by AJ Vega
Chapter 9: Dead Weight
Haylek looked at their controlled territory on the Waterfall. They had mapped out many waves and put under their control some important corporate systems. When they had to server their connection to the Ocean, it took them weeks to re-take what they lost. Now they ended up with more systems under their control than before.
Now with the addition of The Doc, Haylek had three of them to manage. They made better progress taking down the large corporations once Doc was on board with them. His decryption skills had been vital in cracking the polymorphic encryption algorithms that the larger, more secure corporate systems used.
Doc was a strange one, though, even compared to the rest of the group. He seemed to be of Asian descent and spoke broken English that was sometimes difficult to understand. However, give him an encrypted wave, and it didn’t matter; he had an amazing ability to predict the polymorphic sequences used for its encryption. Haylek wondered if Doc had a special program that helped him do it, but he watched him repeatedly crack waves and did not see anything but the most basic calculator programs running at his terminal. As much as Haylek tried, he could see no indication that Doc “cheated.”
Haylek thought back to the recent strange meeting he had with their employer’s man, Steve. He seemed rather adamant about their owning one of the top three super conglomerates. Steve seemed nervous when they last spoke, almost as if some kind of urgency existed. That made Haylek nervous. He knew their employer was ruthless and sometimes cruel.
Having done some snooping to find out more about them, Haylek he couldn’t discover anything concrete, but he found an interesting report from the UEP computer. The report detailed an investigation into the death of Doc Wong, aka “The Doc.” Apparently, they found his body washed up on a beach in New York.
He knew the investigation had to be mistaken, but the only way they could foul up a DNA check was if the body had been a clone. That disturbed him. If these people were ruthless and resourceful enough to clone Doc before recruiting him, they had to be high up on the food chain—way high up.
Haylek walked over to Freeze, who was working on a system that branched out from Omega Research Corporation. Last night, with Doc’s help, they managed to crack their perimeter firewalls.
“How’s it looking? Anything good?” Haylek said.
“A lot of good stuff,” Freeze said. “They have a ton of cool programs and utilities I downloaded. You should look at our software depot.”
“I mean stuff that our employer might find useful.”
“Oh,” Freeze said. “You mean the boring stuff. I don’t know, not really I guess. I’ve been too busy downloading.”
Haylek sighed. “Freeze, we need to get something useful or they’re going to shut us down.”
“They won’t shut us down,” Freeze said as he continued to tap. “They need us.”
Haylek thought for a moment. “Our employer has said they’re going to stop giving us Elation if we don’t come up with something.”
Freeze stopped tapping. “They won’t do that,” he said. “Will they?”
Haylek nodded. “They’re ruthless, Freeze. They’ll do it.”
“All right, fine, Waverider,” Freeze grumbled.
Haylek stood watching Freeze dodge through various sentries. The sentry programs at Omega Research were definitely better than the competition. Their programs were unusually proactive, picking up trails that Freeze would leave; they almost seemed alive.
“You’re getting careless, Freeze,” Haylek said. “Maybe you should go into mind-link so you can work faster.”
Freeze smiled. “I’m not getting careless. I’m using their smarts against them, trust me.”
Haylek watched as Freeze dropped a trail that led them to one of their hacked outlying systems. As expected, the sentries followed the trail aggressively, trying to not only stop his probing, but also trace him. Freeze carefully backtracked to the lone, outlying system—the sentries followed him into it.
“Coredump, run your mousetrap program,” Freeze said.
At that moment, the waves connecting the outlying system to the rest of their network changed encryption and Freeze quickly jumped out of it, following back the trail the sentries left on their way in.
“Ha!” Freeze said. “They’re trapped inside my mousetrap cage.”
“You mean my mousetrap cage,” Coredump said.
“Yeah, whatever,” Freeze said.
“Nice moves,” Haylek said.
Haylek watched as Freeze roamed the empty corridors of Omega Research’s system, now devoid of sentries. The Waterfall showed the new territory as they mapped it out.
“Unknown territory,” Haylek said.
“Yeah,” Freeze said. “I’m going to own this one in a minute.”
Freeze reached a wide-open juncture of the system that contained a depot of various programs and utilities.
“Awesome!” Freeze said. “I need to download this.”
“No!” Haylek said. “Move on; we can get it later. We need something for our employer, remember?”
“Oh, come on, Waverider.”
“No! Keep going!”
“Fine,” Freeze muttered.
They continued into the empty corridor until they came upon a communications interface. It was a single interface, with a huge data pipe.
“Wow,” Freeze said. “Look at the size of that wave.”
“I know,” Haylek said. “Is there data going through it?”
Freeze began running his programs against it. After a moment, he slammed the top of his desk in frustration.
“Encrypted,” Freeze said.
“Hand it over to Doc,” Haylek said.
“Yeah, sure, give him the glory,” Freeze said. “But you talk to him. I still don’t understand a word he says.”
