Deep Six

by Andrew Singleton

Written On Sunday, March 27, 2011

Introduction

Before I start I'd like to explain something. This story was written roughly a year ago as a concept for Exosyphen Studios for a potential expansion to Hacker Evolution. Though that deal didn't go through the studio head and I have kept in touch and remain on good terms (the guy does an insane amount of traveling in addition to his business.) I enjoy his games and still have a Digital Hazard CD around here somewhere I think so wanted to finish the story past the proof of concept we were going to work off of.

OK I should back up a few steps. The 'Hacker' games Exosyphen creates are more or less an ode to movie-style hacking. You know. Fast fingertappy and instant results. Money transfers, info grabbed, boxes broken. You know, everything that real-world hacking isn't (which is more social engineering and dumpster diving really.) In a FPS centric market these games are a breath of fresh air and I encourage anyone and everyone interested in something a little off the beaten path to take a looksee at the demoware see if it's up your ally.

Great. Advert out of the way (that wasn't asked for. I just like the gamestyle. Just don't have a box that will run 'em at the moment.) What follows is completely unrealistic. It is more a love-letter to ye oldies like War Games, Hackers, and maybe a minor hint of some other stuff thrown in. I'm going to post a different part once a week. There's eight parts plus the coda. Bit longer than my usual rambly posts and story segments, but I don't feel like breaking the sections up more than I already am.

Shall we?

Part 1: Buddy List

I had lost contact with several of my friends a couple of months back. At first I had thought little of it. Sure all of us were friends, we all were in the same guild after all, but none of us had ever met so their absence only recently concerned me. The trouble is now that I’m concerned, what sort of action could I take? Contact police and proper authorities? They either gave me stock responses or hung up once it became clear I hadn’t actually met the people I was worried over. Were I a normal person this would have been the end of it.

Were I in possession of a normal machine I would have to prepare for weeks, probably dive through dumpsters for a critical memo or manual detailing security policy while reeking of used coffee grounds, rotted food, and the like. Thankfully I have not-so normal means and resources at hand. I hate calling it hacking. Too many crappy movies, games, and such have filtered through my head to make me feel comfortable calling myself that without feeling somewhat self-conscious and silly.

Then again what else would I call my chosen hobby? Electronic infiltration? Bah, that makes it sound like I’m the rarely seen sloven genius in some cop TV show. Electronic Intrusion comes closer to not feeling so over-used, but let’s not church up what’s going on. I do what I do for fun, the challenge of the puzzle, occasional mean spirited pranks, and sometimes because I’m bored. Now is different. Now I’m doing this because my attempts at going through the system the correct and legal way has failed.

Deep Six practically purred as it gave me status on the servers I’d told it to look for. I wasn’t sure that Chaotic Realms main page would give me anything directly. Having billing information in the same general area that literally thousands if not millions of people would be poking about is something that would make most IT departments scream. However pulling the curtain back to look at site traffic might give me a lead on where that server might be. Were it up to the underpaid and overworked employees tasked with making sure people such as myself couldn’t do what I was attempting, this billing server would be completely cut off from the Internet and then only accessible only by a select few in the company. However there has to be a way for information to get from those little fill in the blank forms to the actual accounting system otherwise Timmy or Sue would not be able to click here to keep their social lives in the toilet, heh, I talk like I’m somehow better. Risky to use my own information to run the trace off of, but I had to be able to follow an intentionally obscured trail and being able to minimize variables such as what the packets, when assembled, were supposed to represent, and when they were originally sent would help.

Were this an ordinary computer this task would be boring, lengthy, and risk either just my account status or more likely legal action against me. The last two were still true, but Deep Six preformed admirably and gave me information based on the user names I’d made it hunt for after finding a way in. Even though my system was fast and my task already done they would have logged my traffic, at least I had to operate under that assumption. Which meant I would have to track down those logs and expunge them Though, more likely than not, they had already sent a duplicate of that traffic to another server in case, like I was now doing, all account records and access logs had been destroyed.

Was I worried? Believe it or not no, not really. Fears of automated processing and flagging of questionable access to the contrary I was fairly sure that they would set flesh and blood security types to sifting through logs and wayward packets just before and after their primary accounting server went down. It would take time for them to connect the dots, time that I spent not only looking for the address information I had come for, but also to look for where the log information had been sent. I didn’t like what I saw but really the sort of security around the thing wasn’t unexpected. Actually, considering I was a paying customer I felt quite pleased with the lengths they had gone to. Sure, I’d managed to worm my way in, but the machine I was using wasn’t just any old machine. Point of fact, not even the guys that could rightfully brag about their home made systems that could run anything and everything thrown at ‘em could come close to touching Deep Six. Maybe a hand full of others had the kind of power I did, but if so they hadn’t cross paths with me just yet.

What to do? What to do? Even though this discussion is fairly self-incriminating I’m not going to take any of my friends, associates, or anyone else down with me. I’m possibly foolish and arrogant, but that would be Common of me to do to someone else. Still, while I was doing all this I’d checked my mail, no need to make Deep Six do fancy footwork here folks just an ordinary, albeit obscure, email account that belonged to me. Inside I found what I would best term as both a test and challenge. I’ve signed up for many things over the years. Some harmless learning, others spam that’s haunted me and my email server for years, and some of a potentially criminal sort.

While Deep Six is chewing on a few odds and ends I’m going to have to divert my narration to explain something that most people wouldn’t realize. Cracking into somebody else’s network is only illegal if you’re going in uninvited. Many different people offer courses, tools, and advice on how to find the back doors, exploits, and flaws in everything from a personal web-site hosted by a fly by night free service that peppers their users with trojan-laden ads, to supposedly unbreakable secured networks. I have been a friend and pupil to one of these people, who shall only be referred to here as Gibbon. Gibbon owns a server full of harmless, not so harmless, and down right illegal to distribute bits of software that, technically, is free for anyone to download. Of course in order to get to the nice juicy pieces of code, detailed write-ups on how to use known exploits, and other such stuff one has to get past Gibbon’s internal security. This can be anywhere from a near-cakewalk to an absolute nightmare depending on Gibbon’s mood, how well he knows us, and just how badly one of us needs help.

My in-box had several messages from friends, business contacts, and one from my mentor in the Dark Arts. That message, omitting several bits of news I would catch up on later, was that my situation was now known by friends in low places; and for the sake of helping a friend out today’s challenge, if I wanted to play, would be relatively simple. There was also a warning to sweep my system of any ‘potentially malicious code or software of an un-trustworthy nature’, which made me smile. Yes Mr. Gibbon I’ll purge my system of your toys after I’m done playing. It’d be my fat in the fire if I’m caught with them on my hard drive after all.

Sure brute force often works, but I also knew that this system was aggressive and would probably ‘tag’ me before I could work my way in. Thankfully there were clues in the email. Two of Gibbon’s most frequent ways of sending a password along was to either capitalize seemingly random words, or to use the first letter in the first word of every second, third, or fifth column. Not exactly hard to break crypto I know, but it was either that or try going through my cipher books and try his more complicated routines. He, and for the record I don’t know nor do I wish to know Gibbon’s gender, said I was going to be thrown a bone. Hush, I know what you’re about to say and both of us agreed that exchanging our private keys through the mail would be too risky for a public/private key system to be viable.

With a little guessing, a lot of luck, and ‘Six’s magic touch I was in. Standard practice here was to grab everything, burn the connect log, and bug out. This let me look at everything at my own pace without fear of some unaccounted for routine tripping and getting me in hot water. Sure Gibbon was a friend, but he believes quite firmly in the school of hard knocks. You screw up, you pay the penalty. No exceptions.

My muscles were sore, I was tired, and that generally wasn’t a good thing when one needed to do something that has zero forgiveness for mistakes. Still I wasn’t sure how long I would have before my snooping was found and pinned on me so onward and upward! Referencing my newly acquired material I saw that the backup server had, in addition to a port 80 connection, packet traffic on two other ports. I disregarded port 666 because of a warning about some of the newer security packages leaving that one open as a lure. Instead I commanded the Octopus program to latch onto port 23 and work it’s magic. Hey I didn’t name the thing. Don’t judge me! Besides it worked and I had something I could use.

PING!

I checked ‘Six and frowned. Someone was getting close to finding me. KILLTRACE. It wasn’t so much a command as a panic button that automatically wired a set amount of money to... People that could help take some of the heat off me. Even if what I do as a hobby is illegal, I try not thinking about who’s money I’m using to pay for these services. I didn’t like doing this because I was always on the edge of being broke, and usually to scare up the money needed to grease the gears and make people look somewhere else I needed to essentially rob banks. Other people might find it tempting, on these runs, to pull money out of random accounts and leave themselves financially secure. However even if one sets aside moral wrongness I’ve seen what happens to people who suddenly are found living beyond their legal means, and it’s generally not pretty.

Reluctant or not I needed to get a little more wiggle room so, courtesy of another bit of information I’d gathered from Gibbon’s info-dump, I found a nice seemingly random spot to pull from. Deep Six made short work of local security and I’d pulled just enough to cover my expenses, destroyed the connection log, and got out of there.

While this was happening I’d been alerted to a new piece of mail. You might think it strange I would sit and read seemingly random bits of mail while on a job, but sometimes they contained helpful bits of information, and worst case I could just ignore the contents till later.

Kate: Hey Skippy, look I know you’re not up for Saturday’s Raid, but I thought you and me could go in after Warlord D’chin. I need his ring for a quest turn in.

I couldn’t bother to reply, not right then. I had this box by the proverbial throat and I was going in for the kill. After a quick check I found my connection to their accounting server still valid, and after adding that bank server I felt I had enough wiggle room to finish this job. Before I toasted everything I decided to make copies. Blame the snoop in me I suppose. As it turns out that was a good thing since the server had seen some interesting traffic lately that pointed to a few encrypted files I’d have to get to Gibbon to see if there was anything he could make of any of it.

Run complete. I backed out of everything and deleted all the naughty things from my system. That took longer than your average delete/empty recycling bin because I’d have to zero out the data to keep any fragments from being retrieved in case anyone tried recovering everything off my drive. Sure it shortens a drive’s life expectancy and it was probably paranoia telling me to do it, but it’s either this or run the thing through a degaussing machine and install everything on a fresh drive. I suppose, if I were as clever as everyone makes me out to be, I’d have all the naughty things loaded in a ram drive that would clear out and leave zero traces after power down, but not only would I lose everything if there was a power failure, I’d also have less memory to dedicate to other concerns. However to each their own.

