Roo'd

by Joshua Klein

  Yes, actually.

  Please draw your attention (without looking) to the briefcase next to me.

  ??

  Are you familiar with the principle of how antennas work?

  I thin kso.

  Please type like an adult, Feed. My briefcase contains one slightly curved metal mesh antenna, attached to three actuators. See the bolts on the side of the case?

  Fede looked, saw that there were indeed three polished knobs arranged in a triangle around the center of the briefcase. He'd assumed they were decorative.

  The actuators move the antenna slightly, homing in on a signal. The opposite side of the case is not metal - it's polished plastic. The newspaper in front of me has a sheet of metal mesh in it to hide the contents from scans. That's probably why the waiter gave me such a look on the way in here - I was either a terrorist or a businessman who thought himself important enough to buy a scan-proof case.

  So the case has an antenna that'll track signals?

  Yes. From here we can see all over the city; there are sure to be unencrypted networks out there.

  The waiter returned and Cessus ignored him, pouring milk into his coffee and dropping in two sugar cubes with casual precision. He stirred the result with a tiny spoon, his little finger raised as he did so. Fed's comp buzzed, an icon in his gogs showed a message from Tonx. He gripped his chord under the table, sat back in forced calm and popped open the message.

  A moment later Fede flipped up one goggle and leaned towards Cessus.

  "My brother's sitting tight but complains the kids are driving him crazy. He wants an ETA."

  "Tell him I'm busy."

  "How long, Cessus?"

  "Soon. I'll be done soon."

  Fede passed the message on to Tonx and switched back to the connection he shared with Cessus. The screen was reformatted to show a similar setup to what they'd had in the car. The briefcase had found a live connection, apparently, and had them plugged into the network through a wireless setup somewhere in the city below. Cessus was busily resuming his scans of the Gaterville Countryside ISP in the foreground. A web browser window expanded, the company homepage appearing. Ghostly cursor followed links to their user login page, strings of gibberish-code pasted into the URL.

  "SQL injection" murmured Fed, his lips moving slightly. SQL injection was an old method of dropping database commands into a browser such that the code controlling the page passed it on to the database. It was an ancient attack, although Fed knew a lot of companies still used the database systems that were vulnerable to it. Fede flipped back to the chat window.

  How'd you know they used SQL?

  A response came quickly:

  Fits the profile. Feel the space, the little hole this ISP occupies. What shape your heel, Achilles?

  Fede flipped back to the browser. It was spitting out page after page of text, database records piling on top of each other. Cessus piped the browser's output to a window, scanned it and piped the output to yet another window, name and password combinations and a column called "priority" streaming up the screen. Cessus reformatted the display, the priority column suddenly on the left. It started showing numbers, twos and then threes and then fives suddenly bobbing to the top, their name/password matches seated next to them. The stream slowed, stopped. Five priority one accounts rested at the top of the page, each name a mix of a first letter an a last name, each password a ten-character long mix of letters and numbers only a computer would generate. Typical old-school corporate methodology. Administrator accounts. Fede switched back to the chat window.

  That smell right?

  Good as gold, my friend.

  An invisible cursor copied the five admin accounts and dropped them into a scratchpad window on the top left of Fed's visual space, the web browser disappearing along with the used scan pages. A new window opened and a secure session started up with the ISP's main server. Cessus logged in as tspranger, password 99f3xl!j06. A welcome script scrolled by. They were in.

  Chapter 17

  Esco was in the driver's seat smoking a long thin filterless through the open window. The ruler-straight lines of his carefully trimmed mustache arched and jumped as he mouthed along to the music. Spanish death-metal thundered through the cab of the tiny Toyota truck, the three of them sitting sticky, side-by-side in the sweat-slicked heat. A Puerto-Rican flag hung from the review mirror, jumping and shimmying with the bass.

