by Ted Weber
Frank looked unconscious. Dingo knelt and handcuffed him, then took his comlink and utility belt. He did the same with the guard behind him, and thrust his gun in his belt.
The final guard rose to his feet. He fumbled for his gun, looking a little groggy.
M-pat charged. The guard raised his pistol.
Shit. M-pat reached him just in time and locked a hand around the man’s wrist. He twisted the wrist and pulled him forward, off balance. With his other hand he grabbed the pistol by the barrel and snatched it away.
The guard flared with anger. He threw a left jab.
M-pat thrust up his left arm and knocked the punch away. Not having the pistol in a firing hold, and hoping not to kill anyone, he aimed an elbow at his head.
The guard blocked the elbow and countered with a hammer fist.
M-pat blocked the fist with his forearm, but the blow was a feint, and the man kicked him in the knee.
Pain shot through his leg. “Bitch ass punk!” He shifted his stance and jabbed with his left fist.
The guard blocked it.
Broiling with fury, M-pat swung his right hand, the gun still in it. The butt smacked his opponent in the left ear. “Straight to school, bitch!”
The man yelped, but kicked at his other knee.
This time M-pat was ready, and dodged. He swept his right leg under the guard’s and pushed against his torso. The man fell hard to the ground.
M-pat twirled the gun in his right hand and pointed it at the guard as he tried to get up. “Game over, chump. Lie down on your face now.”
The guard stared in his eyes, then complied. Motherfucker knows a man who means business. M-pat felt the rage dissipate. He motioned Dingo over, who slapped handcuffs on.
41
Pelopidas
The security room door opened. “Come in,” M-pat/Luke said. “We need you.”
“Everything okay?”
M-pat nodded, then limped toward a guard prone on the floor, the man’s wrists cuffed together. “Hopefully no one else heard.”
Dingo lowered the window blinds. He looked over and tossed a roll of duct tape to Pel. It didn’t come close, and rolled underneath one of the consoles.
“I hope you’ve got more of that,” Pel said.
“Plenty.”
M-pat pointed to one of the other consoles. “I turned the cameras off in here, but I couldn’t figure out the stuff with the old footage.”
“On it.”
M-pat and Dingo began gagging the four handcuffed guards.
“Nice work,” Pel said. He sat at the console.
“Hate them stun guns,” M-pat said while he worked. “Near useless.”
“Everyone’s tolerance is different.”
“Wasn’t expectin’ to act this soon. Hope we can hold out.”
“You’re the bosses here. Just keep the other guards busy elsewhere. Have them patrol the other side of campus or something.”
Pel examined the console. M-pat had indeed switched off the room’s cameras. He opened a Unix shell, navigated to the stored data from yesterday, and copied the files to the buffer directory. The data was all well organized and clearly named. “You know, I loaded instructions on your data glasses.”
“Too busy trying not to get shot,” M-pat said as he emptied the guards’ pockets.
“No one else was wearing data glasses in here,” Dingo said. “Not like the ones on patrol. Had enough trouble blending in as it was.”
Pel found the camera directories. He renamed the copied data from yesterday to resemble raw camera output, and ran a script to give it a current timestamp. Then he changed some pointers in the camera feeds to draw from these files instead of the actual cameras. Done.
He heard scraping noises. M-pat and Dingo dragged the three guards into the corner by the door, out of view of the window if they reopened the blinds. They arranged them in a pile with their feet facing, and taped them together.
“There’s a lot worse positions you could be in,” Dingo said as he wound tape from one ankle to another. “’Course, some of you might enjoy that.”
Pel scanned the wall monitors to see what was happening elsewhere. From the security room, they could spy on everyone in the building.
Several panoramic videos showed the circular control room dominating the fourth and fifth floors, where all of MediaCorp’s broadcasts and Comnet feeds could be overseen. Pel didn’t even know how many channels and backchannels they had, and doubted even most MediaCorp employees knew, since the number of channels increased each day. Today’s focus was clearly the Super Bowl, with some 250 million expected viewers and advertisements exceeding $10 million per minute. Much of the high circular wall displayed the pre-game show and associated standby cameras.