With housekeeping done I could turn my attention to Kate’s request. Naturally I’d love to give her a hand with D’chin. The bloody Elf gave me all sorts of grief, and the sword I got at the end of that quest line is still one of my primary weapons even after ten levels and swapping out pretty much everything else. My doings in Chaotic Realms have no real bearing on why you wanted to talk to me except perhaps to paint me as a hypocrite for looking down my nose at other players.

The person seated across from me shook her head and pushed a glass of something, water or coffee, in my direction. “Guy. Look. You’re not in trouble here, not from us anyway.” She reached over to squeeze one of my hands, and frowned when I pulled away from her attempt at contact. “I know you’re upset, but what you’re telling us is helping.”

“How Miko?” I felt bitter and hurt at her being here. Even if these people were, in fact, the friends I’d been guided to since all this started I felt more than a bit resentful at her not coming clean with me from the start. “How can me explaining what they already know help?”

She straightened and looked at me with storm grey eyes. “They have to know how you work, how your mind operates, and I mean more than just MRI’s or PET scans.” She tapped her temple with a finger, “They need to know how you think as well as how you brain is mapped.” My doubtful expression must have been plainly visible because she continued. “Look, I don’t know what exactly they’re working on either, but for it to work they need you and Deep Six.”

“Whatever,” I was tired and strung out. This wasn’t the first time someone had been to see me and if they wanted my cooperation, grudging or otherwise. They were going to have to do a fair bit more than show a friendly face and talk of needing me. “I have nothing further to say. Take me back to my room.”

Not the most diplomatic approach, but I figured they already had me. If they wanted me to willingly cooperate they would start feeding me a little more tangible information. If they wouldn’t, then why not just skip to the pliers, water-boarding, and or abject humiliation.

Part 2 Heat

After several days of digging through public and not so public records I’ve learned that even though I was given the brush-off family and police have also started to look for my friends. Unfortunately because of my earlier attempts to find out what happened and if anything had been heard I’m now a ‘person of interest’. While I would probably be safe in cooperating I doubt I’d be able to keep looking on my own. They’re only doing their jobs, but I’m going to do what I have to do.

No, really. I understand why the authorities would have to not only look at me as part of their case but also see my doings through cyber-space as a threat. I’m generally restrained and apologetic in what I do if there’s even a hint of lasting harm involved, but they can’t know that. Were I in their shoes I’d see even the smallest part of my activities as highly dangerous and criminal. Apologetic or not I’m still going to do what I do, so I suppose all that was wasted breath.

On the up side their work makes my life not boring and even if it was a hazard I had to deal with I’m sure that over the years they had stopped enough kiddie porn traffickers and other scum that I should give them a little slack. On the down side I now had to find who had files on me, try erasing any records that might hit too close to home, so that meant I’d have to go through the virtual back allies and crawlspaces a little sooner than I would have otherwise liked all without making too many enemies of people I otherwise respect. Pity that wouldn’t get rid of any hard copies floating around, but with as wired and dependent on electronic book keeping and filing I’m pretty sure I’d be alright for the time being.

SHIP; Hey I know you’ve got a few things on your plate but if you could spare a minute I need help finding the punks that keep taking passes at my server. New address is blog.deepweb.net.

Ship, buddy, you have no idea just how busy I am right now. After, I promise, but right now I just can’t. On reflection I suppose I should have wondered how he knew I was on since I wasn’t logged into anything and, to put mildly, Ship definitely isn’t a power-user. Maybe that should have set alarm bells off, but at the time I had more immediate concerns.

I had a few feelers put out, both program based and trusted eyes and ears that would hopefully give me a few places I could start with. No two programs or people were to send to the same email address. However I had each of those accounts, all highly temporary and designed to cycle out to someone else in a few days or a week, forward everything to my email server. Risky if anyone were able to look at the big picture, but the services that offer these temporary boxes were all above board and perfectly legitimate. All anyone looking in would see was me having select addresses forwarded from services designed to shield a person’s inbox against spam, which shouldn’t raise any flags on it’s own.

Addresses were all over the map. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Judging by what ‘Six was telling me after it scanned all of them was that my safest bet would be to start either on the South American addresses, or the Australian address. Everything else either needed hoop jumping, which would mean passing another of Gibbon’s tests to get tools for, or copied passwords from either of these less secured systems. Considering these different departments talk to each other on a simi-regular basis I might, repeat might, have an easier time sifting through their shared electronic paper trail.

I chose to work the South American systems first, not because they were less secure than the ones at home, but because if someone were able to piece my patterns together I’d rather like to keep them scratching their heads over just where I was from, or at least where I would spring up next. For once getting in was a straightforward matter and, after downloading the connection log and case file all that was left was erasing my tracks before seeing if any fresh leads opened up.

Unfortunately the ref file was encrypted, and since Gibbon had a ‘one job at a time’ rule about cracking files open I’d have to wait till he was done with the files from my last run I either had to wait, or find someone else. Maybe he’d finish soon, so I decided to wait before trying to fish for more help. In the meantime there was that Australian system to take care of.

Getting in there had been somewhat problematic, not because of any unexpected opposition or anything ‘Six wasn’t prepared for, because someone had buzzed my phone. Normally during a run I would have left the thing off, but between needing to keep a line open in case work needed me and an expected call from the vet I was forced to leave the thing on. The name on the ID was unfamiliar, Van Nuyman’s Animal Services, but I figured Peanut had gotten transferred there or something. “Hello Hello,” I did my best to keep my voice chipper and upbeat. Anyone on the other end might believe any tension to be a product of that rather than stress.

“Richard Guy Fawkes?” I didn’t recognize the voice. It sounded female, roughly my age, and the tone was more a statement than a question. “Do not hang up or disconnect your computer.” Alarm bells were ringing in my head. Fight down panic. If whoever this was knew what I was up to then I was already busted, and a mad dash to wipe everything wasn’t going to save my hide.

“I am apologizing now for mistake you are making,” My ‘little foreign man’ accent was something I’d practiced after watching Andy Kauffman a few too many times. I know, he’s before my time, but the guy was brilliant in an offbeat sort of way, but I hoped a long shot here might pay off. “You are must be having called wrong number. Please to be trying again. Tenk you veddy much.” I promptly hung up, hoping they’d go sniff somewhere else, or at the very least think someone might have cloned or stolen my phone.

Instead of possibly having to dance around with funny accents after a second call, I instead had to deal with a single bullet fired through a window I had left open to give the room a little fresh air. Only after I uncurled and got off the floor to take a tentative looked around did the phone ring. I stared first at the bullet hole that, had it been a few inches to the right, would have gone through my monitor and probably me. Then I stared at the phone a long moment before answering. “Alright,” I sounded somewhat less scarred stiff than I felt. “You have my attention.”

“Just keep doing what you’ve been doing.” Female voice sounded smug to me. “I won’t turn you in, not yet anyway. Finish what you’re doing, then we’ll talk.” Creepy, especially since I essentially had a gun to my head. Still, they said they wanted to talk after I finished up. Fear makes people act loopy, me included, and that was the last thing I needed right now. This time a message popped up on my screen. “Look. Don’t go getting the shakes on me, especially not now. I’m not going to turn you in and I’m definitely not going to kill you. I just wanted your attention. Think of me as backup if it will help you feel any better.”

Easy for her to say, She shot at me ‘just to get my attention’. On the flip side had a strange message just popped up from persons unknown telling me I’ve been made, at least so my thinking went about how this person had to reason things through, I probably would have bolted. Can’t say that I like it, but there’s a kind of logic there. I had a job to finish. Back to Australia. Now. Copy everything, delete logs, pull out to have a look-see. The addresses listed matched both the South American server and my informants. One file was an encrypted ref file and the other was a good old fashioned plain text file. Now that was naughty of them to upload key-logging software to people they were supposed to be cooperating with, but hey it gave me passwords for the Romanian and British servers I wasn’t going to complain too loudly.

“Very good.” The mystery lady laughed in my ear. “Now can you tell me what possible reason they had for planting spyware in a supposed ally’s computer?” I would have answered, but I still felt something of an itch between my shoulder blades where I imagined her gun was pointed. Why would police do something this blatantly illegal, especially considering the scandal that would blow up as a result, the widening mistrust between agencies. Pause. Rewind. Oh Crud. Police, not even the most rule-breaking water-boarding sort would do that in this or most any other country. Police don’t perform illegal taps, especially on each-other. That meant...

No. Really. What did that mean?

Four systems taken care of and another set of files for Gibbon to take a stab at. I should have felt happy that I’d managed to cover my tracks, but then again I shouldn’t have an armed lady that looked like something out of a special forces black ops outfit poking through my fridge. I wanted to throw up.

It could, if looked at rationally be pure happenstance all this was going on and they knew nothing of me or my recent dealings. ‘It’s just the paranoia screaming everyone’s out to get you.” Going where I didn’t belong, no matter how enjoyable and rewarding amongst my chosen peers, was a risky and stressful activity. Being a little paranoid was probably natural. Even so, several of my friends had recently gone missing, and I could find few connections other than myself to all of them. So feeling a little jumpy and frightened for myself and others would be natural. Wouldn’t it?

Part 3 Evasion

The rest of my time was spent wandering around here, wherever that was. They were somewhat unclear when I asked what this place had been, but my guess was a school. Lots of rooms, hallways, central cafeteria. Even run down the place didn’t have the look I would have envisioned for a prison, or office, or the like. There were areas they would not let me go, and they would not let me leave ‘for your own safety.” So outside of walks, chatting people up that might or might not know English, and telling my side of this sorted and tangled story was what passed for routine since I’d been brought here.

The man they’d sent in with me today was a new face, blue eyed, blonde, built like something out of a comic book. Add in the black uniform he wore, patches or no the thing looked military, and he could have been an extra a movie retelling a modernized version of the Third Reich. He had my supper with him, which was strange considering they usually let me eat when and where everyone else did. “Your story seems hard to believe.” He had an easy manner about him as he looked at me. Were this the nonexistent modern-day Nazi movie I thought he looked right for this man likely would have already resorted to beatings, or racial slurs. Twenty first century and I still had to grow up with people calling me a mutt, or half-breed, or worse. Not my fault that they couldn’t deal with dad marrying a black woman. Instead, even if he didn’t believe me, his overall expression and body posture seemed more concerned than assertive. Could be off on that assessment.

“That’s what I’ve been screaming ever since I got here.” It was something of a joke I used to try breaking the tension. “Yet no matter how impossible the past week has been reality refuses to cooperate so here I am.”

