by W. Len
Anna and I went to the same school when we were little. I still remember how she tugged my hand as we walked the two blocks to the bus stop. When she was young, she used to come to my place. We would sit on the floor, knees to our chins, as we set Father’s gramophone and let the composers regale us: Mussorgsky is a folklorist, Borodin’s a court gossip, while Chopin is a chatterbox accompanying us on a stately barge down the Vistula.
Anna and I seldom talk now because Grigory always shoos me; ever since Father passed away, he thinks I’m cursed.
The music stopped. “Andrei.” I heard Anna’s voice. I looked up. Her elbows were propped against the second-story window and her gray-white blouse blended in with the concrete windowsill. The red ribbons in her blonde hair flickered as her long fingers tapped nervously on the ledge. She can’t stop practicing even when she’s off the piano. When she leaned forward, her blouse cupped her curves. I felt heat on my face.
“Andrei, where are you going?” Her lips swelled like pixels, her shoulders rounded. “You don’t call, you don’t talk,” she said, smiling slightly, “have you forgotten me?”
She’s teasing me, but there’s a bass note of sadness she couldn’t quite conceal.
Before I could answer, another window opened. “Andryushka, you there?” Old Nelya’s shrunken head peered down from the fourth floor. “The cabbage soup will be in the fridge. Remember to finish it,” she shrilled.
Time freezes.
The street wraps me in its powdery silence. Ribbons bounce on Anna’s hair. “Andryushka, my boy, my boy,” she sang, then stuck out her tongue.
The heat on my cheeks and the rushing in my ear faded when I saw Grigory staggering down the street, one hand groping the wall for balance. Drunk again. Anna saw him as well, and quickly ducked back in, sleek as a mink. As I walked on, the piano restarted, a dirge she played friskily, a joke only we understood. It felt good to make her laugh, hear her laugh, even for a minute. Then the melody slowed. The dirge was just a dirge again.
Two streets later, I remembered Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet and a childish promise made. A long time ago, Anna and I had agreed we’d fly away to a palace of music, a place with an unending supply of ice cream and McDonalds. How easily children make promises! How easily children break promises!
Three streets later, there was a buzz on my phone. It’s Luka’s usual warning—Be careful.
Just another day in my life.
1.15
“Let’s not exchange names for now, eh?” Those were Luka’s first words when we first met two years ago.
“Why do we have to meet face to face?” I asked as he sat down. We had arranged to meet at The Mad Lark, a café near Patryarshy Ponds, the area where expatriates like to stay. Luka had a square hairline, which resembled the Kremlin parade ground. He kept his sunglasses on while we talked.
“I can’t do business with people I don’t know. Who are these anonymous people online? There are computers so smart they can hold a conversation. Am I talking to a God or a dog? Anyone can hide behind a nickname. Most importantly, I need to be sure you’re not with them.”
“Who?”
His voice dropped a register. “The F.S.B.” The government’s spy agency? My eyebrows shot up and he smiled knowingly. “You have to be careful if you want to do what I do. Last year, one of my acquaintances was caught.”
“What happened?”
He threw a hand into the air as if to say, who knows? “Technically, there are few laws against what we do. But there are unofficial rules. Never touch Russian companies, that’s the big one. Also, I never destroy anything, I only copy stuff. You have to be careful, because if the F.S.B. catches you… See, they don’t care about the law. There’s irony for you, eh? If they catch you, they shoot first and ask questions later. Assuming you’re alive then.” His tone was light, but he looked serious.
I was hooked. “How do you know I’m not with them?”
“That’s what these are for.” He pushed his sunglasses up and tapped the corner of an eye. “I know their type. You’re too young. You’re what, fourteen? Fifteen?”
I was thirteen then—almost—and not about to admit my age, so I didn’t answer him. “Why should I trust you?”
“Excellent question.” Luka leaned forward, and I noticed his teeth—brown with addiction, coffee, cigarettes, or both. “You can’t trust anyone. Especially those who claim they can be trusted. I’m not trying to scare you.” He shifted his bulk. “If you work for me, I can teach you how to stay safe. Unless”—he raised an eyebrow—“there’s a reward on your head I don’t know about? No? There you go.” He spread his fleshy palms wide. “You’ve nothing to lose and everything to gain. You need work. You need money, right?” Father’s insurance money was running out. “It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. The only people who should be ashamed are people who can’t earn their keep. Now, show me what you can do.”
