Tinker
- 26 minutes read - 5406 wordsSamikai’s forearm cuff vibrated, sifting her from sleep. A soft dryness caked the inside of her mouth, so soft it even seemed sweet, as if some treat had evaporated, leaving dust as she slept. The thought didn’t last, Sam scolded herself for not pulling her filter scarf up and over her mouth and nose before falling asleep. A cough expelled some of what had seeped inside during the night, water from a bottle washed some more away, an attempt to drown the noise of any future coughing. Sam had been lucky last night, but still had to be careful. Those punks had nearly caught her.
The cuff vibrated again, a faint green illuminating the darkness with the time, 05:47. The world would awaken soon. Pressing a button on the cuff, the screen displayed several lines of code, none of the sensors placed having been tripped by motion during the night. Hitting another button on the cuff, it lit up, showing the small room, barely tall enough to lay down in. Removing the chargepack from the cuff, it was returned to its place in the backpack. Pushing aside one of the bricks, Sam could see out into the unfinished building that she had called home last night.
Carefully, Sam placed brick after brick softly down outside of the makeshift wall enclosing the room, until there was enough space to crawl out. The cuff vibrated, showing that a motion sensor had been tripped, the one right outside of the room. Walking over, Sam pulled it down from the wall, turning it off. A moment later, it read “offline” on the cuff, vibrating again. Sam only had enough to deploy three of these, finding a place to sleep had been difficult last night.
Dusting clothes off made a feeling of marginal cleanliness return, but it was the sun stretching from behind the mountains, turning their peaks yellow, that brought calm to Sam. A new day. Walking around the edges of the top of the three-story building, Sam noticed very little movement. Facing the sun and Otuzco, she breathed in deeply, the feeling of the cool morning seemed to expel any remaining stagnant air from her lungs. After some light stretching, Sam descended the stairs, finding the two remaining motion sensors, each fitting easily in the palm of her hand before sliding back into the backpack. No one had come into the building during the night, a great relief.
The door on the ground level was locked, which meant Sam was exiting the same way she had entered last night, through a window and down the bamboo scaffolding erected for the construction of the building. Making sure no one was around, Sam slid down the thin wooden poles till the ground reached up in comfort. Stepping against the brick wall, she moved along it until the openness of the road provided a comforting number of routes to maneuver. Unfortunately, Sam couldn’t go home, too much noise would be made giving away the hidden location.
Thankfully, it would not be long before the street vendors would be out cooking food, and breakfast would be readily available. The snack before bed was missed by both tongue and stomach. Sam decided to walk to the Pelican, a small diner alongside of a large circle in the road. Mom had mentioned the town never used to have such large roads when they had ventured to Trujillo, as children. But, that was in the past, and the past was gone.
The Pelican had landed long before the buildings around her, and seemed stubborn to take off, in relation. The one-story building shed its plaster feathers showing the brick skin beneath in several locations, old paint flaking off everywhere, except for its name, which was painted overly regularly enough to reassure patrons it was still open. An apartment complex had been built around the back of it, the driveway for which circled behind the small diner to drop off renters who would never be caught dead dining at the Pelican. Trees had been planted along the driveway to keep the old brick and plaster from reflecting in the shiny glass surface of the new complex.
Lilly walked in front of Sam and squeezed her arm, guiding her to a table. She had known Sam’s mother, perhaps they had even been friends. Once Sam was seated, Lilly retreated back to the kitchen to make her the usual, sopa de mariscos. The soup was rumored to wake the dead, although Sam had never seen it tried. It was definitely a good energy boost. The broth was strong, the seafood had been cooking in it for hours on end. In the center of the bowl, on top of a pile of small shellfish protruding form the broth, sat a small crab. Thumbing the small medallion around her neck, she said a prayer to the virgin.
