Overclocked

by K S Augustin

  Once the bot­net was frozen, Carl would des­troy it com­pletely with an eras­ure al­gorithm that would scramble then scrub every Rhine-Temple byte. He had cre­ated his weapon so it would be ruth­less and dev­ast­at­ingly com­plete. Any­thing that the Rhine-Temple touched, in­clud­ing it­self, would be des­troyed. That meant that, de­pend­ing on the nature of the data­bases that the Rhine-Temple had already as­sim­il­ated, per­haps thou­sands of tera­bytes of in­form­a­tion would be wiped clean along with the bot­net, but there was no other choice. It had to be done. Nobody ar­gued with the ba­sic plan.

  The point Tania was dis­agree­ing with, was how it had to be done.

  “I will go in through the old blocked IRC chan­nel,” Carl said, fin­ish­ing the brief­ing, “find an ap­pro­pri­ate spot and plant the al­gorithm. Then I’ll launch it.”

  “And, be­cause you’ll be in the bot­net it­self, you’ll be des­troy­ing your­self in the pro­cess.”

  Des­pite keep­ing the in­tric­a­cies of the plan to him­self, Carl knew that Tania would quickly de­duce what he was try­ing to do. It was un­for­tu­nate, but she wasn’t stu­pid.

  Tomek prob­ably knew the con­sequences of the ac­tion as well be­cause, again, he looked away at Tania’s state­ment, in­tently study­ing a blank sec­tion of a nearby wall.

  “If you have a bet­ter idea,” Carl said, rais­ing an eye­brow, “I sug­gest you make it…five cy­ber-years ago.” They had been over this same ground sev­eral times, time was run­ning out, and he couldn’t help the sar­casm la­cing his voice.

  “Like I said be­fore,” Tania said, not budging, “once we’ve re­leased our counter-virus, we get the hell out. Leave it to someone else to des­troy the thing. If the Rhine-Temple freezes as much as you hope, we’ll all have plenty of time to come up with a way to des­troy it from a safe dis­tance.”

  “You’re not listen­ing to your­self, Tania.” Carl felt a little of his old ar­rog­ance seep into his voice. “‘If’. ‘Hope’.” He poin­ted to the front door. “There’s some­thing real out there that can des­troy every piece of tech­no­logy-based in­form­a­tion hu­man­ity has ac­cu­mu­lated. Who knows what it will do to the real world once it man­ages to in­filt­rate it?”

  “The bot­net could re­cover,” Tomek ad­ded and Carl shot him a look of grat­it­ude. “We don’t know ex­actly how ad­apt­able it is. And while it’s ad­apt­ing to our at­tack, we have to clock down, brief our gov­ern­ments, per­haps gather teams of de­velopers, all be­fore get­ting to the ac­tual work. We will be op­er­at­ing in real-time while our en­emy works in cy­ber-time. I’m afraid my friend Carl is cor­rect. If we are to des­troy the Rhine-Temple, then it has to be done now, in cy­ber-time. And here, while we’re all clocked up.”

  Tania sighed heav­ily and threw her hands up. “Both of you made up your minds about this in­sane plan months ago, didn’t you? Be­fore I even set foot in this god­damned place.”

  Carl frowned. “Tania—”

  She shot to her feet. “Well, I’m not go­ing to be part of it,” she said, look­ing from one to the other. “I’ll help with plant­ing the code cap­sules but I won’t be part of a murder-sui­cide pact.” She swal­lowed. “Now if you’ll both for­give me, I’m go­ing for a short walk. I prom­ise it will only take ten minutes, no more, and I apo­lo­gise in ad­vance for delay­ing your de­mise.”

  Carl and Tomek watched as she stormed out of the lab, slam­ming the door be­hind her. The pan­els shook.

  “She’s a pas­sion­ate one,” Tomek re­marked to the air.

  “Yep,” Carl said on a deep sigh. “She is.”

  And, at that mo­ment, Carl didn’t know whether that’s what he most hated, or loved, about her.

  “It’s grown.”

  Tania’s voice was quiet, as if she was afraid the ma­lig­nant en­tity could hear her. She was sit­ting in between Carl and Tomek, on the rooftop of a build­ing that over­looked the Rhine-Temple.

  “Soon it’ll be too big to take down,” Carl said.

