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  Were this an ordinary computer this task would be boring, lengthy, and risk either just my account status or more likely legal action against me. The last two were still true, but Deep Six preformed admirably and gave me information based on the user names I'd made it hunt for after finding a way in. Even though my system was fast and my task already done they would have logged my traffic, at least I had to operate under that assumption. Which meant I would have to track down those logs and expunge them Though, more likely than not, they had already sent a duplicate of that traffic to another server in case, like I was now doing, all account records and access logs had been destroyed.

  Was I worried? Believe it or not no, not really. Fears of automated processing and flagging of questionable access to the contrary I was fairly sure that they would set flesh and blood security types to sifting through logs and wayward packets just before and after their primary accounting server went down. It would take time for them to connect the dots, time that I spent not only looking for the address information I had come for, but also to look for where the log information had been sent. I didn't like what I saw but really the sort of security around the thing wasn't unexpected. Actually, considering I was a paying customer I felt quite pleased with the lengths they had gone to. Sure, I’d managed to worm my way in, but the machine I was using wasn’t just any old machine. Point of fact, not even the guys that could rightfully brag about their home made systems that could run anything and everything thrown at ‘em could come close to touching Deep Six. Maybe a hand full of others had the kind of power I did, but if so they hadn’t cross paths with me just yet.

  What to do? What to do? Even though this discussion is fairly self-incriminating I'm not going to take any of my friends, associates, or anyone else down with me. I'm possibly foolish and arrogant, but that would be Common of me to do to someone else. Still, while I was doing all this I'd checked my mail, no need to make Deep Six do fancy footwork here folks just an ordinary, albeit obscure, email account that belonged to me. Inside I found what I would best term as both a test and challenge. I've signed up for many things over the years. Some harmless learning, others spam that's haunted me and my email server for years, and some of a potentially criminal sort.

  While Deep Six is chewing on a few odds and ends I'm going to have to divert my narration to explain something that most people wouldn't realize. Cracking into somebody else's network is only illegal if you're going in uninvited. Many different people offer courses, tools, and advice on how to find the back doors, exploits, and flaws in everything from a personal web-site hosted by a fly by night free service that peppers their users with Trojan-laden ads, to supposedly unbreakable secured networks. I have been a friend and pupil to one of these people, who shall only be referred to here as Gibbon. Gibbon owns a server full of harmless, not so harmless, and down right illegal to distribute bits of software that, technically, is free for anyone to download. Of course in order to get to the nice juicy pieces of code, detailed write-ups on how to use known exploits, and other such stuff one has to get past Gibbon's internal security. This can be anywhere from a near-cakewalk to an absolute nightmare depending on Gibbon's mood, how well he knows us, and just how badly one of us needs help.

  My in-box had several messages from friends, business contacts, and one from my mentor in the Dark Arts. That message, omitting several bits of news I would catch up on later, was that my situation was now known by friends in low places; and for the sake of helping a friend out today's challenge, if I wanted to play, would be relatively simple. There was also a warning to sweep my system of any 'potentially malicious code or software of an un-trustworthy nature', which made me smile. Yes Mr. Gibbon I'll purge my system of your toys after I'm done playing. It'd be my fat in the fire if I'm caught with them on my hard drive after all.

  Sure brute force often works, but I also knew that this system was aggressive and would probably 'tag' me before I could work my way in. Thankfully there were clues in the email. Two of Gibbon's most frequent ways of sending a password along was to either capitalize seemingly random words, or to use the first letter in the first word of every second, third, or fifth column. Not exactly hard to break crypto I know, but it was either that or try going through my cipher books and try his more complicated routines. He, and for the record I don't know nor do I wish to know Gibbon's gender, said I was going to be thrown a bone. Hush, I know what you're about to say and both of us agreed that exchanging our private keys through the mail would be too risky for a public/private key system to be viable.

  With a little guessing, a lot of luck, and 'Six's magic touch I was in. Standard practice here was to grab everything, burn the connect log, and bug out. This let me look at everything at my own pace without fear of some unaccounted for routine tripping and getting me in hot water. Sure Gibbon was a friend, but he believes quite firmly in the school of hard knocks. You screw up, you pay the penalty. No exceptions.

  My muscles were sore, I was tired, and that generally wasn't a good thing when one needed to do something that has zero forgiveness for mistakes. Still I wasn't sure how long I would have before my snooping was found and pinned on me so onward and upward! Referencing my newly acquired material I saw that the backup server had, in addition to a port 80 connection, packet traffic on two other ports.

  I disregarded port 666 because of a warning about some of the newer security packages leaving that one open as a lure. Instead I commanded the Octopus program to latch onto port 23 and work it's magic. Hey I didn't name the thing. Don't judge me! Besides it worked and I had something I could use.

  PING!

