Beautiful World 04: Disturbance

By the time I made it back to the apartment, the last sunlight had fled the sky, leaving only grey and silver streaks of moonlight across the carpet from the open window blinds. I shoved the door closed behind me with one foot, waiting for the soft chirp of the electronic lock and the thunk of the deadbolt before stepping out of the entryway, past the kitchenette and into the dining area. “Bedroom, light dim,” I called out ahead, pausing next to the card table—still scattered with unopened envelopes and a plate from this afternoon—to drop my keycard and pocketbook, and windbreaker, waiting for the fluorescent panels in my room to light the hallway ahead.

I paused at the bedroom doorway to kick off my shoes and socks, not bothering to untie the laces. As I shifted my weight, my eyes jumped around the room, my home and office since graduation. Multicolor printouts of data and code diagrams bearing inscrutable handwritten notes from projects long past covered the walls, interspersed with the occasional fantasy or futuristic art print. Directly in front of the entryway, a massive computer desk—too big for the room, or even the door to it—dominated the floor, turned to obscure all view of the monitors from the hall. Behind it was the captain’s chair I acquired years ago, reupholstered and restuffed multiple times since its purchase. Beside that sat an unfolded futon, the mattress wrapped in an oversized sheet and topped with a jumble of blankets. Opposite my nesting space, my bureau sat with one drawer perpetually stuck half-open, accompanied by a half-full laundry basket. A well-abused entertainment center filled the remaining wall space, loaded with an old television, various antique gaming consoles, and the occasional forgotten computer component, covered in dust.

Thinking of Adam’s first words at dinner brought a rueful grin to my lips. I really haven’t changed much since college, have I? I stepped into the half-lit room and shucked off my jeans, then tossed them half-heartedly towards the laundry basket, muttering as they fell short of their target. It wasn’t that I hadn’t grown since then, to be sure; I’d learned a lot about myself since those days, and I’d gotten better at knowing what I wanted to do with my time, good enough for self-employment, charging small companies inordinate fees to design self-teaching information management systems. Telecommuting had mostly spared me from having to absorb part of office culture, which meant that I’d really just become more of what I was, back in school.

Maybe that was part of what was splitting Adam away from the group, I mused as I dropped the dinner box on the desk and then slumped into the captain’s chair. Of the three of us at the center of our circle of friends, he’d been the only one who had gotten a “real job.” John had gone into professional design before he’d even graduated, and his models and landscapes commanded more than enough money to make rent. I’d stepped into the working world, doing the business-casual thing, but as soon as I had a decent portfolio I slid right back out and went freelance. Only Adam, with his research projects and his never-ending stream of students, really had to worry about interfacing with the outside world on a regular basis; that forced him into a mindset that, while not bad by any measure, just wasn’t like ours once we’d found our respective niches away from the prying eyes of others.

I took a big bite of turkey club, but a thought struck me that made me almost choke on it. Maybe Adam wasn’t the outsider after all. He was the one dealing with regular people day in and day out, while John and I had been free to insulate oursevlves against others’ opinions. Freed from the responsibility of actually interfacing with normal people except under laboratory conditions like the shops or the next contract review, maybe we’d allowed ourselves to grow inward. Adam, meanwhile, was the only one who’d managed to keep evolving with the rest of the so-called real world. Maybe he really was the normal one of the bunch, and John and I were the freaks.

I set down the sandwich and grabbed for my headset, trying to grin and swallow at the same time. On one of the computer screens, an arctic wolf-morph swayed in time with a silent song. His fur was shock-white, so stark that it seemed to glow against the near-black of the digital display. Hints of gold glinted from the tips of his ears and the fur on his chest, as well as from one of his fingers. Around his neck was a gold chain whose links jostled against each other in response to his motions. His only other attire was a pair of oversized black bondage pants littered with zippers. Multicolored glowsticks hung from short chains hooked into belt loops and pulls that splashed blobs of color about the screen as he danced.

Freaks indeed, I thought as I cleared my throat into the microphone, making the idlescreen freeze. “Computer, unlock,” I said once I had the headset in place. A prompt-box asked for my password, and my fingers rapped against the keyboard. Moments later, the wolfmorph vanished, replaced a myriad of windows. Some held code segments, some contained flowcharts or data diagrams, and still others were blank, waiting for input. The one that dominated the display held a program debugger, a small yellow arrow pointing to the line of code at which I’d paused for Adam’s call.

“Debugger, resume,” I said, fingers already at work, bringing up other windows as the program stepped forward. I flipped over to a database monitor, watching values set and reset themselves as lines of code crunched in the background. “Debugger, stop, restore to breakpoint. Editor, open weather, open terrain. Switch to weather.” I made changes on the fly as the computer rewound the simulation, changing values, adjusting commands. “Debugger, resume.” Again I swapped to the data tracker, then back to the code, muting the microphone to grab another bite of my now-warm sandwich.