From my backpack, I pulled out my laptop. Around me, people were on their computers, phones, or tablets. They looked dull, their eyes cast downwards.
Moscow is an urban sprawl girded by ring roads. The Third Rome, the White Throne—the city has many names and even more people, twelve million of them, breathing, walking, sitting, working, dreaming, dying. It’s the heart of a country that has been invaded from East to West: the Mongolian hordes, the Polish, the Swedish, Napoleon and his Grand Army, the Germans and their Panzers; all were defeated. We’re good at fighting the enemies outside yet we hide from the ones within, Father used to sigh. I’m one of the masses, people tell themselves, nobody cares what I do as long as I stay quiet and trouble-free. People become complacent in their anonymity, trusting the crowd to hide them.
Sometimes, they are wrong.
I spun up Crackjammer. 1 0wnz U, the splash screen of my favorite hacking tool declared as it loaded, its programmer’s ego writ in ghoulish-green pixels. It took less than a minute for my computer to slide between the café’s Wi-Fi router and its users. Streams of data started flowing through my computer.
“A man-in-the-middle attack,” Luka observed, leaning slightly to peer at my screen. “Or shall I say a boy-in-the-middle? Is that Crackjammer?” He was up to speed on the latest warez. “Not the best way. There are two viruses embedded in the code.”
“I found three.” Scrubbing the code line by line had taken me a week. The best hacking programs are booby-trapped—their creators aren’t charity types. Novices download them from pirate sites thinking they are hunters. They end up being hunted. Luka nodded as if I had passed the first test. Around us, coffee cups clinked.
“Keep going.” I loaded other apps to filter the incoming data. It takes the right tools and experience to decipher all the numbers swirling by.
Focus.
The world dissolves around thirteen inches of glass, and I step through into another. Bits and bytes coalesce into meaning. A girl sends an email, a missive of love bundled with a picture, to someone in the United States. Her email promises undying love if he’d get her a green card. Someone is streaming porn, maybe the person squirming in the corner, his computer on his lap. A student is chatting online with his professor about a biology project. Another chat channel, this one with his girlfriend, reveals he thinks his professor a world-class idiot.
A stubby finger broke the reverie. Luka pointed to the student’s chats. “Can you find out who he is?” He waved his hand around the café at the people. Eavesdropping online is one thing; pinpointing the exact person is harder. I pulled up the chat file, copied what the man was typing to his girlfriend and sent it to his professor. Five seconds later, the man in the corner looks wildly around him. Luka’s chin wobbled as he covered his laugh with a fleshy hand. “I was thinking of a technical solution for triangulation, but elegance is what matters, eh?” Elegance—that’s what Father said about coding. I felt myself straighten.
“These little secrets and lies…” Luka nodded slightly, dismissively. “How about something more serious?”
Serious? How serious? For a while, my mind ran wild, straying to the rumors one always hears about on the underground bulletin boards. Programs that control powerful ion satellites orbiting the world; Artificial Intelligences that can, or have taken over the world already; master hacks that control anything—do you want to copy the world, delete, ignore? Vaporware is mostly smoke and myth. What’s serious enough for him?
“Well?” he asked mildly.
I had to come up with something fast, so I expanded my network scan. Corporate hacking is usually a team effort. Any decent hacker will tell you it’s easy to force your way around, to smash and break things—but to do it without getting caught, that’s the hard bit. Bayesian analyzers use heuristics to study your techniques; honey pot traps lure you with fake promises. Professional hackers work in teams. They plan ahead. Sniffing programs are used to understand a system’s maintenance schedules, find all the loopholes. They lurk in the system for months, before getting out. Then, they have ways to sell the data they grab. Most importantly, they do everything with style. I considered my alternatives as I pinged the world. Small businesses are easy targets. Even a newbie can take them down. A brute-force attack algorithm can hurl permutations of characters, trying one set, then another, against their digital locks. Chance and frequency work in cahoots until the right key is found. Simple yet inelegant.
