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Chapter 6 - The Chase

The next day I woke up at 10am, so by the time I was ready to head off the library it was 11am which meant it would definitely be open, but most importantly it would have available computers that I could use for my research. Leaving the house on my bike, I got there in next to no time so I locked up my bike and headed inside.

Inside it smelt of old. All around me were old books, many with tattered spines and ripped covers, the royal blue carpet was wearing thin in places, metal bookcases from another era stood tall and proud, bearing its load for people to see and from what I could tell, mainly old people fulfilled that role, contributing to that aged smell that filled the air. In contrast with everything else in the building the computers were quite new. The local council had recently launched a scheme to try and lure in more of a younger audience by furnishing the library with a just-above-average computer suite for free public use. Needless to say it hadn’t really worked, but even so, here I was, a youth drawn by the computers.

I sat down at the computer in the corner and turned the monitor slightly so it was facing more towards the wall, just so nobody could look over my shoulder, and logged on using my free account. As I did so a counter appeared in the bottom right of the screen declaring how long I had left in this session. I had half an hour to find as much information on Zerco as I needed and on a system like this it was going to be tough. I plugged in the memory stick to make sure I could quickly store any info I managed to find, and as I did so I could’ve sworn I saw a flicker on the screen. It must just be the CPU struggling to handle the processing momentarily, I thought to myself.

When looking for information Google is as good a place to start as any, so I loaded up the default browser and input Zerco into the search box. After a few seconds the results finally loaded and as I scanned them for anything particularly interesting I noticed something strange, absolutely nothing stood out at all. It was as if all these reports were made to look completely average and unassuming, like someone had put them there purposefully to remove attention from Zerco. It was like they were an undercover business or something and if that was the case, I was going to blow their case.

Or so I thought. After a quarter hour of tedious digging through fake stories I managed to find some legitimate news reports and it seemed that at many technologic incidents Zerco was somehow involved, but even so the reports underplayed or glossed over their involvement so I couldn’t get a good grip on what it was they actually did. As I was following my most recent and lucrative lead, I started finding articles, often by angry bloggers, not glossing over the details and actually telling me some of the details, but it still wasn’t much to go by. I chanced upon a genuine news article from the web equivalent of the local newspaper, stating that Zerco was somehow related to some hacking fiasco 4 years ago that has never been fully explored to this day, but before I could read on sparks came out of part of the PC and the screen starting flickering badly, trying to cling on to life to no avail.

I quickly retrieved the memory stick as more sparks erupted from the machine and the screen gave up completely. Unfortunately the librarian noticed the pyrotechnics and came over to inspect the situation.

“Excuse me, but were you just drinking by the computers sir? Is that what caused the sparking?” She asked with alarm and a slight annoyance in her voice.

“No, I don’t even have any drinks with me.” I said, as calmly as possible to diffuse the situation before it even ignited.

“Then what on Earth were you doing to that poor PC?” she said, this time with shock and confusion replacing the previous intonations.

“Nothing, I was just reading the news!” I exclaimed truthfully.

Relaxing visibly, she lowered her glasses in a mock-serious manner “You weren’t trying to find out some sort of government secret were you?” she said with a slight giggle.