Hairy growls from his screen; Heckleena’s screaming lips vomits vitriol; Frannie’s doll head bobs. Gumps blinks a green cursor, while a computer-generated cartoon character goofs off as the avatar for JanusFlyTrap. Paradise57 is dark, no longer in use—Jonny, what am I going to do with you? And then there’s my mom dancing on the last screen.
She’s pirouetting. Could lift her leg to her ear, standing still. A dancer. Her once graceful lines have sagged since. A dream of hers was to turn the offices into a dance studio. Some dreams you never get around to, leaving you with mocking photographs. The wheels of my chair screech as I move on.
Frannie has gotten me into enough trouble lately, so I ignore her and offer up a few choice tweets for Heckleena.
@Hippoman128 Happy birthday, women crying, children dying, happy birthday. #mygifttoyou
@Darren97 No, you’re not cool, you just surround yourself with people who suck, so you feel cool.
Oh, she’s angry tonight.
#oldpeople #pregnantpeople Don’t apply for manual labor jobs. Just don’t, JanusFlyTrap tweets.
“Eight-ball question,” I say aloud, cuing Gumps. “Will we survive, Gumps?” I can’t bring myself to ask what I want to ask: How much longer will my mom live? It’s not like I’m superstitious or anything, but if there’s a chance that stepping on a crack will break your mother’s back, then why would you?
Gumps responds: If you are going through hell, keep going.
Gumps’s reply isn’t verbal yet, but when it is I’m hoping I can find some cool voice modulator.
Following my conversation with Mom, part of me wants to call Trin back and cancel for tomorrow—things will be awkward come pay day. Is it fair to hire someone you can’t pay? Trouble is, I also need to attend school.
I search for something uplifting to take my mind off all of these things. I catch sight of Black Mamba. At least it’s a distraction; I kick over to the laptop.
I scroll through the next twenty or so post-it Word docs he’s piled on his desktop. They read:
Don’t forget to pick up the dry cleaning.
Actually, out of all the notes, a dozen are to do with dry cleaning.
Create LOL cat collage.
Clearly a sociopath.
Doctor appointment Thursday, 3 PM.
AA meeting Tuesday night—go this time!
A member of AA—really? A killer who attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings?
Cat picture copied into the file.
Dr. Appointment, Monday, 9 AM.
Dr. Appointment, Tuesday, 11 AM.
Sick? I wonder. Second and third opinions?
Cat picture
Kitten picture
Cute calico!
Cat picture
This is ridiculous.
I add to my profile notes. Recovering Alcoholic. Ill? And likes to be neat—potential obsessive compulsive disorder? The cat thing is just odd.
It all adds up to enough to strike another hour off my service to the police force. At this rate I’ll be free in five years.
Time for me to figure out if I’m correct about how the carders receive their info. If I can solve this crime I bet I can trim a thousand hours off my jail time.
Darkslinger’s now familiar blue screen of death comes up in my browser. I hover over the login. I can’t use BlackCat57. I need a new screen name.
“What do I call myself?” I ask Shadownet.
“Names are important,” a male voice says from behind me.
I hit the roof and clap twice. Pain lances through my ankle.
Everything goes dark except for an overhead bulb that casts Peter in sallow light.
He’s standing right behind me as if he teleported there.
My hand palpates my chest. “What the fu—don’t ever do that!”
“I’m sorry, Janus,” he says. He’s holding a small silver tube. For a second I think it’s a gun. “I don’t want your mother to know I’m here yet.”
His face is impassive, like Sergeant Haines’s had been before he cut me down to size.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t think she’ll appreciate what I have to offer you.”
My hands tighten around the armrests of my captain’s chair. I think of Hannah and the creep blackmailing her. I can’t believe I ever thought he would stop because he won’t and I have to help her. Tomorrow, whatever it takes.
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
He holds up the tube, which I now identify is a memory key and not a gun.
“My secret weapon.” He shakes it and his lips split into a toothy smile. “I’ve been watching you.”
Words every teen girl wishes to hear from an old man.
“You’re smart and willing to experiment,” he continues. “You’ve an intuitive feel for code. You’re a creative coder.”
“I’m a skiddie,” I say, turning back to my dark computer screens and hoping the violence of powering it off hasn’t done damage. It’s supposed to be for emergencies.
“Ha! Yes, in some ways you are.” Peter chuckles.
“Hey, you’re supposed to say, no, no, Jan, they wouldn’t put a skiddie on the police force.” I cross my arms.
“It’s more or less the level you’re at.”
I haven’t the slightest idea what he’s talking about. “Level of what? Degree of loser?”
He steps forward, and I push my chair as far back against the table as I can.
“Janus, everything has a hierarchy, even hackers.”
“Hackers.”
“Yes, as a script kiddie you’re just scratching the surface.” He holds up his index finger and itches at thin air. “When you’re employing other people’s scripts for your own hacks and don’t really know what they mean, you’re a skiddie. To be fair you already have the skills to be more, you just need to employ them.”
