Take the Fourth

by Jeffrey Walton

  He entered CICJW45 and just before he hit return Jorja shouted, “Wait!”

  He saw his nervous mistake, damn transposition he surmised, always got him into a heap of trouble. He backed spaced and entered CICJW54. PASSWORD: Now the moment of truth. He entered 2dogmai.

  “Invalid Login or Password.” replied the IP address ending in 12.168.

  “Jorja are you sure about that login id?”

  “Pretty sure.”

  “On a scale of one to ten?”

  “Eight… maybe seven.”

  Greg rolled his eyes and thought to himself, “a difference between a B and a C, not up to my standards.”

  “Do you want to try another one or a variation of this one… . you know like substitute the o for zero or i for one?”

  “No, I want to try another one.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, for I am positive, make it so,” accenting the “for I am” in her best Jean Luc Picard voice.

  And without another word Greg entered CICJW54 being mighty aware of his first error, then slowly and methodically, using his old hunt and peck mode, he entered dogmai4 and hit return.

  “Invalid Login or Password,” replied the IP address ending in 12.168

  “Shit,” was Greg’s answer to the message, “That’s not good, we’re done for the day.”

  “Done? Why?”

  “I told you about those red flags, we just failed twice, one more failed attempt and I am pretty sure, no… . one hundred percent certain, we will lock out the President. Then when he goes to enter this machine and gets a user blocked error all hell will be loose.”

  “But I know the reason.”

  “I don’t care Jorja, we can wait, we must wait.”

  But before he could say anything else, Jorja grabbed the keyboard and starting typing. She hit return.

  “Invalid Login or Password,” was not the reply from the IP address ending in 12.168.

  Instead both she and Greg were starring at a dollar sign prompt.

  $

  “Holy fucking shit Jorja, that took some balls, what did you enter?”

  “Come on genius, surely I haven’t stumped you,” he was, “Now what?”

  “We take a look around.”

  “That’s a Unix box.”

  He entered his first command which did not work, then Greg spotted the caps lock key light was still on. He wasn’t stumped anymore, just one more reason to love that woman.

  Greg entered a few commands and the machine seemed to be at his beck and call. On the monitor now was a list of all the directories on the machine. He printed them off. Then he did the command ps—ef and hit return. A list of all the processes this machine had running was now displayed on the monitor. He printed that as well and at the $ prompt he entered exit and hit return. The screen went blank.

  “Why in the hell did you do that?” Without a word Greg went to her printer and gathered the papers, then handed them to her. She looked them over, and then spotted what Greg saw just moments ago. Two of the processor belonged to the President. They being one of them, the other meant the President too was online, dangerous territory they were in, shark infested waters, yes shark infested waters with blood. Hopefully no one noticed.

  They were out of the machine but they had plenty to do. They had to analyze the directories and processes if they could. This would be a good spring board as to what this thing was doing on the network. They had “the who,” “the where,” “the what,” now they needed the why… the how would come later.

  They each had their adrenalin rush for the day and they each needed to calm their nerves. Greg suggested getting Jorja a coffee but she declined and instead joined him in his quest for another can of caffeine. During idle chit chat, Jorja was running things in her head, she knew damn well Greg wouldn’t leave well enough alone but she had to convince him to lay low. Meanwhile she wanted to take control, she knew her way around a Unix box and she had one thing Greg did not… . she had the President’s daily itinerary, which meant there was a very good chance she knew when the President would most likely not be in the system.

  “Greg, I don’t want you in that system unless I’m there right beside you.”

  “I understand.”

  “Greg, I mean it, if you go in and get caught I cannot help you, it’s my responsibility, got that?”

  “No, no, I understand fully, so when’s the next time you want to do this?”

  “How about this coming Saturday, the President has his banquet with his dwindling allies in the Middle East.”

  “Sounds like a plan… I’ll bring the wine.” Deep down Greg was thinking about abandoning her words, deeper still he realized he would do anything for that woman even take the fall for what they just had done but even deeper the idea of working besides Jorja on a Saturday night, he couldn’t plan for a more romantic evening, hacking code with his green eyed boss, yes, yes, yes he will stick to his words. He then slipped a dollar bill into the vending machine, pushed one five seven, watched the item drop, reached in, and handed Jorja her very own Kit Kat Bar.

  “You scare me sometimes.”

  “Everyone knows your mid afternoon snack,” Greg then calculated about just how many people that might be and that he knew he was the full majority. He had the facts on green eyed Jorja Carson, most of them anyway.

  . . .

  Chapter 17

  After dinner he finished watching the local news, then the world news, and even watched the first round of Jeopardy, in the first round he rarely got any answers so why watch the Double Jeopardy round, although he was in full glory when he answered a $100 or even $200 dollar question and considered himself a top contender. He shut off the boob tube then finally made his way downstairs to his little dark room. His little girl was again awake but she laid in silence on the bed. No food or drink was touched so he assumed she stayed where she was. He just watched his little girl in silence and deep down he felt a sense of joy he hadn’t felt in a long, long time, almost a giddiness. She was the one, she was his little girl. After about forty minutes or so, Ripley climbed out of bed and made her way to the bathroom. Ten minutes later she was out. He noticed she was such a good girl she even used soap and rinsed her hands. Her mother taught her well. She then went on an exploration of her room. Ripley first went over to the food. She was starving. She grabbed her favorite right away. She liked them because they were fun to eat. She peeled back the barely ripe banana and broke off a piece of the tip and placed it gently in her mouth… almost like she was unsure of how it tasted. It must have tasted like she remembered because she continued breaking off pieces and eating them like there was no tomorrow. She held the empty banana peel and looked for a place to throw it away. There was no waste basket to be found. He cursed himself as he watched, “how could I be so stupid?” She placed the peel back in almost the same place she found it. Next she grabbed the red bottle of juice and took a sip. She made her yucky face, probably because it was very warm. She took another sip and decided against it. She placed the cap back on and placed it in almost the exact place she found it. He made two more mental notes, one that she was pretty tidy and another was he needed to find a way to keep the juice cold—he’ll use the ice chest he concluded and smiled yet again at his wisdom. She didn’t touch any other food at the moment. She then knelt down besides Barbie’s Dream House and glanced in the windows. She didn’t touch it. She just looked with that child wonderment. She spent almost an hour on the floor and he was beginning to get antsy and uncomfortable. He stood up to stretch and knocked the box of tissue on the floor. She turned towards the sound, towards the mirror. It wasn’t a loud sound, just a small slap of cardboard hitting concrete. She got up and walked right in front of the mirror. On the other side he was motionless. He was in awe. Ripley was more beautiful than he could have ever imagined. That blonde hair and those steel blue eyes… everything he remembered. His girl was beautiful. The two stood and stared at each other, only Ripley was staring at herself unk
nowing of who or what was on the other side of the glass. To her it was just a mirror; to him it was a window into his soul. Unphased by the previous sound she went towards the closet and opened it up. She glanced through all the clothes like she was looking for something; she then made her way to the bureau and again rifled through all the clothes like she was looking for something. She looked again in both the closet and all the drawers. She was seemingly becoming upset. Earlier that morning she had a fight with her mom because she wanted to wear her favorite lime green shirt with the embroidered rainbow turtles on the front—it was a gift from her granddad when he came back from California. She couldn’t find it, she couldn’t find it anywhere. She knew none of these were her clothes. She immediately went to the steel door again and tried to open it, again it did not budge. “Mommy,” at the top of her lungs, then a change of tune… “daddy… daddy… daddy… I want out daddy… please daddy… please.” He so wanted to say something right there and then but he needed more time. The sobbing worsened. It turned into sheer panic and screams… “Mommy… daddy… . mommy… daddy…” and so it went on for at least an hour. He knew she was going to cry but he expected nothing like this… he too was beginning to panic. He couldn’t bear it any longer. He exited out of his watching room, went upstairs, peeked at his watch and got ready to go to work

  . . .

  Chapter 18

  On the contrary to Greg sticking to his words, Jorja was planning a night of her own. She knew how to get into that system on her own and she also knew the password now. She couldn’t wait to get off work. Somewhere in the back of her mind that cat was meowing louder and her curiosity was taking control. Just a few more hours, a few more budget reports, a few minutes in the car, actually with traffic more than a few, but she would be at home doing her own bit of investigating.

  And just like that her day had ended, traffic was the usual heavy load on the beltway, no accidents or rubbing-necking which was good and she pulled in the driveway at almost the usual time when on the rare occasion she didn’t stay late. She opened her garage, walked into the mud room and tossed her keys onto the kitchen table on her way to the fridge. She studied her selection but her pickings were slim, today was normally her shopping day but that would have to wait. She grabbed a bottle of vitamin water, strawberry yogurt, and a slice of whole wheat bread which she also kept in the fridge, then made her way to her office. Here was a pretty elaborate setup that was state of the art with the fastest computing power Silicon Valley had to offer. She upgraded her system quite regularly and always had the state of the art, even sometimes before it was available to the general public… she had connections as well. She booted up her system and while she waited for the log on screen she pulled back the foil of her yogurt and spooned in a mouthful. Her computer was fast but she almost downed the entire thing before the login screen appeared. It was gone before her personal settings appeared on the screen. Jorja then went straight to email, did a quick glance and nothing was crucial, she fired off a quick email to Greg on some other minor project, did another quick glance and clicked on the VPN network that would take her to her final destination of the evening. To her it was almost a vacation destination to an exotic land. She didn’t know what quite to expect as the anticipation was killing her. Then she saw the all too familiar login prompt.

  Jorja hesitated. Her mind starting playing angel devil but came to the rationalization that she should proceed. After all she was directly and indirectly in charge of security and she didn’t know what this machine was doing on her network and she knew someone went to an awful lot of trouble to hide it on the network. When the password prompt flickered on the screen there was no hesitation, no doubt and she was at the all too familiar dollar sign prompt. She did the same commands as Greg did, only in reverse. She went straight to the see the processes running on the system to make sure the President wasn’t on the system. He wasn’t but Jorja knew exactly where he was; it was an informal dinner at the White House with his congressman friend, the republican senator from his home state of Rhode Island. She noticed there were a few processes taking up a pretty good bandwidth of the processors but in no way was this going to hinder Jorja at all. She printed her own list of directories and pulled all six pages from her colored laser printer. She pulled out a highlighter and went to work on a few suspicious names. There were quite a few. She then went to the home directory and listed the folders. She saw folders for CICJW54 and COSSN17 and correctly assumed the other one belonged to Scott Norwood but didn’t know what the 17 stood for, she also saw root, and another home folder, CEOFS01, but couldn’t even take a gander for she was not logged in as that individual and knew she’d get a permission error had she made an attempt. She opened up the President’s folder and found not much to work with. She perused a few other content folders and directories making notes on her paper where appropriate but she really didn’t find much of interest. She was pretty disappointed in the first two or so hours that had gone by, that is until she reran the command to display the processes. She had totally forgotten about the processes that were eating at the cpu’s power. She saw the directory they were hitting and made her way there. Here was a world she did not recognize, not one iota. She saw things like menv, mumps, and just the letter o. She went to the o first and did a list of the directory. Hundreds of items scrolled before her. She summarized that these were computer routines of some sort since they all ended in dot o or object routines that really only machines can read. They were of no use to her. She went up a level and tried to open the mumps directory.

  The screen flashed and she was at a new prompt that just had an M>. “Never seen this one,” she thought to herself. She punched in a few Unix commands and each returned the message Invalid Command. She tried help and nothing, stop and nothing, upper and lowercase and nothing, she tried control characters, function keys and nothing, every time Invalid Command. It was like she was stuck in the damn maze of the popular MUD game Zork.

  Go West,

  You are in the maze.

  Go East

  You cannot go that way.

  Go south

  You cannot go that way. Your lantern has gone out.

  Go west. You cannot see and have fallen, you have died. You are in an open field west of a big White House with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.

  Everything led back to the M prompt no matter what she tried. She started just banging letters on the keyboard in frustration and some combinations of letters, she didn’t know which ones, she found herself back at the $ prompt. She looked at the clock in the corner of her screen and cursed under her breath. It was 2:24 and she had a very busy day planned and it was going to start in less than three hours from now. She thought about staying awake but quickly nixed the idea for she was tired now and any bit of sleep would help. She would have to tackle the system another day. She called it a night.

  At 5:15 her alarm clock sounded and she was pissed—pissed because she knew no amount of the wonder brew was going to get her through this day. She fought her way from beneath the covers and exposed her naked self to the elements of the house. She walked into the bathroom and started her hot hot shower. It was approaching 6:15 before she took her first sip of coffee and that was from her travel mug as she backed out of her driveway and prepared for the morning commute. In between long lights and the stops during the GW Parkway crawls, she checked her email on her blackberry as did most of D.C. but she was very careful not to type and drive unlike most of D.C. Once she was in the office it was business as usual with meetings out the ass and the feeling at the end of the day nothing was accomplished. On top of this all she was dead tired and unlike Jack Bauer, she needed something to eat and a good night’s sleep. She stopped at the store bought a nice piece of halibut, fresh fruits and veggies and made herself a nice healthy meal. It was almost nine o’clock before the system even entered her mind. She approached her computer sat down at the comfy chair and before logging in she felt her body cry for the pill
ow, this time she listened. She had shed her clothes, climbed under her dark paisley comforter and was out before sheep number seven jumped the fence.

  . . .

  Chapter 19

  The next day was pretty much the same as the last with the exception she had recharged her batteries with that good night’s sleep. It was Thursday and in the back of her mind, no in the front because that’s about all she could think of, was the system and how Saturday was quickly approaching. She wanted to find out more before Greg starting his poking but it didn’t look like tonight was going to happen either due to the President’s schedule.

  Friday night was typically get out of work and get drunk night around the greater D.C area, especially in Georgetown but of course Ms. Carson never participated in such events. Sure she would drink but only to the tune of enjoyment. She was a big Amarone fan, the raisined grape of the Valpolicella. She fell in love with the wine on her first and last trip after high school to Venice. She always dreamed of going probably because she remembers her mother’s love for the watery streets and gondolas. Although she could afford to drink it every night she saved it for the weekend and the bottle would last the entire weekend. Upon entering her car after work, she was transported to another world. She turned on the local jazz station and visualized her evening. She was in much anticipation. She would kick off her shoes, grab a wine glass, and pour herself a glass from the bottle of Masi that she had already mentally chosen, and of course she knew the President would be busy until the following Monday. She hoped to have plenty of time to explore before Greg was to come over, possibly into the wee hours of the morning and into the afternoon if need be. She had already informed her staff to only call in dire need, if there was some sort of emergency she would be alerted no matter where she was located.