COPYRIGHT 1994 Joshua Lellis joshua@server.dmccorp.com TTTTTTTTTTTTT AA TT AAAA L TT H AA AA L TT H AA AA L K TT HHHH AAAAAAAAAA L K K TT H H EE AAAA AAAA L SS KK TT H H EEEE AAAA AAAA L AAA S KK AAA NNN TT H H E AAAA AAAA L A A S K K A A N N TT H H EEE AAAA AAAA L AAA SS K K AAA N N TABLE OF CONTENTS Copyright Information E-Published Information Prologue - "Harry's Vice" Chapter One - "Alaskan Scripts" Chapter Two - "Alaskan Angels" Chapter Three - "Alaskan Games" Chapter Four - "TraceRoute" Chapter Five - "Patience, Patience Said The Man" Chapter Six - "Without a Safety Net" Chapter Seven - "Angst" Chapter Eight - "Power Modems" Chapter Nine - "Cheap Surprise" Chapter Ten - "The Midnight Curfew" Chapter Eleven - "The Infiltration" Chapter Twelve - "Big Empty" Chapter Thirteen - "Phony Bone" Chapter Fourteen - "OCFNYC" Epilogue - "Max's Dilemma" Fin - "Operation Sundevil" Author's Notes Pardon all of the quotes.... I just have a lot of influences... "It doesn't matter how you hide, find you if they wanted to." -- The Cure, Burn "Truth, covered in security.... like to know the code word... don't regret a thing, I got this friend you see he makes me feel.. I wanted more than I could steal... don't tell me what I wanna hear, fraid I'll never know fear, occupied and jealousy, jealousy fucking gone....." -- Nirvana, Lounge Act "I used to be so big and strong, I used to know my right from wrong, I used to never be afraid, I used to be somebody." -- Nine Inch Nails, Down In It "I wanna break it up, I wanna smash it up, I wanna fuck it up." -- Nine Inch Nails, March Of The Pigs "I am the voice inside your head, and I control you." -- Nine Inch Nails, Mr. Self Destruct "What the fuck is this world coming to, you didn't leave a message, at least I could've heard your voice one last time... would you hit me, would you hit me...." -- Pearl Jam, Porch Dedicated To: Karen Goins, I swore I was going to put you in a book, here it is. Special Thanks To: Bruce Sterling, good influence on my writing, William Gibson, I'm still working on memorizing _Neuromancer_ :-), Cliff Stoll, for chasing the wily hacker, Patrick Hurh, for criticizing, Alison in Seattle, <-- Got a back issue, Mike Acar, mental support (and a good chat for cpunk), Stefan "Twoflower" Gagne, who I forgot to thank before, MPC, for having nice words, Torben Bjerregaard, for helping me out mentally, Mike Acar, AGAIN, for not getting mentioned twice before, Taran King, helped me envision the phreak/hack world better, Knight Lightning, for editing Phrack, The Mentor, for his Hitler-like speech in Phrack, Prophet, for showing what NOT to do as a hacker, Chris Campbell, for being a goon during school, Harry Parrish, for being a bigger goon than Chris, but not quite a big enough goon to be mentioned first, and for also allowing me to use his name, Daniel Fackrel, for mental support, Dad, for helping bring me into this world and give me life, Mom, ditto, Amy, for getting herself mentioned in a book, Andrew, for picking on me for no good reason, Max Campos, for letting me use his name.... and running a good BBS, Willie, for helping Max (on that BBS part, you know), Brandon "Raistlin" MacDonald, for telling me that I'd never get here, Lee and Rhonda, for running a great BBS, Reginald, for running a great BBS, Billy Biggs, for editing Line Noiz, Kipp, for editing KNOTTED, Tad "Wanderer" Hoddick, for just being really wierd for no apparent reason, Vampiress, uhh.... dunno, Matrix, for just being plain wierd, Rave, for being Rave, Kell, for being Kell, Monalisa, for being a good sister, Zoom, introducing Wired to me, Marshall Motley, aka The Heretic, for helping out here and there (and, NO, darn you, I will not say that Alaska is bleak with only thirty foot trees... :-)), Mr. Christopher, my computer lab teacher (who always complained about my programming instead of playing solitaire), Ms. Wieler, my English teacher (who's using b&w Macs (hehe), Ms. Peatross, for saying that I would write a book someday, Mr. Eberts, my newest English teacher, Ms. Crowley, for teaching me unnecessary history, Ms. Burke, for making me do a science fair project about ciphers and codes, but denied it, and made me do a different project on genetics, which expanded my mind in two areas unfairly, Steve Jackson, for inventing GURPS and helping creative juices, Jon Nave, for being the little idiot he is, the many people that sent feedback to me, and all the other influences on my life. Thanks, I finally did it! This book may be copied in it's entirety without any changes in the manuscript. Acknowledgement of the author must be given to Joshua Lellis. Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis This story is PURELY fictional. It has nothing to do with anyone in real life. Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis E-Publishing Information First Electronic Publishing > September 1994 PROLOGUE Harry's Vice By Joshua Lellis Most of the kids hung out around the liquor store, occasionally stealing booze behind the owner's back, most of the time just smoking, smoking anything they could get their hands on, and sometimes, things they couldn't get their hands on. This included a wide variety of spices, papers, and women's tee shirts. They would smoke anything, and everything. But Harry was a nerd. Harry was worse than a nerd. He knew he was a nerd, and never did anything about it. The kids laughed at him during class. The class bully, Herman, had pulled Harry's underwear over his head, and down from there, to the floor. Harry had to put up with it too. Harry couldn't do anything about it. One time they had stolen Harry's lunch money, and he had missed the bus. He had to walk home. He passed the liquor store where the cool kids hung out. One of them stole his glasses, the other kneed him in the groin. When Harry began to spit up blood, many of them called him a wussy, and words worse than that. Harry made a mistake. He fought back. He stood up, brushed off his clothes with his hands. Next thing he knew, he was rolling around on the floor with a gangster. The people stood around him, yelling, screaming, hoping for the cool one to win out of the battle. A girl in a short tee shirt that revealed her stomach and a tight pair of leather pants which took her rear and lifted it centimeters higher, was yelling for the cool kid, yelling loud. Harry knew her from classes, he had stared at her in gym. He had even taken a shower with her, when some of the cool kids pushed him into the girls' locker room naked. She had laughed at him. He had seen his dreams in real life though, and after that his nights were easier. But the kid on the ground fighting him was something else. He punched Harry, knocking a hole into his face. Taking Harry by the neck and beating the nerd out of him. Harry fought back, kicked the other in the stomach, kneed him in the face, and took his hair in fist. He stepped on the stomach, raised himself up, and yanked the hair up. The scalp burned with a terrible sensation. Harry watched as another kid pulled a knife. The kid jumped at Harry, but Harry sidestepped, and the kid hit the wall face forward. Harry was now standing next to his woman. He was flung towards her by another gangster kick. Harry was on the ground with her. She looked into his eyes for the first time, ever, and knew what she had believed before. Harry wasn't a nerd. Last thing Harry remembered before blacking out was her lips against his. He went to sleep happy that night. The next morning on the bus to school, Harry was looked at strangly by the people in the back of the bus. The back always kept the cooler kids. The very front seat was the worst, many thought, because of the big fat bus driver that sat there. Harry looked behind him and saw his woman. That's when he realized what he would do for her. Harry had a vice. A bad vice. Not that there were any such thing as a good vice. There wasn't. But Harry had a vice just the same. His vice, however, was peculiar. He spent his time at a computer terminal, talking, as it seemed, to invisible friends. Harry had made many invisible friends. But he had never met any of them. One of them in Alaska had given Harry something he did not need, but thought might come in handy. It was a sequencer. For breaking into systems. This was Harry's vice. He was a hacker. An amateur in the world of hackers. Harry was not respected among his peers. Even in the world of nerds, Harry was depicted as a nerd. The entire thought of actually using the sequencer never entered his mind. Not even remotely. He had tried to use it once, but it failed him. He had to ask the Alaskan once more how to use it. The Alaskan explained it all to the amateur. There must be a master race, the Alaskan had thought, a master race of hackers. This can only be acheived by recruition. But deep in the back of the Alaskan's mind he knew, and realized that for every amateur that came through the board, five were caught. The rate of caught hackers was going up, and the rate of recruited hackers dropped per minute. The Alaskan knew he was going to have to do something about it. Harry spent the day writing. Taking notes. Notes on what he was going to do. During Computer Lab, he took a call to his board, logged in, and there, idling, was his hacker pal from Alaska. Harry asked for numbers, for banks in his area. He got them. When school let out, he ran home, past the liquor store, past the gang, and to his house. He opened the door, ran up to his computer, and turned it on. The familiar log on screen blared out at him as he entered his board one more time. Maybe his last time. As it turns out, there was a board in his area. A big bank, lots of money. They could transfer money between two different accounts. This was Harry's chance to become cool. To become famous. He whipped out the sequencer, put it in the drive, and ran the program. The bank let him in. He cruised around for an hour, trying to get a hang of the bank. Trying to get a feel for this hacking stuff. He had done it all before, at least claimed he did. Hackers did it all the time, stretching true tales into legends. But the experience was different. It wasn't the same when you just sat there and lied. There needed to be an actual explanation for all this. Then a pain hit his stomach and he grabbed his abdominals, trying to ease the pain, even though he knew for a fact it was impossible. It was the feeling as though he might get caught. Put in for ten to twenty. But then he remembered the feel of her lips against his, and he didn't stop the hack. He made it out of the bank with over eight thousand dollars. He would get up early tommorrow and get the money, then, he'd get his woman out of school, take her to the mall, and do a shopping spree. He dreamed the dreams he normally dreamt, only this time the pain in his stomach did not die down. It stayed there. He got up early, the pain gone, and went to the bank. There he took out eight thousand dollars under a different name, and left the bank. Easy as pie. He went into homeroom feeling great. Nothing could harm him. Nothing. He saw his woman in the back of class, wearing a dress that he loved. The day meandered by, untill at lunch time, he went up to his woman, sat down at her table, and began a conversation. But then the conversation turned, and he pulled out of his wallet a hundred dollar bill. The bill seemed special. The first bill he'd ever ripped off. He gave it to her. The next period he walked in from lunch, feeling as though nothing could happen to him. He felt good. As he entered the restroom, he felt invincible. Then the gangster he beat up was standing in front of him, gun in hand, pointed straight in the center of Harry's head, ready to blow it off in seconds. Any sudden moves. Harry looked at the gangster. The gangster cussed at Harry, and Harry took from his wallet a bill, he didn't bother to look at it. He gave it to the gangster, and in exchange the gangster handed over the gun. Harry fired at the gangster six times. The bullets hit the gangster hard, and he fell into a toilet, dead. Harry left the restroom with the gun in his pocket, and he made his way to the next class, gym. He began to chat with his woman on the way to gym, and, when she entered the girls' locker room, so did he. He wanted so much to take her away from all of this school work. All of this living Hell he called school. He watched her undress in front of him. He lifted up her head and gave her a kiss, a meaningful kiss. One she would never forget. She stood there in her underwear, looking at Harry. He looked into her eyes. She kissed him. They sat there in the locker room, kissing each other. The period passed, and the final class of the day was approaching. He walked her to her locker, to her class. He sat in her class, answered to another name, the name of the boy he had killed. The class period passed with Harry sending her love notes, juicy ones. She looked at him the entire period, wondering how he made the money. The final bell rang and he walked her to the front of the school. They sat on a bench, kissing, sometimes talking. Then he walked her home. He gave her a final kiss. One would call it a French kiss. To put it plainly, he slipped her the tongue. She gave him her number, and muttered those words. Call me. He watched her go up to her window on the second floor, and from there, she waved to him. He waved back. The sprinklers came on and he laughed. He laughed because he knew now that he wasn't a nerd. Now, he was cool. When he walked home, he had remembered the gun in his pocket. He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, took out the gun, and looked at it. He had forgotten something important. Bullets. He got to the sidewalk and looked at his house. Cops. Harry ran around the corner to hide, and looked around at the five vehicles parked outside the curb. He ran, ran down the street. Ran towards her house. Her. He needed her. She could go with him, leave the world behind. When he got to her front door, he pounded on it. The door opened, and her father stood there. "She's gone." were the only words he could mutter. "Bullshit." was Harry's response. He took the gun and slapped the old man across the face. He ran up the stairs, opened the door, and there, on the bed, was his woman, dead. There was a note, and a gun. The note was unpleasant to read. It came slowly to his mind, the words coming like punches. He collapsed to his knees and looked at the gun. He picked it up, raised it to his head, and pulled the trigger. It was very messy when the police arrived. -------------------------------------------------------------- Harry's Vice By Joshua Lellis joshua@server.dmccorp.com Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis CHAPTER ONE Alaskan Scripts By Joshua Lellis joshua@server.dmccorp.com (notice the cool new internet address) Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis Line noise buzzed the ear of his sister. "Shit!" she yelled. "Goddammit Max, you motherfucker!" Max opened his window and jumped out onto the roof. Just in time to see his sister enter the room. "Sonovabitch! Max, you get your ass back in here. What I tell you about using that line?" Max scaled down the side of the roof and towards the edge. "I get my hands on your neck Max! I get my hands on your neck and you'll be dead!" Max jumped from the roof to the ground, took a short roll, adjusted his clothes, and took the one mile run back to the small Alaskan town he called home. Sure, his sister would be pissed at him for awhile, but that was all just a fact of life. There was a new computer store opening up in the downtown area and if Max was right, he could swipe a few things in his flannel shirt, and make it back to his house by night. Max stuffed his hands into the sides of his pants and pushed