33: ENTERING CHEAT CODES AT MAMA ALEX’S COMPUTER DOJO
* * *
The Upterlife had thousands of servers dedicated to reconstructing the information from uploaded meat-brains. Our refuge had one, hacked-together server. It’d be ten days before Dr Hsiang could talk to us again.
Wickliffe was doubtlessly analyzing Dr Hsiang’s research now, working hard to perfect the mindslavers. But until we heard from Hsiang, we had nothing to do but sit on our heels.
Might as well learn to program.
The rebels lived inside the mall, taking refuge in old convenience stores. They were mostly wiry technosavants like me. You’d find them perched in the oddest of places, hanging high in the mall windows as they reprogrammed the camouflage nets, soldering together new servers from smuggled-in parts. They were grease-stained and exhausted and still somehow excited from the mere act of creation.
The NeoChristians and the rebels had one thing in common: when they weren’t learning, they were teaching.
Mama Alex was no exception. She’d set up two computers for Dare and me in an old delivery dock.
“I did it!” I cried.
I leapt up to do a triumphant booty-dance. Dare had chained together an elaborate set of helper modules – so complex I couldn’t figure how they worked – but he abandoned his work to look over what I’d done.
“…that’s cheating!” he cried. Dare stared at Mama Alex like she was a bribed referee. “Amichai didn’t construct a series of anonymized proxy servers to the internet!”
Mama Alex squeezed Dare’s shoulder affectionately. Dare had taken to programming with a surprising ferocity – and prodigious talent. In the old days, Mama Alex told us, programming used to consist of writing code. These days it was about chaining existing modules together in weird ways. If you wanted your computer to understand spoken English, you hooked up the module that knew how to listen to sounds and fed the data from that into a module that translated sounds into English words, then fed the words from that into an English grammar parser module and a dictionary module, et voila! A program that could transcribe English.
And just like with buildings, Dare could envision huge structures in his head. He’d spend hours in a daze, linking complex webs of modules together, getting them to do things that even Mama Alex whistled at.
I’d programmed, too, but had missed lessons when I snuck off to check on Evangeline – which Dare resented me for. Plus, honestly, linking together modules was kinda the boring part.
“‘A series of anonymized proxy servers’?” I tried to laugh it off. “Look at you talking now! Dare, you didn’t want me to show you how to mute your grandparents!”
He grimaced. “Maybe you read the instructions then. You sure as void don’t now.”
“Then why do I have an untraceable internet connection and you don’t?”
“Because you hacked into Mama Alex’s computer!” Dare chucked his keyboard at Mama Alex’s feet.
“That’s code!” I said loftily. “It’s running, is it not?”
“Zero knowledge of protocol. Zero knowledge of the underlying principles of the net. Zero grace.”
“One hundred percent results.”
“You used only four modules! One to listen to the noises from Mama Alex’s keyboard, another to track the unique sound of each keypress, a third module to map the frequency of each keypress to the most common letters in the English language…”
“…and a fourth that mapped my keyboard sounds into a stream of every letter I typed.” Mama Alex sniffed as she scanned my paltry linking code. “You didn’t even feed the output through an analyzer, Amichai. You just manually scanned through everything I typed in until you stumbled upon my login credentials.”
“…but I am on the internet.” I gave her the puppydog eyes. “And there’s no safer connection than yours – am I right, Mama Alex?”
She cuffed me upside the head. “You are so full of shit you squeak. I left that option open for you. What would you have done if I’d used trifactor authentication?”
“Uh…”
“Do you even know what trifactor authentication is?”
“Uh…”
“You see?” Dare paced in outraged circles. “Void, Amichai, I used to think you were a technoGod. Yet I’ve spent weeks learning to program while you waste time creating animated videos of yourself! You’re making selfies while people die!”
“Selfies are part of my plan!”
“OK, zip it,” Mama Alex said. “This difference in philosophy illustrates the difference between a programmer and a hacker.” She hugged Dare, squeezing his rage-trembles away. “Dare, I’m gonna need you to maintain the branch server when I’m gone – you understand how all this hardware fits together. All Amichai can do is break things; you have a special talent for building.”
Dare stuck his tongue out at me. He looked quite surprised when Mama Alex poked it back in.
“Now, when y’all were trapped in the branch server,” she continued, “did you want someone who could build things… or someone to break shit?”
“But if Amichai–”
“Talk to Amichai, not me.”
He hauled his gaze upwards. “If you’d thought through things more, maybe we wouldn’t have needed to break out.” His shoulders tensed as he thought of Peaches. “You want to lead a revolution, Chai. But you can’t improvise a government overthrow.”
“And you can’t overthrow a government without a little improv.” Mama shoved us together. “You’re two halves, boys – creation and destruction. You need to work as one.” She heaved herself to her feet with a groan. “So hug it out.”
She left.
Dare did not look like a man who wanted a hug.
“Look…” I ventured. “You know I’m sorry…”
“I have accepted the fact of your apology.” He turned away, sounding regretful. “You know what it was like living at the mortuary? With all my relatives watching?”
“I know you got yelled at.”
