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  “Don’t worry,” My efforts might give me a little breathing space, but if anyone here suspected no amount of box bouncing would keep me from being up to my eyeballs in trouble. “Just stretching ‘Six’s legs a little. Any special requests?”

  While Miko rattled off a few semi-obscure spots I worked on putting feelers out for what looked to be Legion’s largest server. Wearemany.net. Heh... I know I’ve said before they had to have the place up as a dare. I also know that whatever I find could be planted just to get me to be cooperative, but somehow I just couldn’t see a leaderless organization of hundreds, if not thousands, of people keeping a consistent set of lies together just to keep me in the dark.

  First one port opened to me, then another, and finally I found things that looked interesting and relevant to what I wanted. Logs were being downloaded for later review. Company names were tossed about, as were documents about quantum processing. My stay wasn’t long, given I was being watched and could be sniffed out any time if I hadn’t already been. However it would give me information to look on later.

  Time to back out, try filling the holes I’d made, and hope that either nobody noticed, or took my curiosity to mean I might be put in a helpful mood if I’m allowed to dig on my own. Miko saw me close down and offered to eat with me that evening. I told her I would love to, which was true, and that I needed her to tell me a few things, which was most definitely true.

  “You could have just asked.” They let me keep ‘Six even after they’d left a message on my box telling me they knew I was behind the ‘attack’ earlier that day. I should be grateful they didn’t take it personally, but still, I hoped I had gotten in and out without anyone realizing what I’d done.

  As Miko talks my mind drifts. This manuscript, a thing that had not been written - yet was already forming in my mind, has done those closest to me a disservice. My friends, four of them, had been missing by this point for two months. I am repeatedly assured that in spite of documented history showing that without an explicit ransom note kidnap victims are typically killed early. They have not been mentioned by name, and though I have total control over how the story is told, I dare not go back and insert their names before now.

  They all have names.

  Will Thompson

  Kamio Daisetsu

  Lynn Thatcher

  Sean Preston

  They had known me for the past five years. In one way or another each had been valuable in both my working and social lives. Yet here I am setting down the events to one of, if not the, most pivotal point in my life and I have not mentioned any of them as more than an out of sight and almost token reason for me to have risked imprisonment, fines, and being barred from any computer, networked or not, for no less than a decade. I can assure you, they are worth risking that sort of punishment.

  I looked at Miko with one of those looks that my Father hated, claiming that it looked like I was both looking down and through someone. Unlike other times I know I am giving her this look, and I find that I do not quite care how upsetting it must be. “You have me chained up i n here, for my own protection. I have been treated well, yet I have been told little of why I am kept here and what part I am to play that is supposed to be vital.”

  Miko waited for me to get to the point, obviously annoyed, but willing to wait till I had finished before cutting me down to size.

  “A man blind to his part in the greater whole, or even the details to his own small portion of the task cannot do anything other than fail.” My voice was calm, or at least I remember it being calm at the time. For all I know I was screaming at the top of my lungs. “My attempts at g etting your attention so that we could speak had, so far, been ignored. You will either give me answers, let me go, or stop with this charade and lock me away. Because my movements are restricted and I am not told why I do not care which of these three options you pick, but this half-state I am currently in stops Now.”

  Miko seemed to consider what I had to say, my posture and tone, as well as other factors I could only guess at. She then spoke to me. This group that they were shielding me against believed that as a species we could not survive many more leaps in technology and that the breaks had to be placed on progress. When asked how long they thought their proposed solution would last their only reply was ‘as long as it takes.’

  In some ways I could find myself agreeing with them. Give people a chance to catch up and adapt before moving on. It was somehow seductive. On the other hand what gives them or anyone the right to tell others that they cannot work on ways of improving the lives of everyone around them, or find a niche to fill in the global market. We might be able to adapt to a stagnant world, but what sorts of innovations, what cures would be missed, what breakthroughs in energy sciences would be overlooked or deemed too far outside of what was then taken as normal?

  Quantum computing was only the latest thing that this group had hoped to oppose. My friends had all been taken to get at me. There was no note because they had thought that such a selective disappearance would grab my attention. I didn’t buy it, so I had to look for myself.

  Each side knew roughly what the other was capable of, and through a combination of flexibility, money, or knowledge each had remained in a stalemate situation. Legion was able to hold its own through numbers, anonymity, and guerrilla tactics. This other group, whom my associates have dubbed Red Queen, also has numbers and is savvy to the general workings of the Internet, but they rely more on use of the law and fear of punishment than Legion does. The humor in this given name is not lost on me, but unfortunately the joke wears thin almost as it forms.

  My part in this struggle is straightforward and easy to guess. Given that my system can run rings around anything Red Queen has built defenses to protect against. I am to find documents and other reports that they have of suppressed technologies, anything incriminating against these people as a group, and locations of anyone they are holding prisoner against anyone’s good will. It is a general consensus that if possible I should find something that can be used to tie enough of Red Queen’s leadership together for RECO to take effect.

