Edited
60: Preoccupation
Endurance, free return trajectory; another flight-deck night watch-
He controlled a surge of something dark and ferocious, because he had to. Far too many lives depended now upon absolute, iron calm... when pretty much everything had gone wrong.
Time differential slowing his strikes… emergencies in deep space and on two separate continents… and a missing female that shouldn't have mattered so much.
Damn it.
Back to business as time and schedule allowed. It was a rare computer that could transmit across 40 million miles of badly warped spacetime. One fast, sleek and stripped down. His own rig, the International Rescue boxes and certain high-speed government mainframes qualified, but NASA's did not, forcing John to choose his paths with great care.
Okay… his overripe hacker friend had almost certainly been set on the trail by someone else. So, find out who waited at the other end of the leash, and maybe find Drew.
Remotely accessing the attack box's registry and irc connection, John began tracking its click trail and messages. Who, besides WorldGov, had the hacker contacted? What sites had he visited, and why?
Turned out to be quite a sobering list:
Anarchick… at her InterBank cover address….
Princeton University….
NASA.gov….
About fifty pr0n sites…
… And a single, unsent message to International Rescue, asking for help and threatening blackmail.
John looked again through webcam eyes at the bloated thing revealed by shifting monitor light. He might have felt sorrier for the dead hacker if the guy hadn't so obviously been hired to track John, himself, down. Extending a little further, this meant that International Rescue was in danger, and possibly the mission, as well.
"Sucks to be you, mister," John muttered, when he was able to get back to searching (Scott had finally replied, and the solar panels needed reprogramming). "Should have made that final call, or found a safer street to play on."
Whatever, J. Random Hacker was well past answering questions. There was that trusted server, though, which he could attempt to crack once the day's 10,000 course and vehicle maintenance details were seen to. Never an idle moment, in space. (Like the movie put it: No one can hear you scream… because they don't have time.)
At this point, John Tracy inhabited two worlds: a tense and distracted 'daytime' existence, and an energized, over-caffeinated nightscape. The others might have been concerned for him, but their pilot hardly noticed, for, bit and byte, things were falling into place.
The cracked server led to a 'misappropriated' government-issue computer; a bandwidth-hogging, extremely powerful rig operated by someone who had no business on the internet if he was going to leave that many ports open. Of course… it might have been a 'honey pot'. John kept a few of those, himself. Nothing like a seemingly helpless computer in the hands of an apparent moron, to encourage and catalog exploits.
But this didn't have that feeling…
...And what he would have given, just then, for a cyberlink! Denice had the trick of making those, enabling direct interface with the world inside, adeeper look achievable no other way.
He'd have called her, but worry stayed his hand. What if, by hitting irc to Denice or Rick, John flushed them out of hiding as Drew had done to him?
No; for his friends' sake, better safe than jump too soon.
He recalled a certain rainy day, back in his Princeton dorm room. Drew had sat cross-legged on his bed. John lay on his back in a pair of jeans; an open ThinkPad balanced atop his chest and his head on the girl's lap. She'd taken a pack of fine-point markers out, and was carefully, intricately drawing upon his shoulders, chest and arms.
(Because she didn't cut herself when she was able to 'graffiti' him, and it burned up nervous energy. He didn't mind. Tee shirts and long sleeves hid her art work until the ink wore off.)
DNC was due back from class at any moment, but Rick was already at the computer, probing that weirdly autonomous web site. John tracked his progress wirelessly, typing out occasional messages on a private irc channel. Would have been just as easy, maybe, to speak across the whole five feet that separated them, but messaging was cooler.
"Hold still," Drew told him aloud, drawing trace lines, chips and solder dots all over the left side of his rib cage. Fortunately, he'd never really been ticklish, nor fully understood what the word even meant. His reply appeared on both screens.
"Krypt0ni3n shrugs: ok"
Naturally, this confused Rick, hunched like a fidgety meerkat in his beloved blue Cubs jacket.
"Backslash punches K: jo, close a few apps D00d- ur losing it & she pwns ur 4$$"
Uh-huh. Yet another early afternoon flame war in the making.