“I didn’t know what praise sounded like.” He massaged his wrists. “I was stupid, I was clumsy, I was a disgrace. My barber aunts would count the stray hairs left out of place after I’d combed, my tailor uncles would yell at me for the way I buttoned my shirt.”
“They were just voices, man.”
He stiffened. “No. Amichai. They were the only people I’d ever loved. I measured myself by them. So when they told me I was worthless, why wouldn’t I believe them?”
“You had Peaches…”
“Peaches tried to introduce me around. She got past her self-hatred by getting everyone to love her. I never managed that. Because inside of me, I…” He punched his chest. “There was nothing. I’d imagine flower gardens and mansions and ballparks, all empty. Because my fondest dream was a beautiful room where I did not exist. When I got free time in the Upterlife trialrooms, I recreated those empty spaces, and hated myself for wasting time.”
“No!”
Dare cocked his head, puzzled by my denial.
“You loved making those spaces, Dare. It’s all you did when you moved in with me.”
Dare goggle-eyed at me, then strangled a laugh. “You… you don’t even remember, do you?”
“Remember what?”
He shoved his face into his palms. “How the void did you ever call me your friend, Amichai? Did you even notice what you did to me?”
I longed to lie, but I’d done enough of that.
“…No.”
He leveled a steely gaze at me. “I. Voiding. Hated. Creating things, Amichai. I should have been tending to our clients’ rose cottages, or repairing the building’s cameras, or something else my great-greats would have approved of. Instead, I made toy rooms. Childish. But I couldn’t stop.
“My great-greats saw, of course. So I moved to the orphanage, because maybe I’d be alone and worthless and making fake rooms, but at least no one would yell at me for it. And you…”
He scrubbed tears from his c
heeks. “How does that work, Amichai? How can someone change your whole life and be so voiding oblivious?”
“Dare, I… what’d I do?”
He slumped to the floor. “You peeked at my buildings. And you called them beautiful.”
I froze.
“That was – is – the first time anyone said anything nice about me. You were a stranger, but… I made another building to see if you’d like it.” He closed his eyes, smiling. “You did.”
“Dare, I–”
“Shut up. For once in your voiding life, Amichai, just shut up. That praise changed everything. The next time Peaches hauled me off to a party, I showed off my designs… And for the first time, I felt like someone worth talking to.
“By the time you got to know me, yeah, I liked being an architect. People liked me as an architect. So I thought maybe… that’s the one thing that made me worthwhile.
“Then you told me I was shit.”
The words hit like bullets. I finally understood what I’d stolen from Dare, why Dare had been so eager to kill himself in Little Venice.
Dare had wanted his Upterlife self to never know the pain of my betrayal.
I laid my palms flat upon the floor, surrendering.
“…I don’t even deserve your punishment, man. That’d make you my keeper. I don’t know what to do. I just don’t want to make it worse for you.”
He massaged the bridge of his nose. Then he tapped my hand – not quite affectionately, but like someone who longed to be affectionate.
“Void take you, Amichai. You’re so fucking stupid. But just when everybody’s going to kill you, you get one thing right.”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“No.” He pounded the floor in frustration. “You look good on camera, so New York is all ‘Oh, Amichai, let us believe in you,’ but… everything you’ve done is predicated upon you not feeling guilty.”
I stayed silent, giving him space.
“That’s not good enough,” he said. “Not when you’re leading a revolution. Peaches sacrifices herself? Fine, her self-esteem is fuelled by rebellion. Evangeline dies? Fine, she’s a warrior for her skybeard. The LifeGuard, void, we all know how eager they are to punch their ticket to the Upterlife.
“But what happens when you need unwilling people to die? I was raised by the dead, Amichai. They don’t let go of anything. And let me tell you: we won’t make progress until every last one of them is erased.”
The only sound in the room was my breathing.
“There must be a better way,” I said.
“That’s not an answer.”
I pulled my legs under me. “No. That is my answer. There’s a better way, and we’ll find it.”
“Void, Amichai, isn’t what we’ve been through proof you can’t save everybody? And yet you’re still…!”
Dare was so frustrated, I could see this argument would lead to blows if it continued. He grabbed his keyboard, staring at his development environment, trying to lose himself in code.
“…So where do we go from here?” I asked.
“We fight Wickliffe.” Dare fired up his programming project, weaving interdependent modules together. “And hope one of us finds the strength to do the right thing.”
34: ISABELLA DAMROSCH’S CYBERWAR
* * *
I had a live internet connection, and no best friend. Yet I had to share my triumph with someone.
I paced the mall and found skinny New York rebels teaching NeoChristians how to improve their solar panels’ efficiency, found NeoChristians leading shooting classes… but found no Evangeline. She’d made herself scarce since we’d arrived at the rebel camp.
But I also found a bunch of NeoChristians and rebels repairing the road, making it more wheelchair-friendly. That was Peaches’ influence; even when she wasn’t around, she was still matchmaking the two factions together.
Peaches. She’d want to watch the news with me.
She was easy to track down; NeoChristians and nerds alike crouched around her wheelchair, hooking it up to a beefier motor. She propelled it forward with a squeal of delight, running over a handsome black kid’s toes – an atypically clumsy move for Peaches. But when she squeezed his arm, I knew the contact was no accident.
