RESTORATION (a science fiction novel) (RESTORATION (the science fiction trilogy))

by Utley, Todd

  They all decided to go out for pizza and a movie. It was like really sticking it to Cyrus whenever they went out. Cyrus had to mobilize a lot of people to keep up with them. When they got to the mall, the pizza place was really packed, so they left and went to another pizza place four miles away that was known for live comic acts suitable for the family. They had a great time and Dodge could tell by watching Toby that he was having the best time he had in ages.

  “It must have been hell having to work for Cyrus Slade” he thought. They took their time eating and listening to the comics, and they enjoyed some much needed laughter that took their minds off their situation for a little while.

  After leaving the pizza place, they went back to the mall to see a movie. There was a new Star Wars movie showing and they decided on that one. It was hard to believe that they were still making those movies. It was now the longest running movie series in history. The box sets now had something like thirty movies in them spanning more than 75 years. It was great, they just kept adding more to the story.

  They were all to full from eating pizza to get movie food so they just got their tickets and went on in. The movie was fantastic, and the visual effects and sound were outstanding, just as expected.

  The movie ended and it certainly served as a healthy distraction from the reality of being watched back at home. They got home, piled out of the minivan, and went inside. Tomorrow was Saturday and everyone was talking about sleeping in and having a big breakfast followed by lying around until afternoon. One by one they all filed off to their rooms. Sarah went to her room and fell asleep reading a digibook. Dodge and Linsey went to their room and watched the news and one of their favorite shows, “Friday Nights.” They fell asleep somewhere in the middle of it. It was a different story in Bobby’s room. They weren’t tired, so he and Toby stayed up watching old movies.

  Normally Bobby would have objected to watching the old stuff, but since he knew Toby was actually an old man, he understood now why he would prefer watching the older shows. It was a really old movie starring a gritty actor named “Clint Eastwood.” He was a tough New York City cop and he was quite good with a gun. Bobby hadn’t watched any of his movies before, but thought that he kind of liked this Clint guy, he was pretty cool as Dirty Harry, a real tough no nonsense cop that didn’t talk much. He loved it when Harry pulled out that big 357 magnum hand gun and said, “Go ahead punk, make my day!”

  It was different now with Toby since Bobby knew he wasn’t really a kid, it was like having a sleep over with your uncle. Toby was doing a great job though of acting like a kid. Bobby supposed he had to do his best to convince the hackers that he was doing his job. Somewhere in the middle of the second movie, they both drifted off.

  Dodge woke up in the middle of the night. He wanted to check his phone but he couldn’t because it would raise suspicion with Cyrus’s crew. He had shut off the ringer on his phone and all the lights too, and turned it face down on the bedside table. He didn’t want any visible signs on his phone if John should call in the middle of the night. It was difficult but he would have to wait until morning to check it.

  Much to his surprise, he slept very soundly the rest of that night, and didn’t wake up again until 10:20 a.m., he must have been really tired, and badly needed the sleep. As soon as he woke up, he grabbed his phone and went downstairs to the kitchen. He wanted to look at it but didn’t want to seem to anxious. Linsey and Sarah were up fixing some breakfast and the coffee was nearly done. Dodge said good morning and sat down for a minute. He poured a cup of coffee before grabbing the digipaper and plopping down to read it at the kitchen table. He started reading the headlines and picked up his phone to check his messages.

  Sure enough John had left a message: Hey, Dodge, I waited to call you until daybreak just in case your phone was on and could be seen, just being careful, anyway, been up all night and I’ve got it done. Take your phone somewhere private, open the message I sent you, and you’ll see an attachment called “contacts2.” Save this message to your mem. card, go to the settings menu and select “import contact list” then select “browse” and go to the mem. card and select the “Contacts2” file. When prompted “are you sure you want to replace your contact list with Contacts2?” select “yes.”

  “When the time is right, go to your office. One of the cameras has a great view of your monitor so the watchers will see what you’re doing and that’s just fine. Link up your phone with your PC and then run a backup file of your phone contact list to your PC, just like you would any other time.

  When you do this, you’re actually infecting your computer but don’t worry that’s part of the plan. Leave the office and return some time later in the day and open some of the old useless files that we discussed. If you still have that secret hiding place then access it so that the watchers can see you do it and easily instruct Toby later on how to get to it. Be obvious about saving the files to a particular microdrive and then place it back in the hiding place and leave the office. That’s it buddy, I have to go, I’m exhausted.

  When Dodge hung up, he realized once again that John was simply a genius, there were no two ways about it, not only was John the best programmer he had ever seen, he was also good at this cloak and dagger stuff, amazing. Just as he ended the call, Toby and Bobby came bounding in like boys that age always do. They all had breakfast together then Bobby and Toby went out to shoot some hoops. Everyone, even the boys, were doing a great job of acting natural.

  Cyrus and his crew had no idea what carnage was about to descend upon them. Dodge took his sweet time reading the paper, drinking more coffee, milling about the house, and checking the security system, just as any engineer would. He took his sweet time but did finally go to the restroom when his coffee consumption caught up with him and he took care of the contact file as John had instructed while he was in there.