The hours cranked past as I continued my editing, until well past the time when any sane person would have crawled into bed and collapsed. Finally, as the sun made itself known outside the window, I saw the codes I needed to see show up in the database. “Debugger, pause,” I grumbled, then switched to a fresh screen and called up an expanse of artificial meadow. With a few keystrokes, a few dandelions grew among the grasses, and an impossibly yellow sun hung in the unnaturally clear blue sky.

“Debugger, resume.” With a spreading grin, I watched as black storm clouds rolled in from nowhere, blotting out the sun. Lighting flashed between the cloudbanks, followed moments later by thunder rumbling in my headset. Seconds passed, stretching ominously to nearly a minute before a searing blast of white burst from the center of the storm front, arcing towards the ground and setting fire where it touched. Another bolt followed the first, then another and another, until the space between earth and sky was filled with a virtual sheet of electricity spattering the ground. The memory of the scent of ozone filled my nostrils as I watched.

Then, a minute later, the lightning was gone. The clouds broke apart, then dissipated, leaving behind only the sun and the pristine sky. However, where there had been only flowers and grass, there was now a patchwork of embers and soot, clearly spelling out “JULES WAS HERE” in bold, black letters against the sea of green.

Looking at the results of my handiwork, my stomach briefly clenched, threatening to give me the chance to revisit my turkey club in all its glory, but the moment passed, and with a few deep breaths I was feeling level again. I’d made it no secret on the Irokai fan-forums that I wasn’t happy with Tadashiissei’s brand management or trademark prosecutions, and I definitely hadn’t been quiet about my dissatisfaction with their autocratic approach in-world, but that was all civil disobedience. This… this was vandalism at best. I didn’t want to think about what it could be at worst.

“E-mail, title, quote offer of business proposition unquote, decrypt, open,” I said, and the scorched earth disappeared behind a text window. The text had obviously been passed through some kind of low-quality translator, but the meaning was unmistakable:

Jules:

I desire that your service is hired in order to write the program which writes message on landscape in Irokai. The method of this I leave for you, but behavior should as lively as possible for pulling much interest. I need this which is ended next month. Protocol everything which we decipher until present, and Irokai data dictionary, is in this e-mail; is this sufficient? If you accept, to this you should answer; at the bottom of this message the key is to encode your response one time. Attach your program to the e-mail of the reply. The payment will be by the method of your suggestion.

We wanted none of this, and you too, coming to this especially. However, Tadashiissei will not to us listen until we prove it is serious. All of us love Irokai, and you too, but with us, you agree that we cannot love Irokai without its freedom.

You are welcome to Democracy Revolution.

Fuki

The document held several compressed files, each encrypted with the same key, the one Fuki had sent in the last message. Inside, they held the connection protocols that Tadashiissei used to transmit data between servers, as well as core object models for the environment. It wasn’t enough to hack directly into anyone’s head, but with this and enough time and effort, I could probably rewrite most of Irokai by hand.

Whoever Fuki and the Democracy Revolution were, they were skilled enough to crack Irokai’s database and dedicated enough to take on the company that owned it. Ever since I’d gotten the message, I’d wondered why they’d contacted me, given what they obviously already had going for them. Were they looking for a fall guy? Would any of this work on the real systems? I’d heard of pranks like this being pulled before, but I’d always assumed that they were people inside the system setting off jokescripts on each other; this was the first time I’d ever seen a suggestion that outside forces could be at work. Did I really want to be associated with this sort of thing?

Did I really believe in freedom for Irokai?

While I was lost in my thoughts, the computer snapped up the screensaver. Within a few moments of the monitor going dark, the wolfmorph was once more gyrating hypnotically to unheard music, lightsticks flashing. I watched him move for several seconds, then spoke into the headset. “Computer, unlock.” The image froze once more, covered by the dialog box, and I entered my password again.

“E-mail, reply.” My fingers jumped across the keyboard, hooking up source code, data dumps, configuration scripts, build instructions and a quick intro file to the response. “Encrypt.” A quick cut-and-paste dumped the previous key into the input box, and a progress bar flashed up on the screen for a few seconds while the computer locked the files. “Send.” The screen flashed once, and then the message disappeared.

With a groan, I peeled the headset off of my ears and dropped it onto the keyboard with a clatter, then stumbled to the futon mattress with a heavy sigh, not bothering to finish undressing. With a bit of thrashing, I arranged pillow and blankets to cover my head from the encroaching sun, then pressed the palms of my hands into my eyes, rubbing away the headache I knew was settling in my brain.

Sorry, John, but I’m not letting you jump into this naked and alone. You may be blinded by love… but maybe so am I. “Bedroom, light off,” I said, then rolled over, waiting for sleep to drag me into the darkness.