The Astral Hacker (Cryptopunk Revolution Book 1)

by Brian Terenna

  Aww, it’s something Barbra would have done. “Yum. Thanks.”

  She smiles, sits down next to me, and we start to eat.

  “So, what’s your real name?” she asks.

  “Fae Luna.”

  “Ooo. I like that. You sound mystical.”

  I laugh, feeling more comfortable around her.

  “I’m Naveha, but since we’re friends, you can call me Nav.”

  “I’m so sorry I couldn’t help you with your hack. I really did want to.”

  She sighs. “I know. I’ll figure something out.”

  “What did you need the money for?”

  “I lost my house and income because of an accident.”

  My eyes trail down and land on her cybernetic arm, the light reflecting off its surface. Her look follows mine, and the corners of her lips tug down.

  I jerk my gaze away, pretending that I was looking at one of her Buddhas. I’m always careful not to upset people…mostly so they don’t hit me.

  She breathes out and shakes her head. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she says, her tone dour.

  Must have been bad. I know what it’s like not to want to talk about hard things, though. “What was the full hack going to be anyway?”

  “A fifty-one percent hack on BitcoinLife.”

  “I’ve heard of it, but what exactly is a fifty-one percent attack?”

  “If someone controls more than fifty percent of the computing power that is mining a cryptocurrency, they can double-spend the coin and make tons of money.”

  My eyebrows rise.

  “No one has pulled off a hack like that in ten years, but I was pretty desperate. Unfortunately, they greatly increased their security after I failed. Another opportunity won’t come up.”

  We finish our meal. She clears the plates and then returns.

  “Why don’t you shower and get ready for the day,” she says. “I had some new clothes delivered for you. After you’re done, maybe we can talk.”

  Sunny follows me into the bathroom, and I pull the curtain closed for a long shower. It’s so nice to be inside a home again. I dry, wrap myself in a towel, and step out.

  Sunny sits on the ground, mechanical parts surrounding him. He glances at me as his soldering tool retracts into his arm.

  Panic seizes me. “What are you doing?” I whisper.

  He holds up his other arm. The back of it opens up, and the stun baton from our attacker extends outward and sparks.

  My eyes widen. “Put it away. Nav can’t see this. She’ll know.”

  “Sorry,” he says, and the baton disappears into his arm. “I was hoping to protect you better next time we are in trouble.”

  I can’t help but love him for it. “Be more careful. She can’t find out about you.”

  He nods and picks up his tools.

  I dress, happy to have clothes that fit me. We return to the bedroom, and Sunny stands in the corner. Nav is looking at an ornately framed photograph of her and some guy on her nightstand. Her eyes are wet and red. She sees me and wipes her face.

  “Is that your boyfriend, Ty? I remember you telling me about him once.”

  She doesn’t respond for a moment, then says, “Husband, but not anymore.”

  “Sorry to hear that. I know relationships can be hard.” Why did I say that? As much as I want love, I’ve never been in a relationship…besides my imaginary one with Jack Trackton.

  “I finally felt like my life was coming together, like I was going to get somewhere. But…things don’t always work out.”

  “It sounds like you still love him. Is that your wedding ring you’re wearing?”

  She shrugs. “Yes.”

  I join her on the bed and decide to change the subject to lighten the mood. “What’s this A?” I ask, pointing to the sheets.

  “It’s the anarchy symbol, but I like the term voluntarism.”

  My eyebrows rise as I imagine the ruined landscape of Silent City. “You support that?” I ask, surprised. She’s the only person I ever talked to that did. “Wouldn’t everyone just kill each other?”

  “Would you start killing people?” she asks.

  I frown. “No.” Well…maybe the Archfiend.

  “Neither would most people. But you’re right. Some people only behave well because of laws. For those people, we’d pay for private security services. It’s similar to how we’re taxed to pay the police now, but it would be cheaper. As much as Navin reformed our government, police still kill too many people. There are other concerns too. A talk for another time, though.” She looks pensive. “Are you ready to talk about what happened to you?”