  John had obviously hacked his phone and purposely infected it with a file that would do Cyrus in, but it was carefully masked within the contact file. Loading that new contact list file onto his office PC was going to infect it. Connecting a microdrive to the infected PC would then infect the microdrive. Then, at some point, Toby would steal that drive just as planned. Cyrus would think he was stealing high-tech ESS files that would reveal the vulnerabilities of the LifeTech system, but instead Cyrus would be falling directly into a carefully laid trap.

  Once they successfully infected the computers within the compound they would have created their own invasion of privacy, the hunter becomes the hunted! After finishing his coffee he decided he would go out for a few minutes and shoot some baskets with the boys. They were glad he came and they all had a good time making bets on who could make the shot from the furthest away. Dodge hired a contractor to remove the old basketball goal, while Bobby was still recovering from Restoration, and had them install a brand-new one at the very back of the drive where it turned to go into the detached garage. That placed it far enough away from the street to prevent any more accidents.

  He had fun and got rid of some stress at that same time. He was beginning to get tired and the timing was good to get to his task.

  “Well, you young men have fun, I’ve got some computer work to catch up on.” Toby and Bobby got what he was saying and knew that Dodge was going to bait the trap.

  Dodge went up to his office and turned on his computer. He set his phone to sync and opened his phonebook software on the PC and set it to sync and hit start. It only took about a minute for the little icon to turn green and it displayed “successful sync” He closed out the window on the PC and on his phone and slipped his phone back into his pocket.

  John went into a lot of detail about selecting contact files and moving them but that was because he didn’t know what method Dodge typically used to do backups. Dodge simply did the sync method which moved the infected contact list to his PC just as John instructed. This was the one time he was actually hoping that the watchers were actually watching. If they weren’t then he was just wasting his
time.

  He got up and went downstairs to get a coke, he thought a little segue between backing up the phone list, and messing around with the

  important files, might provide a natural gap, leaving the hackers less suspicious of foul play.

  He took his time putting a coke over ice in a big glass and then took a lengthy restroom break. He read his car magazine again while in the restroom. He went back to his office and locked the door behind him and retrieved the key from over the window sill.

  “Man, I sure hate giving my hiding spot away!” He took the key and opened his desk drawer, pulled out the fire safe and unlocked it. There were plenty of digital lock safes available today but he liked the old keyed lock, it just seemed to have nostalgic character.

  He dug around in the box until he found a bright orange drive that he knew had some older design files on it, both for the LifeTech, and the Medic-Star systems. He loaded it up and opened several files and then acted as if though he was intently studying them. He used his touch pen to draw several little red circles around areas of the schematic and a corresponding area on the circuit board layout file. He launched a sticky note program in the editor and attached it to the red circles on the drawings and then typed a message in the box. “Discovered security breach potential at these points, vulnerability due to poor shielding on the communications bus, must revise on next design change for Gen 3 release.”

  “There, that should keep them busy for a while.” Neither Cyrus or Glitch were electronics engineers, they did have a good bit of knowledge but nothing like Dodge. He chuckled to himself. “Should I add a flux capacitor to the schematic.” He remembered the old movie that John loved so much from the 1980’s about the kid that had the time travel DeLorean car and the wacky professor with the wild hair.

  He continued to look over the files for about another 45 minutes just to make it look legit. He made a few more notes about voltage levels and upgrading components. Things that they had actually already done for future releases, it looked very official.

  He saved the files back to the orange drive and then removed it and put it in the safe, while doing so he spotted the blue drive with the GTO files on it so he grabbed it out, and a bag of pistachios that he had stowed in there also. He locked the fire safe and the desk then returned the key to the top of the window sill. He went back to his PC and opened a file folder named “old favs” and clicked on one of his favorite things to watch when he was all by himself, classic cartoons from the 60’s.

  Dodge leaned back and put his feet up on his desk as Tom and Jerry began playing on the PC. He sat there and enjoyed the show while he munched on his stash of pistachios. How much more natural than this, can you get? He wondered if the watchers were enjoying Tom and Jerry as well, that funny little mouse, what a hoot! They just didn’t make good stuff like that anymore.

  He ran out of nuts and his coke was just about all gone so he turned off the PC and left the office turning off the light on the way out. Now he just had to wait and see if the watchers would take the bait.

  He went downstairs and turned on the TV to catch some sports highlights. He watched it for about twenty minutes and then decided to wash the car. He pulled the GTO out in the drive and got everything out. The boys saw what he was doing and offered to help.

  Just a few minutes into it Toby’s phone rang. He half way dried his hands on his pants and answered the phone while walking to the other side of the driveway. It was Glitch.

  “Hello Toby,” Glitch’s creepy voice came through the phone more slowly than normal.

  “Hi Dad,” said Toby, to provide cover. Glitch got it and continued. “Mr. Kerrington has a key hidden in his office over the window sill. In his desk is a strong box that it fits. In that box is an orange microdrive. I want the contents of that drive.”