the door open with his shoulder. The store owner wore an apron, for some odd reason or another, and spoke calmly. "Can I help you?" he asked. "Uh.. nah, nah.. Just looking." Max answered, as he walked towards the modems and looked at them. They were making modems smaller these days, and, they looked almost.. Well.... truly... pocket sized. Max turned around and looked at the store owner. He had been staring at Max ever since he had entered the store. Seeing Max's look, the owner looked back down at his records. The owner pretended to be busy as Max looked around. Max picked up a modem, nice hefty one, and wondered, in the back of his mind, if he could convert it. "Nice piece of machinery, easily configurable, you know, kid?" the owner said from behind the counter. "Yeah... I got one at home...." Max said. "Oh, kid, you run your own board or something?" "Nah. Nah. I hang out..." Max said, but then remembered he didn't want anyone to know about what he did at that board over in NYC. "I hang out on the InterNet. Nice place there." "Oh, American Online, or Delphi?" "Nah, I just dial up the University." The owner laughed. "Never knew why the University'd be here in this town. Less than four hundred people here, huh kid?" Max was getting rather mad. He didn't want to talk shop with this owner. He wanted, well, this modem that he held in his hands. He looked down at it now and pondered the idea of stealing from such a nice fellow. But then Max remembered what he was, what he had always been, a hacker. No need to give this dude the wrong impression, right? But then again..... "Yeah. Last census, less than 450." The owner sighed. "Wow. Man, I had come up here from Anchorage. Nice place, Anchorage. You ever seen it?" "Nah. Never seen it." "You gotta.. Big place Anchorage. Well, compared to this little no-name town on the edge of the Pacific." Max put the modem back. He needed to give the dude the wrong impression. He'd have to be friends with this dude, the only person in this town that had computer equipment, literally, at his fingertips. "Yeah. First chance I get I'm getting out of here." That was a lie. He couldn't go back to Seattle, the place where he had gotten all the computer equipment he had right now. "You don't fool me kid." the owner said. WHAT? Max thought. Fool him? Does he know I'm a hacker? "I can see that you're not from around here. Already had enough natives of this town to see what the average person looks like. You're too tan to be from here. Where you from kid? Don't pull my leg again?" Max sighed. "Seattle." The owner laughed. "Geeze, I didn't mean that truthfully. Boy you so pale, you ain't got one tan piece of flesh on ya." His cackle echoed through the store. "Well, now I know you didn't grow up here." Max was standing next to a pair of speakers. "Milbone, Richard." said the owner, holding out his hand. "Max. Name's Max." Max said, taking the hand and shaking it. Max let go quickly, and walked over to the game section of the store. "What brings you to this neck of the ice?" Max asked, picking up a copy of SimCity and looking at the price. "Ahh, had some trouble back home. Brother killed himself. Really messy stuff." "Huh.... too bad..." "He was messed up from the beginning man. Dude went around acting like a hacker. He hung out on this board, talked to some dude from Alaska. Hell, I don't know why." Max nodded, putting down a copy of The Seventh Guest. "He went psycho and stuff dude. You know what. Little fucker went out and got himself a copy of a sequencer. He broke into a bank, transfered a shitload of cash. Thousand dollars and stuff. Man. Was he so messed up." Max nodded, not really listening. He looked at a karoake machine that sat in the corner. "Karoake kills, you know that, Rich?" Richard laughed. "Maybe that's why I got it here, man." "So why you coming up to Alaska, hoping to find your bro's hacker friend?" Richard laughed. "No. Just, well, gotta get away from the trouble back home. Mom's gone freakoid on us, and dad's hitting the bottle. Sister cries in her room daily. Gotta escape that house while I'm still sane." Max laughed. "So you came to Alaska?" Richard smirked. "Hey, white boy, there still is sanity. Just that it's fifty degrees colder." Max nodded as he walked out of the store and down the street. Max was rather cold when he logged into the NYC board and got ready to idle. "Idling, my favorite thing!" he said, as he pulled a blanket up around his neck. Then he checked a list of users, looking for anyone suspicious. >who List Of Users For Open Computer Facility at NYC Hackers ------------------------------------------------------- user login status from cracker 10:35 dl phile(s) node 1 maximillion 8:30 idle node 2 phonebone 10:30 email node 6 lebeau 10:37 chat node 3 king 6:25 chat node 4 lellis 3:30 chat node 8 optical 14:23 dl phile(s) node 5 gable 1:30 chat node 7 sysop 13:00 maintenance local sysop 12:56 watching you local The usual people that sat around there. Except, he'd never seen phone bone before. Drat. He was using email. No chance of intercepting him and chatting. So Max joined the chat line, and listened to the conversation. lellis: I know. The sequencer had a few bugs last time we tested it. king: Tested it? You test stuff? lellis: Haha. Very funny. king: I thought so. lebeau: Me too. lellis: grumble grumble. maximillion: Hi guys. lellis: Hi Max. king: 'Lo Max. lebeau: Max. maximillion: What's the topic today, guys? lebeau: Remember that old kid. The one who killed himself? maximillion: Sort of, yeah, I gave him a sequencer. lebeau: Well, if phone bone -- lellis: I ain't seen Phone Bone before. Except the comics, that is. king: You always switch the topic to comics, don't you. lellis: Only when needed. :-) king: God, I hate you Lellis! lellis: Thanks. lebeau: Anyhow, if Phone Bone's email I caught is correct, he wants lebeau: to find you, Max. maximillion: What'd I do? I ain't never seen Phone Bone before. lebeau: Damned if I know. lellis: 'sides that, we found bugs in your sequencer. king: Big bugs, too, Max. You still using that old Turbo Pascal? lellis: *laugh* maximillion: Yeah. Still using Turbo. No money in hacking, man. gable: I could beg to differ. lellis: Gable! Glad you could show up, Clarkie. gable: Had to read some mail, you know how it is, Lellis. lellis: Not really. :-) king: You always have to make jokes, don't you, Lellis? lellis: Chill out, King. I'm just... what's the word... lebeau: Annoying? king: *laugh* lellis: Humourous. king: playing British again, Lellis? lellis: Mumble mumble... grumble grumble... king: Hey, Lellis, go read some Spider-Man comics or something. lebeau: Yeah, only real hackers allowed here. maximillion: Now what's all this about PhoneBone and me? phonebone: Maximillion, thought I'd find you here. maximillion: Yeah, so? phonebone: Just a reporter, all I am, Max. maximillion: How am I supposed to believe that? phonebone: You're not. ;-) lellis: Smileys! king: Oh, god, not again. lellis: Smileys smileys smileys! phonebone: Just wanna ask you some questions. It's all in the email phonebone: I sent you. So chill, bud. Max sighed. Chill. Yeah, he was chilling right about now. Max woke up to a gun pointed at his head. "HOLY SHIT!" he screamed in terror. His little brother squirted him with water, and his face seemed to cool off, for a moment. "Little brat!" Max yelled as he took a swipe at his bro. The brother, really good at this sort of thing, ran away quickly. Max got up and wiped his face on a towel that rested on the floor. He put on his flannel, rather odd if he thought about it. It was the middle of summer. No school anymore. And still wearing that flannel. It was up to a heat-wavy sixty-seven degrees. Yeah. It was cold outside. Good idea to wear the flannel. He walked down the stairs and out the door towards downtown. His mother yelled after him, "Don't forget to pick up lunch!" Max made his way to the computer store and through the door. "Hi, Rich." Richard was helping a lady customer near the modems. "See, you dial the phone. Well, you dial the phone through the modem and can connect to another person's computer." Richard nodded for Max to wait next to the cash register. "After you connect you can exchange information about certain things. I believe there's a university near here that you can dialup and get an InterNet account." The lady customer smiled. "The InterNet, oh my Charles will be so proud." Max rolled his eyes. "What does the InterNet have?" Max rolled his eyes again. God, please don't make Richard explain it all. "Well, for one thing there's.... uh... newsgroups." The lady seemed to bounce when she spoke. "Newsgroups? My, dear, what are those?" The lady was rather fat, and her son pulled on her dress next to her. "I want candy! I want candy!" he whined. Max jumped up onto the counter and sat, waiting. "They're what they mean. People around the world. International people write articles and post them to specific newsgroups. Cryptologists write to cryptology newsgroups, cyberpunk writers write to cyberpunk newsgroups, animal lovers write to animal lovers newsgroups. There are political newsgroups that keep you up to date about current events. And newsgroups grow daily, with over four thousand at last count. And there are lists of the favorite newsgroups of people. And they take up many megs of space. At least 3500 megs per group. And there are some strange people out there that are really funny. There are people of every race, culture, religion, and brain-size out there." The lady thought a minute. "Why would I want to talk to them?" The little boy drooled on the mother's dress. "Candy! Gimme candy, come on! Come on, ma. Give me candy!" "SHUT UP JUNIOR!" "There would be a lot of good out of knowing and understanding others cultures." "Why?" Max sighed and lied down on the counter. He slapped his hand against his forehead and waited for the ordeal to end. "Listen lady, you want the modem or not? It's been three hours since I've first started serving you, and you've looked at every piece of equipment we have in here, and have already bought a Pentium. If you don't want the modem, tell me, and we'll package up the Pentium and you can play with it at home!" The lady shook her head. "No, I don't want any of it. Leave it all here. I don't want some sad Pentium if you won't serve the likes of me. Come on Junior, let's go get some candy for you. Growing boys need candy." The lady took the child by the hand and walked out of the store with him. Richard screamed. "My god, I thought she'd never leave!" Max responded with, "You got Pentiums?" Richard laughed. "What brings you here today, Max?" "Just coming to look at the games is all." Max said, as he hopped off the counter and looked at SimEarth. "Hey, Max, you seem like a nice guy. You know your way around computers, and I assume, the InterNet. You wanna work for me?" Max shruged. "What's it pay?" Richard laughed. "I'll give you a Pentium at the end of the first month of work, and one game with the Pentium. Every month after that you can have whatever you please in the store." Max's eyes lit up. "You've got yourself an employee." Max walked out of the store and went to the deli across the street. "Hi Marty. Got the cold cuts my family needs to survive?" Max said as he entered the store. Max was kidding, of course, and Marty smiled at him. "Sorry kid, just ran out with that Mrs. Wingleburger and her son. Kid eats too much candy, you know." "Darn, Marty, guess we ain't gonna live till tommorrow. That'll throw off your plans for that BBQ next month." Marty laughed. "You got one smart ass attitude on you, Max. You do, you know that!" Max nodded. "Just give me the cold cuts, Marty." Marty handed Max the cold cuts, and Max stuffed them into the bags available. "Thanks Marty." Marty asked Max, "What's up with that store across the street, Max? Computer Electronics, Inc?" "Just a computer store." "Just a computer store? They're booming in this little town of ours." "People just curious is all, Marty." "Whatever. Whatever." Max left the Deli, and the old man known as Marty, behind as he walked back home. The sun was in the middle of the sky, and as far as Max knew it was soon to be noon. Max checked the logs at @ocf.nychack.com. >who List Of Users at Open Computer Facility at NYC Hackers ------------------------------------------------------ (sorry, folks, but lots of People have been complaining about the setup of the OCF. We've allowed people to know other's handles. Most of y'all are y'all handles. -- SysOp Oh, yeah, and some people complained about not under- standing the times. It's now in military time. Yeah, chew on that one for awhile!) user login status handle maximillion 19:30 idle Maximillion Forte phonebone 20:10 email Phone Bone lellis 16:56 chat Joshua Lellis optical 20:30 chat Optical Overkill king 21:14 email Lion King lebeau 21:15 chat Mario LeBeau gable 17:30 dl phile(s) Clark Gable cracker 15:20 dl phile(s) The Cracker jimi 18:00 ul phile(s) Jimi Nohandle sysop 1:01:00 maintenance SysOp Max joined the chat channel once again. lellis: What do you mean you don't believe it? Listen to the song! lellis: It's plain and simple.... It goes... lellis: She said she'd be my woman. She said she'd be my man. lellis: and I can't live this way, please refill my soul. optical: No. No. No. No. d00d, he goes.... optical: She said she'd be my woman. I said I'd be my man. lellis: Come on, that doesn't make any sense. maximillion: What doesn't? lellis: Oh, good day, senior Forte. I see you got your ass in trouble. maximillion: ? lellis: Go look at the philes. Max left the channel and looked at the files. > ls box/ rumors/ tabulatures/ phracks/ cuds/ games/ > cd rumors Ok. > ls phonebone/ harry/ maximillion/ lellis/ king/ box/ > cd harry Ok. > ls harry's.vice > cd .. Ok. > cd lellis Ok. > ls phile#1-19/ phile#20-29/ phile#30-39/ phile#40-49/ phile#50-59/ phile#60-600/ misc/ > cd .. Ok. > join chat channel lellis: No. No. No. She specifically said she'd be a man. optical: That doesn't make her gay. king: That didn't make sense. optical: Not really. maximillion: Guys, what's Harry's Vice? optical: *laugh* Don't you know, Forte? It's hacking. king: Yeah.. d00d shot himself. lellis: Big time suicide. Lots of people know about it. lellis: It's been in the news for some time now. king: I saw an article on it in USA Today. lellis: You read USA Today? king: Well, yeah. lellis: Answer me one thing.... king: What? You want to know how to crack banks again? lellis: Nah, nah.... just... WHY? king: See, according to crack.banks you're supposed to transfer. optical: Idiots! maximillion: So this phile is something special? optical: Not unless you care about Halloween Harry, the hacker. maximillion: Halloween Harry? optical: that's what he called himself. maximillion: What a silly name. Max woke up the next morning to sunshine on his face. Nothing in the world is better than sunshine on your face. Max yawned and looked at the clock next to his bed. "Ahhh... fuck...." he mumbled. He got out of bed, pulled the flannel over his body, and ran out the door towards the store. "You forgot your lunch, Max!" He made it to the store at half past three. Richard was helping some kids look at some games. "Y'all wanna play 'em?" The kids looked surprised. "I've got an open version of every game, and each game is logged into old Beast over there." Richard pointed to a Pentium that sat on a table across the store. "Try then buy, boys. Try then buy." Each kid yelled a yahoo and went over to the computer to try out the games. Richard noticed Max entering the door, and approached him. "What the FUCK do you think you're doing here? We open at six a.m. We don't have time to sit on our asses when there's money to be made." Max nodded. "You get your ass behind that counter and stay there. I