So I do something different.
A few clicks later, my shadow slips under a virtual door crack. Tack, tack, tack, Luka’s wedding ring makes a heavy sound as his fingers drum the table. I’m in, but the challenge has grown. From Root, the sub-directories spiral out like mazes. It’d take forever to find my way around, so I seeded my favorite hack for subnets. I call it Silver Rose after the flower Old Nelya puts in the vase before my mother’s picture. A few seconds is all it takes to creep and twine and blossom. Almost there.
As I wait, I look up at Luka, then glance away as his shaded eyes study me. I feel like I want to prove myself. Tack, tack, tack, his fingers continue. Is this enough? Can I do more? I want to do more!
Focus.
Down the road, a digit flips in the inventory system of a supermarket. Soon, the store assistants will think all their milk expired three days ago. Across the street, a digital billboard on a pink and white building blinks into a smiley. Hug me, it reads. Amused onlookers begin to gather and point. “That’s good.” Luka chuckles at a couple across the road hugging and taking a selfie. Fifteen seconds later, the sign changed back to its original message, informing people of the perks of being an American Express cardholder. “Very cute,” Luka says. Before he turns to me, I hit a final command.
Send.
“That’s it?” Luka seemed disappointed when I shut my laptop. “I expected more.” His phone vibrated. “Hold on.” He froze as others reached for their phones. The same ring tone was resonating across the café, a snippet of a Cossack lullaby I had taped Old Nelya humming while I was experimenting with the Knock-Knock virus a while back. I’d slapped the virus onto the music like a jet pack and aimed it carefully, an on-the-fly adaptation.
Luka stood up. “Let’s go.” Despite his bulk, he flowed from his chair. He kept toying with his phone as he headed out, pretending to be as puzzled as everyone else.
Outside, everyone stared at their phones. Old Nelya was the hottest singer around Patryarshy Ponds. “Shall we head that way?” He spoke conversationally as we walked, then leaned closer. “If you do stuff like that again, make sure you get sunglasses. Keep moving. Walk, don’t run.” After a block, his brisk pace slowed. “This hack, it’s a variant of that virus you posted. You ran it while I was looking at the billboard. I never gave you my number and everyone’s phone is affected, which means…” He looked around until he noticed the rooftop of a maize-colored building. “There.” He pointed at a stand of paneled antennae facing the junction. Moscow Telecom controls the network here, from cell phones to satellites.
I stared where his finger pointed, up high. Before today, I would never have dared to try a prank like this. A wall had crumbled.
“It’s high up, so the technicians update the software wirelessly. You used the Knock-Knock virus as a carrier and customized the music as its payload. That affected all the phones nearby.” As he spoke, a belated fear seized me. What have I done?
Then, I saw him smile. “Let’s go. It won’t be long before someone investigates a mad wireless cell site.” We walked to the entrance of the nearby Metro. “Elegance, misdirection, and still so young. We can work together.” His expression was reassuring as he stretched out his hand. “Call me Luka.”
His handshake had a weight that drew me close.
1.20
It’s been a while since that first time. Luka and I still meet up at cafés whenever we don’t have to be online and Anton’s not needed. Those days, I bring a duffel bag because Luka always insist on lending me a book or three. “You don’t need school. The great Russians explain everything. Stay with me, I’ll take care of you,” he said. Once, I told him I could download e-books and he’d glared as if I’d uttered heresy. He has a certain old-fashioned streak, I think. Or maybe the books have special meaning to him. There are always soft pencil marks in their margins. These are not written in his blocky handwriting; these are round, lilting strokes. A mystery.
Today, however, was another day in the warehouse.
When we met, Luka pulled up the website for a data protection company called Level 7. He has an archaic six-finger typing technique, like a stiff dance, a style more suited for a typewriter. “That’s our mark.” Luka tapped the screen of his laptop. It revealed little. A barebones website with a login portal. A clean interface. Monochrome colors. This website was so plain it begged to be hacked. I felt tempted to change their font to something bigger and brighter.
