Layme was biting her lip almost hard enough to bring blood, and she didn't dare breathe as she watched the boot bar—the little graphic at the bottom of her screen that showed how close the program was to running as it loaded—slowly cycle up from zero. She had never written a program this big without a pre-designed base, and she wasn't used to loading taking this much time. With every second she waited, she felt the knot in her stomach grow tighter. She had never considered the consequences of failure quite as much as she was now. If this failed, it could fail one of two ways: one, the program would collapse in on itself and cause her drive to do a wipe-out of itself as a security precaution; or two, it would be ineffective, and would render all the default security on her soft drive void, allowing Lighting Storm (whoever they were) full access to everything in her system. The idea was so petrifying that she almost aborted the loading process. Before she could make the final decision to do so, however, the boot bar flashed, and was gone.
Her firewall was up and running.
The breath Layme had been holding rushed out her lungs like it was fleeing from them, and she thought she could cry she was so happy. She knew that if she hadn't still been sliding on Chröm she would be a bundle of over-stimulated nerves and shaking hands. Instead, she waited semi-patiently to see if her trap-hack would be sprung. She knew the odds were thin, but she had time before the drink wore off and she figured she might as well use it. She knew she wouldn't ever be focused enough to stage a stakeout for the mystery program again, so she figured, Why not? What can it hurt? When she tried, she found it was easy to push anxiety and slight tiredness away while on Zink's concoction, and soon she sat sedately on her bed with her legs crossed, waiting. Anyone who saw you would think you're on Nirvanas, she thought once, but that was the only real, coherent thought that passed through her head for awhile. The rest of her mind was filled with slow movement and cool colors. She found that if she closed her eyes, the same colors painted themselves on the insides of her eyelids, and as she studied them, she slipped from stoned awareness into a dreamless sleep.
- - -
She must have been hearing the sound in her sleep, because when she awoke abruptly, she did so with the sense that something important was happening. A second later she became aware of a blaring sort of sound in her ears and an unfocused overlay on her vis feed, and things fell into place for her sleep-drenched brain—this was the alarm for her trap-hack. She had fallen asleep with her screens in (again), and now someone had triggered her hack.
She felt her stomach drop down a notch as the implications of this seeped in.
In her excitement, it took her three tries to calibrate the focus on her conscreens, and when she did, her own alert overlay glowed red in her vision.
Trigger alert: program with call number “void” detected at 3:08:23. Take further action? Layme chose yes before she even finished reading the text, and the overlay collapsed into an input screen that showed what her program was doing as it as it pulled its way across the unknown connection in an attempt to find the source. She watched the lines of code and interaction scroll across her screen at a rapid pace, and she deciphered what she could through a thin veil of sleepiness and adrenaline. As she watched, part of her mind was forming the events into something more of a coherent narration.
After she had set up her firewall with its trap, it had kept tabs on all the seen and unseen interactions in her soft drive, looking for a program that had a hidden or non-real call number, because lightning-storm had hidden its call before. When it had found something that matched the trigger criteria, it had sent out an alert, waking her up and waiting for new instructions. She told it that yes, she wanted it to trace the connection and confuse the other drive, so a third program—not her firewall or her trap—could be sent in to unveil the hidden call number and be traced. If she knew the call, she knew who the lightning-storm was coming from. Everyone's drive had one that was unique; generic access to the System had been abolished in the Provisions of 2024, when everyone was required to carry identification with them at all times.
Layme watched as her trap worked to trace the triggering program and felt an excitement settle into her stomach. She had been right—Lightning Storm had been monitoring her. Her assault program—the one designed to distract the other programmer—reached the other side and kicked in, allowing her worm to follow. While Lightning Storm was trying to counteract the code that was assaulting their main screen, Layme's worm was burrowing into the drive, trying to trace its access point. As soon as the worm found the broadcasting signal, it would send back the information card from the source drive, and that card would contain everything she needed to know: sector, ring, city, and even the source's call. The last bit was the one she was most eager for. Once she had Lightning Storm's call number, a quick run though the System's search would give her the name of the person who was monitoring her drive. She waited impatiently as her worm spat back lines upon lines of useless code in its search for the info card. Finally, it seemed to have found it.
Inform parameters “geo.locator” discovered. Copying...
Layme drew in a hissing breath of triumph and felt her nails dig sharp crescent moons into her palms. She almost had him!
Geo.locator parameter 1.1-locating...
Geo.locator parameter 1.1-unpacking...
Geo.locator parameter 1.1-copying...
Geo.locator parameter 1.1-sending...
And a moment later, the first piece of information was there on her screen. Her hand clapped to her mouth in astonishment as she correlated the technical garble with actual geography.
Geo.loc 1.1 of program “lightning-storm” call “void” = 6771.05...
Sector five. Her worm was telling her lightning-storm was broadcasting from sector five. Her sector.
“Holy shit,” she breathed, the hand still covering her mouth muffling her voice into incoherency. Her mind spun as her program moved on to the next section of the geographic information.
Geo.locator parameter 1.2-locating...