  I cannot say exactly what it means, save that those laws were created to prosecute organized crime, so that a Capo, or Don, or whoever couldn’t wring his hands and go ‘I don’t know this guy. He killed and extorted, not me.’ Not if enough was found to tie the two together. I was no criminal attorney, but we had a few of those. Outside of the fact that anything gathered would be obtained illegally it was generally thought I would find enough to hang these people in court. Even if legally they weren’t touched, the court of public opinion is a harsh body, and sometimes their judgments are harder to overturn than any laws written in dusty tomes.

  Part 6

  Opening Shots

  “My new friends tell me that Legion is in the middle of a war with itself, which is actually expected considering how emotional and attached people get to their pet causes and perspectives.” I kept my voice calm when I talked to mom. We had been close, and I would not lie to her as I explained the situation I had gotten myself into. Sure telling her legion was tearing itself apart instead of them squaring off a multinational secret organization was a bit of a fib, but both groups had people in both camps, so it wasn’t too much a stretch and it made explaining things simpler.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me or your father pulling some strings?” I knew my parents had some connections. How else had John managed to get the sort of stuff that came in and out of his hands?

  I shook my head at the camera attached to ‘Six. “Mom I don’t know how high up these people are, so if you called for help, that might be a tip-off for-”

  “-The wrong sort of people.” Her facial expression looked somewhat concerned, but it had ever since I called to give my parents the full story, now that I had it myself. “How bout journalists? You’ll want whatever you fin d spread around as fast as possible, and the more credible the press the better right?” That made sense, so I agre ed and told her I would get
a copy of everything I found in her hands as soon as possible. That left the final question. “Why you? By everything you’ve told me and I’ve see n from the news these people you’re with are more experienced than you.”

  “'Six can do what no other machine 'our' side has, and I have the most experience using it.” I couldn’ t tell if mom was letting me go out of spite, out of recognition that I was my own person, or out of recognition that this was something I had to do because nobody else was around that could. “So once more into the breach I go.”

  “Call me.”

  “I will Mom.” Close connection. Take a few deep breaths. This was one of those moments in my life that I felt like everything had gone loopy, but I was too far committed to do anything other than what I had prepared for.

  Miko watched me prepare. On other runs I had considered important I had a ritual I preformed. This was one such run, and though there was no scientific evidence in any of it the act itself it’s just one of those things. Eyes closed. Touch the midpoints on each side of ‘Six’s case while praying to the spirits that made up the machine. This wasn’t based on anything really outside of maybe a halfhearted attempt to play at Shintoism, or is it Shamanism? Beats me. Once I had touched the case I had touched three points on my body; Head, Heart, Sternum. Clap twice, close hands. Inhale. Bring both hands, thumbs folded in, to my lips. Exhale. Open Eyes.

  I was ready.

  My machine booted up. My comrades had given me a set of addresses that different paper trails had led to. Each site was backed by the latest in security services and further protected by companies who made it their business to keep their clients safe.

  SCAN

  My screen lit up like a Christmas tree. Each site was connected to all others, and going off what the info-window was giving me if I popped one the rest would call home before shutting down.

  It got worse. Several of the services it looked like they were running could only be run from within that home network or, as with the sledgehammer method I’d been using, they would all shut down then likely reboot with different security settings.

  Clever if you’re paranoid. Mind bindingly crappy if you wanted your site to maintain any sort of up time. I watched traffic in and out of these sites for a time. I speak of that like it’s easy to do, but considering I had nothing on the boxes themselves and couldn’t connect directly I had to use other methods to get a sense of how the packets moved.

  “Raj, make a pass. I want to see how they react.” Rajorin. No idea what the name meant, if anything, but he was on hand and I was told anyone watching me would have working knowledge.

  “Alright. Making a pass... now.”

  From my vantage point I saw Raj’s probe. Like the probes ‘Six sent out to check security and ports the target system ignored it, or at least it looked like it had. When it started probing deeper the target box disappeared.

  I heard Raj making concerned noises and ran over to see what was going on. Seemed that the box made a pass of it’s own at anything that went deeper than a surface lookieloo. Raj was fuming because not only was his box crashing, but when he tried to reboot the thing had eaten through his windows partition. I was curious that it hadn’t bothered touching either the boot record, or the Linux partitions.

  When Raj left Miko raised an eyebrow. “So they just assume anyone making a run at them is going to use windows? Why not have something that’ll just screw with your boot record?”

  I shrugged. There were viruses written for the different Unix derivatives, but I had seen none ‘in the wild’. Still, if they were able to trace back and run commands on anyone’s box that even briefly connected, especially someone who actually bothered keeping security running and up to date, I wouldn’t put it past them to figure out how to make Linux explode, or at the very least force a complete system reinstall. Crude and inelegant if managed, but it would be effective assuming that whatever was being downloaded wasn’t immediately being re-uploaded somewhere else. I told Miko to get everyone on site to start making calls.