Sam pulled out a small screen and sat it front of her as she ate. The cuff on her forearm became a keypad. The apartment complex was state of the art, it had only opened five years prior. A couple of years ago, Sam had compromised the network. A couple of other hackers had carved out spaces for themselves, but were in jeopardy of drawing attention, so she secured the network for herself. The patrons were far better off, their systems secure, no one snooping in on them. It had been remarkably easy, no one suspected a girl in a uniform returning from school walking right past security. After that, it was simply a matter of learning the building, its security, and gaining access to the telecom room. She setup a small server and programmed the firewall so she could get to it whenever and from wherever she wanted, now it was SAMnet. The best part was that she could access the apartment complex wireless from the Pelican, away from the security cameras.
Logging into her systems, Sam found that no alerts had gone off. Just to make sure, she checked on the cameras inside and outside of her home, along with the camera inside of the telecom room in the apartment complex. Nothing had stirred, her life remained hidden, safe. Checking the logs, she found everything was as expected, her data had been backed up to Switzerland, for safe keeping, and her accounts still accessible. Dealing with cryptocurrency was somewhat of a pain, especially when trying to convert it into sol for everyday use, but it was how she had learned to survive. It sure as hell beat begging or stealing.
Tunneling her connection through Sweden, Sam then connected to a remote server she paid to have anonymously hosted in Estonia. From that system, she tunneled through Paris and logged into Internet Relay Chat (IRC), connecting to a private server where she and several friends communicated. The MOTD (message of the day) had changed: “Welcome back, play nice.” It was a warning. The only one in the room was Raegan. Sam immediately disconnected from IRC and stared at the terminal in front of her, while taking another sip of broth. This was bad.
The good news was that she could let the wallet setup for the Estonia system just die, it didn’t have much in it. She destroyed the logs on the system, although it probably didn’t matter, she didn’t control the hardware the system was on. Then, she ran a script to burn the system to the ground, she could never come back, there was no telling who had compromised what, but she had to figure out what had happened. Not from here, though, this was too close to home.
Closing down the system, she packed everything back into her backpack. Sam calmed down a little to think, finishing her meal slowly, taking the time to suck all the sustenance she could from each tiny sea creature. She had saved the crab for last, its shell would remain atop the pile of shells, the king on his throne. Placing down cinco sol next to the bowl, she nodded to Lilly, who waved, and left.
It was easy enough to snag a bus meandering about the circle in front of the Pelican, a man had jumped out of the door and ushered her inside the over-packed vehicle for a single sol. Sam had always been curious about these buses, before she regularly used them, where the usher always jumped off and seemingly pleaded for more people to ride. At times, they even seemed to catch people who did not need a ride, but were embarrassed or harassed enough to just squeeze in. Occasionally, she would even see someone pay just to ride a single block.
The ride downtown was not tremendously long, and Sam jumped off a little early. She was going to the Universidad de Trujillo. While the bus would have taken her the entire way, the mural on the walls surrounding the university was beautiful. It was a good excuse to make sure no one was following her. Pulling two small devices from her backpack, she also reached down and picked up a small stone. One at a time, she threw the stone and the devices over the wall. After a few seconds, the micro-quads spun up and lifted into the air a good thirty feet above her.
Their job was simple, fly above and watch her, following a beacon in her backpack. Not only could she view their cameras on her cuff, they were programmed to recognize patterns that followed her, other people. Sure, she would have to make turns and stop often to root out false positives, but these little guys had saved her more than once. Pretty impressive for something that fit in the palm of her hand, although everything was always getting smaller.
The mural told the story of where the people of Trujillo had descended from. Just outside of town, decades ago now, Chan Chan had been unearthed, long buried in the silty sands of this strip of desert bunched between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes mountains. They had been the last peoples conquered by the Inca before the Europeans had arrived, a proud tribe of short, but fierce, warriors. On the other side of the city, two massive temples had also been erected, one for the sun and the other for the moon. The Spanish had dug down through one of the temples, partially destroying a beautiful painted wall, in a vain attempt to find gold. Chan Chan was one of Sam’s favorite places to go, she loved sitting next to the oasis inside of the high walls, the hum of electricity banished from its tall earthen architecture.
