Overclocked (4 page)

She was still de­bat­ing which was the bet­ter op­tion when Don sidled up to her.

“The de­cision was made,” he said.

She spun around, eye­ing him hope­fully. That was quicker than she had ex­pec­ted. More than twelve hours quicker.

“They’re send­ing me in?” Her voice was breathy with an­ti­cip­a­tion.

“There’s more to it than just the tether. Fol­low me.”

He led the way to a bank of mon­it­ors at the back of the ob­ser­va­tion room.

“See that?” he asked, his voice quiet.

Tania looked at the black screen, and at lines of green, blue and red zig­zag­ging up and down on an or­ange baseline. Re­sem­bling an EKG, it re­cor­ded the “heart­beat” of the Base­ment Five com­puters—the in­form­a­tion be­ing re­ceived and sent by the lab’s power­ful data serv­ers.

“What am I look­ing for?” she asked.

Don poin­ted at a faint red line, his in­dex fin­ger fol­low­ing its tra­ject­ory as it rose and fell on the screen. “That.”

“That's in­com­ing traffic.”

“Spik­ing badly. Server Two has never had this amount of activ­ity as­so­ci­ated with it.”

“Crack­ers?”

Crack­ers were people who went bey­ond hack­ing. Not con­tent with merely find­ing out how things worked, they had ma­li­cious in­tent on their minds and were of­ten used as guns-for-hire by high-tech burg­lars and sys­tem in­filt­rat­ors.

Don stepped back. “You tell me.”

“We’re stop­ping it though, aren't we?” Her voice was a little un­sure. On top of their cur­rent prob­lems, did they really need a bunch of in­ter­net thugs try­ing to break into their sys­tems?

“Who­ever it is can’t get through our DMZ,” Don said, “but they’re fast. Very ad­apt­able. Doesn’t like a rote script-kid­die at­tack at all.”

Tania raised an eye­brow. Fast and ad­apt­able.

Just like...Carl?

“What if
that’s
Carl?” she asked sud­denly. Her voice gained strength. “What if it’s Carl try­ing to find a way back? And we’re stop­ping him?”

Don looked scep­tical. “Ana­lysis of the data pack­ets show some very soph­ist­ic­ated strategies, bey­ond the skill set of most in­di­vidu­als. We think it would take a
team
of crack­ers deep know­ledge of our serv­ers plus sev­eral months of test­ing to put these kinds of at­tacks to­gether. Carl was only in­ser­ted hours ago.”

“Then who do you think it is?” Be­cause, from his tone of voice, Don Novak ob­vi­ously had a cul­prit in mind.

“The board and I think it’s a for­eign gov­ern­ment. We think they some­how found out about Base­ment Five and are try­ing to in­filt­rate our sys­tems.” He tightened his lips. “
That’s
why we’re send­ing you in.”

Tania didn’t hes­it­ate. She didn’t care if the board thought they were sav­ing the planet from an alien fly­ing sau­cer at­tack, as long as they okayed her in­ser­tion into cy­ber­space. She spun around and strode to­wards the second in­ser­tion room.

“Hold on, Tania,” Don called out when she’d covered a little over half the dis­tance.

She turned. “What is it?”

“You go in. To­mor­row.”

“To­mor­row?” She frowned. “Why not now? If the board be­lieves this is a for­eign gov­ern­ment in­tru­sion, then we can’t af­ford to wait.”

Don shook his head. “I’m pulling the plug to­night. The DMZ serv­ers will be shut down in fif­teen minutes.”

That would isol­ate everything in Base­ment Five from the in­ter­net: for­eign gov­ern­ments, crack­ers…and Carl’s way home. It was the data equi­val­ent of a top-rated bio­haz­ard suit and, al­though Tania didn’t like the de­cision, she could at least un­der­stand the reas­on­ing be­hind it.

“Can we af­ford to do that?” she asked. “Shut ourselves off so com­pletely like that? I thought we had data links with other centres. Col­lab­or­at­ive pro­jects, that kind of thing.”

He laughed. “Tania, when’s all said and done, we’re a
secret
labor­at­ory. We can do whatever we like.” He paused and sobered. “As long as it’s with the board’s ap­proval.”

“Then what hap­pens?”

“To­mor­row morn­ing, we bring everything up again. And you go in.”

“We could do it right now. Save every­body the delay.”

“I’d rather you had a good sleep. I don’t know what I’ll be send­ing you into.”

“I don’t know how well I’ll sleep.”

“Even a couple of hours are bet­ter than noth­ing. And who knows, your sub­con­scious might come up with some­thing that will save our ba­con. Carl’s too.”

