Parts Per Million

by Julia Stoops

  “You kidding?” says Jen. “It’ll be classified. But seriously, can one guy get us banned?”

  Nelson says, “It’s a private institution. They can reject whomever they want.”

  Deirdre sits down next to him. Her eyes check the place settings, the bread, the open bottle of wine. Fetzer is salting his soup, and Jen is slurping spoonfuls already. They don’t see how much she cares.

  Nelson wants to say grace. Anything to slow the moment, shine attention on it. But it seems pretentious to stop them for a ritual that’s never been invoked in this household before.

  He tastes the soup. Full-flavored and garlicky. Amazing what she can do even with something out of a can.

  “It’s really good,” he says to Deirdre. Her smile is warm and private.

  “We need to figure out a way to get back in,” says Jen.

  Deirdre says, “Why don’t you wear those disguises?” She stares at the side of Fetzer’s head. “I’m dying to see you in one of those wigs I found in the basement.”

  “You saw no disguises,” says Jen.

  Deirdre opens her mouth, then smiles. “Must be imagining things.”

  “. . . Wait TILL FREE from pain and sorrow he has gained his final rest.”

  Nelson sits shivering on his bed. For the past few hours an abject universe has rumbled through him. Now it’s back to paper and words, and the open-mouthed mask sings at him off the cover. The red numbers on his clock say 2:46 a.m. He should’ve been working, but he opened Oedipus Rex and read it straight through, and now it’s heavy in his hands like a bowl of blood.

  Nelson stands up and puts Denman’s Five Greek Plays back into his bookcase. The journals he brought to bed last night sit on the desk. There’s work to be done.

  18: JEN

  I turn around and tell Nelse and Fetz, “You realize how easy this is going to be?”

  Nelson shrugs under his nerdwear jacket. “Jen, let’s try and figure something else out. I mean, come on, we’ve probably been banned from campus.” He looks at Fetz. Fetz stares at my screen and rubs his dome.

  “Best way I know,” I say. “Colleges are pretty vulnerable. Security’s often pretty chaotic, like, they’re a bunch of little fiefdoms, you know? So it’s hard to enforce standards.”

  Deirdre’s footsteps creak over our heads in the kitchen. Fetzer glances at the ceiling. “If they have a whole engineering computer department or whatever, surely they know what they’re doing.”

  “Don’t be so sure.” I crack my knuckles, type users/secret/mole_scan_harrylane.edu.

  “So you know a way in?” says Fetzer.

  Mole launches. “Starting a port scan as we speak.”

  Nelson whines about risk, and I say, “Yeah, yeah, makes me a terrorist. Hardware firewall’s blocking access to just about everything, of course. I’m looking for a machine that’s less well defended. Like maybe a server set up without IT oversight—set up wrong, you know?”

  The status screens show the host names being resolved into an IP pool. I switch to performing a scan. “They’re running HTTP servers out of a few places,” I say, “and everything’s connected through them, but I’m looking for one with a weak spot that’ll let me onto the network. Then once I’m in on the ground level, I can do a password crack.” I swing the chair around. “By the way, this will take a while.”

  Fetzer says, “Why would a university let a computer be vulnerable like that?”

  Mole chugs away on the first batch. “Just need one virus stuck on a dumb downloadable game some doofus in HR likes to play, and you’ve got a Trojan opening up an exploitable port.”

  Nelson says, “Seriously?”

  “Don’t I tell you to never open attachments? Anyhow, you guys should go do something else. Only thing more tedious than doing a port scan is watching someone do one.”

  Mole prints “Common Exploit DISCOVERED!” Music to my eyes.

  I yell, “Hey guys, get your asses down here.”

  The workstation’s identity is admin26.harrylane.edu. Soon you’ll be owned, admin26.

  Nelson looks like the poster child for National Worry Week.

  Fetzer says, “What happened?”

  “Penetration, boys. And I know you’ll be all over that.”

  “That’s sexist,” says Fetzer. Without conviction.

  “Right. I’m in on the ground level. Going to start with an OS detection.”

  Mole menu option four. “Okay, Harry Lane's administrative offices are running Microsoft IIS. Which is pretty common for organizations, and the unpatched versions are so fucking vulnerable you almost feel sorry for them.”