The forearm cuff vibrated, drawing her attention to a couple of patterns following her. From above they looked like street kids, maybe even the ones that had chased her last night, probably looking to steal a backpack from seemingly easy prey. Before they could close on her, she ducked through one of the gates and into the university, flashing an ID she had bought from a student a few months prior to the security guard as she passed, disappearing into the crowd of students pouring in.
The university was a bastion of peace, holding the chaos of the city at bay. It also had a plethora of unsecured wired connections, as well as a decent wireless network. Sam wished she could attend, but she had not been to school in years, since before she was a teenager. While she had not compromised the network, she had gained access to the wireless and even setup a wireless bridge from an exposed wired port she found on top of the Languages building, little more than an antenna and a solar panel. She put a motion tumbler in the box, as well, which would send an alert if anyone picked up the box. Taking a seat on a bench in the path of the bridge signal, she recalled the micro-quads and connected to the network.
Once she figured out where the wired port was connected, she might be able to reprogram the switch to allow her to delve further into the network. For now, it gave her access to the Internet from a location that could not easily be traced. Someone would have to trace her connection to that port, follow that wire to the roof, climb up there and find the antenna, which she would clearly see from where she was.
Different protocols existed with different friends, none matching the other. As such, if one was exposed, it would not expose the others. After tunneling her connection through Cairo, Sam checked an encrypted email account she used to connect with bKenn, but he hadn’t sent anything. Rerouting her connection through Los Angeles, she checked an old EZBoard forum, a remnant from the first age of the Internet, where many older gamers used to connect to play online games with one another. And, there it was, a message inviting people who had played EverQuest at the turn of the century to find one another again, on a private server. Listed among the many names this person had remembered, was her own character’s name, Eppie.
The game was over thirty years old by now. When people began playing EverQuest, they used modems, not that they were needed anymore. Sam had a modem in her backpack, but it was not easy to get, and the electronics store owner looked at her like she was insane when she asked for him to find her one. The game had only died a few years ago, but fans started up some private servers of their own and continued to play. While the communication in the game was not secured, the odds of someone looking for them there were exceptionally unlikely, which is why they had chosen it as a backup. In addition, creating an account and avatar could be done completely anonymously. Sam had even spent some time playing the game, it was old and outdated, but there was a reason it still had such a loyal fanbase.
When she logged in she checked to see if he was on.
who all kolchak
1 Player Found
Kolchak Warrior (level 50) Misty Thicket
She knew where he wanted to go. As a Wizard, she could teleport right to him. When she arrived, they both ran to Runneye, a low level goblin dungeon in a connected zone. As this was ongoing, Sam monitored the connection coming in for EverQuest and split a copy off to another program, showing her everything in the game on a small map. While this was considered cheating by the game’s manufacturer and most private servers, no one could tell what you were doing unless you admitted it, a flaw in the original game’s programming. Once they were at the bottom of the dungeon, she checked the other program to make sure they were alone, and finally spoke, in open chat. Whispering between one another was recorded by the server, open chat was not.
You say, “Hey, Kolchak, what’s going on?”
Kolchak says, “Hey, Eps. Raegan started asking questions about you in IRC, not the sort of questions Raegan would ask. Not really the sort of questions any of us would ask.”
You say, “He’s compromised?”
Kolchak says, “Seems to be. Not sure if it was him or not. If it was, someone else was maybe telling him what to type?”
You say, “Fuck.”
Kolchak nods his head.
You say, “What questions did they ask?”
Kolchak says, “He wanted to know the last time you were on. Also, he started asking questions about where you were from, what languages you spoke, stuff like that.”
You say, “What did people tell them?”
Kolchak says, “Bullshit: someone said Taiwan, another China. Hell, we don’t know where you live, anyway. That’s not the worst, though.”
You say, “No?”
Kolchak says, “bKenn went dark. No idea if he did it himself or if someone got to him.”
You say, “Not good. Any ideas?”
Kolchak says, “Gotta be GNet.”
You say, “GlobalNet was over a year ago.”
Kolchak says, “Yeah, but there’s nothing else we’ve all been involved with.”