Pel flipped through camera feeds on his console, looking for Hubert. He wouldn’t know who was entering the MediaCorp campus, what they looked like, or where they were going. But he did know they were coming, and probably knew they were worth $3 million if captured. So Pel still didn’t trust him.
Between the giant wall displays, consoles were arranged in tightly packed concentric circles, hundreds of technicians in headgear or immersion suits sitting behind virtual keyboards and mixing boards, and glass video panes curving up like windshields. The producer and director sat in command chairs on a dais in the center. All this Death Star bridge needed was a Sith Lord like Robert Luxmore.
Speak of the devil. All the stadium cameras were on. Two of the wall videos showed Luxmore and his trophy wife in a private stadium booth, chatting with President Rand. The president never missed a Super Bowl, and the broadcasts indulged him with plenty of face time.
Pel zoomed in on one of the monitors. Both men sipped from glasses of gold-tinted whiskey. At least a dozen other VIPs milled about the intimate suite, wearing suits or dresses that seemed incongruous at a football game. Secret Service agents in data glasses stood like animatrons or talked into wraparound mics.
Wonder what they’re talking about? Pel followed directions he’d stored on his data glasses, and used Hubert’s backdoor to access the feed directory. He found the stadium booth cameras and brought them up on his console. He switched on the sound and turned up the gain.
“I’m telling you, Al,” Luxmore said, shooing his wife away. “You’ve got to improve security in this country.”
Might be good material. One of the console displays contained thumbnails of all the open feeds, so you could manipulate window placement. Pel ran links from the stadium booth cameras to console storage, copying the video to a file.
“When terrorists sneak into your own private party,” Luxmore continued, “and steal data that’s used to ruin my board and embarrass everyone…”
Rand narrowed his eyes. “Shit happens, Bob. If your comlinks were more secure, they wouldn’t have been compromised. Secret Service assures me they couldn’t get anything off the comlinks NSA designed.”
“I knew that girl you were flirting with was trouble, Al. You’ve got to stop letting the little head think for the big one.”
Pel plucked a two-inch data stick out of an inside shirt pocket and plugged it into a console port. He opened another Unix shell and set the camera video to copy to the data stick. He could see Waylee tattooing Luxmore’s remark on her ass.
In the stadium booth, a Secret Service flunky refilled their glasses. Rand threw his back and swallowed half the contents. “We plugged the leaks. The new scheduling director assures me it won’t happen again. And we’re all set for the terrorists’ next move. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have full confidence.”
Luxmore wagged a finger. “One good thing.”
Rand raised an eyebrow.
“This fiasco is just the thing we need to crack down on cybercrime. I need a more secure Comnet and BetterWorld. We need stronger laws and better enforcement and need full access to the users, so we can keep a handle on things.”
A Supreme Court justice, one of two Rand had appointed, approached, but the pres
ident waved him off. “Anyone Homeland catches,” he said, “if they’re good, typically we put them to work.”
Luxmore leaned forward. “I wouldn’t mind a piece of that.”
Rand rattled the ice in his glass. “We need to roll up the whole Collective, the People’s Party, the other troublemakers. You know, back in 2001, 9-11 gave the second Bush cover to do all sorts of things. I’d love that kind of leeway.”
Luxmore nodded. “We need Total Information Awareness. For real, not just what we have now. The more we know, the better decisions we can make. Uncertainty is a leader’s deadliest enemy.”
A chill swept through Pel and rattled his fingers. Their video might strengthen their enemies, not weaken them.
“The immersion suits will expand our reach,” Luxmore continued, “but wait until the neural interfaces hit the market. With that kind of technology, we can monitor thoughts if we need to.”
