by Andrew Ives
For years, Simon read of the scams pulled by the other hackers on his local forum, admiring the audacity and inventiveness of the pranksters involved. He was always regarded as the smallest of the small-time hackers by his peers. Obtaining your phone calls free was standard fare amongst them and ordering computer parts deceitfully was hardly impressive. Simon was always on the lookout for the opportunity to put this right.
This was it. This would be his ticket to underworld credibility.
Nocturnals
Karen wasn't ready for bed yet.
She stood in her living room dressed in her matt black riding leathers, collecting together various objects on her dining table.
She placed a small wide-ended chisel into a black rucksack and left the room momentarily, only to return with a piece of polystyrene packing. This was the packaging to her radio, which she kept in case it was faulty. It seemed to be working fine and there was no need to keep it any longer, so she broke off and discarded the rounded ends, leaving a flat rectangular piece which she placed in the rucksack with the chisel.
She left the room again, this time returning with the pliers she had used earlier and her ailing hard drive. She had disconnected it from the bottom of her keyboard with the intention of swapping it for an altogether more reliable one. These were also placed carefully into the rucksack.
Karen hesitated for a moment, trying to think of any other tools she might need. She was new to this game and never knew quite what difficulties she might come across.
She decided she had everything she would need and pressed down the Velcro flap across her shoulder, breathing in to fasten her constraining leathers. She leant forward to put on her crash helmet, being careful to keep all her long hair inside. She threw the rucksack on over one shoulder and struggled with the other strap before it settled on her back. She turned the living room light off and stroked her dog goodbye. She would hopefully be back soon.
She closed the door and looked at herself in the hall mirror. She looked as if she could be anybody and she tipped down her visor to complete the mystery, then picked up her gloves and left.
Karen caught the lift down to her bike. The corridors were deserted and while the lift carried her down through the many floors she wondered if she was doing the right thing. No one in their right mind would go out alone, unarmed, at midnight, in a city rife with crime. She never intended to be out long - an hour at most.
She was tingling with anticipation for what was to come. Surely there would be no trouble? She had calmly and carefully planned every detail.
Despite this apparent security, she still found the danger exciting. She was in for more excitement than she could ever have predicted.
* * *
Night Caller
Earlier that night, Eric found himself with an unexpected, and not entirely welcome visitor. Eric was loafing in front of his blaring telly, enjoying Hell Creatures on his newly-cracked film channel, while treating himself to a bag of toffee popcorn as a well-earned celebration of his shining achievement.
Slouched back at forty-five degrees Eric sat munching away constantly, feet rested on the coffee table, looking the archetypal couch potato. Every so often a sticky kernel stuck to Eric's fingers causing him to lose it between the cushions. 'Never mind, I'll get that later.'
Eric had consciously made an effort to forget all about work, his concentration had been fully set on cracking this formidable video code. Now that this weight had been removed, he was as happy as a broke, overweight, jobless scientist could be - albeit temporarily.
At 9:12pm the doorbell chimed and Eric half-hoped it might be someone wanting to buy his motorbike; his pride and joy.
Eric's project before PsiNapse had paid well. It was a three-month project abroad designing machinery which recognised retina and vein patterns as a means of identification. He spent every penny he earned from this on his Miracle.
It was the biggest, bravest purchase he had ever made. He traded in his cheap car for the expensive road bike he had always dreamed of owning. It was a head-turning bright red, a rarity up until now as 'frozen smoke' fairings were previously only available in natural blue-grey or dyed black. He spent everything he could on it and as a result, it was the only thing of any great value he owned. When times became difficult, it had to be the first thing to go. It was with this dichotomy in mind, that he half-hoped it was a buyer and gingerly opened the door.
"Steve! I'm surprised to see you. I was hoping it might be Jehovah's Witnesses." Eric thought he should hint at Sedgwick's imposition from the outset.
"No." smirked Sedgwick uncomfortably. "Sorry to disappoint you there. I was just driving by on the way to the... err... chemist and..." he struggled slightly to think of a legitimate reason, a nearby place open at this time of night.
"I thought that had cleared up." interrupted Eric, still in reasonably high spirits.
"Yes. Ha... er.. and I saw your bike on the drive with the 'For Sale' notice, so I thought I'd pop round and ask you more about it?" Sedgwick was rather banking on being invited in and he found himself relieved when he eventually was, his excuse being so poorly thought out.
"Are you sure you're not the Jehovah's Witnesses? Hmmmm, oh... OK then." relented Eric. Sedgwick strolled in and sat himself down on the arm of Eric's settee. Eric never took his coat; he wouldn't be staying long.
Sedgwick rambled on about how he understood Eric's predicament and how they were all feeling the pinch now since Psi had folded. Eric nodded politely while Sedgwick rambled on further and his attention wandered towards Hell Creatures which was reaching an especially interesting and gory part.
Sedgwick continued, saying he was considering selling his car as its emissions tax was too costly and that he might need to move down to something cheaper.
Eric couldn't sympathise with his obnoxious boss for having to make do with his dream bike. He felt he shouldn't point this out though as he may have found a possible buyer.