“So what are the other levels?”
“Hacker is next. Or cracker, if you’re opting to be a black hat.” He’s making the peace sign now, reminding me that he’s old enough to have been at Woodstock.
“I’m a white hat,” I say, eyeing the memory key he has and wondering if it’s something illicit.
“Good,” he says. “Hacker, and then finally elite. It’s reserved for the foremost hackers in the world.”
“Okay, I got it it. Hackers are a cult that most people don’t know much about.”
“And like any cult, there are codes and rituals you need to be aware of before you start messing around.” He points at the computer.
I’d been joking when I called it a cult, but Peter appears deadly serious.
He dangles the memory stick from a US Postal Service keychain.
“If you’re messing around on Darkslinger, then you’re playing in the big leagues,” he says. “These are people who can hunt you down and wreak havoc on your life, your friends’ lives, everyone.”
“So what’s that do?”
He’s shaking and I don’t thinks it’s Parkinson’s or anything.
“This,” he grins. “This is a program I created.”
Whoa. This man really can program? He’d told me that he was an Internet security consultant, but that doesn’t mean anything. Any ten-year-old who can show their parents how to set up a web-content filter could call themselves that. I admit to a bit of ageism here. Old person equals low tech.
“Yes, I can program. Remember we talked about hackfests in the hospital?”
“And can read my mind too,” I say.
He laughs.
“So what does it do?”
He crouches down before me, knees creaking.
“This will keep your identity unknown.” His eyes grow in proportion with h
is grin. “Completely untraceable. You’ll be a ghost.”
A shiver runs up my spine and I reach out to touch it. I know how powerful this is. I’m not sure it’s even possible, but I know how useful it would be.
“But why would my mom be mad that you’re keeping me safe.”
“I’m not,” he said. “I’m encouraging you to go further.”
“You want me to—”
“But not without a safety net.” He adds. “This key won’t do everything. It’s not infallible. You need to learn to think like they do. Act like they do. That’s the only thing that will keep you from blowing your cover.”
“But why? What’s in it for you?”
I catch the slightest hesitation before he answers, again smiling, and pats me on the knee. “Maybe I can earn some points with you.”
I’m not buying it, but in his hand is power. I can say what I want. Do what I want. No one can touch me. Not even the real hackers on Darkslinger. The elite.
Just then, it comes to me, my hacker name.
“I won’t tell,” I say.
He hands me the memory stick.
“Remember, you’re behind a computer. No one can see you. Give yourself time to respond. Think like they do. You can be anything and anyone.”
He winks and heads for the stairs.
Clapping, everything lights up and I slot Peter’s memory key into a free USB port. Sw1ftM3rcy, you may have expunged me once, but you’ve never met Lolz.
Peter pauses at the stair. “This is an elite hacker club, Janus. Do you know why I think you have a chance to infiltrate them?”
I shake my head. Who’s talking about infiltrating anybody?
“Because you’re a lot alike.” Before I have a chance to respond he jogs up the steps like a man half his age.
“@Pumpkineatr just called me criminal. At least a potential one,” I say and my terminal takes note, preparing the tweet. “And he’s pretty quick for an old dude—tweet it.”
Chapter 13
Hours of community service remaining: 1990. Now we’re cooking.
<
My favorite superhero is X-Men, Tule tweets. That’s more like it. Mine, you ask? Batman. He’s real. He’s a maker and I feel a kinship to his darker side.
You have a private message.
It’s a popup on the Darkslinger forum, like the first time, and I assume the message will be the same rules from the moderator. I ignore it and click straight to the Introductions thread and search through the posts to see if I can find my old one. My post appears to have been moved to a part of the forum devoted to mocking unlucky members. Foremost amongst the trolls is Sw1ftM3rcy, but he’s not the only one. Looks like I was the butt of jokes all day, as if they wanted to make an example out of me.
The thread ends with Sw1ftM3rcy’s post: PM me if you want to have a little secondary school fun.
I assume PM means Private Message because it was the last public item about me.
Secondary school fun. This can’t be good. If I had Sw1ftM3rcy’s hard drive, I’d be tempted to add him to Shadownet so Heckleena could browbeat him.
As a brand new member, I can’t very well PM the guy, but I really want to know what he’s up to. It’s too early to think he’d trust me. I wouldn’t trust me. So, who is Lolz? Is she the wannabe looking for help with a hack? Or is she something mysterious? Somehow after my initial experience being expunged, I don’t think these hackers have much time for skiddies so Lolz needs an edge to her or him.
Hey, I’m Lolz. That’s all you need to know. I draft in the Introductions thread.
Again, thinking of Peter’s comments, I pause before posting and edit it to: Lolz saying—hey.
I submit. Never try too hard. Within minutes I have replies ranging from hey to hey back, encouraging me to look around. Nothing from Sw1ftM3rcy. No expungement.