ain't about to fuck up my business because of some flannel wearing faggot. Next customer that comes in, you better get to buy something, or your ass is sitting out on the street!" he yelled. Max sat behind the counter flicking pencils off his nose. He caught one in his mouth, but most fell against the floor and KABOOM made a rather loud sound. In the background he could KABOOM hear the sounds of children playing X-Wing. Max had a computer sitting right next to him under the counter. There was a modem and plenty of lines to dial through. But Max wasn't going to be caught behind the counter playing around on the InterNet. Max was too smart for that. The day ended at nine o'clock, with Richard shoving a tired Max out the door. "You better get yourself down here by six a.m. tommorrow, or we ain't going to be seeing each other much anymore." Max pulled the flannel up tight against him. He looked around at this city of four hundred and sighed. He walked past an alley, and breathed into his cupped hands, trying to warm himself up. "Hey, faggot!" yelled a voice from the alley. "We'll warm you up." Two teenagers jumped Max from behind, and another held a switchblade in his hand. The third teenager looked at Max from in front of him. "Whas the matter, little baby? You sleep in a bit much?" The third kicked Max in his mouth. Blood mixed with saliva, and Max struggled to kick this guy's ass. "You don't got an alarm clock, baby? Maybe you should think about getting one." He kicked him again in the mouth. The two teenagers holding him stood him up on his feet. "What's the matter baby?" He got kicked in the nuts, and doubled over onto the ground, coughing up blood. "What's the matter?" He got kicked from behind. "How come you don't feel like a man now?" He got kicked in the nose. Then he realized that the two holding him weren't holding him anymore. Max reached into his flannel and pulled out the gun. He shot the one in front of him in the leg. The knife he was carrying dropped to the ground. Max jumped over the guy in front of him, made a 180 turn and fired at the teenagers now in front of him. He hit one in the leg, and another in the butt. They fell to the ground and the ordeal was over. Max rubbed his mouth as he stood above the leader. "What's the matter, baby?" he asked as he kicked the goon in the face. "What's the matter?" he said again as he bashed his front teeth with the handle of the gun. "How come you don't feel like a man now?" He knocked him silly when he hit him across the forehead with the gun. Max spat on the boy. "Next time you decided to jump someone," Max said, even though he knew the jumper was knocked so silly he couldn't hear anything. "make sure the bastard ain't got a gun on him." ------------------------------------ That's about all I can write for this segment of The Alaskan, a nice big novel. This is the first chapter of The Alaskan, if you were wondering. Please send me your responses to this, cause without responses, this won't turn out to be such a good novel. I'll keep back issues. Look for the second chapter, later. :-) CHAPTER TWO Alaskan Angels (aka _The_Alaskan_ Chapter Two) By Joshua Lellis Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis joshua@server.dmccorp.com PLEASE SEND FEEDBACK! Max looked into the Deli, clutching the gun in his flannel pocket. He tried pushing the door open, but it was locked. How am I gonna get rid of this gun? he thought, trying the door again. He could still see the gang's wounded bodies limping back into the alley. They didn't want to get caught as much as the next guy. Similar to hackers, Max thought as he made his way to the Deli's side door. Max tried turning it, but remembered that wasn't such a good idea, his fingerprints would rub off onto it. Holding his ears, Max pulled the trigger of the gun, firing into the door handle. It deflected off the handle. Max fired again. Small indention. Fired again. Clearly defined hole. Fired again. Again. Again. Click. He grabbed the knob, and, using all his strength, twisted the knob off the door. Great, he thought to himself, now I've got to find a way to get rid of the knob. Angered at himself, he kicked the door in. He walked into the deli, and moved towards the chickens. He had an idea. Wiping the knob and the gun clean of prints with a towel, he put the two items into the rear of a chicken, and shoved it up. Someone would have a great surprise whenever they bit into this Shake N Baker. Max ran up the stairs and made it into the bathroom before his mother could say another word about it. Washing his face, he looked into the mirror at the bruises he had been given by the town gangsters. He had really got his ass kicked out of that battle, and even though he won, he didn't really feel any better about everything. Max wiped his face in a towel, and blood splattered over the white of the towel. God, out of all the towels I could have picked, I pick a white one. Max took a run to his computer, closed the door of his room, dropped the towel on the floor, and got ready to log in. List Of Users at Open Computer Facity NYC Hackers ------------------------------------------------- (Would someone please tell that asshole Joshua to stop complaining about the latest Phracks. It'll get here when it gets here. -- Your Loving SysOp) user login status handle lellis 16:30 chat Joshua Lellis king 20:21 dl phile(s) Lion King optical 19:56 chat Optical Overkill maximillion 23:40 idle Maximillion Forte sysop 21:11 chat SysOp Max rubbed his head. It hurt more now, the adreniline leaving him. > join chat Ok. sysop: Shut up, Lellis! We don't want your kind here! lellis: Listen, buddy, I didn't ask for others to read the email. lellis: I just wanted the new Phracks. sysop: Listen up, Lellis. You be quiet, or I'll .kill ya. lellis: I don't see what the problem is. This is a BBS, you know. sysop: That's it. You're gone. lellis: Why you -- 352656116jhnujsgnd9aUgaa =CLICK= maximillion: Hi all. optical: Hi Max. maximillion: What, no Phone Bone? optical: Nah. He had some "family business" to take care of. sysop: Next person snooping round here for the New Phracks'll be sysop: killed. maximillion: Bad day at the office? optical: Don't we wish. Max went to bed early that night, trying not to anger any sysops that might be dangerous to him. He woke up early, well before four. He got in the shower and freshened himself up, singing old Violent Femmes. "People worry, what are they worrying about today?" Paul woke up to a racket beside his bed. His computer beeped, and he turned on a light on his bedside table. The light hit the family dog, and the dog leapt up onto his mattress. Paul let out a breath, relaxed and looked at the time. Only two thirty. He could work on the BBS some more. It wasn't too late. He had gone to sleep early. He wanted to get back into normal sleeping habits by the time school started in about a week. He was going into his third year of high school, and it would only be another year before he got out of that place. He despised school and all of the things that surronded it. Course, he enjoyed the computer lab enough. The computer lab would be the only place he could escape the teachers. Except for the few computer lab "whizes" that watched over the lab. The lab managers that preferred for users to play solitare, and stay away from that word processor. Don't mess with that printer. You think all this stuff is a toy. Paul thought a minute. The beep came again from the computer. "What?" he asked it, expecting an answer. He climbed out of his sleeping den and walked over to the metallic being. Sure enough, the trap Paul had set for it had worked. Phonebone was logged in. Paul, being a hacker himself, realized what went on in the mind when one entered the "forbidden" realm. But this Phonebone, the one spreading all this stuff about Harry's vice. Harry's vice! Paul reached around beside the computer searching for the printout. Where's that stupid printout? There it was, sitting right in front of him on the keyboard. How stupid of him. How could he make such a slip up when it was so plainly in view? Paul read through it again. He'd read it eight times before falling asleep. NEW YORK TIMES April -- New York City Hacker Commits Suicide All very clear to Paul. But what was this annoying beep for? PAGING SYSOP........|<.....|<.....|<..... No answer. Paul answered it. phonebone: Hi, Sysop. sysop: What you need, Phonebone, I'm up late. It's 2:30. phonebone: Well, SysOp, it's 12:30 here in the Mountain zone. sysop: Yeah, so? phonebone: Well, when I logged in, it said I logged in at 00:30, phonebone: military time. So whenever someone logs in, it calls phonebone: up there own area time. Big time bug, you gonna phonebone: fix it, since I hear that this is a homemade board. sysop: Adds mystery to it. It's a bug that I intentianally put. phonebone: oh, why? sysop: USSS. phonebone: The Servicers? sysop: NSA, FBI, CIA. All of them. phonebone: Ok. I'm from Colorado, you know. sysop: yeah, mountain zone, right? phonebone: Yeah. sysop: Anything else I can do you for? phonebone: Uh.... yeah.... I found another bug in your system. sysop: What's that? phonebone: The paging sysop doesn't appear on my screen. sysop: It's not supposed to. phonebone: You designed the wierdest philes. sysop: It's my hobby. ;-) phonebone: Sure. Paul sat down in his chair and monitored what happened to Phonebone as he prodded the system. Phonebone searched through the Phracks, eventually coming up on number thirty-one. He downloaded it. There was no significance to it, Phonebone replied in email. I just needed to get the Phrack. Paul sighed as he monitored Phonebone's activity from there. Phonebone emailed some mail off. One to a fellow in Texas. Another to someone in New York. Then a third one to someone at Berkeley, in California. Berkeley? Paul checked the address. No, it wasn't the legendary Cuckoo's Egg writer. Some student perhaps. Paul logged into the computer and fingered the email addresses. Nothing special with any of them. No handles. No phreak/hack talk. Just plain ordinary people that had email addresses in Berkeley, Texas, and New York. Why had Paul freaked over this? There are people with email addresses everywhere. Over one thousand users of his OCFNYC had email addresses. Had Paul gotten paranoid again? He had been paranoid for sometime. Whenever the teacher asked him for his number to call his parents, he gave the teacher an encrypted number, which was easily decryptable to anyone with the key. He had neglected to give the teacher the key. Paul rubbed his eyes. Maybe he'd been up too long. He had. "Truth, covered in security!... like to know the code word.... take turns.... don't regret a thing, I GOT THIS FRIEND YOU SEE, he MAKES me feel..." sang Max, in his shower. His hair was covered in shampoo, and he sometimes had nightmares that the shampoo was blood, his own. He shook off the thought as he sang songs. He sounded rather good in the shower, as does everyone. Paul yawned, and rubbed his forehead. His legs ached, and begged for him to go back to sleep. He told them in a moment as he prodded around his own system. No open holes from what he could tell. Security was tight. Everyone's account was checked and double checked to make sure nobody had more than one user. The encryption key he used for protecting the user file was running perfectly well. There was plenty room for uploads, and the InterNet gateway through OCFNYC was working. The board was in the best condition it had been in years. Why was he so worried? Paul couldn't figure that out for the life of him. He went back to his bed and lied down, reading the article on Harry once more. Infamous hacker Halloween Harry. He'd never met Harry. He came to his board once or twice, but that was it. Halloween Harry, newly dawned hacker, steals a big load of cash from the bank, using a sequencer. He got off free, too; wouldn't have been caught if not for him killing the gangster. Paul sighed. What did he care about Harry? That's basically a different universe. Paul was in the here and now, and Harry's a big blob lying someone in a wooden casket. Paul was still reading the story when he fell asleep. Max tossed the towel on top of his monitor, and got dressed. He blinked at the clock. 5:30. Great, half an hour to work. He ran to the bathroom. It was locked. He pounded on the door. "Hey, I got to get my stuff to go to work." he yelled at the door. The muffled voice of his sister came out from behind the door. "I... can't. I'm not feeling good..." "Well, unlock the door, I'll close my eyes and get the stuff." His sister moaned. "The door's too far away." Max sighed, and went back into his room. He wasn't going to be late again. Not for Richard Milbone at work. He swung open a desk drawer and searched threw it for the lockpick. Something he'd picked up in Seattle, when he himself got picked up by some police officers for an offense he couldn't remember now. It had been some time ago. He walked back to the door and played with the lock some before he heard the unfamiliar click of the lock opening. He opened the door, put a hand over his eyes, and turned towards the sink. "You're not looking are you?" asked his sister. "WHY WOULD I WANT TO?" he answered, looking into the sink. He looked for the vital equipment that would help his overall appearance. He grabbed his toothbrush, the toothpaste, a comb, some mouthwash, and some floss. He carried them out the door of the bathroom, and closed the door. He took the pick from the lock and walked to the next bathroom. Using the sink, he got ready for work. Richard was sleeping in the chair behind the counter when Max knocked on the door. Rich jumped in surprise. "Max." Rich said, almost acknowledging the other's prescence. Richard jumped over the counter athletically, and walked to the door. He unlocked it. "Max, you actually showed up for work. That's a good boy." Max grinned sarcastically, and walked in. "Devolped an attitude, Max? I'd think that Pentium behind the counter would cheer you up. You can play with it while you're not serving." Max hopped up onto the counter, then over. He wondered how many years of practice it took Richard to learn how to do that. He booted up the computer, and listened to what Richard had to say. "Marty's got broken into last night. Damn vandalist kids. They had a little gang fight right after we closed, right down the street. You know anything about it?" Max ran his tongue along the back of his teeth. He rubbed his chin, trying to remember if he washed off all the blood; trying to hide the scars he knew Rich would notice. "Nah, Rich," Max said, yawning. "I went home and got plenty of sleep." "You know anything about the break in?" Rich asked, moving the boxes of games around, trying to look neat. "Why would I, Rich? I just learned of it via you." Rich nodded. "True." They didn't say anything else to each other the rest of the morning, except for helping customers. When Max had free time off, he'd play at his computer. The ritual went on for the rest of the month. Max would play at the computer. Rich would help customers out. Every now and then Rich would go out and run an errand. Max would watch the store. He became better at selling computers. He could already sell his story, and people would believe him. That was one of his better skills. Max never heard of what happened to the chicken with the gun and the door knob in it. He assumed that it had been bought, or thrown out by Marty. It had been sometime since Max had fought the local gang, and the school would be opening again in a week. Max received the Pentium at the end of the month, and chose a game to play on the Pentium. He had to get his mother to come and pick up the Pentium, but when he installed it at home, it became his new special baby. Max petted