Read Part 5

“This is a gas, Ricky. I didn’t think getting inside the building would be such a cakewalk. I should let you help out with more of my cases.”

Jane let the door seal behind her and took a moment to assess shipping dock of Pliant Technologies’ main office. The warehouse was dark and vacant except for the automated maintenance arms that swung around, discarding burnt server racks and unpacking fresh ones. Warning lights blinked red and yellow, guiding Jane towards the heart of the datacenter.

“Look Brass, don’t go thinking you can come crawling to me for help whenever you get yourself in too deep.” His voice was stern in her ear, but Jane could detect just a hint of puppydog in Rick’s tough-guy voice. “We’re here for Leon. On Monday I go back to law-abiding meatball doing security tests for shady mega-corporations.”

He checked the data coming from the security feed. It was an uncharacteristically warm night in San Francisco, so they had to distort the thermal imaging only slightly. The audio and video feeds they replaced with high-resolution simulations, inserting random events to fool loop-detectors. This tech was made possible by companies like Pliant themselves, though Rick put it all together with a delicate touch.

Weaving through palettes and recycling bins, Jane made her way to the far end of the warehouse. She climbed a set of stairs while Rick brainstormed different reasons Pliant might need a datacenter inside of their main office.

“No fooling, these cats must not trust the public cloud services with their sensitive data, but, hot-dang, even banks are on there these days. Maybe it’s latency? Something they need in-house without any gremlins snapping their caps?”
Jane stopped at the top of the stairs; the air got hot and dry as she moved away from the liquid-cooled machinery. She took out a cyberette and set it to freeze-vapor.

“Latency… I was wondering, why did Leon’s dear friends back there need such a heavy duty rig for this AR game? The brain is supposed to be doing most of the work.”

“I dunno, Janey. Let’s get you plugged in and see what we can see.”

The info from Fred-E let Jane get through several minor security doors. Fortunately, the target wasn’t on the main office floor or inside the datacenter. Their data showed a terminal used for monitoring the connection between developers and the datacenter. This terminal had greater security clearance than it should have; from that machine they could impersonate a developer and get the computing cluster to run a command over the network: safely uninstall Nervewatch from Leon’s system.

“Ricky, I’m at the terminal. I’m going to make this dolly dizzy. Are you ready to plug him?”

“What? Why would I shoot Leon?”

“I mean the ethernet cable, you oaf.”

“I know what you meant, sugar. You’re not the only one who gets to tease.”

Jane covered her face with her left palm and kept typing with her robotic hand. Well, I like to think my timing is better than that, she thought to herself. The credentials from Fred-E worked on the first try, so she began to work on the exploit. She followed Rick’s instructions, sarcastically sighing whenever he over-explained some basic computer use.

“Alright Janey, this should be go-time. Input Leon’s Brain-Protocol address, I’ll connect him to the network, then you run the command. Everything clear?”

“Shiny as chrome, honeycomb. It should be a…” she paused for effect, “no-brainer!”

Rick couldn’t help but see her raised eyebrows in his mind. “Dammit, Brass, it better not be, for Leon’s sake!”

“I’m sorry, Ricky. That was such a mindless thing of me to say.”

“Alright, just run the biz, ya’ numbskull. I’m plugging him in.”

Jane hit Enter. The result came back instantly:

Uninstall executing.

BP Host local network registering ... 100% complete.

BP Host receiving decode sequence ... 100% complete.

Dispatching sales analysis sequence ... 100% complete.

Uninstall complete.

 

She stared at the message for a moment, curious, but was interrupted by Rick’s voice, excited in her ear.

“He’s talking! I think it worked! Wait, it’s not him talking, it’s a canned message… Some kind of user-survey.”

Crummy post-uninstall feedback forms. They couldn’t resist putting one inside the user’s doggone brain! Fuming, Jane began to erase the command history from the terminal, then stopped. One command caught her attention: “Dump_BP_Addresses_Physical.” She transferred the output to her arm-drive, then disconnected and asked Rick for an update.

“I unplugged him and the survey stopped. He’s passed out, but it’s actual sleep this time. I think, I think he’s going to be ok. But…” Rick paused, then his voice bursted out loudly. “We have a problem! I just realized the survey referred to the user ID of the terminal you used. You better hoof it before a smarter system figures out what that means, Janey! Now!”

Jane was already most of the way back to the warehouse, location scrambler set to maximum again. She was hidden, but Rick’s signal was also blocked. At the top of the stairs she narrowly avoided running straight into the vice-grip arms of a cyber-watchman. The barely-human machine swung an electrified claw at her. She ducked under it neatly, but an electric arc shot into her robotic arm, knocking her to the railing.

The watchman swiveled around 180-degrees at its waist and began to approach. With her functioning arm, Jane reached into her coat, desperately grabbing the first thing she felt. She threw a cyberette-butt at the machine’s face-camera. Her human arm misaimed horribly, but the cyberette hit the watchman’s leg-joints. Vapor exploded around the point of impact and frost spread down the mechanism, freezing it to the floor.

Jane took off down the stairs while the watchman struggled with the frost. “Don’t fret, Mr. Bot, I’ll pay the fine for littering.” she called back, hoping the scrambler didn’t hide the sarcasm in her voice.

All of the lights in the warehouse were blinking red now. The maintenance arms were set to security mode, which seemed to just involve flailing wildly, close to the ground. Jane clambered to the top of a pallette of replacement GPUs and leapt onto a sealed dumpster. She kept jumping between lily-pads until she got clear of the security measures and burst out of the loading bay.

On the street Jane tried to walk casually, like any unsuspicious, cloaked figure jogging through the Tech District at one in the morning would. She considered turning down the location scrambler so she could talk to Rick. She decided against it when a black HoverLux Towncar drifted around the corner ahead of her. Jane quickened her pace and ducked into a shadowy alley.

The hover-car coasted to a stop behind her just as a smaller car entered the alley at the other end, coming at her fast. Jane looked around, frantically searching for something to climb. She began to make for a fire escape, then thought about it: Oh right, hover-cars. The location scrambler began to blink as it ran out of power. Well, no point in this now anyway. She turned it off and blasted out message on Rick’s channel:

“Ricky, darling, sounds like Leon is back to himself, so I hope I can trouble you for a moment. You better deduce the scoop on what I’m sending you, or this goose is cooked. Love, Brass.” Then she erased her com history, raised her hands above her head, and walked towards the large towncar.

The back door slid open, releasing a thick cloud of brown vapor. Inside, a large man in a pinstripe suit casually smoked a cyberpipe. He smiled, then exhaled and let out a hearty laugh, revealing metal teeth and a mechanical tongue. With a voice like a boiler room in the basement of an abandoned meat-packing plant, he greeted her:

“Miss Jane Brass, the Private Investigator herself. Please, do step inside. You have some explaining to do.”

 

To be continued…