  “Okay Dad,” he said, “I’ll clean it up as soon as I get home I promise.” Pretending that his room was messy and he was in trouble. Toby heard a “click”. Glitch had hung up without saying goodbye or anything. “Weird little dude.”

  “Okay, bye,” Toby said, as if Glitch was still on the line. Toby came back and started washing the car again and explained that his Dad had called and complained about him leaving his room a mess. They all played along just in case Toby’s phone was bugged, they couldn’t be too careful.

  A few minutes later Toby began holding his stomach.

  “Hey guys I don’t feel so good, I think I had better go to the bathroom.”

  “All right,” Bobby said, “If you still don’t feel good, just go lie down in my room, I’ll be up when we get done washing the car.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  He went inside and looked around to make sure nobody was watching him. Linsey and Sarah went to the store and wouldn’t be back for a while. Dodge and Bobby wouldn’t check on him because they knew exactly what he was doing and certainly didn’t want to spoil it. He still had to act like he was worried about getting caught just to sell it to the watchers back at the compound.

  He went into the office and grabbed the keys off the window sill, it was on the second one that he checked. He ran over to the desk and turned the PC on, it only took him a few minutes to hack the password. He used the key, unlocked the safe and got the orange drive. He stuck it in the first port and then laid his phone down on the desk and began a sync. He opened the drive contents on the screen and highlighted everything in the drive and then selected send to, wireless devices, site survey, he located his phone from the list and hit execute.

  It only took about one minute to copy all the orange drive contents onto his phone. He put everything away and closed out the windows on the PC and shut it down. He returned the keys above the sill and left the room. They had done it, he thought, all he had to do was get this file on his phone back to Glitch and the take down could begin.

  Meanwhile back at the compound Glitch was watching, we have done it, he thought, we’ll soon have more information about the LifeTech hardware.

  Toby went to Bobby’s room and lay down. He actually was a little tired after playing ball, washing the car, and stealing secrets. He awoke to Bobby standing over him.

  “Hey Toby, wake up man, you feeling better?”

  “Oh, Sorry. I just closed my eyes for a minute and boom, out.”

  “Oh, that’s all right, you must have been tired, you feeling better?”

  “Yes, I am thanks”

  “Come on,” said Bobby, “Let’s go downstairs and have a burger, Dad’s fixing them on the grill.”

  Bobby, Dodge, and Toby sat around the patio table and had some burgers hot off the grill. It was a sunny day and it was perfect for eating outside. They wanted to talk about the plan but couldn’t until the ride back to Toby’s house. Toby was anxious to ask about the drive contents and to tell them how Todd and Cheyenne might be easy to recruit to their side. Pretty much everyone except Glitch was a prisoner in their situation and they all hated what they were doing but simply had no choice.

  After filling up on burgers, chips and dip, they all went into the TV room to relax and watch sports highlights. Their bellies were full so they got lazy and laid around until time to take Toby home.

  They all piled into the GTO for the ride back to Toby’s

  “Don’t worry about my phone, it’s wrapped up good in my bag just like it was on the way here,” said Toby. I copied the orange drive contents is that good? Dodge smiled.

  “Yeah that was the bait, I guess they really are watching.”

  “Okay, listen guys,” said Toby, “I really need to talk about this and we only have a few minutes. I think we can flip Cheyenne and Todd. Cheyenne likes me and we talk a lot. Todd is absolutely nuts about you because of this kick ass car. I don’t know too much about either of them yet, but Cheyenne and I got into a conversation about the head bombs and about getting inside something metal to survive, and she asked a lot of questions. I think, pretty much everyone hates Cyrus, and would jump at the chance to escape if they had somewhere sa
fe to go where their heads wouldn’t go bang. If I could get a bunch of them on board could you find a place for us to go, you know, like when it all comes to a head and you guys take down Glitch and Cyrus, maybe we could make a run for it?”

  “Sure,” said Dodge, “But that’s going to be tricky to figure out.”

  “If we managed to get into a metal container, we could wait there until the battle was over. Once Cyrus is taken out of power, we could be certain that the death signal wasn’t being transmitted. After that we could go to the doctors to get these things out of our heads.”

  Dodge was listening intently, and was impressed with Toby’s idea.

  “Well, I see where you’re going with this, and if we can time everything just right, something like that might just work. If we attack just moments after most of his people have disappeared, he wouldn’t even know you guys were gone. He would find out when he began putting out orders while still under attack, that plan would also keep him from properly defending himself and the compound. Be very careful Toby, if anyone that you talk to were to go to Cyrus or Glitch, out of some twisted sense of loyalty, then the whole thing could fall apart on us, and we could all end up dead.”

  Dodge knew that his family was safe due to the clones being grown at the farm, but he held back from telling Toby, just in case he were found out at some point, he could be tortured into telling everything.

  Bobby had an idea.

  “What if you wrapped your head in tin foil or window screen or something like that?” Dodge chuckled.

  “Well Son, that’s pretty close to the right idea, and that’s what most people think will work, but it won’t work because the signal can still get in through the neck hole, where you can’t put the foil, high frequency will travel through walls, glass, and even your body.”