  Next to him and dwarfing him physically sat Pepe, his hugely muscled shoulders hunched carefully forward to avoid crowding the other two, the gearshift digging into his thigh. Pepe was new to the team, younger, and was working very hard to keep his arms from twitching under his experimental hormone therapy and hurting somebody. On the far side of the cab sat Baby, the pudgy Puerto-Rican clad in a gleaming white jumpsuit, his gold Nikes tapping in time to the music. Baby's head was wrapped in a carefully filigreed viewset, the Virgin Mary etched out in ruby plastic over his forehead. A sinister-looking black joystick sat casually in his lap. From time to time Baby gently caressed it, making minor adjustments.

  The song ended in a crashing guitar riff, the flag slowly settling.

  "Mmm-hmm" murmured Esco in approval. Across from him Baby smiled. Another song started.

  Pepe twitched, shaking the car. Baby swore loudly in Spanish, invoking actions from Pepe's mother which nature had surely not equipped her to commit.

  "Fuck, man!" said Esco. "That's it. Get the fuck out of the car."

  Esco slid out of the seat, the neat creases in his trousers flagging sadly. He waited until Pepe had squeezed by him and slammed the door shut behind them, reached through the window to click the auto-shut. He winked at Baby through the rising glass as he moved back towards the younger man.

  "What the fuck's going on, man?" he asked. "You losing it on us here?"

  Pepe shook his head quickly, a muscle on the right side of his neck seizing up for a second before he could wrench his head back level. Esco raised a carefully plucked eyebrow, the cream-colored skin of his forehead wrinkling briefly, inexplicably.

  "You're not impressing me, man" he said. "Pharoe tells us you're good, that we got to take a chance on you. Baby's in there running two fliers at once. You jostle him and we could lose it all. Not good, man." He sighed. "Not good."

  Pepe shuddered briefly, sweat staining the stretched-out sleeveless t-shirt pulled taut across his chest. Pepe was new to the mod scene in Florida, his cousin letting him crash on his couch after he had jumped a 'liner from the islands. The only thing he had going for him was that he was big, and Pharoe had offered him a chance to make good on a loan to get the muscle work he wanted done to get bigger. His English wasn't that good, and the hormones made him paranoid as well as self-conscious. He was a wild card. An expendable one, as much as nobody wanted to say it.

  Esco sighed again and leaned carefully back against the side of the truck. He looked up at the oversized plywood bed cover, its insulated white plastic sealant gleaming in the hot sun. He ran his eyes over the carefully lettered advertisement for landscaping services picked out in red, the foot-high glyphs of men in sombreros hefting shovels. He pulled out another cigarette and lit it, shook his heavy golden Rolex into place and turned towards Pepe.

  "Look. You're new here, right? Maybe freaked out a little that you just arrived and get sent out to the boonies, yeah?" Esco suspected that Pepe had never been out of the boonies before arriving in Florida, that part of the reason Pharoe thought he was a good choice for this job was that he could make it in the swamps if he had to.

  "So let me give you a little advice." Esco held his cigarette in his carefully pursed lips as he tucked in the back of his shirt with his free hand, adjusted a fold on his shirtsleeve. It was pink linen, and set off the tiny golden cross around his neck nicely. Esco was one of very few men in the world who could wear a pink linen shirt and still look mean enough to be taken seriously. It was part of the reason Pharoe had had him manage this job.

  "You want to stay alive this trip
, you keep it cool. Ain't no big thing what we're doing out here. We get the signal, fire off the big gun, and you go in and get our man. That easy. No need to get excited, no need to go running around all crazy-like. It's business, those Boers understand that. You follow?"

  Pepe nodded, once, his big brown eyes following Esco's.

  "What we do not want" Esco said, tapping ash carefully away from his personal space, "is a big mess. Pharoe doesn't like messes. You keep shaking like that… Well, it's messy."

  Esco eyed Pepe meaningfully, waited a moment while the younger man tried to process this. Eventually Pepe responded; "Why are you in the Mod crew?"

  Esco took another drag from his cigarette, frowned slightly and looked past Pepe's shoulder.

  "What the fuck does that mean?"

  Pepe wasn't from here, was ignorant. He didn't know that he was getting into dangerous territory. He peered at Esco and pointed one thick trembling finger at him.

  "You're not mod."