What I really want is to ask a specific question. I search the site for wireless hacks and find a whole manner of exploits for wireless networks but not what I need. An hour evaporates while I read an old-school thread about phreaking—stealing long distance minutes on payphones. This site has been around forever.
In the absence of a pre-existing thread I need to start a new one. The Hacker Code of Ethics sticky is right at the top of the forum. I know that whatever I post needs to conform with these ethics if I want to receive an answer.
I open the sticky.
Turns out, there isn’t just one hacker code, but several. The first is from 1984. Evidently cribbed from a much-adored book called Hackers.
Basically it amounts to all hackers should have free access to hardware and code. Share everything you learn. Information should be free and decentralized. Judge hackers on their skill not for reasons like race and age—they actually use the word bogus! Create beautiful things—don’t I know it. And computers can improve your life. Uh, duh? Thank you, author Steven Levy.
When I post on Darkslinger they want to know that I already tried to do the hack myself, that I’m willing to help anyone else, and it wouldn’t hurt if it was against some flawed authority system that was hiding data. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Chief Bromden calls authority the Combine. All right! Let’s rage against the Combine. I write:
I just joined but am having trouble with a hack. Has anyone hacked a wireless keyboard before? I’ve searched the site and haven’t found anything. I’ve tried applying what I know about hacking wireless routers—if anyone wants a hand there, I can do this—but this is different. It’s for a good cause. The guy I’m hacking is crushing all his employees under his autocratic thumb. A real jerk and I said I’d lend a hand. Thanks in advance.
So this is my theory about how the carders are stealing the credit card numbers—they’re hacking Orsen’s wireless keyboard. It came to me after seeing the pregnant Samantha’s headphones. Her iPhone uses a specific wavelength to transmit music to her headphones. Wireless keyboards do the same thing. So when pustule-bank-manager-man is typing on his fancy keyboard, someone, somewhere else, is recording his keystrokes as they move wirelessly from the keyboard to the computer. At least, I think. Okay, I’m guessing. To prove my theory, I need to act out my interpretation of part one of the hacker code. Hackers call it the Hands-on Imperative. Meaning to me, I have to get my hands dirty. But I really don’t know where to start.
It’s past 10 PM, and after refreshing my screen a half dozen times, I realize I can’t expect an answer to my question in minutes. I decide it’s time to shut down and pack it in for the night. Before I do, I head over to the iPhone coding thread and find that, unlike other threads, I actually know what I’m talking about here. Two hours fly by as I reply to a dozen or so posts and I feel decent that I’m contributing.
At midnight I text Jonny: Going 2 bed. Miss u. I’ve got your yellow spray can, feels like I stole yur sunshine. :(
I get *sad faced* myself. Wrapping my arms around my shoulders I feel a little closer to him. It’s funny because if he rolled over when I treated him like crap, I’m not sure I’d think about him half as much. He knows he’s worth more, and nothing is more attractive in a boy than confidence. Except fuzzy cute chicks—that boy is like a god to me. If I do help Hannah, meeting him will be my payment.
I climb the fire stairs to the top floor. Peter will lock up when he leaves. If he leaves. Ugh. So bogus, but as I put my hand to the door I catch a few muffled words.
“… fewer who know, the better,” Peter says. I hear someone slurp something. “It’s for your own safety and hers.”
“I don’t like hiding things from Janus, but I understand,” my mom replies.
A tiny moan escapes my throat. If there’s one thing I know, my mom�
��s good at keeping secrets.
“Janus?” Peter asks. “Hello?”
I’m tempted to call them out on this, but I also know that I have his hard drive. I can learn Peter’s secrets at my leisure; their holding out eases my conscience.
I pull open the door, pretending as though I haven’t heard a word.
“Good night,” I shout over to them as they sip wine by an electric fire.
“Would you like me to train Trin tomorrow morning?” Peter asks.
I brighten. “Isn’t that the blind leading the blind?”
“Thanks a lot,” he says, but even my half-blind mom is smiling.
“All right,” I say. I could use an early start. “Thanks.”
Despite their secrets and my plans, I don’t even remember my head hitting the pillow. At some point you have so much running around in your head that you need to flush it all out and just sleep. Hannah, Black Mamba, Jonny, the mortgage payment, work, Peter, my mom, community service, and, oh yeah, school—maybe I’ll throw in a few extra-curriculars next semester to keep myself busy.
Chapter 14
Hours of community service remaining: 1989
<
Next morning it’s time to pull off miracles. Brushing my teeth, I work through the scheduling of the day.
I text Williams to say that I’ve completed the review of the killer’s laptop. I’m ready to present my profile tomorrow—I’m not, of course, but I’ll finish it tonight. Then I double-check the time and location of Hannah’s meeting with the creep. I don’t trust her not to go. And I want to be there if she does, whether she wants me there or not. With Hello Kitty Hellraiser pictured in my head, it’s hard to think of her as quite as defenseless as I had, but this is a grown creep we’re talking about.
Assured Destruction: The Complete Series Page 24
