literature

The Imperialist Accords, Chapter 2

Deviation Actions

Aiamai's avatar
By
Published:
203 Views

Literature Text

Chia opened the door to the server room, stacks upon stacks of electrical circuits, humming as they directed users to their virtual destinations.

Chia unlocked her device and opened the application with a small black square, titled G-2582-MGF. It opened and immediately connected to the servers usb drives using an electrical pulse.

Lo watched silently but was taken aback. She watched as the girl tapped on her screen and finally spoke up.

“Isn’t that borderline illegal?” she said pointedly.

“I don’t know, you tell me. You’re the police officer.”

“It wasn’t a question.”

“Oh really? I’m sorry, I don’t pick up on sarcasm very well.”

“Well I’m telling you now, it is.”

“Illegal?” she smirked.

“Borderline.”

“Very well. Duly noted,” she said with a giggle.

Chia continued tapping on her device, then it opened up with lines of green courier new text on black. She smiled softly, then continued through the usual motions, searching through the code. Normally she would just have to scroll but she had re-programed her device specifically to be able to navigate code.

Lo didn’t understand a bit of what she saw on screen; it wasn’t even the basic language she had learned in primary school, not that it would have made a difference since she had forgotten it. This was assembly language, the only language other than pure binary that has survived since the invention of computing.

Chia looked at it a moment, then with a final tap, locked her device and moved over to a table at the end of the walkway, being sure to hold her device so that the one edge of it that was facing the servers was still facing it. She set it down gently on the table and pulled up a chair to sit in.

“It will take awhile,” she said, looking up at Lo.

Silence, than Lo spoke. “What did you just do?”

“I hacked into the servers.”

“I gathered.”

Silence.

“Well, I set about to find the same marker where I found the hack to begin with. It will take maybe ten minutes, then I can get to work tracking down the source.”

“That’s not even possible. There are a ton of firewalls--”

“Yes. That’s why it will take awhile. I’m running the extinguisher program to get past the firewalls.”

“Yes, but-- wait, what? How is there even such a program?”

“I made it,” Chia said simply, tilting her head to the side, crinkle in her eyes. Lo found it very disconcerting-- though fascinating-- how the girl would smile without actually moving her mouth.

“Aren’t you awfully young to be a competent hacker already?”

“Aren’t you awfully young to be a top officer already?”

Lo closed her eyes and sighed.

“You got me there, uh, Miss Igora.”

“Chia.”

Lo looked up in confusion.

“Chia Igora,” she said. “But just call me Chia.”

Lo stared, confused but stoic, as if to ask if the other was serious.

Chia laughed nervously. “No need to be so formal! Yeah, my father is The Mayor, but  I’m not even in a political position, no need to treat me so professionally.” She smiled, with both her mouth and her eyes this time, as though to show the officer she was serious.

Lo said nothing as she thought of a good response.

“We are attempting to track down a criminal. I believe professionalism is necessary here.”

Chia tilted her head to the other side.

“Good point. But lets save that for later. For now we got, lets see--” Chia leaned over to unlock her device, and look at the progress on screen, “-- 3 minutes until the extinguisher busts the firewalls, then another who knows how long until I can get started tracking. We got downtime.”

Lo miffed. In actuality, though, she felt queasy, witnessing the illegal program running. All her instincts urged her to do something, to smash the device against the wall to destroy the program, but even Lo knew enough about computing to know that if she did that not only would she incure the ill will of both Mis-- Chia, and her father, it wouldn’t even work. If she was this skilled of a hacker, she probably had the good sense to back it up somehow, although Lo had no idea how she could without police detection.

“God, don’t be so huffy, Officer, um, what was it again? Lamicara, or something?”

Was this girl serious?

“We should make the most efficient use of time possible so we aren’t scrambling when it comes time to apprehend this criminal. I’m willing to stay up all night if I have to, but not if it’s because we wasted our time. Let’s concentrate on the task at hand instead of small talk.”

“Now there’s some personality!” Chia exclaimed. “Glad to see that you’re not a rock!”

“I don’t see the personality in that, and either way I don’t see why it should matter to you.”

“Come on, there was tons of personality. I can tell. And for the record, I don’t like working with rocks. I’ve had to do that before and it sucked.”

