Overclocked

by K S Augustin

  The dir­ector looked pale and ex­hausted, vis­ibly aging be­fore Tania’s eyes.

  “It’s only been two hours,” he said. “He may find a way out of this.”

  “We still don’t know the long-term ef­fects of the Blue on our tem­poral sense,” she ar­gued, feel­ing him about to waver. “Our im­mer­sions in the sand­pit only las­ted three to five minutes apiece, and that was in an ex­tremely con­trolled en­vir­on­ment. Carl has already been im­mersed in the wild for more than a hun­dred minutes. Who knows how that’s af­fected him?”

  Don shook his head again.

  “I’m not will­ing to risk you, Tania, not yet.” His voice strengthened as he ob­vi­ously came to a de­cision. “We’ll leave it for a day. Mon­itor Carl’s pro­gress, his vi­tal signs. Maybe he’ll find some way to in­ter­face with us. If we hear noth­ing after twenty-four hours, I’ll re­quest a meet­ing of the board. If there has still been no con­tact from Carl and the board is agree­able,” he swal­lowed, “I’ll make the go-no go de­cision.” He pinned her with a glare. “To­mor­row.”

  “Not just ‘to­mor­row’, Don. To­mor­row morn­ing.” Tania was in­sist­ent. “There are too many vari­ables in a situ­ation like this. We don’t want to hes­it­ate, not if it can mean someone’s life.”

  They stared at each other and Don’s heavy breaths echoed in the room.

  Tania didn’t leave the lab for the rest of the day. She peered into the small room where Carl lay, watch­ing the readouts with in­tent and nar­rowed eyes. She tried to re­duce him to a cipher, a sym­bol of their pro­ject, but couldn’t. Im­ages from the past few months flashed through her mind. His in­furi­at­ing smug­ness and un­deni­able sex ap­peal. His ar­rog­ance and gift for data ana­lysis. His some­times child-like sense of hu­mour com­bined with a razor-sharp mind that made her catch her breath. Lastly, she re­membered the hot and will­ing lover. The nights of ec­stasy, the days of frus­tra­tion.

  A snip­pet of her con­ver­sa­tion with Don con­tin­ued to haunt her.

  We lost the tether nine minutes after in­ser­tion.

  Nine minutes.

  Why nine minutes? It didn’t make any sense. She could un­der­stand a ter­min­a­tion straight on the heels of in­ser­tion. That would mean some kind of fault, either with the hard­ware or the trans­fer pro­cess. A pro­cess, she ad­ded, that had ap­peared to work flaw­lessly in the safe and se­cure en­vir­on­ment of the sand­pit.

  She could al­most un­der­stand a ter­min­a­tion six minutes after in­ser­tion. That was at the up­per limit of their own ex­per­i­ments. Maybe some­thing broke down after reach­ing that dur­a­tion? It was un­likely but not un­heard of. But nine minutes. That was in­ex­plic­able.

  Tania knew com­puter sys­tems. If some­thing com­plex was run­ning for six minutes without a prob­lem, chances were it would keep run­ning for hours without a hitch. Of course that was with the pro­viso that the en­gin­eers who de­signed and de­veloped that sys­tem were good, but Tania knew that Base­ment Five’s en­gin­eers were some of the best on the planet.

  She had looked over the morn­ing’s data. The tether had been work­ing well for al­most the full ten minutes. There had been no spikes of alarm, no gaps in com­puter pro­cessing, noth­ing at all to warn of cata­strophic fail­ure. Frus­trated by the lack of data, she kept comb­ing back and forth through the fig­ures, check­ing and double-check­ing dia­gnostic re­ports, tests, past sim­u­la­tions, any­thing she could think of that might give a clue to the mys­tery.

  By the time six o’clock rolled around, she was still out of op­tions and there was no change in Carl’s status. He was breath­ing nor­mally, look­ing peace­ful, ap­par­ently asleep, and sexy as sin un­der the thin blanket. Tania gazed at his face, torn between want­ing to kiss his lips and punch him in the nose.

  She was still de­bat­ing which was the bet­ter op­tion when Don sidled up to her.

  “The de­cision was made,” he said.

  She spun around, eye­ing him hope­fully. That was quicker than she had ex­pec­ted. More than twelve hours quicker.

  “They’re send­ing me in?” Her voice was breathy with an­ti­cip­a­tion.

  “There’s more to it than just the tether. Fol­low me.”

  He led the way to a bank of mon­it­ors at the back of the ob­ser­va­tion room.

