PUFFIN BOOKS
DOT.ROBOT
Jason Bradbury likes gadgets – a lot! He has scoured the globe to find them and rarely stops talking and writing about them. He also likes computer games – perhaps even loves them. The first computer game he ever played consisted of nothing more than two dots and a straight line, but it was enough to ignite a lifelong passion for the (pixellated) pastime – and, despite having two children and a robot called Vernon to look after, Jason still finds time for more game playing than is wise.
He is best known as the host of Five’s The Gadget Show, on which he swims with sharks, rides rocket-powered bicycles and jumps off bridges – but before his TV career took off he was a comedian, a script writer and a breakdancer.
Jason lives in London, where he cruises the streets on various electric vehicles and newfangled types of skateboard.
The science and technology in Dot.Robot is real and Jason has witnessed much of it first hand – including a trip in a self-driving robotic car in Las Vegas and a look at an invisible jacket . . . if you can look at something that’s invisible.
To find out what Jason is up to, go to his website jasonbradbury.com
Books by Jason Bradbury
Dot.Robot
JASON BRADBURY
DOT.ROBOT
PUFFIN
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
puffinbooks.com
First published 2009
Text copyright © CPI Publishing Solutions 2009
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978-0-14-191050-5
For Luther Francis Bradbury,
who told the best stories
CHAPTER 1
‘Do you know any secrets?’
He almost didn’t notice it. He was busy pulling himself on to a rocky crag high above the vale of Borelock, when the peculiar question blinked its way into Jackson’s little corner of cyberspace. That was one of the problems with instant-messaging software – anyone could find you; anyone could make contact. You had to be careful. Dad never stopped reminding him of the fact. Jackson sighed. His dad didn’t half go on sometimes.
‘Who are you?’ typed Jackson, his fingertips bouncing over the keys with the nimbleness of a tiny dancing troop.
‘Do you know any secrets?’ came the reply.
OK, so someone really didn’t know when to back off and Jackson wasn’t about to be made a fool of. In school, maybe. Perhaps after school, on the way home. There was little he could do about that. Jackson flinched at the thought. But not here, not in his domain.
He moved his cursor over the miniature silhouette of his uninvited guest. A label materialized on the right-hand side, containing the words ‘Elan Drivel’.
‘Elan Drivel?’ Jackson laughed out loud. What kind of a name was that?
There were stupid Messenger nicknames: ‘MyDogBeatsMeUp’ was one in Jackson’s contact list. ‘I’m-a-freak-don’t-talk-to-me’ was another, which he knew belonged to Amisha Patel, the Indian goth girl from Year 11. But none of those were as naff as using your real name. No one used their real name for Messenger.
Jackson was ‘WizardZombie’. It was just about the coolest tag he’d come across. Think about it: a zombie was scary enough. But imagine a gang of undead sorcerers roaming your local shopping centre; now that was terrifying. It was a name that garnered respect – respect that was well deserved – as WizardZombie ruled Whisper, one of the most popular online role-playing games on the Web. If you knew Whisper, you knew WizardZombie.
This Drivel was obviously a ‘n00bie’, a novice, a lamer just asking to be blocked.
Jackson typed a countdown into the Messenger text bar, followed by his favourite atom-bomb emotion: ‘5, 4, 3, 2, 1, ==@’. Then, with a click of the BLOCK command, the stranger was gone.
Jackson turned back to the situation unfolding in the gorge below WizardZombie. Six trolls had surrounded two halflings. Trolls were vile creatures and Jackson had no idea why anyone would pay to spend their evenings playing as the stunted savages. It was an unfair match against the weaker halflings, and they knew it. They were playing with the halflings, like a cat plays with a mouse or a vole.
WizardZombie was a human, a human with more spells than any other he’d encountered. The question was which weapon from his arsenal of black artistry should he summon? Given the odds, a lesser player would choose an explosion, a giant spider spell or a plague of locusts; they’d go for the fireworks, something with bells and whistles. But not WizardZombie.
First he took stock of the surroundings. The troll raiders were in the middle of a deep gully. In front of them were the wide, open plains that led to the Gulliper trading post. Behind them, a steep, narrow path snaked its way through the Delvian mountain range and out to the coast.
WizardZombie selected a sandstorm from his inventory and, pointing towards the entrance to the gorge, fired it at the ground. The six fiends were instantly consumed in a gritty whirlwind.
There was only one way to go if they were to escape the blinding twister. Scrabbling over one another, they darted up the narrow mountain pass.
The fleeing mob didn’t notice the first of their number to hit the ground. The second troll took an arrow in the forehead. They noticed that. Within moments they were counter-attacking, crossbow bolts flying up from the gorge with startling accuracy. But WizardZombie stood his ground. There were only four of them now and, with his agility, his trusty longbow should suffice.
‘Do you know any secrets?’ The message appeared again, brazenly, in the centre of his screen.
Jackson drew a sharp intake of breath. Before it had been mildly irritating; this time it was potentially fatal. Who? How? There wasn’t time for questions. He punched in a key combination to block the pestilent visitor. The message disappeared for a split second and then rematerialized: ‘Do you know any secrets?’
Jackson needed to act swiftly, or WizardZombie would be troll-bait. Hitting ALT and TAB, the Messenger box was exchanged for the game screen, as the third crossbow bolt penetrated WizardZombie’s chest plate. Fireworks it was then.
WizardZombie’s lightning strike hit the ravine floor with such force it cracked the rock face, vaporizing the four trolls and the two halflings instantaneously.
If he w
as to make it back to town and find a healer, WizardZombie would need to set up camp and rest. He lit a fire and settled down for the night. Jackson pressed ESC.
‘It’s a school night, son. Now I know that you’re safely tucked up in bed and your computer is already off, but all the same, I’ll check on my way back from the loo.’ The warning came from behind Jackson’s closed bedroom door, and it signalled two minutes before lockdown. Jackson only vaguely registered his dad’s words as he sat fuming about Elan Drivel’s intrusion.
It was puzzling that this uninvited ignoramus had managed to get a message through at all. New Messenger contacts couldn’t just announce themselves on your screen. It was a feature of the software that they needed the user’s permission first. So how had this Drivel character managed it? And then there was the question of the botched block. Jackson knew exactly how the blocking function worked: it logged a visitor’s unique Internet ID number. Once that number was outlawed, the person associated with it was history. So how come Elan Drivel had repeatedly managed to get that dimwitted question on to Jackson’s monitor?
The answer hit Jackson like one of WizardZombie’s lightning strikes. Elan Drivel wasn’t a person at all – it was a virus!
Jackson glanced at his bedside clock.
Thirty seconds.
Thirty seconds to prove his theory. Damn it, he thought. There are high-security prison wardens who are more relaxed about lights out than my dad.
Jackson was already into the settings for his Internet security software. He scrolled down the screen:
Intrusion Detection: On
Firewall Setting: High
Anti Virus: Medium
Medium? That must be it!
He looked at the clock.
Five seconds.
Wielding his mouse with samurai precision, Jackson was four layers deep into the program in a blink. At last the SYSTEM SCAN box appeared. At its centre was a bright red button surrounded by yellow-and-black hazard warning stripes and the words SCAN AND KILL written in the middle. He loved that: ‘Scan and Kill’. It was so final.
One second.
Jackson hit the button, simultaneously stabbing the power switch on his monitor, leaving his computer to purr away stealthily under the desk.
When the crack of light appeared at the edge of the bedroom door, all was calm in Jackson HQ.
‘Night, son,’ said his father.
‘Night, Dad,’ replied Jackson.
CHAPTER 2
His pillow began to vibrate at around 3 a.m.
Jackson lifted the handset from under it, switched off the phone’s alarm and used its indigo screen as a flashlight. Skimming the room with its beam, he located the desk by the glint of the trophies lined up proudly on the shelf above his monitor. They were ranked by order of importance from left to right: Buffy statuette, a light-seeking robot he’d sweated blood to build from plans on the Internet using an old mouse and some slot-car motors, a limited edition Dr Who Sonic Screwdriver won on eBay, the weightier and considerably more realistic replica of Yoda’s light-sabre, and the pride of the fleet, the county chess prize. The blue glow from the phone screen was powerful enough to project the words FIRST PLACE through its tall perspex body and on to the wall behind. It was a title that was hard won. Not the chess final – Jackson had taken that in his stride – but the fallout. Victory’s aftermath had been tough, with the announcement in assembly and the unwanted attention from Tyler Hughes and his gang. Jackson knew the script: ‘They’re just jealous.’ ‘They feel threatened by you cos you’re clever.’ ‘You’ll see, they’ll all end up with ASBOs.’ But friendly advice doesn’t help when you’re in a headlock and someone is jumping up and down on your iPod.
Jackson stumbled to his monitor and watched as it swapped his reflection for the vivid glare of his desktop. In the centre of his screen was the SYSTEM SCAN window he had left to do his bidding earlier. He inspected the results.
You were last attacked on: NEVER
Recent intrusion attempts: NONE
Recent viruses blocked: NONE
None? Never? No trace of anything? Jackson brooded. How could it be? His anti-virus program was bullet-proof; it couldn’t have missed an infection like this.
If his own high-security settings couldn’t stop this virus masquerading as a message, if it could slip undetected past the best anti-virus software available, then what could Jackson do? If this was another sort of puzzle or an especially testing mission in Whisper, he’d have turned to the Web for help, checked out some forums, surfed a message board or two.
Jackson fired up his Internet browser. He didn’t even wait for the graphics to load before entering ‘Elan Drivel’ and hitting SEARCH. A heartbeat later, tens of thousands of web links unravelled down the screen. A free list of Irish baby names. ‘Feel like your kids talk meaningless drivel? Enrol in Parenting Classes.’ ‘Buy A Guide to Dublin and get an Irish dancing video absolutely free!’ ‘Try our online Anagram Machine.’ Line after line of completely unhelpful suggestions. But no mention of a virus. Not by this name anyway.
Maybe he was searching for the wrong thing. What else was there? There was that question. Over and over again, that question that had breached every defence he had and buried itself in his head: ‘Do you know any secrets?’
Jackson entered the sentence and groaned. Once again he was greeted by page after page of unhelpful links. An advert for a new chocolate bar: ‘It’s so good, you’ll want to keep it to yourself.’ ‘My cat was abducted by a secret alien society.’ Poor cat! thought Jackson.
Then, just as he was about to logoff and concede defeat, on page twelve of a possible 122,600 results something caught Jackson’s eye.
doyouknowanysecrets.com
As websites went it was uncomplicated. No pictures. No colourful animations. The question at the top of the page, DO YOU KNOW ANY SECRETS?, followed by a smaller headline, WELL, DO YOU?
Jackson did know some secrets. He knew that his dad kept a secret stash of cigarettes in the garage for when he got really stressed. He knew a password for the school’s computer server and what his teachers had said about him on his internal report form. It was quite complimentary, so he hadn’t changed it. He knew that Marie Cohan was double-dating Tyler Hughes and that Hughes was only one formal warning away from expulsion. He knew a cheat for unlimited bowstaffs in Whisper and a way of downloading just about any TV show and movie he wanted for free. He knew lots of secrets and apparently he wasn’t alone. Towards the bottom of the page were literally hundreds of secrets submitted by visitors to the site. ‘The Father Christmas in my local DIY store isn’t the real one. He is an actor paid by the store manager.’ – posted by FatBarry. ‘I pick my nose then shake hands with the boss. It makes me feel better.’ – by Wonder Girl.
What was this? What was Jackson doing, sitting here at three in the morning? He wasn’t sure this website had anything to do with the message that had kicked off this whole charade. He wasn’t even sure if sharing a secret was right anyway – was a secret still a secret once you’d shared it? How many people could you tell? What was the critical mass of a secret, the point at which it exploded into common knowledge? Now that was a mathematical problem that made even Jackson’s head hurt. That or his lack of sleep.
He continued down the unending column of confessions, his mouse wheel beginning to feel heavy. That was until one entry stopped him in his tracks. A single sentence, in light grey text, barely a few millimetres high, followed by the name of the author, Elan Drivel:
I keep a secret stash of Easter eggs.
To most visitors, the secret would seem unremarkable, the innocent confession of a chocoholic. But for Jackson it held a whole other significance. He knew he wasn’t going mad for starters. It was clear that someone, this Elan perhaps, had intended him to find his way to this site. And there was something about the secret that Jackson couldn’t fail to notice, something that any self-respecting geek would immediately comprehend. ‘Easter eggs’ weren’t just ch
ocolate treats. The phrase also referred to hidden messages, undocumented features and secret back doors left in the code behind certain games, websites and even DVDs by their programmers. Jackson had been led to this site and now the mysterious messenger was telling him it had a secret entrance.
There was the dancing stormtrooper hidden in the DVD menu of the Star Wars box set if you knew which remote-control key combination to press. Jackson had even found a sign in a cave in Whisper that he suspected had been left by one of the game’s developers. ‘Hello, Mum’ read the message, sprayed on the cave wall in a part of the game where only Elvish was spoken. Easter-egg hunting was all about being methodical. Nevertheless, having probed every link on the page, sifted every name for a nuance, even opened the VIEW SOURCE window to pour over the site’s raw code, Jackson was out of ideas.
Then he saw it. As he was dragging his mouse pointer doggedly down the page, it momentarily switched to a hand. It happened so quickly Jackson wasn’t sure if he’d imagined it. He tested the section of black background again, combing the area with his mouse arrow like a miniature minesweeper, hoping to see the angular pointer morph into the little hand again. But nothing happened. He was dog-tired. He felt like he’d been headbanging this puzzle all night and would have put the whole thing down to exhaustion were it not for a single grey pixel that blinked at him as he started to scroll down again.
The microscopic grey dot looked like a speck of dust on his monitor: barely a pixel in size. He had to lean closer and blink to keep it in vision. But sure enough, as he moved his mouse pointer back up the screen, this time placing it carefully over the dot, it suddenly changed into a tiny hand, an outstretched index finger confirming the presence of a live link.
It was now 4 a.m. or thereabouts and outside his window the birds were declaring their governance of the early morning, before the violent coup of the first of the traffic. Jackson should have been dead on his feet, but as he clicked the mouse button a second window popped up, black except for a luminous green text cursor winking in the top left. For the bleary-eyed Jackson this was caffeine.
Dot Robot Page 1