“Boring,” Anton judged, then he winked at me. “Hey Andrei, did you hear your President’s speech last night?” he said loudly. “He’s a popular one. Didn’t he win the last election with a hundred and two percent of the votes?”
People can be like computers: press X and you get Y. Anton knows Luka gets irate whenever politics is brought up. Last month, we’d watched online as the President stood before the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The country must progress, he’d declared, then vowed to upgrade Russia’s infrastructure and military. Luka had turned livid as he accused the President of being a traitor.
Anton smirked, awaiting a reaction to his barb, but Luka ignored him this time. He was focused on the project. “Get to work now, both of you. What are you waiting for?”
After an hour, Luka came over. I smelled cigarettes on his breath as he leaned over my shoulder, its acrid smell more familiar than repulsive. “Any luck?”
“The first layer of security is based off Aegis, so we can get around it easily. The second layer though, it’s trouble and—”
“That’s all you can tell me after all that time?” Luka boomed. Why’s he so edgy?
“You think it’s easy?” Anton piped up, flipping his gamer goggles up. “The third layer is set up to shutdown once it detects any intrusion. Even if you disable that, the fourth is rigged to wipe everything on the server. It’s like hiring a suicide bomber for guard duty.” He paused. “I managed to tease out a folder title reference though. What’s this Project Silence shit? I don’t like the sound of it.” Anton’s eyes narrowed. “This work we’re doing, it better not be military-related, geezer. I’m not paid enough to mess around with something so dangerous.”
An unbidden thought struck me. I imagined jackboots kicking the warehouse door. Red gun sights flickered on our foreheads. I shook my head. Life isn’t some Hollywood show with blazing gunfire and girls with guns tucked in their stockings. There’s never been trouble, not even a peep.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Luka snapped. “We’ve barely begun and you two have given up. Get the administrator’s password and it’ll be easy.”
“Sure,” Anton said. “I’ll snap my fingers and Behemoth, the devil cat, will
appear and grant all our wishes. Anyone else want anything? I’m taking orders. Pelmeni? Pizza, maybe?”
Luka rubbed his temples with the heels of his hands. A call on his phone saved us from another argument. He stalked away.
“Work harder, work harder!” Anton mimed a whip, then flipped his laptop shut. “Screw that.” Turing Mk IV, a sticker was pasted over his laptop cover. He’s the only one I know who names his computer. Once, I’d asked Luka about the person Anton named his computer after. “It probably refers to Alan Turing. He’s nothing,” Luka was dismissive, “just some dead British computer scientist. He helped his country win World War 2 by breaking the Enigma code, then was betrayed by his own government decades later. What’s new? If Anton wants one of these tragic sorts, well, we have plenty of Russian role models for him. But no, of course that man had to pick some homosexual foreigner. No surprise there.” Unfortunately, Anton came back and overheard us. I don’t think Luka really thinks Anton is gay, but it’s another reason why they don’t get along.
“I hate this.” Anton stood up and stretched. “Who does Luka think he is?”
“He knows what he’s doing. Did I ever tell you I saw his gun?” Luka had fallen asleep in the warehouse and his jacket had slipped to reveal a walnut handle. Anton shot me a look of distilled doubt. “It’s true. I almost touched it.” Right before I could do so, Luka’s eyes had flicked opened and he grabbed my arm.
“Almost touched it? Give me a break.” Anton rolled into a handstand. The orange goggles dangled around his neck. “Even if he has a gun, what does it matter? You’re too easily impressed. Try this, Andrei. You’ll see the world from a different perspective.”
“What do you see?”
“I see we’re no better than serfs. I see we’re being exploited in a gulag.”
“It’s safer …” I began and Anton rolled his eyes. Luka had explained it all to me, how he’d bought a map from a contact in the municipal office. That’s how he picked this warehouse. Beneath Moscow, the new cables traced the pathways of the old sewer pipes. Luka had went down the sewer access in the warehouse and hacked the communications terminal. When he told me that, I’d imagined him inside the tunnels: a flashlight in his mouth, a sack of tools, and wires lassoed around a shoulder. Now, not even the service providers can trace us when we log in. This ‘gulag’ is safer than anywhere else. Anton’s biased. “I’m not going to argue with you, Anton.”