Code Flicker

by Marlin Seigman

  “Get ready to move out of the way,” Chen said to Yuri.

  “I will do my best,” Yuri said.

  A low thump and an explosion filled the road in front of them.

  Yuri cut back behind the eighteen-wheeler, missing the twisted and burning wreck in the road. “That was exciting,” he said.

  “You’ve got to hurry, Jacob. We can’t hold it off much longer,” Sandy said.

  Jacob’s fingers lingered over his deck. Which stream? How to tell? He looked up. XC7-1RF. The license plate of the rear truck read XC7-1RF. He couldn’t think of anything else, so he scanned the streams of code for the plate number. There it was, at least partially. He went after that stream. “I think I got it,” he said.

  Then he was kicked out. Someone was countering his attack.

  “The onboard operator is throwing up new firewalls,” he said.

  “Is that bad?” Yuri asked.

  “I can get through, it’s just going to take some time. Are those reinforcements here yet?”

  “Almost,” Yuri said.

  “Tell them to block the second truck in when they get here.”

  Yuri radioed to the reinforcements.

  “Which of you can hold off the AI protocol for longer?” Jacob asked, not looking up from his deck.

  “I think I can,” Gomez said.

  “Sandy, come in and help me. The protocol won’t matter if we shut down the first truck. Look for the XC7 marker in the code. It’s the first truck.”

  “On it.”

  “Yuri, get ready to brake,” Jacob said. “Tell the reinforcements, too.”

  With both Jacob and Sandy attacking, the coder in the truck didn’t last long, and the system’s defenses fell. Jacob sent a command to kill the ignition. The truck slowed and finally came to a stop. The safety protocols in the second eighteen-wheeler kicked in and it hit its brakes. Yuri did the same.

  “There will be at least two in the cab of each truck,” Yuri said. “Maybe more in the trailers.”

  “Jacob and I will take the passenger side,” Chen said.

  This was something Jacob wasn’t entirely sure he was ready for. He grew up hunting with his father and knew how to handle guns, but he had never been in a firefight. He had been trained, to a degree, in preparation for the Your Better Life peace mission, but training was not the same as the real thing. He looked at Sandy and could see the trepidation in her eyes. She had more training than he did, but as far as he knew, she had no real experience in a firefight either.

  “Ready? Let’s go,” Chen said and opened his door.

  Before anyone could get out, there was the sound of gunfire.

  “The reinforcements,” Yuri said with a smile.

  A man in a corporate security uniform came running from the passenger side of the parked eighteen-wheeler. He looked over his shoulder and fired his pistol at someone behind him. He didn’t see Chen raise his weapon. Chen fired twice and the man went down.

  “We’re clear here,” a voice announced from the communications panel in the SUV.

  Finally, Jacob relaxed. It may have been a bit anticlimactic as far as firefights go, but he was fine with that. There was still more to do.

  “We need to open these trailers,” Chen said. “Yuri, tell the other teams to take the lead truck. We’ll take this one.”

  “I’ll go with the other team and break the locks,” Gomez said. He grabbed his deck and gun and went up alongside the trailer.

  “You want to get this lock?” Sandy asked Jacob.

  “Sure.”

  Yuri, Chen, and Sandy stood ready. The lock was an easy break, and Jacob pulled the latch, stepping to the side out of the line of fire. But there was none. There was no one in the trailer. It was packed with containers, a white NW CORP painted on the side of each.

  “NirvanaWare Corporation,” Jacob said.

  “Let’s check the crates,” Chen said, “and make sure we got what we came for.”

  Chapter 19

  Xia already sat inside Commie Cup when Yuri pulled the SUV up to the curb. She was about to take a drink of coffee but stopped midway when Jacob walked in and they made eye contact. “I’ll explain it on the way. Bring your drink,” he said in response to the confused look on her face.

  As they walked out the door, Xia said, “What’s going on?”

  “Wait until we get in.”

  Xia looked at him briefly before she got in, Gomez getting in the third-row seat to give her room.

  “Yuri, Chen, this is Xia,” Jacob said.