the Pentium when it hummed to him. He copied the boot up sequence from his old computer to the new one. The old ascii-art of a "d00d flipin da boird" appeared during the bootup, and the Pentium was online. Max logged in at ten o'clock, his time. The board was filled. OCFNYC was a happening place during the last part of the summer. > who List Of Users At Open Computer Facility of NYC Hackers ------------------------------------------------------ user login status handle maximillion 22:00 chat Maximillion Forte ERROR: 042 NOTIFY SYSOP -- LIST UNREADABLE The OCFNYC was overloaded with users. The chat line was buzzing with conversation and all very confusing. Max decided to do something sneaky. He fingered Phonebone. It traced Phonebone back to where he was calling from, or it should have. It traced him back to New Jersey. So Phonebone was in New Jersey, but Halloween Harry was in New York. Max cursed. Email is probably the most powerful weapon on Earth. Imagine being able to reach out and give someone an entire guide, within seconds. Imagine sending information to another family within minutes. It's a very powerful weapon. Imagine the front lines of a battle in the future, with information needed in enemy territory, to capture the enemy by surprise. Ciphered text sent by radio waves to a friendly computer, to take the code, uncipher it, and capture that bridge which would make or break democracy as we know it today. That's scary. Just the thought of having an entire battle, an entire war riding on a few bytes worth of memory, ciphered memory. Ciphers were created to protect information. Since the beginning of time when man first bellowed, "My rock good." others have tried to see why. Jealous runs high when people argue over who came up with what first. Imagine what would happen if fire was first discovered, and there was someone there to copyright it. Imagine that. Fire, copyright 10000000 BC Ugh Ugh. So people didn't want their ideas stolen away. They'd write to there friends far away, and keep their ideas secret. How? Ciphers. Max's thoughts seemed to him like a science report. Why was he thinking about this when Phonebone was paging him for a talk? Maybe because he believed Phonebone was using email as a weapon. No, that couldn't be it. He didn't even know Phonebone. Or did he? Max shivered. No, he never knew Halloween Harry. He never met him. Any trouble this dude's bringing up is not his fault. Especially not anything having to do with some idiot kid killing himself. maximillion: What the phuck do you want? phonebone: Chill out d00d, just wanted to ask you, how's the weather? maximillion: What kind of phreaker are you? How's the weather? phonebone: A cool phreaker d00d. I'm in Jersey, you know. maximillion: Nah. Didn't know. phonebone: It's nice in Jersey. Lots of scenary. We even got a few -- maximillion: I know you'd really like to be talking about your little maximillion: scenary and how you love it so god damn much, but maximillion: I've got some philes I need to check on. So you and maximillion: your scenary can just shove off for the time being. Max was rather rude. Here was this guy, Phonebone, asking him for a nice chat. Nothing he shouldn't have pounced on. Max petted his Pentium one last time before going to bed. School was starting soon. School was starting. Max repeated this to himself as he went to bed. He was urged to make a little jingle out of it, but gave up when he turned out the lights, and let the night take him away. Max had a little place when he was younger. It was a nice place where angels would dance and sing, run and play. This place, as he knew it at the time, was Heaven. He only visited it when he knew someone who had died. He visited it now. Harry stood in a brilliant white clothing, that radiated a friendly light off of it. He was tall, having grown since he came to Heaven. He had the beginnings of a beard growing, and he stood with his arms folding, in a scolding/angry matter. Max approached him carefully, not wanting to start up any emotions in the old fellow. Harry was the first to speak. "How you doing?" When he spoke, it didn't seem as though he moved. In fact, had Max not heard Harry speak, he could have sworn he hadn't said a word. "Good, I guess." Max responded, not knowing what else to say. Harry smiled. "You're surprised I found you, considering I've only ran into you a few times, aren't you, Max?" "Still remember my handle, Harry? I remember yours, Halloween. It was a good handle, Harry. You could have done a lot more, had you --" Max stopped, realizing what he was saying here. He was saying that had Harry not died, he would have done a lot more in the hacker world. Correction, Max thought in his mind, had Harry not killed himself. "I always knew your real name, Max. I've followed you around for sometime now, Maximillion. We can see everything in Heaven, you know. "I saw the fight. Damn good one, too. I was in fight, a while back, Max. It was scary. These gangsters, all of them at least a good one or two feet taller than me, they just come up and attacked me. No reason whatsoever. Scares the shit out of me. Did it scare the shit out of you, Max?" Max nodded. "It scared me, Harry. Scared me for a few seconds." "But then the adrenaline hit you, Max? Yeah, I know the feeling." Harry grinned, his perfect white teeth combined with his perfect face. Max thought it was almost disgusting in Heaven. Everyone had their own perfect bodies. "I know the feeling. I was walking home, if I remember correctly. And they just kicked the SHIT out of me for no good fucking reason. My ass was on the ground. My face was getting its shit kicked in, and I couldn't tell what the fuck was going on inside of me. My stomach's got this thing pumping in it --" Harry seemed to be getting a lot more emotional. "And I could feel it. I could tell what it was telling me. It was telling me that I could win. It looked me right in my eyes and told me, Harry you can do it. Harry you can do it." He seemed to laugh. "Worst part was, I did. "Had I gotten my ass kicked that day, I wouldn't be here now. Had that son of a bitch just taken me by the head and pounded the pavement with me, I'd be alive today. What's the moral of this story, Max? Can you tell me?" "Nope. If it didn't happen that day it would have happened another day." Max responded, keeping his cool. Harry smirked. "Strong believer in faith, are you, Max?" He didn't let Max respond, but continued talking. "I see everything that's happening right now with Phone Bone, Max. Is that a topic you'd like to talk about?" "I wouldn't really care, Harry. You're dead. I'm alive. I've got school tommorrow. I don't really care." And with that his view of Heaven changed into dancing fish, and there was a voice that told him that he'd be back. Max ignored the voice, for now, and watched the dancing fish. Max always enjoyed watching dancing fish. The first day of school was a painstakingly long process that, to Max, had no signifagance whatsoever. Had teachers wanted to explain what was needed for class, they would have sent out letters during the summer. This was a small town, after all. There were about four hundred fifty of them in the town, and about one fourth were children. One hundred kids packed themselves into five rooms, each one a different grade level. Now Max was just beginning High School, and his group of twenty were beginning High Schoolers to end of Middle School. He was still treated like he was in the Eighth, but he was taking ninth grade material. He flipped his pencil off his nose. Whoop-te-do. He didn't see much difference in the classes, from what the teacher, the same one he'd had last year, told him. He sighed and waited the day out. Paul sat in his computer lab early that morning. He had programmed a nice file to beep whenever it hears the word computer spoken aloud in the room. So when the idiot computer instructor came into the room and asked him, "Hey, boy, what you doing here again with my computer?", the computer shot off an alarm that echoed down the halls. Paul had to interrupt the process. "Impressive program, son. But can you change the color of the letters each time it beeps?" Paul rolled his eyes. He wasn't sitting in this lab to impress someone who, deep down inside, really didn't care what happened to his computers as long as they were still here when the day ended, and he got paid. Paul changed the program to change letters, nice bright ones, each time it beeped. That satisfied the lab adminstrator, and Paul played with the program to make the letters dance. The letters in the word "computer" danced whenever the word was said. Paul played around with it some more, making it a TSR. Terminate and Still Remain. This program would piss off the instructor during the day. The rest of the day, tap dancing letters crawled across the machine whenever anyone said the word computer. The letters changed colors each time it beeped, and the instructor sure was pissed. Paul had computer lab as his last class, and he found his program living happily in a hidden directory. He edited the file to play Mary Had A Little Lamb instead of beeping. And so, whenever the word computer was said, an electronic version of Mary Had A Little Lamb played, and tap dancing letters changed colors in the background. Paul hid the file carefully back where he had hidden it before, and prayed to dear god that the lab master wouldn't find it. He quickly jumped over to the boot up sequence, and set it up so that his file would be executed automatically. Paul smiled as the bell rang. His first day of hell was over. He turned off the computer, and walked out of the class room, grinning the whole time. Max's day ended with the announcement of the freshman prom, which would be held later that year. Great, he'd have to ask someone out. He combed the room to look for anyone that he could ask, and his eyes landed on a girl, Diana (was that her name?). She was looking for someone to ask out, as well, and her eyes had landed on him. She winked at him and smiled. Max went directly from the school to work, without that sidetrack to home. Rich was talking to someone who was obviously out of town. He wore a trench coat, sunglasses, and stood showing off his muscles. The first thing to pop in Max's mind was: CIA. Rich nodded for Max to wait behind the counter. Max, using the jumping skill that he had earned practicing the jump many times, hopped over the counter and into the seat. Perfect landing. The trenchcoat didn't even notice Max. Very observant little fed. The trenchcoat left without any trouble, and Rich leaned on the counter with his elbow. "Know who that was?" he asked. "Your mother?" Max responded, booting up the computer. "Nope. That was Special Agent Travis Brantsone. He's telling me about a jail break southwest of here. Murderer skipped out on his term. Guess he didn't like the food, huh?" Rich chuckled, going towards his inventory. "So how was school, Max?" Max shruged. "Same as always, I guess. That guy CIA?" Rich shook his head. "Yeah. That make sense to you. Local jailbreak, bigwig CIA." Rich adjusted his games. "All the way from Washington." "Makes no sense to me. None whatsoever." "Definately not in this town." Max played with the computer untill nine, when he walked home. He walked past the alley and was content when he looked in it, and no gangsters looked back at him. OCFNYC was packed. When Paul looked at the current users, there were over one hundred and seventy users. Each doing their own thing. Some were scanning the files, some were chatting, others were playing with email. Optical Overkill was just playing around on the InterNet when he came across a chatline of, as he explained it, bigwig military staff. Acting in his most formal manner, he started what would become a big relationship with military personel. He setup his own personality, added some quirks. He began to play a character in a role-playing game. Optical Overkill relaxed and began to chat with the bigwigs, asking them various military questions. He published his own zine, and he wanted to get an interview with a General. It seemed possible now as he held a private conversation with a General. He asked him all sorts of military questions about secret hidden bases, American missiles aimed at Russia, and all sorts of governmental conspiracies. It took him a good five hours worth of questioning, all recorded, untill the General finally got loosened up enough to begin to leak some information about superhuman projects taking place in remote Montana. Well, thought Optical, this is something special. He asked more about this superhuman project. He published it all in his zine. He gathered all five hours of conversation, edited it into his computer, and released it to all of his subscribed readers. Max received the file at three a.m. Alaskan time, and did not get a chance to read it until he got home from school the next day. Paul got the zine, and did not get a chance to read it until he got home from school. This school thing was ruining the hacker's world. Life without school is like Hacker Heaven. It is Hacker Heaven. Paul sat through the class, whispering "Computer." towards the machine he installed it on. The teacher sighed again as the tune Mary Had A Little Lamb came out of the machine's speakers. The tap dancing letters appeared again and they changed color with each note. It had gotten rather annoying, and the teacher was ready to burst out at the top of his voice, "God dammit, who the hell put that program on this machine?" Paul whispered it again when the machine had stopped, and once again, the tune came out of the machine. "GOD DAMMIT, WHO THE HELL PUT THAT PROGRAM ON THAT MACHINE?" yelled the instructor. The class laughed as the last of the tap dancing letters ended. Paul chuckled to himself. This was almost better than hacking. Almost. Max felt like he was sitting in class, dressed in only his underwear. He had been staring at Diana, daydreaming (as he often did) about asking her out to the prom. He might as well be sitting there in his underwear, the teacher had asked him a pop question about algebra. He hated algebra. So it was now him against the teacher. The teacher. He scolded at her. She asked him the question again, and, running it through his head real quick, answered it correctly. Max flipped through the electronic zine half-heartedly, not really caring about it. Then he saw a nice article by the editor, Optical Overkill. He knew Optical, never met him in real life, but knew him well enough. He was a big time hacker. So what's this article about? Max read it. Some stuff about the United States government working on superhuman artificial intelligence in Montana. Max encrypted the zine and saved it to OCFNYC, which had plenty of room. He'd read it all later. He was tired, and after a hard day at work, and school, he wanted to sleep. First time in a long time that he actually wanted to sleep. Paul sighed as he closed his locker (neatly decorated with GIFs of females), and walked with his backpack towards the front of the school. He'd walk home after a nice day of school. He passed the computer lab, where the instructor came out and began to chase after Paul. "Paul!" he yelled, coming up behind him. Paul turned. "I've found this file sitting on my email address." he said, holding up a printout. "Some file about Halloween Harry. I've got an InterNet link at those computers in the lab. Someone sent it from OCFNYC. You know what that is?" Paul rolled his eyes. "Why you asking me?" "Come on, Paul. I know that you know about computers. I don't know if you're a hacker, but I know you know your way around the InterNet. Nobody's that stupid not to notice." "I've heard of Halloween Harry, but I have no idea what OCFNYC is." The lab master nodded. "No idea