Hack (16 page)

‘strangeness1979.’

I had a vague recollection of there being an old-time rock group from Logan’s era named that. For some reason, I remember the stupidest stuff. I have a brain full of 67

pop culture, when it should have been full of useful stuff. One of the benefits of a TV

education, I suppose. I quickly connected up to the school network using Logan’s account, and found that it did have domain administrator rights.

I connected to the domain controller, and created an account called ‘netsvc,’

which sounded like it might be an authentic account for the netsvc utility, whatever that was. Starting as it did with the letter ‘n,’ it was buried nicely in the middle of the alphabetical list of user accounts, where it might better avoid detection. I gave it domain administrator access.

But before I logged off, I took just enough time to have a look at Grace’s grades.
How can anybody get a D in Home Ec?
I wondered. Another interesting thing cropped up, too. On running a program I had written called ‘wlsof,’ I found that there was already a backdoor in place. It was one of mine that I had written when I was plain Karl Ripley, unkempt loner and script kiddy.

In other words, despite what he had said, Zaqarwi already had a way into Elmwood High, and not only that, but he had downloaded one of my old programs to do it. The irony would have been tasty, if I had had anyone appreciative to share it with.

I logged off and sat back with a visible grin on my face. I had done what Zaqarwi had asked. I had done it in an hour. Not bad work. I had surely passed their little test. Malik would find out. I was through to the next stage, I was pretty sure.

“You did it?” asked Zaqarwi, noticing my expression. He sounded surprised, and the other three hackers looked up.

“Sorry I took so long. I’ve been a bit rusty lately.” A bit of overconfidence never hurts in the presence of hackers. Arrogance and egotism are tolerated, because they’re often necessary. It’s only when you can’t walk the walk that they mind you talking the talk. The group gathered to have a look.

“Here’s your account: ‘netsvc,’ password ‘netsvc.’”

I saw some impressed looks pass around the group. Apparently, they had no idea that I had, in a way, hacked them more than I had hacked the school network. I shut down my machine, before anybody had a chance to look it over. I gave Zaqarwi his machine back, and thanked him.

“I’ve got to go to the john,” I said. A pit stop would give Zaqarwi some time to discuss my membership in his crew with his friends. When I got back, Zaqarwi was still playing with his new account, apparently very impressed.

“Domain administrative rights. Nice work.”

I nodded.

“Good hack, dude,” said Bennell.

“Awesome,” added Parker.

Wright gave a wave of acknowledgement, one hacker to another.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” said Zaqarwi. He pulled me to one side.

“I’m amazed. To come into a group of people, and do what you did. That’s pretty good. We could use someone like you.”

“Cool,” I said. I did feel pretty good, even though it had been a fake hack.

Hacking is pretty addictive. Maybe it’s because you spend ages banging your head against difficult problems, that when you finally win, you feel great.

“We’ve got a few projects on that you might find interesting. A little bit more challenging than tonight.”

“Cool,” I said again. With my single-word answers, you’d never have guessed that the last time anybody gave me a language skills assessment I had got a perfect score.

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“What’s next?”

“There’s someone I’d like you to meet. He’s a good guy, and he’s got deep pockets.”

I frowned, on cue.

“He works as a security consultant. His clients pay him to try to break their security, and he pays us do his work for him. He gets the glory, and we get some of the money.”

“Sort of like subcontracting?”

Zaqarwi laughed. “That’s right. Subcontracting.”

“How much does he pay?” I said, cutting to the money. The more he thought I was motivated by money, the better prospect I would be.

“Let’s put it this way, Bennell is earning more than both his parents . . . put together.”

I laughed. “You got to be kidding me.”

“No, man. I’m not kidding. We could really use someone like you.”

“I’d better get an offshore account opened, then.”

Zaqarwi laughed loudly. “You do that.”

We went back, to join the others.

“David’s in,” he said. The others smiled.

“Nice one,” said Bennell. “Dude, the next time we get together, you got to show me how you did that so quickly.”

“Sure.”

“I’m hungry,” said Zaqarwi. “Anybody want to get pizza?”