Well glad to know I’ll be working with a ditz, Lo thought sarcastically.

“Anyways. You said you wanted to make efficient use of time, right? What would you like to do?”

Lo straitened, and even smiled a little, though her face and demeanor remained serious. She was annoyed with the girl she would have to be working with, but she was about to do what she did best.

“Well first off, why in the world do you have an illegal program running on your device anyways?”

Chia giggled. “I made it, I told you!”

Lo was taken aback. “Yes, yes, I remember that. Why-- how do you have it? Is it anywhere on the black market? What even prompted you to even program such a thing anyways!”

Chia giggled again. “I don’t think any of those are even questions,” she replied.

Lo glowered.

“Okay, okay, fine. I made it because I was bored and I wanted to and I could. Besides, I want to get into some sort of security once I test out of my schooling, so I just wanted to get a head start.” Chia giggled again. “And no, it’s not on the black market. Why would I do something stupid like that?”

Lo just stared as Chia rattled off her explanation.

“Eh-- how… were you able--”

Chia cut her off. “I’ve been programming since I was two years old.”

Lo just stared, then sighed. She didn’t like the girl, but she definitely knew what she was doing.

“Very well, then. Now on to other relevant questions. First off--”

“You already said that before,” Chia said.

“Firstoff, what exactly are we supposed to be doing here? I know nothing on computing and probably shouldn’t even be on this case, so I need more information.”

“Ask away.”

“What exactly are we supposed to be doing here?”

“So huffy. Anyways, we need to track down the source of the security breach, and apprehend the perpetrator, or perpetrators as may be the case. My role is to track them down. You apprehend them.”

“You seem to know what you’re doing, why do you need me to track them down?”

“Hmm…” Chia paused. “Well, you see, someone who has the ability to hack into a government system and leave virtually no footsteps could probably catch and track down someone who hacked into their system. Even I probably couldn’t do it. I hadn’t seen anything before that was anything like this hacker had done-- I could probably use it in the future, but not against the guy that came up with it in the first place…”

“Get to the point.”

“Sorry. Anyways, it is likely to be detected right away, so once I start, we have to get on a move to apprehend the hacker right away. It’s like, game time. That’s where you come in.”

“I’m following.”

“So, I track down the location, you follow as we go there, I go to the computing system to gather the evidence of the hack and you apprehend the owner of the PC.”

“But any average officer could do that, why am I necessary?”

Chia shifted in her seat, uncomfortable. “Well, you see, I can only find the IP address of the computer it went through; I can’t find location. Ever since the world council decided that either everyone could hack into government systems or no one could, they set up these huge firewalls to block location tracking. I’ve tried to hack it but haven’t figured it out yet. That being said, there is a strong chance that the PC used might have been stolen, making the actual culprit untraceable through computer technology. Also, even if the perpetrator is there, they might be belligerent and extremely dangerous. Or they might try to run, and you’ll need to arrest them right away before they get the chance to do it again. Or, the computer might have been sold, in which case we can track the last IP address they used and find it in the black market-- old computers always are high price on the black market for just that reason, that they are untrackable. Or most likely, the  thing was just destroyed. This and a thousand other hypothetical situations we just don’t know. So,” Chia said as she stared Lo in the eye, “In such a situation, you are the one who needs to figure it out. Or at least take the hacker into custody without getting injured. If I recall, you have an excellent record with that.”

Lo nodded in grim understanding.. In addition to being a police officer, she was also a detective, though it wasn’t her official post. And although she would ever admit it, she knew she was good at it. Whether it was an actual gift, or her continual persistence with finding an unsolved answer of wrongdoing, she had figured out most every riddle she had come across. People noticed-- she remembered how she felt when she had gotten her first promotion only six months after joining the force, when her superior handed her her new badge. She felt elated, though she didn’t show it, and something like pride. Responsibility, too. Such responsibility that she felt intimidated, a feeling she wasn’t used to.

Also, a feeling which had increasingly been tested-- she had been recruited for increasingly difficult cases. She honed her abilities and got better with each case she solved-- no matter how long it took or how much of her self she sacrificed to solve it-- but she felt increasingly that she was failing to keep up.

“Yeah. That’s what they say. I do my best.”

Chia smiled wryly.

“So,” she said, “It really shouldn’t be all that complicated. But just in case, you know?”

