Beautiful Red

by M. Darusha Wehm

  It made her wonder, as she turned off the program, what kind of surveillance devices were in use in the wild. Surely, if marble-sized recorders could be bought on the street corner, organizations with money and clout could afford to buy or create even smaller ones, maybe even the size of a speck of dust. A person could be constantly watched and recorded and never know.

  She dismissed the thought as soon as it was fully formed, though, because the point was moot. Round-the-clock ever-present surveillance had become the norm years ago. As soon as everywherenet became truly ubiquitous, any illusion of privacy that people harboured was finally dissolved for good. Your body’s actions may not be photographed as such, but your location, any programs you are running, any conversations you are having are logged and trackable. Even, to a certain extent, your thoughts.

  Sure, no one had the time or energy to truly monitor most people, but you could never really be alone. And for law enforcement or in case of emergency, the logs could be reviewed. They were destroyed after a week as a matter of course, but would be retained longer for important people or known criminals. It was the cost (or benefit, depending on your perspective) of having an always accessible and free to use network.

  Jack pushed these thoughts out of her mind, and thought instead about bed. It was Tuesday, which meant that tomorrow was her last workday for the week. She was looking forward to the three days off; there was no doubt that ten days of working in a row was unpleasant, even if the hours were reasonable. Some of her colleagues at smaller firms or lower classes worked ten or more hours a day. As much as she hated Bellis, she recognized that it could be a whole lot worse somewhere else.

  She stripped off her clothes and stuffed them in the autoclave. It was on a timer and would flash clean everything inside while she was sleeping. She double checked the alarm, and again doubted the wisdom of the holographic Personal Wake-Me-Up. Still, there’s nothing like an adrenaline rush first thing in the AM. Damn that subconscious, she thought, and took a gulp of SleepingJuice. She knew she only had about five minutes until it kicked in, so got into bed and ordered the windows to darken and the lights to dim. The next thing she knew, she was asleep.

  Chapter 3

  00001

  I'm starting to get scared. I'm getting worried for my sanity. Maybe I'm paranoid and there's a hundred boards all devoted to this, this - what would you even call it, a syndrome? Can't even run the search, though, too scared about what I might find. What if I'm the only one, or even worse what if this is the beginning of some incurable illness, brain cancer or some chemical thing. Christ, I think I'm losing it. You know, nuts, batty, loony, crazy, wacko. That's what I think I am. Crazy.

  It's been happening for a few weeks now, on and off. Everything seems normal, everything is fine, then wham! it's like nothing I've ever experienced before. Literally.

  It's later. Everything is fine and then bam, it's some random amount of time later. And I have absolutely no idea what I've been doing and no sense at all that any time has passed.

  At first I just ignored it. Maybe I was really bored and the time just escaped on me. That can happen, right? But after it happened a few times I couldn't ignore it anymore. If I'm at the office when it happens I'll casually ask someone about the last hour or two; you know, make it sound like I was zoned out and wasn't paying attention. They'll say that everything was normal; I guess I didn't run around like a monkey or start foaming at the mouth or anything. But I just don't remember it. At all.

  I'm thinking about looking at my logs, but you can't just call them up like you're paging over to some board. You have to ask for them, officially. I don't know if I have the skills to get them undetected. Oh, I could get them, but I can't be sure I wouldn't leave a trail. And I can't be found out. I need to not be crazy.

  I've seen those people. The streeters. The ones who clearly were normal once then they lost it and now they're nowhere. Living like rats. Well, I won't be a rat. I'd die first. Die.

  Chapter 4

  The birds weren't that bad after all. They really did just chirp, and about three of them flapped benignly over Jack's bed until she hit the off button on the alarm. "I can live with that," she said, getting out of bed and padding to the bathroom.

  She went through the usual morning paces and was out the door within fifteen minutes. She washed down half her breakfast bar with coffee as she headed for the train stop. The morning was pretty much the same as every other day, maybe a few more streeters than before. It seemed like there were more streeters every day. It was hard to tell if it just seemed that way; if there were any official stats on the number of street people, they were classified and unreported. Most people were thankful for what they had and didn't like to think about the alternative.

  When Jack got into the office, Gilles was finishing up the night shift report. "Anything good for me?" Jack asked.

  "Eastern systems are fubar again," Gilles said, getting his jacket on. "Nothing for us though. We've got the Eastern noobs locked out for now."

  "Noobs," Jack said, derisively. "You'd think that by now they'd give a half a day orientation at least. It would cost a fraction of what it costs to clean up the mess."

  "That's corporate, for ya," Gilles said, "don't know their ass from Tuesday. Later, dude." He left the Security Room, and Jack settled into the chair. When she first started at Bellis, she was put off by the cubicle sharing system. Fresh out of training, she idealistically believed that companies would have realized that physical presence in the office was obsolete thinking. But now that she had been working in the system for a while, she realized that it wasn't solely a lack of understanding that made corporate require physical presence.

