Ch. 3

Super Computer

Champagne drank her third cup of coffee that day. She needed to find a place to smoke. She had to. The coffee was keeping the jitters down, but the longer she went the more she needed. She walked to the park, once again looking for a corner where no one went, where she could smoke in peace. It seemed to her that all the corners were already taken, either by couples sucking each other's faces off or by people playing card games.

Holding her steaming cup she walked around the park again. "There must be someplace," she muttered before taking a sip. Her foot hit something hard. She looked down and noticed a rusty old man hole on the ground. "That's odd," she muttered taking another sip.

Quickly glancing around to make sure no one was looking she bent down and tugged hard on the manhole cover. She slid it to the side and climbed down the ladder, not bothering to shut the manhole cover after her. The emergency lights lit up the sewers, and a row of skateboards and scooters greeted her to her left. They were covered with grime and dust. "Wonder how those got down here." She thought for a moment before grinning. "If kids were able to store these things without getting caught there must be a good place that I can go to smoke!" She started down the corridor, glancing down the passage ways, meandering toward the river that went through the city.

At the end of one of the passages was a large tunnel with another manhole cover. She climbed it and pushed the manhole off, moving into the fresh air. She came up in an abandoned street across from an abandoned factory. Checking once again to make sure no one was following her she crossed the bridge and entered the factory.

It was completely deserted, with no way down to the ground floor other than some cables that swung in the breeze. She grabbed one and slid down with a thunk to the ground. Pulling out her box of cigarettes and a black lighter she quickly lit one and inhaled deeply. "Ahh, yes that was exactly what I needed," she sighed before glancing around.

The factory looked like it had been abandoned long ago, the beams and walls and a few boxes the only things left. There was an old cargo elevator in the middle of the floor, Champagne walked up to it, cigarette in her mouth, "Now you're an odd thing, why would there be a cargo elevator here, with no place for it to go?" Cautiously stepping in she examined the old machine.

"I bet you'd have a lot of interesting stories to tell huh?" she said patting the wall of the elevator, "I wonder if you still work?" She pressed the up button, and the elevator shook but did nothing else. Curious she pressed the down button.

Champagne let out a gasp as the door to the elevator began to close. The elevator shook as it then descended down one level, before opening up again into a basement room with a chair, giant cables several monitors.

After running out of the elevator and a couple of quick drags on her cigarette she walked over to the chair, noticing the track it ran on. "What the heck is this place? Some kind of control room?" she touched the chair and was surprised how easily it moved on its track. Hopping on she moved it up to the monitors, to find that it had an old style headset hooked up to it. The headset though was younger than the computer by the age of it. "Hmmm," Champagne reached into her laptop bag and pulled out her laptop and a bunch of cords, the same ones she'd used to perform heists.

"Let's see what you have under the hood now shall we?" she said hooking her computer up to some of the jacks before she entered into the new hacking software she had made. An error came up on her screen showing her that the computer she was connecting to wasn't on. She looked around for an on switch, but didn't see one. "Hmm…I bet there has to be a master control switch around here somewhere…" she walked around the room, lighting a new cigarette as she moved. "Bingo," she whispered when she saw a ladder that lead one floor lower. Climbing down she came into a room that was even bigger than where the monitors were stored. Huge cylinders connected to cables as well as a middle area full of them as well were visible.

"Well, this is odd…" She said glancing at them before traveling one floor lower. There in the middle of the floor was a giant mechanism with a single lever. "There it is!" She exclaimed walking over too it before pulling it down. There was a large hrrrrrrr as the computer started up and extra lights turned on. The elevator smoothly came down to meet her and opened its doors up. "Probably suffered from not enough voltage," she muttered before getting in and pressing the up button twice. The elevator carried her smoothly back to the room with the monitors. She walked over to her laptop and began typing as she saw the computer screens on the master control computer light up.

She studied her computer, finding herself blocked by a firewall, "Well nothing I can't crack," she muttered as she started typing. She paused once to look up onto the main screens, checking to see if there was a way to disable the wall, to find a program with a sleeping human with purple cat ears sleeping.

"What the heck is this?" she asked as she clicked the program.

"Huh wait what?!" The program said jumping up and looking around before turning toward the screen, "Oh hello! Who are you?"

Champagne blinked once and glanced around, seeing no camera on the screen and figured it was part of the program's opening line she put on the headset and spoke into the microphone. "Champagne."

"Champagne? Isn't that some sort of fermented bubbly beverage made from grapes? Odd name," the program said before looking around again.

Champagne cleared her voice and then stated, "Program what is your directive?" she figured it must be like one of her father's voice activated programs. If she could get it to work she might be able to get it to shut down the firewall.

"Directive?...I don't know, I pretty much just schimed the internet before you called me back to the computer," it stated. "Heck I don't even know where I am."

"Well do you at least have a name program?" Champagne asked, curious about what it did, and if in fact it was a browser, or maybe some sort of AI program.

"I don't know. I remember all this stuff from the internet but…nothing else. I guess my memory was erased," it said looking at her.

Champagne stared hard at the AI program, and then shutting her laptop she set herself up to start exploring the computer itself. Perhaps going to Kadic was not such a bad thing after all.