchange protocols—and a few, like Jinkai, did block them all—and only let through approved exchange protocols, which is the opposite of the default accept all and block some method.”

“The problems is that this basically means that all government exchange protocols have to be registered as well? And a lot of the time, there are reasons not to keep such explicit records of government exchange protocols—you don’t want your spy network’s exchange protocols being noted down so officially, for instance; so, many government officials use unregistered xphern exchange protocols. As a result, if Jinkai’s list of approved exchange protocols is ever leaked, all their government protocol numbers would be publicized, and other nations could use the xphern transmission network to track any foreign agents down with ping messages to their xpherns. They could also cut their xpherns off from the network, then flag anyone trying to buy a new xphern or leave the nation without a working xphern registered to their name. Obviously, this creates a huge risk to national security, few nations ever utilize this block all, accept some method—Jinkai really only gets away with it because their nation is so tightly controlled, although I imagine that one day, a coup will lead to their lists being leaked, if only so the new leaders can outsource tracking down spies to other nations.”

Hurinren hummed. Within the Inner Palace alone, there were dozens of unregistered xphern exchange protocols. Many of the Inner Palace’s most powerful and influential people had their own individual exchange protocol, in order to limit the possibility that their exchange protocol would be blocked, or that a leak would cause issues for anyone but them. The majority of the ryohua had xpherns with a specific, shared exchange protocol—again, unregistered—as well.

Even with his relatively limited knowledge on the subject, Hurinren knew there were a few main reasons why unregistered exchange protocols were used in such situations. One of the main reasons was so, if a foreign government decided to block all registered Dionese exchange protocols, there was a way to keep some government assets from being affected. Unless the ryohua's registered exchange protocol were leaked, those who worked outside the nation would still be able to communicate, for instance.

On the other hand, if the ryohua decided to rebel against the Imperial Family, the Dionese government would have the ability to block their xpherns alone—assuming whoever was in charge of such a coup attempt hadn't had the sense to get everyone new xpherns with different exchange protocols beforehand. In theory, were that the case, if one of the communication officers who knew the ryohua’s exchange protocol was able to get to the xphern network to activate the block, their xpherns alone could be blocked. Alternatively, the entire network could be blocked within Dion—leaving everyone without use of their xphern—or they could choose to let only specific exchange protocols—such as those used by his lo’lu and fellow students—work.

As his knowledge on the subject was more limited to how such a system of blocking might affect some sort of coup or conflict, Hurinren had little idea of how it actually worked.

Meeho Kun'sai, however, knew exactly how it worked, and as Yujao had stopped glaring at her whenever she dared talk while working on her assembly, she happily babbled about the behind-the-scenes details of the xphern transmission network. As he wasn’t Emilia, Hurinren wasn’t sure he understood all of what the woman said, but from what he did understand, it seemed that while xphern exchange numbers were publicly known and easily given out, there was more to allowing xpherns to communicate with one another than that little bit of contact information alone. Effectively, within each xphern—or technically, within a changeable communication chip inside it—was a bit of encrypted information, where the exchange protocol was stored. As it was encrypted, it was difficult—if not outright impossible—to determine what exchange protocol it used, even if someone got their hands on the xphern or the communication chip.

“It starts out as an unencrypted exchange protocol, then, it’s encrypted as it’s put on the chip. After that, it’s registered with a public exchange number. The exchange number can change, but unless the chip is changed out, the exchange protocol remains the same. Every time the xphern does something, it sends out that bit of encrypted information as something like a confirmation of its identity,” Meeho Kun'sai explained, another piece of her metallic puzzle of ancient technology snapping together. “The encrypted information—because whatever message is being sent out is also encrypted—goes out and is transferred along the xphern transmission network. At each step, the network has to decide what to do with it. Most will pull it into their system, push the exchange protocol through a bit of software that will decrypt the exchange protocol in a way that isn’t accessible outside of the software, and decide if it's an exchange protocol that can use the network. If it is, the message continues along.”

“Some networks will add a little bit of information to the data as well—something to say it's already confirmed the information is fine to be sent along, so other parts of the same network, or even other networks that have similar exchange protocol restrictions in place, won’t have to waste resources checking it again. This is somewhat rare, as such data flags can be easily faked, but a few nations still utilize such flags—and there are a number of interesting stories about hacked flags being used in war and coups. Other networks will pass information on, no matter what the exchange protocol is, but I think only Nur’tha’s network does that at the moment?”

“So, no humans can see the exchange protocols of a message?” Yujao asked, curious because this was information neither of them had ever heard. Hurinren wasn’t sure it was the most relevant of information, but no information was ever completely useless.

The woman waved a hand and the delicate tool it held, muttering something about age-old agreements. “Part of the reason xphern messages are slower to send than a lot of more specific communication methods—like Baalphoria’s aethernet communication or Byshire’s lioking—is that xphern messages have a lot of information packed into them. I assume the messages Censors send can have extra obfuscation attached to them, but as a default, xphern messages pack a lot of information into them. Part of it is to make sure the message hasn’t been interfered with.”

“International paranoia?” Hurinren half asked, half commented. As xpherns were the most transnational of the Free Colonies’ methods of communication, it made sense that the people who had allowed the network to be deployed throughout the continent would be a little paranoid.

“Yes. As a result, a human could crack open a message to check the exchange protocol directly, but it would damage other information within the message. As far as I know, there would be no way to stop the message from pinging back to the sender that something bad had happened to it, simply because if the network stops sending the message along, a ping goes out telling the sender that, but only after the message has been deleted. The message is deleted, but it’s more of a spiral, leaving behind this little bit of information that says it was deleted. So, the message is gone and nothing else can be done to it. If someone tries to hack into a message, though, the message would also send out a distress signal for that. In order to avoid that, the hacker would need to remove the message from the network entirely, but then, the message would just vanish. Poof. No deleted signal. No arrived signal. Nothing—and xphern messages also send out a distress signal if someone tries to copy it, so that won’t work either.”

“So, unless someone actively publicizes their exchange protocols or has access to it through government records—”

“Or corporate. A few companies have their own unregistered and private exchange protocols,” the woman added. With a hum, she muttered something about how a few criminals organizations might have been able to secure their own exchange protocols as well, but that was only a rumour—apparently, crafting an exchange protocol required some specific tech that was regulated by an international committee of some sort.

“So, the chances of a random person figuring them out is low,” Yujao finished, eyes finally flickering away from his xphern, where he had been typing out all this information to Emilia, to Meeho Kun’sai, when she laughed.

“Not low, virtually impossible. From the rumours, the lomin’taiyung ri’kiar is good at hacking Censors, but there is no one like that for xpherns. There have been people who tried, but they have quickly been tracked down and killed by multilateral teams of law enforcement. While many nations would love to get their hands on the communications of other nations, everyone knows that once the xphern transmission networks are broken, they will be broken for everyone. Perhaps if there was another technology to take its place, our governments wouldn’t care as much. All that exists that could quickly and easily be deployed across the continent, however, is the aethernet, and no one wants Baalphoria finding more power within the Free Colonies, all because some government couldn’t keep their spying out of another nation’s xphern communications.”