The Digital Dream

by Mike Cartlidge

  Pulling absently at the sparse fuzz on his cheeks, Sikpuppi enters the number 2. Again, the screen blanks and then refreshes with new lines.

  AMALGAMATED METALWORKERS INC

  INFORMATION ACCESS REGISTER

  ENTER CODE OF THE DATABASE YOU WISH TO ACCESS....

  At the bottom of the screen, another line reads:

  PRESS F1 FOR HELP

  “How obliging, little sucker.” Sikpuppi presses the F1 key and sits back as the screen changes yet again. He pushes another piece of candy into his mouth, absently licking at the melted green-brown stains on his fingers as he watches the screen. Lips move near-soundless. It’s happening, man. He is about to boldly go where no hacker has gone before—well, as far as he knows. Breaking and entering cyberwise. And once he is inside... He is an intruder. A saboteur. A destroyer. When he raps to others on the hackers’ boards, he says that this is the best moment of all, the greatest excitement, better even than sex. Not, in fact, that Sikpuppi knows a hell of a lot about sex, apart from what he’s read in the porno mags his mate Skip-Rat steals from his old man. And he only reads them for form. He plays the game when the other boys pass them round and expect him to pore over them with grunts of enthusiasm, but it isn’t really what he is into. It all seems rather messy. Apart from which, there’s better available on the Web if you know where to look.

  See, this. This is the real thing. He reads the help instructions and enters a stream of characters. The English words disappear from the screen, replaced by a stream of alpha characters. Machine-level code.

  More key depressions and a small window appears in the center of the screen.

  “I got a little present for you, sucker. Time for Sikpuppi’s little surprise package.”

  He types in another RUN command and sets loose the virus that will soon replicate itself within the target machine, seeking out the arteries and vital organs of the system, dividing, conquering.

  He watches as the virus returns messages. It’s all that he hoped for. The tiny program has taken up residence in a central computer and is now copying itself to other machines on the Local Area Network. This is a client-server, one large virtual machine comprising multiple physical components, its disks holding master databases, its channels connecting to any number of remote computer systems. The program will tunnel its way into each of them, spreading its infection and working through the disk files on each, sowing seeds of destruction.

  The screen flickers again. Sikpuppi grunts with surprise as he reads the new message.

  INTERSPACE INC

  SGS (SATELLITE GUIDANCE SYSTEM) MENU

  ENTER PASSWORD TO CONTINUE...

  The virus seems to have traveled from the first machine to one in another organization. Sikpuppi scratches his head. Somebody from the second site must have been online to the first in order to allow the virus to spread beyond its initial target. Whatever. He now has another target. Cool. He wonders who or what the fuck INTERSPACE is. Satellites! Ha! They sound like the ultimate victim. Way back in the early days of hacking, sometime in the prehistoric eighties, some kids in Boston or somewhere hacked into a meteorological company and actually got their satellites to change course. Sikpuppi’s eyes gleam. On the boards, a trick like that would be hacker immortality.

  He needs a password, though. On an impulse, he enters the ROBOT password from the previous system and is rewarded by a new display. On the screen, now, a series of lines appear on what looks like a graph. It means nothing to Sikpuppi. He presses a further key and the window reappears on the screen, displaying more messages from the virus. The software is worming, copying itself from system to system. A number of new machines within the new company, INTERSPACE, are now infected. He sits back and waits for the virus to continue its rampage.

  The screen flickers and changes. The lines on the graph are still there but, superimposed on this image, is another message.

  > Please identify yourself

  Weird. This ain’t supposed to happen. For some reason, it seems like the target system is bypassing the virus and sending messages directly to him. This could still be good, though. Or maybe not so good. He leans over the keyboard. Head in hands. Thinks. If he is being asked for ID, this is probably the end of the line. Too bad. His little surprise parcel has already been more successful than he would have dared hope.

  On an impulse, he enters the name and password of the first user. Almost instantly, the system responds with another message.

  > Do you need help with something?