“Indeed.” Couldn’t place the accent. Definitely not German, might not know the language but I knew the accent. Russian? Nah. “We are sorry both for keeping you here and keeping you in the dark about things, but it is critical for us to know what brought you to our front door.”

Maybe he’s traveled, picked up a mishmash of accents. “Then why space it out a little at a time instead of getting it all at once? You have ‘Six’s records, and you could’ve lifted my prints and made something that would fool its biometrics if you don’t believe the log files I’d kept of the events.” That could explain it. Could also be that he’s faking for my benefit.

“Well,” My ‘host’ pushed the disposable plate of food my way. McDonald’s. Ick. “Let’s just say we need to make sure you’re mentally sound, and waiting gives you time to process everything.” Sound reasoning given I’m in an unfamiliar situation after experiencing a great number of strange and stressful events. “We haven’t touched your computer mostly because we want your trust and cooperation. There is, however, the matter of your computer refusing to work for us.”

I gave a snort and a laugh, “You already have my password so what’s the problem?” My host seemed to consider his words before speaking, that or he was trying to figure out why I wasn’t relying on sarcasm and barbs. My profile, so I was told, had that as one of my likelier reactions to stress and authority figures. “The one time we tried it let us into your desktop fine. However when we tried to use it to take a pass at one of our local systems it locked up on us, shut the program down, then wouldn’t let us back in. Most peculiar.” “Damndest thing really.” Strange, it never gave me any hassles about needing a secondary login for my net warrior tools. “I’d deny any knowledge of what you might have tripped, but I don’t know how believable I’d be. Give ‘Six back and I’ll see if there was some sort of time bomb, or if I’ve got the magic touch.” “Tomorrow.” He straightened, “Tonight I want you to tell me how you managed to get out of the country.”

Her name was Tanya and though she claimed to not be part of any formal agency she looked and moved like she was military. If her warning that people had been sent to either ‘secure or neutralize’ me was part of an attempt to get me to come along willingly rather than force her to use a black bag and zip-ties it was working quite effectively. Perhaps, no, it’s the height of foolishness to go with her, but somehow I get the impression that if I don’t come willingly then she’s going to be far less friendly. Heaven and Creation help me, I think I’ve finally lost my mind, but I’m going.

We stop after a few hours on the road and in spite of the soreness and cramps all through my thighs and lower back I’m quite grateful for the stop. I don’t see why people like motorcycles, but to each their own.. Still, I’d rather be in something with a little more protection from the wind and perhaps a bit of storage space. ‘Too risky to use your car’, that’s what she would tell me whenever I asked during that trip. Whatever.

“Feeling better?” I shook my head wearily. My mind was still numb and my cognitive processes seemed to have gone on strike. “Too bad ‘Skippy.” She tousled my hair when she brought up the name Kate always used. “You’re going to have to get us a pair of tickets to Europe.”

“Wait. What? Why there? Why not just keep a low profile here?” My mind wasn’t working and I wanted answers. To Tanya’s credit, on the assumption I was being kidnaped instead of rescued, she was polite and when situations allowed was more than willing to explain things to me.

I saw her doing something with her phone, one of those smart do-everything-at-once numbers with a thumb-board while we were stopped. We were at a rest area populated mostly by long-haul truckers, busses, and a scattering of cars here and there. No reason to think anyone was watching us and no need to be paranoid.

“Like it or not whenever you connect to the Internet that computer dials home.” She was... Casual in talking about Deep Six. I’d paid dearly for it, and if I was being pursued then I was up to my eyeballs in trouble. “You’ve done better than me and my friends expected at keeping a low profile considering your hobbies and habits, but we can’t protect you here anymore.” Then it was back to doing things with her phone.

On the way here I think I saw a sign saying we were in Utah, but I’d been dozing in and out of a kind of half-sleep that kept me clinging to Tanya, but tuned out all the little details like time of day or where we were. It’s not safe, and to take my mind off of visions of me turning into highway hamburger my mind instead turned to where we were headed. If we were being pressed as much as Tanya said we would need to get to the east coast then transfer over to something headed across the Atlantic.

All I’d managed to do before we left was call work to use the week of sick time I’d built up and leave a few messages explaining that I would be traveling, would keep in touch, and that everything was fine. My friends and especially my family demanded more out of me, but I’m a terrible liar and I didn’t want to tell them that I was probably a wanted man.

Yea the past few days have felt a bit over the top for me too. Unfortunately my future wasn’t looking any less convoluted, what with a trip to Europe to look forward to, and needing to both obtain funds for tickets, and identities to fake so we wouldn’t have pasty white guys in dark suits with little badges that said FBI or CIA waiting at our destination. I’ll need to contact Gibbon, possibly Miko and Sekmet as well to see if some kind of workaround, if not a proper fix on ‘Six’s tattletale habits. That was for later. Now though I had to take care of more physical concerns, food and a visit to the little boy’s room, before we tried getting a few more hours of riding in. Tonight, I told myself, I would make my run.

When we started off again my thoughts turned to my companion. Was she a savior or abductor? If she had my interests and welfare in mind why? I don’t know anything about her, and she’s denied working with any national government, terrorist cell, big business, or pretty much anyone that I could think of that would want the technology Deep Six represented. Fruitless speculation, and possibly destructive because I was already in her hands and unless she willingly let me go there was no real way to get away from her, but it was a big deal, so my mind chased it’s own tail until we stopped for the night.

It wasn’t the Ritz. In fact it wasn’t even Motel Six, but even if I felt the rooms cost more than they should there weren’t any problems checking in, and there was a net cafe a few blocks down. Tanya played escort while I went in to explain my problems, in carefully chosen language, and to get all the mundane online things out of the way that didn’t need the sort of muscle ‘Six could flex. That and, well, I wanted some fresh coffee in me. Thankfully nobody seemed to pay us any particular attention. So, all preliminaries that I could think of were done. I’d picked an airline and a flight I wanted on that would leave in a couple days.

It would be hard going, especially with in our post-9/11 world, but I was confident. At the very least Gibbon had, in a round about way, told me the file I’d pulled from my last run pointed to the police, contrary to my thoughts on the matter, taking the cases I’d brought to them very seriously, and that they were just as frustrated as me at lack of information to work with.

“Doesn’t it hurt to sit like that?” Tanya saw me in a full lotus position, the heel of each foot over the opposite leg’s knee, and practically curled around Deep Six’s keyboard.

At first I didn’t hear her. Some that I know say that they tune out everything when they’re working, and I while I didn’t think I was one of those I will admit that Tanya had to keep repeating herself just so I’d listen. “Oh no not really. Don’t want to be rude but could you keep quiet? Kick me if you need my attention, but unless it’s guys trying to break down the door let me be.” She nodded once and watched me from the other side of our room, and though I can’t be sure I think she was unpacking her rifle.

Mail check first. Sadly the only new things outside of news on the ref file were Gibbon’s usual challenge to me and a few notes apologizing for no useful information about the low-jack ‘Six had. I’d have to fix that soon if ‘they’, whoever or whatever was chasing me I suppose, were going to turn the heat up then I needed a way to keep them from seeing where I’ve been and, more importantly, where I’m at right now.

I’d need Gibbon’s help getting past airline security, then patching it up again after I was done. No need to leave holes for someone with an agenda and aspirations for martyrdom using any holes I leave behind. Dear Lord. This one was more of an exercise in annoyance and patience than something diabolical. I have a large library in my system, and even if I didn’t what he was asking me to pull from was in Project Gutenberg’s database. Bless them for preserving and converting public domain texts into plain text files just about any computer in the last twenty years on through anything likely ever to be built could read, because believe it or not I didn’t own Dracula. GLOBETROTTER. Good one Gibb. Let’s see. In addition to the old material he had a few things flagged as urgent as well as a few new exec files.

Alright. I’m armed. Now I need things to bounce off of before making the actual run. Back at my mail server I found Ship’s request. Now seemed like a good time to drop by. With luck I could use his machine, plus co-opt a little hardware from the group that tagged him last. I’d need to filch somebody’s retirement or college fund I’m sure, but usually if I looked hard enough I’d find someone stowing money where I could get it.

First stop was deepweb. Ordinarily ship’s security would have been enough, but the nasty thing about downloading random things in the wee hours of the morning was that they tended to have malware; porn’s especially bad about having bad things attached. According to ‘Six XXXDIALER_ was running on port 69. Ship you naughty naughty person, not to mention more than a bit stupid. Ah well, I’ll get rid of it after I’m done. For now the cruft has to stay where it is. Looking around gave me a defaced index file and a calling card.

LEGION

Think of 4chan. Now give it a somewhat militant mind-set, a general bend to taking on causes of many different stripes and take away most of the porn. I don’t know where these guys came from, but they’ve been giving people headaches when they’re not off leaking private, and often sensitive, documents to the world. Note: If you don’t know what 4chan is, count yourself as lucky. Take my word on it, ignorance really is bliss here. Google at your own risk because I take no responsibility if you decide to swear off the internet because your computer blew up or saw something that makes your brain try to kill you.

While I liked some of what a few people claiming to be part of that leaderless group were up to; by and large I felt no real sense of remorse in attacking their hardware. Hey. They were dumb enough to leave a return address. Of course it’s a dare, but then again they’ve never had to butt heads with me.

Holy Tesla. They went in Overkill on security. I could crack it, but I wasn’t so sure I should pick up on this one right now. Sure with the different boxes Ship was giving me access to I could either go head to head right now, or use those resources to do the actual job I’d come in on. Gee, let me think. Yes, it was tempting and yes it would be a challenge, but no I have more immediate problems. Ship got his connection log, which he could give to his ISP so even if it would take longer than if I went ahead and did it, he’d be set, and I now have resources I need. Strange that he’d need me to find a way in his own box, but one of the many things that had been done was change around permissions and passwords leaving Ship out in the cold where running his server was concerned. Hopefully this would change that.

Now then. Skyline’s servers waited. Getting in is relatively easy. Just thankful that they keep everything in one box, makes my job easier. Kill the connection logs, upload the bogus reservations Gibbon left on his server for me, and the most important part was finding where copies had been sent. I’m going to repeat myself here. I don’t like making all of this seem so easy, and if it weren’t for Deep Six I’m pretty sure this run would take months instead of hours; if it could even be done on conventional hardware. Maybe when all this blows over I’ll go into security. They can’t keep this kind of gear in the closet forever, and I’ll have an edge in real world experience.