  The edges of Esco's nostrils flared ever so slightly, thin wisps of smoke curling out of them as he let out his breath in one long controlled sigh. His eye snapped over to Pepe's.

  "I'm more mod than you are, fool" he said quietly. Pepe took a step back, unconsciously, his hands balling into fists. Esco's pink linen shirt crinkled slightly around his shoulders as he cupped one elbow in his hand, took another drag.

  "I got more mods on me than you do by a long shot, but they're all aesthetic, see? I'm carefully designed, planned out."

  Esco leaned forward off the truck, towards Pepe.

  "This isn't crude" he stabbed his cigarette at the larger man, "bullshit" again with the cigarette, "muscle mods." He bit off the word with teeth clenched, his thin mustache wrinkling under an angry sneer. Pepe's face twitched and jerked, degrading synapses trying to decide between anger and fear. Esco's face dropped back into blank, formal beauty.

  "What I got is subtle. Takes a long time. It's art, see?" He watched Pepe carefully, noted his gaze shift between his eyes and his shoes, waited until he was sure the larger man knew who he was, if not what he meant.

  "Doesn't matter" he said softly, flicking his cigarette into the bushes. "Just keep it cool, okay? Go check the rig again. We should be hearing something soon."

  Esco climbed back into the cab, death-metal filling the air. He twisted the knob with a casual flick of his wrist, leaned back to rest his arm on the back of the seat.

  "Boy's a fucking idiot" he said.

  Baby nodded, smiling, his face hidden behind the viewport.

  "Anything new?"

  "Nope. Same readings. The big gun ought to do it, we get digital coverage from Tonx's guy. They spaced out their screamers pretty good, but I got them all marked. They put timers on them so a casual scan wouldn't see them all. Clever fucking bastards."

  "Whatever, man. Just so long as we've got the situation under control."

  "Yup. I'm bringing back a flyer - keep an eye on the other while I do it."

  Baby tapped the joystick and the review monitor flickered from scraggly swampland to the front side of a small cabin. A beaten-up petrol Studebaker was parked in the lot, a large mail sack holding a body - hopefully a live one - slumped across the front porch next to the screen door.

  "He still okay?" asked Esco.

  "Mmm-hmm" mumbled Baby, his hands busy. He was taking the other flyer in through the woods so it wouldn't get spotted, but it wasn't easy.

  "He's still breathing, anyway. You want to hear him blubber go ahead and pipe it through the radio."

  "No thanks" said Esco, snorting in disgust. Fucking French eurotrash. What the fuck was he doing out here?

  The truck shuddered as the flyer suddenly slammed onto the hood of the truck. Esco jumped, the back of his head hitting the rear of the cab.

  "What the fuck you do that for?" he shouted at Baby. The pudgy pilot shook with laughter, keyed in a mounting sequence. In front of them the long, tubular flyer bobbed and weaved as its three legs adjusted themselves, slowly moving around until it was level, pointing straight at the sky. The flyer was pornographic pink, thirty inches of rubberized plastic wrapped in three rims containing silenced fans. Esco didn't like the thing. It seemed - dirty.

  Baby got out of the car and strolled over to the flyer, carefully unpacked a set of hydrogen filters and a small bottle of water. He bobbed his head back and forth as he worked, casual confidence plain in his movement as he went through the familiar motions. Baby was one of the best pilots in Florida, and Esco was glad to have him. He worried about the cerebral implants he was considering, figured that the eyejacks were good enough. But it wasn't his business. A man's mods were his own; you just had to respect that. It was part of what made being a mod great.

  The rearview monitor bleeped and Esco pulled out a tiny voice comp, syncing it to the truck's comm before placing it next to his ear. It was ceremonial, of course, but that was part of Esco's composition. He listened to the voice that came through it and nodded, twice, before hanging up. The music resumed as he clicked off the comm, and he sat a moment as the chorus ended before turning it off. Esco stepped out of the car, saw Pepe standing more or less where he'd left him. He called to Baby over his shoulder, nodded at Pepe.

  "Gentlemen, it's time."