You say, “I bet Rae opened his damn mouth, got himself caught somehow.”
Kolchak says, “Doesn’t matter now, they are probably on to all of us. To be honest, I’m surprised they didn’t find you first. You had to have been more exposed than any of us, still do not know how you did what you did till this day.”
You say, “Still worth it, even if we get caught.”
Kolchak says, “Exposing the greatest worldwide surveillance system ever created? Yeah, I’d agree.”
You say, “Plans? You going ghost?”
Kolchak says, “Already burned my stuff at home and walked away. Better to go ghost than be ghosted.”
You say, “Yeah, well, I don’t even have a home.”
Kolchak says, “Probably why they haven’t caught you. Speaking if which, how did you do it?”
Eppie smiles.
You say, “Just walked through the front door.”
Kolchak says, “Fine, keep your secrets. Burn what you have, though. Start over, somewhere new. Maybe we’ll run into one another, again. Thanks for the long nights.”
Eppie hugs Kolchak.
Kolchak sat down in front of her on the screen and camped out of the game, disconnecting from the server. Sam did the same with Eppie, knowing she would probably never see him, again. But, as long as that server existed, they would be there, next to one another, their coordinates intertwined deep in the goblin dungeon, the Warrior and the Wizard.
Sam hadn’t been lying when she told him she had walked right through the front door. She never should have told him that. If he was paying attention, he would know that at some point she was in Lima, where GlobalNet had been knowingly breached. GNet was a good idea, even started out altruistically. It was a response to the Great Information Plague that began in the second decade of the twenty-first century.
Nations had been toppled, millions of lives lost even, as misinformation was weaponized and people and countries turned against one another. GNet was backed by what power remained in the United Nations, free satellite Internet where no one was anonymous, where misinformation was limited. It became more than just propaganda, the first concern of many. It was used to track people, and some countries even used it to purge dissidents. Law enforcement even had access, the abuses covered up. Sam and her friends had made the truth undeniable, shown people how and where they were tracked, what they had given away.
Sam was a student of history, if anything. Sure, people were scared. And, when they are scared, they turn to anything that promises them security. If one looks at the presidential acceptance speeches of 1938, during the Great Depression, prior to World War II, a hundred years ago, they were strikingly similar. One could easily mistake the words of Roosevelt for those of Hitler. People were frightened, starving, even, and that made them malleable. One need only shape them in the right manner, and they could rule or even destroy the world. GlobalNet would have been used to shape the world into scared, compliant populations with no will.
For some time, people had wondered when the next plague would happen, when the world would balance the scales. Many had assumed it would have been another disease, others climate change. Misinformation had surprised them all. The vaccine was supposed to be GlobalNet, but it was also the enemy. People needed the capacity to think for themselves, to challenge authority, to know what freedom was in order to have the will to fight for it. Sam had reminded them of their need for freedom, even if that meant returning to the Internet.
Reason movements began shortly after, where science and rational thinking were championed. The cure to the plague was not GlobalNet, it was education, an informed and rational populace capable of thinking for themselves. GNet may have controlled the populace, given them security, but someone could have found a way to take control of those people. Sam was sure of it, they had stopped the coming of a second plague of information, one that would have been far worse than the first. And, that was why this was all worth it.
She was naive, though, she understood that now. They had not escaped unscathed, they had been hunted this entire time. Looking across the campus, she wondered if anyone here knew what she had done. Trujillo was not Lima, but it was not exactly far from it, either. She had to make a decision, should she ghost like Kolchak and bKenn? She had some of the tools with her, she always did, her backpack had been her protection for so long. The cryptocurrency was enough to move and disappear, but she would need to cash some in before running. At least, there was no one to say bye to, except perhaps for Lilly. Sam pulled the medallion from her shirt, looking at the virgin, remembering what her mother had said to her, “She will protect you.” If only her mother had kept the medallion, before traveling.
