Hack

by Peter Wrenshall

  “Is this seat taken?”

  I stared at the woman for a moment, and then I realized who it was.

  “Grace?” I said. “I . . . I thought you didn’t make it . . .”

  “I couldn’t find you.”

  “I’ve

  been

  waiting.”

  “I didn’t think you’d be in first class.”

  I had decided to make the trip as enjoyable as possible for Grace, seeing how she had been my accomplice for the last few days, while I had been nothing more than a burden—a geek in her home and bedroom. For some reason, my head was blank, and I was finding it hard to form sentences.

  73

  “So, what do you think?” Grace said, holding her hands out to demonstrate the suit she was wearing.

  “I think you look great.”

  “Thank

  you.”

  That was it? I had complimented a girl on her looks, and she hadn’t phoned the police or run away screaming. I was getting to like Grace a lot.

  “Not too shabby yourself.”

  “I had to rent a suit.”

  “I like your penguins.” She was referring to the pattern on my new neck tie.

  “So you think the blonde suits me?” she asked, running her fingers through her new hair. It was pony-tailed, held back by a small black band, exactly like the woman I had pointed to on the Internet.

  “Sure. Where did you get the suit from?”

  “A friend helped out. The jewelry is mine. And so are the shoes. So, where are we going, that needed us to get all dolled up?”

  “We are going to Silverdale.”

  “I know that. What’s in Silverdale?”

  “I’m going to visit an old business colleague.”

  “David, you’re being mysterious again.”

  “Believe me, the less you know, the better. Besides, I’m Jim.”

  “Huh?”

  “My name today is Jim Jensen. And you are Alison Croft, my assistant.”

  “Alison?”

  “Yeah.”

  She frowned. Now that she had bothered to comb her hair, and was so well dressed, her characteristic frown wasn’t so bad.

  “Why do I get the feeling that you are going to get me into trouble?”

  “Your stepfather sells stolen electronic goods. How worried could you be?”

  That sounded awkward. I hadn’t meant to be so blunt. I quickly covered over it. “All we’re doing is visiting someone I used to know.”

  “So why do you need me?”

  “I don’t need you per se. I wanted to say thanks for letting me geek-out at your place. I thought I’d buy you some breakfast in first class. Beats the school cafeteria, right?”

  “Breakfast?”

  “Sure. Do you want to get something to eat?”

  She opened her mouth, as if to say something sassy, then changed her mind.

  “Okay.”

  We made our way to the dining car, and sat down. The waiter gave us menus.

  “Oh, my God,” Grace said, looking at the prices on the menu.

  “I’m going for the continental breakfast.”

  “What’s continental about it?”

  “They eat it on the continent.”

  “Which

  continent?”

  “Europe.”

  We both had the same breakfast, which consisted of croissants, butter, fruit spread, coffee, juice, and some unidentified thing that I didn’t ask about and didn’t eat.

  Grace put a napkin on her lap, and then spread butter on her croissant, and looked at it without actually eating it.

  74

  “So, what are you going to do after school?” I asked.

  “I was thinking of becoming a mainframe programmer,” Grace said.

  I laughed.

  “Do you know what a mainframe is?”

  “A big computer?” she asked.

  “And you are going to program these mainframes in what language?”

  She shrugged. “Computerese?”

  I smiled. “Good luck.”

  “Well, I don’t actually know what I want to do. I’ve got a time to figure out the details.”

  “You must have something that interests you.”

  “I like the idea of working for myself. You know?”

  I nodded. I did know. “Being your own boss is good. But you have to have capital to set up a business.”

  “Yeah,” Grace said, glumly. “I guess I’ll have to work in the factory with mother dearest, for about a hundred years.”

  “You’re not going to college?”

  “I’m not exactly academically minded. Besides, I can’t afford it. What about you?”

  “I’m going to college next year.”

  “Next year? I thought you were sixteen, like me.”

  I realized that I had let the real world cross over into the fake one, and had referred to my federal-financed education. It was my first gaff. I tried to get out of it.

  “I’m a star pupil in science, and my dad has already talked his old school into admitting me.”

  “Didn’t you say that you weren’t allowed to study computers?”

  Another good point. “They want me to go to med school. I’ve got other plans.

  I’ll be quietly working on my computer career. After I graduate, Dad won’t be able to tell me what to do. I want to work in Silicon Valley. That’s when the fun begins.”

  Grace looked at me quietly, and I realized then how boastful and idiotic that last sentence must have sounded. It works with geeks, but not really with girls. Grace finally bit some of her croissant. I had finished mine and was looking around for more.

