Goblinopolis, The Tol Chronicles, Book 1

by Robert G. Ferrell

  The script in question was cleverly designed to simulate an exhaustive search, so that the inevitable audit of the system logs would corroborate Rexingrasha’s legitimacy. The script itself, of course, would utterly self-destruct once its mission was accomplished, as would any incriminating temp files associated with it. He navigated to the place where the script was hidden and tried to start it up. The first attempts went awry, since he’d forgotten the exact syntax, but finally he got it right. The search simulation would take about three minutes, Sildran had said, so he just relaxed and pretended to be engrossed in his “hacking.”

  When the search finished, there was a pause while the last part of the script loaded. Rexingrasha knew it would all be over in a few seconds; he tried not to smile too broadly. Premature gloating might raise suspicions, after all. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath in anticipation of glorious victory. When he opened them again and glanced at the screen, something odd had happened. Instead of the little revolving dots that indicated a program in progress, there was a single printed line:

  +++Program kingmaker.mod exited on signal t from kernel

  What the phlenk was that? If the program exited, shouldn’t that mean he’d won? Why hadn’t the judges halted the contest yet? He pushed a few keys. Nothing changed. He tried listing the directory contents, one of the few commands he actually knew. It worked just fine. The script was still there, though, which was not fine. It meant that something had gone wrong, because it should have erased itself after completion. Rexingrasha had no idea what to do now. He stared dumbly at the screen for a few seconds, and then realized he had to do something, and soon. The only thing he could think of was to restart the script, which he did, apparently successfully. He couldn’t even begin to consider the merest possibility of speculating on why his first attempt had been such a miserable fail. He could only hope it didn’t happen again. With luck he still had time to beat his opponents to the prize.

  Carnilox grinned internally. It was one of those huge face-wrapping grins you get when things are going really, really well, only he was keeping most of it inside so it looked like he was just smirking. His enterprise search engine was working even better than he’d dared dream. He’d already found six copies of the file; now all he had to do was figure out which was the correct one, calculate the proper changes to generate his signature, and drop the file in the designated judges’ account. Everything was going smoothly now, it seemed. Just a few more seconds and...

  He couldn’t believe it. Just as he was mapping to the judges’ drive, everything went down again. What in the name of Arfsweener’s Pustulant Bunions was going on here? What could possibly be shutting down applications across nodes? It wasn’t merely a simple OS glitch, after all. It was something much more mysterious. T minus 17.

  He was getting a little frantic now. Surely everyone else was at about the same point in the process. He now knew in his heart that he was the best hacker in the competition—it would be exceptionally painful to lose due to some stupid machine malfunction. He looked around the stage while the system was coming back up. Everyone, including Lempo and the king, looked apprehensive. That was probably a good sign.

  Lempo was closing in. He’d found two dozen directories that had files modified during the appropriate time frame, and narrowed down the potential candidates to about six, based on file size and type. He was already hard at work generating the necessary embedded signature. He figured three, four minutes, tops. That should give him at least seven or eight to spare. He glanced briefly at the rest of the field. No one was looking too happy right now. Good. That’s just the way he wanted it. He checked network connectivity to the judges’ shared node, where the properly tagged file was to be deposited. Everything looked fine. It was just a matter of time now.

  Yes! He’d succeeded in embedding his signature. As he started the file transfer that would win him the throne, his apps dropped again. Lempo went through his entire sizeable litany of curse words silently, in alphabetical order just to be thorough. He jabbed at the restart button so hard it popped off on the rebound and skittered across the floor of the stage. A couple of people nearby glanced at it with raised brows; Lempo was not concerned with them. He only had eyes for the screen. T minus 12.

  Carnilox shook his head in disbelief. It seemed like every move he made had been anticipated and prepared for. Could he have underestimated the king or Lempo or one of the other contestants that badly? Was this an RNET employee’s doing? The rules had explicitly stated that no one else was to be on the network. The judges would be only passively watching network traffic from their consoles. He looked at all network connections across the contestants’ subnet and counted nodes. Twelve contestants, three judges. That added up to fifteen. Why, then, were there sixteen active connections?

  He quickly eliminated all the legitimate nodes, leaving only one that couldn’t be accounted for. It was a different type of network interface from all the others, as shown by the first eight characters in the physical address. Something was very weird here—there shouldn’t be any heterogeneity on this network segment. That was by design; the segment had been constructed specifically for this contest. Someone had somehow slipped in an unauthorized machine. Either they were doing so with the tacit approval of the judges...or...the judges didn’t know they were there. He slipped back to the OS shell and punched up the native network monitoring utility. The extra node was not visible to it! Good thing he always brought his own tools—an artifact of being involved in too many clandestine hacks with untrustworthy system binaries. He might well be the only one who knew about the intruder.

  “Such a smekking day I’m having.”

