The Spiraling Web

by Ryan Somma

  2.07

  A jet engine rumbling in the distance was Zai’s first clue that things had changed. Its frequency slowly rose and descended in pitch as the jet neared the train and passed over it. The IWA’s anti-virus had worked; it was safe to go back online.

  Perhaps this meant Zai’s travels would go smoother from here on out. The last 24 hours were an exhausting mess. Getting from point A, her home in Toronto, to point B, Devin in Norfolk, was not a simple and direct process. First she had to get from point A to point C, Union Station, with a cabby who did not speak English or French and had no idea how to get to the train station without computer directions. The computer governing the cab’s emissions and fuel consumption were also batty, causing the vehicle to lurch and stall like a rebellious horse. The train station presented another series of challenges without computers to maintain schedules, time arrivals and departures, and coordinate with other stations.

  Then there was the problem of money, which was tracked electronically. Who owned what portion of the quintillions of dollars, euros, francs, yen, rupees, pounds, krones, marks, yuan, etc in the world’s bank accounts were completely unknown, except in the memories of those who owned them. Luckily, the world was not going to stop working simply because the established currency system was inoperable.

  Between Toronto and Philadelphia Zai had scribbled out nearly a dozen promissory notes. “IOUs” the cabby had called them. The train conductor referred to them as makeshift “Personal Checks.” Apparently, a mere fifty-years ago almost all financial transactions were conducted with these tiny contractual agreements. Zai marveled at an economy constructed on written promises.

  Zai smiled to herself at the irony of comparing this to the present system: an economy supported entirely with imaginary monies.

  Pulling out her palm computer, she connected her headset to the hand-held device and tapped the “On” button. After a few moments, the digital connection to the satellite feed established and she was greeted with a welcome message as her avatar logged onto the Web. She waited, making sure the juvenile hacker wasn’t lying in wait.

  “Connect to Outlaw News,” she spoke to the microphone after a moment.

  A string of beeps and chirps came through her headphones by way of reply.

  They stopped and Zai said, “Hello?”

  More beeps and chirps, then silence.

  “Dammit,” Zai pulled off the headset, bundled it all up with her palm computer, and dumped them in her bag. She could hear it still beeping and chirping from under her seat.

  “It is frustrating, isn’t it?” came a sympathetic voice to Zai’s left. It was the elderly woman who took the seat in Boston. At least she smelled old, which Zai did not find unpleasant, but could do without the residual salami sandwich odor from the woman’s lunch. “We’ve become so accustomed to being inundated with media, that when it’s gone, the silence drives us mad.”

  “Tell me about it,” Zai huffed, and then turned to the woman. “You can’t get online either?”

  “Oh I can get online,” the woman assured, “but there’s nothing to see in cyberspace. Didn’t you hear? The anti-virus destroyed the Internet.”

  “I can’t get online at all,” Zai said.

  “I’m Jodie,” the woman said.

  Zai extended her hand, just in case. Jodie took it and Zai judged the texture of oxidation in the woman’s skin to place her about age 60. “Zai,” she replied. “Do you think we could try accessing some sites on your computer?”

  “It’s something to do,” the Jodie’s voice sounded like a shrug. “Where would you like to go?”

  “Try Outlaw News,” Zai suggested.

  “Okay,” Jodie’s tone was hesitant, “but those independent medias are always so slow to download, if they even come up at—oh!”

  “Welcome to Outlaw News,” the grungy male voice of Samuel Jenkins, newscaster, announced, “You’re only source for corporate-free current events analysis. We dig a little deeper for your peace of mind.”

  Zai smiled at Jodie’s surprise, “I bet Earthtainment Online is your service provider.”

  “How did you know?” Jodie was even more surprised.

  “They filter out competing news sources so you have to go to one of their vendors,” Zai explained.

  Jodie was skeptical, “But I was getting Faux’s newsfeeds before the Internet went down.”