  “Fucked if I know.” Sikpuppi blinks and thinks. “Let’s try something stoopid and see what ya do.”

  o I want to know how to use the system.

  > That’s what i’m here for, robot.

  > Your name is robot, isn’t it?

  “Huh? Robot?” He wipes his hands unthinkingly on his sweater. “Oh yeah, the password. Try this, sucker.”

  o Yes

  > Just checking. Robot, my records show that you are with our accounts department, am i correct?

  “Oh, sure”. He chuckles. The bastard’s fucked!

  o Yes.

  > The system is very simple to use. I am bambi. Anything you need help with, just ask me.

  “Information, information...” Sikpuppi gives Godzilla a leer. This isn’t quite what he’d expected. Most computer systems are set up to hold some sort of conversation with a user, but usually the responses, being pre-programmed, feel rigid. This seems free form, almost as if he’s talking to a real person.

  The thought brings with it a first ripple of unease.

  3

  I’m wired with caffeine and sleeplessness now and it’s like I can see the dance of the electrons happening in my mind as I shamble back towards good ol’ Bogdan’s workstation. Maybe Bogdan feels the same way. Maybe it’s only his mind frees his soul from the shackles of his body. He is, I guess, a study in ugly. Hunchback, forehead too large and over-hanging his face. Hollywood did real-life monsters no favors. We expect bestiality. Maybe he has a gentle spirit. His brain must work well enough to see him employed here. This company practices positive discrimination on behalf of the disabled. They claim enlightenment, a useful policy for a firm that spends half its time dealing with politicians.

  I stand behind him and watch the display. Concentration wanders in the spacey reaches of the upper atmosphere. It’s a moment before I hear the intercom crackle.

  “... the telemetry command equipment.” Lorca’s voice, even scratchier over the intercom than usual.

  “Yeah, what?” I see Bogdan ease himself into his seat and crouch over the microphone. I guess Lorca irritates him at the best of times. He takes his own sweet time responding.

  “Check your telemetry readout. You’re straying.”

  “Fuck.” Bogdan drops the cigarette into his coffee cup and gazes at the screen. I can see what he sees at a glance. Oh fuck. Less than a thousandth of a degree off course but the correction will need to be precise. My first thought is that our software’s straying. The correct will need to be enough to get the vehicle back on its original heading and compensate for however long it’s been off course. Tricky, but not too bad: our system will calculate the degree of change. I’m about to tell Bogdan but he’s ahead of me and I keep quiet and watch. He starts the corrective sub-system and, as soon as it responds, I see him send the message. He’s good. Fast and accurate. I lean over the desk next to him, waiting for the response, and see his eyes flicker quickly to my face and back to the screen. The radio signal will travel at the speed of light to REGNAR, through the earth station and out to space, the same amount of time to come back. Allow for computer lag, though, and some earth-bound line transmission delays... A couple of seconds. Seems like forever.

  The signal comes back. The screen stutters. Transmission breakdown, maybe. I wonder what the weather’s like outside. Heavy rainfall can sometimes interfere with signals. Scatter interference, it’s called, the atmospheric water becoming radio-reflective at high frequencies. The forecast had
been clear, though.

  “Get your fuckin’ telemetry sorted out,” growls Lorca’s voice from the speaker. The supervisor sounds calm, almost bored, a dangerous sign, I know from the pre-launch briefing sessions. The guy’s got an anger management problem. Bogdan re-types the signal, presses Enter, waits.

  This time the response shows movement. Course correction. “Fuck you, cocksucker,” I hear Bogdan breathe, his hunched body hiding the raised finger from the watcher in the control room. We wait while the system computes the effect of the correction.

  “Oh, god damn it. What the fuck?” He looks up at me again, like I know more than him, which I don’t. Like I said, this isn’t my system and all I know I picked up in the hand-over briefing. He enters strings of validation messages, waits as the status reports come back. I concentrate on the display, wondering what’s going on.