  “Hello,” Xia said, nodding.

  Yuri pulled away from the curb and said, “I will turn the music down so you can explain.”

  “Yes, please explain,” Xia said.

  “Well, I don’t know where to start,” Jacob said. “I guess just getting right down to it is the best thing to do. We have a shipment of code decks and chips that we need to jailbreak.”

  “What? Where did you get a shipment of decks and chips? Why do you need to jailbreak them? Where are we going?”

  “I’ll get to that, but we need your help with the jailbreak. We can do it, but you are the best person I know when it comes to cracking a deck or a chip.”

  “That’s high praise,” Yuri said, turning around and smiling.

  “Just pay attention to where you’re going,” Chen said. “This guy never learns.”

  “What type of decks are they?” Xia asked.

  “The latest NirvanaWare model.”

  “The Vb76?” She couldn’t hide the excitement in her voice. “I’ve been wanting to get my hands on one of those.”

  “I thought you might say that.”

  “Just do me a favor,” Xia said. “Forget I asked you where you got them.”

  Despite her request, Jacob began telling her the story. The others joined occasionally to add details. Chen even agreed that Yuri displayed superior driving skills. Everyone, except Xia, laughed at that. Jacob could see that some parts of the story, Chen blowing up two SUVs and shooting someone, disturbed her, so he tried to stay focused on the hacking part of the story. By the time they reached the warehouse, they finished relaying the story, leaving Xia with a look of disbelief on her face.

  The warehouse, a prefab building the size of an aircraft hangar, sat in the middle of a large compound surrounded by a tall fence topped with razorwire. Towers flanked the entrance and sat at the corners of the fence, reminding Jacob of prison. The SUV approached the warehouse and the large bay doors opened slowly. Inside, self-driving forklifts were unloading the pallets of crates from the trailers, stacking them in neat rows along the walls, while several men stood watching.

  “Quite a good night,” Yuri said as everyone got out of the SUV.

  “Where should we set up to work?” Gomez asked.

  “There are tables in the back,” Chen said. “That can wait. Evgeny should be here any minute.”

  Jacob went to a pallet and opened a crate. Inside were 144 code decks. He counted the crates on the pallet. Twelve. There were eleven more pallets like this one. “That’s a lot of decks to break.”

  Sandy and Xia went to a different pallet with smaller crates. Sandy opened a crate and looked inside. “And a lot of chips.”

  “I hope you didn’t have anything else to do this weekend,” Chen said.

  Gomez approached another pallet. The cases on this pallet were a different size from the others.

  “You don’t need to worry about those,” Chen said. “Only the decks and the chips.”

  Gomez stopped. He gave Jacob a questioning look. Before anything else could be said, a black sedan came to a stop in front of the bay doors. A well-dressed man who looked like he could be a Russian movie star got out of the back and straightened his tie. Though they had never met, Jacob was sure it was Evgeny. A large, bald, Chinese man in a suit got out the other side of the car.

  “Gomez,” Evgeny called, “how are you, my friend?”

  “Looking forward to finishing this job,” Gomez said,
walking to Evgeny and shaking his hand.

  “Always with the business. Gomez, this is my associate, Mr. Li.”

  Gomez shook Mr. Li’s hand.

  Jacob thought it was interesting that members of the SRS seemed to travel in pairs, one Russian and one Chinese. It was probably a smart thing to do, but it also showed a lack of trust. Of course, no one trusted the SRS for long, so why should they trust each other?

  “And you must be Jacob,” Evgeny said, extending his hand. “I know you have done excellent work with our organization before, and it is a pleasure to finally meet you.” He turned to Xia and Sandy. “And these lovely ladies are?”

  “Sandy.” She shook his hand also.

  “I’m Xia.”

  There was a slight nervousness about her voice. Jacob tried to will her to be calm.

  Mr. Li said something to Xia in Chinese.

  “Hong Kong,” Xia said. “My parents' families got out when they were teenagers.” She paused, then added, “After the crackdown in the early 20s.”