what OCFNYC is, huh. Ok. Do you know Phonebone?" Phonebone? Yeah. He knew Phonebone. He's a good friend, Paul wanted to say. Why don't you just go take your pick of fingers and sit on it? "Never heard of Phonebone." Paul said, turning back to his walk. He stopped and turned around. "Unless you mean the comic character, Phone Bone. Two words." He turned back and walked away. The lab manager fingered the address, but the connection was refused. There was only one way to find out who this Phonebone was. Reply to the article and ask him. Ask the Phonebone. He laughed to himself. More like Phoneybone. Max turned the page of _The_Hacker_Crackdown_, by Bruce Sterling, and chewed his gum in the lightly lit room. He'd wondered sometimes whether or not he should take up smoking, like in Cliff Stoll's _The_Cuckoo's_Egg_. He'd read an interview in a Phrack somewhere with the star hacker in the latter book. He denied everything. Max wondered what it would be like, waking to a gun to the head. Gasping and trying to hide all the information that could be hidden in time. Max put the book down, and turned off the bed side lamp. He sometimes wondered what it would be like to meet Taran King, or maybe Knight Lightning. That was impossible, Max knew. He'd never get enough money, or enough attention, to get out of this frozen pit of hell. ----------------------- Wow... That one was a long story..... I'll start writing chapter 3, and throw that one at y'all soon. Please give me some response about this book. I'm putting _The_Alaskan_ together, so I will have back issues available if you want them. So far, posted stories: Harry's Vice Alaskan Scripts *NEW* Alaskan Angels Till next time. CHAPTER THREE Alaskan Games (aka Chapter 3 _The_Alaskan_) By Joshua Lellis joshua@server.dmccorp.com PLEASE SEND FEEDBACK "You wanted a master race, Max." said a voice from the light. Max recognized it immediately as Harry's voice. "Remember that?" Max saw Harry in a few moments. It took a few seconds to focus, and when Max saw Harry in the same bright cloak, he squinted. The light seemed to pierce throw his dream and hit him. But people couldn't feel things in dreams, could they? "I remember the idea. Passing thought, such a long time ago." Max responded. "You really should get some chairs around here, Harry. It would only be polite. This is Heaven, after all." Harry nodded for a second, and a chair appeared behind Max. "Sit, it's your idea after all." Max sat down in the ugly-looking chair, which, surprisingly enough, was rather comfortable. "Master race of hackers, you wanted." Max shrugged it off. "I was younger then. Little bit more stupid." Harry seemed to laugh. "Younger then? It was last April. Have you matured incredibly in the short time it's been, Max? You still hack, and daily, too. That OCFNYC is big stuff I hear. Paul's doing a good job of running the board, considering --" "Paul?" Max interrupted. "The sysop. Good god, Max, are you so dense that you don't know the sysop's name. And you say you've been there how long? Hello?" Harry was sitting now, and his voice seemed insulting, as though he were slinging his knowledge of the sysop as Max's fault. "I don't exchange real names, Harry." Max said. Their conversation lasted a few lines until Max asked about Phonebone. Harry grinned, and Max could tell. "Phonebone. Yeah, I know him. You want his real name?" Those damn dancing fish interrupted the dream, and Max never got to know who Phonebone was, at least, not from Harry. The OCFNYC is just like any other InterNet access system. It's got a whole shitload of users, and thousands of email addresses to watch over. Paul didn't scan every message that didn't come in. He read the subject lines to each message and, had the subject been an odd one, he'd read it. He wasn't honest. If you wanted your mail safe, you'd deliver it first hand. Or encrypt it. Encrypted messages sometimes screwed over Paul's screen for a few minutes, and beeped loudly. Paul didn't hate encrypted messages, he just hated having to read the fuzz that decided to come with it. So when there appeared a message in Phonebone's mailbox with the subject "RE: Harry's Vice", Paul's eyes lit up. This would be interesting. RE: Harry's Vice Phonebone, I've received a file from you. It appears you must have mistaken me for someone else. I have no idea who Halloween Harry is, or what his importance is to you. But I do have some questions for you. 1) What is OCFNYC? 2) Who/what is Phonebone? Thanks Mr. Mendelson Paul reacted by forwarding the message back to Mr. Mendelson. He'd say there was no such user at OCFNYC, and that would be that. Mr. Mendelson wouldn't bother asking the root account manager what OCFNYC is, or who Phonebone was. He couldn't. The letters OCFNYC stood for Open Computer Facility of New York City. Plain and simple. The fact that they had over one thousand users from outside New York was going to be a hard one to swallow down Mendelson's throat. After all, this was just a lab with a few computers, maybe a line or two. Nothing special. Yet when Mendelson logged into the OCFNYC under the handle Gene Splicer, Paul began to worry. Gene Splicer immediately paged the sysop for a chat. Paul fingered the address to make sure it was Mendelson. It was. Paul rolled his eyes, and answered the chat. gene: Yo, d00d. sysop: What you want? gene: Just wanted to know about OCFNYC, what's it about? sysop: Open Computer Facility for New York City. gene: Oh. sysop: Anything else? gene: Who's Phonebone? sysop: Probably a user. Why? gene: I got mail from him at my work address. sysop: Yeah, so? gene: It's about this article in the paper about Halloween Harry. sysop: I heard of it. We got it in our phile system. gene: You know Halloween Harry? sysop: Nope. gene: Never met him? sysop: Nope. gene: He ever come here? sysop: Once or twice, right before he killed himself, I think. gene: You know why he killed himself? sysop: Nope. gene: Ok. Thanks. sysop: No problem. Paul went to bed earlier and earlier as the school year went on. Gene Splicer began to show up more, and, he eventually subscribed to Optical Overkill's zine. He began to show more knowledge of computers during Paul's lab, and he found Paul's tap dancing computer letters program. He edited the program so it would play silently. So now only the tap dancing letters remained. Max began to hang out on OCFNYC a little less, having his homework collide with his hobby. The Pentium was holding up good, and, if needed, the old computer was still plugged in. Max read _The_Hacker_ Crackdown_ and began to put it to memory. He began to believe once again in the idea of having a master race of hackers. The omnipotents that watch from behind a keyboard. He liked the idea, and dreamt of it often. That was only when he was not having the same reoccurring nightmare. He played Harry in this nightmare and could not change anything that happened. He got beat up, then asked himself for the sequencer, and hacked the bank. It always ended the same with Max killing himself. And if he wasn't fortunate enough to get the dream about Harry, he received the Heaven dream, and had many conversations with Harry. Harry brought up the subject of Diana, a few days before the prom. "So," Harry said out of nowhere. "you going to ask that sweet girl in the back of your class to your prom?" Max smirked. "You know about her?" He seemed to emphasize "her" for some strange reason. "Damn, boy, you forgetting already that I can see all? I see all, I hear all, I remember all. I remember everything that went through her mind about you, Maxie baby. Oh, how I remember it all so clearly. Would you like to know anything *personal* about her, Maxie? That's what she calls you, by the way." His tone of voice mocked that of a girl. "Oh, when will my Maxie ask me to the prom." His voice changed back to normal. "Odd habits she has, too. You know she'll wash her hair, sit down in the shower, and just hum? Not that I'm prone to watching her shower, Max. I've only seen it a few times, maybe eight or nine." Max, to put it simply, was pissed. "WHAT THE *FUCK* ARE YOU DOING WATCHING HER SHOWER?" Max was up against Harry's face. "YOU MOTHERFUCKING SONUVABITCH!" Max punched Harry, and, reacting like a human, stumbled backwards a bit. Harry showed no anger in his eyes, but looked calmly back at Max. "Can't really feel anything anymore, Max. You know that's true don't you?" Was it just the pain of his response, or was it Max? He was crying now, but hoped it wasn't really visible. "I can't feel anything. Emotions. *poof* They're gone. Now, we wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would we my dear 'Maxie'?" "Sonavabitch. SONUVABITCH!" Max kneed the fucker in the nuts. Harry just smiled. "Can't you tell I can't feel anything, dipshit? Nothing. I can't feel anything. I can't feel emotions. I'm FUCKED. I can't do jack shit up here in Heaven. Heaven ain't for humans. You ain't going to find one human in Heaven. We're just dead souls that can talk, walk, and shit. If that doesn't knock your socks off, let's look at this in a different way. I can no longer enjoy any food, any drinks, any activities that I might have enjoyed before. Might have enjoyed back when I was human." "So what's all this have to do with me?" he yelled, ready to attack Harry again. "YOU KILLED ME!" Harry yelled back. At exactly the wrong time, the dancing fish returned to Max. Harry's last line had been implanted in his brain. Paul twiddled his thumbs. He was sitting outside the principal's office and was being quiet. The secretaries, the one's that were supposed to be doing their "work", sat and stared at Paul. He quietly recounted what he had been doing. Oh, yeah, it was those damn tap dancing letters. Must be Mendelson's idea of getting back at him for not saying who Phonebone was. But that was his own personal business, it was protected in his own first ammendment rights. Yeah, that was what he'd respond to any questions. His own first ammendment right! They couldn't stop him from not telling irrelavent information to a teacher after hours. But then again, Mendelson had no idea that Paul knew Phonebone, or had any connection to Phonebone. Paul didn't. That was truth, wasn't it? Phonebone was just a user on a BBS, a BBS that was privately run by Paul, and had nothing to do with school or Mendelson. Just because a certain user writes email to a school teacher didn't mean that Paul was responsible for it. It was the act of the user. Although users that upload pirated software do not get in as much trouble as the sysops that run the board. The sysops are responsible for the user's actions. But up to what point? Where does it stop? Paul thought he was going to wet his pants when he first stepped into the room and saw the corporal punishment paddle. Paul dug deep down and remembered where he was. He was in high school. Anyone wetting pants in high school was out of place. He stood as still as he could and listened to what the teacher had to say. "Sit down, son." the principal said, leaning back in his chair. Principal's always did that, to try to make you feel at home. Paul resisted the urge to tell the principal that he was not his son. Paul sat down anyways, and continued to listen to the bigwig. "You know, we take our computers very seriously here." Paul shrugged. "We don't really enjoy having some teenager come in and ruin the computers. We've got better things to do than fix computers. We're all at this school to learn. Learning does not require 'tap dancing letters that play Mary Had A Little Lamb'." Paul tried a lame attempt at a joke. "Does it help if she had some veggies on the side?" "No. And you know that. It's taken Mr. Mendelson many valuable man hours to find out more about this little program of yours and even more hours to disassemble it. What do you have to say for yourself?" Paul twisted his head, popping the bones in his neck. "Maybe I should build a better program next time, include some encrypted code and some dummy code, too." "You should be kneeling on the floor sucking shoe. You should be worshipping the ground I walk on and pleading with me. 'Please don't send me home. Please don't suspend me. Please let me continue my high school career.' At the very least you should be asking for your punishment. You should be asking to be kept off the computers so that a thing like this doesn't happen anymore. You should be asking to do bookwork on computers for the rest of your school year in that lab. You should be asking if you could go apologize to Mr. Mendelson for all the trouble and pain in the ass that you've given him. You should be kissing ass, son!" Paul lifted his eyebrows. "Oh?" The other's voice raised higher, and Paul wondered if people outside the room could hear it. "Your puny acts of defiance have no relevance here in this room. You're going to be punished and punished severely. Mendelson's already given me your work for the rest of the year. All I have to do is give it to you and tell you to get to work." He pointed to a stack of computer manuals, nice thick ones, and continued. "Those are the manuals for DOS, Windows, some programming languages, and CD-Rom help. That's your homework. You're going to go home, read them all over, and have a nice big test over all of them. You're going to put them to memory and hope to dear God that you don't get a question you don't know." Paul smirked. "You want me to read manuals?" "YES, YOU'RE GOING TO READ EVERY MANUAL! YOU'RE GOING TO PUT THEM ALL TO MEMORY! YOU'RE GOING TO WRITE THEM ALL BACK FROM MEMORY, WORD FOR WORD! YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO GIVE THE COPYRIGHT PAGE ALL THE WAY TO THE INDEX, AND IF THEIR ARE ANY MISTAKES, YOU --" He paused, obviously for dramatic purposes. "ARE GOING TO FAIL." What an unexpected twist, Paul thought, still keeping his smile in tip top condition. "Fail the class, or fail the entire year?" The ruler continued. "We've had a conference about that, including all your teachers. That includes the ones from your freshman year to your present year. And considering that you've came into this room so often, we've decided that the punishment would be fit for you to be held back another year, to teach you a bit more about your life, your being, and your personal state of mind." "Hold me back an entire year if I don't work on this manual reading exercise? What the fuck kind of punishment is that?" The principal seemed shocked. "You don't question punishment, and you sure as hell don't talk to me with that language. You're not to talk to any adults with that word, or any other words that you know are inappropriate for school!" Paul remained quiet for the rest of the "trial" and walked out after a comment from the other about cutting that hair of his. Gene Splicer had quite a relationship with Optical Overkill. He'd read every issue of Optical's zine, and was flattered (is that the right word for it? maybe it was surprised) when Optical asked Gene to write an article for the zine. Gene was really surprised when Optical mentioned flying to Montana to write it. Sure enough, though, a letter arrived in Mendelson's P.O. Box with the return address: Optical. Rather wierd he'd put just Optical. Opening the letter he found a thousand dollar bill, neatly folded, and a note. It read: Hi, Gene. Found your PO Box. There's money for the round-trip to Montana. You know the place to look at. (smiley) Optical Mendelson walked into the principal's office that Monday. He wanted the time off to fly to Montana and write that article. But why? This was a free zine, published by some hacker named Optical. How did he know that this thousand dollar bill was real? Why did he want to write this article for this hacker mag? He was just a computer lab teacher. He never thought he'd be asking for some time