  Tania re­cog­nised the ledge as the same one she’d sat on when Carl first in­tro­duced her to the bot­net, but they were now closer to it. Much closer. Where be­fore all she could see were thin, dis­tant tendrils tin­ted a rich car­mine, the three of them were now near enough for her to see them as thick red data pipes. She could even see them dilate and con­strict to handle the chan­ging flow of data traffic.

  “It’s either now or never,” Carl said, then looked past Tania. “You brought them, right?”

  Tania kept look­ing at the bot­net, fas­cin­ated by how or­gan­ic­ally it seemed to move. Tentacles writhed in the air be­fore land­ing on an ad­ja­cent build­ing, grip­ping the smooth walls with un­set­tling firm­ness. Even as she watched, one such tendril sprouted sev­eral oth­ers and began the task of en­gulf­ing and in­filt­rat­ing an­other data­base.

  She looked away just as Miller pat­ted a non­des­cript ruck­sack that res­ted on his lap. “The three code cap­sules plus your ex­tra-strength sur­prise.”

  Tania blew air out nois­ily through her mouth, a clear sign of dis­pleas­ure. It sparked a sim­ilar look on Carl’s face.

  “You know I have to do this,” he said. “Thanks to you, we al­most for­got to pack the IRC virus. What were you do­ing with it any­way? Try­ing to des­troy it?”

  When she had re­turned from her walk, she had gone to a con­sole, pick­ing up Carl’s sui­cide al­gorithm along the way. There, she had worked in com­plete si­lence un­til Carl told them to be­gin pack­ing the equip­ment.

  She faced him fully now, watch­ing him with a cold gaze. “It’s still work­ing, isn’t it?”

  Un­like the bright dazzling code cap­sules, the al­gorithm was a gleam­ing black sphere. The light­est bowl­ing ball in cy­ber­space, she had thought to her­self while hand­ling it.

  Carl looked a little un­sure, the skin un­der his eyes bunch­ing as if he was try­ing to peer into her. “Yeah,” he said. “It still works.”

  Her re­sponse was pert and a little sar­castic. “Then I ob­vi­ously didn’t des­troy it, did I?”

  She had known he wouldn’t trust her. Had known he would stop, take the al­gorithm from her hands be­fore they left and run some ba­sic dia­gnostics on it. But, des­pite his si­lent and sim­mer­ing an­ger, there was noth­ing he could do. Be­cause the al­gorithm cleared the checks. It was still func­tional. And they had run out of time.

  Now, on the roof of an an­onym­ous-look­ing build­ing, Carl was about to at­tempt the de­struc­tion of the Rhine-Temple. The blade was about to fall. Tania hoped she looked a lot calmer than she felt.

  After a heavy si­lence, Carl sighed. “All right, let’s do this. I’ve tar­geted three nodes where we can plant the cap­sules. The co­ordin­ates are on each of the shells. Just get as close as you can to a junc­tion at those co­ordin­ates and press the big green but­ton. We’ll meet back here af­ter­wards.”

  Miller got to his feet. “When I was a child, I wanted to be a su­per-hero.” He flipped open the ruck­sack’s can­vas flap and handed out the large cap­sules. “I think this will be the closest I come.”

  Carl smiled tightly as he took his cap­sule. “Re­mem­ber,” he said, os­tens­ibly to the both of them but his gaze res­ted on Tania, “we meet back here, straight after we set the cap­sules.”

  Miller nod­ded and shot off, winging through the air in a burst of speed. Tania saw that he was head­ing for the cy­ber­space level above them.

  “I’m tak­ing this level. You head down.”

  Tania nod­ded.

  There was a slight hes­it­a­tion. Was Carl go­ing to say some­thing? Was she? Then he ar­rowed through the air in a sim­ilar fash­ion to Miller and she was alone.

  Tania couldn’t take to the air the way the two men did, not with such con­fid­ence. She was still re­l­at­ively new to the Blue and was half-ex­pect­ing the phys­ic
s of the real world to kick in at any time. Be­cause of this, she lowered her­self gently to “street level” and then looked down, fo­cus­ing on what was be­neath her feet. The grey pave­ment sep­ar­ated into in­di­vidual strands of criss-cross­ing en­ergy – part of the in­form­a­tion back­bone that sup­por­ted en­tire cy­ber­space – then she was through, des­cend­ing to a lower level that su­per­fi­cially re­sembled the land­scape she had left be­hind.

  Carl had ad­ded a track­ing sys­tem to the cap­sule. As she looked at it, ar­rows ap­peared in soft am­ber, in­dic­at­ing the dir­ec­tion she should fol­low. As she neared the lower struc­ture of the Rhine-Temple, the ar­rows moved faster, their col­our chan­ging from an eye-sooth­ing light or­ange to a brighter red.

