A Philosophical Investigation: A Novel (8 page)

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Authors: Philip Kerr

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What on earth did people do before there was Reality Approximation? What was there for those who found no substitute for sense to seize and clutch and penetrate? It was only my RA exoskeleton that enabled me to enjoy a world of colour and sensation - a world that resembles the real world, and more. This is the normal way in which I relax after a hard day. It’s no more addictive or a waste of time than television. I can occupy myself with an approximately real experience, often of my own devising, for hours at a time. Usually, I am climbing into the RA equipment the minute I come through the door, but on this occasion I didn’t feel like it at all. It was as much as I could do not to go into the bathroom and slash my wrists.
Can you blame me? From good citizen to social pariah in the space of a single afternoon? I ought to have seen the funny side, I suppose: me, the right-winger, always banging on about law and order, forever raising my voice against the abolitionists who would punish a murderer with nothing worse than a couple of years in a nice warm prison. Me, suddenly catapulted onto the other side of the jurisprudential fence. What a supreme irony. The sheer injustice of it. After all, I voted for them specifically because of their law-enforcement programme. I thought that something like this Lombroso Program would be a good idea. And look what happens: I get given the mark of Cain; on a computer file anyway.
Until that moment I had never given much thought as to which of my personal details appeared on what computers. I dare say I was aware that my bank, my employer, my building societies, my doctor, my dentist, my analyst, and possibly even the police (there was that old parking-ticket) all had information about me. But it never seemed to matter very much. I certainly wasn’t one of those who bleated on about civil liberties and Big Brother when the EC made the carrying of ID cards compulsory. Not even when they added a bar-code containing things like your genetic fingerprint. I have never even read 1984. What’s the point? It’s long past its sell-by-date.
They were reprising an old television series called ‘The Prisoner’ the other night. Very popular with the more disaffected sections of society. ‘I’m not a number, I’m a free man,’ exclaims the granite-jawed hero. Well now I know what he was so upset about. Russell said that there were simple relations between different numbers of things (individuals). But between what numbers? And how is this supposed to be decided? By experience? There is no pre-eminent number. Not number six. And certainly not number one.
The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to erase my name and number from those files. I was not persuaded by all the guarantees of confidentiality that had seemed so irrelevant before taking the test. I felt like someone who had been persuaded to give a half-litre of blood in the expectation that it would be used to save a life, only to discover that it was to be fed to a colony of vampire bats in a zoo. Bats, what is more, who might well come and attack me while I was asleep. Because there is no telling what can become of information these days. Any database can become the target of unauthorised entry. Electronic vandalism is rife.
Suppose, I thought, that someone managed to break into the Lombroso Program’s database and, having got hold of the identities of those people who had tested VMN-negative, sold them to the News of the World? I could just envisage the headlines: WE NAME THE HUMAN TIME-BOMBS IN OUR COMMUNITIESl TOMORROW’S RIPPERS?/ SEEKING OUT THE PSYCHOS/ POSITIVE STEPS NEEDED TO CANCEL OUT THESE NEGATIVES ...
I had read enough about the activities of the Cologne Chaos Computer Club to know that for the really determined electronic burglar, even the most sophisticated system of data-security is vulnerable.
Probably it was the effect of the sedatives, only it took me several more minutes to realise that if someone else could break into the Lombroso database and steal personal information about me, then so could I. Not only was I possessed of all the equipment for such a task - PC, modem, the telephone company’s Jupiter computer information system, digital protocol analyser - I suddenly recalled the most important fact of all, which was the basic information for entering and using the system.
I have always been interested in all kinds of electrical equipment, an interest which originally was encouraged by my grandfather, who owned a chain of electrical retailers. There was nothing electrical which he and, after a while I, couldn’t fix. So when I was back there in the waiting room at the Brain Research Institute, confidently anticipating my PET scan, it had been quite natural for me to start trying to adjust the television set they had in there when I saw that it was on the blink.
The problem was a simple one - a channel improperly tuned
—
and I had just started to rectify this when I noticed that the set, which was rather an old one, was picking up electromagnetic radiation from one of the computer installations in the building. Somewhere in the Institute, a VD U was radiating out harmonics on the same frequency as the television set. There was something almost readable on the television screen and by adjusting the direction of the desktop antenna I found that I was able to see that it was an image of information that someone was feeding into the Lombroso computer. It’s roughly the same principle that used to enable the old television detector vans to see if you were using an unlicensed set, when there were still such things as TV licences. It wasn’t a particularly clear image, just black letters on a white background, and the picture had a tendency to swim, but it was easy enough to recognise a basic entry code, an individual operator’s personal ‘key’ word, and the Lombroso system’s password for the day.
The image of the computer-hacker spending many hours in front of a screen trying to break into a system is a false one. He is more often to be found scavenging in a company’s refuse bins in an attempt to find a piece of information that will provide a clue as to the computer system’s password. In other words, I had already achieved what is ordinarily the most difficult part of any hacker’s task.
I cannot say that at the time I consciously committed this information to memory. There was no reason for me to have done so, believing as I did then that I would pass the PET scan without a problem. Perhaps fate plays a hand in these things, for later on I found that I was able to visualise the various numbers and codewords on that anonymous operator’s VDU as easily as if I had been sitting in front of it myself.
Of course, all a password does is to get you into the system. Then you have to find out which set of rules or protocol the target system is using so that you can interface with it and speak the same computer language. That’s where the protocol analyser comes in handy. It has got some ingenious software that examines the other system’s entry port to see which of the many data communication protocols is in use.