  Rexingrasha was beating his head against the wall, mentally. Every time his script got close to completion, it would get terminated and he’d have to start again. The weirdest part was that it didn’t seem to be happening at the same place every time. Not that he had any real technical clue here, but after a lot of stumbling around he’d found the debug utility’s stepwise error log, and the last line processed before the kickoff was never the same twice. Even if he were a programmer, he wasn’t sure what he could do to fix the problem. He glanced out at the audience and caught Sildran’s eyes. With a tiny wiggle of his eyebrows he pled for help. Sildran looked uncomfortable for a few seconds and then abruptly left the audience seating area.

  Well, at least the other contestants all seemed to be sweating profusely also. Maybe this confounded problem was affecting everyone. There couldn’t be more than ten minutes left, and no one had yet claimed victory over him, so something was probably holding back the whole lot of them at once. None of the judges even had keyboards—he’d been watching them. Either one of the other contestants was responsible, or something odd was going down here. When Rexingrasha found out who was behind this inexcusable delaying tactic, at least one head was going to roll. First, though, he needed to wrap up this ridiculous contest and get back to being king.

  Messages suddenly started scrolling across his screen. The script had restarted itself and was progressing much faster than usual. It looked as though someone had manually bypassed most of it, and was just running the portion that had so far failed to complete. Sildran! He owed that sniveling little geek. This time the script did finish, and the transfer took place. His Majesty relaxed.

  Lempo had finally made it back to the transfer step. He started several instances of the file transfer program, to make it more difficult for whom—or what—ever to interrupt. He pressed the enter key for the final time, and sat back. Any second now. T minus 4.

  Carnilox was logging every packet transferred between the intruder’s box and the contest network. He was so engrossed in the intruder’s movements, in fact, that he almost forgot about the contest itself. Shaking himself loose from the hunt for a moment, he set up a quick filter to slow down any attempts by the interloper to interfere with his processes and then sent the winning file over to the judges. This time it worked perfectly. He was so interested in
the mystery hacker, however, that he scarcely gave his long-sought success a second thought. A few seconds later the contest was halted by the head judge.

  “We have a winner,” the head judge announced.

  There was an avian in Tragacanth that lived predominantly in the mountains. It was a largish, solid black species, highly intelligent and tough as nails, but hard to observe due to its solitary and secretive nature. Avianologists had spent years just trying to map out the natural history of this bird, the Northern Boogla, but even today not a great deal was known about it. Local folklore held it in high esteem, though, ascribing to it the qualities of courage, wisdom, stealth, and speed. In the indigenous mythology of Tragacanth the boogla was credited with bringing knowledge and understanding, such as it was, to the goblin race. In these enlightened times, of course, no one but a few eccentrics who adhered to the old ways knew or cared about such things.

  All of the keyboards were frozen the moment the contest was declared to be over. The judges would not be announcing the outcome just yet; they had to confer with one another and validate the winner’s efforts. Rexingrasha and Lempo were each convinced they’d triumphed, and grinned knowingly at the crowd, the other contestants, and each other. Both of them were a little disconcerted by the other’s smug expression, but didn’t let it show.

  Carnilox was still preoccupied with tracking the intruder. He’d switched over to his own stripped-down keyboard controller in time to evade the net admin’s ‘disable all’ command. There hadn’t been any activity from the intruder’s box for a while. Maybe he had given up, now that the contest was over. The connection was still active, though. On a hunch, Carnilox punched up the sniffer. It was idle at the moment, but as he watched packets began to flow furiously. They were coming from the intruder’s address and targeted the judges’ station. He grabbed a few and perused them in detail. They seemed to be comprised of text, apparently formatted in tables or some other row and column-oriented manner. He ran them through his autoformat utility and gasped involuntarily at the results.

  The judges conferred amongst themselves for a few minutes, then reached a unanimous consensus. They were about to announce their decision when their monitors suddenly flickered to life simultaneously. They watched as a transcript of sorts scrolled slowly across the screen. The same transcript was in fact also appearing on all the contestants’ screens, as well as on the huge public screen provided for conveying messages and contest status to the audience.

  0992.13: Node RNET_NOC_1 joined partitioned network CONTEST_NET via administrative override. Username:

  SILDRAN. Flags: stealth, no_id

  0992.36: RNET_NOC_1 issued NET_BLOCK_ALL

  0992.98: RNET_NOC_1 issued RCONTROL CONTEST_NODE_1

  0993.45: RNET_NOC_1 issued rrun kingmaker.mod -s 145

  0993.94: RNET_NOC_1 issued serase –x kingmaker.mod; 34rt67km.temp; yt5e43km.temp

  0994.55: RNET_NOC_1 issued rrun scrublogs; serase –x scrublogs

  0994.78: RNET_NOC_1 issued rtrans sig.file > CONTEST

  _NODE_JUDGES_ALL

  0995.02: RNET_NOC_1 issued stop RCONTROL CONTEST

  _NODE_1

  0995.34: RNET_NOC_1 issued NET_RELEASE_ALL

  0996.13: RNET_NOC_1 left CONTEST_NET

  # show rtrans queue -t

  2 files in queue:

  File Name Timestamp Sender

  sig.file_11 0993.01 CONTEST_NODE_11

  sig.file_2 0993.34 CONTEST_NODE_2

  # show users -n CONTEST_NODE_2,CONTEST_

  NODE_11

  Node User ID

  CONTEST_NODE_2 lempo1

  CONTEST_NODE_11 carnilox

  This public service message brought to you by Boogla. Glory to Tragacanth!