  “They’re owned by Earthtainment too. That company owns about six newsfeeds to create the illusion of a free market,” Zai continued. “With the Quality of Service architecture removed, that leaves only the anything-goes anarchy of the World Wide Web. We can tune into any newsfeed we want, corporate-approved or not.” Cripes, Zai thought, I sound like Devin.

  Zai could almost hear the paradigms crashing down inside Jodie’s head, “I see.”

  “Would you mind turning it up?” Zai prompted politely.

  “You don’t want to read the—” Jodie dropped silent for a moment, registering Zai’s eyes for the first time. “I’m sorry, of course.”

  Samuel Jenkins voice came up, “Today’s top story is the supposed defeat of the Flatline Virus. For almost 37 hours now the virus has shut down shopping malls, airports, and banks across the world costing trillions of dollars in damages and interrupted sales. Today the International Web Authority released a statement that the virus was eliminated from computer systems worldwide and that it was safe to go back on the Web,” the venom in the man’s voice foreshadowed his impending rant.

  “Safe,” he spoke the word and paused dramatically, “Since when do we need to be safe from the World Wide Web?”

  Here it comes, Zai thought, amused.

  “Have we become so reliant on computers doing the work for us that a department store has to shut down because their cashiers are incapable of basic arithmetic? Have we become so out of touch with physical reality that we can’t turn our lights on and off, adjust our air conditioning, drive our cars without a computer to tell us it’s all right to do so?” Samuel’s pitch elevated as he became more emotional, “What next? Computer’s to follow us around, wiping our butts and…”

  “Well,” Jodie said, “he’s certainly obnoxious.”

  “Yeah,” Zai grinned. “He’s great. Let’s check out the Global Village Voice. They’re less opinionated and more news-oriented.”

  “I prefer my news to be objective,” Jodie sighed.

  “I think objectivity’s the problem,” Zai countered. “Objective means giving equal time to every idea, no matter how uninformed.”

  The GVV feed opened, “Welcome to the G-Double-V News, the independent voice for a rapidly changing world. Today’s discussion is on the destruction of the World Wide Web. Is it all that bad? We have with us Dr. Larry Lessig, author of the book ‘Today’s Ideas,’ and DataStreams Incorporated spokesperson Rover Carl. Dr. Lessig, let’s begin with your somewhat controversial idea that the destruction of the World Wide Web is a good thing.”

  “Not the World Wide Web, but Quality of Service.” Dr. Lessig corrected. His voice was crisp and articulate, like Devin’s, Zai thought. She liked him immediately. “Remember, the World Wide Web was an architecture laid over the Internet, and QoS was an architecture laid over WWW. It gave corporations the power to manage bandwidth more efficiently, but also gave them the ability to descriminate against competitors—”

  “That’s nonsense,” Rover Carl broke in. “Such descrimination is illegal. Clearly—”

  “Without being able to look at the code,” Lessig returned, “the law is unenforceable.”

  “That code is proprietary,” Carl snapped, “which is why—”

  “Exactly,” Zai and Lessig said together.

  “…which is why DataStreams intends to sue the IWA for this obvious breach of public trust,” Carl continued. “Someone in that organization decompiled proprietary information and used it to destroy not only the company I represent, but every corporation on this planet. This class-action lawsuit’
s magnitute, every major corporation suing the world-wide governing body, has never been seen in history…”

  Zai suddenly felt immensely burdened, “Would you mind flipping it to SSDD?”

  “Certainly,” Jodie said, tapping in the address. “You know, I’d heard this was a good newsfeed, but I could never my system to download it.”

  “I bet it’ll work now,” Zai said, the burden lifting. “I bet all the independent voices are being swamped with online traffic right now.”

  “Rather like a Renaissance in Cyberspace,” Jodie offered, and then, “I used to teach University Literature.”

  “I used to take Literature,” Zai’s face split into a goofy grin.

  Both fell silent as the media stream resolved, “You’re online with SSDD News. Today’s top headlines: World Bank Struggling to Recover Accounts Destroyed by IWA Anti-Virus, Computer Scientists Debate the Web Architecture Flaws That Allowed Flatline Virus to Propagate, IWA Apprehends Suspected Author of the Flatline Virus—”

  “That one!” Zai clutched Jodie’s arm. “I want to hear that story!”