"Krypt0ni3n punches back: STFU no she doesnt"
Anarchick could see both screens from her upright position on the bed. She did not, however, have a keyboard of her own handy. As she completed drawing the characters for a particularly nasty virus, the girl said,
"Rick, if I have to go over there and I lose my flow, your face is going through a wall. Without help from quantum tunneling, either. Zip it."
"Whutev," Backslash replied, hastily dropping the subject. Wise move.
…And she did not 'own' him. She just… mattered. He didn't mind being graffitied; he did mind seeing her arms wrapped in strips of bloodied bed sheet. So, all she could do was open cans and heat strawberry pop-tarts… the fact that it was for him she did it still meant something. But…
"You're right, man," Backslash said aloud, disengaging from the cyberlink to look over one shoulder at John and Drew, "It has gotten bigger. Like wireless coverage is spreading cyberspace outside of the boxes, or something. Looks to be organizing itself, too. Think anyone else could get in?"
With a murmured word to Drew, John put aside the laptop and got to his feet.
"Maybe," he allowed, as Anarchick followed him up to admire her handiwork, "if they had a cyberlink."
It was a major discovery, this flowering otherworld wilderness; one where any code you thought or typed out gave form to the bitstream void. One where duplicated funds might safely be hidden and rough designs given 3-D life.
John had been fascinated, pulling the others in for their own look at the brand new, self-assembling universe. There, every thought left a mark and each pod-cast or message created something that went bounding away through ethernet clouds. Eden, as discovered by four brilliant kids with nothing better to do than explore and code and meddle with other people's data.
Not that much had changed, 40 million miles and seven years later… except that they weren't together anymore, and John Tracy had promised never again to take up that shadow life.
The D.C. box yielded root access without too much difficulty. For all its evident power, the computer had not been well defended. Its primary user was listed as 'Mr. Black'. An obvious pseudonym, leading to the further aliases: 'Stirling' and 'Genovese'.
John smashed the files on these last two against the best decryption program he had. Then, there was a meeting to attend with the rest of the crew, down in the ship's storm shelter/ lounge.
Too long. Blah, blah… health issues… Endurance… Kuiper… Houston… and so forth. The fact that Pete had to three times recall his straying attention should have been warning enough that he was getting into trouble, but John was too deeply preoccupied to care. If those files held what he thought they did…
Roger Thorpe stopped him just outside the hatch, once the meeting broke up. The big Marine was responding well to his medications and recovering quickly, though he'd have to wait for an Earth-side clinic to fully regrow those missing parts.
"John," the combat engineer said to him, in English (another barely-heeded warning sign), "hold on a second. I need to talk to you."
John attempted to shrug away the bigger man's hand. Didn't work. So, he said,
"Roger, I don't have time for this. Later, once I've…"
"Uh-uh." The Marine's grip tightened bruising-hard against his shoulder. "Now. If I have to tie you to the bulkhead, you're gonna listen, John."
Okay. You've got my attention.
Of course, he hadn't remembered to say this aloud, but Thorpe continued anyhow, his swarthy face clouded with worry.
"Maybe it isn't my place to say it, buddy, but you haven't talked to Linda in three days. Not more than shop stuff, anyway. Hang on…! She hasn't been complaining, but she and Cho are close, and Kimmy told me. Dammit, John, what the hell's the matter with you?"
Thorpe gave him a quick shake (fortunately, he was braced against the hatch sill, or they'd have gone flying). Then, after a pause in which the Marine rubbed a partly-healed hand over his own scalp,
"You got problems somewhere else… okay. Do what you have to. But, AO', you take care of business at home, first. That's your kid in there, and your family up here! Get it? Good! Now, go make nice with the lady, or I'll beat the shit out of you. I'm serious as hell, and it's nothin' but love, man."
Okay. He was being threatened by a well-meaning amputee. John smiled for the first time in many days. Even made eye contact, briefly. Exhaustion hit, like a truck load of sand. Speaking mostly in Klingon and Samoan, John replied,
"Very well. Advice considered. I will see to matters in the home cavern, and (wrestle/ subdue) my female."
Roger grinned at him.
"Good hunting," he replied in kind. "She is in a mood to take heads, that one."
And so, after a pause at the sink to scrub a wet cloth against his migraine, John Tracy went forward to seek Linda.