off. "Family emergency." He was even more surprised when the other allowed him the time off. Mendelson read the note again on the plane to Montana, but put it away, having not seen anything different in the note. He arrived in Montana late Monday night, and was able to find a nice hotel. He figured he'd rent a car tommorrow and drive up to the site. It was only a few miles. He'd get there pretty quick, sneak in, take a look around, sneak out. Easy as pie. No problem. He did rent the car the next day, and did drive up to the site. He stopped the car a few hundred feet from the gates, where two mean looking guards with big guns stood. The guards were talking to each other, having nothing else to do. The site was so remote, it was hard to believe there'd be any guards there. But, taking a look at the building, Mendelson realized why guards where there. The building was enormous. There were many small buildings, about the size of mansions, huddled around what looked like the main building. There were gun towers every five yards along the gate. The guns looked like they'd tear a hole out of the earth if fired at the ground. Mendelson immediately wished he'd come prepared. He didn't even have a gun on him. Checking his pockets, he found he had a pair of binoculars, the note from Optical Overkill, and his wallet. Taking out the small pair of binoculars, he looked towards the windows of the main building. He focused them a bit, and his eyes widened at what he saw. From what he could see, the room was packed with supercomputers and scientists, a deadly combination. He tried to focus the binoculars on the supercomputers, but that failed. He could only see the blur of the screen. No real text visible. He heard some rustling towards the left of his car. He decided to ditch the car there and take a run to the right, into the woods. Sliding over to the right side of the car, he opened the door and took off. Behind him he could hear barking. He started running through the forest and uphill. He had dropped the binoculars on his way out of the car, but when he did a quick inventory check of his pockets, his money and his note was still there. He wondered a bit about the note. It made no sense to be kept. He didn't have time to think about that right now. He sprinted as fast as he could uphill. He came to the top of the hill and looked to the left. Sure enough, there were the gun towers lining the gate. A guard shouted something about the hill, and began to fire from the tower. Bullets whizzed past Mendelson as he stood there, shocked out of his wits. "What the hell am I doing here?" he thought, as he jumped over the side of the hill and began to roll down the side of it. "Well, this is going well." he thought, as he tried to gain control of the roll. But the hill was so steep that he couldn't. Any attempts he would make were useless. He came to a stop at the bottom of the hill, right on top of a rock. He moaned in pain as his back hit the rock. He could see dogs on the top of the hill, with their masters standing above them. "Stop him," one guard said to the other. "he must not be allowed to escape. Shoot him in the leg, we will interrogate him." Moving with all his might, he began to run away. Bullets hit the rock and racketed off. The first guard began to fire, too, but no bullets hit Mendelson. Mendelson ran towards the next stretch of forest, a few hundred feet away. The guards let go of the leashes of the dogs. The dogs ran down the hill fast enough not to roll. They chased after Mendelson, who was close to the trees now. A few more feet and he'd be there. A few more feet. The two guards leapt sideways down the hill, anchoring their feet into the ground, and jumping again. They made it down the hill quicker than Mendelson had, obviously trained for this type of exercise. When the first guard had landed on the plain between the trees and the hill, he began to fire at Mendelson. A few bullets teared into the trees, but nothing hit Mendelson. He was into the forest now and was running towards the middle of it. The dogs barked at him from the edge of the woods. He made it to the middle of the forest without any trouble. Gaining some good footing, and trying with the remaining strength he had, he made it to the top of a tall tree, and rested on a branch. He began to sleep and would leave the worries he had behind. Paul sat in class that Tuesday reading manuals. The substitute was dragging on and on about computer security. Paul smirked and rolled his eyes. The rest of the class, heck, the rest of the school had heard all about Paul's punishment, and most of them laughed at Paul. Paul was going downhill for the first time in a long time. He read the rest of the manual that day, and was on his way home when the sub caught him in the hall. "Paul! I've got something I want for you to do for me." the sub said, taking Paul into the lab. "Can you fix me up with an account on Mendelson's Net link?" Paul shrugged. "Sure, you want root privs?" The other nodded, and Paul worked the computer over so the sub would have all the power he needed on this one link. "There's dial-in access, right?" the sub asked, looking around the room. The time had passed quite a bit since the time Paul had come into the room. Paul pointed towards a stack of eight modems. "Yup. 24-hour access. Access to user records, for root. Access to the school's accounts, only for special people. Even access for students to dial in and have a look at what homework they're missing. Normal INet access too." The other nodded. "Gotta be fun playing around on those computers, eh, Paul?" Paul shook his head. "Everything's recorded. Every keypress, every telnet, every ftp, every archie, every Mosaic, everything. All recorded. Email is scanned regularly by Mendelson, excuse me, Mr. Mendelson. No privacy whatsoever." "Then how are you setting up this account, if everything is recorded?" Paul grinned the grin of a tiger that had just eaten. "Because I know what the file is for the records." The sub slapped Paul on the back. "You're a pretty cool dude, Paul." "But I get into way too much trouble." Paul finished. He went home that day and played around on his board a bit, but gave up and read the manuals. Max looked at Rich in the back room. He was doing something with the new sattelite dish they'd gotten. Rich was tweaking the thing up so the town could have access to a few hundred cable channels. He did it all out of his own pocket, too. Strange. Really strange that Rich would pay for all this stuff. Even stranger that he'd come to this town to setup his own store. Max turned the key to the cash register, and opened the sucker up. He looked dazed for a second. The drawer was full of money. There were rolls and rolls of money. Packs of fifty dollars in ones. Packs of five hundred dollars in twenties. He lifted the top of the bin to look in the bottom compartment. Staring back at him in the face were hundreds of Ben Franklins. There were rows and rows of money, sitting right here in this little register. This little register in this four hundred fifty person town. Rich stood behind Max's back. "Something wrong?" Max shut the drawer quickly. "No, no. Nothing. Just.. just..." "Checking to see if you could still some money?" Rich asked, lifting an eyebrow. "NO. No.. Just I wanted to look in the register. I've never seen it before." Rich locked the drawer and took the key. "Now you've seen it." --------------------------------------------- And so ends Chapter 3 of _The_Alaskan_....... Moving right along.... The list of chapters is below. If you missed a few chapters, or one, write me and I'll fix you up with a copy of the chapter(s) that you need. Please send feedback. Thanks. LIST: Prologue-Harry's Vice Chapter 1-Alaskan Scripts Chapter 2-Alaskan Angels NEW Chapter 3-Alaskan Games CHAPTER 4 TraceRoute (aka _The_Alaskan_ Chapter 4) By Joshua Lellis Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis joshua@server.dmccorp.com If you trace the route of a certain system, say, MIT, you'll see a good thirty sites, more or less. If you can understand these sites, or at least a few of them, you can get to the place you want to get. It's a sort of chain reaction system. Robert Morris, Jr. showed off the system, and its faults, when he created the Internet worm that screwed over the InterNet, a community built on trust and honesty. When that trust and honesty is invaded, something must be done about it. This is the part that gets undertaken by the unlucky "net police". This is the story that includes these net police, and their enemies. Mendelson woke up a good thirty feet above the ground. Startled, he moved from his place on the sturdy branch. He dropped a bit, and clutched the branch with both hands. His feet dangled below him, and looking down, he saw what he thought was his left shoe. Night was falling around him, and he tried pulling himself up onto the branch. His left arm slipped and he was offbalance. His right arm strained to keep him up. He swung wildly with his left arm to reach the branch again. It slipped a bit at first, but he got a good grip on it. Relaxing a bit, he sighed. He stayed that way for awhile, his biceps straining, telling him to stop it and just fall. He contemplated falling for a second, but then decided it wasn't worth it. He began to pull himself up onto the branch. He was all the way up when he heard something on the ground below. A dog was chewing on his shoe, and the other was barking up the tree. The masters were coming, and from what Mendelson could see, they were well armed. They'd see him sitting up here. He needed to get away. He needed to escape. But how? They were down there, and wouldn't just let him go. He couldn't fight his way out of it, they had guns. He put his head in his hands and tried to think. Tried. "I've got this friend you see." Max sang in the shower, getting ready for school. OCFNYC had been down when he tried calling the night before. Technical troubles, maybe? Max shrugged it off and got dressed. The day passed rather smoothly for Max. No trouble. Well, not much trouble. No one has "no trouble" at school. Oxy-moron. Paul read manuals in class. He wanted to get to a computer, preferrably one with a modem, and call OCFNYC. Darn board had dropped out on him last night. Thousands of hackers all over the world were mad at him. He sighed and read on. Mendelson put pressure on the right thigh, trying to let the blood flow. The bullet had hit him unexpectedly, and now he was on the ground, crying like a baby. The guards stood above him, trying to keep the dogs from chewing Mendelson's head off. They had had a twelve hour stand off. Mendelson sitting in the tree, the guards radioing in what happened. It all ended when the superior officer demanded Mendelson be caught. "Use force if neccessary." Well, they'd used force and now Mendelson was bleeding all over the ground. Mendelson passed out. Optical Overkill, aka Laura, walked down the street. The town was peaceful at about this time. She lived in a small town in the Dakotas, two thousand, close to three. Everyone didn't know everyone, but that didn't matter much. They were all peaceful, and didn't care much about the others actions. Laura brushed her brown hair out of her eyes and stuffed her hands back in her pockets. She wanted to whistle, but that would make it look too much like one of those homely movie scenes about children in small towns. All that was needed were a few kids in suspenders running through the street to the candy store. She wondered whether or not it was wise to send Mendelson to Montana. She had went through alot to get that thousand dollar bill, and would have rather had Mendelson spend his own money to get there. If he was such a good hacker, he'd find a way to get the money. Course, she was an expert. Sixteen years of age, with five years experience in this sort of thing. She could have gone to Montana herself. Could have had school not stopped her. School stopped lots of thing, mainly fun. Mendelson came to inside a pitch black room. At least, he thought he came to. He couldn't see anything in this room. His right thigh, he saw, had been bandaged up by medics. His hands were tied behind the chair in which he sat. He tried to look at his pockets, to see if the inventory he'd had was still there. It wasn't. There came a voice from the darkness. A crackly voice of someone who didn't have the time to deal with someone like Mendelson. Someone like Mendelson. He was beginning to think he actually was a hacker. "What are you doing here?" said the voice. He'd expected this question, but didn't quite know how to answer it. Using his "acting" skills, he tried to talk like a native Montanan. "Why, I just came out here to look for deer. I got me car back dere so I could drive around. Couldn't find any deer though." "You don't have a gun." "Don't tell me wanna hear, 'fraid I'll never know fear." Harry said, taking a seat. Max was already seated, and had prepared himself for this dream. "Truth covered in security, like to know the code word, don't regret a thing. I got this friend you see, makes me feel, rest my self. Go outta my way. Rather interesting song, if you think about it for awhile, Max. In a way it has to do with hacking, doesn't it? But in another way it has nothing to do with hacking, more about.. ahh.. What's the word?" "Dunno, Harry, you never tell me anything. By the way, isn't it 'truth covered in obscurity'?" Harry grinned. "Maybe. I'll give you one good reason why I don't have to tell you anything. Mendelson." "Who?" "Mendelson. He's being interrogated in Montana this instant. I could let you see it through this dream, but that wouldn't be all too nice." "Since when have you been nice, Harry?" "Anyhow, he's being interrogated right now up there in Montana. Or should I say down there in Montana. Some not very nice bigwigs. American government agents sworn to protect the secret of their.. project. "Something, if I remember correctly, about an artificial intelligence. Very interesting stuff. Bigwigs got every scientist from the States up there, working their butts off. "Biotechnology, very dangerous weapon, Max. They succeed with working this little AI into life, the human race may be next to disappear. This AI is going to be pumped full of information. Geography, political views, warfare. This thing could be the perfect president. So what do people do, vote for the AI. The AI gets into office, first thing it does, takes over the States. Very easy. No resistance from the people, considering they like the idea of having this AI in power. Landslide vote. "AI begins to take over Earth, country by country. Mass production of other AIs begin. Human foot soldiers are replaced by artificial foot soldiers. No life is lost, and so the people begin to think this is a great idea. "Only they realize too late their mistake of letting the created become the creator. Very messy war happens after that, Max. Very messy. The earth becomes a very big battlefield for humans and computers. "You think that Optical Overkill knew what she was doing when she sent Mendelson over there? Heck yeah! She thought he'd find a few secrets about the AI, and sabotage the sucker before he could be completed. "Only problem is, this AI isn't going to be completed. There's a twenty five percent chance of it succeeding, but that won't work, because you can't put human life into a machine. All the scientists in the world won't agree with you on that, but every philospher from here to China will. "Really quite interesting, eh, Max? But you realize what will happen, won't you? They're going to trace the chain. They're going to see the link between Mendelson and Optical Overkill. They're going to find Overkill, and trace the link. It's going to spread all over the hacker community, and