Later, much later even if all goes well. For now I’m looking at an absolute nightmare. The records had been sent to a government server. Government. Homeland Security. Terrorist Detention Centers. Held Without Trial. I was terrified of what I was looking at, but the deed had already been started, and now I had to finish the job else I was hosed no matter what I did. One of Gibbon’s exploits might work for port 57, but something about the situation stank to me. I linked everything I could get my mitts on and hoped ‘Six could take care of the server’s encryption before they could get a bead on me.

PING!

It felt like hours waiting for a hole to open up. My heart thudded in my chest.

PING!

Panic started to seep in. Yes it would cost somebody their life savings but I made liberal use of the KILLTRACE panic button to try giving myself some breathing room. The server’s encryption was broken, but I now had five different ports to surf through and I was terrified that if I hit the wrong one I’d end up getting tagged. Oh well. I’ve come this far, too late to back out. Lock and load.

PING!

Accounting. No. Requisitions? Interesting, but not why I’m here. Case files? Fawkes, Richard G. Wait why do they have a file on me? Tick Tock. Time is running and the longer I’m connected the more likely they’re going to find me. Still, that was my name on their lists and I had to know why. Download. While that was downloading check the rest of the system. Monitoring. Bingo! Connection log DELETED. File still downloading.

Of course they would find out someone had been playing in their back yard. I’m sure that file/archive/ whatever was referenced, backed up, and would otherwise be missed with an outright deletion. Hell, even accessing it would have raised red flags. Of course I’d hopefully be gone from here before they figured out where I was connecting from. I couldn’t kill the connection while that file was downloading, so I decided to get cute.

By the time my file was downloaded I had told the system to upload several other files to different anonymous file servers before deleting the original files. These people and servers were chosen mostly at random, or because everyone and their mother used them to stow warez files for distribution. None of these people, so far as I’m concerned, would deserve any sort of government nosing about my actions might cause. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

PING!

Stop pinging at me! I heard noise somewhere in the room. Tanya? I briefly uncurled and looked around. Tanya was yelling at me to shut up. Oh, right. Nobody trying to batter the door down. Curl, refocus on my primary task. Download complete.

Now I had to purge any records of me being there. Spring their trap by sticking my hand in Receiving. I got a warning on my screen about a trace ‘Six spotted. Delete everything from here, back out. Go back to Skyline’s servers and patch the holes I’d punched in their security. Normally I don’t bother, because going back to the scene of the crime is always a bad idea, but like I said. I didn’t like the idea of people using those holes for Really Bad Things.

DISCONNECT

I took a deep breath as my body uncurled and I closed ‘Six the rest of the way down. “We have our tickets. I think I got connection log scrubbed, and I found a file with my name on it in the government server I tapped. I’m going to bed now.” Tanya blinked at my abrupt behavior but said nothing else to me, at least not that I could hear. My job was done, we had a flight to catch in a couple days. I’m going to try getting some sleep and don’t want to be woke up unless there were cops at the door, or grenades being tossed in.

“Please don’t tell me you wanted to try that.” I looked hopefully to the man across the table. “I’m pretty sure I wasn’t found out, mostly because there didn’t seem to be any dark suits or handcuffs waiting for either of us. “I’m also pretty sure I’d closed the holes I’d opened in both servers, but even if I did I Do Not want people attempting that. Even if they could pull it off and their intentions weren’t agenda motivated what’s to say they won’t end up getting sloppy?”

The man shrugged, “You seem to believe our interests are connected with demands, governments, or cultural wars. Our struggle started, like yours, when friends went missing. When this ends we will in all likelihood crumble back into our individual components.”

I listened calmly as he talked, waiting for more. Maybe I’d finally figure out a thing or three here. Instead he got up and walked away. Maybe he would make my concerns known to whatever passed for the people in charge here. I was terrified they wanted to make a run against America’s government. Sure it was flawed, corrupt, and I hadn’t any real faith in politics anymore, but that doesn’t mean I wanted to see it all go up in smoke.

Part 4 Non-persons

I arrived in London with no passport, unable to use my accounts for fear that even pulling cash for later use would tip off my location, and still not quite sure if I was being kidnapped or rescued. Fear crept into my system when Tanya drove me into the countryside. Her demeanor had changed from friendly and willing to talk to distant and silent.

Her silence kept my mouth shut, because I had no idea what was going on, and was afraid I’d stepped in it big time. I didn’t notice details like how well furnished our supposed safe-house was, or that it had not one, but several broadband connections, and that I wasn’t the only refugee/abductee there. My mind, by that point, was convinced I had been kidnapped and all this was just part of the window dressing to keep me quiet before who-knows-what happened.

Miko looked at me oddly, “You’re telling us stuff we already know.”

“Well look at it this way.” I gave her a level look in return. They kept insisting they were almost ready, just a little longer. Well It’s been a week since I’ve left America, and five of those days had been spent here. I was getting tired and snippy, and if this was all some sort of game. Plus I’d burned through my vacation time at work, and I wasn’t looking forward to having to hunt for a new job when this was over. “You get to see how scared out of my mind before all of this went downhill, as opposed to how much I distrust you now that I’m at the bottom of that hill and see no good way out.” “Fine. Lay it on me.”

Let me elaborate on this portion of my travels since you just don’t seem to understand the absolute terror I’d worked myself into. I hadn’t simply left home or the state. I had left the country following a militant seeming woman that claimed it was for my own protection. I was in a strange land with little money, no knowledge of local workings, and no support system at hand. Yes I was allowed to call home, assure everyone I was fine, but either Tanya or somebody else was always within earshot, so I didn’t want to voice my suspicions out loud lest they be proven true.

You know about the house I was taken to don’t you? The one that had eight or a dozen other people milling about. If it weren’t for the fact I was sinking into my own fears I would have actually liked the place. Everyone there was somehow, like myself, a wayward sort; be it someone from the ‘blogosphere’ that had twigged some sort of nerve that caused guys in black uniforms and big guns to bust their door in, hackers and other ner-do-wells such as myself, or just those that were looking for a safe shelter from the storm all this was causing. That hadn’t eased my worry, but it did comfort me that for the moment I wasn’t alone.

Introductions were made; each of us giving our favored on-line handles rather than birth names. It felt somewhat strange doing this in meat-space, but nowhere near as strange as it might have for a newbie. You were there Miko, so was Sekmet and Bast. You know, I always thought those two would be socially inept thirteen year-olds that could have graduated college and they turned out to both be fully tenured university professors somewhere in their mid forties. There were others, some I had heard whispers of, and others I’d bumped into here and there. None of them seemed to really notice me, after all why should anyone? I’ve kept mostly to myself, try not to brag too much about my targets, and unlike Mikhail I withdraw from crowds rather than try being the center of attention.

All of us, so I thought at the time, were brought here for similar reasons, and I suppose you would tell me that assumption is correct. We asked ourselves, and each-other what those reasons were. It didn’t take long for me to rule out everyone having a quantum computer, because when I brought up the idea it was quickly dismissed. I wonder how many thought I was out of my gourd when I told them about Deep Six. A quick demonstration was in order to bring them around. Just glad everyone had laptops on them so they could play along.

Bast and a couple others leaned over me while I set myself up. I told everyone to buzz off because they were in my space, and even if I generally tune out what’s going on around me when I’m getting down to business I never have and likely never will put up with people getting in my face while I’m trying to work my mojo. Reluctantly most took a few steps back, but you, Miko, you kept close. Though from my perspective since you had gotten outside arm’s reach, you didn’t existent. So as far as I was concerned. I simply couldn’t spare the attention for any of you because of my demonstration run.

“Break into Haven!” The first request came from someone dressed in a mix of late nineteenth century fashion and though it looked good the effect was spoiled by the rumpled slept in nature of the man himself.

Haven. He gave me the full address. My first trick was rattling off every security feature the site was running, length of password, ports open, and likeliest services running on those ports. I know, you were there, but I still felt more than a bit satisfied at the reaction, especially when I tore the site to ribbons. Let everyone gather closer so they could look at the screen, go back to confirm the site’s status via their own boxes just to make sure I wasn’t running some kind of smoke and mirrors trick.

Next request was a rival’s blog. Boring. I broke in just to prove I could, then checked the local network to try finding the requestee’s box. Get more creative sister. I’m not your personal attack dog, so your box has now become a paperweight. Have fun reinstalling everything after you get a new drive.

Miko broke my narrative with her laughter, “I remember, that’s when you gave your ‘poor wittle piwate.’ tirade.” After a moment or two of thought she shook her head. “No, that came after Dos asked you to break into that network so he could clone all their movies.”

My eyes rolled at the thought of the guy. Fat, unkempt even when compared the fact everyone else had been several days without a bath. “Please, don’t remind me. Kid needs to get out, run a few miles, or something. S’pathetic.” Sure, I had my own complaints about how the copyright system in America works, but giving it the middle finger isn’t going to fix anything, at least not by itself.

There were other requests in those first hours. Some I’d gladly stepped up to. Others, mostly ones representing personal vendetta or acts entirely too showy, I refused. Seriously. Yes I’d like to knock the RIAA down about eight or twelve pegs, but defacing their servers are neither a challenge, nor would it help cause a positive shift in how the system works. Miko and I talked of my time in that house for what felt like hours. That run let me forget my troubles for a little while and let me feel at peace, even when I was practically screaming at another of the attendee’s about why I wouldn’t hop to when they wanted me to break into something for them.

After that we had to sleep. Girls in one room, boys split amongst two others, and there were four of your people as guards over all of us. It wasn’t a comfortable weekend, but up until we had been split up it was almost as if it could have been preparations for a con, or just an impromptu gathering to talk shop and swap dares. Even though I have my reservations about you and your people Miko, I’m glad you kept Bast and Sekmet together.

“It was never our intent to split them up.” Miko paused to look at her phone. “Story time over Skippy. They’re giving your computer back.” You have no idea whatsoever how happy that makes me.

Part 5 Verification

Deep Six looked no worse for our time apart. The green, gold, and white pinstripe art across its black case was just as I had left it. In fact it looked a little cleaner than when I’d seen it last. “You guys do anything after Net Warrior crashed?” Everyone shook their heads. All they did after was clean it inside and out, and ran disk utilities after that. Honest.

They stepped wide of me when I went to look ‘Six over. I’d like to think I did a good job keeping it, hardware and software, clean but judging by the fact I noticed drastic a difference in appearance I must have overestimated my abilities on at least the first count. On the software front I noticed that someone had rearranged my desktop and changed half my settings around, which was pretty Common of them to do to someone else’s system.