Geo.locator parameter 1.2-unpacking...
Geo.locator parameter 1.2-copying...
Geo.locator parameter 1.2-sending...
She had, in the back of her mind, entertained the idea that Lightning Storm was a Government program, maybe someone from the Standards committee that had been assigned to watch her; but the Standards center was in Sector 1, in Washington, and this was from her own sector. It could be a lower Govlie, she told herself. Someone from the University maybe. Someone from the experimental section. Before she could think too hard about that, her vis feed glitched, and her attention was immediately diverted.
The boot bar, which had been loading steadily across her feed as her worm sent her the geographic information, suddenly froze, and then a moment later, picked up speed at an alarming rate. Her screen was bombarded with information, and none of it was making sense.
Geo.loc 1.2 of program “lightning-storm” call “void” = 6771.05.9475
Error. Recalculating...
Geo.loc 1.2 of program “lightning-storm” call “void” = 6771.11.9596
Error. Recalculating...
Geo.loc 1.2 of program “lightning-storm” call “void” = 6771.01.8563
Error... recalculating
“Father-tragging BASTARD!” Layme shouting, leaping up from her bed in anger. He had bypassed her loopholes and was scrambling his signal. This was not an easy thing to do—in fact, she had never done it herself, only heard rumors of others doing it. The location on her screen changed again and again, and each time it seemed to settle, her worm informed her there was an error, and it recalculated. She was about to enter the code that would sever her worm hack—cut off her link to it so that the trace she had on Lightning Storm couldn't be doubled in the other direction—when a message similar to the first time she had encountered the program appeared on her screen.
VERY NICE WORK, RAYME. I'M IMPRESSED.
So much for not letting Lightning Storm double the connection. And he was using her proggie handle. She flinched; this meant he had either broken open Tessa's drive crawler or gotten his electronic hands on one of her other programs and had managed to crack that. Both concepts made her feel vulnerable and wrong, like there were things crawling across her skin.
Who the trag are you?! she asked on impulse, not expecting an answer.
SPELTER AT YOUR SERVICE, MADAME.
It was a handle of course; every proggie had one, but it wasn't one she'd ever encountered before in school, when she had sometimes bumbled across other rudimentary hacks and firewalls in the school's microsystem.
Why are you doing this? she asked desperately. She had lost all hopes of beating Spelter; the least she could do was try and get him to talk, even if she was depending on pure luck to do it.
YOU'RE GOOD. I'VE BEEN WATCHING YOU.
Watching me do what?
DON'T PLAY DUMB. YOU'RE A SUITABLE LITTLE PROG, AREN'T YOU, RAYME?
So are you.
TOUCHE, MY LITTLE LAW-BREAKER. TOUCHE.
I'm not your goddamn anything. Pull out, she said. Proggie-speak for “get the hell out of my system.”
NICE TRY, he answered. YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING TO GET RID OF ME THAT EASILY? I COULD OUT-CODE YOU TWICE BEFORE YOU EVER EVEN SAW WHAT I WAS DOING.
Then why don't you?
HOW DO YOU THINK I REVERSED YOUR HACKS?
He had a point, and somehow that made it worse. She ignored his question and switched tactics.
What do you want?
YOU'LL SEE.
You can't turn me in without turning yourself in. Unless you're Government, but I feel like if you were, I wouldn't still be talking to you. Am I right?
YOU AREN'T WRONG.
So even when he was giving her answers, he was determined to be cryptic.
So you aren't Govlie, and you're not blackmailing me, she said, speaking more to herself than him. It always helped to organize her thoughts to say them in order to someone else.
THAT'S ABOUT THE SIZE OF IT, he agreed.
So what do you WANT? She demanded, anger flowing through her so intensely that her fingers all but slammed onto the surface of her bed, much more viciously than the movement her keyboard params needed.
YOU'LL SEE, he said again, and a moment later the conversation scrolled backwards as their first interaction had, erasing it from her drive and, she assumed, from his. Her boot bar, which had been rising and falling in percentage schizophrenically since Spelter had started scrambling his signal, finally reached 100% as her worm informed her, ERROR: Geo.locator parameters not found. Target may have been moved, renamed, or deleted. Restart?
With a sigh so listless it was hardly more than a shaky exhalation, Layme chose no. As her worm program cut off communication, she felt some strange emotion sink its claws into the lining of her stomach and claw upwards into her chest; it felt like a mixture of shame and anger. Defeat, she thought with some degree of awe. I've been defeated, and this is how it feels. He beat me. After all of that, he fucking beat me.
Breathing another small sigh and pressing her fingers to her temples, Layme was forced to admit that this was exactly what Spelter had done. She had used every bit of proggie knowledge she had acquired to build her firewall, as well as quite a bit of guesswork and sheer dumb luck, and he had ripped through it like a knife through a spiderweb. Whatever his goal was, there was nothing she could do to stand in his way. All she could do was be aware that he was out there, with her handle and her call number, biding his time.
For what? she wondered, but she couldn't think of anything. Instead, his words bounced off the tired walls of her memory.
You'll see.
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