  Tania watched as the bot­net loomed large around her. Un­like the static struc­tures that littered cy­ber­space, the Rhine-Temple re­sembled a liv­ing thing in the way its tentacles pulsed. She re­minded her­self that it was a liv­ing thing, powered by semi-sen­tience and com­pletely out of con­trol. From the way it moved, she also knew Carl was right. It wouldn’t rest un­til it had taken over all of the Blue. And, after that, if it could some­how find its way into the real world...

  “This is not real,” she said to her­self as she walked. “This is just how I per­ceive data.”

  The words failed to re­as­sure her. There was some­thing vis­ceral, prim­it­ive, about the Rhine-Temple, a chaotic mass of raven­ing growth. And she was ap­proach­ing it. Swal­low­ing hard, she looked down again at the cap­sule in her hands. The ar­rows were flash­ing faster but they still in­dic­ated the dir­ec­tion she should fol­low.

  What would hap­pen if she just planted the cap­sule where she stood? It wouldn’t be at the node that Carl had iden­ti­fied but surely it would be close enough? Did he ex­pect her to walk into the bot­net it­self to ex­ecute the first part of their plan?

  Tania swal­lowed hard and her hands began to shake. She lif­ted her­self into the air and moved within the outer peri­meter of the bot­net. Sud­denly her world be­came a throb­bing blood-red mass, above, be­low and around her.

  She wondered what would hap­pen if a tentacle de­cided to in­vest­ig­ate her and ima­gined the de­struc­tion it could in­flict. It would in­filt­rate then des­troy her mind. Her skills, know­ledge and ex­per­i­ences would be used to bring down more in­form­a­tion banks but there would be noth­ing of Tania Flowers left. And, mean­while, her body would be in a ve­get­at­ive state in a Base­ment Five in­ser­tion room. It would never awaken.

  “I don’t want to die here,” she whispered, shak­ing her head. She moved for­ward. “Please don’t let me die here.”

  Her uni­verse was the Rhine-Temple, en­vel­op­ing her and cut­ting off her view from the rest of the Blue. She wondered if she would ever find her way out of its over­lap­ping strands. What if the tendrils closed be­hind her? Could she wait un­til the cap­sule did its job or would its job mean that she re­mained im­prisoned in a throb­bing prison of red pipes?

  Then the cap­sule beeped and a thick black let­ter ap­peared above a large green but­ton. Des­pite her fear, Tania had to smile.

  “‘X’ marks the spot, eh?”

  Swal­low­ing her dis­taste, she held the cap­sule against the nearest junc­tion of tentacles she could find and pressed the green but­ton. Slots opened along each side of the cap­sule and sil­ver legs emerged, clamp­ing them­selves to the pipe of pulsing red. Once she was sure it was firmly at­tached, Tania let go. The top of the cap­sule slid back and hun­dreds of little white beetles emerged.

  This was the start of it and, as much as Tania wanted to stay and watch the mod­ules while they worked, the an­imal part of her was scream­ing to get out. She turned and nav­ig­ated her way back through the forest of red as quickly as she could, try­ing not to look be­hind her. The rep­tilian stem of her brain was con­vinced that one thick red rope was aware of what she had done. Ob­li­vi­ous to the small white in­truders over­run­ning its neigh­bours, it was reach­ing for her. Closer and closer…

  Tania was al­most run­ning when she passed the bot­net’s peri­meter, and she stopped to drag in a deep lung­ful of air. Her heart was thump­ing in her chest and her trem­bling fin­gers were cold and clammy. It didn’t mat­ter that this was more a men­tal re­sponse than a phys­ical one. She was sure that ad­ren­aline was also pump­ing through her su­pine body back in Base­ment Five. Would Don and his tech­ni­cians pick it up or would the re­ac­tion be too fleet­ing to re­gister? All she knew was that she had never been so happy to see an ex­panse of grey in her life.

  After a few steady­ing breaths, she ar­rowed up to the ren­dez­vous point.

  She was the last to re­turn and Carl couldn’t hide the re­lief that washed over his face at the sight of her.

  He strode over to her just as she landed back on the ledge.

  “Did you strike any prob­lems?” he asked, search­ing her eyes.

  “Not a one,” she replied, keep­ing her voice even. “Al­though it’s a shame we can’t quar­ant­ine it some­how. Up close, it’s really,” she swal­lowed, “fas­cin­at­ing.”

