Hi-Tech, Lo-Life
Chapter: 3
Firewalls and ICE-breakers
He sat alone on the floor in the dark of his room, the only illumination provided by the screen of his laptop. The monitor more akin to a window into an electronic world more real than his own. He was staring at the source, the wellspring, the modern day font of knowledge where Odin had cast his own eye in return for knowledge of the past and the present. Thankfully his sacrifice required no such bodily disfigurement. No, for him, that little screen scrolling with bits of data was his reality. He knew it's pathways and routes better than he knew his neighbourhood streets. He knew the areas open to the public, and the secret pathways built strictly for the corps, places one avoided at all costs if they expected to die a ripe old age. Blaine Hamilton did not expect to die of old age.
Instead there he was, surfing the electron horizon. Programs paring through binary data like a fish through water. Normally he'd take his time maybe browse around and get media fix, but right now he was on the job and looking at the entry page for Nanodyne Enterprises and it was already buzzing his system for access codes. No one was as paranoid about digital security like a Corp. He shut down the GUI and went straight for the DOS-box. The method was ancient, but Blaine had spent all of last summer tweaking his machine to run off text commands. Again, it was an ancient method of computing, but so god damn obsolete the Corps didn't even bother trying to cover from hackers using it. It took a few more seconds, but the buzz dropped off immediately and his system was shunted over to the equivalent of a main foyer on the web space. This is where things got interesting. With the practised ease of a long time hacker, Blaine slipped through the firewalls protecting the 'secretary' and ran a data search, looking for the net address of the Chairman of the Treasuries budget. Security Red-5, node 4451. He could handle that without even jacking in. Fingers flying over the keyboard to spell out his own little brand of techno-arcana Blaine sat back as he watched the screen shift, reaching beside him to grab a few animal crackers. Making sure to bite the heads off sadistically he ran his sleaze program for the next access verification query and slid past another firewall slick as Teflon. Uploading his librarian, he had it search for the budget while he kept an eye on the background code to look for any sec chatter. He was in the clear so far, and the longer it stayed that way, the better his chances of getting out of this without his brain dripping from his ears like molten wax. He liked his grey matter just the way it was thank you kindly. When his librarian came back with the file, he downed it faster than shots at that frat party he went to last week and ran a few permutations to scramble any electric trail he may have left behind before ditching the node. "Now then... Let's see what we can see."
The file itself was encrypted fairly heavily and it would take a while to crack. Not that he was in any rush, the easy part was done in getting the file. All he had to do now was trace the blacklisted funds, break into a VR node, slip or break his way through the ICE and get the prize for the Brotherhood in return for a hefty sum of Cred. Opening the safecracker program, Blaine left it to chip away at the encryption while he got something more substantial than animal crackers to eat. Setting his laptop to the side he got up on creaking knees and arched backwards, cracking his back loudly with a groan. Sliding his AR goggles from his head and running a hand through his unruly and wild brown hair, Blaine found his eyes squinting against the darkness of his shop. His gaze returned by the cracked lenses and optics of drone parts, cybernetic implants, and gun scopes. Each piece of equipment precariously pilled on top of each other amid towering stacks of books, many technical and scientific. Though eclectic, the vast assortment boasted little dust, subtly bellying it's well used nature.
Not bothering to turn on the lights Blaine made his way to kitchen too open the all to empty fridge and grab a soy beer and leftover chinese. Popping the top of the carton, he grabbed the synthetic chopsticks, and slid it into the ancient microwave he had scrounged and fixed up. It still looked beaten up and disabused, but at least now it worked. He leaned against the dingy counter top, flicking through AR feeds displayed and drawing a cigarette from a pack in his back pocket. It was bent and squished, but the hacker barely paid it any mind as he lit it and took in the cathartic nicotine. Slowly letting it out through his nostrils to let it drift and halo about him in the gloom. By the time he had grabbed his leftover take out, beer and cigarette and returned to his laptop, the safecracker was almost finished with the encryption. Considering he was in no rush, Blaine sat back and kicked his feet up onto the table as he ate. He was just finishing off his beer when his I/O node alerted him to an incoming call. Sighing, Blaine plunked the cigarette butt into the bottle and sat up straighter.
"Accept the call." He groused, running a hand through his unruly brown hair and straightening his red tie before the tridscreen came to life displaying a very irate Eric Lensher. Never a good sign.
"Eric, how good to see you again." He lied, forcing a nonchalant smile to his face even as he internally groaned. He did not want to deal with his current employer right now.
"This had better be a secured line if we're going to use names Hamilton." The older mutant replied, his voice haughty and cold as he leaned back into an office chair. Blaine just snorted and shrugged dismissively. With Magneto you had to play along, match the man's arrogance with dismissal or he'd never give you space to work.
"And just who do you think you're talking to? If I can splice my way through corporate webspace you think I'd have trouble securing a fucking comm line? Give me some credit here Mag, you came to me after all." He grinned, even as he felt his stomach twist and lurch. He was playing things close to his chest and he knew it.
"That's right Hamilton, I did. I came to you with payment for a service, a service I have not yet received. And you well know that I am not a man known for my patience in these matters. When do I get my data?"
"Chill out boss, I got your paydata right here. Decryption takes time you know." Blaine grinned, watching as the safecracker's progress bar hit 100% before he brought the file onto the vidscreen. Displaying it both for himself and for Magneto. Scrolling down through the mass of bureaucratic budgeting before he started to hit the blacklisted projects, the hacker highlighting them for his employer. "See, Nanodyne is pouring a tonne of cred into these blackbook projects. They're working on something big, and if we just correlate the expenditures to some of the products they've been ordering we can get a fairly decent idea of what their up to. Job done."
