******
The room was small and crammed full of equipment. A long series of workstations lined one wall, each having numerous holograms of information hovering above and around the occupants.
A single door with a security lock provided entry into the room. However, nobody ever came or left. Adjacent to the door were two delivery panels, a small one big enough for envelopes and another big enough for a crate.
In the center of the room sat a large holographic projector. It showed a colorful display of arching waves, each highlighted with multiple points of light across their span and bits of information flashing across the hologram.
They referred to the projector as the “Waterfall”. It depicted a visual interpretation of all the interconnecting waves and computer systems that they already hacked or were in the process of hacking.
The other side of the room had a few bunk beds, a food dispenser, and a large dresser, all the amenities necessary to function. It was certainly plusher than any mining prison, but the most important amenity to the inmates was access to computers.
There were three of them so far, with plans to add a fourth. Haylek, known in the hacker channels as “Waverider,” had been designated as the leader of the group, more so because nobody else wanted the job. Even so, he took the job seriously.
Well, as seriously as he could. There was not much to do in that capacity. They were all busy deciphering and cracking the network waves, so nobody questioned anything.
None of them knew each other’s real names, only their aliases. Hacker aliases were the only name that mattered in the virtual world anyway, carrying with it their earned reputation and status. With every conquest of a system, a hacker would brand it with their alias; an advertisement that added to their notorious resume. This became the justification for bragging rights.
The waves that Haylek’s crew worked on were part of the global and interstellar network of invisible energy known as the “Ocean.” The Ocean’s waves spanned across the solar system to every city on every populated planet, moon and orbital station. They formed the vital infrastructure for all citizens, governments and corporations—becoming the backbone of data and energy delivery to civilization.
Though invisible to the eye, the Ocean’s waves could be snooped and examined using the right equipment and skills. In his day, Haylek could tap and crack every wave in the Ocean within his reach. One of his most infamous accomplishments was diverting data and power from over forty different major wave pipelines to his small apartment, providing him with free electrical power and virtually unlimited data resources that he shared with the hacker community. He used the stolen resources as barter to trade with other hackers. Ultimately, the bartering got him caught by a nark.
As for the other two, Freeze’s specialty was outer perimeter hacking. The first step in “owning” a system— taking them under their control.
Coredump’s forte was developing injection programs that would be uploaded to hacked systems, where they would sit dormant until they needed them. Once activated, the programs would turn the systems into zombies that provided them information and put them under their complete control—unbeknownst to the companies that owned them, of course.
It had been a month since the curious set of events that led them here. They were all serving time for committing their acts of “cyber-terrorism,” as authorities called it. Then came the strange transfer from Thyle Prison to the Martian mining facility in Tharsis—followed by the meeting with their new employer.
That’s when they got the deal; it was like being handed a treasure chest. Unlimited funds to get any equipment they needed, as long as they hacked and owned at least a couple of corpers each day.
Haylek felt a throbbing pain in his head. He had been trying to lower his intake of Elation—and headaches were the side effect. He knew he would have to take it for the rest of his life, even if in small doses. There was no known cure for Elation addiction, except to replace it with other drugs that helped lessen the symptoms—trading one addiction for another.
Haylek stood from his workstation and walked around to look at the other two. He stood behind Freeze, looking at his holographic screens. He had been hacking away at a particular wave for the past few days with no sleep. No doubt, the Elation helped.
“Still on that wave?” Haylek said.
Freeze kept at it—his fingers moving and merging the interface shapes and symbols of his surfaceboard. “Yeah. I’m not going to be happy until I own this.”
“Have you traced out the endpoints yet?” Haylek said.
“Almost,” he said. “They branch out and disperse across the Oceanic Spectrum. But I have the source beam coming from somewhere nearby in a business complex. There’s only a few corpers it could be, and one of them is Omega Research. I hope it’s them; I want to own them.”
“Hmm,” Haylek said. “That would be a nice hack. Our employers would probably like that too. I’m sure they have info worth stealing.”
“Uh, yeah, I guess,” Freeze said. “I just want to own them. I don’t think I have much of a problem tracing the waves; the problem is the polymorphic encryption.”
“Yeah, I know,” Haylek said. “We need an elite decrypter. The best one I knew got caught.”
“Who was it?” Freeze said.
“He called himself The Doc,” Haylek said.
“Oh yeah, I heard of him. He was in that guild Transient Wave,” he said. “Let me see what I can find out about him.”
One of the holographic screens changed to show the top menu of what looked like a record inquiry system.
“What’s that?” Haylek said.
“UEP Enforcement database,” he said. “I’ve owned it for three days straight so far—nice hole in their session setup. Coredump gave me a smooth exploit to run against it—got level-one security in one pass. Okay, let me see… The Doc.”
The inquiry screen changed to display information on The Doc. It showed he had recently been released and was staying somewhere in New York, but gave no specific address.
“Hmm, he got out,” Haylek said.
“Yeah,” Freeze said. “No address, though. You don’t think he’d be out on the hacker channels would he?”