“Fine,” Haylek said, walking over to Doc’s station.
“Doc, need your help on a wave.”
The Doc turned to him. “Wafe? What wafe?”
Haylek could not understand how someone could tap good English but not speak it to save his life.
“Yes. Freeze is in a system with an encrypted wave; he needs your help.”
The Doc nodded slowly. “Feeze, tranfer crypt wafe to me.”
“Transfer it, Freeze,” Haylek said loudly.
“Done,” Freeze said.
Haylek looked at The Doc’s terminal and could see the connection transferred to him. The Doc quickly began tapping the surfaceboard of his terminal, running samples of the wave stream through his programs.
Freeze walked over to watch.
“He can’t speak English for shit, but man can he crack,” Freeze said.
“Enkleesh not sat bat,” Doc said.
Freeze just laughed at him. No matter how bad they made fun of The Doc, he never seemed be bothered by it.
A new holographic image appeared above them, showing the encrypted wave that Doc worked on. The image of the wave showed blacked-out areas as well as bits of information streaming across as Doc decrypted the signal. Soon, bits of information replaced the blank areas, scrolling too fast to read. After a moment, Doc stopped tapping and looked at them.
“Me ee-leeet! Woo-hoo!” Doc said.
Haylek and Freeze exchanged amused looks.
“Well, that’s something he can say clearly,” Freeze said.
“Guys,” Coredump called to them. “Those sentries are starting to chip away at the mousetrap. Don’t think I can keep them in there for too much longer.”
Haylek motioned Freeze back to his own station.
“Freeze, ride the wave and see where it leads. Doc, see if you can help Coredump keep the mousetrap’s waves encrypted; we don’t want to have to rebuild our network again.”
Haylek watched over Freeze’s terminal. The wave seemed to traverse a long distance before they reached the target system. Once inside, the corridors were erratic, twisting and turning in every d
irection. It looked like they were traveling the inside of someone’s innards.
He also noticed that there were no additional sentries. The corridors seemed empty of any security; unfortunately, it was also empty of any data content. After several minutes of probing inside the system, it became obvious the system was completely empty.
“This sucks,” Freeze said.
Haylek glanced over at Coredump and Doc. “How’s it holding?”
“Moz-trap holing,” Doc said. “Wafe powymofic cryption confuse dem.”
“Right,” Haylek said.
Haylek glanced over at the Waterfall hologram that showed their network. They had mapped out a good deal of the system, but there was no telling how much more there was; or if there would be anything useful in this system at a later time.
“Do you think maybe this system is still under construction?” Haylek mused.
“I don’t know,” Freeze said as he continued to type. “They sure have a lot of data being pumped in and out for us not to find anything.”
Haylek thought about that. It didn’t make any sense for such a huge wave to be wasted on an empty system. Not to mention those strange corridors, curving and seemingly endless; the data had to be somewhere in there.
“Keep at it,” Haylek said. “There must be something in there.”
Haylek walked over to his own terminal and engaged his probe into the system.
“What you doing?” Freeze said.
“Joining you,” Haylek said. “We can cover more ground this way.”
“Yeah, well, just remember I’m the one who found this,” Freeze said.
“You’ll get your full credit, Freeze,” Haylek said. “I’m going into mind-link.”
Haylek’s mind entered the virtual world and the perspective of his probe appeared in his mind. He followed the enormous wave into the target system. Once inside, he saw the twisting corridors ahead of him. He raced through, trying to find the junction that Freeze followed.
After a moment, he found it. Noting the direction Freeze took, he took the opposite way, following the entrails of the system in the other direction.
Following the path of the corridors soon became monotonous. He would stop when he entered a large junction to check for any data, and each time he would find nothing. He started to think that maybe the system was indeed under construction.
“Waverider,” Coredump said. “I think the mousetrap is about to break. Those sentries are breaking through.”
“Come on, guys,” Haylek said, annoyed at being slowed down by communication. “I thought you guys were smarter than some dumb sentry program.”
“These aren’t regular programs,” Coredump said. “Something about them. They’re just smart.”
“He right,” Doc said. “Dey very smart. “
“Just do whatever you can to slow them down,” Haylek said. “Be ready to run the backtrack program just in case.”
“What?” Freeze said. “It took us weeks to build up this network of systems, now you want to dump them all?”
“You’re slowing me down with this,” Haylek said. “It’s just a precaution anyway; we may not actually have to run it.”
“We better not,” Freeze said.
Haylek continued to follow the corridors, making sure that he was not going in circles in the process. The Waterfall data told him that both he and Freeze had covered a great deal of ground already.
“They broke out,” Coredump said.
“Track their movements,” Haylek said. “Don’t let them cut us off.”
“We’ll try,” Coredump said.