  “I like that about you,” she said, tilting her head a little, like someone in a gallery trying to figure out a painting. “You know what you want.”

  What do you say to that?

  We talked, and the train traveled on through some pretty impressive scenery. I had one of those feelings, you know what I mean, when you kind of realize that this is one of those memories that you would look back on.

  “Can I ask you a question?” she asked.

  “Sure.”

  “The first time you talked to me, you weren’t really interested in a phone, were you?”

  “I needed a phone, and I wanted to ask you to the party.”

  Grace did a familiar thing with her face—sort of looking at me as if I was so pitiful it was funny.

  It was my turn to ask the questions. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Okay.”

  “How come you like me?”

  “What?”

  75

  “Girls usually think I am weird. Cute, maybe, but weird. Why not you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “It

  doesn’t

  matter.”

  “Tell me what you mean.”

  “Never

  mind.”

  “David . . .”

  That was another thing I never understood about girls. They always wanted to talk things out, as if words changed anything. This was something that I felt strongly about. Talking only changed your perspective on something—sort of dealing with something without dealing with it.

  I heard the train begin to slow, looked out of the window, and saw that we were approaching the station at Silverdale.

  “We’re here. We’ll make it in time.”

  “In time for what?”

  “People starting work.”

  We quickly got off the train, and got into a cab. I gave the driver the address, and he took us through the replica Elmwood suburbs of Silverdale.

  In a short time, I spotted the offices of J. B. Enterprises from the sign at the entrance to an industrial compound. It was a medium-sized, dark brown, brick building, and its windows were so dark they were almost black.

  I got the driver to let us out away from the entrance. I checked my watch again. Almost 8:00 a.m.—right on time. We stood for a minute whi
le I looked at the building, and thought over the situation. I could have turned around, gone back, and worked out some other way to get the details that I badly wanted. No time. I had no other quick option. I had to get in there.

  One good thing about it was that the building was open-fronted. There was no barrier to go through, and no metal detectors. I had been lucky.

  There was a security guard posted inside the big glass doors, but he wasn’t checking every person who came and went. I watched as a gaggle of office clerks did the Friday-morning amble from the parking lot into the entrance, moving in sleepy ones and chatty twos.

  “Okay,” I said to Grace, “all you have to do is be my assistant. Just go along with whatever I say.”

  Grace raised an eyebrow.

  “Are you serious about going in there?” she said.

  “Yeah. You don’t have to do it.”

  “No, I want to help you. I just feel a bit nervous.”

  I waited until I spotted four women, who were chatting loudly and joking.

  “Are you ready?”

  “No,” Grace said.

  “Just act natural.”

  “What if we get stopped by a guard?”

  “Just smile that beautiful smile, and watch him melt.”

  “I’m not that attractive.”

  “Don’t you have mirrors in your house?”

  Grace looked flustered for the first time since I had known her. I grabbed her arm and ushered her along until we were walking at the back of the chatty group, as if we were part of them.

  “David!” Grace said. I must have been hurting her arm.

  “It’s Jim, Alison,” I whispered.

  76

  As we passed through the entrance, I spotted the guard and started speaking to Grace in a loud voice.

  “Remind me later about Donald Aston’s report.”

  Grace said nothing. I watched her eyebrow rise a little.

  “It’s very important, all right?”

  Grace said nothing, again. She looked a little spooked. I continued talking to myself, hoping that the guard, who was at the side of us now, would allow my inside knowledge to override his common sense. I hoped that it was too early in the morning for him to be paying attention to security passes.

  The group passed through the inner doors, and I put my hand on the small of Grace’s back, and ushered her through the door.

  We split from the group, and walked into an elevator. I hit the button for the eighteenth floor. We had a quiet ride up.

  We got out of the elevator, and stood in front of the locked doors that led out into the work area. I was looking at the security swipe on the doors. I had no card to let us in. I stood at the door for a minute, making a good act of looking for my card.

  Where did I put it? I rummaged in pockets, and came up with nothing. Someone else got out of the other elevator, and walked straight past me, and swiped the door open.

  I waited until the last minute to grab at the door, and got it just before it closed. Grace followed me into the corridor. I stopped to look around, but there were no clues as to the location of Donald Aston’s office.

  I spotted two management types coming toward us, and started talking again.

  “Don’t forget that report for Donald.”

  “Yeah,” Grace said, and I was grateful that she had at last found her voice.

  We wandered around, until we came to a door whose name plate read “Donald Aston.” Glancing to the right and left, I confirmed that no one was paying any attention to us. Fortunately, the crack under the door revealed that there were no lights on inside the office. Like most overworked network administrators, Donald Aston probably arrived late most mornings, having worked the night before.