  The link opened with a click, “Welcome to SSDD News. Today’s top story, the International Web Authority this morning announced it has apprehended the suspected engineer of the Flatline Virus. While they were unable to reveal the suspect’s identity due to his status as a Juvenile, Reuters Headline News has learned they were apprehended in Norfolk, Virginia…”

  Devin? Zai wondered, and continued listening.

  “…at a public library after police and IWA officers were unable to locate him at his home,” the woman said, “Authorities believe he will be an important factor in preventing future outbreaks of the virus.”

  That hacker is too powerful to let himself be caught, Zai thought to herself, and only Devin would hide out in a public library.

  “Where are they holding him?” Zai demanded.

  “They didn’t say,” Jodie offered apologetically. “I would guess at the IWA headquarters.”

  “Yeah,” Zai frowned, “but they’ve got headquarters in every state and country across the globe and the means to ship him to any of them in under an hour. Damn.”

  They sat in silence for several long moments.

  “SSDD,” Jodie finally mused quietly. “I wonder what that stands for.”

  “The name doesn’t make much sense to me,” Zai shrugged, weary. “Same Dollar-sign Pound Exclamation Point Question Mark Different Day News.”

  Jodie typed this out on her palm computer, “Same $#!? Different Day News.”

  “It reads ‘Same Stuff Different Day’,” Jodie described, “only replace ‘stuff’ with the s-word. You know, poo.”

  “How do you get that out of it?” Zai puzzled.

  “They symbols look the same,” Jodie explained. “The dollar-sign looks like an ‘S,’ the pound sign like an ‘H’…” She trailed off, obviously uncomfortable with going further.

  “I see,” Zai said, absorbing this new perspective on something familiar, a new layer of understanding. “It must be like that Leet-Speak Devin once told me about.”

  “Leet-Speak?” Jodie asked.

  “Short for ‘Elite Speak.’ Hacker cryptography,” Zai explained. “They use it to communicate though public channels.”

  “Hm,” Jodie mused thoughtfully. “How clever. They communicate right out in the open and only someone thinking along the same lines can read it. It’s so simple, it’s brilliant.”

  “That’s the point. Like minds…” Zai drifted off, thinking. She said, “Are you tired of me yet Jodie?”

  “Of course not,” Jodie scoffed. “I am thoroughly enjoying this tour of the Internet by one of its experts. It’s like being taken around to all the best shops in town by one of the locals.”

  “You want to explore something with me then?” Zai asked. “I need your eyes and your imagination to do this.”

  “Okay,” Jodie offered helpfully.

  “You know what SSDD did with sh—uh… With the s-word,” Zai began. “Could you try doing that with the term ‘Legion of Discord’ and plugging it into the ideonexus search engine?”

  What followed was the most infuriating twenty-minutes of Zai’s life. Zai knew what result the right answer would get from ideonexus, but lacked the visual acuity mandatory to figuring out the puzzle. All of these characters were sounds to her, their pattern similarities were complete unknowns to her, but if she did have sight, she was certain she would fair better than poor Jodie.

  Finally, one of Jodie’s inputs returned over a hundred thousand results:

  |_[-6][()|| ()|= |)()()[V]

  “Awesome!” Zai exclaimed at first hearing the news, but browsing the links, she knew they had to narrow down their results. “Add IWA to the end of that string in Leet-speak.”

  “‘eye X/ 4,’” returned the best results out of the character combinations Jodie could come up with.

  Zai was actually thankful for the one-hour delay they experienced in Philidelphia when she realized they needed to narrow the results down even further, “Add ‘Devin Matthews’ to that.”

  “Is that you’re boyfriend?” Jodie asked with a touch of humor.

  Zai was caught off guard, but managed to answer, “He’s the closest thing I’ve got to one.”

  “ ‘|>{-/! []V[]@++]-[3_|_/$’,” Jodie entered on her last attempt. Growing more confident at this she said, “That one isn’t returning anything.”