  Nelson says, “Why?”

  “Oh, you know, the Ukrainians.”

  “What Ukrainians?”

  “The Ukrainian hackers? Had a field day with that particular security hole last year. Sixty reported break-ins in thirty-two states, which means way more in reality. Institutions tend to keep their yaps shut about breaches.”

  While Mole’s checking the server version, I check for the Trojan that let me in. Sure enough, the Solitaire virus. Love this.

  “And guess what.” They peer over my shoulder.

  “Do I have to spell this out?” I say. “Look, HLU's is still unpatched.”

  Fetzer says, “HLU's what exactly is still unpatched?”

  “Operating. System.”

  They back off.

  “You know what this means?” I say. “They’re morons. Because they never applied the patch.”

  Nelse and Fetz give each other a look. “So what now?” says Fetzer.

  “I got in through this desktop machine. Some administrator. Got to start identifying valid user accounts and crack a password.”

  Fetzer sits one thigh on the edge of the desk and keeps his eyes on the screen. The Crusher starts the crack, and generates seven dictionary words within seconds.

  “I’m not even going to push further,” I say. “Obviously they don’t enforce strong passwords. Look at this: ‘binky’? And ‘madonna’? Come on.”

  “So where to now?” says Fetzer.

  “So these passwords might get me access to trusted systems, you know, beyond user-level access. But for now the VNC is giving me a back door into this machine.”

  I dig around for the data file. “Hey, while I’m here, maybe we should enroll in some courses. Then give ourselves As.”

  “That’s not funny,” says Nelson.

  I thought it was pretty hilarious, but whatever. “Okay, this machine belongs to Douglas Heinrich. Deputy Director, Communications and Marketing. Now I need to find the way to Reynolds’s.”

  “Dinner’s ready,” Deirdre yells down the stairs.

  Nelson goes to the bottom of the stairs and yells back, “We’ll be up soon, we’re in the middle of something.”

  She yells, “Are you hacking into that university?”

  “Ah,” he yells, looks across to us, looks back up the stairs. “Yeah.”

  “Maybe you could each take a bullhorn,” I say, “and go up on the roof?”

  Nelson holds up his hands. “Sorry.”

  “Hah! That was so fucking easy. Okay, see this? Reynolds’s directory tree.”

  Fetzer points at the screen. “Can you download those interoffice memos?”

  “I’m on it. Know what? I’m going to look for the mail archive, too.”

  Fetz can’t keep the grin off his face, and even Nelson nods with satisfaction.

  Fetzer then pats his stomach. “But first, dinner.”

  19: FETZER

  The threat of another war was blossoming on the news, and even the so-called “liberal media” got busy interviewing retired generals and war analysts. Bush had some explaining to do, and when he came to Portland that August, we and a few others went downtown to greet him.

  We crossed the river and had to park in Old Town because the city was jammed with buses trapped nose to tail by protesters. The sound of drumming led us to the crowd as it swept east on Alder. The street was wall-to
-wall with gray ponytails and fresh mohawks and short-back-and-sides, holding signs and walking and dancing and clapping to the beat. Made me proud to be an American right then. Prouder than I’d felt in a long time. We got near the marching band at the front and let the noise take us over: nothing to do but step along in the Mardi Gras of it. Stern-faced kids thrashed hard on Bush’s “what-me-worry?” face in the middle of their big drums. Thunder came out of them, bone-shaking syncopation, a sound I’d never heard downtown amid the office buildings and parking lots. On the corner of Fourth Avenue cheerleaders bounced up and down as we passed. Striped and skinny and plump with green hair and no hair and long hair flying with the pompoms. Behind us was a bunch of buttoned-up guys who looked like accountants figure-eighting a set of large upside-down flags. A woman with giant blue clown glasses skipped by. There was a group of unsmiling vets going the speed of their buddy in a chair. I slowed down and considered saying hello but Jen tugged my sleeve because the drummers were getting away from us. We passed elderly ladies in slacks holding signs with Bush’s government: One more corporate scandal and kids in black with ENEMY COMBATANT patches pinned to their backs. They made me do a double-take. Even Congressmen—a group I’d normally classify as among “the powers that be”—weren’t getting away with criticizing Bush anymore. In this context the enemy-combatant half-joke seemed riskier than it would have even a few weeks earlier.