He sat back and stretched out once again as Eric perused the files, once again kicking his feet up onto the desk as he waited. Internally sighing as he watched the older mutants face scrunch in disappointed frustration. Looks like he wasn't off the hook yet.
"I didn't pay you for idea's or vague guesses Hamilton, I paid you for hard, concrete data. This is just aimless supposition. Until you get me something incontrovertible, you're not getting another cred." Eric looked angry, and when the founder of The Brotherhood was put off, you didn't want your neck on the chopping block. Blaine knew enough about the man to know he wasn't just fucking around.
"Look, Eric. I know what you want, but that stuffs buried so deep under corporate ICE* that even I'm not willing to go spelunking for it. It's just not worth the risk of getting fried. That's black for a reason, the node technically doesn't exist, and likely the node's unregistered. So even if I do make it there,there's no guarantee they won't just blow the system. It's common practise to keep this sort of thing on physical back ups."
"I don't care. I don't care how you do it, or how much it's gonna cost me. But you will get me that data Blaine, or you won't have to worry about getting fried by corpsec. The Brotherhood will be paying you a visit. Do we have an understanding?"
Yep... He was fucked. "Yeah yeah... I'll get on it. Oh by the way, if this goes to shit. You're paying for the fucking funeral." Blaine growled as he shut the call down. "Ya fucking asshole."
Still, the hacker slumped in his chair and turned to face his laptop, looking back into that window to his digital reality. Reaching over to his computer, he pulled out a fiber-optic band ending with a plug and drew it out with a sigh. "This is the shit I get for working with terrorists." He bemoaned as he slid the plug into the datajack in his left temple, giving himself up to the powerful neural computer lodged in his grey matter. He made himself as comfortable as he could while the physical world slowly bled out of his senses to be replaced with electronic data translated into physical sensation by the computer nestled in his brain.
Soon enough, the technopaths eyes closed, the darkness of his room replaced with a static burst of colour and fractal images that hung three dimensionally against his eyelids. The electron horizon extending into infinity on a grid work of connections and data-lines. Each node represented as a physical object, the common, poorly secured geometric shapes of everyday use propagated amongst the towering forms of Corporate networks. The entire world wide web stretched out before him, though his interest was held solely by the five revolving and interconnected orbs of the Nanodyne logo in the distance. With a wave of his digitally represented hand he was transported to just outside the node. His access barred by the impossibly high barrier of coding that was the firewall.
Blaine held there for a few precious microseconds, letting the visual data filter into his mutated cortex, mentally running permutations and calculations until he was mentally un-weaving the coded tapestry, unravelling the fine line of data until he reached out and inserted a string of nonsensical data into the firewall. Tearing a seam through the perimeter just large enough to for him to slip through, the rest of Net closing off behind him like a portcullis slamming into place. He was in. Before he knew it the towering orbs representing the Nanodyne corporate node cascaded around him in pixelated bites and bytes, coalescing around him into a aesthetically bare, white reception hall that seemed to stretch off into forever as a hall of countless doors, and more than a few digital avatars not unlike his own busying about. Worker bee's to Nanodyne's hive.
The highest quality node's took realistic programming to new levels, sort of like a sign of social status. And as he walked along the tiled floor of the node, and heard the echoing footsteps around him, Blaine was unsurprised to find that a member of the corporate council went so far. Ignoring the A.I. Receptionist at the gilded marble desk before him, Blaine advanced along the hallway and subtly rerouted a trace initiated against his unknown IP address. Opening his tool bar in his peripheral vision, the hacker also ran a quick analyze, looking for the connecting portal to the node he was looking for. It'd be unregistered, but sometimes it was easier to find what didn't belong.
In the end it took a precious few seconds, wasting away the edge that his sleaze program afforded him. It could only hide his signature for so long. Accessing the portal link, Blaine sighed in the real world as once again the node fell away around him before convalescing as a massive library. The plaque over the doorway listing this as R&D. The bright flare of pain stabbing him between the lobes of his brain let him know that he'd tripped the ICE*. True to form as he rolled forward and turned around, there was a librarian running a combat program. The thin black stiletto in it's hand promising to burn out his cerebral cortex with biofeedback.
Thankfully Blaine had his own combat mods installed on his system, and pulled them up along with a browse program. The browse wisp shot off from his avatar rather shakily, a sign that the ICE was degrading his systems as well. But he only had to last long enough to find and download the paydata before jacking out.
Tossing himself to the side as the librarian went in with a jab, Hamilton drew his own little bit of techno-arcana in the form of a baseball bat, nails protruding from the digitalized wood.
"Security breach in R&D section 9" The librarian monotoned, setting off the node's alarm, immediately slowing the connection Blaine held. Spiking him with lag as he rushed the Librarian and took a swing for it. Degraded or not, the digital entity could not hold up against his programming and the librarian disintegrated into bits of binary even as he could see more swarming him. He took off running, the hacker realizing that with the security measures enabled, he only had so long before the corporate security hackers showed up. And Hamilton did not want to see what Corporate resources could do against his home built programs. The only good news was that the Browse software had begun the download. All he had to do was make sure he survived long enough to finish it.
So... I just wanted to apologize to everyone about the extensive delay in chapters and to assure you all that I am not dead. My computer was however. And because it was under warranty the shop decided to take as long as possible to remedy that. However the long the wait, it has been returned to me as wholesome as Lazarus returning from the tomb. So expect to see more of your favourite Lo-Life's and their Corporate counterparts. Cause' this is where the action starts to pick up.
ICE: Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics.