  A dozen different people were gathered in the room with me. Dozens, if not hundreds waited across the world. It had taken two days since that initial pass to get people on the same page and ready. When we started all they needed to do was sacrifice their boxes tripping those trace-back routines I’d seen pulled on Raj’s rig. There was mu ch grumbling over this. What would it accomplish to send wave after wave with the express purpose of letting themselves get nuked?

  I needed them to be my foot in the door so when I started the other servers couldn’t just fade out. If they were continually going after everyone else they had to maintain a connection, which meant they couldn’t just shut down. Of course it could be that their security had ‘hide’ being more important than ‘retaliate.’ If so then this gathering wouldn’t be wasted, for it would be an educational experience. Red Queen would probably still believe it’s security uncompromising and uncompromisable. If it worked though... Well I wanted there to be more people on hand than I would need since it would be better than not having enough live bodies to hold the door open.

  ‘What about police? They trace us back they have enough to get warrens?’ Nobody said it in exactly that way, but that was the question on most of their minds. The only reply I could give was that if I could get through I could get their records and make it look like what they’d suffered was a spambot triggered attack. That’s oversimplifying things to rather gross degrees, but what am I supposed to say?

  It was risky and stupid and in hindsight it shouldn’t have worked. Still. We had already burnt enough time. While I’d been sitting pretty friends, mine as well as others, and allies were separated from family and home. I said as much, which shut everyone up. What followed was hectic and insane. This is the only way I can come close to portraying it.

  blocked” INCOMMING! “Doesn’t matter?” “He’s in! Keep going guys!” Why are you here? Never-BOTTLENECK -give up! KILLTRACE “Guys keep going! He’s got the lists!” PATHFINDER BAAAANZAAAAIIIIIII!!!! What do you want? “ Frak I’ve been made!” “This is madness.”

  I want to talk. “Second box cracked!” It’s working! “Don’t let us down!” PING!

  “Come. Let’s dance!” Who are you? “Files uploading now!” FFFFFUUUUU!

  I’ve been infected! “Holy mother what was that?”

  They say you’re-

  “Half our network’s toast.” -a bad man. WOOO!

  RUN

  We have only just begun to fight! Are you a bad man?

  You’re looking for someone. PING! Why won’t you talk to me? KILLTRACE

  “Skippy get out of there!” Just talk, nothing else. “Skippy!” VOODOO DOLL

  Almost done Miko. Did we do it?

  “Never seen this kind of security.” “Got it!”

  Please?

  DISCONNECT

  I had the lists. Mom worked her magic. Don’t know how, but she managed to take what I’d given her and get everyone out. I don’t believe it worked. My friends, Their friends, and lots of other people had been freed. It worked. My God Almighty it Worked.

  Through all the noise, confusion, and adrenaline I saw something out there. Probably a lonely sysadmin, but shades of AI and Ghosts in the Machine tickled at the back of my mind as I lay in bed that night while everyone else was high fiving and celebrating. Only in movies and badly written stories were wars won in a single engagement. We had the intelligence we came for and showed them that their best wasn’t good enough. I’m sure others were also thinking along these lines. I’m not the smartest guy in the room, just the one with the biggest virtual guns.

  Later I tried figuring out how I would fare in a head to head ‘fight’ against someone else with a quantum processor in case Red Queen got a clue and got one of ‘Six’s sibling machines and decided to level the playing field. Maybe that voice I ‘heard’ in the dark and c onfusion of that run was another such as myself. If so who’s side were they on? I couldn’t exactly risk dismissing it as nothing, bu
t worry would get me nowhere.

  So, with that on my mind I pulled Deep Six out and browsed the web awhile. If whoever it was had been able to talk to me they knew my address. Granted the thing shifted enough so that it wouldn’t have done much good, but, I don’t know. Actually I suppose I do, but I can’t put it into words that make sense to anyone not fascinated by how the Internet is structured and addresses handed out.

  I was in the middle of working on my mailbox when it happened. Black window with green text opened on top of what I was doing.

  > I remember you from before. You did something they thought was impossible.

  My blood turned to ice in that instant. Rational thought failed me.

  > How do you think?

  KILLTRACE

  Show all incoming traffic. She’s got to be bouncing through to get here. I can't get a consistent return path. Address keeps changing.

  > Sorry buddy. I won’t let you get away.

  LOAD PROGRAM: Manticore

  Gotta be hell on her signal. Even if she's wielding one of ‘Six's siblings that might give me enough advantage for Manticore to work.

  > Talk Then.

  > In a bit.

  PROGRAM Manticore HALTED.

  > Clever. You write that yourself?

  > No.

  UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS DETECTED.

  Halt Process. Halt! I'm running a user account with no root level privileges and can only run system commands either by SUDO through terminal, which requires my root password, or logging out then logging back in under root account. My password is generally something lengthy and difficult to guess because it uses a garble of letters, symbols, and text. Even so she managed to wrinkle in and delete a good portion of my system. Had I either rebooted, or been forced to restart I'm pretty sure I'd have been faced with a reinstall. Thankfully I managed to kick her out before she, and I'm using that pronoun arbitrarily, could force either of these situations.