Thinking Eric was fully understanding his position, Sedgwick was not slow to steer the one-way 'conversation' around to PsiNapse.
"Of course, if we sold PsiNapse to Dreamland, I could keep my car and you could keep your bike. All I need is your cooperation." Sedgwick rushed the sentence out, hoping he hadn't gone too far too soon.
"If that's what you really wanted to talk about, you can leave right now. I told you I'm not interested. At all." Eric tried to hammer the point home, but it seemed to fall on deaf ears.
"No. No, it wasn't. I really am interested in your bike, but only if you won't help me sell PsiNapse." Sedgwick was hoping to stay a while longer. He was going to get Eric to concede tonight one way or another.
"I won't help. So do you want the bike or not?" Eric was beginning to lose patience with his intrusive guest, his night becoming spoilt. "Maybe. If you won't help me with PsiNapse, would you at least let me have copies of your notes or programs or whatever. I might go it alone." Sedgwick pleaded. It seemed Eric really was resolute. Eric laughed.
"You won't be able to make any sense of them whatsoever. And even if you could, I don't have any of them here anyway. The only copy is on my hard drive at the labs, which as you well know is to be shipped tomorrow."
Eric did have a copy at home, but he figured that if he pretended not to, Sedgwick would be forced to give up on the idea, compelled to sell his car and possibly buy Eric's bike. It was a decision Eric might soon come to regret.
"Oh OK. I give up with the idea then." Sedgwick seemingly conceded. He briefly remembered his debtors and what might happen to his kneecaps, before continuing.
"Could I have a better look at your bike? Possibly a quick ride?" Sedgwick's eyes wandered aimlessly around the room as he spoke.
"I'll just go and get the keys. Oh, and the manual and papers and stuff. Won't be a minute." Eric left Sedgwick alone in the sitting room and immediately seizing his chance, Sedgwick pounced like the rattlesnake he was.
Sedgwick crept over to the mantelpiece, his footstep
s drowned by the deafening screeches emanating from the film. He picked up the glittery lump of rock Eric kept there as a souvenir of a past holiday.
Sedgwick approximated its weight in his hand and guessed it was heavy enough.
He crept quietly back across the room, dimming the light with the dial on the wall near the doorway that Eric had disappeared through. Sedgwick stood by the doorway hiding in Eric's blind spot, wielding the rock above his head.
There was a thud, followed by a scream.
The Hell Creatures had claimed another victim.
Eric returned through the door behind Sedgwick, occupied solely with the Miracle manual he was carrying.
"What happened to the ligh..."
Night Crawler
Soon after midnight in a gloomy and secluded alleyway, a black leather-clad figure was barely visible. Poorly lit by the distant orange sodium streetlamps, the stealthy intruder could only be seen by the nearby feral cats scavenging amongst the spilled dustbins.
Balancing precariously on the seat of a parked motorcycle, the figure removed a glistening chisel from a rucksack and silently prodded at the frame of a first floor window.
Within moments, the window opened - the screws falling easily with a tinkle onto the tarmac outside. The burglar replaced the chisel and climbed with a struggle through the newly-made opening.
Karen crouched on the windowsill, finding the familiar surroundings surprisingly different in the virtual absence of light. She clumsily climbed in over the cistern and toilet, wishing the unwanted sounds quieter. She was new to this burglary caper and was beginning to find just what a novice she really was.
Her first mistake was unforgivably amateur - forgetting to bring a torch. How could she be so stupid? She couldn't believe she had made such an obvious oversight. It was not only the light that was dim tonight.
As it turned out, she never had a working torch at home anyway. Its terminals had become badly corroded through forgetfully leaving mouldy batteries inside for years on end. Torch batteries were little use in anything else and as such were always left to split and rot. This corrosion would later be her saviour.
Her second mistake was wearing motorbike boots. She found this too was an annoyingly obvious oversight. There couldn't be more clumsy footwear for such a delicate job. Cat burglars wouldn't be seen in anything else.
She was fortunate that there was nobody about to hear her stomping around and that she knew the building well enough to find her way to the labs without a torch anyway.
She crept out of the toilets and into the corridor, immediately bumping into the squeaky swivel chairs that were now there. Ssssshhhh!
She had no idea that they were there having been moved from their usual location after she left that afternoon. She tiptoed between them carefully, nudging the occasional one with her knees causing further momentary squeaks.
She turned to the swing doors dividing the labs from the corridor and gently pushed one open.
Karen walked in, straight into the security camera's line of sight. The camera was concealed above a ceiling vent and Karen never knew of its existence in all the time that she had worked there. Fortunately for her, she never remembered a torch so it never had much to see.
She quickly turned to the row of computers that were laid out for shipment. She couldn't recognise her own terminal in the blackness, but remembering that Eric had a much larger hard disk capacity and that he also had a copy of her work as well as everyone else's, she opted to take that instead of her own. Eric's computer was a dark tan colour with a larger monitor, so Karen could easily distinguish this from the others. She wanted to swap the hard drive for the one in her rucksack, but this was an impossibility in such poor light.
Karen felt along the back of one of the nearby monitors and feeling down the flex, took the plug and scraped the pins around the wall until they fell into the three slots of the socket.