  Barbra lies gray and lifeless. The mugger hovers over me, his teeth yellow, and his breath stale. My stomach sinks as I learn that I’m a wanted criminal. I look down and pull at my shorts. “I…I don’t know.” Will she still help if she knows I’m wanted for murder?

  “Why don’t we reminisce about Silent City for a while first?”

  A bit of a sore subject. “I’d love to. I need to tell you some bad news, though.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Somehow, my account was deleted. StarFeather is gone.”

  She gasps. “No. Why would they do that? Did you try to find your character in the archives?”

  “They said I violated the service agreement, but that’s a lie. I did check the archives, but it’s permanently deleted.”

  She scowls. “I’ll never forget when you first joined. We were floundering without good leadership or planning. Even though you were new, people wanted to follow you. We quickly ascended the rankings after that.”

  I loved the feeling of domination. “Remember when you dueled ten consecutive people because they insulted me?”

  She laughs. “They had it coming.”

  “You beat them all. Blaze, Champion of the People.”

  “It’s nothing compared to when you hid in the sewers after everyone in our guild was dead,” she says.

  “They sent almost everyone from their base looking for me.”

  “Then you blasted through the ground with a rocket launcher, killed the two guards, and took their flag. That was epic.”

  I smile at her, feeling just like I used to when we played.

  We reminisce for hours, then Nav says, “Ready to tell me what happened?”

  My stomach sinks, and I look away.

  “Tell me about your parents first then. You’ve never told me about them.”

  I’ve never told her much of anything about my real life, partly because I wanted to escape it.

  Nav squeezes my hand. “Come on. You can trust me.”

  She was always there for me in-game, but I hesitate as a crazy thought pops into my head. What if she was involved with Barbra’s death somehow? Maybe she joined the game and befriended me as some kind of plot?

  No. That’s too crazy. Besides, I’m the one that contacted her. She’s taken good care of me and seems as kind as I remember her.

  I lower my head so my curls drop in front of my face. “My mom is dead, and my dad left before I was born. While they were together, he made her promise not to get a brain implant. They were only together for six months before he went on the run from the NIA, though.”

  “Those scumbags. What did they want him for?”

  I shrug. “I can only imagine. I’m not even sure if my mom knew. Years after he left, she got an early model Evo. It had a rare malfunction, which caused a stroke. She lived for a few days, but it was too much on her system. It’s as if my father knew there would be an issue.”

  She squeezes my hand, then rubs my back. “I’m so sorry.”

  I shrug, still looking at my lap. “It’s nothing compared to the pits I fell into afterward.”

  “The foster homes?”

  “Yeah…but I don’t want to talk that.”

  “Do you know anything about your father?” she asks.

  “Just before my mom died, she gave me a letter that he wrote. I only keep it because it’s one of two thi
ngs I have from when my mom was alive. I also tried to search for him on the mesh once. It was weird, though. I couldn’t find anything.”

  “That is strange,” she says. “What was in the letter?”

  “After saying he loved me and that he wished he could stay, he warned me against brain implants, specifically the Evo, just like he warned my mother. He also said they’d only hold me back if I were anything like him.”

  “My father opposes the Evo too,” she says.

  “Interesting. My dad also wrote about meditation. According to his letter, he believed that a person could do amazing things if they focus their mind. Sounds like a bunch of nonsense to me.”

  “I’ve meditated for a long time. There’s actually tons of research to support his belief. People have controlled their heart rate, temperature, medical conditions, blood pressure, and more. Lately, it’s been helping me deal with things,” she says, a sadness darkening her eyes.

  “I heard it’s healthy too,” I say, trying to make up for my dumb comment.

  “So, are you ready to tell me what happened?”

  I opened up about my parents, but this is much bigger. I hesitate.

  “You saw in Silent City that I’m empathetic. How many noobs did I help out?”