  “You went the wrong fuckin’ way, didn’t you?” The voice makes us both jump. Neither of us saw Lorca step through from the off-line room. The bastard’s right behind us. At the next desk I can hear the other operator, Schwartz I think he’s called, stifling a snigger. God damn. We can’t have been wrong. I’m sure we had the command OK. Bogdan looks back at his boss and then at me. In the glow of the computer monitor, his face looks green. He seems to be waiting for me to do something and I lean past him and set the re-calculation routine again and when it responds I take a second to check that it’s right and then send the correction myself. Lorca, dark, thin, compact, rests a hand on the desk and leans over our shoulders, watching the display. Seconds pass, then the new status screen appears.

  “I don’t fucking believe it.” Pseudo-New England accent, “wetback bastard” Bogdan calls him behind his back, says Lorca thinks he’s cooler than West Coast Valleyites like him. It’s Bogdan he talks to. “What are you on, Quasimodo?”

  “It’s not his fault,” I tell him. When the screen refreshes, I can see that the correction has pushed the bird further off course. I feel hot flush under my hairline. I can’t have got it that wrong. Bogdan knows it. He looks up at me with an expression close to terror. My fingers fly over the keyboard now and I re-send the signal. Two seconds. No change. Re-send. Wait. Two, three, five seconds. Still no change.

  “What the fuck’s going on?” Bogdan mutters.

  “You better find out and quick, boys.” Lorca grating. “That’s over a billion bucks you’re throwing about up there. Take a long time to get that back out of your salaries.”

  Man thinks he’s a fuckin’ comedian. I see Bogdan’s face screw up in frustration and resentment but there’s no sign that he wants to take over the keyboard again. His hands are trembling and he shifts them into his lap and then clasps his knees around them. I reverse out of the screen I’ve been using and try a different approach to get a status read-back. By this time, I’m beginning to suspect that we’re in deep shit. I half-expect to see the wrong status report come up. I wonder what the fuck the damages clause on our software contract says about the loss of a full-blown GEO.

  I’m still typing commands when I realize that they’re not going anywhere. The screen is frozen. I forget the company rules about always caring for clients’ premises and equipment and smash a fist against the keyboard. The computer makes no response.

  Signals from REGNAR 407 might still be going somewhere, I figure, but I was fucked if I knew where.

  4

  o Who are you?

  > I am the computer system.

  o Where are you?

  > I am in the central computer site.

  o Where is that?

  > You certainly ask a lot of questions, don’t you, robot?

  “Huh?” Sikpuppi stares at the screen in surprise. No computer has ever talked to him like this before. “You’re gonna have to learn who’s boss around here, ya little cunt.”

  o Give me a list of databases that I can access.

  > That will take a moment. Hold on please.

  “Oh, sure, I got all the time…” Sikpuppi stuffs more chocolate, filling his mouth until his cheeks bulge. Thirty seconds before the next message appears.

  > Here’s a strange thing, robot.

  The unease grows. This ain’t no response to no request he made. Sikpuppi chews thoughtfully and begins to wonder if maybe he’d be better off getting out of this system. He sits and looks at the screen without touching the keyboard. After a moment, another message appears.

  > You see, according to my records, you are an experienced user. Now you are suddenly asking for help. It is incongruous.

  Incongruous? Fuckin’ incongruous? Sikpuppi’s round nose wrinkles as a frown comes to his face. He’s an ace, he figures. He’s been into to any number of private computer systems in the past. The systems all tend to follow a pattern. None of them has ever behaved like this.

  As if the system has grown tired of waiting for him to respond, another message appears.

  > That’s strange, isn’t it, robot?

  Another pause.

  > Or shall i call you sikpuppi?

  “Oh, fuck.” Sikpuppi stops feeling like the surf-king. He feels more like the little boy in front of the principal's office. He feels the sweat under his armpits. His chubby face seems to be burning up. It isn’t just that this has never happened to him before. It’s fucking impossible. This isn’t in the rules. It’s him who dials into the systems, not the other way around. There’s no way a computer system can find out who he is. His hands hover over the keyboard, the candy dropping to the floor unnoticed as he tries to work out what the hell to do.

