H3ll0_im_T4nY4.docx (Mr Robot)

Ch4pt3r_1_Un3xp3ct3d_c4ll

January 4th, 2016. I'm woken up by my phone vibrating and flashing wildly, as someone tries to call me. Making some kind of tired, guttural noise, I grab at my bedside table, trying a few times to pick up my phone and failing before finally managing to put the phone to my ear. "What time is it?" I mumble into the microphone. I know it's Gideon calling me. It's always Gideon. "It's around 2am. I have an emergency." Hearing the urgency in his voice, I can't help but wonder why, if it's an emergency, did he call me? I'm not the only person he knows and I'm hardly the closest to him.
"I'm at least 40 minutes away, Gideon. It's 2am. What am I supposed to do?"
I hear him tapping his fingers on a table nervously, as he replies. He always fidgets when he's stressed. I'm pretty sure he never notices he's doing it, either.
"Can you come to AllSafe?"
AllSafe Cybersecurity- that's Gideon's company. He has plenty of employees that he could get to work on this 'emergency', so again, why me? For fucks sake it's 2 in the morning.
"Why?"
"It's one of our clients. Someone's hacked them, and it's not good. We already have one guy working on it, but we need someone else on this job, and no one in the office will pick up their phones."
So that's why. He knew I would be available because I'm always available. He knew he could rely on me because I have nothing else to do. On nights like these I often spend my time sleeping. That's if its an okay night. On worse nights I drink until the sun comes up, or wreck my apartment for the hell of it (Both are very therapeutic, I must add). Gideon knows I'll be in my apartment and he knows I'll answer my phone because to a degree, I'm that desperate for attention and to a degree I crave the human contact that I don't receive. I feel a tinge of resentment for Gideon seeping into my mind, but I shake it off. After all, I know I'm probably looking too far into it and I know I would do the same thing if our situations were reversed.
Breathing out, slowly, I sit up in bed. "Gideon, don't say I never did anything for you. I'm on my way." With that, I hang up on him abruptly, yanking some clothes off of their hangers. I throw on a grey T-shirt, a hoodie and some sweatpants. Shoving my phone and $75 into my pocket, I shut the door behind me and walk out of my apartment complex, hailing a cab. Within 5 minutes a taxi is at the sidewalk, telling me to get in. The speed at which I found a taxi isn't very surprising if you take into consideration that it's 2am on a Sunday morning and as a result, at least half of New York will be out partying, which, in most cases, renders almost all of the people on the streets unable to drive. 2am-3am on Saturday and Sunday morning will be the two busiest hours of the week for any taxi cab.

"Where are you going?" The man in the front asks. His hair is graying and at shoulder length, but you can see a few streaks of brunette hair still clinging onto his head. He's wearing a button-up blue shirt and a beanie hat, which is a strange combination of clothing, but overall there would be one word to describe him. That word would be 'average'. Of course, in 100 years, this 'average' will be considered 'abnormal'. The adjective of 'average' will never have one solid definition apart from 'abiding to societal norms'- society being the main cause of our problems and ultimately our downfall. Society controls our every move, everything we do, when it comes down to it and there's no real use for the norms that come with it. Enraging, isn't it? Knowing that if you step out of the boundaries of the lines set for us by other people, you'll be punished unjustly? A brilliant example of this being gender norms. When did you last see a girl under the age of 12 who had hair shorter than her jawline? What about a boy under the age of 12 with hair that reaches further than his ears? When you ask them about why their hair is that way, their parents will answer for them. They'll tell you that it's because 'boys have short hair and girls have long hair'. Did you know that that idea is based off of the idea that men work and women are there to look pretty? Short hair is more practical in terms of labor and long hair is pretty, which is why men are 'supposed' to have short hair and women are 'supposed' to have long hair. To conclude, fuck societal norms.
"Take me to Allsafe cybersecurity, 655, 3rd Avenue, please."