  I nod and giggle. “It took up half of our time.”

  “We can’t all be Miss Efficiency. But seriously, I’m not the type to screw people over. And as long as you’re straight with me, you can trust me.”

  I gaze into the pools of her eyes, looking for confirmation.

  “Not only was I a crisis counselor, I was going to start an agency. I’ll keep everything we talk about confidential.”

  Here we go. I tell her that Barbra is dead but don’t go into specifics. Then I let my walls tumble and tell her about my trials afterward and how I’m wanted for murder. She’s surprisingly easy to talk to. Maybe when this is over, she can counsel foster kids as part of my blockchain project.

  “That’s cracked. You can never trust the police to get anything right. Should be abolished. Lucky for you, you came to the right person.” She holds up a finger. “One sec, though. Cube, activate nature projection three,” she says into her q-link.

  Bushy trees and vibrant flowers appear around us, and a bright orange sun shines from the ceiling.

  “That’s better,” she says. “Now tell me the details of what happened to Barbra.”

  A wave of sadness passes through me, but I force it away. I switch to a cross-legged position and rub my knees. “Barbra had two recorded schizophrenic breaks where she went to the hospital. She received medication that should have worked and then a booster medication that was almost guaranteed to work. But then she had a third break, where she stabbed herself in the chest with scissors. She also wrote a suicide note on the wall in blood.”

  “Oh my God. That’s horrible,” she says, squeezing my arm.

  I lower my head, feeling the weight of the loss.

  “It seems like a cut and dry suicide. Why do they think it’s you?”

  “Unfortunately, I took the scissors from her chest. My fingerprints are on them.”

  “Okay, still,” she says. “She wrote a note. It should be obvious.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

  “Someone else might recommend you go in for questioning and try to smooth it over,” says Nav, “but I don’t trust the police.”

  “Me either. Plus, there are other things. My bank account and Progs account were both gone.”

  “What do you mean gone?” she asks.

  “I called customer services, and there was no record of my accounts.”

  “Why wouldn’t you hold your own crypto keys?”

  I sigh. “I don’t know. I never thought it would be an issue.”

  “Either way, the police are not allowed to touch your accounts until you are convicted and, even then, it’s a process.”

  I throw my hands up in frustration.

  “Okay. I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but it feels like there’s something wrong here. Maybe you could be accidentally accused of murder, but they wouldn’t delete your accounts unless something else is going on.”

  “There’s more. I told you about Barbra’s schizophrenic breaks, but I also came across two other local women who had schizophrenic breaks. And strangely enough, like Barbra, this woman Anna was unresponsive to the typically successful medications and had no history of mental illness in the family.”

  “Weird,” she says. “Let’s see if we can find any other similar articles here or outside of Stroudsburg.”

  We both search for a while but have no luck.

  I rub my head in frustration as I watch holographic tree branches blow in a fake breeze.

  “Let’s go back to the three women,” says Nav. “Was the third woman, Sandra, also unresponsive to medication with no family history?”

  I re-scan the article. “It doesn’t say, but I can figure out which hospital they took her to and get answers.”

  I access my q-link and find the address of the courthouse where Sandra was rescued, then look up the closest hospital, Stroudsburg Regional.

  I breach their outdated systems, locate Sandra’s file, and scan the information. Diablo. “She didn’t respond to medication and has no family history either!”

  “Wow, this is getting weird. There’s definitely a connection. But what could be causing it?”

  “I don’t know. Barbra and Sandra both had the flu before or while they were hallucinating. There are no diseases that cause flu-like symptoms and hallucinations, though. Encephalitis is the closest thing, but it doesn’t fit because the hallucinations shouldn’t last past the disease.”

  “We need to check if Anna also had the flu. It may be nothing, but what if there’s some new disease?”

  I nod. “I considered that. Let me hack her social media account.”