Yes, she had to leave. Conrado would use her cryptocurrency to buy stuff for his store, pay her about half what it was worth in sol, that is where she would start. His electronics boutique was on the way home, she might as well be efficient about it. Disconnecting from the network, she pushed the tablet back into her pack and stood up. Everything seemed normal, students walking back and forth between class, the noise of the city barely audible outside of the walls. She walked across campus, making sure to leave from a gate different from the one she entered.
Conrado had been good to Sam, although, at first, he was suspicious. A teenage girl in his shop usually meant trouble, a thief trying to score something. She convinced him to give her a shot, first by proving she could repair electronics, and finally by purchasing something with crypto. He made more profit from her than his regular customers, she was sure of that. If he ever made enough money, he had even promised her a job, fixing stuff in the back for a cut.
The shop was tucked away on an off-street, next to a pharmacy, where there was just enough traffic to provide cover, but also sparse enough to pay attention to everyone. Three exits existed, one of which took her back to the main road, another toward her home, and the third to the Pelican. As she approached Conrado’s boutique, she noticed someone else standing behind the counter with Conrado. He had promised he would hire her if he business allowed it, and now he had hired someone else? The blood pumped faster in veins, she had longed for something more stable.
She was leaving, she told herself, it didn’t matter anymore. Taking a few deep breaths, she looked up and noticed a new sign on the window, plastered among the others. “No Modems Here,” it read, in bright red marker. Glancing back at the man, she realized he was not Peruvian. Hispanic, but definitely not a local, the native blood was strikingly absent. Conrado caught her gaze, glanced briefly over at his new employee, and shook his head back and forth ever so slightly.
Sam walked away. He had put the sign up just for her. Conrado had told her she was the only one to ever ask for a modem. It was a warning, that man was there for her. They had found her. She definitely had to go ghost. Maybe one day she would track down Raegan, figure out what had happened, if he had betrayed them. But, none of that mattered now. As soon as she was around the corner from the store, Sam deployed the micro-quads. She had no idea whether or not anyone had been watching the store from the outside.
As she walked quickly along the sidewalk, she checked her systems. Nothing had been tripped, no alarms had gone off. She checked the alley camera outside the entrance to her place, nothing was stirring. She turned and walked down the alley, the micro quads floating higher above to get a better vantage point, their default location whenever she was here. Disengaging the latch, beneath the staircase rising up the side of the building, she shifted the wall. It only moved enough for her to squeeze through, and she shut it immediately.
The gap had been there since the house had been built. She had moved in a few years back, when there was only the area beneath the staircase, a place to sleep. Fashioning a sliding wall hadn’t been too difficult. Over the first couple of years, she slowly dug down. Now, there was a small staircase leading down and enough room for a makeshift bed and desk. She had tapped into the electricity of the house, only using it minimally. Of course, she had taken over their wireless network, but used it purely for entertainment, education, and news, on an entirely separate system from the devices she carried with her.
She packed up some spare money, enough to keep her from starving and even grab a bus out of town. A backup data card, a fresh change of clothes, a couple of different passports, a retractable yagi antenna, and a spare recharge pack with a solar panel all fit into her backpack. She would leave the statue of the Virgin, it would not fit and she had the medallion, anyway. As she was stuffing some food bars into her a pocket on her cargo pants, her cuff vibrated warning. Making sure the door above was closed, she touched the cuff to see what was going on.
A couple of kids had been following her, they made their way down the alley, the micro-quads watching them from high. She could hear them moving in the alley above. It was so stupid to come home so quickly, there was no way out of here. They moved down the alley, walking right past the hidden entrance, as so many had before. Sam breathed out, realizing she had been holding her breath.
Before leaving, she made sure to pull the operating system card from the computer there, just in case someone found her place. No need to give them any leads. At the top of the stairs, she checked the alley camera, it was clear. She slid the wall aside and shimmied outward, but her backpack became caught in the small entrance with its new bulk. Her wrist vibrated.