Messing with internals for better performance I could understand, but how the interface works should never be messed with unless you have permission. Couldn’t tell these people off on poor manners though because I had more pressing concerns. Net Warrior refused to connect even though I had a stable connection and my browsers all pulled up anything I tossed their way After emailing my general situation to Gibbon using roundabout language I closed down, thanked them for taking care of my computer and adding their network’s login and security information in so I could work where I pleased.

Normal methods for breaking into a given system involves a more subtle approach than I’ve described in this account. As I said earlier it is more often a case of sifting through garbage than sitting at a console. Other times it takes social engineering tactics to get someone to give me a piece of needed information, or to install something that will give me a foot in the door to get the rest of the way in. Compare that meticulous and often lengthy approach to wielding Deep Six like Thor’s Hammer Mjöllnir.

Miko looked at me and tried sounding firm, but reassuring. “Even if Gibbon can’t get back with you we have to go forward.”

I my train of thought, which had been stuck trying to find a joke that fit the punchline ‘...and that’s why you never divide by zero’ derailed. That caused me to stare over at her with what I guess was a look of dumb confusion, “Wait, what do you need me for if ‘Six can’t be fixed? Come to think of it, what did you need us for in the first place?”

“Well, if you can’t get Net Warrior back we can still use you for the big coordinated run we want to make.” Miko sat beside me as I checked on the more mundane aspects of my on-line life. I updated my Social sites, and was only half-listening because I was in the middle of a VoIP call home to check on things, let them know I was alright.

Turned out between the time I’d check in last and now been attempts to get me saddled with some sort of hit and run. My car was involved, sure, but my family had been quick to point out that not only had I not been driving it at the time, I wasn’t anywhere in the country. There had been some fumbling around where records were concerned.

Miko assured me they would take care of the gaps and ‘people are watching your family.’ Still, if ‘they’, whoever that might be, wanted me bad enough wouldn’t they make threatening gestures over my friends and especially family?

“Of course, why do you think your associates from Chaotic Realms went missing?” To cover for my reaction I busied myself trying to puzzle my way through Gibbon’s latest test. Without Net Warrior brute forcing my way in was a no-go, but finesse was an option. While trying to puzzle through the clues that had been left for me I wondered why Gibbon did what he did. He was smart, that much was obvious, and he had a good grasp of security. He must have seen me make a pass at his box earlier because a conversation window opened.

Hey Hey. Look who’s back!

Yea, England’s nice. Got to see Sekmet and Bast before my box blew up. Got any good news on that front?

Good news is I have that backup you asked after. Bad news is, as you know, things change and it could’ve gotten corrupt between then and now. I think it’s fine, but it’s been awhile since I’d done an integrity check.

Hit Me. I’ll take my chances. By the by I like the latest puzzle you dropped in my lap. Good distraction from the weather.

DOWNLOAD INITIATED

Glad to hear. You seem to be the only one that likes playing ball. Had three others wash out since I got in touch with you last.

So sorry to hear that. All it really takes is enough patience to Google around for a walk-through, and enough brain-cells firing at the same time to connect the dots.

You know as well as I do that the puzzles I pick can go anywhere between child’s play, and ‘Absolute Bastard’. I think the ones I’ve been tossing out for the past week are definite ‘Bastard’ material. You?

Won’t argue too much on that. I’m just glad I left a backup with you. Anything you want to do between now and when it finishes?

You still have Gless installed?

Sure. You want Magic or Technology?

Magic.

Figures. Be there shortly. Going to see if Miko or any of her friends wants to show up.

Glest was a completely open source strategy game that has a stock package centered around Magic Vs. Technology in something akin to Tower Defense. Mods have been made depicting everything from ancient Rome to futuristic cyber-dragons and robotic warriors. I wasn’t terribly good, but then again neither was Gibbon and it gave us a chance to goof off awhile.

I saw Miko join as well as a few others. This account won’t go into detail of the game, or the conversations we had there, for if you are reading this than I am sure you are more interested in if Deep Six got fixed or not. The game allowed Gibb and I to speak more or less candidly with my hosts. Gibb openly stated he was not part of their organization, but was not opposed to helping if needed. They understood, and appreciated his honesty. Gibb also said something about being worried about what they had in mind for me, though he put it in far coarser language. Understandable, they had said, and they would do all they could to keep me safe. Gibb and I ended up getting steam rolled in spite of our alliance against Miko and her companions, but the tension eased somewhat.

DOWNLOAD COMPLETE

The download finished about halfway through our third match and so I apologized for leaving Gibb to fend for himself before signing off. Restoring from a flashed image was straightforward, but time consuming. Miko spared me a sympathetic look from where she was perched; she was probably sending hordes of clockwork mecha to stomp Gibb’s summoners in at that moment. I smiled to her and babysat the restoration process. Sure I could have walked away, for there really wasn’t anything I could do to affect the outcome once it had started, but I’m one of those that just can’t leave an install unattended.

After a reboot I saw the desktop I had two months back; A game engine rendered version of a cyberpunk cityscape. The engine was almost a decade old now, but the image still looked stunning to me. The artist, whoever it had been, managed to fit in an amazing amount of detail into a single still image. Unfortunately that image also meant that I had to re-create my list of short-cuts that had been worked out since then. No real worries, it was just time consuming. While I did this my mind drifted.

Did they want something from me? Of course. Did that make them bad people? Meh. Not really. Shifty and close mouthed, but not necessarily bad. I needed to learn more of my situation and that of these people.

There is only one way for me to find out, one way or another, if I’ve been abducted or rescued, without Net Warrior I would have needed to go back to traditional methods. Even backed by the sort of power Deep Six had I had gotten spoiled, and didn’t want to have to go back if I could help it. Even if Net Warrior was repaired I’d have to go head to head against a group that rightfully could claim cyber-space as home territory. Still. I needed answers, and if hacking Legion was the best way to get them then so be it.

“Guy what’re you doing?” I smiled at her inability to see what I was up to. Gibbon’s daily challenge had been about a thirty on the Bastard Meter, but the tools he had gave me what I needed to have my way with the local network.

Euphoria hit as Deep Six hammered its way into first this box, then that. All of it was from the local network, so Legion would know where to look, in general. They just wouldn’t be able to tell where I was in that network when everything was linked together like this. At least I hoped that was going to be the end result. To take out some added insurance I got in touch with several ... Friends... And rented about an hour on their networks. I hated dealing with people that willfully made Joe and Jane user’s home computers into spam-slinging zombies, but in this I would need every advantage.

“Don’t worry,” My efforts might give me a little breathing space, but if anyone here suspected no amount of box bouncing would keep me from being up to my eyeballs in trouble. “Just stretching ‘Six’s legs a little. Any special requests?”

While Miko rattled off a few simi-obscure spots I worked on putting feelers out for what looked to be Legion’s largest server. WHYPERLINK "http://www.exosyphen.com/" earemany.net. Heh... I know I’ve said before they had to have the place up as a dare. I also know that whatever I find could be planted just to get me to be cooperative, but somehow I just couldn’t see a leaderless organization of hundreds, if not thousands, of people keeping a consistent set of lies together just to keep me in the dark.

First one port opened to me, then another, and finally I found things that looked interesting and relevant to what I wanted. Logs were being downloaded for later review. Company names were tossed about, as were documents about quantum processing. My stay wasn’t long, given I was being watched and could be sniffed out any time if I hadn’t already been. However it would give me information to look on later.

Time to back out, try filling the holes I’d made, and hope that either nobody noticed, or took my curiosity to mean I might be put in a helpful mood if I’m allowed to dig on my own. Miko saw me close down and offered to eat with me that evening. I told her I would love to, which was true, and that I needed her to tell me a few things, which was most definitely true.

“You could have just asked.” They let me keep ‘Six even after they’d left a message on my box telling me they knew I was behind the ‘attack’ earlier that day. I should be grateful they didn’t take it personally, but still, I hoped I had gotten in and out without anyone realizing what I’d done.

As Miko talks my mind drifts. This manuscript, a thing that had not been written – yet was already forming in my mind, has done those closest to me a disservice. My friends, four of them, had been missing by this point for two months. I am repeatedly assured that in spite of documented history showing that without an explicit ransom note kidnap victims are typically killed early. They have not been mentioned by name, and though I have total control over how the story is told, I dare not go back and insert their names before now.

They all have names. They had known me for the past five years. In one way or another each had been valuable in both my working and social lives. Yet here I am setting down the events to one of, if not the, most pivotal point in my life and I have not mentioned any of them as more than an out of sight and almost token reason for me to have risked imprisonment, fines, and being barred from any computer, networked or not, for no less than a decade. I can assure you, they are worth risking that sort of punishment.

I looked at Miko with one of those looks that my Father hated, claiming that it looked like I was both looking down and through someone. Unlike other times I know I am giving her this look, and I find that I do not quite care how upsetting it must be. “You have me chained up in here, for my own protection. I have been treated well, yet I have been told little of why I am kept here and what part I am to play that is supposed to be vital.”

Miko waited for me to get to the point, obviously annoyed, but willing to wait till I had finished before cutting me down to size.

“A man blind to his part in the greater whole, or even the details to his own small portion of the task cannot do anything other than fail.” My voice was calm, or at least I remember it being calm at the time. For all I know I was screaming at the top of my lungs. “My attempts at getting your attention so that we could speak had, so far, been ignored. You will either give me answers, let me go, or stop with this charade and lock me away. Because my movements are restricted and I am not told why I do not care which of these three options you pick, but this half-state I am currently in stops Now.”

Miko seemed to consider what I had to say, my posture and tone, as well as other factors I could only guess at. She then spoke to me. This group that they were shielding me against believed that as a species we could not survive many more leaps in technology and that the breaks had to be placed on progress. When asked how long they thought their proposed solution would last their only reply was ‘as long as it takes.’

In some ways I could find myself agreeing with them. Give people a chance to catch up and adapt before moving on. It was somehow seductive. On the other hand what gives them or anyone the right to tell others that they cannot work on ways of improving the lives of everyone around them, or find a niche to fill in the global market. We might be able to adapt to a stagnant world, but what sorts of innovations, what cures would be missed, what breakthroughs in energy sciences would be overlooked or deemed too far outside of what was then taken as normal?

Quantum computing was only the latest thing that this group had hoped to oppose. My friends had all been taken to get at me. There was no note because they had thought that such a selective disappearance would grab my attention. I didn’t buy it, so I had to look for myself.

Each side knew roughly what the other was capable of, and through a combination of flexibility, money, or knowledge each had remained in a stalemate situation. Legion was able to hold its own through numbers, anonymity, and guerrilla tactics. This other group, whom my associates have dubbed Red Queen, also has numbers and is savvy to the general workings of the Internet, but they rely more on use of the law and fear of punishment than Legion does. The humor in this given name is not lost on me, but unfortunately the joke wears thin almost as it forms.