no one, not even you, will be safe. "You know what I'm glad about, Max? I won't be around when that happens." It was Thursday, Thanksgiving Day. Not many people had much to be thankful for. At least not in the hacker community. Word had spread quickly about Mendelson being caught, but the word stopped there. They didn't know where Mendelson had been caught, and believed that he was a good hacker, one that wouldn't give out too much info. Max himself was thankful, for he finally got to go to the prom. He was sharply dressed. Nice formal occassion for the high schoolers. Everyone had sent away to Anchorage for their clothes. Six weeks it had taken for the clothes to get here. Max was dressed in a tux, with a nice polka dot bow tie (which complemented the rest of the outfit). Diana was dressed in a green dress (one Max's sister said looked dreadfully ugly). Max liked the dress, and it didn't matter what the others thought about it. The dance went by quickly, and without any trouble. Max and Diana danced together most of the night, stopping only for punch (luckily, not spiked) and rest. Max finally felt good without the aid of a computer. It had been a long time since that had happened. He was, for once, happy with life. Paul received mixed emotions when he heard about Mendelson. He was happy that the bugger finally got what he deserved, but he was worried whether or not Mendelson would tell about the board. Mendelson probably would, and Paul would get raided. That would suck. Paul didn't worry about that when he sat down for the Thanksgiving turkey, and, like he did every Thanksgiving, gave thanks that he was alive, and hadn't been raided. Laura sat down at her own Thanksgiving meal and gave thanks that she hadn't gone instead of Mendelson. It was selfish, she knew, but she didn't want to get caught. Plain and simple in the hacker world, don't get caught. But then again, there was no honor among thieves. Mendelson's Thanksgiving dinner was less than satisfactory. "Prison slop," as one scientist called it. Mendelson was grilled with thousands of questions. Many about how he was able to find this government installation. A few even asking if he knew this was a government installation. Of course, they had Optical's note. Mendelson wasn't going to get out of here alive unless he gave all his information and prayed to high Heaven that God would help him. ---------------------------------------- Kinda being pressed for time on this chapter. I just spent a little holiday up in Seattle (got myself an Alaska hat in Port Angeles). Anyhow, this was written before the trip, and since I don't want to keep anyone waiting too long. Anyhow, I'll be starting on chapter 5, promise it will be full length. All comments, critiques, thanks, requests for back issues should be sent email to moi. Thanks a bundle. List of stories: PROLOGUE - Harry's Vice CHAPTER 1 - Alaskan Scripts CHAPTER 2 - Alaskan Angels CHAPTER 3 - Alaskan Games CHAPTER 4 - TraceRoute CHAPTER 5 Patience, Patience Said The Man (aka _The_Alaskan_ Chapter 5) By Joshua Lellis Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis joshua@server.dmccorp.com PLEASE SEND FEEDBACK They're very thorough in the FBI. Had the artificial intelligence laboratory not been scouted by Mendelson, they wouldn't have to be on this case. He wouldn't have to be on this case. But, as he flicked the toothpick away from him, this was his job. He was a field agent for a long, number filled name of a computer agency. He did his job good, considering the factors that had entered into it, ie. he'd never gotten into a gunfight before. Well, never a real gunfight. He'd never been a part of a crackdown. He'd never busted any computers. He'd never really even worked in his specific field. Before today. List of Users At Open Computer Facility NYC Hackers --------------------------------------------------- user action handle phonebone email Phone Bone king chat Lion King |<|< chat King Kong nevermind email Nirvana sysop maintenence SysOp maximillion chat Maximillion Forte latter chat Jacob S. Latter Max did the usual routine, jumping into the chatline write in the middle of a fight. |<|<: It was all Prophet's fault. He kept six copies of the phile. king: But HE didn't know he was gonna get caught! latter: Didn't matter. No one keeps six copies. latter: Imagine someone with six copies of the same sequencer. latter: what's going to happen with six copies? king: But HE wanted to have backups. Every good hacker keeps backups. latter: Backups yes, extra copies, no. |<|<: Remember that time when they were right at my door. |<|<: Door's caving in on me, and I'm rumbling round to find the extras, |<|<: and kill dem. king: And they busted you for destroying evidence, too. |<|<: Got out, didn't I? phonebone: First time offender. latter: like that really makes the punishment any less. king: Sure, why not? latter: Didn't work on KL. He got grilled for $75,000 on the E911. king: But it was a $13 book. He got off. maximillion: Got off's a harsh term. Use escaped. latter: Been a long time since I seen you, Max. phonebone: Same here. maximillion: I heard SysOp's got some probs with da board. sysop: Just some technical troubles, Max. sysop: Trying to make sure I don't get caught running this sucker. sysop: The chain reaction of raiding me would be huge. maximillion: *shrug* Just the risk you take. phonebone: Actually, there are precautions you can use, Sys. sysop: Yeah, but finding them are terribly hard. sysop: I've got everything encrypted, three keys, really hard codes. sysop: Then I've got the directories encrypted, the phile names encrypted. sysop: Everything. There's no way they coud get into this place and sysop: find anything. coud - could. phonebone: Unless they stick you up on the stand and make you. maximillion: What are the odds of that happening? king: Perty good odds against you, Sys. |<|<: Don't keep backups! sysop: *sigh* This works killing me. optical: Hi all. maximillion: Hi Opt. king: Yo Opt. |<|<: *wave* optical: Hot topic of discussion, Gene Splicer is gonna spill his guts. optical: Y'all know that, don't y'all? sysop: That's what I'm worried about. |<|<: They ain't gonna find you, Sys. You're in NYC, everyone else |<|<: is spread out, hard to trace the ppl. sysop: Doesn't make me feel much better. gene: Hi guys. sysop: Gene? gene: It's me. Got away from those feds. Mendelson shivered as the cold end of the gun tapped him in the back of the neck. "Continue." the man at the opposite end of the gun said. gene: Just need to know where to go from here. gene: Optical, you sent me on this.... "Optical is..." Mendelson responded quickly, not wanting this Cray to have his brains all over it. "Optical Overkill. He sent me a letter telling me to come to Montana." "Get her in a private chat, immediately." gene: I'd like to chat with you privately, Optical. optical: Ok.... LINK ESTABLISHED: PRIVATE CHAT - GENE & OPTICAL "Ask her where she got the money." gene: Where did you get the $1000? optical: Hacked. gene: Hacked what? optical: Oh, come on, Gene, how stupid ARE you? optical: I've known you for some time now, you know I know you're a optical: die hard hacker. Was it just Mendelson, or did the words die hard mean that he was supposed to die in this mission? Ha. Using the word Mission didn't make much sense. gene: Tell me anyways, I want to know. I got on this mission! I should gene: KNOW! optical: Uh... it's a bank... The bank in my town. Didn't even know optical: they missed it, I pushed $1000 into my account, and added optical: $1000 back into the account I stole from. Very tricky work, optical: that. gene: It's stolen. You robbed a bank? optical: Dirty job, someone had to do it. Job? He's acting like he has nothing to do with Mendelson's problem. He sent him into this, after all! optical: Patience, patience said the man. Patience, patience I can't optical: understand. optical: It's a good song, Gene. If you ever wake up, I'd like you optical: to listen to it. It would be, what's the word, enlightening. Enlightenment. Suddenly Mendelson felt as though he was stuck in a Buddha convention, if there was such a thing. optical: Sounds like I went to a Buddha convention, eh, Gene? optical: Gene??? Mendelson was splattered across the screen. No use for him anymore. He'd wandered into this top secret building, broken into the lab, and logged into the Cray. From there he entered this OCFNYC, a hacker computer den. He was tresapessing on a top secret military area. He got what he deserved. The government had acted like they should have. No problem. And for the FBI agent, he'd gotten to do his first gunfight. Too bad there was no return fire. The bigwigs chatted with optical for hours, tracing him with a patience unmatched in history. They'd finally traced his route. All the way back to his email address. Small place in the Dakotas. They had him! They made there way back to the landing strip on the opposite side of the compound. An agent stayed behind and helped the scientists look through this OCFNYC. They set up a Trojan horse, to capture the others passwords. They were going to search thoroughly through everyone's email. The others took a plane and started the long flight to Dakota. They arrived in Dakota before dawn, and from there started the trek to Optical's town. It was a little past seven when they got to the town, and found Optical. The clock said seven fifteen. She'd overslept a bit, but could make up for that along the way, not doing certain things. She took a shower first, and, over the sound of water, heard the doorbell ring. She ignored it. After she'd finished her shower and gotten dressed, she went to the door to see who the idiot was that had ringed it. She didn't open the door, but looked through it quietly. She was amazed and frightened. "Enjoying this, Max?" Harry asked, chewing on some popcorn. Max had entered this dream as he'd normally did. Harry would bug him for a bit, remind him that he killed him, and let Max sit down. This was Harry's little punishment, but it also let Max see what was happening in the world. Right now, Mendelson was typing, that much Max could see. Suddenly, there was a loud pop. Blood. Brains. Death. Violence. "I seem to remember that from my days." Harry said, reminding Max again that he'd killed him. "Blood, brains, death, violence. She killed herself first. She said I'd 'ruined her life'. You read the article, Max. You tell me, did I ruin her life? I killed her ex-boyfriend. No trouble. I gave him a few hundred, he gave me his gun. I blew his brains out." Harry paused for a moment, thinking. "I didn't take the money back, that should count for something." "What happened there, Harry?" Max wondered aloud. Harry pushed the hair away from his eyes. "You see, when the trigger is pulled, it makes the hammer do something, then a bullet flies from the gun, or pistol. When the bullet impacts, Mendelson died." Harry sighed. "I think you'd know by now what happens in the world. Saw you at your prom, by the way. Looked nice in the suit. Good enough to kill." Harry smiled. "You're a freak, Harry." Harry shrugged it off. "You want me to tell you all about your lovely Diana? She's having a nightmare right now." "Really?" Harry nodded. "She's seeing your face everywhere." He cackled, and the dream ended. Paul was banging his head against his locker. Rather violently, too. He had known Mendelson would lead back to him. He shouldn't have let Mendelson get on the board. Outlawed him. Outlaw the hacker. Paul banged his head a few more times before he scurried off to class. Laura played with her thumbs. She lied on her bed and played with her thumbs. The FBI was at her door. Just as long as she didn't do anything -- oh my! -- the computers were still hooked up! She tiptoed over to the computer, and muffled the beeps and whizzes as best she could. Then, finding the e-zine she edited, deleted the entire directory. The doorbell rang again. She had company. Walking over to the shredding machine she'd asked for on her twelfth birthday, she took all the printouts she had and shreded them. Neat little 1/4" carvings about how to crack banks. The disks where hidden well away. She'd found the "secret panel" when she was six. She hid from her mother there such a long time ago. She'd started hacking six years ago, at age ten, and she hid every disk she had there. It was cleverly disguised, and no one could possibly find it, except her. The doorbell rang again. The dream had never happened before in the same night. This was odd. So when Max came back to his Heaven, he wondered what was up. He couldn't see much. Fog rolled across the floor (was it a floor?). The sky changed colors rapidly. He heard gunshots, saw fire. Something was wrong. The sky lit up in a blast. It followed by a mushroom cloud. Laser (unsure about that one, as well) fire pounded into something. Explosions. Fire. Did he smell something odd? Harry didn't appear when the dream ended. He'd never even appeared. What had happened here? This was his dream of Heaven. This should've been Harry insulting him. Or was something wrong? Was Harry's prophecy of artificial war coming true? Or was something else involved? Could it have been Max's vice catching up with him? Optical lifted up the panel and dropped through the floor. She closed the panel behind her, and crawled up next to an old pillow. The disks were hidden in the opposite corner. It was hot in the panel room. There were no windows. She didn't even know if there was anything opposite the walls. There probably wasn't, except maybe the basement. Rats appeared here and there, but she had been used to them, hiding in here for hours at a time. But how long could she hide now? Max caught up with Diana at lunch. He sat with her. He chatted the "usual" small talk for a bit, then tried popping up the question. "Sleep well?" What? It sounded better in his head then it did coming out of his mouth. She didn't seem to notice. "I guess." Phew. Thank god she ended that quick. "Course, then again, I keep having these odd dreams." Max's mouth dropped open. Diana must have noticed it. "Something wrong?" she asked, chewing a green bean. Max shook his head. "No." There was a short pause. "Yes. What are these -- your dreams about?" Diana shrugged. "Don't really remember much... Oh, except for maybe... Well, yeah. I remember. This cute boy, name's -- what was it -- Harry, that's it, he keeps coming to me from Heaven or someplace. Really wierd. Last night, he showed me a really wierd 'movie'. Some guy getting his brains blown out in front of a monitor." She changed the subject. "How come I haven't seen you around the computer store anymore, Max? Hanging around at the antique place, I presume?" He laughed. "Nah, just having some problems." Bad choice of words. She jumped on them. "Problems? Can I help?" No, you can't! "I guess... But I wouldn't think you want to." No, you don't really want to. You *don't* really want to. "Sure. Nothing I wouldn't do, just as long as it's not time consuming." I said you didn't want to. Why aren't you listening to me! "Just a problem I'm having in the computer world. Nothing you would know about." Slap. Bad choice of words. Please don't attack. Please don't attack. She shrugged. "Guess not. Never understood computers." Thank goodness! "It's rather simple, really." Why did I just say that? That was dumb. The conversation was over. "An entire system focusing on the numbers zero and one? Max, that's not simple." "Guess not." "And then all the operating systems and modems and hookups. All these little gadgets guarenteeing time and product satisfaction." He had to ask. "You hanging out around the comp store?" She giggled. "Of course, you dumby." Rich was snoring behind the counter. The store was dirty. Beer cans (empty ones) lined the counter. Max