  I tried the door handle, and breathed a huge sigh of relief to discover that the door was unlocked. Easing it open as quietly as possible, I pulled Grace into the office behind me, and quickly shut the door. Only then did I turn the light on.

  She shot me a suspicious look. “Is this your friend’s office?”

  “I’ll explain later. No time now.”

  I immediately walked around his desk, plopped down into the overpriced ergonomic chair, and turned on his computer monitor. I of course harbored the unrealistic hope that he had forgotten to log out of the network before going home last night. But the login prompt that came up confirmed that, like any security-conscious techie, he was good about logging out whenever finished with his computer. Now I faced the task of trying to get into his computer before he made it into the building.

  Like the fabled Coke machine that had “Pepsi” as its password, if you have the same warped mindset as the typical network administrator, you can often guess the passwords on servers fairly easily.

  Lucky for me, Donald’s mind was as warped as mine. Within a short time, I had logged in and installed a Trojan horse program on Knight’s server. Come Monday morning, Knight would be in jail.

  I had done it. I had won.

  “Let’s go,” I said, opening the door, and moving us quickly into the corridor.

  Several paces in front of us, a very thin and nervous-looking guy was walking toward us at a fast pace, with his ID badge attached to a pocket protector full of pens 77

  and bouncing on his wrinkled shirt. He was looking at the two of us, and the vibes I was picking up were not positive.

  Glancing toward Grace, I was horrified to see her staring at him like a deer caught in car headlights. My hand was against the small of her back, and I tapped it lightly to try to pull her out of her trance.

  I realized that my mouth was dry, and I would’ve loved to slip into a nearby break room to get some water. But there was no time to worry about that. We had to get out of there as soon as possible. At any moment, we could run right into—

  “Donald!”

  A plump lady in a nearby cubicle spotted the guy walking toward us, and called out to him.

  He stopped, looked at her, glanced back at us, and then returned his attention to her.

  She continued. “I can’t log into the system. Can you help?”

  By this time, we were passing right by him, and he gave us a suspicious look.

  The plump lady interrupted his thoughts. “Donald, I need to get this report out ASAP!”

  Peripherally, I saw him reluctantly walk toward her cubicle.

  Grace looked even more pale than before.

  “Grace, you are doing great. We’re going out now.”

  Grace said nothing. She was too spooked. I knew I had made a mistake in bringing her along.

  “Look, I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to drag you into this. It’s just that, other hackers I hang around with think this is good fun. I guess I didn’t think.”

  Grace remained silent.

  “Do you want some water?”

  “No, I don’t want any water. I want to know what happens if we get caught on the way out.”

  I had neglected to mention that, for a good reason. I knew one hacker from a rival crew (it was a friendly rivalry), who called himself Joker, because he was always playing jokes. But one day Joker had got caught engineering his way into an office network. He just walked into some office, and charmed them out of their server details. After they had arrested him, we had jokingly sent him five dollars toward his ten-thousand-dollar bail. We weren’t joking when we saw him next. They had put him into a juvenile detention center. A whole year off school might sound like fun to most students who hate school, but he was a changed person when he got out. As far as I knew, he never touched a computer again. We heard from a guy at his school that he said nothing at school, and just kept to himself. He was a changed man.

  Come to think of it, so was I, after my spell in the prison system. It is the most insane life you can imagine. Everybody hates everybody else—especially some kid who thinks he knows it all. I, too, had planned to give up hacking forever. At least, I would quit once I had finished what I had started.

  “We won’t get caught,” I said. “We'
re leaving. Let’s go.”

  I speeded up the pace, even though Grace was doing little steps beside me, in her impractical but nice-looking shoes. When it comes down to it, things are either useful or good-looking.

  “Come on,” I urged her. “We’ve go to get back to the train station.”

  Suddenly, I noticed a large security guard standing down the corridor from me, close to the locked doors that we needed to use to get to the elevator. He seemed to be glaring at me.

  78

  I slowed us down, and came alongside a fire exit door, which had on it the picture of a stick figure walking down some emergency stairs.

  I could have got away. All I would have to do would be to push open the fire door, and run out of the building. The guy was heavier than me and Grace. We’d have out-nimbled him any day. But the alarm over the doorway would have sounded, the police would have been called, and the game would be up. They’d find out what I had been doing in the building, and then they would go to the trouble of changing all of the server details and passwords, so that the information I had obtained would be worthless.

  I couldn’t do that, after all of the hard work I had put in. Also, they might have stationed another guard along the stairs somewhere.