The color drained from Rand’s face. “Careful what you say. No one wants to hear things like that. Besides, I thought the brain implants were more than a decade away.”
“Mostly it’s FDA regulations in the way. That’s what’s really slowing us down.”
I should have known not to underestimate them.
Rand nodded. “Well you know my administration is committed to reducing burdensome regulations. Especially where national security’s at stake. We’ll talk more later.” He waved the Supreme Court justice over. Luxmore walked off, presumably to stalk other prey.
“’Sup?” Dingo’s voice came from behind. Pel turned. They’d finished taping the security guards together.
Pel pointed to the camera feeds from the stadium booth. “Rand and Luxmore will use our hacking as an excuse for further repression.”
Dingo shrugged. “Fascism 101.”
“Well I was hoping for the opposite. And Waylee was right about the brain interface research.” He hated to risk it, but… “DG, call 42.” Waylee’s new link, audio only.
“What’s up?” She sounded peppy.
She wouldn’t be en route just yet. They hadn’t planned on taking the guard station so soon. In low tones, he summarized Rand and Luxmore’s conversation. “What if our video backfires? What if instead of stopping the march toward totalitarianism, we accelerate it?”
Waylee responded immediately. “We’re going to wake people up. People need to know about their schemes, and can act to stop them.”
He tried to reply but she kept going. “It’s too late to second guess now. We’re committed.”
That was pretty much true.
“Radical change is always messy,” she said. “But if Rand and Luxmore overreact, even more people will turn against them, some passionately so.”
More Waylees? Pel checked the time. “Well you’d better get going. We had to advance the schedule a bit.”
“On my way.” She disconnected.
Pel returned to the search for Hubert. There he was, at a console in one of the outer rings, staring at scripts and moving graphs. He switched to the camera on Hubert’s console. Beads of sweat clung to the engineer’s forehead.
He fed the camera video to Hubert’s display, showing the engineer’s nervous face in a popup window.
Hubert mouthed “all good.”
He’d forgotten to switch on the audio but that was okay. Pel closed the camera video on Hubert’s display and turned to Dingo. “I’m like so late now I’m probably fired. Our friend’s on the monitor here. Keep an eye on him.”
“You got it, chief.”
He pointed to the data stick and spoke loud enough for M-pat to hear. “Take this with you when you leave. Don’t forget.”
“You say jump, I say how high.”
Pel shook his head and moved to another console. It would be nice if he could give himself full access to the security systems from remote terminals. Unfortunately, it looked like they were self-contained and isolated from external commands.
He motioned M-pat over and brought up a 3-D map of locks and cameras, then opened a help program. After querying it, he said, “Just tap on the camera symbol and the feed’ll pop up in a window.”
It took longer to figure out how to override the door locks, but the system was designed for muscleheads and was user friendly.
“Think I got it,” M-pat said.
“If in doubt about anything, ask the help program. In an emergency, contact me, and I’ll run up from the basement.”
Pel waited until the hallway was clear, then left the security room. He took the stairs down instead of the elevator.
The first door, marked “Authorized Personnel Only,” was four flights down. Biometric scanners were mounted next to it. The stairs continued downward, to a utility and storage sub-basement.
He donned his data glasses and displayed Nick Smith’s eyes. A retinal scan, thumb scan, badge read, and facial recognition later, the door slid open.
Inside, a megalopolis of blue-lit server racks sprawled toward a dim horizon. Red and green indicator lights, some blinking, dotted the homogenous facades like tiny windows. Fans hummed in the walls and the ceiling far overhead, carrying away the heat.
He shivered. It was the most terrifyingly beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Countless thousands of machines, each one anonymous, but together, in this blue twilight, shaping the thoughts of the world.
Pel wandered down one of the cyber canyons. Each computer and hybrid storage drive was connected to a power strip and neat bundle of optic lines running up the stack to horizontal arteries. According to the floor plans, the data center office, parts room, and other support facilities lay somewhere beyond.