  “See that?” he asked, his voice quiet.

  Tania looked at the black screen, and at lines of green, blue and red zig­zag­ging up and down on an or­ange baseline. Re­sem­bling an EKG, it re­cor­ded the “heart­beat” of the Base­ment Five com­puters—the in­form­a­tion be­ing re­ceived and sent by the lab’s power­ful data serv­ers.

  “What am I look­ing for?” she asked.

  Don poin­ted at a faint red line, his in­dex fin­ger fol­low­ing its tra­ject­ory as it rose and fell on the screen. “That.”

  “That's in­com­ing traffic.”

  “Spik­ing badly. Server Two has never had this amount of activ­ity as­so­ci­ated with it.”

  “Crack­ers?”

  Crack­ers were people who went bey­ond hack­ing. Not con­tent with merely find­ing out how things worked, they had ma­li­cious in­tent on their minds and were of­ten used as guns-for-hire by high-tech burg­lars and sys­tem in­filt­rat­ors.

  Don stepped back. “You tell me.”

  “We’re stop­ping it though, aren't we?” Her voice was a little un­sure. On top of their cur­rent prob­lems, did they really need a bunch of in­ter­net thugs try­ing to break into their sys­tems?

  “Who­ever it is can’t get through our DMZ,” Don said, “but they’re fast. Very ad­apt­able. Doesn’t like a rote script-kid­die at­tack at all.”

  Tania raised an eye­brow. Fast and ad­apt­able.

  Just like...Carl?

  “What if that’s Carl?” she asked sud­denly. Her voice gained strength. “What if it’s Carl try­ing to find a way back? And we’re stop­ping him?”

  Don looked scep­tical. “Ana­lysis of the data pack­ets show some very soph­ist­ic­ated strategies, bey­ond the skill set of most in­di­vidu­als. We think it would take a team of crack­ers deep know­ledge of our serv­ers plus sev­eral months of test­ing to put these kinds of at­tacks to­gether. Carl was only in­ser­ted hours ago.”

  “Then who do you think it is?” Be­cause, from his tone of voice, Don Novak ob­vi­ously had a cul­prit in mind.

  “The board and I think it’s a for­eign gov­ern­ment. We think they some­how found out about Base­ment Five and are try­ing to in­filt­rate our sys­tems.” He tightened his lips. “That’s why we’re send­ing you in.”

  Tania didn’t hes­it­ate. She didn’t care if the board thought they were sav­ing the planet from an alien fly­ing sau­cer at­tack, as long as they okayed her in­ser­tion into cy­ber­space. She spun around and strode to­wards the second in­ser­tion room.

  “Hold on, Tania,” Don called out when she’d covered a little over half the dis­tance.

  She turned. “What is it?”

  “You go in. To­mor­row.”

  “To­mor­row?” She frowned. “Why not now? If the board be­lieves this is a for­eign gov­ern­ment in­tru­sion, then we can’t af­ford to wait.”

  Don shook his head. “I’m pulling the plug to­night. The DMZ serv­ers will be shut down in fif­teen minutes.”

  That would isol­ate everything in Base­ment Five from the in­ter­net: for­eign gov­ern­ments, crack­ers…and Carl’s way home. It was the data equi­val­ent of a top-rated bio­haz­ard suit and, al­though Tania didn’t like the de­cision, she could at least un­der­stand the reas­on­ing be­hind it.

  “Can we af­ford to do that?” she asked. “Shut ourselves off so com­pletely like that? I thought we had data links with other centres. Col­lab­or­at­ive pro­jects, that kind of thing.”

  He laughed. “Tania, when’s all said and done, we’r
e a secret labor­at­ory. We can do whatever we like.” He paused and sobered. “As long as it’s with the board’s ap­proval.”

  “Then what hap­pens?”

  “To­mor­row morn­ing, we bring everything up again. And you go in.”

  “We could do it right now. Save every­body the delay.”

  “I’d rather you had a good sleep. I don’t know what I’ll be send­ing you into.”

  “I don’t know how well I’ll sleep.”

  “Even a couple of hours are bet­ter than noth­ing. And who knows, your sub­con­scious might come up with some­thing that will save our ba­con. Carl’s too.”

  She looked Don square in the face. “I hope so.”

  Chapter Three

  The room was cold.