But I’m getting ahead of myself, because I encountered my first major difficulty the minute I buttoned the Brain Research Institute’s telephone number. They weren’t even on the public switched telephone network. They were using a private leased line - the newly installed ECDN, the European Community Data Network. This included records for all member governments and their various departments on one exclusive network.
I was still not thinking properly, and it was at least another minute before I recalled that the computer system at work was on the ECDN. All employers in the public sector, Police, Inland Revenue, Customs and Excise, Medical, Information, Employment, Women, Conservation were on it.
I tapped my head with the flat of my hand. It was obvious that if I really was going to do this and use the computer system at work, I was also going to need some juice. So the first thing I did before unplugging the analyser and going out to the van was to find my cognitive enhancement pills.
Nobody at work was surprised to see me. I’m often working late at night, catching up on the administrative paperwork for which there’s little time during the course of an average, underpaid and over-working day. Anyway, I switched on the computer, and while it was warming up and coming on line, I started swallowing. Dilantin for sustained periods of concentration. Hydergine for a general intelligence increase through the drug’s creation of extra synapses. And Vasopressin, a neural hormone which helps to improve the memory. To be honest, I’ve been using a combination of cognitive enhancers for a while now, so I was just topping up the dose. The effect on the human brain, while we’re in the way of talking about computers, is that of upgrading a machine from say 40 to about 50 terabytes. But to really get myself warmed up, I finished this cocktail of drugs I had swallowed with some cocaine.
Have you ever shot coke in the vein? It hits that medullar brain centre like electro-convulsive therapy and switches you on like the Christmas lights on New Oxford Street. For about fifteen minutes you’re in the seat of an F26 with all your cannons blazing, your laser-guidance keeping you locked onto the tail of some enemy plane. As an aid to pure concentration it’s terrific. No wonder Sherlock Holmes found it an aid to investigation. You feel as if there’s a new intelligence working within you. If you were to inject some into the computer’s software port you would not be surprised if the machine were literally jolted into life itself, like something dreamt up by Mary Shelley. Normally I’ll use about .20 of a gram, however I had the suspicion that I was going to need a longer flight than normal if I was to be able to run where I wanted within the Lombroso system. So I made a solution that was twice my normal percentage and pushed the needle into the skin.
Using the ECDN, and with a legitimate identity, I was interfacing with the BRI in less than a minute. They must have anticipated having to deal with unauthorised entrants to the system, because the very first thing that happened was that a nude Marilyn Monroe graphic appeared on my screen and, with a wiggle of her lifelike bottom, asked me if I felt lucky.
‘Because if you can answer just three little old questions you and your reality approximation software get to fuck my brains out.’
Marilyn was referring to the software which controlled the computer’s optional body attachments and which enabled one to enjoy an approximate physical sensation of whatever kind of reality was being created. This kind of Reality Approximation program was very popular in the amusement arcades. Like I said before, I own an RA machine and body suit myself.
‘Well?’ pouted Marilyn. ‘Cat got your tongue?’
Even though I did not have my own RA suit with me, I wasn’t about to fall for this. The point of Marilyn was to trap the unwary schoolkid hackers into wasting their time and not progressing any further within the system. I knew the chances were that if you did manage to answer Marilyn’s questions correctly and got to fuck her, then you were liable to discover that your own computer software had been infected with a very nasty, possibly terminal virus.
Marilyn dropped a hand between her legs and rubbed herself provocatively.
‘What’s the matter sugar?’ she cooed. ‘You one of them, or something?’ And, right on cue, Marilyn was immediately joined on screen by James Dean, wearing nothing else but the kind of
gladiator-style outfit that would have looked very fetching in the heavy leather bars of Earls Court or Chiswick.
Before Jimmy could try and tempt me with his own particular brand of sexual allure, I typed ‘goodbye’ and then the Lombroso system’s password for the day which, according to my watch was due to expire in less than fifty minutes.
Marilyn and Jimmy disappeared as the password transported me into the basic operating system. Now I had to find the root directory with all the system files stored on it, and the easiest way of doing that was to reboot the system, to shut it down completely. So I pressed the right keys simultaneously and watched the screen clear itself of everything but a flashing ‘root’ prompt which told me that I was getting closer.
Next I told the computer to list all the sub-directories which were contained in the root. First up was the directory containing Lombroso personnel, and then several others which dealt with things like accounts, payroll, counselling procedures, PET scan operating procedures; last of all came the two subs I was particularly interested in accessing, which contained the super operating system and the VMN-negative database.
My optimistic attempt to immediately view the sub containing the VMN database was, as I had expected it would be, firmly denied with a reminder of the system’s first decretal, which was the confidentiality of this particular information. It seemed logical to assume that if I was going to be able to roam freely through the system as I wished, I would have to do it from the privileged access point of the so-called super operative - which in any system is usually the person who created it. So I accessed the super-op sub, and set about the creation of a trapdoor. I hadn’t been in there very long when I met Cerberus.
It’s difficult to say exactly how I triggered him. It could have been the very fact of my using an outside keyboard. Or it could have been the fact of my attempting to create a trapdoor from the super-operating sub into the VMN database, but suddenly there he was on-screen, a three-headed black dog graphic with
blood-chilling sound effects, and guarding the system from anyone like me who sought to circumvent its first decretal. From the size and number
of
his teeth
I
was very glad
I
had not been
wearing my Reality Approximation body suit. It was clear that I wasn’t going any further until I had dealt with him.
My intoxicated mind was already racing through a number of classically-inspired solutions. Could I drag the monster away, like Hercules, and release it outside of the Lombroso system, somewhere within the BRI’s ordinary administrative program files? Or, like Orpheus, could I lull the brute to sleep with the playing of my cithara or my lyre?

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