  He grinned. “That’s my Tania. Pure ball-buster.”

  Tania watched him walk back to his friend to share a joke and let out a pent-up breath. Did he real­ise the enorm­ity of what he was plan­ning to do? After plant­ing the cap­sule and wait­ing for it to do its work, he was go­ing to walk back into the depths of that thing, and let him­self be sur­roun­ded by those seek­ing, raven­ing blood-red tendrils. Now that she had been there her­self, Tania un­der­stood the mag­nitude of his task. But they had no choice. She knew he had to do it. Given their lack of time, it was the only way.

  Carl had to des­troy the Rhine-Temple.

  “How long do we wait be­fore we move into the next phase?” she asked, mov­ing up to the two men.

  “Tomek brought a make­shift mon­itor.” Carl in­dic­ated a small square screen in his friend’s hands. “He’s watch­ing the traffic care­fully. When we think the bot­net is para­lysed, I go in. It could take minutes. Maybe up to an hour. No longer than that, I don't think.”

  Was she ima­gin­ing things or did the tentacles ap­pear to move more slowly, even as she watched?

  “And you still want to go through with this?” she asked him.

  “Now, more than ever.” His voice was heart­felt. “It’s got to be stopped, Tania. And I’m the best per­son to do that. You know why.”

  “You’re not go­ing to bring up your blas­ted in­tu­ition again, are you?”

  It had been a con­stant source of fric­tion between them in the past. Her lo­gic versus his “feel” of a situ­ation.

  The smile he shot her blazed like an arc of light. “Don’t knock it. It’s worked be­fore, hasn’t it?”

  Un­for­tu­nately, she couldn’t ar­gue with him. It’s what had kept them neck-in-neck dur­ing the Base­ment Five tri­als. Whenever she thought she had bested him with plan­ning or through her use of ana­lyt­ics, he would bounce back in a second with a strategy that com­pletely by­passed the prob­lem, or a solu­tion that seemed to come like a light­ning bolt from a cloud­less sky. Sud­denly, only at the end, Tania real­ised what a great team they could have made if they’d worked to­gether, in­stead of against each other.

  “I don’t want you to go,” she whispered, her voice raw. “Isn’t there an­other way?”

  He cupped her face with a hand. The wrinkles that were once so prom­in­ent on his face had all but dis­ap­peared, and his hair was back to be­ing blond, not a thread of sil­ver among it. “You know there isn’t, sweet­heart.”

  He was al­most back to look­ing like the youth­ful Carl Orin she had once dis­liked. The Carl Orin she was now afraid she was start­ing to fall in love with. Tania par­ted her lips to say some­thing but no words emerged.

  Miller’s voice called over to them. “It’s time.”r />
  Chapter Nine

  Pulling him­self away from Tania was one of the hard­est things Carl had ever done in his life. Word­lessly, Tomek re­trieved the sphere from his ruck­sack and handed it over. Carl thanked him with a nod…then stepped off the build­ing’s ledge.

  He drif­ted down to the pave­ment and began walk­ing to­wards the Rhine-Temple bot­net, for­cing him­self not to take one last look back.

  Wasn’t this where his life was sup­posed to flash in front of his eyes?

  Carl tried think­ing back on what he had man­aged to achieve in the past couple of dec­ades. He had changed from a high-school fail­ure to a well-re­spec­ted se­cur­ity con­sult­ant, able to name his own fee. He owned a house, his own private jet and a se­cluded lux­ury hide­away along Italy’s Amalfi coast.

  Tania would have loved it there.

  Too late.

  I could have made love to her twenty thou­sand feet in the air.

  Too late.

  Her skin would have gleamed brown and sil­ver in my sauna room.

  Too late.

  Would it have killed him to con­cede that the first cy­ber­naut should have been her? No, it wouldn’t have. Would it have cost any­thing for him to of­fer a word of thanks or ap­pre­ci­ation? To take her supple body into his arms be­cause of what he could give her, not only for what he could take? Carl grit­ted his teeth. He could kick him­self for his past pig-headed­ness.

  With steady steps, he neared the bot­net. The code cap­sules he and Tomek had worked on seemed to be op­er­at­ing ex­actly as they were in­ten­ded. From his vant­age point, Carl no­ticed en­tire sec­tions of the bot­net frozen in place. He quickened his step. There was no bet­ter time to shut down the en­tire ma­lig­nant net­work than right now.