  “This feels good,” Jen yelled into my ear.

  “Sure does,” I yelled back. I was hoping to run into Nancy. She was a firebrand back in the day, and even though it had been a surprise to see her in a mainstream environment, I figured she’d be at the protest. But then the realization struck me: despite the lifestyle diversity of the crowd, there wasn’t a single black person in sight.

  The mood shifted when the march reached Second Avenue and a set of bike cops swooped around and cut us off from the Morrison Bridge. We were surrounded. The drums kept up, pounding loud, and the crowd pressed closer.

  “What’s happening?” yelled Nelson. Jen was clapping and shuffling to the beat. “Dunno,” she yelled back, but then she rolled her eyes. “Check it out.”

  Behind the cycle cops a dozen men in black had appeared. Feet spread, pants tucked into shiny boots, identical pairs of gloved hands on identical nightsticks. The helmets, the visors. You could see the crowd become aware of them. The drumming got louder. Kids whacked their skateboards on the ground. Banged on hubcaps. Blew on whistles. The cops kept us hemmed in, and I was getting claustrophobic. Every time I stepped backward it was onto someone’s foot. I needed to be on the perimeter, but I didn’t want to get any closer to those robocops. When a guy tried to push his way past, the cops wouldn’t let him leave. Nelson took out a notebook and started writing. This was turning into a story.

  A chant rose up of “Whose streets? Our streets!” Then three teenagers staggered toward us, two girls and a guy, flushed in the face and gasping like they’d been held underwater.

  “Tear gas?” said Jen. She snapped photos.

  Strangers put arms around the kids’ shoulders, sat them down.

  “We’d be smelling it,” I said. “It’s OC.”

  Nelson scribbled faster. Two white thirtysomething guys in polo shirts groped toward us, eyes screwed shut and coughing into bandannas. Jen got one by the elbow, and Nelson tucked his notebook into his jacket pocket ready to help, but right then two Black Cross medic girls appeared. They sat the stricken guys down, pulled drink bottles from their frayed knapsacks, and poured what was probably diluted Maalox into the guys’ streaming red eyes.

  Something was happening on the other side of the intersection that we couldn’t see for the crowd, and couldn’t hear for the noise. A woman yelled, “This is a peaceful protest,” her voice shaking with shock and hurt. The riot cops had disappeared without us seeing them go, but the bike cops leaned on their handlebars and stared straight ahead like there was nobody there. More pepper-sprayed folks stumbled toward us. “What the fuck are you doing?” screamed the woman. “You can’t trap people then pepper-spray them!” The crowd picked up a chant of “Peace-ful pro-test” that swelled around us. We were trapped, they were using tactics I hadn’t seen before, and Jen, Nelson, me, we were pumping our fists and chanting our lungs out. Then a clean-cut Toyota-and-Chablis couple broke through, staggering in pain, and in their arms two beet-faced shrieking children.

  Now how do you explain pepper spray to a toddler?

  “Peace-ful pro-test, peace-ful pro-test,” shouted the crowd. Nelson gripped his pen so hard his knuckles were pale. Bodies pressed close. The chant got garbled, mixed up with new words taking over. The Black Cross medic girls got the family on the ground and started their ministrations. The crowd was turning outward, facing the bike cops, jabbing their fingers at them, and the new chant cleared into a rhythmic, “Shame! Shame! Shame!” The cops didn’t blink. “Shame!” yelled the crowd.

  Jen’s finger jabbed the air. Nelson’s notebook jabbed the air. A short white guy with dreadlocks shoved a video camera into one cop’s face. “Fucking fascists!” he screamed. “This is a peaceful protest!”

  “Hey, is that Brian?” Jen yelled in my ear. “From the EFB?”

  The officer stood unflinching, his hands loose on the handlebars, one foot on a pedal and the other on the ground.

  Jen added, “So he has his own camera now, huh.”