  Tania sat on the edge of the metal med­ical-style bed, feel­ing like a pa­tient about to un­dergo sur­gery. She tried hard not to shiver. Was Carl’s room this chilly? Her hands gripped the bunk's smooth tu­bu­lar rim, curl­ing around it with her fin­gers, warm­ing the steel. Be­hind her, a tech­ni­cian was care­fully fit­ting the neural head­set to her head. At least tech­no­logy had ad­vanced enough that she didn’t have to shave her head in or­der to have the tiny sensors pick up her brain im­pulses. In front of her, Don watched the tech­ni­cian at work.

  “You know what to do?” he asked for the third time.

  Tania swung her legs back and forth and sighed up at him. “I’m not a child, you know.”

  He flicked a glance at her feet and their move­ment. “Could’ve fooled me.” But his voice held the hint of a smile.

  She curved her lips, thank­ful for the small lev­ity that cut through the room's thick ten­sion. “I know the drill. I go in. I find Carl. I haul him back by his arse. I pum­mel the liv­ing shit out of him.”

  “You do not sever the vir­tual tether.” His voice was stern.

  “I do not sever the vir­tual tether,” she re­peated.

  “You send an ac­know­ledge­ment the minute you hit the Blue.”

  “I send you an ac­know­ledge­ment the mo­ment I’m in­ser­ted.”

  “You do not take time out to do a bit of sight­see­ing.”

  She cocked an eye­brow. “I will not do any­thing that relates to why I was chosen for this pro­ject in the first place.”

  He shook his head. “Listen to me just this once, Tania. For­get your sci­entific curi­os­ity and just play it by the rules this time. If everything goes to plan, we’ll send you into the Blue again with a first-class ticket to all the cy­ber-won­ders of the world.”

  She paused, then cracked a smile. “You al­ways know how to show a girl a good time, Don.”

  “Strange, my wife says that as well.”

  “Have you been mar­ried long?” Al­though she knew a lot about Don’s pro­fes­sional life, he was less forth­com­ing about what he did in private and, right now, Tania needed some dis­trac­tion. The tech­ni­cian hadn’t fin­ished ad­just­ing the neural head­set and she didn’t want to have to wait in leaden si­lence, with noth­ing to oc­cupy her but her thoughts.

  “In Oc­to­ber, we would have been mar­ried twenty-four years.”

  Ouch! Twenty-four years!

  “That’s, er, quite a while.”

  Tania couldn’t ima­gine be­ing to­gether with any­one for twenty-four months. A pic­ture of Carl’s face rose in her mind and she frowned as she dis­missed it.

  Don laughed. “It’s not as bad as you think.”

  “We’re ready,” the tech­ni­cian said. A hand touched Tania’s shoulder. “Could you lie down please?”

  With a last look at Base­ment Five’s dir­ector, Tania swal­lowed and lowered her­self onto the bunk. In­tent, the tech­ni­cian made fi­nal ad­just­ments to the head­set and checked that the rest of the sensors on her body were firmly con­nec­ted. He reg­u­larly looked over at the shelf of screens in a corner of the room, mak­ing sure they were pick­ing up every one of the sensor sig­nals. Mir­ror­ing her, head to head, in the other in­ser­tion room, Carl was still alive but un­re­spons­ive. As she stared at the ceil­ing, she knew the DMZ serv­ers were be­ing brought up at that mo­ment. That was part of the plan.

  She tried to find a pat­tern in the por­ous-look­ing tiles above her head, con­nect­ing ima­gin­ary lines between the small dark in­dent­a­tions and try­ing not to think of any­thing bey­ond that. Over­look­ing the in­ser­tion room, en­gin­eers moved between sets of mon­it­ors, watch­ing the in­form­a­tion traffic, wait­ing for the surge of data that meant she was be­ing in­ser­ted into the Blue. That was when everything that made up Tania Flowers—her memor­ies, emo­tions and ex­per­i­ences—would be flushed into a stream of elec­trons con­nec­ted to a bank of ma­chinery, be­fore be­ing re­leased into cy­ber­space.

  “How are you feel­ing?” Don’s voice.

  “Scared shit­less, to tell you the truth,” she said and swal­lowed. Did she have that swal­low re­flex when she and Carl had been in­ser­ted into the se­cure sand­pit en­vir­on­ment? Tania tried to re­col­lect a pre­vi­ous in­ser­tion ex­per­i­ment but her mind drew a sud­den blank. She couldn’t re­mem­ber. But there was one thing she did know. One thing that had oc­curred to her the night be­fore, while she was toss­ing and turn­ing in bed.

  “Don!”

  “What is it, Tania?” He hovered into view, look­ing down at her with a wor­ried gaze.