  Mr. Li smiled. “Well, we are all friends here. What is it they say about bygones?”

  Xia half-smiled.

  “Yes, well,” Evgeny said, “on to more pleasant things. We have the goods?”

  “Yes,” Chen said.

  “Did the operation go smoothly?”

  “For the most part. There were a few setbacks, but nothing that couldn’t be taken care of,” Chen said.

  “Perfect.” Evgeny turned to Gomez. “So, you and your team feel that you can unlock the decks and the chips?”

  “We can. We’ll have to get inside them and see what we are up against.” He walked to the open crate of code decks and took one out. “These are the latest model from NirvanaWare. None of us has ever seen one, and the corporations are always adding new layers to keep them secure. But between the four of us, we can handle it.”

  “Do you have an estimate on how long?” Mr. Li asked.

  “As soon as possible,” Jacob said.

  “I hope so,” Mr. Li said.

  Jacob looked at Mr. Li. He didn’t like the man. He could tell Mr. Li saw this situation as a you-are-working-for-me relationship, not a we-are-working-together relationship. This may have been the truth, but the air of condescension from Mr. Li annoyed Jacob and, from the looks on their faces, everyone else.

  “We should get to it,” Gomez said, breaking the tension.

  Chapter 20

  They set up to work in an office at the rear of the warehouse. Xia explained the best approach would be to unlock a deck first. In theory, the chips would accept any code from the decks. That was the theory, but they were not familiar with this type of chip either. The pharma-tech corporations were constantly upgrading their hardware, making the older chips and code obsolete, forcing people to upgrade if they wanted the latest pharmaceutical code. Everyone did. Anyone with a heart condition or diabetes or depression had to upgrade. And insurance always covered it. It was easier to get insurance to cover a new chip than it was to get them to cover a broken arm. There was always a chance you were at fault with a broken arm, but who could blame you when NirvanaWare or Your Better Life or anyone else introduced a new chip?

  Jacob and Xia worked next to each other, while Gomez and Sandy were at separate stations on the other side of the room. As they were setting up, Xia kept checking the time. An hour into the work, Jacob noticed she checked more frequently. He was concerned. She was out of her element, and he wasn’t sure how she was handling it. Jailbreaking stolen code decks in a Sino-Russian Syndicate warehouse was a long way from doing code on a peace mission. The situation was stressful enough for Jacob, and he woke up with an idea where the day was going. Xia, on the other hand, had this dropped on her.

  When Xia checked the time again, Jacob asked, “You good?” as he turned a code deck in his hands.

  Xia took a breath and held it for a second before exhaling, her lips forming an O. “My anxiety code isn’t scheduled for another,” she checked the time again, “two minutes. And trust me, I could use it right now.”

  “You should’ve said something. I could’ve flicked some code to you. I still can.”

  Xia shook her head. “I can’t do that. The corporation has been cracking down hard lately because of the new project. Everyone gets a random log scan at least once a week to make sure they aren’t using any non-prescribed code. They’ve fired at least three people this week. Maybe more I haven’t heard about.”

  Jacob put down the deck he had been working on.

  “I’m sorry I got you into this,” he said.

  Xia looked at him. The anxiety could be seen in her eyes, a force clawing to get out. “You didn’t force me.”

  Jacob looked away for a moment. Yuri slept in a chair in the corner, and Chen stood in the warehouse at a Triple B energy drink vending machine.

  Jacob looked back to Xia. “No, but I may have guilt-tripped you into helping with our other plan.”

  Xia nodded in agreement. “I said I would help. A guilt trip only works if you let it.”

  “Well, I am sorry. It was a dick move.”

  “I won’t argue. What I’ve been trying to figure out, I mean other than this damn code deck, is what this has to do with stealing the Q-chip from Your Better Life.”

  “The Q-chip?”

  “That’s what we call it on the team. Someone thought it was funny.”

  Jacob turned to see Chen inspecting the contents of some of the other crates from the shipment and talking with Evgeny and Mr. Li. “I guess you need to know this. We need some resources to steal the,” he paused, “Q-Chip. The SRS has the resources, so we’re working with them to get what we need.”