  “I think it is,” said Nelson. “Oh god. This isn’t going to end well.”

  “Fascist bastards,” screamed the guy. I was pretty sure it was Brian, even though we’d only met him once before, and in the dark. He bounced on his toes like a boxer, brought the camera within inches of the cop’s face. “You like hurting little kids? You like it? Huh?”

  The cop dropped his hand to his belt, brought up an aerosol can the size of fly spray, and shot a jet of oleoresin capsicum right into Brian’s face. Brian wheeled away, but turned back like an enraged hornet, screaming incoherently and holding up his shaky camera. Not a flicker on the cop’s face, and Brian got another blast of point-blank OC that knocked him to his knees.

  He rocked and gasped. The Black Cross girls were busy with the family. Nelson ran toward Brian. Jen and I followed. The cop turned. He looked right at me and mounted his bike, and on some invisible cue all the cycle cops mounted their bikes. I felt it in my guts. I was sure they were about to ride through the crowd, spraying OC indiscriminately as they went, but next moment they were yelling, “Move back, move back,” and there was a tire shoving my shin and I was caught between sleeves and necks and faces and there was nowhere to go but backward. Nelson, bless him, grabbed ahold of my shirt, and together we grabbed Jen before she got separated. But as we moved the crush lessened, and a cheer went up from the other side of the intersection. The cops were freeing us northward.

  “What happened?” said Nelson. “What changed?”

  Brian was left behind, along with the other stricken folks lying in the intersection. The Black Cross girls had mercifully been allowed to stay, and as we crossed Third, one was kneeling beside Brian, holding his head.

  “No idea,” I said. We spilled around trapped cars like water. Despite being inconvenienced, some of the immobilized drivers clapped and flashed V signs at us, and after a while we took up the new chant, “Not my president, not my war.” The pride I’d felt was gone, but little by little the hope trickled back. Hope that maybe there were enough people against attacking Iraq, and that maybe, despite the war on citizenry in defense of Empire, maybe if we all got behind it, we could avert the looming atrocity.

  Back home we pored over the reports on Indymedia. Turned out we never made it to the main protest outside the Hilton. And they had it worse, with armed riot police, rooftop snipers, and helicopter gunships overhead. The police declared a state of emergency and pushed people back with so much tear gas, rubber bullets, and pepper spray that they hit old folks, kids, and even reporters. The TV news was all over the “state of emergency” because those words are gold
to them. But they painted the crowd as out of control. And they ended with a clip of the mayor claiming the police actions that day were in line with current policy on safety.

  20: JEN

  “That’ll be Sylvia,” Fetz says to me.

  I’m so buzzed from the protest I don’t even care!

  The sound of her heels up the stairs and she comes into the kitchen, Nelson following.

  “See tonight’s news?” I ask her.

  Sylvia gives Dee one of those girly half-hugs, then takes a seat at the kitchen table. “Yes. Very dramatic.”

  I open the fridge. “It was awesome. Till the cops got violent.” Huh. There were six Creekbed Porters in the fridge last night, and now there’s four.

  “They pepper sprayed babies,” says Nelson.

  Sylvia frowns. “Pretty thoughtless bringing kids to a protest, though.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” I say, then, “Anyone want a beer?”

  Fetzer says, “I want something better,” and he’s on his knees, pulling one of Mrs. Krepelter’s bottles from the cupboard at the end. He stands up and announces, “We fucking exercised our fucking First Amendment rights today. Loudly.”

  “Damn right we did,” says Nelson, and he stands on his toes to get down the good glasses. They’re made of, like, lead crystal and they make me nervous, but whatever. Jeez, that fight he had with Lise in our old kitchen, when he first joined us. She actually came over to try and get them back. “All your stupid new hippie friends’ll just break them,” she screeched. “Take something you can use, like some blankets.” But for some reason Nelson loves those glasses. And maybe it’s because I’m afraid it will mean I’m a hippie, I am extra careful not to break them.

  Fetzer brings the bottle to the table. “Why the hell shouldn’t you take kids to a protest?” He points a finger. “Every single person has the right to protest without fear of retribution. There were old people there, families, and everyone in between. Just like it should be.”