There was a round of positive replies.

“How about you, David?”

With the Malik hack on simmer, I needed to turn my attention back to Knight, and quickly.

“I’d love to,” I said, “but I’m meeting my girlfriend.”

I left Zaqarwi and his merry crew of robbing hoods, and made my way across the parking lot to the movie theater.

69

I should have been happy, because I had scored at last. But when I considered it, it was a home goal. I had hooked Zaqarwi, and next time—maybe as soon as this weekend—I would be meeting Malik. Not long after that, the FBI would have him ‘in the bag.’ That only meant that my chances of bagging Knight were about to become nonexistent. After three days at Grace’s house, hacking away at Knight’s client, I had got nowhere, and I was running out of time.

If you ask me, some people are simply born with the idea hardwired into their brain that they can always do what they want to do. I knew a few hackers who didn’t know the word ‘can’t’—or at least where mechanical things were concerned. You just enjoy things so much that the more difficult they are, the more fun it is when you stand back to admire the end result.

But on this occasion, the time constraint had beaten me. There was no hacknological way to do what I wanted to do, and I conceded that I’d have to do it the old-fashioned way: a field trip. If I needed a way into J. B. Enterprises, then I’d just have to visit their offices and politely ask them for it.

After I resigned myself to it, I felt better. At least I was moving forward again.

But even that wasn’t without its problems. J. B. Enterprises’ head offices weren’t in Elmwood; they were near Knight’s hometown of Westridge, a place called Silverdale. That was fifteen minutes away from where I was by train, according to the schedules I had consulted. A taxi might take 45 minutes if it got stuck in the rush-hour traffic, and I didn’t want to chance getting followed, either by Malik’s men, or Philips’s men. Nor could I rent a car, either; you had to be 21. I couldn’t do anything.

I made my way to the movie theater, the kick of the hack already gone. I phoned Grace, and despite it being late, I managed to get her to meet me. She turned up half an hour later, and we went into the theater.

“Thought you were busy,” Grace said.

“I’m free. Wanna choose a movie?”

Grace chose the movie, while I chose the popcorn. At just after ten, we went bowling, and I let her trash me. But I beat her hollow at pinball afterwards. After that we sat in a coffee shop, talking. I didn’t complain when she stuck vanilla in my decaf coffee, and she didn’t complain when I spent half an hour playing a video game called Manic Miner.

The journey home was quiet, but it wasn’t an awkward silence. I had gotten used to being with Grace even though I had known her only a few days. I quietly watched the nighttime town go by. They must have designed Elmwood at night, because it looked a whole lot better. Coming through the middle of town, I saw the black asphalt shining red and green, from the traffic lights. For some reason, I thought about the TV program
The Twilight Zone
.

Even Grace’s shabby neighborhood looked good in the moonlight. We turned left at a junction, and I happened to turn my head, and noticed a silver car behind us.

There is nothing unusual about having a silver car behind you, and I don’t why I noticed it; I just did. At Grace’s house, we got out of the taxi, and I asked the driver to wait. I looked back down the street, and out of the corner of my eye, I watched the silver car pull in down the street and stop. Its lights went off.

It was a street where people parked on the road, so there was nothing wrong with that. But I could see the dim form of the driver inside. Someone was waiting. Or watching. I walked with Grace up to the front door.

“Thanks for beating me at skittles,” I said to Grace. She laughed.

70

“That’s okay. I think it's called bowling, though.”

There was a silence, and this time it was awkward. Grace seemed to be waiting for me to say something, but I didn’t know what. Girl’s magazines, I knew, were full of articles on dating conventions, but I was never a guy to follow formulas. I thought that I might be doing something wrong. I gazed up at the stars.

“Look, you can see the whole of Orion.”

“The stars?” Grace said, looking upwards. It was an almost cloudless night, and despite the road lights, the stars were distinct.

“Yeah.”

“Which is Orion?”

“Just up there. The three together are the hunter’s belt.” Grace did her trademarked frown.

“Follow the line of my arm,” I said. Moving close to her, I put my head next to hers, and pointed upwards. From where the tail in the car was, it would look like some sort of romantic clinch. Grace tilted her head, to look beyond my pointing finger, to the heavens. I could feel her warm hair on my cheek.

“It doesn’t look much like a hunter.”

“I always thought it looked more like a spaceship.”

Grace looked at me in that way she had, like she pitied an idiot.

“And look over there. There’s Gracium.”

“Gracium?”

“Yeah, it’s over there,” I said, pointing. “Gracium is the fabled rescuer of stray animals.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And over there,” I said, moving her around another ninety degrees. But I slipped, and grabbed Grace around the arm.

“Oops! You guys should get this path fixed. You could get a lawsuit from somebody. And over there is Davidos.”

“Really? And what fabled constellation is Davidos?”

“It’s top secret.”

“That I can believe.” For a moment, I stood, looking at Grace, and she looking at me. She didn’t mind my talking nonsense, and I didn’t mind that her eyes were like black diamonds.

“Well,” I said, stepping back. “I’ve got to get back home. It’s getting late, and my mother will be calling the Coast Guard. See you tomorrow morning.”

“Okay,” she replied, somewhat wistfully. I should have kissed her. I had wanted to, but knew that I couldn’t get too close. Business first.

I turned and walked down the driveway, and got into the taxi. As it turned and headed back down the road, I checked out the silver car. It was empty. Wherever the driver was, he wasn’t inside. I wondered if paranoia was setting in. Being watched all of the time is something that no one can endure for a long time. It wrecks your brain.

I arranged with the driver to have a taxi pick Grace up in the morning, and another taxi meet me at the end of the street tomorrow at seven. I gave him a twenty and told him to instruct the driver to wait for ten minutes, if I wasn’t there.

Back home, I stuck my key in the front door, and went in. Hannah was there.

“Hi, David. You’re late.”

“Yeah, sorry.”

“I wish you had called.”

“Sorry, I forgot.”

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“Did you have a nice night?”

“It was cool. Everything went great. I’m going back this weekend.” I tried to convey wordlessly, with just my positive expression, that I had hacked Zaqarwi, and was in the group.

She seemed to get it. “That’s great. Did you see a movie?”

“No, we just sat around and drank coffee and talked.”

“What about?”

“We talked about computer games and girls.”

“Well, it’s nice that you’re fitting in. I am glad to hear it.”

“Thanks. Me, too.”

I went to my room. Without turning the light on, I got undressed and got into bed. But, despite being tired, I couldn’t sleep. I lay awake, looking out of the window into the cloudless night.

Why do I lie so easily, so convincingly?
I wondered.
What sort of talent is that
to put on your CV? Had North been right? Was I really a natural-born criminal?

Up above, Orion was watching, just like he had been outside my nighttime window throughout my teenage years, spent hunched over my computer until two or three a.m., dreaming of the things I would do, the money I would make, and a better life away from these crime-ridden, run-down neighborhoods.

A jet blinked its way into the night, and as I watched it disappear, I wondered about its occupants, and where they were going. And I thought about going somewhere myself. Grace had said that she wanted to go to Europe, to look around.

Me, too.

72

I sneaked out early the next morning, before my proxy-parents were up. I hid my bike in some bushes at the end of Grace’s street, and got into the waiting taxi.

At the local bus station, I retrieved my bag, and went into the restroom, where I changed into my suit and tie, stuck my clothes into the case, and put my name, address, and cell phone number on a label attached to the case.

I stuck the case on the floor in front of the restroom attendant’s door, and then knocked loudly. A door opened, and an elderly man looked out.

“Excuse me, sir, but I found this case over there. There are some kid’s clothes in it.”

It would be simpler to be able to retrieve my belongings from the lost and found later, after I had returned to Elmwood from Silverdale.

I left David Johnson’s clothes with the attendant, and walked out of the restroom as Jim Jensen, successful young businessman, with an quirky habit of wearing dark glasses in autumn. I got into a taxi, and told the driver to take me to the train station.

I arrived shortly after 7:30 a.m., paid the driver, and bought two tickets to Silverdale. I made my way to the platform where my train was due at 7:45 a.m.