  I checked 'Six and frowned. Someone was getting close to finding me. KILLTRACE. It wasn't so much a command as a panic button that automatically wired a set amount of money to... people that could help take some of the heat off me. Even if what I do as a hobby is illegal, I try not thinking about who's money I'm using to pay for these services. I didn't like doing this because I was always on the edge of being broke, and usually to scare up the money needed to grease the gears and make people look somewhere else I needed to essentially rob banks. Other people might find it tempting, on these runs, to pull money out of random accounts and leave themselves financially secure. However even if one sets aside moral wrongness I've seen what happens to people who suddenly are found living beyond their legal means, and it’s generally not pretty.

  Reluctant or not I needed to get a little more wiggle room so, courtesy of another bit of information I'd gathered from Gibbon's info-dump, I found a nice seemingly random spot to pull from. Deep Six made short work of local security and I'd pulled just enough to cover my expenses, destroyed the connection log, and got out of there.

  While this was happening I'd been alerted to a new piece of mail. You might think it strange I would sit and read seemingly random bits of mail while on a job, but sometimes they contained helpful bits of information, and worst case I could just ignore the contents till later.

  > Kate: Hey Skippy, look I know you're not up for Saturday’s Raid, but I thought you and me could go in after Warlord D'chin. I need his ring for a quest turn in.

  I couldn't bother to reply, not right then. I had this box by the proverbial throat and I was going in for the kill. After a quick check I found my connection to their accounting server still valid, and after adding that bank server I felt I had enough wiggle room to finish this job. Before I toasted everything I decided to make copies. Blame the snoop in me I suppose. As it turns out that was a good thing since the server had seen some interesting traffic lately that pointed to a few encrypted files I'd have to get to Gibbon to see if there was anything he could make of any of it.

  Run complete. I backed out of everything and deleted all the naughty things from my system. That took longer than your average delete/empty recycling bin because I'd have to zero out the data to keep any fragments from being retrieved in case anyone tried recovering everything off my drive. Sure it shortens a drive's life expectancy and it was probab
ly paranoia telling me to do it, but it's either this or run the thing through a degaussing machine and install everything on a fresh drive. I suppose, if I were as clever as everyone makes me out to be, I’d have all the naughty things loaded in a ram drive that would clear out and leave zero traces after power down, but not only would I lose everything if there was a power failure, I’d also have less memory to dedicate to other concerns. However to each their own.

  With housekeeping done I could turn my attention to Kate's request. Naturally I'd love to give her a hand with D'chin. The bloody Elf gave me all sorts of grief, and the sword I got at the end of that quest line is still one of my primary weapons even after ten levels and swapping out pretty much everything else. My doings in Chaotic Realms have no real bearing on why you wanted to talk to me except perhaps to paint me as a hypocrite for looking down my nose at other players.

  The person seated across from me shook her head and pushed a glass of something, water or coffee, in my direction. "Guy. Look. You're not in trouble here, not from us anyway." She reached over to squeeze one of my hands, and frowned when I pulled away from her attempt at contact. "I know you're upset, but what you're telling us is helping."

  "How Miko?" I felt bitter and hurt at her being here. Even if these people were, in fact, the friends I'd been guided to since all this started I felt more than a bit resentful at her not coming clean with me from the start. "How can me explaining what they already know help?"

  She straightened and looked at me with storm grey eyes. "They have to know how you work, how your mind operates, and I mean more than just MRI's or PET scans." She tapped her temple with a finger, "They need to know how you think as well as how you brain is mapped." My doubtful expression must have been plainly visible because she continued. "Look, I don't know what exactly they're working on either, but for it to work they need you and Deep Six."

  "Whatever," I was tired and strung out. This wasn't the first time someone had been to see me and if they wanted my cooperation, grudging or otherwise. They were going to have to do a fair bit more than show a friendly face and talk of needing me. "I have nothing further to say. Take me back to my room."

  Not the most diplomatic approach, but I figured they already had me. If they wanted me to willingly cooperate they would start feeding me a little more tangible information. If they wouldn’t, then why not just skip to the pliers, water-boarding, and or abject humiliation.

  Part 2

  Heat

  After several days of digging through public and not so public records I've learned that even though I was given the brush-off family and police have also started to look for my friends. Unfortunately because of my earlier attempts to find out what happened and if anything had been heard I'm now a 'person of interest'. While I would probably be safe in cooperating I doubt I'd be able to keep looking on my own. They're only doing their jobs, but I'm going to do what I have to do.

  No, really. I understand why the authorities would have to not only look at me as part of their case but also see my doings through cyber-space as a threat. I'm generally restrained and apologetic in what I do if there's even a hint of lasting harm involved, but they can't know that. Were I in their shoes I'd see even the smallest part of my activities as highly dangerous and criminal. Apologetic or not I'm still going to do what I do, so I suppose all that was wasted breath.

  On the up side their work makes my life not boring and even if it was a hazard I had to deal with I’m sure that over the years they had stopped enough kiddie porn traffickers and other scum that I should give them a little slack. On the down side I now had to find who had files on me, try erasing any records that might hit too close to home, so that meant I'd have to go through the virtual back allies and crawlspaces a little sooner than I would have otherwise liked all without making too many enemies of people I otherwise respect. Pity that wouldn’t get rid of any hard copies floating around, but with as wired and dependent on electronic book keeping and filing I’m pretty sure I’d be alright for the time being.