She turned the electricity on and the screen glared brightly. The ever-changing flicker was of adequate intensity and she easily pulled the panel from the bottom of Eric's keyboard and removed the ribbon connector from the motherboard. She put the drive aside and took her own corrupted unit from her rucksack, installing it as easily as the other had been removed. She put Eric's drive carefully into the rucksack, and took out the polystyrene before walking past the doors - again into the camera's sight - over to the stack of drawers where the components were stored.
Karen could barely read the labels with the monitor's light so far away, so she just took handfuls of each chip from each drawer and stuffed them hurriedly into the polystyrene. She poked the long piece of polystyrene over her shoulder back into the bag, then grabbed a couple of reels each of gold, platinum and superconductive wire, a box of ten floptical disks, an unformatted hard drive, some LCD displays, some gilded ribbon cable...
Desperate Measures
Eric reluctantly opened his bleary eyes, their sensitivity heightened due to being closed for nearly three hours. An intense throbbing, almost a burning sensation in the centre of his forehead soon reminded him of how he had come to be in this state.
He had just looked up from his Miracle manual on the exciting page about hub-centre steering when suddenly Sedgwick had come at him like a thing possessed and smashed his head in with a large rock!
He could also feel that his wrists had been taped together and possibly around the chair he was sitting on.
He had known Sedgwick for over a year now, and although he considered him to be callous and self-centred, he had not once thought of him as dangerous before.
Eric could hear the quiet crunching sounds of popcorn nearby and decided to get a momentary glimpse of his surroundings before pretending to still be unconscious, so he could consider his actions further.
Eric slowly opened his right eye, but without his glasses he struggled to recognise exactly what was before him. When he did, he was further disheartened to see Sedgwick sitting opposite him, looking directly at his face.
"Ah, glad to see you're awake at last. I've been sitting here hours waiting for you to wake up." Sedgwick grinned at the position of superiority he was in. He had at last gained the upper hand over one of those know-alls he was forced to work with. He chucked the near-empty bag of popcorn onto the coffee table between them and stood up.
"Don't think much of your popcorn, Eric. Your films are alright though." jeered Sedgwick. Before Eric had a chance to compose any reply in his aching head, Sedgwick walked over, took a rag from his pocket and stuffed it forcibly into Eric's sagging mouth. Eric struggled the best he could with both feet, but being as overweight and semi-conscious as he was, this didn't amount to much. Sedgwick walked away, behind Eric as if nothing had happened.
Sedgwick had already been through Eric's garage while he had been laying unconscious. There he found a plastic can of petrol for Eric's bike and a rag (which Eric now had in his mouth). Sedgwick had with him a pair of black driving gloves which he had worn earlier in the garage and he put these on again before picking up the petrol can in his left hand and then taking a discrete, silenced pistol from a chest holster with his right hand.
Sedgwick walked back in front of Eric and with a wave of the gun beckoned Eric to his feet. Eric mumbled through the rag and nodded sideways towards the mantelpiece where Sedgwick had earlier neatly folded up his glasses.
"You won't be needing them. Get a move on." Sedgwick prodded Eric with the gun, showing his impatience. Sedgwick followed Eric outside, turning off the lights and closing the door as he went.
Close Thing
Karen paused as she put the last item in her rucksack. Was that really a noise or was it just her imagination? Her adrenaline had made her so cagey, she couldn't be sure any more. How could the police know of her presence already? She stood motionless for a moment; her hearing hindered by the crash-helmet she was still wearing. She couldn't remove it for fear of being seen, but like this she...
There it was again. A door; downstairs. She frantically look
ed around, searching for anything else she might need. She panicked. Her bag was nearly full and becoming heavy. She was about to leave when she remembered the Trapper that Bob had showed her that morning. She ran over to it, under the security camera, taking the Trapper from amongst pieces of headset, clumsily knocking some over with a clatter.
This noise would alert the other intruders and hasten their arrival, so Karen immediately made her escape. She ran back under the camera, through the double doors, turned right and ran down the corridor squeaking most of the chairs as she did so. She heard tones as someone typed a door code.
She stumbled and half fell between the chairs.
The coded lab door slammed open behind her. They were closing in.
Karen scrambled to her feet again and fell through the nearby toilet doors to her left. Her pursuers were only seconds behind.
She jumped onto the toilet, then the cistern, hands and feet grabbing at any grip they could latch on to.
The chairs in the hall squeaked violently as her pursuers ran through them.
She crouched on the windowsill and after a momentary hesitation, she jumped down onto her awaiting motorcycle. She fumbled around in her waist pocket for the infra-red keyring and after what seemed like an age yanked it out and pressed the button. The UV-headlights and dials lit up in acknowledgement.
Twisting the throttle with her right hand, the expectant engine roared to life. She trod it into gear and jolted forward, wrestling a left turn from the fierce machine.
Up at the window, a gun barrel poked outwards. A high-pitched puff followed and a bullet ricocheted from Karen's rear mag spoke. Another soon sparked from the Ovaltube frame, narrowly behind Karen's left leg.
Karen trod the gearbox into second and with that she disappeared from sight.