I thought of Evangeline, and swallowed frustration.
“Got a second?”
She reoriented her wheelchair at me, and smiled. I’d watched her flirt with a thousand boys, and that smile was mine alone. I hoped it was the genuine Peaches.
“For you? Always.” Her technicians looked disappointed at being abandoned – until she wheeled herself backwards to showcase me. “You boys know Amichai, don’t you?”
They stepped forward as one, fighting to clasp my hand.
“The Pony Boy.” They oozed so much reverence it wigged me out.
“We saw you fighting,” said one.
“We saw you winning,” said another.
“You fought for my brethren,” said a third boy, his throat a blotchy red from his first cross tattoo. “It’s an honor.”
“Now, now, Amichai clearly has important business with me,” Peaches told them, preening. “Otherwise he would never have interrupted my first test run. Would you mind gifting us some privacy?”
They skedaddled. I blushed as Peaches drove in happy laps around me.
“Look what they did, Amichai! I can practically bulldoze my way across cracked pavement now!”
“And I, uh…” I held out the tablet. “I got an internet connection.”
She grabbed it. Her girlish joy evaporated, replaced with the satisfied smirk of business-Peaches. “At last. News. I have been so needing to hear the outside world.”
“I thought you would have charmed a boy into feeding you some signal.”
“Mama Alex told me I couldn’t get access until you did. She thought I’d encourage you.”
“You let her get in your way?”
“Oh, Amichai.” She patted my cheek. “You don’t cross Mama Alex. Now let’s see how the revolution’s coming…”
She loaded her news aggregators: Opinion polls. Riots. Votes. Ponies. Seas of protesting people in every city, demanding to see me, the real me.
“Wow,” I said. “People are getting pony tattoos. They’re spraypainting ponies on walls. Is that… is that a pony Mohawk?”
“You’re a symbol, yes, yes,” Peaches muttered. “LifeGuard reports Blackout Party attendance has doubled, which means it’s quadrupled. Folks keep drowning in Little Venice, searching for the collapsed server. But… nobody’s stopped Shriving. And Wickliffe’s been dropping heavy reminders that even if all the living voted against him, the dead would still outnumber them. So the living…”
“…aren’t sure what to do,” I finished.
She wheeled backwards, placing a disappointed gap between us. “We need to give them a plan, Amichai.”
“I don’t have one! Evangeline says it’s about getting the people on your side, but… they’re on my side! And Wickliffe has all the technology and the armies and the weapons…”
Peaches hooked her index finger into my collar, pulled me down to kiss me. As usual, my entire body shorted out.
“…better?”
“That didn’t teach me how to win.”
She gave me an indulgent purr. “The same way you always win, Amichai. You cheat. You cheat magnificently.”
The word “cheating” reminded me of Evangeline’s snuggles.
“I didn’t come here to ask you to help me plot,” I admitted.
“Oh?”
“I thought you might want to see how Izzy is doing.”
Peaches touched her fingertips to her mouth, shocked and shamed. “…yes. Yes, I do.”
“Then let’s pull up her videostream. And – whoah. Her account’s shut down?”
“That makes sense. They don’t want her talking to the public. Search for her name, though.”
“There’s…” I swallowed. “Sixty million videos with Izzy in it… mo
stly news reports referencing her as my sister, but…”
“Never look at the front page for the good information.” Peaches clicked deep into the search results. “Drill past the obvious hits, and most of these are the same video. Very few hits on each. I suspect people are mass-uploading that video illegally, and then the video’s being taken down as fast as the dead can yank access…”
“So my sister’s video has triggered a cyberwar?”
“Let’s watch this one quick before it disappears.”
The video was purposely glitchy, with hitches and bursts of static and random blocks of color popping onscreen so the automated content-scanners couldn’t flag it. But…
It was still my sister.
Seeing Izzy, even sick in the hospital, was like getting hugged and gutpunched at the same time. I was flooded with memories of Izzy and I chatting late at night in our respective orphanages – me endlessly complaining, Izzy endlessly reassuring me that things would get better…
But Izzy had squeezed herself into her LifeGuard uniform. I knew it no longer fit her properly, not after the plague had warped her body – and no one but me knew the effort it took her to sit up straight, like a soldier, so she’d look good on camera.
“People have been asking me about my brother for a long time,” she said. “Mostly, they’ve been asking if I’d arrest him.”
She exhaled a long breath, signaling that this was going to be difficult to talk about.
“Anyone who knew me at the Academy knew that when my superiors asked about my brother, I gave the politic answer: only the dead can decide who’s guilty. But my fellow cadets also knew what I told them informally: If my stupid brother steps out of line, I will be the first to arrest his dumb ass.”
She thumped the breast of her uniform in a half-salute, blinking back proud tears.
“I would have graduated top of my class if the Bubbler hadn’t taken the LifeGuard from me. Because I believed. I was proud of my fellow cadets, proud of the way they had signed up to keep the living safe. It was an honor to stand by the side of such noble guardians.
“But…
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