The cab driver speeds through traffic, running more than a few red lights. I know this company has a history of reckless drivers. You can tell simply from the amount of 2 star reviews on their Yelp page. You would think that that would convince me not to use their services, but I don't care about the reviews so much. They get me to my destination much quicker than most other taxis and as a result of all the bad reviews, they've always been cheaper than all the other taxi services. They're cheap and fast. I'm at Allsafe in 35 minutes. After passing my $75 to the driver to pay for my trip and telling him to keep the change, I walk up to the building and ring its intercom. Gideon answers almost immediately. He must have been waiting for me.
"Allsafe Cybersecurity. Who is it?"
He knows exactly who it is. He can't not know.
"It's me. Let me in."
I hear a 5 second long beep as the door unlocks and having been let in, I walk into my friend's company's building.

Soon, I am knocking on the card-activated door just beyond the office. Gideon, upon seeing me, rushes to the door, opening it with his card and making a 'get in' gesture with his hands.
"What's up with your client?" I ask him, whilst looking around his office, which, judging by the boring white walls and the tiny cubicles that employees must spend most of their days in, could easily suck your soul out if you spent enough time there.
"Uh, there's a back-door program or something, Elliot-"
Damn it. I forgot that Gideon, although a brilliant company manager does not work well under pressure. "Where's the 'one guy that's been working on it', Gideon?" I cut him off, not wanting to bother with a very broken explanation of what's going on.
"Over there."
He points to a man in a hoodie, who is hunched over a computer terminal, typing away wildly. I hadn't noticed him until he was pointed at, since he seems to blend in without even meaning to. He has olive skin, which, although still visibly tanned, looks like it hasn't seen sunlight in weeks, and he wears a hoodie and some jeans that are obviously designed for comfort, not style. He seems to be a stereotypical hacker. I sit on the swivel chair next to him.
"What's the situation?" I say, starting to set up my own terminal next to him, logging into the computer with Gideon's work username (He had given it to me voluntarily when I had asked about the company's cloud system) and his universal password. I had figured his password out within days of knowing him. His security wasn't that high. Glancing at the man in the hoodie, I notice that he seems to have paused in shock and is staring at me.
"What? We don't have time to handshake or whatever, tell me what's up."
He snaps out of his stupor, as I talk to him. Most good hackers don't have many friends, so it's not mind-blowing to me that, from what I've seen of this guy, he's not brilliant at social conduct. Hell, if I judged him on his social skills, I would be a hypocrite.
He seems to suddenly spring to life once jolted, though and that's reassuring.
"There's a back-door virus that's allowing someone to remotely delete a lot of the company's data, as well as taking thousands of dollars worth of money." He's very softly-spoken and for a moment, I wonder whether that's because I've only met him recently and he's just shy or whether it's his natural tone. I decide the answer to that question can wait.
"Why am I even here then? That's easy. Wipe everything. They have backups, don't they?"
Gideon puts a hand on the back of my chair, seeming to have calmed down slightly, but he still looks quite tense.
"We haven't tried that because they're a relatively new company and they haven't backed up their data. They've requested that we don't wipe anything. We'd lose a client."
"What are the technicians over there doing?"
As I ask the question I immediately know the answer to it. Almost all of the technicians that deal with things like backups do absolutely nothing. They're too lazy to do anything but ride on the coat-tails of their bosses.
"What about their Malware Protection programs? It could be as simple as scanning for the virus and removing it."
"They haven't installed Malware Protection."
"What company is this? And once again, what the fuck are the technicians doing?"
Most technicians of this standard are terrible, yes, but you would have thought that that they'd be smart enough to download Malware Protection. That's the first thing that you're taught in internet safety in elementary school.
"Sitting with their thumbs up their asses apparently." Gideon runs his hand through his hair.
"These companies are ridiculous. So we'll have to-"
"Code our own temporary malware protection." The guy in the hoodie interrupts me, finishing my sentence.
"Yeah. With one person, making malware protection, even if its temporary, that could take a few hours. Your client would be up to their necks in bankruptcy by then at the rate at which this virus is going." It isn't a particularly impressive virus, but it's definitely running fast. I'm looking at the amount of data it's deleting right now.
Time to get to work.
"Gideon, do you have any chewing gum?"
He stares at me for a minute. I know this habit seems out of place at a time like this, but I can't work without it. He throws me a packet of chewing gum without a brand on it. He must have taken the outer packaging off at some point. I unwrap a piece and put it in my mouth, beginning to chew it. It's bubblegum flavour. Bubblegum flavour is possibly the worst flavour on the market, but it'll do.
"Let's get started."