knocked on the door. Rich stumbled, fell out of the chair, and hit the floor hard. Rich got up and let Max in. "Why you here, little buddy?" Rich asked, the alchol apparent in his breath. "I work here, Rich." Rich rolled his eyes. "Almost forgooooot." He stumbled backwards. "You drunk, Rich?" Rich shook his head. "Never." "Can I ask you a question, Rich?" Max was going to ask. He was going to find out, for the first time ever since the little bugger showed up, he was gonna ask! "Who's Phonebone?" Laura wanted to whistle. It was odd, the feeling of wanting to whistle. People want many things. People want to drive, but you have to wait for it. People want to open the Christmas presents one day early, but you have to wait for it. You don't have to wait for whistling. You can whistle wherever you want. It's the one freedom given to everyone who knows how. But Laura, cooped up in this secret room, wasn't going to give away her posistion. She began to remember the 1990 raids. All those computers, being taken from their rightful place in the walls. All those disks, those illegal disks with information that could get everyone in trouble. She was sitting opposite those disks. Disks that could get hundreds of thousands of people in trouble. If the FBI found there way back to OCFNYC, Laura was to blame. But they'd let her off. First time offender. No problem. She could get someone else in trouble. Maximillion, for instance. She knew all about ol' Max. She could be a witness in his trial. She could watch him go down in flames! Although, Mendelson was also a first time offender, and he'd spill his guts quick (course, she didn't know he'd already spilled his brains). He'd come to her trial and tell all about the way she got money from the bank. She sent him there with illegal money. She had talken a General into spilling the beans about this artificial intelligence place in Montana. She'd be in jail. Racking up the offenses. No one had entered the house since she'd hidden in this room. Had they gone away? No chance to push her luck. She sat there, waited, wanting to whistle. She'd whistle loudly when she got her first chance. She would. She swore this down there in that little room. Was it just her, or was it getting hotter in here? The air might be getting used up quicker. That wouldn't be good. The body can survive without food or water for a day or so, but air is necessary. She could whistle now, give her posistion away, and just wait it out in some slime filled jail cell. She regretted getting caught at this age of sixteen, when she could be tried legally as an adult. ------------------------------------ Next Chapter........................ Who's Phonebone? Laura on the Run Paul's Problem List: PROLOGUE CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 3 CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER 5 Requests for back issues sent to my email address...................... PLEASE SEND FEEDBACK. CHAPTER 6 Without A Safety Net (aka _The_Alaskan_ chapter 6) By Joshua Lellis Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis PLEASE SEND FEEDBACK The first agent leaned back in the chair. He lit up a cigar, puffed lightly, and waited to see what the second was going to say. The second, an aging man, typed Unix command after Unix command, searching for some flaw in the OCFNYC computer. They'd set up the Trojan horse already, and the passwords were flowing in. The other agents were hacking other accounts with the passwords that had been stolen. They read backlogs of email, copied every piece of new information down. The second agent rubbed a wrinkle under his chin, and thought for a moment. "Well, it's obvious that the operator there's paranoid." he said, searching for a cigarette in his pockets. "He's got every file on the system encrypted. Not standard encryption, homemade encryption, obviously has more than one key. I can't find anything that would point us to those keys, so we're screwed unless we can --" He found a cigarette. He searched for his lighter. "-- find a way to capture the operator's keystrokes. But that would mean a few more hours of programming." The second found his lighter and lit the cigarette. "So, you're telling me we can't get into this guy's personal files?" "Affirmative. Unless we capture the operator's password in the horse, in which case we've got access to everything he owns. Hopefully that includes the keys." The first agent nodded, and scratched his beer belly. "Ok. Keep working on it." He turned towards the agents working with the stolen passwords. "Found any places we can trace to, guys?" An agent responded. "Yeah, we've found a few email addresses of a few users. Real email addresses, not the OCFNYC address. We're sending mail to the roots, gonna try to get the real name, address, etc. Then we -- you -- can send a strike team down to each one and bash down the door." "How are we doing in the Dakotas?" "We haven't been able to take down the door, no one's at home." "Stand off a bit more, but if no one shows up in the next forty eight hours, break the door down. You've set up movement detectors around the house, right?" "Yeah, but they keep detecting cockroaches. Sensitive little fuckers." "Break the door down now, we ain't gonna get another chance." It was dawn when the phone call reached the USSS at Optical Overkill's house. She was asleep in her "bunker". Two agents stalked up to the front door, two went to the back. Another agent checked his camera to make sure there was enough film to capture evidence. A sixth agent opened the back of a "Move-It, Inc." rent-a-truck. The two agents at the front door drew there guns. The first agent stepped in front of the door. The second dropped back behind the first. He kicked the door. It flew off it's hinges. The back door went down next. The two agents there stormed in. The photographer made his way towards the computers. He began to take picture after picture of the evidence. The agents told the photographer to fall back a bit. The first agent thought he saw something move in the closet, close to the computer. A bullet launched from the gun and hit the closet door. Nothing happened. He ran over to the door and kicked it down. No one there. "Craps. Where is that stupid hacker..." "He's gotta be here somewhere." "Alright, just take the computer equipment for now. Call for back up. We're going to search this entire house for this guy, even if it takes all day." "There were two cots. The first being elevated higher then the second. He shared the cell with no one but the mice. This would work out for the better in the long run. "He was let out of the cell once or twice a day. He would make his way down to the courtyard of the prison. He would work it out in his mind daily, remembering how he would take down the guards. He would plot this in his mind and remember. "Two years passed, and every day he would plot the escape again. And again. And again. So eventually he decided it was time to do the dirty deed. "The sun was bright in the sky. The yellow on blue shone down on the prisoners. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and the hot sand seemed to seep through their boots and attacked their feet. "He leaned quietly against the wall. A few people walked by, here and there, and eventually the time had passed by quickly. There was no more free time inside the courtyard. "At this point, he was approached by a guard. The guard had a shotgun slung across his back. "'What are you still doing here? Your time today has ended.' said the guard. "The plan raced through his mind once more, and he took the makeshift blade from a hidden spot in his clothes. He slashed down with the blade quickly. The time had come to escape. "Time passed like lightning at this point. He wanted to escape quickly. The guard put up quite a struggle. He slashed the guard forty eight times. "The gun towers were aiming directly at him. The guard worked well as a human shield. The gunmen opened fire anyways. The guard was as good as dead anyways. "Bullets rammed into the guard's dead body and out the opposite side. The living one was hit. He pulled the shotgun from the guard's body and jumped up onto the wall. Using the blade of his knife and his upper body strength, he began to scale the wall to the top. "He was gunned down quickly by the guard towers, and his sad planning left him dead." The teacher closed the book, dropped it on the desk, and looked up at the class. Max was nudged by Diana, who whispered, "Wake up, it's over." Max woke up, and looked towards the front of the class. "Poor planning. Everyone should have a good plan." Paul cursed. This wasn't right. This wasn't happening. He had logged in, and listed the users. That one user that wasn't supposed to be there, was. The user was himself. He couldn't just chat with himself, could he? The hacker at the other end of this strip wouldn't talk with Paul. He booted the hacker off with his favorite kill command, and looked at the other users. URGENT SYSTEM MESSAGE --------------------- Shutting down for maintenance. Thanks. --Sysop OCFNYC was offline for the first time in two years. Max sat quietly on the roof of his house. He was tired, and it was past his usual commencement of rest. He was worried. He got this feeling all the time. Harry had gotten this feeling. Harry got the feeling when he just started out. Just started out, shit. He had been an amateur. Max was the hacker, Harry was the apprentice. It was a simple relationship with no twists or turns. But now there was a twist. Harry was still able to communicate with Max. He'd already told Max about Mendelson. Right now agents would be flying towards his house, breaking down the door, and ending it quickly. Max sighed, tilted his head back, and went to sleep. He woke up in pain. He was on the ground, in front of his house. His sense of time decided it was early morning. His leg was what hurt. He remembered quickly the events of the night before. Oh my. He'd fallen off the roof and onto the ground. Was his leg broken? He tried to stand up, but the pain was too much. He fell back down, a bit harder. He let out an involuntary screech. Appearing from the door came his mother. "Oh my." she mumbled, jogging over to Max. "What hurts?" "My leg." Max responded, grasping the leg. He was put into the back of the pick up truck, and told to bite down on a stick. The truck made the long trip to Anchorage. There a doctor looked at the leg, set it, and put the cast on. At the end of the day, Max was in an Anchorage hotel, watching MTV. "I've got an idea, Max." she said from a chair across the room. "You're good for a vacation. I'll phone the school back home and tell them you're ill at a hospital in Anchorage. They'll give you some time off for sick leave. We'll head down to Seattle, have some fun there. Don't you think that would be fun?" "Catch a flight to Seattle, mum?" Max asked, taking his mind away from the tube. "Sure... Dad's still going to be home. He'll understand. Or better yet, you're old enough to hold your own, aren't you? How would you like a chance at the big city?" she was looking directly at him. He turned away. "I don't know. I think I'd enjoy it more without the cast." He knocked on the cast. "Four to six weeks with the cast on. You'd have to wait untill after Christmas. Four weeks at least. I hear the doc thinks you're gonna make it out in four. That would be going to Seattle during Christmas. I think you'd like to wait till after the holidays to have your little trip. We better get back to home tommorrow. We'll set out at six or so, make good travel time, probably be back early enough for you to get into school. With a note of course." ---------------------------------- Requests for back issues should be sent to joshua@server.dmccorp.com. Please send any and all feedback. Please don't complain about spelling or grammar. I don't have a spell checker or a grammar checker, even though I dreadfully need one. :-) CHAPTER SEVEN Angst (aka _The_Alaskan_ chapter 7) By Joshua Lellis Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis joshua@server.dmccorp.com Christmas day. It was freezing when Max woke up. He stumbled a bit, grabbed his crutch, and made his way down the stairs. The family was already gathered, waiting for him. "All here, go ahead, open the gifts." There was a fire burning in the fireplace, and the family slowly opened the gifts, one by one, person by person. Max hadn't really wanted much this Christmas, nothing that the family could buy for him. Paul woke up before the rest of his family, making his way to the computer before he went down to open the gifts. He had put OCFNYC back on line, erased the user files, and destroyed someone's password grabber. Phonebone was there, even at this time of morning. He was sending the usual email rounds, but eventually he wound up surfing the newsgroups for fun. Paul monitored Phonebone for two hours, finally realizing it was seven o'clock. He sat next to the Christmas tree and waited it out. The agents connected once again to OCFNYC. OCFNYC was becoming their favorite hang-out. They had a four meg file of information about OCFNYC, from the regular users to the email. They'd waited it out in the Dakotas, monitoring the house for any movements that might be the hacker. They hadn't found any. They'd screwed up on this one, making the hacker know they were there before they could get in. They had the hacker's computers and electronics, but those proved worthless. He didn't have any disks visible, so they were probably hidden in another area. They had searched the house for days not finding anything. But even on Christmas day, the house was being monitored for signs of life. There were none. And the sysop of OCFNYC had closed his doors in the face of the FBI. Obviously, the Trojan horse was destroyed, and there was no way of setting up a second one. The NSA had poked it's nose in on this one. They sent a few of their best to Montana to help out the FBI in their time of need. The United States Secret Service had joined the party, sending three of their agents down to Montana to join the festivities. So, spread out around fifteen computers were the best agents of their fields, trying to catch the hackers involved in this OCFNYC. This was big news. It wasn't everyday that thirty thousand hackers populated in one place. Sure, there were the normal conventions of hackers held in big hotels, but these are active hackers. Hackers that have been caught in the act. Two megs of email has been stored away about these hackers. All that email showed their traits, their favorite hang outs, other boards, more sites, more places to go, and (here and there) clues to their real IDs. Interesting stuff for America's best to work on. And it was quite a lot of work. The file on OCFNYC was growing daily. The agents were "hot on the trail" of these damned hackers. It was four weeks of investigating. Now they were ready to trace some more of the hackers. They'd already found one in San Diego. The Secret Service broke down the door to the kid's house, took the computers, took the electronics, took the disks. Parents, as usual, were terrified. Not my son. Not my son. It happens. It happened to them. And now they were going to have to wait untill the rest of the OCFNYCers were rounded up. There was going to be one big trial, and in the end, the sysop of OCFNYC was going to be sent to the slammer, for a nice long time. With all these witnesses, thirty thousand witnesses, there was no way that this sysop was going to get off. There were the prime witnesses, the ones that might be sent to jail for longer periods than others. The list was quite long. Phonebone, Halloween Harry (oh, wait, he was dead.... why hadn't he been erased from the all time user file then?), Maximillion Forte, Lion King, Optical Overkill