She looked Don square in the face. “I hope so.”

The room was cold.

Tania sat on the edge of the metal med­ical-style bed, feel­ing like a pa­tient about to un­dergo sur­gery. She tried hard not to shiver. Was Carl’s room this chilly? Her hands gripped the bunk's smooth tu­bu­lar rim, curl­ing around it with her fin­gers, warm­ing the steel. Be­hind her, a tech­ni­cian was care­fully fit­ting the neural head­set to her head. At least tech­no­logy had ad­vanced enough that she didn’t have to shave her head in or­der to have the tiny sensors pick up her brain im­pulses. In front of her, Don watched the tech­ni­cian at work.

“You know what to do?” he asked for the third time.

Tania swung her legs back and forth and sighed up at him. “I’m not a child, you know.”

He flicked a glance at her feet and their move­ment. “Could’ve fooled me.” But his voice held the hint of a smile.

She curved her lips, thank­ful for the small lev­ity that cut through the room's thick ten­sion. “I know the drill. I go in. I find Carl. I haul him back by his arse. I pum­mel the liv­ing shit out of him.”

“You do
not
sever the vir­tual tether.” His voice was stern.

“I do not sever the vir­tual tether,” she re­peated.

“You send an ac­know­ledge­ment the
minute
you hit the Blue.”

“I send you an ac­know­ledge­ment the mo­ment I’m in­ser­ted.”

“You do not take time out to do a bit of sight­see­ing.”

She cocked an eye­brow. “I will not do any­thing that relates to why I was chosen for this pro­ject in the first place.”

He shook his head. “Listen to me just this once, Tania. For­get your sci­entific curi­os­ity and just play it by the rules this time. If everything goes to plan, we’ll send you into the Blue again with a first-class ticket to all the cy­ber-won­ders of the world.”

She paused, then cracked a smile. “You al­ways know how to show a girl a good time, Don.”

“Strange, my wife says that as well.”

“Have you been mar­ried long?” Al­though she knew a lot about Don’s pro­fes­sional life, he was less forth­com­ing about what he did in private and, right now, Tania needed some dis­trac­tion. The tech­ni­cian hadn’t fin­ished ad­just­ing the neural head­set and she didn’t want to have to wait in leaden si­lence, with noth­ing to oc­cupy her but her thoughts.

“In Oc­to­ber, we would have been mar­ried twenty-four years.”

Ouch! Twenty-four years!

“That’s, er, quite a while.”

Tania couldn’t ima­gine be­ing to­gether with any­one for twenty-four
months
. A pic­ture of Carl’s face rose in her mind and she frowned as she dis­missed it.

Don laughed. “It’s not as bad as you think.”

“We’re ready,” the tech­ni­cian said. A hand touched Tania’s shoulder. “Could you lie down please?”

With a last look at Base­ment Five’s dir­ector, Tania swal­lowed and lowered her­self onto the bunk. In­tent, the tech­ni­cian made fi­nal ad­just­ments to the head­set and checked that the rest of the sensors on her body were firmly con­nec­ted. He reg­u­larly looked over at the shelf of screens in a corner of the room, mak­ing sure they were pick­ing up every one of the sensor sig­nals. Mir­ror­ing her, head to head, in the other in­ser­tion room, Carl was still alive but un­re­spons­ive. As she stared at the ceil­ing, she knew the DMZ serv­ers were be­ing brought up at that mo­ment. That was part of the plan.

She tried to find a pat­tern in the por­ous-look­ing tiles above her head, con­nect­ing ima­gin­ary lines between the small dark in­dent­a­tions and try­ing not to think of any­thing bey­ond that. Over­look­ing the in­ser­tion room, en­gin­eers moved between sets of mon­it­ors, watch­ing the in­form­a­tion traffic, wait­ing for the surge of data that meant she was be­ing in­ser­ted into the Blue. That was when everything that made up Tania Flowers—her memor­ies, emo­tions and ex­per­i­ences—would be flushed into a stream of elec­trons con­nec­ted to a bank of ma­chinery, be­fore be­ing re­leased into cy­ber­space.

“How are you feel­ing?” Don’s voice.

“Scared shit­less, to tell you the truth,” she said and swal­lowed. Did she have that swal­low re­flex when she and Carl had been in­ser­ted into the se­cure sand­pit en­vir­on­ment? Tania tried to re­col­lect a pre­vi­ous in­ser­tion ex­per­i­ment but her mind drew a sud­den blank. She couldn’t re­mem­ber. But there was one thing she
did
know. One thing that had oc­curred to her the night be­fore, while she was toss­ing and turn­ing in bed.