In front of Sam, the kids emerged, looking back down the alley, spotting her. One pointed and they both came running toward her. She was still stuck, but grabbed an electropuck from her belt and threw it in between them. The puck activated, connecting blue electricity between itself and nodes she had hammered in the wall on either side of the alley. It was mostly harmless, might tingle a little, but it stopped them in their tracks, bars of electricity arcing between the walls.
Sam slammed her fist against the latch of the backpack, retracting the straps and feeling it drop from her shoulder. She caught it as it fell, shimmied out through the door and pulled the pack after her. Giving the kids the middle finger, she ran in the opposite direction. The electropuck would only last another minute, and they might realize it was harmless before that. Nothing like having both street thugs and the government on your tail. She was sure the electropuck would only convince those kids they wanted everything she had in the backpack.
Hitting the street at the end of the alley, she turned right and ran toward the Pelican, throwing the backpack over her shoulder and clasping the straps in front of her. The micro-quads zipped above, following her. At the very least, the street punks would not be able to follow her into the the apartment complex, if she could just make it that far. Even though she was not dressed overly well, she had an access code for a side door. From the systems room, she could check all the cameras in the building and make sure things were clear before she made a run for it.
As she approached the circle, the kids came out of an alley right in front of her, her wrist cuff vibrating warning just in time to allow her to stop. She tripped the first one and the second kid went tumbling over the first as he fell to the ground. She ran for the Pelican, dodging cars that cared little for crosswalks. Running in the front entrance, she found Lilly, looked her in the eye and nodded an out-of-breath gracias. The kids were coming.
Running through the kitchen and out the backdoor, she ran across toward the side entrance. A van pulled up in front of her, men in suits piling out. She recognized the man from Conrado’s, but there were others, not Hispanic. Dodging left, she ran for the main entrance. Shouts emerged from behind her, and the micro-quads sent alarms to her cuff. They were chasing her.
She tried shouting as she approached the main doors, but nothing came out. Pulling on the door, it remained locked as the man inside behind the desk looked at her blankly. Another man in a suit was standing next to him. Someone grabbed her from behind. She pulled her legs up and kicked the door, toppling him over backwards. From the ground, she could see both the street punks and the men in suits converging on her. They were working together, they may have been this entire time.
Slowly, they walked as the man held her, anchoring her to the ground. She let her breath slow, allowed her lungs to regain their composure, and then reached behind her to the backpack. Sliding down a small hidden zipper, she reached inside and found the ripcord. They had her surrounded. She opened her mouth to scream and pulled.
Her chest was filled with reverberations, seemingly pushing the very air from her lungs. A subtle numbing pulsed through her. The man released her immediately, those surrounding her all collapsed to the ground, clasping their hands to the sides of their heads. Glass shattered all around, the doors, the windows, everything three stories up came crashing down. Sam pulled the filter scarf over her face and tucked herself into the man that had been holding her, seeking whatever protection she could. Once the glass settled, she stood up, the pulsing still reverberating through her as the sonic weapon continued its assault.
Everyone she could see was on the ground, writhing in agony. She had tested the device, out in the middle of no where. She remembered the feeling of it coursing through her body, the silt and sand dancing all around her. Now, here, the people could not move, curled up, eyes closed with teeth clenched, as the shattered glass around them vibrated in a symphony all its own.
From the back door of the Pelican, Lilly watched, holding her ears, but not in pain. Sam snagged the wallet of the man who had grabbed her, and walked over to the van, shards of glass dancing in a circle that followed around her. Inside the van was some computer equipment, and a screen that had her picture displayed. Pulling out another electropuck, she slapped it to the side of the computer equipment. A few seconds later, it went off, destroying the equipment, causing the screen to go black.
The sound would abate shortly, and people would recover a few minutes after that, at least to the point where they could move around. She did not have long. It was time to go ghost, but she couldn’t leave Peru before doing one last thing. She would travel into the mountains to Otuzco and she would finally visit the Virgin de La Puerta, traveling the very road upon which her mother had perished. She would ask the Virgin questions she had not been able to ask her mother: why couldn’t she speak, why couldn’t she hear? More importantly, why did the virgin protect her and not her mother?