The rows terminated at glowing blue cuboids of plastiglass, power panels enclosed inside. Beyond that was a wall punctuated by doors.
The glass door to the office was propped open. Through windows on either side, Pel saw three people sitting at consoles and one looking toward the door. Hu Kwong. She spotted him approaching and scowled.
“Sorry I’m late,” Pel/Nick said as he entered.
“You said that over an hour ago. Where the hell you been?”
Had it been that long? “Got a call. Family emergency.”
Everyone turned to look. “Everything okay?” Hu said. “You sound weird.”
Pel coughed. “Feels like I’ve got a cold or something.”
Hu backed up, then edged around him to the door. “I have to make the rounds. You get to work.”
One of the technicians, a heavyset blonde, glared at Pel/Nick, eyebrows knotted. She logged off her console, threw on her purse, and stomped out of the room.
Pel started to feel guilty about arriving late, but reminded himself the woman was lucky to have a job to complain about. Half his graduating class were unemployed, partly from outsourcing, but mostly because increasingly autonomic systems reduced the need for IT personnel.
He sat at the empty console furthest from the remaining two techs. It had a real keyboard, with springs under the letters. Let’s see if Nick lied to us. I’ve got Hubert’s info as a backup. He entered Nick’s console password. It worked, unleashing a tropical beach photo and a universe of icons on the glass display.
He opened the network monitoring programs and a command line interface. I’m now a network administrator for the most powerful corporation in the world. Time to prep things for Waylee and Charles. He typed another password and logged into the root account.
* * *
Dingo
“At least we’ll catch the second half,” M-pat said from his console, where he watched for Waylee. “All goes well, anyway.” He had directed the two guards patrolling their building up to the top floor, as far away as possible.
“This is way more fun than watching a stupid football game,” Dingo said.
Pel had asked him to keep an eye on Hubert in broadcast control. All he did was stare at diagrams and squiggly lines, though. Boring.
The stadium booth feeds were more interesting. He expanded both windows and watched the Sith Lords, Maste
r Luxmore and Apprentice Rand, strut among their toadies.
Too bad he’d been cut out of the New Year’s op. Waylee had owned them to their bastard faces. Wait ‘til they saw her video of them go out to 200 million people, with no way to stop it.
Not far from camera PresBooth1, Luxmore clapped President Rand on the shoulder. “Care to make a wager on the game, Al?”
“Now you know as president I have to stay impartial.”
The shitsacks laughed the laugh of sadists. Their game had nothing to do with football.
A middle-aged man with flattop hair, a government-issue suit, and data glasses entered the booth. Rand waved him over. “Anything?”
“Not yet, sir.”
Rand huffed. “You’re sure your intel’s solid? I mean, the tip’s from a teenage farm girl, for God’s sake.”
Flattop fidgeted. “Well, sir, she claimed to know them. The terrorists’ leader, who’s apparently unstable, personally told this girl about their plan.”
Farm girl? Who’s he talking about?
Luxmore’s trophy wife walked up, umbrella drink in hand. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Luxmore huffed.
Rand turned to Mrs. Luxmore, scoping her cleavage before answering. “Remember that couple who broke into the New Year’s party?”
Shit. Someone definitely sold us out.
“Oh,” she said, “the girl who threatened to cut off—”
Luxmore waved a hand. “Yes, yes, those two.”
Why would Waylee tell some farm girl about our plan?
Rand sighed. “They’re working with that cyberterrorist Charles Lee, and apparently hope to disrupt the Super Bowl somehow. Secret Service wanted me to stay home.” He scoffed. “It’s my presidential duty to watch this game.” He stared at Flattop. “These people are irritants, nothing more. Certainly not assassins, or they’d have set off a bomb or something on New Year’s.”
“We’re ready for anything,” Flattop said. “Homeland Security’s on full alert. And we’ve got choppers on site just in case.”