“Don!”

“What is it, Tania?” He hovered into view, look­ing down at her with a wor­ried gaze.

“An al­tern­ate path, in case some­thing hap­pens to the tether. Route an in­put cable from the two in­ser­tion rooms to one of the DMZ serv­ers.”

“A back-up plan?”

“Yes. If everything else fails, we’ll try to come in via a trans­port pro­tocol.”

“User Da­ta­gram?”

She wanted to shake her head but real­ised it might af­fect the neural head­set con­nec­tions.

“No, it’s too un­re­li­able. Try Trans­mis­sion Con­trol. Keep port 27014 open for two hun­dred mil­li­seconds every half an hour.”

Don frowned. “Port 27014? I don’t think I know that one.”

Tania man­aged a grin. “It’s used by a game com­pany. A rarely used server port. Un­der the cir­cum­stances, I doubt any­one will be sniff­ing for it.”

“Will do. We’ll open the port on Server Three.”

Tania took a deep breath. “Good.”

The si­lence in the room star­ted to close in on her as Don stepped out of view.

“Heart rate is in­creas­ing,” the tech­ni­cian said, “but it’s well within tol­er­ances.”

“Can we just get on with this?” Tania asked. Her voice was testy.

Don didn’t say a word but he must have nod­ded. Quite clearly, as if it was the only sound in the world, Tania heard one heavy click.

And she was gone.

Tania would have said there was a loud rush­ing in her ears, ex­cept she knew she had no con­ven­tional sense of hear­ing. She felt squeezed, stretched, blind­folded, un­masked to be shown a blaze of lights, be­fore hav­ing her vis­ion shuttered again.

She thought she was pant­ing, draw­ing frantic breath as she was cata­pul­ted into the Blue. It had been like this in the sand­pit en­vir­on­ment as well, this feel­ing of dis­lo­ca­tion and speed.

Everything stopped. She opened her eyes. Saw black. Felt her­self fall­ing.

Down the rab­bit-hole again, Alice....

She hit a hard sur­face, staggered and fell over, then just lay there for a while, eyes closed, catch­ing her breath.

My breath doesn’t ex­ist here. My lungs don’t ex­ist here.

The real­isa­tion that she had no body had the po­ten­tial to drive her in­sane, so Tania put it from her mind. She con­cen­trated on the calm­ing breath­ing ex­er­cises she and Carl had learnt dur­ing their train­ing ses­sions.

Breathe in....

It didn’t mat­ter that her body didn’t ex­ist. Her mind was still used to its habits, and that was a link – and a power­ful one – back to her own real­ity.

Breathe out....

She moved her hand and felt a smooth sur­face be­neath her fin­ger­tips, a tex­ture like glass or pol­ished stone. She opened her eyes and rose to her knees then to her feet, tak­ing her time while look­ing around.

This was it. Not a test en­vir­on­ment. Not the sand­pit. This was the real deal.

Cy­ber­space. The Blue.

A rush­ing sound that she thought was part of her pas­sage into cy­ber­space be­come more dis­tinct. It was a dis­tant wa­ter­fall thun­der­ing and echo­ing around her. As she looked, fuzzy out­lines ap­peared, co­alesced into sharper de­tail then dis­ap­peared. She knew this was her mind’s way of ad­apt­ing to the Blue, trans­lat­ing the bits and bytes of cy­ber­space into a co­her­ent land­scape she could make sense of. If she didn’t push it, didn’t force her brain to go faster than it wanted to, a full im­age would form, a true vir­tual world.

She looked down at her­self. She was wear­ing the one-piece suit she had worn in the sand­pit. Around her waist was a belt. On that belt hung a ca­ra­biner hook. And sway­ing gently on the clasp, a thick disc – the size of her hand – blinked green.

Un­hook­ing it, Tania brought the cir­cu­lar tether device closer to her face. She pressed a small in­dent­a­tion near the top of the disc and the lid popped open.

It was like the fan­ci­est com­pact mir­ror in the uni­verse, Tania thought, look­ing at the small rect­an­gu­lar screen in the centre of the tether. Little dots ran across the tiny mon­itor, trail­ing faint col­oured lines be­hind them. Some dots fol­lowed a path already laid down, mak­ing the line darker and thicker. Oth­ers went off on a tan­gent, straight for a while, then turn­ing and shoot­ing off an edge. They were all data pack­ets from the Base­ment Five serv­ers.