Memory Traffic

Chapter 10: The Getaway

Sharon moved with well-rehearsed motions, sliding the weapon out of her pocket and putting it to the head of the male who sat at the terminal. His hands froze when he felt the metal against his skin.

"Out of the chair," she ordered.

"Wait! You must be with Juno, right? I've been waiting for you!" he blurted.

I narrowed my eyes. Juno seemed to have his finger in everything. Still, I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

"Get out of the chair then," Sharon growled again.

He scrambled to comply. "Juno sent word you'd be coming soon. I didn't know it'd be this soon, though."

I sat in his place and looked at what I had to work with. I had an enormous holographic touch screen in front of me straight out of a sci-fi movie with an alternate input pad I had no hope of being able to use. Underneath it was a box I recognized as the equivalent of a server hard drive. And, wouldn't you know it, right there in front was the access port I needed for the storage device. "ID-10-T," I muttered.

Before I began, I talked to Sharon over my shoulder. "Secure him in the bathroom so he doesn't watch and remember what I'm doing."

Sharon fired the weapon at the male's torso, and he slumped to the floor.

I spun to face her. "What are you doing? I said to secure him!"

"He's just stunned. He'll come around eventually," she assured me, rolling her eyes. "Get to work. We've got a mission." She leaned down to start searching his pockets and held up a square of plastic, a smug look on her face. "Now we've got a second ID."

My nostrils flared, and I scowled, itching to argue, but I turned back to the terminal. The mission was more important. I slid the storage device from my pocket and looked at it, remembering that Juno had given me a new-and-improved virus. I hesitated for a moment before fishing out the device he'd given me and inserting it into the access port, saying a little prayer as I did.

A window in English appeared in the corner of the main touch screen. It explained how to find the root folder I needed. I touched the appropriate part of the screen, and the file network structure appeared, showing the terminals, nodes, security hubs, and the data lines that connected them.

I felt light-headed and paused, pinching the bridge of my nose.

~

"You need to hack the nodes and terminals before the security hubs can secure them," the woman teaching the off-world tech training class explained.

"How do I do that?"

"First, you need to touch the terminal or node icon you want to hack so the software knows which one to analyze. Then, hit 'Begin,' but when you do that, the security hub will start trying to take over the terminal and everything else. You'll have some tools to use, like web nukes, to slow it down, but you only have so many of those, so you have to strategize."

"Can I overclock my terminal to make the process faster?" I wondered allowed.

"Oh, sure, you've got software for that, too. Just be aware of potential overheating issues. It's easier to use other things, like the clock virus, before doing that."

"Okay, let me give it a try."

I touched the node icon networked to my terminal, which separated my station from the main one I wanted to take over. From the hacking window, I chose 'Begin,' and I watched as the network display showed my hacking progress in blue. A counter showed me how much time was needed to take over the network.