My part in this struggle is straightforward and easy to guess. Given that my system can run rings around anything Red Queen has built defenses to protect against. I am to find documents and other reports that they have of suppressed technologies, anything incriminating against these people as a group, and locations of anyone they are holding prisoner against anyone’s good will. It is a general consensus that if possible I should find something that can be used to tie enough of Red Queen’s leadership together for RECO to take effect.

I cannot say exactly what it means, save that those laws were created to prosecute organized crime, so that a Capo, or Don, or whoever couldn’t wring his hands and go ‘I don’t know this guy. He killed and extorted, not me.’ Not if enough was found to tie the two together. I was no criminal attorney, but we had a few of those. Outside of the fact that anything gathered would be obtained illegally it was generally thought I would find enough to hang these people in court. Even if legally they weren’t touched, the court of public opinion is a harsh body, and sometimes their judgments are harder to overturn than any laws written in dusty tomes.

Part 6 Opening Shots

“My new friends tell me that Legion is in the middle of a war with itself, which is actually expected considering how emotional and attached people get to their pet causes and perspectives.” I kept my voice calm when I talked to mom. We had been close, and I would not lie to her as I explained the situation I had gotten myself into. Sure telling her legion was tearing itself apart instead of them squaring off a multi-national secret organization was a bit of a fib, but both groups had people in both camps, so it wasn’t too much a stretch and it made explaining things simpler.

“Are you sure you don’t want me or your father pulling some strings?” I knew my parents had some connections. How else had John managed to get the sort of stuff that came in and out of his hands?

I shook my head at the camera attached to ‘Six. “Mom I don’t know how high up these people are, so if you called for help, that might be a tip-off for-”

“-The wrong sort of people.” Her facial expression looked somewhat concerned, but it had ever since I called to give my parents the full story, now that I had it myself. “How bout journalists? You’ll want whatever you find spread around as fast as possible, and the more credible the press the better right?” That made sense, so I agreed and told her I would get a copy of everything I found in her hands as soon as possible. That left the final question. “Why you? By everything you’ve told me and I’ve seen from the news these people you’re with are more experienced than you.”

“’Six can do what no other machine ‘our’ side has, and I have the most experience using it.” I couldn’t tell if mom was letting me go out of spite, out of recognition that I was my own person, or out of recognition that this was something I had to do because nobody else was around that could. “So once more into the breach I go.”

“Call me.”

“I will Mom.” Close connection. Take a few deep breaths. This was one of those moments in my life that I felt like everything had gone loopy, but I was too far committed to do anything other than what I had prepared for.

Miko watched me prepare. On other runs I had considered important I had a ritual I preformed. This was one such run, and though there was no scientific evidence in any of it the act itself it’s just one of those things. Eyes closed. Touch the midpoints on each side of ‘Six’s case while praying to the spirits that made up the machine. This wasn’t based on anything really outside of maybe a half-hearted attempt to play at Shintoism, or is it Shamanism? Beats me. Once I had touched the case I had touched three points on my body; Head, Heart, Sternum. Clap twice, close hands. Inhale. Bring both hands, thumbs folded in, to my lips. Exhale. Open Eyes. I was ready.

My machine booted up. My comrades had given me a set of addresses that different paper trails had led to. Each site was backed by the latest in security services and further protected by companies who made it their business to keep their clients safe.

SCAN

My screen lit up like a Christmas tree. Each site was connected to all others, and going off what the info-window was giving me if I popped one the rest would call home before shutting down.

It got worse. Several of the services it looked like they were running could only be run from within that home network or, as with the sledgehammer method I’d been using, they would all shut down then likely reboot with different security settings.

Clever if you’re paranoid. Mind bindingly crappy if you wanted your site to maintain any sort of up time. I watched traffic in and out of these sites for a time. I speak of that like it’s easy to do, but considering I had nothing on the boxes themselves and couldn’t connect directly I had to use other methods to get a sense of how the packets moved.

“Raj, make a pass. I want to see how they react.” Rajorin. No idea what the name meant, if anything, but he was on hand and I was told anyone watching me would have working knowledge.

“Alright. Making a pass... Now.”

From my vantage point I saw Raj’s probe. Like the probes ‘Six sent out to check security and ports the target system ignored it, or at least it looked like it had. When it started probing deeper the target box disappeared.

I heard Raj making concerned noises and ran over to see what was going on. Seemed that the box made a pass of it’s own at anything that went deeper than a surface lookieloo. Raj was fuming because not only was his box crashing, but when he tried to reboot the thing had eaten through his windows partition. I was curious that it hadn’t bothered touching either the boot record, or the Linux partitions.

When Raj left Miko raised an eyebrow. “So they just assume anyone making a run at them is going to use windows? Why not have something that’ll just screw with your boot record?”

I shrugged. There were viruses written for the different Unix derivatives, but I had seen none ‘in the wild’. Still, if they were able to trace back and run commands on anyone’s box that even briefly connected, especially someone who actually bothered keeping security running and up to date, I wouldn’t put it past them to figure out how to make Linux explode, or at the very least force a complete system reinstall. Crude and inelegant if managed, but it would be effective assuming that whatever was being downloaded wasn’t immediately being reuploaded somewhere else. I told Miko to get everyone on site to start making calls.

A dozen different people were gathered in the room with me. Dozens, if not hundreds waited across the world. It had taken two days since that initial pass to get people on the same page and ready. When we started all they needed to do was sacrifice their boxes tripping those traceback routines I’d seen pulled on Raj’s rig. There was much grumbling over this. What would it accomplish to send wave after wave with the express purpose of letting themselves get nuked?

I needed them to be my foot in the door so when I started the other servers couldn’t just fade out. If they were continually going after everyone else they had to maintain a connection, which meant they couldn’t just shut down. Of course it could be that their security had ‘hide’ being more important than ‘retaliate.’ If so then this gathering wouldn’t be wasted, for it would be an educational experience. Red Queen would probably still believe it’s security uncompromised and uncompromisable. If it worked though... Well I wanted there to be more people on hand than I would need since it would be better than not having enough live bodies to hold the door open.

‘What about police? They trace us back they have enough to get warrens?’ Nobody said it in exactly that way, but that was the question on most of their minds. The only reply I could give was that if I could get through I could get their records and make it look like what they’d suffered was a spambot triggered attack. That’s oversimplifying things to rather gross degrees, but what am I supposed to say?

It was risky and stupid and in hindsight it shouldn’t have worked. Still. We had already burnt enough time. While I’d been sitting pretty friends mine as well as others, and allies were separated from family and home. I said as much, which shut everyone up. What followed was hectic and insane. This is the only way I can come close to portraying it without dozen’s of session logs, timestamps, and a whole load of stuff maybe five people would care about. What follows is very loose, fast and intentionally hectic. Deal With It.

CONNECT

PING! Mother of- WHAT?! “I’ve got it man.” Hello. “What about using-” Go! “I’m out!”

I’m still up. You aren’t supposed to be here. “I’m blocked” INCOMMING! “Doesn’t matter?” He’s in! Keep going guys!” Why are you here? Never- BOTTLENECK -give up! KILLTRACE “Guys keep going! He’s got the lists!” PATHFINDER BAAAANZAAAAIIIIIII!!!!

What do you want? “Frak I’ve been made!” “This is madness.”

I want to talk. “Second box cracked!” It’s working! “Don’t let us down!” PING! “Come. Let’s dance!” Who are you? “Files uploading now!” FFFFFUUUUU!

I’ve been infected!

“Holy mother what was that?” They say you’re-

“Half our network’s toast.” -a bad man. WOOO! RUN We have only just begun to fight! Are you a bad man?

You’re looking for someone. PING! Why won’t you talk to me? KILLTRACE

“Skippy get out of there!” Just talk, nothing else. “Skippy!”

VOODOO DOLL Almost done Miko. Did we do it? “Never seen this kind of security.” Got it!

Please?

DISCONNECT

I had the lists. Mom worked her magic. Don’t know how, but she managed to take what I’d given her and get everyone out. I don’t believe it worked. My friends, Their friends, and lots of other people had been freed. It worked. My God Almighty it Worked.

Through all the noise, confusion, and adrenaline I saw something out there. Probably a lonely sysadmin, but shades of AI and Ghosts in the Machine tickled at the back of my mind as I lay in bed that night while everyone else was high-fiving and celebrating. Only in movies and badly written stories were wars won in a single engagement. We had the intelligence we came for and showed them that their best wasn’t good enough. I’m sure others were also thinking along these lines. I’m not the smartest guy in the room, just the one with the biggest virtual guns.

Later I tried figuring out how I would fare in a head to head ‘fight’ against someone else with a quantum processor in case Red Queen got a clue and got one of ‘Six’s sibling machines and decided to level the playing field. Maybe that voice I ‘heard’ in the dark and confusion of that run was another such as myself. If so who’s side were they on? I couldn’t exactly risk dismissing it as nothing, but worry would get me nowhere.

So, with that on my mind I pulled Deep Six out and browsed the web awhile. If whoever it was had been able to talk to me they knew my address. Granted the thing shifted enough so that it wouldn’t have done much good, but, I don’t know. Actually I suppose I do, but I can’t put it into words that make sense to anyone not fascinated by how the Internet is structured and addresses handed out.

I was in the middle of working on my mailbox when it happened. Black window with green text opened on top of what I was doing.

I remember you from before. You did something they thought was impossible.

My blood turned to ice in that instant. Rational thought failed me.

KILLTRACE

Show all incoming traffic. She’s got to be bouncing through to get here. I can’t get a consistent return path. Address keeps changing.

Sorry buddy. I won’t let you get away.

LOAD PROGRAM: Manticore

Gotta be hell on her signal. Even if she’s wielding one of ‘Six’s siblings that might give me enough advantage for Manticore to work.

Talk Then.

In a bit.

PROGRAM Manticore Halted.

Clever. You write that yourself?

No.

UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS DETECTED.

Halt Process. Halt! I’m running a user account with no root level privileges and can only run system commands either by SUDO through terminal, which requires my root password, or logging out then logging back in under root account. My password is generally something lengthy and difficult to guess because it uses a garble of letters, symbols, and text. Even so she managed to wrinkle in and delete a good portion of my system. Had I either rebooted, or been forced to restart I’m pretty sure I’d have been faced with a reinstall. Thankfully I managed to kick her out before she, and I’m using that pronoun arbitrarily, could force either of these.

