The Shock of the New

Chapter 8: The Widow Process

Stunned by what she'd heard, Eleanor helped Sofia into her apartment and sat her down at the kitchen table. Sofia was completely consumed by tears to an almost hysterical degree which wasn't too surprising considering she'd just lost her husband of five years. Eleanor prepared her a cup of coffee, then sat down opposite her.

"Now calm down" she said gently "What actually happened"

Sofia sobbed and took a quick sip of her coffee. Then she began to speak

"Matias's office phoned. They said he was working away at his usual place when the whole thing just exploded and...and..."
At that, Sofia broke down in tears. Eleanor put a supportive hand on her shoulder

"There, there" she said gently "When did you find all this out?"
Sofia looked at her and sniffed

"Only a couple of minutes ago. They told me I had to come down to his office and sign a few forms. I knocked on your door because I couldn't stand going alone..."
"It's ok" Eleanor smiled sweetly "You just take a minute to get yourself together, then we'll go there together"

Once they'd both finished their coffee, Eleanor gave Sofia time to pull herself together. Then the two of them set off to Matias's workplace- a food manufacturing plant located in the north district of the Yiannopolis gardens. Due to most of the earth's main food supplies being wiped out in the Giga Wars, most food was artifically made using sophisticated production techniques. Lunaville W.E.R. had it's own facilities especially for this as having food constantly shipped up there to the earth was just too time and resource consuming to be practical.

When the two women arrived at Matias's department, they were met by his manager, a small thin nosed man with thick glasses who scowled at them when they walked in.

"Sofia Fernandez" Sofia introduced herself "I'm Matias's widow"
The manager glared at her for a second, before looking at Eleanor

"And who's this?"
"Eleanor Johnson" Eleanor explained "I'm a friend of hers."
"I've come to sort out the documents involving my husband's death" Sofia said. Although she sounded dignified, Eleanor could tell she was fighting back tears. The manager however didn't appear to notice. Either that or he chose not to show it.

"Yes yes" he nodded before typing on his computer "Very tragic death that. The man was one of our hardest workers and we'll definitely see a drop in productivity now he's gone"
"If you don't mind me asking" Eleanor interjected "What actually happened?"
The manager briefly adjusted his glasses before speaking
"The terminal he worked at overloaded and electrocuted him. We did our best, but the injuries he suffered really were so severe we couldn't do anything"
"What caused the overload?" Eleanor asked
"We're not exactly sure" replied the manager who was clearly trying to get back to his work "We've got our top technicians going over the equipment, but it's a very sophisticated piece of computer technology. So it might be a while before we get a definitive answer"

"You want me to take a look?" Eleanor asked "I may not look it, but I'm a pretty good computer technician"
The manager looked her over, confused
"You?"
"Yeah" Eleanor nodded "I mean you're gonna need all the help you can get in a situation like this and I ain't doing anything at the moment"
The manager sighed "Fine. The computer system you want is Module F23 in block F4. I'll let the area manager know you're coming"

Eleanor found block F4 easy enough and the staff were able to supply her with a basic computer repair analysis kit. Then it was just a matter of searching the computer modules stored in the block until she found F23.

After 30 minutes of searching through the huge metal boxes that made up the food company's supercomputer systems, Eleanor eventually located F23. She then took out the connector for the repair kit, hooked it up and began searching through the code.

When the manager had said that the computers were sophisticated, that really had been putting it mildly. The coding for the computer was far more complex with much more operators and other coding systems running right through it. Nonetheless, it was a system Eleanor knew her way around and slowly but surely she began looking through the vast swathes of numbers and code in an attempt to find anything that could have caused the power surge.

Eleanor had been looking through it for a while when she came to a section of code that appeared to have been corrupted by a foreign program. When she took a look, she was met by garbled mess of programming that looked as though whoever programming the system had had a seizure halfway through. Eleanor began carefully combing her way through the mess trying to see if there was some way she could make sense of it all.

As she continued to make her way through the coding mess, Eleanor then saw something. Among the garbled letters, numbers and other signs was a sentence that simply read "So shall we be bold and assert that a human being too, if he is going to be gentle to his own and those known to him, must by nature be a philosopher and a lover of learning?"

For a second, Eleanor assumed it was just another P.R.E. hacker pissing around with the system. But something deep down told her this wasn't so. It just didn't feel like your typical run of the mill P.R.E. hacker trying to mess with the system. It felt like someone more intelligent and sophisticated.

As Eleanor continued to ponder over this, she glanced down at her watch and swore. She'd been in block F4 for over an hour. By now, Sofia was probably wondering where she'd gotten to. Eleanor quickly packed up the equipment and began making her way back to the front desk where she'd left Sofia.

When she got back to the block, Sofia was still sitting at the desk with the manager. As soon as he saw her, the Manager scowled

"So have you discovered the cause of our problem?" he asked in slightly mocking tones

Eleanor shrugged "Sort of. There's a complete clusterfuck of coding in the system that's probably been caused by some sort of hacker. It's lead to wide levels of corruption all through the CPU"
The manager nodded "Well I'm glad you can tell us that. Do you have any idea how to fix it?
"If i'm honest with ya, it's most likely gonna take you a while" Eleanor told him "It's not something that one technician can put right in a single night"
The manager sighed "Well I'm finished with your friend here. So could you kindly leave and let us fix up our system?"

Eleanor accompanied Sofia all the way back to her apartment. When they got there, Eleanor turned to her

"I'm always here if you need a shoulder to cry on" she said "If there's anything playing on your mind, don't hesitate to give me a call"
Sofia sniffed "I will"

Once Eleanor got inside, she laid down on the bed and began to think about the odd things that had happened to her in the last few hours. If this was a new breed of smarter hacker, then there was a good chance she'd have her work cut out for her from now on.