Lo nodded. I would have done the same thing, she thought.

“Okay. So. That’s sorted out. Next, what are we tracking down? Embezzlement, I gather?”

“Yes-- though not into the hands of the person who actually hacked the system, and only a very small amount.”

Lo furrowed her eyebrows. “I’m not sure I understand. Was it just a test run you mean?” Already she was trying to sleuth out the problem, although she knew that she shouldn’t until she had all the information. Assumptions could be wrong, a lesson she had learned dearly several times over already. Even if she was able to figure out information with relatively little information, she knew she needed at least some information to begin with, and she would get it wherever she could get it.

“Possibly. But my father and I agree that it’s far more likely that they actually had a purpose behind it,” she said. Her eyes grew serious, no longer smiling. “This is where the confidentiality part comes in.”

Lo nodded silently. Chia continued.

“You see, the economic system of this city is very fragile. You probably know that, right?”

Lo shook her head no. She only knew enough about money to handle her personal finances on a day to day basis.

“Hm… well, I may have to explain a bit more. But only what you need to know. You see, even a little relocation of money could drastically change the system.”

Lo felt that defied logic. She tried to voice her confusion, but Chia continued anyway.

“It’s like, if A and C have connections and B and D have connections and so do A and B and C and D respectively, if C gives more or less money to D than is expected, they can affect how D functions and therefore how B functions even though they have no direct ties to B, and also affect A without ever doing so directly. Everyone is affected with a small relocation.”

“...”

“I’ll draw a diagram for you later. For now, just know that this could potentially be a very serious embezzlement that could really damage the city’s infrastructure, or at the very least change it for a single entity’s selfish ends.”

“You said it was a small amount, though, did you not? I don’t see how that could drastically change the system, even if a large amount could.”

Chia sighed in frustration.

“You are assuming A, B, C, and D are companies, aren’t you?”

Lo understood it was a rhetorical question, but was confused until she remembered the girls previous example. Then Lo got it.

“You mean to say that a small amount could directly affect smaller, personal entities such as individuals or very small businesses, which combined change a company’s or investment firm’s functioning, which lead to much bigger changes that lead to personal changes and so on.”

“Exactly.” Chia nodded grimly. Just then, her device pinged. She looked down at it and reached for it, then looked up at Lo again.

“Okay. Enough talk. Time to get this showdown going.”

Chia looked at her device, and at the code and system processing of the servers. Though it was specifically a VPN for the government, she could theoretically hack into any system or computer through this one server. Actually, Chia knew she could hack into any device through any other device, and she actually had quite often when she was younger just for the hell of it. She would just play jokes on people, nothing too harmful. As she grew older she stopped, though… not because she realized the danger and potential consequences of such behavior, but because she disliked the pressure having that kind of control brought on. So she drew a red line that she never crossed-- until now, when it was clearly necessary. She tried to smile, but she felt grim about the prospect of this task-- it made her feel queasy.

In any event, she looked over at the lines of code both stagnant and developing, all working together in a tangled orchestra. It would be slightly harder to track the breach itself down after the fact, but all she had to do was open up the archives within the system-- nothing stayed unrecorded-- there was always a way to track everything that ever happened computationally, even stretching back to the last thousand years.

After a bit of fiddling, Chia finally finds what she was looking for, and gets to work finding the general location of the changes in the system.

“Hmmm… I won’t be able to find the exact location,” she said to Lo, without looking up, “due to advanced encoding, but I will be able to find the IP address. We can track that at least, since IP addresses can’t change.”

Lo nodded. “Duly noted.”

Lo took out her own device. “In fact, I can do so now, in fact. I have access to all the sales records in the city if I want them, even private exchanges”

“I doubt you have all of them. But you probably have what we need now. Just one moment…”

Chia fiddled around for a second more then placed her device face up on the table, then slided it over to face Lo. Lo saw the address  in the middle of the screen, embedded in a chunk of code.

“I have no clue how you actually did that but good work,” Lo said, truly impressed. She messaged her superior officer for a warrant request, then imputed the address on her device and started tracking the perpetrator down.
See the first Chapter for a description! ^u^ and thanks for reading! forgive me if it's not that good, I'm still a new writer!
© 2014 - 2024 Aiamai
Comments0
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In