  Zai thought it out, “Try ‘Omni.’”

  Apparently Jodie was getting the hang of this, because the portal responded to her third query, “Did you mean ‘()|/|||][‘?”

  “Click that. Click that! Yes! Definitely that’s what you meant!” Zai urged excitedly.

  “It’s a paper,” Jodie said, looking over the single link. “It’s for breaking into the International Web Authority’s Intranet. There’s a web address.”

  “Go to it,” Zai ordered.

  “Are we hacking IWA?” Jodie asked.

  “We’re trying to,” Zai answered.

  “How exciting.”

 

  Although Zai felt the tension, she could not observe her knuckles blanched from her fingers griping her seat’s armrests. Forty minutes had passed following the Legion of Discord’s directions for breaking into IWA’s website to no avail. The intercom announced their arrival at Penn Station, and Zai knew this avenue of investigation had come to an end.

  “I’m sorry Zai,” Jodie said, gathering her things to take on Baltimore. “I really hope you find what you’re looking for. I’ll e-mail you when I get to my hotel.”

  Zai nodded, the lump in her throat prevented her from speaking.

  Jodie took Zai’s hand in both of hers, “You’re a very brave girl, and I know the Cosmos is looking out for you.”

  They broke physical contact and Zai struggled to push the sobs welling up in her down. She picked up her palm-computer, rubbing its smooth screen. It was turned on, broadcasting light-waves that signified mass quantities of data to the dead receptors that were her eyes. The world was a great big lonely place designed exclusively for people who could see it. Zai was an aberration, unable to function within the world.

  A man grunted as he sank into the seat beside her, his oversized mass shifting the incline of her seat. Zai’s desperation transmogrified into anger, but she cognitively willed herself to remain diplomatic.

  “Pardon me Sir,” she began in her best estimation of meekness. “Do you have Internet access?”

  “What?” he grunted. “You can’t afford it or something? Get your own service provider. You can even get them free you know.”

  “No sir,” she said, her innards contorting to prevent her from gouging out his eyes. “I’m blind, and my headset is on the fritz. Could you run a few online queries for me? It won’t take but a moment.”

  “Blind?” he sounded incredulous, as if the milky white orbs staring at nothing were insufficient proof. �
�I thought they cured that. You know, growing new retinas, transplanting optical nerves and whatnot.”

  Kill. Kill Kill, Zai thought, and allowed some acid into her response, “Which do no good if your brain lacks a receptor site for the nerves. I don’t have a visual component in my brain.”

  “Don’t they got chatbots?”

  “Chatbots are horrid fetid monstrosities! They’re obscene excrement that make me sick!” Zai leaned forward and spat on the floor between them, “Eff Chatbots!”

  That was the end of their conversation. Zai folded her arms over her chest and tried to control her breathing. After a moment she realized the clicking noise aggravating her so much was her teeth grinding. She willed herself to stop it, but her internal silence let the sounds of her overweight selfish neighbor into her consciousness.

  “Jerk,” Zai snapped at him and reveled in the uncomfortable silence that followed. After a moment, she heard him get up and leave for a seat further back in the compartment. This made her feel a little better, but the problem of finding Devin in this great big universe still remained.

  The train set into motion again, leaving Zai to contemplate her isolation. She was so absorbed in self-pity that she barely noticed her palm-computer chirping an instant message. She still could not go online, which required her sending signals out to the Web, but her computer could apparently receive incoming data.

  Jodie’s excited, spirit-lifting voice came through, “Zai, you won’t believe what just happened! I just received an e-mail from a hacker named Traveller. He says he’s with the Legion of Discord and our attempts to hack IWA assure him we’re not with the law. He also says they installed a program on Devin Matthew’s monocle computer that broadcasts its GPS coordinates.

  “I plugged the 38.805 latitude and –77.047 longitude into mapit.com and it gave me the address for IWA Headquarters in Alexandria Virginia. That’s just outside Washington DC Zai! Isn’t that something? So if you get this message, be sure to get off at the next stop in Union Station. You can take the metro from there. Good luck Zai and go get him!”