Hacking the Sun [Old Version]

Chapter 7.1 Epistemology

New Sumer had fourteen minutes until something somewhere—people somewhere—suffered at the hands of the so-called Sub Terra.

Hushed playbacks of the seething voiceover lingered, score to the citywide countdown. "A free Earth... Be the resistance... Fight, humanity..." On and on.

No room for debate. A long time ago, somebody implemented a mandate, that civilians with knowledge of CPR would save absolute strangers. This seemed no different, albeit trickier and a little more frightening. 

"Might as well call me Jessica 'Trick' Leibniz!" she exclaimed with bravado. Her eyes fell, and her lips pinched together. "I know what you would do, dad." Her feet had already brought her back to Goliath HQ.

The white suits at the front desk were distracted, shouting into their ear-pieces. Therefore, she simply speed-walked up the stairs. To her bad luck, the security guard hadn't moved, somehow oblivious to the uproar. 

"I hoped you would be gone," she muttered.

"You should not be in here, miss."

"Sorry about this!" She tapped his neck on the penultimate stair, much to his shock—literally, fifty-thousand volts from her glove to his cardiovascular system. And out like a light, the guard collapsed.

***

The seventh floor of Goliath was already scrambling, David's voice like a natural megaphone. "I want every system working on the source. Find out what's hacking the damn network. You're all on the clock!" 

Busybodies and fast hands belonged to brains that failed to circumvent whatever mystery penetrated New Sumer's cyberinfrastructure. The pressure was on, coders motivated and inhibited by the countdown on the memo board. Alphanumeric passcodes, logic, the dissonance between computer and operator levied no answers.

"Signal is bouncing off IPs all over the world, director!" cried an employee.

"Then we need to be faster!" David said.

Malvis stood in the middle of the chaos, stoic; the room might have thought him concerned, from how he paced back and forth. They were so consumed by their task, however, that his aura never distracted their hustle.  Eventually, he set himself beside David. 

"Your subordinates do not lack for imperativeness, director," he began, "but do they hold the acuity to see this crisis through?"

David desperately wanted to answer yes. Enough stakes had transformed his coat into a sauna of anxiety. The discomfort sustained his sense of urgency, constantly turning him to the clock. Malvis only made it worse. As much as he wanted to shut the alien up, he wanted to humiliate him by succeeding. Unfortunately, he lacked confidence, the peculiar kind of confidence Malvis seemed to maintain even now. Absorbed by desperation, the director, along with every employee on the seventh floor, was oblivious to the return of the Tacquizza girl.

For everyone's sake, Jessica hoped to escape notice. Not the hardest task, once she saw their ardent focus. None saw her creep through the washroom corridor, to the other side of the room. Along the way, she grabbed a hat on the employee rack, placing Tacquizza's in her pocket. Stealthily, she side-stepped to the director's office, relieved to find it was not a sliding door.

Quietly inching inward, her field of vision pinned David and Malvis by the memo board, both presiding over the sweaty workforce. Lip bit, she shut the door without the slightest hint of notoriety, then crept onto David's seat. His personal computer was already logged in, which saved some time. She pulled the head off of miniature R2-D2 and connected the USB. Everything essential popped onto the screen before her fingers unweave New Sumer's network.