  It was a method of control. Sure, the network was able to ensure you actually were working when you were on the clock; no one had to physically see you to be sure of that. But making you wear the uniform, sit in the chair and just be there is a not so subtle way of letting you know who's in control. You really gave up a lot of freedom in exchange for employment, and all the historical trappings just helped to break your spirit a little more.

  But really, what other option did you have? Become a streeter? No-one chose that life, never mind what those conservative vidcasters said. Jack daydreamed about other options all the time, which is to say that she daydreamed about nothing. She wished things were different, but wishes don't make anything real, so she tried to find satisfaction where she could. Work wasn't doing it for her these days, but between the boards and online friends she had an okay social life. Maybe playing with the micro recorders would keep her occupied for a while - learning a new tool usually interested her for a few weeks or months. She might have to visit that street vendor more often.

  Jack spent the work day paging through the boards, reading Gilles' report and avoiding Tony. The first two items were more successful than the latter, as he accosted her not once but twice on the way to the washroom with boring anecdotes about some guy in Cuba with a collection of what she had to assume were clothes, though she'd never heard the word he used before. At least he was benign. Unlike that guy in admin, Atomu, who was obsessed with practical jokes. Having an anti-grav chip stuck to the bottom of your chair was one thing, but he had graduated to doing things like screwing with the access codes and turning entire logs into haiku.

  Jack hadn't seen any of his shenanigans first hand, and she was thankful. She wasn't sure if he just hadn't made his way up to her floor, or if he was scared of Security. Privately, she found his handiwork pretty funny; she just knew that it would make her life momentarily miserable if it happened on her watch.

  Around mid-afternoon, as she was fighting off the end of the day drowsiness, Jack noticed something odd. The Eastern systems were still being flaky, which meant that the problem had been going on for over 36 hours. That was a long time, even for a really green noob. Jack punched up the logs for the Eastern system, entering her Class 5 admin token. She knew that action would be flagged for her counterpart in Eastern and she expected an
angry message any minute now, complaining about her interference. She just couldn't let it go by unchecked - it was the closest thing to something actually interesting that had happened in ages.

  As she suspected, her messenger started chirping a few seconds after she accessed the logs. She ignored the insistent sound resonating insider her eardrums, and started reading.

  That's strange, she thought, looking at the logs. There's no record of anything wrong here. The logs look like any others. Hell, they look just like mine. The insistent sound of the messenger brought her back to reality, and she finally answered.

  "Hey, Jack," the voice at the other end said, sounding surprisingly calm.

  "Sorry, Mac," Jack said, "I just couldn't stay out of it. I know it's none of my… "

  Macintyre, the Eastern Class 5, cut her off. "I'm not calling to bust yer balls," he said, "I'm hoping you've got a clue what the fuck this is all about."

  "Damn, I don't know," Jack answered. "This log looks fine. Are you sure the system's borked?"

  "Only completely," Mac answered, the frustration clear in his voice. "Users can only log in half the time, then they get kicked off. But no one seems to be able to replicate the problem. It's totally random. Yesterday's crap didn't help, but this doesn't seem to be related to that. I don't know what this is."

  "I haven't seen anything like this in years," Jack said. "I know it's an old school idea, but have you thought about shutting it down and restarting the system?"

  Jack heard a sharp intake of breath from the Eastern guy. "Christ, that's drastic." He paused. "But I'm running out of options. I'll see if we can't straighten it out some other way, but if it come to that, I'll let you know."

  "Thanks, Mac," Jack said. "I'll keep an eye on things from my end, if you don't mind."

  "I'll take all the help I can get," he said and ended the message. Jack sat back and watched the clean-looking Eastern logs scroll.

  Mac never did figure it out, but by the time the middle shift was arriving, the Eastern systems had gone back to normal. Jack had spent the remainder of the afternoon scrutinizing the logs from her systems and for the Eastern systems, and finally noticed something odd - a connection on the Eastern side from an external node. Of course, access to the system was restricted to authenticated users, but if you could authenticate to the system you could log in from anywhere. You wouldn't get credit for being at work of course, but you could always work if you wanted to. Obviously, not many people took advantage of this feature, so it was unusual enough that Jack instinctively noticed, even though the system wouldn't flag this kind of connection.

  On a hunch, Jack ran the address through a secure reverse lookup feature she had installed in a fairly well-hidden directory. Bingo. The address resolved to Buyside Solutions Inc., a huge financial services corporation with branches in every major centre. As far as Jack could figure, there was no good reason why someone would access the Bellis system from within the Buyside system, unless someone from Buyside was trying to get access to private Bellis documents.

  Jack paged over to her office mail and rooted through her deleted messages looking for the most recent "What's New at Bellis Corporate" propaganda piece. She scanned the last few weekly missives and read between the lines. It looked like it was possible that Bellis was planning on acquiring a new subsidiary. Jack wasn't involved in big finances, no one who wore a uniform could afford to be, but she knew enough to realize that inside poop would be pure platinum to an outfit like Buyside.

  Espionage. What a cute, antiquated concept. But, if she could foil an attempted acquisition of unauthorized information, she would get bumped up to Class 7 or 8 without breaking a sweat. But she had to tread carefully, since she could never survive a lawsuit from Buyside. And that was if they didn't just sic their goons on her instead.