  “An al­tern­ate path, in case some­thing hap­pens to the tether. Route an in­put cable from the two in­ser­tion rooms to one of the DMZ serv­ers.”

  “A back-up plan?”

  “Yes. If everything else fails, we’ll try to come in via a trans­port pro­tocol.”

  “User Da­ta­gram?”

  She wanted to shake her head but real­ised it might af­fect the neural head­set con­nec­tions.

  “No, it’s too un­re­li­able. Try Trans­mis­sion Con­trol. Keep port 27014 open for two hun­dred mil­li­seconds every half an hour.”

  Don frowned. “Port 27014? I don’t think I know that one.”

  Tania man­aged a grin. “It’s used by a game com­pany. A rarely used server port. Un­der the cir­cum­stances, I doubt any­one will be sniff­ing for it.”

  “Will do. We’ll open the port on Server Three.”

  Tania took a deep breath. “Good.”

  The si­lence in the room star­ted to close in on her as Don stepped out of view.

  “Heart rate is in­creas­ing,” the tech­ni­cian said, “but it’s well within tol­er­ances.”

  “Can we just get on with this?” Tania asked. Her voice was testy.

  Don didn’t say a word but he must have nod­ded. Quite clearly, as if it was the only sound in the world, Tania heard one heavy click.

  And she was gone.

  Tania would have said there was a loud rush­ing in her ears, ex­cept she knew she had no con­ven­tional sense of hear­ing. She felt squeezed, stretched, blind­folded, un­masked to be shown a blaze of lights, be­fore hav­ing her vis­ion shuttered again.

  She thought she was pant­ing, draw­ing frantic breath as she was cata­pul­ted into the Blue. It had been like this in the sand­pit en­vir­on­ment as well, this feel­ing of dis­lo­ca­tion and speed.

  Everything stopped. She opened her eyes. Saw black. Felt her­self fall­ing.

  Down the rab­bit-hole again, Alice....

  She hit a hard sur­face, staggered and fell over, then just lay there for a while, eyes closed, catch­ing her breath.

  My breath doesn’t ex­ist here. My lungs don’t ex­ist here.

  The real­isa­tion that she had no body had the po­ten­tial to drive her in­sane, so Tania put it from her mind. She con­cen­trated on the calm­ing breath­ing ex­er­cises she and Carl had learnt dur­ing their train­ing ses­sions.

  Breathe in....

  It didn’t mat­ter that her body didn’t ex­ist. Her mind was still used to its habits, and that was a link �
�� and a power­ful one – back to her own real­ity.

  Breathe out....

  She moved her hand and felt a smooth sur­face be­neath her fin­ger­tips, a tex­ture like glass or pol­ished stone. She opened her eyes and rose to her knees then to her feet, tak­ing her time while look­ing around.

  This was it. Not a test en­vir­on­ment. Not the sand­pit. This was the real deal.

  Cy­ber­space. The Blue.

  A rush­ing sound that she thought was part of her pas­sage into cy­ber­space be­come more dis­tinct. It was a dis­tant wa­ter­fall thun­der­ing and echo­ing around her. As she looked, fuzzy out­lines ap­peared, co­alesced into sharper de­tail then dis­ap­peared. She knew this was her mind’s way of ad­apt­ing to the Blue, trans­lat­ing the bits and bytes of cy­ber­space into a co­her­ent land­scape she could make sense of. If she didn’t push it, didn’t force her brain to go faster than it wanted to, a full im­age would form, a true vir­tual world.

  She looked down at her­self. She was wear­ing the one-piece suit she had worn in the sand­pit. Around her waist was a belt. On that belt hung a ca­ra­biner hook. And sway­ing gently on the clasp, a thick disc – the size of her hand – blinked green.

  Un­hook­ing it, Tania brought the cir­cu­lar tether device closer to her face. She pressed a small in­dent­a­tion near the top of the disc and the lid popped open.

  It was like the fan­ci­est com­pact mir­ror in the uni­verse, Tania thought, look­ing at the small rect­an­gu­lar screen in the centre of the tether. Little dots ran across the tiny mon­itor, trail­ing faint col­oured lines be­hind them. Some dots fol­lowed a path already laid down, mak­ing the line darker and thicker. Oth­ers went off on a tan­gent, straight for a while, then turn­ing and shoot­ing off an edge. They were all data pack­ets from the Base­ment Five serv­ers.

  The trail of bread­crumbs home.

  There was a thumb key­board be­low the screen and but­tons along the in­side lid of the tether. Short­cut com­mands.