  Before I start, Nav’s cybernetic fingers zip through the air as she hacks. “I’m in her Bazo account.”

  “That was fast.”

  She grins. “I am still your teacher.”

  “Any mention of the flu or flu symptoms? It could be anytime in the last few weeks.”

  She flicks a finger, and Anna’s posts scroll through the air. “Wait…here we go. She says, ‘The only thing worse than my stuffy nose, is how tired I am.’ It was a week ago.”

  My eyes widen. “Could it be?”

  “We’ll have to contact the Center for Disease Control. Maybe this is enough to clear your name.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We need to confirm that she had the flu.” I locate her address, then breach the simple defenses of nearby doctors’ offices until I find hers. “She wasn’t in for the flu, but that doesn’t mean anything. Wait,” I say with a sigh. “She has allergies. That might be all it was. See if you can confirm that.” I pull at one of my curls while I wait.

  “Cube,” she says into her q-link, “locate anything about allergies or the flu.”

  “There are five mentions of allergies. There is one mention of the flu,” says her q-link.

  I lean forward.

  Nav shakes her head. “It was from three years ago.”

  I slump. “So much for that theory.”

  “What else do the women have in common?”

  “They’re all women,” I say, “but that probably doesn’t mean anything.” What else could it be?

  An idea strikes me, and I picture my mom on her deathbed. Her face was slack and gray tinged. Despite her spasms of pain, she pushed herself up on her elbow and locked eyes with me. ‘Swear to me,’ she said. ‘Swear you’ll never get the Evo.’

  It can’t be. An Evo hasn’t malfunctioned in fifteen years, but what if? “Could it be the Evo? Barbra got one just before her break.”

  Her eyes widen. “That could be really bad. Let’s see if Anna and Sandra had the Evo before we get worried, though. I’ll check Anna.”

  Nav’s cybernetic fingers move and select holograms as she scan
s Anna’s social media. Her face falls. “She wrote this a month ago, ‘I see why they want to pass job quotas for norms. I just upgraded, and wow, I’ll be an even greater asset to the Cardinal Post.’ She had it. Tell me that Sandra didn’t.”

  I access Sandra’s social media and scan her posts. A cold dread sizes my body. “Three weeks ago, Sandra wrote, ‘they expanded the Evo to my department. What could be better than evolving at the employer’s expense?’”

  “Oh my God. If it’s the Evo, a third of the population is at risk.”

  I shiver as I think of the potential consequences. The issue seems limited now, but what if it spreads? “Why didn’t they ban brain implants? They banned human-level AI?”

  “Evos are controlled by the brain and usually don’t have problems,” says Nav. “Whereas AI has a mind of its own. It’s much more dangerous.”

  I glance at Sunny. He watches a parrot glide from one holographic tree to another, giving no indication he’s listening.

  “I know it would be terrible if the Evos are the issue,” I say, “but we can clear my name if we can prove it.”

  “Do you think it could be a malfunction like what happened to your mother?”

  “It’s possible. Can you look up if there was a cluster of manufactured Evos that were sent to our area?”

  Nav’s enhanced fingers fly as she searches. “Nope. Our Evos here are part of a wider distribution all over the country.”

  “Since there were no other strange schizophrenic situations outside of Stroudsburg, it can’t be a malfunction then,” I say. “I wonder if it could be a hack or some advanced malware.”

  Nav adjusts her legs. “We all remember what happened when the early brain implants were hacked, but the Evo is different. It’s been shown to be unhackable, and honestly, I’ve taken a shot at it. It’s like nothing else I’ve come across. I can’t see how it would be possible.”

  I stare off into the corner at some swaying ferns, my hand over my mouth, and my brow furrowed. Unfortunately, I know that it’s possible and no amount of wishing otherwise will change that.

  “Fae…Fae?” asks Nav.

  I flinch and jerk my head toward her. “What?”

  “I said, what else do you think could cause the Evo issue?”

  Sunny looks at me with a frown.