“If I was him, I would be,” Haylek said. “Let me go look; maybe we’ll get lucky.”
Haylek walked back to his terminal and began touching the symbols on the surfaceboard. The holographic screens lit up around him, displaying many pages of encrypted information. Haylek ran his decryption chat client against the code and the pages of information changed into legible text. He scrolled through the list of chat channels and picked a channel titled “3l33t 3ncryption.” He entered the virtual room with an alternate alias.
The holograms around him changed to show countless avatars of the hackers that were in the room with him. His own avatar, a cartoon-like image of a surfer on a wave, popped up to represent him in the chat room.
Halyek scanned through the list of names, doing a search for The Doc. Out of the hundreds in the room, the list filtered down to three variations: D0ch0liday, D0ckt3r, and The Doc. He tried the last one, inviting him into a private room. The Doc’s avatar, a portly cartoon with thick-rimmed glasses and a large scalpel in one hand, gave a raised eyebrow to the request.
“Who and why?” was his response to Waverider.
“Waverider,” Haylek tapped back.
“I know you. Why?” The Doc wrote.
“I’m in an elite group with a lot of toys. We need someone that is elite.”
“I am an 3lit3 d3crypt0r,” The Doc wrote.
“Rider,” Coredump said. “Someone’s triggered our perimeter sensors.”
Haylek turned away from the surfaceboard to look at Coredump. “What is it?”
“Someone’s backtracking your connection,” he said. “They’re cracking our outermost owned system.”
Haylek looked back at the avatar of The Doc and noticed it was animating a slicin
g motion with the scalpel and pointing at him. Definitely him, Haylek thought.
“How’s he doing?” Haylek said.
“Damn,” Coredump said. “He’s good. He hacked the outer system already, and he’s working on the next system inward.”
“How many systems we got between us?” Haylek said.
“Twelve more,” Freeze answered for him.
“All right, Coredump—go into mind-link and try and slow him down.”
The mind-link interface would allow Coredump to interact with the Ocean using his thoughts, giving him nanosecond response time—it was the only way he would be able to keep up with The Doc’s hack attempts.
“If you get too close, I have to cut you off,” Haylek said, trying to keep the conversation going. He knew that the interaction would break him out of the mind-link intermittently and slow him down.
“If you cut me off, how can I trust you?” The Doc asked.
Haylek thought a moment. He could not allow him to trace his location, but he needed to gain his trust somehow. He leaned back from his chair and looked at Freeze.
“Freeze, give me the authentication info for that UEP system,” he said.
“Why?” Freeze said.
“Just give it to me; trust me,” he said.
Freeze grumbled as he tapped the surfaceboard. The authentication keys were now on Haylek’s terminal.
“I have a gift for you, so you can trust me,” Haylek said.
He uploaded the authentication key to The Doc.
The Doc’s avatar smiled. “I like gifts,” he said.
“He just cracked two more of our systems,” Coredump’s message came up. “We have ten left.”
“Can you slow him down, Freeze?” Haylek said. “Try cutting off his waves.”
“That’s your specialty. I don’t know how to do that,” Freeze said.
Haylek sighed. He would have to make this quick.
“If you like the gift,” he tapped out, “then you can trust me enough to meet again. Meet me same time tomorrow in this channel.”
The Doc’s avatar rubbed its chin.
“Damn! He just knocked down five systems,” Coredump said.
“You better cut him off; he’s really close,” Freeze said.
“Decide fast,” Haylek tapped.
He glanced at the topological map of their network. Twelve dots representing each system they owned marked the path between the Ocean and their location; all but the five dots closest to their location were marked red, the inner five were green. Suddenly two of the green dots went red.
Freeze gasped. “He just—”
“I know,” Haylek said.
“The Big Apple,” The Doc said. “You’re close to me, you know.”
“That’s as far as I can let you in. Hope you show tomorrow,” Haylek tapped in.
He quickly triggered the backtracking program and unloaded the code from the three remaining systems; he then disconnected his wave. The Waterfall went blank. Their connection into the Ocean was severed.
“That was close,” Freeze said.
“I know,” Haylek said. “Let’s stay off the waves for an hour. Then create a new line of owned systems into it; I don’t want to use the same ones again.”
Freeze grumbled. “That will take most of the night,” he said.
“Would you rather sleep? I can have Coredump do it instead,” Haylek said.
Freeze reached into his pocket and pulled out a small device. He pressed it against his neck and smiled.
“You know I don’t need sleep,” Freeze said. He pointed the device at Haylek. “Want some?”
Haylek shook his head and turned away. It was a difficult decision to shun the Elation. He knew the others did not understand why. Both Freeze and Coredump had been delving deeply into the supply, both severely addicted. Haylek was not sure why he chose to slow down; something inside just clicked and he felt he had to.
He looked at the other two. Even though they were great hackers, that was all they could do or think about. For all their hacking talent, they had the mentality of adolescents. He had to be more of a thinker than they were. There was a bright light somewhere at the end of his long wave and he would find his way to it. The headache throbbed again, so he went to his bunk and tried to sleep it off.