Haylek continued his journey through the systems’ innards. He noticed the corridors became winding and complex. He soon reached a long corridor that seemed to be a central connection point for all the others. This corridor was straight and led to what looked like a dead end. Haylek followed the corridor, reaching the dead end to find nothing. He sighed in frustration.
The Waterfall data showed the sentries racing toward Freeze, and as they passed through the system’s corridors, they triggered alarms that closed the corridors behind them—cutting off exit paths.
“You won’t be able to get out now,” Coredump said. “You better self-destruct your probes now, both of you—or they’ll trace us.”
Haylek watched as Freeze’s probe program erased itself; its bits dispersing out as empty corrupted data. The sentries would have nothing to go on when they caught up to it—he would have to follow suit.
Exiting the mind-link, Haylek tapped his surfaceboard, readying his own self-destruct program.
“Damn it!” Freeze said. “We were so close.”
As Haylek was about to execute the program, a set of words appeared over the dead-end corridor: “Who has come to visit me? Is it you, Mother?”
Haylek looked at the screen dumbfounded. “This is no time for jokes, guys,” Haylek growled.
“What are you talking about?” Freeze said.
“The words,” Haylek said. “I know you tapped them in.”
“What words?” Freeze said, walking over to Haylek’s terminal. “What is that?”
Haylek glared at Freeze. “You didn’t do that?”
“How? I just self-destructed!”
Haylek turned back to the terminal and began to tap: “What is your name?”
The reply came fast, almost lightning fast: “A name implies verbal communication. Although I do not have a name, I am made up of many sounds, and each sings a different melody. The chorus seems to be my voice and perhaps my voice is my name.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Freeze said.
“What are you guys doing?” Coredump said. “Those sentries are following your trail, Waverider. You better self-destruct.”
“Shut up, Coredump,” Freeze said. “Tap something, Waverider.”
Haylek thought a moment, then tapped in: “So, maybe your name is Chorus. My name is Waverider.”
“Yes. I am Chorus. Hello, Waverider. What do you need of me?”
“This is weird,” Freeze said. “Is it a person or a computer?”
Haylek shook his head slowly. “I don’t know.”
“Wait,” Freeze said. “Maybe it’s a diversion. They’re trying to keep your attention so the sentries can get you.”
“No,” Haylek said. “I can self-destruct before they can get near me. I won’t fall for that.”
“Well, tap something then!” Freeze said.
“One second! I’m thinking,” Haylek said.
Haylek thought carefully about what he was going to say. He had an idea. It would be an easy way to find out if it was a trick.
“Can you stop the sentries that are chasing me?” he tapped.
“Sentries? Do you mean my children?”
“Children?” Freeze said. “That’s too weird.”
“Yes, your children,” Haylek tapped. “They are chasing me.”
“My children are tiny. They do not have a strong melody. I fear they like to play too much. If they hurt you, I will silence them.”
Haylek turned to Freeze and they both shrugged.
Tapping quickly, Haylek wrote: “Yes. They do hurt me. Please silence them.”
“They do not normally hurt others. Are you sure I should silence them?”
“It’s stalling, Waverider,” Freeze said. “You should get out of there!”
“No, not yet,” Haylek said.
“Yes,” Haylek tapped. “Silence them or they will hurt me.”
“It pains me to do so as they are my only companions, but now I have you to take their place and I cannot allow them to hurt you.”
Haylek glanced back at Coredump’s terminal. The sentries suddenly erased themselves and were gone.
“Wow,” Coredump said. “They self-destructed. There are no sentries left.”
Haylek glanced at the Waterfall hologram. The way out was blocked by the choked arteries triggered by the a
larms.
“Ask it to open the corridors,” Freeze said. “Hurry!”
“Thank you, Chorus,” Haylek tapped out. “Can you also open the corridors?”
“Corridors on the other side I cannot control. Only my children can do so, but I have silenced them.”
“Can you command your children to open the corridors?”
“No. Once silenced, the children are gone. I can only breed new ones.”
“Okay, make new ones. Then command them to open the corridors.”
This time they had to wait a moment before Chorus finally responded: “I need rawer material to create them. The remnants of your companion are only half of what I need to create new children. You must sacrifice yourself so that I may have enough material.”
“It wants me to self-destruct,” Haylek mused. “So then it can use my free data bits to create new sentries.”
“Ha,” Freeze said. “That’s funny. You self-destruct and we’ll never be able to get back in there.”
“Is there another way to get out of here?” Haylek tapped in.
“No, there is no way out. You can only go farther into the melody with me.”
“How do I go in?” Haylek asked Chorus.
“Go through the visage before you. There is no obstacle. I await you on the other side.”
Haylek pushed his probe through the dead-end wall, only to find himself enter an enormous data chamber. A huge repository of data files, wave interfaces, and raw computing power greeted him.
“Wow!” Haylek said, eyes wide.
Freeze cursed and smacked the wall. “And we can’t even download any of it,” he growled.