  “Since you keep checking on Chen, I take it the SRS doesn’t know about the Q-Chip?”

  “No. And we don’t want them to know about it either. That would just add complications we don’t need.”

  Xia closed her eyes for a second, her anxiety code doing its job. “Understood,” she said, much more relaxed.

  “I think I’ve got something,” Sandy said.

  Everyone gathered around Sandy’s table and she turned to face them. “Anyone know what a SQL injection is?”

  “An old school hack on databases,” Gomez said. “They used to cause a lot of headaches, but programmers found ways to prevent injection attacks a long time ago.”

  “Which is why we didn’t think of it before.” Sandy held up the deck she had been working on. “What did we notice was different about these decks?”

  “They already have code loaded on them,” Xia said.

  “Right. I’m not sure why, but they do.”

  “Maybe NirvanaWare wants to edge out the legal coders to cut costs,” Jacob said.

  “It doesn’t matter why,” Sandy said, “just that they do.”

  “So,” Gomez said, “if all of the code is already on the deck, it’s stored in a database.”

  “And if it’s in a database, maybe something like a SQL injection might work,” Sandy said. “The problem is, I haven’t come up with the injection yet.”

  “At least it gives us something to work with,” Jacob said.

  An hour later Xia cracked the first deck. After that, the rest of the decks were simple. Jacob showed Yuri and Chen how to set up the injection hack, and they helped. They moved much slower, but they helped.

  When they were finished with the decks, Jacob picked up one of the chips. “What about these?”

  “We have to make sure they’ll take code, both what’s preloaded on the decks and any other code we sent to it,” Gomez said.

  Jacob returned the chip to the table. “Any ideas?”

  Xia said, “If one of us could link with a chip, we would be able to see if it was receiving and accepting the code. ”

  “How? Won’t someone need to have it implanted?” Sandy asked.

  “No, we test chips in the lab all of the time. Of course, we have them hooked up to a chip monitor to see if they function, and we don’t have the in
terface we need for that or the power pad we use. But we don’t need much power,” she said, picking up a chip and looking around as if to materialize a power source.

  “One of us holding some copper and some wire should make a battery with enough power,” Gomez said.

  “Just like science class,” Sandy said.

  “Monitoring it is still a problem,” Xia said.

  “I could link with it,” Jacob said. “At least I think I can. I’ve never linked with a chip that wasn’t implanted.”

  “Is it risky?” Sandy asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Xia said.

  “Let’s set it up,” Jacob said.

  After getting some salt and vinegar from the warehouse break room, the experiment was ready to go. Gomez insisted on being the battery. He was the biggest person so he would conduct the most current, he argued, but then admitted that might not be good science and he wanted to do it because it was his idea.

  “I’ll send some stored code from a cracked deck first. Then some of my code on that deck. Then some from my deck,” Jacob said.

  Xia nodded. “Power up,” she said to Gomez.

  Jacob sent a mild stimulant code to the chip and linked with it. At first, all was a blur and unfamiliar. The sensation was not like any other time he had linked with another person’s chip, or when he had linked with a network. Those experiences came with a sense of vastness, of almost unlimited space. This space had limits but wasn’t confining. It gave him a sense that there was an edge to the area his mind occupied. He searched for the code. It was a faint echo in the short distance. He went to it, taking it in. There was something about it he recognized. Something deep, buried in the layers of the echo, a faint signature, pulsated. A quiet noise, oddly familiar, tugged at his mind. Then the stimulant kicked in. He concentrated on the noise but it dissipated. He cut the link.

  “It worked,” he said.

  “What’s wrong?” Sandy asked.

  “Something about this code. Or maybe the chip. I’m not sure.”

  “Should we stop?” Xia asked.

  “No. It’s not important right now. Let me try some of my code on this deck.”

  He coded in another mild stimulant. The deck and chip worked but with no quiet noise this time. He coded a mild stimulant on his deck and sent it to the chip. It worked perfectly.