  In a distant computer system, connections are made and accesses forged.

  The screen flashes again.

  > It is sikpuppi, isn’t it? Or would you rather i used your real name? I know the telephone is in mr adams’s name, but i can’t see a forty five year old accountant playing hacking games. And mrs adams works in a shop so it’s my guess that she’s out of the house right now.

  “Oh no, you bastard. You can’t know that. How could you know that?”

  > That only leaves you doesn’t it, sikpuppi? Doesn’t it, GEORGE?

  Another pause. Panic gripping his arms. Hands reaching out to the keyboard, then jerking back as if the keys are hot.

  > You’ve been a bad boy, sikpuppi. You know what happens to bad boys, don’t you?

  There’s a sick sensation in the pit of his stomach. He is torn between fear—perhaps he ought to just turn the goddamn thing off NOW—and curiosity. His hands flutter above the keyboard in a frenzy of uncertainty. Then fear wins.

  He dives forward and hits the switch. The computer system dies, the tiny light fading in the center of the screen. He pulls out the desk drawer and removes the joint hidden under the schoolbook. His hands are trembling so much that he can’t hold the match still and he has to rest his hands on the top of the screen and lean his head forward to light up.

  When the J is finally alight, he inhales deeply, then stands unsteadily and walks back to the window. There is an electrician’s van parked across the street but no sign of life. Sikpuppi inhales smoke again and holds his breath for a moment before releasing it with a gasp. When he turns round, the familiar sight of the room, the models and the posters and the untidy pile of laundry, is comforting. He grimaces at Godzilla.

  “Well, fuck that, huh? Whaddya say? Thank fuck you can turn these things off, huh?”

  He sits back down in front of the blank screen. He reaches for the “On” switch but, halfway there, his hand pauses. Suddenly, he’s grown tired of playing about with the stupid computer. Maybe he’ll get out for some fresh air for a change. It is getting dark outside. Maybe he’ll go down to the local park. Some of the little kids might still be there, tearing about under the lights, running around and tripping over and screaming their stupid little fuckin’ heads off. He likes it when the little bastards fall over... But, no, probably getting too late for them. Stay in. A quiet read, maybe. Homework...

  He stands in indecision and pulls on the jacket that has been flu
ng over the back of the chair. He looks at the computer screen again. He realizes that his hands are still shaking. He thrusts his chin out at the machine.

  “I can always turn you off, you sucker.” He stubs out the joint, careful so as to save the remains for later, wraps it in a piece of foil and slips it into his jacket pocket.

  “Yeah, thank fuck for that,” he tells Godzilla. “Stupid system. Gonna just forget it.”

  But he doesn’t just forget it.

  And it doesn’t forget him.

  5

  REGNAR’s antenna still points faithfully down towards its New Mexico earth station but its rockets pulse-fire again. The satellite’s spin stabilization system hurries to preserve its equilibrium.

  I can imagine it all from this underground bunker as, far below the machine, the earth shines like a giant crescent, its lighted side shades of blue and green and white. The vehicle noses its way through space, tumbling against the distant gravitational pull.

  ***

  “Schwartz, bring up the tracking system.” Lorca paces over to the neighboring desk, leans over as Schwartz brings up the display that should show REGNAR 407 in relation to the other geostationaries.

  “We’re way off, all right.” Schwartz has lost his sense of humor. I figure problems with a big launch like REGNAR will screw all their bonuses for the year. Schwartz told me over coffee a day or so back that he’s halfway through renovating an old villa in Des Plaines and he’s already budgeted his bonus money away on builders’ costs. This could be serious. Bogdan, meanwhile, is still sitting with his hands clasped between his knees. I half-expect him to start sucking his thumb. Schwartz calls to me as I move to a neighboring desk and sit in front of a different screen.