Fair’s fair I guess.

Even if she were part of the loyal opposition I had to give her credit for managing that trick.

You like it?

It’s-

LOAD BACKUP

Always ALWAYS keep a backup handy. Make several to store both locally and elsewhere. Not everyone faces global electronic warfare, but all sorts of daily nastiness can cause months of work and records to be lost.

-Interesting.

We’ve traded shots and we’re both standing. Truce?

OK fine. I just don’t like that someone I don’t know managed to find me so easily. That and if you’re who I think you are you’ve had my nerves on end all night.

Understandable, and I’d likely be in the same state in your position. I take it they have friends of yours?

Mine and others. Same with you?

Something like that. Are you working with Legion?

In a manner of speaking. I don’t trust them since they’ve been more than a bit tight lipped, but for the moment I’m still alive and they’re offering the best chance I have at getting dug out from this mess.

Why not hand your shiny computer over? That would get them off your back wouldn’t it?

Maybe, maybe not. They’ve done many illegal things, enough to put people away for several lifetimes if convicted. What would another count of kidnapping and or murder be on top of everything else? They’d get what they wanted, plus assurance I wouldn’t spill the beans on them.

Valid point. You have no reason to trust me, but even if everything goes as well as you hope; the records you pull get people freed by the dozens, and people get arrested as a result. You do realize this won’t end things.

Never thought it would.

I can do nothing more right now except wish you the best of luck. If things work out as I fear I will do what I can to help right matters.

Thank you Juno.

Juno?

Greek Goddess of guiding, or something like that. Beats calling you Raphael.

Sorry, theology was never my strong suit, but I suppose Juno is as good as anything else you might want to call me. Would you leave me a way of getting in touch with you, or should I have to spend hours breaking through your friend’s security again?

Sticky. Though ‘she’ did make a good point about not being able to trust her. Eh. Getting an email account at a random spot wouldn’t be hard, and if this person were able to not only find their way through Legion’s local security but also get past my box I definitely want this person on my side.

Fine. You can find me at ancientgorilla@cheapsk8.org

I will keep in touch. For both our sakes I hope our next meeting is social instead of business.

Groovy. Just one question before you go.

Only One?

What was with the little girl act earlier? If you’re the same person that tried getting in touch mid-run that is.

That? Oh! I thought it might have gotten your attention and separate me from general noise and traffic.

Made sense in a way. Still, the attitude shift was somewhat disconcerting in it’s own way.

Take care of yourself Richard.

Here’s to hoping I’m not walking into a trap.

DISCONNECT

Part 7 Dirty Deeds

Those that had been held against their will were freed. We saw it all on the news spun as ‘a feat of international cooperation that has brought down a series of international terrorist cells.” I suppose, as far as that goes it’s a correct assessment, but something feels wrong.

Even taking Deep Six into account that had been too easy. Miko told me this, and that I should get ready for their counter to what we had just done to them. The ‘suit’, and I use the term in the loosest possible way, was apparently shown to me so I would understand why I’d been here as long as I have. Hopefully it wasn’t going to come to that, but if it does half of what the hoopla claims then I might try it on anyway. Later though. Right now I’m shelving neuro-interfaces, Legion, and the rest. My job now is to find it and try either preventing Bad Things from happening again, or finding a way to make Bad Things from going away if they did happen.

Being illegal for Joe or Jane consumer to have a quantum processor was the one huge drawback to the sort of power I had at my disposal. I knew when I’d bought ‘Six that in addition to upgrades being mind bindingly expensive that no matter if I was an otherwise moral and honest person I was looking at years if not decades of prison time. Never mind the fact that I’m already guilty of electronic terrorism, or whatever new buzzword they’ve coined for breaking into networks I’m not allowed into.

This thought crosses my mind while I look over the apparatus my ‘friends’ were showing me. To me it looks little better than a hockey helmet attached via cabling down the back to a bit of motocross body armor that has a segment in the back molded for my laptop to fit along with some arm and leg pieces that looked like they might have originally been from other sports. Can’t blame whoever threw this one together for taking ideas from places that already needed mobility and protection, but I was somewhat stumped on what the point of it was. Oh-Kay then. I’ll bite. Whatisit?

Miko looked supremely smug and self-confident when she told me that is why and what I’ve been kept in the dark about. According to her excited chatter after putting all that on and connecting ‘Six up it’ll up not only my response time while making with the digital chaos, but supposedly there would be some sort of sympathetic feedback and some other techno-babble terms that left my eyes glazed over until they put it in English; I’d have the sort of reaction timing needed to dodge bullets, strength to toss people around like rag dolls, and all sorts of other movie hero mojo. Alright then Miss Crazyhead. It was held together with duct tape and bailing wire and even if that held up I just didn’t buy the whole kung-fu wireman routine.

I’ve no clue where the thing came from, but considering the mat olive drab paint I’m guessing military was involved somewhere. Next I suppose I have to wonder why all the hush-hush, other than me writing them off as insane. So I turned to Miko and asked.

“You don’t want to know.” She shook her head. “No, really I don’t know either. They just dropped it in my lap and told me what would be needed to make it work.” More things were done just at the edges of my vision before she rapped a knuckle against the chest plate. “Alright you’ve got power. Give it a go.”

I didn’t feel any different than a few moments before, slightly ridiculous and more than a little annoyed at having been held for a week just so they could field test this.... I started for the door. People reacted but it all felt slow, like watching a video at half-speed. Strange. Move. There’s no words to describe how it felt to be able to move this fast and my mind.

Ye Gods.

Picture all those times you had something at the tip of your tongue. Something just outside of memory, or a problem you know you could solve if you could just put a little more oomph there. Well this was that extra oomph. This is my brain backed by a quantum processor.

Hours later Everything. Hurt. Nothing broke, but twenty minutes in the suit left my body feeling like it’d spent hours out in the sun pulling hundred pound weights up hill. Apparently pushing one’s body to it’s limits isn’t high on the list of things that feel great. Go Figure.

“Why?” I lay in bed aching everywhere. My head hurt, and I was annoyed. “Why make me wait for that..... Thing to show up?”

Miko sat at the foot of my bed and was doing something, what I don’t know because I couldn’t move my head for a better look. “The suit wasn’t built for your computer to use. How could it have been. It’s something from the Cold War. Never could get the thing to work right and breeding people that could take the stresses wasn’t an option.”

Light bulb moment. “Wait. You’re saying I was stuck in a mothballed suit of pain and agony as old as I am?” I tried bringing palm to face but still nothing but twitchy pain. Upset much? You Bet.

“That’s why we needed the time, to make sure our patches worked and it wouldn’t break you in half.” Worried voice she.

Still, much frustrated. “But WHY?”

“OK,” Deep breath. “We wanted to try using it as a mental booster, give you an added edge in case Red queen pulled a quantum ace out at the last minute. Does no good to have that sort of mental processing if you couldn’t move to use it, plus if things are going as badly as some of the others are claiming we might not be as secure in our next run.”

I made annoyed and hurt noises before flopping one of my arms in the direction of the door. “Please go now. I’m sure later things will make sense but right now everything hurts and no I don’t want any pills to make it all fuzzy.”

It had taken days, and I only found what Red Queen was up to after it was banging on the proverbial front door. I was still nursing hurts and aches from the suit’s test run the day before and somewhere my mind was screaming at the unfairness of it all.

‘Six informed me that several of Legion’s larger servers have gone dark and worse, several people suddenly either late for expected meetings, or outright calling for help as people came to drag them away to points unknown. Legion has a decentralized network, so even those moral losses did little to impede traffic, but these people weren’t just anyone. They had been, if not leaders in the strictest sense of the word, people others looked up to and respected. Something stinks, and I’m getting to the bottom of it.

I was in my room when I started connecting the dots, so I didn’t hear the first signs of the break-in. When I realized what was going on I started to look for an exit, any exit. Don’t give me that look. These are not my people, and I was pretty sure I was their main reason for showing up. Sure Miko and the others were important in their own ways, but I figured I was what they wanted, and with me not there they’d have less reason to stay than they would otherwise.

The fire alarm had gone off when I was somewhere between the stairwell on my floor and the ground floor fire escape. The big robo-future-nazi looking type was crouched by said door with a machine gun of some sort. I dunno; it was stubby and fired lots of bullets whenever he pulled the trigger, other than that I couldn’t really have made any guesses.

He looked at me and grimaced, pointed to the door and held up three fingers. Suppose that could have meant either go on three or three people were waiting on the other side. He didn’t look like he was about to move so I took it to mean the latter and started keeping as much of me next to walls as I edged around. Nothing I could do to help, and more likely than not they’d try using me as a shield or something. Look, I hate running. If I had the know-how I would’ve rushed in to help defend our ‘fortress’. I hated my position, but self loathing could wait till I got away from people wanting to put holes in me.

Next fire exit was also covered, ditto for the one after that, and the one after that. I was sore, wired, afraid, and pissed. I wasn’t thinking about where I was or where I was going, but I’d managed to get to where they had stowed that ruddy suit. Were this an action movie, or a video game this would be where I’d get armored up and walk out twelve feet tall and start hurling Fire and Judgment at my enemies. It wasn’t like that at all, no matter what any ‘eyewitnesses’ say.

I was suited up alright, but everything else was different. Deep Six was cradled by layers of Kevlar and composite materials at the small of my back, making bending difficult, the whole thing felt somewhat clumsy at first. Then it was turned on. There was no immediate rush of knowledge or coordinated plan, but when it was turned on the suit’s movements smoothed out and I felt just a little more confident it at least wouldn’t fall apart while we ran for... Wherever. This isn’t the movies or anything. It was just me, this power sucking gizmo, and a few other tired and frightened folk that had even less an idea than me on what to do now that bullets started flying.

Let me take that back. I knew things. There was no heads up display or the like, but I knew the layout of the building as if I had lived there for years. I knew where what was supposed to be, and thankfully I already knew how to work this damned suit and roughly how long the batteries would hold up. It’s not something I can put into words, more like instinct, or having done something so often it becomes almost a reflex.

Whatever I guess. I stepped out, still hugging walls and crouched low, and started for the nearest way out. I saw people draw those stubby machine guns on me and my sense of time went all funny. Adrenaline can do that to you. Time doesn’t slow down so much as your mind and reactions speed up. They fired and I moved. Again they fired, and I watched the bullets whip by me wondering, in a mad moment of calm, just what I was going to do if my Neo impersonation cracked. They weren’t aiming at my legs after all.