  Chapter 18

  "It's time" said Cessus. He reached up and twisted off one of his rubberized dreads and placed it carefully on the table between them. Midway through its length it was banded with a glowing blue ring.

  "This thing starts blinking, you start chatting into your comp and slowly go out to the elevators. Punch the third floor - it's another restaurant - and take the stairs down to the front. Then get a cab and go home. You got that?" He stood up, adjusted his shirt.

  "Where're you going?" asked Fed.

  "To the bathroom" said Cessus.

  He turned and left.

  Fede was suddenly aware of the fact that he was sitting in front of a melted bowl of ice cream, a newspaper containing a metal-mesh signal shield, and a hidden tracking antenna through which they were hijacking a connection from somebody's house a half-mile away.

  The waiter appeared, collected the dish and Cessus's empty coffee cup, and disappeared.

  Fede realized this was the first time he'd been alone since he'd found out about the Boers and all the trouble. Up until now he'd just been reacting, doing what he was told. And what the hell were they doing messing with Disney, anyway? The megacorp had become world renowned for their vicious investment and takeover cycles, leading the way in overseas labor exploitation and almost single-handedly reworking the World Trade Organization committees in their favor. Disney had become synonymous with sweatshops, black market trafficking, and stock manipulation. They'd pioneered the concept of corporate armed forces, generating a marketing spin-off to DARPA which eventually partnered with and was then sold to the U.S. government. Along the way they'd bought a couple third-world countries and used their citizenships as testing grounds for new products. The Disney nations were wonders of Darwinian downbreeding and ongoing corporate propaganda as enforced by law. They were scary, scary places.

  Cessus had a right to hate them, although Fede didn't know why he was so willing to go head-to-head. It was only business, after all.

  In any case Tonx was out there risking his ass right now, and by extension so was he. If they were hijacking Poulpe from them Disney sure as hell weren't going to sit around idle while they waited for him to come back. Defectors from Disney didn't last very long unless they got under some other corp's wing, and even then the battles for custody lasted forever. The Disney passport wasn't so much a permissions slip as a title of ownership.

  Scary shit, and not exactly what Fede had been planning to do with himself. He was supposed to be studying, following the courses along a prescribed path to corporate security. Part of him had actually considered working for Disney; if you got a good contract they made sure you were set for life. Instead he was about to help steal from them.

  F
ede crossed his arms and stared out at the city moving slowly by beneath him. He tried hard not to think about Disney. The data streams in front of his eyes flowed on, modulating against the view, rippling the houses and cars below like water over rocks. Cessus had spent a long time just watching it work, scanning for anomalies, letting error-checking routines and monitoring tripwire software get a solid handle on what normal was. He'd held forth at Fede for a while about patterns, about the parts of your brain that recognized and managed large data sets without your conscious thought. Cessus seemed to think that the 90 per cent of the human brain that didn't seem to be doing anything actually did a lot, that it acted as a hugely subtle modulator for the electrical signals being used by that ten per cent that people could monitor. Fede had started to get interested until Cessus lapsed into theories about ESP and government mind control.

  But he had made some good points. Fede knew that sometimes, when he was coding, he'd get so caught up in the overall pattern, the structure, that he'd code good-sized chunks without thinking about the specific lines he was writing. Those lines worked, they fit into the structure perfectly, but they'd been written by some other part of his brain. The module that handled the rules for code had done its job, and Fede hadn't had to think it through character by character to do it.

  He was beginning to understand how Cessus could do the same thing with network monitoring.

  "How do you tell how cold it is by looking out the window - barring obvious indicators like snow?" he'd asked. Fed hadn't had a good answer, had said "I just know."

  "That's right" said Cessus. "You just know. Because your brain there knows how the light looks at that precise time of day in certain humidity and under particular wind speeds. Your brain knows that if the shadows are just so it must be cooler, that if the road is just that wet it's a particular humidity. You don't think about it, you just know."

  Fede had remained unimpressed.

  "It's the same with code, or network monitoring, or anything else you see on a screen. A good coder can often find the problem spot in code just by tabbing over it. He just seems to be able to find it, know what I mean?"