  > Ship: Hey I know you've got a few things on your plate but if you could spare a minute I need help finding the punks that keep taking passes at my server. New address is blog.deepweb.net.

  Ship, buddy, you have no idea just how busy I am right now. After, I promise, but right now I just can't. On reflection I suppose I should have wondered how he knew I was on since I wasn't logged into anything and, to put mildly, Ship definitely isn't a power-user. Maybe that should have set alarm bells off, but at the time I had more immediate concerns.

  I had a few feelers put out, both program based and trusted eyes and ears that would hopefully give me a few places I could start with. No two programs or people were to send to the same email address. However I had each of those accounts, all highly temporary and designed to cycle out to someone else in a few days or a week, forward everything to my email server. Risky if anyone were able to look at the big picture, but the services that offer these temporary boxes were all above board and perfectly legitimate. All anyone looking in would see was me having select addresses forwarded from services designed to shield a person's inbox against spam, which shouldn't raise any flags on it's own.

  Addresses were all over the map. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Judging by what 'Six was telling me after it scanned all of them was that my safest bet would be to start either on the South American addresses, or the Australian address. Everything else either needed hoop jumping, which would mean passing another of Gibbon's tests to get tools for, or copied passwords from either of these less secured systems. Considering these different departments talk to each other on a semi-regular basis I might, repeat might, have an easier time sifting through their shared electronic paper trail.

  I chose to work the South American systems first, not because they were less secure than the ones at home, but because if someone were able to piece my patterns together I'd rather like to keep them scratching their heads over just where I was from, or at least where I would spring up next. For once getting in was a straightforward matter and, after downloading the connection log and case file all that was left was erasing my tracks before seeing if any fresh leads opened up.

  Unfortunately the ref file was encrypted, and since Gibbon had a 'one job at a time' rule about cracking files open I'd have to wait till he was done with the files from my last run I either had to wait, or find someone else. Maybe he'd finish soon, so I decided to wait before trying to fish for more help. In the meantime there was that Australian system to take care of.

  Getting in there had been somewhat problematic, not because of any unexpected opposition or anything 'Six wasn't prepared for, because someone had buzzed my phone. Normally during a run I would have left the thing off, but between needing to keep a line open in case work needed me and an expected call from the vet I was forced to leave the thing on. The name on the ID was unfamiliar, Van Nuyman's Animal Services, but I figured Peanut had gotten transferred there or something. "Hello Hello," I did my best to keep my voice chipper and upbeat. Anyone on the other end might believe any tension to be a product of that rather than stress.

  "Richard Guy Fawkes?" I didn't recognize the voice. It sounded female, roughly my age, and the tone was more a statement than a question. "Do not hang up or disconnect your computer." Alarm bells were ringing in my head. Fight down panic. If whoever this was knew what I was up to then I was already busted, and a mad dash to wipe everything wasn't going to save my hide.

  "I am apologizing now for mistake you aremaking," My 'little foreign man' accent was something I'd practiced after watching Andy Kaufman a few too many times. I know, he’s before my time, but the guy was brilliant in an offbeat sort of way, but I hoped a long shot here might pay off. "You are must be having called wrong number. Please to be trying again. Tenk you veddy much." I promptly hung up, hoping they'd go sniff somewhere else, or at the very least think someone might have cloned or stolen my phone.

  Instead of possibly having to dance around with funny accents
after a second call, I instead had to deal with a single bullet fired through a window I had left open to give the room a little fresh air. Only after I uncurled and got off the floor to take a tentative looked around did the phone ring. I stared first at the bullet hole that, had it been a few inches to the right, would have gone through my monitor and probably me. Then I stared at the phone a long moment before answering. "Alright," I sounded somewhat less scarred stiff than I felt. "You have my attention."

  "Just keep doing what you've been doing." Female voice sounded smug to me. "I won't turn you in, not yet anyway. Finish what you're doing, then we'll talk."Creepy, especially since I essentially had a gun to my head. Still, they said they wanted to talk after I finished up. Fear makes people act loopy, me included, and that was the last thing I needed right now. This time a message popped up on my screen. “Look. Don't go getting the shakes on me, especially not now. I'm not going to turn you in and I'm definitely not going to kill you. I just wanted your attention. Think of me as backup if it will help you feel any better.”

  Easy for her to say, She shot at me 'just to get my attention'. On the flip side had a strange message just popped up from persons unknown telling me I've been made, at least so my thinking went about how this person had to reason things through, I probably would have bolted.

  Can't say that I like it, but there's a kind of logic there. I had a job to finish. Back to Australia. Now. Copy everything, delete logs, pull out to have a look-see. The addresses listed matched both the South American server and my informants. One file was an encrypted ref file and the other was a good old fashioned plain text file. Now that was naughty of them to upload key-logging software to people they were supposed to be cooperating with, but hey it gave me passwords for the Romanian and British servers I wasn’t going to complain too loudly.