  There was absolute silence for about ten seconds, and then a low murmuring began in the crowd, rising rapidly to a regular din. The audience was composed primarily of others in the data handling industry, since not many folks outside this field would be interested in a hack-off, even if it were being conducted for the purpose of choosing a new sovereign. Consequently, enough of them understood the implications of the posted log that public disenchantment with the king hit an all-time high in a matter of two minutes. The public in question, in fact, turned into rather an ugly mob (goblins tend to do that at the drop of a hat; it’s genetic), and stormed the stage, demanding Rexingrasha’s immediate surrender of the crown and/or various body parts.

  The situation was deteriorating with each passing moment. The king’s personal guard swept up and surrounded him, weapons drawn, in case the crowd decided to take matters into their own hands. Things were looking grim all around when suddenly the head judge stood up and raised his hands for silence.

  “Fellow citizens of Tragacanth: in light of the evidence presented to us by the person who calls himself ‘Boogla,’ the veracity of which the judging panel has independently verified, and in strict adherence to the rules set forth for this competition, we now hereby declare the winner to be contestant number 11: Carnilox of Goblinopolis. Long live the King!”

  The crowd murmured their approval, crescendoing into a cheer when Carnilox rose from his seat at the urging of the judges. It was beginning to sink in that he’d won, but something about the whole Boogla episode still had a powerful grip on his mind. He stumbled to the dais at the front of the stage and stared out at the sea of beaming faces. Finally he gathered his wits enough to address them. Fortunately, he’d memorized the canned acceptance speech beforehand, just in case.

  “I humbly accept the charge that has been thrust upon me today, and promise that I will rule to the best of my ability, exhibiting neither malice nor undue favor toward any but those who have earned them by their actions. Further, I will devote myself utterly to the defense of Tragacanth against its myriad enemies, and to the betterment of all its citizens, be they rich or poor. This I, Carnilox, do now solemnly affirm and attest.”

  It was a speech right out of the public oratory textbooks, and it found wide favor amongst the crowd. Even Rexingrasha grudgingly admitted to himself that it was well executed. That was scarce consolation for his having lost the Royal Diadem to this pathetic little geek, though.

  Despite considerable effort on his part, Carnilox, who took the name Haxxos when he ascended the throne of Tragacanth, was never conclusively able to prove the identity of his benefactor ‘Boogla.’ There were numerous theories and conjectures, but no definitive evidence ever surfaced. Boogla was such a superlative hacker that even the Senior Security Analysts at RNOC, the best of the best, were unable to track him. And so Boogla and his exploits passed into legend in the data handling community, the label ‘Boogla’ being applied reverently thereafter to all of the most technically proficient and audacious actions.

  Chapter Eight:

  Operation Tumble

  Aspet knew this history, of course: knew it well. Learning it was required of every child attending school in Tragacanth, and one component of the orientation of attendees of The Seminar was another intensive review. He’d always been fascinated by the stories about Boogla, although in truth he didn’t completely believe them. He knew from experience that legends have a way of expanding to fill the volume available to them, and in a field as esoteric as data handling that was a hefty volume. Still, the legend of Boogla was an inspiring one for someone with his aspirations. Aspet even dreamt one night that Boogla intervened on his behalf during his own challenge to the throne.

  The day he finished The Seminar was also the day the messages began. They were cryptic and obscure, at first; even taunting. Despite his considerable prowess at the keyboard, he couldn’t trace where they were coming from past the first couple of hops. The sender was obviously an expert at clandestine communications. He could only assume he’d been singled out for this treatment as a successful alumnus of The Seminar, although that information was supposed to be secret until and unless the student chose to challenge for the crown. Still, someone with the computer acumen of his taunter probably wasn’t seriously
put off by the access controls placed on the Seminar attendees’ database.

  Aspet decided to ignore the messages initially. They weren’t really threatening or disturbing, just enigmatic. After a few days, though, the tone of the communications began to soften and Aspet felt a trickle of compassion for the anonymous author. He was apparently frustrated by some societal constriction, although he never made it clear what it was, exactly. He was obviously a very talented hacker, and despite the fact that it was contrary to his own interests, Aspet couldn’t help replying finally, asking the mystery person why he didn’t compete for the crown himself: he was definitely well-qualified.

  There was no direct answer to his question, but from that point on the messages were friendlier: gone was the derisive rhetoric and underlying current of hostility. The mystery correspondent now provided shrewd political insights, valuable snatches of code the like of which Aspet had never before seen, and even the occasional bit of humor, so Aspet replied in kind. After a few more weeks they had developed an online friendship of sorts. Aspet had noticed that his pen pal never signed his messages with any name, so one day he wrote:

  “Hey, I’m a little tired of just saying ‘hey.’ What do you want to be called?”

  It took much longer than usual for the reply to come back. He hoped he hadn’t inadvertently insulted his new friend. When the response finally did come, it was brief and to the point: