Denial of Service 5: End of Line.

by Steve Jordan

  “She had a change of heart,” Pete replied. “I think she’s decided that she needs to work harder to make sure I don’t forget it’s her… and she said I need to work harder, so she doesn’t forget why she’s working so much harder. Anyway, we sure didn’t have trouble… remembering, last night.”

  “Glad to hear it.” I’d only known Reilly for a few months, but I already hated the idea of Pete and Reilly being apart. They seemed to be such a great fit (in a lot of ways… ahem), that they already seemed like soulmates to me.

  We entered the hotel, walked over to the restaurant, and picked out an empty table, as we had many times before. After a few moments, one of the waitresses who knew us, a cute little number name of “Jazz,” came over to the table. “Hey, Billy and Brucie! How’s it goin’?”

  We grinned. Jazz loved to kid us about our resemblance to those famous acting Campbells, once she’d met me for the first time and made the connection on her own. “Goin’ great, Jazz,” Pete said, a big grin on his face. “No usuals today… let’s see the menu.”

  “Oh,” Jazz nodded, sizing us up. “Are we celebrating something?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s Universal Brotherhood Week.”

  “Well, happy Universal Brotherhood Week, brothers,” Jazz smiled, and retreated to get us two menus. We watched Jazz as she walked away… she was tanned, trim and shapely, always a pleasure just to watch from afar. But presently our eyes returned to each other, and we shared one of those moments. It was something for me to think that, as enticing as a girl like Jazz might have been at any other time, I already had a girl that I would do anything for. And I didn’t need mental leakage to know Pete was thinking the same thing.

  He reached for the water glass on the table, and held it up. “To true love, bro.”

  I raised my glass. “May it always favor the Schitz brothers.”

  The glasses clunked in proper plastic fashion.

  4: Still stymied

  Thus physically and mentally refreshed, I returned to Pete’s place and his dining room, aka my Borg alcove, where I did my serious IT work, and luddites feared to tread. It was time for a brilliant plan to emerge, so I could save the day.

  But the moment I sat in front of my Toughbook, I froze. I didn’t have an idea. After a night up, then sleeping through a solid day, I still didn’t have an idea.

  Pete came out of the kitchen with two beers, and deposited one on the dining room table within my reach. Presently, he said, “I know that look. You don’t have a clue, do you?”

  I winced before I responded, “No. And I can’t wait too long, or they’re liable to spring Merc before I’m ready.”

  “Little bit of a time-crunch, huh?” Pete nodded and tipped back his beer. “Well, you don’t know they’ll trigger it soon… maybe there’s no crunch at all. Look at it that way.”

  “Don’t think I can afford to do that,” I said.

  After a moment, Pete pulled up a chair and sat opposite me at the table. “Okay, let’s think about this.”

  I looked at my brother, who was no tech guy by any means. “This cannot be good…”

  “Hey, I’m trying to help!” Pete protested amiably. “Okay: These guys have a program that will spoof NASDAQ, make them a shitload of money, and add to the tarnishing of your reputation. They’ve already used it once, but it didn’t work, and they framed you for a DOS attack to cover it up. If they use it again, they could implicate you again, which could even get you arrested.”

  “Good recap,” I said sourly.

  “Thank you,” Pete nodded. “So, you know about the program, but they don’t know that yet. They’ve probably been working on improving the program, so it works the second time… but you don’t know how far along they are.”

  “Right,” I said, waiting for more.

  Pete stared at me. “Well, don’t ya see? They obviously don’t have it ready yet, or they would’ve triggered it already! No one waits to earn a shitload of money if they don’t need to!”

  “Hmm.” That was a good point.

  “So if you can force them to trigger it before it’s ready, you’ve got a good chance of its not working again!”

  “Yeah, but what if it does?” I asked. “Can I afford to take that chance?”

  Pete considered that. “Hmm.” I had a good point, too. He went silent for a moment, considering the problem. I went silent, too. After a few minutes, Pete said, “It’s a program, right? Can you get a virus into it through that guy Cooley’s e-mail account? Corrupt the program?”

  “I thought about that,” I replied. “Can’t get at it that way, it’s in a protected file on their server.”

  “Anything else in there you can corrupt?”

  “Nothing that would help. I’ve been through their server—that much I can do—but they’ve got everything pretty well protected and backed up.”

  “Oh.” Pete and I went silent again for a few minutes. Pete started to raise a hand and open his mouth, when the doorbell rang. Without missing a beat, Pete said, “Thank God,” and bolted out of his chair. He opened the door, and I saw Reilly standing there in a practically translucent sundress that was over a flowery bikini. In her hands, she held two Starbucks cups. She smiled at Pete, a smile that would have melted steel.

  I smiled at the Starbucks cups with a smile that would have melted titanium. “Nectar of the Gods!” I exclaimed, and hopped out of my seat.

  “One grande double-shot skim milk espresso with room,” Reilly said, and held out the cup for me. “How you feeling, hot-shot?”

  “Sooo much better now,” I said as I accepted the cup and took a sip. My knees threatened to buckle from the pleasure: It had been over a day since I’d had my espresso; another and I might have gone into withdrawal.

  “Glad to hear it,” Reilly said, and she sipped from the second cup as she slipped her now-free other hand around Pete’s waist and looked up at him. “Are you helping your brother with his problem, then?”

  “Well,” Pete replied, “there’s helping… and there’s helping.”

  “Not so much, huh?”

  “‘Fraid not,” Pete admitted. “I’m no strategist.”

  “Well,” Reilly said, “fortunately, you have lots of other good traits.”

  She hugged him and beamed up at him, and for a moment, I just enjoyed the glow that was coming off of them. The next moment, I realized they were still staring at each other and glowing, and I was feeling like a fifth wheel. That had happened fast. So I started to back up, and said, “Thanks for this, babe. I’m gonna get back to work.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Reilly said without looking at me. After a moment, she started to draw Pete in the direction of his bedroom, and Pete, being the guy he was, put up no resistance. Their door was closed before I was seated in my alcove again.

  So about five hours passed, with me continuing to struggle to find a way to get in and wipe out the Merc program, to the muffled sounds of my brother and his girl having a good time in his bedroom. Some days, it was a mystery to me how I’d managed to get to the point where I could actually tune that out and keep working. Fortunately, Pete and Reilly had apparently managed to find a new, quieter way to have sex, and it was pointedly less distracting than it usually was. I have to admit, though, that I began to realize some of the ideas I found myself toying with could only have been inspired by submerged thoughts of copulation, from various angles, at different stages of the process, and at varying… intensities. When I found myself musing over electronic condoms, therefore, I finally knew it was time for another break.

  I was in the kitchen, leaning against the counter and finishing off a beer, when I heard Pete’s bedroom door open. Momentarily, Pete padded into the kitchen, thankfully wearing shorts (he had been known to blow off even those when walking around his apartment… but hey, I’m only a guest, who am I to complain?), and looking rested and happy. “Hey,” he said, amiably patting me on the shoulder as he passed and reached for the refrigerator door.

&nb
sp; “Hey,” I said. “Grab me another, I’m about out.” I watched as he pulled out two bottles of beer. “None for Reilly?”

  “She’s fast asleep,” Pete said with a grin. He popped the top on one beer and handed me the other. I popped my top, and we clunked the bottles together before taking a sip. “How’s it going with you?”

  “No better yet,” I said. “And I gotta tell ya, some of the most outlandish ideas have been coming to me.”

  “What’s the most outlandish?”

  “Disrupting the space-time continuum by reversing the polarity on the warp field generators. I figure creating an MP3 of Mannheim Steamroller playing backwards at one hundred times’ speed, sent as a signal down the electrical grid, would do it.”

  Pete considered my words straight-faced. Finally he nodded. “Yep: That’s pretty outlandish, all right.” He seemed to consider a moment. “I wonder if some kind of an electronic condom—”

  “Oh, please, do not go there!” I stopped him, and we both laughed.

  “Don’t worry, bro,” Pete said, “you’ll get it. You’re the best at what you do… a little IT Wolverine.”

  “Who’s little?” I smirked. Pete grinned back, and the two of us held up the beer caps we both still held in our hands. With a simultaneous flourish, we tossed the caps side-armed at the trashcan across the kitchen.

  As we watched, both caps arched through the air, on target for the trashcan’s mouth. Then, in one of those “you couldn’t do that in a million years” moments, the caps neatly impacted each other and caromed away, both passing the can on either side and landing on the floor.

  Pete snorted out a laugh. “Dee-nied!”

  “Ha!” I laughed. “What’re the odds?” We glanced at each other in amusement, then started over to pick up our beer caps. We bent down on opposite sides of the can to retrieve each cap, and as my hand closed over mine, a sort of “ding” sounded somewhere in my mind. It was the signal to start an avalanche of information flowing out of my subconscious, and it hit me like a cartoon anvil on my IT brainpan. I had it.

  I straightened up abruptly, and cried, “Holy shit!”

  Pete nearly had a heart attack. He jerked upright, looking like he’d been nailed like a jailhouse bitch bending over to pick up a soap, bobbled his beer desperately, and cried, “What? What happened? Did you hurt your back?”

  “No, man, no,” I said. “I figured it out! I know what to do! Yes!” I bellowed loud enough to alert half the west coast as I ducked past him and headed for my alcove.

  5: Solution

  By the time Gail showed up after work, I was finishing the draft of my program and ready to do some debugging. Gail hadn’t changed from her office wear, which still made her look sexier than a lot of girls could look stark naked. Reilly let Gail in, and the two of them grinned at each other and bumped their fists together… now that was the first time I’d seen that. I was sure the two of them had come to some sort of understanding about something. But I was a bit too busy to ask.

  Gail came over to my alcove, lifted my head from its position poised in front of my Toughbook, and gave me a kiss. “Hi, lover. I hear there’s progress.”

  “Well,” I replied, “yes, and no. Yes, meaning I’ve figured out how to stop Merc. No, meaning I’m still not sure of some of the variables.”

  “Okay, I want it all,” Gail said. “Start at the beginning.”

  “I was born in a dump… my mama died, and my daddy got drunk—”

  “Fast-forward about thirty years, please.”

  “If you say so,” I grinned. “I’ve established that I can’t get in far enough to crash Merc. It’s too well-made and well-protected. But I had an alternate plan. Instead of crashing it, I’m going to let it run… and let NASDAQ block it.”

  “They’ll block it? How?”

  “Well, that’s what I’m still working on,” I explained. “I managed to tease out of all the data on BM’s server, how the program would get into NASDAQ. I’m trying to create a program that I can drop onto the web that will monitor for that signal from Merc to NASDAQ, trying to get in. When it’s detected, my program will simultaneously repeat that same login signal from another address.”

  “Why would you want to repeat it?” Gail asked.

  “Funny,” Pete said from across the room. “That’s the same thing I asked.”

  “Then I’ll tell her what I told you,” I said, and turned back to Gail. “When the NASDAQ servers get two identical connection requests at the same time, it should respond by assuming something is wrong with one of the requests… possibly that it could be a prelude to a denial of service attack… and since it won’t be sure which is genuine, it will reject them both. My program is also designed to monitor the Merc signal in realtime and instantly replicate it, so even if they change it slightly to get around the rejection, they won’t be able to do it easily. And that’s the good news.”

  “It sounded good,” Gail admitted. “But that implies bad news.”

  “Yeah,” I nodded. “At first, BM will think NASDAQ’s servers are having some temporary issues, so they should keep trying for a bit. But once these guys figure out what’s going on… and they will eventually… they can do two things. Either they’ll shut it down, or they’ll make major changes to the connection signal that my program can’t replicate. So I can’t just run the program forever. What I need to do is to get enough data to be able to trace it back to BM, and send that data to NASDAQ and the FBI.”

  “Can you do that?”

  “I don’t know. It’s anyone’s guess whether or not they keep it running long enough to let me do that. And there’s another problem.”

  Gail rolled her eyes. “This is getting good.”

  “Oh, just wait’ll you hear it.” I indicated the program I was debugging. “When I send this program out, every time it tries to collect data on the BM hack, it’ll also leave a trail back to me. That is, back to the address I use to send the data.”

  “All the way here?” Gail asked. Then she paused. “Wait a minute… we’re in California. How bad can that be?”

  “I’ll put it to you this way,” I replied. “BM must know where I am. They’ll figure out I’m doing something to block their program. So, while they’re trying to figure out how to get past me, they have someone put in an anonymous call to the FBI… an organization that happens to have offices in San Diego.” I mimicked a fist banging on the door, then cupped my hand over my mouth to muffle my voice. “This is the FBI, Schitzeiss. Come out with your hands up!”

  “Okay, that’s not cool,” Pete said. “You think it could happen that fast?”

  “It could,” I admitted. “There’s one thing I can do to slow them up, though.” I lifted the Toughbook. “Take this show on the road. I can send my program commands from any wireless access point. Then, while the FBI traces the signal, I can move to another wireless point somewhere else. If I can stay ahead of them, I can collect my data and present that to them when they catch me. They’ll have the real culprit… and I,” I finished with a flourish, “will be a national hero.”

  “Or at least have the blacklist revoked,” Pete pointed out.

  “Yeah, at least that.”

  Gail nodded. “We can do that. I’ll drive you around while you work!” She paused again. “When do we start?”

  I nodded at the screen. “Okay, I have to debug the program, send it out… and we wait for them to trigger Merc. We can also call or e-mail Mel Cooley, and let him know he can quit, and be as blatant about it as he wants, in the hopes that that will make his former bosses trigger the program ASAP.”

  “How much longer do you need?” Gail asked.

  I looked at her. I looked at the Toughbook screen, trying to divine a timeframe. I looked at Reilly.

  Reilly instantly perked up, and stood up out of the sofa. “Say no more,” she said as she headed for the door. “One grande double-shot skim milk espresso with room, coming up!”

  “That’s my girl,” Pete and I said in u
nison as she dashed out. The moment the door shut, I realized Gail was looking at me with a significantly-cocked eyebrow.

  “I-I mean, that’s his girl,” I amended quickly, pointing at Pete.

  Gail smiled. “That’s what I thought you said. Come on,” she added, pulling me out of my chair. “You need a break, until your drink gets here.”

  “Um, I really don’t know how much time—”

  “Make the time,” Gail said meaningfully, and started dragging me towards the bedroom.

  Pete stepped towards the Toughbook while Gail dragged me off. “Say, bro, do you want me to work on this while you’re gone?”

  I managed to break out of Gail’s grip and turn back to the alcove, growling, “If you touch one key on that keyboard, so help me I’ll—” before Gail re-wrapped both her arms around me and dragged me off again.

  “Call Reilly,” she called over to Pete before we disappeared into the bedroom. “Tell her not to rush.” She kicked the door closed behind her.

  6: Intermission

  I opened the door to my bedroom at about 4am. In the dark, I saw a stirring in my bed. That would be Gail, who had stayed up with me until about midnight while I worked on my program, and then crawled off to bed. I wish I could say our earlier lovemaking had worn her out… but truth be told, she was one of those girls who had the kind of stamina that football teams looked for (in themselves, their girlfriends, and the girls who liked to do the whole team at once). No: She’d gone to bed because she was bored, no more and no less, with watching me work my IT magic, muttering incomprehensibly to myself and sucking down espressos (Reilly had come back from Starbucks with four of ‘em—God bless her).

  I shucked off my clothes, all but my shorts, and crawled into bed next to her. Gail shifted, then turned over to face me, and draped her arm over my chest. Even in the dark, and before my eyes had fully adjusted to the gloom, she was an angel. I reflected on the things she’d told me in L.A., and I felt truly sorry that things hadn’t worked out as she’d originally intended for her life. It must have been tough, realizing she could not keep the man she’d loved, and because she was actually too wild for him… considering how woman are taught about men, and about using their sexuality in a man’s world, it must have been quite a blow to her. Then, deliberately switching from a girl who used her (ahem) assets to get work, to using her brains instead… well, that should have been a no-brainer, but with a boss who apparently liked her to use her (ahem, again) assets, defying him and keeping her old job anyway must have been especially frustrating (that might have needed a third ahem, but I’m tired).