  Jack left coded notes about the situation for Gilles in her report and made a note for herself to message him privately the next day. She logged off the network, got her jacket and headed out the door. She didn't have a fully formed plan about how to investigate this, but she hadn't felt this engaged in her work in years. Maybe ever.

  On her way home she stopped off at a take away that made food the old fashioned way, with multiple ingredients grown from seed rather than flavoured nutrient blocks. She spent half a day's pay on a small box of steaming vegetables, part of her weekly indulgence. She carefully carried the box back to her apartment, keeping a keen eye on the streeters aroused by the aroma. She made it into her apartment unmolested and shucked her uniform immediately.

  Changed into her own clothes, she popped a beer from the fridge, set her display to rest and sat at the table with her stir-fry. She ate slowly, savouring the flavours. She knew that some people ate like this every day, and that knowledge more than anything else made her angry about the inequities in the world. But many people could never afford to eat this food even once, and Jack was aware of the realities of life enough to know this as well. Once she had finished every last morsel, and had her last sip of beer, she stuffed the box and bottle into the recyclatron. She did nothing for a moment, enjoying the memory of her dinner, then restarted her display.

  She started up the program that controlled the micro recorders and spent the next three hours breaking it. Part way through her fourth hour of trying, she finally successfully reconfigured it the way she wanted and involuntarily let out a small yelp of happiness over her success. She wanted to share her victory as well as talk about what she had uncovered at work, so she pinged Adrian.

  "Not available", came the response, "do you want to leave a message"? Jack said "no" and went to one of the micro recorder boards instead. She paged through a few posts, but the board was publicly accessible, if hard to find, and presumably logged, so she left without posting anything.

  She silently cursed herself for being her usual antisocial self and never asking Gilles for his private contact information. Logically she knew that no one ever did that at work; off duty fraternization was frowned upon strongly enough that no one ever bothered. But now the social code of work had become inconvenient. She would have to contact Gilles tomorrow at the office.

  She sat in her apartment, the night sky barely visible even though her window was still transparent, and cracked another beer. After drinking half of it, she opened her fridge and its freezer compartment. She found a small box labeled "petite green peas" and opened it. Inside she fished out a cigarette from her small stash.

  Tobacco was illegal, of course, although no one ever got in trouble for simple possession anymore because possession didn't pose a problem to any of the firms. Even so, a record of criminal activity can be a real problem for someone in Security, so Jack was slightly paranoid about her stash.

  She lit the contraband cigarette, and spent the next ten minutes thoroughly enjoying her illicit habit. She didn't even smoke once a week, but sometimes it played a part in her weekend indulgences as an extra treat. The drug was an acceptable substitute for companionship, and it almost compensated for not being able to talk about her exploits; however, between the nicotine and the alcohol, she felt like she had taken half a hit of SleepingJuice. She fell into her bed, excited and intoxicated and oddly a little sad. She set the alarm for the middle of the night, then immediately fell asleep, and dreamed of infinitely scrolling log files.

  Chapter 5

  Jack woke again to the chirping birds, each peep sounding a bit like a tiny jackhammer to her aching head. The first morning of the weekend often started this way, though usually a few hours later. She silenced the birds, rubbed her eyes and banged her way through her tiny apartment to the water. She drank down a couple of glasses and tried to convince herself that she felt better. She grabbed a hot breakfast packet from the box and chucked it in the zapper. She turned on the coffee and while everything was heating up, she found some comfortable clothes. The zapper dinged and the coffee machine pinged, and Jack took her food and drink to the table. She ate and drank offline, becoming less aware of her headache, more aw
are of her surroundings and thinking subconsciously about the previous day's revelations.

  She knew what was going to do, she just didn't want to admit it to herself. Security was a good job, that was sure, and promotion would make it an even better job. Hell, she might even be able to move to a apartment with a bedroom. Or eat real food more than once a week. But none of that was worth committing a crime. Jack was fully aware of that, but she also knew that the real motivation for what she was going to do had nothing to do with Bellis, her job or any of the other possible gains. The real reason was that it was exciting. It was what she had trained for and it was what she had done for fun before she got into security. It made her brains throb and her skin itch, but in a good way.

  She was going to break in to Buyside. It was either break in or forget the whole thing. Technically there was no crime in just connecting to the Bellis system since all users had to authenticate, and the actual connection was out of her jurisdiction, anyway. But she knew something was up and she had to find out what it was. She had to get in there and she had to get out again without being caught. This was going to be fun.

  She fired up her display and headed straight for the Escher. She set the basic encryption on and tunneled into the Bellis system through the security back door. She messaged Gilles as soon as she was in. He answered immediately.

  >Hey, dude. Read your report. Not surprised you called.

  >>You saw it, too?

  >Yup. Weird. Nothing wrong with it, though, officially.

  >>Dunno…

  >Me either. You going in?

  >>

  >

  >>How did you know?

  >Don't read someone's reports every day and not figure out a thing or two.

  >>Back me up?