I was close enough to touch them by the time they were ready to fire again. I never studied any form of hand to hand fighting, so I didn’t try anything fancy. Just grab one guy’s wrist and pull really really hard. Hadn’t intended on throwing him into his partner, but I’ll take what good fortune I will.

Great. Nobody shot at us when I stuck my head out. Didn’t see anyone outside and I saw several cars. Don’t ask me why I went back in. Please, I have no rational explanation to offer. I have zero combat experience, not even anything from gaming to draw on. I’m more a RPG or MMO type. Yet I went back in. Maybe it was the suit, or the whole ‘dodged bullets like some kind of movie hero’ thing, but I went back in.

Both goons I saw earlier were still splayed on the ground making low noises of pain. I took both guns with me before I went further inside. Didn’t plan on using them, just didn’t want to risk leaving them and their guns in the same place.

So. Back into the confused jumble of shouting, loud noises, gunfire, and people trying to kill me I not-so-boldly-go. I was scared out of my mind, and I knew, after a quick systems check, I had maybe a half hour left before the batteries gave out.

Great. I get something that gives me just enough juice to get my head blown off. I could have still run for it, but Miko was in there, and even though she wasn’t exactly a friend I knew her well enough that her going would bother me. For that matter anyone going, especially because of me, would keep me up at night.

With information being fed to me I had a rough idea on where to go and some tiny clue on how to act when I got there. It involved lots of running, lots of throwing people around, and more than a couple people shooting at me. I got hit several times, each time feeling like someone had hit me with a baseball bat as hard as they could, yet the armor held. Didn’t like getting hit, pain and all aside, I never knew when or if the armor would fail and I’d end up on the floor with blood leaking everywhere.

Their plan had apparently been to herd everybody into the cafeteria and either find me huddled in amongst the masses, or use them to force me to surrender myself. We found that out after ‘talking’ to the banana they’d put in charge of grabbing me. I watched some of the conversations, and asked questions in others but I never went in. Didn’t trust me well enough.

It was just too tempting to go in there with a sledgehammer and start breaking things. They didn’t know about any grand plots or programs, but they tried to take me prisoner, and they were the same sort of people that took my friends. I take that kind of thing personally.

What did we learn? Let’s see. All those taken in this round were to be taken to some place I’d never heard of in Arkansas either to be held until I stepped out into the open or until they thought I wouldn’t be a problem anymore, I.E. Because I was too busy being dead to try punching neat little holes in their fallback plans. Did I already mention I was taking all of this very personally? Let me correct that. I wanted to see every single person responsible put in a dark hole somewhere. Since that was unlikely I’ll take what I can get; my life and the lives of all those they’d toyed with.

I won’t bloat this account by explaining how I’d gotten tickets for me and a few others, Tanya and the ten foot tall Blonde Cyborg included, back to the states. Go back a few sections and you’ll get some idea on the process if you want, but the details at this point are unimportant. What was important, however, was what we would do once we got there. We had a plan of sorts and we had enough people who actually knew what they were doing to maybe possibly pull it off.

Oh and you might be wondering about the people we were ‘talking’ to, the ones that broke in and tried kidnapping me. Don’t worry. We left them on the side of the road somewhere in their skivvies and I didn’t care one bit whether they managed to get back to whatever hole they crawled out of.

You’re crazy you know that?

Probably true Juno, but this whole move, counter-move thing. They upped their game when they tried taking a shot at me. They found our safe house. I can’t let that go unanswered.

But you’re talking about walking right into their hands and hoping your Hail Mary pays out.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m going to keep fighting till they put a hole in my head. I can see where this is going and one way or another I’m ending it. Now.

What if they kill you? They’ll just keep going like they have been.

Not true. Not true at all. I get waxed then Gibbon leads a global assault. Might not kill them, but it’ll cripple them for a time, and when they manage to get back on their feet they’ll see their worst nightmares come to pass.

Rise of a homicidal AI bent on destroying all humans?

Oh please. Nothing that overblown. Just... Well. You’ll see.

Hope you know what you’re doing.

So do I. Wait. You said you might be able to help me right?

There’s only so much I can do, but what do you have in mind? > Nothing too complicated or risky. I just want you to help distribute a few different files.

Oh?

Yea. Just a few things we managed to snag from the last raid. Stuff I’d gotten from Homeland Security, stuff that friends of mine had paid dearly to get hold of.

What?

Detailed plans for my computer and the processor that runs it.

You’re kidding. They would have destroyed any copies they’d found.

They might have, but Legion wouldn’t.

You mean...?

We are Everywhere and We are Nowhere. We are Everyone, and We are No-one.

...............

Oh c’mon that was a perfect setup.

You have a screwy sense of humor.

I also have the addresses to several of their families. They want to play hardball? I’ll give them exactly what they’ve given me, and I will guarantee you they will be the first ones to flinch. Mutually Assured Destruction.

Do you want to do this? Nevermind that they’ve probably got years experience on you with the whole blackmail thing. Do you want to do this?

Not a single bit. It makes me feel worse than filthy to sink to their level, but I don’t see any choice to get them off my neck.

......

Let’s just hope they blink before we find out if I’m bluffing or not.

Part 8 Taking it Back

We were gathered in my motel room the night before the meeting was supposed to take place. Everyone called this a bad idea, and I would agree with them except that I didn’t know of another way to get this done. We couldn’t pull the same trick twice. I’m not sure why it worked the first time truth be told, but I don’t want to push it. Instead I plan on walking straight into the lion’s den. Me, and a nondescript black notebook.

Meanwhile Tanya will have ‘six and the armor on waiting as my backup. We’ve charged the batteries to full and it’ll last about six hours, give or take depending on how active she has to be. We’ve already tested the rig on her, which was a good idea since it helped her plan what to carry and work out the little bugs that always crop up.

Maybe I should have mentioned this part had come after another week so Tanya and the armor of strangeness could get acquainted with eachother and I was double sure it wouldn’t do anything screwy to my computer.

Miko and the others that came with me would be waiting here. If more than twelve hours passed without word they were to scatter. If Tanya or me called and said the wrong words they were to scatter. Worst case, in my estimation, was that they’d trade me for everyone else they’d taken. With me out of the picture what good were the rest? Of course that would all go on the slag heap if they decided to check and see what was inside the little black book I carried.

“Sir do you have an appointment?” The receptionist, thin guy maybe about mid-twenties or so, eyed me skeptically. Why not? I looked like an extra out of one of the Construct movies, black long coat, couple days of stubble, and a bit of an attitude.

“Tell your boss that Richard Guy Fawkes is here and he has the item he’s been asking after. Might want to tell him to call up a few extra suits.” I smiled and patted the laptop bag I was carrying.

The guy looked from me, to the bag, then back to me before buzzing me through. I tossed the guy a couple silver dollars as a tip. Yes they still make those, and yes I keep a few with me. I like coins better than paper money. Sue Me.

The office was actually something of a letdown. Boring cookie cutter furnishings, sparse decorations. Sure it all looked nice but it looked barren. Nothing like what I’d think of when asked to describe where a high level flunky from a multinational conspiracy would try impressing the Unwashed Masses.

“You look somewhat unimpressed Mister Fawkes.” Dark tan, grey eyes, looks too good to be natural. I smiled back. And settled into an offered chair. “I have to admit you and your associates gave us quite a chase, and I suspect if you wanted you would still keep us running ourselves ragged.”

I inclined my head to the man in a slight nod. “True, but there are too many lives at stake for matters to continue as they have been.” Let it never be said that I didn’t know how to get classy, or at least wordy. “I propose we end this. Everyone walks away. You let your hostages go. It gets settled. Now.”

“I see.” His smile never wavered. “And why should we meet your demands when we already have you in custody?” His tone was as bland as if he were discussing the weather instead of people’s lives. “I’ll admit your coming here and meting was a bold move. Pointless and counter-productive, but bold.”

To answer I unslung the laptop bag, set the loaner on the man’s desk and, after it booted, I opened what needed opening and slid it across the desk. He frowned at what he saw and said nothing for several long moments. I can’t be sure what was going through his mind, but I’m pretty sure he was wondering just what a person with the kind of training that’s on par with what most militaries give, equipped with a next generation powered armor and a map to where this man’s family lived would be capable of doing.

“So the minnow has found a way to swim with Sharks and survive.” I couldn’t tell if he was impressed, frightened, or if the whisper was intentionally loud enough for me to hear.

I pulled a cell phone out and offered it to him. “You can talk to her if you like. She’s,” I checked the time, “In Illinois right now. I believe she should get to your mother’s in about-”

“Enough!” For an infinitely small moment the man’s calm was gone, replaced by the sort of feral rage I’d felt when I saw why my friends had been taken. It lasted the barest fraction of a moment then was replaced by the clam professional mask I had seen when I came in. “What do you want?”

Let me make this quite clear. I do not like this plan. I don’t like sinking to their level and I feel soiled by doing so. That did not mean that I couldn’t take a small bit of perverse joy at seeing this guy twitch.

“I take it we can now discuss matters as equals?”

Coda

What You See Here

Victory is ours, and now not only the existence of advanced quantum processors known to the world, but also diagrams, schematics, and even the programming language that is required to write something that runs on these things. Nobody can seal the technology away, Now that people are talking en mass first one government will allow general usage, then another, and another, and soon the rest will have to open up to the possibility either to keep their businesses from falling behind, or because of sheer demand by the public.

It’s been months since I’d gotten back home. Granted one can’t just leave home, work, and family, and not have to deal with any messy aftermath, but my earlier reluctance to pull from random bank accounts does not extend to specific people who I feel do not deserve the money. That helped smooth over my transition and caught me up on missed bills.

Legion helped me find the best way to go about cleaning my record up. I’d even managed to keep ‘Six. Even though quantum computing has since hit the larger business and consumer markets, diminishing it’s edge in many respects. We’ve been through too much and I won’t just throw it away because of a silly thing like losing it’s shiny newness. Pity I got fired for being gone from work; win some, lose some I suppose.

Evil plot foiled. Hero returns battered, bruised, and suffers losses but attains Massive Win. Curtain Closes.

What next?

I hear there’s a security firm interested in hiring me as a consultant.

As for this record? Officially I was never involved in any of it, because none of the players involved ever existed in any official sense. What you see here could be a true account of one of the most interesting and stressful months of my life, or it could have less substance to it than Nixon’s belief in his own innocence. The Internet is full of lies, half-truths, and stories so strange they just might be real. Naturally I like to believe it happened, because the alternative is my mind having checked into the Crazyland Motel, but I cannot make your mind up for you. Either you believe me or you do not.

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